Chapter Sixty-One: Endless Possibility

Darla and Bruce had made their way to Tony's room, which consisted of a frighteningly quiet elevator ride and an awkward stroll down a sun-bleached hallway where the only sound was their footsteps. One of Darla's shoes was squeaking. She tried to alter the pressure of her steps to make it stop, but any adjustments she acted out only made it worse. Her cheeks felt like they would be coated in non-makeup blush for the rest of her life.

Bruce was trying to ignore the awkwardness, which bordered on aggressive. Vicious. He was the soft spoken one in a group filled with huge personalities. He wasn't used to having to fill any silence. Luckily, Tony broke it up for them-far before they got to his door.

"It's not asinine! And you don't have to use your never-ending supply of four dollar words when you're talking to me, babe, to try and make me feel fucking stupid. Maybe that shit works with the low-level businessmen and trophy secretaries you spend your days interacting with, but me? Sometimes I think you forget I have a brain-and a damn good one." A brief pause. "No, I'm not stretching here!"

His tone was coated in a sticky layer of angst. Much like nail polish smudged before drying, it was no surprise to anyone that there was a plain, boring fingernail underneath. Desperation. Loneliness. Heartache. All the worst, most devastating feelings inflicted by a crumbling relationship, masked poorly by a steady hum of anger.

"You need to learn to delegate! I'm sick of hearing that you're the only one who can do these things. I trust you implicitly-" a forced pause "-no, come on, don't turn that four dollar words thing back on me this fucking soon. Usually you let me get a few more things in before you twist my intentions up and feed them back to me."

Bruce and Darla had stopped walking. Darla took a cautious step back. "We shouldn't be listening to this," she whispered.

"Right," he agreed, cursing his own morbid curiosity. "Hang tight for a second, though, I'm sure Jarvis already alerted him that we're here."

"He knows we're listening?"

"He might not know how loud he's being."

Tony started up again. "I'm sure you can do a fine job of planning this thing from wherever-you-are, making time for whoever-you're-with. You plan things in your sleep, don't you? So I'm sure it wouldn't be a challenge for you. That way you won't have to fly all the way home and sleep in your own bed for a change."

Darla winced, like Tony was saying these things directly to her.

"Well what am I supposed to think? You're never around. No, fuck that, I'm sick of assuring you I've been faithful. If you don't trust me, then-" a halt. "Pepper," he pleaded, then more aggressively, "Pepper!" She must not have been listening to him.

When Tony stormed out the door of his suite, he was met with embarrassed and worried gazes. "Having fun?"

"No," Darla was adamant.

"Really? At the very least I'd think eavesdroppers would be glad to hear such a personal conversation."

"Tony, you know we weren't-"

"I don't really know that, do I?"

"We weren't! Fury sent me to find you."

"Because he doesn't know exactly where I am at all times? Nice try. Anyway, I'm gonna duck out." He didn't make eye contact with either of them but as he passed, he pat Bruce on the shoulder and said, "Don't fuck her in my bed, okay?"

Bruce was used to being green at this point in his life, but this time it was because he was feeling ill. Reluctantly, he met Darla's eyes. She looked horrified. "He's upset…"

"Yeah, me too," she said, voice meeker than usual. Still, her devotion to following orders had her wanting to chase Tony down and explain herself. If she didn't do that, would she have to go back to Fury and tell him she'd failed? Or could she wander the building for the rest of her shift?

"Look, I don't know why he said that."

"Oh, right." She was distracted. Tony's vulgar statement had caught her by such surprise that she wasn't thinking about it. She was often able to gloss over things she didn't want to process, and this definitely fell into that category. Never in her wildest dreams would she dare to confront Tony, either. Not even something so simple as so ask what he meant, or to insist that he treat her with respect from now on. She had a nasty habit of making excuses for the people in her life, and blaming herself for the way they treated her. It was something she'd learned from her mother. She wasn't emotionally aware enough to realize this, though, and it sent her thoughts down a track that made her sad in a way she couldn't explain. "I think I'm just gonna go back to the surveillance room."

He picked up on a forlorn quality behind this statement. Like she'd given up and wanted to seclude herself. "No," he said, "You can come help me in the lab!"

After avoiding looking him in the eye for a long while, she succumbed to her own curiosity. In his expression was a real kindness. She couldn't help but assume that he felt sorry for her. "No, ah, no thanks."

"Come on, it'll tick off Marista! She never gets to come in my lab."

Darla wanted to go with him. He made it easy to want it, with his gentle encouragement and eager half smile. Then it played over in her head: Don't fuck her in my bed, okay? She refused to believe a bold statement like this could come out of nowhere. There had to be something else behind it. However genuine Bruce was being, it felt like it could all be a trick.

