Chapter Text
January 20, 2014
I always tell myself I should bring my phone when I go out to do the laundry. It's so stupid, as a woman living alone minutes away from a university campus with a bad reputation, to leave my phone inside while I go to the laundry room around the side of the house, especially when you leave it to eleven at night. But I don't ever listen, no. Which means that when there's a weird huge flashing light outside the door, I am completely shit out of luck.
It's because of that situation that I ended up standing in a t-shirt and boxers just out of the pouring rain, a pile of towels in my arms, with my hair in an awful bun and a freshly picked zit on my face, staring at some soaking wet skinny dude in an alarming amount of leather.
"Beg your pardon," he gasps out, stiffening and trying to flick the rain off of himself while standing directly in the rain, "I appear to be… very lost."
"Um." What else is there to say? The only things he could possibly be is a cosplayer or fetishist. Sure, there were those Avengers guys, but they were in the huge metropolis cities, they never came to glorified suburbias like my city.
He saw my hesitation and put on what was clearly a forced smile. "Would it be possible for me to come inside for a moment and gather my bearings?"
Okay. Options, options… He was in the way so I couldn't just bolt back to my apartment. I could try going the other way through the backyard, but I'd have crawl through my window with my towels because I wasn't going to abandon them when it cost $3.25 per load of laundry.
Apparently it was obvious that I was considering my escape routes. "I won't hurt you," he tried to assure me with that smile that didn't reach the eyes, which in turn said 'probably tortured small animals as a child', "I just need to get out of the rain while I figure out where I am."
"That's something that a murderer would say. There's a plaza about three blocks that way," I indicated with my head, "Someone should be able to help you."
With a heavy sigh he nods. "Very well then," he agreed, and with a wave of his hand his clothes appeared to actually *morph*, changing into a much practical and normal-looking wool coat and suit.
I promptly stepped back inside the laundry and shut the door.
Great, one of those superheroes actually made it to our tiny city and was standing outside my laundry room and I was stuck inside without my phone, unable to google which one it was. (Definitely not Tony Stark, the only one I could recognise on sight.) Shit, it could even be a supervillain, though weren't the last ones a bunch aliens?
I waited a few moments before I opened the door to peek out. The weird man was nowhere to be seen. I hauled ass to my apartment with my towels, locking the door behind me and diving onto my phone to figure out who that guy was.
Googling 'the avengers dude in leather' turned out to be a VERY bad choice, so I checked their wikis instead. The attack on New York article had images of him on Stark Tower, and he was linked underneath as 'Loki of Asgard'. While I knew about the mythological Loki, I didn't know anything about the superhero Loki. I clicked the link.
Correction. Loki the superVILLAIN.
Who now knew where I lived.
Well, at least I didn't seem to be of too much interest to him. It would probably be best to file a police report saying that he was here, but would they take me seriously? I pondered this as I folded my towels. With any luck he'd run off to a bigger city and screw things up there, but still…
A knock on the door made me drop a handtowel. I stared at it in horror.
There was another knock.
"Excuse me, everything in the plaza is closed."
Supervillain horse-fucker remembered where I lived. GREAT.
His knocking became more insistent. Why didn't he go to the laundry room instead?
I crept over to the door and peeked through the blinds. He noticed and looked right at me with pathetic puppy dog eyes, completely soaked through. It wasn't enough to weaken me though.
Instead, I grabbed my umbrella, my nice, expensive umbrella, damn it, and opened the door a crack, shoving it out.
"Here. Good luck."
I slammed the door shut behind me. After a few moments I heard him walk away, crying out to whoever knows, "Skurge! Skurge, bring me back!"
Settling back onto the couch, I began refolding my towels. My umbrella would be missed, but its sacrifice would be remembered always, in preventing me from being murdered by a psychopath who fucked horses, who I would never see again.