RATING: T
GENRE: Drama, Angst, Dark
SUMMARY: Jane Foster bumps into a stranger on the streets of Puente Antiguo, not knowing he's come to make good on an old promise. (Post-Avengers AU, Dark!Loki.)
A/N: The story continues in "This Time" (next chapter).
FOREIGN
"No, Darcy. You can't buy a new iPod with the grant money." Jane rolls her eyes as she hurries down the sidewalk. She cradles the cell phone between her shoulder and ear as she totes an overfull box of equipment.
"Oh, come on!" comes Darcy's whine on the other end of the call. "Music is, like, integral to my process. It'll make me a more efficient assistant. It's a total write-off."
"Darcy," Jane warns.
"Fine. Whatever." Darcy lets out an exaggerated sigh. "I'll see you next month—if my mother hasn't kidnapped me and forced me to marry some doctor."
"Bye, Darcy." Jane rolls her eyes again as the line goes dead.
Not for the first time, she wonders what it would be like to have an assistant who actually takes work seriously. SHIELD offered, but then after what Darcy and Jane had been through together, Jane can't imagine not having her sarcastic sidekick— no matter how she might fantasize otherwise.
The cell phone begins to slide from her shoulder and she instinctively raises a hand to catch it. The box in her arms falls to the concrete with a loud crash, sending the electronic parts flying. Unable to stop her forward momentum, Jane flings her arms outward to brace for impact.
She collides instead with another body.
A hand captures her wrist just before she tumbles over. "Sorry!" She squints up at her savior as an embarrassed blush heats her cheeks. He's tall and lean, wearing a black three-piece suit with the coat slung over his shoulder. The cuffs of his white shirt are rolled up to his elbows, and she notices oddly that the bottom button of his vest is undone.
"Miss Foster?"
She looks up at the deep and unfamiliar timbre, guessing British by his accent. His long face—all planes and angles, framed by glossy shoulder-length black hair—makes her think of an ethereal fairytale being. He's not handsome in the classical sense, not like Thor. (No, don't think of him.) A more fitting descriptor for this stranger is beautiful. But not effeminate. There is something in his intense gaze that tells her he is every bit as masculine as a blond demigod she is most emphatically not thinking about right now.
A moment later, she registers that the dark-haired man has said her name. She frowns, worried that SHIELD is attempting to foist another babysitter on her. Since Erik's sabbatical to Norway, Fury seemed to think Jane incapable of handling her research on her own.
She eyes the man before her. "Do I know you?" She doesn't, but she wants to hear whatever lie he will come up with.
"I don't believe you do, no." He raises a brow and points to the upended box on the ground. "Foster" is scrawled in huge block letters across the side, and Jane feels a little foolish for being suspicious.
"Oh, right." She half smiles, half grimaces. "Foster. Yeah, that's me. Jane Foster." She bends over to pick up the box and its contents. "I'm so sorry for all of this—" She pauses, hoping he'll fill in the blank with his name. When he says nothing, she continues on, even more flustered.
"Anyway, I can be a bit of a klutz sometimes." Stop babbling, Jane. Just shut up before you can say something really stupid. Numbers and star charts she's good with. People? Not quite as good. Really attractive foreign guys? Not good at all.
He is so quiet, at first she thinks he might have walked away. But then he squats down and retrieves a computer fan from the ground, studying it with a frown. "Yours, I presume," He holds it out to her.
"Yes." She takes it from him, unsure of what to say next. The way he stares at her with those pale eyes— not quite green, not quite blue—unsettles her. For a giddy heartbeat, she wonders if he's trying to read her mind. Chills prickle across her skin.
"So, um, thanks," she says, trying to fill up the awkward silence. She brushes a strand of her hair behind her ear and he follows the movement with the tilt of his head. "Okay. I guess…goodbye?" She flashes what she hopes is a smile and picks up her box.
His smooth fingers are over hers, and the goosebumps tingle back up her arms. "Allow me." His mouth stretches into a wide grin, bearing perfect white teeth.
