Meet Cute
A gift fic for fabulousflutterings
It had all gone wrong. All his grand plans, all his cherished ambitions. Instead of seeing the admiring gaze of his parents as he told them that they need never fear the barbarism of the Frost Giants, all Loki beheld was the vast, dark sky of Midgard. Even the stars shone weakly here. What a pathetic Realm.
How suitable it was that he should find himself stuck here, after having soared so high. For stuck he was; every time he tried to move, a troublesome creaking and a tearing rush of pain flooded through his sternum. His magic was too exhausted to compensate, at least as quickly as he would like. No, he would simply have to lie in the dust and stew in his own failure.
Loki supposed he deserved no better. His reach had exceeded his grasp the moment he tried to kill Thor. If Yggdrasil ever gave him another chance at power, he would be certain not to make the same mistake again.
Two ribbons of light swept him from head to toe, and a vehicle screeched to a stop just beyond him. Running footsteps crunched in the cold sand, and a voice—soft, female—asked him how he did.
"Is it not obvious, woman?" he gritted. He could not even rise to see her face. "Leave me be."
"Oh my God," she came into view, "you're him, aren't you? I mean, you're not him, him, but...you're his brother. Loki. He told me about you."
He made no answer. So this was the woman who had so reformed Thor. She seemed frail and slight, as far from his brother's typical conquests as could be. There was a certain delicacy in her smooth tanned skin and clear dark eyes, he supposed, but he could not imagine Thor valuing those graces as he might.
"What are you doing here?"
"Why," his grimace would never pass for a smile, "to visit you, of course. I promised my brother I would, and I am occasionally a man of my word."
She made no effort to parse his cryptic statement. "Can you stand?" she asked instead, hands skimming just shy of his shoulders. "I don't think I can carry you."
There was something injured quite deep inside; his magic was not just struggling to heal him, but also to keep him breathing. Still, Loki supposed he should be grateful to be alive after such a chaotic journey.
Not merely that, but it seemed as though Yggdrasil had begun to favor him once again. He gained his feet without the woman's aid and stared at her long and carefully. Her long hair fluttered on the chill evening breeze, and though her attire was hardly doing her any service, the body beneath seemed well-molded.
Perhaps his idle threat turned out a better thought than intended.
"You're hurt," she said, noticing how he moved. "Thor didn't do very well in the hospital, but I could take you if you wanted."
"All I require is rest," Loki assured her. Whatever he decided to do about this woman, it would be best to play nicely for now.
She nodded, motioning him towards her car, only stopping at the sudden grasp of Loki's hand.
"May I know the name of my rescuer?"
"Uh," her smile wavered uncertainly. "It's Jane. Jane Foster. And..." she shifted, "I have to ask...you're not here to to kill anyone, are you?"
He laughed, disguising how much it tore at him. "Did I not say I was a man of my word?"
()()()
A day in Jane's company helped resolve his undecided intentions. What he gleaned from her rather incompetent medical attentions, pathetic surroundings, and her frequent, incisive questions about the universe was that it was only a pity she had not been born Aesir. Even at such an elementary understanding of the fundamentals of—well, everything—she showed promise to become far more than her birthright would allow.
Perhaps Odin should have rescued her from squalor instead.
He frowned at the thought and Jane's brow furrowed.
"You said you had accelerated healing," she said, "Does it still hurt?"
"What I require more than anything is distraction," he snapped. Though he no longer planned to kill her, he did not require her sympathy.
She brightened. "I think I can help with that." From a pantry above the stove, she pulled a bottle nearly full of clear liquor. At least, he assumed it was liquor. He could not imagine even Midgardians weak enough to be intoxicated by water.
"Darcy gave this to me for my birthday," she unscrewed the cap and poured a generous helping into their two empty coffee mugs. "But I don't like drinking alone. Cheers."
At his blank expression, she tapped their mugs together and drank deeply, nose scrunching at the alcohol's burn. He drained his in one gulp and reached for the bottle; Midgardian alcohol would far less for him than her.
Half the bottle later, Loki forgot that his injuries made him far more susceptible to its influence.
At least Jane was in no state to notice.
"So," she fought to keep her words from slurring, "What you're sayin' is...is I'm still con—con—conceptualizing," she broke the word into very distinct syllables, "wrong. That interstellar travel isn't travel so much as...jumping?"
"Essentially," he could not look away from the drop of vodka beading on her lip.
"Then..." hesitating, shy, "can't Thor jump back?"
He laughed again, and it hurt for different reasons this time. "He hardly knows how. You would be more likely to learn the technique first."
Loki knew he should stop drinking, but the bottle was nearly empty. One more swallow.
"Why do you want him to return?"
The smile she gave lit the room despite the darkness. But she was not smiling for him.
"I dunno...he told me things about the universe that I never knew before."
No more than I could tell you.
"He's kind, strong...and," she grinned, eyes darting furtively up, "he kisses like—"
Vodka from her lips might taste differently, but the slow, warm burn was the same. His heart leaped at the sound of her startled gasp, and pounded when her tongue stole slyly out to meet his. Her hands tugged insistently, catching the hair at the nape of his neck to pull him closer.
His knees bumped the coffee table as he tried to follow her lead; he cursed. She didn't notice.
"Wow," she sighed, "I guess you all kiss like that then, huh?"
"Certainly not," he huffed. "Thor hardly knows how."