A/N: Sorry this has taken so long. Have barely had a moment to myself these last couple of weeks. Which is why I'm finishing this off at 6am on Christmas morning. Hope you all have a lovely day, whether you celebrate the holiday or not. And if you're going to be sobbing in front of the TV later because of Eleven, know that you are not alone. Merry Christmas, ya filthy animals. ;)
The Interloper
by Flaignhan
She wakes before her alarm goes off. He's still asleep, curled up under the duvet, his fist wrapped closed possessively around one corner of it. His eyebrows are drawn together in a frown, his breathing slightly forced, and Natasha wonders whether she ought to wake him. She quickly decides against it, realising that a sleeping Loki is far more bearable and far less dangerous than an awake one, and so she cancels her alarm, gets out of bed, and heads for the shower.
Once she's dressed, she towel dries her hair as thoroughly as she can, not wanting to wake Loki with the hairdryer. She finds the quiet immensely peaceful, after the adrenalin rush of the assignment last night, followed by the shock of a supposedly dead Norse god draped across her sofa. Her hands are still smarting from her run in with the barbed wire, but she unravels the bandages anyway, unwilling to spending her day fumbling with every single thing she tries to handle.
"Is it bad?"
She jumps at the sound of his voice, turning quickly to see him hovering in the doorway, his clothes slightly different to the previous day. She frowns, and wonders whether he presumptuously brought luggage with him, but the question vanishes from her mind when he approaches, holding out his hand so he can inspect the stitched wounds on her palm. She instinctively backs away, but he frowns at her, and hesitantly, she allows him to see.
"You've been sewn together?" he asks, lip curling in disgust. He's gentle with her hand, and she supposes she shouldn't be surprised. There is a particularness to him that has always shone through in his very few quieter moments. He's not clumsy, nor heavy handed, and she wonders if growing up in the shadow of Thor's brute strength forced Loki to become as different to him as he possibly could, so he was never trying to play catch up.
"They're called stitches," Natasha tells him, pulling her hand away once she decides he's seen enough.
"Was it done by a child? Or an imbecile? It's a mess."
Natasha scowls. "What were you expecting? Some embroidery? Maybe a little decorative beading?" She turns away from him, ignoring his smirk, and opens the kitchen cupboard roughly, grinding her teeth together when the handle catches the graze on her less damaged hand. She pulls out the box of Froot Loops then opens the next cupboard, more carefully this time, and extracts a bowl from the precarious stack on the lower shelf.
"You want breakfast?" she asks.
"Please," he says quietly.
She takes another bowl down for him and sets it on the counter next to hers. "You want Froot Loops?"
He shrugs. "I don't know, do I?"
Natasha opens the box and holds it out to him. Cautiously, he dips one long fingered hand into the box and takes a single, bright pink loop, scowls at it, then puts it in his mouth. Immediately, Natasha can tell that it's not for him, the grimace on his face as he swallows makes it obvious enough, but the point is hammered home by the groan of disgust that sounds from him. She shrugs and pours herself a bowl, then puts the box back in the cupboard, chewing her lip as she looks at the other offerings, wondering what might meet the approval of an alien prince.
"Too sweet?" she asks him.
"Yeah," he says, then scrapes his tongue against his teeth, trying to rid himself of the taste. "Why the hell would you eat those?"
"Because they wake me up more than coffee does…" she replies. She pulls down a box of Rice Krispies and pours some into his bowl.
"What are they?" he asks distrustfully, scowling at the cereal.
"Not Froot Loops," Natasha says stiffly, before pulling open the fridge door, taking out the milk, and pouring some onto their cereals. She dumps a spoon into each bowl with a loud clink, puts the milk back in the fridge, then takes hers into the lounge, Loki following, still scowling. She sits down on the sofa, turns on the TV so she doesn't have to make any small talk, and begins eating, chewing quickly so that she doesn't have to think about the sickly sweet taste, and also so that she can get out of the apartment as soon as possible. She doesn't know what he plans to do today, but as long as it doesn't get her into trouble, then she really couldn't care less. She grinds her teeth as she hears the quiet crunch of his cereal mingle in with the sound of the commercials and takes a deep, calming breath, determined not to let him get to her. He's petty enough to take it as a victory, and she can't have that.
