The debriefing took two hours, including chewing time because by then Erik had taught Thor that speaking with one's mouth full isn't appealing to the fairer sex, so not even he talked while he had food in his mouth. They'd covered what Shield was, what Shield did, what the civilians could and – more importantly – could not say about Sheild. They'd talked about funding from Shield for Dr Foster (Shield was very interested in her continuing her research) and a possible job for Dr Selvig (though it was a bit more up in the air 'if you would be interested' sort of work for him). Then...

"What about Darcy?" Jane asked.

"I've still got college to finish," Darcy answered before Coulson or Barton could. "Does Shield even have a job for a poli-sci major?"

"One who knows her way around a taser and a computer?" Barton quipped with a smirk. "Oh, we can definitely find work for a girl like that."

"We will be in contact with you, Miss Lewis," Agent Coulson promised, a twinkle in his eye that could be interpreted by the scientists as 'you know too much for us to not keep an eye on you', but which Darcy and Loki both know to be amusement, as Darcy already had a job with Shield and only Thor and the scientists don't know it.

"And what about Thor and Loki?" Erik asked lowly.

"Up to them," was Coulson's quick response. "Shield is aware that both are princes to another... realm. Though of course we will be watching while they are here. Any further details would need to be discussed privately before you could be let in on it."

"And even then, security clearance probably wouldn't be high enough, right?" Darcy fake-groused, and her pout would have been more convincing if half her mouth hadn't been trying to smirk at the same time.

"Possible," Coulson allowed.

"Likely," Barton added with a smirk.

"Mr Odinson, I believe you haven't tried at reclaiming your property yet today?" Agent Coulson said as he rose from his seat. "Will you be accompanying us back to the site, or will you make your own way there later?"

"Later," Thor answered. "I thank you for the consideration, but I feel there are things that I must discuss privately with the Lady Jane."

Pink blossomed on Jane's cheeks and a small smile tugged at her lips as she very determinedly did not look up from her own lap.

"I wanna know why Loki hasn't tried pickin' up the hammer," Barton said as he stood up. "You're both Asgardian, right?"

"First, because it is Thor's weapon," Loki said. "My preference in regards to weaponry is to pole-arms or my throwing knives. Second, quite apart from never having learned to use an over-sized hammer as a weapon, I will never be 'worthy' enough to lift it from its place."

Thor frowned at his brother, confused. "Why do you think such a thing of yourself, Brother?" he asked.

Loki's smile was tight, small, and utterly fake. Pained almost. He looked away and rolled his lips, moistening them for speech as he thought over what to say, how to say it. "Because I am not Odin's son. Not truly. In my heart and by Odin's vow, certainly I am. But by birth? It is not so. How can I then be worthy of a weapon fit for a ruler of Asgard, if I am but a foundling, taken in by Odin when he found me as a babe, left for dead?"

Silently, he was grateful that Clint had 'forgotten' their conversation where Loki had admitted to being a Jotun, and that Darcy hadn't really heard him when he'd mentioned it to his mother. He was also grateful that Clint had given him a way to broach the subject with Thor of not actually being his brother. It was a delicate topic after all.

Thor looked at Loki with a horrified, betrayed, and pained expression on his face. "H-how long have you known this?" he asked, tears beginning to well up in his blue eyes.

"Not long," Loki answered. "Father did not tell me until after he had banished you from Asgard, I suspect he would not have told me at all if Heimdall had not spoken. It is why I followed you. I needed time to think about what being... adopted meant for me. I had no desire to be in Asgard, in the palace I had no true right to inhabit, while I did so." He forced a smile, still fake, evidenced by the watery-ness of his own eyes, but as bright as any mischief-making smile he had ever worn for his brother in the past. "I have a family of my own on Midgard after all," he said, with put-upon brightness.

Barton was nodding along. "Family issues," he said softly, lowly, sympathetically. "I think alcohol might be in order," he added.

"Go and raise Mjolnir to the heavens, Brother," Loki said gently as he rose from his seat. "Agent Coulson, would you be against my stealing away Agent Barton to my California home? I have a much wider range of alcohol there than is available here."

"Have him back by midnight. He's on detail from ten tomorrow," Coulson answered.

Loki nodded. "Of course. Agent Barton, if there's anything you wish to take with you?"

"Would it be paranoid of me to bring a weapon along?" he asked, even as he slung his quiver of arrows off the floor and onto his back and picked up his bow.

