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Strange Days

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Humiliation wasn’t unknown to Loki Laufeyson, in fact, it was a state of being he was most familiar with, always being second to his foster brother, considered insignificant by the Asgardians for most of his long life. Nowadays humiliation only prickled his hard skin, ineffective against the barriers he had had to build since childhood to withstand it.  So naturally the humiliation that this mortal girl had caused him by outsmarting him and reducing him to a man following his most basic urges hadn’t really even infuriated him. It had been a mild annoyance actually, barely worth mentioning or thinking, or so his sense still claimed.

But something strange had happened to him during his encounter with Darcy Lewis – and then again, and again, and again, ad infinitum for months now. This slip of a girl – well, not exactly slip since Darcy was curvy and voluptuous and delicious – had turned into something all-consuming in his mind, crawling beneath his skin like a curse, holding his sanity prisoner.

She was dark matter, someone truly insignificant and invisible, and yet her presence was a gravitational pull he was caught in, unable to struggle free.

Why? Why was he so entangled in a pathetic mortal girl? Loki did not understand this despite constantly questioning it.

There was nothing remarkable about Darcy Lewis. She worked as an assistant to these scientists without even understanding their work. She had low-level clearance and little importance in the S.H.I.E.L.D organization, yet her presence was somehow justified and required. In the larger scale of things she just kind of was there, a ghost, a lingering presence. Talking to her had the same effect as talking to the wind.

But he seemed to find his way to her unexplainably often, charmed by her graces, seduced by her genuine catching smile and that giggle that sent chills down his spine. He, who had been in the presence of the true immortals, creatures whose powers knew no limits, was inscrutably affected by her presence.

At first he had expected the magic of her presence to fade away, to slowly corrode with each visit. Instead she seemed to have a never ending supply of quirky responses to his attempts at intelligent conversion, a collection of untold ways to reduce him into a weak minded man quavering with lust, or just the ability to make him feel actually good around her. The sex, of course, was imaginative, and it occupied most of their time together, turning boredom and curiosity into an explosive mix of madness and fulfillment.

After four months of the surprise visits that would’ve turned a regular woman insane, but what Darcy greeted with elated excitement and dirty, breathless jokes, Loki came to realize that this, whatever this was, wasn’t subsiding, at all. 

He was left with two choices with this conclusion; one, to embrace the madness and drink and fuck and enjoy her in all the ways he wanted to (she was willing, inviting and exhilarating after all); two, to stop this, to abstain until he could gain control of his own unprecedented urges and become the master of his own body again.

He kept pushing back the choice, avoiding it, hoping things would somehow sort themselves out. This minor annoyance of an addiction he’d developed was unprecedented though, and Loki honestly didn’t know what to do with it.

So while Loki was a stranger to rapture, to this kind of attachment, Darcy was not. She’d been through this many times before, participating in all variations of it: the unrequited crush, the passionate first love, the lustful special arrangement, the nervous first relationship, the seductive one night stand, and even the melodramatic love triangle. There was something about her (her boobs if you asked her) that appealed to a certain sleazy demographic of men, whilst her bubbly personality and positive outlook seemed to attract a fair share of decent male specimens as well.  The attention wasn’t always welcome, and she didn’t exactly thrive in long-term relationships, being the quirky and independent woman she was, but Darcy had no regrets.

One day, with the right guy, I’ll rule the world, she’d used to tell Jane whenever they had discussed the topic.

Why not have fun until then, she’d asked with little annoyance, used to the way other women were quick to call her promiscuous (and a whole lot worse). True love didn’t mean she needed to sit with her legs crossed until she found it, did it?

And Jane, being the bright eyed fall-in-love-first kind of girl she was, had certainly admired her ability to look at things like this, but hadn’t really understood her point. It was OK though, Darcy knew not all women were in charge of their sexuality the way she was, and that Jane was definitely the type who couldn’t just “let go” unless they felt secure and loved. For Darcy it was enough that she got some love to send her off the deep end and up to cloud number nine.

