Pepper gives Loki her number, but it still comes as a surprise when, two days later, she gets a text from an unknown number on her Starkphone. Friday routes all her calls; there should be no such thing as an unknown number. And yet, here it is.
She assumes it's one of SHIELD's people (Tony is going to be fit to lay an egg when he hears about this), but when she pulls up the message, she sees a photo of…a small snake with fluffy, feathery wings wearing an equally tiny top hat. She scrolls up. Another photo, this time of a gecko with tiny bat wings wearing the smallest witch's hat. And then, above that, the first message.
"Lady Virginia, I hope I am not remiss at contacting you again," the text message says. "I send these to you for your consideration and – it is my hope – enjoyment. Their names are Mark and Valentine."
"Friday," Pepper says, staring at her screen. "No one is to know about any of this, okay?"
"Yes, Miss Potts." Friday sounds almost resigned.
Pepper taps on the number and her fingers hover over the screen. After a moment, Pepper picks the first three green emojis she sees on her phone for the name field. With another tap, Loki is added to her contracts.
"Friday, can you find me some photos of…" Pepper pauses to think. "Cats. Small, cute cats wearing hats, please."
"Yes, Miss Potts." This time, Friday definitely sounds resigned.
The next time Pepper sees Tony, Loki's already texted her the time and location for a second date. That tempers Pepper's annoyance over Tony's meddling a bit. Briefly, she considers telling Tony that Operation Fireproof Boyfriend is up and running: Pepper has another lunch date with Loki - one, according to his text, 'to make up for the impromptu nature of their first encounter.'
But she also hates the idea of admitting out loud that all she needed was for someone to keep ignoring her boundaries with blind dates until she found one that didn't jump off a roof. Admitting that Tony's strategy has some merit feels like it sets the wrong precedent.
There's also a part of Pepper that wants to keep her cautious interest in Loki quiet. She doesn't want to jinx the second date.
Tony is going to find out on his own, anyway, through whatever backchannels he used to rope Loki into this little scheme of his. Pepper just wants to put that off for a little longer.
Meanwhile, Tony is acting more squirrely than normal when she walks into the workshop, tablet in her hand, the sharp clicking of her heels especially pronounced on the laminated concrete flooring.
Tony pretends to bustle around, touching this machine, then swiping something on the screen, then moving an Iron Man gauntlet from one workstation to the other. But amid the chaos, he's definitely doing his best to keep Pepper away from the back of the workshop.
"Tony," Pepper says as she watches Tony act very, very busy at the screens surrounding him. "I thought we agreed that you'd stop."
"Stop what?"
"Meddling!" Pepper walks over and puts her Starkpad between Tony's nose and the circuit board he is examining close up. He rears back, looking at her with a look of wounded innocence and reproach. "Sign off on this. I need you to look me in the eyes and tell me you're going to stop trying to fix this. And sign here -"
"I do not appreciate the energy you are creating on your side of the room right now," Tony said, scribbling his signature with his finger on the screen. "And I have no idea what you think I'm trying to fix."
"This!" Pepper snaps the fingers of her free hand in the air. A giant glowing spark crackles into life like a flash of a holiday sparkler. (It's a new trick that she discovered the night before. It is very impressive.) "You promised you'd stop!"
"I did stop!" Tony exclaims, managing to look even more indignant and squirrely at the same time. It's a look that makes Pepper's fingers itch to place a call to tell Anna to put the PR crisis response team on standby. They stare at each other as Tony hands back the Starkpad and Pepper puts it into her bag.
"Pep?" Tony finally breaks the stand-off. His voice has a tentative, almost apologetic note in it.
"Yeah?" Pepper says, eyeing him warily.
"...Will you please do that again? The thing you just did - " Tony snaps his fingers several times to demonstrate. "Please? For science?"
"Oh, for heaven's sake!" Pepper turns and marches into the waiting elevator. She pivots there with a sharp clack of heels to give him a singularly unimpressed look. The doors start closing and -
- timing it just right, she grins and snaps her fingers in a flash of red-gold sparks -
- and the doors slide shut on Tony's startled expression.
"No! Wait, come back! I wasn't ready! Friday, were you recording? Crap, Friday, start recording. Pep, come back - !"
And then the elevator is whisking Pepper down to the thirty-fourth floor for her next meeting and she can no longer hear Tony's muffled shouts.
They agree that Loki will pick her up downstairs after her last meeting. They're going to try a picnic again – this time, on purpose. That morning, Pepper makes sure she's wearing black, in case of grass stains, and, as her last appointment wraps up, tells her assistant that she is going out for lunch. She's barely stepped out from the conference room when Loki appears in the hallway, looking sleek and dapper in his green and black leather, gold flashing at his wrists and threaded through his hair. He's swapped out his long and arcing horns of his helmet for a smaller pair attached to an elegant circlet.
"Lady Virginia?" He says as she approaches, and holds out his hand, as if in invitation.
As his eyes flicker around the closed office doors of the hallways, Pepper decides to pretend that it's eagerness that brought him up fifty stories above the lobby where they were supposed to meet, and not paranoia.
