#THE ACTUAL FRUIT FLY TRAP YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO DROWN IN WAS TWO FEET AWAY WHATS WRONG WITH YOU

[lilnasxvevo]

I left an iced coffee on the headboard of my bed behind me for like a couple hours and by the time I returned to it six fruit flies had drowned in it. I’m gonna set my fucking apartment on fire.

[modestlyabsurd]

Endgame (Loki x Reader)

"How do your Avengers fare in the future?" The bitter poison laced through his words is testing you, testing your strength, testing your love, testing your will.

"They're good fighters." You chew the inside of your cheek, the metallic taste of blood coating your tongue. "They've developed a sense of teamwork."

"It won't last."

That coldness. Callousness. You nod slowly and purse your lips. "You'd be surprised."

Looking through the glass at this product of Thanos' brainwashing is painful. Nowhere is the Loki you loved, the Loki you let in to see the ugliest parts of your soul. The Loki that loved you.

This person is weak. Afraid. Dangerous. A hurt dog hollering, a cornered dog snarling. The first source is at the hands of his father's lies, then began a horrendous spiral. Plucked from an abyss of nothingness, his attempted genocide and suicide having failed, captured when he's most vulnerable.

Fed promises and hope. Filled with a hunger for vengeance. Given tools, power, and supposed knowledge. Given answers to his pain; that the universe will only work against him, lest he rules it himself.

Against the advice of his handlers, he would begin with Midgard, the simplest of the realms. The realm that rules themselves. The realm known for the ignorance of its people. Great opportunity lies within Midgard. Humans were a moldable people; not entirely set in their ways. Ever-changing. Indecisive. In need of guidance and direction. Yes, he would begin with Midgard.

At least, that's what he planned.

Loki underestimated the advancement of Earth's technology and resources. The push-back that would come from the humans. He expected more willing submission, and instead has now been captured, yet again.

Once more, he is being filled with new knowledge. Of betrayal, of lies, of ulterior motives, much the Black Order had enlightened him of. Only this information comes not from the mutant, disfigured mouth of The Other; rather, it comes from the sweet-tongued, youthful, naive mouth of a young woman.

She begs him to relent. To rethink his plans. She says she is from the future, that she knows him and his brother. The Avengers. She claims she has seen the fruits of his labor and that they are poisonous. Futile.

Of course, he listens - as if he has a choice - but he gives her words no credence. He has been shown the power. He yielded it within the scepter! He did, before the Avengers imprisoned him and took it away.

What fools.

Just a bit longer, he will play along. He will look into her eyes as she vomits this schpiel of nonsense for him. A few more moments won't hurt.

"Y'know, your brother explained it to me this way. How you are. He said, 'Loki is a free spirit trapped within the confines of his own limitations. He's like a bird that's been raised in a cage, and then suddenly the cage collapses. Most birds might fly away and never return. But Loki continues flying in a circle within the same boundary of the cage, as if it were still there.'" you pause, staring at your hands, licking your chapped lips. A sad smile spreads across your cheeks at the thought of Thor. "Now I see what he meant."

"Is that so? He thinks he's cracked the code, is that it?" A dark, humorless chuckle quietly fills the room. "And you believe him. I need no further convincing that you are nothing more than a hopeless, delusional child. A waste of time."

He was really digging deep. And it hurt.

The taste of blood coated your entire mouth now; you'd chewed your lips into blisters, your cheeks were butchered on the inside.

Next plan of action.

You pull out your walkie-talkie and push the communications button, a three toned chirp echoing off the walls.

"What's the code to enter the cell?"

A moment passes.

Steve's voice comes through.

"Eight eight four two, five eight five six."

"Copy."

You stand from the metal bench, rolling out tension from your neck and shoulders. The touch pad is alongside the cell, left of where you are. You pad across the metal grate floor, each step excruciatingly audible. You notice out of peripheral vision Loki's cold blue eyes monitoring your every move.

You tap in the code. The glass door opens horizontally. Loki, mockingly, beckons you inside by opening his arms to the cell.

Ever since you stood up, your heart rate has been off the charts. Your blood has gone cold. Your hands have moistened, you wipe them on the thighs of your jeans as you enter the cell.

Once you're inside, the door shuts behind you, jarring your feet as it latched tight.

There is so much distance between you. Not a trace of fondness. No sign of emotion. Other than disdain. Annoyance, maybe. Like he wished you would spontaneously combust.

"I've gathered that you don't believe me," you peek from under your eyelashes.

He ponders you. No, he doesn't believe it, but that's not what he wants to say. He's highly intrigued, now that you've shown the courage - be it as stupid as it is - to enter the cage with the animal. The monster.

Your persistence is amusing.