"I would never ask a warrior to go anywhere unarmed," Loki answered.

"I can't come?" Darcy asked, making eyes at Loki.

"Male bonding," Barton and Loki answered her at the same time.

"Besides, I need you here," Jane added, laying a hand over Darcy's arm comfortingly. "I'm going to need your company, and probably a few pints of ice cream before the day's over."

Darcy smiled at her boss-lady and relented.

Loki lay a hand on Barton's shoulder, and the two of them disappeared from the lab.

~oOo~

Clint whistled in appreciation when the pair of them popped into existence again in Loki's front entry.

Loki chuckled. "Is that for the ride here, or for the way I have styled my home?" he asked.

"Both actually," Clint answered easily, a smile on his face. He'd seen the schematics of Tony Stark's house in Malibu when Natasha was preparing to do her infiltration bit. It was everything he expected of a rich man's house in these modern times. Open plan, big spaces, high ceilings, big furniture, some expensive art-type stuff around the place, but the rooms were so big (and otherwise empty) it was impossible for the place to look cluttered. It was a house that kinda looked like it was meant to be filled with people holding champagne flutes and wearing cocktail dresses.

Loki's place was nothing like that.

The ceiling was high, yes, but not nearly so high as in Stark's house. It wasn't as 'open plan' either. There were definite walls and doors, closing some spaces away from view completely. The spaces were big, but again, not as big as the space in Stark's house, and not nearly so empty-feeling. The furniture was all old-fashioned, the sort of thing that looked lovingly crafted by a master tradesman rather than tubes of metal bent at a specific, ergonomic angle in a factory. There was a large bookshelf that went up to the ceiling on one wall, with a ladder on wheels so that all of the books on the higher shelves could be easily reached. It covered the entire wall.

There was just... something about the place that made Clint think of all those movies that had been set in times where things didn't just have to do what they were made to do, they had to be beautiful as well. And yet... It didn't feel as ostentatiously rich as Clint was sure Stark's house did. That was it. Stark's Malibu house was just that: a house. This place that Loki had brought him to? It was a home. Clint had been welcomed into a place that Loki had claimed, from top to bottom, as his.

Clint couldn't help but wonder if this was what Asgard looked like. So, of course, he asked.

Loki chuckled as he led the way through his home to the room with the liquor cabinet. "No," he answered. "Asgard... is more golden. Perhaps I will take you there some day and you may see for yourself," he offered as he pulled a cork from a ceramic jar and poured an inch of the contents into a short, fat glass before he replaced the cork and took out a fancy looking glass and poured into it from a black glass bottle, filling only the lower-bulb of the glass, which was an interesting way to measure shots, if that's what Loki was doing. The bottle, like the ceramic jug, was returned to the liquor cabinet once it was re-corked.

"Have you taken a lot of people to Asgard?" Clint asked as he accepted whatever it was that had been poured into a glass and handed to him. It was a deep golden amber sort of colour, and the smell reminded him of the fields in the summer or at harvest time when he'd been with the circus.

"My wife, my daughter, my granddaughter," Loki answered. "I did not keep anything of myself from them." He snorted in disgusted amusement and corrected himself. "Nothing that was not kept secret from me, at any rate," he said, then knocked back the shot of green liquid he'd poured for himself.

"Can I ask what's the poison?" Clint asked, holding up his glass and looking pointedly to Loki's empty one.

"You have in your hand a snifter of hundred-year-old Scotch," Loki answered with a smile. "Mine was absinthe. I don't care for adding sugar and ice-water to my drink though, however traditional it may be to do so."

Clint blinked. "Right," he said. "I don't think I'll knock this back with the same speed you did yours though, if that's alright?" he asked as he raised his glass pointedly again. "Quality booze like this needs to be lingered over."

Loki chuckled, nodded, swapped his empty absinthe glass for a wine glass, and let himself into an Australian red wine before he settled himself into one of his chairs.

Clint took that as his cue to finally sit as well.

~oOo~

"The what initiative?" Loki asked, blinking at his drinking buddy.

"Avengers Initiative," Clint answered. "I didn't come up with the name, and I'm not exactly going to ask Fury what he was smoking when he came up with it."

Fury being the big, one-eyed black man who ruled Shield with an iron glare. He didn't need fists when his one-eyed glare of doom was directed at you. Clint had already told Loki about his boss... about two drinks ago. After the Scotch had been mead (which Clint had liked), and then a Guinness (which he'd damn near choked on because he wasn't used to beer like that), he was currently drinking extra añejo tequila – he'd missed out. He had really missed out.

