Paradigm Shift | By : AlexPhoenix Category: Marvel Verse Movies > Avengers, The Views: 4077 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1 |
Disclaimer: I do not own anything in the Marvel/Thor/Avengers universes. The only thing I own is Alex, Ronan, and their actions/thoughts. This is all for fun; not monetary values. |
Chapter 2: A Wrench in the Machine
The desert stretched itself out before us in mile upon mile of snake infested terrain. Loki had become silent after my stunning display of idiocy. Because I wasn't good at small talk, especially after embarrassing moments, the car was filled with an awkward silence that was thick enough that only a chainsaw would've been able to cut it. Unfortunately for me and my new companion, Phoenix hated awkward crickets, so she decided to die and give us something to talk about.
Her body began shaking violently, causing my heart to turn into Speedy Gonzales.
"Baby? What are you doing?" I asked her, running my hand over the black steering wheel in a comforting gesture.
"What is wrong with your machine?" Loki asked, his eyes darting around the shadowed interior.
"I-I don't know," I replied, shakily, panic turning my voice into a glass shattering soprano. My eyes mimicked his and skimmed over her console, checking for an overheated engine or low fuel light. Before I had time to register that the console would give me nothing but my speed, Phoenix turned herself off and we rolled to a stop.
"Goddammit, Phoenix! No!" I cried, switching off her ignition. "Don't do this to Mama!"
Loki was watching me like I'd sprouted a second head as I started petting her dashboard. "Phoenix? Mama?"
"Phoenix is what I named my car," I said, sucking in a deep breath to keep myself from snapping at him. He didn't make her crap out, therefore, he didn't deserve the brunt of my worried-mama-bear wrath. I shoved my door open and stepped out, popping the hood and spewing obscenities as I went.
"Do all humans name their machines?" Loki asked as he, too, removed himself from Phoenix's interior.
"Only the ones that care," I answered, lifting the hood and propping it up. We were still miles away from the nearest town, and I was pretty sure my flashlight was on its last leg of life. I really needed to start carrying spare batteries in my glove compartment.
I stalked past Loki with my shoulders around my ears and my hands balled into tight fists. I looked like a disgruntled cartoon character. At least, I certainly thought I did once I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the window. My head was pulled down to my chest and my shoulders were reaching for the sky like they were in a B-list Western. My face was contorted with worry, anger, and panic, and my icy blue eyes were so wide that I looked like a Philippine Tarsier strung out on crack.
Flopping into the passenger seat, I popped open the glove box and rummaged around for my light stick. Thankfully, I was able to find it without too much of a problem, and made my way back to the front of the car to survey the damage in the engine. I clicked on the light and scanned the ray over the engine. My eyes finally found the problem, and did an abrupt double take. A stream of creative curse words sprung to the tip of my tongue, but only one, hackneyed phrase seemed to fit the situation perfectly: we were fucked. Her timing belt had snapped, so we were up shit creek without a boat, much less a paddle.
"We're fucked," I stated, curtly.
"Pardon?" Loki asked, his eyebrows shooting up on his pale forehead.
"Her belt snapped," I huffed, lowering the hood closed. I clicked off the flashlight and shoved it into my jacket pocket. "We're stranded here unless I can get a signal on my phone."
"Please tell me that this is some idiotic form of a human joke," he said, his teeth bared in a smile that a shark, or a lawyer, would be envious of.
"My car is the only thing I don't joke about," I said, settling my eyes on him as I dug into the pocket of my jeans for my cell phone. Fishing it out, I held it up to the sky in search of a signal. The only time I found even a mildly strong signal, I was pressed against my car as if I was going to give her a lap dance. Hell, maybe a lap dance would kick start her heart.
Fat chance, I thought to myself. One of your lap dances couldn't kick start the heart of Pacemaker patient.
I shoved my internal dialogue aside and dialed the only number in my emergency arsenal: my mechanic. I leaned over the hood of Phoenix, resting my elbows on the crimson-painted metal with the phone pressed to my ear. Thankfully, it was ringing loud and clear.
On the fifth ring, my handy dandy grease monkey, Ronan, picked up with a pissy baritone mumble.
"Can't understand ya, peach," I said, clapping my hand on the hood.
"I said, you better be gettin’ attacked by a gang of rapey, homicidal ninjas," he said more clearly in a thick Southern drawl. His voice was tired and gravelly, like he'd just woken up from a deep sleep. Oops.
"What time is it?" I asked, looking at my wrist for a watch I didn't have, or even own, for that matter.
