A/N: I graduate University in 5 weeks. 32 days, 17 hours, 39 minutes and 42 seconds, to be exact. Yes, I have an app on my phone counting down the seconds to the start of commencement. Yes, I'm excited to be done with school. No, I don't already have a grown-up job lined up. Yes I'm concerned about that. Yes I'm avoiding my problems by writing fanfiction. Moving on.

Thank you knightowls2, Skipper McSlade, Erikstrulove, and xbecbebex for your reviews! Somebody I know in the outernet texted me feedback, so I will count that as the fifth one, and here is the promised chapter!

Last chapter's Easter Egg was not waiting for the bus in the rain from My Neighbor Totoro, but points for guessing, xbecbebex! It was the reference to the Amiishi people. In Hayao Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke, the main character comes from a small, backwoods tribe of that name, who are famous for riding red elk. The princess in question—a "slip of a girl, ruling in her father's illness"—is Nausicaä, from Miyazaki's Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, who was a fairly gentle teenage girl with all the stress of ruling heaped on her shoulders with her father bedridden—and who could also fly into a rage and kill a man twice her size if pushed to it.

People

School was less painful than Loki had been expecting. Sure, he had to spend the majority of his time sitting in tiny classrooms full of bored humans listening to the same three people explain things, but Resistance in History was mildly interesting, and British Literature was a challenge because with his accent, many of his classmates expected him to already know a lot about the subject. Hating to look inept, Loki flung himself into studying, and actually enjoyed quite a bit of what he read. The topics of the readings weren't usually to his taste, but he appreciated the artistry with which the stories were crafted.

College 101 was, predictably, an utter waste of his time, and he resented it all the more when the professor took half an hour to explain something that Darcy had told him in two minutes, and with more clarity. Unfortunately, there was absolutely nothing he could do to exempt himself from that requirement.

"Yeah, I hated it too," Darcy empathized as he lay sprawled on the couch, complaining for the umpteenth time about the six hours per week of his life spent in that classroom. "Bring your tablet—pretend to take notes while actually screwing around on the internet. Guarantee that's what everyone else is doing on their laptops. Or if you want to be an overachiever, you can do your homework for your other classes on the school's Wi-Fi." Loki nodded thoughtfully. The wireless connection in their building was irritatingly slow, and sometimes disagreed with the data on his tablet. The school wasn't that much better, but any better was still an improvement.

Work was hardly difficult—Loki had spent a thousand years being nice to stupid oafs and acting humble when he should probably have been leading them, so customer service was no challenge. The machines were simple, he memorized the recipes during his first shift, and so the only real hurdle was curbing the occasional urge to bash his own brains out at having to say the same mundane things over and over and over again.

With his three classes and four days a week working, Loki was out most of the time. When he had free time, he had homework, plus some write-ups Agent Coulson had requested, and his coworker, Monica, had lent him a copy of a delightfully disturbing book called A Clockwork Orange. He wasn't entirely sure if he liked Monica—but he liked the book, so he smiled and nodded and behaved cordially as she spent the majority of their overlapping shifts relaying gossip about their coworkers that he really could have guessed by looking at them, and didn't particularly care about either way.

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.

Then, there were professors. He got along swimmingly with the little old man who taught his history course—he was pleasant, cordial, and didn't throw his weight around in the classroom. He butted heads a lot with his lit professor on certain interpretive methods, and hated his College 101 professor on principle because of the stupidity of her subject. He'd also run into a professor Ahlström—a little middle-aged Scottish woman with a long curly train of vibrant red hair who taught anthropology, and frequented the local Starbucks at the same times he did. She, at least, was fun to talk to.

Most complex and challenging was romance. It wasn't like he was looking to fall in love and get married—Yggdrasil forbid!—but he wasn't exactly a monk. He'd had his share of flings, but here on earth, as Darcy had noted, everyone found him attractive, which was a relatively new experience. However, the whole gender and sexuality thing was remarkably (and unnecessarily) complicated.

"Hey," Darcy asked on their third day driving, "do you like girls or guys?"**

"Beg pardon?" Loki asked, looking up from the Google rabbit trail he'd lost himself in while she took her turn at the wheel.

"You know," she responded. "Are you attracted to women, men, both?"

"Depends on the person," he shrugged.

"But does it depend on gender?" she pressed. He shook his head slowly.