There is the tiniest flutter building in her middle—something she hasn't felt since… No, don't think about him. "It's okay. I've got this. Thanks for the offer, though."
"It's true, then," he says rising with her. "Chivalry has no place in your modern world."
Jane finds his use of "your" instead of "our" strange but dismisses it. "That's not it."
"Then what is it?"
"I just…" She searches for an answer that sounds reasonably intelligent. "Listen, I don't know you. And I don't have the greatest track record with strangers—especially guys who definitely look like they have
no business hanging around a place like this." She leaves unsaid that the last visitor they had nearly got the whole town destroyed. Not that it was Thor's fault—not really.
"A wise course, I'm sure," the man before her replies. He places his hand on his chest, splaying those long fingers against his black tie. "Lukas. And you are Jane. Are we not acquainted now?"
Jane has no argument against that, though she feels like she should. "Fine. I'll let you carry my box on one condition."
He smiles again—an expression which is both disarming and disquieting. "Oh? And what would that be."
"You have to tell me what you're doing in Puente Antiguo. Business or pleasure?"
He glances away as he considers her question. "Both," he says after a protracted silence. "You could say that I'm on a holiday of sorts, but I'm also here to take care of a few…loose ends."
"That sounds," Jane replies, frowning, "cryptic."
He gives her a half-shrug but doesn't offer further explanation. Instead, he reaches for her bundle and deftly balances it in one arm. "Lead on, fair maiden."
As they head toward her lab, Jane becomes acutely aware of the stares of the geriatrics sitting on the bench in front of the barber's shop. Most of the population of Puente Antiguo has come to tenuously accept Jane again in the year and a half since Thor's visit. But the white-haired set hasn't forgiven her for bringing a tornado of crazy down on their dusty little haven. And here she is with another outsider.
She glances at Lukas. He wears a hint of a smirk, as if he knows the attention his presence as engendered and he's amused by it. His tongue sweeps across his bottom lip as he meets her gaze and her stomach ripples. There's a hunger there, ringing the pupils of his eyes. Wild but restrained like frothy waters beating against a dam. She shrinks away from it as she backs away from him.
His smile broadens a hair before his expression turns blank, guarded. "You still don't trust me?"
"I still don't know you." She points to the rundown building across the street. "That's me." The fishbowllike windows of her makeshift lab have been tinted since SHIELD began funding her research. They offered her state-of-the-art facilities as well, but accepting it felt too much like selling out. She clings to the gutted former car showroom as if it's the last vestige of her scientific independence.
This is where Jane's encounter with the enigmatic Lukas should end, but he crosses the road before she can retrieve the box from him. Digging into her pocket for her keys, she scrambles after him. When she opens the door, he walks inside without so much as a "by your leave." Jane huffs at this but doesn't say anything. He has the air of someone who always gets what he wants, and her earlier misgiving is rekindled.
"Thank you," she says, taking the box from him and setting it on the ground.
"My pleasure." He takes in her lab with the slow turn of his head, fingers brushing against the pile of notes scattered across the nearest desk. "What is it you do, Jane Foster?"
The way he says her name, dropping the "r" at the end as if it hadn't belonged there in the first place… She shakes herself, ignoring the sudden warmth blossoming on her cheeks, and hastily gathers her paperwork out of his reach. "It's kind of classified."
He holds up his hands in surrender. "I meant no harm." Amusement ghosts in the corners of his smile. It's almost disarming, but not quite.
Silence falls between them, and he begins to meander through her lab, picking up the snow globe Darcy gave her last Christmas as a joke. Lukas turns it over, frowning at the flecks of white swirling in the water. Setting it down, he turns back to Jane.
"I should like to know you better," he says. It's not a question; it's an intention.
"Why?"
He draws closer to her, siphoning the air from the room with each languid footfall. She doesn't retreat, though. It's not in her nature to cow to others.
"Because," he says, grinning again, "you intrigue me. Is that not reason enough?"
