Chapter 5
Today’s the day, and I have a headache. Not a residual one from my intoxication a few nights ago, no—this one’s one hundred percent anxiety-induced. My bowl of lucky charms isn’t much in the way of comfort food, but I guess if I had pizza or something in the fridge, I’d probably be setting myself up for a pretty heavy, miserable night running around downtown. Assuming it even got to that, of course. My assignment involves infiltrating some high-end gala event, after which I’m supposed to corner some poor fool named Robert Heinecher, get some passcodes out of him—which are actually coordinates in tandem—and then gently ask him to forget that any of it happened.
S.H.I.E.L.D knows all about this operation of course, and they’ve already been in contact with Mr. Heinecher, who knows not to be afraid when a devilishly handsome blonde chick shows up and presses a knife to his neck. It’s all planned out to the smallest details, even the facilities are prepared with false-information to be stolen in the next phase, but… hell, I can’t shake the feeling that something has to go wrong. It always does. Even in the movies.
“Hey!” a voice startles me in the middle of scrolling through my Facebook feed, and I bite down sharply on my current mouthful of cereal as Rita saunters around the kitchen aisle, and goes straight for the fridge. “What’s up?”
“Nothing,” I shrug. “Breakfast, the usual.”
“Okay,” she suddenly turns as she closes the door, with nothing in her hands, and plops them down on the counter in front of me. “So I’ve actually gotta talk to you about something.”
Something twists in my gut as I stare at her pointedly, slowly bearing down again on the cereal in my mouth. “And what’s that?” I say, my voice muffled a bit.
“Okay so I was talking to that guy, Loki, the one that came by the house? I kinda started talking to him ‘cause I figured, since you said you were just friend, and he seemed like he was pretty into me, that it was fine, right?” my throat constricts further and further. “So I asked for his phone number and then texted him, and we’ve kinda been talking, but I can’t really tell if he’s into me. And since you guys are friends, I just wanted to ask you,” she pauses, pulling out her phone to show me some texts. “Is this normal for his text-talk?”
Fri, 10:20 PM/Loki: Yes, I’ve just finished reading the chapter.
Sat, 9:07 AM/Rita: Sorry yeah, I fell asleep last night. I’ve been meaning to get around to actually reading a book like that too, cuz I’ve seen so many movies about it, but I feel like people just don’t read books anymore and I don’t really want to contribute to that lol you know?
Sat, 9:40 AM/Loki: I understand.
I stifle the temptation to smirk at his response—and her decidedly impressive effort to keep the conversation going.
Sat, 10:32 AM/Rita: Hey so you’ll be here around 8, right?
Sat, 10:47 AM/Loki: Yes.
I stare at the texts for a brief moment, unsure of whether to feel nauseated or amused by Loki’s snipped responses. But from the idea of her ‘seeing’ him tonight, my body decides to go with being slightly nauseated.
Ugh. It had to be tonight, though. Of all nights. While I’m on a super secret mission that requires my utmost concentration.
“So I can’t tell if he’s into me or not,” she says, “He responds to all my texts pretty quick, so that’s good, but I’m just like… confused, you know? He doesn’t seem super enthusiastic to talk to me. What do you think?”
I raise a brow at her. “Are you asking me if I think he likes you?”
She nods. “I mean, guys are supposedly to be shitty at texting right? So it doesn’t mean anything?”
I furrow a brow at her, rubbing my fingers together as I shift uncomfortably—trying to think of something to say. “Apart from the fact that he’s hundreds of years old,” I remark pointedly, half expecting that to deter her somewhat, so the sudden, enthusiastic eye-widening takes me back a bit.
“Holy shit, I didn’t even think of hat,” she says. “I’m going on a date with a god, what the fuck…”
I’d wager to guess that the look on my face is somewhat akin to how it might be if I saw a cockroach in my cereal, though she doesn’t seem to notice as her eyes drop back down at her phone. “Shit, shouldn’t bang on the first date though…” she mumbles.
