"Are you sure there won't be any permanent damage?"
"Relax," Max chuckled as she slammed her car door shut and wedged her key in the lock. "I've never met anyone whose bruises lasted more than a few days. We get protective gear and everything."
Loki frowned when she quirked an eyebrow at him, but followed her toward the indoor paintball arena with a resigned sigh.
It had actually taken more persuasion than usual for Loki to accept her request for a game of paintball. The bookstore staff partnered with other departments around campus on the first Sunday of every March to play a vicious tournament at the indoor arena two towns over, and Max wasn't about to miss out on it this year just because she had a massive paper due. No, school obligations could wait: paintball was serious business. Loki seemed more interested in lounging around the apartment all day, and she wasn't about to let that happen.
She wasn't sure what had changed, but lately Loki rarely seemed to be doing anything—anything. Sure, he watched TV, helped her with dishes, and attended drunken outings with her friends, but otherwise she wasn't sure what he did all day. Max knew for a fact that he had stopped doing his class assignments altogether—Ben hadn't received a history assignment from him in almost three weeks—and he rarely joined her for study sessions anymore. If he did, he was on his laptop, not a book in sight, and always seemed to finish roughly around the same time she did. She wasn't about to mother him, but if she didn't see a change by the end of the month, Max planned to bring up the subject as nicely as possible.
He wasn't a lazy guy. He didn't seem like the type to flake out on something because he didn't feel like working on it anymore. He was intelligent, resourceful, and determined—she had seen him be all of those traits at one point or another during the year. Therefore, all things considered, Max hadn't the slightest idea what had gotten into him lately. It seemed that he had taken all his energy out of his school work and thrust it into their relationship, and while she was thrilled to have a man who actually cared, she didn't have the luxury of abandoning her academics.
So, when Loki was bored and procrastinating on whatever assignment he planned not to do, he would harass her for attention. She wasn't completely oblivious; she knew he came to her because he had run out of things to scroll through online. Well, that and they were having great sex lately. However, she couldn't be someone's distraction because she didn't have the time to be distracted. The end of the year inched closer with each passing week, and she had finals to prepare for, assignments to grade, and papers of her own to chew out and edit like a maniac before term came to a close. Yes, she had another year of her graduate program to go, but every single year counted, and she felt like she had been slacking earlier in the semester.
So, her relationship was great. Loki was great—amazing. Sometimes she wished, however, that she could sneak off to the library and spend the day there without wondering when her boyfriend would stroll up with plans. Despite everything, she wasn't about to complain. If Loki's attentiveness and need to be kept busy by her were the only two downsides of living with a boyfriend this early in the relationship, Max would take it. Besides, while he might have been a bit of a pest sometimes, he wasn't following her around anymore… That was a bonus, was it not?
Still, she sometimes felt like Loki was the least of her concerns. With her mom's health stable, but still relatively poor, she turned her attention to Nolan. He had sent the family an email two days ago explaining that he had picked up another infection in the hospital, and instead of being moved to an outpatient care facility, he would be stuck in there for another two weeks. Every time she thought about her brother's condition, she cringed: he must have hated his life in there. Nolan wasn't the most active of guys, but he certainly didn't like being caged in one place for too long, and every time they had a video-chat, her brother expressed his concerns that they may discharge him from the army completely. While she had always wished Nolan had chosen a safer profession, she knew he loved his job, and Max didn't want him to lose it over a little infection.
Her plate was full: school, Loki, and family seemed to take up the entire pie graph, never mind her social life and work. Somehow, she seemed to keep everything balanced, and she suspected she had Loki to thank for keeping her sane when she was bogged down at home. If she had to go through this year alone or with someone like her previous few roommates, she probably would have had a mental breakdown by now.
She shot her man an appreciative smile as he held the glass door open for her, and then took his cool hand with both of hers once he was inside. The paintball arena hadn't changed in years; there was an indoor and outdoor field, and both were open to use depending on the season. In the main foyer, the walls were covered in horrible military camouflage print, and there was a beat-up jeep for kids to climb on and take pictures in near the reception desk. Off to the left were the locker rooms and to the right the hallway toward the indoor field. It was busier than she usually saw it, but she assumed it was because more faculties and service departments signed up for teams this year.
