Thanks so much to anyone who is patient with me and is still reading! I promise I will continue till the end! No obstacles like life, stressful work, life threatening illnesses, up and down moods or natural disasters will stop me!
Also please send a mental or written thanks to Night Companion who helped me take out the ludicrous and most stupid things I wrote out of this story! (Well, I didn't say all of them ;-)) Hope you enjoy!
CH5 – But, the hammer!
"I am so very sorry! The door just opened right in front of me and by the time I saw it, I was already in it. Oh God, are you OK?" Jane poured out her concern in one big exhale filled with words.
How interesting. Staring at her outpour, Loki quickly discerned that he had not come across such a genuinely and openly displayed concern from anyone, the least in public and not to mention from a relatively complete stranger from another planet. Even his own mother had to exercise dire restraint in front of her husband who was trying way too hard to retain an image of uncompromising supremacy, leaving her to relay her motherly matters through subtle motions of her expressive eyes. And Asgardians, they were usually more concerned for their own safety and well-being when any harm came to the dark prince. Perhaps their fear was not entirely unjustified since he was not exactly impartial to retaliation, but a little concern would not go completely unappreciated. He despised pity, true, but that was miles away from outright caring.
"No harm done," Loki offered, still somewhat in thought, his trademark smile rippling his lips on autopilot. "But do you keep intending to drive into us, or do you have some alternate plans as that would be rather nice?"
"I…I keep getting distracted and you seem to just…be around when that happens," Jane tried to explain apologetically, secretly thankful that they seemed to be so resilient to withstand her destructive distractions, not to mention that in fact they were taking it so exceptionally well overall. She was not usually that lucky getting away with her notorious clumsiness!
"Are you suggesting we are distracting you, Miss Jane?" Thor popped out of the car with his self-confident and planet-lighting grin.
"Well, not exactly," Jane began to consider, probing her memory. "The first time it was a particularly unusual storm I was chasing when driving happened to become a secondary concern, just as right now when somebody happened to have been very rude to me and my friends and ranting in my head about it took precedence over paying attention to random people opening their big doors right in my way."
Ah, how deliciously feisty, even directing the blame at him which was usually the reserved privilege of his own family. He might later even enquire about that rudeness she mentioned as it might prove sufficiently entertaining. "And at the healing facility?" Loki enquired whilst completely ignoring her small accusation, raven eyebrow visiting his forehead in enjoyment of this completely irrelevant debate.
"That was…," Jane stopped herself from saying that she was distracted by looking for them because of the big, swirling reason why she had crashed into them in the first instance but it seemed that feeding more into the already oversized ego shining so dangerously in the blond one's eyes and smile might make him explode and she was not prepared to lose one of her primary witnesses of the phenomenon she was researching just yet. Best admit to the other equally true reason.
"I was reversing. I am not too fond of reversing. I prefer to go forward," Jane elaborated factually.
"Don't we all," Loki agreed with a perfectly curved grin, offering a meaningful side look to his dismembered door.
Getting the hint, Jane quickly offered a reconciliation despite being sure that it had been Loki's fault. But she could hardly yell at her potential tickets to an astronomically large recognition, now could she? And it was his door that got yanked off, her SUV was completely fine. "Well, the least I can do is to offer you the lift you wanted? I was heading that way anyway. I mean, you still want to get to that satellite, don't you?"
"Yes, that would be most kind," Thor instantly accepted, swinging around the dismembered car towards Jane. Could he not at least try to hide his eagerness to please every pretty face he meets, Loki thought? As Loki definitely was more than able to hide his eagerness to throttle Thor or anyone who happened to annoy him on most occasions.
"Perhaps you have forgotten about our own transport?" Loki pointed out that they still had a working means of travel, be it a little less intact than before. Of course he would not reason aloud that he did not want his testosterone loaded brother engaging the only woman who had so far actually managed to hold Loki's ever so preoccupied interest.
