A Pawn Shop in East Flatbush | Friday evening

[knife_bender]

To say today had been rough was quite possibly the biggest understatement ever. It had started with watching porn at way too early in the morning, went into cutting off a guy's hand to get his girlfriend out of jail and somewhere between that Annie had absolutely gotten her ass handed to her by Black Noir.

Diego was worried. He knew why Annie was playing it cool. Her mother was there, and Billy Butcher wasn't exactly someone you wanted to look weak in front of. But she had been hurt, and neither of them had gotten the chance to process that and he just really needed to make sure she was okay.

When everyone seemed to be as settled as they were going to be, he found his way to Annie's side. "Can we talk?"

[Last post for the day, I promise. For the girl! NSFW!]

Comments

[knife_bender]

"That'd be a good reason to stay," he admitted. Homelander was bad even with Maeve around, he couldn't imagine how it could get worse.

"I owe her one, for coming to the rescue," he said. He looked over at the door. "We probably owe Kimiko one too."

There was just absolutely no way she hadn't heard them while guarding the door.

[defenderofdesmoines]

Annie immediately turned a fairly bright shade of red as she glanced over at the door, and then gingerly crouched to pick up the toothpaste she'd knocked over.

Like that was going to fix anything. At all.

"I'll get her...something," Annie decided. "Maybe she'll let me paint her nails for her."

She'd noticed that Kimiko had something of an interest in girly things, and Annie could girly it up with the best of them.

"Think she...heard anything?" she added, lowering her voice a touch more, as though that was going to do anything now.

[knife_bender]

Diego gave her a look. "She'd have to be really into that magazine to not have heard anything."

[defenderofdesmoines]

"At least she's probably not going to tell anyone," Annie tried, blushing a little darker. "Whatever. I think it's understandable, under the circumstances."

She would be a lot less okay with it if she realized that Kimiko was no longer alone out there.

[knife_bender]

"It's definitely understandable." And Kimiko seemed cool, she wouldn't rag on them about it. "You ready to go out and deal with the shitshow out there?"

[defenderofdesmoines]

"No," Annie said immediately, but she was smiling. "But we also can't stay in here forever. Scenic though it is."

She moved over to open the door and stuck her head out to look around the corner where she'd left Kimiko -- and then immediately ducked back in.

"Oh, God." Smooth, Annie.

[knife_bender]

"What?" he asked. "What's wrong?"

[defenderofdesmoines]

"They're all out there."

She had not exactly lingered, but she had at least spotted Frenchie and MM.

Frenchie had given her a thumbs up, because he was kind of an asshole.

"Not Butcher," she added. If Butcher had born witness to this, they would have probably heard about it already.

[knife_bender]

"Oh." Yeah, okay, that wasn't great. "Well we can't live in this bathroom. And you're right, it's understandable."

"...but we are probably going to have to deal with some teasing and looks."

Worth it.

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Fine." Annie took a deep breath, willing her face to, like, settle the fuck down, and opened the door again.

Casually. Normally. Nothing to see, here.

At least MM seemed pretty determined to pretend he hadn't heard anything, considering he didn't even look up from his laptop. Hughie, it seemed, also wanted to pretend he'd heard nothing from where he was sitting by MM, but he did a way worse job of it. "Oh, hey. Didn't even know you guys were here."

Frenchie and Kimiko were settling for smug looks, though. And Frenchie, as everyone now knew from the dick thing, tended to play the long game with stuff like this.