"Are those the people who work at the McDonald's booth?" Loki inquired as he nodded toward a quartet of elderly women clustered around the jeep. Max grinned.
"Yeah, they usually team up with the janitors from the science building," she explained, scanning the crowd for the group of rowdy thirty-somethings who—for some reason—always grouped up with the older workers. "They're pretty stiff competition."
"Not this year!" It was Melissa who interrupted, gliding in between the pair, her arms folded across her chest. "They're dividing us all up this year… Apparently people were complaining we have an unfair advantage."
Loki rolled his eyes when Max glanced up at him. "Hardly."
"Easy, Captain Ego," she scoffed. "Melissa was talking about me."
"Oh?" His eyebrows shot up as he observed her down the tip of his nose. "Really?"
"You don't know this about me, but I'm fucking baller at paintball," she insisted, hands on her hips. "Like… I could be pro."
"Right."
"I'm awesome—"
"Awesome like your singing?"
Max pursed her lips at him, and then shrugged, unwilling to give her strategy away. After all, if they were going to be split up, she had a sinking suspicion that Melissa had arranged for Loki to be on any team besides hers.
"Melissa," Loki greeted, turning his attention away from Max and smiling down at the portly woman at her side. "It's nice to see you again."
"Yeah, it's been a while," her boss mused as she gave Loki a once-over. "I was starting to wonder if you actually worked for me anymore."
"It's been a… terribly busy month," he told her with a forced smile, one that made Max smirk. "I'm so sorry if I've caused you any trouble."
Both Melissa and Max slowly looked down at the hand Loki had placed on the woman's arms, and her normally uptight supervisor gave a flustered laugh. "Oh, no, it's no trouble at all."
"Okay," Max said with a sigh. She shrugged off her coat and stuffed it into Loki's arms. "Why don't you go check our coats in at the reception? I forgot a lock."
"Do you anticipate someone stealing this thing?" Loki inquired as he folded the garment over his arm. "There's a ketchup stain on the back—"
"What?" Max lunged forward, mortified that she hadn't noticed it before. Sure enough, there was a dark red smattering of ketchup on the bottom, as if she had sat on a ketchup packet at some point. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"I thought it was some absurd fashion thing," he told her, though he had a difficult time keeping a straight face when she glared up at him. "I'll return shortly."
"But not too shortly," she snapped at his retreating form. He strode confidently through the crowd, pausing momentarily when one of the new cashiers greeted him.
"You guys are cute," Melissa said. Max quickly looked back at the woman when she realized she was staring creepily at Loki from across the noisy hall, and she nodded.
"Thanks… We try."
"I'm serious about his work ethic though," the woman admitted softly, leaning in with her usual furrowed brow. "If he doesn't work a shift soon, it'll just be easier to not have him on the payroll… and I hate firing people, but—"
"I'll talk to him," she sighed. "I'm not really sure what's gotten into him lately, but he's been kind of distracted."
Lie. However, she wasn't about to let her both stand there and judge her for dating a guy who slacked on both his school work and his job.
"Well, he's got another week to figure himself out," the woman told her, "and then I'll have to say something."
"Right, thanks."
Max watched the woman fiddle with her St. Judith's sweater, and then resisted the urge to roll her eyes. While Melissa may have acted tough in front of Max, she had serious doubts that the woman would actually fire Loki. Although it was well-known that Max and Loki were dating, her boss was still pretty sweet on the guy and tended to turn into a puddle of mush whenever he spoke to her. So, while she threatened a week, Max knew Loki probably had two months—at the very least—to realize that he needed to do at least a shift a week.
"Hello St. Judith's support staff!" The voice boomed out a megaphone at the front of the foyer, and Max winced when the machine emitted a high-pitch squeal. She spotted the holder of said device standing on the reception desk, dressed to the nines in his paintball jumpsuit and tousled grey hair. "Are we ready for some paintball?!"
Max joined in with the cheers, and then snorted noisily when she spotted a thoroughly unimpressed Loki stuck in the middle of the crowd, a disgusted look on his face.
Honestly, he was such a snob sometimes.
"My name is Joe," the man with the megaphone started.
"Hello, Joe," came a chorus of veteran players, Max included.
