marcus pike x reader
.🏛️ ݁ ˖𓂃.🧪 ݁˖ ➪ technical difficulties (parts 1 and 2 here) || about me
pairing: marcus pike x f!scientist! reader (reader works in the labs, chemical and electronics)
rating: general audiences
word count: 3.3k , ask to be on the taglist for the next chapter...that may come in a week or two!
i'm also on ao3
warnings: marcus pike has like. a terrible sense of humour. the worst... what can he do hes weak in the knees for a pretty girl like you!
reader is a techie working in the labs, marcus keeps asking for gadgets :P that's it really. set after lisbon and jane get together, and pike is working in dc.
reader is not described but she has hair that's long enough to be tied into a bun or braid. (LAB SAFETY!) reader is also SHYYY and does not have the best social skills (she's just like me fr) but she has a hugeeee crush on the pretty agent with brown eyes who shows up asking for gadgets and stuff. also please give me ideas for the next gadget. OH reader also has a sweet tooth, my girl is inhaling energy drinks in her little underground lab.
authors note: heyyy everyone! it's your girl anjali here. i know i haven't updated this in months! but stuff is stressful :( anyway please enjoy this lovely chapter where we LEAVE THE LABS!!! WOAH. reader is finally LEAVING THE LABS and actually makes friends. i am wholeheartedly of the impression that marcus pike is 1 a soft loverboy and 2 actually socially anxious just like the reader...esp when he is with someone he likes. there is one throwaway line about the reader wearing glasses, mainly because i'm also always wearing glasses under my safety goggles, but you can always just have her not wear glasses :) enjoy seeing the world in premium for free </3 the reader has a big fat crush on marcus pike and she doesn't know how to fix it...little does she know the handsome brunette likes her back too. let me know how this fic is, if the pacing and characterisation is good! i love my fbi loverboyyy :]]]]] i'll also be getting to work on the requests that have shown up on my inbox.
REQUESTS ARE OPEN <3
The rumble of the centrifuge is comforting to you, a steady thrum that matches the beat of your heart and you spend the days down in the lab.
Weeks turned into months, and you’ve fallen in love with your little space. The research and development department in DC is underground, but the odd shape of the building makes it so you’re lucky enough to share half a skylight with 3.3a, to let a little light shine in. Late nights in the lab are always in the backdrop of the silvery moonlight – a spotlight on you as you work with barely any other lights on.
3.3a – Amber – and you are friends, sharing a skylight and a door and jobs so similar that friendship was inevitable, no matter what. You never really ventured out further than the lobby of the building, something about the thousands of stares, the noises – just something that would be too loud for you.
And one day, amber had almost appeared out of nowhere, full of radiance and light and that shock of green hair (that was originally blonde.)
She's the other half of your personality that you sorely needed, the extrovert that adopted you into the wider group. just like college again where you made a friend, and then got absorbed into a big group.
She’s got badges on her satchel that she brings to work, bright and sunny, just like her – it’s as if summer has graced herself in your lab when she drags you out for lunch at the lovely cafes around DC. Suddenly lunches are not a glass tupperware box you prepared a few hours ago in your apartment, to be eaten alone, but instead eaten with the rest of 3B in the common room, playing a game of pool together.
It’s nice – she’s nice. That's something you haven’t experienced in a while, friendship. Comparing notes, laughing about what the agents have you doing.
It's no surprise when she coaxes you out to the sixteenth floor of the building today, trying to show you what you’ve been missing out by heading straight to the labs, and straight out again, after most people have left – the view of the city from above, and a lovely cafe.
You roll your shoulders back, aching after standing hunched over your workbench for however many hours you had today, time both flies and inches by, and you have no idea how that happens.
The lift plays some irrelevant tune, and it clashes with all the thoughts swirling in your mind, mostly just thinking about the calculations for the ongoing project, a communications device.
Amber just smiles at you, and you faintly smile back – she knows you well enough these days to know you aren’t thinking of what is here, but back in the lab.
The scent of coffee and cakes wafts into the lift as the doors slide open, and you immediately brighten up.
You've loved sweet things ever since you were a child – cakes, pastries, but your chosen poison was energy drinks, keeping you awake late at night in the lab.
Amber laughs when she sees something light up behind your eyes in real time, and you brush it away.