"And this is what Fury wants me on side for?" Loki asked sceptically, disbelieving. "An 'oh shit no' response team?"

"Not exclusively," Clint answered with a chuckle. Hearing Loki swear like that was amusing. It was the accent and the way he said even foul words properly. And he was thoroughly buzzed. "I'd guess he's got other stuff he'd like you to do as well, but you can agree to being part of the Avengers Initiative and then tell Fury to fuck off the rest of the time if you want. Me? I enjoy working for Shield. The pay is good, the work isn't completely shit, and it's because of Shield I met my girlfriend. On the other end, there's Tony Stark. He does his thing, pisses Fury off whenever they're in the same room, but he'll go along with the whole Avengers Initiative bit if it ever comes to that."

"Well, if he likes living and the enemy is going for destruction of your planet, then yes, I suppose he would," Loki said with a chuckle.

"And you wouldn't?" Clint asked.

Loki sighed. "No, I would," he answered. "Midgard may not be the world I was born to, but it is where I feel the most at home. Tell me about your girl," he requested softly.

Clint smirked. "Sorry, you don't have clearance," he said.

Loki barked out a loud, amused "Ha!"

Clint chuckled. "Yeah," then he calmed down and the smile slowly slid from his face. "I think she and I are on our way out though. It's been a couple of years, we work together, fight together, sleep together – and it's great. Really it is. Think I could honestly be in love with her. But I know her, you know? She needs someone who isn't in our line of work. Deserves someone who can give her relief from all the shit, all the debts she feels like she owes."

"Debts?" Loki asked.

Clint nodded. "She talks about having red in her ledger, and in our line of work there are people who think she's talking about blood, about people she's killed. She isn't. It's debts owed. My name is in her ledger, written in red. It's why we won't work for the long run. I've got to let her go, let her know she's paid in full, doesn't owe me anything any more. She won't necessarily believe me, but I've got to tell her, and I don't think we'll stay together in a relationship past that," Clint explained, gently swirling his drink in his glass and staring down, down into the bottom of it.

"Would you be able to work together after a break-up?" Loki asked.

Clint nodded. "We're professionals," he said. "It's what we do."

"And what about you?" Loki probed. "Do you need someone to distract you from your work, or do you prefer someone who's in it with you?"

Clint chuckled. "Tried both," he admitted. "Liked both too, but I keep on getting into relationships with women who need something other than me, and I'm man enough to admit where my failings are in terms of relationship material."

Loki smiled just a little. "Perhaps you're looking for the wrong things in women then," he suggested.

Clint snorted. "Probably," he agreed. "So, Avengers Initiative, Shield operative, you in?"

Loki mulled that over a moment, stared at the ceiling as he considered. "I'm in," he decided at last, and took another sip of his wine. He'd been working through the single bottle while offering new tastes to his guest. His poor, uneducated guest who had barely branched out from weak American beer in all his years as a recreational drinker.

~oOo~

True to his 'orders', Loki had Clint back at the Shield base around the crater outside of Puente Antiguo, back in New Mexico, no later than midnight. Interestingly enough, they were packing up – and in a more permanent-looking sort of way than would be anticipated if they were still guarding Mjolnir from being tried for like it was Excalibur.

"I take it that Thor was able to retrieve Mjolnir after I left?" Loki asked when he and Clint found Agent Coulson. Clint was... leaning heavily on Loki, but still upright and conscious, which was more than Erik had been after he went drinking with Thor.

"He did," Coulson confirmed, "and then returned to Miss Foster's lab after pledging that he would come to Earth's aid should he ever be needed. Mr Odinson, do you have an answer for me?"

"He's on board!" Clint said happily, grin spread across his face.

Coulson blinked at his sniper a moment before turning his attention back to Loki.

"Nanu-nanu, take me to your leader," Loki joked with a smirk as he held up his hand in the Vulcan peace sign, then turned it on its side as Mork had done.

"Coulson! Coulson!" Clint said, launching himself from Loki to grip the lapels of Coulson's jacket. "We get to keep him! Isn't that awesome?" he asked in a loud, excited whisper, his eyes wide like a child that's been given the best present ever and has to tell their parent all about it.

"You got one of Shield's best agents drunk, Mr Odinson," Coulson said solemnly.

