Like Real People Do
Loki's voice cut through the dim apartment, as cold and sharp as a Frost Giant's dagger. He stood, shaded, somewhere between the open kitchen and the living room, his emerald eyes bright with barely bridled rage. This is what she had been doing? Eight days since last she visited him, and she had all this time been tucked away in her apartment, curled up with a book that, by its title, was only bound to make her wallow all the more in her guilt. The guilt that he caused her.
No, the guilt she caused herself by returning to him.
The god watched, hands balled into shaking fists, as Natasha leaped to her feet from her place on the couch. Her glass shattered in her hand, soaking the light beige fabric with wine and opening several small cuts across her palm and fingers. In her haste to face him, she kicked over the open bottle of alcohol on the floor, long tendrils of purplish liquid snaking across the hardwood.
As soon as her eyes alighted on him, her expression grew icy. "I'm not in the mood for your tricks, Loki," she said flatly.
Loki bristled, his lips twitching as he tried to refrain from openly snarling at her. "I am no trick," he replied harshly, through gritted teeth.
"Right, you're an illusion," Natasha corrected herself, her voice seeping with derision.
"Neither am I an illusion."
She picked up her book, its pages dripping, and flung it across the room.
He caught it before it collided with his face, specks of wine splashing his neck, fresh blood from the Russian carcass. He took no satisfaction in watching her eyes grow wide with surprise and then cast around, searching for his point of entry or, perhaps, a weapon. "What are you doing here?" she asked after a moment, a mild note of confusion showing through the cracks in her angry tone.
Loki let the book drop to the floor with a soggy thud. His fingers curled ever tighter, his short nails pressing into his palms. "Am I not allowed to visit you as well?" he nearly growled.
"You're not allowed out of your cell," Natasha returned firmly.
"How many times have you told me that I am no prisoner?"
"What are you, then?"
Loki's eyes narrowed. "An unwanted guest," he spat venomously.
Natasha's eyes narrowed in turn, but her anger appeared to be dissipating. She was watching him carefully now, her tense shoulders straightening, her head tilting curiously to one side. Loki fought to hold her gaze, but after only a few seconds of her piercing inspection he needed to look away. Every muscle in his body was tight, shaking lightly, and his palms were beginning to sting. His lips trembled under the force of his frown.
After almost a minute that seemed an eternity, Natasha took two delicate steps forward. Barely audible splashes sounded where her bare feet struck the growing puddle of spilled wine. "What are you doing here, Loki?" she asked again. This time her voice was measured, cautious.
Loki ground his teeth. That was a very good question, one to which he seemed to have forgotten the answer. "Perhaps I wished to ruin your lovely evening," he forced out.
"Bullshit," she returned immediately, a challenge ringing in her voice. Wet splats issued from her feet as she padded across the floor. His heart seemed to quicken with each step she took until it thundered in his ears, relentlessly throwing itself against his breastbone.
Natasha stopped in front of him. She was so close that he could feel her warmth seeping through his clothes. "What happened to you?" she whispered.
She raised a slender hand, her fingertips outstretched to touch his cheek, but Loki slapped them away so hard that she hissed. He flinched at the sound and turned his back on her, his shoulders rising and falling visibly with his forceful breaths. His eyes connected with his reflection in the window across the room and he felt as though he could scream before he threw his gaze in yet another direction. He didn't need to see the sallow tint to his skin, the dark purple tinge clinging to the rims of his eyes, the limp way his black hair framed his face.
His fingers twitched, and after a brief flash of pale green light he looked like his old, perfectly manicured self again.
"No!" Natasha commanded from behind him. She threw her weight behind an attempt to push him, to turn him to face her, but he didn't budge. With a frustrated growl she stalked in front of him, his vision swallowed by her defiant grimace. "No magic," she told him in that same commanding tone.
A cruel smirk worked its way across his lips. "Have you forgotten me already?" he asked her, his low voice grinding like gravel over the silky sentence.
Fury exploded behind Natasha's pale eyes. "Is that what this is about?" she asked, her tone threateningly even.
The question ripped Loki's smirk away. His eyes narrowed dangerously, a warning etched into every line of his frozen expression.
