#But out of all the quicksilvers Comic!Quicksilver needs some platonic affection

[morsartis]

Comfort

Somewhere you could hear distant music, the notes soft and faint to the point you could delude yourself into thinking it was only in your head. The music coupled with the open window and the gentle breeze that would sway through your curtains created a sort of softness to the atmosphere. Or maybe it was the lethargy caused by the summer heat. You could never be too sure on that one. Laying on your bed you continued to lazily card your fingers through soft white curls. He’d fallen asleep some time ago and you were pleased to know he was getting any decent sleep at all. His weight was a comfort, head pillowed slightly below your chest and one arm wrapped underneath you around your waist. Had someone told you he was cuddly you might have laughed, but in a way it made a strange sort of sense. He was a twin after all, once upon a time he’d been so close to another as to share the same womb. You wondered if that was a thing with twins, if they’d spend their whole lives craving that sort of closeness with somebody. 

It had to be lonely if so. 

Your eyes drifted to your ceiling, the stars you’d placed there sometime in your youth when things were simple and you had yearned for the vastness of space to swallow you whole. Even pain, even suffering, had seemed simple then. But that had been long ago and you would never know how to explain to that younger self of yours what had led to your current situation. You couldn’t really explain it to anyone at all. Nails lightly scratching along his scalp you tried to recall when this closeness the two of you had had started but that moment was a blur amongst soft niceness you’d shown him since you had known him. It was in your nature to be kind and you had long stopped trying to deny yourself the urge to tend to others. Just as it had been in your nature to be cruel so that you could not be hurt. 

In his sleep Pietro shifted, tightening his hold. A freed hand shimmied under your body, curling loosely around a shoulder blade, before he settled. Wrapping an arm over the lean expanse of his back you let him curl close and intimate. Despite the intimacy there was no desire there. No lust. Just a warmth from the unspoken trust between you. In all the time you had known him he had been a friend and an enemy and a companion. A myriad of complicated truths and history between the two of you. 

An old friend.

Watching him now in his vulnerable sleep your eyes found the scars that peeked from underneath his shirt. The faded burns of hateful fire, the jagged scratches of war, and the stinging straight slashes of betrayal. When you had first tried to know him he’d been wild-eyed with stolen youth. Expecting a knife in the back that you never gave. He was cruel then, cruel in his suffering for fear of much the same. You had your moments of cruelty too back then. Time and experience had curbed that cruelty and dulled it with compassion and melancholy. He carried with him a great never ending sadness behind quick wit and sharp barbs. Once, when he’d been vulnerable and you had simply been there he spoke of a community afraid to love him in fear he’d be snatched from them. Of a time and place where his differences didn’t just affect him but his entire family. How he strived to embrace his own culture with the hope it would be brave enough to embrace him back. The fear his mother had, his aunt you would learn but she had always been his mother in his eyes, that he would be taken from her simply because he looked different than what the world thought the Roma should look like. That one day someone would snatch her own child from her and claim he’d been stolen from them instead. You would have liked to claim that you’d had an intelligent reply to that confession but you’d been younger then and newer to the world- suffered in different ways to the man that would become your friend- all you had been able to do was listen and offer him a hand to hold. Miraculously that had seemed to be enough for a while. You had educated yourself after that, made a better effort to understand so that he wouldn’t have to explain at every turn. 

Perhaps that had been a turning point between the two of you, one of many. A genuine attempt at understanding him when he felt isolated. Or perhaps that had been a mere moment and the turning point had been something else. Either way you had gotten to know him and he in turn had gotten to know you. Despite the terrible things you were both capable of, despite the way you had both hurt each other at times, despite every hurtle and thorn and fight between the two of you somehow you had managed to hold onto each other. You would never be sure if the way you wordlessly let him in and out of your life was healthy, if the hurt between the two of you ran deeper than either of you were comfortable admitting, but you had your moments. Moments as soft as this where the two of you were simply people. Simply seeking comfort. You could live with that. With knowing that Pietro found comfort when he needed it not just from his sister but from a friend. 

Even at your most terrible you had never denied him that. Even at his. Maybe that made you foolish, but you couldn’t deny that it could be sweet. Rubbing a hand over his back you closed your eyes, letting the afternoon heat lull you. In your bones you knew something would call him away, that some disaster or world altering tragedy would ask for him, demand his help in blood. But for the moment it was you and him in the safety of your childhood bed, a moment suspended in time and softness. For now there was the surety of comfort, the steady weight on top of you and the warmth of skin. A togetherness you rarely shared with anyone else. 

For now that was enough.