"Half past I'm going to kill you. If you want to know the time, look at a fucking clock, Lex." Jeez, you'd think he was tired.
"I am not Superman's arch nemesis. And I didn't call you to ask for the time, asshat. My car broke down. Her belt decided to make like a divorced couple and split."
"So call a tow truck and bring her in tomorrow morning," he grumbled.
"If I call a tow truck, I'll be paying them a thousand bucks for the drive alone," I said, putting my unhappiness into my voice.
"I guess that means you want me to come and get you?" he asked, not sounding pleased by the prospect.
"Me, my car, and a guest. Pretty please with a whiskey shot on top?"
"A guest? You finally started picking up man whores?" he asked, a hint of wry jesting leaking into his tired tone.
"You know damn well I can't afford them," I said dryly. "Otherwise you'd never see me."
He let out a deep laugh and I could almost picture him shaking his head of light brown hair. "Fine. I'll come get you. Where are you this time?"
I looked around. If my calculations were correct, I was about 25 miles west of the small town where both I and Ronan currently resided. It was quite small. It only had a population of about 9,000. And I swear, the only reason I stayed there was because of Ronan. Okay, so maybe I did have a friend other than Phoenix. And he was about to kill me.
"I'm about 25 miles west of the town," I said, timidly.
"WHAT?!" he shouted. I yanked the phone away from my ear to keep myself from getting a broken eardrum. I could still hear him clear as day with the phone held at arm's length away from my head. Jesus, Mary and, Jehosephine, that man had a set of pipes. "What are you doing way the hell out there?! Are you crazy?! What if a scorpion stung you! You could be dead right now! Hell, your car is dead right now! What is the matter with you?!"
Slowly, I returned the phone to my ear and said his name, trying to get his attention. "Ronan." He kept ranting. "Ronan!" I said a little louder, attempting to get him to shut up. He didn't. "RONAN!"
His endless yammering abruptly stopped with a loud, "WHAT?!"
"I don't need you to be my mother. I need you to be my knight in shining tow truck. Now pull on some clothes and get out here!"
Ronan was silent for a few seconds. I listened carefully for any signs of life on the other side of the phone line. I couldn't even hear creeper breathing. I'd thought I'd pissed him off to the point that he'd hung up, and was about to call his name when he said, "Make my whiskey a double."
"Hun, I'll make your whiskey a bottle if you do this for me," I said, holding back a relieved sigh.
"How about a double and you let me get to second base?" he asked.
"How about a bottle and I'll only imagine punching you in the face for that last part?" I asked, lifting my eyebrows and smiling sweetly, as if he could see me through the receiver.
He laughed again and I pictured him running his fingers through his short hair. "Fine, fine. I'll be good. Don't let the guest ninja kill you before I get there."
"I won't, Ro," I smiled.
"Ugh! Why do you call me that?! You know I hate that name!" he groused.
"To get a rise out of you," I grinned. "Besides, Ro is better than Nan. Or Ron." I shuddered verbally and physically. "God, that's a creepy name."
"You're lucky I like you, Lex," he mumbled. I opened my mouth to respond with a sarcastic comment, but he cut me off. "By the way, it's one in the morning." The phone clicked off and the line went dead.
I pulled the phone away from my ear and smirked. I was lucky that he liked me, otherwise he would've kicked my ass to the curb a long time ago. The fact that he was willing to pick me up in the middle of nowhere at one in the morning was a testament to how much the poor bastard liked me. The fact that he was willing to do it also made me feel kind of crappy. Here I was, dragging him from his warm bed to make him come pick up my crazy ass, and another person of whom I'd just met, and he asked for nothing in return except for monetary values for reparations of vehicular parts. I either needed to buy him a case of beer and a hooker, or a fruit basket. I was betting that he'd like the beer and prosti-hoe better.
I sighed and looked up, nearly jumping out of my meat suit when I saw Loki standing on the other side of Phoenix's hood. I'd entirely forgotten that he was there, even though Ronan had just mentioned a killer guest ninja.
"Jesus Christ!" I yipped, clutching a hand to my chest.
"Did I frighten you?" he asked. I could've sworn I saw a smile tug at his lips in the darkness.
"Only because I forgot you were there," I replied honestly, taking in a deep, calming breath to slow down my heart rate. I shoved the phone back in my pocket, trying to will myself to be the hardass I claimed to be.
"Am I really so forgettable?" he asked, slowly making his way around the front of Phoenix.
"You are when I have a shitty memory," I responded, giving him a nervous smile.
