#despite a) knowing full well I was OOO and it has been on my calendar for a month

[curiosity-killed]

I left exactly one (1) thing not done Friday night when I worked till 2 AM, and I specifically left it in the hopes that I’d be less pissed about it with some time away but I opened it up now to finish and I am actually still just as pissed

[bonjour-rainycity]

Odin’s Ward ~ Chapter 12

Link to previous part: https://bonjour-rainycity.tumblr.com/post/638076748499681280/odins-ward-chapter-11

Pairing: Loki x female reader

Word count: 1077

Warnings: Adult themes implied

*63 years later*

True age: Y/n: 1197 // Loki: 1323 // Thor: 1575 // Audunn 2961

Human equivalent age: Y/n: 19 // Loki: 21 // Thor: 25 // Audunn: 47

Y/n’s POV

“You may go.” Audunn’s voice, detached and commanding as always, dismisses me from the dark room. I slide out of his bed and pull the silk dressing coat over my naked body, tying it tight against the evening chill.

As always, Ragna waits in the hall along with a guard to escort me back to my room.

It used to be humiliating, walking through the castle in nothing but my dressing gown after being tossed from my husband’s bed, but by now, I’ve gotten quite used to it. Servants and noble-folk alike bow or curtsey to me as I pass, some whispering conspicuously, some offering me hopeful smiles.

The preferred topic of gossip at the moment is why I have yet to conceive.

While it is perfectly normal for it to take a woman near to 100 years to get pregnant, I am the highest ranking woman in Alfheim. That means I am held to a different set of standards. By many’s belief, I should have conceived the first time I laid with Audunn and should by now be well on my way to providing him his sixth heir.

What they do not know is that I pray every night that I will not get pregnant.

In Audunn’s less-than-polite terms, my father ‘refuses to die’. And every passing year that Audunn does not take the throne, he grows more and more cruel. Anger continues to delude his mind, and many servants shake at the mere mention of his name.

I can empathize.

Against all odds, Sveinn still lives, though he has many scars to show for it. In order to ensure both his safety and mine, I have gotten to where I do not speak at all when in Audunn’s presence, unless I must, in which case I stick to a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’. When all else fails, it’s usually safe to agree with his last few phrases. But despite my efforts, Audunn still finds reason for fury, and Sveinn and I bear the brunt of his abuses.

That is why, regardless of the fact that some part of me wants to be a mother, I pray that I am barren.

It would break me to have to bring a child into Audunn’s cruel world.

{***}

The days run together. Before I know it, winter is in full swing and the castle is preparing for Yule, a silly Midgardian tradition that Alfheim stubbornly observes. Over the past few years, I’ve gotten used to it and have even come to enjoy certain aspects of it, but I still do not see the point. Why is there an entire event dedicated to giving everyone in your life a gift? It’s quite overwhelming.

I amble over to the calendar on my writing desk, counting the days until Yule officially begins. Eight. Okay, I still need to get gifts for Lady Katrienne, Sir Miran, Audunn—

Audunn.

According to the calendar, I’m five days late.

“Ragna!” I call for my handmaiden, panic causing my voice to sound strangled.

Alarmed, she rushes into the room to see me practically doubled over, clutching my calendar.  She catches on quickly, her mouth pulling into a shocked frown. “Oh no.”

I cover my face with my hands, then throw the calendar down angrily and pace. It’s all too much. My hands begin to shake. “I can’t be late, Ragna. Late means pregnant, and pregnant means—” I can’t say it. My eyes prick with tears.

Ragna hurries to the basin and fills a glass with water, urging me to drink. At the very least, drinking the water forces me to focus. After many deep breaths, my heart slows. I feel my mouth set into a hard line.

“I will not bring a child into this world if it is to be at the mercy of Audunn.”

Ragna clasps my hand, looking utterly distraught. “I am so sorry, My Lady. We’ll figure something out. Please don’t worry.”

But worry is all I can do.

{***}

The cool light of a winter sunrise is what wakes me the next morning. I rub my heavy eyes, having gotten little sleep. I stare at the ceiling, desperately not wanting to get up and confront the day. Ragna knocks and enters the room quietly, giving me a brittle smile when she sees me already awake.

“Good morning, My Lady. I thought you might like some tea.”