"Does all your food come in boxes?"
"In America it does," she answers, her gaze fixed on the TV as she spoons another heap of Froot Loops into her mouth. "It's convenient."
"It's awful," he says with distaste.
"Yeah will if you want gourmet cuisine you can always go to Le Cirque…"
He doesn't say anything to this, and after a moment, she hears another crunch. After a while, she's able to concentrate on the trashy reality show on the TV and ignore Loki's existence completely, but it's not long before her bowl is empty and she's hurrying into the kitchen to place it in the dishwasher.
"I'm going to work," she says to him as she pulls on her jacket. "Don't fuck up my apartment."
"And there I was planning on flooding the place…" he says, his eyebrow arching as he surveys her.
"If you leave, make sure you close the door behind you."
He rolls his eyes at this and Natasha resists the urge to punch him.
"And most importantly of all, don't draw attention to yourself, and don't get me in trouble."
He dumps his bowl on the coffee table, a small pool of milk in the bottom along with the dregs of his cereal. She makes a mental note to pick up some decent bread on her way home from work so he can have some toast tomorrow, then slams the brake on that train of thought. Why should she put herself out any more than she already has simply to accommodate a very much unwanted house guest?
"Anything else?" he asks, leaning back on the sofa and propping up his feet on the table. He's like a teenager in his attitude, all of her requests being met with either disdain or impatience. She hates how cocky he is, how he treats her apartment like a hotel, and how he makes it seems as though she's being completely unreasonable by asking simple things such as don't commit mass murder today.
"You know," she says, running a hand through her still-damp hair and shaking it out as she checks her reflection in the mirror, "I could always ask Thor to run through the house rules with you, if you like. If you won't listen to me, then I'm sure you'll listen to him."
Loki's nostrils flare and he stands up suddenly, storming towards her. Natasha stands her ground, ready to retaliate should she need to.
"If you're going to constantly hold that threat over me - " he growls, but Natasha interrupts.
"No. If you're going to be staying in my apartment and eating my food and sleeping in my bed, you're gonna have some respect, okay Goldilocks?"
His face twitches at the name, and she knows that not understanding the reference is paining him more than he'll ever let on. He doesn't like being the only one not in on the joke, doesn't like other people knowing more than him, no matter how trivial and inconsequential their knowledge might be.
"So, when I say," she says, index finger hovering half an inch away from his chest, "don't fuck up my apartment, d'you know what you're gonna do?"
He doesn't answer, his face set in a venomous glare, and so Natasha prods him.
"Not fuck up your apartment," he says boredly, looking towards the ceiling.
"And when I say close the door behind you…"
"I'll close the door behind me, and I'm not going to draw attention to myself because the would be idiotic, just like fucking up your apartment would be idiotic because I'm staying here too. It's counter-productive, and you know how I hate such things."
There's that phrase again. Counter-productive. She's not sure she likes him using it. It suggests to her that he's up to something, that there's some scheme or plot cooking away in that brain of his and he just needs to bide his time in order to pull things together.
"You're planning on staying until your dad dies, right?" She feels strange, saying it so coldly, so callously, but she knows he wouldn't have it any other way. She knows how much it grates on him to even refer to Odin as his father, that whatever happened with Thor and Malekith must have changed something within him so that he's not so hung up on the small details, that his priorities have been rearranged in such a way that semantics are no longer an issue. She supposes being considered dead might do that to a person.
"Yes, I am," he says plainly.
"So er…is he you know…on his way out?" She knows she probably doesn't have to try and put it tactfully, knows that he detests the man and always will, but for all the hatred that Loki has for Odin, Thor has just as much love, and even if Loki doesn't care about her phrasing, she knows that Thor would, and somehow, in her addled brain, that doesn't seem right.
"Yeah, he'll probably fall into another Odinsleep in the next year or two and won't wake up. I'll have to wait until he actually dies before I go back, I know what the old bastard's like. If he senses that I'm anywhere near his throne he'll jump out of bed and drag it out for another thousand years."