So when the God of Mischief had discovered her during her longest dry spell ever and given her some of the best sex of her life, objections hadn’t exactly fallen off her lips for round two, or seventeen, or… Fuck it, she’d lost count already.

But she hadn’t expected the arrangement to start resembling anything, errrr, permanent. These kinds of arrangements usually turned sour after awhile, dying when they reached the natural end of their span. After a certain point you just couldn’t find a higher pinnacle, and everything paled in comparison after that. Well, not with him.

Darcy knew Loki was in rehab for the lack of a better word. She knew he was potentially dangerous, very self-sufficient, considered most humans beneath him, and that every interaction with him was a very bad idea. She’d received lectures about it (not that anyone knew about them specifically, these were just general warnings as Loki was Fury’s favorite subject to rant about, and he loved to appear out of nowhere to remind everyone that Loki wasn’t tame; that he could change his mind at any given moment and turn evil again), and she had the gist of each of them embedded in her spine.

She knew all this. She was reminded of it all the friggin’ time.

And she continued the affair nevertheless, not out of fear or duress, but simple curiosity. Loki intrigued her.

 For some unexplained reason he had taken notice of her, a simple girl in the middle of this crazy adventure. There were more seeming options for his attention obviously; You had the Black Widow or any other super cool S.H.I.E.L.D operative that wore skin tight uniform and could kill a man with their pinky; You had Jane who was a genius and beautiful and downright perfect; You also had the over 3 billion other women on Earth who weren’t generally considered brainless klutzes.

Loki saw her worth something, obviously, because he didn’t move on, not even when she was sure the time had arrived. Now he never bothered to tell her what it exactly was, but it was something. The way he looked at her whenever he materialized out of thin air, looking for that moment when his presence would bring most discomfort for her as Darcy had theorized, he always made her feel important with his shenanigans. He made her feel present, not just the invisible girl at the office who made coffee for the geniuses and agents, but someone who mattered.

Then there was obviously the fact that he was a distraction. He was like a force of nature that set up dominos all around carefully, and then snickered furiously as he set the first one in line to fall, knocking them all over. She fed on that chaos in his wake, reveled in it.  In a world where order was the desired state and everyone wanted predictability, stability, she kind of enjoyed those moments when she went in blind, not knowing what to expect, and was suddenly engulfed in him, caught in another heated moment that ended up rocking her world. Those moments sustained her after days of copying files to ad nauseam.

At first he looked at her like she was crazy whenever she opened her mouth. He didn’t get popular culture, fictional characters, TV or anything that allowed Darcy to escape reality. And she didn’t understand him – or particularly want to, because Wikipedia had some insane shit about him in there that she was terrified of asking about and yet couldn’t push off her mind at inappropriate times – most of the time.

But for some reason he didn’t always jump into the sex first; no, he just kind of came in to see what she was doing, asked some questions, tried to understand the answer and the action, and then all of the sudden she was teaching an immortal god about classic arcade games and what kind of sauce and candy filling made for the best soft ice cream experience. Small surreal moments expanded, always ending up in sex but becoming more as well.

If Darcy wasn’t so sure that this was just a fling, she could’ve sworn this was dating. But watching the progress of Thor and Jane’s relationship from close quarters certainly told her this was not the standard for courtship in Asgardian terms (which she supposed was OK, because she’d never been the romantic type anyway), yet there was a faint resemblance to her idea of dating in her interaction with Loki. If this was romance though, it had to be its mutated distant cousin, or disfigured bastard son, because everything about their arrangement was nuts.

Like when she asked him if his skin was really blue, and he looked like he was about to explode and hack her into small pieces for awhile there, but turned to her and admitted coolly that it was instead, of course her first natural response to that was, what does blue skin taste like? And Loki, looking at her with a mix of surprise and something akin to enchantment, extended his hand, his pale skin slowly magically peeling its hue and revealing the blue underneath, and told her to lick it, which she did.

This was a perfectly normal exchange in their relationship – arrangement – whatever.

