MHA # 2 | Late, late Tuesday night

[defenderofdesmoines]

Annie was sort of starting to figure out something of a balance between her life in New York, and maintaining as much contact as she could with people in Fandom.

She’d had a busy day of meetings -- there were some storyboards being rolled out for Dawn of the Seven, which it was looking increasingly like she’d be in, so that was a whole trip and a half, plus Vought had hosted a focus group for a perfume they were formulating (tentatively under the Wish line), and they’d sent her out on patrol.

In her new uniform. With her new boots.

It had not, exactly, been a productive patrol. But thankfully, they’d sent her out with Noir, who had stayed quiet the whole time, unsurprisingly.

But, that being said, with her patrol out of the way, Annie was looking at a block of nearly thirty-six full hours before she had to be back for another Citizen Starlight camera test on Thursday, and then of course there was Believe Expo on Saturday, and...look, those thirty-six hours were precious. (And this was fine. Being pulled in this many directions was fine.)

So, even though it was well after midnight, Annie shot Diego a text to say she was coming to town, changed as fast as she could at the Tower (no, she was not making that mistake again), and hopped a portal to Fandom.

She let herself into his apartment as quietly as she could, given the hour. “It’s me,” she called in a very soft whisper, hoping that if he was asleep, she wouldn’t wake him up -- but, you know. She also knew who she was dating. Best to warn the knifey guy if you were sneaking quietly into his apartment in the middle of the night.

[for the knifey guy.]

Comments

[knife_bender]

It was probably a good thing she warned him because it just wasn't a safe idea to sneak up on Diego. But seeing as she texted beforehand he had been expecting her and was really only dozing in bed.

He rolled out of bed, only looking slightly sleepy as he padded out of the bedroom. "Hey."

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Sorry," Annie said with a little wince as she set her bags down, still whispering even if they were the only people in the apartment, and went over to wrap her arms around him fairly immediately. "I should've probably waited until the morning."

Except that selfishly this way she'd get to sleep here, and guess what, Fandom sleep was turning out to be vastly superior to New York sleep, for some reason.

[knife_bender]

"Nah, I'd rather have you here," Diego said, wrapping his arms around her. "I missed you."

[defenderofdesmoines]

"I missed you, too," Annie sighed, leaning against him a little. "I got here as soon as I could after patrolling."

Her new official footwear slowed things down a lot, though.

[knife_bender]

"How did that go?" he asked, even if he had the feeling not much crime was being fought.

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Stood there, looked pretty, got cold," Annie assured him with a roll of her eyes that she hid against his shoulder. "And Black Noir intimidated the hell out of some poor night security guard who didn't know we'd be wandering by that particular bank."

The guard had been much happier to see Starlight, for multiple reasons.

[knife_bender]

"That's not surprising," he said, laughing lightly. "There's a surprise for you in the fridge."

[defenderofdesmoines]

"A Hawaiian surprise?" she guessed, pulling back to beam up at him. "I take it that means everything went okay?"

Or else she was way off-base and Diego had not, in fact, grabbed coco puffs for her after completing his rescue mission.

[knife_bender]

"Yes, a Hawaiian surprise," he said. "I wouldn't say everything went okay, but Steve's alive."

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Good. And you're all right?" Annie had to check, even if he seemed completely fine, because Diego was absolutely the sort of person to insist he was fine and then reveal that actually he'd broken his leg and it was fine because he'd walk it off.

[knife_bender]

"I'm fine," he assured her. "Nobody tried to shoot me, I swear."

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Are you sure you were in the right Hawaii, then?" Annie teased lightly, going onto her toes to kiss his cheek. "I'm glad Steve's -- well, alive, anyway. Sounds like it had the potential to be pretty exciting."

And not even related to the thing that she was involved with, with Danny and his brother. So much Hawaiian intrigue!

[knife_bender]

"I got to threaten a guy with Kono," he said. "That was pretty exciting."

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Threaten him for doing what?" Annie asked, both impressed and mildly surprised.

[knife_bender]

"Well we were there to get information out of him, but he started getting gross with Kono so I threw a pen near his balls." Extremely warranted, in his opinion.

[defenderofdesmoines]

See, hearing that made Annie simultaneously feel like she'd made the right call in keeping her own gross stuff to herself (much though it also was starting to feel like it was eating her from the inside to keep it to herself, now that the assault was coupled with the uniform and it was all making this really ugly picture of Vought), but a little part of her also sort of reveled in the idea of Diego putting some disgusting pervert in his place.

"I love you for that," she decided, going up for a kiss. "And I should text Kono."

[knife_bender]

"She'd probably be happy to hear from you," he said, holding her a little bit closer to him. "Bed or coco puffs?"

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Bed. Coco puffs for breakfast," Annie decided, pressing a kiss to his jaw. They would magically become green juice if she had to recount her breakfast to Ashley for any reason. "And you get me all the way up until Thursday afternoon."

Though she also had Thursday night free, and might just portal right back, if Vought didn't come up with something else for her to do.

[knife_bender]

"Lucky me," he said with a smile as he led her to the bedroom. "And coco puffs are for any time, by the way."

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Somehow I don't think I can get my marketing team on board with that," Annie noted lightly. "But they also don't need to know. Vought can't even see my tracker here, so it's like anything I do in Fandom doesn't count, anyway."

Hence why she was taking literally every hour on this island that she could get.

[knife_bender]

"Have they questioned you about that yet?" he asked. He thought the whole tracker thing was creepy, and was quite frankly surprised his father hadn't thought to do it to him.

...that he knew of.

[defenderofdesmoines]

"They're just treating it as a GPS blind spot," Annie said, shaking her head and just going right ahead and helping herself to one of Diego's shirts once they got to the bedroom. She'd brought things to sleep in but you know, she was going to exercise girlfriend privilege as long as she was here, okay? "I'm sure it won't last forever, but it's working out great so far. I almost feel like I actually have some privacy here."

[knife_bender]

Diego did not mind her exercising girlfriend privilege at all. He didn't care how often it happened, he liked when she wore his clothes.

"I am glad you have that," he said, crawling back into bed. "It's insane they actually embed something in you. Couldn't they just track your phone? Or, like, a watch?"

[defenderofdesmoines]

"You should've seen the thing they used," Annie murmured, slipping out of her clothes in fairly short order and tugging on his shirt before crawling in beside him. "Or, really, it's probably best you didn't."

Because when she said thing, she meant giant needle.

"But I also think they track my phone." Just for extra creepy points!

[knife_bender]

"Yeah, I'd rather not think about it," he said, reaching for her. "You think they just track it by GPS or, like, can they see what's on your phone?"