Work Text:
Cliff sighed as he sat back down in his chair in his dressing room, scrubbing a hand through his long black hair. He’d tried to tell the host of this talk show, whatever her name was, that he wasn’t comfortable with the security she hired. He’d fired his own security only days before, which had been splashed all over all the gossip rags. She should have made sure she hired decent help that wouldn’t get him killed. This was his life they were talking about, after all. Cliff played a hero and an adventurer in the movies, and had trained to get the body of one too, but that didn’t mean he was prepared to get in a physical fight with a stalker.
He looked up into the mirror they’d done his makeup in. Not even the concealer could hide the dark bags beneath his eyes. He hadn’t been sleeping. He supposed it was pretty common for stars like him to attract unwanted attention. Maybe he was supposed to be even flattered; that he’d hit some new level of fame having someone send him pieces of their hair in the mail with cryptic messages. But he’d just been left feeling…scared.
He was pretty good when it came to the ladies. He had a new starlet on his arm for every day of the week. But all of those relationships, if you could call them that, had been mostly transactional. They weren’t real outside of fucking in dark hotel rooms and walks of shame in the morning. He liked it. He liked the attention from the rotating cast of women in his life, and it didn’t bother him too much that it was never something permanent. He was young, after all. What was youth for if not having a little fun here and there?
But this? Having this unknown woman sending him increasingly concerning photographs and knowing his private schedule? He didn’t ask for this. He didn’t want this.
“Fear? Fear’s not a word where I come from!”
Yeah, right.
He let out a slow breath and bent over his table, pressing his forehead into the smooth wood. He’d fired his usual security guy, Frank, after getting a photograph of the woman’s face next to his house in the middle of the night. Clearly, something wasn’t working. (And he suspected it was Frank). But that meant he’d had to get for-hire bodyguards. They weren’t that reliable, and they sure as hell weren’t friendly.
Was it too much to ask for someone who could protect him but also hold a conversation?
Apparently.
There was a knock at his door and he sat up, trying to make himself look at least a little bit like the movie star he was. “Come in,” he said, once he was sure all of his hair was in the right place.
The door opened, and Cliff turned to greet whoever it was with a wide smile, but his eyes widened as the individual was revealed.
Standing in front of him was probably the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen in his life. And he should know. He’d seen a lot of beautiful women over the years.
She was petite in almost every way: short, no taller than 5’0, with thin but muscular limbs. Her fingers were small and delicate but firm on the handle of the door like she was in full control of the strength hiding in her. And her face… It was bright like the sun, matching the flaxen hue of her hair cascading down her shoulders in gentle waves. She had a smattering of freckles across her cheeks and nose like stars, and perfect pouty lips; the kind that begged to be kissed. She had stunning sapphire eyes that looked at him with a kind of…humor. It was like they shared an inside joke that only she knew the answer to.
She was immediately captivating in a way that no other woman before had ever been, and she didn’t even need to show any skin to do it. She was dressed in a form-fitting blue gi that matched her eyes, wrapped around her like a hug rather than to suggest any kind of curves.
“Are you Cliff Gordon?” She asked, seemingly amused for some unknown reason.
“I…” He started, tongue tied for the first time in his life in the presence of this angel. He knew he should feel horrified that an unknown woman had just barged into his dressing room while he was worried about a stalker, but he knew what his stalker looked like and this woman, while looking nothing like her, seemed to radiate a kind of excited but comforting energy. It was like meeting with a best friend you didn’t know yet, and Cliff immediately trusted her.
But…first things first…time to lay on the charm.
“Who’s asking, Beautiful? You got a name to go with those eyes?” He stood and tried to lean seductively against his vanity, showing off the dip of his shirt. He gave her a once-over with a smirk.
The woman seemingly couldn’t hold it in anymore and immediately her face broke into a hysterical smile before she doubled over and started laughing uproariously.
Cliff just blinked, his smirk falling off of his face. That…wasn’t how that was supposed to go. Usually women started blushing or falling all over themselves just to get a chance to meet him and this woman was…laughing? Was she insane? Did he need to call someone to come get her out of here?