When she didn't answer, he started to lead her back down the hallway. She didn't follow, though, and he stopped himself. He thought about how she'd said she might be good at being quiet or staying out of the way. Her growth was suddenly very important to him. "I'm not letting you go back to that stuffy room."

His investment in her prodded her to follow her instincts. Oddly enough, her instincts were focusing on the wrong things. Now that Tony was out of sight and likely riding the elevator down and further away from them, she wanted to address his statement. Mostly because she thought Bruce would be honest with her. "Are you sure you don't know why he said what he said? You have no idea?"

He didn't answer at first. It didn't feel right to tell her the truth, it would only make her uncomfortable, and she needed to be built up, not broken down. She waited patiently until finally he said, "I have no idea." It didn't feel like a lie. He really didn't know why Tony thought that was appropriate. He could see Tony being spiteful or tactless or downright mean. In fact, the more he thought about it, the quip was totally in character. But Darla didn't know either of them well enough to know what to make of it. "Come to the lab," he managed to inject some assertiveness into the statement.

The thought of wandering around aimlessly or going back to Fury or surveillance gave her more anxiety than the idea of spending more time with Bruce. So she agreed and followed which were, incidentally, two things she was very good at.

Natasha was making her way from Barton's room to Fury's office. Barton had made the mistake of falling asleep, and Nat was likely the only person on earth who could sneak away without waking him. She'd seen a text on her phone from the director that said, Meet with me when you can. It didn't feel urgent or pressing in the slightest but she was dying to know what he wanted to speak to her about. Sitting around and waiting for her body to heal wasn't her style. Intellectually, she saw the importance of it, and decided that when she was done she would stay in bed for as long as her mind would allow it.

Fury was behind his desk, looking bored and unoccupied. Natasha could have come down to see him at any point in the last few hours and found the same sight. He couldn't hide his delight at having something to do, though he tried. A smile peeked through his eternally rigid lips. "How did you manage to get out?"

"He fell asleep." She was proud of herself the way a child takes pride in getting away with something. She'd been careful not to encourage him to sleep and arouse suspicion, but that didn't stop her from drawing little circles at the base of his scalp until he nodded off. Barton would be upset at first, but she knew exactly how to calm him down. It felt good to get up and move around, anyway.

"I have a favor to ask."

"I figured." Though coy as she usually was, she was itching to have an assignment. Anything, even something small, would bring her pleasure. She still hoped it would be something vital and difficult. She didn't consider her encounter with Loki a failure. No one could have expected her to go toe to toe with him and come out on top. Still, she hated the idea that she'd been reduced to a damsel in distress by his mind games. She tried not to think about it too hard.

"It has to do with the party Stark wants to throw."

"You're okay with that idea? You?"

"It's not my favorite, but, I have to admit that I'm willing to try anything at this point. I tend to think about things logically. Rationally. That hasn't really worked for us yet. I'm bad at considering magic a variable, no matter how many fucked up things I've seen. So I'm just gonna roll with this one for now. Anyway, I had a thought." Already, Nat was wary of where he was going. Any previous excitement was dwindling. "We still need to find Eve, I don't know that I'll believe this story until we speak to her."

"Why do you think she would tell us the truth?"

"I don't. Thank god we've got a handful of human lie detectors wandering around this place."

"Right. So you want me to find her?"

"I want you to help find her, yes."

"Okay, I'm not sure what I can do that surveillance isn't already working on. Aren't they combing the city?"

"They are."

He was burying the lead. "Okay-out with it."

"I want you to get Agent Barrows to attend the party."

She actually laughed at this. "Sam isn't going to come anywhere near this place."

"How do you know that? Have you spoken to him?"

"Sir, no one has. He won't see anyone. You know that. I asked some co-workers about him in passing and they seemed to think he wasn't coming back."

"You could change his mind."

That was true. She could do it without even trying that hard. "I don't know if I want to do this."

"Okay," Fury said, which startled her more than if he'd yelled. "I understand. Think about it, though, please? He could help us find her. Despite how he might feel about the situation, about me, I don't think he'd want her missing." That was true, too.

Elsewhere

After their swimming session, Eve and Loki scrambled onto the beach, shivering under the starry sky. He dried them off with a simple spell and caught her yawning. He built them a bed out of the sand, envisioning it in his mind's eye and bidding the earth to do the construction for him. It was like a four-poster bed grew right out of the sand, save for the legs underneath. Eve laughed, thinking it all a neat trick. Then he actually crawled into it and curled up, producing a blanket made of sand to cover up with.

Eve stuck her tongue out in disgust. "I don't care how powerful you are, you are never going to get all the sand off of your body. You'll be finding it for centuries."

