keydav asked you: Perhaps a drabble where they make some sort of progress to getting back to Asgard and she starts to realize that they'll be leaving soon? So she has to deal with that and comes to realize how much she'll miss them (Loki especially hehe).
Wherein Jane doubts herself, Loki doesn't, and Thor discovers red shells. (Romance. PG-13.)
This is Jane's roof.
Yes, her lab — her home, because home is where the heart is, and her heart will always be with her work — has been invaded by three of the strangest strangers she's ever met (Darcy counts). And after some adjusting, she doesn't mind too much (though the grant money was budgeted fora single intern, not a research partner and an intern and an intern's intern, and before long they won't be able to keep the electricity running for their equipment, let alone eat). They're not so bad. Jane never realized how much her analysis could use a fresh pair of eyes. Or how isolated she'd actually become. Jane's a loner, but not a hermit. So it's nice, to have the company, crazy or not.
Plus there's the sex.
Can't forget that.
But there are certain things she can't concede. No matter who's sleeping on it, this is still her roof. And she needs it for thinking. Not all the time, but sometimes. Like tonight, when the latest numbers are all swimming in her head like school of scared fish and refuse to sit still long enough for her to process them.
That seems to be happening a lot, lately.
Jane pokes at her cell again, listens to it ring six times before sending her to voicemail. "Doktor Erik Selvig är inte tillgänglig. Lämna ett meddelande—"
She hangs up.
"I thought these were my brother's chambers, now."
Jane nearly falls off the lawnchair. "Do you have to sneak up on everyone?" she grumbles, stashing her phone in her pocket.
"It would seem so." Loki somehow wound up standing behind her without her noticing. "What are you doing?"
"Just calling Erik. Again."
"Is it unusual, to go so long without contact with him?"
"Yes. I mean, no, not when we're busy with projects. But he's never not taken my calls before." She looks up at the stars and frowns. Ursa Minor should be brighter, it seems like. Or maybe she's just tired. "Whatever 'research opportunity' he got called away on, it must be incredible."
"Or he is in some sort of danger."
"Gee, thanks. That makes me feel better."
"It is only the truth. It seems unlikely he would willingly abandon you to the influence of Thor and myself for any length of time. He didn't care for us."
"He hated your guts." Loki's right, though, and the sick feeling in Jane's stomach only gets worse at the thought. Erik had wanted their new squatters tossed out on the street, being as they were, objectively speaking, probably insane. Then he got a call and left without warning or explanation.
That happens, in the scientific community. Especially when you're an expert the way Erik is. You can get pulled in at a moment's notice, and sometimes what you wind up doing is sealed under a non-disclosure confidentiality clause, or is even classified. Not uncommon. No big deal.
But whenever she's been stuck, or doubted herself, Erik has always been there. Always reminding her to chase down every possibility, every alternative. Always.
And now it's been six weeks.
That's a long time not to answer your phone.
Jane feels long, cool fingers thread through her hair, nails scraping lightly against her scalp. Her eyes close on instinct. "If you want your mentor found," Loki tells her, "then it will be done. Heimdall can see a drop of dew fall from a blade of grass a thousand worlds away. Locating Erik Selvig will be nothing to him."
"If we can get to Asgard."
The stroking pauses for a moment, then resumes, a little slower. "Have you lost faith, Jane Foster?"
"No. I don't think so. But…" Oh, it's all so frustrating. "I'm running in circles with this, Loki. I can't crack it. We have all the data we need, and the answers are there, I can feel them, but they're just— right out of reach."
"I know the feeling well," he murmurs.
Oh. Right. His 'magic'. Jane still doesn't believe in that — if he can do the things he's implied then there must be a scientific explanation, even if neither of them understand it — but it certainly eats at him. It's why he needs her.
Maybe tonight she needs him.
It's only fair, after all.
Jane opens her eyes and looks up at the only man she's ever let work on her data, the demigod she's sleeping with, the possibly crazy person who calls her his consort, whatever that means. Some kind of pet, it seems like. "Tell me I'm on to something," she says. "Tell me I'm not wasting my time. Please."
The hand in her hair creeps lower to dip below the collar of her shirt. "Your Einstein-Rosen Bridge," he tells her, "is built of a thousand colors that rush through your body as they carry you across the stars, Jane Foster, and once you have experienced it you will never call it by its Midgardian name again. It will only be the Rainbow Bridge to you, for that is the only title that can do it justice."
She likes the way he explains things. "I want to see it."
"You will." His lips brush her temple, cool and soft. "We will traverse it as many times as you wish."
"Why?" She wonders about that, sometimes. Is it just that she's the first woman he saw? Is it that she's his best shot to get back to where he came from? It gets harder to tell, because that edge that was always there, waiting to cut someone who handled it wrong, has grown duller in the last few weeks. It's obvious that he's still not happy, but he's not so miserable as he was. He's not so desperate for her anymore. He doesn't have to take her anywhere.
He could change his mind.
He could find the wormhole and go home without even saying goodbye.
Maybe she'll never see anything.
"Why?" she asks again. It matters, right now. Tonight she's full of doubts. She needs a good answer.
Loki seems to realize that this means something, that it's important; he takes his time responding, his thumb still stroking along her collarbone. "Because," he says finally, "you never mock."
Oh. That, she understands.
All the rejected papers from scientific journals. The professors who laughed at her. The groveling and scraping and begging she had to do for this grant, which she only even got because Erik reached in at the last minute and pulled the strings.
Yes. She understands.
He's never mocked her, either. Not about her work. Which is all that matters.
She turns her face and presses a kiss to the base of his neck. He shivers in response. He's not the only one who's paid attention to who likes what. "Are we being watched?"
"Almost certainly," he rasps.
Oh, well. At this point it's nothing the town hasn't seen before.
Jane pulls Loki down into a proper kiss.
"It might be time to find you a futon or something," says Darcy, turning up the volume on the Wii.
"I care not, as long as their actions take place on my brother's chair instead of my own."
"I'm just saying— hey, what the hell!" Darcy gapes as Mario tumbles off the side of the Rainbow Road. "Did you just shoot a red shell at me?"
"I did."
Bowser crosses the finish line. Celebratory music drowns out the sound of lawnchairs scraping across the roof. And Thor raises his hand. "Next?" he says, grinning.
Darcy hi-fives him, then restarts the game. "Best two out of three."
"I accept your challenge."