“What the hell is a Jotunheim?” Tony asked, reading off of your neck as you tinkered away in his lab.
“Wish I knew, Stark,” you said, having grown accustomed to people wondering about the odd place that was so elegantly written on your skin.
Most people are born with destinations like Denver, San Diego or New York City marked upon their skin to indicate where their soulmate was from. Some people you’ve met even got international places like London, Tokyo or Dubai. Not you, though. Instead, you got the weird, mythical place called Jotunheim.
Ever since you could remember, people asked about it, causing you to do some research on it once you were old enough to truly grasp the concept. Months and months of searching for the foreign location and all you had found was some mythological realm of ice and snow. After finding absolutely nothing that dealt with your actual planet, you decided that maybe your soulmate wasn’t coming after all.
That was years ago. Now, you had recently landed yourself a job at Stark Industries as his lab assistant. Needless to say, it took less than a week for him to come in all banged up in his Iron Man suit. You were currently repairing his helmet while Tony stood a few feet away as he worked on repairing the actual suit. The billionaire asked you, “You haven’t looked into it?”
“Oh, I have. But after finding nothing but a bunch of make believe worlds, I decided to just forget about it,” you honestly replied. Typically you wore your hair down to cover it up and allow the rest of the world to forget about it as well, but doing lab work with long hair didn’t exactly work out for you. This resulted in you tossing your hair up into a bun, leaving your neck exposed to whoever was in the lab with you. Thankfully that only consisted of Tony, and occasionally Pepper, both of which you knew you could trust.
“Helmet's fixed,” you announced, putting it on yourself for good measure.
Tony turned to you and laughed at the sight. He joked, “Wow, what would I do without you?”
---
It has been years since you were first hired, and life has changed drastically since then. Fighting off a villain with a robot army that highly resembled Tony’s tech, hearing news that a super soldier from the 40s lived after being frozen for decades, and protecting yourself during an alien invasion aren’t exactly things you thought you’d experience in your lifetime.
Yet the universe always had a way of surprising you.
Today, for instance, Thor had randomly dropped in with his brother Loki, saying that the both of them would need to stay at Avengers Tower for awhile as part of Loki’s punishment for the chaos he had caused on Earth.
“So the King of Asgard, your father, banished brother dearest and sent him to Earth?” Tony asked, trying to get the facts straight as the Avengers and their unexpected guests ate at dinner. After receiving a nod of confirmation from Thor, Tony asked, “Why?”
Thor swallowed a mouthful of his food before answering, “He has hopes that it’ll change Loki’s behavior, just as it changed mine when I was sent here years ago.”
“Okay, but why Earth? Why send him back to the place of the crime?” Clint voiced, the man in question clearly growing uncomfortable as he sensed where the conversation was going.
“Show them, brother,” Thor said in an encouraging tone, nudging the god that sat beside him.
Loki exhaled, for he had dreaded this moment since he arrived. Knowing that everyone would soon find out, he decided there was no point in delaying the inevitable and proceeded with his brother’s wish. Loki placed his utensils down on the table and turned around in his seat before moving all of his hair to one shoulder. It left his neck exposed over the dark green tunic like top he wore, and the entire table was able to read the single word printed on his pale skin: Midgard.
“Midgard?” Steve asked, knowing it sounded familiar, but couldn’t remember why.
“Earth. It means Earth,” Bruce quickly responded, making eye contact with you as he did so.
Dr. Banner practically lived in Tony’s lab after The Battle of New York - or The Incident as the tabloids liked to call it - so it was only natural that he knew about the strange birth place on your neck. He even helped you try to learn more about it after Thor took Loki and the Tesseract back to Asgard, but after finding zero cases of love across the realms, you deemed it as a lost cause once again.
Now, though, all you wanted was to excuse yourself from the table and pick up where you left off in your research. The mischievous god sitting across from you, someone you know to be born in Asgard, had suddenly given you hope that perhaps your soulmate was out there after all.
