Darcy feels like it would be appropriate if she was in a hospital bed saying her last goodbyes to family and friends because that's exactly how she feels; like she's dying.
Loki assures her she'll survive but really how would he know. He has never gotten sick in his life (and this isn't an exaggeration) and he's not planning on it anytime soon, so knowing it won't get better any time in the near future she wraps herself like a burrito in her bed and watches The Cabin in the Woods, laughing every time a character dies. This is how Loki finds her ten minutes later, half sick and half insane, watching a person die via unicorn.
"And what do we have here?" Darcy turns, giggle caught in her throat which quickly turns into a cough upon hearing his question.
Darcy frowns and pauses the movie, she turns to look at him and she frowns deeper at his presence in her bedroom.
"What? Did you forget one of your precious books or something?" There's not much rage in the question since she can barely muster the energy to look at him.
Loki smirks knowing this, usually their games are physical. Darcy loves attacking him with anything within her sight, pillows, purse, mirrors and in one amusing occasion a blender. Darcy doesn't posses this option now something which she knows Loki will explode until he grows bored with it and really she doesn't know why he bothers with her, yeah they sleep together sometimes and she's sure he regards her as anything more than a plaything. They're not dating though and she gets so confused sometimes when he'll appear in her bedroom not to get lucky but to just lay down with her and sleep (they don't cuddle though, God forbid they cuddle), sometimes he'll just sit, back against the bed's frame, and read.
"Not at all sweetheart, just making sure you are feeling better." Loki, all charm, slides besides her on the bed and grabs the end of her ponytail using it as a steering wheel so he may kiss her. Darcy feeling gross retreats before he can get there. Loki scowls and Darcy sighs explaining quickly before he feels all rejected.
"I'm sick, I'm gross you don't want to touch me." Saying so she unwraps herself from her personal burrito and runs to her bathroom, because maybe she's got enough energy for a little sexy time with Loki.
He chases after her, knowing he'll catch her she doesn't close the door behind her.
Later, much later, when Darcy feels somewhat human again and Loki stares at the ceiling and softly plays with her hair, she remembers the movie. She muses about it, she wonders if Loki is into horror movies but she doesn't doubt it since he's Loki and he would find amusement rather than fear at such a silly human thing.
Darcy wonders if Asgard has anything like horror movies or plays or something, she wonders if they have something like Halloween or Christmas.
"Loki does Asgard have holidays?" She doesn't know why she asks, really she should know better. Loki tenses up every time his home planet, realm whatever, is mention and today is no different.
"Some, why?" his voice feels colder somehow and she shivers.
"Just wondering, here we have tons of holidays. It's October, this month we celebrate something called Halloween, do you know what that is?" Later when Tony is screaming at her she'll deny having asked Loki anything and everyone will believe her and worse still she'll believe until one day she remembers the whole thing was her fault.
"No. Tell me." Subject away from him, he goes back to being blank Loki rather than freeze-a-room-with-my-hatred Loki.
"Well it's..." And she stops because Loki is Loki and vague explanations are not enough.
She scoots over to her bedside table and grabs her laptop. Finding a suitable but small video, she gives Loki the laptop and let's him watch. Loki smiles widen as the video keeps going and once it stops Loki is practically giddy with excitement.
"So in this holiday of yours, pranks are expected yes?" He turns to look at her and the light from the laptop makes him look almost diabolical, smile all teeth and eyes practically gone because his smile is that big.
"Well...yes...kind of..." She groans because she realizes she just gave him a valid excuse to be an asshole.
"Excellent." He gets up, extends his hand to her and she hesitantly grabs it. "Shall we start then?"
She can't help but feel a smile tug at her lips. She won't say it out aloud but she didn't think Loki would include her in his little mischief, feeling lighter than before she follows him into her kitchen where they sit and scheme ways to prank the rest of the avengers (because Loki is consider one now even if he won't admit it).
Darcy is so distracted she doesn't question when her cold is mysteriously gone.
Loki hits the hard people first and by that he means Tony, who can be just as devious as Loki.
Tony's prank is simple, way more simple than Darcy expected, Loki will just move stuff around until Tony finally snaps.
Loki tells her the best plans are sometimes the most simple.
It starts at breakfast. Tony walks into the Avengers shared kitchen and grabs a mug from a cabinet.
