SHIELD trusts Loki against its enemies and in its heart of hearts—the control center—but doesn't trust him out of Thor's sight anywhere other than in his upstairs apartment. So, Loki's seated in one of the SHIELD break rooms, ignoring the loud appreciation his not-brother holds for his stack of turkey and provolone sandwiches.
Rogers happily engages Thor over their mutual love of America's processed meat industry. Next to Rogers, Barnes picks at his grilled chicken salad quietly. Barnes is tied to Rogers just as Loki is tied to Thor. In that way, they are of a kind. But in another way, because Barnes has thrown himself in front of a bus, off a building, and in the way of an incoming missile for Rogers in the past year alone, they are nothing alike.
"Pastrami?" Thor asks. "Tell me of which animal you speak, Captain."
Rogers laughs. "It's just another way to season beef. We'll have to go out to Brooklyn one day—I'll take you to a Jewish deli for you to try it."
"I like this proposal!" Thor claps Rogers on the shoulder and gives him a shake, and Rogers smiles broadly back at Thor. Leaving the two of them to their bonding, Loki returns his attention to his book.
…Promised is she,
gold-decked maid, to the glad son of Froda.
Sage this seems to the Scylding's-friend,
kingdom's-keeper: he counts it wise
the woman to wed so and ward off feud,
store of slaughter. But seldom ever
when men are slain, does the murder-spear sink
but briefest while, though the bride be fair!
A tray clatters down onto the table, and Darcy drops into the seat beside Loki. "How is it going, my strapping male companions?" She asks the table, popping the tab of her can. "I'm digging the haircut, Loki. It takes like, an entire millennia off your face."
He'd done it himself over the bathroom sink with some blunt scissors a few nights ago, cutting it back above his collar. His neck still feels strangely exposed, but the sensation will pass soon. "What is the god of mischief if not eternally young?" Loki says with the turn of the page.
Darcy reaches over—she's painted her nails crimson this week—and tilts the cover of the book up so she can read it. "So, you're liking it? Grendel's mother is like, the baddest villain to ever walk this earth."
"She seems to be quite a formidable adversary," Loki admits. "Though I've crossed swords with worse."
Barnes looks at the two of them like they're speaking in tongues. "It's just fiction."
"So says the metal-armed and immortal Soviet assassin eating lunch with the God of Thunder." Darcy snaps off a bite of her apple, leaving a smudge of pink gloss on the fruit's green flesh. "I mean, this dude opened a rift in between worlds during his little identity crisis. I'm doing research on whether or not it's feasible to coat an entire skeleton in metal. And we're wondering whether monsters might or might not have lived in a swamp in primeval Britain?"
With a defeated but unconvinced shrug, Barnes turns back to his salad. While not having an opinion on Grendel's mother, Rogers has something else to share with Darcy. "That's a lovely blouse."
It's light blue, the color of her eyes. The neck scoops low over her full breasts that rise upwards with her inhale. Then she exhales, chest falling, and Loki drags his eyes away to the roll of condensation down his glass. With a toss of her curls, Darcy pulls her lips to the side in a half-smile. "Thanks, Captain. You're cutting a nice figure today your own self. All muscley in that tight black shirt." Rogers' cheeks pinken and Loki resists the urge to tell him that he can practically smell the virgin on him.
She turns her eyes to Loki and nudges his tray with her fingers. "Better eat up, Destroyer of Worlds. If you wanna keep up with your brother, that is."
Loki licks his finger and turns the next page. "Adoptive brother."
"Same difference." He feels her eyes sweep over him, then her hand is on his arm, squeezing gently through the fabric of his shirt. Loki jolts at the sensation—the first female touch since he covered Jane Foster with his body nearly a year ago. Thor and Rogers immediately drop their sandwiches and pull their feet up underneath their chairs, as if Loki would turn and attack Darcy in front of them and the other 75 SHIELD agents and without his magic to escape. "Hey, you're not too scrawny either, Loki. You should take a page out of these guys' books and let your torso breathe. And by that I mean, you should totally walk around shirtless."
She's turned her playful smirk on him now, and it's been too long since he's had a woman do anything other than scream and shout at him that he takes a moment to organize his words. "I doubt Director Fury would look favorably on that."
"Psh." Darcy crosses her legs towards him and takes another bite of her apple. "Nicholas is but a tiny part of SHIELD. It's the little people you've got to get back on your good side. Like Lucy Liu over there," she jerks her head at a black-suited woman blowing gently on her spoonful of chili, "she could be in charge of video surveillance during the next apocalyptic crisis and just might choose to glance away when she knows someone is sneaking up on you. But if she happens to battle inside of herself about whether she should save that godly six-pack?" She lets her suggestion trail off and shrugs noncommittally, lifting her drink to her mouth and taking a swig.
