Chapter Text
Loki sat beside Thor at the open bar area, turning just enough in his stool to keep the dance floor in view. From where they were, the whole room seemed to move in waves. Colored lights swept over the crowd, catching on sequins, glass, masks, bare shoulders, and sweat-sheened skin. Somewhere behind them, bottles clinked, ice cracked, and the bartender kept working without pause.
Thor, already seated, set down what would be the first of many empty beer mugs and pushed it forward.
“Another!”
Then, after the slightest pause—
“Please.”
Loki laughed under the red mask. “A very subtle start, brother.”
Thor took the fresh mug the second it was set down. He drank deeply, wiped the foam from his upper lip with the back of his arm, and leaned one elbow onto the bar as he looked back over the crowd.
Loki’s attention drifted there too, but his mind was somewhere else.
The Valkyrie.
Loki lowered his voice. “Brother…”
Thor turned toward him through the Wolverine mask. “What?”
Loki kept his eyes on the crowd. “The Valkyrie from earlier… Was that the girl from the garden? The one with Spider-Man?”
Thor nearly choked on his beer.
He coughed once, pulled the mug away from his mouth, and stared at Loki in disbelief.
“No chance,” he said, still recovering. “Miguel would never have left her alone. Not in a place like this.” He took another drink and gestured faintly toward the dance floor. “You know he would be all over her like a bodyguard if she were looking like that.”
Loki’s eyes narrowed behind the mask.
Thor set the second mug down and glanced toward the bartender again, who was already reaching for another. He let the noise between them sit for a second, his hand still resting beside the drink, before he finally looked back at Loki.
“I know you did not want to come to that lunch that day at the gardens,” he said, quieter now. “I’m sorry about that. Jane did not enjoy it much either.”
Loki looked at him, surprised enough that it nearly showed. For all Thor’s bluntness, apologies never came lightly from him.
He let his own voice soften. “No need, brother. I did not mind it as much as you think.”
He meant it.
At least more than Thor expected.
Loki leaned back against the bar, hooked two fingers under the bottom edge of the mask, and pulled it up just enough to knock back a quick shot of whiskey. The burn hit fast and clean. He dropped the mask back into place and sat there for a second with the taste of it still sharp on his tongue.
Afterwards, he slid off the stool and headed into the crowd.
Thor glanced at him.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
Loki started walking backward through the edge of the crowd, one hand already raised in a lazy wave.
“To do what I do best.”
Thor frowned. “And what is that?”
Loki flashed him a sideways peace sign.
“Cause mischief.”
Thor watched him go for a moment, then turned back to the bartender.
“Three more of these, please.”
A little later, Task Force 141 arrived.
Halloween had always been one of the few nights Ghost and König could step outside looking almost exactly like themselves and still pass unnoticed. Masks and tactical gear disappeared easily among cheap military costumes and plastic weapons, letting them move through the crowd without drawing the kind of attention they usually did.
They had pregamed just enough to take the edge off. Not enough to be sloppy, but enough that the line between relaxed and reckless had started to blur.
König stood at the entrance of the mansion with his hands resting at his belt, staring up at the place as though he was reconsidering every choice that had led him there.
“You sure this is the right place?”
Ghost took in the lit windows, the bass shaking through the walls, the bodies spilling across the front steps and balconies.
“What the fuck do you think?”
König’s gaze drifted back to the crowd. “Do you not think we are a little too old for this?”
Ghost turned toward him as they started walking. “Should’ve thought of that before you got in the bloody car.”
König nodded once, accepting the point, then immediately looked like he was having second thoughts again.
Ghost slung an arm around him for a moment and steered him toward the door. “Oh, come off it. It’s the one day a year we blend in. We drink their liquor, flirt with nice girls, and leave before anyone starts talking too much.”
König looked at him. “I feel like I’m living my midlife crisis.”
“Nah mate,” Ghost said. “I’ve seen worse than this.”
A girl in glitter and angel wings nearly ran into them on her way inside, screaming something incomprehensible at her friends before disappearing into the house.
König watched her go.
“If you say so.”
Inside, the party had already reached the point where people had stopped pretending not to be drunk.
The place was packed shoulder to shoulder. People were dancing, shouting over the music, kissing in corners, or disappearing down hallways with people they had probably met less than an hour ago.