"What's up reindeer games? Darcy always lovely to see you." Saying so he sets down his cup of coffee on the counter and turns towards the fridge. Loki takes the chance to move the cup just slightly.
While Tony and Loki fight their never ending verbal fights, Loki continues to move things slightly out of their place. Darcy doesn't know if it will be enough but Tony looks weirdly fascinated by his hands as they leave so she assumes it's working.
By dinner time Tony looks a little manic and Darcy resist the urge to laugh. Darcy has an open invitation for dinner, every time she wants to eat with the Avengers she can, Loki tells her is because the Avengers like having someone normal around. Darcy is just glad they genuinely like her.
Tony keeps glancing around the living room as if to find something out of order, he glares at Loki every once in a while but Loki acts nonchalant and that seems enough for Tony, for now.
The final straw for Tony seems to be misplacing his fork in the middle of their dinner. Abruptly he stands up and goes straight for Loki, who is blank face and quietly eating his dinner. Darcy squeezes Loki's knee hard when Tony draws near and she swears she can feel tremors running down Loki's leg or maybe is just her own suppressed laughter at work.
"You son of a bitch! What did you do?!" Tony tries to strangle Loki but he doesn't get much further than fingertips touching Loki's skin before Thor has him over his shoulder.
"What is this foolishness man of iron?!" Darcy looks at Loki contemplating why he let Tony get has far as he did and then she realizes Loki is going for innocence of all things. She is so surprised by this she snorts and Loki pinches her thigh in warning.
"That son of a bitch did something to me!" Tony flails in Thor's meaty arms and hits his back with force but Thor barely blinks.
By now the rest of the table haven't gone past confusion, except Natasha and Clint who have bow and gun at ready.
"I beg your pardon?" Loki's look of innocence is lost on Darcy, who's thigh is getting pinch so hard now she knows she's going to bruise, but the laughter she's holding in is ready to burst out.
"You heard me! All fucking day all my stuff has been moving around by itself and right now my fork and my food too!" Thor hasn't let him down but Thor kindly moved around so Tony could face Loki.
"Are you suggesting I have been following you around all day, hiding in the shadows wasting precious energy, to move your papers?" Loki now looks offended, scoffing he stands up and leaves the room. Darcy gives everyone an awkward wave before practically running out of the room.
She finds Loki standing by the elevator chuckling and unable to hold it in, she breaks in out in laughter.
They try Natasha next, something simple as well.
They mess with her closet, something Darcy doesn't thing would matter a great deal to Natasha but apparently even her clothes are weapons.
Darcy has a bad feeling as she and Loki trade Natasha's clothes for brand new ones, most are now bright things of all colors that blind people couldn't miss in a crowd.
Darcy knows the prank falls apart when Natasha enters the shared living room in nothing but a pair of panties and bra (that match of course), goes straight to Loki who is sitting next to Darcy. Natasha whispers something in Loki's ear, he nods and she leaves.
Loki refuses to speak about it but tells Darcy to erase Clint for the list of pranks.
Steve by far is the easiest to prank and really Darcy doesn't get as much satisfaction as she thought she would.
This time is all her, Loki retreating to his floor in possession of her phone playing angry birds.
She sits down next to Steve in the living room and opens up her laptop showing Steve random funny videos and random games as she does every once in awhile.
She hands Steve the laptop, telling him the game consists of him finding the differences between the two pictures which are suppose to be identical. Steve concentrates hard on the game and after ten seconds, just as she expected, a bloody face pops up screaming bloody murder.
Darcy expected surprise, Steve had after all done and seeing things much worse than she could even imagine but to her amazement Steve screamed right along with the laptop. Darcy isn't quick enough to grab her precious laptop as Steve throws it across the room, where it falls into a million pieces or maybe that's just her heart as her precious piece of technology dies a painful death.
Unfortunately for Darcy Steve isn't done yet, he screams and throws stuff until he calms down. Thor and Tony enter the room expecting trouble only to be encounter with Steve, apparently losing his mind. Steve breaths hard and eventually he falls back on the couch.
It takes awhile for Steve to stop apologizing but Darcy figured she had it coming, she sulks back to her room even after Tony tells her he'll give her the best tech Stark Industries has to offer.
She finds Loki laughing on his bed, his massive TV shows the destroyed living room. Darcy sighs and simple throws the first thing she sees at him.