"No one can sneak up on me," Loki tells her. "Not when I can hear the carbonation in that can even through that…insulation you have wrapped around it."
Darcy narrows her eyes at him from behind her glasses. "Challenge accepted. And it's called a 'coozie.'" Beside her tray, her phone buzzes and lights up. She huffs a sigh and picks it up, scrolling through her message. "Great—a working lunch. Ugh, I don't care what you say, Steve—the modern world is beyond cruel."
With lackadaisical care, she flips the lid closed over her lasagna and hitches her bag over her shoulder. "Much as I would rather hang out with all of you chisel-jawed hunks, I've gotta go boss some interns around," Darcy informs them, pushing her glasses up her nose. She grabs her box and drink and turns to walk away to the tune of the rest of the table saying goodbye to her. "Try Gilgamesh next," she says in parting, leaning over his shoulder.
Her hair brushing the back of his neck feels like cool silk.
His bracelets have never felt more like shackles in this moment, with Thor and Falcon on the other side of the city and Stark high in the sky. He lost his earpiece some minutes ago, meaning that any call for help would be futile among the shrieks of rending metal and the rumble of crackling asphalt.
Agent Hill had kept hold of the heliboard when it had flipped in the air; Loki'd reached out too late and fallen the hundred feet to the road below, cratering it on impact. Bystanders watched in amazement as he'd hauled himself to his feet with just a cough or two and walked away from the site. Luckily, none of them have recognized his face yet, or he'd be staring down an angry mob and taking the blame for the current crisis. Darcy had been right that day in the elevator, surely—it's his helm that would have given him away.
SHIELD's light armor makes it easy for him to bob and weave to the sidewalk. Another explosion sounds above him and he ducks around a corner and under an awning to avoid falling debris.
He nearly runs right over Darcy Lewis, her back pressed up against a wall while she fiddles with some machinery. "I swear to god," she shouts above the chaos and gesturing with the machine in her hand. "I'm demanding a raise after this! Or a shot of whatever juice they gave to Steve!"
A steel bar smashes into the street, decimating a line of parallel-parked cars. "I'd go with the latter," Loki recommends, and Darcy immediately nods. "Have you aligned the sensors?"
"I need to get to that corner down there." Darcy pointed across the street. "But… I did something to my ankle."
Loki looks down and realizes that her injury is why she was leaning back against the building—she's got her foot picked up off the ground. If they don't get Stark's sensors up and running, the entire city is going to fall into the Earth's core and melt away. Which he honestly doesn't care too much about, but he was dragged along with Thor and Loki will be damned if "melted in a planet's core" is how he's going to die.
He drops to his knee and rolls up her pant leg. She hisses and he hears the thud of the back of her head against the brick of the building. "My mother taught me healing magic as a boy," he tells her. He palpates the swollen flesh, trying to feel down to the bone. As he pokes and prods around her ankle, she pulls her lip between her teeth and groans in her chest.
The glint of the steel around his wrists infuriates him. Illusions and small transmutations have been easy enough, but rearranging living tissues? "Hold still," he instructs, and she nods in his periphery. He reaches out his magic, weaves through the inflamed muscle strands to the bone, just like his mother had shown him all those centuries ago. It's the mental equivalent of running up a hill—the more that he wants his magic to do, the harder it is, edging towards physically impossible. When you can literally run hundreds of miles without getting winded, it's not only a frustrating feeling, it's a foreign one.
There's a fracture, precariously close to the bottom of her fibula. He shoves his magic up that damned hill, guiding the two pieces of bone towards each other and cross-stitching his magic along the crevice. But when he goes to tug his magic tight, like Frigga's maid would do to her corsets, his connection snaps. Like Sisyphus, his magic goes tumbling backwards, head over heels.
Cursing under his breath, he looks up at her. Darcy's staring at him with the I'm impressed but still suspicious of you look that he's grown accustomed to over the past year. "I stabilized the bone, but I couldn't fix it wholly, and I couldn't do anything for the swelling. Can you walk?"
She takes the hand he offers and takes a single step forward. She winces, but grits her teeth and nods. Thor blasts past, leaving a burst of wind in his wake. Her loose hair flies into her face and she bats it out of the way. "Let's go."
Slowly but surely, they hobble forward under the eaves of the storefronts. Loki knows that he will have to carry her across the street and over the strewn cars but, for now, he can keep his focus on the skies. "Darcy here," he hears her say into her earpiece. "Heading towards the final signal point with Loki. … ETA? ehhhhh, when we get there. … Well, you're more than welcome to come join us down here if you're dissatisfied with our job performance, Ben."