A guy in a lab coat pushed between them, carrying a large cardboard box full of BuzzBalls, seltzers, canned cocktails, and whatever else had been selected in panic by whoever was trying to keep the party supplied.
“Ah—sorry, guys! Nice costumes!” he said breathlessly.
Ghost was already reaching toward the box. “Mind if I have one of those?”
“Yeah, sure,” the guy said immediately. “We’re just restocking. People are drinking way more than we thought.”
“You don’t say,” König muttered.
“Hell yeah!” the guy said, leaning in like he was about to share something important. He pointed across the room. “See that Wolverine over there?”
Ghost and König both looked.
Thor, in the Wolverine suit, was halfway against the bar with a random cluster of guys around him, telling some broad, animated story with his beer lifted in one hand.
“—and then I told her,” Thor boomed, clearly loud enough to carry over the music, “for you to claim to be someone sooo brilliant, you do make some deeply questionable choices!”
The group around him burst into laughter.
Ghost and König looked at each other. Both of them seemed to arrive at the same thought at once.
Fucking Americans.
Ghost took a drink. “Yeah.”
The guy in the lab coat kept talking. “That dude’s on, like, his thirtieth drink. That is easily four hundred dollars’ worth of alcohol.”
“Then start charging him,” König said. By some small miracle, he already had a drink in his hand too.
“Nah,” the guy said. “He’s keeping the party alive. Him and that Deadpool guy. I think they came in together.”
Ghost and König only stared at him.
Before either of them could answer, a voice cut through the noise from somewhere across the room.
“Ethan! Come help me with these!”
The guy shifted the box higher against his hip, already turning. “Alright, I’ve gotta go. Enjoy yourselves.”
Ghost raised his drink in something close to a salute. König followed a second later, just as half-hearted, and Ethan disappeared back into the crowd.
Ghost watched him go. “He’s going to be disappointed when he figures out our tolerance.”
König tapped his glass lightly against Ghost’s.
“Cheers to that.”
After you lost [Bsf/N] in a way you could not really explain, you somehow ended up folded into a group of girls who had adopted you as their own.
That was the strange logic of parties like this.
Sometimes people simply claimed you.
You took shots with them, danced with them, and listened while they pointed out half the room and explained who was worth trusting, who was not, and which names at the party actually mattered. They had taken over one of the curved booth areas near the back, and you sat among them with your cranberry vodka and your Valkyrie cape half slipping off one shoulder, nodding along like you knew any of the people they were talking about.
“Murdock fucking killed it,” one of them said, pointing somewhere across the room.
Another girl groaned in agreement. “He’s so hot. I wish he was around campus more.”
You had no idea who the hell Murdock was, but you were invested anyway. The alcohol had made everything feel warmer and more immediate, even conversations you should have had no reason to care about. Your body felt loose and light, your thoughts still there but moving a second slower than usual.
One of the girls, dressed as Blossom despite clearly having lost both Bubbles and Buttercup somewhere earlier, stood up suddenly.
“Ugh. I need to go to the bathroom.”
You sat up immediately. “Me too.”
And you meant it.
You had been drinking enough water between shots to avoid regretting everything the next day, but by now, you were fairly sure you had crossed the line from tipsy into fully gone.
Blossom grabbed you by the arm and started leading you through the crowd. For some reason, you found that deeply funny, like you had been selected for some sort of secret mission. You giggled once as you cut between bodies and spilled drinks and flashes of colored light.
Then, at some point, the arm was gone.
You pace slowed as you began looking around the room.
Bodies everywhere.
Faces you didn’t know.
A thousand moving lights.
“Blossom?” you called, then realized with delayed horror that you did not actually know the girl’s real name.
You turned one way, then the other, trying to find Blossom again, but the crowd kept shifting around you, taller and broader and louder than it had felt a second ago. Someone knocked your shoulder. Another person laughed too close to your ear. The music pressed harder through the room, bass crawling up through the floor until everything felt packed too tight.
“Blossom?” you called again.
You turned too fast.
And walked straight into someone’s chest.
A very broad chest.
A hand caught your arm before you could stumble back, steadying you with barely any effort.
“Ah. My bad, love.”
You looked up.
Way up.
Your brain, slow but still fighting for its life, took a second to catch up. You blinked at the skull mask, squinted harder, then lifted one finger and pointed right at him.
“Oh my God—” You laughed, nearly tripping over your own feet as you leaned back to look at him. “You’re the guy from the lab! Crossbones!”
