The aviary was huge. Darcy had expected it to be like the bird house at the zoo, but this thing made that look like an actual bird house. The dome reached at least ten stories up, all glass and bronze and full of huge trees and viney vines.
Winding through the aviary, all the way up to the top and back down again, was a metal walkway, enclosed in a heavy mesh fence along all sides. Even the floor was a heavy grate letting them see what was below them, but looking down through it just made Darcy's stomach drop to the floor. She kept her eyes almost straight up as they walked along the path, climbing higher and higher into the dome while giant, flying dinosaurs screeched and swooped angrily all around them. Darcy stayed close to Loki, which only heightened her apprehension about being there. She could feel his own tense energy as he walked a stiff path straight down the middle of the bridge.
About halfway up the dome, Loki took a handful of his shirt and pressed it against his face to smell it. Apparently unsatisfied, he buried his face in Darcy's hair and smelled that too. She flinched, trying not to pull away too hard, terrified she might somehow fall off the bridge.
"We reek," Loki explained.
"What?" Darcy asked. She smelled her own shirt, and realised there was more there than detergent and deoderant. It was something she couldn't quite place, acrid and almost harsh. Darcy was surprised she hadn't noticed it before.
"If I didn't know better," Loki said as one of the shrieking animals crashed into the cage before woozily fluttering off again, "I'd say this was a territorial display. And we've spent all day around other dinosaurs that didn't want us anywhere near them either."
Darcy smelled her shirt again, and remembered where she recognised the stink from. She smelled like Loki's nasty leather jacket.
"So, we're in the cage because these things literally want to eat us?" Darcy asked, watching as one of them landed on the cage and tried to get its long, pointed beak through the mesh. She ducked away quickly, backing into Loki and pushing him into the person behind them.
"Oh, not at all," said Loki, watching the animal above them until it flew off in a rage. "Food is the last thing on their mind. They want to murder us."
Darcy looked around, trying to find Jane and Thor, but the group had become so disjointed from so much stopping and starting that they were a full two levels above, having a similar dilemma.
"I wanna go. Can we be done now? I want to be done," Darcy decided suddenly.
Loki looked around, first up at the continuing walkway as it snaked all the way up and back down again, and then behind them toward where they'd come. There was only the single path, with no quicker way in or out that they could see.
"Come on," he decided, turning around to go back in the direction they'd come.
Getting back down seemed to take even longer than getting up had. The dinosaurs were still pissed, hissing and dive bombing and trying to get their way through the tiny holes in the mesh, but the general flow of traffic was also against them as well. They had to stay closer to the edge to get around everyone who walked in a perfect, terrified straight file down the middle of the cage. Every time the dinosaurs crashed against the side of the cage, Darcy knew their claws and teeth and beaks had somehow got through and torn her up, but when she looked down at herself, there wasn't a single mark on her. They were still far enough away from the edge of the cage that there was a decent gap between them and the dinosaurs on the other side, but all Darcy could see were teeth and claws and giant beaks and wings, all belonging to the dozens of animals that wanted to kill her.
They finally made it to the doors, much to the surprise of the man watching the crowd going in.
"No–The exit's on the other end," he said vacantly, pointing to the door about ten feet to the right.
"Bite me," Loki said as he lifted Darcy up over the turnstile, before jumping over it himself.
The crowd outside, waiting to be let in in small groups, all began looking at one another with a worried confusion, but Darcy didn't care. She just had to get away. The two of them walked briskly down the path to the first bench they could find and sat down. Hugging her arms tightly around her chest, Darcy hunched in on herself and stared straight down at the ground, where it sat comfortingly at her feet. So far, the day had not been as fun as she had been promised. It had been boring, upsetting, and terrifying, for the most part. Just a lot of waiting in line before trying to look at dinosaurs who didn't want to be looked at, really.
As she sat and tried to catch her breath, she thought that if she were a real journalist, she'd be able to do one hell of an exposé on this place. Nothing seemed to be run with any real regard for safety or common sense at all. It was no wonder the resort had been built in Costa Rica in the first place, really. Darcy was pretty sure there wasn't a single thing about it that would have passed a safety inspection in America.
