"Clint, do you happen to have Jane's number by any chance?" I asked, focused more on writing potential clothes sizes for Loki in my planner than on the actual question.
"Depends… why do you need it?" he asked saucily, rolling his office chair over right beside me. I would've pushed him away if I thought that I had half of his strength.
"I just thought I could have lunch with her," I said quickly, slamming my planner closed. I didn't want him to see the clothes sizes or Loki's name. Clint's the type of person who wouldn't necessarily tell on me but he would certainly give me hell and it would only be a matter of time until the others knew.
"Lunch? What's wrong with me? You don't wanna have lunch with me?" I turned and looked at him, on the verge of laughing.
"That almost sounded genuine, Clint. But for real, do you have her number? It's kind of important." As soon as I'd said it, I realized that saying this was important was stupid. He rolled back from me a bit and raised his eyebrows.
"This wouldn't have to do with who you were on the phone with earlier, would it?" My lips were already parted so luckily, I didn't have to show that much of the shock I was feeling. I knew he'd noticed but why would he ask?
"Listen, my cousin's in town and he doesn't really know about stuff here, okay? Is that what you wanna hear?" It was the first thing that had come into my head and now I had a cover story for when I took him out once he had normal clothes. Damn, I was on a roll.
"Where is your cousin from that he doesn't understand phones?" Clint still had his eyebrows raised and I noticed that Tony was beginning to lean out of his cube to hear more about this.
"He's from… Sweden," I said. Another thing that just popped into my head, mostly because I made the connection from Loki to Norse mythology and from there to Sweden. The problem being, I'm obviously not from Sweden. "You know, all they've got over there is Nokia and that's so different from iPhones and stuff." I winced at my stupid excuse. Does Nokia have iPhones? I didn't know, I didn't care. I had already made up too much.
"You're totally not from Sweden," I heard Tony call from his cube. At this rate, everyone was probably hearing about my "cousin."
"I'm not from Sweden but he is." I almost openly wiped my brow.
"What's his name?" asked Clint, leaning back, crossing his arms. I bit my lower lip. I couldn't think of anything. WAIT.
"His name is Er- uh, Edward." My brain wanted to say he was Eric because of True Blood but I thought that would be so obviously made up that I settled for Edward. Clint rolled his eyes and Tony rolled back into his cube. Dodged a bullet there. "Clint, though, do you have Jane's number or not? This is ridiculous."
I watched him scribble down some numbers quickly and hand them to me. I breathed a sigh of relief and automatically dialed the number from my office phone. She answered quickly, thank goodness. "Hey Jane, it's Charlotte from S.H.E.I.L.D. and I was wondering if you had some time to talk to me later?" I asked anxiously.
"Probably not today, unfortunately," she responded.
"That's fine. It would be better for me tomorrow too but listen, this is important." I had lowered my voice so that everyone else couldn't hear me. I heard her sigh.
"I think tomorrow should work but I'm kind of busy in the lab. Some stuff came up on the radar last night and we're trying to find out what happened out there." I froze.
"You're kidding," I whispered, practically squeaking. Well, I had my answer. S.H.E.I.L.D. had registered something. I definitely needed to do something and quick.
"Yeah. It's definitely from Thor's world. We're looking at some samples from out there now and it's looking like it has the same chemical components that some of the stuff did when Thor came through." I practically gulped. I was beginning to get really nervous. What the heck am I stressing about? There's no possible way they could link anything to Loki and from there to my house. I had enough time to make him look normal and now I had a cover story for him. "It's probably from a person or otherwise, we would've seen something else. I wonder where he went. What if it's Thor?"
"I really doubt that it's Thor." And I wasn't just saying that because I knew without a shadow of a doubt that he wasn't down here. Thor would've automatically searched out Jane. I was almost positive about that and so was S.H.E.I.L.D. It was the reason they tried to keep Jane around and have her working on a way to reach Asgard. S.H.E.I.L.D. wanted Thor in any way possible and I had no doubt that they actually would find him. "Actually, I doubt that it's anyone. Don't you think someone would've seen them by now?"
"Yeah," she said, sounding disappointed. I mean, please, Jane. She's a grown woman and a scientist. I didn't understand how she could believe in this true love, soul mate thing with Thor. He wasn't from here and he never would be. They were too different to ever actually make a real love connection. She needed a dose of reality in her life. Actually, it probably could work out if Thor ever actually came back and agreed to join the Avengers.
"Well, that's kind of what I need to talk to you about so just call me and tell me when I can see you. This is really important." It probably wasn't the most genius idea I'd ever had, to tell Jane about Loki and pray that she wouldn't tell the higher ups here. Hell, I probably shouldn't tell her. I made a deal with myself to decide when I got home about whether I could tell her.
I hung up the phone and grabbed most of my work, shoved it in my huge purse then walked past the other cubicles. The Avengers were being called into a meeting so I was able to leave. I ran into a men's store on the way home. It was an ordeal getting there since I still didn't really know where everything was in town. I would've settled for Walmart, actually.
I walked in and I realized that I had no clue what Loki would actually like but he needed something. I'll just get him one outfit and then we can go shopping together, so if the size is wrong and everything, it's easily fixed. I picked up a Henley looking shirt in green. Yes, this was perfect. I held up various sizes and gauged around where I thought he was. Next was the jeans, which was easily the hardest part of everything. I settled for a nice pair and checked out and went on home.
I slowly opened the door to my hovel of a house. I didn't want to startle him. "Hey, it's me, Charlotte! I'm home! And I brought you some clothes!" I said. I turned slightly and I saw him sitting on the couch, staring at the TV. I had forgotten to explain that to him. I was wondering how lax I'd gotten since I'd had to explain everything to Steve. Oh, that was totally different. At least Steve had prior knowledge of phones and television. Loki wasn't even from this planet. "I see you've discovered television."
He turned and looked up at me, for once, and asked, "What is this?"
"It's kind of the greatest thing. See, here's the remote," I said, picking it up and showing it to him. "It flips the channels." I surfed the channels for awhile and watched as he got more and more enthralled with it. "You can find anything you've ever wanted to watch. You'll get used to it."At least he had something to do while I was at work. "Hey, I bought you a shirt and some pants. You wanna put them on so I can see if I got the right size? We can go shopping together tomorrow if you want and you can get more clothes."
He gave me this really innocent look and I got really skeptical of it but it was nice, after all. I handed him the bag. "I guess you can figure out which are pants and which is the shirt, right?" He nodded at me. "Is everything okay? You're acting a little weird."
"What ever do you mean?" he asked.
"I mean that you're not acting like it's a burden to talk to me and you're not acting like you're so much better than I am." He rolled his eyes a bit.
"It's not a burden for me to talk to you at all and you can't help being human. I can live with that." I parted my lips a little and smiled. He smiled back, a little mischievously, then pulled out the shirt I'd gotten him. "I love green."
"I can tell. You know, we have the same eye color. I don't know whether you've noticed. But I love the color green 'cause it goes so well with my eyes and I figured that you felt the same way." Gosh, I need to learn how to shut up. I was probably annoying him to no end. He made a face like he thought I was incredibly lame but then he smiled at me and it made me feel intensely better. I don't know why the way he felt about me meant so much.
He got up with the clothes and walked into my bedroom to change. He made me incredibly nervous.