For awhile the distraction was everything: desired, effective, comfortable. He would arrive out of nowhere, catch her off-guard, and whatever she was doing at the time of his appearance would set the tone of the meeting; her Halloween turned into an all-night sex marathon as he was quite taken by her Halloween costume (Wonder Woman had always had that effect on men it seemed); he caught her baking and suddenly making cupcakes had turned into a long torturous foreplay; every game he caught her playing from Dance Dance Revolution to classic Nintendo titles turned into a fierce competition, which he won eventually either by cheating as he utilized his superhuman speed or making it impossible for her to concentrate by, you know, randomly willing their clothes away or something like that; And trying to drink Loki under the table was always, always, a bad idea, which he too understood after it became customary from him to be holding her hair back when she started throwing up cocktails and those sneaky Mojitos.

But the universe had a way of untangling its messy tendrils, of recoiling before returning to the way it was before; It course corrected, whether it was wanted from it or not.

*

It was morning, the city was still wrapped in twilight, but the traffic was already buzzing. Darcy was advancing the street, iPod blazing about heartache, thoughts scattered as she crawled into work after a long night and a couple glasses of wine too many. Rain drops were seeping from the clouds, creeping across her glasses while she walked. So it was another melancholy day in the not so glorious life of Darcy Lewis.

That is until she let her guard down, distracted by some unrest further away, the approaching car unseen by her. Darcy stopped just for a minute, a frown spread across her delicate face as she processed the arguing crowd a bit further back. And then suddenly she felt an arm wrap around her waist, something yanking her body into motion, going as far as ripping one of her headphones from her ear, which was when she finally heard the alerted noise of the car, the urgent scream of its horn.

It was such a cliché, but everything slowed down around Darcy; her eyes widened as she turned her head to see the car and then Loki himself, his arms around her, pulling her along with him to safety. Her eyes focused on his face, his decisive jaw, dark eyes, and the warmth his embrace spread across her body. It struck her like a hot flush once he stopped and the car sped past them; Queen was singing their praises to love (even if it lasted just for the blink of an eye in the midst of long loneliness) in her ear, she was looking at Loki, perhaps, for real for the first time, and Darcy realized her heart was racing, not because of lust or the excitement, but because of, uh, love.

“You might want to keep your eyes on the road, Miss Lewis,” Loki noted lazily, finding her absentmindedness to have reached entirely new heights this time around. He’d been observing her, wanting to catch her before she got to work, so it was just blind dumb luck he’d even been around to yank her to safety on time. Had mortals not been so pathetically weak, he would’ve not bothered to act, or so he told himself.

Darcy positively hated it when Loki called her by her last name, and she knew he did it precisely because she hated it. But this time she was out of quirky responses, out of distractions. They stood at the edge of the walkway, embracing one another while the world around them turned into a blur. She stared at him mutely, not knowing what to think or say about her recent revelation.

Loki found her strange behavior curious, and he reached for the remaining headphone in her ear, dangling it near his to hear what exactly was so entrancing that it had made her mute. He caught the first sounds of the epic love ballad, chuckled at it and grabbed her iPod next, still smirking a bit as he stuffed the music player inside his coat pocket. This certainly got her attention, effectively snapping her out of her confusion.

“Hey!” she exclaimed, her expression changing into irritation. She quickly tried to reach for the iPod in his pocket, but Loki bound her hands with his, amusement on his features.

“Now, now,” he said calmly, “Where are your manners, Darcy? Show some gratitude for your savior.”

She settled to scoff at him and tear her hands free in order to slam her hand palm against his chest. The impact could’ve been completely avoidable, yet Loki chose to remain still and brace for her hand, which undoubtedly brought her a small sense of achievement.

“That was not necessary!” she growled at him, reaching for his pocket again, only to have him evade her hand and sidle from her reach playfully.

