"Remember the two months or so you actually slept in a bed?" Loki asked Gwen, who had been slumped forwards on her desk when he found her. Her escape from the Asgardian gaol had caused no small amount of panic about the security of the supposedly inescapable cells, which Loki had smoothed over with a tact that Odin had never had.

"I prefer it when I got company," she yawned, pulling away a sheet of paper that had been stuck to her cheek.

"How did James and the Rats react when you came back?"

"I got a bollocking from Bobby and James started crying," she said shortly, "I'd rather not talk about it, especially since I've got a shit ton of work to catch up on." She did seem exhausted; there were dark circles around her eyes that weren't from her makeup and her nails were bitten down to their beds.

"You look awful."

"Cheers," she muttered, and yawned again. Loki walked around the desk and sat on the edge of it beside her, and brushed her hair back from her face with a finger. "And you sat there so pretty, with your cheekbones and your eyes and all."

"Have you ever considered becoming a poet?" Loki asked, and she smiled weakly. "Is it making you regret leaving Asgard yet?"

"Not even slightly. I've missed the history channel more than anything," she told him, "not to mention a significantly reduced class system… How long can you stay?" she asked, standing up and positioning herself between his legs.

"Long enough to get you into bed." He kissed her, and suddenly found that his arms around her waist were suddenly supporting her entire (though still not significant) weight. "Gwen. Mouse, put your feet back on the ground."

"But I'm so tired," she mumbled into his neck. "About getting me into bed… can you carry me? And can we just, like, sleep?"

"It means I get to enjoy your company without having to listen to you babble," he replied, "so if you like."

"You think I'm annoying?" she asked, mock-reproachfully.

"I'm with you only for your body," he said, "try not to take it personally."

%

Gwen wasn't the only one who preferred to sleep with company. One day, Loki mused as he drifted off, he would have to get her into his chambers in the palace. It would probably involve dragging her in there kicking and screaming, but he had already proven himself capable of that.

He was awoken by her tracing the scars on his back, the only ones he had that refused to heal. The burns had not disappeared over the years since he had received them, but rather faded into marbled swirls across his pale skin that stayed whatever glamour he wore. Perhaps a healer might be able to do something about them, but Loki was determined nobody would ever see them, this sign of weakness that Thanos and the Chitauri had inflicted upon him.

Nobody except Gwen, of course, who had enough shameful scars of her own- she had long ago explained about the syringe needles that had made those dots on her, the drugs that could easily have killed her, that she was lucky she never became addicted.

"Do they hurt?" she asked quietly.

"Only ghost pain."

"They're kind of pretty," she said, "in a weird way. Not like mine."

He smiled. "You're probably the only person in the world who would ever think that."

"Honestly, I don't know when I started looking at you through rose-tinted spectacles," she smiled, "it's probably not very good for your ego."

"What ego? I always thought I was rather humble. And it's unbecoming when you laugh like that."

"You're adopted."

"That cannot be your response to everything, mouse."

"Why not? And they are pretty scars," she said firmly, kissing the one between his shoulder blades. "They look like the seafoam in the Great Wave off Kanagawa. It's a painting, before you ask."

"I wasn't going to ask," he muttered.

"Liar."

"Well, I'm not called Silvertongue for nothing." He rolled onto his side so she could no longer reach his back.

"I think posh boy suits you way better," she replied, pulling at her lip piercing with her teeth.

"I always wondered," said Loki, "why do you change your name so often?"

She looked away at nothing over his shoulder. "I… just fell into the habit, I guess. I stopped going by my birth name after I ran away, and then it was easier to be something different to each person. Made it easier to play 'em, if I wanted to, and made me myself harder to track down. Downside is I kinda lost track of who I was, after a while. I couldn't afford an identity if I wanted to survive. I still can't kick the habit- I'm boss to the Rats, miss to James, Mel to Ben and Gwen to you."

"What about mouse?"

"Stop trying to make mouse happen, it's not going to happen. Posh boy." She laughed at herself.

"I never asked- why Gwen?"

"It means clean, pure like. I guess my subconscious was telling me I needed a fresh start. Fat lot of good it did my innocence."

"Quite."

On the bedside table, her phone bleeped and she sat up. "I need to get this… hello? Oh, hi… No, I haven't… holy shit, seriously?... Sodding hell…" There was a long pause as she listened to the person on the other end of the line with a furrowed brow, and Loki kissed her neck lightly in an attempt to distract her. "Can you give me an address?" she leaned away from him to grab a pen and paper, and scribbled something down in messy handwriting. "Cheers, Ben… I know. I can handle it. It'll be sorted by the end of the week, don't worry." She hung up and tapped the phone against her lip piercing, which Loki had noticed she always did when she was thinking.

"What is it?" he asked her curiously.

She didn't answer him for a while, which was annoying. "People are trying to kill me," she said eventually, with far less gravitas than the statement deserved.

"That seems like an inconvenience."

She pulled on a shirt and walked to one side of her bedroom, which was entirely covered by a map of New York. "So the Rats escalated quicker than I expected, right? We put a lot of bounty hunters out of business. The closest thing we have to rivals are the hall street gang, who grew out of a hole the mafia left behind here." She tapped a point on the map with her finger. "I guess they don't like a woman taking their job from them, 'cause according to Ben they're gonna have put out a hit on me by the end of the week. There's a baker's dozen of 'em, and since we started thriving and they ran outta business they've all been hanging around the base…"

Loki could see the gears turning in her head, and knew her well enough to guess what they would produce.

She looked over her shoulder at him. "Would you be interested in joining me on a pre-emptive strike, posh boy?"

"I thought you'd never ask," he smirked.

"Right," she said, "well, then. Back in a tick." And she bolted in a way that only street urchins with a sense for trouble can.

Loki stared absently at the space she had just vacated. He knew for a fact that she still carried a photo of Lucy in her pocket. But some things, he knew, one had to carry, however painful they are. That was what one did when it came to family. He had died in Svartalfheim to save Thor, after all. Sort of.

Still. All that... turbulence was behind them now. They could move onto gradual world domination and the occasional smattering of murder like the pair of megalomaniacs that they were.

A/N honestly though I love writing Loki and Gwen so much, their dynamic's so different to all my other fics. I also enjoy making their lives incredibly difficult, as you may see in future chapters :)