Natasha's brain has frozen. A year or two? She'd thought days, weeks at the most, but years? She's expected to share her apartment, her sofa, her bed with a mass-murdering, power-hungry demigod for two years?
"Are you fucking kidding me? Two years?" she breathes, looking up at him, her mouth agape as her head tries to process the idea of this becoming a normality.
"Two years is nothing," he says with a shrug, turning away from her and heading back to the sofa. "You know our people live for around five thousand, don't you?"
"Yeah and we live for eighty," Natasha retorts. "That's a huge portion of my life you're gatecrashing."
"I'll make it worth your while," he says, as though this makes everything okay, and anything he has to offer her would be worth the trauma and inconvenience and general stress of having him around. How can she be expected to keep him a secret for that long? Her colleagues area mixture of spies and superheroes. They make everyone else's business their business. There is no way she's going to be able to keep this quiet for long, no way she'll be able to look Thor in the eye and nod sympathetically whenever he tells her how much he wishes he could have done more to save Loki, how his biggest regret is not taking the body home to Asgard so he could have a proper funeral. and not just been left to rot in a dark and dismal wasteland.
"How?" she asks. "What could you possibly offer me that will make me think that sharing my bed with you was worth it?"
He raises an eyebrow and Natasha's stomach lurches. "No way," she says in disgust. "That's gross."
Loki smirks. "Well, I'm sure when I'm King of Asgard I'll be able to find something that meets your approval."
Natasha rolls her eyes. "You seem to think that you can just go ahead and be King and no one's gonna say a thing about it…after everything, you think the Asgardians will just sit back and let you rule them?"
"What choice will they have? Thor has declined the throne, the line of succession falls to me. Not even Thor will be able to change it once I ascend."
"You know I feel morally obliged to tell him of your plan to take over Asgard," she says, resting her hand on her hip and ignoring the flash of his eyes. "I remember what happened last time you thought yourself good enough to rule over people."
"It's not a takeover if you're the rightful heir," he argues.
"But you're dead, so technically it means it's a zombie takeover."
He smirks at this, but then plays his ace, the one which he will use in Asgard should anyone ever question his ascent to the throne.
"I'm not dead, Thor left me for dead, but that doesn't mean I was actually dead."
Natasha shakes her head and sighs. There's no winning with him. He'll argue it until she tires of him, and if she's honest, she's halfway to that point already. She hopes that when she walks back through the door this evening, she'll still have a recognisable apartment and he'll have spent the day doing harmless things like watching TV or reading a book. Part of her hopes that he will still actually be here, because if he's here, it means that he's not wreaking havoc on the world. If he's not, on the other hand, he's no longer her problem. It's been less than twelve hours, and that already seems like a very appealing turn of events. How the hell is she supposed to handle two years? She's gonna wake up next to him on her birthday, on Christmases, on bad days and good days and all the shit in between. And he's going to be there.
"I'm going to work," she says abruptly, turning and heading for the door before her thoughts burrow their way too deeply into her brain and torment her for the entire day. "I'll see you later."
She has to stop herself from sprinting to the door, but she can't hide the fact that in her haste, the door slams shut behind her with rather more force than is truly necessary. As she descends to the ground floor, a horrible truth makes itself clear. She is going to work to escape her own home. Oh how the tables have turned.
"That hand needs bandaging," Fury says, one eyebrow arched, his lips pursed.
"It's fine," Natasha mumbles, closing the door behind her and taking the seat opposite him, her hands clasped gently in her lap, out of the sightline of his reproachful glare.
"It's going to get infected," he says, accentuating each syllable on the last word, as though she is an idiotic child. She bites on the inside of her lower lip, and refrains from spitting out an acidic retort. If she's going to spend hours trawling through CCTV footage with him, she doesn't want to be in his bad books. It's not worth the hassle. Instead of retaliating, she crosses one leg over the other and sits back in her chair, exhaling softly, patiently waiting for him to move on. He fixes her with a piercing gaze for a moment longer, then eventually lets out an exaggerated sigh and turns to the screens fixed to the wall on his left. He picks up the remote control, presses the play button, and Natasha turns her chair, ready for a long day of watching hour after hour of footage.
