"Loki?"
It must have been something big, because she was using his actual name. "What?" he asked suspiciously.
"Can I borrow a million dollars?"
"Sorry?"
"I mean, you probably won't get it back, but y'know. Borrow sounds nicer."
He closed his eyes, counted to ten and took a deep breath. "Gwen," he said slowly, "what are you planning?"
"My empire," she replied cheerfully, stood at the stove with a pan of something hot and delicious-smelling. "I've had an idea."
"Oh," he said, "good."
"Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, posh boy. Did you know, there's an entire labyrinth of passages and rooms under our feet?"
"You want to buy the building," he said, and she nodded in confirmation. "To create an empire of what, exactly?"
Her gap-toothed smile grew wider. "Rats."
She explained the plan as she cooked, and as extravagantly, over-reachingly insane as it was, Loki had to admit it wasn't bad- and besides, he wasn't exactly averse to extravagant and over-reaching plans himself.
"If I make you this money," he said, "what about the Weimar Republic?"
She snorted with laughter. "The bloke who owns this place is a hoarder. I doubt that million will ever see the light of day when we hand it to him. Or…"
"Or what?" Loki asked, playing absent-mindedly with the sharpest knife in the block next to him.
"Leprachaun gold," she said, "hand it over, it disappears by morning. That seems more your style."
"You're not wrong," he said, flipping the knife into the air and catching it by the blade.
"And," she added, "I can kick this maid job into the dust and get one of the other rats to tag Thor for you instead."
"But I want you to do it," Loki whined, before he could stop himself.
"Well, my poor little sausage, you'll have to make do with a much nicer, prettier girl instead, most likely," she said in an offhand voice. "And it's not like you're having to pay for my upkeep anymore." She dropped the spoon she was holding on the side, walked over to where Loki was sat on the kitchen side, stood between his parted legs and batted her eyelashes at him. "Pretty please?"
"Fine," he said shortly, if only to get her to vacate her position between his legs. "But I'm coming with you."
"Where to?" she asked over her shoulder, returning to the stove.
"When you buy the building, idiot."
"Ahh, that."
"I'm hardly going to trust you with my immense wealth, even if it is conjured. Gwen," he said, "at the risk of sending you off into another rant, don't you think you might be aiming a little above your pay grade, so to speak?"
She turned around to jab the spoon in his direction. "Listen up posh boy, just 'cos I-"
"Oh, shut up," he said, and she glowered at him. "I meant that you've never attempted something on this scale before, or at least that I assume. You can't step from sneak thief to leader of a crime syndicate in a day."
"It won't take a day," she said, "it'll take at least a couple of weeks. And besides," she added, "I've got a king to help me out, ain't I?"
I never asked for this, Loki thought darkly, out of all the sneaks in Midgard, I had to choose the one with ambition, not to mention a vicious bloody mouse. "Unfortunately for me. This all seems a little sudden, mouse."
"The stuff I tell you is not all the stuff there is going on in my brain," she scolded him, "don't be so conceited."
"So says the woman trying to run an empire," he pointed out.
"Ha!"
%
"Are you panicking?" Loki asked Gwen, as she drummed the heel of her shoe repeatedly into the floor. He had cast a glamour over them both so they appeared quite the stereotypical Midgardian couple, but there was still an aura of anxiousness coming off of her.
"I prefer to stay in the shadows," she whispered back, "instead of just striding in and… and doing what we're doing."
"Perhaps I should have left you behind," he murmured.
"Bitch, this is my business."
"And my money."
"Which you magicked- mmf mff mmf!" she finished, due to the fact Loki's hand was over her mouth. He raised an eyebrow and she looked stonily back at him before he removed his hand. "You're lucky I didn't bite you."
"Oh, I'm well aware of your feral tendencies. Just keep your pretty mouth shut and nothing should go wrong." Heh.
"You really think I'm pretty?" she asked in a high-pitched voice, and he knocked her with his shoulder.
"Mr and Mrs Foley?" a large man in a suit asked, walking into the waiting room of the poky building owned by the man who also rented out Gwen's rooms.
"Oh!" Gwen trilled in the same accent as the rest of the mortals in this part of Midgard, and Loki stared at her. "Finally! Me and my husband are just so excited about this venture, aren't we Johnny?"
Fine, Loki thought, if she wants to play… "Absolutely!" he laughed, in an accent to rival her own. "The kids are just gonna love that Mommy and Daddy are starting their own company!" He repressed the gag rising in his throat.
The besuited man nodded, a trace of amusement on his face. "If you'll both follow me."
Gwen waited until he was six strides ahead of them to drop her façade. "Arsehole."
"You started it," Loki muttered, and as the suit turned back round they both beamed at him. She yanked the briefcase filled with what, for all intents and purposes, appeared to be fully legitimate American dollars out of his hand and hugged it to her own chest, so that he couldn't snatch it back off of her.
