There's a discreet little beep coming from the phone which he's set on the mattress, right beside his pillow, and within seconds he is wide awake.
For an instant, he holds himself perfectly still, taking care to keep the rhythm of his breathing slow and even, as if he were still asleep, and listens.
The sounds are all normal.
Outside his room he can hear boots on concrete, the steps unhurried but rhythmical. Jamison's doing his rounds, as per schedule.
Down the hall, in the lab, he can hear Selvig engaging in an animated discussion about something called "ADM mass" with his one of his assistants, Dr. Catherine Howards, their words only slightly muffled by distance and the cardboard-thin door of his quarters.
The damn dripping coming from the faucet of the washbasin to his right has started up again. How is it that they can make a whole damn Helicarrier fly, but are unable to permanently fix one leaky faucet?
Well, at least everything seems normal. McCay is a reliable second in command, but he's no field operative and his instincts, while good, are far from being as sharp as Hawkeyes'.
In the darkness, he rolls out of bed and stretches, stifling a yawn.
If only 'Tasha were here. Or Coulson. Then at least he'd get a good night's sleep. But with only McCay to spot for him, he's restricted his rest to short naps at irregular intervals.
This is surveillance, not a hit, so granted, he's not straining himself beyond his limits to get things done. Keeping things up like this almost indefinitely would be possible, but it's not exactly fun either.
God, he needs some coffee. Black. Hot. And a quick shower. Cold, to wake up.
Sighing, he grabs his throwing knife from underneath his pillow and a towel from the locker beside the washbasin and heads for the shower.
At least he'll be able to jack off in peace and quiet there. Being in command has its' benefits, like having a bathroom with a shower all to himself. It's tiny and the cracked tiles are a fucking ugly shade of mouldy beige, but it's his.
A quick meeting with Miss Palm and her five daughters will take some of the edge off, but hell, it's been far too long and he could seriously do with a good hard fuck.
Why does shit always start going down the moment he so much as starts thinking about taking some time off?
He's close to being a bit too tightly strung right now and he knows it. Any chance to unwind a bit is welcome.
The fact that he's scurrying around underground in a warren of tunnels and caves more like a rat and less like the hawk Selvig calls him is not helping any, and damn if he isn't starting to jump at shadows.
Doesn't help either that as a roustabout at the carnival, he's been involved in setting up haunted houses that were less weird than this place.
Odd sounds where you don't expect them and fleeting movements at the corner of your eyes that disappear when you try to get a closer look.
Under any other circumstances, he'd suspect some kind of hostile intrusion, an enemy spy scoping out the compound before moving in for a heist or somesuch.
Just to make sure, he's gone over the entire perimeter and quite a bit beyond with a fine comb.
He knows the blue-prints of the base by heart and he has climbed through all of the service ducts himself and installed surveillance devices in any spot he felt might offer an intruder some kind of access or hiding place.
Nothing.
Doesn't necessarily mean he's losing it though. They've come across some seriously weird shit lately, even more weird than usual. Hell, how often do you come across a God who's stepped right out of a fucking fairy-tale?
So yeah, maybe he ISN'T losing it and maybe there's something going on that they simply don't have the tech yet to pick up on.
Until then, he'll have to rely on his gut feeling, and that's usually a pretty good indicator of what to watch out for.
Strangely enough, whatever it is that has him on the edge like that, it doesn't feel hostile enough to call up Fury and ask for some hard-core back-up.
The itching right between his shoulder blades that usually comes from someone being about to stab him in the back if he lets his guard down even for one second is missing.
As he steps into the shower, dropping the towel and the knife on the nearby toilet-seat, and soaps up, he idly wonders if it might actually be something harmless.
When he was still a kid and living in the orphanage, there'd been a few weeks where the whole house had had been spooked and people had been jumping at shadows too.
Stuff had been disappearing from the kitchens, mostly the odd sausage, bits of roast; there'd been strange noises on the roof and in the attic at night, vases knocked over in the hallways.
The old geezer who ran the house was a superstitious asshole and after pest-control hadn't found anything and a round of randomly beating up the best known mischief-makers had not yielded any confessions, he'd hired a freakin' exorcist to deal with the matter.
None of it had helped.
Two days after the visit of the "exorcist", which had the whole house smelling nauseatingly of incense, Clint had spied the mangy stray crouching in the bushes.
He himself was perching way up in the old oak that sat in the middle of the playground, 'cause his bruises were still fading and he wasn't in the mood to collect more when their "housefather" tried once more to find a culprit by beating the shit out of any kid he didn't like the looks of.
The fur on the tiny grey was scruffy and you could count every single rib, but the cat's tail was swishing back and forth like a farmer's scythe and there was a predatory gleam in its' green eyes. It was watching the kitchen door.