Five minutes pass before they decide to watch it on triple speed, pausing whenever someone new enters the compound. It's not rewarding work at all, there's no gratification. At least with her adventure the previous night she had done what she'd set out to do, even if she had ended up with hands that look like they've gotten on the wrong side of a salami slicer. With this however, it's just hour after hour of no results. By the time lunch arrives, they've managed to get through the first day's worth of footage. She wonders why they can't just delegate the task to some lowly, overly enthusiastic level three minion and get on with more important things.
"Because," Fury says, pouring them both a cup of coffee in the canteen, "If we do give it to one of the kids, we'll end up with a three hundred page report detailing every single movement of every single person in that footage that'll take even longer to get through the tapes themselves. If you want something doing right…"
Natasha sighs, knowing that he's right, and resigns herself to the fact that the rest of the week will be spent in his office, slowly losing her mind. It would be a hell of a lot easier if they knew what they were looking for, but they don't. They're just looking because they're suspicious, because someone, somewhere, went to Fury and said I've got a bad feeling about this. Bad feelings, Natasha knows, usually aren't without cause, but bad feelings with supporting evidence are her preferred types of feelings.
"I want you to head down to the med bay before we start up again," Fury says. "I'm sick of looking at your damn hand."
Natasha scowls, and looks down at her stitches. The skin around them is swollen, the scar jagged and red. She doesn't argue, and after a quick bite to eat, she finds herself traipsing along the corridor with the two youngsters from the previous night hurrying along at her heels, though this time, thankfully, they're not bombarding her with questions.
The girl wraps up her hand, but this time, she doesn't make the bandage so thick. Perhaps she thinks that if Natasha can use her hand more freely, she'll be more likely to keep the bandage on, but Natasha knows that as soon as she sets foot outside the doors at six o'clock that night, she'll be unravelling the cotton and dumping into the nearest bin.
"I'm just gonna check that blood pressure of yours," the guys says, wrapping a cuff around her upper arm. "Was a little bit all over the place last night, should be able to get a better reading today."
Natasha closes her eyes as the cuff swells. She tries to breathe normally as it constricts her arm, but between that and the itchiness of her new bandage, she's finding it quite difficult to stay relaxed. After a few moments, there's a bleep, and the cuff deflates rapidly.
"Perfect!" the guy says, making a few notes in a folder. "That's absolutely spot on!"
Natasha frowns and looks to the monitor. 105 over 70. That's unusually high, even higher than last night when she was stressed and tired. She wonders briefly whether the coffee might have had any effect, but she's drunk no more today than she normally does. Perhaps it's the prospect of a week's worth of CCTV viewing that's got her all wound up, or maybe the fact that she hasn't had a proper weekend off for a while, her free days constantly ruined by calls and assignments that just can't wait until Monday morning.
But, as she slides off the bench and thanks the two med assistants for their help, she remembers exactly why her stress levels might be higher today than they were yesterday, and the reason comes in the shape of the Norse god that's probably destroying her apartment right now.
Her stomach churns as she turns the key in the lock. She doesn't know what kind of chaos she'll be walking into, and part of her hopes that the two young medics had doped her up with the wrong kind of drugs and she'd hallucinated the whole ridiculous episode. The sick feeling in the bottom of her stomach tells her that she's just grasping at straws, and the fact that the lounge light is on and the TV is spouting out some unintelligible rubbish confirms the awful reality.
She closes the door quietly behind her and shrugs off her coat, hanging it and her bag up on the hooks secured to the wall. She heads towards the lounge, chewing on the inside of her cheek. He's sprawled across the sofa, his pale arms crossed over his stomach, his head tilted to one side so he can watch the TV with blank eyes. She glances towards his feet and notes that he's not wearing his shoes, which is at least an improvement on the previous evening. She's not sure that he's even realised she's home; he seems lost in his own world and neither a re-run of a nineties episode of Ricki Lake, nor Natasha's presence can penetrate it.