So far, it wouldn't have even passed an ADA inspection.
Finally feeling like her chest wasn't going to implode, Darcy sat up a bit and reached out for Loki's pack.
"Can I have my purse?" she asked.
Without a word, Loki opened his pack and pulled Darcy's purse out. Taking it, she dug through it and pulled out her phone. She shot a quick text to Jane, letting her know what had happened and where to find them.
"I think we had dinner plans, but I don't know if I want to go tonight," Darcy said tiredly. "I kinda just want to go take a bath and be a bum."
Loki sighed. "I like the sound of that," he said.
Darcy almost wanted to make a break for the hotel right then and there, but she didn't want to leave Jane behind inside the aviary with murderous dinosaur birds. She kept anxiously checking her phone, hoping to see a response from Jane, but knowing there was no way she'd have heard her phone in all the chaos inside the building. Feeling weirdly drained and wanting a nap, Darcy leaned against Loki's side and tried to will herself to forget the last half hour.
Neither of them said anything, and a few times, Darcy felt like she had almost drifted off sitting there on the hard concrete bench. After another forty minutes or so, Darcy's phone made a noise, startling her so hard, she dropped it to the ground. Hissing sharply, Darcy picked it up and inspected it for damage, and finding none, turned on the screen to read Jane's message.
"They should be here in a couple of minutes," she announced, stuffing the phone back into her purse, and stuffing her purse back into Loki's bag.
By the time Jane and Thor found them, Darcy was leaning back against Loki's side, with his arm over her shoulders, while she tried to think of anything other than being inside the aviary.
"How'd you guys get out so fast?" Jane asked as she and Thor walked toward them. "I didn't see you guys pass us."
"We turned around," Loki said, standing up before offering his hand to help Darcy to her feet.
Without even thinking, Darcy took it, finding her footing surprisingly shaky.
"It was awful. I couldn't do it," Darcy said meekly, suddenly feeling stupid about it.
Loki took a deep breath as he looked down at her, and then slung his bag over his shoulder. "I think we're staying in tonight. Too much excitement for one day."
Thor gave Loki a suspicious look that everyone ignored.
"Yeah, I kinda feel the same way," Jane said, also sounding tired.
"But we have reservations," Thor protested.
Jane sighed, clearly stuck between being too worn out to go, and being too worn out to debate not going. Shaking her head, Darcy turned and started making her way down the path, back toward the monorail station.
hr
Darcy never thought she'd be so glad to see a hotel room. Looking at the freshly-made bed and clean surfaces, she suddenly became acutely aware of how dirty she felt. She glanced over at Loki while he emptied his pack of her purse and all their junk from over the day, torn between feeling uncomfortable about being gross, and uncomfortable about wanting to hog the bathroom for a while.
Sighing, and feeling a little lost in her own skin, Darcy shrugged to herself.
"Do you want to take a shower or something before I spend a while in the bath?" she asked.
Loki looked up from the pile of trash he was leaving on the coffee table, glancing from her to the bathroom door, before shaking his head. "Go ahead," he said.
Politeness would have dictated she make sure he wasn't being overly polite, but Darcy felt too tired and filthy not to take advantage. Instead, she walked over to dig some clean pyjamas from her suitcase before shuffling into the bathroom and shutting the door behind her.
The bath tub was huge and rounded, with jacuzzi jets along the narrower end, away from the faucet. Darcy wanted to just fill up the bath and soak away the tensions of the day, but she forced herself to draw the curtain instead and undressed quickly before turning on the shower. The warm water fell against her skin, doing more to make her aware of the ache in her muscles than soothe anything. Impatient to be able to relax, Darcy washed quickly with the brand new paper-wrapped soap in the dish, trying to scrub off every place she thought any of the flying dinosaurs might have touched her.
