a/n: Thank you, kindly reviewer, for catching the fuck up. Hopefully, the chapter works now. This site has been giving me a hell of a time lately, so I'm considering updating exclusively to AO3. There's a link to my account in my profile. I haven't decided yet, but man, it's been way too hard just to put up a chapter.
The life of a refugee can be terribly boring with the entirety of a universe to hide in. Loki is the master of subterfuge and as such, it is very difficult for him to be caught when hardly anyone is looking. Thanos has been defeated by the combined efforts of the Avengers and the laughably named "Guardians of the Galaxy." Only Thor seems to have any lingering interest in his whereabouts, and that is only when he holds his dearest Jane hostage. For nine months of the Midgardian year, he is free to do as he wills, and what he most often wills to do is to flit about from planet to planet.
On these planets, he makes acquaintances, friends, and enemies. He absorbs information. Much of this is for Jane's benefit as much as his own. She is ravenous for knowledge and he likes feeding her; he likes the lights of her eyes, the scrawl of her pen. In traveling, he learns so that he may teach and he measures and evaluates possible worlds to house her during their time together. Though there are an infinite number of worlds, not as many are suitable as one might think. For all her immortality, her physiology is still largely human and there are places where the climate would be unsuitable for her. He treats with kings and queens, ministers and presidents, dictators and emperors, sometimes asking and sometimes demanding a season's residence.
When he stops and reflects on her and all the considerations he takes for her, he becomes...discomfited. Annoyed and should he choose to admit it, ashamed. He does not keep her for her pleasure - he keeps her for Thor's pain. It is unnecessary for him to go to this trouble for her. She owes him everything, after all. He has no need of her delight. His ego is sufficient without her wonder. He knows she is powerfully attracted to him and so he need not deliver her to exotic locales to have access to her body. He does not even need her body.
When he needs convincing of this, he takes a lover.
This current woman is one he has had before, decades ago. She is a queen among her people, a race of beings so magically advanced that they rival even the Realm Eternal. It is his habit to take the wealthy and powerful as his paramours. Prior to his fall, this had been because he felt they were the only ones worthy of his attentions. Now that he is no longer a prince or a would-be conqueror, he does so because his arrogance still demands it. Compared to her and her like, Jane is nothing. Compared to him, she is even less.
During their first dalliance, Loki had taken it upon himself to compromise to a form more suited to hers; smoke, shadows, and whispers collected into the suggestion of a humanoid shape, only just spilling from the edges of conventional lines. Tonight, she has deigned to coalesce herself into solidity. She smells dark and rich, like salt and burning fires and wet earth. She has assumed a body made to please him, drawn in long sweeps with subtle curves. The glamoured skin that binds her diaphanous figure together is a soft, silvery grey. In fact, all of her is this same hue, from leg to nipple to eye. Light casts no shade upon her, no matter which angle she turns. The most interesting is her approximation of hair. Clouds of smoke billow from her scalp in constant motion, pouring downwards instead of up as smoke is most often wont to do. The curls of it dissipate and unravel as they reach the floor, creating a fog around her feet. Her voice has an echo, though she is quiet. She speaks words of desire to him in their strange tongue that sounds for all the world like the sparks and embers that crack when a fire is stoked. He replies in his own native language. Their meanings hang between them and their intent is clear.
He is telling her he wants her. Loki is so very good at lying that he can even lie to himself.
She tastes magic and ancient, all the flavors her scent suggests magnified. She caresses him with confidence, albeit gently, as she is not familiar with forceful touches. When he buries his fingers in her, she hisses like heated metal meeting water. Her skin is cool, but inside, she is all liquid, sinuous heat. She is incredible. Beautiful. Completely remarkable. Even so, she is dancing at the peripheries of the thoughts he tries to drown in a stranger's embrace. Every trail he paves in the grey with his mouth and hands inevitably leads back to Jane. In this moment, he hates her so passionately, so desperately, that it is almost love.
Behind his eyelids, he can see the pedestrian brown of her hair, the practical contours of her body, the creases that line her smile. He can hear her hums, her surprised laughter, feel her short nails. His senses are occupied by her, even when a literal queen is splayed beneath him, a study in sculpted perfection, power incarnate. He cannot help but compare the queen's elegance to Jane's cacophony. There is no number invented for the variety of species there are in the universe. Loki himself is at least somewhat acquainted with hundreds of them, and nearly all of them are more interesting than humans, with whom he has grown far too familiar. He knows for a fact that Thor's woman is not as sexually skilled as even half of the women he has been with in the past, so why won't she leave his mind?
In his frustration, he is more vicious with the queen than he had originally intended. Their race is one of subtleties, which ordinarily suits him well. Not at this juncture. His fingers bite into her sides while his hips drive into hers at an unforgiving pace. She isn't displeased - if she was, she would most certainly stop him - but he can feel his fingertips biting further into her, sinking through the illusory shell. He can feel the wisps of her true nature brushing against his nails. He wants this to end. He wants to be alone, but to deny her climax would be a grave insult and he would never be allowed on the planet again; unthinkable, as this is where he plans to spend his next winter. It seems he can't ever have sex without possible political repercussions.
Luckily, he knows her fantasy body better than she does and he finishes her with clever hands and tongue, though it takes much longer than it should. He does not reach his end, but it hardly matters to the queen, who thanks him politely for his time and bids him farewell. She has no need to say it, but he can surmise by her tone that his performance was only just satisfactory. He leaves with an equally perfunctory goodbye. The citizens of this realm wear no clothing and so neither does he as he makes the trek back to his guest quarters. There are no stairs, no hallways; everything is open and exposed, just as he is feeling at this very moment. He feels raw, angry, dissatisfied. He is humiliated, embarrassed by himself for himself. The queen and her people are not telepaths, but it matters little. He knows what distracted him.
Doors are not typical of the local architecture, but his room and the rooms of other aliens have been outfitted with them for comfort and privacy. He is thankful for it and slams it behind him. Loki will not be taking Jane here this winter. In fact, he won't take her anywhere. She has been spoiled by him and his unwarranted desire to please her and satisfy her curiosity. This year, he will keep her locked in a cave on some remote portion of Midgard and ignore her, save for when his lust needs slaking. She deserves no better. She is insignificant, a piece in his game. He will expend no further efforts on her. He has spent too long without aspirations and for a creature of ambition such as himself, that is inexcusable. He had been using her to fill that void, but no more.
These are the thoughts that warm him after he has finished stroking himself to the thought of her. Even after he opens his eyes, the memory of her voice and body do not immediately flee. He is an incredible liar, one of the most talented in all the galaxy if not the universe, and yet he cannot bring himself to believe anything but how very wretched he is and how he should have just let Jane Foster succumb to her mortality, as nature intended. Loki prefers not to dwell upon regret, but it follows him anyway. His scheme was not fully developed. He had been foolhardy. Arrogant.
How could he have known - how could he have expected to sink himself so deeply?
Seducing her had always been an integral part of the plan, to part her from Thor's trust. He underestimated the breadth of his once-brother's love for her and how easily she had separated her feelings from her physical wants. She laid with Loki, but her true affections were elsewhere. He overestimated himself and his ability to do the same. While he tosses and turns on a pile of feather and fur, she sleeps on Midgard in the arms of another. She gives him her smiles, cunning, and passion. When she comes to him in the winter, she gives Loki what is left over. For centuries, he had been content with Thor's leavings.
It is a cold comfort to think that he is not the first god she was able to change.