"I must admit, your story is quite elaborate. Believable, even." He rises from the little bench provided in the cell, holding his wrists behind his back. All you hear is the blood pounding in your chest, and his boots. Your eyes are fixed onto him.

He saunters toward you and it is when he has decreased the space between you that your world freezes.

"Sadly, no. I do not. And my patience is wearing thin," he snarls. You see the twitch of his jaw clenching.

"Your patience is running thin, and my time is running out," you whisper. A small, nervous smile wants to emerge, so you let it. "I want to show you something, if you're willing to see."

He gestures for you to show him, and you cast your gaze down to his chest as you pull something out of your back pocket.

A photo.

Instead of handing it to him, you take a chance and move beside him to view it together.

It's you and Loki. You're taking the picture, laughing, as he kisses you passionately.

"Thor found this picture mixed in with his stuff before," your voice cracks as you remember. "Before it happened. I didn't even know it existed. When he gave it to me I stared at it for hours. I memorized every part of it. Every color. Every shadow. Heh, I'm not even sure where we were or what we were doing, but, I remember thinking that this image was the culmination of how I felt about you. How you made me feel."

The photo shakes in the grip of your fingertips.

Loki was pulled into the water by the photo. He swam through it; your bright, toothy smile, pink cheeks and scrunched nose carries him afloat to his own reflection. The high angle shows his arms secured around your middle, holding you tenderly. Protecting you. His nose and lips are pressed firmly to your temple and although his eyes are closed, the image permeates his feelings in that moment. Whatever they are, he seems so sure of himself.

Loki begins drowning in your narration.

Confliction; a strong pull in all directions. Did this happen? Could it be true? Could you, a mortal human, have enraptured his tarnished heart in such a way? Could he, you?

No, of course not. Loving a human? He would never. This ... Somehow, this is certainly a manipulation from the mastermind Avengers. A ploy. Manifested out of fear.

He shakes his head, willing away the pathetic questioning you planted in his mind. How dare ... he cannot seem to look away from the photo.

"You alright?" you ask softly, naturally.

His head hasn't stopped shaking. Out of the corner of your eye, you notice his fingers twitching, aching to fidget with something. His brow has hardened.

"This ... You ... You witch!" he backs away, leaving a gust of cold near where he stood.

"Loki, calm down - "

"Do not give me orders," he hisses. "Who do you think you are, anyway? The holder of my heart? My one true love? This is nothing more than a childish game. Pathetic!"

"Why are you reacting this way? Why are you so angry? You act like I punched you in the face; all I did was show you a picture."

"You undermine my intelligence, you imbecile."

"I think you're hiding how you really feel."

"Oh, do tell," he mocks, cocking his head sideways and squinting coldly at you.

"Look at yourself! I'm childish? You're acting like a bully and it's because you're afraid of the possibility I'm right."

He glares daggers into your soul.

You begin walking toward him, waving the photo as you go. "Tell me you didn't feel something when you saw this. Tell me. I watched you. Tell me you felt nothing! Lie to me, just like you would anyone else!"

You've closed the space to only a few feet, at best. He looks down his long nose at you, but you don't choke. You hold him there. You stand your ground for the greater good. Ready, at this point, for him to do with you what he will.

But he does nothing.

Actually, he does do something - he drops his head and looks away from you. He inhales sharply. He brings his hands together. He scratches at his left palm, a nervous habit you've tried to help him break. The source of all the cat-scratch scars that adorn it. Scars you used to kiss whenever he got upset.

You take a chance, and carefully inch closer.

"You're gonna die, Loki."

He meets your troubled gaze, his eyes no longer stone cold, but still untrusting.

"You're gonna die. He's gonna kill you himself. He's using you. He's using your pain to manipulate you into doing something you don't even realize. Something you'll regret very soon. You won't rule the world. You'll cease to exist. Along with everything else."

You're mere inches away now. It still as though you're approaching a wild animal; they may seem docile, but you're unable to read their thoughts. You've already felt a bit of the bite, though. It's now or never.

"Look at me." you whisper.

Slowly, he lifts his eyes up to yours. You swear, they've changed from even moments ago from cobalt blue. They're now a clear gray. The color they fade to when he's truly afraid. A color you've only seen once...

"I came across time to save you, Loki. I love you."

It wasn't until a few seconds of silence passed, that you realized you had never said that before. You were always too scared to admit it to yourself or anyone. It made sense as to why you felt that way now. You've just laid your feelings out in front of someone who is so mentally broken, so damaged, he is going to die due to mistakes made stemming from his afflictions. You know it.

You saw it.

Suddenly your chest becomes hollow. No lungs to breathe air. No blood for your heart to pump, so it just pumps and pumps and pumps, constricting your ribcage, suffocating you.