"And I'll be your paintball coordinator for the day," he continued, sounding positively giddy at the idea. Max had played roughly four games with the bookstore staff at this point, and it was either Joe or his wife Martha who led the day; the elderly owners of the arena always tried to make it a theatrical occasion. "We've done things a little differently this year… We've divided you all up into four teams. There's a roster posted before you go into the arena. We'll play two teams, and winners will play for the title of champions."
Max grinned, her limbs itching to get into a jumpsuit. Although her coworkers had only played with her a handful of times, paintball was a regular affair for her when she was younger. Nolan had every single birthday party until he was nineteen at the local paintball center, and Max was even fleetingly invited to play on his recreational team when they were in high school. A part of her wondered if her academic fascination with weapons came from a childhood surrounded by her paintballing brother and her World War Two obsessive father.
No matter. She was ready to win; this place was one of the few that she actually let herself be competitive, and she liked to come out on top. Football games? Whatever. Drinking matches? She'd like to win, but she usually didn't. Paintball, on the other hand, was something she was good at.
"I still don't quite understand what we're supposed to be doing," Loki complained once the speeches had come to an end. It was the same spiel as always: no shooting when helmets were off, always wear your protective jumpsuit, arm up when you've been shot, and cease fire when the siren sounds. She glanced up at him, unaware that he had worked his way out of the crowd, and then looped her arm around his.
"It's really easy," she reassured him as they followed Melissa toward the massive whiteboard by the entrance to the indoor arena. "Shoot the other team… Be the last man standing otherwise."
"Right."
"I think you're overthinking it," she said. Max peered up and over Melissa to scan the lists of names to find hers: team four. Loki, on the other hand, was on team one. "We aren't together."
He seemed thoroughly blasé at the realization. "I don't think I want to play if I'm not on your team."
"This is war, soldier," Max teased, pinching his side hard enough to make him squirm. "You can't abandon your team!"
Melissa seemed equally put-out that she was on the third team, and waved a half-hearted farewell as she joined the throngs of people making their way into the nearby hallway.
"Max—"
"Besides, it looks good that you're participating in something work-related," she said quickly before he could worm his way out of it. "I mean, you don't really do much else anymore at work… You know that, right?"
"I'm aware of my attendance, yes."
She sucked in her cheeks, catching the sarcastic comment before it slipped out. "Okay."
He sighed, taking her hand in his, and then pulled her toward the nearby doors. The hall was smaller than she remembered, but perhaps it was because there were at least fifty people squished into it. At the end of the corridor sat a little kiosk, at which players were given their uniform and gun. Beyond it, there was a waiting space to get dressed in, and Max and Loki eventually found themselves forced to separate into their teams at opposite sides of the room.
Max greeted her new comrades with a warm smile, knowing most of them by face and a few by name. The only weakness was one of the McDonald's ladies, but otherwise it seemed like she had a pretty solid crew to fall back on.
"Alright, folks," Joe announced as Max wiggled into her dark green jumpsuit, her gun and ammunition resting against a nearby bench. The elderly man found a chair to stand on, the megaphone back in hand. He could have just talked noisily; it was starting to hurt her ears to listen to him shout into the thing. "We'll be playing teams one and four first… Two and three can head up to the observation deck in the meantime."
An excited energy pulsed through her limbs as she hastily zipped up her jumpsuit, and then set about loading her gun with colourful paintballs. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Loki sitting on a bench across the room doing the same, nodding as a man from the library night staff murmured something in his ear—tactics already?
"Okay, so," a gruff woman from the janitorial crew started, her gun resting over her shoulder. "Get the towers if you can… They'll try to do the same, but we got to beat them." Max nodded along with the rest of them: towers were key. "Is anyone really good with accuracy?"
"I am," Max offered. "If I can get to a tower, I can usually pick people off when I see them."
"It's you and me and a tower for the next half hour, baby," the woman told her, which made Max laugh. "The rest of you try to just get rid of them, or stay out of the way. Today belongs to team three."
"We're team four," the McDonald's woman muttered, which also made her chuckle.
"Alright folks," Joe bellowed. "Moving on out… You'll have five minutes to find a position in the field, and then you can start shooting when you hear the buzzer."
Max rolled her eyes: there were less than twenty-five people in the space and he still used the megaphone. Gun in hand, she followed her crew toward the artistically battered metal doors, and then shot Loki a narrowed look when he sauntered up to her side.
