Wait, what? Loki wondered as his eyes snapped open at his phone's alarm. Where even was he? This wasn't the B&B, and it certainly wasn't his apartment back in Boston. Ooooooh, yeah, he thought as he unwound himself from the couch. He remembered now. He'd slept over at Darcy's.
(The previous night...)
During the first commercial break, Darcy muted the sound and looked at the empty bag of carrots with big, tragic eyes. She turned to Loki. "They're all gone," she said sadly.
He was impressed. He had only had a few, so she had devoured almost the entire bag in about fifteen minutes. Though he had really bought them for himself, he didn't mind. It surprised him, because he was normally much more possessive and liked to keep his own things for himself.
"I see that," he said, smiling at her. She smiled occurred to him to wonder if something more was going to happen. Would she kiss him...?
"Arrrrghgh! You're such a bad influence on me!" she cried, still smiling, but scooping up a pillow and burying her face in it. "I can't believe you. I literally cannot believe you." She shook her head to emphasize her disbelief.
"Whaaaa?" he asked, cocking his head to the side.
"It was you and your stupid, healthy eating ways. You turned me to the dark side." She looked back up at him. "I can never love again now."
"Never what again?" Surely he'd heard that wrong?
"Never. Love. Again." She threw the pillow over the coffee table. He smiled bemusedly as it landed on the floor. "I had contentment! I was happy! Well, so there were some rough spots. There were some tough choices ahead of us. But I was willing to commit. I was! I was at a turning point. But then you come along with your surprisingness, and with your fancy words and your tasty carrots, and what was I supposed to do! They were like my Rory Williams, and you were the Doctor- come to save me from the staidness of the world I knew. Your carrots were the TARDIS. But now I know!" She tilted her head to the ceiling and raised her arms as if to call on God. "Now I know!"
Loki couldn't help but start laughing. She was so ridiculous and cute.
Darcy turned back to him. "That's right," she said. "Ice cream is my Rory Williams, aaaaaaand I want some."
"Well, I doubt it'll wait two thousand years for you," he quipped. Ice cream that old would be crawling in freezer-burn, he noted with amusement.
She shushed him, and un-muted the TV. "Shut up, you. God you talk so much. But it's coming back on, so hold thy silence."
It was indeed coming back. He was really enjoying this episode. It was certainly true, too, that it was funner to watch with someone else who loved the show. Or maybe it was just because it was Darcy. She was really into it. She gasped at surprising parts (although, truthfully, she had a broad sense of the term 'surprising'), or she got really tense when it was suspenseful. She smiled through almost the whole thing, and laughed heartily at the exchanges between River and the Doctor.
The rest of the commercial breaks she filled with chatter and good-humored ragging on him. He teased her about wrapping herself in a blanket even though it was quite warm out, and she called him a Scrooge.
"How does that even make sense?" He'd asked. "Scrooge was the guy who didn't want his workers to have the day off for Christmas. All I'm saying is that you're crazy to be under a blanket when it's like 85 degrees in here."
"Oh, I'm sorry" she'd said. "I can't hear you over the sound of how factual my brain is."
Basically, he'd had the best night of his life. After the episode ended and they'd discussed it's brilliance and Moffat's deviltry, Loki was considering what he should do- whether he should just take a chance and ask her out for real, or what
"Ugh," Darcy had said just then, "If I ever do find my soul-mate, Moffat will probably just kill him off."
While he was trying to think of a way to phrase his question, he was interrupted by a loud boom. Darcy shrieked and jumped. A moment later rain started pouring down. A streak of light lit up the windows.
"Oh, fuck everything," Darcy had said quietly, something in her tone making Loki look at her in concern.
"Are you okay?" he'd asked. She had turned paler.
"Me? Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, no. But yeah. It's fine. It's whatever."
Another boom sounded. The storm must have been pretty close, because it was incredibly loud, and the lightning followed it quickly. Darcy jumped once more, and huddled into the back of the couch, wrapping her blanket around her firmly.
Loki was really worried now. She was just so pale, and her eyes were wide and frightened. "Darcy? Sweetie, it's okay," he said in as soothing a voice as possible. He could have bitten his tongue at the unexpected endearment, but it had just felt right.
She whimpered a bit and then made a sound of disgust. "I'm not usually like this! I'm so sorry! This is completely pathetic of me." She sounded miserable. He made a noise as if to disagree, but she ignored it. "I know! I know. It's just a thunderstorm. I'm over-reacting in a major way. I don't even know why, honestly. It doesn't make sense."
"Well," Loki smiled in a hopefully comforting way, "that's why they call it an irrational fear."
Darcy shrugged miserably. "I guess so. It's so annoying, though! I've just always been like this with thunderstorms, ever since I was little. My mom says that when I was really young she would get all the pots out and a pair of ladles and she would join me in hitting them, and that that helped." She made an attempt at a smile. It fell far short.
"Well, if you wanted, I could go get some pots and we could see if it still works," he offered, completely serious. He felt so useless. He wished he could just help her in some way. She looked up at him with her wide blue eyes, and they sort of misted over like that was just the nicest thing anyone had ever said and he wanted to just hold her in his arms, but he couldn't find the courage.
