100 Marvel One Shots✔️

The Painter >> Loki X Reader

Title: The Painter

Paring: Loki X Reader

Warnings: mentions of blood, and references to Loki's torture from Thanos. 

Spoilers: Set after Thor: The Dark World but set also in Hell's Kitchen, NYC around the time of Daredevil. Not too many spoilers, but hope you're up to date with that neck of the woods. 

Author's Note: I'm a big sucker for writing Matt Murdock in places where Matt Murdock isn't really supposed to be in (sort of like seeing animals in places and predicaments they shouldn't be in). I'm also a big sucker for Loki. Based on a prompt from the tumblr blog @lokiprompts. 

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The day after you got the new tenant in your apartment, your neighbour turned up bruised and battered on his way home. It should be known you lived beside the up and coming lawyer Mr. Murdock, a lovely blind man who made passing jokes on the stairs. Of course, you wanted to think it was just a coincidence, and your tenant was just a hipster drifter with too much money and hotness genes. But it became a regular kind of thing, and when Mr. Murdock would come back to his place across the hall with bruises and cuts, Loki had an alibi, and your mind settled.

"You're not beating up the blind man who lives next door?" you accosted him over strawberry jam toast at seven o'clock one morning.

"Of course not," he replied, and retreated to his bed in the other room. Calling out over the hum of the vacuum cleaner a few doors down, he added, "I was receiving medical attention all of yesterday!"

Perhaps you were just naturally suspicious. Your mother played cello in the Portland Symphony Orchestra, and father had passed away at his job (he was something like a security guard, your mom never really said). But all that left you as was the bastard daughter and an art student living out her student debt in Hell's Kitchen where crime was unfortunately high and rent slightly lower than the average NYC prices. But naturally suspicious or no, the guy who answered your advert was oddly strange. Stranger than the blind neighbour who gave you boxing tips.

Loki had too much money. Perhaps, for anyone who spoke English and had only one pair of shoes, and didn't know what a Ferrari was, or even the function of a toaster. The man knew loads about philosophy and the arts of stuff you weren't sure were even arts, but life skills? None. He also spoke too perfect English. Like he had been raised to make everything grammatically correct or no deserts as a child. He had no job, but promised he'd get one, and you swore he wasn't American, or even perhaps, human. Nobody could recite poetry off the top of their head, at least, normal people.

But as naturally suspicious as you were, the was not an investigative bone in your body (a lie, but you told yourself that to keep out of trouble). So, life went on. You used your art degree and the studio in the apartment to create semi-masterpieces, and Loki got a gig as a bouncer a few suburb overs at a fancy club. Rent went on to be paid, the world kept spinning, people tried to forget about the alien invasion that came to Manhattan. Mr. Murdock's lawyer business was starting to kick off, and there were masked heroes in the night time beating up mobsters and making headlines. But you stayed out of it, sending your things to the Scene Contempo Gallery, half of your money to your mother in Oregon.

"You're sure you're eating and sleeping okay? Please tell me you're not sleeping with some lead singer or drummer from a garage band. Don't end up like me." Your mother would fuss over the phone. You can always hear the birds on her end of the phone, and half miss them. But your soul loved the city more than birds. Nostalgia was for weak.