"Coffee's back!" Tony cheered as Lyn walked into the office. It had been a month since Loki had begun working with Bruce and Tony, but Lyn hadn't been there. She'd finally returned to work and, to Tony's delight, resumed her morning coffee run.
"Your hair looks nice." Bruce commented. Lyn had allowed her hair to grow longer than she usually liked; she had it up in a ponytail and it still reached the middle of her back. She shrugged, handing him is decaf. She crossed the room and set down Tony's drink by him. He smiled at her. Loki was in the middle of the room, carefully welding some kind of circuitry. It was obvious Tony and Bruce had been teaching him; Thor was still amazed by the idea of a paper shredder. She placed his drink a careful distance from his work and returned to her desk.
She returned to the lab moments later with the pile of forms from her desk.
"Did you guys not even bother checking your in-tray while I was gone?" she said, handing Bruce some of the papers, which he quickly began to read. "One month of paper work, that's 4 WEEKS. How are you not in the middle of some kind of apocalypse?" She put Tony's forms on the edge of his table. The next few forms were for Loki. She handed them directly to him. "Look, there's even the confidentiality form for you to sign, which was due in weeks ago! I am never leaving you guys alone again, you're hopeless." She turned away from Loki to face Tony. He looked up at her from the paperwork.
"Sorry Mother." He pouted. Lyn couldn't help but laugh, but quickly stopped when she heard Loki speak.
"How did you know I like hot chocolate?" he asked. Lyn froze facing away from Loki, her mouth slightly open. She recalled that, as she ordered the drinks, she'd been thinking of Lucas, not Loki, as the receiver of the third. No-one had told Loki what he had done as a human, and he clearly didn't remember himself. Lyn felt a lump forming in her throat. She finally thought she'd be okay.
"I told her." Tony said. Loki shrugged, accepting the lie and continued to drink. He held out the forms for Lyn to take. She took them and rushed from the room, leaving him looking very confused.
"Is she okay?" she heard him ask as the doors shut behind her. Sitting down in her chair, Lyn attempted to rub the feelings out of her head. She took a big gulp of the coffee she'd bought herself and set about whatever work she had been given for the day.
By lunch Lyn had completely forgotten about the incident with Loki. The same could not have been said for him. As he skimmed over Bruce and Tony's notes concerning their plans for the tesseract for what could have easily been the 100th time, he found himself thinking of the assistant. The way her laugh echoed around the room was wonderful. This wasn't the woman he'd seen at the Hellicarrier; she was better. He wondered why she had been so sad that day. No, this was stupid. Why did he find himself…interested in this common Midgardian thing? He closed his eyes, attempting to force the idea of her from his mind. But he couldn't. She was the reason he'd decided to come here and help Bruce and Tony; he wanted to be close to her, to touch her skin and see if it was as soft as he expected it to be…
"Loki, is something wrong?" Bruce's voice interrupted his train of thought. He opened his eyes.
"Uh, no Ban...Bruce; I'm just a little tired." He replied quickly. Getting used to called Banner and Stark by their first names was a bit of a chore. Bruce glanced down, raised an eyebrow and the left. Loki looked down to see what he had raised an eyebrow at.
Ah. Well that explains quite a bit.