“Aren't you happy I dragged you away?” She checks the watch on her wrist. The whole floor had a meeting with Dr Lewis in two hours, but she’d be damned if she didn’t drag the two of you out for a good time (in direct sunlight).
“Dragged is a bit dramatic, don’t you think?”
You’re already looking at the menu, subsidised prices – nice.
“Oh come on, you were basically kicking and screaming,” but her words aren’t cruel, just genuine happiness that she’s managed to get you out of the basement, even if it was with the help of the bait of cakes and sugary coffee.
“Okay, I'll get us a table, can you get me a carrot cake?” She asks, and you nod back at her.
“Of course! get us a table with a nice view.”
She gives you a little thumbs up, and you slide into the (admittedly long) line at the cafe counter.
A cake and a coffee in hand, you make your way to the counter to pick up packets of sugar, and start emptying them into the cup all at once.
“Five cannot be healthy–”
You whip your head around, the voice is smooth, rich – you know that voice.
“Who are you to tell me what I can or can’t do?” you say, almost reflexively, meeting Agent Pike’s brown eyes with your own, “it’s my cup of coffee.”
His brow arches, the corner of his mouth turned up, he’s been growing out his scruff in the past month, and the crush you thought that you’ve managed to rid yourself of is back in full force, “But seriously, five?”
“I like it sweet…?” You raise your hands up in defeat, before going back to stir the /sugary syrup/ coffee with a wooden stirrer.
“That's not just sweet, that’s a whole health emergency waiting to happen.” He shakes his head, the bastard is actually laughing.
You don’t have the heart to tell him you’ve put a pump of caramel syrup in it too.
“We'll cross that bridge when we get to it.” you put the lid on the coffee cup with a small ‘click’.
He retreats back to the group he came with, probably other art crimes agents, you wouldn’t know – you barely know any other FBI agents apart from him. You balance the cup of coffee and a slice of cake, watching as he’s absorbed back into the group, full of suits and fancy shoes. Nothing like the lab coats you and Amber wear, full of pens and folded graph paper in the front pockets.
“Oh, and who was that?” She does ask, a smirk on her face as she reaches for the cake. you just sigh, sitting back down on the chair in front of her – “that’s the FBI agent who shows up to my lab from time to time, i think he works in art crimes.”
“I've seen mr art crimes down in 3B quite a bit.” And she’s reaching a fork over to steal a cube of feta from your salad today.
You freeze, because he does come down quite often. You've grown accustomed to the sound of his loafers against the linoleum floor as he steps into your lab every week or so. (He never graces the office of your superior, which makes Dr Lewis unreasonably mad, something you always laugh about.)
“He’s always got…something for me to fix” You say, nonchalantly…Or as nonchalant as you can manage, which isn’t very nonchalant after all, as Amber can very clearly tell with the way your voice shakes.
“I'm sure.” She nods, and you shake your head, waving your hands in the air.
“It's not like that!” You wave your hand to wave that thought away, there was nothing between you and the agent, at all, clearly. From your end? Perhaps. But from his end? Nothing.
Surely he would have said something by now.
“If he has anything he needs to upgrade for a mission, I get it done. It's all very strictly professional and all that.”
“Mhm, I see, super professional…very interesting how he comes to you with his requests though?” Amber's lips twitch, and you know she doesn’t mean it really, all bark and never any bite. “I’d almost call it flirting.”
You scoff, a bit too loud. “Of course he’s not flirting with me.”
She shrugs, a little smile still on her lips - “your face gets so red when he leaves, just don’t combust the next time he comes with one of his little requests.”
Five Days Later
He’s here again, in a suit jacket and a white shirt, top two buttons undone – like he does in the summer.
You give him a cursory glance through the lab door as he knocks on it, a small smile on your face, a quick nod of acceptance of his presence into your space, before your eyes turn back to your experiment.
Your hands are in blue gloves, and they grip the stem of a conical flask, swirling it gently to mix the solution thoroughly – simple compound development for the trace analysis of explosives. something incredibly boring, for a better choice of words.
Important, but ridiculously boring. more grunt work. Amber would never be stuck with this, you were convinced – this was part time PhD work, absolutely.
Your fingers move with practice, and you hold it away from your face, it’s not glamorous work, clearly – your hair is in a bun, flyaways falling over your safety goggles. you’re back with your sunken eyes, dark eye bags that barely hide under the concealer, this was just your everyday.
