OUR LIFETIME || PIETRO MAXIMOFF
"i've lived enough lifetimes to know that i was meant for this one. i was meant for a life with you."
metamorphic: book 1
(summary inside)
avengers aou - ????
pietro...
PIETRO LOVED HER. God, he loved her. Savannah Martin was the only love he'd ever truly known, and he just needed to say it out loud.
He could say it now—while things were quiet and they weren't running. He should say it now.
Well maybe not now. Not when they'd had too many drinks. His inebriation would wear off sooner than hers, but that meant nothing for his current state of mind.
"If I could stay here forever, Pietro, I would," she murmured from where she sat at the edge of the hotel bed, her legs hanging over the side. She looked at him from over her shoulder, her pupils wide and her hair a mess of tight curls pulled loosely at the nape of her neck. Her dark brown skin was illuminated by the moonlight, and she was wearing a large, old t-shirt and little else.
He loved her.
Pietro rested a hand on her lower back, turning onto his side in the bed and propping his head upon his left hand. He wished she would just come to bed and stay there, but when she was drunk, she liked to think, and she'd said she couldn't think right while lying down. "I know, Sav."
"I love you," she said, leaning down and pressing a lingering kiss to his lips. Pietro's eyes were wide when she pulled back, his heart beating quicker than usual. So he didn't have to worry about saying it first, but he still had to say it—he still wanted to. Of course if it were anyone else, he would be questioning the truth of their words, but Savannah never said things she didn't mean, not even when she'd had too many drinks.
He said it back to her, and she smiled somberly, looking away from him once more.
"What is it, Savannah?" He asked, his hand moving to grip her waist firmly but reassuringly.
She shook her head. "The same thing it always is." Savannah reached back and ran a hand through his shaggy hair. "Time."
And Pietro just wished that he'd known then that they'd have so little of it.
•••
Now, 2020
PIETRO HAD LEARNED HOW to keep moving, at a speed a dozen times slower than what he was used to but moving nonetheless. The second year wasn't nearly as hard as the first.
It was almost just as lonely though.
That constant loneliness, however, is what prompted him to finally call Tony Stark. The older man had had a child—Morgan— and when Pietro had finally met the child, he'd realized that good things still existed in a world where he'd lost everything good in his own life.
Pietro still had people, though, and that mattered. It may have taken him too long to realize as much, but it was better late than never. He chose to spend more time with them because sometimes he felt as if he was on the brink of losing them too, and he just couldn't. What was left of the Avengers was his family, and even though they were broken, they made things better. Still, he could hardly handle the time when Savannah's birthday came around, nor could he handle celebrating his birthday or Hanukkah without his sister. It was too hard.
More often than not he found himself working all hours of the night, trying to keep New York safe. He was good at that. He had to be because he had hardly ever been when it truly mattered.
New York was calmer, of course, but not without its problems. The place, surprisingly, had no shortage of heroes, though. He, Natasha, and Steve were happy to help in any way they could. Pietro, however, seemed to be the only one of them with a calling to vigilantism.
As far as he knew, anyway.
At first, the act had seemed small—trivial—compared to all that he had seen, but he came to understand that at the end of the day, people's lives were still in danger, and that was no small thing.
It never was.
He met a lot of different people through it too. There was a Jessica who was never not at least a little inebriated and who also refused to give him her last name. She told him that she'd done the whole vigilante thing, and that it should be obvious that it just wasn't worth the trouble.
Pietro had only shrugged.
There were too many reasons why she was right and even more reasons why she was wrong.
He kept himself busy because when he didn't, he was forced to confront his problems and unless he was sitting across from a therapist, he couldn't handle doing so.
"Juice," the two year old demanded of him with a tap of her cup against his leg. His other thoughts were dimmed by her words. He gave Morgan a small smile and ruffled her brown hair, much to her dissatisfaction. Her tiny face was now pinched in some imitation of anger, and Pietro had to hold in his laughter.
He'd thought he'd may have taken on too much when he offered to babysit the child for the infinitely tired Starks. Just three hours, they'd promised him, and he was available and easy to trust.
They trusted him, and he was glad for it.
With that thought he gently took the cup from her awaiting hand and walked—yes walked— to refill her cup.
She muttered something that sounded like some sort of thanks and wobbled back to some toy of hers Pietro didn't really understand.
He watched her for a moment.
She reminded him of his sister.
Pietro sighed, cutting the thought short before he could spiral into that place that was hard to come back from.
He was fine, and he was getting better because he had to, and one day he would want to.
He just needed time.
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hi! i want to start off by saying, thank you, thank you, thank you for over 100k reads on this story. it really means a lot because this was my first story ever on here, and even though i've rewritten it since then, it's still very special to me.
i'm working through the last of my finals, but i'll be done after monday, so we may be getting more updates on all of my books. so stay tuned!