“Shh. Shh, shh. No not him!” Ghost answered.
He kept hold of you, steady and careful, lowering himself just enough to meet you closer to eye level. Then he lifted one gloved finger to the mouth of the skull mask.
“Secret, remember?”
You stared at him, your head giving one loose, delayed wobble.
“What?”
Ghost glanced over your shoulder once, then touched the side of his comm and muttered something too low for you to catch.
His hand found yours before your mind had time to catch up.
“Come with me,” he said, nodding toward the hall.
He was already moving when he said it. You stumbled one step after him, then another, letting him draw you through the crowd while your thoughts lagged a few seconds behind. His grip stayed firm without turning rough, warm even through the glove, and people shifted out of his way without needing to be told.
“Where are you taking me?” you asked, the words dragging softly together.
“You’ll see soon enough, sweetheart.”
You stayed quiet
You weren’t exactly sure what you were supposed to do, but your body had already decided to follow. The careful part of your mind was moving too slowly to argue, and the rest of you didn’t feel afraid. You had met Ghost before. König too. They were strange, sure, and probably dangerous in ways you did not have the patience to unpack right now, but Ghost’s hand was steady around yours and the crowd kept opening around him.
A laugh slipped out of you before you could stop it.
A tall, handsome man in a skull mask was leading you into another room, and somehow that felt less like a warning and more like the start of an adventure.
Ghost led you off the main floor and into a quieter hallway, then up a set of stairs toward the west wing, where the music dulled from a roar to a heavy pulse behind the walls.
The library felt different the second you stepped inside.
It was still part of the party, technically, but the chaos had thinned out. Warm lamps replaced the strobe lights. Bookshelves climbed the walls from floor to ceiling, and small groups had gathered into leather chairs and shadowed corners, talking low over their drinks. A couple kissed between the shelves, half-hidden by old hardcovers and amber light. There was still noise, still music, still laughter bleeding in from the rest of the mansion, but none of it crashed into you the way it had downstairs.
König was waiting in one of the far corners.
He lifted one hand from his drink and pointed at you, the motion loose and lazy.
“You sure that’s the girl?” he asked, sounding drunk enough to stop pretending otherwise.
Ghost let go of your hand and reached into his backpack. “Yeah.”
He pulled out a water bottle and held it toward you.
“Drink this, hon.”
You nodded and took it, fumbling with the cap for a second before getting it open. “Thanks.”
Ghost leaned one shoulder against the bookcase beside you. “Funny place to be seeing you.”
You lifted the water bottle and drank before answering, mostly because your mouth needed the help and partly because your brain was still arranging the words in the right order. Ghost waited, watching you over the dark rim of the skull mask.
You lowered the bottle with a small breath. “Yeah, well…” You wiped your thumb under your bottom lip and looked between him and König. “It’s not all petri dishes and microscopes. Sometimes people take breaks, you know.”
König gave a low hum from his corner, lifting his drink slightly. “Don’t we know it.”
Ghost’s eyes flicked toward him. “Some of us know it too well.”
That made you smile, but it also pulled your mind back to the last time you’d seen them; all that chaos in the lab, and their trip to the X-Mansion.
“So,” you said, still holding the water bottle, “did y’all visit Doctor McCoy yet?”
Ghost looked up at you more fully now.
“How do you know about that?”
You let out a soft laugh and glanced down at your shoes, almost amused with yourself. “You two aren’t exactly subtle. It was an empty lab. I could hear you from across the room.”
König gave the smallest reaction at that. Ghost only watched you.
Usually, he would have been the first to notice when König started slipping, when a mission detail turned into a loose end because too much alcohol had dulled his judgment. But here, in the warm quiet of the library with a half-drunk girl looking at him like she’d already decided he was more interesting than he should be, his own guard had loosened first.
“Yeah,” he said at last. “We left the vials with him.”
You laughed under your breath and took another sip of water. “Not all of them…”
Ghost caught it immediately.
“What?” His brow shifted beneath the skull mask.
König glanced up too. “Yeah. I’d like to know.”
THUMP
Before you could answer, a stack of books dropped hard from a nearby shelf.
All three of you turned.
A few loose pages fluttered down after them, settling across the carpet in a lazy scatter. For a second, nobody moved. Ghost stared at the shelf. König stared at the books. You blinked at both, waiting for your drunk brain to decide whether this counted as important.
