The Ocean is She
"This is Y/N. She is here to complete her college degree. She will be living here for now."
That was the first time Loki saw you.
You stood out like a lost firefly in that lounge among the crowd of broken people on Hero Syndrome. While everyone was giving him the stink eye, you passed a flat smile towards his direction before being pulled by the others into questioning.
What is someone like her doing here? Loki was meant to have it as a passing thought.
But that passing thought slowly percolated into his life in the form he never really thought he would meet again- a friend.
"It's okay, I'll have another one." You smiled at him when he took your cup of green tea your first morning there.
And Loki would never admit to his ego that the first act of unadulterated kindness had made his heart sink a little into an unnamed ocean before covering it up with 'this woman must have an ulterior motive'.
Ulterior motive.
Loki was 'on guard' since then, trying to figure you out.
You knocking on his door to join the others for a movie night, making him those heavenly molten chocolate lava cakes on his birthday, buying rings and bracelets that reminded you of him, falling asleep in his presence in the library, asking him to help you study for your exams, sending him pictures of cats on the campus, sharing latest memes with him to keep him up to date; everything you did was seen as motive of some bigger game for the God who had once fallen and twice died.
But seemingly, he killed a part himself the day he told you about your origins and you did not blame him for a single second. And nothing was the same for God afterwards.
.
He started paying more attention to you. His initial reason was that unlike the clowns infesting the building always high on either adrenaline or coffee, you were a specimen that he could study.
Right.
He was studying how you had a habit of cracking your neck every hour no matter what you did. How you would interact with inanimate objects with emotions, like looking at your assignment on the laptop and asking it with tears in your eyes, 'Why won't you conclude yourself in a way that's not gibberish?!'; or how you would gently pat the car and say thank you whenever you arrived at your destination. How your eyes would light up every time you saw a little spawn of the dogs or cats and your voice would go higher to greet them.
He was amused by how your calm persona would do a one-eighty when your menstruation cycle was on the verge of bleeding days. That was the exciting part of his day during the cycle- sitting close to your sweatshirt and shorts-clad figure sprawled on the sofa in front of the TV, watching you threaten anyone who passed the hall.
That's all you were to him- an amusing human who helped him pass his days on earth.
At least that is what he had convinced himself of, never realising how his day would start by coming out of his room looking for you. How he would take a tour of the entire Avengers facility to find you and when he did, he would play himself off non-chalantly. He did not seem to let himself know how he would automatically come to stand by your side whenever he was to leave the facility and go out into the world.
.
The narrator's heart often wonders how he could not see himself getting attached to you. Like that one time, he was the only one up beside Scott and Tony when you were out partying with your college friends; how he pretended to be drowned in a philosophy book while Tony worked on his robot babies and Scott watched the Kaichowa Maid Sama anime; how he intently listened to the phone call Scott got and he immediately recognised your voice even though he sat a bit far; how he heard your slurred words say 'Scottieeeeeee~ please take me home. I am drunkkkk and I kindaaaa don't want to stay heeeere'.
"Of course, honey," Scott replied, "but it'll take me an hour to reach-"
"Then send someone who'll be faaaaaasterrrrr~" you whined on the line.
Scott looked in the direction of the elevator, wondering whether to call Stark from his workshop when Loki slammed his book shut.
"Turn on the sink tap," Loki commanded a confused Scott as he vanished with green and golden hues only to land on the campus grounds in a poorly lit park where you were sitting in the cold grass, your phone still to your ears.
"Scott," you whispered into the phone, "you don't understand. I am drunk and I am feeling these waves of horny-ness but I do not want to do it with anyone here!!!"
"Let's go home," Loki announced as he stood in front of you, waiting for you to take his hand. And boy did he feel his heart do another dip in that unknown ocean when you smiled at the God with a shade of relief and hugged him the moment you were up on your legs. "Thank you for coming for me."
The wave of feeling his heart about to take another dunk into that ocean, he immediately teleported back with you, making sure both you and he landed right next to the sink to help you puke your wobbling guts right into the sink.
.
As time passed, Loki grew more used to your presence. From sitting together at breakfast and sharing one cup of tea to having reading sessions in his room on his bed. You were one of the rare ones who were allowed to enter his sacred space. No one knew but he thoroughly enjoyed the waves of emotions that would run over your features at different times when you became too engrossed in a manga. Sometimes it was your uncontrollable laughter where you read the same pages again and again; other times it was the repeated punches you threw either on your thigh or on the bed when you found yourself being impressed by something. But then there were the times when you would be in tears when one of your favourite characters died, and you could not stop yourself and Loki would look at you, with the intensity of the moon, wanting to stop time and do something...anything to stop you from crying.
