When Gracie Met The Grump

by Mariana Zapata

“Eat the nutrition bar,” a bossy voice said from somewhere close by. I closed my eyes instead.

I was shaking so hard my teeth rattled.

I found The Defender’s face looking down at me. All smooth, unreal skin. All that perfect bone structure. Those beautifully shaped and colored eyes. All that wrapped into one being.

And he was letting me use his leg as a pillow? Why did that suddenly seem like the nicest thing in the whole world? And why did it make me want to cry?

“Why are you so beautiful?” I whispered.

“Your fever is worse,” he said. “Get better.” “I can’t…” Why was I so out of breath? “Just get better.” “Wrong. Make it happen.”

“Get better,” he insisted in that familiar, rich voice. I groaned some more and rolled onto my side again, still on his leg. On his thigh. “Gracie….” I closed my eyes.

My fever was getting worse—or was already there. I could feel how hard my body was fighting. How even my spine hurt. My throat felt like I’d swallowed a couple hundred rocks with no water. I burned up while I slept.

I was shivering, and I frowned at how dry my throat was. And it was that distraction that had me noticing that I wasn’t just sitting up, my back was propped up against something that wasn’t the wall. What…?

There was a thigh on either side of me, two big feet planted flat on the floor. It was on those raised knees that a wrist was propped up on each of them. It was the full-looking forearms covered in a familiar, gray-colored material that had me blinking. They were connected to sturdy elbows and full, strong biceps bracketing my shoulders. I was wrapped up in the hoodie. Buzzing bare skin was touching parts of me.

Scrunching up my face, I licked my lips and tried to tilt my head back and to the side. He didn’t make it easy for me either, not moving at all. It wasn’t until the back of my head touched what had to be his shoulder, my cheek to his bare chest...

The thigh at my hip seemed to bulge at the seams of the sweatpants he had on. He’d put my head on it. More than once, I was pretty positive. Tipping my head, my eyes stung, and those dark eyelashes dropped, and the man who looked an awful lot like The Defender, but better, scowled.

“What are you crying for?” He frowned. I felt one little tear slide down my cheek a moment before I whispered, “Am I… dead?” His snicker caught me off guard. “You’re not fucking dead.” His chest was almost warm, and my skin tingled just a little bit where it touched his. “Are you sure?”

It looked like someone had lit a flashlight beneath his skin, making him damn near practically glow with health or power, or maybe even both.

I reached up with an arm that felt too heavy and touched his cheek lightly, taking in the firmness. He felt real.

“You really are pretty.” “And you’re sick and could use mouthwash,” the grump replied. It was so mean, but I still snorted weakly, and the familiar-unfamiliar face scowled down at me even more. “Stop it.” “You keep saying that like I have a choice,” I croaked.

The thigh on my right pressed closer to my hip.

“Why are you still here?” I asked before I could stop myself and really think about what I was pointing out to him. “Can’t you leave already?” Those purple eyes bore into me, an...

“You want me to leave you?” My neck felt too weak to shake my head. “No.” I swallowed, regretting waking up. “But I’m surprised you didn’t. This isn’t your business.” His expression darkened. “I don’t go back on my word.”

I closed my eyes and leaned even more against him, totally fucking wiped out. “I wouldn’t want to be here without you.” I swallowed, flicking my finger against the soft material of the hoodie. “It makes me feel better that we’re both miserable.” His chest made a strange motion against my cheek. “You like me being miserable?” he asked, his voice funny.

“I would be so scared here alone, but I don’t want them to get you.” “They won’t.” “How do you know?” “Because there’s no one in the facility but a couple guards, and they don’t have any plans to come over here,”

“That’s why… you’re still here?” I asked instead. “You’re too sick to move,” he said, like that explained everything. “I’m not going to risk it when we have time.”

“But… you can’t wait too long because then you won’t be able to get out.” He made a noise that almost sounded like a snort. “We’re getting the fuck out of here.”

“I told you, nothing made on this planet can hold me back. Not once I’ve regained what was taken from me.”