"I've just been strategizing with my team," he told her haughtily. "I think it's best if you find a safe place to hide until the fighting ceases."
"Says the guy who has never played a round of paintball in his life," Max droned, rolling her eyes. "I think I'll be fine."
"Oh, darling, I've seen more battle than you can possibly imagine," he whispered in her ear. "You're going to lose."
Eyes still narrowed, Max dropped her gun to her side as they stepped through the doors, and then shot him in the foot.
"Max!"
"Hey, no shooting until the buzzer starts!" Joe shouted from somewhere behind her. Max held up her hands innocently when she spotted the old man charging inward.
"Oh my god, my finger slipped," she cried as Loki fretted over his paint-splattered shoe. "I'm so sorry!"
"Next person who slips is sitting out," he warned, staring everyone down before disappearing back behind the metal doors.
"You did that on purpose," Loki hissed when she fluttered her eyelashes at him. She shrugged, and then dragged her helmet on.
"All's fair in love and war, darling," Max cooed. "See you on the other side."
She nudged his arm before darting off to join the rest of her team, most of whom had already booked it to the far corner of the arena. Over the years, the indoor arena itself had undergone a series of changes. In the first few years, it was nothing more than a few plastic tunnels and plush bags to hide behind. However, the owners must have realized there was profit to be made during the winter months, and one year she and Nolan played a round in the new arena, which looked like a massive McDonald's play-place. From there, it only got better. The final product, which Max jogged through today, looked very similar to the outdoor arena: wooden towers, tunnels, plastic cut-outs and balls, a singular underground burrow, and fake palm trees. It had recently been painted to match the military camouflage wallpaper in the foyer, though much of the wood remained in its original state.
Each team had five minutes to find and hold a position, and when Max caught up to her group, she found herself swept into a debate about who ought to take one of the wooden towers in the far corner. Naturally, because she said she was good up high, heads turned back to her.
"I don't want that tower," she said quietly. "I mean, towers are good, but I want to get that middle one… That's the crème de la crème of towers."
It was a large circular tower in the dead center of the field. Surrounded by barricades and plastic tubing, it was probably the best spot in the place to play the sniper, but its walls were full of holes. So, while it was a good position to hold, it was also a risk if the other team had accurate shooters. However, it was a risk Max was willing to take: Nolan always beat her to the center tower, and she was keen on getting there first this year.
"I like that plan," the burly janitorial woman said with a nod. "We'll take the tower." She then turned back to the remaining members of her team, who seemed marginally unimpressed that someone was telling them what to do. "You guys take the south wall and come at them from behind. Understand?"
Max hid her smile at the irritated grunts and murmurs of acknowledgement, and then glanced up toward the observation deck at the top of the far right wall. She liked that the ceiling was just a giant window, because the game felt more realistic with natural light, but she thoroughly disliked that the other teams had an opportunity to watch their strategies from some room two floors up.
All thoughts of prying eyes disappeared when she heard the buzzer shriek out of the nearby speakers, and she dropped low with the janitorial woman at her side.
"My name's Max, by the way," she whispered as they darted behind a small boulder.
"Claire."
"Nice to meet you."
"Same."
Her eyes flickered in the direction of the first shots of the game, which were followed by some shouting, and she and Claire took the opportunity to race to the next boulder. Ten feet closer to the tower—another forty to go.
"Wait," she murmured, planting a hand on Claire's forearm when she spied a pair from the other team racing across an open area nearby. Gun up, Max followed them, one eye closed, and fired off six shots in rapid succession. Three of those managed to hit the duo—two to the first runner and one to the second—and both players held their guns up in surrender shortly after her paint made contact.
"Good shot," Claire praised. Max nodded as she watched the pair march solemnly toward the exit.
"Thanks… Let's go."
They hurried forward, pausing here and there when they heard voices or shots. Over the next ten minutes, Claire took out two more players, and Max managed to nail someone's ankle as they tried to make a desperate crawl into a tunnel. However, it was when the tower was directly in sight, a mere thirty second jog away, that they were forced to separate. The barrage of paintballs came so suddenly and so fiercely that Max peeled off and crouched down behind a cut-out of a jeep, hiding herself behind the tires with her hands over her head.