You were brought out of your thoughts as Thor began speaking again, “Father doesn’t know of it, but mother discovered it and persuaded the Allfather to send Loki here, in hopes he may find his soulmate, as you call it.”
“It’s not common for anyone outside of Midgard to have a birth place across their neck,” Loki stated as he turned back around to face everyone, “When mother found it and discovered its true meaning, she was all too eager to find a reason to cast me here.”
“Well, good luck finding the poor soul with Asgard written on the back of their neck,” Tony said after taking a sip of his drink.
Loki scoffed and muttered, “Right.. Asgard.”
You noted the odd reaction, but remained silent as you knew he had family issues and you thought it best not to touch on that subject.
One by one, each seated member excused themself from the table to carry on with their day. You were one of the first, as you were eager to rush to the lab and begin on your old research. Upon arriving, you threw your hair up into it’s usually mess of a bun and got to work.
Nearly half an hour later, you let out a deep sigh as you took a break from reading over your past notes. Nothing you had found then proved beneficial to your situation and it still didn’t prove to be beneficial even after your discovery at dinner. You decided you needed a break, but weren’t exactly granted that as the elevator dinged and you were met with the sight of the two Asgardians.
“Hello boys,” you greeted, covering up any evidence of what you were previously working on. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“My brother requires some assistance,” Thor replied, nudging Loki closer in a slightly aggressive manner.
Loki rolled his eyes and said, “Yes, thank you Thor.”
You held back a laugh as Thor scanned the room and asked, “Where is Stark and Banner?”
“They went to give their opinion on some new technology SHIELD is developing, but I’m sure I can manage to assist your brother on my own,” you politely informed him.
Thor seemed satisfied with your answer and said, “Excellent! I told Captain Rogers I would spar lightly with him, so I should be off. Behave yourself, brother.”
With another eye roll from Loki, Thor left the room, leaving you completely alone with the God of Mischief. You carefully eyed him up and down, taking in the few chips in his armor he now wore as opposed to the tunic at dinner, before asking, “What do you need?”
“My armor was slightly damaged upon arriving here. It’s nothing of dire need, Thor simply just wished for me to interact with others,” Loki commented, not a drop of enthusiasm dripping from his tone.
“Surely you could’ve handled it own your own?” you inquired, knowing the trickster god had some sort of knack for magic.
Loki shook his head before informing you, “Before, yes. But the Allfather put a few restrictions on my powers while I am to live here, one of them being no personal uses of magic.”
“Well that’s highly unfortunate,” you stated, Loki only nodding in agreement. You turned to retrieve a few supplies you would need to repair his armor as you instructed, “Take the chest piece off.”
Loki did as you said, leaving him in his tunic once again, as he watched your retreating figure walking towards another section of the lab. Out of curiosity, he attempted to read the one hint every Midgardian is given about their soulmate, the task proving slightly harder as you continued to walk away. His breath nearly hitched when he was finally able to make out the word along the back of your neck: Jotunheim.
The god couldn’t help but stare as his mind raced. There you were, his so-called soulmate, and you didn’t have the slightest clue. He almost pitied you, for he couldn’t imagine how confusing your life must have been, nor could he imagine how disappointed you’ll likely be when realizing you’ve been waiting your entire life for someone like him.
You turned around and began walking back towards him with different materials in hand as Loki thought about how to tell you, if he should tell you, that you were destined for each other.
As you approached him, you placed the materials you had gathered on a nearby table. Loki handed you his chest piece and cautiously asked, “Jotunheim?”
You froze, then quickly snatched the armor out of his grasp. By instinct, your free hand went to rub at your neck as you silently cursed at yourself for being so careless. The lab was such a comfortable place for you, and hardly anyone really visited, so you didn’t think twice when you turned your back to the god in front of you.
“Dammit,” you finally whispered. You let out a heavy breath before admitting, “Yeah.. Jotunheim, the realm of ice and snow and frost giants.”
Loki took in the mockery laced within your words as he carefully dared to dig deeper, “You’ve looked into it then?”