Sure enough, just a few moments later, one of the household-helpers came out, carrying a several big bags of trash. The cat slipped in through the open door behind him, quick as lightning, and came back out a few heartbeats later, a whole chicken drumstick that was almost as big as itself clamped in its sharp little fangs, all the while the household-helper, his back turned, was still stuffing the bags into the trash-cans.
When the cat had disappeared into the bushes, Clint had already been making plans to befriend the little stray.
If it didn't get someone to look out for it hereabouts, it was bound to get caught and then the feisty little thing would end up in a tied sack thrown into the river to drown…if they didn't just bludgeon it to death the moment they caught it.
He'd carefully staked out the places where he thought the grey would show up and had laid out bits of food for the stray, mostly chicken livers and hearts and a saucer of milk. No processed, spiced foods, those weren't good for animals. And he'd always taken care to put something that smelled of himself nearby, a shirt or a bandana.
It only took half a day for the cat to discover the treats he'd left for it.
It took another day until it actually came out of its' hiding place and fed on any of it.
It took a whole week of Clint sitting a bit closer each day as the cat fed until he was close enough to reach out and touch it. He got a whole minute of being allowed to scratch the little cat behind the ears, even getting it to purr, before the stray apparently decided that it had had enough and sank its' sharp little teeth into his finger.
Didn't mean though that Clint gave up on it.
At the end of the summer, thanks to the extra food and the occasional bit of shelter that Clint provided when he could sneak the cat into his room without anybody noticing, which was a LOT, the cat had grown into a sleek, well-muscled predator.
When Clint settled in one of his many hidden look-outs, be it in the highest branches of a tree or on some rooftop, the cat would often settle beside him, rubbing against his legs while he scratched its' ears or curling up in his lap, purring like the engine of a Harley.
The tom even had had his shots.
Pulling that last bit off had required enlisting Barney's help, which had come at a price, as well as two break-ins into the house manager's office to make phone-calls and forge some documents and a clandestine trip into the nearby town.
He'd also needed money, which he'd gotten by lifting money from the wallets of a set of "prospective parents". They'd been the wealthy type and it seemed like they hadn't even noticed the money missing. At least there hadn't been any kind of hubbub about them missing anything.
And even if they had noticed and had pegged him as the thief. So what? It wasn't as if he was going to get himself adopted anyway.
The prospecs' always preferred the younger, cuter, more malleable children. Those who didn't have much of a past.
Nicking stuff had been frighteningly easy and Clint had kept it up since. Couldn't hurt to have a stash of cash somewhere…just in case.
He chuckles to himself.
Maybe whatever has him spooked is some kind of small animal, a cat or a ferret, which has wandered onto base and is now haunting the twisted maze of the corridors and ducts here.
Because that's what it kinda feels like.
Maybe he should start putting out saucers of milk.
For TheNaggingCube
*g* Loki can be quite perceptive if something catches his fancy, and you're right:
He caught it really, really bad this time.
But for the time being, he's willing to go with that, because so much in his life has changed…why not add a mortal to the mix?
He's already becoming very friendly with Frost Giants and has started accepting his Jotun heritage….it's not like he has much left to lose in the "I won't associate with THAT kind of people" department anymore.
For some odd reason (maybe the Tesseract is meddling?) Clint and Loki are very finely attuned to each other. If it had been anybody else watching with the help of a similarly constructed shade, there's a chance that Hawkeye wouldn't have noticed it. ^_~
For greyheart
Yep, this seriously blows. The stakes are going to be very high though and options will be severely limited, so Loki will have to make the best of what he can get. And yeah, that's going to hurt. A lot. But with great power…etc., etc…..
For the details, you'll just have to keep reading. ^_~
*g* Also, if people are starting to feel sorry for (this version) of Loki, then I'm doing something right.
Poor guy has a real talent for drawing the short straw most of the time….but then, he hasn't come fully into his own yet, so there's a reason why things aren't going his way at the moment.
For Hawkfriend
Thank you for letting me know that you liked it!
For killing u with umbrellas
Thank you, I try ^_~
For Aldarame
I love this pairing too and I try to update as fast as I can! Thanks for the shout-out!
For ELOSHAZZY
Comments are VERY much appreciated! I desperately need people to fangirl with!
And even though I don't think that Loki is being mind-controlled, I DO believe he is being coerced in some way...and the movie hints at that too, when the Other, the servant of Thanos, tells Loki "If you fail, if the Tesseract is kept from us, there will be no realm, no barren moon, no crevice where he can't find you. You think you know pain? He will make you long for something as sweet as pain.".
That particular scene chilled me to the core. ...
The thing about telling (movie!) Thor might be problematic, exactly as you said, because, just like the boy who cried "Wolf!". Loki has lied once too often, and it might very well be that Thor does not believe him. o_O
And even if he does...that (movie!) Loki at this point hungers for power and carries a huge grudge against Asgard is undeniable, so no matter what. Loki's motifs are rather murky.
But boy, I want a reconciliation between Thor and Loki SO bad!