"He had five drinks, Agent Coulson," Loki countered. "He's playing it up. Though perhaps the sake after the tequila was a little much. I, on the other hand, had a glass of pure absinthe, a whole bottle of wine, and agreed to be part of the Avengers Initiative, as well as a consultant if you ever need my help with anything."

"Thank you, Mr Odinson," Agent Coulson said. "I will see you in the morning."

Loki nodded and turned to go. "And Clint?" he said, stopping before he got too far away.

"Yeah man?"

"When it happens – Friends Theme."

"Thanks man," Clint said, a dopey, but genuinely grateful smile on his face.

"Do I even want to know, Agent Barton?" Coulson demanded softly as he dragged the inebriated man towards his camper-van.

"Learn more 'bout pop-culture, Boss," Clint answered, finally starting to hit the 'sleepy' stage of being drunk.

~oOo~

Jane and Darcy had apparently retreated to private quarters earlier, and taken all of the ice cream with them. Erik was asleep. Loki found Thor on the roof, alone and once more dressed in his usual armour, Mjolnir at his side where it belonged.

"Will you be returning to Asgard?" Loki asked softly as he walked up to stand by his brother's side.

"Brother!" Thor exclaimed softly as he turned sharply in surprise. Clearly he hadn't heard Loki's approach. "I..." he said, and broke off as he returned his gaze to the horizon beyond the town. "I do not know. Father banished me. His banishment is not simply rescinded because I can now lift Mjolnir."

"You're making excuses," Loki said firmly. "What is your real reason for not returning to Asgard at once, Brother?"

"I have spoken with the Lady Jane," Thor said quietly. It would possibly surprise some of his acquaintance to learn that Thor could speak quietly. Loki was one of the few who got to see him like this, got to hear him speak with quiet, unsure solemnity. Was privileged to bear witness to Thor's moments of vulnerability. Such moments had become increasingly rare as they both aged, had been replaced with silent huffing or loud temper-tantrums. Yelling and over-turning tables before settling in for a royal sulk, for instance.

"And?" Loki prompted softly.

"She has agreed to courtship," Thor answered. "But I know little of her customs, and likewise she knows little of ours -"

"Thor," Loki cut in, a soft smile on his face. "Courtship on Midgard is just the same as it is on Asgard, save she will neither expect, nor likely want, any hunting trophies. Dining, dancing, taking her to the theatre, spending time together and learning about each other. There will be some things she will enjoy more than others, it is the way of all things. Plan your outings together, so that you can learn her preferences and when you are assured of them you may plan occasional surprises for her."

"Thank you, Brother," Thor said. "I... I would not wish to offend the Lady Jane with improper behaviour."

"As you did that first day when you smashed a cup demanding another coffee?" Loki prodded, jokingly.

Thor coughed. "Yes," he said. "I have learnt my lesson there."

"Mother will be pleased," Loki said, still smiling, "and I think she will like the Lady Jane when you introduce her."

"What of you, Brother?" Thor asked. "Will you remain on Midgard, or return to Asgard?"

"I have agreed to work with Shield," Loki answered, and now it was his turn to watch the dark horizon while his brother watched his face. "I still do not feel ready to return to Asgard, and shall remain here, perhaps spend some more time with my granddaughter, and Agent Barton is good company."

"Do you make this decision because you are adopted?" Thor asked softly. "Will you stay on Midgard, never to return home?"

Loki closed his eyes, bracing himself mentally against the pain of the words he knew, knew, that had had to speak to his brother. "I am a Jotun," he said. Neutrally, without inflection, without feeling.

Abruptly, Loki was pulled into a fierce embrace, and he did not resist it. He clung to his older brother... and wept. He was so grateful to be held after such an admission, rather than to have been pushed away, as he had feared would happen.

"You are my brother," Thor answered with a quiet, fierce intensity. "My. Baby. Brother," he reaffirmed, taking Loki's face in his hands and staring into his eyes, making sure that Loki would never doubt these words from him. "And aren't you a bit short for a Frost Giant?" he added, more teasingly.

Loki chuckled wetly. "I was abandoned for being too small. I cannot even look like a Frost Giant without touching something... too cold to be touched," he explained.

Thor nodded. "Then I am grateful for your failings, or I would never have had you as my brother, and I would not be without you," he said sincerely.

~And the All Lived Happily Ever After... Kinda. More or Less~