He was teasing her, why was he teasing her? For some reason (realizing she’d somehow developed feelings for this jerk) she was more annoyed by his behavior than usual. Her shoulders stiffened, her entire pose was off, and there was tension in her very being; It was not caused by the titillating lust that usually undulated in her body, leaving her a slave to his affections, but something else entirely. Loki didn’t like the unfathomable change he witnessed, but as she hit him in the chest with her hand again, she only managed to increase his smirk as he backed up, inviting her aggression with renewed excitement.

Scoffing, she stopped at a distance, deciding not to follow him further. “You know what?” she said to him with a dry tone, “Whatever. I’m late from work!”

In one smooth motion he was suddenly by her side, hand wrapping around her, snaking beneath her open jacket and landing on her stomach. The unwanted touch seemed to fill her stomach with butterflies as he leaned closer to her, whispering seductively, “And here I was thinking I could borrow my favorite minion for a moment.”

Oh she knew very well what he’d been thinking, because it was all he ever thought about. Every visitation was aimed at one purpose, every charming smile, every compliment. He’d learned early on that her fear for him had dissipated once Thor had returned him to Earth, stripped from most of his powers, and that it was easier to get her between the sheets through flattery, compliance.  With his silver tongue, it wasn’t even a challenge.

“Not in the mood,” she hissed at him, feeling that urgent pulsation between her legs again, invoked by his presence as always. Clearly her body had divorced her senses, she thought bitterly, and squirmed beneath his hold, trying to free herself.

Loki seemed to take notice her annoyed tone though, raising a brow while they strolled down the street in unison, their appearance deceivingly resembling any young couple in the city. “That is the first fib you have graced me with since our arrangement started, Darcy,” he noted with surprise.

How he could tell was beyond her, but then again she was in the presence of the prince of lies. She was about to open her mouth about it, when he whispered to her again, moving his hand so that it brushed against that sensitive area beneath her breast, “You might not want to react so visibly to my advances if you wish to feign aloofness.”

“Loki,” she gritted her teeth together in an attempt to keep herself from imploding, “Not. Today. OK?”

Her voice sounded more urgent and a bit bristled, which was a clear sign she was about to reach the limits of her patience. Then again her patience wasn’t the only thing at its limits; nuh huh, if she had actually felt what she’d thought she had felt a moment ago she was also nearing the mountains of madness. Maybe she could get Jane to check and see if she’d been hit by some magical sex beam or if Loki actually radiated something that was dangerous to your mental health. Of course there had been that one time when Loki had turned Erik and half of S.H.I.E.L.D into his bitches…  

    Spooked by the thought, Darcy yanked again, hoping to break free. Now she actually managed to tear herself free from his hold, and leave him standing behind, perplexed by her sudden rejection. She was anything if not predictable, something he had considered a virtue when it came to satisfying his needs. He was after all sentenced here among the mortals in order to learn to appreciate them (in his father’s words), and he felt he was progressing rather well in the lessons of appreciation.

    “What has changed?” he asked her suspiciously, striding to her side now, keeping his hands to himself to her great relief. Darcy pursed her lips, trying to think of reasons, anything to throw him off-guard, but this time all the bullshit in the world wasn’t saving her, because apparently her brain had turned into mush (and what was worst of all, mush that ached whenever he made sad faces).  

    “We can’t keep doing this,” she admitted barely audibly, her words muffled but loud enough for him to pick up.

    “Why?” he inquired, still working on following her in this strange shift of character. To him it was a game, a puzzle. Solving it would certainly reward him with another gloriously sinful experience.

    Forcing to keep her face plain, Darcy paced on, cursing his long legs that allowed him to keep up with her quickening paste with little trouble. She thought furiously, hands clasping her satchel, eyeglasses catching more rain until she realized her field of vision was beginning to blur.  Because of this she stopped abruptly, grabbing her glasses and cleaning them to a napkin in her pocket. And when she placed them back on, Loki was standing right in front of her, inquisitive eyes upon her.

    Her body sighed, begging to be fucked in any way possible, but her mind realized the danger. She swallowed hard, feeling the cold wind caressing her legs (or was it another magical tendril of his?), and felt danger approaching.