At the end of the block, Loki bends down and waits for her to climb onto his back. When she doesn't immediately hop on, he looks back over his shoulder. She's smirking down at him with dancing blue eyes, the expression so out of sync with the giant balls of fire and smoke clouding the sky behind her head. "Gimme a minute," she tells him. "I'm enjoying the view of you on your knees at my feet."
Loki rolls his eyes heavenward. "Would you like to die here in the middle of nowhere or in bed of old age?"
Finally leaning over, Darcy wraps her arms around his shoulders. "There are only two things I ever want to do in bed—sleep and sex. Dying's not ever gonna be a part of the equation." With a chuckle, Loki catches Darcy under her knees and hoists her up over his hips. "Although, did you know that old people in nursing homes apparently have like, bangin' sex lives. I would think everything gets…dry down there."
Normal men would strain under the weight of a human on their back, even on flat surfaces, and climbing over wreckage would be out of the questions. But Loki's not a normal man. He's followed Thor into battle for centuries and has carried his adoptive brother's dead weight through mountain passes and riverbeds afterwards. Darcy's shapely form and a few turned-over cars is as easy as skipping stones.
"Perhaps it is, as you humans say, not the size of the boat but the motion of the ocean?"
Darcy giggles in his ear. Her breath smells like the spearmint gum she'd offered him in the helicopter on the way into this city. It's a welcome respite from the stink of burning ash.
"Those ladies can speak for themselves but I'm still looking for a two-hundred foot yacht." She squeezes her thighs and Loki tells himself that she's just adjusting her hold after they've down from the hood of a minivan. Then: "Well, you would know, wouldn't you, grandpa?"
"I'm still young by Jotunheim and Aesir standards." His voice comes out lower than he intended. He wills himself to focus on placing one foot in front of another but…with her thighs around his hips, her breasts against his back, and the pretty slope of her nose in his periphery, can he be blamed?
Still, Darcy scoffs. "You do realize that you are so old that you are a legit ancient mythological figure, right?"
Loki clears the last vehicle and sets her down, catching the curve of her slim waist when she stumbles. "And gods are forever young."
Darcy gives a queer sideways nod of her head and folds her fingers into mimicries of Midgardian firearms. "Touché. Alright, let's get this sensor aligned and save the world. Again."
By the time the leaves begin to drop from the trees and SHIELD agents arrive for work wrapped in scarves and jackets, Director Fury finally allows Loki outside. Just the grounds of the SHIELD compound at first, but that doesn't stop Loki from tilting his head back in the winter sun and taking deep breaths of fresh air. Thor joins him, as required, but it's far easier tune him out when there are trees and birds and passersby to which Loki can direct his attention.
Television commercials begin to blather on and on about the "holidays." Some internet research reveals to Loki that, at this point in the year, those who follow the Christian religion celebrate the birth of their messiah figure, Jesus Christ. What amuses Loki, however, is how many "Christmas" traditions are blatantly ripped from the very people that once worshipped Loki and his family as gods. Rogers hadn't taken too kindly to Loki pointing out that the Yule Log and the "Christmas" tree were once used by Vikings to thank the Aesir for the bounty the immortals had bestowed upon them.
After they destroyed the thirtieth-floor cafeteria, Loki had been forced to sit through lectures from Director Fury and Thor about not antagonizing people "on his team." Rogers, Loki didn't fail to note, escaped that particular fate.
Rogers appears to be in a better mood tonight, however, even clasping Loki's hand when Loki, Thor, and Jane Foster arrive at Samuel Wilson's condominium for an evening party. Thor had been confused as to what a "cocktail party" entailed, particularly when Jane told him to "please not eat all of the food – you're not supposed to actually get full." Eventually, Thor and Loki understood that the point was to drink, but not get drunk, eat, but not get full, and look nice, despite seeing all of the same people they see every day.
Jane Foster presses beers into their hands and the brothers promptly lift them to their lips, chug them down. Wilson has been around Rogers, Thor, and Barnes long enough now and Jane Foster doesn't look the slightest bit guilty as she passes them two more and takes their empty bottles. Compared to the alcoholic fare in Asgard, even the "artisan" earthling beers slide down Loki's throat as easily as water.
"I also have liquor," Loki hears Wilson tell Jane and Romanoff. "But it'd be nice if they got buzzed before breaking into that. I'm not made of money, you know."
Romanoff pats his arm. "Just get me an inventory tomorrow. I'll make sure Fury refunds you." Wilson doesn't seem too assuaged by that promise.
