knife_bender | A Niceish Hotel

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who: annie hargreeves

A Niceish Hotel | Night

Chalk this up as one of the most emotionally exhausting days of Diego's life, and it had to have been so much worse for Annie. He was more than happy to get her out of the Believe Expo and hole up with her in a hotel on Vought's dime (not that they knew that). It was a little surreal having to be incognito by paying everything in cash while Annie was off to the side in a makeshift disguise, but he could already see it was needed. It was all over the news whenever they passed a TV.

At least they managed to not get recognized on the way up to the room. Though, really, who would imagine Starlight hanging out with a guy that looked like Diego?

"Oh thank god there's a minibar," Diego said as soon as he opened the door to their room.

[For Annie and NFB due to distance! ETA warning for description of sexual assault in the comments]

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Surely Diego would not use those tips to his advantage!

"Seems like he's a pretty useless member of The Seven in addition to being a tool," Diego said. "Won't be a loss if he gets fired."

Annie...sort of hadn't really considered the possibility that Vought might actually punish The Deep, now that she'd called him out so publicly. Danny had said something similar, but Annie was only just starting to believe that maybe it might happen.

"He's good for water crimes." There were so many of those. "But yeah, unless it's underwater I don't know why you wouldn't send literally any of the rest of us. I think they just keep him around as eye candy, from what he was bitching about that night we patrolled."

And part of her was almost sympathetic to that. (Almost.)

Diego couldn't believe the guy was bitching at Annie, like, days after sexually assaulting her. What a douche.

"Let's put a ban on talking about that asshole for the night," Diego decided. "We're not focusing hard enough on the alcohol and chocolate."

"See, this is why I should've told you sooner," Annie agreed, reaching for her bottle again. "Because yeah, I give that guy way too much real estate in my brain."

Which, you know. Probably explained a lot of her behavior those first couple weeks.

"And hey," she added, just realizing, "we haven't even celebrated your major accomplishment of actually successfully avoiding my mom for all of Believe Expo."

He laughed. "I'll be honest, I totally forgot about that."

Too busy taking in all of the bigotry at the Believe Expo distracted him.

"Guess who she did run into, though?" Annie said, smiling a little as she took another sip of her tequila. "Apparently some short detective from Maryland was really rude to her."

And so when Annie had sort of settled after all this, she had questions for Danny.

"Well she can't be talking about Danny," Diego joked. "He's so nice."

"Apparently he and his boyfriend made quite an impression," Annie said with a little snort. "But yeah, I don't think anyone else met Mom. Just Danny -- and apparently Steve -- and my new friend Hughie for a second. Way to luck out."

Because really, that was the last thing they needed. Annie would find some nice, calm way to introduce Diego to her mom someday, but Believe Expo was absolutely not the right venue.

"Yeah that lines up," Diego said with a nod. Has anyone met Danny and Steve without thinking they were dating?

"Is this a new friend in a genuine way or are you being sarcastic?" Because if Diego said he made a new friend it would be sarcastic. Especially if it was made regarding someone in Annie's universe.

"I mean, 'friend' might be a stretch, but yeah, I'm being genuine," Annie told him with a little laugh. "He's this dude I met in the park like, right after I started, and he kinda heard me trying to articulate what happened in a voicemail I left for Rey and we got to talking a little."

She reached for more candy, adding, "We ran into each other again yesterday. Super weird coincidence, actually. He ended up asking me for backstage passes."

Which, you know, looking back on it, she was still kind of curious why he'd needed them, since she didn't buy that excuse about his dad for a second.

"Weird," Diego said. "Not you making a friend, the backstage pass thing. But I guess I'm not the target audience."

"Yeah, I don't know. I think they guy's going through some shit." Give it a few days and they'd both understand a lot better. "I got pretty mad at him last night over it, 'cause like -- you know, it doesn't like, feel great? I mean, it's one thing to give stuff out, but being asked felt sort of gross. But he told me his girlfriend died, so." Annie shrugged. "Who knows. Maybe Ezekiel was able to, like, counsel him or whatever."

This was also why Annie had come to the conclusion that Hughie was fairly content to stay over there in the Friend Zone, and that bumped him up, like, a whole letter grade in her estimation, honestly.

"Yeah, that makes sense." Still weird, but understandable. "Glad you found someone here that isn't a total dick."

"He is literally the only semi-nice person I've met," Annie said, shaking her head. "I mean, okay, Homelander's great, but he's not like, approachable, you know? And then everyone else has been like, varying degrees of hostile. Or, like, best case scenario, if not hostile then, like, over-the-top friendly and...handsy."

She finished her drink, making a face. "And Ashley gets pissed if I talk back to the fans, so."

Though, you know, 'screw Ashley' was kind of a great new motto to adopt, Annie was beginning to think.

Diego was forming his own opinions on Homelander after that speech, but it was entirely possible that he was just spouting off stuff Vought fed him like Annie was supposed to. And if Annie said he was great then Diego was willing to lend what little optimism he had to going along with that.

"This Ashley chick sounds like a nightmare."

Yeah, Homelander's speech had been a whole question mark in the middle of the day, there, but considering the speech that Annie had been supposed to deliver, she figured she didn't have the whole story there, either.

(Though, like, she didn't really like all of that stuff about protecting America? Because like...what about the rest of the world? But Homelander was also, you know, Homelander, so she supposed that was his...schtick.)

"So like imagine if you took a super hyper, nervous dog. A Chihuahua, maybe," Annie suggested. "And then you gave it espresso. And then told it its one job was to follow me around and look at what I eat and whether my eyelashes are falling off. That's Ashley."

Which was not entirely accurate -- Ashley yelled at the other members of The Seven, too! -- but it sure felt accurate.

"I probably would have killed her by now." It was only a slight exaggeration.

"I'm honestly surprised Maeve hasn't," Annie admitted. "She seems to be able to get away with just flipping her off and walking away."

Though maybe it would take more effort to kill Ashley than it was worth, for Maeve.

"That's...not actually a bad idea." Though he really couldn't imagine Annie doing it unless she was really pissed off.

"I mean." Annie actually considered this. "Like, we have an obligation to not abuse our powers, but like, it is kind of one of those things where I wonder why we're letting some normal human lady boss us around like this."

Maybe Annie was kind of done being bossed around by anyone, least of all people who fundamentally did not seem to understand what her life was like.

"Maybe they think it'll prevent you from getting an ego," he said with a shrug. "Or they really think it's fun to annoy you."

"I think it might also be that this is like, a pretty coveted position, you know?" Annie said thoughtfully. "Like, when they gave me the new uniform I tried to tell them it was my body and I didn't want to show that much of it, and Ms. Stillwell said that was fine, but that I would be not-showing it somewhere other than on the team."

And maybe once she was as established and well-loved as Queen Maeve, she could start talking back, too.

"Jesus, I am amazed at just how many ways your job sucks." Like every time he thought he heard it all something else comes up.

"I've been holding onto a lot," Annie admitted, shrugging a shoulder. "Like, I figured that -- you know, it's hard because it's an amazing opportunity, and if it was easy, everyone would do it, right? But maybe it's hard in ways it doesn't need to be."

Because the people were all willfully terrible.

"But you still think you can do some good with this?" he asked.

A Niceish Hotel | Night

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