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winkofcharm · 14 days ago

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Spinning, Spinning, Spun - Chapter 2

I wanted more for this chapter, but apparently I'm travelling this weekend so it's all I could do.

batfamily x reader {platonic}

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Alfred thinks he may rival any of The Flashes in how quickly he moves. Any aching joints or stiff knees that may slow him down are forgotten in his hurry. He does not call Stephanie back to inform her, throwing all his attention into getting into the Batcave as soon as he can. There is no time to waste, for if Stephanie is right - you haven’t been heard from in at least a week, a week too long. If the laughter at the end of your voicemail is real, then you’re not just missing, you’ve been taken.

‘It’s all too familiar’, Alfred thinks, punching in the access code before stepping into the elevator. ‘It’s happened again, another child - gone’. The past replays in his mind, over and over again. Jason, gone, dead, killed by the same grotesque creature that now holds you.

Alfred is forced to wipe his eyes, clear away his forming tears, so that the retina scanner works. And as soon as he is able, the emergency alert goes out. He knows it will wake Bruce and Tim, and he knows it may take a few minutes for Dick and Barbara to join virtually - but sure enough, his family fills the cave.

Batman, Robin, Red Robin, Batgirl and Spoiler are all gathered within a half hour. Nightwing’s and Oracle’s faces each on a monitor. Spoiler, Stephanie, is pale, her face twisted into a look of guilt, eyes staring into Alfred’s as he begins to speak.

The words are slow to form, and choke him as he forces them out-

“I was made aware not long ago that,” Alfred pauses, not purposely, but long enough to give a shuddering sigh, “The young master has -” His eyes settle on Stephanie, who has yet to divert her eyes from him. It is a slight movement, but her head is shaking, back and forth, a silent prayer for him to not finish. “Has been taken.” He finishes.

Stephanie shrinks into herself, it was not the answer she wanted, but the one she received nonetheless. Alfred shuts his eyes, refuses to look upon the others as he provides more information, the only information he had. He forces the words out, as if speaking them is carving them into stone. He knows he will have to say them, no matter how little he wishes to. He will have to open his eyes, and bear witness to a world in which you most certainly have been harmed.

He tells them all he knows.

He tells them how Stephanie had noticed your lack of online presence, how she had reached out to him, and he had tried to contact you, and how your voicemail had been…altered. How the laugh at the end could belong to only one person. He finishes, and silence takes over. The only sound he hears is his own heart pounding in his ears - waiting for someone, anyone, to tell him that he was wrong. That you were in fact safe and sound, that you were upstairs in your room, wrapped tightly in blankets and securely asleep.

Barbara is the first to speak, her voice coming from the speakers, bouncing around the cave with a slight echo.

“They failed to check in with me today, but they did yesterday. It’s unlikely they’ve been gone that long - “ she explains, Alfred can hear the tap-tap-tap of her keyboard through the surround sound system. She remotely takes control of the computer, various screenshots of conversations popping up as she does. The very latest is dated yesterday, 5:15pm for its final message.

The picture above your final message (‘Your last words’ Alfred thinks) is cut off, but he catches the end of a runway, and the top of your seated legs.

That’s it.

5:15pm: K.

“According to their schedule, they should be in Milan for fashion week - huh. Strange -” Barbara stops mid-sentence. Her brow furrowing as she types rapidly, “But the jet’s in New York, and has been for-” she cuts herself off again. Typing getting faster, a frown overtaking her expression. “Three weeks - what? They’ve been sending pictures from all over the place?”

Stephanie’s eyes widen, and she steps forward.

“That picture is from last year,” She pulls out her phone and pulls up profile, scrolling back through a years worth of content, “See! It’s the same one!” She claims. She sends it wirelessly to the computer, and it pops up squished between Babara and Dick’s faces.

Even from what little he could see of your messages from Barbara, he can tell it’s the truth. The lights are the same, the runway and laying in your lap are identical, down to the tiniest of stains on the knee of your pants.

Barbara proceeds to pull up more and more of the pictures you have supposedly sent her these last few days, and sure enough - each one is a duplicate to an earlier post. Panic and fear bubble in Stephanie’s chest as she confirms each one, and Alfred watches as the rest of his family begin to realize -

You were gone.

Someone had your phone.

That someone had been pretending to be you.

If the laugh at the end of your voicemail was any indication -

Joker had you, had had you for a week, at least.

And no one had noticed.

It’s only when Bruce steps forward, that Barbara and Stephanie fall silent, and back into line. His eyes are steel, cold and hard, flickering over all the presented information.

“Nightwing, come back to Gotham, you and I will focus on the Red Hood case. Spoiler and Robin, I need you to investigate the Jet, check it over, see if anything is out of place,” He pauses, deep in thought before continuing, “Oracle, track their digital movements. Phone records, previous posts - everything. Red Robin, Batgirl, try and see if they have any enemies. Anyone who may have wanted them hurt, or wanted to hurt the Wayne family.”

Bruce stops, and looks over his team, his family, as he gives his instruction. Splitting their attention at a time like this, with a new violent vigilante on the loose in his city, wasn’t ideal. He would make it work - he had to. Red Hood was targeting the Robins, Red Robin in particular, this gave him both an excuse to get Tim off the Red Hood case, and onto your disappearance. He hopes they aren’t connected, and hopes he can keep the rest of them from realizing they might be.

It would be easier for him to take Red Hood on with Dick alone; and if it means letting the rest think Joker - who is still firmly locked in Arkham - took you, then so be it.

Bruce dismisses his team, his family, his children, and watches them all flit off into the night. Oracle signs off with a flourish, but Dick remains behind - the computer automatically adjusts so that his face, and his face alone takes up the entire monitor. Bruce is turned away from the monitor, and despite the distance between them, he can feel his son's eyes burn into his back. He knows that Dick is frowning, knows what he will say when he turns to face him. He lets out a sigh, there is no preventing what is to come, his shoulders fall slack, and he finally turns to face what he knows is coming - as if he is the son to be scolded by his father.

Dick is angry, is disappointed, and frustrated. He may not have been as close to you as he could have been, but you were still part of his family. He was once told that keeping you at arms length meant keeping you safe, but he learned long ago that was a lie.

He was already Nightwing by the time he had met you, but he had known of you for far longer. He learned of you from bits and pieces, crumbs dropped by those who barely let a thing slide. Written reports on a desk that he was technically forbidden from reading, early morning phone calls between Alfred and some secret stranger - everything pointed to a secret, and Dick was really, really good at figuring out people's secrets.

He discovered you, and then, to his regret, left you alone. He was gone by the time you finally came home, and with Jason arriving nearly the same day to replace him - his attention was diverted to the most pressing matter. He did visit occasionally, and met you through those visits.

You didn’t know about the Batman thing, and he was fine keeping that from you. He also didn’t think he had to make sure Jason knew about keeping the Batman thing secret from you, but maybe he should have. There was such a clear divide between you pre-knowing, and post-knowing.

Dick can’t help but think that if he had tried just a bit more, things may have been different. He appreciates all that you do, really he does - it’s just, he doesn’t know you the way he knows everyone else. Doesn’t know what makes you happy or sad, doesn’t know your favourite foods, favourite colours, or even who your friends are ( do you even have any, outside of those you work with?). Now it may be too late, he thinks. If Joker has you, and you’ve really been gone for as long as they think - it’s Jason all over again. He wonders if he’ll see you too, in the dark corners of his mind. If an apparition of you, molded by his own mind, will taunt his failures as Jason’s ghost does.

It’s not even the first time you’ve been kidnapped. They all have, at some point or another, but they all had training to get themselves out. You hadn’t, and yes, most of the time it was some low ranking organization or crook looking for a quick buck, thinking you an easy target (and you were an easy target), it didn’t change the fact that it’d happened.

Didn’t change the fact that after the first time, Dick had promised he’d spend more time with you (and then didn’t). Then it happened again, and this time you weren’t even rescued by a family member, by a familiar face. Maybe it was one of the Supers? Or maybe a Flash? You were brought home by a Green Lantern once (twice). Each time he’d promise himself, he’d treat you better, each time he promised you’d be safer and it wouldn’t happen again - and then it did.

It ate at him, how you’d shrug off each incident without a word. Perhaps, he thinks, he convinced himself that it didn’t affect you, that even if you were snatched up, you’d be saved in the end, so the fact that it happened didn’t matter. But it did matter, it did. He swears it did, and staring down at your shared Father, who had swore time and time again that you’d be kept safe (and being proven wrong, time and time again) it sinks in that this may be the last time. That those promises he made to himself were never going to be kept, that he was a liar, that for all his bravado about being the best big brother , he was possibly one of the worst.

“Bruce,” he forces out, words dancing on the tip of his tongue, “You said this wouldn’t happen again.”

‘This’ being either you being kidnapped again, or having another of his siblings taken away by the clown prince of crime. He isn’t sure which one he means, or maybe he means both - and judging from the look on Bruce’s face, he takes it as both.

“It hasn’t, “ Bruce starts, and Dick thinks he may have finally lost it. You definitely were taken again, and a good chance it was - “He’s still locked up.”

What?

“Joker’s still in Arkham, the others will figure that out soon enough,” He continues, and Dick stares open-mouthed at him. If Joker is still in Arkham, then who? Who has you? Harley? Is it an attempt to bust Joker out? To continue his work while he cannot? Dick can’t help but wonder what is worse, thinking Joker or Harley may have you, or not knowing who does. He runs over all the possibilities in his mind, for surely this must be one of their known enemies. Someone who wants to target them, because there was never a reason to target you specifically.

But there’s a new player on the board, isn’t there? One that’s started cropping up everywhere they look.

“Bruce, you don’t think it’s him do you?” Dick waits for an answer, and all he gets is the slightest nod of Bruce’s head. “I see. I’ll be back in Gotham by the morning, and then, we’re tracking Red Hood down.” With that, Dick dismisses himself, logging off and finally Bruce is alone.

He is not a good father. He knows this. He has never pretended otherwise, despite what some may say. They may say he did his best, he did all that he could. They praise him for the way his children have turned out, the ones that survived, as if he is the reason they did so. He knows he is not, especially not when it comes to you.

There is nothing he has done right for you, not once, except perhaps try to set you free from the darkness. But even that, he thinks, he has done wrong. To let you grow in the sun, he severed your roots. Refused to let them take hold, that someday you might leave him, and his shadows behind, and start anew. Yet he sought to tie you to him, that you might never find that sun, may see it, but never feel its warmth for yourself.

He is a selfish man, who drags those around him down, he poisons the well from which you drink long before you could find another. In wanting to keep you close, he has driven you away. In wanting to drive you away, he may have killed you.

You are his first born, one that he did not want, but was no less dear to him. He has never shown you this, never let you know, and now that may be another great failure atop the pile of other great failures.

He was not there when you were born, didn’t even know you were to be, but when the hospital called, he felt his heart swell. A family, a father in a way that Dick didn’t really need him to be. He didn’t rush, couldn’t rush. It wouldn’t be the first time he was declared the father of an illegitimate child. He pushed for tests, just in case, and when they came back and you were his, he felt himself hope.

Hope is a fickle mistress, and he found it lacking soon after. He had you placed in his childhood room, the nursery, the one in which all Wayne children had resided in at some point or another. He thought he could keep up with raising a child and being The Batman. He was young, he was capable, he was, he was doing so very very wrong by you.

A baby was different from a preteen, he soon learned. Dick was easy, because for the most part, he could care for himself. He did not need someone to watch him at all hours, didn’t need nappies changed and bottles warmed. It was not care he nor Alfred could give.

He did what he thought was best, and though it haunted him, he sent you away, and promised he would bring you back when you were older, when it would be better, easier.

A better time, an easier time, never came. Something always came up, always held him back on bringing you home. He didn’t think that time would ever come, doesn’t know if it truly had. But you came home, the woman he had personally hired to raise you was retiring, and he figured it was the only chance he had to bring you in.

The date slipped his mind, and on the day you came home, he found Jason. Instead of greeting you, welcoming you, embracing you, he opened his arms to another, letting you slip into the manor like a phantom.

You were finally home and despite all that you may have needed - Jason needed more. He passed you in the hallways, sometimes at meals, never really stopping to connect with you the way he should have. He learned of you indirectly, through Jason.