“‘mkay, well, I gotta go,” I murmur decidedly as I stand, dumping the rest of my cereal into the sink as my entire chest constricts maddeningly. “Have fun,” I add on my way back to my room, texting Pepper on my way there.
Sat,10:57 AM/Cerys: “Hey so, you said Loki didn’t mention anything about Rita the other night in the car, right? Well apparently they’re going on a date”
The door hadn’t slammed nearly as loudly as I thought it would, and I look back at it—glaring as I remember the conversation I’d literally had with myself just two nights ago. About how I would feel if some other woman set Michael’s teeth on edge this way, how I’d decided that I wouldn’t see Loki anymore, how I’d put as much distance between us as I possibly could—physically, and mentally. Because what would be the use of physically distancing myself if I didn’t do so mentally as well?
Sat, 11:06 AM/Pepper: “Yeah he didn’t”
Sat, 11:07 AM/Pepper: “But Cer… Let them go if they want to, you shouldn’t be thinking about them. You have a boyfriend and a life, and there’s something important going on in it tonight, so think about that instead”
I exhale lightly through my nostrils, nodding at my phone.
Sat, 11:09 AM/Cerys: “Yeah, you’re right”
Sat, 11:12 AM/Pepper: “Of course I’m right, quit acting like a lovesick teenager”
Sat, 11:12 AM/Pepper: “Seriously, get new roommates if it helps.”
I smirk, but my face blanches at the thought that follows.
Sat, 11:17 AM/Cerys: “lol, if he takes her home then I might have to”
Sat, 11:23 AM/Pepper: “Stop that. Go relax”
I press my lips together, and roll my eyes back slightly as I set the phone down. And to take my mind off things, on Pepper’s orders, I spend the next few hours hours binge-watching the Big Bang Theory, until it’s high time time for me to shower and high-tail it out the door.
With my hair tied up in an elegant, fluffy pony tail and simple blue dress trailing loosely around my knees, I throw on a black trench coat and make my way down to the street. From that point forward, it’s a matter of finding the meeting spot—which isn’t too difficult, it’s just a couple of blocks down. Opting to travel in style, Yuriko and Pyreus pick me up in an outwardly inconspicuous looking black SUV—slightly bigger for its model—lined with a number of unexpected luxuries on the inside.
“Hey,” I say, cringing a little as I slide into the seat beside a fourth member of our troupe—Alessei.
Not the type of guy to understand the meaning of ‘back the fuck off’ the first time I told him, nor the second. Seems he happens to truly believe that his gorgeous head of hair and striking jawline is enough to sway any dainty lady—dainty by his standards, anyway. I’d make his ears bleed if he came near me, and he knows it. If that’s dainty, then I’m all fucking for it.
“Well hello there,” he answers suggestively as he scans my legs, and I demonstrably shift into the opposite seat. “Ohhhh,” he croons disappointedly. “Come on, really?”
“Really,” I respond dryly, accepting a half-glass of wine from Yuriko as she smirks. “Everything good to go?”
“Good to go with us,” Yuriko states as the car pulls away from the curb. “You?”
“Yup,” I say, trailing the hem of my dress slightly to reveal a blade strapped to my thigh underneath—two, to be exact. One on each leg.
“Those look a little thin,” she points out, taking the object beside her wrapped in a brown cloth and holding it up to me. “You sure you don’t want one of these?”
I shake my head. “Better to fight what you’re trained with, right?”
“Sure,” she nods, setting it back down. “Those all you’ve been using?”
“From the start,” I murmur against the glass, and take a delicate sip of it as Alessei leans forward in his seat.
“So we’ve got to be in and out within an hour, with those codes,” he says, taking on a more professional tone.
“What’re they for, again?” I ask.
“That’s a need-to-know basis, and we don’t need to know,” Pyreus responds. I narrow my eyes at him a bit.
Okay, I murmur inwardly as I look out the window. With all the traffic of a Saturday night, it takes us quite some time to get across town. Though someone somewhere evidently accounted for that, and we end up arriving at the building just before nine o’clock.