He pat the space beside him on the queen-sized sandcastle bed.

"Never in a million years."

"Trust me."

"Never. In. A. Million. Years."

He lifted her off the ground without moving a finger. She wiggled in protest but there was nothing she could do. In a few seconds, he placed her gingerly on the side of the bed. She laughed and went to push herself off it once the spell wasn't holding her anymore, but then she realized that the thing underneath her was plush and comfortable like a real mattress. She stared at it, like her eyes were playing tricks on her. Then curiosity overtook her. If she closed her eyes, it was like sliding into a real bed-the most comfortable bed on earth. The blanket, which looked like a sheet of aluminum foil coated with hard, damp sand, may as well have been a downy feather blanket.

No matter how lovely it felt, she couldn't get past the sight of it. It was the same reason she still didn't eat seafood. Despite being forced to try it many times in the past, and usually enjoying it, she could never get past how it looked and smelled. Her body sunk into the bed and he covered her with the blanket. She wanted so badly to close her eyes and sleep, but she absolutely could not let go of the preposterous sight they were.

Loki was comfortable and sleepy, and tried to pull her closer to him. She was rigid like a board. "Would you please just relax?"

"This is strange."

"Good strange. It's not like I've asked you to actually sleep on a bed made of sand, have I?"

"I mean, yes. It's literally made of sand."

"Alright. I'll sleep here and you figure something else out."

She glared. "No need to be rude."

"I don't think that providing you with an innovative, magical and inspired place to sleep for the night constitutes rude."

She ran her fingers along the top of the blanket, her mind expecting it to be rough. No matter how many times she lapped her fingers around it in circles, the sensation was the same-silky, soft and serene. It was even producing a comfortable warmth to combat the breeze coming off the waves. She adjusted herself onto her side and looked at him, his head burrowed into a sandy pillow, with not a single grain of sand in his hair. The pillow below her head was just as she liked it, more to the firm side, but still she rubbed her face on it expecting sandpaper burns.

He slid his hand under her head and pulled her into his chest. "Okay, close your eyes." She did. "Breathe. Clear your head."

She breathed in. If I open my eyes, I'm on a cold, impossible beach bed. She breathed out. What if his magic fades while he's sleeping? Of course, he heard these thoughts.

"Hey. You're tired, right?" She nodded into his skin. "Then don't worry. Let yourself be comfortable. You don't have to understand it to enjoy it." She said nothing, leading him to believe this reassurance meant nothing to her. He moved the hand on her face to the base of her scalp and massaged the spot lightly. She produced a handful of happy, satisfied sounds. In the moment, he wanted to touch her more. Intimately and slowly like a lover should. He knew he could, and that she would go along with it and be sufficiently tuckered out after the fact. More than that, though, he wanted her to come to terms with the endless possibility of his powers. He wanted her to relax and sleep and dream, so he held her close until her breathing steadied, and let the sound of the waves creeping up onto the beach lull him to sleep.

They slept until afternoon the next day, one o'clock, and the beach was bustling with people. Many stopped to take pictures of what appeared to be an art project, and the pair were lying so still that they looked like part of a sculpture. Plus-how could anyone lie on a bed made of sand without a speck of it on their bodies? When Eve rubbed her eyes and sat up, the first to notice was a toddler. She grabbed at her purple bathing suit's straps in excitement, scrunching them up and pointing, then, with all her fingers at once.

Her mother picked her up, holding her around the waist effortlessly the way experienced parents can. "Can we take a picture of her with you?"

"Oh," Eve did a quick scan of the beach, and not seeing the harm in it said, "Sure."

The mother plopped her baby down on the bed and snapped a photo. The child seemed to understand that the bed didn't feel like she'd expected it too, and brushed her hands along the surface of it furiously. "Alright, Ina, come along." She snatched up her daughter and continued down the shore.

Loki's eyes opened just in time to see the camera flash. He was irritated to find the beach littered with people, the shallow end of the water strewn with bodies splashing and wading and floating on the surface. He hadn't planned to sleep in so late-at least not now that he thought about. He hadn't really planned anything. "Why did you let her do that?"

Eve blinked, still half asleep. "I don't know, it seemed easier than saying no."

"Right, so now they have a picture of us saved on their device?"

"I doubt they're the only ones who took a picture of us."

"That's not good," Loki said, eyes serious. Groggy, Eve blinked again. "You don't see that that's not good?"

"Well, I mean, what can we do about it now?"

"You pick the strangest times to be aloof."

After a pause she said, "Let's get breakfast."

"Wouldn't it be lunch?" They got out of the bed. Eve brushed herself off, even though there was no need to.