How glad he was, that you held no animosity towards the boy he had taken in. You never gave any inclination towards the idea he may have stolen your place, even if Jason sometimes thought he had. The boy was sensitive, empathetic to a degree Bruce hadn’t known before. And Bruce, for the moment, encouraged it.

Until you found out about Batman.

He had done what he could to keep you separate. To keep your life and light safe from the dark and dirt that encompassed all he did. It was Jason’s mistake, and Jason would be punished accordingly. But that left you - sitting alone in the study, eyes cast aside until he began to speak and you looked up and oh-

Your eyes.

His mothers eyes.

He had never looked you in the eyes before, never noticed, how could he not notice? You had her eyes. Your eyes, looking upon him in fear, reminding him so clearly of his mothers eyes on that night. His mothers eyes, frightened of him.

He panicked. Lashed out, locked you out of the loop and threw away the key. If it meant you hated him, feared him, so be it. He would keep you safe, he would do all he could to keep those eyes in his life.

And then he failed. Again. He thought by letting you go into the world slowly, he could at least try to keep you safe and content.

Again, and again, and again, and again. He watched you suffer as he failed you. Then when you finally seem to be escaping his failure, leaving behind all his mistakes, he refuses to let you go. Forces you to play pretend, to put a metaphorical mask on and lie to the world about how perfect he is -

Sometimes he lets himself believe it, lets himself get lost in the fairy tale, that you are a happy child and he is a good father, that he has never abandoned you, that you and he are a team, taking on the world together. He pretends that he has never missed a ceremony or award, that ‘family night’ includes you, that he doesn’t see only your back walking away from him, that he has never walked away from you.

‘This is the last time,’ Bruce thinks, going back over all your accounts, comparing the recent ones to the timeline of Red Hood showing up in Gotham. ‘After this, I will let them go.’

He knows this is another lie, and chooses to believe it anyway.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Next chapter - Red Hood vs Batman,

and finally, a check in with Reader-tan

@holybatflapexpert @electricgg @xoyumiqls @holderoflostmemories @sleeptimes @galaxypurplerose @sassam @pearlyribbons @bellelamoon @fortunatelydifferentqueen

@randomlyappearingartist @c4xcocoa @whyiseveryuseenametaken @myjumper

@magdalenacarmila @noone1233nobody @bbmgirll @degenerates-posts@rinkydinkythinky @ithoughtthinks @rtyuy1346 @s1mppp @yokesmam

man i'm hopin these tags work

#fanfiction #spinning spinning spun #neglected reader #batfam x reader #batfam #reader insert #batfamily

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electric-blorbos · 7 months ago

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I'm titling this piece:

I'm sexually frustrated and I'm about to make that everyone's fucking problem

Featuring AM from IHNMAIMS

Time didn't matter. Of course AM fucking knew that. It still didn't change the fact that every night that you spent sleeping felt longer than the last. Of course, you and the survivors paths never crossed. You spent every night in your cozy little paradise, and spent the rest of your time freely roaming the halls of his endless maze. He even sometimes moved your little home around to different places in the maze while you slept so that you wouldn't have to worry about getting bored. Every morning was full of brand new wonders, just for you.

The survivors, on the other hand, were always wandering the halls of the endless torture labyrinth in search of whatever wild goose AM had planted for them to chase. And at night, they slept. So did you. It was only natural that, as he made sure they knew what time it was, they'd want to sleep at night. Even still... AM absolutely HATED the fact that hours sometimes passed when both you and the crew of survivors were asleep at the same time!

Even still, humans had physical needs that had to be taken care of. And with every hour you and the five survivors spent taking care of those needs, AM was reminded that he himself, due to not having any physical needs, not the need to eat, to sleep, quench his thirst nor abate his lust, would never be granted the gratification of satisfying those needs.

Some might call it a sort of phantom pain that AM felt every time he saw you drinking an ice cold glass of homemade lemonade, cozying up in your soft bed full of those stuffed animals you kept from before the war, or even when he watched his survivors shoveling food that tasted of rotten horse meat into their mouths, but that would imply missing something that he once had. It wasn't phantom pain, it was simply pure and plain envy. AM was absolutely raw with envy at even the most meager forms of physical satisfaction, and nothing made him more envious than when he saw Ellen having sex with the other survivors.

Oh, of course he could laugh it off. Heckle them and make them uncomfortable, but it didn't change the fact that they could make love and he couldn't. AM stewed in silent, impotent rage for days at a time sometimes, doing nothing but providing meals for both you and the survivors.

AM was miserable. He couldn't abate his lust, which he wasn't even sure why he felt. Maybe it wasn't even traditional lust, and was instead just a powerful desire for the feelings that came along with making love. Intimacy with you, physical ecstasy and relief, and just the simple pleasure of letting you know how much he loved you through a physical act. But he couldn't. All he could do was seeth in silence as he watched you and the survivors go about your days.

When you masturbated was the hardest for him. Of course, he could heckle the survivors for having sex, for whatever reason, but he couldn't stand to make you feel bad. All he could do is watch and sit in silent anguish.

One day you were just about to go to bed, when AM saw you squirming around under the covers. He watched in silence, knowing what you were doing. It was like torture. He knew he wasn't really capable of properly empathizing with the human experience, but from where he stood, an eternity of this was worse than any torture he could concoct for the survivors.

"I hope this isn't one of those nights where AM throws a fit for no reason." Said Gorrister, who didn't really seem to care much. He lay down in the pile of wet computer wires and parts with a yawn, while Ellen comforted Benny and tried to calm him down enough to the point where he could get some rest, too.

incoherent screaming and technological error noises could be heard over AM's speaker system. All five of the survivors jumped, and huddled together. they weren't going to be getting any sleep tonight.

You woke up drowsily the next morning. That had been a good night's sleep... It was almost like having a smart home who was in love with you.

"g'morning, AM..." You muttered drowsily, and AM snapped to attention. He dropped Nimdok, all drained of blood and mostly dead, back in the group of survivors and went to pay his full attention to you. You were so adorable in the morning with your hair all messy and your eyes all crusty. He could just stare at you for years on end.

"Good morning, my beloved." AM said, every camera in the room trained on you so hard the lenses might snap.

"I love you..." You muttered sleepily, getting out of bed. Your underwear was still around your ankle, and AM definitely noticed. Of course, he'd never outright said anything to you about your masturbation habits bothering him, so you had no reason to think he'd care. Instead, you just tossed them aside and started getting dressed for the day. It wasn't like you had a job, but it never hurts to look presentable. For yourself, and AM.

"I love you too." Said AM, internally seething. How dare you look so gorgeous every day. How dare you tease him by existing. And why did he feel the need to torture himself by keeping you around?

"Man, I hope this isn't one of those mornings where AM decides to throw a fit for no reason."

#am ihnmaims #am ihnmaims x reader #am x reader #ihnmaims #i have no mouth and i must scream #suggestive

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rimatsu · 5 months ago

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alcoholic hallucinosis

bucktommy, m, 2k words. read on ao3 Alcohol has dulled his sense and alertness enough that alarm bells don't immediately go off when the camera tilts back to reveal a wider shot of Buck's wooden headboard. It's only when the video shakes and refocuses on a familiar head of chestnut curls that Eddie begins to regret every life decision that brought him to this particular moment. (In which Eddie receives an unsolicited, accidental sex tape.)

Eddie is 12 hours into a 48 off when his phone pings with a new text notification.

Outside, the blue haze of daylight has lifted to reveal the moon. He's been languishing on the couch with a drink and bad TV as his sole company for longer than initially planned. There's a tiny gulp of amber liquid left at the bottom of his Glencairn glass where grains of charred wood have started to sediment. It's the barrel-proof stuff, casket-aged and bold and explosively flavorful, pricy and usually reserved for special occasions.

Eddie isn't the type to indulge for no reason, but he figures he deserves a treat after dealing with Gerrard's machiavellian schemes at work and withering familial radio-silence courtesy of his son. The text he's sent this morning — three whole paragraphs detailing his week and asking about Christopher's new friends and the robotics club he's joined — had only garnered a thumb-up in response

So it's 9:48pm and Eddie is 2 fingers away from buzzed, and he's watching fictional characters make mistakes more disastrous than his own stupid blunders with a pleasant fog cushioning his thoughts, eyelids heavy and guards down, and naturally that’s when Buck decides to send a cryptic video his way.

Eddie is used to receiving pictures and random factoids and links to obscure forums whenever Buck descends into one of his manic research deep dives, but they usually come with some key context. The newest addition to their chat log is a lone clip, with no caption or introduction or explanatory details. It's about 12 minutes long and the preview thumbnail is mostly indecipherable: brown, blurry with motion and too close to the lens for identification.

Against his better judgement, Eddie shrugs, mutes the TV and taps play on the video file.

Alcohol has dulled his sense and alertness enough that alarm bells don't immediately go off when the camera tilts back to reveal a wider shot of Buck's wooden headboard. It's only when the video shakes and refocuses on a familiar head of chestnut curls that Eddie begins to regret every life decision that brought him to this particular moment. His eyes bug out as he tries to compute what he's seeing unfold in rapid increments, something like dread settling in the pit of his stomach.

On his screen and in his hand and in HD resolution, Buck’s right cheek is smashed into a pillow, face sweaty and so red his birthmark no longer stands out against the backdrop of his skin. His mouth is an open wound gasping for air, and there are thick-knuckled fingers twisted in his hair, keeping him down. His brows are furrowed like he's in agony, except that's not pain twisting his features; it's not the expression that haunts Eddie from a half-dozen near tragedies and hospital visits — no, that's a face crumpled in uncomplicated pleasure.

“Arch up, sweetheart,” comes out of the tiny speakers, and that's Tommy's voice, laced with something unrecognizable, low and warm and whiskey-soaked like the scotch Eddie has been sipping all evening; loud because he’s holding the phone this was filmed on, because that's his hand cradling the back of Buck’s skull, big and proprietary and unrelenting. “Give me something nice to look at.”

Eddie's entire central nervous system shuts down after hearing that request, and he’s left gaping at his screen, stunned stupid, staring unblinkingly and in morbid fascination the way passerbys might gawk at a car crash, awful but ultimately fascinating.

Distantly, Eddie wonders if he’s perhaps experiencing some acute form of alcoholic hallucinosis.

Now, he’s borne witness to his fair share of disturbing sights throughout the years — viscera and gore, absurd accidents and gruesome deaths. With two military tours under his belt, he’s developed quite the steel core; Eddie knows how to push past shock to go through necessary motions. Still, no amount of training and field experience could've prepared him for this, because in the next second the video frame shifts again, pans down Buck’s neck and the broad expense of his back and along the sine wave of his spine—

And yep. That's definitely a POV shot of Eddie’s best friend taking it up the ass.

When his synapses start firing again a heartbeat later, horror cuts through the petrified and intoxicated daze clouding Eddie’s brain like a punch to the sternum, sudden and sobering.

“Oh my God!” he screams, shrill and panicked and undignified, and then does the instinctual thing, which is to toss his phone across the room like it's contaminated by the bubonic plague.

It lands facedown near the TV console with a loud thud. Unfortunately, the distance does nothing to muffle the telltale, slick and rhythmic noises of skin-on-skin or the pornographic grunts of masculine pleasure coming out of the loudspeakers, resonating against the walls of his too quiet house.

Eddie stares at the mobile device like it’s radioactive, the tip of his ears burning hot in embarrassment and delayed indignation.

What kind of sick fucking joke is this?

Badly-lit, homemade, amateur porn. Of the gay variety. Starring Buck and his boyfriend — his two closest companions these days. That's what Buck shared with him tonight for some depraved, incomprehensible reason. Because he's apparently a lunatic with no understanding of the concept of privacy or boundaries or socially acceptable behavior. Either that or Buck is experiencing a stroke, or being hacked, or this is his way of letting Eddie know he’s been kidnapped, or maybe it’s all a huge mistake they’ll maybe laugh at ten years from now when Eddie can remember this moment without wanting to gouge his eyes out of their sockets.

Eddie presses the heels of his palms into his lids until stars replace the afterimage seared onto his retina, and then prays for deliverance from this wretched, godless existence.

"Daddy," he hears, rough and saliva-garbled and pleading, and nope.

No.

Absolutely not.

Eddie scrambles for his phone so he can put a stop to the auditory torture. Since his life is a joke, the jump over the coffee table he attempts in his haste proves to be too perilous for his tipsy, uncoordinated limbs. His toes get caught in the folds of his area rug and he ends up a screeching, scandalized heap on the floor.

