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A/N - I am a fan. I really enjoyed "On Each Other's Teams" by Audreyii-fic and and Halfpenny's continuation,"color in your cheeks". As in, they are together my favorite Lokane re-imagining of the bunch and honestly one of my favorite stories altogether. This is just my take on a further sequel. It is a short one-shot ~1300 words. This is dedicated to audreyii-fic (and also halfpenny!) for inspiring me to write something and breaking me out of a years long writers-block. Thank you! And I hope that if you were to ever read this, you would enjoy it.
High as Hope
Jane wakes up with the intent to sneak out early, as she always does. Though sneak at this point seems a rather strong word considering she sets alarms. For all the air Loki gives off, the 'I-am-aware-of-all-things Nothing-gets-passed-me-and-if-you-thought-it-did-I-wanted-you-to' attitude, he has revealed himself to be a very heavy sleeper or he has her right where he wants her. His attitude is exceptionally convincing no matter what the data Jane has collected on him says otherwise.
It has been many many months since that fact bothered her.
Everything about Loki defies conventionality, defies logic, and while that can be aggravating —extremely!—, as the scientist she is, it has also proven to be her weakness for the same reasons. Jane studies the stars because she wants to understand them too. It only makes sense that she is as enamored—no, that's not quite right— is as plagued by him— that's a little closer to the truth— as she is. He is her own personal black hole—a little mysterious, a little terrifying, and altogether inescapable— pulling her in, in, in, no particle of Jane Foster able to avoid being sucked down, until she's no longer sure which way is up and she no longer gives a damn.
Her alarm goes off and when she turns over, he is staring at her. It is such a change from the normal that she freezes.
"Did you sleep well?" he asks, a gleam in his eyes and a grin threatening to spread across his lips because he knows she didn't. Loki can sleep one hour, heavy and deep, and seem to be no worse for the wear but Jane is an actual human-being (sometimes she swears that just because he believes he is above everyone else, it is so) and so their post Board Meeting "meetings" never leave her well rested, though they do leave her very well relaxed, among other things.
"Yes," she says, just because she can.
She gets up and goes about getting dressed, buttoning up her crumpled shirt, sliding on her crumpled skirt, and manages to notice that somehow all of his clothes are neatly folded on the hotel's computer chair.
She looks down at herself and then catches his eyes, sparkling with mirth, watching her appreciatively from the bed and just shakes her head to herself, not allowing him to distract her with his typical... well, Lokiness. She remembers the night before— and will probably be dreaming of it and other variations on it for many nights until their next inevitable confrontation— and she had undressed him herself, so the clothes had not been that way the night before, she knows it.
Once upon a time it might have made her nervous, him watching her as intently as he is but now she thinks 'let him enjoy the show'. She always makes him pay for it later.
Her shoes are the last on. Her purse is shouldered. Her phone is in her pocket. She looks to the bedside table and—
"Where are my keys Loki?"
He makes a show of glancing at the bedside table as if he hadn't just watched her do the same. The confusion in his eyes clashes with the small smile tugging up the corners of his lips. "I couldn't begin to tell you Jane. I could have sworn they were right there."
She checks her phone for the time.
"Loki, I have a plane to catch," she reminds him, trying her hardest to control her anger. She can already feel a headache beginning to bloom behind her eyes. The Loki-headache.
"You do."
"And—?" she urges.
"I hope you're not suggesting that I somehow am in possession of them."
Jane wants to pull her hair out. No—his hair out.
Asking him is a bottomless pit of unhelpful. She knows this. She shouldn't have even tried. So instead she starts looking. Under the bed—too easy. In the drawer, under the pillows, in the tub, in his neatly folded clothes, hell she even gives a cursory glance in the toilet. She searches every place she can think of in his extravagant hotel suite but to no avail.
She is just about to resort to forcing it out of him. Which is probably what he wants— it's what he always wants—but she knows that if all of that begins then she definitely wont be making it to her flight anytime soon. And then she remembers— ah ha!
Jane let's her purse strap slide down her arm and rummages through it. Sure enough there is a neat slice in the lining which wasn't there before. She deftly sticks her hand in and—she doesn't feel her keys but there is something...
Jane pulls— it —out of her purse and feels one last hard throb of her heart before it stops beating.
His eyes are hot and intense on her back.
"It was Frigga's," is what he says. Not the answer to the most obvious question of which is: why is there a ring hidden in my purse Loki, why is your mother's ring in my hand, why—
"Is it really so surprising Jane?" he asks her instead.
She spins to face him and she wants to say: yes! Of course it's surprising! —It's crazy! She wants to tell him that now, more than ever before, he really does need to go to a therapist! She wants to say that what they have is— well she's never really formed a definition for what they have that fits, that encompasses all the intricacies, —the past, —the hate, —the magnetism, —the lo... and frankly fucked up bits, that make up why they always end up back together, lying in bed and lying to each other and—
"Not... very surprising," she answers because that is the actual truth isn't it? "But we don't even really talk about anything important. And despite all that we do, you don't really know me. I mean, have you ever asked me for one story about my childhood? And no one, not even in a thousand lifetimes, could ever really know you."
He looks away for a moment, seeming to ponder this and then he replies, evenly, "I know you Jane." And her heart has finally picked up it's staccato rhythm because though she was expecting more, apparently that's all he needed to say to convince her. Well, there goes everything she'd ever known about the scientific method, Jane thinks. Who needs to make observations or conduct experiments? Who needs to analyze data and draw conclusions, when Loki Odinson can pull four words out of thin air and make them reality?
"And you know me better than anyone... living, that is."
Jane looks down at the ring. It's about what she would expect of one that was once owned by Frigga Odinson. It's classic gold, with designs that look like ruins, the stone is a diamond and is large and opulent, and probably worth more than Jane could even fathom, though she doesn't really know jewelry so that's not such a big surprise.
"If you'd like something different—"
But Loki doesn't get to finish because when Jane looks up at him quizzically, because of course she's not in the least bit concerned about the ring, at least not in that way, he is looking off in a haughty and yet disinterested manner, and she realizes suddenly that he is actually—gods-honest—nervous. It throws her off. And though her brain is screaming at her that Loki and nervous don't go together and that Loki can seem however he wants, she knows it's true because she does know him— at least a little, and that's a hell of a lot.
"No," she says, cutting him off, "This one's fine."
And Jane Foster— soon-to-be Odinson or Foster-Odinson (the universe really wanted her to end up an Odinson, poor Odin), slides the ring on her finger.
***
And Loki still wont tell her where he hid her keys until she makes him.
Jane does not catch her flight.
She also does not mind it... much.