"We just woke up. It's breakfast." Eve had a sudden thought and circled the bed, tracking her eyes along the perimeter. She started to panic a bit. Sasha was playing in the water with some children, but soon noticed her two favorite humans were awake and bounded over to them as quickly as her short legs would allow. The kids called for her to come back-they were calling her perrito-but she ignored them.

Most of the people at the beach were watching them at this point, some of them startled to find the sculpture was actually a live art demonstration. Without paying any attention to this, Eve and Loki strode off. The bed returned to its natural, sandy texture, the blanket crumbling on top of it seamlessly. Children and adults alike descended on it, curious, and found it was simply an elaborate sand castle after all. It didn't survive long.

In full defiance of Loki insisting they were eating lunch, Eve ordered pancakes and sausage at the first restaurant they found. Of course, she shared a large portion with the dog, saying, "See? Sasha thinks it's breakfast time too."

"She would eat any food you handed her."

Eve picked up the garnish off of Loki's plate, disturbing whatever healthy rice-based dish he'd chosen. She held it up to the pup's mouth and she sniffed it, then recoiled with a grimace. "Good girl!" She received another hunk of sausage.

Once they were finished, they lounged at the table and drank iced tea out of tall glasses. They were seated outside, with a large fabric umbrella protecting them from the harsh sun. Eve had her feet propped up on an empty chair. Their waiter approached and asked if he could use the chair for other patrons. The restaurant was far busier now than when they'd arrived. Eve glared at him, silent, until he left.

"Okay, I think we'd better go," Loki laughed.

"Why? I'm comfortable."

"We have things to do today."

"We do?"

He led her down a couple streets, snaking up and down and reading the signs on the buildings. She lagged behind, cuddling Sasha in her grip. It was hard to keep the dog at her side if they were walking, she was easily distracted and scampered off at a moment's notice.

Eve was curious, but enjoying the weather and the sounds of the streets kept her from pestering him. They were still close enough to the beach that they weren't in the heart of the city, and it gave the air a leisurely feel. Nobody seemed to be in any kind of hurry. By the time Eve was growing impatient, Loki found what he was looking for and went inside. She hesitated before following to read the sign above the door. Still, it took a moment for her to realize what was going on. Squeezing Sasha into her side so she could reach out and grab the door handle, she found Loki making polite small talk with the receptionist.

"Ah, this is my wife," he said, holding his arm out for Eve to join him.

"Mrs. Howl! Very nice to meet you, I'm Patricia." That was pronounced Puh-treece-ee-yuh.

It took Eve a second to catch up. Loki nudged her. "Please," Eve laughed charmingly, "call me Marigold."

"If you two want to have a seat, I'm going to check and see if any of our reps are available," Patricia said.

Loki sat down in a rigid waiting area chair and Eve stalked over to him before taking the seat adjacent. "What does she think your name is, Mr. Howl?"

"Bertram."

"That's pretty gaudy."

"Gaudy? Marigold is the epitome of gaudy."

"Great, then we're just a young couple with old people names. It fits, I guess, since you're really old, right?" He didn't find this funny, so she added, "And I've never had a moment's worth of childlike wonder to speak of." He couldn't contain his smile. "I guess I can imagine a child named Marigold. But not a young adult. Feels off. Hey, here's a thought, what are we doing here?"

"Are you actually struggling to figure it out?"

"I guess not, but-"

Patricia was back. "Good news! Alicia can see you right away! Come on back!" She was sweet to the point of it being frustrating.

Alicia's office was as floral of a space as there ever had been. It was to the point where it rivaled an actual outdoor garden. The paintings on the walls only varied between flower beds and big, blown up exaggerations of ornate flowers. There were several obsidian columns of varying heights, all of which had a flourishing flower pot on top. She stood up to greet them and, low and behold, a floral print skirt hugged her curvy hips. She shook their hands in turn, curly brown hair bouncing around as she did. "So, my dears! You're interested in buying a house?"

Eve said, "Sure, why not."

A/N:

Alright, since we're in two different time zones, I'm going to do my best to have things lining up. So morning things at SHIELD will be taking place during afternoon stuff in Spain. It'll probably be a lot of detailing SHIELD HQ's stuff then moving over to the lovebirds, like this chapter was set up. I guess just trust me and let me know if things get hard to follow! Though it's not like anything heavy is going on right now. I'm having a lot of fun writing these chapters, it's nice to take a break from the cat and mouse angle. It's also pretty easy to crank out 4,000 words when everything that's happening is purely for fun. As always, I'm open to suggestions! My approach lately is pretty free form. In any case, I'm glad to be updating semi-consistently again instead of making you guys wait months and months. A new rule I have for myself is that I don't post a new chapter until I've already outlined the next one. Feedback is love !