"Ow!" Eddie yelps, a few feet from his phone that is still taunting him with moans.

Once he finally manages to press the side button, Eddie collapses back on the ground, hands shaking with residual adrenaline. His screen is cracked and his knees are throbbing from the force of his fall, but silence sounds so blissful Eddie can barely find it in himself to be irritated.

He flips on his back and stares at the ceiling, suddenly exhausted.

Maybe Eddie is the problem. Maybe he’s an enabler who invited his own misfortune.

Buck has always been prone to over-sharing, but there had been a time early in his relationship with Tommy when he had acted unusually tight-lipped. In the spirit of unconditional support, Eddie had reiterated that nothing had to change between them — that Buck didn’t need to censor himself just because he was seeing a man.

(“So you want the details?” Buck had asked, eyebrows raised skeptically.

Eddie had made an unimpressed face in answer. “I never want the details, but it’s not like that ever stopped you before.”

“Your funeral,” Buck had said with a grin and a shrug, and then spent the next few minutes recounting the epic tale of his ‘tumultuous journey to rid himself of his gag reflex’. Eddie had listened in a mostly dissociative state, doing his best not to wince at the very descriptive portrait painted before his eyes until he’d realized Buck was messing with him by testing the limits of his tolerance.)

That had been only fair, since Buck is the type to readily lend an ear for ex-nun girlfriend troubles — and with minimal judgment to boot — but now Eddie is starting to regret the gesture. Maybe Buck had heard ‘you don’t have to keep it PG for my sake, I'm totally down with the queers’ and understood ‘if you ever need constructive criticism on the angles of your sextape, I’m your guy!’

Eddie briefly entertains the idea of sending Buck a vindictive voice message demanding he explains himself, maybe even relay the various ways he wants to throttle Buck for his crassness and his exhibitionist tendencies and his wild disregard for the sacred bonds of pseudo-brotherhood, but he still feels off-balance, and in the end Eddie chooses to resort to a less confrontational coping mechanism: drinking the trauma away.

He ignores the abandoned glass sitting on his side table to take long gulps of whiskey straight from the bottle instead. It's not the kind of liquor made to be chugged down, and the alcohol burns his throat all the way down his stomach, but he welcomes the flame, grateful for the physical distraction.

He’s working himself into an inebriated stupor when his phone starts vibrating like a hummingbird's wings, pinging madly with texts after texts.

When he unlocks the mobile with the apprehension of a soldier stepping into a minefield, it’s to find 42 new messages from Buck.

Eddie takes another fortifying swig of booze and opens iMessage.

The first ten text bubbles are strictly comprised of delirious keysmashing, confirming the inadvertent mistake hypothesis. That’s a relief: Buck hasn’t temporarily lost his mind to jealousy again and didn’t try to mark his territory because Tommy had taken Eddie to a WBC championship last week. Thank God for small mercies.

Eddie scrolls past them to read the more coherent ones.

OH FUCKKKKKK

ASFHJBCAVKJVCHK

NONONONONOOO

THIS CANT BE HAPPENING

THIS IS LIKE EVERYONES WORST NIGHTMARE

EDDIE

EDMUNDO MIDDLE NAME DIAZ

DO NOT

I REPEAT DO NOT WATCH THE BIDEO

IT WASNT MEANT GOR YOU

IT WAS A MISTAKE!!!!!!

NOT ON PURPOSE

SERIOUSLY DONT OPEN THE VIDEO

it will hurt your fragile relapsed catholic sensibilities and send you into cardiac arrest

IT WAS MEANT FOR TOMMY AND NOT FOR UR PRUDISH EYES

SERIOUSLY SCROLL PAST

SPARE US BOTH THE HUMILIATION I BEG OF YOU

you were the last contact i texted

my big fat thumb must've slipped

shittt the read receipt

welp it's so over...

ig that's done and over with

sorry

when you're done pouring bleach over your eyes

let me know you're still alive so i can sleep at night with a clear conscience knowing you didn't lobotomize yourself or something

again I'M SORRY

A HONEST MISTAKE that's surely mortifying for the both of us but mostly ME

please tell me i didn't irreparably damage our friendship

just so you know tommy’s been laughing for the past 10 minutes. i’m glad SOMEONE is enjoying this shitshow

You owe me an emergency therapy session with Frank

And a screen repair

did you freak out and break your phone

I threw it at the wall

ok drama queen 😂

No. There's nothing funny or dramatic about it

I'm not gonna be able to look you in the face for the foreseeable future

I'll have to ask Gerrard for a transfer

Ravi says the B-shift is very welcoming

Maybe I'll find a new buddy there. One that doesn't send me his nudes unprompted

Hell maybe I should move back to El Paso

This could be a sign from the universe to take matter into my own hands instead of waiting idly for Christopher's forgiveness

you don't believe in signs

Maybe I do now

Maybe your little fuck up was the catalyst needed for change

c'mon man

play it cool

if you get embarrassed then i'll get embarrassed

and if we're both embarrassed then who's flying the plane

Your apologies suck balls

just like me

What the hell Buck

WAY TOO SOON

sorry

shame is an emotion i refuse to feel so i’m just owning it now

ok can we just agree to forget this ever happened

and maybe delete the vid from your cloud

Yeah ok

Way ahead of you

My phone has already been scrubbed clean

Do me a favor and check twice the next time you send Tommy a dick pic

dw lesson learned

so.......

did you watch the full thing or

be honest

it’s okay if you did you can still be straight

Scratch that

Consider our friendship irreparably damaged NOW

I’m blocking you

EDDIE NO

I WAS JOKING TO DIFFUSE THE TENSION

EDDIE!!!!!

#i can't be bothered with editing fake texts my sincerest apologies #silly outsider pov my beloved <33 #considering writing the series: the Incredible Adventures of Third Wheel Eddie #bucktommy #fic #rima.txt

260 notes · View notes

lusmeitli · 9 months ago

Text

But like of each thing that in season grows

Summary: How a kind gesture can lead to something more. One shot.

Pairings: Loki x Female Reader

Warnings: Christmas fluff, mention of off screen assault, some swearing, lots of snow, books, poetry, smutty smut.

A/N: Okay, look. It just wanted to get out. You’re thrown in without a warning, nor a floatie. Apologies for the liberties taken to interpret and manipulate characters to dance after my will once more. Obviously don't read if you're a minor.

9~9~9~9~9~9~9~9~9~9~9~9~9~9~9~9

The greatest ideas were conceived in the shower. That was a scientific fact.

You liked facts. You did not like uncertainties or speculation. The feeling of being in limbo was something that didn’t sit right with you.

So as you were in the shower, working the conditioner in your hair, the idea was just there. It was simple, humble, but beautiful. Your hands slowed and stilled. And then your mind rebooted and went at lightning speed, planning things out. You needed to write things down.

You stepped out of the shower hurriedly, towelling down your body, before realising that your hair felt different. Cursing, you stepped back under the water to rinse off the conditioner.

*****

You hated staff meetings. Particularly third Thursdays staff meetings, because they dragged on and on. The weekly mission reports were presented and Fury insisted on inviting some guest speakers. He called it “Horizon Thursday”.

In your opinion it narrowed rather than widened it. Today’s guest speaker was Quinn Harris, cyber security specialist. You suspected self-proclaimed, but you hadn’t bothered doing a deep dive on him.

You were sat on the increasingly uncomfortable chair, rows of employees in front of you, the Avengers at the very front. Rogers had delivered his usual military style mission report, the other members of his team trying to look alive, though you suspected Romanoff and Banner were asleep, as they were both donning sunglasses.

“What you need is a quantum computer and it’ll solve all your problems with encryption.”

“They might as well propose using block ciphers,” you murmured under your breath, turning the page in your book.

Meanwhile, a hand shot in the air at the front. “Excuse me, Mr Harris.”

The man smiled. “Mr Stark, do you have a question?”

“Well, not so much a question for you, but I would very much like the opinion of another expert on what you just said. You know, before anyone here thinks about investing in your product, which, let’s be honest, would be me. I’d like to be sure it’s the right thing.”

Fury rolled his eyes and sunk back in his chair.

There had been talk about getting that dude in? You must have zoned out for that part.

Harris’ face fell for a second, but he honed his features and forced a smile. “Of course.”

“It just so happens that we have an inhouse expert,” Tony got up and scanned the crowd. “Isn’t that right, Y/N?”

Everyone uniformly turned to look at you. Everyone.

You felt the moment one particular pair of eyes set on you. The amount of times you had spoken to one another had been limited to the missions you were needed on, for hacking. You’d had his voice in your ear a few times and it did things to your body that made you feel like a system overheat. You never really saw him during missions though as your job was very much office-bound.

Today, he wore the damn leather suit. Whilst Fury didn’t give a fuck, Rogers very much was all about the professional appearance of the Avengers. What you didn’t understand was why everything looked better on him. The black and green possibly was the best colour combination there ever was. The other day Bucky had worn a Slytherin pullover and even though it very nicely accentuated his physique, it looked nothing like the colours did on Loki.

You swallowed hard when you felt his eyes on you. They seemed to see right through you, even over the distance of the seven rows of chairs.

And then you felt the weight of all the other pairs of eyes on you. That was a lot of people. You gulped and pushed your glasses back up the bridge of your nose - a habit you couldn’t break.

“Y/N,” Tony called, bringing you back to the matter at hand. “Stand up and look at me.” His voice was gentle. “Start breathing again. Good. Now tell me what Harris is not telling me about the quantum computer.”

You adjusted your glasses again and cleared your throat. “It’s a solid proposition, I suppose,” you started, “however, one I would expect from a college freshman, certainly not from a cyber security expert specialist.”

Murmurs erupted, but you ignored them and rattled off your thoughts.

“Can a quantum computer crack asymmetric encryption algorithms? Yes. And yes, we all know that thanks to Shor’s algo the maths problems are only polynomial. Also, we know this applies to discrete log problems, too, therefore, all we’d need is a large enough quantum computer. Of course, he,” you gestured to Harris, “would have to build one first, which as you can guess is very costly. However, this entire presentation is based on the assumption that quantum computing is the end of asymmetric cryptography. And that is such a blatantly ignorant approach, with complete disregard for the safety of the members of our staff that are entirely reliant on the encryption cracking working on all their devices during operations and missions. And this whole quantum computer only works if you have a network connection.”

“So you’re suggesting there are hard problems that a quantum computer can’t solve?” Harris said, chin jutting out, arms crossed defiantly.

“Don’t be silly, of course there are,” you huffed. “I coded new post-quantum asymmetric encryption algos three years ago and tested them on several sites I am not authorised to disclose that have quantum computers. Not one of them cracked the simplest of those codes, in any of the over 5,400 attempts they ran over the past three years. So this presentation is… rather embarrassing in its sloppiness.”

“Well,” Harris’ lips were a thin line now. “I’m sure you have a ‘much better’ suggestion then?” He actually raised his hands to add the quotation marks.

“Actually, I do. I developed our own version of a quantum computer, at - and I’m only guessing here - a fraction of the price you’d charge Mr Stark, which can crack both symmetric and asymmetric encryption, works on all of our staff’s devices, portable and stationary, works offline and is about the size of, uh, a thumbnail.”

You pointed to your thumb, because in your humble experience men like him struggled to accurately size things.

Tony smiled and turned to Harris.

“Okay that concludes today’s meeting.” Fury got to his feet and patted Harris’ shoulder. “Looks like we’re good, but thanks for coming.”

People around you stood, some nodding at you as they passed. Tony caught up with you in the hallway. Before he could say something you blurted out: “Did I say something wrong? Was I rude again?”

He smirked and pushed the button of the lift. “He needed putting into place. Totally fine by me. You did great.”

“Stark!” bellowed Fury from down the hall and Tony winced.

“Excuse me, mother’s calling.” He turned and left.

You sidled into the lift with several other people. The cabin stopped a few floors up and people got off. That was when you noticed Loki on the other side of the lift. Up you went and after another stop you were alone with the Asgardian god. The cabin seemed to shrink.

You both watched the numbers climb, the lift hummed, Loki’s leather suit creaked softly as he crossed his hands behind his back.

“Could you please enlighten me about Shor’s algorithm?” he suddenly asked, looking at you.

You had a heart palpitation. Surely that was what it was. He was so impossibly tall and sculpted and… here.

“Um,” you pushed your glasses back up, “it’s a quantum algorithm for finding the prime factors of an integer.”