Figures she would break a thousand dollar vase.
Thor and Bruce are a share experiment or so Loki tells her.
Loki is holding tightly to a bag of green leafs that look unfamiliar to Darcy. Loki tells her they are rare plants from Asgard.
During lunch Loki stealthily drops some of the ground leaves into Bruce's tea and Thor's beer. It is not long before Bruce starts giggling and Thor starts looking at the room in confusion.
"Darcy your hair is so very pretty, it's like chocolate can I lick it?" Bruce takes the seat next to Darcy and she's a little startled, she never saw him coming. Before Darcy can say no, Bruce has her head in his hands and is trying to lick her hair.
She is distracted enough by this she completely misses the way Thor hugs Loki tightly while reciting poetry, or well what passes for poetry according to Thor.
"Your eyes brother, they are so deep, they are like the greenest grass of Asgard. Your skin so soft and pretty."
"Let go of me you big pile of dung!"
"Bruce knock it off!" Darcy struggles for a second before Bruce concedes and lets her go.
Darcy's moments of relief lasts all but as second as Bruce goes directly to Thor and Loki, the latter struggling to get out of Thor's meaty hands. Darcy finds the whole thing fucking ridiculous and almost says as much before Thor looks at Bruce and roughly lets Loki go. What happens next will stay one of the most hilarious things she will ever witnessed.
Bruce beckons Thor across the living room and Thor as if in a spell walks lazily towards him. Bruce holds out his hand and Thor takes it, before Darcy knows it they are both dancing a very slow tango, which makes Darcy uncomfortable in so many ways she can't even describe them.
The dance is small potatoes compare to what Bruce and Thor do next, that is they start stripping each other and before Darcy starts to think naughty thoughts about the pair (because really they are both good looking guys) they let go and start running wildly through the share living room.
Stark (pun totally intended) naked.
"Look Loki I got two Mjolnirs now!" Thor laughs loudly at his own joke before he starts to jump around on the couch. Darcy can hear the wood beneath as it breaks.
Bruce for his part is now wildly admiring everything in sight and has a running commentary about everything in the room.
"The chair is green and lonely as it looks I'm going to wait until I tell the lamp how beautiful it is because really nothing is more beautiful than the color aquamarine." Darcy doesn't hear the rest because Bruce is now talking too fast to keep track.
Loki is still sitting wordlessly on the floor where Thor left him, staring at his brother in at appears to be amazement. Darcy muses that he looks as if the wind was knocked out of his sails, which is tragic because if anyone should be enjoying this it should be Loki.
Darcy walks to him and hits him on the head trying to wake him from whatever stupor he is in.
"Are they high?" She asks him softly afraid to admit it even to herself because it is such a dangerous thing to get the hulk, of all people, high.
Loki shakes his head and looks around the room in wonder, Thor is now looking questioningly at his own junk as if he had never seen it before, Darcy highly doubts that. Bruce is still running commentary of the things in the room but now the commentary is a soap opera.
"Couch you have to forgive the blu ray player it didn't mean to cheat on you with the lamp, it wasn't like that between them!"
Thor looks like he's about to burst into tears and Darcy abandons Loki in favor of making sure Thor doesn't jump through a window or something.
"Thor what's wrong?" To her surprise Thor gives her a watery smile.
"Lady Darcy do you see the beauty of my mighty hammer? Here touch it." Before he can move closer Loki is between them, all silent rage. Darcy shamelessly hopes it's because of her.
"Thor no." Loki grabs Thor by the arm and drags him to the kitchen, Darcy is left behind with Bruce who is now excitedly telling the stereo system a tale of love and justice. Darcy thinks she hears her name somewhere in there.
She hesitates for a half a second before following Loki and Thor in the kitchen. To her amusement she finds Loki making hot chocolate, when she gives him a questioning look he simply shrugs.
"Cocoa beans is apparently the only thing that can render the effects mute." Saying so he shoves a cup to Thor who stares dreamily at his brother. Darcy doesn't hesitate to grab a cup for Bruce.
When she comes back Bruce is still talking to the furniture except now he seems to be holding the lamp like a baby, Darcy wonders if the lamp is suppose to be something's child.
"Look Bruce, I brought you hot chocolate." Bruce roughly grabs the cup from her and thirstily drinks the whole thing.
Unfortunately the effects aren't instantaneous and so the rest of the day she and Loki are forced to care for the idiots.