Wilson's living quarters are well-enough appointed, possessing more of a personal touch than Loki's back at SHIELD headquarters. Agent Hill and Jane Foster make amiable conversation under a series of photographs of what are clearly Wilson's family members. Standing together in short black dresses, they look very much like sisters. By contrast, Romanoff's traded in her usual black for a green frock, appearing decidedly tame while sipping her white wine and nodding along to another of Barnes' "back in the 1940s…" stories.
Loki meanders the condominium, not caring that eyes follow him wherever he goes. If they wish to believe that his new brand of evil would be to up-end a table in a condominium in a suburb, so be it. Other SHIELD employees—he recognizes their faces, doesn't care to ask their names—stare openly at times, ignore him at other times. It's intriguing, though, to see them all out of their day garb and in other raiments that have clearly been chosen to highlight the attributes they care most about. Women of this realm seem to favor their legs, if the shortness of their skirts and the tightness of their hose is anything to go by. Loki doesn't dare complain.
In the sitting room, Darcy Lewis leans against the back of a sofa, legs crossed at the ankle, surveying a large framed image on the wall at eye-level. "Loki," she says, lifting her glass of wine and drawing out the last syllable of his name in the same way she does with Rogers' and Thor's. Loki feels a familiar swirl of warmth behind his sternum, though it's not a sensation he's entertained in years. "Who took you shopping for the threads?"
Loki takes one long, sideways step to stand next to her. Her blue dress shimmers in the lamplight as she turns her torso towards him. Loki fingers the length of his black tie, then the stiffness of his white shirt cuffs. "Jane Foster. Or, rather, she took my measurements and returned with a stack of options. Thor accompanied her…yet, by all accounts, it proved more difficult to accommodate his frame."
A thud from the other room jerks their attention to the dining room, where Thor and Rogers each pick up a second stein and begin to take large, sloppy swallows. Spent steins sit on the table before them, headfoam running down the insides of the glasses. Around them, an audience has formed and cheers them on while Romanoff and Jane pop new cans and pour them into the first steins, trying to beat the men's pace.
Thor roars in victory when he finishes his second stein, even though Rogers is already taking his last swallow. By the time he finishes his outburst, Rogers is even with him again, and each man scrambles to change out steins with Jane and Romanoff more quickly than the other. Well-accustomed to predictably alcoholic tournaments, Loki turns back to the framed artwork and regards it while taking down the last of his beer in a succession of long pulls. "You know this work of art?"
"Mmm. Not this particular one," Darcy says, suddenly glancing down and twitching at the scalloped edge of her skirt. The fine, sheer mesh of her hose shines in the light. "It's one of Monet's water lily paintings, though."
"I see no brushstrokes."
She laughs, tucking her chin to her chest. Loki notes that without her glasses, he can see the kohl she's smudged around her eyes. Her irises look the same color as her dress—a fetching portrait she would make if painted. "This is just like, a big photograph of the painting. I'm sure the real thing is in some museum somewhere. But this lets us humble middle-classers have fancy art on our walls."
He sets his empty bottle on the end table and pulls another from his pocket. Darcy nods approvingly purses her berry-stained lips. Again, Loki feels the warm quiver behind his sternum. "And the import of this painting is…?"
"Well," Darcy straightens her spine and tosses her hair out of her face, revealing the little mole below her eye. "This is all from my Art History class in college, of course, but the paintings are a study in the collapse of visual fields. So—we see the water lilies on the water's surface, of course, but we also see, the murky shapes of things below the surface, and the shadows of the branches and such that hang above the surface. But: We look at all three in the single field of the water's surface, which is what makes the series so famous."
Loki follows the lines of the painting with his eyes as Darcy speaks, seeing the mastery of it all as soon as she points it out. In the corner of his eye, she tips her head back and lets the rest of her wine drain down her throat. "Another drink?" he hears himself ask with the same smooth timbre he's used for centuries.
She tsks and reaches behind one of the couch cushions, pulling her hand back wrapped around the neck of a half-full wine bottle. "A lady is always prepared."
Still, he holds out his open palm and takes the bottle when she passes it to him. He uncorks it with the flick of his wrist, watches the peachy liquid swirl out of the bottle and into her glass. "White Zinfandel," she tells him when he turns the bottle to look at the label. "Totally girly. Totally delicious. Wanna try it?"
It is 'girly.' Too fruity for his taste, particularly with the taste of her lip gloss on his tongue. Still, he understands the appeal—the fruity taste covers up the clear lack of aging and the absence of a strong alcoholic note is probably ideal for a young woman like Darcy, whom he knows spends late nights in her office rather than out taking advantage of early evening drink specials with her coworkers.
"Do you have painters in Asgard?" She takes the drink back from him and sips. The light through the wine casts a lovely array across the bodice of her silky dress, not unlike the colored glass he's seen time and again in the religious buildings of this realm.