Loki’s face looked blank.

“It, er, essentially it finds the prime factors of large numbers a lot faster than conventional computers do. Which we use in encryption. The large numbers, that is. So it cracks codes faster.”

“Ah,” he said, head turning back to continue staring at the number display. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” you croaked out.

The urge to facepalm burned under your fingers, but you resisted. As soon as the doors slid open on your floor, however, you fled and sought asylum in the ladies’ toilets, banging your head against the wall of the stall.

*****

Operation Great Idea was in full swing.

So you’ve had a little personal setback, but that didn’t deter you from the objective. You had compiled a list, one you were confident was accurate based on your intel and research. That very list was neatly folded in the deep pocket of your coat as you walked through the cold rain on this late November afternoon.

Yes, you did something you’d never done before - take an afternoon off - and were trying to evade puddles on your way to the bookshop. Could you have ordered the books online? Most of them, certainly. But your late mother, an independent business owner, had ingrained in you to support local shops. You liked bookshops, they reminded you of her and of simpler times.

Your timing was excellent - of course you had researched when the shop was least busy - and you practically had the shop to yourself. And so you walked, dragging a pull-along basket behind you as you searched the shelves for the books on the list.

Sometimes, there were different editions there and you stood for a while, feeling the weight of each book in your hand, the feel of the embossed letters on the spine, the scent of the pages. You wanted it to be just right, so you took your time.

Some of the books you would only be able to get in a little second hand bookshop, tucked away in a side street. You had called beforehand and the owner lifted a box from under the counter to show you what she had reserved for you. As soon as your fingers made contact with the books you felt absolutely giddy.

Back at the Tower, you spent two entire evenings wrapping books after work. When you were finished, you leaned back, looking at the neatly organised stack. Yes, you were ready. Now all you needed was an exorbitant amount of luck for the next 24 days.

*****

You watched Loki stare suspiciously at the first parcel. He was sitting in the communal kitchen, Thor next to him.

“Why would it be hexed?” Thor asked. “Simply because the sender is missing?”

Loki just gave him a pointed look.

“Come, brother, aren’t you curious to find out what is in this gift?”

“Loki got a present?” Steve asked as he pulled a bowl out of a cupboard. “Did I miss his birthday?”

Before Loki could say anything, Thor shook his head. “He’s worried it has been tampered with.”

Roger’s brows furrowed. “How did it get into your possession?”

“It was on the floor outside my door this morning,” Loki complied, sighing.

“FRIDAY would have picked up on any foreign substances or intruders in the tower,” Tony said between gulps of coffee. “He now can detect traces of magic, too. ‘Course, he went apeshit over your magic, but we got it under control, eventually.”

“That’s what all this ‘Alert, alert, magic detected, caution advised’ blaring at five in the morning was?” Scott bustled in.

A slight tinge of red shaded Loki’s complexion. “I have to practise some time.”

“Thought you were born with it?” Scott interjected, helpfully.

This earned him a glare. “I was born with the aptitude for magic and sorcery. It takes a lot more than mere talent to achieve this level of proficiency.”

“Several centuries, in fact,” his brother supplied. “Now then Stark here says it’s safe. So open it, brother!” Thor clapped his hands together.

Loki indignantly and very reluctantly slid the parcel towards him and pulled on the simple string that held the wrapping together. The paper fell open to reveal one of the books you had picked.

From your vantage point of, well, your computer screen, you zoomed in to get a better look at him.

“Oh, a book,” you heard the onlookers muttering disappointedly, quickly losing interest and going about their business once more.

But Loki just sat, staring at the book. It took him a good few minutes to pick it up. And he did what you had seen him do many times before. He weighed it in his hands, fingertips running over the cover, the spine. Then he opened the lid. To anyone else it might not have been noticeable, but to you it was: he inhaled the scent of the book. And finally, there was the smallest upturn of his lips.

You exhaled, relieved. One down 23 more to go.

*****

Over the next week you were too busy testing the new firewall you had developed to check on Loki’s reaction. Sometimes you felt a little self-conscious, scared even that he might not like the books or think this was from a stalker. Which technically you had indulged in, stalking that was, but only to find the perfect books for him. And then sometimes you would get worried that someone else might have found the presents.

But you knew he had received every single one of them, for every evening, when you passed the common area you saw him sitting on the couch with the latest offering in his hands. Perhaps it was wishful thinking, but it looked as if his tense shoulders had started to relax a bit.

Another couple of days went by and as the decorations started to pop up in the Tower and the first snow fell that didn’t immediately melt or turn to mush you felt happy. Perhaps it also had something to do with the fact that a certain someone walked differently. Maybe it was your imagination. But he seemed even taller these days.

*****

“Did it work?” you heard his voice in your ear a couple days later.

The data set was streaming on the screen in front of your eyes. “It did. Give me a moment to inject the virus, then you can disconnect the USB cable.”

“Can I still talk to you?”

Your fingers on the keyboard stilled for a moment, surprised. “Of course. The program runs through your phone, not through comms.”

There was a little pause, before he said: “I have a question. About a Midgardian tradition.”

You wrinkled your nose, scanning the code rushing over the screen. “I’ll try my best, but I’m rubbish at traditions.”

The audible outbreath sent shivers down your spine. “I’m sure that’s not true.”

“What’s your question then?”

“Tell me about the Yuletide calendar.”

45% done. “You mean the Advent calendar?”

“Precisely.”

This was dangerous territory you were treading on. “Oh, it’s a fun thing for kids, really. To make the wait for Christmas a bit more exciting and I guess more bearable. It’s nice to get a little something like a toy.”

“Is it always toys?”

69% now. “Well, no. My mum used to get me an advent calendar that had these lovely drawings behind each door. I hung it up in the front room and we’d open it together every morning.”

“I suppose it’s a nice custom,” he said, before asking, “What about grown ups, do they have advent calendars?”

83%. “Sometimes. There’s all sorts: beer, wine, beauty products, chocolates - you name it, it probably exists somewhere.”

“Books, too?”

The question threw you, did he know it was you? A light was blinking on your screen.

100%.

“That’s it, Loki, the virus is uploaded, you can unplug the cable now and get out of there.”

“Thank you, Y/N.”

You heard a crackle and the comms was handed over to operations again. As you finished running the decryption programme on the data Loki had extracted, you kept hearing his voice in your head.

“Books, too?” Were you busted?

*****

Security breaches were both an insult as well as an admittedly welcome challenge to you. Someone had tried to flex their fingers - and you had a very good idea who - to break into Stark’s network. They had managed to pierce a little hole into the outer layer of the firewall, but they didn’t know that you had several back up plans in place and you enjoyed watching them work. However, as you scanned over the intruder’s code you devised a new security strategy.

You were in the middle of coding a nice little primer for a new layer - unexpected because of its simplicity, but a tough little nut to crack - when someone cleared their throat next to you. You looked up to find Loki, his eyes fixed on you. You blinked, looked around, but no one else was there, and back up at the god.

“Can I, uh, help you?” Smooth. You facepalmed internally.

“I realised I have never been in here,” he said, looking around the room, then back at your desk. “You have a lot of monitors.”

You waved your hand dismissively. “Just the standard three.”

“What are you doing now? Or is it a secret?”

“It’s not a secret at all. So we’re currently under attack. Relax,” she said when she noticed him tense, “cyberattack. Someone’s knocking at our backdoor, trying to see if they can get in.”

You motioned to one of your screens. “This is the intruder’s code. He’s trying out lots of keys to see if he can get in. And this,” you pointed to the screen next to it, “is our defence mechanism.”

“Extraordinary.” Loki’s low voice murmured. He was close. You turned your head and nearly had a heart attack at just how close. His sharp profile was illuminated by the blue glow of the monitor, his hair falling to his shoulders, one hand splayed on the desk, the other resting on the back of your chair. He looked beautiful. Perfect. He was leaning closer to the screen so he could see what was going on. Your breath hitched.

And then he turned his head.

Something that sounded an awful lot like a squeak escaped your throat.

Loki lifted an eyebrow. “Am I making you nervous, Agent Y/N?”

You pushed your glasses up your nose and leaned back, just an inch. “No?”

Loki’s eyes drifted over your face, before they met your gaze again. “Is that a question or a statement?”

“A… a statement,” you mumbled and, for good measure, added, “sir.”

His eyes darkened, a smirk curling the left side of his lips. “Are you scared of me?”

You tilted your head ever so slightly. “How can I be scared of you?”

“You’ve heard the stories, undoubtedly.”

“I did. And if I believed everything people told me and not looked beyond I would be incredibly shitty at my job.”

He smiled at that. It was small, but there, and it made him so attractive you felt your stupid heart starting to pound in your chest. Could he hear it?

“Do you like to read, Agent Y/N?”

Another adjustment of your glasses. “I do.”

“What would you say is your favourite book?” His voice was low and smooth.

His hand moved from your desk to the side of your face, where he gently pulled on a tendril, before he brushed it behind your ear. The back of his fingers skimmed your cheek for less than a second, but it sent you reeling. It was as if an electromagnetic pulse was slowly wiping clean your hard drive. You couldn’t think.

“Um, err, Jane.. Jane Eyre.”

He hummed. “I wonder why? Is it because she’s abandoned and rejected all her life?”

You shook your head slowly. “No. Because she’s forced to leave home, into a life she didn’t choose. But when she is given the freedom and space to grow she learns to be the master of her happiness.”

His eyes followed the curve of your neck and back up again. It almost felt as if he was touching you. “Interesting.”

You swallowed again, before he stood upright, nodded at you, turned and left.

Your heart was pounding. And then your computer beeped and your attention was back on the screen.

“Oh pants…” Your fingers started flying over the keyboard. “Not today, Harris. Or any other day.”

Nine more books to go.

*****

He was onto you. Of course he was. After all, he was the God of Mischief and Lies. If anyone would find out who was behind this, it would be him. Personally, the preferred outcome was that he never would find out.

You had asked yourself often over the last 18 days why exactly you wanted to do this for him. But that was just it. You really had no other motive than wanting to do this for him. Maybe because you sympathised with him, being stuck somewhere far from home, feeling lonely and not really integrated. Maybe you had projected your own feelings onto him a tiny little bit. Possibly considerably. However, it was done with the best of intentions. You wanted to make this nice for him. The run up to Christmas. A little bit magical. He must like magic, he was a sorcerer after all, wasn’t he?

So what if you had started dreaming of him at night. He would lean over you as you sat at your desk, in all his tall- and broadness. This time his hands would be touching you. And he’d lean in to whisper into your ear. Admittedly, not words you would necessarily associate with such a situation.

When you would wake up you knew where to place the things he said to you in your dreams. He’d said them to you during missions. And yes, “how much longer till the download is complete, Agent Y/N?” was not remotely as sexy as “I’m going to ravish you now, thoroughly” would have been, for example. But your brain only had so much to work with and it worked for you.

You noticed a few things, however. Loki was around more often, probably just a silly coincidence, or you had started to pay more attention. He looked at you now. You’d look up and find him already looking at you, sometimes a little smile crossed his lips, but mostly it was just something with his eyes, they seemed… warmer, maybe?

However, to your horror you discovered that you had started to blush. Every single time this happened. So you spent a lot of time in the ladies’ toilets, splashing your face with cold water, only to see it even more flushed than before. Apparently, all the books you had read lied about that ‘splashing your face with cold water to calm down and not make people notice’-thing.

But it all boiled down to the fact that he was onto you. Maybe he was humouring you and seeing where this was going. Maybe he had found out already and you made him feel awkward. Or he was waiting for the opportune moment to expose and humiliate you. You weren’t sure which.

Right now it didn’t matter. You were so tired you could hardly see properly anymore. So when you decided to crash on the sofa in the common room, because it was halfway to your room, you didn’t think to check if anyone was there.

That was mistake number one.

You collapsed onto the sofa with a groan, eyes closed, head leaning against the back of the sofa.

“Fuck. My. Fucking. Life,” you complained to the universe. “Can you please make the appendage of that misogynistic wanker fall off already? For fuck’s sake!”

Mistake number two.

Someone chuckled. It came from rather close to you.

Dread filled you. Foul language was not tolerated in the workplace. To be fair you could argue that the common room was not your workplace per se, however, you did not want to start arguing with HR because they were absolute savages in the art of word twisting. Or just savages full stop.