“Alright, you all know what the plan is,” Yuriko murmurs quietly as we saunter up to the building behind her, filing in with the small crowd.
I look back and forth at the plethora of finely dressed people trying to squeeze their way in through the doors in a civil manner, and the air around me gets hot very quickly. Thankfully it opens up once I’m inside the gala, where the rooftops stretch way high up above our heads, and the hall itself is lined with tall pillars.
As planned, it takes the better part of the hour for me to finally catch sight of Heinecher in the crowd. Though I continue sauntering about the vast space, mingling with the occasional drunk patron and feigning somewhat of an intent search for him, the clock nears ten when I suddenly see him heading toward the elevators. Which can only lead to the second floor—for those who are too lazy to take the stairs off to the side.
“Elevators,” I turn and whisper over my shoulder, invoking the voice so as to only reach the others.
I stalk toward him through the crowd, feeling a hint of panic rising with every step as I watch the doors close behind him—damn it, I was supposed to be in the elevator with him. I turn slightly to the right and head up the stairs instead, catching him in the hallway, surrounded by a number of suited men that I don’t recognize. They also don’t seem to recognize me, judging by the way they turn and stalk toward me.
“Shit,” I mumble under my breath as I approach them, breathing a sigh of relief when I pass the elevator doors as they open, and my companions stride out into the hallway with me.
The suited men immediately react to our menacing approach, and within seconds, Heinecher backs away slowly from the scene as a fight breaks out. Fists fly, along with knives and heels as I disarm two of the men, probably rupturing a few spleens accidentally in the process. Well—not entirely accidentally. These men weren’t supposed to be here, and I’m supposed to put on a convincing performance for the others.
I manage to break through the action finally, grabbing Heinecher by the throat and pushing him against the wall. “Calm down,” I pretend to invoke the voice once more—quietly, so the guards don’t hear—sheathing my knives and pulling out a small recording device. “You cooperate, and no one has to get hurt—I’m going to need the access codes to S.H.I.E.L.D facilities eight, twelve, and fifteen. You know which ones I’m talking about—and afterward, I’m going to need you to forget this conversation ever happened.”
“Y-yeah, yeah okay… Just, just please don’t hurt me…” A glimmer of understanding flickers in his brown eyes, amidst his otherwise terrified expression. And rightfully so—planned or unplanned, it must be terrifying to watch my colleagues demolishing his security team.
“S—six, nine… t-twelve…” he mutters the numbers one by one as I hold my thumb against a recording device beside his mouth.
My eyes snap back to the scene behind me as one of Yuriko’s knives fly to the ground. Damn, these guys are really going all out on this sting operation…
Yuriko cries out in a rage as she kicks the man backward, and I barely have time to react before another hand appears on my shoulder—tugging me away from Heinecher with a furious force. Enough to send me toppling back toward the others. I stumble onto the ground from the sheer momentum, due in no small part to the secondary fumbling of limbs and bodies that ensues when I collide with Yuriko and her opponent, and I gasp sharply when I feel a slight sting on the back of my right wrist, under the heavy weight of one of the guards.
After pushing him off, I look down to see someone’s knife peppered with slivers of my blood, and I furrow a brow at the way they intermingle with little green splotches all over the blade.
“LET’S GO!” Pyreus cries, throwing the agents off of us. He and Allessei practically drag us backward onto my feet, and we run from the footsteps that break off after us shortly after.
Once again, the intricate planning of the mission proves successful as we descend into an alley through a nearby window, and bolt back to the SUV.
“Aw, shit,” I curse as I grab some napkins and start wiping the blood off my arm slowly—realizing at least, that it’s hardly the worst injury that I’d gotten out of all of us. Everyone else is cut up pretty badly as well, but at least there aren’t any bullet holes.
Yuriko reaches out and opens a small compartment underneath one of the seats, pulling out some gauze for each of us to wrap ourselves up with. “We got what we needed, yeah?” she asks as she hands one to me.
