Author's note: Hello everyone! Hope you enjoy this chapter, let me know what you think!
Disclaimer: I own nothing you recognize.
Loki glanced down at the woman's hand before fitting his around hers, noticing how tiny her palm seemed in his. She smiled at him as they moved their clutched hands up and down, Loki unsure the need for the gesture, but allowing it anyway.
"So what are you doing back in the city you broke?" Maggie asked, taking her hand from his and leaning on the wooden table behind her.
"My father banished me here," He muttered unhappily, drawing a shrug from the woman.
"Fit punishment I would think."
"Why would you say that?" He asked roughly, his eyes narrowing.
"Well, from what I saw on the news you wanted to rule us and all, but a king can't rule people he doesn't know or understand."
"You sound like my brother," He huffed and she grinned.
"Good thing one of us is making sense."
He glared at her, pouting like an insolent child. Maggie's head tilted to one side, sending him a quizzical look. "So if your father banished you to Earth, where are you staying?"
Loki's lips narrowed to a thin line, a grim look on his face. "I don't know," He said simply, staring out of the shops' front windows.
"Well that sucks."
Maggie lifted herself from the table and walked away towards the back of the building, wiping her hands on her apron.
"Wait," Loki called after her and she turned. "Wouldn't that be the time to offer some kind of aid to those that are in need?"
"I didn't even get a thank you from you," She said incredulously. "Why should I offer you a place to stay?"
His face contorted briefly, but before he opened his mouth with the death threat at the tip of his tongue, his eyes cast the front windows again, noticing that twilight wasn't that far off. If he didn't take what he needed from this woman by giving her what she wanted, who was to say someone else would be extending the same offer? He also couldn't help but believe that she was right about his name, it would be terribly troublesome if he came across more humans who knew who he was and what he had done. He needed an alias first and foremost, but this woman who knew who he was didn't seem to care. On the contrary she was even considering him a place to sleep if she received payment and even though in his eyes it was terribly demeaning, he had no other choice but to offer it up.
"Thank you," He said after a moment, his eyes casting to the floor. "For driving off those boys earlier and giving me something to dry off with after dousing me with water." He glanced up at her, finding a bemused smile on her lips, her arms crossed over her chest again.
"And?"
"What?"
"Well I'm not so sure I've got a place for you... unless you ask me nicely," She smirked cheekily and Loki's fists clenched in anger.
"Do you by chance have a place for me to stay?" He growled through clenched teeth, a long pause following his words, Maggie's eyebrows rising from his silence. "Please."
"Yup," She sang with a large grin, her arms dropping as she turned towards the doorway behind her, glancing over her shoulder at the still smoldering god. "Common, I just so happen to have a free apartment upstairs."
Loki huffed, gathering his shattered pride before following the woman through the door way to a little foyer, another door leading outside sitting on the opposite wall. She ignored it and took to the stairs on their left, climbing them smoothly, the wood creaking under her weight.
"You're lucky," She said over her shoulder as they climbed. "I'd been looking for a new tenant but didn't want someone nutty..." She paused, stopping her ascent and glancing at the raven haired man behind her. "Close enough."
She pulled a set of keys from her pocket, choosing one from the ring and slipping it into the wooden door behind her, opening it and stepping aside so Loki could walk inside. Above anything else, the place was bare. There was only one room in the place, a small bed all the way against the far wall below the only window, the walls were off white and the only splash of color came from the wooden cabinets arranged nicely in the left corner to form some semblance of a kitchen. Loki sneered as he walked through the doorway, eyeing the bare walls, the single chair left in the middle of the room, the ugly yellow-ish tiles at his feet. His eyes squeezed shut for a moment.
"Banishment."
"What?"
He turned, finding Maggie staring at him expectantly from the doorway.
"Nothing," He said quickly, waving her off and turning back around to the place he was supposed to be staying at. He said please for this?
"Well," Maggie hummed, coming up behind him and glancing around the place herself. "The former tenant took everything with 'im except the bed and that chair obviously. Otherwise you're going to have to find your own stuff to buy." She stepped further into the apartment, twirling to look at him. "Your key is upstairs in my place and uhm..." She gazed at the tiny kitchen off to the side. "You don't really have anything to eat so if you want you can come up, I'll cook us some dinner and we can talk about rent and what not, sound good?"
He eyed her for a moment. "Do I have to say please again?"
Maggie laughed, moving past him and back through the doorway. "You don't, but manners are always accepted in my building."
Sighing softly to himself, Loki followed her out and up another flight of stairs, the pair ending up at her place, seated at her lush dining table with plates of what she called stew in front of them, a loaf of bread in between. Loki was never good at small talk, he never had been during Asgard feasts and sitting with Maggie was no different. He thought they would be talking about whatever Maggie had said before, but instead she blathered on about the building and the little shop she ran on the bottom floor. He was simply thankful the food was decent or else he would have run back down to the little white place below to get away, the key already tucked into his trouser pocket.