"I - I shouldn't have said that," you stutter, turning away and blindly looking for an escape from this feeling.

You're at the glass door, your fingers shakily hovering over the key pad as you try to remember that damned code but it will not come to you!

Another hand covers your trembling one. You jump and turn around, not even registering what was happening.

"I can't - I can't remember the code - it was eight eight something - "

Loki covers your mouth with his.

...

He's kissing you.

Your lungs fill with sweet air. Your heart fills with warmth. Your knees give way and you wrap your arms so tightly around his neck because if you didn't you would've fallen and goodness gracious, he's kissing you.

It was the best you've ever had. All lips, tongue, teeth, hands, everything.

Finally, you're home.

He breaks away all too soon; you whine, and find yourself moving closer to feel him again. His breath fans your nose. Your head is spinning, you barely hear his words.

"I believe you."

[sunaddicted]

Cyanide

Happy Villains Day!!! TW: torture, graphic descriptions of violence, suicide attempt Cyanide Waterboarding, compared to other types of torture he had endured lately at the hands of the Chinese, was almost boring; you rationally knew that nobody was actually trying to drown you and, while unpleasant, it didn't leave too many damages behind.  After all, what was a bit of water in your lungs when you had danced with death several times as a Double-Oh agent? Or maybe he was going insane. Tiago had considered that possibility - it wasn't as if there was much to do in a prison, apart from picking apart his own mind - and he wasn't quite ready to exclude it. Especially since it was starting to feel like there was someone else in his head, someone snake-like and vicious and thirsty for revenge in almost a biblical way - someone who called himself Raoul. Someone Tiago was terrified of.   So, he took the waterboarding sessions as chances to hide in a corner of his mind where not even Raoul could follow - or, if he managed, he couldn't actually make any damages: childhood memories weren't as fickle and fragile as many other parts of the psyche, a golden veil seemed to shroud them and not even the passing of time could make them lose their shine.   The rag that was dropped on his face, and almost seemed to get stuck to his skin as if it had been imbued with glue, stank of mould and old water - Tiago couldn't help gagging, head instinctively tossing to the side to avoid choking on his own tongue and vomit. Not that he had enough in his stomach to actually throw up: it was only acid that came up his esophagus, inexorable like a slow column of lava sliding down the sides of a volcano. Tiago didn't particularly enjoy it, but the trauma was necessary to trigger in his mind the necessary mechanisms to make sure that his consciousness got lost in the darkest and most protected depths of his memories; it couldn't be avoided and Tiago had learned to crave it, to crave the brutality that came with having his body vandalised in such a way.   He did realise that it wasn't exactly an healthy way of thinking. During training, they had called it dissociation - Tiago thought about it as salvation, to be completely honest. Maybe it would only make the pricks in Psych think about him as a dangerous and deranged - but sacrificable - asset to be kept under strict surveillance, instead of an agent that had endured hell to keep their precious  secrets hidden. It had happened already, Tiago remembered it well - Raoul made sure that he remembered in great detail, murmuring in his ear that protecting them wasn't worth it; he had been put in a holding cell, not dissimilar to the one he was currently trapped in, and interrogated for days to make sure that he hadn't been twisted beyond reconnaissance  during captivity. Really, those cells all looked the same - sleek metallic surfaces everywhere, a hole in the ground, neon lights flickering on a ceiling stained with humidity. Unless you were somewhere in Africa, then they looked like muddy huts so hot that every breath burnt like fire down dry and dehydrated lungs. They smelled the same too: the stinking of fear apparently didn't change too much, independently from which country around the world had you captive - acrid with piss, shit, vomit and sweat that wouldn't be washed away until someone broke you out or you found your way to freedom in the form of a barely recognisable corpse. And, in the end, no matter whether it was the Chinese or the Russians or MI6, the same exact things happened in them; people were pushed beyond salvation, human beings reduced to filthy bags of flesh and bones that had lost their minds under the pressure of torture - an instrument mankind had been honing for centuries, elevated it up to a form of art.   The first splash of water was freezing, though Tiago was pretty sure that it seemed colder than it actually was because of the fever burning up his skin. If he thought about it, it almost brought him some relief - which was admittedly fucked up and rather badly at that. But did it truly matter when he was going to die a horrible death, far away from home? Home. Tiago hadn't been home for a long time and he didn't mean London, with its grey skies and and grey streets and dark brown buildings. No, London had never been his home but it was a place he felt bound to - where a small and perpetually angry lady that didn't look half as much scary as she actually was had given him a purpose and tethered him to earth, keeping him from floating up to a world where only he existed. Home had been the island his abuela had bought when he was just a child; a small affair, nothing to boast about, even with his short legs Tiago managed to walk around it in a couple of hours. Back then, though, Tiago had felt like a prince in a secret fortress that other people could only dream of owning. Behind his closed eyelids, Tiago looked down at his feet and smiled when he could see his toes wiggling in the golden sand, eyes narrowing to spot the small shells and shards of long-dead corals mixed up with it; it made the beach shine with a light bubbly pink colour under the strong sunrays that Tiago had always wondered about whether it truly was there or it was a product of his imagination.   