“Yeah,” I nod as I hold out the recording device, feeling beads of sweat lining my forehead as I wait for my body to cool down.
“Good,” she says, and nods as she turns to the others. “How the hell are they training them like that right now?”
I look between them absently as I feel a headache rise, and each subsequent breath feels hotter and hotter all the way home.
***
Loki sighed heavily as he received yet another text message from Rita—this time at five fifteen, mere hours before they were supposed to meet. Someone had warned him when he acquired this device, that it would open him up to a myriad of unwelcome conversations at all hours of the day, if he wasn’t careful about who he handed his phone number off to.
Sat, 5:15 PM/Rita: Yeah, like, my mom told me that back in the day they’d go off to this little cabin that we had (and I own it now technically), and they’d go to this beach with a giant harbor that a lot of people didn’t really know about, and they’d get to see some of the ships and stuff docking during WWII
Sat, 5:16 PM/Rita: It was cray lol
Loki furrowed a brow as he reviewed his previous text to her.
Sat, 5:02 PM/Loki: Sounds very interesting.
An awful lot of inference to be taken from three simple words—and ample invitation, it seems, to progress onward with the conversation most ardently.
He rolled his eyes as he set the device down on the small metal table, replacing it with tea in his hand as he trailed back over to the book in his hands—a book on all American-fought wars, which he’d made the mistake of telling Rita about. He was hardly sure of whether or not he could tolerate an entire evening with the woman, and he only hoped that she would be more tolerable in real life—as she was at Cerys’ little get together in their home.
Surely this little outing would bother her. The fleeting image of her puckering expression was enough to draw a slight smile to Loki’s mouth, and he sipped his tea once more. Though he knew that it hardly mattered. Rita was a nice girl, as was his impression when he’d first met her, but there wasn’t much that could be done for the larger situation at hand—little did Cerys know that Loki and Thor had been given the opportunity to relocate permanently to the states, in honor of their services to national security. Or rather, their participation in the affairs of an organization that ensured said security. He need only accept the offer, tentative on their ability to travel back and forth to visit their people, and their continued ‘employment’ under S.H.I.E.LD.
Considering the state of affairs that he’d returned to, however, Loki was beginning to feel that there wasn’t much left here for him. His curiosity was sated, but his satisfaction with the overall situation was not. Not with the shock of witnessing Cerys galavanting with that moronic excuse of a man, who seemed inebriated each and every time he’d had the displeasure of seeing him—perhaps he was the cause of her newly found alcoholic tendencies?
He’d also noted the way she swayed under his arm at the festival, and the sharp contrast that it provided against her otherwise normal countenance when he’d visited the apartment to deliver the serum. By the end of the second night he’d found himself in that place, he regretted attending the celebratory occasion altogether—better to have stayed home and wondered what was happening in his absence, rather than go, and watch that other man draw her into his lap the way he did. Aggressively, at that—no gentility or appreciation in the gesture, none of the softness that a woman like Cerys deserved. If at all, in such cases, that kind of aggression could only be appropriately reserved for—
Loki shook his head briskly, interrupting the ensuing thought as he pressed his attention to the black and white words printed on the pages before him.
“…and the attack on Pearl Harbor was widely regarded as the instigation of the US’s involvement in the second world war…” they read.
The cafe where Loki had stopped wasn’t far from Cerys’ apartment, so when the hour finally arrived for him to be on his way, it only took minutes for him to reach it. He’d worn the same, long coat that he did to the party, and all other occasions before that—the weather truly called for it.
Rita, on the other hand, was decidedly imprudent in her apparel. Granted, she looked rather lovely as she stepped out onto the steps in front of their building, but it was hardly the occasion for such a short skirt. Regardless of how it flaunted her straight legs. Loki stifled a smirk at the contrastingly warm coat she’d had thrown over her shoulders, and was slightly taken aback at the way her chin tucked under slightly as she approached him.
“Hey,” she murmured rather shyly—quite different from how she was a few nights back.
“Hello,” he smiled in turn. “Ready to go?”