"I'm glad to hear that it is not I that is at fault for forgetting my presence," he said. He was now on my side of the car and was inching his way toward me slowly. I felt like the cheese in a rat maze, just waiting for a vicious beast to pounce on me with gnarly, gnashing teeth. Only this particular beast wasn't a ball of fur and had perfect pearly whites that probably didn't do too well with gnashing. At least, that's what I hoped.
"Well, it's partially your fault. You were being pretty damn quiet. Then again, it's also Ronan's fault for being a distracting asshole. And, it's of course my fault for having the combined memory of a goldfish and an amoeba. So, the blame doesn't lie solely on any one person," I explained, staring up at him, my nervous smile turning into a goofy, lopsided grin.
He looked down at me like my second head had grown in as a goblin shark and was trying to gnaw on my earlobe. My grin fell a little. Here I was thinking I was all clever with my rationalization and my analogies, and there he was looking at me like I was the dumbest human being alive. My ego, the little bit of it that I possessed, felt like it had been crushed.
After realizing that not having an ego had never stopped me from being a snarky bitch before, I raised a challenging eyebrow at him and asked, "What?"
He grinned down at me, an almost sweet smile that made my toes tingle. I wiggled the appendages inside of their black leather casing to rid them of the alien feeling.
"You are unlike any creature I have ever met before. You confuse me," he said, that smile still on his face.
"I confuse everyone. Hell, I even confuse myself most of the time," I said, pulling myself up to sit on the hood of my car. I crossed my legs at the ankles and leaned forward, propping myself up on my hands. I stroked my fingers in small circles over Phoenix's smooth surface.
"Do you confuse this Ronan person as well?" he asked, moving to stand in front of my knees.
"All the time. Ronan is gonna give us a lift, by the way, so we're not fucked. He'll be here soon."
"And where is he lifting us to, exactly?" Loki asked, placing his hands on either side of my own.
"Hopefully, my place," I answered, giving a little shrug of my shoulders.
"Your place?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Yeah," I nodded. I leaned toward him a bit more to make an empathetic connection with him, which I doubted he'd care about. "Look, I know you wanted to go to a hotel, but all we have is crappy motels that like to lock their doors after ten at night. And seeing as how it's currently 1 A.M., I highly doubt that you'd be able to get a room tonight. So, I figured I'd be a good Samaritan and let you stay at my place for the night. Provided you don't kill me, of course."
He grinned at me, perplexed and amused all at once.
"I won't kill you." he stated, "You have my word."
"Good," I said, returning a smile to his good-natured grin. I thrust a hand forward to seal the deal with, and he let it hang in the air like an awkward boner. "Shake to make it solid," I said by way of explanation.
"Make what solid?" he asked. His smile turned into an abrupt frown and he flicked his gaze down to my hand, then back up to my eyes. "Your hand looks solidified to me."
"We're not shaking to make my hand solid. We're shaking to make your word solid. Shaking my hand is basically saying that your word is your bond and that you won't break it." I clarified. "And that if you do, I have every right to cut your dick off and feed it to coyotes."
His frown deepened, and he glanced down at my extended phalanges again. "What is a coyote and why would you feed my...how did you put it?...dick to one?"
"It's a type of canine that hunts for food and isn't adverse to being a scavenger every once in a while. And I'd only do that if you broke your word."
"You'd feed my dick, whatever that may be, to a canine if I broke my promise not to kill you? You would be dead if I broke that promise," he analyzed, staring up at me.
Oooh, he did not know who he was dealing with. I gave him a disapproving look, like he was a slow drunkard who couldn't sit himself on a bar stool properly.
"I'd travel through the astral plane until I found a voodoo priestess to resurrect me so I could roam around until I found you and cut off your manly bits." I said it like that kind of stuff happened on a daily basis.
"My manly bits?" he asked, arching an eyebrow quizzically. Okay, so maybe he was from another realm of existence.
My face fell. My eyebrows formed a hard line and my eyes halfway hooded themselves as my mouth turned as level as the horizon.
"The dangly things between your legs," I said, perking up left side of my upper lip.
Loki's spine straightened almost painfully and his eyes widened.
"Ah," he said, curtly. "Well, we certainly wouldn't want that to happen."
His eyes moved between my hand and my eyes, and finally, with as much dignity as he could after being told that I'd remove his reproductive system, he slipped his hand into mine.
His hand was large and warm, and enveloped my much smaller hand as if he were a blanket and I, a premature kitten. It felt has if my hand was a ball of static electricity, tingly and full of bright blue charges. I firmly squeezed his hand to make the pact solid on my end. He ended the shake and sealed his end of the deal by twisting my hand over and lifting the back of my pale extremity to his soft lips. My skin ignited almost painfully as his silky mouth pressed against my skin. As his eyes found mine, I knew that this man could charm a king into giving up everything that the crowned monarch had even thought of owning. I also had the distinct feeling that he could charm the queen into running away with him if it suited his dastardly needs.