That night Darcy won't let Loki touch her.
A couple days after the whole Thor and Bruce incident, which Tony likes to play for guests, Darcy is walking towards the Avengers Tower where Loki told her to meet him.
He hadn't been speaking to her the lasts couple of days, Darcy knows it really isn't about her but about how horrible his last prank went. Loki won't admit it but she knows the whole thing was mostly an experiment for those leafs of his.
She bumps into Bruce at the entrance and they walk together making small talk.
"Hey listen I want to thank you again for letting me know about Loki and I want to apologize again for the whole incident a couple of days ago."
"The whole thing, let's not mention again ok?" She smiles awkwardly at him before running over what he said in her head, something doesn't sound quite right. "Wait what do you mean letting you know about Loki?"
"You know for letting me know about the prank he was going to pull so the rest of us could be prepare in case something happened, I'm just happy he let out of his system you know?" Darcy wants to tell him she doesn't know because she doesn't.
She stares at him in silence and thinks about the pranks. She knows Loki meant them and there wasn't any tricks to them, well aside from the obvious ones, but she knows she didn't call Bruce and warn him and Loki can shape shift into whatever he wants, which includes his voice.
"Darcy you ok?" Bruce looks at her in worry and Darcy can't help but return that worry.
"And everybody knew? After I...called you? Everybody knew what Loki was doing?" She stares at the number in the elevator and wonders what she'll find once she gets to the shared living room.
Bruce gives her an odd look but answers. "Well yes that was the whole point wasn't it?"
Darcy lets out a small giggle and before she knows it she full blown laughing next to a very confused Bruce.
Loki had once told her about always having an extra trick stashed somewhere, just in case. Just before the elevator gets to its destination she turns to Bruce and tells him:
"Bruce I never called you." And just like that she knows what Loki was trying to do.
Loki wanted to get everyone by surprise, regardless of what he needed to do to achieve. Loki could be so patient when he needed to be and Darcy mentally hit herself for not realizing the pranks were there to distract. Once the pranks were over, everyone relax. That's what the call was for, if Darcy 'warned' them about the pranks then they had a sense of calm because they had someone on the inside.
Before Bruce could say anything else the elevator doors opened.
To chaos.
Everyone looked in various states of shock and anger, Loki was nowhere to be found.
"DARCY!" Pepper screamed at her and Darcy was beyond shock, Pepper never yelled.
Everyone in the room turned to look at her, she flinched at some of those looks.
"Darcy please explain what my brother has done." The voice was all wrong and when she turned to look at Thor, she came face to face with Natasha instead.
Darcy was beyond amazed, Loki had made them switch bodies which was hilarious and so damn unexpected.
"Oh no. Listen I had no idea Loki was planning anything like this." She walked slowly through the room, she felt like she walking the plank. Darcy knew Loki wouldn't just throw her at the wolves so she stall.
"Ok so where is everyone? Nat?" She looked around and locked gaze with Steve who nods.
"Ok...Steve?" She saw Clint as he stepped forward and he gave her the puppy dog look Steve had muster long ago though the look kind of didn't work on Clint's face.
"Umm... Clint?" She burst out laughing when Pepper, or at least her body gave her a death glare. She stopped before Clint kill her.
"Oh Jesus, Pepper?" Tony's body gave her a weird smile and Darcy laughed again because God that was just so ironic. Which meant...
"You know I think I like being all muscles and having the hammer of destiny." Saying so Tony stretched in Thor's body making incredible stupid poses. Thor looked devastated in Natasha's body, Darcy wants to take a picture.
Before she could say anything else she felt arms go around her waist, she smiled knowing Loki had finally made his appearance.
"And I do believe this is the part where I laughed in an incredible loud and obnoxious way." But he didn't, simply smirked and dragged Darcy back to the elevator, waiting patiently while it arrived.
Darcy kept glancing between the Avengers and Loki, everyone looked about ready to kill him but Loki just held her hand and hummed a tune under his breath.
The elevator arrived and right before it close Thor or Natasha smile. "There will be retaliation brother."
"I shall wait patiently...milady." Loki smirked as the door close.
"Oh my god." Darcy leaned back and laughed until her sides hurt.
Loki smiled fondly at her before grabbing her roughly and kissing her still laughing lips.
"Trick or treat?"