AN: A prompt request on Tumblr: I was thinking that being in a relationship with Loki would not be the easiest thing in the world, so can I ask for an established relationship fic that shows what Natasha would have to put up with in having Loki as a boyfriend? This will be a gradually updated series of ficlets as more annoyances pop into my brain.
What Your SHIELD Boss Never Told You About Dating the God of Mischief
By Wynn
"Day Moves"
Natasha should have realized. There's not many people who can sneak up on me. Loki had said it, right from the beginning. He prized his ability to know what someone was going to do five moves before they did it, so for her, a tiny, inferior, mortal woman, to take him by surprise, even when he knew she was coming, of course it would stick in his brain like a burr on Velcro, tormenting him until he could triumph over her in return.
Triumph, however, eluded him at every opportunity. Loki had never mastered stealth on its own terms, always having used magic in battle to conceal his approach. Yet magic was not an option for him because Natasha had not used magic against him, and if she, an inferior mortal, could sneak up on him, a thousand year old god, then by god he would sneak up on her too. So he tried. Every day, multiple times a day, in her apartment, at S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters, in the Tower, in the street, even on assignment, Loki would approach, his tread heavy and his need great, only for Natasha to acknowledge him twenty feet away. Every failure elicited a glare, and at every glare, his need intensified. Natasha contemplated faking surprise just to get Loki to stop, yet she knew he'd be able to detect it, every cell in his body attuned to her to catch her genuine, delicious, coveted surprise.
After the fortieth attempt, one misty Saturday in March, Natasha sighs, flips another page in her book, and says, "It's never going to happen. I've been trained for this since I was four."
Loki contemplates her, his eyes once again narrowed in a glare. "How old are you now?"
"Ninety-four."
At that, his pout dissolves into a sly grin. "Then I have time."
He teleports away, seemingly to practice and plot. Natasha sits on the couch, flips another page in her book, waits, and, after fifty-seven seconds, hears his tread light on the floor behind her.
"I know you're there."
Loki huffs out a sigh at her acknowledgement. The air cracks as he, truly this time, teleports away, now to practice and plot and scheme and strategize.
Natasha just flips another page and smiles.
"Table Manners"
Natasha closes the door to her apartment, taking a moment to stand in the blessed silence of the foyer. While the day had not been the worst of her life (it wasn't even in the running for a spot in the top twenty worst days of her surprisingly long and increasingly eventful life), it had been a trying day, full of petty annoyances, long meetings, and Tony Stark in Stage Five of his Seven Levels of Caffeine Deprivation. All Natasha wanted to do now was sit down, eat the sushi currently in her fridge, and, later, let Loki fuck her into sweet oblivion.
Pushing off the door, she makes her way to the kitchen. There she opens the refrigerator and reaches in, only to find nothing, the space on the top shelf formerly devoted to the gorgeous rolls of spicy tuna and cool avocado now empty. Natasha's hand clenches around the door handle at the sight. Always, without fail, he ate her food, whether it be sushi, pasta, Brie, bread, broccoli, or brownies, giving only an unrepentant shrug to her glares.
Closing her eyes now, she breathes in, counts to ten, and then tilts her head up.
"Loki!"
His name snaps off the ceiling and walls. A second passes and then she hears the air crack behind her. Turning, her hand still tight around the door, Natasha finds Loki lifting the last sushi roll into his mouth, his eyes closed in tuna bliss.
"I hate you," she says, stepping away from the fridge.
"No, you don't," he murmurs around the last bite. Chewing slowly, he waves a hand in her general direction. A moment later Natasha hears a faint pop in the fridge. Twisting back around, she finds an identical set of spicy tuna rolls occupying the formerly blank space on the top shelf. Her stomach grumbles at the sight.
Leaning in, Natasha reaches for the rolls, but she pauses before contact. "Did you pay for it this time?"
"Do I ever?"
Despite herself, Natasha feels her lips twitch in amusement at his cheek. Grabbing the rolls, she kicks shut the door to the refrigerator. She places the package on the counter then reaches for her phone in her back pocket.
"Tell your S.H.I.E.L.D. minions to take enough for the sake, too."
Natasha glances up in time to see Loki saunter from the kitchen into the living room, two bottles of her favorite sake clutched in one hand. Shaking her head, she speed dials the minions to take money once again to Mako's for the continuously disappearing sushi rolls.
"Night Moves"
Natasha wakes in the middle of the night to find herself, once again, shoved to the edge of the bed. Sighing, she twists around and finds Loki sprawled out on his stomach across the entirety of the mattress, both of their pillows gathered in his arms beneath his head. If he were human, she would just shove him over and reclaim what belonged to her, but the quirk of his anatomy made him weigh nearly five hundred pounds on Earth, and no quirk of her anatomy, Red Room modifications be damned, would allow her then to successfully move a former Asgardian prince who had slept for nearly a thousand years in a bed the size of her apartment and demanded the same space and comfort here.
Restraining the urge to sigh again, Natasha reaches out and attempts to reclaim her pillow. Loki grunts from her effort and tightens his grip, causing Natasha to narrow her eyes, the gesture proof that he is awake yet unwilling to relinquish his spoils. Turning, she grabs the glass of water from beside her bed and then upends it over his head, but the water splashes against a force field that he conjured in her turn and drenches her instead.
He chuckles as she wipes water from her face. Natasha glances down and finds him peering up at her, amusement brightening his eyes. "You know," she says, moving to stand, "one day I won't reach for the pillow first. Instead, it'll be my knife."
Loki smiles at that and turns back around, her threat not a threat at all, but instead a delightful promise of future fun. She watches as he burrows further into her blankets and takes up even more space on the bed, testing her warning from the outset. Shaking her head, Natasha stands and walks to the bathroom, stripping off her drenched shirt as she goes. When she reaches the door, she tosses it back over her shoulder, grinning at the yelp it elicits as it lands with a plop on Loki's unprotected head.