"You're early," Pepper says, and takes the proffered hand, bracing herself for a kiss or a teleport.
Loki does both.
There is a brief pressure of lips on the back of her hand, and then the world flickers and the ground shifts under her feet. Her heels sink into the suddenly soft ground. Pepper wobbles, and only Loki's sudden arm around her waist keeps her on her feet. They're standing on grass and, as Pepper's eyes lift, just a few feet away from an honest-to-goodness checker patterned picnic blanket. On the blanket rests a wicker picnic basket the size of a medium-sized office printer.
And then Pepper's gaze rises to take in the view beyond, and Loki's arm around her waist becomes the last thing on her mind. Pepper and Loki are standing next to a small grove of trees. The green grass stretches out to a mountain range on the horizon, and on the vast plane, a herd of large, dinosaur-like creatures roam. Two bright gold suns hang on opposites sides of an almost cloudless blue sky.
"Oh," Pepper says, and finds herself leaning just a little more where Loki stands tall and solid by her side.
"The planet of Caluderon," Loki said, his voice quiet. One of the creatures in the distance lifts its large, scaly green head and lets out a low warble. The sound of wind and grass and the chitter of alien insects surround them. "It's a preserve. No one has set foot on this planet in almost a millennia."
"Should we be here?" Pepper asks, sinking down to sit on the blanket. The sight of this strange alien world is dizzying. Loki settles down beside her in a rustle of leather.
"A viewing of the jewel of the Ritilik Galaxy," Loki says, and his free hand catches Pepper's and lifts it to his lips for a light kiss. "For the crown jewel of Midgard. I could think of nowhere more befitting for our excursion, Lady Virginia."
In the air beyond the grove, a dozen gossamer jellyfish are drifting on the air currents like shimmering soap bubbles. The light from the double-sun is bright, and through the heat-filter of Extremis, Pepper feels warmth of one of the bright suns like a pressure on her cheek and side. Eyes riveted by the scene before her, she still can't stop herself from imagining that it would feel just as warm if Loki leaned a few inches to his left to press up against her side. She imagines his lips pressing lightly against her sun-warmed cheek.
At her side, Loki keeps a chivalrous distance between them. But he hasn't let go of her hand, and Pepper doesn't mind in the least.
Pepper watches the sky for a bit, and then her eyes drop to her phone again, still there in her free hand. Even on an alien planet, the movement is pure instinct. She can't help it. But the phone is silent: no messages. The icon at the top is still showing her no data. She almost smiles; Tony will lose his mind when she shows him the logs proving his phone lost signal. When she looks back up, she catches Loki watching her.
"No work interruptions," she says, and puts the phone away. When her eyes lift, she's again startled to see the two suns still there, on opposite sides of the sky, the shimmering fauna drifting across the sky, and the vast stretch of gold-green grass.
Loki unpacks the picnic, fetching items out of the wicker basket and placing them on the plaid blanket with covert glances from beneath his helmet at Pepper that she pretends not to see. The gold goblets and large plates with silver engravings around their rims are exactly what she expected to see during lunch with an Asgardian prince. The dozen fresh tomatoes on the vine, a paper box of barbecued chicken from a popular New York chain, and a bowl of skittles are not.
By the time Loki pulls out oysters in several taco shells and a box of donuts, Pepper isn't sure what to think. She is almost surprised that there are no strawberries in the basket. It is a very…strange combination of snacks, for a picnic.
"These are your favorite foods, are they not?" Loki asks. "I was remiss in our first outing, so I am intent on winning what favor I lost last week."
And then it hits Pepper. "Oh, you researched me. That Post article."
"Indeed."
"They…took some creative license." Pepper says. What actually happened is someone took Tony too seriously. But Pepper doesn't try to explain. It's clear from the spread that Loki tried. To head off any other misunderstandings, Pepper asks, "What else did you find out?"
"Much I already knew about your role in Iron Man's company, and your history with him," Loki says, pouring her a drink. "Though I found that once I looked, there are quite a few conspiracy theories about you, Lady Virginia."
Pepper schools her expression as she accepts a golden goblet full of pomegranate juice. Unfortunately, some of the wilder rumors about fire powers and Pepper's history with Tony do come a little close to the truth, but Friday insists that removing them would just fan the proverbial flames. (Plus, Tony thinks the occasional accompanying illustrations and graphs are hilarious.)
"I came across one such tale that claims that you turn into a snake during board meetings to hypnotize your minions into doing your bidding," Loki says with a teasing glint in his eye, and Pepper snorts. That theory is one of the not-true ones, thank heavens. "I must admit to feeling almost jealous. I have shifted into a snake on exactly three separate occasions on Midgard, with very little acclaim."
"Journalists love to speculate about your heists," Pepper reminds him. "The tiny green fireworks dragons over the Capitol had the press talking for days. Especially when they kept chasing the politicians."
Loki looks proud. "Indeed."
"We can always just talk to get to know each other," Pepper offers.
Loki's expression says what he thinks of conversation as a way to collect information. Pepper grins and pops a red skittles into her mouth.
