A/N: Nobody reviewed the last chapter... :-( Are weekends not good for you guys to read, or was it just boring?
Last chapter's Easter Egg was in Darcy's driving lessons where she says she believes in learning by doing. This is a tribute to How to Train Your Dragon's Gobber, saying flippantly to a character in mortal peril, "I believe in learning on the job," and when Loki says he's not so sure about her teaching methods, this is an echo of when the character of Fishlegs says basically the same thing to Gobber during another lesson.
Firsts
"To be completely frank with you, it's been a while since I've been around modern conveniences—my last few jobs were mostly waiting tables at little cafés and pubs in the middle of nowhere here and there…" Loki smiled, laughed a little self-deprecating laugh, "so I'm not familiar with the machines. But I'm excellent with customers, that I can promise you—plus I speak several languages."
"Well, I appreciate your honesty," Max, the middle aged Barnes & Noble manager said with a grin. "We can train you on an espresso machine, but it's hard to train people skills." He stood up and offered his hand—Loki shook it firmly, a gesture in which Darcy had coached him, and smiled back winningly.
"And if a bookseller position becomes available," Max assured him as he ushered his newest barista out of the office, "I'm sure we can transfer you."
"Thank you very much," Loki said warmly. "I look forward to working with you."
He tried not to let any sarcasm or disdain creep into his voice, and kept his posture and walk casual as he headed out onto the sales floor and then exited the store. Only when he reached the relative privacy of the bus stop did he sink onto the bench, groaning and pressing the heels of his hands into his forehead. This was humiliating—this whole thing. Making coffee for strangers to support himself, being patronized by human professors who thought they knew what they were talking about, the backwards plumbing in Darcy's… in their apartment…
"Living room," Darcy announced as she led the way into the small living space on the fourth floor of the very plain brick building she'd parked at. "Kitchen," she added, gesturing through a wide doorway. "Bathroom's at the end of the hall," she continued, gesturing down a short, narrow hallway with four doors. "Hot means cold and cold means hot. My room's on the left, yours is on the right, spare towels and sheets are in that closet. There's a little balcony through the kitchen on the other side."
Loki had silently shouldered his bag and headed down the little corridor, turning right at the second door, as the first was too narrow to admit a person, and therefore must be the closet. The room that was now his contained a bed with white sheets and a brown coverlet, a desk with one of those rolling swivel chairs, an empty bookshelf, a plain dresser, and a wide, shallow closet with two sliding doors and a rod strung along the top to hang clothes on. He set his duffel bag on the bed and went to look out the window. It faced the same way as the balcony, and overlooked the rooftops of many smaller buildings nearby.
The view wasn't bad, he told himself bracingly. And it was better than a cell.
He turned and began exploring the area more critically. There was a plain digital clock on the desk near the bed, and a lamp with a hinge that could overlook either the desk or the bed; he could have good reading light in either position. There was also an overhead light, with a switch by the door.
Under the bed lay a pair of low plastic tubs on wheels. One contained what he guessed was a second set of sheets and another comforter of some sort, and the other was empty. On the end of the bed lay a thick dark green blanket, knitted from fluffy yarn. The color reminded him inexplicably of home, and his throat tightened.
"Hey," Darcy called, leaning her head in the door, "life skills time—you're going to order a pizza and learn how to use a wash machine."
"Coming," he said quietly, and followed her out, glancing at her room on the way. It was a mirror image of his, but looked smaller at first glance—then he realized it was because she'd actually filled it with personal items. Clothes were strewn across the floor, there was a huge round unmarked sack of something shoved in the corner, and every surface was covered with small items—books, empty mugs, makeup, cords… her window overlooked the rickety tangle of stairways that they'd climbed to get up so far.
'Making coffee for strangers is better than subjecting myself to whatever torments Asgard can concoct.' Loki reminded himself with a deep breath as the bus arrived and pulled over to collect him and two women with bags full of shopping who had joined him at the stop. 'Besides,' his mind supplied, 'it's not as though I haven't put up with worse humiliations in my life. At least this one I picked.'
He had originally thought of working at Cold Stone—Darcy was right, everything in their shop was pure frozen pleasure—but he was concerned that if his hands got too cold, he'd start turning blue in front of everybody. It was unnatural, not being able to control his magic. It felt like he was always wearing an ill-fitting suit of clothes; itchy and tight and dragging and generally cumbersome. And the worst bit was, he'd used to hide his blue skin without even realizing he did it—but it was like breathing; as soon as he became aware of it, he had to actually make an effort to do it.
His phone buzzed in his pocket, and he pulled it out to read Darcy's text. She'd been messaging him all day to help him practice using the thing. She'd sent him a picture of an empty container of milk.
[Can you get more of this when you pass Aldi?] she requested. [Just this exact one. Put it on the green credit card from Fury.] SHIELD was paying Darcy a stipend basically to babysit him and get him into human life; she'd insisted on getting two paycards so that she could send him on errands just like this.
