Justin Hammer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
therealgenius) wrote2012-06-02 02:51 pm
therealgenius) wrote2012-06-02 02:51 pm
Entry tags:
a bloo bloo I did a thing
So I don't write fic or whatever but this is a fic I guess and I wrote it and I'm posting it here so you can have it, whoever you are.
Uh I guess warnings for abuse and villainy and stuff.
There was only one mortal on Midgard that retained contact with the Norse god of mischief and fire and yet never kneeled immediately the moment he entered a room.
He was Justin Hammer.
It had been a long five years, more like fifty to his mental and physical state. Imprisoned on another Realm of existence, he hadn’t stayed there long. He hadn’t gotten anything close to a therapist or medications for his insanity and avarice, either, which meant that when he returned, he returned for good.
When he returned, Justin had just gotten settled back into his house in Maine. He’d chosen Maine specifically, close to New York and easy to get in and out of when need be. That and their seafood was unrivaled. He may have had a sweet tooth that could have left every bone in his body rotten to the marrow, but there was a special love for dead marine animals resting in his gut.
So when he’d opened his own door, curious as to who the hell it was, barely awake and in nothing more than pajama pants and an undershirt, his glasses slightly askew, he knew exactly who it was. Loki wasn’t exactly a face that had gone under the radar.
In less than twelve hours, all of Justin funds had come under a joint account. Loki took on a mortal name after some bloody coaxing from a bruised Justin, a miserably jealous CEO having taken refuge in the corner of the living room as far away from his declared new housemate and partner as he possibly could have been. He was surprised he hadn’t lost any teeth that first day, but he knew they couldn’t all stay in his head in the long run.
He’d come back, crazier and driven with more power lust than Justin could have ever imagined. He’d come back and waxed and waned poetic about how honored Justin was, how blessed he should feel, how the walls needed to now be green and the drapes the color of polished gold. It was a single day that seemed to drag on for years and yet, now, was barely even a blip in the lifeline of Justin’s last five years.
Of course the Avengers had come, and warriors from Loki’s homeland, but he had some new power that couldn’t be defeated. The day Captain America had taken Hammer Industries bullets to the heart, skull, and both hands, Justin knew for certain that there was no retiring. There was no getting out in twenty more years with unlimited health benefits, a fine pension, and dental until he died. There was only more rage and pain and being a kept man, even if it was on his own dime.
He’d watched in his room in Loki’s castle, built on the backs of mortals he’d worked until their clothes had fallen off and they’d collapsed from stress and lack of rest. Justin had looked out his window and seen a trail of bodies in the muck and mire of a rainy day’s work, starting just by the castle and ending somewhere he hadn’t seen, simply because he’d turned away immediately and gone to his toilet to get rid of everything in his body. While he was always glad to be alive, he took no joy in the deaths of others, and he was constantly running out reasons to live.
The moment he saw the footage, Justin Hammer had taken off his glasses, hung his head, and cried. The god had been gone for a good week, and he’d never told him. He had inquired if he had seen the news or not, and continued on until Justin was uncomfortably silent and unable to even return with monosyllabic replies. A job well done, in Loki’s book, Justin had always assumed.
He was mostly kept to certain sections: a lab of his own design and making in what would have otherwise been a dungeon, his enormous chambers, the kitchens, and occasionally the “throne room.” He kept up with records and weaponry, and could often be found at the end of the day sitting on the floor between his couch and coffee table with an old-fashion calculator, keeping up with the money lost and money inevitably stolen back and regained.
Some men who played poker had poker faces. Some men, however, had physical or verbal tics that made it obvious when they were bluffing or about to take all the money for themselves. Some clicked their tongue, some ground their teeth together roughly, some sighed in certain ways, some even tapped out specific rhythms with one hand.
Loki’s was so easy to see that Justin knew never to mention it. It was so simple, so obvious, so easy to read that it was impossible for Justin to read his wrong.
If, at the end of the day, the first thing the god did was take off his helmet, it was a good day. Justin didn’t have to get up from what he was doing and get on his knees, eyes trained on the floor, and listen to him rant and rave for hours into the night without saying a word. If he had a bad day, the helmet remained, leaving him a horned, alien demon with a point to make, even if no one but Justin was there to hear it.