"No, I suppose not," he responded, thinking back on his previous partners and looking for a pattern. On Asgard everyone had considered it one of his many failings, that he seemed interested in such a variety of people, but he knew that in other cultures—Vanaheim and Svartalfheim, in particular—it was actually less common to be attracted to the opposite sex. Of course, their breeding methods were different, and their entire partnering culture was equally different to match, but the point was, he knew it was that way on other worlds. He'd thought he was the only Asgardian like that—when he'd thought he was Asgardian. He wasn't actually sure about the Jotuns—by the time he learned of his true parentage, sexuality was the last thing on his mind.

"That's another typical human adaptation, is it not?" he inquired with some interest. "That such things vary from one individual to the next?" Darcy nodded, eyes on the road.

"I mean, it depends on who you ask," she responded. "Some groups—usually religious ones—claim that all humans are heterosexual and cisgender, and condemn anyone who says otherwise. Other groups say it varies from person to person. I'm not sure anybody actually knows how it all works or what causes people to be certain ways. In some places there's a cultural stigma, in other places there isn't. It's definitely a 'handle with care' subject, depending on who you're with. Unless you don't care what people think about you for it—just know that you might have to deal with some assholes poking their noses into your business if you broadcast it."

"Noted," he responded. "So, Darcy," he added, "do you like men or women? Or both?"

"I like men," she laughed. "The ones with good ab muscles—and freckles. I have a thing for freckles. I wish my boyfriend had 'em, but nobody's perfect."

"Boyfriend is… a lover, not a committed partner?" he guessed.

"Again, depends on the person," she explained. "Some people have kids together and buy houses together as boyfriend and girlfriend, and for other people the words just mean that they're in some kind of relationship. Jeff and I have been together for about a year now, sort of casually. I spent the last semester traveling with Jane and doing online classes, so we've been kinda' doing the long-distance thing. Do you… did you have someone back home?" she faltered as she asked, and he could tell she was trying to be delicate, knowing that this could be quite the landmine if the answer was yes.

"No," he responded, shaking his head. "I was never really close with anyone emotionally—never really did the whole courting thing. I'm not really the 'settling-down' type." He left out the bits about how Asgardians rarely found him particularly attractive, in body or in person—and how difficult it was for him to establish an identity beyond "Thor's little brother."

"Gotcha," Darcy responded casually. "Well, you'll do great in college, I gotta say," she snorted. "Bunch of horny, no-strings-attached-please people, plus your accent, not to mention your face, now that the mop of hair's gone," she added. He glared at her, but she ignored him. "You'll fit right in."

And she'd been right—maybe a little too right. His hearing was better than the average human's, so he could make out quite clearly what many of his classmates whispered about him—mostly the women, but a few of the men as well. He was also perceptive enough to notice when people were attracted to him, of course, and would have assumed that was just how all humans acted if Darcy hadn't explained that he looked and sounded good to them. He was pretty sure he'd already ruined a friendship between two girls who both wanted into his pants. All of this, and he hadn't even slept with any of them yet!

Then there was Nina. Nina sat next to him in College 101 and found the class equally useless. She was witty, sarcastic and dominant, taking charge during projects and daring anyone to cross her with a flash of competitiveness in her eyes and an assertive fold of her arms across her well-endowed chest. She had warm, olive-toned skin and thick brown curls, adorning a slim, tight body honed through years of volleyball and swimming. As mortals went, he'd think with a smirk as his eyes lingered on her during a boring lecture, she was quite lovely.

But of course, the most complex relationship was his friendship with Darcy.

Sometimes she seemed incredibly clever, breaking apart the inconsistencies of her culture and speaking so eloquently about power and leadership and justice.

Other times the mortal talked wildly to herself, tearing apart the contents of her room to find something—usually by the time he asked him if he'd seen it, whatever it was turned out to have been in her purse or on the kitchen table the whole time. She apparently couldn't abide silence—when she wasn't talking, she always had music playing, or the TV on. She owned about thirty hats, and four pairs of glasses, but whenever she was getting ready to leave, she could somehow never find a single hat or pair of glasses.

She waited tables every night, took two day classes, taught him "Midgard 101," but still couldn't pronounce Mjolnir (although he was getting the impression she was doing it on purpose) and would vary between intellectual inquiries about Asgardian culture and government and some of the most off-the-wall questions he could imagine.