Strangely enough, just as the thought crossed his mind, another boom of thunder came and Darcy flinched, asking, "Okay, I know this is really stupid and everything, but can I just...I mean, can you just...like, hold me or something?" She blushed, looking at the coffee table instead of him. "You just seem really calm and everything and I...It would just...I mean, obviously you don't have to. Oh god!" she said looking at him in surprise. "How are you supposed to get home? You can't drive in this. Your bike totally is a death-trap right now. Just," she bit her lip, looking the closest he had seen to vulnerable. "I mean, you could just stay here. As a friend, of course," she rushed to explain.
She flinched again at the thunder. The rain was pouring down heavily. It really would be dangerous to ride in this weather, but to be truthful, he didn't want to leave anyways. Especially when she was like this.
"Come here," he said, holding his arms out to her. Her relief was abundantly clear as she quickly scooted over to him, blanket in tow. She lay across his knees, back to the sofa's armrest, and his arms closed to hold her firmly in his grasp. She sighed in contentment, her head resting against his chest. He smiled at how warm her breath was against him.
"Thanks," she said on an exhale, her lips moving against his chest.
"No problem," he said, his chin resting on her head. He marveled at how strange it was that she was just the perfect height for him to be able to do that. But of course, he thought to himself. Everything about Darcy was just perfect for him.
She was very stiff at first, and kept tensing at every boom of thunder, but she relaxed in slow degrees. First her shoulders, then her back, her legs, her chin, and so on. He noticed that she had matched her breathing to his, as well.
Loki had never been in this position before. He liked it though. She kept talking about her childhood- apparently she had been quite the troublemaker. He could picture it easily. He would offer a comment here or there, but was content to just hold her and listen to her voice. Like everything else about her, Darcy's voice was beautiful. Somehow like raspy honey, his brain supplied, and he smiled at the strange comparison.
"What about you?" she asked sleepily, sometime later. The thunder had mostly quieted, though Darcy didn't seem to have noticed. The rain still pounded outside. Wasn't New Mexico supposed to be all dry and rainless? He supposed it must be a highly unusual freak storm. At some point they had shifted on the couch so that he lay along the back of it, and she lay with most of her body on top of his, his arms still clasping her to his chest. She lay with her head still on his chest and her eyes shut (he had peeked). "What about your family?"
His family...he had issues with his family. Normally he wasn't big on sharing, never really talked about the past at all really, but this was Darcy and it was one of those nights that you knew you would look back on later as being one of the most important of your whole life, and so he said, "I don't really know who I am."
"What do you mean?" Darcy asked. Her words were slightly slurred from sleep. It must be near one or two in the morning by now.
"Well, I'm adopted." The word 'adopted' still held so many feelings in it. Betrayal, disillusionment, confusion...
"Really?" Darcy asked, craning her neck to look at him with sympathetic, bleary eyes. He nodded. "I'm sorry," she said. Her voice was filled with sincerity. "I'm adopted too."
He was surprised. "I'm sorry. I didn't know. You speak of your parents very fondly though."
She smiled up at him before returning her cheek to his chest. "Nothing to be sorry for," she murmured. "I love them. I used to want to find my birth-parents, but...not anymore. I love my mom and dad. My real mom and dad."
He was glad for her, but he felt an ache in his heart. He still desperately wanted to find his own birth-parents. And he couldn't forgive his adopted-parents. If he had known, being raised...but, "Of course, mine didn't tell me I was adopted until I was seventeen. I had to get my driver's license and the woman at the DMV accidentally let it slip. It was the weirdest thing. I confronted my parents about it and they tried to downplay it, as if it didn't mean that they had been lying to me my whole life. I went from having a mom, dad, and brother, to being alone- all in one day. It was brutal." He frowned, remembering. "My brother hadn't known either. We used to be so close. I couldn't stand it though- it felt wrong to be there with them. So when I got accepted into college at MIT I packed up and left them. We haven't really been in touch since."
Darcy looked up at him again, her eyes warm with compassion. "Loki, oh my god. That sucks. I'm so sorry."
He couldn't hold onto bitterness or anger when she looked at him like that. He stroked his fingers through her hair as she once more laid back against his chest. "Don't worry about it," he murmured. Nothing could really ever be that bad, not at a time like this.
"Sing my something?" she asked. Her words tripped out clumsily from sleep. "Your voice is so...hmm...it's so pretty. Like an angel. An angel from England. Sing. Please?"
He chuckled softly. He really wasn't much of a singer, but he sang anyways, stroking her silky hair.
"Hmmm," Darcy laughed. "Beatles? Really?"
"Don't knock them- they're a classic," he smiled.
"I know. I like them. I just like that you like them."
She drifted off to sleep somewhere between 'Can't But Me Love' and 'Something In The Way She Moves'. He was quite tired as well by this time, and the couch was less comfortable after a few hours. Debating silently for a moment, he decided to just do it. Moving very slowly so as not to wake her, he gathered her up in his arms and carried her into her bedroom. Her room was filled with all sorts of things that he couldn't make out, which made him smile as he laid her on her bed and pulled a sheet over her. She certainly seemed to like to collect things.
Giving her one last look, he went back out to the couch and laid down himself, falling asleep quickly.