Work Text:
This wasn't Nikola's plan. He Knew it, sitting in that Starbucks making idle chatter to a man who was a foot shorter than him with an ash-streaked scar and a smirk that was too flirty for a mere Marking.
Danny left the store with a Desolation avatars number and the Knowledge that Nikola was going to try again. Breekon, outside, sighs and ushers Danny into their car. Hope chuckles, flicking through their books. (He's too thankful for his two Assistants that they didn't sit him down for a talk).
The second meeting wasn't much better. Mike leans against a lamp, the bulb fizzing from the sheer heat of being so close to the man, and Danny chuckles, eyes half-lidded as he purrs that he was missing it all if Mike was using it on party tricks.
Danny comes home with all the wrong Marks and laughs at Nikola's expression, too drunk to care.
The third was a phonecall late at night, laughing about the strange testimonies some poor people stumble across. Mike points out a few that he's mentioned in, and Danny makes a note to record them, before the talk dissolved into the Magnus Institute. How wrong their statements are, how that strange lanky archivist (without the capital A, Mike assures) keeps following Danny. How a woman climbed out of a coffin with a dead ginger man.
The theatre plays a romance that night. Hope passes Breekon 20 pounds with a wink of his eye.
The Magnus Institute sent a spider. Her smile was sharp and as full as lies as the laws she obeyed. Danny does not feel remorse that Mike burned the webbing of her eyes.
Mike says that flowers never tell the truth. Breekon Watches him deliver flowers to the Library anyway, under a false name and forgetting that the Eye's followers See. They grin and hang an arm over the shorter man, Hope slinking a date into the disgruntled desolation avatar's pocket.
Nikola is not impressed when a living fire hazard waltzes right into her Library and demands to see her Archivist (she complies, eventually, because the searing heat is bad for the leitners and the Corruption mark can always come later), nor is she impressed to watch how the Lonely mark slips under Danny's skin so easily when Mike is around.
Nikola is impressed when the Web takes her revenge.
Nikola is impressed when Danny starts wearing the burn around his neck like a trophy.
Hope and Breekon usher Danny into the car, eyes adverted and not Looking.
Danny cries for the first time since he joined.