I force my face into what I hope is a grateful expression. Standing, I take the steaming cup in my hands, allowing it to warm me as I head to my favorite chaise. The tea is certainly good, but it does little to elevate my mood; I still have the issue of a possible pregnancy hanging over my head.

“My Lady, look!” At the sound of Ragna’s shout, I rush back to the bed.

Right where I had been lying is a small splotch of rust-colored blood.

The teacup falls to the ground and shatters as I drop to my knees, immediately dissolving into tears of relief.

Ragna offers me a true smile now, her own happiness shining through her eyes. She disappears, returning nearly immediately with a washcloth to clean the tea mess, still beaming. “This is good, My Lady. Bearing Audunn’s child can be put off for a while longer.”

I raise my head.

Because she’s right.

This is probably only the first of many pregnancy scares. And how many of those would end up in actual children?

I bite my lip and sink fully to the floor, considering. “No. I can’t do this every time, waiting and waiting in hopes that, by some miracle, I won’t get pregnant. Bearing Audunn’s child needs to be put off forever.”

Ragna sighs, straightening. “I understand, My Lady…but what can you do? There are no ways to prevent pregnancy here in Alfeim. It is not our custom.”

My heart sinks as I consider her words. No ways to prevent pregnancy…

Here in Alfheim.

No…

I cannot dare to hope.

Only for emergencies…

I swallow, scarcely able to believe I’m about to do what I have planned. When I finally get the words out, they feel both endlessly wrong and euphorically right. “Ragna, please find me some parchment and a pen. I need to write a letter.”

A/n Ooo who’s she writing to? Let me know what you thought and if you would like to be added to the tag list! 

Link to next part: https://bonjour-rainycity.tumblr.com/post/638547377817550848/odins-ward-chapter-13

If you have a moment, check out my masterlist!

Tag list: @80strashbag @dark-night-sky-99 @what-am-i-doing10 @chxrryycola @ravenclaw5606

[semperintrepida]

The Sellout, chapter two

two: the big reveal

Kassandra sipped her coffee and surveyed the Portland skyline: the muddy river far below, Mount Hood backlit by sunrise skies as soft and pink as a kitten's tongue, and the laughably light traffic skating along I5. Roofs and trees, then trees in greater and greater numbers until they made a velvety green carpet all the way to the mountains. Portland had to be the smallest big city she'd ever lived in.

She sipped again, letting the coffee's warmth ward off the chill from the polished concrete floor beneath her feet, and she wandered away from the unbroken expanse of floor-to-ceiling windows that formed the eastern wall of her condo, back to the table where her laptop waited for her to put the finishing touches on the Yelp review she'd been dying to write since yesterday afternoon.

After visiting fifty — no, closer to a hundred — coffee shops in the month she'd lived here so far, she'd never experienced one quite like Cliffhanger Coffee. The latte she'd ordered was damn near perfect, but the coffee snob capital of the US was full of near-perfect lattes. It wasn't full of beautiful, dark-haired women with fire in their eyes who could pull espresso shots while throwing volleys of sharp, sharp words at the first sign of a threat.

Despite turning up the dials on her charm and attentiveness, Kassandra had gotten skewered almost as soon as she'd opened her mouth. After two years of living with Pacific Northwest passive aggressiveness, the woman's flat-out, in-your-face aggressiveness had hit Kassandra like the first taste of a sea breeze after years in the desert.

She'd savored every sip of that latte while walking up Belmont back to her car, and later on, she'd fallen asleep thinking about the woman's sharp words, the muscled lines of her forearms, and how they'd disappeared into blackwork tattoos that ran under the rolled-up sleeves of her flannel shirt. Trees on one arm and plants on the other, ferns giving way to some kind of vine, twisting in intricate lines on her skin...

Kassandra shook the thought away and focused on the text she'd written. Come for the delicious drinks, stay if the barista likes you... She tapped a finger against her chin in thought, then typed out one final sentence before she clicked "Post Review."

She examined her handiwork with a satisfied grin, then finished off the last of her coffee. Maybe she could squeeze in a visit to the other side of the river after her one o'clock planning meeting downtown. She picked up her phone.

Dessa answered in the middle of the first ring. "Good morning, Kassandra." She'd been Kassandra's assistant long enough to know her working hours went from seven a.m. to seven p.m. and often beyond.

"Dessa. Good morning. How's my two to four looking this afternoon?"