"Hey," she says quietly, not wanting to startle him. He's too volatile to risk such tactics with, even if the shock would be suitable karma after the nasty surprise she walked into last night.
He blinks, then turns his head slightly to look at her. He doesn't say anything, but folds his legs up, freeing up the last cushion for Natasha to sit on. She takes a seat, and glances at the tagline along the bottom of the TV screen: My mom died without telling me I was adopted. She wonders whether he's been paying more attention than first anticipated to the reddened, teary faces and declarations of love smothered by strangled sobs.
"You okay?" she asks, half watching the scenes on the TV, half watching Loki and his response.
"Yes," he says, so quietly that it almost gets lost in the tinny wailing coming from the speakers.
She doesn't feel sorry for him. That's not why she's tip-toeing around him. That's not why she wants to reach out and touch him, just to remind him of reality. She's not concerned at all, and certainly not about the fact that doesn't think he's moved from this spot all day.
"D'you want anything to eat? I'm gonna order something in." She tries to sound friendly, but she's not great at that, certainly not with him, and it ends up sounding rather strained and a little bit pushy. She's not his mother after all, she shouldn't be telling him when to eat, but she doubts he's ventured to the kitchen to make himself some lunch, or even get a drink. He must be parched.
He sighs and rolls onto his back, frowning at her through heavily lidded eyes.
"What are you going to get? More rubbish in boxes?"
He sounds a little more like himself now, and Natasha allows herself a small smirk.
"Yeah, I was thinking maybe Chinese food, you might like that better than pizza."
"Fine," he says with a shrug, turning his attention back to the TV. He stares at it with little interest, and Natasha has half a mind to change the channel, put something on that might be more rewarding than families airing their dirty laundry in public. Even some half-assed action movie would be better than this - at least he could get caught up in a vague attempt at a plot, or admire the special effects, either for their brilliance or their unbelievable shoddiness. But, the selfish part of her brain kicks in and reminds her that he's not causing anyone any trouble at all, and that she should probably make the most of quiet moments like these.
She calls up the take-out place just down the street and places her order, half expecting Loki to protest at her choices, or else interrupt and demand to know exactly what it is she's ordering for him. Instead, he just continues to stare at the TV in disinterest, his mouth turned down at the corners, his eyes glazed over. She doesn't think he hears her when she tells him she's going to collect the food, ten minutes later, and when she arrives back, brown paper bag full of foil trays and beautiful smells, he doesn't move a muscle until she calls him over to the dining table twice. He stalks over, his eyes narrowed at the trays laid out between their two plates, then slides into his chair.
"Why is that red?" he asks, his eyes on the sweet and sour chicken, his nose crinkled in distaste.
"Because of the stuff they make it with," Natasha answers patiently. She takes one of the trays and begins spooning noodles onto her plate.
"Red food isn't natural."
"Why? Because it reminds you of Thor?" she asks, knowing that jabbing him with a proverbial stick isn't the best thing to do so close to bedtime. He lets out a huff and helps himself to some rice first, then tackles the other dishes on offer with varying degrees of caution. He ignores the sweet and sour chicken altogether.
The meal passes in silence, but for the clinking of cutlery. Natasha had considered arming Loki with chopsticks, but after a vision of him jamming one into each of her eyes had assaulted her from somewhere in the back of her mind, she had decided to go with knives and forks instead. Perhaps when he's in a more cheerful mood, she'll try it, but today probably isn't the right time to be provoking him.
He pushes his plate away when he's finished, and waits for Natasha to set her knife and fork down, and drain the last of the water in the bottom of her glass before he slinks away from the table and back to the sofa. His attention is once again on the TV, and Natasha thinks it's probably best to leave him to it. If she's lucky, he might fall asleep on the sofa and she'll get the bed to herself tonight.
