Rec: rangerdanger
rangerdanger writes the most charming, lighthearted and sweetest RPF's. They feel less RPF actually, because she takes Tom Hiddleston and Chris Hemsworth and puts them in various AUs: In one scenario they both are employees of a corporation, in another they meet in the Australian outbacks, and in another one Tom meets Chris on a ranch.
I do love Thor/Loki fics and Avenger fics in general, but sometimes it's great to have Tom and Chris without the drama of maybe/almost/actually yes-incest, father issues and norse mythology. Of course there is a voyeuristic aspect as well-rangerdanger's Tom and Chris feel very real in her fics, down to their relationships with their parents, their siblings, their private thoughts and memories. Although it's an illusion, one is very tempted to believe to really get to know them.
It also helps that rangerdanger is such a talented, skilled writer, whose absolute strength lies in romantic comedy and sweet, perfectly measured UST!
Her fics are my sunday afternoon reading delights, and I usually have my slice of cake with my matcha americano with them, and curl up in my bed to enjoy them!
Here are some of my favourites:
ergonomics wherein Chris finds work as a personal assistant, and his boss is Tom Hiddleston. Naturally Tom drives Chris crazy! Must-read if you love misunderstandings, charming dialogues and charaterisations. I have much love for Tom in this here.
Thomas Hiddleston. It sounded like an expensive brand of socks.
Word was Hiddleston was a difficult man to please and once fired a guy who got him a decaf instead of the half-caf he had asked for. He’d just been back from a six day vacation in Brazil where his spending, it was said, most likely contributed to the country’s GDP.
The guy was made of money, born with a silver spoon in his mouth, well-versed in five languages including Latin. At least according to Giselle.
Chris resented him already; nobody was that perfect and didn’t have anything to hide. It just wasn’t possible.
Carol led him to Hiddleston’s office, squeezing his arm and winking. Her hips swayed hypnotically. “You’ll be reporting to him now,” she said.
With a red taloned finger, Carol pointed to the end of the hall with all the gloom one might reserve for delivering a death sentence. “Mr. Hiddleston’s quite the powerhouse; try not to get intimidated, Chris.” Then she left Chris to fend for himself like a deer caught in headlights, high heels clicking away.
Chris gulped. He smoothed the front of his shirt and pushed back his hair. The glass door squeaked under his palm when he pushed it open; he held his breath.
Seated behind the immense cherry wood desk, to Chris’ complete astonishment, was the guy from this morning, the first two buttons of his dress shirt undone, red silk tie in a heap next to his coffee mug. And he was rubbing Benadryl all over his neck, tipping his head back as he daubed the stuff under his chin.
He blinked when Chris walked in.
“Benadryl,” said Chris, feeling awkward.
“Yes,” said the guy -- Hiddleston -- gaping. “You’re the new --”
“--administrative assistant--”
“--secretary?”
Chris paused. He hated euphemisms. “Yes,” he said. “Sir. Yes, sir.”
Hiddleston gestured to one of the leather seats. He cocked his head to one side, lifting his chin a little. “Sit.”
Chris sat. He watched as Hiddleston wiped his hand on a blue silk handkerchief to his right and then peered into a dossier in his lap. Tilting his seat back, Hiddleston began flipping through the pages, the tip of a pen casually pressed to the corner of his mouth, and Chris watched, oddly transfixed, as his tongue curled around the ivory lid.
It was a little distracting to see him with his shirt loose at the throat too, two buttons undone, the slender curve of his neck exposed like in the old days when women showed a bit of ankle and men went completely riotous afterwards.
Chris felt a little bit like that, the riotous man spluttering in a mixture of outrage and a faint twinge of inexplicable lust. He wanted to kill himself.
“Says here you have no corporate experience prior to this one?” Hiddleston said after a moment.
Chris jerked up from his seat in surprise. “It says that?”
“No, I just came to that conclusion after reading your file,” said Hiddleston. He sipped his coffee.
Chris wished he could fling himself out the window.
There was a pregnant pause during which Chris swore he could hear his heart hammering in his chest. Behind Hiddleston’s leather seat, was a sweeping view of the business district, the sky so immensely blue Chris suddenly understood why people often killed for an office like this one.
It was relaxing in its own way, and gave you a sense of perspective: everyone else was a worthless peon if you had a view like this.
Hiddleston tossed the dossier aside, the sudden movement making Chris jump in surprise.
“All right, Christopher,” he said, folding his hands together, “Everything seems to be in order. You’re not a wanted felon and your background checks out. You will be working for me until my secretary returns in January. I called you here so I could meet you, and now that we’ve met…” He trailed off, pressing his lips together, eyeing Chris from head to foot. “Is that a skinny tie?”
sweet dreams, sweet cheeks wherein Tom thinks it's a good idea to drive through the Australian outback in a rented Volkswagen beetle and is saved by Chris Hemsworth, who happens to be a car mechanic. Need I say, that sexiness ensues?
He introduced himself as Chris.
“Is it short for Christopher?” said Tom. “Christoff?”
“Just Chris,” said Chris with a grimace.
He didn’t have the face of a killer and was, in fact, ruggedly handsome, in his gently worn jeans and his threadbare shirt with the words Truckstop Joe in fading blue letters; but Tom knew it was these sorts of types that you had to watch out for; the charming ones tended to have a lot to hide, and if the plastic hula-girl on the dashboard was anything to go by, Tom had best proceed with caution.