“Yeah, let’s do it!” her cheeks flushed as she grinned sweetly, giving Loki some immediate sense of satisfaction by her obvious attraction to him.
The car took them to a nearby restaurant—the only one that Loki was familiar with in the area—and relinquished them to the sidewalk after several minutes of idle smalltalk. The fact that it was considerably more difficult to engage in a real, verbal conversation was rather shocking to Loki, in light of how enthusiastic and loquacious she’d been over text just a few hours earlier.
“So I was talking to Cerys a few days ago,” Rita says as Loki takes a bite of the slimy morsels that Cerys had introduced him to some years ago—Chinese, she called it—sweet and sour chicken. “And she mentioned that you guys all lived together, so was that when all the other Asgardians were in town?”
“That’s right,” Loki nodded, quirking a brow up as he looked at her.
Rita pulled her lip to the side regretfully. “Well I heard what happened to you guys, it was completely unfair,” she pointed to him with her fork. “You know there were actually some protests against it—I went to those.”
“Did you, now?”
“Mhm,” she perked up a bit.
“Well that’s very kind of you,” he went on. “There wasn’t much of that going around for us back then.”
“Yeah, I bet it really sucked,” she looked down and took a sip of her soup. “How’ve things been over in Norway?”
“It’s quite nice. Small country, but never a boring day. If you ask my brother, he’ll tell you the same.”
“Oh yeah, Thor’s your brother—did he live at the apartment too?”
“He did.”
“Cool,” she giggles as she looks back down. “How did Cerys end up living with you guys? She never mentioned it.”
“Her apartment was robbed,” Loki stated plainly without looking up at her. “Twice, and she needed a new home. Stark is our landlord, so he was more than happy to let her stay with us. You might say we were all on the same page, in that regard.”
“Oh,” she murmured. “I see, did you guys have to shift rooms for her?”
His eyes flickered up to her, and he hesitated only briefly as he considered the extensive rumors that could spread. “No—I occupied Cerys’ current room, and she took the one down the hall, which we’d reserved for guests,” he answered, and movement flickered in the woman’s brow as she noticed the subtle change in his voice.
“Oh, that must suck to come back and see someone else living in it,” she remarked.
Loki narrowed his eyes on her, realizing that Cerys had omitted the details of their prior relationship. “Not at all,” he went on, indulging the hint of a mischievous grin tugging on his lip. “She spent quite a bit of time in there as it was—we were very close, you see.”
In the corner of his eye, he noticed how the woman’s movements ceased slightly. “Oh, how… how do you mean?” she asked hesitantly, and he looked up, feigning a look of sincerity as the flicker of envy spurred his ego a bit.
“Well Cerys was a dear friend to all of us, we were all quite fond of each other,” he went on, careful not to divulge any information that might quench the gossip that’d surely ensue after tonight. “Naturally, we spent a lot of time in each others’ company. If my old living space were to go to anyone, I’m glad it went to her.”
Rita nodded reluctantly as Loki turned his attention back down to his food. Thus was the most entertaining conversation of the night concluded, and moments later, Loki was rather grateful for the idea of being back at home soon, in the peace of his own company.
By the end of the night, the car returned and brought them back to Rita’s apartment, where they noticed that another was parked before the building. Loki furrowed a brow at the large vehicle as they drove by, and opted to park some ways away instead, under the guise of going on a final stroll for the night.
At first, the woman acted hesitantly, as she’d also clearly seen the strange, large car parked in front of her home. But she seemed to relinquish some of her nerves when she slid an arm underneath Loki’s elbow—home was only just around the corner, but once they approached the building, their idle chatter ceased rather suddenly.
Loki in particular, came to an abrupt halt that stifled Rita in her tracks. He stared ahead for a moment, startled by the sight of Cerys sauntering toward the steps, swaying slightly as she gripped one of the railings tightly and leaned against it. She seemed to be struggling to stay upright, and her free hand was busy at work on her phone.
“Is… Is that Cerys?” Rita mumbled, seeming just as shocked by the state of her roommate as he was.