I gave him a small smile and pulled my hand away to rest it, palm down, on the hood of Phoenix. My body thrummed with an unnatural electricity. It creeped me out.
"So, now that I know you won't kill me, may I ask what Asgard is like?" I motioned to his strange garments with a nod of my head. You knew I was uncomfortable when I played into a crazy, hot man's delusions of grandeur.
"Asgard is a beautiful place," he started, stepping away from me. He motioned his upturned palm to the spot on the hood next to me, and raised his eyebrows. "May I?"
I nodded and patted the spot to my right. "Hop on up." He did.
Although, he really didn't have to hop. All he had to do was sit on the edge and scoot himself back. Tall ass. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his spread knees and stared out across the black horizon.
"Like I stated before, Asgard is a beautiful place. It is not round, like your planet is. It is actually quite flat. We have tall, metal spires that stretch towards the sky sitting amidst lush gardenscapes. There are beautiful lakes and waterfalls, each more gorgeous than the last. Even the peasants have households that would be fit for Earth's kings. On any given day, we can look in the sky and see the stars or our moons. The palace though, is perhaps the most stunning of all. It is monumental and wonderfully crafted by hand. It is a place that is unmatched by anything else in the nine realms. It is truly indescribable," he said, almost longingly.
I listened to him, drawn in by his accent and smooth voice. His voice was like a long forgotten waterfall; smooth, fluid, beautiful beyond compare, and so easy to drown in. He could read the phone book and I'd have been lost to the world for an eternity. As I watched and listened, he paused and looked up at the stars in the same way I had been doing before he'd fallen from the sky. He looked at them as though they were a place that held many great joys, and many soul-crushing heartbreaks.
Someone who so thoroughly expressed such emotions about a certain place had either been there, or was so off the wall insane that they'd only thought they'd been there. I wasn't entirely sure which of those two Loki was just yet.
"It sounds incredible," I said, ripping my gaze away from the mournful sight of his sad face to stare at the stars with him.
"It is," he agreed.
He didn't elaborate, and I didn't push him. I became entangled with the stars once more. I stared up at their shimmering forms, wondering what it would be like to travel through the inky darkness of the universe. I wondered what it would be like to fly past a nebula that might as well have been a rainbow ball of clouds and stars and sparks. I wondered what life on Asgard would be like, if it really existed. I would probably never leave whatever gardens they had. I'd just sit and stare at the stars, or read all day and night while lounging next to a waterfall. I'd probably marvel at the buildings. If their peasants lived like kings, one could only imagine what their actual king lived like.
"Loki?" I asked, my eyes still on the sky. I halfway expected the weight of his gaze to burn a hole in my head like it had before. Instead I was left with nothing but a warm feeling spreading over the surface of my skin.
"Yes?" he replied.
"What does the rainbow bridge look like?"
I could hear him smile. The quiet sound of lips pulling away from teeth rang in my ears like someone had banged a cowbell against my head. The sounds of his smile was much less painful than a chunk of brass being conked upside my noggin, though. Thankfully.
"Well, it looks like what it is. A bridge made of rainbows. Millions of rainbows forged together to make the strongest bridge that the realms have ever known. Though it feels as if it is glass, you cannot see through it. But, if it is broken, it shatters as if it is glass. Every kind of color imaginable pulses through that bridge. It is truly a magnificent sight to behold."
As he explained the bridge, I formed an image of it in my mind. It was probably immensely inaccurate, but it was still the most beautiful thing I'd ever imagined.
I tried to shake the insane notion of there actually being a real Rainbow Bridge and another realm called Asgard, but for some equally insane reason, I couldn't manage to do it. Wishful thinking is a powerful thing.
"It sounds breathtaking," I said, tearing my eyes away from the night sky to look at Loki. I was surprised to find him already looking at me. I still didn't feel that burning of my holes being seared into my brainpan, but I did still feel that all-over warmth. A mack truck of realization plowed over me. I hadn't been that warm all night long. Only when I'd started staring at the stars did the heat wash over me. And the heat wasn't from my jacket either; it was from his unwavering gaze.
"I've never found a being alive that did not think the bridge awe-inspiring," he said, giving me a crooked little smile.