She's only just finished washing the dishes (with just the one hand, to make her day even better) when there's a knock at the door. She frowns, then pulls her phone out of her pocket to see if she's missed any messages. Clint usually texts if he's heading over, and anyone else…well, no one else ever bothers. She heads out into the the lounge, and Loki is still lying, almost comatose in front of the TV. She doesn't have to worry about him keeping the noise down while she deals with this then. She walks down the hall, and as she approaches the door, she sharpens her hearing, trying to make out any noise from the other side of the wood, but all she can hear are random outbursts of applause from the Ricki Lake audience, interspersed with opinionated, leading, and often just plain insulting questions.
She unlocks the door and opens it just a crack, then breathes a small sigh of relief when she sees who her visitor is.
"Hey," Bruce says with a sheepish smile. He glances up and down the two inch wide gap between the door and doorframe, then says, "Bad time?"
"Kinda," she tells him. "I was just about to take a shower."
"Oh!" he says, his cheeks reddening. "Well I just wanted to drop these off, Coulson said you got cut up pretty bad last night."
He hands over a pair of gloves, made from a thin, coarsely woven material. She frowns at them, then looks up at him for an explanation.
"They've got stuff in," he says, pushing his glasses up his nose. "Some silver, to help the healing, a few choice chemicals that'll speed things up…"
"What kind of chemicals?" Natasha asks, trying not to sound too distrusting, but unable to keep the scepticism from her voice entirely.
"Nothing that'll turn you green," Bruce replies with an awkward smile. "It's all been tested. You don't have to use them if you don't want to, but I figured they'd be better than nothing."
"No, I will," Natasha says, nodding. "I will, thank you."
From the lounge she hears a crack, and it takes every ounce of will power for her to not look over her shoulder.
"What was that?"
"What was what?"
"That noise," Bruce says. "Didn't you hear it?"
Natasha speaks before she thinks. "Oh shit, I've left the bath running," she says, fumbling with the gloves. "I'll see you tomorrow, thanks for these."
"I thought you said you were having a - "
Before Bruce can pick any holes in her woeful lie, Natasha slams the door in his face and turns around, hurrying back into the lounge. Her heart stops in her chest, the gloves falling to the floor. She makes a dash for the kitchen and grabs the fire extinguisher, while Loki just lays there, without a care in the world while the whole TV is ablaze. Initially se thinks he's so lost in his own world that he hasn't noticed that Ricki Lake has been replaced by flames, but when she sees the corners of his mouth turned upwards in the smallest of smirks as she unloads all the foam the fire extinguisher has to offer, she knows he is fully aware of what's happening.
It doesn't take long for her TV to become a foam covered wreck, and the flames subside even faster than she expects. She drops the fire extinguisher and it lands with a heavy, metallic clunk, then she sits down on the end of the sofa, pushing Loki's feet out of the way, her hands trembling ever so slightly as she takes some deep breaths.
"They weren't real flames."
She turns to look at him, unsure as to whether she's heard him correctly. "I beg your pardon?"
"They weren't real. Just an illusion. No need for you to ruin the TV over it."
Natasha bites her tongue as several choice insults spring to mind. After a few more steadying breaths, she trusts herself to ask him the question through gritted teeth, without exacerbating the situation. "Why?"
"I was bored," he says with a shrug. "Wanted to see what you'd do."
Natasha presses her hands against her face, ignoring the sharp, stinging sensation caused by the pressure. "Well I hope you found that suitably entertaining," she says, her voice muffled by her hands.
"Not really," Loki says boredly. "I was hoping you'd panic, but you were very dull indeed."
Natasha bites back a retort and snatches up her gloves from the floor.
"And you've ruined the TV. What a waste."
"I'm going to bed," she growls, standing before he can say anything else that would drive her towards attempted murder. She strides into the bedroom and slams the door behind her, pulling on Bruce's gloves before she pulls back the duvet and collapses onto the mattress. It's another few hours before she hears the door quietly open and close. She feels the mattress sink down next to her moments later, and as she lays awake, horribly conscious of the sensation of her skin knitting back together, she knows that he's not going to sleep a wink.
Had he not ruined her TV, she might give a damn, but as it is, she finds she couldn't care less, even if she tried.