She'd ask him whether he had trouble getting through doorways wearing "that stupid helmet" (only on Midgard, where doorways were unnaturally small) or if he'd actually slept with a horse (no! And why, out of all the weird myths about him, were the mortals so obsessed with that one?) or what was the weirdest thing he'd ever eaten (he'd had to think about that one—probably pickled Om'irpo eggs from the western continent of Niflheim). Were there any aliens that actually looked "like aliens?" She'd shown him a picture of some bipedal creatures with green skin and huge black eyes. They reminded him vaguely of a few different species, which he drew to the best of his ability, but she wasn't satisfied with any of them—and none of them were from the vicinity of Mars, to her great disappointment.

By the end of his first month, he'd decided that Darcy was a bit mad, but had realized that he actually rather liked that about her. She was very blunt, and very open, but not in the same abrasive, obstinate way as Thor and his ilk. She just… was what she was. And that was refreshing.

Then there were the nightmares.

In prison, he'd kept himself under rigid control, barely sleeping, and when he did, not allowing himself to move or cry out no matter what his mind plagued him with. Then in his first few weeks of freedom, he'd been so busy, so distracted, and his mind had shut down into calming, restful blackness when he would finally fall into bed, wrapped soothingly in the heavy knitted green blanket.

But now that he was settling, now that his life among the mortals was becoming routine, his subconscious was seeing fit to torment him with vivid half-recollections. Sometimes he dreamed of fire and agony and the blurry faces of unknown captors. Other times it was slightly more concrete visions of his last week as prince and king of Asgard, the moment when his skin turned blue and a simple plan to show father why Thor was not only unworthy but unsafe for the throne had spiraled instantly out of control, ripping through everything he thought he knew and sending him into a sickening spiral of despair. Often he dreamed of falling—of lying on the Bifrost and realizing that he'd stepped off the metaphorical edge, and then letting himself fall off the physical edge minutes later, his life in scraps around him, irrevocably destroyed… that one always had him waking up gasping.

Sometimes his mind would try to piece together the horrors he'd committed while influenced by his captors—sometimes it made sense, things like killing Coulson or fighting Thor. But other times he couldn't distinguish fact from hideous fiction. Strangling Barton, ripping the Man of Iron's heart from his chest, killing the lady Jane a dozen different ways, always with Thor watching, always screaming in horror, begging his once-brother to kill him instead. Then he'd kill Thor—that was when he'd wake up screaming.

The first two times, Darcy had gotten up too, awakening when she heard the noise. He'd mumbled excuses and told her to go back to bed. The third time, she'd stayed up, turning on the TV and wordlessly inviting him to join her. For all her goofiness and bluntness about so many things, she was surprisingly compassionate and understanding about the nightmares. Once she'd said cryptically that the mind was a powerful force, and dangerous when left unattended. But she'd followed up by prattling about Sherlock or something like that, generally sounding very Darcy. He wasn't sure what to make of it, but he'd eaten a bowl of ice cream and drank a cup of tea in front of an episode of Cold Case, then gotten a few more hours of sleep—fitful, but thankfully unbroken until his alarm returned him to consciousness.

Of all the relationships in his new life, the one Loki hated most was the one with himself.

A/N: **Read the myths, guys—and not the kid versions, the real ones. Loki kinda' slept with everybody—and both mothered and fathered children. This is canon. Incidentally, since the comic book versions have a different history than the mythical versions of these characters, and I'm kind of blending the two based largely on Hiddleston's performance in the movies, Loki is pansexual as in the myths, but identifies as a man and has not been married or had any children, which I think is comic canon, and in keeping with the way Hiddleston played the character (in my opinion).

The Easter Egg for this chapter isn't an easy one to find—the key word is actor(/ess). Also, Professor Ahlström herself is an Easter Egg, but that name isn't a hint at all. If you can tell who she is just by the description, then congratulations, you are the obscure fandom reference master!

Review!

Chapter 8: Enemies

"I just don't like that you're living with a guy, Baby," Jeff grumbled, sitting huffily on Darcy's bed while she sat on her bean-bag, arms and legs crossed, not looking at him.

"You didn't have a problem with Keenan staying here," she reminded him.

"Yeah, but I know Keenan, and you're not his type," Jeff complained. "I know he's not checking you out. I don't know this guy at all, and you never talked about him before, now suddenly you're besties, and he moved in, and I hadn't seen you in a while… makes a guy wonder, y'know?"

"Well, it wouldn't if you trusted me," Darcy reminded him crisply.