For a while, they just enjoy the view and the quiet is filled with the sounds of an alien world. Pepper finds her eyes drifting over to Loki, every now and then, as if drawn by a magnet. The leather outfit he chose for their date plays up the trim cut of his waist and broadens his shoulders. Embroidery shimmers silver green on his silk undertunic. Pepper wants to run her fingers over it, and pulls her gaze away to the food and the view again.
As she eats, she keeps her posture straight, pencil skirt smoothed and her legs folded just so to show off the curve and thigh as she sits and pretends she doesn't notice the way Loki watches her too.
Loki breaks their silence first.
"The reporters also say you work long days," Loki says. He's watching one of large dinosaur-like creatures rise up on its hind legs to reach the hanging branches of one the few trees scattered across the alien prairie. His tone is mild, as if commenting on the weather.
"Life of a CEO," Pepper says with a shrug. She doesn't plan to apologize about rescheduling the date twice. "I can't do much about it."
"And yet, the day we met, you commanded Iron Man's invisible companion," Loki says, and when he looks over to her, the light of the two suns plays over his face. "You choose when the Avengers respond, and when they do not with just a word."
"Friday knew you were no threat to me," Pepper says, and wonders if Loki will take offense to that.
Loki makes a thoughtful humming noise instead. "But surely, with all this power at your beck and call, you need not work at all."
Yep, apparently Loki is still sore about the three times they had to reschedule their outing. That is sure to become a problem eventually, but Pepper decides then and there, it will be a problem for Future Pepper to deal with. Present Pepper is enjoying the sunshine and the exotic landscape of an alien planet too much to call Loki out on it.
Pepper isn't sure how to explain real life and working for a living to an alien prince, either.
"Everyone needs a purpose," Pepper finally says.
"A glorious purpose," Loki murmurs, thoughtfully, and nods.
Loki clearly brought her here out on this date to impress, to engage and to delight her.
"Tell me about this place?" Pepper asks, because she knows how to play this game too. And because it is not every day that she gets to see a completely new world.
Loki looks enormously pleased at her interest and does just that.
To her surprise, Loki seems to be as interested in what Pepper has to say as he is in showing off his knowledge of the local flora and fauna. He asks her about her projects at Stark, about how she rose to the top of the company, and about her life.
Even more surprisingly, Loki turns out to be a good listener.
"You spoke of the Man of Iron's role in arranging our first meeting," Loki says. He glances over at Pepper with an incline of his head. "It is a strange thing indeed."
There is an unasked question there, and Pepper knows what Loki wants to know. Still, Pepper is tempted to nod and let the conversation move on.
"Tony thinks I don't meet enough people," Pepper says instead, even as she feels her cheeks warming at the admission. "He's been trying to set me up on dates."
Loki nods. "A clever ruse."
"Mm?"
"When Thor found Jane, he lost interest in his princely duties in favor of months spent on Midgard courting the favor of his new beloved," Loki explains. "No doubt the Man of Iron hopes to use your distraction to further his own projects. Such as those ships he seeks to acquire."
"Ah," Pepper says, her voice dry. "Very Machiavellian of him."
"Indeed," Loki says with a serious nod. "You would require a companion who is a true match. One who understands the weight of ruling…and has the experience to support your ambitions, Lady Virginia, rather than split your attention to your detriment."
Pepper hides her smile behind a golden goblet. "How astute."
Their conversation meanders into a companionable silence as they wrap up the picnic. The oysters in the tacos remain untouched, but Pepper and Loki have made a very real dent in the skittles and barbeque. Surrounded by the alien landscape and sitting on the gingham blanket, Pepper is already feeling nostalgic for a date that isn't even yet over.
"This planet is beautiful," Pepper says. "I'd love to see it in person one day."
Next to her, Loki goes very still. "How do you mean?"
Pepper looks over at him, considering. Then she just shrugs. He reads the answer in her face anyway and something tightens in his expression.
The air shimmers around them, and the second sun in the sky melts away into nothing as Loki's illusion fades into the summer heat. The green grass turns yellowed and dry, and the stand of trees behind them become an abandoned gas station. The herd of dinosaur-like creatures in the distance become the slow-moving herd of cattle, dusty and drab. In Pepper's pocket, her phone begins to buzz as the messages from the last hour and a half start rolling in.
The picnic basket and large plaid blanket, however, stay the same. So does the vast blue sky above, and the two large goblets standing precariously on an uneven surface.
"What gave it away?" Loki finally asks, his eyes on the picnic basket. Two crows hop and flutter across the roof of the gas station, cawing as they observe the two intruders in their dusty domain.
Pepper tilts her head to the bright blue sky. "Two suns, but I could only feel one."
A faint pale contrail from a passing airplane hangs above them like a faint ghost.
"Ah," Loki says, and when she turns to look at him, his expression can't seem to decide if it is displeased or impressed.
"The lunch was lovely," Pepper reminds him and holds out her arm. "Shall we?"
"Lady Virginia." There is a new note in his voice that wasn't there before - respect, maybe, or wariness. He takes Pepper's arm with a bow and teleports her home.
