A little girl wakes up shivering, in a tiny, all too familiar room in a cold, damp basement. She always woke up just minutes before her master would come to retrieve her, same time every day. Like clockwork, she hears footsteps approaching, and braces herself for punishment, orders, food, or maybe all three.

The door opens. It wasn't him this time. Instead it was a taller man with dark shoulder-length hair, who felt familiar, but she couldn't say where they've met. He extends his hand to her.

"Come on! We need to get out of here!"

"I can't!" She protests in an urgent whisper. "I have to wait for my dad!"

"He's not coming."

"But Kate–"

"She isn't coming, either. They don't even know you're here. We have to go, now!"

The little girl shakes her head. "I can't. But you need to get out of here before he finds you."

He kneels by her bedside, meeting her height. "I'm not leaving without you."

She shakes her head again. "I can't go."

The stranger smiles, but with sadness in his eyes. "Then we're both going to die here."

Before she could answer, she was waking up. Now an adult woman again, in the present year.

But the stranger's face didn't disappear... except he wasn't a stranger to her in the real world. Beth sits up with a startled gasp. Loki is sitting in her rocking chair halfway across the room, with a tray of breakfast foods and condiments in his lap.

"What are you doing in here?"

He holds up the tray, smiling, oblivious to her terror. "I brought you 'breakfast in bed', to help you start your day on a more positive note."

"Oh... How thoughtfully thoughtless of you. You couldn't at least just leave it on the dresser? How would you feel if you woke up to someone staring at you?"

Loki shrugged. "Depends on whom."

"No. Don't watch people sleep without their permission. Jesus Christ." Beth wanted to sound more furious, but her voice was still waking up. She rubbed her eyes. "Seriously, it's not fair."

He frowned. "We've slept in the living room together."

"Yes, a communal area, and I was made aware that you were going to be there. Come on, I hate when you drag out the innocent act. You knew this was rude."

"Alright, I did doubt the ethics of breaking our first house rule, but once I was here, I just didn't want to leave." I was already with the person I wanted to be with, he didn't dare say.

Though she was still very annoyed, a curious thought popped into her mind. "People really do become psychic in our sleep, don't we?"

"What?"

"I was just having a dream about you. I was a kid again, living in that basement, and you barged in and tried to break me out. I kept saying I couldn't come with you because I was waiting for Dad and Kate. You said you wouldn't leave without me. When I warned you that Cartwright would kill you, you said, 'Then we'll both die here'. And that's exactly when I woke up and saw your creepy ass," she ends with a glare.

Loki smirked. "I guess dream-Beth forgot that a single human cannot kill me."

"We're about to find out, if you don't get the hell out of my room." She started to pull the covers aside, but stopped, groaned and rolled her eyes when she realized her nightgown had ridden up her thighs. So she couldn't even move freely at the moment. The look she shot him then was full of all kinds of profanities.

Loki got the message. She was seriously offended, and in his mind, she had some nerve to be. But he decided to be 'gracious' about it. He stood up with the tray and walked over to her bedside. "Enjoy your breakfast," he said, beginning to lean down to set it on her lap, but halted when she raised her hand in a 'stop' motion.

"I don't want it. I'm not eating it."

He backed up. "Why not?"

"Because the implication of the situation would make me sick, if not the food itself."

"'The food itself'? 'The implication'?" He scoffed. "I cook for you all the time. You think I would poison you?"

"I don't know what to think. I didn't think you would be in here!"

"Fine! You throw it away then, since I already went through the trouble of preparing it for you," he said as he walked over to her largest dresser, and almost slammed the tray on top of it. "You wouldn't have minded if it were Kate," he mumbled, storming towards the door.

"What did you just say?"

He stopped with his hand on the doorknob. "You heard me. You wouldn't mind if it were Kate at your bedside. You would eat anything she serves you."

Her eyes widened like saucers. "Are you kidding me right now?"

"No. You would trust someone who has tried to kill you, but you don't trust me. You think I would poison you, after everything."

"I didn't say any of that!"

"I know what you said, and you wouldn't feel that way at all if you trusted me."

She loathed the way he spoke of trust as if she owed it to him. Didn't Loki understand that trust is earned by being consistently trustworthy?

"I trusted you up until a few minutes ago. Mainly because you've respected my boundaries so far. I've been sleeping with one eye open for half my life, never knowing what might happen around me or who might come for me. I finally have what almost every adult has; a space where I'm in control and no one can access me without my permission. Or so I thought."

Something had clicked in Loki's mind by the time she finished her statement. Suddenly he felt like he really should leave. Like his very presence there at that moment was some sort of crime. "I'm sorry. Truly. This will never happen again." He quickly left the room and closed the door without looking back, but not before she caught the kicked-puppy look forming on his face.

Beth felt guilty, but knew she had to stand her ground. Though it even felt a little nice not having to wake up alone for once, she couldn't overlook the principle of the matter. Loki needed to know that he couldn't just welcome himself to her and her space however he wanted, whenever he wanted. Let him sulk for a little while.