"So," Maggie said after another swallow of her food, drawing the man's attention back. "About rent - were you planning on getting a job while you're here?"
Loki blinked at her, blatant confusion settling in. "What are you speaking of?"
"A job," Maggie said, not clarifying anything. "Work you do to earn money so you can pay me for the apartment?"
The god blanched, unsure if it was over what she asked or the horrible thing he just bit into that was floating in the brown concoction he had been eating. "I have to pay you?" He asked.
"I'm not letting you stay for free," Maggie snorted, reminding Loki for the smallest of seconds of the ladies in waiting back on Asgard as she leaned back in her chair, glancing at him down her nose. "You work for your bread and butter here on Earth."
"I thought you said this was stew," He muttered, glancing down at his spoon. Maggie huffed lowly, crossing her arms underneath her breasts, the globes straining against the neck of her shirt, Loki's lip curling from the effect.
"Well, I think you should work down in the shop, I'll take the rent out of your pay and you can have the leftovers for food and everything."
"Work in the shop," He glanced down at the table with his eyebrows drawn. "What would I be doing exactly?"
Maggie grinned a truly terrible, wolfish grin that straightened the god's spine and for the first time in a while, sent a streak of fear trickling down his spine.
"Oh you'll see."
"I'm a what."
"A waiter!" Maggie said with her same boisterous smile, the apron fixed back across her waist, a green shirt now plastered to her frame, her curls bouncing enthusiastically. He took one look at her and contemplated turning around, having every mind to go back upstairs where he had been sleeping soundly until this woman woke him up with loud noises on his door. He opened it to tell her off, but the woman grabbed him and shoved him down the stairs and into the kitchen with another tired-looking youth with bright blonde, scraggy hair.
"Hey Magg's," The youth yawned. "Turn down the cheery would ya? It's too early for it."
Loki couldn't agree more.
"Sorry Chase," She grinned, drawing a sleepy smile from the slouching man. "You," She pointed to Loki, making sure not to use his name around the one called Chase. "With me."
She turned and waltzed through the kitchen, opening a door next to a giant metal one that looked like some sort of cage for something large. He glanced at the man beside him, his eyes closed as he rocked back and forth on his feet before following Maggie, finding her shifting some boxes around inside a tiny room.
"Ah," She said happily, throwing a white cloth over her shoulder, Loki catching it from the air. "That's your apron and it's one of the few left so don't go losing or breaking it." She shifted a few more things around before uttering another triumphant cry, holding something in her hand. "I knew I had it somewhere here."
Stepping out of the room with her hand outstretched she handed him something small and rectangular. He eyed the words typed in black on the beige background, a tiny yellow happy face at the end of the last letter.
"Lance," He read lowly, glancing up to the glowing woman.
"That's your name tag while you're working," She said, her hands on her hips. "I could care less what you name yourself outta the shop, but it's not going to be your old name."
Loki looked at the two objects in his hand, confusion written all over his face. Maggie sighed with a roll of her eyes, moving up to the man and wrapping the apron around his waist and affixing his new badge on his chest. She stepped back, looking quite proud with herself before leading him back to Chase who looked considerably more awake than he was when they had left him. He glanced at the name tag on Loki's chest, his eyes widening slightly.
"Lance?" He glanced over at Maggie. "You're giving him your old boyfriend's name tag?"
Loki's green eyes found Maggie's blue who looked at him wearily before sending a weak smile Chase's way. "Gotta, that's his name."
Loki suppressed the snort from the obvious lie the woman stated. Honestly, what were the odds that a man new to the shop would have the same name as the one who had worked the position beforehand? His chin tilted back slightly, wondering if he could use this idiot woman to his advantage, having full faith in the man in front of him to see her obvious lie.
"Works for me."
Maggie grinned good-naturedly, clapping Chase on the shoulder and pointing to the bewildered god behind her. "Show him the ropes would you Chase? He's never served before so he might need some extra attention."
"On a Monday Magg's?" The human boy whined.
"Yes on a Monday," She said, turning from the both of them and heading out of the kitchen. "Don't worry if he needs more help than you can give, I'll offer some of mine." She sent another wolfish grin Loki's way, stopping him in his tracks for the second time, the look far too dangerous to ignore.
"I'm opening the doors now," She sang as she headed up front, the boy next to Loki turning to him.
"Listen up, pal," He leaned up to the taller man, his brown eyes narrowing. "You better watch my lead and do exactly as I do. You can shadow me for the first table, but you're on your own afterwards. If Maggie doesn't like you by the third table then you're outta here."
Loki sneered, using his height to look down on the blonde, his eyes narrowing. "I don't need your help," He growled, his lip curling. "I'll be perfect by the second table."
Chase snorted, shaking his head and headed to the door of the kitchen, grabbing his apron from a hook on the wall, tying it tightly around his waist. "I'm not bailing your ass out today. You can flounder for all I care."
"I'll have all of you humans eating out of my hand," Loki growled out as Chase turned and strutted out of the kitchen, completely ignoring the fuming man behind him.