It was only when she was done, feeling almost raw, that she turned off the shower and stopped the tub so it would fill, before flinging the shower curtain open so she didn't feel like she was in a cage. It had almost seemed a shame to use up so much hot water before she was able to fill up the bath, but she'd have never be able to really truly relax if she thought the water was anywhere near as dirty as she felt. Gingerly lowering down into the jacuzzi tub, Darcy let the water fill up around her, feeling a little too hot, but too tired to sit up to adjust the water temperature.
When the water was high enough, Darcy reached out with one of her feet, barely able to turn off the water with her toes. She felt incredibly lazy about it, but was far too tired to care. After a few long moments of just soaking in the heat and having to try to keep her eyes open, Darcy sat up just a little bit and rolled over onto her right side so she could look at her left thigh. Her skin was red from the hot water, making her look like a boiled lobster, but that was all. Even though her left side still felt a bit tender, it hadn't even really bruised. She realised, suddenly, how glad she was for it, considering her Christmas plans to spend all day at the pool, wearing as little as possible. A giant, ugly bruise would have seriously hampered that plan.
Relaxing once again, she settled onto her back and looked around the wall by her head. About a foot and a half away, just at eye-level, she found a conspicuous switch and flipped it. There was a few seconds of contemplative humming before the jets started, pounding right down the middle of her back so hard, she couldn't help the loud, almost sexual noise she made. Aware that Loki was still on the other side of the door, she covered her mouth and laughed, trying not to make any other sound as the tension in her back was hammered away.
The park may have been poorly planned out, but whoever had designed the hotel had definitely known what they were doing.
Darcy let the jets go until her skin felt numb, giving her an indication that it was probably time to turn them off again. With the jets off, Darcy leaned back into the water again just to relax and forget how the day had gone. She stayed there for a long time, trying not to doze but not wanting to get out either, until Loki suddenly knocked on the door. Panicked and not sure what else to do, Darcy ducked down into the tub as low as possible, covering herself with both arms.
"Yeah?" she called out cautiously.
"I'm going to order room service. What do you want?" Loki called through the door, surprising her a little.
"Uh." Darcy thought for a moment, but realised she had no idea what was even available, outside of chocolate cake and chicken soup. "What do they have?"
Loki didn't answer, and after a moment, Darcy began to wonder if he'd even heard her. She was about to ask again when the door opened just the slightest amount, and a plastic-bound menu flew awkwardly through the air, landing about a foot away from the tub.
"Thanks," Darcy called out as the door closed again.
Making sure it was going to stay closed, Darcy leaned out of the tub just enough to snatch up the menu, and hid back down again. The menu was as extensive as a restaurant's, offering a little bit of everything, much to her surprise. She read over all of her options, holding it close to her face so she could read it without her glasses, suddenly feeling very hungry after the day they'd had, and the pathetic little lunch they'd taken with them. Once she'd narrowed her choice down to about three options, she got up to drain the tub and dried herself with one of the huge white towels on the rack. Already, even as she dressed, she felt like she had some energy back, but just enough to sit up and watch TV over dinner. Wrapping a second, smaller towel around her hair and picking her glasses up off the counter before making her way back out to join Loki and relay her order. She was surprised to find him not only changed into clean clothes as well, even wearing one of the new shirts and the pyjamas she'd got him, but his hair dripping over his shoulders and onto the floor. He must have seen her confusion in the look she gave him, because he pointed at the door joining to Jane and Thor's room.
"They weren't back yet," he explained.
"Oh," Darcy said, wondering if he'd bothered to let them know that he'd gone into their room to use their shower. If it had been anybody else on the planet, Darcy didn't even think it would have been a big deal at all, but somehow, she could see Thor angry that Loki would even dare. She put the room service menu down by the bed and climbed on top of the covers, before realising the remote was over by the TV
"Have you ordered yet?" she asked, glaring at the remote until it became clear that it wasn't going to magically shoot across the room into her hand, and getting up to fetch it.
"Not yet," Loki said. He made his way over to the phone, ready to pick it up.
"That mushroom Swiss burger sounds amazing. With the wedge fries and a salad," Darcy said, already feeling like she could taste it. For a moment, she almost thought to order a bottle of wine as well, until she realised she'd be the only one drinking it. "And a Coke, I think."
