Darcy laughed as she awkwardly shuffled back and forth, unintentionally ice-skating in place. God it felt good to laugh!

"Katie," she gasped, "What on earth!"

Her best friend just stared at her with a straight face and twirled like a ballerina on the ice.

"I don't see what's so funny," she said. "Just because I'm making pterodactyl noises doesn't mean I have to make the face, too."

Darcy snorted. It looked so funny seeing her best friend, who was quite the stylish dresser and looked all fancy and cultured in her ice-skates, proceed to skate circles around her with a blank face making dinosaur noises and crying out things like "I am the master of evolution!"

But that was Katie for you.

They'd always become stranger than normal around each other.

Every winter Willowdale made an outdoor ice-skating rink downtown, and Katie and Darcy had gone down to try their skates out for the first time in a few years. Darcy had proved to be horrendous at it, while Katie had taken to the ice again with the grace of a gazelle, if gazelles enjoyed skating.

"I guess I'm just more talented than you," Katie smirked, sticking her tongue out at a still struggling Darcy.

"No!" Darcy cried in mock-outrage. "Ye shall ne'er be more talented than I! 'Tis impossible! And I will defeat you if it's the last thing I do, evil Princess Humbug! I will not let you steal Christmas with your talent and your beauty! I shall save it!"

She attempted to snatch her scarf as Katie skated past her, but instead ended up falling to her knees on the hard ice. Bah. Still, she was wearing some pretty thick snow-pants because they'd had a snowball fight before skating.

It had been an unseasonably cold, snowy December for Virginia. There was currently eight inches of snow blanketing her parents' lawn, and more on the sides of the roads where the plows had done their work.

"Katie," Darcy fake-whimpered, trying her puppydog eyes on her. "Heeeeeelp me!"

Katie laughed and leaned down a hand to help her up.

"Well that's what you get for trying to stop me from my terrible plot to bring everyone a merry, merry Christmas."

"Oh hush," Darcy groused good-naturedl, craning her neck to follow Katie's movement as she continued skating around her. "As if-"

Wait. Was that...? A man had caught her attention.

Darcy shook her head even as her heart pulsed painfully. That would be ridiculous. Loki in Virginia, and not even just Virginia, but the downtown of her home-city. Dismissing it as impossible, she focused on Katie once more.

She opened her mouth to tell her that they should probably head back because her family was going to do this sit-down dinner thing. Although, she probably would have phrased it more like 'Katie go away, I need to go eat with my family who loves me and doesn't make fun of my incredible grace and talent'.

But Katie turned to her with a sneaky grin and nodded her head toward the man Darcy had been looking at a moment before.

"Girl, that dude is totally checking you out."

Darcy chuckled.

"Yeah, and he's getting a real eye-full too," she said dryly, not really believing Katie, and gestured to her winter coat and snow-pants. "I feel almost scandalous."

She'd just been making fun of Katie, but, actually...he did kind of seem to be staring at her for quite a while, and there was something about him that just seemed like...

"Oh for fuck sake!" She cried, throwing up her hands and skating awkwardly over to him. Oh, well, there you go, she chided herself in annoyance. It couldn't possibly be Loki, because even from this distance she could tell that, yeah his hair was black, but it was also much shorter than Loki's, and faintly curled. Except...

The man was wearing a black leather jacket (how was he not freezing?) and jeans. He watched her skate toward him, a slight smile on his face at her choppy journey.

"Darcy...?" Katie asked in confusion, having followed her.

But Darcy didn't hear her. Her heart jumped wildly in her chest. She could see his face now.

"Loki?" She breathed in disbelief.

Loki grinned hugely.

"Darcy," he said, rolling her name off of his stongue slowly, as if savoring it.

"Oh my god," Darcy exclaimed, her brain still reeling. She poked his chest with her finger. Yep. He was real. "Oh my god!"

"Oh my god," he agreed, still grinning.

"Oh my god," Katie interjected. "So do you guys know each other or something?"

Darcy had forgotten about Katie. Whoops. She couldn't stop staring at Loki. Her eyes devoured every inch of him.

"Yeah, we know each other," she said. He really was as tall as she'd remembered. Just as good looking. And his hair! Whoa.