However, to Loki's presumed advantage, he also usually paid a little more attention to the all mysterious and inexplicable internal workings of the fairer sex creatures, something Thor did not bother to bother about. He would simply wait, while exuding his mysterious irresistibility from a short distance. Someone her intelligence alone with Thor for even the shortest while would surely soon realize his troll of a brother had no more to offer than two sparkling rows of teeth, an impressive pack of eight abdominal muscles, even more impressive but tiresome hammer with pathetically short handle, free flight for one night and general mental absence? That surely wasn't enough to a woman of her apparent intelligence and spunk now, was it?
"Perhaps you should not have chosen a transport so easily breakable," Thor did not fail to announce haughtily, his impressive chest, one thing Loki forgot to list out, puffing up in a show of superiority. Loki snorted inwardly. Who would fall for that kind of a bodily display? She would never fall for this cocky charade, Loki tried to assure himself.
"I did not think it necessary at the time to make it jackass proof but it appears that I should have," Loki responded with the most pleasant expression he could muster, observing in self-induced discomfort as Jane seemed to be actually observing, to say the least, Thor's overwhelming assets.
Now the only way around this negatively developing situation was to get to the crater first, grab the hammer and then smash Thor's head with it. Or, he could take over this world faster than usual and then order her to stop behaving like a typical woman? No, that would not have been as much fun as a true win over Thor. The battle was afoot.
"Yes you should," Thor did not even catch up to the insult aimed at him, already readying to jump into Jane's oversized means of travel which became him so well. Finally, fate had smiled at him, Thor thought with an absently grinning face. He did not have to feel like being crushed by a giant beast in that small land vehicle his brother had conjured and the view has much improved as well. Her pleasing face was a much better suited companion to his impending reclamation of power and glory. If only Loki didn't…
"Suit yourself, dear brother. I will send you a post card from Asgard when I reclaim Mjolnir in your stead. You may want to roll up your window as I intend to leave enough dust behind to shave off that unkempt stubble on your face," Loki wiggled all five fingers at him in a gesture of a goodbye, the low suspended sun illuminating his face in a brilliant, devilish light.
…if only Loki didn't get there first! Thor felt the strangest, tiniest pang of worry in the depths of his stomach, watching through a mirror that was so handily placed outside of his window as his brother jumped into the door-less car and closed the door that was still there. Well, Thor was no sucker for education but he understood enough to know that the smaller, streamlined vehicle was probably much faster than the rather square thing Jane was driving, plus, well, the fact that Jane was driving was enough a reason for worry.
For a moment Thor was beginning to regret his decision to go with Jane and even willing to take more claustrophobic squashing with a much less enjoyable face next to him when something made him chuckle like a little girl.
He watched Loki still sitting there and going absolutely nowhere, soon hitting the same parts of the car that Thor had before, with a homicidal expression of insulted Frost Giant sprawled across his face. This made Thor's worry flicker away as fast as Loki's magic disappearing act in the midst of a battle. Now all he needed to do was to leave with Jane and the hammer would soon be safely swinging in his mighty hands…
"Did you say that he just hired the car or something?" Seeing Thor looking intently into the rear-view mirror whilst even more intently chuckling, Jane took a peek through the rear window, concern mixing with tingling smile instantly flowing into her brightly sparkling eyes.
"In a manner of speaking, yes," Thor slowly turned to her, his voice pitched disturbingly higher than usual, causing Jane to fight hard to supress her own outburst of laughter. After all, it was not very polite to laugh at your much needed witnesses to a possible Nobel Prize discovery.
"Then maybe he is not quite familiar with the controls? American cars tend to be a lot different from European ones. I should go and help," Jane established as a good as any reason and before Thor could stop her, to his mild chagrin, she had already shouldered open her door and jumped out.
Jane made a dash to Loki's side and knocked on the window, her suspicions being confirmed as the dark-haired brother seemed to need to take a while to figure out how to lower the window, managing to flood the windscreen first together with a good portion of Jane's hair as the wipers entered into the most vigorous mode available. And they thought she was a bad driver?
"Um, you need some help there?" Jane offered, forcing on a kind smile, tucking the wet strand of her hair behind her ear. She would have not minded all that much as in this heat her hair would be nice and dry in no time, but what on earth was that smell?