"What the Asgardian hell was that?" she said aloud to herself. She slid out of bed, straightened her nightgown and walked over to the tray of food. "Really, what was his thought process?" she asked the scrambled eggs, like they could give her the answer. Maybe Loki fried his secrets into them.

"Alright, I'll have a couple of bites..."

Beth came out of her room an hour later, fully dressed and fed. She looked down the hall to the left, seeing a shadow in the living room that indicated someone–definitely Loki, she hoped–was sitting on the couch.

Loki tensed when she came in, but kept his eyes on his textbook... except now they were just blindly scanning the same line over and over. He wasn't angry with her; more like the distinct mortification and dread one feels when they're in trouble with their parents. It was too easy to invoke that emotion in Loki. He hates it. It wore out its welcome in childhood, yet here it was, every time he had to face someone after a conflict.

"Hey, Loki?"

He looked up, bracing himself. "Yes?"

"I'm sorry I–"

"No no no." He closed the book and put it aside. "Please don't be sorry. You did nothing wrong, I kn–""

She cut him off right back. "I didn't mean to give you such a hard time about it though."

"Yes you did, and that's alright." He leaned back and sighed deeply. "I hated it when my brother would barge into my room unannounced. You know, there were no locked doors on the surface levels of our palace. Sections that needed to be guarded were guarded, but anyone with enough authority could venture wherever we wanted. Including our sibling's chambers. I hated it. It was suffocating, knowing I never had true privacy, but I accepted it. I felt I had no right to complain. And showing others the same discourtesy became second nature."

Beth stifled a smile. She imagined him lying across the couch, and herself scribbling in a notepad.

"Too bad I didn't have the kind of courage you do," he continued. "I never complained when I felt... violated. I just let my anger build up until it became strong enough to make up for my lack of courage."

"Well, if you tell me you don't like something, I'll make an effort to refrain from it. Unless I have an important reason not to, which we would talk about. So you don't have to be afraid to..." she made a sideways chopping motion with her hand, "draw the line with me."

"You clearly aren't afraid to do it to me," he said with a smile. There was something weird about this smile, though, Beth thought. It didn't seem to be born of cheer, nor malice, but she felt like whatever it was could go either way.

She didn't have enough experience with men to guess that Loki found her aggressiveness attractive.

"Oh, right. I came in here for..." She pulls a long white hair ribbon from a pocket of her jean vest. "This kind of feels like rewarding bad behavior, but I'm going to start leaving this ribbon hanging from my doorknob at times. It means you can come in. If it's not there, then you have to knock as usual."

Loki thought about it for a second, then shook his head. "I don't need that. Knocking is easy enough."

"No, but..." She looks down for a moment, like she's trying to find the words, fingers now fidgeting nervously with the ribbon. "Sometimes I want you to just... be there. So now if you ever feel like walking in while I happen to want you there..." she shrugged, "just skip the formality and walk right in."

Loki still didn't see a significant benefit to it; why couldn't she just tell him when she wanted his company? But he nodded, sensing that this meant some kind of barrier was disintegrating between them.

And it frightened him to realize he wanted that. He wanted to be closer to her, and his meaning of 'too close' was getting further and further away at an increasing rate.

Loki didn't sleep that night. Or on most nights. He found it truly mournful that humans needed to spend a third of their lives unconscious.

While they slept, their night sky awakened. Though Loki never looked upon it with his eyes alone. There were creatures in Midgard's heavens who transcend all physical avenues of perception. They were old, they are fast, they were huge, and they were terrifying. Luckily for humanity, they were peaceful and paid the worlds no mind. One of Loki's newfound nightly hobbies was sitting in the backyard and watching them, which required strong focus. He would do this for about two or three hours, take out his sketchpad, and try to draw what he could remember.

Those were his plans for tonight. It was forbidden to draw these beings in every tribe or religion that acknowledge their existence, but... he was bored. Contrary to popular belief, Loki didn't always feel like reading. There was no yardwork to be done, Beth was asleep, and... casting illusions in his bedroom to keep himself company was starting to mess with his head. Spying on celestial beings made a good distraction from his thoughts, fears, regrets.

As he quietly passes Beth's bedroom on his way outside, he steals a glance at the door as usual. He always hoped to see it completely closed. For the day she finally shed that fear of being locked in.

Unfortunately, it was cracked open... But wait just a minute. He stopped in his tracks.

Beth's long, silky white ribbon was hanging on the doorknob.

Loki looked at the clock on the wall, then at his watch. They both confirmed that it was almost 1am.

She must have forgotten it was there, he reasoned to himself, and kept going about his business.

A few hours later...

"Good morning," Loki greets his groggy roommate from the dining table, staring down at the unfinished image in his sketch pad.

Beth grunted in response, opened the fridge, grabbed her water bottle and twisted the cap off. It was 5:30am, and she was just coming out to quench her thirst before going right back to sleep.

"You forgot to take the ribbon down last night," he said as she gulped down almost half the bottle.

"No I didn't." She said when she was done. "Cracking the door is the last thing I do before I go to bed. Wouldn't forget something like that."

"... Oh."

She went back into her room, and when Loki checked about 30 minutes later, the ribbon was gone.