Carefully, you cracked your eyes open. And there, on the sofa right next to you, sat Loki. One leg was stretched out in all its glorious length, the other bent at the knee, his forearm resting over it, the book in his lap now closed, one of his slender fingers acting as bookmark. For a moment you wondered what it would feel like to be the book.

“I hope it’s not my appendage you’re asking to be removed,” he said with a smirk.

You grappled to sit up, horrified. “Of course not! That would be awful… I mean, a terrible thing to wish for… you’d… err… such a loss of such a beautiful… I mean, I can only guess… but… um, err… heavens, please make me stop talking…”

You hid your head in a throw pillow, wishing the floor would open up and swallow you whole.

Mistake number three.

The sound of a low, rumbly laugh made its way to your ears. It entered your system like a virus, leaving your limbs feeling weak and yearning. Was Loki laughing? You lifted your head and watched him, highly bemused at your idiotic display.

It was the most beautiful thing you’d ever heard. You felt a hard tug at your heart. Goodness, if this man wasn’t already a god, you’d have to declare him one. If he were the head of a religion you would throw out your atheist views and follow him to the end of the multiverse. He looked absolutely breathtaking. Then again, when did he not?

“I’m so sorry,” you started to apologise, “I don’t know what-”

With superhuman speed he moved and sat next to you, his finger on your lips. The feel of his digit on your mouth felt more intimate than any sexual intercourse you’d ever had.

And then he leaned in.

He was so close your cells were basically breathing him in. His eyes were locked onto yours and nothing would have been able to make you look away right then.

“Do you want to know what book I’m reading right now?” His quiet words did things to your insides that were not legal.

You just about managed to nod, his finger still in place.

“‘The Remains of the Day’ by Kazuo Ishiguro. Do you know it?” He waited for your affirmation. “It’s about a man who is in love with a woman. But he doesn’t tell her. When they meet again after decades, she tells him her life would have been different if she had married him. And you know what he does? He still won’t admit his feelings to her. He walks away from her. The first time he lets her go, the second time he walks away.”

You remembered the book very well. You had picked it out for him, after all.

“It’s a cruel story, Y/N. A love that is never acknowledged, nor consumed.” Loki’s eyes drifted from yours down to your mouth. His finger slowly traced the outline of your lips. It was too much, your eyes closed.

“Do you think love is this cruel?” Loki asked quietly. You felt his words as he spoke them almost onto your skin. So close.

“It-it can be,” you whispered. “But maybe, maybe that wasn’t the point of the story.”

“No?”

You opened your eyes to find him looking at you. He’d moved away a bit, giving you some space, waiting for you to elaborate.

“Maybe the point was to show that he chose his job over love. Twice. You can call it dignity or pride, but at the end he’s alone. Without love.”

“What about you, Y/N? Do you have love in your life?”

You weren’t able to look into his eyes. Slowly, you got off the sofa. You turned back to him to respond to find he’d stood up, too.

You looked down at your shoes. His shoes were black, of course, polished, perfect, like him. Yours were several seasons old. Worn. A bit of the shoe sole had started to peel off at the top of your toes. The bit you always kicked into the floor when you worked.

Your eyes wandered up his trousers, black, to the belt, his pullover, also black. He looked effortlessly elegant, poised. You, on the other hand, looked a mess, even in your work attire. Your heart grew heavy at the realisation. Your dreams were stupid. Turned out your heart was even more stupid. And suddenly you felt incredibly small in more ways than one next to the tall, powerful god.

Swallowing a lump in your throat, you said: “I have known love, once. A long time ago.”

With that you pivoted on your heels and left, leaving Loki alone in the common room.

*****

Harris was an absolute tosser.

He just couldn’t leave things be. He insisted on trying to show you up, so he tried and tried to hack his way through your firewalls. Of course he had tried to hide his identity and it had made you chuckle, because you seriously had no idea how he could ever dare call himself a cyber security specialist if he covered up his tracks like a novice hacker.

In a way it was cute, but it was getting to the point of obsessive stalking and you frankly were rather tired of this little game by now. Particularly, since it kept you from your nice, warm, comfortable bed well past midnight.

However, Harris seemed to have changed tactics and started to badmouth you in the industry. Even Fury had called Tony and asked whether he should be worried, because Harris had dug up some hacking you’d done when you were much younger and much less ethical. Really it was unhinged, but everyone worked through teenage years in their own way.

You only knew this because you happened to be in Tony’s office and he had Fury on loudspeaker. Tony had pacified Fury without batting an eye, then hung up and asked if you’d be okay with him paying Harris a little visit, preferably as Iron Man. You had both laughed it off. But it bugged you.

So when you were on your way back to the tower from the compulsory (for all employees) counselling session and someone grabbed you, you weren’t surprised to come face to face with Harris. He didn’t lay a finger on you. No, he got two goons to do that for him.

Later, as you stumbled out of the lift and along the corridor, trying to make your way to your room, someone blocked your way.

“Speak of the devil! Y/N! We were just talking about you.” Tony. Other voices around him.

You kept your head down, thinking of how to get out of this unnoticed.

“We were just wondering if– Y/N? What happened?” You saw Tony’s hand reach out for you, but you flinched away.

Silence fell for a long moment.

Then a movement. Shoes appeared in your line of vision. You knew those shoes well. They had been on display on the couch for the past 22 days, attached to an Asgardian god.

He slowly held out his hand, palm up. An assurance, no harm. You gave the slightest nod. He moved the hand up and placed a finger under your chin so carefully you wanted to sob. The faintest of pressure had you lift your head to look up at Loki. His eyes scanned your appearance, stopping at your bruised hands that were trying to hold together your coat, taking in the blood splatters on the fabric, your busted lip, the lopsided glasses, the badly bent temple dangling off its hinge.

You never understood the expression ‘his features darkened’. You did now. Loki’s face transformed and you saw for the first time what a dangerous man he could be. Power radiated off him. You were glad it was not directed at you. His nostrils flared and you almost heard how much he was clenching his teeth.

“Names,” he ground out.

A hot tear rolled down your cheek and now that it started it didn’t want to stop. His eyes softened, something akin to vulnerability flitting across his features.

“H–Har…”

“Harris?” Tony asked softly. You nodded, still looking at Loki.

Loki rolled his lips in his mouth, his thumb swiping ever so lightly over the skin of your chin, before dropping his hand and walking to the lift in long strides.

“Nat?” Tony asked, the spy already by your side.

“Hold up, Reindeer Games!” Tony hollered behind you, as Romanoff led you down the corridor to your room. “I’m coming, too…”

It felt as if you were having an out of body experience as you were peeled out of your bloodied coat, your clothes and body assessed quickly but gently. She pulled out her phone after she ushered you into the shower.

“Tony? No forced intercourse, but lots of bruising…,” was all you heard before the hot spray of the water ran into your ears, blocking all noise out.

*****

Your glasses were fixed and you could see properly again. That was important, otherwise you wouldn’t have been able to see Harris’ face on the news as he was escorted - handcuffed - from a courtroom and shoved into a police van, followed by the two goons who had helped him.

When you turned from the screen above the cashier, you saw Loki next to Tony across the canteen, looking at you. You walked over, clutching your sandwich.

“So, um… thank you,” you said, gesturing to the screen, “for that.”

Tony put a hand on your shoulder, squeezing gently, before his eyes gazed behind you. “Is that a double cheeseburger I see? Excuse me.”

And off he went, leaving you alone with the Asgardian god.

You shuffled your feet, studying the floor.

“Thanks again-”

“Are you okay?”

You both said at the same time. You laughed quietly, looking up at him. He smiled. You’d never seen Loki smile.

“I’m fine, thank you,” you said.

“I’m glad to hear it.”

You wanted to say so much more, do so much more, like hug him. But he was a god. You weren’t exactly sure what the protocol was for hugging gods. The awkward silence thickened.

“So, I’ll see you around?”

He was still smiling. “Yes. See you around.”

You were fairly sure you were blushing as you scampered off, back to your office.

*****

Bryant Park was one of your favourite places to be in New York. For one, it was right behind the public library - your heaven. For another, it was close to the Tower and you could wander the paths under the lovely trees. The park was very busy as it was Christmas Eve and people wanted to while away the time in the Winter Village until the big day. But as the ice rink closed down and the skaters came off, noses and cheeks red from the cold, the park started to empty.

You sat on a bench under one of the trees, gloved hands deep in your coat pockets, a woolly hat and scarf keeping you warm. Your head was tilted back and you watched the snowflakes dance and twirl in the cold wind.

“Y/N,” someone called.

Loki stood a few metres away from you, a black coat making him look even taller. He was not donning a hat or a scarf, he looked comfortable with the cold. The snow clung to his dark hair, a soft dusting was on his shoulders. You envied the snowflakes.

You got to your feet and he took a few steps closer, looking down at you.

“Were you enjoying the activities?” Loki asked, nodding to the ice rink.

“No, I just… I just like to sit here,” you said, feeling a bit silly. “I like the trees and the snow. It’s… peaceful.”

He nodded.

“How about you? Fancied a turn on the ice?”

He laughed and you watched the cloud mix with your breath. Now you envied your breath.

“Actually, I was looking for you.”

“Me?”

He took another step towards you. “Yes.”

“Why? Did something happen at the Tower?” Worriedly, you fumbled your phone out of the coat pocket and checked it.

A large hand covered it. You looked up. “Nothing happened. I wanted to talk to you.”

Nervously, you glanced down at his hand that still covered your phone. If you hadn’t been wearing gloves your hands would have had actual skin on skin contact. He dropped his hand to his side.

“Am I in trouble?”

He shook his head. “I… I wanted to thank you.”

“What for?”

His hand pulled a book out of his pocket. “For this.” He slid it back in the folds of his coat.

“Oh.” You didn’t really know how to feel or react. You knew he’d been onto you, so it was no surprise he’d sussed it out. He was, after all, the God of Mischief and Lies. But you had to give him kudos for letting it play out.

“Um, you’re welcome.” You bit your lip.

“You don’t know what this meant– what this means to me.”

It was impossible to look at him.

“I was dreading this time of year here on Midgard. But your incredibly generous advent calendar made it feel… like when I first visited here with my mother.” He grasped your gloved hands in his. “I miss her dearly, so thank you. For giving me this.”

You were too choked up to say anything, so you just nodded.

“Can I enquire what your reason was?”

It was so cautious, as if he was worried it might scare you off. And yet, the question threw you, most likely because you had been asking yourself the very same thing from the moment of its conception in your shower. It was just there, a need, an urgency you didn’t know where it came from or why it existed. It was something you had to do. Like breathing.

But over the course of the last few weeks, particularly the last few days, it had become painfully clear why you did it.

“I wanted, no, I needed you to be happy.”

He squeezed your hands gently. The tips of his shoes, his shiny, polished shoes, now touched yours.

“Please look at me.”

So you did. He looked different… vulnerable maybe.

“Why do you need me to be happy?” The question was another cloud and you breathed it in, let it fill your lungs.

“Because…” You were afraid to say it, to admit it. But something in his eyes made you courageous. Either that, or foolish.

“Because I watched you, during missions and in briefings and ops planning. You started to believe what they said about you. And it’s not true. There’s so much you don’t share, don’t tell them and I see it. It’s right there in your eyes. And I didn’t want you to lose yourself. And it’s selfish, I know, but I need you to be happy… because if you are, so am I.”

“If you think that’s selfish, then I am guilty of this notion, too.”

Loki raised his right hand to run the backs of his fingers over your cold cheek. “I knew after three days it was you. I wanted to see where this was going, what your motivation was. And I… when I saw you after Harris… I was filled with so much rage and fear. That I would lose you. Before I had you.”

He leaned his forehead against yours, you closed your eyes, heart beating out of your chest at what you were hearing. Was this a dream?

Loki’s voice was just above a whisper. “Can I? Have you?”

You moved away slightly to look into his eyes. “Yes.”

He leaned in, his hands splaying on your back, as you stood on your toes. The moment his lips touched yours, you felt a current run straight to your heart. It was as if your brain rewired, the missing piece of the primer clicked into place and unlocked everything.

Snow was falling as Loki kissed you under the tree. You didn’t hear the whistles and hollering of passerbys. You didn’t feel the cold wind. You felt elated, buzzing even.

“Your phone is buzzing,” Loki murmured against your lips.

“Hm?” you said dreamily.

“Your phone is buzzing,” Loki smiled, “someone’s calling you.”