He stands awkwardly near the workbench where you’ve left your purse, half tipped over by the weight of your laptop and water bottle in there, and he gives you a little smile – one you don’t respond to, focused on the experiment. Not much weighs on this, but all the labs on B3 are working on different parts of this, and you’ve managed to convince yourself that everything – everything – balances on this.
Always a little too self important for your own good.
As the blue fades after a few drops of the compound that you dropped in with a pipette, you sigh in relief, before putting it down on the mat, to not stain the table – Lewis would have your head if that happened. Flask down, out of your hands, finally you can focus on him – him.
Now this is a face that has been hovering in your dreams for a good while – all you can think about. You feel ridiculous, almost.
It's touching, when someone like you – sitting in the basement most of your days, with a perpetual case of gloved hands, catches the attention of someone like him.
He stands in front of you, like he’s stepped off the set of an action movie, or a police procedural. looking every bit of an FBI agent. Broad…very broad, even in that suit jacket, shirt rumpled, folder in hand like he’s holding something ridiculously important, tucked between his arm and his chest.
And yet there’s a softness to him, he works in art crimes after all – not just shooting, but there’s an appreciation of the arts. His tie looks to have some money painting print, and it’s currently stuffed in his pocket, the tail sticking out. It's like he started the day off attempting to look the part, and halfway it’s turned into whatever a long summer day has brought out in him.
You wonder if he knows just how well he fits into this environment, how he’s just another control variable in this lab – in your heart.
“You're always so busy when I show up.” He almost says it like he means it, he’s got that smile of his own – disarming, one that would have you trusting him immediately, and you probably would.
That was your curse, a nerd in school and a nerd in college, you weren’t someone who basked in attention, especially not someone like him.
“Funny how that happens in work hours.” You bite back, a smile on your lips as you carefully start pouring the contents of the flask into a small labelled test tube, then motion for him to move as you walk to the fridge to put the test tube rack in.
He smiles, of course he smiles – of course. Look at him, you make him smile, isn’t that enough?
“So, what brings you here?” You say, peeling the gloves off, before tossing them into the bin.
Hands, used to paging through books and writing results on glass now tap against the marble countertop, expecting him to answer.
You’ve always been a little pushy, it’s never been *ude, just efficient. what made you stick out like a sore thumb in school, in college. A few people get you, but that’s one in a good hundred, usually people mistake it for coldness, rather than what it truly is – directness.
“Thought I’d drop by, see how it’s going.”
You frown at that, he doesn’t do something as simple as that. Whenever he shows up, he’s always got something to ask for.
“Can't I just come down here to see the genius in the basement?”
And god help you, you almost believe him, almost giggle at that – instead you just look at him, exasperated.
“Agent Pike–”
He looks around your lab, like he’s catalouging the clutter. You assume this is his everyday – surveillence, understanding art galleries and paintings to find everything that is hidden. Instead of that, he’s got his eyes on your lab, analysing it; wires, sensors, the empty chemical bottles, your red purse. He makes a show of thinking, and then meets your eyes.
“You're right doc, I need something that needs fixing.”
He brings out something small, the size of a pack of cigarettes.
“It's a scanner,” he states, as you take it from his hands, hands immediately finding the screwport, and grabbing a screwdriver from one of the drawers near the workbench.
“Custom made by a private contractor, picks up paint and dates it so we can check paintings real time in galleries without having to bring them back to the labs for testing.”
You knew the hassle of the paint testing in the labs, 2B usually handled all that crap, and there were only two labs in the floor above you, paintings needed space.
You hold it in your hands, heavy. It's dense.
“Can't you bring it back to the private contractor?” you ask, once you open it up, it’s just a mess of fried wires. How the hell were you going to try and fix this?
“I just want to improve it.” he shrugs, “make sure it doesn’t hum like that, trying to keep it discreet.”
You frown, lifting the charred circuit board with some tweezers, as if it could crumble with too hard of a touch. “Great….” you mutter.
He sees your expression, unimpressed, a little grimace. You can almost see it in his brown eyes, a glimpse of something that you can’t quite decipher.
That something in his eyes, the softness – whatever expression you had falters, and you take off your safety goggles, your glasses underneath.