Quiet click-clicks as Dessa brought up her calendar. "You've got a one-on-one with Trevor Adams from two-thirty to three-thirty."

"Reschedule him to early next week."

"Consider it done."

"Any messages for me?"

"Kevin would like you to call, but he says it's not urgent."

Kassandra snorted. A CEO's not urgent merely meant right now instead of yesterday. "Coordinate a call with Lisa so I can talk to him at his earliest convenience." Lisa, his long-suffering admin assistant, who'd followed him from Microsoft to Juniper and every other stop along the way.

"It'll probably be around eight-thirty."

"That works." She drummed her fingers on the tabletop. "How're things back at the ranch?"

A sigh. "Markos has been looking for you."

Kassandra rolled her eyes. "He can make a calendar request like everyone else."

"I told him that, but you know how he is."

She did, all too well. He liked his meetings with her to be in person and off the record, like he was some big-shot politician instead of a middling marketing executive. "I'll be on site tomorrow morning. If he weasels by again, tell him he can buy me lunch."

"Will do. Anything else you need?"

"That's it for now. Thanks, Dessa."

She gave one last smirking glance at Yelp, then closed the browser tab and pulled up Outlook. The number of messages in her inbox had reached quadruple digits, and she made a mental note to spend some time cleaning it up later. She scrolled around until she found the email she wanted, then picked up her phone again. "Hi, Evelyn. It's Kassandra. Ready to start crunching those square footage numbers on the southeast flagship?"

.oOo.

A little after two o'clock, Kassandra turned her Audi R8 onto the looping ramp that led up to the Morrison Bridge, and just past the apex of the curve, she punched the gas and grinned as the big V10 began to howl. The acceleration shoved her hard into her seat, and it was like sitting in a recliner strapped to a rocket, more than making up for the fact that the car only came with an automatic transmission. No matter. If she wanted to shift gears herself, she had motorcycles for that.

She found a place to park on a side street off Belmont, slung her laptop bag over her shoulder, then backtracked a couple of blocks to the building that housed Cliffanger Coffee. The neighborhood wore its light industrial roots proudly: lots of brick and corrugated metal, and the coffeeshop's building was no exception. The ground floor units had lofted ceilings, but there were two more floors above them that looked like they'd been converted into apartments sometime in the last forty years. Likely rent controlled. Probably what had kept the owner from tearing it all down and putting up a mixed use development in its place.

A development on a street corner like this could net tens of millions.

The corner unit was occupied by a store selling overpriced furniture, and she scanned the price tags through the windows as she passed: five-hundred-dollar end tables and six-thousand-dollar couches. The store had probably been open for less than a year. She wondered what had been in its place a decade ago, when the coffee shop next door had moved in and nudged this neighborhood a little further down the path of gentrification.

A slate-colored sign bearing the words "Cliffhanger Coffee" hung over the door, the bold white lettering in a font that was clean and timeless rather than trendy, set over an angular slash that was more suggestive of a cliff than explicit.

Kassandra pushed the door open and stepped inside. Busier today, with customers dotting the interior tables, and the same three people from yesterday seated at the couches, deep in conversation. The woman — the owner, Kassandra reminded herself — was at the register, smiling as she handed a cup to a customer. At the sound of the door opening, her gaze slid from the man, to Kassandra, then back again.

The woman's smile faded as soon as the customer turned his back to her. She wore a blue and white plaid button-down with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows, and tight black jeans. The buckle of her belt glinted silver under the menu board's lights. "What do you want?" she asked as Kassandra walked up to the counter, her gaze as opaque as smoked glass, and Kassandra knew she wasn't really asking about a drink.

"I'll take a double shot, bone dry cappuccino, please."

The woman's eyes narrowed a fraction as Kassandra's weaponized order hit its mark. "Four dollars and thirty cents," she said flatly, slamming her fingertip into the register's touchscreen so hard its plastic casing creaked. This time, Kassandra took a good look at the woman's hands: long and slender, implying fine bones within, but her fingers were wrapped with muscles, as were her wrists and forearms, powerful lines disappearing into black foliage and vines that climbed up her arm.

That kind of muscle didn't come from pulling shots at an espresso machine — it came from training and effort. Kassandra knew it well; she wore it herself from her neck to her calves, earned it in the weight room and on the pitch, and, once everyone figured out she'd grow up to be tall instead of fast, on the basketball court. The woman had probably started young at whatever sport it was, but she was too tall and lean to be a gymnast, and no soccer player who wasn't a goalkeeper had wrists like that, and she wasn't tall enough to be a keeper anyway...