On good days, Justin didn’t leave what he was doing. Loki would enter and place his helmet on the desk where Justin rarely worked, run those wicked fingers over one of the horns, sigh, and take a seat. Sometimes he asked about his day, but it was never out of concern, simply someone to talk with, even if his favorite insult was Justin’s inability to create the greatest of weapons with the most funding and equipment one could have ever imagined to obtain.
When Captain America died, the Avengers had all disappeared. At first, Loki had demanded that Justin use any means necessary to track them down, with harsh words and harsher actions. But Justin never really put in a great deal of effort to do so. By the time he’d tracked the master assassins to Austria and Loki appeared, they had fled. Last he knew of Stark and Potts, they’d been squirreled away somewhere in Oregon. As for Banner, he was so good at hiding that any effort would have been, undoubtedly, wasted. The Asgardians were gone for now, at least, to come up with specific strategies to defeat his power. There was talk of Odin, his father who wasn’t his father, at great length for many weeks, about how if he wanted it to end and cared for Midgard, he would have summoned it so. Justin knew more about Loki’s family and life than he could have ever Googled or read in a library, but he never really pitied him.
By this specific night, Justin Hammer was missing three teeth: one of them the front on top, one of them a molar, the other being a canine. Two had been broken beyond repair and had to be pulled, but the third had come straight out. They never stayed empty spaces for long; Loki didn’t like his toys to be broken. Three teeth were completely false, but it was impossible to tell with the dentistry they had in 2017, especially not with the power of Hammer’s money in every sort of field imaginable. It wasn’t all his money, either, but money Loki had given other powerful men and taken back at the end of a blade and dumped back into the bank.
No, the richest man on Midgard was leaning back on his extremely posh couch, staring blankly at the god before him. Sans helmet, which meant he was perfectly safe in his current position. And said, bare-headed god standing in front of him was flipping pages over a speech he was “trying out” on Justin. It was all very Orwellian, something Loki flaunted as his own designing and make, but the only man in the world who knew any differently was sitting in front of him, tie undone and hanging as one long piece of cloth around his neck.
“You already used subjugation twice, Loki, you need to pick another word.”
“They are each at least three minutes apart, Justin, I am certain it will work well.”
If there was something Justin had learned at this point, it was how to flatter Loki in a way that wasn’t obvious at all and certainly rolled off the tongue like no thought had been put behind it.
“All your speeches work well, but if you used the same word repeatedly, people lose interest. You should learn German.”
A quick flash of green eyes, a warning and yet curiosity behind it. “We do not speak of Germany, Justin Hammer.”
“I know, I know. But their language is…very persuasive. If you toss the right German word, or word based from German, at the perfect time, it packs a damn fine punch.”
“How do you mean?”
“It’s a harsh language. Have you ever heard Germans speaking together? They could be talking about having a wonderful day at the park and how much they love each other, and they still sound like they’re ready to spit venom into baby’s eyes and impale their neighbors. There are plenty of words in English with Germanic roots, you should look into it.”
There was a lull; a lull where Loki was thinking as he ran those terrible hands over the paper before him, a lull of contemplation about Justin’s words and not about how to punish him.
Eventually, he stalked around the table to sit on the other end of the couch, flipping to the next page. Justin didn’t bother to watch him, instead rubbing his eyes beneath his glasses. It had been a long day and it was apparently going to be a longer night. He really just wanted to fall asleep, and he wondered how Loki would react if he got a pair of glasses with open eyes drawn on them so he could sleep and not be obvious. They’d be gaudy and cheap, of course, more for a laugh than anything else, and Loki did like some rather simple tricks.
“I will…look into the matter.”
That was about as much of a “you give sound advice” as Justin had come to expect. Loki could have been bleeding out of an artery on the floor without a damn idea what to do, and Justin could have told him to put pressure on it and calm his breathing, and he still wouldn’t say “thank you for that.” Not verbally, at least. He’d probably send up a cake the next day and leave it at that.
“Have you heard the word schadenfreude before?”
“I have not. What is the meaning of it?”