It wasn't there that night, either, which bothered Loki more than he would have expected it to.

The night after that...

Loki had already suppressed any expectation of being invited to her bedroom at night again. He wouldn't set himself up to feel rejected. He avoided looking at her door this time as he passed it, but his peripheral vision unintentionally caught the sight of the ribbon, stopping him in his tracks.

Beth's signal of invitation was there, and he knew it wasn't by accident.

Now was time for the priceless question he avoided asking himself the past two nights: What did he expect to do once he went in there, in the middle of night?

Waking her up seemed like the smartest thing to do, since he didn't know what business he had in Beth's room while she wasn't awake. He would walk in, wake her up, and ask her what she wanted with him at this hour.

Loki pushed her door halfway open and walked in. His eyes immediately landed on the endearing sight of Beth curled up in a large purple blanket, her pony-tailed blonde head being the only visible part of her.

He surveyed the rest of the room as well. She had a little nightlight plugged into the wall next to her bed, casting a dim pink glow around the room, to avoid tripping or bumping into things in the middle of the night. She didn't have as many cosmetics as he would expect a woman to have, but her closet was already bulging outward from the overflow of clothing and shoes. Her computer and game console were turned off, her phone plugged into the charger on the desk. There was the bag of 'Beanie Babies' she keeps in the corner...

Loki suppressed a chuckle as he noticed at least three different pair of socks scattered around. Why does this woman shed her socks everywhere she goes? He finds her socks in and around the couch, in the master bathroom, under the dining table, on the front porch, and even in his bedroom. It was adorable.

He placed his drawing pad down at the edge of her nightstand, and gently shook her by the shoulder. "Beth. Wake up. It's me."

She woke up alert, but relaxed the instant she realized it was him. "Oh hi." She scooted over, making plenty of room on her queen-sized mattress. "You can lay down."

Loki was dumbfounded. "I-I can?"

"Yeah, if that's not too scandalous to you."

"Wait, let me go put on a shirt first." He was only wearing black jeans.

"Why? I'm wearing shorts under here. The ones you said look like underwear. As long as you're not naked, I don't care."

Well if she was that comfortable with him, Loki wasn't going to argue. He hesitantly slid underneath the covers, and the mutual sensation of enclosed body heat caused both their breaths to hitch.

He laid on his back, face turned towards her, but not daring to move his body any closer to hers. Beth had propped herself up on her elbow, a nervously excited smile on her face. He saw a familiar glint of mischief in her eyes and grinned, sure that his expression mirrored hers.

"Doesn't it feel like we're getting away with something?" She asked. "Like you snuck in here and our parents don't know it?"

The look on his face said yes, he knew exactly what she meant. "I think I even looked around before I came in, like someone might catch me."

"Hehe." She turned over, back facing him, and yawned softly.

After a few minutes of silence and steady breath, Loki thought she had fallen back asleep. He sighed softly, stared at the ceiling and realized... he was content. That nagging feeling of constantly having to do something was gone. He also realized how tired he actually was. He eyelids began to grow heavy...

But Beth's voice jolted him out of his half-slumber with, "Hey Loki. Do you like to spoon?"

"Do I like to what?"

"Spoon."

"Spoon?" What nonsense is she–

"Yeah. Like how we put the spoons in the drawer, hugging, one behind the other."

"... Ohhhhh, you mean cradling someone. Yes, and I miss it very much. Why?"

She turned over to face him. "You know, that's an interesting choice of words. 'Cradling'. That actually is how you would cradle an entire person who's about your own size."

"Yes. It's protective and comforting."

"With the right person, I'm guessing."

"Am I a 'right person'?" He asked with a hint of longing in his eyes.

"You're the only one I would try it with," she said, rolling back over. "You can be my big spoon, if you want."

'Try' it. He thought nothing of her wording at the time.

Loki didn't need to think twice about it. He embraced her from behind underneath the covers, and they awkwardly adjusted themselves for a moment until they were both comfortable.

"Mmm, this does feel nice. Are you comfortable?"

"Yes," Loki replied. "Are you?"

"More comfortable than I've ever been. I can sleep like this forever."

That left Loki speechless. No one has ever expressed that kind of sentiment to him. Not even lovers. No one has ever even made him feel as wanted as she just made him sound.

"I forgot to tell you something the other morning," he says, breaking two minutes of silence.

"Yeah?" a sleepy voice replied.

"I'm sorry for bringing Kate into our argument. She holds a special place in your heart, and that's the last part of you I want to hurt."

That was the most... heartfelt apology she has ever heard. "Thanks. And by the way, if I woke up and saw Kate in here, the first thing I would do is grab my knife."

He didn't comment on that, but he wanted to say, 'Good girl'. He tried to control his bias against Kate, but anyone who has hurt his only friend in the universe–literally–was just as much his enemy as everyone else is.

A minute later, he felt her body relax.

"Beth?" he whispered in her ear after another minute, but she didn't stir and her breathing pattern didn't change.

She fell asleep in my arms. Effortlessly.

Beth trusts him, and that makes him proud.