Here's the advent fic for 4th December. It's a day late, but there was a slight incident where I fell asleep in my living room in front of my laptop last night, so I didn't get to post it then.

D: Dark Horse – Katy Perry

Anyway, today's offering is Darcy/Loki, so I hope you all like it, and as usual, I do not own anything to do with Marvel. Thanks for reading.

Dark Horse

Loki wasn't sure how he had ended up in this position – beholden to a mortal such as this.

Darcy Lewis.

She was nothing special really – she had no magic, no obvious gifts, she was of average intelligence, she wasn't anyone important in the grand scheme of things.

Her main talents seemed to be her ability to both function as a normal human being and persuade those around her to do the same.

And yet he was drawn to her in a way he had never been with anyone else before.

Propped up on one elbow, he ran a finger down her bare side, revelling in the softness of her skin. She murmured and shifted slightly beneath his touch, but did not wake.

He thought it was her lack of fear.

Freshly released from his cell and sent down to Earth by the Allfather to atone for his crimes, she had taken one look at him and snorted.

"Dude, prison's changed you. You used to be hot."

An abrupt silence had fallen over his brother's comrades at her confusing words. Why would prison have had an impact on his temperature? Unless Thor had opened his big mouth and she was referring to his new understanding of his parentage and his Frost Giant heritage.

"Really, Lewis?" Of course, Stark had been the one to respond while the others spluttered. From his own encounters with the man and Thor's ramblings, Loki had already deduced that he clearly loved the sound of his voice and would talk for hours on things of little consequence purely just to have the last word. "Reindeer Games?"

"Sure." The girl had shrugged, ignoring the frantic hissing from his brother's lady. "He was in New Mexico at one point. With shorter hair and…you know… less crazy eyes."

Loki ignored the insult in her words – it wasn't the worst he had heard thrown at him over the last few days and it helped to clarify her meaning.

Hot. The word could obviously refer to appearances as well as physical heat, and apparently Darcy Lewis had found him relatively attractive.

Had.

He could admit that he was not at his best to begin with. Still, it was almost humorous to see the other mortals and his idiot brother blanch at the girl's casual words.

It was interesting, if nothing else. She was interesting. And Loki hated being bored.

He didn't seek her out, not at first anyway. It was more that she didn't avoid him like the others did – for Earth's greatest heroes, they were surprisingly twitchy - so he found himself in her company more often than not. He didn't particularly like her, but she didn't offend his sensibilities either and he found that when he was not on missions with Thor or the other crusaders, he rather enjoyed spending time in her presence, arguably under the excuse of protecting Jane Foster for his brother.

The little scientist was another mortal he didn't mind being around.

He had admired her spirit when she had been battling the Aether inside her and she was almost uncaring of his presence around her, as long as he didn't upset Thor and didn't get in her way while she was wrestling with her primitive theories of the cosmos, she was happy to let him wander around her laboratory, annoying her assistant and subtly changing and adapting her machinery to produce more accurate results in her studies.

Darcy treated him with a strange mixture of snarky attitude and overprotective mothering. One minute she would be mocking his sensibilities and his desire to rule over his people one day and the next she would be force-feeding him some cuisine from a different land that she ordered over the telephone. She was blunt and direct and he admired that after all the subterfuge in his life.

Occasionally he thought about drawing her in – he knew she wouldn't be spending all that time with him if there wasn't a certain degree of attraction – but his pride wouldn't allow him to use his usual tricks on her.

If she came to him, it would be of her own accord.

Little did he know, it would be he who was drawn to her.

He had returned from a fight with his brother and his merry band of soldiers covered in ash with a deep gash running down his back from where an odd-smelling human had tried to stab him, and they had immediately abandoned him to tend to their own wounds and lovers. Unfortunately, this left him with no way of treating his own wounds until one of them returned.

Peeling off his clothes slowly, he took a painful shower, before slowly sidling into the communal kitchen in search of some mead to ease his pain.

Instead he found Darcy, guiltily ploughing her way through some kind of frozen dessert. She had taken one look at him and pushed him onto a bar stool, fetching a green box from on top of a cupboard. She had patched up his wounds, berating him the whole time for his recklessness.

It almost felt like caring.

So when she had moved around to treat the scrapes along the front of his abdomen, he had gripped her chin in his hand and kissed her.

Darcy had frozen for a split second before sinking into the embrace, her hands sliding up his bare chest, over his shoulders and into his hair. Despite his best manipulations, she had taken charge of their embrace and then pulled back.

He stared at her warily and she watched him back before grinning and kissing him passionately again. What felt like hours later, she silently took him by the hand and led him back towards the bedrooms. The moment she led him to her chambers rather than his, he knew he had lost the silent power struggle between them. He was in her territory now and she was in charge. A small part of him was amazed she was even receptive to his embrace in the first place and when he had finally stripped her naked and pushed inside her willing body, he found that he no longer cared.

Each time they came together like this they scandalised the other inhabitants of the tower, and Loki found himself sinking just a little deeper. By the time half a year had passed, he would not argue with being called hers.

Darcy Lewis was a human, nothing special or remarkable.

Darcy was extraordinary and he would rip the heart out of anyone who said otherwise.