Her skin was pale, even taking on a bit of a blueish hue, and with each passing moment, she seemed less and less able to stand upright without swaying back and forth. It took her a moment to realize that he and Rita were approaching once again, and she flinched when they got close—revealing the layer of sweat that had built up along her knitted brows.
“Loki…R-Rita,” she breathed out.
Color drained from Loki’s stoic face as the putrid tang of activated poison coated his nostrils, and he swallowed thickly as he scanned Cerys’ length—looking for some source of the smell.
“Cerys,” he murmured darkly. “What happened?”
She parted her lips to speak, but instead, she exhaled sharply as his eyes landed on her bandaged wrist. Panic flooded Loki’s limbs as he watched her phone slip from her fingers as she slid to the ground, landing on the steps.
Rita gasped as Loki tore away from her side, his knees colliding with the steps as he fell to her side, pushing her back gently so he could see her face.
“Cerys,” he commanded sharply as he took her soft cheeks in his hands, brushing his thumbs over them. Pain gripped his chest as she struggled to keep her eyes open. “Stay awake now, do you hear me? Tell me what happened.”
“Loki…” she wheezed out as she clasped the sleeves of his coat weakly with her left hand, unfazed by his proximity as he pulled her upward, and cast her eyes down to her wrist. “My… hand…”
Loki took her wrist in his hand as she rested her head against his shoulder, and slowly unraveled the bandage, while Rita came up behind them. He held it up before him, careful not to grip it tightly, and narrowed his steady eyes on the green and purple veins visible under the lamplight, stretching outward from a small cut in her skin.
“Holy shit, is she okay!? Should I call 911!?” she asked in a trembling voice.
“No,” Cerys answered, while Loki slid his gaze down to her, at the unexpected burst of energy. “No—Pepper,” she said, starting to pant. With a sharp exhale, she tilted her head back against him once more. “Call Pepper.”
Loki’s eyes flickered toward her hand as she reached for her phone, without grabbing it. He took it into his hands instead, reading the texts on the brightly lit screen:
Sat, 10:47 PM/Pepper: I know which ones you’re talking about, I don’t know why they had them. They’re supposed to be prototypes, they weren’t supposed to use them in the field. I’m out the door, don’t fall asleep
He pressed his lips together as he read the last three words, navigating to the call options. After two rings, the woman answered the phone in a panic,
“Five minutes Cer, I’ll be there in five minutes!”
“She’s not awake anymore,” Loki answered sternly as he cast a glance down at Cerys. “Drive faster.”
“L—Loki!?”
Without responding, he hung up the phone as he turned to Rita briefly, “Open the door, right now,” he ordered as he slid an underneath Cerys’ neck, and one under her knees, scraping along the surface of the steps
“Wh—what?” Rita stumbled forward a bit as she tore her eyes from Cerys.
“The door!”
The woman flinched, but nodded briskly as she scrambled up the steps. Loki rose up behind her with Cerys in his arms. Frustration shortly began pounding in his temple as he watched the keys shake in her trembling hands, while all the while, Cerys’ face grew paler and paler under the lamplight.
When Rita finally got the door unlocked, she held it open for Loki to stride inside. Once up the elevators and in the apartment, Loki was relieved to see that everyone else seemed to have disappeared for the night. A sheer stroke of luck that Rita would be the only one to bear witness to the scene.
“What happened to her!?” she asked as she held Cerys’ bedroom door open.
“Poison,” he murmured darkly.
“Holy shit,” she breathed out. She’d seemingly calmed on the way up to the apartment, but her voice continued to shake as she stood there worriedly, watching as Loki laid Cerys gently down on the bed.
Next, he turned the light of the small lamp she had beside her bed, which had a bright bulb and a bluish cap. When Cerys cringed at the bright flash that ensued, he turned it upward toward the wall—casting only a dim light over her, and she relaxed slightly in response.
