Moving to London was not all Darcy's mom had cracked it up to be. For one thing, moving in with your boss and your boss's mom was not exactly a glam vacation/opportunity to hook up with James Bond lookalikes (so many options!), even if it was free. And Jane wasn't doing well.
Jane was the one who met Darcy at the airport, all alone and carrying a completely illegible sign. Well, she had probably carried it at one point. By the time Darcy actually spotted the other woman, Jane had turned in a completely different direction than the disembarking area and was glaring at a movie poster with a spacey picture on it. The sign was on the floor resting against her legs. Darcy immediately felt herself relax. It was so easy to be chill around Jane, because Jane was the sort of person who did all the unchill for you.
"What's shakin', eggs and bacon?"
Jane shook herself and turned to Darcy. Her eyes were reddish, and she had that half-feral look that meant she hadn't had any sort of sleep schedule or meal plan for at least a week. "What?"
Darcy patted her on the shoulder and bent to pick up the sign. "I said 'Hey, boss'. I am super hungry." The best way to get Jane's feet back on the ground at that stage was to make it all about someone other than Jane.
She blinked and murmured: "I'm sure that wasn't it."
Darcy nudged Jane's boot with her toe. "We need to go pick up my luggage now. Where's Erik? I was kinda counting on, like, Swedish man-strength or whatever."
"I haven't heard from him. Darcy, I haven't heard from him since he convinced me to come out here!" Jane was worse than Darcy's initial assessment. She'd gotten to the twitchy stage.
Darcy looped her arm through Jane's and slowly strolled in the direction of the baggage claim. "It's been two weeks, Jane, and I just got here. Obviously he was waiting for me, because you have gone off the deep end of Science." Science was pretty much always a capital around Jane. "So we're gonna get something to eat, have naps because you know I hate planes and I can already feel the jetlag. And then we'll call Erik and tell him if he doesn't get his ass in gear and answer his phone, that Norwegian dude we met last year that he hates is going to be your new go-to stuffy male scientist."
Jane grinned, a sudden evil glint in her eye. Mission accomplished. Darcy handed her the purse and grabbed the rolling suitcase for herself.
"You've been here two weeks, does non-gross British food even exist? Lead the way."
Frigga had been spending most of her time at her loom, trying to read anything about her sons. Loki was gone, no trace of him that even Heimdall could find. Thor had become wrapped up in the fighting that had broken out across the realms, as soon as the Bifrost had been repaired. He had not rested more than a single night at a time in Asgard since.
It was not a good time to be a mother to princes. Every moment not spent in court was spent weaving, searching for some message of the future. It was not a happy occupation. But it did mean she wasn't terribly surprised when she returned one day to find a small, smooth, flat golden disk on the small table by her loom.
The moment she touched it to pick it up, words engraved themselves upon it:
Frigga. Truly have I seen the error of my ways, and have realized that conquering Midgard was the height of foolishness. A mortal helped me escape the battle and for it I am eternally grateful. But still I run from Thanos, and I do not know when he will find me. I may at some point need to come home. If you have need of me, I have the copy of this coin. I will receive your message.
Frigga smiled bitterly. At least he was alive, although the mortal might not be. He did seem to forget who taught him most of his trickery, though. One of his worst habits. He was alive, and if another person was dead then that would have to be added to the list of his crimes. But her son was alive. She could not help but be comforted by that, even for all he had become. She turned the coin over, and pressed her palm against the surface.
I am your mother, Loki. I do not wish you dead.
The response was prompt: Well, that's a relief.
Jane's mother was an archivist, which was not even slightly surprising to Darcy. What was surprising was that the woman lived alone in a multi-bedroom apartment in a city like London, and had graciously loaned the usage of it to her daughter while she was spending a year updating files on religious texts in France. Clearly, Darcy needed to reconsider her major. Screw world domination, old books was clearly where it was at.
Contrary to Darcy's proclamation at the airport, Erik still hadn't gotten back in touch with Jane after a week, and she was starting to unravel with concern again. Darcy was antsy as well, and had started leaving Jane in the lab so she could distract herself with schoolwork. It probably wasn't the best idea, but after the fourth night of no word they'd start arguing in circles and since neither of them actually knew where Erik had been when he'd told Jane to come, they couldn't call the police. So wait and do various kinds of science it was.
It was then that Loki finally made his return, popping into Darcy's room while she was doing an online class and listening to music, and nearly gave her a heart attack. "Jesus christ, dude!"