"And I doubt you ever will," I smiled back. His eyes fluttered down my face and the front of my body until he pulled his gaze away to watch over the empty desert in front of us. I dropped my own sight to my lap where my fingers were nervously twisting at each other. Good grief, it felt like I was on an awkward first date! And that, in and of itself, was a ridiculous notion. It was made all the more ridiculous by the fact that the stranger sitting next to me claimed to be a space alien, and was a walking bag of mysteries.
He falls from the sky and says that he is the rightful king to another world. He tries to assert his royal authority over me while acting condescending at the same time. And then he suddenly changes gears and he's Joey Suave, with the hand kisses and the longing explanations of his world. I was not at all sure how to handle this guy, or what to even think of him. And what was with his clothes?
I looked back up and scanned my gaze over his body, trying to identify the fabric that he was wearing. After not being able to even come up with a minor idea of what the fabric was, I decided to ask him straight out.
"What kind of fabric is that?"
He lifted his head to look at me, then brought his head down to look at his clothes. Running a hand over the bright green lapels, he looked back up at me. I honestly couldn't say exactly how I knew the true colors of his clothes, especially in the darkness. Perhaps my brain stored the memory of what he was wearing when we had been sitting in the pool of light that my car had offered.
"It is a durable fabric that you've more than likely not heard of as only my world creates it. It acts as a light armor," he said.
I leaned forward to inspect the fabric, but I couldn't see due to the lack of light that I somehow kept forgetting about. I reached a hand forward, wanting to run my fingers over the brushed metal and leathery fabric, but pulled away when I realized that touching anyone without permission, let alone a space Viking who claimed to be royalty, was rude. I sat up straight and looked at him, putting as much respect into my eyes as I could, even though I was pretty sure that he wouldn't be able to distinguish it from any other emotion in the darkness of the night.
"May I?" I asked, pointing a finger at his lapels.
He hesitated for a moment, his upper body twisting itself away from me as if he was preparing for a fight. I started letting my hand fall back to my lap, resigning to the fact that he didn't want me touching him, when he nodded.
"You may," he said, firmly yet gently. It was like we were having a heartfelt moment simply from me asking to touch his clothes.
A goofy smile tried to creep across my lips but I forced it back with a nod of my head and a bite of my cheek. "Thank you," I said.
I reached forward again and took hold of his lapel in my fingers. The emerald green side of the lapel was smooth and soft, almost like a high quality suede, but tougher. The other side was a combination of bumpy and smooth, but slightly slick, leathery material, only it was much harder than any leather I'd ever come across. It felt like it was just like he said it was: a light armor. I'd never felt any fabric like it these ones before.
My hand traveled across his chest, finding the U-shaped band of gold-colored metal there. It was cool and hard under my fingertips, and it didn't yield when I put pressure on it. I put both hands on the strip of brushed steel-like material and followed the shape up, pushing back the shoulders of his trenchcoat as I did.
The right side the coat gave way easily. The left stayed in place, for the most part. I trailed my eyes down and found a strap swung across his chest and belly. Laying my hands flat against the harder leather on his chest, I traced my way down the lapels of coat until I came in contact with the strap. It was the same tough yet pliable material that made up his trenchcoat and had a long band of metal in the middle of it. I followed it up, knowing that following it down would be inappropriate even for me. The strap ended on his right shoulder, and disappeared into another metal piece that had obviously been crafted to fit his frame. I gingerly ran my fingers over the ridges, welts, and bumps in the forged metal piece.
"Whoever made this really knows their way around a blacksmith shop," I said, studying the metal pieces with awe. "These are exquisite. And the fabric...it's so strong and durable. It's beautiful."
"I agree whole-heartedly," he said, unmoving under my wandering hands. I looked up at him only to become incredibly confused and wonderfully astounded. At some point during my explorations of Loki's clothes, I'd slipped off of Phoenix's hood and positioned myself in front of the astonishingly handsome man. I was now standing in between his legs with my nose two inches from his. His eyes were sparkling again, and full of some unknown emotion that the shadows wouldn't allow to be revealed.
I studied his face in the starlight, entranced by how the minimal light carved soft definition into his cheekbones. How could someone so gorgeous literally fall into my life? I wasn't that lucky even on my best day. There had to be something that this man was hiding that made his beauty null and void. Perhaps the secret was that he was a nut job. Perhaps he was a serial killer who took a drastic approach to Ted Bundy's original MO. Perhaps I was overthinking, and should just shut up and soak up the fact that physical perfection was less than a foot away.
I focused on studying Loki's beauty in the moonlight, and it seemed that he did the same to me. After what felt like only a few short moments, a harsh light ripped through the night and stole our collective concentration away from us.
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