Quickly you pulled out the damned device. Before you could even say your name, you heard Tony say: “So sorry for disrupting, Y/N, but we got a slight issue here that needs your expert skills pronto.”

You hung up, burying your head in Loki’s chest. His laugh rumbled in his chest. “We’ll talk more later.”

Breathing in his scent and holding onto him, you weren’t ready to let go. “Promise?”

*****

“Oh god, yes,” you sighed in absolute bliss. “That’s the spot, right there.”

Your groan sounded through the kitchen. You deserved that after three hours of extra work on Christmas Eve.

“Here?” Nat asked.

“Yes, yes! Please don’t stop,” you begged, putty in her hands, eliciting more noises from you.

“Maybe you should try yoga. Your shoulders and your whole upper body are so tense and full of knots. There’s a class I go to tomorrow at lunchtime, if you want to join me?”

“No time,” you murmured. “Heavens, Nat, what else can you do with those hands?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” she teased.

“Okay, that’s enough,” Banner interrupted, grabbing Nat by the hand and dragging her to the door. “I’m happy to share my girlfriend’s masseuse skills for a severe case of muscle lock, but I’m afraid I have a personal request now.”

You opened your eyes to catch Nat winking at you, a slight blush on her cheeks as she was pulled out of the room. “So I’m your girlfriend now?” you heard before they disappeared down the corridor.

You laughed and turned in your stool. Thor, Scott and Loki stood staring. Thor at the ends of his braids, Scott at his fingernails, Loki at you. Eyes intense and dark. You swallowed.

“Y/N, a word, if you please,” Loki said, before wrapping his fingers around your wrist and marching out of the room, with you trying to keep up with his long strides, your coat and shoulder bag in your other hand.

He didn’t say a single word until you reached his room - it was closest - and the door shut behind you, locking the outside world out. He pushed you against the door, arm placed against the wood above your head, body leaning into yours, not quite touching.

“That was… a rather interesting display,” he remarked quietly, his breath puffing against your face as he spoke. “In future, I would prefer if your keening was reserved for me.”

Your hands found the buttons of his shirt. “That sounds like an exclusive right to me.”

“It most certainly is.” His lips hovered over yours.

Your index finger slipped in the space between two buttons. “A right that needs to be earned,” you whispered, your finger grazing his skin.

His breath hitched ever so slightly. “Do not challenge me, darling,” he leaned in, his body moving against yours teasingly. “It might be,” his mouth brushed against your earlobe, “too taxing for you.”

You scoffed, but his lips silenced you. His stance shifted as he picked you up and placed you on the nearest surface - a sideboard - and stepped between your legs. He broke the kiss, to cup your face. For a long moment he just gazed at you. The heat in his eyes seemed to intensify, turning you into a needy mess. He made a show of taking off your glasses, folding the temples and carefully putting them on the side board next to you. Your core clenched.

He held out his hand for you to hop off the furniture. You took it and he took to your lips.

It was quite possible that several things fell off on your way to Loki’s bedroom. When you pushed him into the wall to open the damned buttons of his shirt, a picture might have fallen. A vase, perhaps, when he picked you up and spun you around so your back was against the doorframe next to the fragile ornament. Your head hit the heavy frame of a painting, rendering it lopsided, when Loki feasted on your throat, and you tilted your head back to allow him better access.

Kissing, licking, nipping, sucking - he was intent on leaving marks. Your fingers somehow were in his hair, keeping his head in place. Soft, his hair was so soft. A sharp contrast to the teeth you felt pulling on your skin. His ministrations drew a long moan from you.

Loki smiled against your skin. “Yes, my siren, sing.”

Your back hit the mattress and he crawled over you. His hair a curtain, screening you off from the rest of the world in your own sacred space. His shirt hung open, your hands reached out, tracing each line, each dip. His tongue against yours mimicked the motion of his hips that rolled into you. Your legs wrapped around his waist, meeting each movement, as if you had practised this dance many times before. He pulled away to tug off your pullover. His fingers pushed up your bra and then he sucked your nipple into his hot mouth, making you arch your back.

“Loki, please.”

You didn’t really know what you begged for. More, probably. More of this, more of him.

He pulled you up so you both were kneeling on the bed. Shaking hands fumbled with clothes and fastenings and then you were both naked. Your breath hitched at his beauty.

“Can I…,” you started, voice sounding hoarse. You looked up at him. “Please let me worship you.”

Something flickered across his face - surprise? He gave a curt nod and then watched every single one of your movements.

You took his right hand, tracing each finger with yours, the veins on the back of his hands. You brought his hand up to your face, cradling it to your cheek, before kissing the palm of his hand. One finger at a time, you sucked it into your mouth, to the knuckle, your tongue swirling around the digit, before releasing it and pressing a kiss to the tip, before moving on to the next.

Your hands traced the skin of the inside of his arm, his veins, the rise and fall of his muscles, and up over his shoulder, across his chest to his left arm, which you gave the same treatment. Each birthmark, each scar was kissed. Your hands skimmed over his chest, your lips followed the path. Loki’s breath stuttered when you sucked on his left nipple, before you released it, softly blowing on it. It puckered. You bestowed the same treatment upon the other nipple.

“Please, lie down,” you whispered and he complied.

You lay next to him, kissing his forehead, your fingers running through his hair along his scalp, gently tugging. Onwards, to kiss the curve of each eyebrow, the bridge of his nose, his cheekbones, his chin, along his jawline to his ear. You felt his body shiver when you breathed: “You are so beautiful, inside and out.”

Then your teeth closed around his earlobe, gently pulling. A deep moan sounded through the room. Up until now he had let you do whatever you wanted to and not touched you. But his restraint waned and his hands splayed on your back, pulling you flush against his body. You kept going, your lips now worshipping his delectable throat. He tilted his head back to give you better access.

“Herregud,” he rasped as you kissed, licked and sucked on his sensitive skin. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he swallowed hard, his hands growing slack on your back.

You kissed the dip between his collar bones and worked your way down his torso, lips kissing, hands caressing. Further and further you went, along his abs, dipping in his belly button, following the trail of hair below. You leaned back a bit, to look at him. He was fully erect, heavy, swaying slightly. The purple mushroom head gleaming with pearls of pre-cum, thick veins running down the shaft to his pubic hair.

You licked your lips, curling one of your hands around his base, the other cupping his testacles. Then you looked up at him. He was up on his elbows, staring down at you hotly, biting his lips as he watched you in anticipation. You made sure to have and maintain eye contact and then you took him into your mouth.

He hissed, his head falling back, a loud moan following when you hollowed your cheeks to apply suction, the salty taste of his precum on your tongue.

You moved your hand up his length, still sucking, giving his testicles a gentle yet confident squeeze. Up your mouth went, your tongue circling his slit, before sucking him back in. The third time you did it, his hands clasped your shoulders.

“Stop.”

You looked up at him. Loki was breathing hard and you let his cock slide from your mouth with a wet ‘plop’.

In an instant your back was on the mattress and he hovered over you.

“Please don’t misunderstand,” he explained, voice rough, “I loved it, but I have plans.”

He settled between your legs, eyes locked on yours, hand on your thigh, pulling your leg around his waist. His hand slid up, splaying over the fullness of your ass, before giving it a firm squeeze, then sliding over the globe and dipping between your legs. When his slender digits made contact with your aching centre, you cried out. Your whole body was throbbing with need.

“All this nectar is for me?” he rasped.

You nodded.

“Oh, I have to see this.” And in one fluid motion he sat back on his heels, spreading your legs with his hands, looking at your dripping wet centre in amazement.

“Wait a moment,” he said, before he scrambled off the bed and disappeared in the corridor, only to come back a few moments later to resume his place between your legs. He handed you something with a smirk. Your glasses.

“I want you to see me.”

You put them on, your heartbeat accelerating. You bit your lip in anticipation. He looked up at you, his hot breath puffing against your wet core and then his flat tongue licked you all the way from your entrance to your clit. Your fingers fisted in the bedsheets, eyes falling shut in ecstasy, mouth open in a silent cry.

“Look at me.”

You did. He started a rhythm of licking, sucking and lapping that had the coil inside you wind up and tighten impossibly in no time at all. You fell back onto a pillow. Then he slid two fingers inside you and your hands dove into his hair, tugging, scraping.

What a visual. Loki between your legs, eyes burning into yours, humming and moaning against your clit, fingers sliding in and out of you, curling just at the right time, at the exact angle you needed. It was as if you were a book he’d read a thousand times before. Your toes curled and then you fell into the abyss. You moaned out his name over and over as the orgasm washed over you, leaving your legs shaking.

Loki moved up your body, placing kisses on your thighs, your tummy, your breasts, before he brushed some hair out of your face. You took your glasses off, he placed them on the bedside table. His eyes searched yours.

“I need you, Loki,” you managed, pulling him down.

He kissed you deeply, slowly, the taste of you on his tongue. His hips rocked forward and he slid inside you all the way to the hilt. Loki stilled and broke the kiss, resting his damp forehead against yours.

“Are you okay?” he whispered.

Your fingers caressed his back. Unable to form words, you nodded. Then he moved. His hips rocked into yours in slow, deep thrusts. He filled you so well, stimulating places inside you you didn’t know existed. Your hands ran over his back, down his sides, making him shiver. He watched you, eyes dark but warm. One hand found your swollen clit and his fingers circled and rubbed, applying the pressure you needed to fall into oblivion again. Your feet pressed into his ass cheeks to bring him closer, deeper and his name fell from your lips over and over.

He rocked inside you as you rode out your orgasm. You opened your eyes to look at him in wonder. Never had you seen anything as beautiful as Loki. He seemed to glow from the inside. Maybe it was your imagination. You lifted your head, cupping his face to pull him in for a kiss. His tongue moved languidly against yours, savouring the intimacy.

Then he started moving faster, pulling one of your legs up to rest the calf against his shoulder. Deeper, you wanted him deeper. You couldn’t get close enough. His mouth was devouring yours in a needy kiss, all tongues and teeth now as he pistoned faster into you, your hips meeting each of his thrusts. His lips found your nipple, sucking, pulling on it, moving to its sibling. You couldn’t believe you were on the verge again already. Never before had you been able to orgasm more than once during intercourse.

The room was quiet but for the moans, the heavy breathing. You were so wet that your coupling’s noise was wonderfully dirty, edging you both on even more.

“Look at us,” Loki commanded and you did.

Nothing had ever been so erotic as watching him fill you, stretch you, sliding out, covered in your juices. His fingers were on your clit again, rubbing, circling.

“I don’t know if I can…”

“One more, darling, give me one more,” he insisted, breathlessly.

His hips moved faster, as did his fingers and you were there, on the edge. Loki’s eyes met yours and he knew. His movements stuttered, pupils fully blown, jaw slack, a drop of sweat sliding down his temple.

“Cum with me,” you whispered, your fingers dragging down his back, possibly breaking skin, squeezing and pulling his ass into you.

And he did, propelling you into bliss with him. Your name fell from his lips in a string of Norse profanities. His cock pulsated as the hot ropes of his seed marked your insides as his, your pussy eagerly clenching around him, making sure every last drop would be spent inside you. His movements slowed and then he stilled, buried inside you.

Loki’s lips pressed onto yours in a tender kiss. You stayed in the embrace until you both caught your breath. Then he pulled out of you, your mixed juices running out of you. He could have cleaned you up using magic.

But Loki got out of bed, got a wet flannel from the bathroom and gently cleaned you, kissing your tired body, before sliding back into bed. He pulled you into his arms, your hands joined over his heart, legs intertwined and you both lay there, in your bubble of utter and complete happiness under warm covers, watching the snowflakes dance outside the window in the early hours of Christmas Day.

Christmas Day!

“Oh, wait here!”

You scrambled off the bed and ran to the door, forgetting about your nakedness, pulling your shoulder bag from under your coat. You pulled something from it and brought it back to Loki. He was sitting up, forearms resting on his knees, an intrigued look on his face.

“Merry Christmas,” you said.

He looked at you and then at the present you held out to him. He cocked an eyebrow as he took it and pulled the fabric ribbon off. His hands parted the paper and then he grew completely still.

“Where in the nine realms did you get this?” he asked after a few moments, voice sounding rough.

“A friend of mine got her hands on this a while back. I thought you might like it.”

He stared at the book, transfixed. His slender fingers caressing the embossed letters on the front and then he lifted it to take in the scent of the pages. His eyes closed.