“It’s German, a combination of harm, I believe, and…joy? Elation? Either way, it’s combining the idea of being overjoyed that someone is suffering some sort of pain, any sort of pain at all.”
He cast his glance the god’s way, his face alight in the dancing, small fire across the way and beneath the ridiculously large television plastered above it. He could tell immediately that this word was one Loki would grow very fond of.
“Say it again.”
He repeated it.
“Once more.”
Repeated yet again.
“I like this word. You say it very well. I will have to save it for future use, though not in a speech.”
The tired businessman crossed his arms and leaned against the arm of the couch, making it more and more obvious that he was not up to the task of listening and editing a fifteen-page speech that wouldn’t be delivered for another two weeks.
“Am I bothering you, Justin?”
A year ago, he would jolt, he would placate him with praise and assurances that he certainly was doing no such thing. Now, however, he was too complacent. He would tally how many agonizing screams he’d heard during the day to find a correlation between them and the removal of the helmet, and he knew his “boss” had had one damn fine day. He knew that he was, at least, mildly safe.
“You don’t ever bother me, I’m just tired.”
“If you think you are tired, perhaps I should send you to the site of my newest, most glorious statue and have you worked there until you know the difference between tired and collapsing in your waste, left to die.”
“Yeah, maybe. Go for it. As long as I get a nap on the plane ride, I’ll be fine.”
Clearly, tonight, Justin wasn’t even giving a fuck.
And, clearly, tonight, Loki wasn’t going to go through with his threat. It was empty, but Justin would end up punished in some way or another, not when he was expecting it and not in a way he could have imagined. The Trickster always had an ace up a sleeve and the humor of a villainous joker, and Justin had rarely been able to see anything he would do before it was right in his face. Right in his face because it was being rubbed in so hard he’d never get it out of his pores, his nostrils, his eyelashes.
“I think not. I have a better idea.”
The stapled papers were flung directly at Justin’s head, enough to cause him to sit up and flip through them himself.
“You have heard every one of my speeches, have you not?”
“For the past five years, I have. Yes.”
“Then you will write this one, and if it is not the best I have delivered in the past five years, I will gut you from groin to chin.”
Maybe Justin had something witty to say, but those retorts had long been gone from his arsenal. Quelled, bottled up, beat down until he rarely opened his mouth to say anything without a good five seconds to think it through.
This time, however, he didn’t need a hundredth of a second, because he knew exactly what he wanted. Or, at least, there were two options.
“Do you want me to write it with those you have given me personally in mind, or do you want me to write it from personal experience as your pet and give it in your stead? A twenty-minute presentation on how great, glorious, and ultimately generous our ruler is for freeing us from freedom?”
And, oh, if that fire had been dancing in those terrible eyes before, it was now giving a ballet performance that would be unrivaled. Every tooth the god had seemed to be shining in the light, canines seemed to be sharper, there was nothing about Loki’s body that was anything close to generous in that moment Justin had so quickly put two and two together.
“You have learned well.”
He held his gaze for as long as he could, flipped a page, looked down, and sighed heavily, moving to take off his tie completely and flop it over the couch arm he’d just thought of sleeping against.
“I’ve had a great teacher.” Always the praise, it was what Loki craved, even in the most intimate of moments. “And I have a lot of work to do, so I had better get started, yes?”
“A moment, first.”
The doors opened with a loud snap of two fingers, two of those blue-eyed, glossy servants he kept through his power pushing in a large, squeaking cart. Atop it lay a piping hot roast surrounded with vegetables that were in no way native to the region they were in, two small plates, two large plates, one small cake covered in Justin’s favorite icing, one bottle of champagne, and two flutes on either side. Utensils were, he assumed, kept in the little section beneath the top, as well as…whatever Loki had commanded be there.
Tired eyes looked over the cart curiously, then back to the god, now pleased and contented to a point that would make most men fit to burst.
“It is our five year anniversary, Justin Hammer.”
Another snap, the cart left to them, and them left to themselves.
“Five years is a long time for business partners, I have read this much. Let us share a meal, then, yes? I had it prepared just to the way you liked it, and I know you are partial to butter cream, are you not?”