"This transport refuses to start," Loki partly growled, partly exhaled in a defeated sigh, slowly turning his head to her with eyes that shimmered away like two blue stars lost in the black velvet of space, hypnotizing and inducing of emotions one had never expected to possess.
Being so close to him for the first time, she caught a scent of something otherworldly and enticingly dark, like a dark matter mixed in with the silver sprinkling of a galaxy, but at the same time she could swear that she still smelled petroleum coming from her hair, but what would that do in the windscreen-washing container? Damn that offending odour! Maybe the car had a fuel leak and that's why it wasn't starting?
Jane peeked at the dashboard once she managed to finally force her eyes from the gravity defying pull of his and the flashing red symbol woke her up instantly from the strange but tantalizing moment.
"You are out of gas. Lucky you didn't explode," Jane stated triumphantly, pulling her head back from inside the window, crashing into something superiorly hard behind her.
"Gas? These things are propelled by exploding gas?" Thor asked incredulously from behind Jane. Loki on the other hand had no time to ask anything as he was busy escaping out of the car.
"You have not heard of that? So what do you run your cars on in Norway?" Jane looked genuinely intrigued.
"In our world, we run things on the power of the stars," Thor, backing away from the car, jumped in to explain in his deeply booming yet poetic voice, attempting to elevate his appeal by pretending to actually know what he was talking about. That sneaky little giant bastard, Loki cringed inwardly.
"Ah, you mean that your cars are solar?" Jane pronounced enthusiastically, always in favour of going green, though she could never afford it herself which was quite ironic. Shouldn't saving the planet be cheaper?
"Yes, precisely. Something that cannot easily explode and hinder one's chances at living." Hence in the same equation as your driving skills, Loki finished mentally. He really would have said that out loud normally, but rather bizarrely one prolonged look at her sealed his mouth shut. What an odd, disturbing feeling. How could the earthly woman he'd only known for less than a day have the same effect on him as his own mother?
"It's not really that bad. We usually get to smell it before there is any real danger," Jane tried to lessen the impression of death that they seemed to associate with petrol, not quite succeeding by the unconvinced looks on their faces, not to mention that the blonde one, Thor as he called himself, actually scrunched his nose as if he was smelling it.
"Something smells," Thor announced decidedly, sniffing around like a hound picking up a scent.
Strange, Thor hadn't noticed it before, but was that what humans used for hair oils on this planet? That was truly far more appalling to one's senses than a squirt from an Asgardian skunk, and he had never flung his hammer at one ever since that one unfortunate incident. For a split second he contemplated the indignity of walking all that way rather than sharing a confined space with Jane and her offending scent…but, the hammer!
"Really? I don't smell anything, do you Lady Jane?" Loki said in all politeness, his gloved finger dispelling the petrol from her hair. After all, it was more amusing to contradict Thor than to humiliate a human.
"Hmm, not really. But I think the gas from your car might have been leaking. Fortunately, mine runs on diesel. Much safer. Overall," Jane restrained herself from biting her tongue at her little lie, but science was more important than a debate over fuel safety. No one could argue with that.
I could have sworn… Thor looked a bit baffled for an incomputable fraction of a light year, then shrugged at the disappearing stench, deciding instead to concentrate on his hammer. After all, with Mjolnir back in his hands, he could easily fly away from all the smells that any branches of Yggdrasil could ever conjure.
"I do not know what diesel is but if you say it is safe, I believe you," Thor gave no room for more discussion as he lifted his massive self back into Jane's front passenger seat, thus leaving Loki to choose a seat behind him, a self-satisfied grin popping up on his face.
"Right, I take it that you are coming with me then," Jane said as she took her place to drive, watching as Loki silently slinked onto the seat behind them and pensively stared out at the desert. Funny, she did not know them at all but she had already made an observation how in between short moments of gloom Thor always seemed to be happily dreaming of what might happen, while Loki in between moments of mischievous joy always appeared to be gloomily thinking of how to make something happen. Or was she wrong?