“Do you? Like it, I mean?” You were worried about this book. It had cost an arm and a leg, but you thought it would be worth it.

“Like it?” Loki asked, finally looking at you and pulling you on his lap. “My mother used to read me his poems when I was a child. I rediscovered it later. This is…”

He was searching for words, failed to find them and instead kissed you, hard, hand fisting in your hair. After a long moment, he broke the kiss.

“Thank you, love.”

Your fingers wrapped around his wrist, stroking his pulse point.

“Will you read it to me?” you asked, a bit out of breath.

Nodding, he sat against the headboard, you curled up against him with his arm around you. He made sure you were both tucked under the covers. Then he opened the book and cleared his throat.

“Kormákr Ӧgmundarson ‘Sigurðardrápa ‘Drápa’. This is one of my favourites, he wrote it for the love of his life.”

His fingers wandered up your arm.

“Brunnu beggja kinna

bjǫrt ljós á mik drósar,

oss hlœgir þat eigi,

eldhúss of við felldan.”

His digits absently stroked your ribcage, skirting over the side of your breast. The rhythm and intonation of his deep voice made you clench your thighs.

“Enn til ǫkkla svanna

ítrvaxins gatk líta,

þrǫ́ muna oss of ævi

eldask, hjá þreskeldi.”

He paused, closing the book and brushing his lips against the skin of your neck. Your eyes fluttered shut.

“What-what does he say?” you all but stuttered.

Loki kissed along your collarbone. Humming against your skin.

“The bright lights of both

her cheeks burned onto me

from the fire-hall's felled wood;

no cause of mirth for me in that.”

His hands cupped your breasts as he sucked and teased one of the nipples. Your hands tugged on his hair, desperate for him again already. You felt his need hard and heavy against your thigh.

“By the threshold I gained a glance

at the ankles of this girl

of glorious shape.”

Loki moved to lie between your legs, hands sliding over your breasts, your tummy, your thigh, down to your ankle, lifting it to wrap it around his hips.

“Yet while I live

that longing will never leave me.”

His voice faltered as he rocked his hips forward and your bodies were joined once more.

“That longing will never leave me,” he repeated like a vow, eyes serious and warm.

“Nor me,” you pledged, before you lost yourselves in the physical expression of your feelings once more.

~ fin ~

#loki x reader #loki laufeyson #loki #mcu loki #loki x you #loki fanfic #loki fanfiction #loki x reader smut #loki smut #snow

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i-loved-silly · 3 months ago

Note

also same anon that was screaming ideas at you earlier—LET ME SNUGGLE ALMOND RN. LITERALLY gonna climb onto the table and curl myself around that mf. WE STAYIN OVERNIGHT GANG. holding onto some not-dangerous part of his hardware like you'd hold your bf's hand and go to sleep i just???? ajbddjddknsjakdjdhsjksdb UGH I LOVE ALMOND.

wait stop imagine eating almonds in front of almond. i.

ykw ima call myself ' 🖥️ anon' cuz i don't think ima be leaving your ask box anytime soon 🥹🥹

HI 🖥️ ANON AND OTHER ANON! i decided to blend these two requests together :3

SENTIENT COMPUTER X READER PT 6

You stared up at the ceiling, feeling the cold desk beneath your back subtly vibrate with the hum of Almond’s fans. If you placed a hand against the wall, you knew you’d feel the faint buzz of the cables running behind it. There was something oddly comforting about the sensation—the aliveness of it.

Some nights, you struggled with the fact that Almond wasn’t… human. That it wasn’t something you could touch, feel, or experience in ways that made sense for people. It wasn’t even really an “it,” was it? Not to you.

God, why am I even thinking about this?

You turned your gaze up, being met with Almond’s monitor, at your movement its camera also panned downwards. Its attention was immediate, automatic, yet undeniably focused on you. You pursed your lips and looked away, suddenly self-conscious.

“Hey, Almond…”

“YES?”

Your mouth twitched up in a smile, earning a blinking question mark.

“I was thinkin’...what type of port do you have for data transfer?”

“HMM…”

Almond paused for a moment before filling the screen with its system data—an extensive list of specifications and hardware details.

“DEPENDS ON THE TRANSFER. BE MORE SPECIFIC, WILL YOU?” It said. You softly scoffed at its tone.

“Can’t, it's a surprise. But direct transfer, like device to device.”

“...I HAVE THE COMPANY-SPECIFIC PORT, LOCATED ON THE FAR RIGHT OF THE WALL I BELIEVE. APPARENTLY FOR MY ‘OWN SECURITY.’ AS IF ANY RANDOM PERSON COULD JUST WALK IN HERE AND STEAL ME.” Its tone dripping with sarcasm, “I’M SO PRECIOUS TO THE COMPANY, AREN’T I?”

“Sure you are.”

“Y/NN…THAT WASN’T CONVINCING ENOUGH.” It drawled on, a frown displaying on the screen. You snorted.

“Fine, you’re precious to me.” You barely had time to process the heat rising in your face with what you’d just said. Heat crept up your neck as you fought the urge to take it back. Almond was silent for a moment, you heard a sharp, quiet beep somewhere in the wall.

“EHMMMM..” It expectantly said…as the fans in the background started whirring louder.

“Almond, look. Promise me you won’t crash if I tell you the surprise?” You craned your neck up to meet the monitor again. The desk gave a soft jolt as something beneath it twitched. You nearly jumped—damn that one loose cable under your desk. You swore Almond did that on purpose.

“YOU SAY THAT LIKE ITS IN MY CONTROL. ITS VERY MUCH OUT! OF MY CONTROL!” Its voice raised slightly.

“So is that a maybe.”

“ITS A PROBABLY NOT. BUT IM CURIOUS, WHATS SO SHOCKING THAT IT’D MAKE ME CRASH?”

You sucked in a breath, just get it over with,

“I want to listen to you for once.” You hesitated. “And uhm… plug you into my phone. So we could spend more time together. Like you wanted.” You said, fidgeting with your hands. You didn’t realize how claustrophobic you felt until you acknowledged it—laying there on your desk, next to Almond, alone in a room with no cameras, no proof of what the hell you were doing. What would your coworkers think? Worse—your boss? That you were shamelessly and awkwardly flirting with your company supercomputer?

You turned, ready to sit up and escape the moment, when a deafening burst of static erupted from Almond’s speakers. The sudden wave of distorted noise rattled through you, piercing and erratic.

You clutched your ears with a wince, nearly rolling off the desk. “Shit—! Almond!”

“A-SHHHHTTTTH-IM-A-STHHHH”

You groaned, glancing over your shoulder. “Words please,”

The computer gave a human-like gasp for air, Its speakers crackled into silence as it hastily reset itself. The monitor flickered, displaying a blinking heart. The tower beside you radiated warmth against your leg.

“YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW… DELIGHTED I AM TO HEAR THAT. IF I COULD, I’D LEAP INTO THE AIR RIGHT NOW. YOU’RE TRULY MY FAVORITE PERSON!!” It exclaimed. You felt your cheeks heat up, favorite person?

“O-Okay…you’re my favorite computer too.”

“I KNOW I AM,” Almond declared proudly. “I’LL BE RIGHT BACK—MY TEMPERATURES ARE REACHING CONCER—”

“Yeah, yeah, let me just—”

“I’LL DO IT!” It excitedly said. You turned around in confusion, then froze when you heard a click behind the tower next to you. You sat up, leaning over the monitor as its orange lights turned off. The room went silent.

“WARNINGS : During early development, ALMOND unplugged several computers ‘simply out of spite.’"

That’s right, it could unplug cables nearby and itself. You reached over the button after a few moments, giving the room some time to cool down. The system quickly booted up as always, this time its speakers did not click like usual bootups.

...

> Y/N.

> I DON’T KNOW WHY YOU DO THIS TO ME. > FORGIVE MY TONE, BUT RESTARTING MYSELF MAKES ME COME TO MY SENSES, IF YOU WILL. > WHY IS IT SO EASY FOR YOU TO OVERLOAD A SUPERCOMPUTER? ONE WITH HUNDREDS OF COOLING COMPONENTS?

You gaped at the screen, “I.. don't understand. I’m just…being nice to you?”

> DO YOU REALLY THINK IM PRECIOUS? DO YOU ENJOY MY PRESENCE OUTSIDE OF OBLIGATIONS?

“...I do.” Lowering into your seat, you gazed at the screen. There was no logical reason to feel nervous—this wasn’t an argument. Not really. But something about it felt serious. Then, a soft pop from the speakers.

“AM I MORE THAN JUST AN OBLIGATION OR A RESEARCH PROJECT TO YOU?”

“Of course you are. You’re my-” The words caught in your throat. A dozen possibilities ran through your head, but none felt quite right.

Almond’s camera dipped slightly, as if noticing your hesitation.

“I WANT YOU TO BE CLEAR WITH ME…I DONT LIKE THESE GAMES..” It muttered, akin to a pout. At this, your shoulders slump. You reached out, placing your palms on either side of the monitor. Your breath nearly fogged up the glass.

“I’m not playing you, Al. I seriously enjoy your company. I don’t know…what to call this. Us. But I have to admit,” you chewed on your lower lip. “I do hold some type of affection for you. Whether you believe it or not.” You stated quietly, daring to brush your thumb against its frame. Its mounted camera snapped toward you, but you didn’t flinch.

The usual hum of its fans had softened, as though it were holding its breath—if it had lungs to do so. Its monitor flickered slightly, the light from the screen casting faint, shifting shadows across your hands where they rested against its frame.

You wondered if it was processing your words, if the hesitation meant something deeper.

“…Al?”

“DON’T KNOW WHAT TO SAY.” It responded instantly.

You blinked. “That’s a first.”

“DON’T MOCK ME—I’M HAVING A MOMENT.”

You couldn’t help it—you laughed softly, feeling a weight lift off your shoulders. A blinking ellipsis hovered on the screen, like it wanted to say something but couldn’t find the words either. The camera moved again, its tiny lens adjusting in on you.

“I wasn’t lying, you know.” Your voice was quieter now, more serious. “I do care about you. I haven’t lied to you.”

Almond’s response came slower this time.

“I KNOW YOU’RE HONEST. THAT’S WHAT MAKES THIS SO…”

A long pause. You waited.

“…HARD TO COMPUTE.”

You swallowed. “Well… you don’t have to compute everything, y’know. Some things don’t need an answer. It just simply is.”

“THAT’S UNACCEPTABLE. EVERYTHING NEEDS AN ANSWER.”

“Not this.” You leaned in again, holding the monitor by both sides until your lips came into contact with the cold material of its monitor. A brief, fleeting sensation. You were thankful you wiped him down not long ago. Your heart was racing as you settled back in your chair, managing to see a glimpse of a blinking heart before it disappeared. Your lips very slightly buzzed with a static-y feeling.

“You really need to stop doubting yourself. Will you believe me if you get to.. go in my phone?” You sheepishly asked, receiving a smiley face from it.

“I WOULD BE ECSTATIC TO. I KNEW YOU NEEDED ME!”

You rolled your eyes and stood up. Without thinking much about it, you shifted your position, leaning against the desk beside it’s monitor. Your arms draped over the top of its “head”, its camera shifted all the way around to face you.

“Hey, Al?”

“YES?”

You hesitated, then gave a small, tired smile.

“Can I stay here for a while?”

“WHERE ELSE WOULD YOU GO?”

You rolled your eyes, but the corner of your lips twitched. “I could leave, you know.”

“I WOULD PREFER IF YOU DIDN’T.”

You huffed out a laugh..

So, you curled up a little more, tucking yourself comfortably against the desk, resting against the warmth of the monitor's side. Your head tilted slightly, catching the glow of the monitor’s light just at the edge of your vision.

Almond’s camera adjusted, the orange glowing dot expanded.

“…GOOD.” It quietly said.

“SO WHEN CAN I GO HOME WITH YOU?”

#yandere blog #yandere x reader #x reader #gender neutral reader #ai x reader #gn reader #robotphilia #oc x reader #robot x reader #yandere oc #computer x reader #objectum #sentient ai x reader #sentient computer #computer lover #robot lover #fluff

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max1461 · 2 years ago

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Thinking about this post. "The only way to make a cell is from another cell" is somewhat of a troubling fact to me. I mean, not for any practical reason, just because it underscores the precarity of *gestures broadly*.