Even back then, Tiago hadn't burned easily thanks to his olive skin but still his abuela insisted on slathering sunscreen all over him “It doesn't matter whether you burn or not, nene , you need to protect the deeper layers of your skin” she chided, a benevolent smile on her face even as she kept him still with a firm grip on his forearm before starting on a lesson about how his skin regenerated itself. As a child, Tiago had listened attentively but hadn't asked himself why actually his abuela was so cultured; he didn't knew much about her, apart from the fact that she was his maternal grandmother and that she had taken him away from his family when his mother had refused to leave her abusive husband. He didn't remember his parents’ faces, nor their names: his whole family had been his abuela and the hoard of local animals that thrived on the island.   For some reason, he'd never gone back; despite distinctly remembering just how much he'd missed the island he had grown up on, something in his heart had pushed him away from home - whether ambition or the fear of revealing his weaknesses to invisible enemies, he didn't quite know. Tiago had left for university and when his abuela had fallen sick and instead of moving back into the island to take care of her just like she had taken care of him, he had moved her to an hospital where she had slowly died; the last sound she had heard was the tapping of his fingers on the keyboard of the laptop, not the whispering of the breeze amidst the palm trees: it was Raoul’s biggest regret, the reason why he had yielded to MI6 and started to work for them. It was his rather poor attempt at atoning for his abuela’s cold death. To be completely honest with himself, it wasn't even that: it was his attempt at escaping from his past and the pain, without realising that he was throwing away all that had been good in his life up until he had nothing left but anger and loneliness eating away at his soul. Olivia Mansfield had known how to take advantage of that and exploited the mix of feelings born out of grief to the country's advantage, turning him into someone he wasn't: in a way, she had been the shaping hand when it came to Raoul - a monster that, up to the moment the Chinese had started torturing him, had been leashed and soothed by the government authorised killings. Tiago didn't delude himself with the idea that Raoul was born in that particular prison, his voice was too familiar. Too seducing to escape.   Tiago walked along the beach, studying the way the waves foamed white at their crests, glistening under the strong sunlight, before languidly crashing on the wet sand, spreading out until there was only a thin veil of salt water lapping at his feet. He'd always found it a peaceful vision, one in which he could easily get lost: the colours captivated him, swirled in his head until they morphed into new images - blooming flowers, ripening fruit, variegated butterflies fluttering too close to the sun and - Falling down. Spiralling out of control. Crashing into the now stormy sea to die a horrible death: drowned, salt water both soothing and corroding the burnt wings. “An apt metaphor” Raoul murmured smugly, hands clasped behind his back and a gleefully cruel smile in place. “Get out of here” Tiago ordered, turning on its heels to glare at the projection in his mind. Raoul arched an eyebrow, a tiny but smug gesture of victory “I'm in your head” he pointed out rather uselessly, voice infused with disgust at the fact that even such a simple thing seemed to be out of Tiago’s grasp “I would love to get rid of you if I could, believe me” “I'm the one in control” Raoul nodded towards the butterflies still falling into the sea - there were thousands of them coming from the balm-like darkness of the small tropical forest, only to fly to the end of their already naturally short lives “Doesn't look like it” A slap - or better, the heavy and metallic taste of blood - momentarily brought Tiago back to reality and he looked up at a blurry face as he coughed water up from the bottom of his lungs and prodded at the cut on the inside of his cheek. It was during those painful explorations that he remembered it: the capsule of cyanide embedded in his molar, the last resort and one he had never thought of using - not even when he'd been buried alive for two days in Saudi Arabia. “But it's been months now, hasn't it?” Raoul's voice echoed inside his head and Tiago tried to shake it away: he wasn't supposed to manage to break the barrier of his consciousness and come at the forefront of his mind “The coward's way out must sound wonderful to you right now” It did - especially if it meant that he would be rid of Raoul once and for all. Tiago prodded the tooth again, jaw aching with the effort to avoid clamping down and breaking the crown so that he could pierce the capsule and let the poison do its job.  “With your rotten luck, you'll survive it” Raoul hummed, sitting in the sand with his head angled up to soak up in the sun. How Tiago wished that the prophecy hadn't revealed itself true.