He didn’t put his seatbelt on even though Chris insisted that he did as soon as Tom clambered into the rickety passenger seat.
The inside of the truck smelled like an odd combination of chips and sawdust and Tom shifted a few times before he found himself a comfortable position. The seat felt mildewy and old and Tom made sure his back touched as little of the sticky leatherette seat as possible. Who knew why it was sticky in the first place? Who knew the wear and tear it had been through?
“You walked how long in this sweltering heat?” Chris asked again, lowering the volume of whatever was playing on the radio. Christian rock probably, Tom thought, palming the sweat off his face. Chris looked like the type.
When Chris reached over to the glove compartment, grabbing what appeared to be a moderately clean dish rag of indeterminate color, Tom nearly leapt for the window in surprise.
Chris gave him an odd look before extending the rag toward him.
“It’s clean,” he assured Tom who sniffed at it gingerly before wiping his arms and neck with it. It felt good though his skin protested against the bristly texture. Tom felt Chris watching him so he resisted the urge to scrub under his arms and instead folded the cloth in two in his lap.
“Well,” Tom said after a moment. “I don’t think I walked very far anyway. Probably just two miles, I think. Forty minutes, maybe an hour.”
“An hour,” Chris repeated, shaking his head and whistling. He laughed a little. “All right, wow.”
Tom shrugged; he’d done plenty of questionable things before and this didn’t even make it to the top five. He tipped his head out the window to feel the desert wind blow hotly against his face, then sat back down again and sneezed, wrinkling his nose; clearly that was a terrible idea.
In fact, now that he thought about it, the entire trip had been a terrible idea. He’d wanted to go sightseeing, do something new and exciting and endemic to the region, but instead he was in a stranger’s truck, watching acre after acre of red plains roll by outside the window.
Tom allowed himself a moment of panic and felt his entire face twitch as a result. Luckily for him, Chris was too busy driving to pay attention to his newly developed facial tic.
Tom said, “Thanks for stopping; I’d have died otherwise,” which he knew was probably true. He wouldn’t have survived out there, not for another few hours; he’d have managed to kill himself with stress if a wandering bear didn’t get to him first.
“You were kind of hard to miss,” said Chris not without a hint of amusement. “You were standing in the middle of the road.”
sugar blue, her most recent fic, features Tom, a struggling actor who, out of boredom or despair or a combination of both, flees west. To a ranch. In the middle of nowhere.
When he's starting to realise, that he's made a spectacular mistake, he meets Chris. Cue Hiddlesworth. Points for a lovely OC (part cameo!) who nearly steals the show!
He knew what he wanted to do as soon as he saw the truck tire swing in the breeze. Tom kicked off his shoes, toes sinking in the soft grass as he positioned himself stomach-down through the center. His arms dangled in front of him. His ass was raised slightly in the air. Tom used his bare feet to push himself until the rope was wound in a tight spiral. Then he let go, picking up his feet from the ground and letting the rope spin until he thought he was going to ricochet across the hill.
“Tom?”
Tom blinked one eye open. He hadn’t realized he’d fallen asleep. He felt suddenly hungry. He opened his other eye and saw that it was Chris standing there over him, his massive shoulders to the light so that he looked gilded like a messenger of the Lord. His hair hung loose for a change, soft cascading waves around his face. “What are you doing out here?”
“I think the question is what are you doing out here?”
Chris shone a beam of light at Tom’s face, lowering the torch in his hand after Tom protested and flailed. “Are you drunk?”
“Are you?”
Chris looked amused. “I’m looking for Greg.”
“Who’s Greg?”
“One of the kids. He’s wandered off. Been missing for about an hour, maybe two? Luke and Liam are searching the house, I think, and a few other guys are scattered around in case he decided to go exploring or something. I hope he hasn’t gone very far.” He made a face, staring at something across the distance, frowning.
“What are you doing down there?” Chris raised an eyebrow.
Tom sniffed. “What does it look like I’m doing?”
Chris tilted his head to the side. “Frankly, I’m not sure,” he said, looking like he wanted to laugh.
Tom wasn’t sure either, and he still felt hungry as he eased himself from the center of the tire, staggering back against the sugar maple. He wondered if they still had any leftover pastrami sandwiches in the kitchen; he wondered where he’d left his phone.
Chris, stepping back, stared down at Tom’s feet and Tom found himself doing the same shortly after. His toes seemed unnaturally white against the dark grass, fish-belly pale and dainty.
“Where are your shoes?” said Chris, already scoping the area for them, flashing spots of light across the grass with his trusty torch. After a minute, he gave a triumphant noise and said, “Ha! Found them! Here they are,” and tossed them at Tom who jumped as they hit his ankles.
“Thanks,” Tom muttered, sitting down heavily on a patch of dry grass as he stuffed his feet back into them. They seemed tighter for some reason and Chris started snickering.
“What’s so funny?”
Chris shook his head, tugging him up to his feet as soon as he’d finished tying on his laces. Tom wiped his hands across the seat of his pants, noticing with dawning realization that it felt damp when they should not have been. His palms came away with flecks of mud and he glared up at Chris who only smiled widely and clapped a hand on his shoulder.
Death, Tom thought. A slow and painful death.
“I have an extra torch,” Chris said, handing one to him and clicking it on and off, like Tom needed to be taught how to operate it. Tom snatched it from him before he gave the both of them epileptic seizures.