RATING: M
GENRE: Angst, Dark, Drama
WARNING: Unhealthy relationship
SUMMARY: [Sequel to "Foreign"] He comes for her daily, and this time she promises herself that she won't give in. (Post-Avengers AU, Dark!Loki)

THIS TIME

This time, she won't give in.

She'll ignore the way his unearthly eyes travel down, down, down like the last autumn leaf before the dawning of winter. Her breath won't catch when he advances toward her in languid stride, building the unbearable tension step by agonizing step. Her heart won't quake when he says her name with a reverence belied by the dark smile he wears.

This time, she'll turn away when he takes her face in his slender hands and leans forward, his mouth hovering just over hers. She won't close her eyes in anticipation of his gelid kiss, of his tongue tracing a line across her lips, of his breath fluttering through her hair as he presses her against the wall. She won't stand on her toes until he lifts her up and wraps her legs around his waist. Her fingers won't fumble with the straps of his leather armor. She won't let out a trembling sigh when he tugs her shirt over her head.

And she won't sleep with him.

Not this time.

She's made this promise before. After the first time, when his lips grazed the shell of her ear as he whispered what he'd like to do to her. She made the promise again after the second time, when he told her between devouring kisses that once wasn't enough. She makes the promise after every session of that ends with her in his arms. And she never keeps it.

But not this time.

The temperature drop in the lab is almost imperceptible, but she has grown accustomed to this harbinger of his arrival. He always comes. Every day since he "bumped" into her on the street, pretending to be an ordinary guy. She's not sure how he manages this; he's supposed to be in prison— on another world. He's told her as much, told her that he's sent his consciousness—his soul, as he calls it—across the void in a mere projection of himself. But if that's true, why does he feel so undeniably real against her skin?

He's there, appearing between one blink and another. She averts her gaze, already half-undone by his eyes—too pale, too bright, too hungry. He's killed people, she reminds herself. He destroyed Manhattan in his ambition to bring her world to its knees. He made attempts on his own brother's life. She clings to this knowledge like a shield as she feels him draw closer.

"Jane, Jane, foolish Jane," he murmurs with a soft laugh. "Are you truly planning to resist me today? After all that we've shared together? I'm heartbroken." But he isn't. He's amused. He likes the chase. She hates that she knows him so well. She hates that he knows her so well.

Killer, villain, monster. She repeats the words silently like an incantation to ward off the way his voice trails goosebumps down her spine. "I can't do this," she says, "I don't want to."

He tilts his head, studies her with a flick of his tongue across his bottom lip. One corner of his mouth turns upward as he lifts a brow in disbelief. "You don't want to what?" He's taunting her, daring her to describe everything that has already transpired between them. Because he knows she can't do it—not without her heart racing, not without her voice becoming a hoarse whisper.

But neither can she let him have the upper-hand anymore. "I won't because... Thor." She invokes the forbidden name and watches Loki's dimpled smile drop into a sneer. She holds her ground despite the fear snaking through her veins.

Killer, villain, monster. Angry with her. The game has become dangerous.

With unnatural speed, he grabs her arm and yanks her against him. "Thor," he says his adoptive brother's name as though it is the filthiest of curses, "is not here. I am."

"You're not here, either," she breathes, pushing against his armor. The supple leather is solid beneath her fingertips. The scientist in her wants to understand how this is possible. How she can smell the faint scent of the hide mingled with the overpowering scent of him?

"I'm more here than he's ever been." He glares down at her with chilling fury. Loki despises being reminded of her affection for the golden-haired demigod, even though it was that affection which drew him to her in the first place.

His hand slides down the curve of her spine, pressing her into him. "You're more mine than you've ever been his."

She resists the instinct to tip her chin up, to expose the length of her neck and offer it to him, proving his statement true. "I don't belong to anyone—least of all you."

He bares his teeth in a snarl and she knows she's teetering too close to the edge of his murderous wrath. But it's the only way to break this twisted thing between them. He's like a drug, and every time she indulges in her yearning for him, she becomes darker. Just a shade. Just a little more gray. Just a little less white.

This is what he's doing to her—shaping her into something that suits his blackened and mangled heart. Shaping her into something that Thor couldn't possibly care for anymore. She suspects that this has been his design all along—else why would he return each day? He can't crave her as much as she does him.

"You cannot love him," Loki says in a low growl, his eyes translucent and as hard as ice. "You don't know him."

She loathes this part—when his words put another crack in the effigy she's created of Thor in her mind. When he tells her stories from his youth, of a fair young thunder god who laughed while in the throes of battle lust, who counted kills like trophies, who believed that not one species in the nine realms could come close to equal the might and glory of the Aesir, who courted girls for the challenge, the conquest. Lies, lies, lies, she wants to tell herself.