"Where have you been?!" he snarled, loud enough for Darcy to hear over the music. She turned it off. Somehow 'Bubblegum Bitch' didn't seem appropriate. He looked...a bit like Jane snarling about Erik, actually.
"Uh. Here." She closed the laptop and narrowed her eyes. "You can't be here, though! What if Jane hears? Why are you here? How are you here? How did you even find me? I only even had time to call my mom the day after I landed!"
Loki deflated slightly, and shrugged. "Blood calls to blood."
Darcy blinked in confusion at the sudden switch in tone. "What?" He rolled his eyes and pressed two cool fingertips to her forehead. Where he'd drawn the mark. "Oh." She shuddered and pushed his hand away. "That's super creepy. And Jane?"
She would say he flopped down onto the bed at her feet, if it weren't him. 'Flopped' didn't seem like quite the right word, too ungraceful. Or maybe just too human. Regardless, he settled himself and waved a hand lazily through the air before responding. "There. You could kill something in here and an eavesdropper wouldn't know."
"That's just so comforting, coming from you." Darcy closed her laptop and set it on the night table. Even if he left immediately, there was no way she was getting any more classwork done for the evening. She stretched her legs out, deliberately prodding him in the side with her foot. Instantly Loki grabbed her ankle and yanked the offending appendage off the edge of the bed and out of his way. Darcy smacked his hand lightly. "My bed. What's the order today, sir? Or are you just bored again?"
"And such a sad little bed it is," he murmured. Louder, he said: "The second one, of course. I'm afraid you've no other use to me as of now."
"Thanks." Although considering the alternatives, she couldn't feel too offended. She leaned down and dug through the suitcase still lying open on the floor next to the bed, full of books for her classes. Darcy pulled out one at random, and pressed it to Loki's chest after a glance at the title. Contact, that was the thing. "Here. Existentialism and Humanism, it's some human thinky thoughts. Maybe take some advice and get your shit together, huh?"
He raised his eyebrows coolly, and disappeared with the book.
Erik Selvig could not find a well-fitting pair of pants to save his life.
There was a cute boy at the coffee shop by the house. Darcy had started spending her days there three weeks after she'd landed in London, as Jane became harder and harder to coax out of her room. Even Science couldn't tempt her boss, and the apartment/lab was too lonely without some kind of purpose. If it went on for much longer, Darcy might even begin to look forward to Loki's visits, if only for something to do.
So the coffee shop it was, and the cute-in-a-nerdy-way guy who didn't protest very much when Darcy plunked herself down at his otherwise empty table in the crowded café. Truth be told, she'd chosen his table because he was reading one of the weird space magazines Jane got and Jane must have rubbed off on Darcy too much, because she was starting to miss Science. And think of it with a capital 'S' sincerely. It was a tragedy of the highest order.
It took a week of bumping into each other for them to start talking, and Darcy managed a month without bringing up Jane, Science, or anything actually factual about her personal life. As it turned out, Cute Nerd/Science Guy (Darcy couldn't remember his name to save her life, but it was a daily struggle not to call him 'Bill') was a big fan. "Wait. Jane Foster? Doctor Jane Foster? Noted astrophysicist Jane Foster?" His voice jumped half an octave on the last bit.
"Uh. Yeah?" Darcy took a sip of her coffee and grimaced. Her tongue was doing the thing where she couldn't taste anything anymore but the ache in her teeth from the sugar, even though she didn't take her coffee particularly sweet. It was a shame London was so freakin' cold, she could have done with an ice water. The amount of coffee she was having daily couldn't have been a good thing.
"You said you were a political science major!" Science Guy's voice was incredulous, and Darcy glared at him.
"Yeah, and I've been working for her for..." She did some mental calculations. Count the schoolyear or don't count the schoolyear? "Fuck, I don't know, almost two years. Got a problem?"
He turned sheepish. "No, I'm sorry, I didn't mean...D'you think she could use a second assistant?" He was especially adorable when he was hopeful. Darcy forgave him.
"No. But I could probably use one, the way she's going." She stretched in her chair and stood. "Actually, I should probably go check on her now." Darcy patted his shoulder. "Get back to you on the job thing, Science Guy."
"My name's Ian..." he said plaintively as she walked out of the coffee shop. Sadly, she was already thinking of other things.