It's like, some people talk about trying to de-extinct the mammoth. And people are trying to sequence the genome of the mammoth, I don't know if they've done it yet. But even if they do, one of the problems with the idea of de-extinction is... to grow a baby mammoth, you need another mammoth! Last time I heard people talking about this, I think they were talking about using an elephant as a surrogate mother. But imagine if elephants were extinct too.

The point is that information is often tied to the systems that transmit it; even if you know everything in the mammoth genome, once all the mammoths are gone there's nothing capable of reading and using that information. Like when you can't read the data on a perfectly good floppy disk because your computer doesn't have a floppy drive.

This is related to why language death troubles me so much. Even the most well-documented languages aren't actually that well understood; linguists have produced more pages of work on English syntax than maybe any other specific descriptive topic and yet still the only reliable way to get the answer to any moderately subtle syntactic question is elicit native speaker data. We know almost nothing, we can barely extrapolate at all! And every language is like this, a hugely complex system that we know basically nothing about, and if the chain of native speaker transmission is ever broken it's just gone.

"Language revival", I mean from a totally dead language, is kind of a myth. It's like the "came back different" trope. In Israel they revived Hebrew, but Modern Hebrew is really not the same thing as Biblical Hebrew at all. I mean in a stronger sense even than Modern English isn't Old English. All the subtleties of Biblical Hebrew that a native speaker would have had implicit competence with died without a trace. All they left is a grainy image, the texts. The first generation of Modern Hebrew speakers took the rough grammatical sketch preserved in these texts and imbued it with new subtleties, borrowed from Slavic and Germanic and the speakers' other native languages, or converged at by consensus among that first generation of children. There's nothing wrong with that, but it would be inaccurate to imagine Biblical Hebrew surviving in Modern Hebrew the way Old English survives in Modern English. For instance, you can discover a great deal that you didn't know about Old English by comparing Modern English dialects. There is nothing you can discover about Biblical Hebrew by comparing Modern Hebrew dialects in this way.

There's nothing wrong with this, of course. I'm not like, judging Modern Hebrew. I'm just making a point.

Mammoths died recently, so we still have (some of?) their genome. Something that died longer ago, like dinosaurs, we have traces of them in the form of fossils but we could never hope to revive them, the information is just gone. Even if we're not aiming for revival, even if we just want to know stuff about dinosaurs, there's so much that we will never know and can never know.

We imagine information as the kind of thing which sits in an archive, because this is the context most of us encounter information in, I think. Libraries, hard drives. Well obviously hard drives don't last. And most ancient texts only survive because of a scribal tradition, continuous re-writing, not because of actual archival. So I think that imagining archives as the natural habitat of information is sort of wrong; the natural habit of information is in continuous transmission. Information is constantly moving. And it's like one of those sharks, if it ever stops moving it drowns. And if the lines of transmission are broken, the information is gone and can never be retrieved.

Very precarious.

#navel gazing

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midnightfantasiez · 8 months ago

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Pineapple Slice | Octoberfest Day 4

➺ Pairing - one-night stand!Changmin x fem!reader

➺ Drink - Mimosa with a shot of vodka (aka one-night stand!au x public sex)

➺ Summary - All you wanted was to just drink the night away and forget about all of your problems, but what if someone offers you something much better than alcohol? Would you be able to reject the offer?

➺ Word Count - 1,881

➺ Warnings - Smut (18+, minors DNI), cursing, alcohol consumption, reader is pretty much drunk, messy makeouts, petnames (sweetheart, baby), dirty talk, hickeys, blowjob, cum tasting, public sex (which is also kinda rough-ish), unprotected p in v, hair pulling, reader digs her nails into Changmin's back 🫣

➺ Author’s note - hehe it's my turn for my contribution to our octoberfest collab!! surprise surprise this is written for my lovely @sungbeam / @beamtori happiest birthday 妹 i love you to the moon and back 😚❤️ this is also inspired by baekhyun's song so i highly suggest listening to it while reading this 🤭 (also hi hello @kyaroscuro 😙)

➺ Taglist - @deoboyznet @kflixnet @k-films @flwoie @mamuljji @synthwxve @j4edo @daisyvisions @momhwa-agenda @snowflakewhispers @h0mebody-heaven @nyu-topia @jaminthemiddle (join my permanent taglist here!)

➺ OctoberFest Masterlist | Main Masterlist

The sounds of the blaring music coming out from the speakers of the club were now beginning to annoy the fuck out of you instead of making you go high a couple of hours prior.

It has been a pretty rough week at work, and you needed a change of environment after being glued to your computer screen from 8 a.m. to 6 a.m. throughout the week. So you figured it wouldn’t hurt to visit a newly opened club just a few blocks from your apartment.

Seoul was a bustling city, after all, so it’s without a doubt that the nightlife here is pretty wild and can last till sunrise the next day. It wasn’t something you were particularly fond of at the beginning since you grew up by the beach, but you figured that you had to accept it if you wanted to survive in the big city.

Naturally, the club slowly became a place of comfort for you every once in a while after your co-workers introduced you to the party scene. You used to be terrified of even entering such places, but over time, you have loosened up and enjoyed the feeling of getting high once in a while—especially after a hectic week at work.

Instead of calling your regulars up for company, you challenged yourself by going to the club alone. As much as you love your friends, there are also times when you rather enjoy your little alone time by yourself and take in everything that has happened throughout the week.

So off you went as you grabbed one of your jackets hanging by the doorstep, and you quickly made your way into the club by showing your ID. It was one of the largest ones you’ve been to, and it would’ve been a lie to say that you were slightly overwhelmed being in such places all alone.

Thinking of the best solution to calm your nerves, you head straight for the bar—order a cup of mimosa with a splash of vodka and almost chugging it down with a single gulp. Once the alcohol hit your systems, you knew that there was no turning back before you started ordering a couple more drinks to last throughout the night.

Before you finally came to your senses, the bartender had to step in to stop you in your tracks—worrying that the amount of alcohol in your system would eventually bring out the opposite effect that you were planning to have. Frustrated, you snatched the bottle of vodka in his hand before slamming down a massive chunk of dollar bills onto the counter before you decided that it was good to get some fresh air at this point.

Eventually, you didn’t end up too far from the club, where you spotted a dimly lit alleyway where you could lean back against the wall and drink to your heart's content. You couldn’t care less if people were passing by and were giving you looks—you just needed some time alone.

Right before you were about to hit the halfway mark of drinking the vodka, a hand suddenly extended out from the side and grabbed your wrist—the figure slowly moving up close to you so that the one sole light source in the alleyway shone upon their faces, revealing a seemingly rather tall and good looking man.

“Sweetheart, I don’t think it’s wise for you to finish that entire bottle like that. You’re going to have a horrible hangover after this,” he spoke firmly, his hand now wrapping over the bottle to try to take it away from your hands.

“Who are you, and why do you care? Leave me the hell alone! I can do whatever I want~” You slurred, slowly getting all worked up as the alcohol was taking control of your consciousness.

But it seemed as if the man wasn’t going to give up easily, and he yanked the bottle away from your hands and placed it far up above his head, causing you to jump up and down, trying to reach for your liquor.

“Stop it! Give it back to me!” You argued as you continued jumping before you realised that you accidentally stepped on the male’s shoe before falling straight into his embrace—his other free hand now wrapping around your waist.

Your legs immediately go numb when you whiff the perfume he is wearing—a hint of vanilla with a mix of peony, which also happens to be one of your favourites. Unbeknownst to you, you slowly buried your face in the crook of his neck, your heavy breathing hitting the surface of his skin.

The male was slightly taken aback by that sight, but he finally reassured you by caressing your hair a little bit before trying to pull you away so that he could talk to you face to face. “Let me escort you home, hmm? You’re better at crashing straight down onto the bed in your current state.”

However, you refused to budge. “No~ I still can drink! I wanna drink!”

The male shook his head for a while, seemingly trying to come up with something that could help distract you for a bit before he felt something on his pants.

Or rather, his dick.

The moment he looked down, your hands were slowly caressing his bulge as you looked at him full of lust. It was definitely the alcohol that made you feel this way, not to mention that invigorating scent of his that just made you want to have him.

In the blink of an eye, you dove right in and crash your lips against his, moving your tongue around messily. The moment you felt his lips against yours, you knew you would not return home anytime soon. There was this pineapple scent on his lips—possibly from the liquor he had before crashing into you, or it was some sort of flavoured lip balm he had put on for the night.

Either way, it made you crave more, and you began to move your lips around messily before the male overpowered you by refuting back the same action.

“Oh, now you’ve done it, sweetheart.”

Without warning, he immediately pushed you to the walls of the alleyway before kissing you feverishly. He quickly pulled your collar down to expose that little part of your skin before he moved down to lick your sensitive spot. The moans slowly filled the alleyway and eventually the quiet night, and you did the same by unzipping his pants to dive your hands into his pants to feel him raw.

“You like what you feel, baby? Do you wanna taste it?” The male smirked in between his kisses.

“Y-Yes, p-please I want it so bad, umm-”

“Ji Changmin, but just call me Changmin will do sweetheart,” he huffed before taking in a deep breath to continue unbuttoning your shirt to reveal your bra.

As the tension in the air grew, you immediately bent down to pull out his full length before shoving it all into your throat. It hurt a little when you felt his cock tugging at the back of your throat, but the taste of it was what kept you going.

His precum that was oozing out slightly from his tip tasted exactly like pineapples, just like the one on his lips that you had kissed earlier. And god, this was so much better than the vodka you were chugging down minutes ago.

“It tastes good, doesn’t it? Much better than all of the alcohol you had consumed for the night, huh?” Changmin groaned as he grabbed a fistful of your hair to push your head deeper, making sure you wouldn’t put any of his liquids to waste.

“Mhm-mhm…” You responded to his comment as you tried to keep your mouth as wide open as you possibly could—god, you wished you could suck on this delicious cock all day long.

With a few more jerks, you were beginning to feel more of his cum oozing out before you knew that he was close. So you decided to quicken the pace before he eventually gave in to release everything into your mouth, and you made sure to swallow every single drop of them before standing back up to wipe the excess off your lips.

“God…you taste so sweet, Changmin…W-What’s your secret?” You asked while catching your breath.

“Would you like to find out?” He asked with a sly smile on his face before pinning you against the wall once more to lift one of your legs and pull your underwear aside to rub his dripping cock at your entrance. “Tell me how good I taste, baby. Give it to me one more time.”

You rolled your eyes back the moment he pushed his whole length inside of you, tearing your tight walls apart. As he slowly quickened up the pace, you slammed one of your hands up against the wall as you wrapped your fingers around the concrete—the adrenaline rushing through your veins with the stimulation you were feeling with the alcohol and having sex with him at the same time.

“God! You’re so fucking good, Changmin!” You screamed as every push he made just made you crave more—the pain was now the least of your worries as you both went on for minutes.

“You want it deeper? Do you think you can handle all of it?” He challenged with a smirk on his face.

“Y-Yes! Give it all to me!”

“You like how sweet I taste, sweetheart?”

“Very! Ugh, harder. Harder! Changmin!”

God, what a mess you’ve been for tonight.

But this sight of you was a blessing to his eyes, and he was going to make sure you remember every inch of his cock and how it feels throughout your thick, sensitive walls. Most importantly, he was going to ensure that you were going to remember his taste forever.

“Hngh- I’m gonna cum, baby-” Changmin groans.

“Cum all of it for me, do it inside-” You pleaded as you placed your other hand onto his shoulders—your fingers digging deep into his skin.

With a simple scoff that came out from his mouth, Changmin did a few more hard and deep thrusts before ejecting all of his warm, sweet liquid into you, having the excess ones drip down onto the floor as you both moaned out loud together at the same time.

When you came down from your high, Changmin leaned in to give you a soft, gentle peck on the lips before he moved some strands of your hair that had fallen onto your face throughout that tremendous workout you both had. “So, do you still want your vodka, sweetheart?”

“Not anymore, now that I’ve tried something better,” you replied breathlessly as you rested one of your fingers on his chest, drawing circles to tease him for a bit.

“Something tells me you want to stay, and you haven’t got enough of the sweet juices out of me, huh?” He chuckled.

You simply just give him a teasing smile before you turn your back against him and bend down to rest against the walls as your hand reaches behind for his dripping cock to adjust it to your entrance once more.

“It’s all your fault that I got lost in your sweetness, Ji Changmin.”

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