Jane shifted into drive and started to pull away from the row of parked cars, worried that her straying thoughts towards the intriguing brothers might yet again cause her to crash somewhere or run someone over, when a smooth, danger promising voice came from behind her ear and pulled her back out from her short, deliberating reverie.
"Who was rude to you and your friends?" Loki asked suddenly with a disarming smile that she spotted in her rear-view mirror yet from the tone of his voice Jane pictured him pulling out a little notebook to write down a hit list for later execution. Well, she would have liked the darn agents to be kind of punished for what they did, but not necessarily brutally tortured or killed, right? Shake it off Jane, he is no secret spy from Norway. At least she'd never heard of any such thing…
"Well…," Jane's mind rushing to the moment when her whole life had been ripped out from her hands, she had no problem at all entering into her riled up emotional state which also included imagining quite voluntarily shoving the previously pictured list into Loki's hand's, all complete with the names of the entire S.H.I.E.L.D's agency. "…It was S.H.I.E.L.D. They decided that it was a rather splendid day to waltz into my laboratory unannounced, rip the place apart and steal everything that was ever worth to me. Then, because apparently that wasn't enough, they also stole everything my friends owned and cherished. They made Darcy faithless without her iPod, me without my research notes and Erik without his pants. Well, not that they actually stole his pants but they might as well have…"
"They stole from you?" Thor suddenly turned to her, entering into one of those rare gloomier moments.
"Yes. They stole my life's work without the slightest consideration. They didn't think it appropriate to give me a good reason why and that is why I am going over there now to find out why," Jane continued heatedly, not eve noticing the appreciative glow in Loki's eyes. She had not a clue why she was sharing all this with them, must have been their ready-to-smash-something appearance or did she have too much coffee for breakfast?
Speaking of smashing, what was that darn noise at the back? Did those agent asses actually leave something in her SUV for it to get loose? Jane made a quick peek backward and swerved the car, nearly running off the road as a face popped out from behind Loki's shoulder while not disturbing him at all.
"And they took my socks!" Darcy proclaimed crossly, scrunching her nose in angered expression, looking like she had been there the entire time. Well, technically, she was.
"Darcy?!" Jane threw in a question as well as proclamation of disbelief into her voice. "What do you mean socks?"
"I have written the coordinates to my iPod on them in case I forgot where I have hidden it and they took the iPod and my socks!" Darcy complained, utterly disheartened.
"I will have them thrown off the branches of Yggdrasil," Thor proclaimed with a royal authority, sealing his promise with a gesture of a held out fisted hand, Darcy's sudden appearance never throwing him of his horse.
"And I will throw my other socks at them," Darcy added determinedly, her fisted hand though paling in comparison with Thor's.
"You what?" Jane blinked, not quite familiar with Thor's term as well as reacting to Darcy's mindboggling ridiculousness.
"It's a Norwegian expression. It means…he will ask them not very politely to return your research and Eric's…well, you get the idea," Loki offered to explain from behind Jane, leaning forward with that politely murdering expression again, as Darcy started to scramble over the seat.
"And my iPod!" Darcy emphasized, giving Loki a convincing look from under her glasses as she sat herself next to him, recoiling a little to nearly get a double chin when he turned to her sporting his most casual smirk.
"I do not know an iPod, but I do know a research when I see one as well as pants," Loki told her darky without blinking.
"Yeah," Jane found herself nodding in enthusiastic agreement, yet at the back of her mind she was contemplating swiftly turning the car around and driving in quite the opposite direction while ditching those two, correction – three, somewhere in the desert. What was she doing? And what exactly were those two planning to do when they got there? But the back of her mind was in fact the sensible corner of her mind and hence the very part she never listened to and so her curiosity and desire to get herself in trouble won yet again.
"So did all the iPods like freeze in Norway? Or did all the Trolls eat them?" Darcy attempted to explain the general iPod absence in Norway, only getting Loki's raised eyebrow in turn.