    “Fuck it Loki,” she growled in frustration. “I’m not cut out for this sex minion thing! I don’t have the stamina of a fricking horse, I can’t even tell anyone who or what I’m banging, and at the end of the day I like to snuggle when I’m done, you know, banging.”

    Loki let out a relaxed laugh at her speech. “In my honest opinion your performance has been worthwhile,” he announced to her kindly, speaking with the kind of elocution that rattled her even further, but was a part of his sleazy charm. “As your master and lover, I have no complaints.”

    “Well I do!” she shrieked, objecting the way he was once again referring to this as some sort of sex slavery when it was nothing of the sort. She participated willingly! At least, she wanted to believe his brainwashing days were over, and this didn’t sound like the cold chill of death that Erik had talked about when he explained what it was like being mind controlled (the chills she suffered in his presence were firmly rooted to the sweet spot between her legs that ached for him) .

    Loki quirked a brow at her resistance. “You drugged me and humiliated me in public,” he noted, his speech gaining a dangerous dimension now as he recalled their history.

    “And you used me for hangover sex!” she objected, hinting at the fact that in her book they were even-steven now. Not that she could pretend to be a victim in that scenario when she’d practically begged him not to stop.

    Loki’s stare was vainglorious by the least. Darcy stood her ground though, refusing to let him cajole her right back to submission.

    “I do recall returning the favor once or twice,” Loki then retorted, recalling her supplicant attitude during those encounters. She had sucked him like a Popsicle, begging for his silver tongue to ease her nausea and headache.

    If it had it been someone else, they might’ve blushed already, but Darcy simply rolled her eyes, having been through this many times now. Slut-shaming hardly worked with her.

    “Still not having sex right now.”

    This was starting to get repetitive and tiring, he realized. Would it simply be better to seek distraction elsewhere and leave her to calm down? Thor often spoke of the Midgardian moon cycle, and its ill effects on the women populace here – Perhaps that had something to do with her unbecoming mood swings?

    His impetuous brother would’ve simply hoisted the woman on his back and taken her along willing or unwilling, but Loki was not a brute or a barbarian. Truculence would only spoil the trust he had built with her, and his pride could take a little petulance (as was to be expected from a lesser being) without being irrevocably hurt. The umbrage he suffered though was apparent; it sullied his good mood and drained the brisk enthusiasm from his features, leaving behind a quiet and calculated man.

    “Fine,” Loki then agreed, his voice dripping poison. “We shall convene at another time.”

    Darcy took a sharp breath just as he was about to do his magic disappearing act, and she pushed the pesky bereft emotions away to announce with maverick pride, “No, we’re not doing this again. Ever.”

    She could feel his intrusive eyes upon her in an instant, encroaching through her shields and reaching her very core. Not knowing whether to melt to a puddle or flee in fear, she froze under that stare, realizing now that she really liked it when he got all terrifying, as kinky as that was.

    Speaking with overtly polite intonation and elocution, he addressed her again, his voice having gained raw power, “I am not familiar with the mores of your race, my dear, but it is customary in Asgard for-”

    “No!” she interrupted him, creating surprisingly powerful noise from her small body. It even made Loki quail a bit, bewildered by her defiance. “You’re not in Assguard anymore! This is Earth, and I’m not your subject.”

    Why was he staring at her like that? Like she had just dipped him in poison from head to toe, peed on him and the lit him in fire? Because that was one hell of a horrifying look, in fact, it was a World Concurring Psycho Loki look if she ever saw one. A small whimper escaped her lips, and she took a step backwards, stepping straight into a pool of rain water behind her. It wet her sneakers right away, but honestly she did not even notice. Those serpentine green eyes were dominating her thoughts.

    “This is unprecedented,” he whispered, his voice turned rough with exasperation, “The arrogance!”

    “Yeah?” she replied, her voice trailing off a bit. “Look at all the fucks I give about you hurting your feelings.”