Quietly, so quietly the fire may have drowned it out if it cracked at the moment the word left his lips, all Justin said was: “Thanks.”
Uh I guess warnings for abuse and villainy and stuff.
There was only one mortal on Midgard that retained contact with the Norse god of mischief and fire and yet never kneeled immediately the moment he entered a room.
He was Justin Hammer.
It had been a long five years, more like fifty to his mental and physical state. Imprisoned on another Realm of existence, he hadn’t stayed there long. He hadn’t gotten anything close to a therapist or medications for his insanity and avarice, either, which meant that when he returned, he returned for good.
When he returned, Justin had just gotten settled back into his house in Maine. He’d chosen Maine specifically, close to New York and easy to get in and out of when need be. That and their seafood was unrivaled. He may have had a sweet tooth that could have left every bone in his body rotten to the marrow, but there was a special love for dead marine animals resting in his gut.
So when he’d opened his own door, curious as to who the hell it was, barely awake and in nothing more than pajama pants and an undershirt, his glasses slightly askew, he knew exactly who it was. Loki wasn’t exactly a face that had gone under the radar.
In less than twelve hours, all of Justin funds had come under a joint account. Loki took on a mortal name after some bloody coaxing from a bruised Justin, a miserably jealous CEO having taken refuge in the corner of the living room as far away from his declared new housemate and partner as he possibly could have been. He was surprised he hadn’t lost any teeth that first day, but he knew they couldn’t all stay in his head in the long run.
He’d come back, crazier and driven with more power lust than Justin could have ever imagined. He’d come back and waxed and waned poetic about how honored Justin was, how blessed he should feel, how the walls needed to now be green and the drapes the color of polished gold. It was a single day that seemed to drag on for years and yet, now, was barely even a blip in the lifeline of Justin’s last five years.
Of course the Avengers had come, and warriors from Loki’s homeland, but he had some new power that couldn’t be defeated. The day Captain America had taken Hammer Industries bullets to the heart, skull, and both hands, Justin knew for certain that there was no retiring. There was no getting out in twenty more years with unlimited health benefits, a fine pension, and dental until he died. There was only more rage and pain and being a kept man, even if it was on his own dime.
He’d watched in his room in Loki’s castle, built on the backs of mortals he’d worked until their clothes had fallen off and they’d collapsed from stress and lack of rest. Justin had looked out his window and seen a trail of bodies in the muck and mire of a rainy day’s work, starting just by the castle and ending somewhere he hadn’t seen, simply because he’d turned away immediately and gone to his toilet to get rid of everything in his body. While he was always glad to be alive, he took no joy in the deaths of others, and he was constantly running out reasons to live.
The moment he saw the footage, Justin Hammer had taken off his glasses, hung his head, and cried. The god had been gone for a good week, and he’d never told him. He had inquired if he had seen the news or not, and continued on until Justin was uncomfortably silent and unable to even return with monosyllabic replies. A job well done, in Loki’s book, Justin had always assumed.
He was mostly kept to certain sections: a lab of his own design and making in what would have otherwise been a dungeon, his enormous chambers, the kitchens, and occasionally the “throne room.” He kept up with records and weaponry, and could often be found at the end of the day sitting on the floor between his couch and coffee table with an old-fashion calculator, keeping up with the money lost and money inevitably stolen back and regained.
Some men who played poker had poker faces. Some men, however, had physical or verbal tics that made it obvious when they were bluffing or about to take all the money for themselves. Some clicked their tongue, some ground their teeth together roughly, some sighed in certain ways, some even tapped out specific rhythms with one hand.
Loki’s was so easy to see that Justin knew never to mention it. It was so simple, so obvious, so easy to read that it was impossible for Justin to read his wrong.
If, at the end of the day, the first thing the god did was take off his helmet, it was a good day. Justin didn’t have to get up from what he was doing and get on his knees, eyes trained on the floor, and listen to him rant and rave for hours into the night without saying a word. If he had a bad day, the helmet remained, leaving him a horned, alien demon with a point to make, even if no one but Justin was there to hear it.