Kassandra realized she was staring, and her fingers fumbled at her wallet inside her suit jacket's pocket. It took her two tries to pull a twenty from the cash in her money clip, and she made herself take a slow breath before she pushed it across the counter. "Can you make that drink for here, please?" she asked once she'd regained her poise.

The woman tilted her head and eyed the twenty. Her look could have shattered concrete. Then the twenty disappeared into the cash drawer and a stack of coins and bills took its place. "You might as well have a seat," she said, tossing the words over her shoulder as she moved to the espresso machine.

And just like the day before, the woman's shroud of irritation fell away as soon as she focused her full attention on making the drink, her eyes lighting up with a clean, unburdened joy. This woman was the one Kassandra wanted to talk to. She wanted to ask, Does it feel the same way for you too? It was beating everyone in the paint to a rebound, or hitting a holeshot on the racetrack, that flowing perfection where everything is just so and all is right in the world. Kassandra had spent a lifetime chasing it.

One espresso shot and two full pitchers of steamed milkfoam later, the drink slid across the counter. "Bone dry," the woman said in a voice to match.

Kassandra picked up the cup, murmuring her thanks before she drifted around the perimeter of the shop. Lots of brick and exposed metal, softened by green plants. Real ones. This place would Instagram well. She sipped the drink, the hot espresso tunneling through a thick layer of fluffy foam, completely free of milk and its diluting effects. Yesterday's latte had been near-perfect, but this drink was perfection in every way, its components correctly proportioned, the shot ecstatically good. She needed to find out who the woman's coffee roaster was.

A set of shelves crammed with books occupied much of the back wall, under a small, hand-lettered sign reading take one, leave one. Past the shelves, a bulletin board hung over a small self-service bar that held carafes of cream and a variety of sweeteners. Kassandra's eye lingered on a line of brightly colored stickers running along the edge of the board: Best of Portland 2010, Best of Portland 2011, 2012, 2013... all the way to last year, 2017.

She chose a table against the wall that was mostly hidden from the counter's line of sight, pulled her laptop from her bag, sat down, and pretended to get to work.

A steady stream of customers passed through the doors of the shop, despite the doldrums of the mid-afternoon, and the thread of tension wound tight around the woman's voice began to loosen as she filled orders and chatted with customers. Once, she even laughed, low and round and rich, the sound fuming in the air like a good bourbon. Until that moment, Kassandra wasn't sure the woman was capable of it.

The shop began to empty out as the clock swept past three. Kassandra packed her laptop away and carefully set the empty cup into the bus tub under the self-service bar. She strolled over to the counter, ignoring the hostile glances from the regulars at the couches. There was a jar full of business cards next to the register she hadn't noticed before. Enter to win a ten-pack of drinks written in strong, angular lettering.

The woman turned to her and crossed her arms.

"The drink was perfect," Kassandra said.

Silence.

"I didn't catch your name."

"I didn't give it to you."

Not this way, Kassandra wanted to say. Let's not do it like this. Let's just talk. Tell me about your coffee: who grew it, where it came from, and what drew you to doing this? Because she wanted to see that bright joy return to the woman's eyes instead of the anger living there now. "You don't like me at all, do you?"

"Have you given me a reason to like you?"

"Have I given you a reason not to?" Her brows knit with real confusion. "If I've caused any offense, I'm sorry."

"You seem to think that I have to give you the time of day because you're dropping twenties on drinks."

That stung. "Consider it compensation for wasting your precious time, then." She had tried to be nice from several angles, but had bounced off the mirror finish of the woman's anger every time. Nice didn't work on everyone. She'd keep her interest professional then, and run a different play from the playbook. "I guess you really wanted that fifth star," she said, and then she reached into her laptop bag and fished out one of her business cards, and she smirked as she caught a glimpse of a siren's enigmatic smile looking out from a familiar green circle. She locked eyes with the woman and threw the card into the jar by the till. "See you later."

As she walked out the door and onto the sidewalk, she couldn't help but grin. She would have loved to see the woman's face as she read the words on the card:

Kassandra Agiadis Vice President of International Real Estate Development Starbucks Coffee Company

Chapter two of The Sellout. Continued in chapter three...