    OK, that was mean, but she had wanted to say that for so long. Hell, she’d even practiced it in front of the mirror during her periods of doubt. Strangely enough she wasn’t frozen still by paralyzing fear as she watched the confusion on his face increase. The lurid truth about their little arrangement was that it was not pretty, it was not in control, and this was the damn time to hop the hell off this runway train of crazy depraved sex acts. Or so Darcy tried to bravely convince herself.

    His arms extended, his fingers digging into the soft flesh of her shoulders, pressure turning into pain in a matter of seconds. Loki’s expression was completely sinister, and this was the part where she would be murdered and hacked into pieces and fed to his Asgardians pets (that also may have been his children, some of which had been from born from his womb, his magical man-horse-womb).

    “You cannot be so obtuse that you would willingly mock a god, girl,” he narrowed his eyes at her.

    “Thor!” she shrieked, raising her hands between them in her defense. “We’re buddies, and he’s sworn to protect me from crazy space aliens, even if they’re his brother!” She tried to appeal to his brother as her last line of defense, utilized the moment Loki got too creepy. It was another proof how far off control things had gotten with this thing.

    Loki laughed at her mockingly. “Thor? He knows everything about us, and doesn’t care,” he revealed maliciously, causing Darcy’s mouth to open in mild shock.

    “Oh yes,” he told her. She could tell he was enjoying her silent squirming and the ever-growing panic. “He doesn’t leave my side so eagerly, you see. Not unless I give him a good reason. For Thor, the company of a creature such as you certainly sufficed.”

    She swallowed visibly, lips trembling, limbs growing numb. There was a sexy party going on downstairs nevertheless, a fact that amused Loki to no end, even if he didn’t allow it to show.

    And then Darcy pushed him back after a sudden revelation. “Wait a second, this is bullshit!” she exclaimed. “You’re not going to harm me. You know why? Because you wouldn’t do that to him – not after everything.”

    Everything included speaking on behalf of Loki in the court of Asgard (or so she’d heard), agreeing to guiding him in during his punishment here in Midgard, dragging him along most of the time, and just generally holding onto that sacred brotherly love no matter what Loki did. So in Darcy’s mind, killing her would be an offense against Thor (even though she liked to think Loki wasn’t so cold that he would slaughter her after all of those amazing sexy times).

    He had to give her credit for perception. After all, he was attempting to atone for his past mistakes and change for the better. Most of the time he was told this could be achieved by striving into becoming more like his brother (and hadn’t he heard that before); Loki had taken this statement as a primal council to his heart, recognizing the impressive change his brother had truly undergone, turning from a prideful, small-minded man into a selfless hero. Loki wasn’t as easily transmogrified though. It had taken his brother measly three days here to be humbled and awed by these mortals, whereas Loki had spent months here and he was still very much unchanged. Gladly, the All-father had the patience of a god; he had promised Loki would spend an eternity here if necessary, a thought that still made chills lick his spine.

    Her words seemed to have invoked a response from him, a new kind of thoughtfulness that brought forth a disquieting silence. She knew his repartees were usually quick and brilliant, and now he was speechless, considering her words. In general this was not a good sign.

    “Loki.”

    “You’re correct,” he then answered her, his haughty skin shed in favor of an honest approach for once.

    The sound of his voice, stripped of the eloquence he usually spoke with, almost made his intentions seem, well, immaculate, even if the man was anything but. Oh for crying out loud, he’d made a mare of himself to birth horses! Darcy tried to remind herself of these confusing facts, details that should’ve sullied his image as potential boyfriend and made her retinas bleed from the mental images, and yet she was holding back a breath, watching his pain, feeling her own anger dissolve instead.

    “My brother would grieve for your loss, although it would spare him the constant exasperation. Thus it is not my intention to harm you.”

    Not that it was any relief really, because the way he worded it spoke in spades about him wanting to harm her, and being only held back by the fact that it would make his brother sad. Whatever sympathy had ailed her a moment ago flushed out of her pores with his words, and Darcy could finally breathe freely.

