☑ THE SHADOW | Peter Maximoff

t w e n t y - s i x

~ 𝐏𝐞𝐭𝐞𝐫 ~

"Amara!"

To his relief, the girl actually stopped on the stairs. She was only about halfway up, but she actually paused. He saw this as a positive.

When she slowly turned around, Peter was finally able to get a good look at her. Her eyes were a dark grey, just like they had been this entire time since her body was trying to heal itself. Her outfit was tight, showing off her features as they hugged her fair skin while her damp hair fell into her face.

Peter had noticed her beauty before - it was pretty impossible not to, despite the baggy band shirts and sweatshirts she frequently liked to wear. Her dark curls fell perfectly around her face, framing her with her sharp jawline, while her muscles (before the mission) had shown through nicely to show all of the training she's done at the X-Mansion, and her dark makeup made her even more mysterious - so much so that it only helped to intrigue him.

Luckily, no one noticed the way his eyes lingered on her frame when Kurt brought her and Jean down for the mission briefing - one of the many advantages he had as a speedster. He had to do a triple take when he noticed just how short her skirt had been, and he had to swallow down the urge to do something about the heat in the room that only seemed to be growing for him.

Not to mention when she stepped out of her room in her suit. God, that suit. It hugged her curves in a way that made him unintentionally stare and (sometimes) not even try to hide it. That was when she was confident, and poised, and sexy, and when she waved her mutation around, he was downright hot and bothered.

Most of the time it was a serious struggle for him to remind himself that she hated him, and in turn, he hated her. Every now and then, he would let her comments get to him, and some of the things he said were just plain brutal. Barbaric. Inhumane. Wrong.

It was childish of him. He should have just let what she said slide, just like he did with everything else. But he couldn't. He wanted to know her. He wanted to talk to her.

His eyes raked up and down her body.

She, like him, had lost weight. And yet, the curves of her body still hadn't gone unnoticed to him. Her sweater sat comfortably over her shoulders while the faint dip in the neckline of her tighter shirt gave him just the smallest peek of something she would have otherwise been very diligent of covering up.

One thing he noticed about her were the freckles that delicately accented the curves of her face. He didn't even know they existed; before the mission, he had never seen her without makeup.

But this only made him like her more. He was able to see a part of her, even as small as the cluster of freckles on her cheek, the light dusting on her nose, and the darker one visible just below her lash line, that no one else did. It was natural. It was her. And it only made him want to know more.

He stepped up to the bottom of the stairs, his back hands in his pockets to control himself while he looked up at her.

"Ames, you're not going to hurt me."

Her fingers fiddled with the sleeves that were a little too long for her arms as he took another step up, but she didn't move. He continued going up.

"If that's what you're worried about, you don't have to be."

Her chin quivered, and he paused at the step that allowed them to be eye level with each other.

"Yes, it is," she whispered.

He didn't dare move as she reached up to run her fingers through the shorter section of his hair. He knew that they cut some of it off at the base, and when he first saw it in the mirror, he groaned as he noticed it was this awkward, large chunk on the side of his head in the front that just made him look like an idiot more than anything else.