When the splatter of paint finally ceased, she hesitantly looked up and saw Claire across the way in the mouth of a large tunnel, gun peering around the edge. Squaring her shoulders, Max managed to poke her head out just enough to see the players responsible for the recent assault: Loki (with his height and tuft of black hair poking out from beneath his helmet) and another man camped on the right side of the tower. They seemed to have the same plan in mind, and when Loki's companion made a run for the tower's wooden ladder, Max stood up and fired slightly ahead of him, forcing the man to retreat.
However, she had to throw herself onto the ground when Loki retaliated, his paintballs splattering noisily along the wooden shelter. She had to scrabble behind the other wheel cut-out when some of his paintballs managed to get into a few openings: he was good. Better than good, actually—he had accuracy. She stilled when she recalled his words before the match: I've seen more battle than you can possibly imagine. Had he been serious? Max blinked a few times, trying to shake the thought, and then focused her attention on Claire's frantic waving.
The woman pointed to herself, then made a fist and covered it with her hand. She then pointed at Max and then thumbed the tower. I'll cover you. Max nodded and crept forward, peering around the edge of her hiding spot just in time to force Loki back to his with a few carefully aimed paintballs. Claire then counted down from three, and when the numbers cleared, both women shot off toward the tower. Max gave an involuntary squeal when a wall of paintballs flew their way, but as Claire promised, she covered her until the gritty end.
Once she was close enough, Max threw her gun up into the tower and then leapt onto the ladder, scurrying up and into safety. Luckily enough, there was no one else lurking in the circular upper-level, and Max was able to recover her weapon and fire a few shots in Loki's direction. Unfortunately, she lost her wing-woman when she spotted Claire marching away from the tower with her gun raised. She wasn't sure how many other players had been taken out over the course of the last twenty-five minutes, but she had to assume that numbers were dwindling on both sides.
The tower that she found herself in was essentially a large balcony, with walls the only came up to her waist when standing and a conical roof that served no purpose at all. When she peered through one of the holes in the wall, she had to duck out of the way to avoid Loki's barrage of paintballs, but she had managed to see that his friend was heading around to the opposite side of the tower. Max was quicker: she was able to pick the man off just before he hopped behind a barrier, and he stalked away with his gun raised after cursing noisily.
Pleased, Max crept across the creaking circular structure, and then frowned when she saw Loki had moved. Finger on the trigger, she inched from hole to hole, eyes narrowed as she tried to detect any brief flicker of movement amongst the structures around her tower. However, all seemed quiet until she heard a few more shots from somewhere in the distance. It was in that brief distraction that Max heard the ladder groan behind her, and without thinking, she turned back and fired, nailing Loki three times in the helmet before she stopped.
"This hurts far more than you led me to believe," he snapped, running a hand through the paint as Max grinned at him.
"My poor baby," she cooed, falling to her knees to her knees once she was directly in front of him. "Maybe you could go put some ice on it while you wait on the loser's bench for me..."
"This isn't over," he hissed, and his glare softened only slightly when she blew him a kiss. "I'll have my vengeance."
"I think you're all talk and hot air, tough guy," she teased as she pushed him away by the helmet. "Don't forget to hold your gun up on your walk of shame back there… Don't want any more bruises."
"You're insufferable—"
"And you love it."
He opened and closed his mouth several times, and then smirked at her flushed cheeks. "I suppose I do… sometimes."
"Don't be a sore loser," she continued, hoping to brush away her accidental 'love' drop by being childishly competitive. "Go away… You're letting everyone know where I am."
He gave her a hard stare before jumping down off the ladder. She watched him saunter across the arena with his gun up, and then forced herself to focus on the game again—she could have sworn she heard voices on the other side of the tower.
Max inhaled sharply as Loki shoved her up against the bathroom door, his lips on her neck and his hands everywhere. She wasn't sure what had come over him, but once the paintball game came to an end, she couldn't keep his hands away; they lingered on her back, traveling southward, or rubbed her shoulders and curved around her neck. At the time, she hadn't paid much attention to it, but when she finally turned away from Team Four's victory celebrations, she realized that he needed to go home—now. There was a look in his eye, a richness to his voice, and Max quickly found it difficult to concentrate on anything but him.
