Energy Dance

The party was small, by Avengers standards: just the people who’d bled on Hala together.

Carol’s brownstone roof glowed with string lights and the low thrum of a 1940s jazz playlist she’d stolen from Steve Rogers. Teej was asleep downstairs with Goose curled on his chest like an orange heater. The others—Kamala, Monica, a very drunk Rocket—had drifted inside for cake.

Carol found Clark on the edge of the roof, elbows on the railing, city lights flickering in his glasses. He’d ditched the suit for a soft gray sweater; the S-shield peeked from the open collar like a secret.

“You’re brooding,” she said, leaning beside him. Two beers dangled from her fingers.

“Not brooding. Thinking.”

“Same difference.” She nudged his shoulder. “Come on, farm boy. Dance with me before Rocket tries to tango with the chimney.”

He took the beer, set it down untouched. “I don’t tango.”

“Everyone tangos when the song’s right.”

The playlist shifted—slow, smoky trumpet, a Spanish guitar that curled like incense. Carol stepped in close, one hand sliding to the small of his back, the other catching his.

“Follow my feet. It’s just flying with less gravity.”

They moved.

Clark was careful at first—too careful—until Carol pressed closer, her breath warm against his jaw.

“Stop counting steps. Feel the music.”

He did. The city blurred. There was only the sway of her hips, the heat of her palm, the way her pulse jumped when his thumb brushed the bare strip of skin above her jeans.

The song ended. Another began, slower.

Neither of them stopped.

Carol’s forehead rested against his. “You know what I like about you, Clark?”

“Tell me.”

“You never try to save me when I’m already winning.”

He laughed, soft. “Learned that the hard way.”

Her lips brushed the corner of his mouth—testing.

He answered by closing the distance.

The kiss started gentle, Kansas polite. Then Carol made a small, hungry sound and it turned into something else—teeth, tongue, the scrape of stubble against her cheek. His hands found her waist, lifted her effortlessly until her boots left the roof. She wrapped her legs around him, the city spinning far below.

They didn’t make it downstairs.

The stairwell was dark, the wall cool against Carol’s back. Clark’s sweater hit the floor first, then her tank top. Buttons scattered like hail. She tasted salt on his throat, felt the tremor in his shoulders when her nails dragged down his spine.

“Bedroom,” she whispered.

“Too far.”

They stumbled into the guest room—spare, moonlit, a single lamp flickering on. The door shut with a click that sounded like permission.

Carol pushed him onto the bed, straddled his hips. His eyes—God, those eyes—were dark and endless. She peeled the S-shield shirt over his head, tracing the lines of a body that had carried planets.

“You’re beautiful,” she said, reverent.

He flushed, actual color rising on invincible skin. “Carol—”

She silenced him with another kiss, slower this time, mapping every inch of his mouth. Hands explored—his calloused from years of farm work, hers glowing faintly at the edges, binary embers under control. When she rocked against him, the friction drew twin groans.

Clothes vanished in a tangle of urgency and laughter. Skin on skin, finally.

Clark rolled them, pinning her wrists gently above her head. “Tell me if it’s too much.”

She arched, challenging. “Make it enough.”

He did.

It was tango in three dimensions—push and pull, breath and bite, the slow drag of hips finding rhythm. Carol’s powers flared gold when she came the first time, light spilling across the ceiling like sunrise. Clark followed seconds later, burying his face in her neck, whispering her name like a prayer.

After, they lay tangled in sheets that smelled of gunpowder and vanilla.

Carol traced the S on his chest. “So. Refugee status comes with benefits.”

Clark chuckled, the sound rumbling under her ear. “Pretty sure this voids the paperwork.”

“Good. Paperwork’s overrated.”

Outside, the city kept spinning.

Inside, two heroes who’d lost universes found orbit in each other’s arms.

The playlist looped back to the trumpet.

Neither of them moved to turn it off.