Caffeine Rush (Avengers Fanfic)

Chapter 18: Speedsters Aren't Known for Patience

The second prince of Asgard, the heir of Jotunheim, the longlived Asgardian-Jotun not-quite-immortal, the god of mischief, lies, and storytelling, the renowned Loki, snored, and not in a princely manner. It was loud and disruptive, nearly as much as his oaf of an older brother, which was downright unexpected. Eventually, after many hours of tossing, turning, trying to drown it out, and eventually resorting to precise manipulation of my speed to effectively create a noise cancelling effect, I finally fell asleep.

I woke with a little black Lokitty purring softly on my chest. Normally, I would find this totally adorable and spend half an hour cuddling and petting him. Normally didn't often follow a night with him snoring in human form for four hours followed by being pounced on as a cat, all eight pounds of him, right on my stomach, at five in the morning. Bad Lokitty, bad!

Unsympathetically, I booted him off of me and went back into my room to get myself ready. As I pulled on a new shirt, I glanced at the clock on my phone and did a double take. I was late. I had never been late while working for the Avengers. "Shit," I cursed. When I couldn't hear the word, I realized my noise cancelling was still on and made the precise adjustments to return my hearing to normal, superspeeding my way through my routine. Loki (back in Asgardian form) was almost knocked over as I ran at normal speeds down the hallway to my coffee station. Tony was just walking in from the other hallway and was surprised by the flurry of motion that rushed past him. "Sorry, Tones!"

I quickly made the drink he had no doubt come for and set it on the counter next to him. All the people around him knew that he didn't like being handed anything, Pepper being one of the only exceptions. I'd heard that he'd been shanked by a stranger trying to hand him a gift as a teenager so I could understand the reason why he was so stingy about people handing him things. We were close enough where he would probably take it from me if I offered it, but I felt I was a considerate enough person to do it for him anyway. "I know you're not a morning person, Jes, but I've never seen you late." He remarked as he picked up his macchiato, studied it a moment and took a sip.

I massaged the pressure point behind my ears, working my jaw to get them to pop properly. What a pain that had been. "Didn't sleep until late," I grumbled, my one-time roommate walking in, "and Loki snores like a hog."

"Say that again and I'll turn you into a hog!" Loki sniped back, apparently he didn't like that I booted him off of me this morning and basically shoulder-checked him in the hallway. After last night, I was hardly even sorry either.

"You just try it, I'll retaliate so fast you won't be able to say abracadabra!" I wasn't kidding either, involuntary transfigurations made my speed go haywire and if that was what gave me away, he would never see the end of it. The greatest speedster in the multiverse was once turned into a turtle himself, which was rather fitting, but he had absolute control over his speed and was not effected in the way other speedsters, such as myself, would be. It would take hours, maybe days, to account for the difference in propulsion, air resistance, drag force, gravitational displacement, and deceleration, let alone an entirely new body form and its motions, and don't get me started on joint rotations and ligament elasticity.

Tony paused where he was, looking back and forth between us like he was trying to decide whether to separate a pair of dogs or get out of the way of a brewing fight, "what exactly is going on? Why do I feel a weird sense of Deja vu?"

"I need a work order for my room, the thermostat is broken and there is no way I'm sleeping in there until it's fixed. I stayed in Loki's room 'cause it's cooler but he snores so much I didn't get much sleep anyway."

"Ah, I'll get right on that." Tony wouldn't want his favorite barista to lose her game because of fatigue, or at least, that was my logic anyway. If I could sneak away for a ten minutes speed nap, I would be fine, but until then I was stuck with the lack of sleep looming over my ever thought and action, not a good combination with speedster impulsivity—or my particular brand of it, which usually involved a short temper and a wickedly mischievous streak.

Loki grabbed the tea I'd just boiled and steeped for him and went to sulk on the couch in his usual spot. Tony pointed at him and raised an eyebrow as if to ask 'what's with him?'.

"He has teenage angst."

"He is not a teenager."

"Maybe not by Earth standards but Asgardian lifespans and godly powers are considerably different. Right now, he's young and he's weak, and he doesn't like that I know that and still called him a hog for snoring like one."

Loki straightened up, a scowl on his face, dagger slowly manifesting in his hand, "say it again, Mrs. Sharpe, and we will have a problem."

Now me, being the impulsive speedster that I am, took that as a challenge. I leaned over the counter, looked him dead in the eye and slowly drew out the word, "hog."

Before he could so much as stand up, Steve walked in for his usual Americano, on time as always, and pushed him back into his seat on the couch. Good thing too, if he had taken even a single step toward me or did the slightest magical action, I would have put him on his ass, godly ego and speed reveal be damned. The more I thought about it, the more annoyed I got, speedsters were practically born to show off and I'd been bottled up for too long. I wanted to run, fast and free, without responsibility or hindrances. This was a hindrance, the secret, but any negative reaction to it coming out would also be a hindrance. One more mission, I decided, then I would reveal myself, I could be patient, I could wait for one mission.