Hell, she was barely able to focus on the drive back with him sitting beside her, the pair buried in a tense silence—a silence that hadn't come from anger. She had never, ever experienced anything like it before. In the past, guys had told her they wanted to go home and have sex; she'd laugh and he'd laugh and they'd go home with red faces before going to bed. This time, no one had said a single thing, and yet she knew precisely what he wanted. Desire. She had never actually known true desire, or what it felt like to be completely wanted, until that moment.
She had trembled with the key at the door, despite the fact he hadn't touched her, and it wasn't until they were inside and had shrugged off their coats that Loki pounced. Not that she had doubted his intentions, but even if she had, his kiss left nothing to chance: heated, demanding, persistent. He had backed her down the hallway, passed the couches and kitchen island and bedroom doors, until she found herself there, flush against the bathroom door with a firm body bearing down on her.
He wasted no time; with his lips nipping at the sensitive skin of her neck, each graze of teeth making her squirm, his fingers tackled her jeans and pushed them down her thighs. Her skin prickled at the touch, and she fisted her hand in his hair to yank him up for another kiss. It was almost clumsy the way their lips met, as if it had been years since they shared a proper kiss, and she groaned, tilting her head back and breathing shakily, when he pushed a pair of his long digits into her. They brought immediate pleasure, a sensation that could be felt right up to her abdomen, which clenched under his tactful wanderings.
And then, as quickly as he had started, Loki pulled away, and Max released a breath she hadn't realized she had been holding. Licking her lips, she went for his jeans, keen to return the pleasurable favour, but he batted her hands away briskly with his, opting to handle his trousers personally. Max glanced down and pushed her jeans to the floor, kicking them off with her underwear into a pile in the corner. When she looked back to him, she saw him studying her so intensely that it made her stomach knot again, and she raised a shaky pair of fingers to his lips, tentatively touching the lower one. Before she could lean up to kiss him, he grasped the hem of her sweater and hauled it upward, dragging it roughly from her body and tossing it aside. Her bra came next, ripped away as he wore the most curious expression on his features, as though the clothing bothered him.
She watched him peel the remainder of his clothing off, throwing it to the floor with the same expression, though she was quickly distracted by the infinitely toned body that lurked beneath. He barely went to the gym anymore, and yet there he was, muscular and solid and defined, and she wondered how she had lucked into finding a guy who looked like a Greek god.
Max flinched when a hand grasped the underside of her knee, hoisting her leg up as he moved inward. She braced herself on his shoulders, and then wrapped an arm around his neck as he rammed himself upward. Eyes clenched shut, she couldn't keep the cry in when his sharp hipbones slammed against her; he forced that cry out of her over and over again, taking her in silence. She whispered his name, and he returned her needy kiss with such ferocity that it almost hurt. In fact, if she removed herself from the moment, there were a lot of things that hurt: he took her harshly, pounding against her so that door behind her started to make her shoulders and back ache.
But the pain was easy to ignore. In fact, every single thing in her life was easy to ignore when his eyes flickered up to her, heavy-lidded and filled with the same desire he had shown for the last hour. The shift in angles when he wrapped her legs around his waist, holding her up with ease, was almost too much, and Max bit down on her lip when an unexpected wave of pleasure shook her. His lips coaxed hers from between her teeth, and she dragged him impossibly close as he ground against her, forcing her against the door—almost to the point where she felt suffocated.
She didn't care. He could take and give and suffocate all he wanted. Loki finished shortly after, a hand tangled tightly in her hair and his lips against her cheek, his breath heated and uneven. They stayed like that for a moment or so, holding one another in that position, until Max's legs gave a noticeable quiver and Loki finally set her down. However, they stayed together even then, their foreheads resting against one another. Max gazed up at him affectionately, while Loki's eyes remained shut, his breathing shaky. She finally caught his attention again with a soft kiss, stealing it away before he could react, and he smiled down at her when their gaze met.
"Was that my prize for being the Paintball Queen?" Max murmured, cupping his face and kissing him once more. He scoffed against her lips, though it turned into something of a weak laugh when she pulled away.
"Hardly."
"Oh, bitter looks bad on you," she teased, flinching when she felt the tips of his fingers trailed down her side: up and down and over her breast.
"Come to bed," he urged when he stopped his roaming hand at the base of her neck. She shook her head.