"Polite sure does not work with those government thugs. I had in mind to have a good word with them in a very much impolite manner myself," Jane darkened her voice, surprised at how well it sounded, already planning how she could use it on the agents. With those two as her backup, she might even be able to get them to return her notes, then stomp on their feet and run like hell…
"Are you always this brave and adventurous, Miss Jane?" Thor was back to smiling like they were not at all going to their possibly unexplained disappearance or even death, his own eyes sparkling high and mighty with heroic adventures.
"She never is," Darcy replied speedily, wrinkling her nose in confirmation, pushing up her glasses.
"No," Jane forced on a smile of her own, her mirror catching the shine in Loki's eyes promising the deliverance of mischievous misadventures. Yeah, that was more what she was getting into rather than anything heroic, Jane thought as a worrying doubt tried to crawl under her skin, but it was too late to turn back now, even as the threatening and black as space storm clouds rolled in over the desert sky. Yup, they were so totally screwed.
And because she was totally screwed with everyone, might as well find out if it was worth getting screwed for. "So, who are you exactly? I mean, who are you, really?" Jane secretly bit her cheek, praying to the furthest galaxy and back that she didn't get this wrong. Otherwise, she would have been screwed for nothing, dragging in Darcy as well and that was far worse. She'd have a good word with Darcy later for being as stupid as herself.
"You shall see soon enough," Thor beamed with his usual confidence and determination, breathing in the smell of Asgardian power that rode on the moisture in the air right into his mightily inhaling nostrils.
"Oh, so you will soon turn into your true space forms?" Darcy threw in conversationally.
Jane, on the other hand, was not so easily pleased. That was what she was going to get? She was going to die very soon and she was supposed to see soon enough? Over her dead body! Well, not literally… "You promised me answers, remember?" Jane persisted, trying on her newly found dark voice.
"Something like that," Thor gave a laugh at Darcy's surprising intuitiveness whilst admiring Jane's determined eagerness. He had wanted to reveal to her who he was only once he could properly demonstrate his fully blown mightiness, in the form of a massive hammer of course, yet the disapprovingly scowling look on Loki's face spurred him to tell both ladies anything they wanted right there and then.
"What you seek…it is a bridge…," Thor began, overly pleased with himself at sensing the head-shaking, face-palming aura emanating from his darker brother. There was no way Loki could pull Thor away from Jane right now and on Odin's beard, Thor was going take a full advantage of this gigantic advantage.
"A bridge? You mean like an Einstein-Rosen Bridge?" Jane reminded herself to breathe since she was still driving and keeping everyone alive for now, fighting to contain her excitement so that she could also prove them wrong about her driving. Thank goodness though that there were no man sized cacti in the near vicinity or any random people staggering about drunkenly in the desert.
"No, it's more like a rainbow bridge," Thor said with a sparkling smile, otherwise unblinking, and Jane took a moment not to show her tentative disappointment at an answer that could mean one of two things; that Thor was either leading her on or he was even more clinically crazy than Erik had warned her.
"Cool! I know rainbows!" Darcy called out, excited that she thought she knew what they were talking about, looking at Thor who seemed truly pleased with himself.
Loki, on the other hand, inwardly rolled his eyes at Thor's unwavering lack of self-preservation. It was inexplicable how the mortal and easy to kill situation was still somewhat escaping his oafish brother even after all this time. And of course his brawny brother with no time to waste on intellectual pursuits would chose to describe something so splendidly unique and immensely extraordinary with one word, only seeing what it looked like, not what it really was. Loki found himself wanting to jump in and explain his detailed and expert knowledge on the subject when he reminded himself that humans were not yet ready of this precious gift of the universe. Perhaps, he would share it with her later, one day, when he was convinced that this ignorant yet surprisingly eager to learn world could be worthy of Asgardian, and of his of course, knowledge and protection, and one day maybe even ever so benevolent governance.
"Yes, as you can see, my brother enjoys colourful metaphors. It is nothing more, nothing less," Loki said as casually as he could, which in fact came very naturally to him, knowing that any one of them would have to think hard to formulate another question.
