Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Only you would manage to piss off the Inhuman who’s weaponized teleportation,” Daisy complained. She rubbed at her arms fitfully. She had a small quake bubble around them, to keep them out of the waist deep snows.

“He wasn’t trying to kill us,” Robbie said. There was nothing but snow as far as he could see in every direction. One minute they were talking to an Inhuman who called himself Skipper -- well, arguing, because Skipper had information they needed about a possible murderer, who’d taken out two Inhumans in the last week, and they had good reason to suspect that the murderer had gone to Skipper for a quick ride out of town -- and the next, they were in the middle of what was probably the fucking arctic circle.

“You think not?” Daisy’s voice went up in a hysterical pitch. “We’re gonna freeze to death. I can’t quakeride fast enough to get us out of here before we die!”

“If he wanted t’ kill us, he’d have teleported us to the bottom of the ocean. Squish.”

“Thanks, needed that thought,” Daisy said, her teeth chattering so hard she was barely understandable.

Robbie wasn’t cold. Not that Skipper could have known that, but Robbie had a demon inside him that kept him warm. “Come here, you,” Robbie said, pulling Daisy into his arms. She hesitated, but as soon as she realized how much heat he was putting out, she practically crawled inside his jacket.

“My own portable fireplace,” she muttered. “Do we have a plan for not dying?”

Truth, Robbie did, but he was about to give away another one of his big secrets. And it wasn’t that he didn’t trust Daisy, but he wasn’t sure about SHIELD yet. Maybe he could turn it around, though, because while he trusted Daisy, she was also a SHIELD agent, and if he were her, he would have bugged the Hell Charger, too.

“Do you trust me?”

Daisy was in his arms, where he’d wanted her to be for weeks now, deny it as he might, and she was shivering like a leaf in a gale force storm.

She nodded, curling closer. “Unless you’re planning to take us to Hell, and right now I don’t know that I’d even mind that.”

“Sort of,” Robbie said. “I need you to deactivate the bug in the Hell Charger.”

“What? How… shit. You knew?”

“Not until just now, but I could have guessed. As soon as it gets here. I don’t want SHIELD to know everything I’m capable of.”

“I guess you must trust me.”

You could call it trust, Robbie guessed. More like obsession. Wanting, needing, craving. He couldn’t leave her to die, and that was his only other option. “About as far as I can throw you,” Robbie teased.

“That’s pretty far,” Daisy said. “All right. Get us the hell out of here.”

Robbie couldn’t help it. She was right there, in his arms, her mouth trembling, snowflakes in her eyelashes. He lowered his mouth to hers and pressed a brief, heated kiss to her lips. “For luck.”

Daisy touched her mouth. “We’re gonna need to talk about that, Reyes.”

“Later.”

The Hell Charger appeared with a roar of demon engine, steam clouding the air as the snowflakes melted on contact with the superheated metal of the car.

“How--”

“Hell Charger’s a part of me,” Robbie said. “As long as I’m on the planet, she can come to me. Get the bug, destroy it.”

Daisy scrambled into the passenger side and shoved her hand between the cushion and the back of the seat, pulling out a small, plastic tab. She handed it over, and the Ghost Rider surfaced just long enough to melt it into scrap.

“Get in, girlfriend,” Robbie said. “We’re driving back to Florida.”