“Ohhhhh,” she said, wiping an imaginary tear from her eye as she straightened. “They told me this was going to be an entertaining job, but hooooo you’re something else! She looked him up and down, not unlike the way he’d just done to her, and he found that he was actually the one blushing under her flirtatious gaze. “Is that the line you always pick up women with? Does it work? I mean, looking like that it probably does, but you’ve got to do better than that if you want to get with me. I just got out of a breakup and I’m on this whole I need to do right by me self care kick right now that my best friends Lilly and Maya are helping me with but-”
“I-...” Cliff found himself at a loss for words again as the woman kept talking excitedly at him. Not to him. At him.
“And he was a total sleazeball! I don’t know why I ever stayed with him in the first place, but I think that’s why I’m working on myself right now. I’m taking odd jobs to keep busy, y’know? Keeping myself in shape and my mind off guys for the moment. I just need a break, but you, I hear you never stop. How is that working out for you? Because I-”
“I’m sorry,” Cliff held up a hand and she, thankfully, stopped speaking. All traces of his previous flirtatious attitude were gone, but shockingly, the attraction stayed. She was just as captivating as she was before, maybe even more so…Weird.
“Um…I don’t mean to be rude but, who are you?”
“Oh!” The woman’s eyes widened, like she finally realized she had clearly forgotten something. She entered the room and closed the door behind her with a soft click, but he didn’t feel threatened to be in the same room with her at all…not because she was so small, but because she seemed to put him at ease. She walked closer to him and stuck out one of her pretty hands. “My name’s Libber! Libber Bronte! I’m your bodyguard for the event this morning and for the premiere tonight! They told me you didn’t like Carl too much, which is a shame. I’ve worked with him before and he’s a great guy even if he did eat my sandwich that one time that I ordered special from this deli on Main. It’s great, you should go sometime and tell them I sent you and-”
“You…You’re my security?” Cliff wanted to scoff, but at the same time he didn’t want to offend Libber. (Though he suspected she was pretty unflappable.) What could a woman of her stature do against a crazy fan who wanted to kidnap him and lock him up in a murder basement?! Was she packing a gun or something he couldn’t see? It didn’t seem like it…
She stared up at him with those sapphire eyes, considering his face for a moment. “Wait…you don’t know who I am, do you?” She cocked her head to the side and pursed her lips, and for a second, he felt guilty.
“I…no?” He answered truthfully. “Should I?”
Her smile widened into a devious smirk and she leant forward to grab his hand in her own. Her skin was warm and soft, clearly taken care of, but what happened next caught him off guard. All the hairs on his body started to lift off of his skin, even the hair on his head started to stand on end. He glanced in the vanity mirror and it looked like he’d stuck his finger in an electrical socket.
It took him a minute, but he finally got there.
“You…” He turned back to her and she grinned toothily at him. She didn’t let go of his hand though, she appeared to be too entertained by his hair.
“Libber Bronte, Elemental Master of Lightning, at your service. I think I’m more than capable of protecting you, Mr. Gordon.”
Oh…
You would have to be living under a rock to not know who the Elemental Masters were. Cliff knew of them, of course. Everyone did. The great heroes of the Serpentine War and all that. He just didn’t expect one of them to be so…beautiful and agree to protect him of all people. He was famous, sure but she was on a completely different level. There were movie stars, and then there were legends.
No wonder she had laughed at his advances. He was way out of his league with her.
But more than that, he liked her. There was definitely some kind of attraction there, he would have been stupid to not find her beautiful, but everything about her both surprised him and comforted him at the same time. She was confusing, like a puzzle he wanted to crack. She also was apparently a chatterbox like nothing else…but it came off as more endearing than annoying. It was a voice he could get used to hearing all the time.
He needed to know more about her.
“Do you like movies, Libber?”
Her eyes sparkled with mirth. “I do. Are you asking me on a date?”
He chuckled and let go of her hand so he could smooth down his hair again. “Maybe. It depends on what you say.”
“Well, I’m already taking you to the premiere tonight, but I’m free tomorrow.” She winked at him.
“Alright,” he couldn’t help the smile that spread across his own face. “And please…call me Cliff.”