This one was prompted by GIFs of Tom Hiddleston's blood lolly in Only Lovers Left Alive. If you haven't seen them, Google it. You'll understand.
Wherein Darcy and Loki suffer from overheating. (Humor/Drama. PG.)
Jane's new draconian budgetary rules mean that the air-conditioning gets turned off at night.
This might be fine for freeze-babies like her, and it doesn't seem to bother Thor, who still camps on the roof and has proven himself impervious to all weather. (The only difference is that he sleeps without a shirt on now. There's been another uptick in people walking around with binoculars.) Seriously, that's great for them, but Darcy's the one who has to sweat through the wee hours of the morning in her converted closet bedroom with next to no ventilation.
Sometimes — usually at three AM, when she's on top of the covers in nothing but underwear because normal human beings are not meant to sleep in eighty degree heat — Darcy seriously questions whether six college credits are worth all this.
But then she remembers that her former classmates are currently writing papers on how the Leviathan pertains to the European Union while she, Darcy, gets to hang out with aliens and preparing to spend summer break traveling to places with hundred-flavor mead and flying sex snakes.
In other words, it stopped being about the credits a long time ago.
Regardless, the fun she's having overall doesn't help her sleep. So she sits up, pulls on a robe, and heads out to the 'kitchen' for something to cool down.
There are those who would be spooked to find an unexpected backlit-by-moonlight shadow-y figure standing silently by the sink in the middle of the night; Darcy's not one of them. "Hey," she says.
Loki jumps. Then he turns to glare at Darcy like it's her fault he's lurking around for no apparent reason. "I'm not accustomed to people sneaking up on me," he growls.
"Sucks to be mortal."
"Indeed." And he turns back to the sink — very pointedly.
Well, someone's in a great mood.
Not that that bothers Darcy. If other people's crankiness got to her, she'd probably be miserable all the time. Like practically everybody else. "What are you doing?" she asks, ignoring his prickliness.
Loki snorts in obvious annoyance and doesn't answer, but he doesn't shy away as she glances over his shoulder. He's holding an ice cube against his wrist. Quick way to cool the blood. "Pretty clever," she comments.
"I've never cared for the heat," he replies shortly.
"You should talk to Jane, and get her to ease up."
"I doubt she'll listen."
"She might."
"Then why don't you do it?"
"Uh, because, if you haven't noticed, the way you 'talk' to her is a lot more persuasive."
"I don't wish to discuss temperature with Jane Foster — or with you. Now leave me be."
"You're just cranky because you can't sleep." Darcy opens the freezer, sticks her head in just for a minute to enjoy the blast of cold, then roots around until she finds a solution. Two of them, as a matter of fact. "Here."
Loki looks at her offering with suspicion, but he sets his ice cube in the sink and takes it all the same. "What are these?"
"Popsicles. I grabbed a box yesterday. Hope you like cherry."
Five minutes later they're sitting on the couch and Darcy's down to chewing on her stick, watching in mild fascination as Loki continues to work on his popsicle one careful lick at a time. No wonder half the town can hear Jane screaming.
Darcy's been living with Loki — more or less — for over three months now, and she still doesn't know him. That's a first; usually even when people don't like her they stop clamming up after awhile. But, then again, Loki's still pretty clingy with Jane, and most of the time Thor's around, too. So when have they really had the chance?
If they're going to be heat-wimp buddies, they should talk more.
"So," tries Darcy, "space. Is it fun?"
"Yes."
"That's nice."
"It is."
Silence.
So much for that.
Finally Loki's popsicle is gone too (and Darcy's contemplating that it's been too long since she had a boy- or girlfriend. Seriously, damn). She's feeling a lot cooler; he's glancing back at the fridge. "Take another one if you're still hot," she says. "I got the twenty pack."
The second one goes a little faster, which is too bad from Darcy's perspective. It doesn't seem to cheer him up.
"Want to talk about it?" she hears herself saying.
"Talk about what?"
"Whatever it is that's bugging you." She props her feet up on the coffee table. "Well, whatever's bugging you right now, anyway."
Darcy doesn't like not knowing people.
Not that she expects an actual answer — beyond being told to get lost, that is. So it's a surprise when Loki says: "Do you believe in curses, Darcy Lewis?"
"Nope," she says without missing a beat. "Do you?"
He looks down at his left hand with disgust and not a little fear, like it's possessed or full of gangrene. "Logic," he says miserably, "dictates otherwise."
That's not cryptic or anything. Darcy decides to go with patting him on the shoulder. "You and Jane get too into the logic stuff," she tells him.
"You have no use for logic."
"I didn't say that; I just don't get the point of overthinking things."
"Ah. Now I see why my brother believes you wise."
"Thor's a lot happier than you are."
"He has more reason to be."
"You and he are in the exact same boat, except you're getting laid. If anyone should be moping, it's him."
"Moping?"
"It means brooding."
"I do not brood."
"Please. You're the best brooder I've ever met. You're practically a brooding expert." He scowls (which, Darcy doesn't point out, counts as brooding), so Darcy adds: "You don't brood when you're relaxing and having fun, though. Then you're pretty easy to like."
Okay, that wasn't much of a compliment.
But Loki stares at her like no one's ever said anything so nice about him in his entire life. "Am I?" he says, sounding stunned.
"Sure. You just need to lighten up." Just about everyone needs to lighten up, in Darcy's opinion.
Loki continues to stare — but just as it's starting to get weird, he laughs and says: "Mortals are surprisingly better company than Asgardians."
"Well, we don't have loads of time to sit around and sulk." Darcy shrugs. "If you and Thor fix everything the way you want and start being real aliens again, you're going to live, what, a couple thousand more years? Jane and I only have another fifty or sixty. I'm not going to use them up worrying about curses."
All the amusement drops out of Loki's face.
It only takes a few seconds for Darcy to realize what she did wrong. "Uh, you forgot about that part, didn't you," she says slowly.
He is gone from the lab, crossing to Jane's trailer, with what's left of his popsicle, in less time than it takes a cat to flee a fire hose.
Oops.
Still, Darcy feels somewhat less guilty about screwing that up when, a little while later, she hears the usual sounds of the two of them going at it carry across the yard. And, hey, maybe all the angst-sex will come in handy again; Chester from down the street might pay for the AC to turn back on. You never know.
She grabs another popsicle and goes back to bed.