Loki hums. "Sculptors, moreso—"
"Heeeeeeyyy, look who's caught under the mistletoe!" Wilson, unlike Thor and Rogers, with whom he's been trying to keep up in the alcohol consumption department, is clearly crossing the line from pleasantly-tipsy into intoxicated.
Darcy glances upwards, and then barks out a disbelieved laugh. A sprig of plastic mistletoe hangs above the two of them. "Oh, you've kept this tradition as well?" Loki asks. His tongue has been loosened by the number of beers he has consumed. It's nothing compared to his usual tolerance, but he also knows that it's enough to send a normal Midgardian to a hospital. Regardless, realizing that humans still hang sprigs of the poisonous berries fills him with a sort of pride, and Loki can't help the grin that spreads across his face.
"Wait, wait, wait. You know about mistletoe?" Wilson seems confused and amused.
For his part, Thor finds it all hilarious, snickering into his hand despite Jane's tugs on his shirtsleeve. Loki meets his brother's eyes in camaraderie, rather than animosity. "You all adhere to this tradition and don't even know its origin? I'm the one who hung the first sprig. Just a bit of fun, of course, and you humans kept it for…thousands of years, it would seem."
"You hung the mistletoe? Badass, dude." Darcy's smiling at him, eyes dancing, and Loki is amazed that he's never thought to use mistletoe with his lovers over the years.
"'Tis quite the tale," Thor chimes in, ready as always to bring attention back to himself. "Two clans had feuded for decades over trapping rights and whether their respective lands ended at riverbeds or tree lines. They sought the help of the gods—us, at that time, keeping watch over Midgard to ensure no one used the alignment of the realms to invade Midgard as the frost giants had. I thought that a battle would settle the score, once and for all; my mother believed that diplomacy amongst the chieftains would be best, so each man could air his grievances."
"The Allfather thought that we shouldn't interfere at all," Loki added, falsely jovial. "He's always been concerned with Midgard itself, not the people that inhabit it. You're all much to weak and short-lived to keep his interest."
Darcy pokes his arm. "I see where you get it from, Odinson."
Only the knowledge that she's jesting and not purposefully scraping a sore spot keeps him from reminding her that he is not a true son of Odin. Still, he brushes his sleeve in the wake of her sharp knuckle.
"Loki knew to play on the…desires of the flesh of mortals, shall we say. And his plan succeeded."
"Do I need to earmuffs Kelly?" Darcy asks, pointing at a fresh-faced young woman on the couch. Loki recognizes her blonde curls from Fury's control room. "She's the youngest here, so…"
"Oh, please," Kelly scoffed. "You borrow my bodice-rippers and give them back all dog-eared."
Loki arches a brow at Darcy, who lifts her pink wine to her pink face and takes a sip. "Times of strife are the best times for reckless decisions," he continues. "So, I lured the first son of the first clan and the first daughter of the second clan out into the woods via various trickeries and caused them to meet under a tree hosting a cluster of mistletoe. They laid together, as I'd planned, and when she discovered her pregnancy, the two clans arranged a marriage in such a way that brought the feuding to rest."
"Sex and politics. I can dig it," Darcy grinned.
"And from then on, it became the custom to kiss under the mistletoe, to remember how love can set aside even the bitterest of rivalries." Thor announced, with the same proverbial tone Odin so often used while trying to use history to teach Thor and Loki moral lessons before bed.
Loki scoffed. "Not quite how I intended it, but humans will make of godly interventions what they will."
Darcy sets her glass on the end table and declares, "Well, now I have to kiss the god who first hung the mistletoe under his own mistletoe."
Romanoff shakes her head from across the room. "I don't think that's a good idea," she says in that infuriatingly calm and even voice, but Darcy ignores her and pivots towards him.
With all eyes on them, Loki can barely focus on Darcy's upturned face. Distantly, he notes the impish grin that dances across her mouth before he leans down and gives her a chaste kiss. It's off-center, because he's too distracted by the Rogers' and Romanoff's disapproving stares to aim true. Still, he holds his mouth to hers for one, two seconds, and pulls away just as she starts to lean into the kiss.
The crowd claps and hollers; Darcy laughs and gives a little curtsey. When she picks up her wine, though, her sharp eyes settle on him. They follow him when he walks briskly towards the kitchen for another beer. Thor slaps him on the shoulder, but Loki rolls his shoulder until the paw falls away.
The Midgardian ale eventually hits his bladder and Loki is forced to retreat to Wilson's lavatory. It's on the other side of the condominium, down a dark hallway flanked with some half-open doors—Loki presumes they are bedchambers—and around a corner. The rooms in which earthlings bathe and care for themselves are admittedly more efficient than those used by the Aesir, who still use chamber pots when feeling nostalgic. After Loki tucks himself back into his pants, washes his hands, and gives his face and clothes a once over in the mirror above the sink, he opens the door and stepped out.