She cranes her neck to meet his gaze, her heart rate accelerating at the intensity in his eyes—as if she is all that exists in the universe and he wants to know why. "Coffee?" She blushes at the tremor in her voice.
His brows draw together in a brief furrow. "Coffee," he repeats the word as though its shape is unnatural on his tongue. "Perhaps, tomorrow."
Jane nods, not entirely certain why she's agreeing to this. "So, do you want to meet here or…"
His grin is an incongruous combination of innocence and something predatory. "Don't worry, Jane," he says, stepping toward the door. "I'll find you."
And then he is gone.
Chills slide over her arms at the promise in his parting words.
He kisses her after their third date.
It's not entirely unexpected, but Jane is still taken by surprise when he leans down and brushes his lips against hers. Like a request. Like a warning. She tips up her chin instinctively, leans into him, and feels him smile against her mouth.
As if that simple movement is the permission he needs, his kiss turns consuming. Her entire body becomes a super conductor, lightning dancing across her skin. She has never been the focus of such single-minded desire and a thrill builds in her middle, snaking lower.
They make it inside of her apartment. Only just. She should stop this, tell him to go before they cross this line. But she doesn't. Because for the first time in eighteen months, she's not thinking about a golden-haired god who swept out of her life as quickly and unexpectedly as he swept in. There is only Lukas and the press of his lips against her throat, the caress of his fingers beneath the waistband of her jeans.
They leave a trail of discarded clothing as they stumble toward her bedroom. She doesn't care about the stacks of books on the floor they kick over, the papers fluttering across the carpet, as they crash to her bed. It's flesh on flesh, mouth on skin.
She closes her eyes as she slips toward blissful oblivion.
Afterward, she rests her head on his chest as he traces designs on her nude back. She is content, more at peace than she has been in… She can't remember when. Not in the last year.
"When first we met," Lukas says, his chest vibrating with his deep timbre, "I had believed our encounter would go differently. Vastly so."
Jane smiles. "Oh?"
"Mmm." He combs his fingers through her hair. "I like this much better than what I had initially planned."
"Planned?" Her smile vanishes as a thread of disquiet trembles in her chest.
"I had planned," he says while continuing his affectionate caress, "to torture you so exquisitely that even Thor would beg for the mercy of your death. But I think I shall make you mine instead."
Ice crystalizes the blood in her veins. She doesn't want to believe what she's hearing. Torture? Thor? Her eyes widen as understanding comes to her piece by terrible piece. She pulls away from him, wrapping a blanket around her shoulders with shaking hands. Swallowing her fear, she says one word.
"Loki."
He gives her a broad grin. "Very clever, though perhaps not clever soon enough."
Her breaths come too short, too shallow, stifled by the weight of what he has done—what she has done. But how is he here? She doesn't realize that she gave voice to the question until he answers.
"How am I here? When I'm supposed to be locked away in the crystal cells of Asgard? Like some dangerous weapon put on display but never admired?" He sits up, still grinning. "But I am, Jane. I am there."
He brushes the hair from her eyes. "And I am also here. Keeping the promise I made long ago."
"Get out." She cringes away from him.
"Please don't," Lukas—Loki replies, his mouth turning downward in an exaggerated frown. "You needn't fear me—not anymore. Come, give your lover a kiss."
She bats his hands away when he reaches for her. "Never."
He laughs as if her defiance is pointless. "We shall see," he says. "Until tomorrow, little bird." His fingers brush her cheek just before he winks out of existence.
She stares at the space he occupied, horror churning in her stomach. Her fingers quake as she touches her lips, tasting the memory of his kiss ghosting there. She strips the bed with a scream, scrubs her skin in the shower until it's raw. She curls up on the floor, damp and shuddering until she succumbs to exhaustion.
Until tomorrow.
Never. Never again.
~TBC~
A/N: Thank you so much for reading! I'd love to hear your thoughts if you have a moment. The story continues in the next chapter!