But then, she doesn't know Thor, not really.

She won't admit it to Loki, though. And so she says instead, "I know you."

More than she ever wanted to and not nearly as much as she needs to. She leaves the And I don't love you left unsaid. Because she thinks speaking that sentence will drive him over the precipice this time. And because the words aren't entirely true. A part of her does love him, loves how alive he makes her feel, the way an addict loves a chosen vice.

He smiles then, a horribly feral thing that makes her question how tenuous his sanity is. "Yes," he agrees, "and yet, you still want me—no matter how you protest." He bends his neck and whispers next to her ear, "I wonder, are you so terribly wanting that you would lie with a despicable creature like me? Or are you as broken as I am?"

She turns away, feeling an angry blush scorching her cheeks. "Stop it, Loki." His questions flay her open, exposing every unsettling revelation about herself she's had while lying next to him, skin against skin.

"You stop deceiving yourself, Jane Foster," he bites out, grasping her chin and wrenching her head to face him. "Stop clinging to your false sense of morality because you are too timorous to admit this simple truth: you are more like me than you will ever be like him. Your best match is not with the heroic god of virtue and righteousness, but with the wretched god of lies and mayhem. Or else you would have never let me into your life, let alone into your bed." His voice rises with each word, lips curling with contempt.

As she stares up at him, she wants to claw at his face and scream. She wants to crumple to the floor and weep. She wants him to shut up, to leave her alone, to kiss her until the fires of passion burn away everything else, until she forgets his terrible indictment of her. "I hate you."

He gives her a quiet, bitter laugh. "Everyone does," he says. A single tear slips from the corner of his eye, despite the cavalier aura he projects. "But no one more than myself."

She wishes she hadn't resisted him, that she hadn't forced him to this confession. Killer, Villain, Monster becomes Shattered, Lonely, Lost, and she doesn't know how to reconcile his past nefarious deeds with the damaged little boy revealed beneath his mocking, haughty exterior. The latter doesn't excuse the former, but it makes him more than just a psychopath, less than a crazed demon. And she thinks maybe he hasn't always been this mad, this tyrannical. Had everything he had ever known been obliterated before his eyes, and in that fragile moment, he snapped?

She shies away from the question. She doesn't want to feel compassion for him pooling in her chest, choking her heart. She wants him to stay the rogue who only pursues her out of jealous spite for his brother. She wants to blame him for seducing her, for corrupting her. She doesn't want to know that this thing between them could be as close as he gets to solace—that maybe his daily visits are not always part of some Machiavellian master plan.

And she doesn't want to cry for him.

With a long, slender finger he traces a tear on her cheek and brings it to his mouth. She draws in a ragged breath when he tastes the salty drop. Every nerve ending in her body comes alive under his unwavering gaze, and she is struck by one last truth.

She's not going to keep her promise.

Not this time.

Not ever.

She doesn't feel hollow resignation as she expects. She feels strangely liberated; the ubiquitous guilt coiled tightly in her stomach has dissipated. Without it, she's suddenly more herself than she's been in the weeks since he revealed his true identity. She marvels at the incongruity of finding peace in surrender. To him. To a dark and broken immortal prince.

His eyes narrow. He's noticed the change that has come over her, but doesn't know its meaning. This is how she's gained the upper-hand, she realizes. Not in fighting him. But in giving in.

She smiles up at him, a gesture that deepens the furrow in his brow as she reaches up to tangle her fingers in the black hair curling at the nape of his neck. He leans into her caress before catching himself. His hand captures hers and pulls it away from him.

"I don't know what new ploy you've conjured in that little head of yours," he says, "but it won't work."

Her smile widens. "I know." There are no more ploys, no more battles. This war, at least, is over for her, for him. He doesn't know it yet.

It's not the answer he anticipated, and from tightening of his jaw, he's unsettled by it. His gaze slides away from her, to some distant place in his mind. Or maybe back to where he really is, to the crystalline cell he once described, sequestered deep within the catacombs of Asgard. After an elongated silence, he looks at her again, wary, guarded, and he slips his fingers beneath the collar of her shirt. His lips part, and her heart stops working properly when he leans down and crushes his mouth over hers.

This time, she will let his hands grasp the back of her thighs as he lifts her onto the desk. She won't care when her paperwork flutters to the ground in spiraling flurries. She'll arch into him as he trails rough kisses down her throat, as his fingers seek the flesh under her shirt, beneath the waistband of her jeans. She'll pull at his armor while she tries to remember the secret of its release.

This time, she won't feel damned for screaming his name when he's wrested every last morsel of pleasure from her.

And next time, she will teach him about trust, about letting go.

About love.

~FIN~

A/N: Thank you so much for reading this twisted, dark thing. Please feel free to let me know your thoughts in the review box below!