He can feel her; the displacement of the space in a nearby chamber. The door stands slightly more ajar than it had when he'd first passed by. He braces his palm on the jamb and sees her standing by the window, looking out over the river. "Needed a breath of fresh air?" he quips, even though he knows that she's clearly come here to speak to him.
Darcy turns sideways and braces her hip on the windowsill, drums her fingertips on the manufactured and painted wood. She hadn't turned a light on, so she's set in relief by the clear moonlight outside, her dress shimmering across her belly and breasts. "You can kiss me for real now," she tells him, voice quieter than normal in the darkness of the room. "If you want."
Loki's stomach twists all hot and lovely, particularly when she gives a little laugh and raises her eyebrows. "I know how you look at me, Loki."
"Oh?" He steps into the room and joins her at the window. The moonlight makes her skin pearly and luminescent and sets a glimmer in her eyes. Her skin is as soft as it looks, too, when he curls his fingers under her jaw and runs the pad of his thumb over the curve of her chin. "And how is that, exactly?"
Her eyes slide from his eyes down to his mouth, her eyelashes sweep down and out like a butterfly's wings. "Like you are right now."
She waits for him, which is new. He's used to women pushing forward into his space, afraid that he'll lose interest in the last moment and leave them stalled on their push towards the throne. So he pulls her in with an arm around her waist, watching from under hooded eyes as her head tilts backwards with the movement and her eyelashes drop that last small distance to rest against her cheekbones. With care, he meets her mouth with his and revels in the huff of a sigh she lets out through her nose.
She shifts, brings her hands to hold the backs of his shoulders, and turns her head to brush her tongue against his. Her mouth is warm and wet, the slide of her tongue against his is the most delicious soft friction. When he closes his eyes, he becomes acutely aware of the trim nip of her waist and the press of her breasts against his chest. Her hair slides cool and smooth between his fingers and Darcy follows the gentle nudge of his fingers, turns her head to the other side and meets his mouth again. Later, Loki will be the slightest bit ashamed at the sloppy press of their lips and the over-eager clink of their teeth. But right now, with the hums Darcy makes in her throat and her coy grin when he shudders at the press of her fingers between his ribs.
"Ticklish?" Darcy asks. Her hair is mussed where his hands have worked through it, and her lips are…beautifully swollen. Loki leans back in and catches her lower lip with his teeth before he can stop himself, smooths it away with a chaste kiss just as quickly.
"Just slightly, clearly." They hold their breath as someone passes by the open door. Darcy rocks back on her heels and runs her palm down his arm, fingers catching along the cords of his muscles. "Cheeky," he murmurs.
"Appreciative," Darcy chirps back. "Of everything that just happened, bee tee dubs." Her expression shifts, eyebrows pulling together. "I was angry at you, you know. For kissing me like a piece of rotting meat out there."
He skims his hand to her waist; when he stretches his thumb upwards, he can feel the swell of her breast. "On the contrary, I'd say you're very much alive."
Darcy laughs, taps her finger on the knot of his tie. "Now you're being cheeky."
Later that night, when he's lying in bed and staring at the ceiling, he curses how easily he'd parroted "Appreciative" all smooth and silky just as she'd done. How his skin had seemed chilled once she'd slipped from his arms and left him at the window alone. He should want nothing more than to escape from those wretched cuffs around his wrists and flee this abominable building. But Loki knows that such an attempt would be premature for another dozen years or so. Humans have such enduring memories and grudges.
With an exasperated sigh, Loki rolls over and wrestles his pillow into submission.
Loki's been living on Midgard for a year before he meets the elusive Pepper Potts. She stays behind in New York City whenever Stark comes to SHIELD for conferences and training, after all. When they finally cross paths at lavish press event in the ballroom of Stark Tower, even Loki can understand Stark's attraction.
She's sleek and poised in a red column gown, icy blonde hair cascading down her back in a glossy curtain. It looks more like Stark is on her arm than the other way around.
"Charmed," Loki says with a tight smile, lifting her hand to his mouth and kissing the backs of it. After all, everyone knows that Stark runs Stark Industries, but Pepper Potts runs Stark.
For her credit, she doesn't snatch her hand back in front of the cameras, just refuses to acknowledge him once he lets go of her fingers. Coolly, she takes in his face, arches a brow, and then turns away without another word. Stark follows behind, running his hand down her back in a soothing manner as they go.
"What happened there?" Barnes asks at his shoulder, and Loki shrugs.