"You got a haircut," she said stupidly, vaguely aware that Katie had tactfully said goodbye. She'd gotten used to his hair being long, but it suited him more like this.

Loki chuckled. "I did indeed. I got a haircut." He stared at her hungrily. Not in a lusty way- more in a soaking-everything-about-her-up kind of way. "You look beautiful."

His deep accent settled over her deliciously. God she'd missed him! But...

"I'm totally suited up," she said, looking down at her feet and wishing she was wearing something more attractive.

"Darcy," he said, and something in his voice commanded that she look at him. "You look beautiful."

She blushed with pleasure. "What are you doing here in Virginia?" she asked, hoping with some small part of herself that it was because he'd known she had moved back after her Internship had ended at the beginning of December.

"I was invited down to give a lecture at Culver University."

"Oh." Well that made sense. Still, she was slightly disappointed.

"I wouldn't actually have accepted though, with it being so close to the holidays and an annoying time to travel, but..." he shook his head. "I just liked the idea that we might possibly be here at the same time."

Darcy smiled joyfully at that, her spirits light again.

They stared at each other for a long moment, lost in their own world, and then Darcy kind of came back to the reality, wincing.

"Shoot," she said. "I'm supposed to be doing this dinner thing with my family. I really should go..." but she didn't want to leave him. She'd just gotten him back! Well...her spirits sank. Not really 'gotten back'. More like 'seen'. But she'd been desperate for anything for months.

"Oh," Loki said, unwilling to part as well. "I understand."

"Hey!" Darcy exclaimed. "You should come with me!"

It was perfect! She'd get to spend more time with him, her parents would love him, and she'd somehow convince him that they could work something out- that they could make some sort of relationship. Her mind was already latching onto the fact that she hadn't gotten an apartment yet. She'd been staying with her parents for two weeks while looking. But...what if she just moved to Boston? She didn't have a job yet. Not really anything keeping her from leaving. All that needed to happen was for her to pack a few bags. But of course that depended on whether he still wanted her to move in with him. If he'd ever even meant that to begin with. Or- Jesus Christ!- he could have gotten another girlfriend!

"I-"

"Are you single?" Oh, fuck. She hadn't meant to cut him off. Urgh! Dammit.

He looked surprised at the question. His eyebrow did that quirking thing that she loved, and her heart thumped painfully.

"Am I single? Well, yes. I haven't really-that is, there hasn't been anyone since you." He blushed slightly. She loved that about him- that he allowed himself to be vulnerable sometimes.

"Me too!" Darcy bit her lip. Geez. That was a bit more enthusiastic than she'd been aiming for. "Not that we have to- umm. Not that-" how was she supposed to phrase this? "I didn't mean that, like, we should be together again?" she ended in a question, hoping he would disagree. "I mean, that we don't have to..."

Loki stared at her, his expression just so goddamn tender. She wanted to feel his strong, masculine arms surround her and breath in the scent of his sandalwood, pine-ness that was so comforting. She wanted to be held by him so badly.

"I missed you."

He said it so simply. It could have been meaningless and polite, like what you might say to an old friend that you'd grown apart from. But it wasn't. Darcy could hear in those three words how lonely he'd been, how much he'd longed to hear her voice how he'd gone over in his head a thousand times why they hadn't just tried to find middle ground so they could be together, and how he'd replayed memories of the two of them over and over again... She knew, because she felt the exact same way.

"I missed you too," she said. She could hear the yearning in her voice, but couldn't be embarrassed by it.

He seemed frozen by her admission. Stunned, in a joyful way.

Fuck it, she thought, and stepped forward to wrap her arms around him. God, he was so warm. How was he so warm? But he radiated heat. It felt so good to just hold him. His arms came around her a moment after hers went around him, and she was cocooned in a tight embrace- her head to his chest, his heartbeat in her ear.

This was what she'd wanted for so long. This was what she'd missed most for all those months. The intimacy that had always been between them. The feeling that she was home again. Before she'd met him, she'd thought she'd known herself pretty well. Thought she'd known what she wanted. But after being with Loki, she realized: he made her think about things she'd never really considered seriously, like marriage, children, actually having a purpose in her life besides just doing things spontaneously. He made her want more out of life, and he made her want it with him.