[Sure,] he said, standing up and making his way towards the exit door. [I got the B&N job.]
[CONGRATULATIONS!] she exclaimed with a long string of smiley faces. The bus pulled over at the shopping center stop, and Loki shouldered the back door open and stepped onto the curb. He'd been living here for three days, and between that and the road trip, not one person had given him a funny look. It was a tribute to his acting skills, and, he grudgingly admitted, to Darcy's tutelage. Really his major challenge had been figuring out which of her mannerisms were typical earth behaviors which he ought to copy, and which ones were, well, Darcy.
But since Americans were, for the most part, fully engrossed in their smartphones, or else in a huge rush to get everywhere, no one really paid him enough attention to him to notice little things like him being Loki. Of course, he got more attention than the average person. His accent, for one—he'd considered changing it, but Darcy had vetoed, saying that him being international would help explain to all of her friends why they'd never heard of him before.
"Plus, that accent is an aphrodisiac," she'd added with a smirk. "If you're looking to get laid, just talk like yourself." Barton had guffawed from the corner, and Romanoff had nodded her head once to the side, tilting her mouth down in an attitude of reluctant agreement.
"English it is," he'd laughed.
It hadn't occurred to him that this would be the case, but he'd noticed people's reactions immediately. Even as he checked out at Aldi, responding politely to the cashier's greeting, he saw her and the two people in line behind him perk up their ears and start to pay attention. Now this was something about earth that he actually liked. Nothing about him had been considered particularly attractive on Asgard, but here—at least in the parts of America where he'd been so far—his voice, face and body drew people in.
It was a poor substitute for a kingdom, but he was looking for anything positive about this.
-0-
The SHIELD base in Larimer was a plain 4-storey office building marked "Trade Center Ltd" in big blue letters. The foyer looked like that of an ordinary office building, with beige chairs and three receptionists at desks side-by-side. Darcy looked a little nonplussed as they entered, clearly wondering if they were at the right place, but Loki had anticipated this sort of chicanery. He slid past Darcy and headed up to one of the reception desks.
"Mr. Randle and Miss Lewis here for a meeting with Mrs. Hansen," he announced conversationally. The receptionist put on a winning smile and rifled through a bunch of papers.
"Wonderful weather we're having this morning," she said brightly as she extracted a sheet from the stack.
"Yes," Loki agreed, "but I always carry an umbrella."
"First elevator on your left," she said, handing him the paper. Once they entered the nondescript elevator, Loki punched in a numeric code from the sheet in his hand, and the car began to descend.
"According to the Captain," he said after they stood in silence for a while, "SHIELD has been using the same codes for nearly a century. Only for people with appointments, of course," he added. "If they hadn't known who I was, it would have been a slightly more complicated negotiation."
"If they know who we are, what's the use in having a code?" Darcy asked.
"So we can indicate if we're being followed, or if we have explosives strapped to us, or any number of other unpleasant things," he explained. "And the beauty of it is," he added as the doors opened, "an enemy would assume they were being given an old code as a trick, and would try nearly anything else." They stepped off of the elevator, into a cinderblock hallway with the SHIELD emblem in bronze on the wall.
"That's more like it," Darcy commented, nodding at the crest.
"Loki, Darcy," Barton greeted them from the end of the hall.
"Hey, Agent Feathers!" Darcy responded with a grin and a wave. "Where's Spider Lady?"
"Working," he responded, unable to help the little grin that spontaneously spread across his face at Darcy's general goofiness. "D, you're in briefing room four, down that hall, first right turn. "Loki, you're with me."
"Don't wait for me," Loki said as Darcy turned and left. "I'll take the train back if mine is longer than yours." She waved over her shoulder to show she'd heard, and then headed off.
"She make you watch the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy yet?" Barton asked after they'd walked in silence for a while. Loki laughed.
"It's been recorded on a long, long list," he responded. "I have so far seen The Princess Bride, Star Wars, a New Hope, The Dark Knight, the first season of Sherlock, and several episodes of Star Trek."
"Solid choices," Clint nodded approvingly. "You actually like any of 'em?"
"Sherlock," Loki replied immediately.
"Figures," Clint snorted. "Oh, I'll take your phone, by the way," he added, reaching out a hand. Loki dug it out of his pocket and handed it over, and the archer stuck it in the inner pocket of his jacket before opening a door.
"He's all yours," he announced.
Loki entered the room—and froze.
"We meet again," said Coulson calmly, folding his hands on top of his immaculately clean desk.
"How?" Loki demanded when he could speak again, advancing a few steps into the room to get a better look at the decidedly not dead agent.
"Your mother," Coulson responded simply. "I'm going to be working with you on your monthly debriefings for now."