"Stark and I…exchanged words upstairs," Loki admits, twitching down the sleeves of his silky black suit jacket. "And I leveled a few buildings."
Rogers frowns and cuts a side glance at him. "Don't remind me of that tonight, please." He snags a tumbler of amber liquid from the tray. "All I want to do is have a nice time, drink enough to get a light buzz, and find a lovely lady to dance with."
And lovely ladies are in abundance. Loki sees Agent Hill handing off her shawl at the door, revealing a svelte, long-sleeved black gown. On the dance floor, Jane Foster twirls in a gauzy, light blue dress under Thor's watchful gaze. Other women meander by, gems glinting in the dim light of the chandeliers as they chat with each other or with the men snapping at their heels. As if summoned by the god of mischief himself, Natasha Romanoff strolls past the three of them on Barton's arm. Skipping Loki completely, her eyes sweep over Rogers and Barnes' well-fitted tuxedos and broad shoulders as she sashays away.
It was the kind of mischief that Loki would have amused himself with if he were allowed full use of his magic, but this arrangement is completely free of his trickery. It doesn't stop him from delighting in the way that Barnes and Rogers both follow Romanoff and Barton towards the long bay of windows on the other side of the room, jockeying for position on her right side. It's like Eris tossing the golden apple into the group of them, really.
Speaking of drinks, however…
Loki fingers his cufflinks and looks around for the bar. Against the far wall, he sees the bank of shelved liquors and the stretch of dark wood, and he sees her. Chestnut hair sweeps around and over her shoulder, baring a long expanse of skin to the air.
He finds himself crossing the room before he really thinks much about it, sliding onto the stool next to her. Normally, she would jump at his sudden arrival and comment on his devilish quiet, but tonight she just lets a smile curve her full lips upwards. He can smell the aroma of distilled malt and grain, and his eyes drop to the low-profile glass on the stretch of bar in front of her. Only the slightest bit of scotch remains in the bottom, and her fingertips, glossed with peach polish, run around the rim.
For all of her normal love of leather and beaded bracelets, the only adornments on her figure are a pair of glittering diamonds in her earlobes, and Loki has to run his eyes down her neck, across her clavicle, and along the lines of her bare arms before they trip across the oblong and filigreed ring on a single finger. "Nausicaa of the white arms," he greets her, and he watches in near slow motion as she leans forward and presents him with her cheek. Her skin is smooth under his lips, her shoulder warm under his hand, and she smells of cedar and sandalwood save for the slightly starchy scent in her hair that he's come to recognize as "hairspray."
When she leans back upright in her stool, she sets her elbow on the bar in a way that sets her décolleté in warm relief above the bodice of her aubergine gown. With eyes that seem a much deeper blue in the glow of the chandelier, she pins him with a stare. "So, you've read the Odyssey then?"
Loki raised his finger for the bartender. "Preferred it to the Iliad, in fact." The bartender steps over, a clean-cut young man with wide eyes for Darcy, and waits for Loki to speak. "A refill for Lady Darcy and the same for me."
"Three fingers, Johnny," Darcy clarifies. The bartender stutters, "oh, my name is Jack," but Darcy has turned her face back to Loki. "I thought you might. Thor might be more of a fan of Achilles and the fall of Troy."
Loki chuckles. "Thor wouldn't make it through twenty lines of that book before giving up."
"So Ulysses is more your type?"
Eyes dropping to the swell of her breasts and the nip of her waist, Loki murmurs, "well, I hesitate to call him my type but I found myself much more amused by his approach to problem-solving."
"'No one.' So classic." The bartender slides their drinks across the counter and Darcy lifts hers to the space between them. "To victory in battle and to those who write it down."
Their glasses clink together lightly, and they sip the strong, smooth liquor in unison. "I wouldn't have figured you for scotch," Loki notes, setting his glass down on the bar.
With a wink, Darcy runs her finger along the grain of the bartop. "I do love wine. Merlot is my current favorite. But Tony is paying and it's an open bar, so I might as well indulge. I mean, I'm not gonna be fancy on my own dime."
"Perfectly reasonable." He's never seen her outside of work, but she doesn't seem to make a particularly copious amount of money, judging from the overall quality of her wardrobe. More than others he's run across here on Earth, for sure, given that SHIELD wants to keep her with them and not lose her to a "private contractor," but nothing like Pepper Potts or even Romanoff.
"Listen," she begins, sliding her finger along the corner of the bar. "I'm going to be taking a field trip up to New York State pretty soon—Nicholas wants me to come up with some sort of operation on this Institute for Gifted Youngsters. I want you to come along."
Loki takes another sip of scotch and listens to the orchestra slide from one song into the next on the dance floor. "Why?"