Through gritted teeth, Natasha pushed, "Did you get lonely without me, or just bored?"
"I would wager you were neither," Loki threw back at her, his words razor sharp. "Where is Agent Barton? I am shocked to find he ever leaves yo—"
Natasha's slap stole the rest of the sentence from his mouth. He took the blow, licked the blood her cuts trailed from his lips.
"Stop it, Loki," she growled, her beautiful face, so full of disgust, inches from his own.
"Why?" he demanded, his lips pulled back in a snarl.
The god took a step forward. Natasha stepped back, but he didn't stop his advance. This dance, their dance, was too familiar to him now.
"You know why."
Natasha's low words froze Loki in place, his mouth open, his silver tongue poised to lash her to pieces. His brows furrowed in mute incomprehension as he regarded the agent, her face turned up to his, her defiant expression beginning to splinter.
"What?" he asked, dumbfounded.
Natasha stared at him a moment longer, something like mingled resentment and longing pooling in her watercolor eyes before she stepped closer to him and crossed her arms over her chest. "You know exactly why I don't want you to talk about him, just like I know why you keep trying to make me. You can play on my guilt all you want, but it doesn't change the fact that you're using it to punish me for going back to him," she said quietly, a forced edge to her tone.
Loki's eyes widened and he opened his mouth to protest, but she silenced him with a curt shake of her head before she continued, "You can't talk your way out of this one. You can yell and choke me and cover up the dark circles all you want, but you have 'em for the same reason I do. If you didn't, you wouldn't be here right now."
For several long seconds the god of lies was silent. Slowly the flame in his green eyes began to flicker out. His hands balled into fists, clenching and unclenching without any real conviction. There was nothing left to grasp onto. For the past three months Loki had been slowly chipping away at Natasha, stripping from her that cold, impenetrable exterior. She hid who she was beneath layers of indifference, repentance, and a sham of a relationship with a man who had no hope of seeing her for what was really there so far below the surface. Like blood-soaked bandages he had peeled them all away, one by one until the raw, inflamed wound was left exposed to the open air.
He hardly realized, after eight days of non-stop pacing in his tiny cell, that all this time she had been holding a fistful of his bandages as well.
There was no lie he could tell, no falsehood he could spin to prevent her from seeing through him now. She'd stolen all of those out from beneath him during her last visit. At length, he asked, "Why have you not returned?"
Natasha broke his gaze, her eyes flickering down to his chest, down to her bare, wine-stained feet. "I knew you wanted me to," she answered softly.
Loki grit his teeth against the flash of mingled anger and pain her words sent through him. In some sad way he knew what she meant, and he knew why she had to try to stay away. That never made the fury, the jealousy, the truth any easier to bear, nor had it made the nights spent waiting up for her any shorter.
After another long moment he lifted his hands, his fingertips gently brushing her elbows. She shivered but didn't move away. Delicately he laid his palms over her arms, moved them up to her shoulders and then down again. Her eyes slipped closed at his his touch, and the corner of his mouth twitched briefly. How he missed her warmth.
The god lowered his head, his nose brushing the tops of Natasha's bright curls. "What are we to do?" he asked her, but the question tasted bitter on his tongue.
Slowly the agent unfolded her arms and pressed her small hands to his chest. Her face lifted once again, and her pale eyes, swimming with an emotion he couldn't recognize, met his. "We could kiss," she suggested, a vaguely melancholy tone clinging to the edges of her words.
The corners of Loki's lips curved upward into a weak smile. "Kiss," he repeated gently, not without some amusement. He always assumed that was the one line they would never cross.
Natasha gave a slow nod. "Like real people do."
Loki slipped one of his arms around Natasha's waist, his fingertips sneaking below the edge of her tank top, brushing the warm skin along the band of her shorts. He trailed his other hand up her arm as she leaned into him, feeling over her shoulder, along the side of her neck. He moved gingerly, as though she might shatter at any moment, as he slipped his palm over her cheek. A few of his fingers lost themselves in her fiery hair.
"Like real people do," came his whispered recitation.
He trailed his thumb across her soft cheekbone.
The end of her nose brushed his.
Their lips met.