Nothing else happened.
Ghost’s hand eased away from his side.
König took another drink. “Anyways,” he said casually, “it’s their problem now.”
“We made a decent trade" Ghost added. "The vials for more of their SHIELD manpower. Things are getting nasty out in the east. More of them every day. We can’t afford to spend more time trying to play scientists when they need us out there.”
You tilted your head, “And you still don’t know where it came from?”
Ghost shifted his weight and straightened just a little. “Well, after that McCoy lad analyzed it, we started seeing patterns that pointed back to an old lab. One that supposedly isn’t operating anymore.” He paused. “Or isn’t supposed to exist.”
Your interest sharpened. The water had started taking the edge off the alcohol, not enough to sober you, but enough to steady your thoughts into something you could follow.
“Ah…”
You adjusted where you sat against the edge of the table.
“So where do you go from there?” you asked. “Do you trace whoever worked there before? Or do you go back to fighting them back home?”
König finally stepped in, sounding tired of the whole thing. “God, can we not keep talking about this bloody mission?” He rose to his feet and rubbed the back of his neck. “I came here to be off the clock, not on it.”
Ghost gave a small nod. “Yeah.”
You looked between them, the question still sitting on your tongue, but something in Ghost’s stare made you swallow it down.
“Fine.”
A short silence passed.
Then your eyes moved from König to Ghost, taking in their gear, their size, the fact that both of them looked wildly out of place and somehow not out of place at all. A smile tugging at your mouth.
Your brow lifted. “Aren’t y’all a little too old to be partying with college kids?”
König turned to Ghost, instantly vindicated. He gave him a look that said 'There. You hear that?'
But Ghost didn’t react. Instead, he pushed off the shelf and walked toward you, slow enough that every step registered. His beer hung loose in one hand. There was nothing rushed in his movement, but it made you straighten all the same.
He stopped in front of you. Close enough now that you had to tilt your head back to keep looking at him.
“Aren’t you a little too young,” he said, voice low and even, “to be asking older men questions like that, sweetheart?”
Warmth climbed into your face before you could stop it. Your back pressed a little farther into the table behind you, palms flattening against the wood while you looked up at him through the alcohol and the nerves twisting together in your stomach.
Ghost’s gaze dropped to your hands for half a second, catching the way your fingers curled against the edge. When he looked back at you, the skull mask tilted slightly, and he let the silence stretch just long enough to make your pulse jump.
You opened your mouth, determined not to let him win that easily.
“Well, maybe you shoul—d—”
But your voice thinned before you could finish.
Something moved over Ghost’s shoulder, near the doorway leading back into the hall. At first, it was only a dark shape caught between corridor light and library warmth, half-hidden by two people talking near the entrance.
Then one of them shifted.
Your attention fixed on the second man.
He stood half-turned, listening more than speaking, but everything about him pulled your focus anyway. Black clothes swallowed most of the light around him. A long coat fell clean from his shoulders, flashing deep wine-red inside whenever he moved. Beneath it, fitted dark layers framed a burgundy vest that made the whole outfit feel far more deliberate than the costumes around him.
You went quiet.
Ghost stayed close, still waiting on the answer you had forgotten to give.
“Maybe I should do what, darling?” he asked, dipping his head slightly, his voice soft enough to pull at the edge of your attention.
You barely even heard him.
Because now the man in the hallway moved again, and what had first caught you as a silhouette, sharpened into something more.
A strong, sculpted face.
Dark hair pushed back loosely, a few pieces falling forward just enough to soften the severity of the rest of him. Sharp cheekbones. A broad jaw. The lower half of his face looked even more defined in the low light, the kind of face that already carried too much intensity before adding anything else.
And then he turned a little more—
And the eye caught the light.
Red.
Bright, unnatural red.
You went still.
The costume suddenly made sense; dark coat, wine-red lining, dramatic height and a vampire sharpness.
Your stomach dropped. The alcohol haze thinned all at once, leaving you staring past Ghost at the figure in the hall.
Ghost was still in front of you, close enough to block part of your view, waiting for an answer you no longer remembered. You lifted a hand and pressed lightly against his chest, nudging him aside just enough to see.
He stiffened under your palm, more confused by the change in your face than by the touch itself. König noticed it too. A second later, both men followed your stare toward the doorway.
You kept looking at the man in the hall, your voice coming out louder than you meant.
“Miguel?!”