Loosely wrapping her hand around her glass, Darcy twists more towards him in her seat. "Well—you can do magic, first of all. Yeah, you're restricted, but what you can do is way more than a human can do. You could be our 'in'—our gifted youngster."
"Weren't you telling me just a few weeks ago that I'm an ancient mythological creature?"
"Didn't you tell me that gods are forever young?" Darcy winks at Loki; the scotch isn't the only thing making him warm. "And you're definitely a master at trickery and diversions, so I figure you've got a fast mind and an even quicker tongue."
Wicked images explode in his mind and, letting his impulses rule him, Loki kisses her. She squeaks a bit in surprise and her hand flutters up to his neck, pointer finger catching the corner of his jaw. Her mouth opens under his when he flicks his tongue over her lower lip, and he slips his hand around her rib to haul her to the very edge of her stool. A moan vibrates up and out of her throat and then, with a suddenness he didn't expect, she wrenches away.
She's already a touch disheveled—eyes too-bright, cheeks too-pink. Johnny-Jack stares at them, agape, but Darcy doesn't seem to notice him. She slides down from her stool, her skirts swishing and crinkling, and then laces her fingers through Loki's.
"This way—I had a conference here before."
No one pays them much mind as they stride towards an open doorway by the end of the bar; Loki keeps his head tilted away from the main floor, and he is in a generic black tuxedo. Through the doorway they go, into hallway permeated with the same mood-lighting as the main event and flanked with armchairs and love seats. She leads him around another corner and down another hallway, finally ducking behind a bookcase.
They're next to a window overlooking the Brooklyn skyline (Thor had dragged him along on his outing with Rogers for lunch), but Loki pays it no mind other than to appreciate how the lights highlighted Darcy's hair and made her skin look even more fey against the dark purple of her dress.
She's handsier now, boldly sliping her hands under his jacket when he leans down and noses her jawline. Her pulse point tastes faintly of alcohol from her perfume, but he cares much more about her shudder when he laps at her skin and her moan when he closes his teeth over her earlobe.
Her breasts fill his hands, though the stiffness of her dress frustrates him. He's not so foolish as to search for the fastenings—they are at a party and need to stay clothed—but, gods, he wishes they were in a bedchamber. He'd spread her on the bed, strip her naked, and find every little spot that makes her shiver and groan. Loki tells her this and it sends her into even more of a frenzy, clutching at his tie and fisting the too-long hair at the nape of his neck.
Loki hasn't tired of kissing her yet, either. She laps at the back of his top teeth, sucks on his tongue, nips his lips, smiles toothily when she shakes noises loose from Loki's chest. Then she's guiding his hand to her skirts while she makes a pass across the front of his slacks. He's hard, and gods he wants nothing more than her perfectly-manicured hand wrapped around him, but not when she's in such a lovely dress and people are still passing by so closely that Loki can hear their conversations.
So he bats her hand away but uses both of his to hike her skirts to her hips. She's hot and warm between her legs, and her body goes all quivery with every stroke of his fingers. Darcy murmurs in his ear half-nonsense, half-direction, and Loki follows orders. The expressions on her face flutter between struggle and pleasure while the capillaries in her cheeks and chest open. It's absolutely lovely watching the goosebumps break out across her arms mere seconds before her mouth drops open and she rises up onto her toes with her orgasm. Ecstasy, the purest of magic, courses through her skin so powerfully he can almost taste it.
"Were we on Asgard," he murmurs, when she's recovered and his own desire has been firmly stamped down, "I would ask you to my chambers and we wouldn't leave for a week."
Darcy rolls her head back on the forearm he's rested behind her shoulders. "'Chambers,' huh? I'm imagining a four-poster bed and a massive fireplace. Do they have a balcony that faces the sunset?"
"No balcony."
Darcy groans and extricates herself from his arms. "Then I would callously decline your offer, Loki of Asgard, for Lady Darcy only hooks up with princes with sunset-optimal balconies." She wiggles the top of her gown and swats at her skirts. "So — you don't invite ladies back to your chambers until after you've had your hand up their skirts?"
With a flick of her hair, she rounds the bookcase and starts back towards the side hall. "Oh, no, I've always required a full performance beforehand," Loki drawls.
"Well, I hope the hay in Asgard is comfortable, for the girl's sakes," Darcy quips. She's still flushed, but it's fading, and she's finger combed her hair back into order. She looks so neat and tidy that Loki wants to drag her back into the shadows until he can make her face screw up in pleasure again. But then she turns to him, gesturing for him to listen to the change in the music tempo. She reaches out her hands, ring glinting on her slim fingers. "At the very least, you could take me dancing."
Two chapters down, one to go! I would love to hear your thoughts, so consider dropping a comment below!