Nodding, Loki picked up the phone and placed their order while Darcy flipped through the channels, slowly remembering how little the tiny island had to offer. She found the On Demand menu again and began scrolling through it, still not seeing anything that looked terribly interesting.
When Loki finished placing the room service order, he walked around to the foot of the bed and sat down on the floor again. Darcy watched him for a few seconds, wondering why he did that.
"You don't have to sit down there. You can come up here if you want," she told him.
"I like it here," Loki said.
"You're weird," Darcy said, not really sure if he was being serious or not.
They flipped through the On Demand menu, utterly failing to find something they could both agree to watch, taking up enough time arguing over crappy movies for room service to knock on the door. Loki jumped up from the floor to answer the door, stepping aside as the young man wheeled the cart in. Looking at it, Loki seemed caught in a quandary.
"Am I supposed to tip you?" he asked, looking at what now seemed like a surprising amount of food.
"There should be some cash in my purse," Darcy said, before the guy could answer. It was only as Loki picked up the bag and started pawing through it that she realised she'd given him permission to do so without even thinking. Part of her now wondered if he'd use it as an excuse to dig through her bag whenever he wanted.
He pulled out a small crumple of green and looked at it. "Uh," he said, handing it over.
The attendant looked down at it, nodded, and a little too brightly, said, "Thank you," before turning to leave.
"How much did you give him?" Darcy asked, watching bemusedly as Loki shut the door.
"The smallest I could find was a fifty. Or two singles," Loki said.
Darcy almost choked. And then she remembered that she'd so far put pretty much everything on the card, and hadn't touched any of the actual cash she'd drawn out. "I really need to get some smaller bills for the room service guys," she said.
Loki lifted the domed lids on all the plates, snooping through everything before just wheeling the entire cart over to the bed. There was a small table between the bed and the sofa they probably could have eaten at, but Darcy absolutely refused to get out of bed.
Apparently also contemplating the table, Loki chose both. He dragged the table over to the side of the bed and stretched his long legs out in front of him. The bed was big enough that Darcy was able to set her plate and her salad bowl in front of her, still having enough room for Loki's basket of fries, and his other basket of onion rings, and the third basket of chicken strips, while he put his steak down on the table beside him.
Darcy almost commented on it, but she bit her tongue. She's seen Thor do exactly the same thing dozens of times before, and it had been funny then. Somehow, she felt like calling Loki out on it when she knew he probably ate more ramen and macaroni than anything else would only piss him off.
It didn't stop her from stealing an onion ring, though.
"That's mine," Loki protested, entirely without bite.
"Yeah, but you're sharing, right?" Darcy said, biting into it just to taunt him.
"I only share on dates," Loki said.
Suddenly, Darcy realised that technically, this was a date. A long, extended, $17,000 date, and she couldn't stop laughing at how ridiculous it still sounded.
"What?" asked Loki.
Darcy tried not to choke as she forced herself to swallow the bit of battered, fried onion. "I paid for the first one, too," she said, remembering him barging in on her angry Chinese dinner, just after Ian had broken up with her.
Loki paused while he tried to work out her reasoning, but he caught up quickly.
"I seem to remember paying for that one," he argued.
"Yeah, but I paid you back. So."
The look of sudden realisation on Loki's face only made Darcy laugh harder. But it didn't last long, and was soon replaced by something far more devious.
"Since we are meant to be dating, don't you suppose we ought to be putting on a louder show for our neighbours?" he asked.
Darcy nearly choked again.
"No," she protested forcefully. "God, Jane already thinks you did some horrible butt thing to me last night. That's all I needed."
This time, Loki didn't catch up on his own, and only looked confused.
"You bounced me off the bed!" Darcy reminded him. "I'm surprised I didn't bruise. I'd have been so pissed if I couldn't wear my swim suit tomorrow."
Loki laughed, loud and genuine, and it was infectious. Before Darcy even got to start eating her dinner, a full five minutes had passed.