“I'll see what I can do.” Because that is what you always say, what you’ve always said. Your heart thuds in your chest, but you stay calm.
He’s asked something of you so many times, turned up to your lab every time he wanted something fixed.
Your hands reach towards the bottle in your purse, and it finally tips over, the contents of your purse spilling out.
Awkward.
He turns away, hands leaving the workbench as he does so, and he has manners.
“My mother told me never to see what’s in a lady’s purse.” And you have to laugh at that, because what do you mean the FBI agent who was used to snooping in everyone’s business turned away when your bag spilled out.
“It's fine.” you hum, it’s not like your bag was a total mess – just your bottle, planner, five different chargers, a box of pads, glasses case, a wallet and what seemed to be a neverending amount of pens just sitting in every crevice of the purse.
“Is this yours?” he bends down to pick something up, and it’s a keychain. small, silver – the shape of a dove. You grab it from his hands – large hands, warm hands – almost a spark goes off, except you haven't even turned on the soldering iron.
You nod, wordlessly, “my sister gave me that, she’ll kill me if i lost it.” a huff, a smile, and you clip it back onto the buckle of your purse.
“...that’s a lot of pens.” is all he says, eyeing the pens stuffed into the pockets, and you pull the bag away from his eyes.
You’ve noticed he isn’t too good with conversation either – suave when he needs to be, other times blending right into a large group. But here, in the labs, he often just watches you work on the thing he’s asked of you, and then walks out a small while later, with a small polite expression on his face, like he’s intruding on a safe space.
Which, mind you, he is – but you don’t mind the intrusion.
“You dig through people’s basements, and all you can think of is ‘that’s a lot of pens’?”
“A lot of pens have been going missing from the lobby –” he narrows his eyes, but there’s a smirk on his face.
This is a terrible, terrible joke, if he’s setting it up the way you think it is.
“Oh, let me stop you there…”
“I’m just saying…this could be a huge lead in a whole operation, running under our noses, ink laundering.”
You sigh dramatically, “are you trying to pin this on me, a ballpoint pen smuggling ring?”
“I can see it right now, the headlines: FBI research scientist caught between state lines trying to transport what seems to be a hundred stolen pens.”
A groan, then, “this was such an awful joke.”
“It's a developing case, the details are classified.”
“Oh god, I don't know how many suspects you get if you interrogate them all like this.”
“Who says I was interrogating you..?”
“Of course.” your head ducks down, back to the guts of the scanner, but you can’t help the curve of your lips as he just stands in front of you, that wistful expression on your face.
This is the most you’ve spoken with him – the most unprofessional it’s ever gotten between the two of you. Just some silly banter over stolen pens, but it feels like you’ve broken some ice between you two.
Ice that you usually hold between you and the world.
He stares at you – really stares, leaning over the counter. You almost have a mind to ask him if he doesn’t have a job to get back to, but you’d rather work in silence, this silence, with him, than work alone.
He’s wormed his way into your heart, and you don’t understand why.
Your hands are working through the wires of the scanner, trying to understand what makes it tick, and suddenly it’s like time flies around you. Seconds turn into minutes, and there he is, still watching you intently as the clock hits an hour since he came down.
You grab a small pair of pliers, and flick on the switch for the soldering iron – and he’s leaning over the circuit board you’ve gutted out and laid out on the table. Before you bring the iron closer, you gently take his face in your hands, like you would take a moveable lamp, or something like that – and move it to the left, away from the circuit, to clear away your workspace.
“I don’t think you should burn your hair.” you mutter, absentmindedly.
Then you freeze.
Because your hands, still dry from the gloves, hot from the lamp above the circuit, your hands touched his face.
You’d just moved his face away like it was some equipment.
His eyes are wide, still in shock with something he can’t quite name.
Then a grin across his face, “is this lab safe too?”
“I didn't even realise I did that…” you frown, blinking, “but I assume so, yeah, hair shouldn’t be close to the iron.”
“Oh you did do that,” and he’s still grinning, god. “It was like I was part of the lab. very professional.”
You groan under your breath, turning back to the scanner – safety goggled strapped to your face again, “remind me never to touch your face again.”
“Noted.” but it doesn’t sound like he means it, with the way he smiles at you.
end notes: 🎶 and everytime we touchh i get this feeling 🎶 i also do not think this will be 4 works...oops....
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