    “Great,” she noted sarcastically, placing one hand over her hip as she tilted her head at him. “Then as far as I’m concerned we’re done talking.”

    “Of course we’re not!” he objected, raising his voice in agitation. “Are you daft woman? You will never know another being as capable as I am.”

    The side of her mouth quirked as she tried to keep the laughter inside, but somehow Darcy managed to keep her face somewhat deadpan in response to his agitation. So, her immortal lover was back to boasting about his physical prowess?

    “My fingers are more than dexterous, thanks for asking,” she noted, implying that she was capable of handling her own pleasure herself. Also there was that portable neck massager she’d gotten for Christmas, and it did wonders when she put it on and closed her thighs around it, leaving her purring like a kitten over a bowl of milk – Not to mention she had over ten years worth of experience in handlings things herself and a secret weapon that guaranteed satisfactory every fucking time.

    “Oh you will beg for my attention!” he argued, only encouraged by her comment.

    Funny how his consonants turned really hard whenever he was losing his temper, Darcy analyzed, finding his empty threats rather amusing. Now that the pesky issue of him killing her and stashing the body in some pocket dimension where it would never be found was dealt with, she was starting to wonder why she hadn’t done this sooner. Well, his cock was still awesome, so that was probably why.

    “You will scream for mercy, girl,” he continued, unnerved further by her unresponsiveness to his threats.

    “Yeah, I’ll scream for mercy when Thor informs daddy you’ve been harassing innocent girls,” she mumbled back at him, believing firmly that Odin was a one-eyed badass like Fury who didn’t particularly like creeps that harassed women. Or that he liked seeing Loki bitch slapped. Actually she would even settle for a god-to-honest intention to teach Loki some humility by not being allowed to zap her into nothingness. Seeing how well his redemption had progressed so far, she was thinking he wouldn’t be getting his full abilities back in her lifetime, and if he was still holding a grudge after she was decomposed, he could do anything he wanted with her remains. Fuck if she cared at that point.

    And how crazy was it that she’d gone from a total Harlequin moment of a surprise love realization to imaging him getting his ass kicked (or alternative having his way with her remains, which was, by the way, yucky as hell)?

    “Hear that Heimdall?” Loki pretended to raise his voice as if he was talking to his watcher buddy upstairs, even as his gaze remained firmly locked on her eyes. “This mortal mocks the court of Odin. She should be struck down for her insolence.”

    Darcy sighed. “Look, I didn’t wanna do this, but if you get difficult, I still have a stash of that dust that sent to La-la-land the first time.”

    Loki hesitated visibly, realizing she was talking about the substance she had tricked him into drinking, which had then blacked out his memory and made him susceptible to mortal beverages. At this she smiled, realizing he was following her on this one.

    “I won’t hesitate to spike your drink again, or make you snort that shit until you won’t even remember your species!”

    He looked positively beleaguered for a moment, but gathered himself quickly, returning the illusion of serenity upon his fine features. “You’re bluffing,” he told her, his voice rather a chilling caress than a response.

    “Tony’s been weaponizing that shit for months,” she countered bravely, wondering that same moment why exactly she hadn’t asked Tony to do just that. Instead she’d lied that the powder had been useless, because of some misguided cocklust that had driven her to protect poor powerless Loki. Looking back, she should’ve been hella worried right then and there.

    Retreating back into his familiar confidence, Loki brushed back a strand of hair that had escaped to his forehead. His hair was moist from the rain and his fine suit looked a little weathered, but otherwise his appearance remained gorgeous.

    “You’re not trying to fool the god of mischief are you, Darcy?” he asked, smirking with the knowledge that she had been stupid and a fool, and had allowed him to bully her into making sure the Asgardian date rape drug would not resurface. Supposedly Loki liked his sex a little less assault-y.

     “Look, you’ll have to kidnap me and chain me to a wall to get me in bed again, and even then I’d spit and bite and never ever shut up!”