On good days, Justin didn’t leave what he was doing. Loki would enter and place his helmet on the desk where Justin rarely worked, run those wicked fingers over one of the horns, sigh, and take a seat. Sometimes he asked about his day, but it was never out of concern, simply someone to talk with, even if his favorite insult was Justin’s inability to create the greatest of weapons with the most funding and equipment one could have ever imagined to obtain.
When Captain America died, the Avengers had all disappeared. At first, Loki had demanded that Justin use any means necessary to track them down, with harsh words and harsher actions. But Justin never really put in a great deal of effort to do so. By the time he’d tracked the master assassins to Austria and Loki appeared, they had fled. Last he knew of Stark and Potts, they’d been squirreled away somewhere in Oregon. As for Banner, he was so good at hiding that any effort would have been, undoubtedly, wasted. The Asgardians were gone for now, at least, to come up with specific strategies to defeat his power. There was talk of Odin, his father who wasn’t his father, at great length for many weeks, about how if he wanted it to end and cared for Midgard, he would have summoned it so. Justin knew more about Loki’s family and life than he could have ever Googled or read in a library, but he never really pitied him.
By this specific night, Justin Hammer was missing three teeth: one of them the front on top, one of them a molar, the other being a canine. Two had been broken beyond repair and had to be pulled, but the third had come straight out. They never stayed empty spaces for long; Loki didn’t like his toys to be broken. Three teeth were completely false, but it was impossible to tell with the dentistry they had in 2017, especially not with the power of Hammer’s money in every sort of field imaginable. It wasn’t all his money, either, but money Loki had given other powerful men and taken back at the end of a blade and dumped back into the bank.
No, the richest man on Midgard was leaning back on his extremely posh couch, staring blankly at the god before him. Sans helmet, which meant he was perfectly safe in his current position. And said, bare-headed god standing in front of him was flipping pages over a speech he was “trying out” on Justin. It was all very Orwellian, something Loki flaunted as his own designing and make, but the only man in the world who knew any differently was sitting in front of him, tie undone and hanging as one long piece of cloth around his neck.
“You already used subjugation twice, Loki, you need to pick another word.”
“They are each at least three minutes apart, Justin, I am certain it will work well.”
If there was something Justin had learned at this point, it was how to flatter Loki in a way that wasn’t obvious at all and certainly rolled off the tongue like no thought had been put behind it.
“All your speeches work well, but if you used the same word repeatedly, people lose interest. You should learn German.”
A quick flash of green eyes, a warning and yet curiosity behind it. “We do not speak of Germany, Justin Hammer.”
“I know, I know. But their language is…very persuasive. If you toss the right German word, or word based from German, at the perfect time, it packs a damn fine punch.”
“How do you mean?”
“It’s a harsh language. Have you ever heard Germans speaking together? They could be talking about having a wonderful day at the park and how much they love each other, and they still sound like they’re ready to spit venom into baby’s eyes and impale their neighbors. There are plenty of words in English with Germanic roots, you should look into it.”
There was a lull; a lull where Loki was thinking as he ran those terrible hands over the paper before him, a lull of contemplation about Justin’s words and not about how to punish him.
Eventually, he stalked around the table to sit on the other end of the couch, flipping to the next page. Justin didn’t bother to watch him, instead rubbing his eyes beneath his glasses. It had been a long day and it was apparently going to be a longer night. He really just wanted to fall asleep, and he wondered how Loki would react if he got a pair of glasses with open eyes drawn on them so he could sleep and not be obvious. They’d be gaudy and cheap, of course, more for a laugh than anything else, and Loki did like some rather simple tricks.
“I will…look into the matter.”
That was about as much of a “you give sound advice” as Justin had come to expect. Loki could have been bleeding out of an artery on the floor without a damn idea what to do, and Justin could have told him to put pressure on it and calm his breathing, and he still wouldn’t say “thank you for that.” Not verbally, at least. He’d probably send up a cake the next day and leave it at that.
“Have you heard the word schadenfreude before?”
“I have not. What is the meaning of it?”
“It’s German, a combination of harm, I believe, and…joy? Elation? Either way, it’s combining the idea of being overjoyed that someone is suffering some sort of pain, any sort of pain at all.”