"How did you get so unlucky as to be assigned to the man who killed you?" Loki inquired, eyebrow raised as he sat down. "I was the one who killed you, yes?" he checked awkwardly. He distinctly thought he remembered running the man through, but he also remembered a conversation—afterwards?—and getting blown up. Shortly after that his head had started to clear a bit, but then he'd been lost in a horrible haze of trying to sort out how much of what he was doing was his own volition and how much had been planted inside of his mind. While he'd been distracted, he'd continued to act, so he wasn't entirely sure what had happened after confronting this man.
"Deputy Director Coulson was the only Level 8 agent who wasn't afraid of you," the black-haired agent who'd often escorted Darcy to his cell back at the Triskellion explained. He was sitting off to the side, posture deceptively casual, firearm within easy reach.
"Let's say I'm with Miss Lewis, banking on you not being stupid enough to try the same thing twice," Coulson added. "Now, we have a lot of material to get through today, so let's get started, shall we?"
"What would you like to know?" Loki asked, crossing his legs comfortably.
"Let's start with what you can tell us about our closest neighbors, and go from there," Phil suggested, sitting back and hitting a button on what Loki guessed was a recording device.
-0-
"You have to remember, the Amiishi may be a small tribe but they are ancient and proud, Brother," Loki explained, speaking slowly and clearly, gesturing with his hands as he tried to get through to Thor, who was pacing back and forth like a wild animal in a cage.
"It's only natural for their princess to speak to you as an equal," he continued. Thor growled furiously at the mention of the incident.
"Tiny slip of a girl, hardly more than human," Thor muttered. "How dare she speak thus to the crown prince of Asgard?"
"Because with her father deathly ill, that 'slip of a girl' is the ruler of her people—she practically outranks you," Loki moaned. "If you wish for Asgard to preserve equitable relations with the Amiishi, you must start with her."
"I care little for such petty fools—why should the might of Asgard seek to align itself with a backwater tribe in the first place?"
"Because there are dragons the size of this palace terrorizing the northern lands," Loki reminded him, getting frustrated, "and the Amiishi can tame dragons."
"Then I shall simply fight off the dragons myself!" Thor roared.
"You can't—you'll devastate their crops, ruin their ecosystem…" but he could tell Thor had stopped hearing him. He sighed, rubbing a hand tiredly across his face. Why even ask if he didn't care to know the answer?
Why did no one listen to him?
-0-
"And that is everybody within a few weeks' flight," Loki finished, sliding the papers he'd wound up drawing on towards Coulson, Ward, Hill and two other agents who'd wandered in during what had quickly become a lecture.
"So, green is friendlies," Hill summarized, pointing at the different colored highlights on the diagram. "Pink might attack us, and yellow is so-so?"
"More like bees," Loki corrected. His voice was rough from talking for so long—how many hours had they been here? "If you don't mess with them, they won't mess with you—but if you go poking your noses into their business, you may not like them very much."
"Okay," Coulson said, turning off the recording device and handing it to one of the unnamed agents. "Take this and have it transcribed and filed. Jackson, contact NASA and let them know that bit about the satellites. No point in transmitting Syrinian mating calls when we're just trying to measure star mass."
"Yeah, that would be awkward," Hill quipped.
"From what recall from the last Council of Realms," Loki responded with a smirk, "it already has been, a few times now."
"Duly noted," Coulson replied dryly. "Well, we'll see you back here, third Saturday in July." He stood up, and Loki followed suit. Then to his surprise, the agent held out a hand. He stared at it for a moment before taking it in his own.
"This may well turn out to everyone's advantage," Coulson said optimistically.
"That was the idea," Loki responded quietly.
What strange times he lived in, Loki thought as Ward escorted him to the end of the hall, where he was handed off to Barton, who gave him his phone back and led him to the elevator. Thor, who was supposed to listen to him, had rarely cared, while this man (whom he'd apparently killed) seemed to actually value his knowledge.
He wasn't sure if it pleased him or just made him horribly sick.
A/N: So, I have the next chapter all written and everything... actually I'm pretty far ahead on this thing! So how about I post it when I get five reviews? There's a fair number of yeh's readin' this according to the traffic graph-that's a pretty small percentage. Anyway, I've probably been posting too fast for a new story... I should probably back off and give myself some margin for when I inevitably get writers' block.
This chapter's Easter Egg is pretty hard to spot—the hint is Miyazaki.
Chapter 7: People
The complicated part was relationships.
First, there were his classmates and coworkers. Getting into their good graces was a walk in the park—figuring out how much energy he wanted to spend on any of them was something else entirely. He didn't have a history of close friendships, confined typically to spending his time with Thor's friends, who tolerated him because he was Thor's brother. Without Thor's shadow to hide him, he was free to befriend pretty much anyone—but so many of those who seemed to like him were just the pettiest of petty mortals… it became quickly evident that the majority of others' appreciation for him was a shallow "liking" based on the façade he projected; the character of Luke Randle.
There was hardly anything he could do about it, of course; his choices were to let people like the façade or hate him when they realized who and what he truly was. Either way, his ability to have relationships was doomed—if it had existed to begin with.