The owner of the building, who Gwen had called Hughes, was a pasty-looking man with egg stains down his necktie. His eyes never left the briefcase as he offered them a seat and took his own chair behind his desk.
"Well," Loki smiled, still wearing the accent, "I don't see any point in drawing this out, do you?"
"No, sweetie, I don't think I do," Gwen added with an equally sickly grin. The glamour had filled in her missing tooth, but by this point he was so used to the gap that he found her smile a little disconcerting. They both turned to look at Hughes, who grimaced back at them and slid a contract across the table.
Loki grabbed it before she could and signed his fake name with a flourish before sliding it across to Gwen. She added her own name even more extravagantly and handed it back to Hughes atop the briefcase. As soon as the greasy little man's hands were on it he flipped the clasps and pulled it open, and Loki watched with smug self-satisfaction as the wealth reflected in his watery eyes.
"The contract's watertight?" he asked, and Hughes nodded without looking. "Excellent. Darling, time to go."
"But-"
"Now, my sweetest." He took her wrist and hauled her out of the room.
"What's the rush?" she asked him, stumbling in her new shoes.
"You'll find out soon enough. Don't look back," he ordered her, striding through the waiting room and flinging open the door to the neglected staircase.
"Loki," she said in a warning tone, "what have you done?"
Through the still-open door there drifted a strangled scream, the sort of scream a man would utter if… "I enchanted the money to last only as long as he looked at it," he confessed, breaking into a run.
"You utter wankstain!" Gwen yelled at him, tearing off her high-heeled shoes and pelting after him. "WHY?!"
"Thought it might make things more interesting," he said, jumping half the flight to the landing of the next floor down. "Which it did, I might add."
"Are you insane?!" she screeched, slipping in her stockings.
"Quite possibly!" He felt her hands shove into his back, and the thundering of countless security guards' feet as they joined them on the stairwell.
"I'm going to kill you, Loki, I swear to-!"
"Is that laughter I hear in your voice, Gwen?"
"SHUT UP!"
They burst out into the bright sunlight of the New York street, and Loki was temporarily thrown- where now? If this were Asgard, he would know precisely where to run, but-
Gwen gripped his hand and pulled him down a side-alley, and he dropped their glamours as they tore down the maze of backstreets. As she looked over her shoulder to check he was still there he saw she was laughing, and her smile softened her face as strands of sunset hair flew across it. Her eyes caught his. There was something about that smile, wicked and saintly all at once, that changed her face from nothing worth noting to something weirdly beautiful.
The moment passed as quickly as it came, and she looked back ahead to navigate them back to their new building. Ten minutes later they both collapsed through the door to her rooms, Gwen panting with exhaustion and he barely flustered. James screamed as they burst in and picked up the nearest thing to hand in order to defend himself with, which happened to be a cushion.
"Oh," he said, "I thought you were breaking in, sorry."
"That would be somewhat difficult," Loki replied as Gwen caught her breath while lying on her back, "considering we own the building."
"What? I mean, what, sir?"
"I'll explain later," Gwen breathed, waving a sweaty hand in the air. "But you don't have to pay rent anymore."
"Oh. That's nice, miss. I've got to go to work now, miss, I'll see you later."
"Before you go," Gwen said, sitting up. "You don't happen to have a sledgehammer lying about, do you?"
"Funny you should say that, miss."
Ten minutes later, Loki and Gwen were stood in front of the boarding that hid the door to the basement, after having had a brief scuffle over who got to use the hammer. Loki had surprised himself by letting her win that one.
"This is it," she said, "this is the doorway to my new life."
"There's no need to be so metaphorical," Loki said, who had grown up with Fandral and his terrible poetry.
"Spoilsport."
"The quicker you get this over and done with, the better. You have work in the morning, you know, which you are required to attend until you recruit someone to replace you."
"You nearly destroyed the entire plan to make some mischief," she reminded him, "let me have my fun."
"Only because I like you," he relented, and her cheeks turned as pink as her hair.
"You really like me?" she asked. "Like, you're sure?"
"No, mouse," he said, "this is all some elaborate scheme to create your undoing."
"You're adopted."
"You've used that one before."
"I've got a sledgehammer, posh boy, and I'm not afraid to use it," she threatened him, and he smirked.
"Have fun with it, Gwen. I must return to Asgard, Nilfheim is at war with itself and seems to expect me to sort it out."
"Have fun with that," she said, eyes back on the wall. She hefted the sledgehammer in both hands, but he was back in the cave before it even connected with the wall.
A/N confession time: this was a ridiculous amount of fun to write. Actually, I think this fic might be my favourite out of the three Civilian Chronicles (ie this, Coffee Run and Finding Bucky). But sshh. Don't tell anyone.