I sighed, weakly, exhausted and feeling like total shit. “I’m sorry I’m holding you back.” His broad chest did that funny almost-hiccupping sound. “You should be; it’s annoying.” Surprised, I glanced up at him. The son of a bitch blinked. “You’re… annoying,” I whispered. Rude.

His gaze ran over my face for what felt like a long time. The muscles at his cheeks flexed, and even his throat bobbed. He didn’t exactly sound happy about it, but he still said it. “I owe you my life, Gracie.”

Those eyes glowed for a second. “I take it seriously.” He sounded like it. “You could have told them who I was, and that might have made them stop what they did to you.” He took a deep breath that I felt more than heard. “You tried to protect me.”

“We’re going to get out of here,” he claimed, sounding for once exactly how I’d imagined The Defender talking—serious and powerful with just a hint of arrogance. “I promise.” What a promise that was.

I sensed my body being moved once or twice in the time that came afterward, and I definitely felt my cheek and head resting on what felt like a leg or something else hard but more comfortable than the floor. Warmish liquid was fed into my mouth in streams, and I was pretty sure I heard a voice coaxing me to swallow each time.

But at some point, while my brain was at its fuzziest, hurting so bad I wasn’t sure how I could still think, while total darkness enveloped my consciousness, while I felt like I cried and could have sworn I felt a hand wipe my face, all of a sudden, the shitty-ness lessened.

I was surprised to realize that my side was plastered against a body.

I was on his lap. Not between his thighs, but on him. The side of my face was sealed up against his chest. He smelled spicy and dark, and for a brief moment, I wondered how bad I had to smell. I hadn’t put deodorant on in… I didn’t even know how long it had been since we’d gotten here. I’d sweated. I hadn’t showered. My skin was grimy and oily, and now that I thought about it, my head itched like hell. Then there was everything else wrong with me. But I was on top of him.

“I’ve waited long enough,” he told me solemnly.

“No,” he grumbled almost gently, so different from the way he’d been talking to me before. “I’m not leaving you, Gracie. Stop doing that. If you’d listen—”

“We’re going together.” His face was oddly even, gaze intense. “I’ll carry you.” He would? I gulped, and somehow his scowl got worse.

Oh. “Because.” “No ‘because’. No.” A grumble built in his throat that I felt along my head. “Don’t do it.”

I turned my cheek into his shoulder, like I had a right to. Like I wasn’t being a complete inconvenience and this shit wasn’t totally my fault. It was needy and unnecessary, but he was being so nice—in his own way—and it’d been a long, long time since I’d been held.

“We need to go.” We need to go. Because he hadn’t left me even though he easily could have.

I wouldn’t forget this. I would never forget this. I took in the crabby man’s jaw and swore to myself right then that I owed him my life. That I would stand by him for the rest of mine in any way I could.

He was focused on the ceiling. Was he smirking? “What?” I asked as loudly as I could, in basically still a whisper. Alexander started shaking his head slowly, looking… amazed? “How do you still have anything left in you?” I was still going. I tried to smile.

I was weak, and we both knew it.

Alexander, The Defender, hesitated, really not looking all that happy about it, but after a second, he nodded reluctantly.

And it must have been the emotion, or the remnants of being sick, that made me reach out and grab the first thing I could—his pinkie finger. I gave it a light squeeze, half expecting him to shake me off. To ask me if my hand had gotten lost. He didn’t.

He didn’t even glance at what should have been a gunshot wound… if his body couldn’t repel bullets. “Fine.” What in the hell had happened in there?

“Are you going to blow it up?” Those purple eyes flicked toward me. “Blow what up?” I tipped my head to the side. “The building,” I whispered. His blink was so slow. “We don’t… do that.” Oh. Duh.

But his tense look turned into a dirty one. Okay then. “Get on my back,” Alexander ordered, his tone almost urgent.

Fortunately, those big hands caught me by the backs of my thighs and hoisted me high along his spine.

just barely heard him say over his shoulder, “If you fall off, I’m not stopping.” This mother….

It was one thing to see his strength on television, but it was a totally different thing to watch him crumble metal in his hand like it was paper.

I didn’t give a fuck. We were leaving, alive, and I had all my toes. I hugged him even tighter.