It didn't take long for Loki to fall into step beside her after she left the shop. He'd taken to doing that the second day she'd invaded Ian's table. At least the suit was nice, although Darcy wondered about his ability to stay incognito when his face had been on the news at least a couple of times. She didn't ask. If he was the one who got them caught, it'd be the best thing to happen to her since he'd dropped in in the first place. "You don't like him, do you?"
Loki rolled his eyes slightly. "He's not S.H.I.E.L.D. I must monitor you."
Darcy snorted and looped her arm around his, ignoring the way he froze for a moment at her touch. "You know, I hadn't actually thought about that. I'll have to keep it in mind."
He tried to tug his arm away and whirl around to glare at her, but Darcy held on and kept resolutely trudging towards the apartment. "You will not," he hissed.
"No, I won't. I prefer not being dead." She didn't look at him, but she could feel Loki's metaphorical feathers settling. "You finish the book yet? I need it back."
"Yes." There was an abrupt extra weight in her laptop bag.
"Walk me home and I'll give you a new one."
Erik Selvig's shirts had all become inexcusably itchy, no matter how many times he washed them. It was impossible to concentrate.
Loki was going through Darcy's books at a truly voracious pace. For the past month and a half he'd been showing up almost daily, looking for something new. He was, frankly, getting on her nerves. Which was something Darcy hadn't ever expected to be an emotion that applied to an actual murderer, but there it was. It turned out the fight-or-flight reflex dulled when you gave someone Thomas Pynchon* to read and they didn't even try to strangle you for it. Instead, he'd merely returned six hours after taking the book in the first place and held it up for her to see, whereupon it spontaneously combusted. Darcy couldn't even bring herself to mind the loss of selling-it-back-to-the-bookstore cash. Her fault for assuming anyone could be that desperate for a distraction.
It finally struck Darcy that he was being antsy. He covered it much better than Jane, which was probably why Darcy hadn't picked up on it. Jane had quickly reasserted herself as Darcy's baseline expectations for social interaction. She had a Way. Capital W. But there was tension in Loki's otherwise perfect posture, the merest suggestion that he was hunched over her latest selection. He'd woken her up just to get the next Thursday Next, and she hadn't exactly pegged him as a 'metatextual jokes' type of guy. Especially since she kept having to explain certain cultural references to him that he was too lazy to look up. At least Thor had been willing and eager to learn the art of googling.
Loki was sitting on the foot of her bed, as usual (and it was strange to think she'd developed a 'usual' with him), frowning at the book and flipping through the pages. Darcy watched him. His eyes weren't focusing on the pages, instead staring dully at a perfectly innocent patch of the carpet. She sighed and stopped playing with the end of her braid, leaned over to rest a hand on his shoulder and plastered on her most sympathetic expression. "So what's eating you?"
His eyes snapped to her face with an alarming sharpness, then drifted lazily downwards. Right. No more tanks for bed. At least she was wearing pants. Small blessings. Darcy snapped her fingers in front of his nose, and he grabbed her hand. Smiling slightly, Loki looked her in the eye and winked. "Something is beginning to happen."
"That's very specific."
He snorted quietly. "A convergence of the realms. It is...infrequent."
Darcy moved towards him and moved her other hand to his knee. She tried to keep breathing. Best chance to ask, put on 'genuine concern'. "Is this something to do with what you wanted that research for?"
The grip on her fingers tightened slightly. "You should forget about that."
Darcy tried desperately for guileless. "I'm just curious!" She slid her hand up his a thigh a fraction.
Loki narrowed his eyes at the movement and let go of her hand, instead pushing her away from him. "What are you doing?"
She held up her hands, all innocence. "Nothing, I swear." She fiddled with the end of her braid and tried not to frown at her knees. Visible disappointment was not a good angle.
"You've got potential, I suppose, but you're not very good at this. Yet." His voice was mild. Darcy felt his weight shift closer to her on the bed, and then one warm hand pressed firmly into the small of her back, the other on her inner thigh. A cool breath flowed along the exposed side of her neck and involuntarily she arched into the touch, shivering. Suddenly her skin was on fire and she was definitely not going to look at Loki.
"You're not the only one who can play this game, you know." The whisper in her ear sent another shudder through her, and Darcy couldn't help but risk a glance. His eyes locked onto hers immediately, and he was grinning like a cat. She flushed, and his grin widened.
He pressed a kiss to the corner of her jaw, and vanished.