“Of course I’ve looked into it,” you told him, placing the metal chest piece on the table before rhetorically asking, “How could I not? Especially after you and Thor came down and proved Asgard existed, who’s to say Jotunheim didn’t?”
“I can assure you, it exists,” Loki informed you, an underlying tone to his voice that you couldn’t quite distinguish.
You shook your head as you sat down on a lab stool, a bitter chuckle escaping your lips as you spoke, “You know sometimes exactly what you wanna hear, isn’t exactly what you wanna hear.”
Loki took a seat as well in the lab stool across from you as he carefully asked, “You know of the frost giants then?”
You nodded and replied, “Yeah, which only brings about another unanswered question: how am I supposed to have a soul mate that I can’t even touch without worrying about getting frostbite?”
Loki nearly grimaced, but kept his outward composure. The next few moments were held in silence as he thought on how to approach the subject with you, before deciding to just let it out. He started, “Shortly after I was born, Thor’s father Odin had just ended a war and agreed upon a treaty with a.. certain realm.”
“I don’t see how this relates–”
“Just, let me finish,” Loki said, he continued after you had fallen into silence, “Odin had just ended a war and agreed upon a treaty with the realm from which I am actually from.”
“I thought you were from Asgard?” You interrupted, curious despite the fact you had no idea where he was going with this. After you had recieved a short look from Loki, you apologized, “Sorry, continue.”
“Odin had stumbled upon a temple in the aftermath of the war, in which he found me as an abandoned baby that was left to die, no more than a few months old,” Loki told you, standing from his seat and taking a few steps towards you.
You grew slightly wary as he approached you, but you pressed on, “Where are you from then?”
Instead of giving you a verbal answer, Loki only stuck his hand out towards you. You looked at his hand before glancing up at him in confusion. Loki nearly cracked a smile at the amount of perplexity that swam around in your pupils. The eye contact between the two of you was held until you glanced back down at his hand. Your curiosity getting the better of you, you felt the need to do as he wished, and therefore reached out to touch his hand.
As soon as you had made contact with his skin, you retracted your hand and stood from your seat in complete shock. His hand was ice cold.
“I-I don’t understand,” you stuttered out, daring to lock eyes with him again, only now realizing the jump from your seat resulted in you being no more than a foot away from the raven haired god. Loki raised his eyebrows down at you, giving you a knowing look that was enough of a push for you to voice your suspicions, “Jotunheim?”
“Afraid so,” he confirmed.
You couldn’t quite process the information you had just received. All those years of seemingly meaningless research, just to have your soulmate appear in the building you happen to work at and live in.
Your soulmate, Loki, the God of Mischief and Lies.
Loki could sense your mind racing as he elaborated, “Odin took me to Asgard and raised me as one of his own. It wasn’t until a few years ago that even I was informed on my true parentage.”
“Oh, wow,” you breathed out, completely at a loss for words.
“I know it’s a lot to take in–”
“Yeah, no kidding,” you cut him off, still trying to wrap your head around the fact that you were meant to spend the rest of your life with an actual god.
You glanced up at him and really took in his features for the first time since meeting him. He clearly wasn’t a sight for sore eyes, and he had yet to give you a reason to dislike him since arriving at the tower. Perhaps a lifetime with him wouldn’t be so bad after all.
You couldn’t help but laugh at your own thoughts and informed Loki, “You know, the others won’t take this very well.”
“No, I imagine not, nor will the Allfather,” he said, nearly tempted to laugh himself.
Your laughter continued as thoughts reeled into your brain at a mile a minute. Loki only smirked at you as he allowed you to get your mind straight before engaging an any serious conversation with you as to what your future may hold. You told him, “Just because we’re soul mates and all doesn’t mean I automatically trust you. You still have to earn that, you know.”
“I know,” he honestly responded, “I’d think you a fool if you had thought otherwise.”
“Yeah, well lucky for you, I am no fool,” you said to him.
“Oh yes,” Loki said, believing that the fates may have actually chosen well as you smiled up at him, “Lucky me.”