It's That Time Again...

[scribblemyname]

I've been mired in big fics or flexible prompts for a while now. Feeling blah and uncertain which big fic I really want to mire in at the moment. Prompts anyone?

1. Character/Fandom/Original Fiction World

2. Prompt or question of any kind

I'd like to commentfic if you all would be so kind as to help me out? :bats eyelashes:

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Originally published at Liana Mir. You can comment here or there.

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Re: 919 Avengers: Hedge Your Bets [2/3]

[scribblemyname]

The inn had a small eating establishment on its eastern end, which is where she found him. Collie didn’t do a whole lot of fancy undercovers like Nikolai. She didn’t try to be flirtatious or seductive. She simply sidled up to the bar comfortably far enough to be nonthreatening, comfortably close enough to draw Nikolai’s attention.

Seriously, those eyes would be the death of her. They should be cold like a Russian killer called Atrax after one of the deadliest spiders in the world. Instead, they were warm, interested, and all too human. She hadn’t been informed of any of the details of the meeting. She knew she wouldn’t know what to say as a safeword, but she looked up as if she did when Nikolai deliberately caught her eye.

“Love is for children,” he commented dryly over his vodka. “Wouldn’t you agree?”

Collie tilted her head to one side, then slid over a slip of paper from her dress. She could do this, pretend a hawk was looking out for a spider.

Nikolai palmed the paper discreetly, glanced at it. No visible reaction, but suddenly there was a cold knife under her ribs and breathing wouldn’t be easy if she didn’t want to draw blood. Dead to rights. She should have stuck an arrow in him while she had the chance.

“You want to go somewhere?” she asked, as if this were casual conversation and she picked up men regularly in any place that had a bar. “You seem like the kind of guy I’d like to know.”

Then that smooth Russian smile came out at last. “Maybe later.”

Four minutes, likely less. “After you figure out my price, huh?” Collie muttered, a tad too cynically. She really didn’t do seductive all that well and it wasn’t like she hadn’t just laid all her cards on the counter when she slid over the evidence that someone had sold him out.

And that was the primary question, wasn’t it? Why in heaven or earth would Collie put her life on the line to warn him someone wanted his head? He had enough enemies. He could have expected a double-cross without her.

She suddenly realized Nikolai had lifted her hand in his, as if he would kiss it—feeling her fingertips and cocking that eyebrow. Hawkeye. Only one agent in the business odd enough to have those callouses from an instrument of war as out-of-date as a comfortable old coat.

“Who sent you?” he asked. Collie could hear the tone she’d come to know of certainty one or both of them would end up dead.

She couldn’t very well answer nobody, so she glanced at the clock and knew in her bones Phil was staking out an entry. “You want to deal?”

Trust wasn’t on the table. Both of them knew it, but only Collie knew it needed to be.

“Immunity, protection, and a black hole pulled in behind you.” She ran down the list quickly. “My reinforcements are behind me.” Literally. She could feel Phil’s laserlike gaze burning a hole in her back.

He narrowed eyes at her, pressed the knife, answered harshly, “For what?”

Collie let out the breath she’d been holding, suddenly realizing she had him enough to quit trying. It was an honest gleam of amusement in her eyes and a twinkle of a smile that she answered from cold, hard experience. “A steady paycheck.”

Incredulous. Impossible. Because she was trying not to laugh as she had when Phil had offered it to her. How could she laugh in a moment like this?

“You’re offering me a job?” Incredulous, amused despite himself. He turned his attention squarely in the direction of that gaze at Collie’s back. “Why?”

“It’d be quite the coup.”

“More to kill me.”

Collie shook her head. She hadn’t shot the arrow when she should have. That coup was good and gone.

“I need a down payment,” Nikolai said abruptly, returning his stare to Collie.

“Keep the knife then,” she said. “Keep it on me if you want. And you’re willing to follow me up to where I left my bow.” She held up her earpiece, fitted it in while Nikolai watched. Nikolai didn’t need a knife. He could snap her neck with his bare hands. “Phil. You mind helping the cat drag in a spider?”

Phil’s snort of amusement told Collie all she needed to know.