He cast his glance the god’s way, his face alight in the dancing, small fire across the way and beneath the ridiculously large television plastered above it. He could tell immediately that this word was one Loki would grow very fond of.
“Say it again.”
He repeated it.
“Once more.”
Repeated yet again.
“I like this word. You say it very well. I will have to save it for future use, though not in a speech.”
The tired businessman crossed his arms and leaned against the arm of the couch, making it more and more obvious that he was not up to the task of listening and editing a fifteen-page speech that wouldn’t be delivered for another two weeks.
“Am I bothering you, Justin?”
A year ago, he would jolt, he would placate him with praise and assurances that he certainly was doing no such thing. Now, however, he was too complacent. He would tally how many agonizing screams he’d heard during the day to find a correlation between them and the removal of the helmet, and he knew his “boss” had had one damn fine day. He knew that he was, at least, mildly safe.
“You don’t ever bother me, I’m just tired.”
“If you think you are tired, perhaps I should send you to the site of my newest, most glorious statue and have you worked there until you know the difference between tired and collapsing in your waste, left to die.”
“Yeah, maybe. Go for it. As long as I get a nap on the plane ride, I’ll be fine.”
Clearly, tonight, Justin wasn’t even giving a fuck.
And, clearly, tonight, Loki wasn’t going to go through with his threat. It was empty, but Justin would end up punished in some way or another, not when he was expecting it and not in a way he could have imagined. The Trickster always had an ace up a sleeve and the humor of a villainous joker, and Justin had rarely been able to see anything he would do before it was right in his face. Right in his face because it was being rubbed in so hard he’d never get it out of his pores, his nostrils, his eyelashes.
“I think not. I have a better idea.”
The stapled papers were flung directly at Justin’s head, enough to cause him to sit up and flip through them himself.
“You have heard every one of my speeches, have you not?”
“For the past five years, I have. Yes.”
“Then you will write this one, and if it is not the best I have delivered in the past five years, I will gut you from groin to chin.”
Maybe Justin had something witty to say, but those retorts had long been gone from his arsenal. Quelled, bottled up, beat down until he rarely opened his mouth to say anything without a good five seconds to think it through.
This time, however, he didn’t need a hundredth of a second, because he knew exactly what he wanted. Or, at least, there were two options.
“Do you want me to write it with those you have given me personally in mind, or do you want me to write it from personal experience as your pet and give it in your stead? A twenty-minute presentation on how great, glorious, and ultimately generous our ruler is for freeing us from freedom?”
And, oh, if that fire had been dancing in those terrible eyes before, it was now giving a ballet performance that would be unrivaled. Every tooth the god had seemed to be shining in the light, canines seemed to be sharper, there was nothing about Loki’s body that was anything close to generous in that moment Justin had so quickly put two and two together.
“You have learned well.”
He held his gaze for as long as he could, flipped a page, looked down, and sighed heavily, moving to take off his tie completely and flop it over the couch arm he’d just thought of sleeping against.
“I’ve had a great teacher.” Always the praise, it was what Loki craved, even in the most intimate of moments. “And I have a lot of work to do, so I had better get started, yes?”
“A moment, first.”
The doors opened with a loud snap of two fingers, two of those blue-eyed, glossy servants he kept through his power pushing in a large, squeaking cart. Atop it lay a piping hot roast surrounded with vegetables that were in no way native to the region they were in, two small plates, two large plates, one small cake covered in Justin’s favorite icing, one bottle of champagne, and two flutes on either side. Utensils were, he assumed, kept in the little section beneath the top, as well as…whatever Loki had commanded be there.
Tired eyes looked over the cart curiously, then back to the god, now pleased and contented to a point that would make most men fit to burst.
“It is our five year anniversary, Justin Hammer.”
Another snap, the cart left to them, and them left to themselves.
“Five years is a long time for business partners, I have read this much. Let us share a meal, then, yes? I had it prepared just to the way you liked it, and I know you are partial to butter cream, are you not?”
Quietly, so quietly the fire may have drowned it out if it cracked at the moment the word left his lips, all Justin said was: “Thanks.”