    He had a thoughtful stare for a moment there, as if he was considering this. It filled her with unspeakable horror, so she proceeded to correct her mistake, “That is not a viable option by the way!”

    “Yes, I have understood your government abhors slavery,” Loki noted dryly, as if not really understanding why. “Not that anyone would mind,” he then added with silken innuendo, “I could take you right now, right under their noses, and none would object.”

    “I object! That’s the whole point of this conversation!”

    Of course he wasn’t about to abduct her. The reason they had an arrangement was because she was willing in the first place. One of Thor’s many requirements for Loki had been that he should treat these mortals with respect and to consider them as equals, not as lesser beings.

    “I had grown rather fond of you,” he suddenly confessed, drying her throat in an instant. “You’re surprisingly entertaining for a mortal.”

    “And you’re dangerous. Why would I want to have sex with you after you’ve practically been insinuating my quick demise for the past fifteen minutes?” She asked, feeling completely justified in her point of view.

    Darcy may have been a little taken by his charm and the other benefits of their arrangement, but she was too sound in the head to withstand this kind of treatment. It made her feel bad that things could escalate into something this ugly this easily, but he was practically making her point here and now. Loki was not boyfriend material, and he didn’t even want to be, so she didn’t have to fight an uphill battle for him.

    Loki considered her words again. “Am I not dashing and an exceptionally good lover?” he then asked with honesty.

    “Yes.”

    It wasn’t like she could lie about it; there was no point.

    “Honesty becomes you Miss Lewis,” Loki then complimented her. There was a gentle smile on his features again, all traces of hostility gone from his person.

    Darcy was about to say something more, to really drive through her argument and make sure he understood, but then she realized he was calmer now, almost accepting in the way he kept distance. She inched closer to him, studying him with suspicion, and he registered this look quietly. To her surprise he succumbed.

    In retrospect his anger – empty threats and boastful speeches – seemed like a sad storm in a teacup, the attempt to stop her at any cost, even painting himself a villain again.

    In that moment Darcy no longer felt angry or insulted (she still was though, he’d been an A-class jerk), but rather sorry. If she wanted to get out in time, to live on while she still could, this was the exact time for her to make her exit. She’d thrown herself into his arms to feel better, and then it had escalated nearly spinning out of control.

    The only way to rectify things was to end it. Otherwise there was a very good chance things could turn destructive. She never wanted to go through that herself, to be blinded by love so all-consuming that sense departed entirely. Sure, fiction made it sound glamorous, like Cathy screaming for Heathcliff was a good idea, but she just wasn’t going there.

    “Thanks for pulling me out of the-,” she swallowed, thinking how final this was, how she needed to say this now, “-Car’s way. Squashed Darcy isn’t how I wanted this day to start.”

    He accepted her thanks with clemency or so it seemed. Then Loki dug up her iPod from his pocket, dangled it between them until she extended her hand, and dropped it then. She didn’t know what to make of his expression, this cold demure.

    “My apologies for insulting you,” he then managed an apology to her surprise. “I will take my leave now.”

    She clenched her teeth, like she could clench her heart doing it. But those few seconds of self control were enough, and he was gone as quickly as he had appeared. Darcy was left alone in the gentle rain, clutching her iPod.

    She was so close to the finish line though, and eventually Darcy got her feet in motion again. She put the earphones on one ear at a time, fiddled with the player, searching for that one playlist that didn’t have songs about heartbreak. And when she finally heard something good enough to distract her from this, something loud and energetic, she ended up bursting into tears anyway.

    Darcy continued dragging herself to work though. Life went on, and she needed bagels for Jane. Nothing made that girl explode into nerdy mess quicker than tardiness, and there needed to b snacks present once she broke the news about her illicit affair with the prince of darkness, since Jane was an emotional eater (pretty unbelievable with that figure, right?). Somehow Darcy was more worried about her in all of this, as absurd as it was (she was also known to project her issues though).

    It took her awhile, but eventually her steps grew lighter as well.

    - fin