"I need to shower."
"That's not a requirement for my bed," he told her with a grin. Max chuckled, weaving her fingers through his hair, and then sighed.
"No, I have to get going," she insisted. Pulling away, she stepped around him and peered into her room to look at the clock by her bed. "Yeah, I have to meet with Ben soon."
"What?"
"We're doing a review session today," she remarked when she faced him again. "You know… for the next test? Everyone seems to be bombing those things lately…"
She almost added that he wouldn't know, seeing as he had missed the last two, but she refrained. They had had such a wonderful time, and she wasn't about to sully the mood by picking a fight. No, she could wait.
"Why with Ben?"
"Because we're both TAs…" She said it as though it was the most obvious fact in the world, and then darted into her room to grab a towel. When she returned, he looked thoroughly unimpressed, dare she say annoyed. "I told you this was happening."
"No, you didn't."
"I definitely did."
"You didn't, Max."
"Okay, well, now I am," she said with a bit of a huff, thrown by his sudden shift in mood. "Look, I'll only be gone for an hour or so."
"You could always leave Ben to handle the little children," he mused, reaching out for her when she sauntered back toward the bathroom. She sidestepped his hand.
"I said I'd help."
"Fine." She watched him slip back into his boxers. "Fine."
Her eyes narrowed as he stalked down the hallway and disappeared into the kitchen. What was his issue? He had been especially testy whenever she mentioned Ben lately, and it was starting to grate on her nerves. Not only was Ben in a relationship, but it seemed like his crush on her was a remnant of some ancient past that was never to be spoken of again. Therefore, she couldn't imagine what was making Loki's hackles rise whenever she said her friend's name.
Whatever. Rolling her eyes, she turned away and locked herself in the bathroom, irritably going through the usual routine in a stony silence. When she finished, she had every intention of confronting Loki about his mood swing, but when she stepped out of the bathroom wrapped in her towel, she saw his door shut, and then thought better of it. As she walked by, she heard something break, as though it had been thrown against a wall and hurled to the ground, and she hurriedly shut herself up in her room.
Pepper awoke when she felt something prick her arm. Groaning, she placed a hand on her forehead and tried to sit up, only to panic when she felt someone push her back down. Chest heaving, her eyes flew open; she was still in her darkened hospital suite, the private one Tony had spent a fortune on, and a masked doctor hovered over her. She wished she was at home. Where was Bruce?
"Relax."
It was a man who spoke, the man behind the mask, and yet there was something off about him. It was the tone he took, the way his voice curved around the words: it was all wrong. It was forced, as though he was speaking a foreign language.
"What are you doing?" she whispered. There was a tube in her arm. The tube attached to a hanging IV drip. Bruce was gone. "Bruce?"
"Relax."
There it was again. Off wording. Strange pronunciation. She tried to get up once more, but whatever the man was pumping her with finally seemed to kick in, and her world started to grow fuzzy. Her limbs weakened, and right before she plunged into darkness, she caught the metallic flash of a knife.
AUTHOR'S NOTES:
OH SHIT, GUYZ. OH. SHIT.
So… two updates in a row! Very exciting! I've had such a strong muse for this lately, and a part of me wants to put my other stories on hiatus to work on it. However, one of my other stories is less than ten chapters away from completion, so I'd like to get it wrapped up. Once that happens, I think I'll refrain from starting other WIPs, and just work on this story and my Loki/Sigyn one. So. More frequent updates! Hurray!
You all left incredible feedback for the last chapter, and I'm thrilled that people ship Garret and Tiff as much as I do. My babies.
I've played paintball once in my life, and while I had fun, I was absolute shit. Like. My first round I got taken out within thirty seconds when someone shot me in the head. That was fun. And then I was super proud about hitting some lurker, only to realize she was on my team. Guhh. But I like that Max gets weirdly competitive over it… I don't think she's the hyper-competitive type normally, so it was fun to write.
I am hoping to infuse more of godly-Loki into my more recent chapters… Like, more things that indicate he's less human than he once was, and I hope that came across. I mean, he still threw a tantrum like a toddler, so there we go, but we're working on it. Loki rehabilitation takes time.
Love you allllll. I adore you feedback, and adds to lists, and just… everything. SEE YOU SOON. LIKE. REAL SOON.