"You mean like psychedelics? I've seen a few rainbow bridges of my own, if you know what I mean," Darcy shared her very much scientific experience, though no one seemed inclined to continue the conversation, to Loki's secret delight, also perhaps due to the fact that the transport they were in had run over a hillside and came to an abrupt stop.
Both Jane and Thor leaned forward, Jane with her hands clenching the steering wheel as she took in the sight befallen in front of them. She knew that the agents came this way, but she had never expected them to create a whole darn armoured fortress made out of plastic surgical tubes around this so called satellite. Vehicles, trailers, barricades, lovely razor wire fence, mean looking armed guards and no doubt all her stuff were all dotted around this intricate maze of plastic tubes, all leading to a central translucent cube located exactly in the middle of the crater. Yep, definitely no satellite. This was big, really, really big. So big that her research notes were gone for good, dammit.
Jane quickly reversed, surprisingly without any injury causing incident before they were seen and stashed the car in the dark, just below the top of the crater's edge. As Thor jumped out of the car as fast as a bear smelling food, Jane was on autopilot as if on the verge of a new discovery and reached behind her for her binoculars, instead feeling something warm and soft with her searching hand, finally frozenly realizing that there was in fact a man on her back seat who wasn't normally there.
Truth be told, there were never men in her SUV, at all. Blake never liked her clunky transport, seemingly enjoying more the company of his sports car than hers, and Erik…well, Erik was just Erik, so he didn't count. God, why was Darcy there?
"May I enquire as to what you are searching for?" Loki pronounced in a politely entertained voice, not moving an inch. Of course a guy with a look that could make her shiver in her deepest core would not make it at all easy for her, would he. Darn. Jane swallowed hard.
"Erm, it looks like a long, tubular instrument…?" What? Oh sure, that was the right thing to say. Why couldn't she just say binoculars?
"You mean his…"?
Jane whipped her head back so fast, it caused Darcy to swallow the rest of her most likely inappropriate sentence, to Jane's very short lived relief.
"And did you find it?" Loki didn't flinch apart from his evilly spreading smile, not helping to lessen Jane's utter embarrassment and Darcy's over developed shamelessness at all.
"Nope, not yet," Jane replied, still unable to move and remove her hand. God, could this get any worse? She never touched guys! Well, not exactly never, but her chronic inhibition in the intimacy department had pushed her towards a life in places where she was more likely to meet a rattle snake than a guy which she was also more comfortable touching and that said it all. Maybe that was why Blake had left her, as crudeness and chauvinism sure weren't her things like they were his, the boobs and telescope comparisons from him speaking for itself. And now, a complete stranger was looking at her like she was initiating a sacred place invasion? Oh God, God no.
"Interesting. Then perhaps this might be of use?" Loki reached somewhere without even looking and lifted it up.
Jane retracted her hand from the dark place she was still in denial about touching to snatch the binoculars from his hand and darted out of the car, grateful for the chilled breeze that washed away the burning from her cheeks. She had no idea where her hand had been exactly, but there was no way she was going to ask either him or Darcy.
"I can tell that you've found the right place," the deeply resounding voice came from behind her so suddenly that Jane nearly yelped.
The shiver of shame that run down Jane's spine at that comment was however much more expected, to her bitter grievance. Did the big guy know about that as well when he wasn't even in the car anymore? "What? H-how do you know?" Jane choked out.
"I would say that the extraordinary amount of swarming humans in an otherwise deserted place is a good guiding indication," Thor said with a light chuckle as he looked towards the artificially bright light coming from behind the crater's edge.
"Oh, oh! Yeah, the right place. Sure it is," Jane could literally taste her relief as she landed back in the land of sanity when a sudden whisper in her ear sucked all her calmness back out into space and converted her into a hotly burning supernova.
"Do not look so abashed, Lady Jane, all you had a good feel of was my well-formed thigh," Loki's voice was an incarnation of seduction as he brushed past her, leaving Jane rooted in place like a frozen tree of Jutunheim.
"What is going on with you two?" Thor turned to them, hesitant, uncomprehending frosty smile plastered on his face.