"God," he sighed into her hair. "I missed you so much."

"I want to move to Boston," she said, looking up at him, trailing a hand against the curve of his jaw. He leaned into her hand and closed his eyes briefly. Her heart warmed, reminded of an old thought of how feline he could be at times. "I want to move in with you."

Loki stared deep into her eyes, reading how sincere she was. He grinned.

"I would really like that," he said, and her heart felt so light that she was glad for his arms around her, or else she felt she might just stat rising in a balloon of happiness.

The fingers that had traced his jaw had moved on to his lips, now tracing the curve of them. He kissed her fingers, and suddenly their embrace went from emotionally satisfying to physically frustrating.

Her hand went to the back of his neck to pull him down so she could reach easier. He complied, bending down and brushing his lips to hers. She felt the familiar spark of lust ignite at his kiss, but made a conscious effort not to get too carried away, because they were, after all, on the edges of a skating-rink that was fairly full of people.

He pulled back sooner than she would have liked, but her common sense told her that it was good of him to do. Now wasn't really the place.

"Come to my house?" she asked, using her puppy-dog eyes. "My parents will want to meet you. And don't worry, they're really nice."

Loki chuckled and squeezed her hand. "I would love to meet your parents."

"Yay!" she cried. She was so pleased with him! She was delighted with the world in general. What an amazing thing- that she'd gone skating with a friend only to run into the man who she knew to be the love of her life. And now they were back together and she was going to move to Boston with him and he was meeting her parents and everything was going to be wonderful and thank god because the last few months had been awful, but they were all worth it if it meant that they had a future together now, and she was just glowing with happiness and love.

He walked over with her back to where she'd put her boots and helped her unlace her skates while they caught up on what they'd been doing for the last few months.

The one thing that still lay between them was the fact that neither had reached out to the other, though they both admitted to missing the other and regretting their decisions.

Because Darcy's parents lived close by, they walked from the skating rink to her house, her skates' laces tied together and hanging off of Loki's shoulders. Though it was only six it was already getting quite dark, and they could see their breath fog in the chill, dark air. Their shoulders brushed as they walked, each liking the constant physical reminder that they were, indeed, back together again.

Loki had explained how he hadn't wanted to pressure her into changing her mind by calling her, and that then by the time he decided that he just wanted to hear her voice, he couldn't even reach her.

She told him about how she had started to have doubts about her memory of his sincerity (and here he assured her once more that he had meant everything) and worried that she'd misinterpreted things, and that then her phone had gone on to greener pastures and she'd had to get a new number.

Both their minds felt easier at these explanations of why the other hadn't tried to reach them. That it hadn't been a lack of caring, but of too much.

Loki spent the following couple days getting reacquainted with Darcy, and spending time with her parents. Seeing the loving, supportive relationship Darcy and her adoptive parents shared had him missing his own. He promised himself that in the next couple months he would reach out to them and try to mend their differences.

Christmas eve was festive and full of a holiday cheer. They played charades, Darcy's parents winning easily. Loki saw how close her parents were to each other and knew that he would like for him and Darcy to be like that when they were their age.

That night they drank hot cocoa by the fire and watched classic Christmas movies.

Christmas day they slept in and got up around noon. There were few presents. It was more the idea of family being together than that of materially showering each other with gifts.

Loki had bought her something though, to show her that he was serious about them being together and wanting her in his life. Her face had lit up at the unexpected present when he handed her the envelope, and the way she'd looked at him when she opened it had made his heart nearly burst with happiness.

Inside the envelope were two tickets to Boston.

I don't know if people really care, but anyways... I realize that it's a bit weird that a college would ask for a lecturer to come speak during what should technically be Winter vacation, but pretend it's not weird. Pretend it's normal. Good. Thank you. Now I have no plot holes! Well, probably a couple somewhere, but forgive me. I am a mere mortal. =P

P.s. This story isn't over. I promise I'll change it's status to 'complete' when it is, but I don't see that happening for a long time. I like writing it too much, and I have plans for it. I'll probably stop updating quite as frequently after a few chapters and focus on the Thor/Jane fanfic I'm writing, but this will be ongoing for a while yet to come. =)

P.p.s. You guys are wonderful and I love you. 3