.
He did get tested for his belief of looking at you as a specimen. That one time when you and Hope fell into the other end of the universe. This God was ready to draw blood if it meant bringing you back in one piece. Once you were home safe, he could not help but overthink as to why did what he did for you.
You were a mere human.
You were not supposed to mean much to him.
You were just his amusement.
Right?
Just his amusement.
The very amusement who stood in a barren alien land in front of the most delirious alien army, making Loki calculate in one point two seven seconds how he was about to lose his sleep for the next three months if he was to keep you alive while trying to find a way back home.
Home.
Earth isn't my home, he would mentally slap himself back to reality whenever he caught himself thinking of the Avengers facility and the other clowns.
But then he would turn to look at you.
Earth was your home. And going home would make you happy.
He wanted to see you happy.
Another mental slap to his head.
You are losing your edge, Loki, he would bully himself to keep himself cold and calculating throughout that demanding journey of looking after you and the monster you had adopted on your way. And of course, Javi.
Any other day, any other life, any other universe, Loki would have punched the numbers as to how useful you were to him dead or alive and then be his way once you fulfilled your purpose of helping him survive. But here, he was doing the basing math of making sure to get you out of all the darkness of the universe unharmed.
But life, as we know, has other plans. The music genre too changes when the playlist is on random and the heart is set on adventure for one and survival for another.
Aellae came as the genre of dread and darkness.
Being well aware of her obsession and abuse of power, Loki knew she would see you as a threat; for she knew the God of Mischief never travelled in a pack unless that pack had Loki's prey or something Loki wanted to keep close.
So his first thought was to call in the seven Gods while 'ditching' you in the middle of a desert.
Little did he know that you too were thinking from your heart in that space and time.
As much as he hated to see you come for his rescue, he would never give up on the time when you two were stuck in that small space in Aellae's dungeons, trying to find a way through the room, bodies covered in sweat, your back and his front finding the angles to become one as you both pushed your way out. How synchronous were your bodies working together, how you readily trusted him with touching you in a way he would never want to witness you being touched by anyone. Why was he thinking that way?
All those questions, all those confusions, all those hours of his inside voices bullying him to see you as nothing but a human ticket to a life of peace back on earth- all of them burst with the brittleness of the snow that fell on you as your lifeless figure lay in his arms.
This time when his heart sank into the ocean, it did not want to come up. The God could not sense anything but fear crawling on his skin when his hand touched your face and it did not feel warm anymore. Your usually cheerful eyes did not open when he called out your name again and again. The fear he had felt when he first found himself dying when he wanted to live, was nothing in that moment when he was faced with the reality that you might be dead.
And just as that little speck of possibility crossed his mind, the hell inside him broke loose, causing a wave originating from his magic destroying everything within a radius of two kilometers.
Ever since he was born, Loki, son of Laufey, son of Odin, Prince of Asgard, the Silvertongue, took to his knees for the first time for a life that was not his. He begged for your survival at the cost of his own, no longer denying himself from the truth. His heart did not come up from that ocean that carried your name on every atom in its waves.
You were his reason to laugh.
You were his reason to be curious in this life.
You were his reason to look forward to getting up the next morning.
You had been the reason he had not gone for Plan B of running away from Earth and ending in the bosom of some dying star that would end his misery.
You were the reason he was willing to live a little longer.
You were the reason he was ready to love again.
.
Even when back from the horrors of the universe, Loki did not stop looking after you. He let Peter in on the secret of your near-death experience because he trusted that boy and he knew how much he cared for you.
Both he and the boy would discreetly look for signs of you experiencing any discomfort. Taking shifts in the night, they would help you get out of your nightmares- which were the after-effects of healing you back to life right from the arms of death herself.
Loki grew more protective of you but would distance himself whenever found himself feeling whatever little ounces of happiness his heart felt in your company.
He would walk the extra mile of punching a man in his face for disrespecting you but he found himself pretending to laugh at your heartfelt confession because his heart could not bear the truth of knowing that you loved him back.
You loved him.
You, the perfection that walked amongst mere peasants. Loved. Him.
And he laughed. He laughed hard enough to hide his tears of happiness that hurt him to the point of no return.
He could not let you do that. You were too precious. Too precious to be put in danger again.
He was the danger. He brought death to you. He would rather die than do that to you ever again.
And so the God decided to walk away, let out his screams in the middle of the desert to kill his heart for finding love in this lifetime and then hating the fact that it loved him back.
The God was no better than a human then.
He was in love. But he could hold on to that love for the fear of breaking it with his ill fate.