"Absolutely nothing," came from Jane and Loki in unison yet with varying degrees of conviction.
"Jane grabbed his binoculars," Darcy put it out right there, but instead it seemed to put Thor at ease.
"Well then, let us waste no time," Thor proclaimed rather loudly, clapping together his hands. "You stay here Jane. And Darcy. The storm has arrived and soon I am going to add some thunder and lightning." Thor looked up at the blackened sky in expectation, raising one gigantic hand.
"Wow, he's gonna be beamed up to his space ship," Darcy whispered to Jane as she looked up expectantly too.
Jane stared at that for a moment, even forgetting all about Loki.
Thor cleared his throat after a while and shifted uncomfortably when nothing happened. "Well, once I have Mjolnir back. Force of habit. And…you are going to need this." Thor shrugged out of his brown leather jacket that admittedly looked rather good on him in Darcy's experienced opinion, the stream of lights from behind him highlighting the extremely well developed parts of his body exquisitely.
Jane took the jacket in her hand, still observing Thor as if he had just got struck by the said, non-existent lightning, but when the thick rain drops started to pat the dusty desert ground in an increasing rhythm, Jane came back to earth.
"Have you seen what's down there? You still really think you can just walk in, grab…whatever you think is there, and walk out?"
"No," Thor said as if that was the most ridiculous thing he had ever heard.
Jane sighed in relief and Darcy in disappointment.
"I am going to fly out," Thor corrected with an arrogant, testosterone loaded air and before Jane could react in protest he started to head towards the crater, his long blond hair bouncing on his shoulders from his heavy, confident gait.
"Wow." Perplexed, Jane turned to Loki who still stood next to her, his eyes calmly following Thor as if he was just going to fetch some coffee. "Does he suffer from anything? Anything at all?" She really needed to know. After all, Thor didn't seem that crazy before? On a second thought…
"Yes, a lot of things," Loki confirmed her suspicions yet in fact revealing nothing at all. Should she maybe ask for a detailed written list? Maybe she could then read it in jail to remind herself why not to run off with strange crazy guys who were promising her even crazier answers to the craziest discoveries.
"And you? What are you going to do?" Jane asked Loki instead, thinking it might be safer, wishful thinking as it may have been.
"I am going to walk in after him." Loki gave a short bow, his face rising back up to her with a wicked smile. "And fly out first." He then took off his top coat, surprisingly having another one right underneath, and handed it over to Darcy, who had already started to huddle in the rain, having wondered why it had always been Jane who got the free stuff from people. When she turned to Loki to thank him in her proper way though, his black as midnight suit and hair had already vanished into the dark.
"Wow that smells so good. It's like bottled sex from outer space," Darcy exhaled as she detached her face from being smooched into Loki's coat and lifted it expectantly up to Jane. With tentative apprehensiveness, Jane leaned down for a short sniff, and nearly tripped and fell full on into the large bundle of wonderful aromas. Darn, even her supressed and scientifically oppressed female hormones sprung to life at those heavenly scents.
"I wonder how he does it with all those layers he's been wrapped in all day in this stupid desert heat," Darcy said part enthusiastically, part annoyed, wrapping herself inside of her dream of a man-scent. She looked at Jane who looked like she was about to sniff Thor's jacket, though appearing somewhat undecided.
Well, it was unsurprising to say that Jane didn't smell men. At least not deliberately, because she wasn't neither an animal nor Darcy, but ever since that time when she had stuck her head into Loki's car, smelling men has definitely become one of the curiosities she was now more inclined to investigate. So here it went.
Jane buried her nose deep within, smelling kind of a radiant sunshine which was quite nice but then there was also a healthy wallop of fresh manly sweat that made her pull out of there a little faster than she wanted. When she saw Darcy still looking at her expectantly, it was the only thing she could say.
"Well, it's not that bad," Jane elaborated after some consideration. She looked pointedly at Darcy, her eyes sliding to Loki's posh looking coat that Darcy was happily wrapped in, looking like a shrunken grim reaper.
"I'm not swapping," Darcy proclaimed sharply at Jane's demanding look, causing the two to stare at each other for a short while, until Jane shrugged and resigned herself to yet another weird night full of unexpected discoveries, this time in a sweaty man's jacket. But in the end what did it really matter?
What mattered was that very likely she and Darcy were soon going to die. And then probably get arrested, also most likely. And all that wrapped up in strange men's over-garments. Fantastic. Just the thing to add a great boost to her career. Jane scrambled up the edge of the crater in a mad rush of sudden regret and concern, and saw…absolutely nothing. Where were the darn binoculars?
"That's so cool! You should see the big guy's biceps working on those big agent asses!"
Jane looked to the side of her to see Darcy looking through her field equipment and yet again using it to ogle men instead of helping with her research. Jane quickly rolled over and snatched back her inappropriately used equipment, then had a look herself despite Darcy's glaring and puffing protests.
Oh wow, Thor really did work well on those agent asses!
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In the chill of the pitch black air, the wind picked up and began to whip about three tails of a long, elegant coat. The heavy drops of rain pulled down by gravity soon turned to thick lines of water, yet with a subtle wave of his hand, Loki made sure his hair remained immaculately ordered and dry, together with the rest of his exquisite self.
Indeed, he had never argued with his own priorities. Looks first, then image, both that much more easily obtained and maintained by a good wrapping of power. And family, yes, but never before the first three as family was also the most trouble and pain invoking priority. And Thor was the primary source of trouble, though on some occasions, usually those occasions that Loki was actually willing to admit to, Thor also served as a great distraction to boredom.
That was why Loki still had not moved from his chosen spot. Yes, from this distance he could easily teleport straight to Mjolnir but what would be the fun in that? Keeping Thor an encouraging company on his journey to certain failure and then snatching the hammer right from under his big brother's outstretched hand would lend itself to a far more deserving victory.
It would be like taking a candy from a child, or rather like taking a massive pile of roast beast from an even bigger beast that was still alive. Loki had no doubt that the hammer could be his. After all, hadn't he rescued Asgard and hence an entire universe from a certain downfall and ruin by Thor? The only thing Thor was capable of ruling over was a pair of twins, called ignorance and arrogance, which put together spelled an eternal cosmic war. And now, Loki was supposed to just let Thor stroll back to his hammer and then resume his personalized mockery of an ancient coronation ceremony after learning absolutely nothing?
Over his very much alive, and preferably immortal body!
All that said however, Loki had not quite yet had a solid plan, considering that Mjolnir was at this moment the very much unpredictable element and had a metal head of its own, though this was no big feat for the master of improvisation and illusion. But all in good time. First he would get the kicks out of observing Thor in his unnatural state and environment as that would not be something he could easily see ever again. Well, then again, perhaps seeing Thor springing recklessly into a horde of local inhabitants of a random planet without thinking was not all that rare in the first instance.
In a way it was like reliving the splendidness of the Jotunheim fiasco all over again as Loki watched Thor walk into the human base like he owned the place and started punching everything unfortunate that managed to get in his way. He had to hand it to Thor though. Even without Mjolnir or Asgardian powers, Thor was a force in its own league, only shame the same could not have been said about his intelligence which in fact didn't even have a league at all.
Loki shook his head as he saw Thor grab the shooting end of a long weapon to yank it from the hands of one human and then ram the part one is actually supposed to hold into the man's jaw, then toss the very much usable weapon aside. What a terrible waste. Did his beast of a brother still believe he was immortal?
No matter how much fun it was to observe however, there was still a point beyond which Loki would not simply remain in the shadows. And the point jumped out when Thor had gotten spotted by the whole now swarming and shouting establishment, which was not at all surprising really, given he had slept through all the lessons in subtlety and delicacy.
So with a cunning grin on his face, Loki decided it was time to lend Thor a bit of a hand.
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Please leave a review? I love to hear from you what you think and what you liked! I added Darcy in this chapter after I wrote it, as I thought you might like it. But did you? OK, see you next time! And thanks all for the R&R!