Moments later, Pepper had arrived. Without bothering to knock on the door, she strode straight into the apartment, and her footsteps pounded as she stalked down the hall and right past Rita in the doorway. Loki stepped back to the foot of the bed and watched motionlessly as Pepper examined the wound that Cerys had acquired.
“You have an antidote?” he asked sharply.
“Yeah,” she murmured as she continued fumbling around with a syringe. “Her body just needs to take it in time…”
“Why would it not?”
“Because this type of poison infects cells, she needs to be able to produce more while the antidote destroys the infected ones, and…” Pepper pauses, her voice trembling. “And I don’t know how much time she’s spent with it in her system, or how much, or anything…”
“That’s not a problem,” Loki said matter-of-factly, prompting her to look over her shoulder at him. “I can help.”
She furrowed a brow at him, but looked back down and continued working anyway. “What? How?”
“I can regenerate her body, if it’ll help the recovery.”
The woman sighed as she kneeled against the bed, laying her fingers against her forehead. “Okay—okay,” she muttered frustratedly and she slid off the bed, and gestured to him. “Do it then—and you,” she stalked toward Rita, startling the poor girl. “We need to talk.”
Loki eyed her over his shoulder as he sauntered slowly toward the side of Cerys’ bed, and lowered himself down beside her. He sunk into the mattress and sighed as he took her right hand, sliding it between both of his, and resting them on his knee. Pain tightened in his chest as he observed her labored breathing, and he brushed a thumb along her soft skin as he listened to Pepper lecturing Rita on the importance of discretion in this situation. She kept her explanations short and clipped as she urged Rita to give her word of silence—otherwise, there would be drastic consequences to her indiscretion.
“Alright,” Pepper exhaled lightly. “We’re going to stay with Cerys, but we’re closing the door so your other roommates don’t see anything. And you keep quiet about it, alright?”
Rita nodded as she stepped out of the way. “Yeah, okay,” she whispered as she took one last glance at Loki and Cerys on the bed.
After closing the door, Pepper dropped down on the desk chair across the way, rubbing her forehead tiredly. “Shit…”
Loki eyed her quietly for a moment before drifting his gaze back down to Cerys. With their hands being the only point of contact, he freely grasped hers tightly as his magic poured across their palms.
They stayed that way for some time, barely saying a word to each other as Pepper occasionally checked her phone. They’d soon begun to hear the other roommates coming home, obviously in a state of intoxication, and they all shuffled to their rooms after some brief conversing—which did not include Rita.
When trailed his eyes back down toward Cerys from the door, Loki suddenly noticed Pepper’s gaze narrowed on their intertwined hands. She looked up at him in turn, looking as though she wanted to say something, but decidedly withholding her thoughts.
“What?” he asked darkly—quietly.
Her eyes flickered up to him, and she shook her head at first—changing her mind a moment later. She set the phone down slowly on the night stand as she looked at him, “Do you still love her?”
A wave of anger suddenly coursed through him at the audacity of the question, but he kept still as he eyed her in the darkness. She waited, and Loki realized that the conversation would not move forward without an answer.
“No.” he said dryly as he slid his gaze back down to Cerys, loosening his grip around her hand.
Pepper’s light scoff drew his eyes back up to her, and he stared blankly as she shook her head. “See how easy it was for me to figure out that you loved her before?” she murmured quietly. “Even though you never told her?”
Loki stilled.
“And the fact that I heard about it before she did—it’s why she deserves better,” Pepper went on, pausing only for a moment. “Michael tells her he loves her every single day.”
Loki’s eyes hardened a bit as he glared at her. All the while, tension rippled in his jaw as he began considering the variety of reasons why this patronizing woman would risk tearing him away from his current task—did she want him to leave her best friend as she was?
The way she shook her head indicated that she’d had no fear of that happening. “That’s what she deserves. And that’s not an invitation for you to tell her,” Pepper added pointedly. “If you care about her at all, you won’t try to take away what she has now, with him.”
Loki slid his gaze away from the woman, and trailed his eyes over to the small window instead, just behind him.
“Of course not.” he murmured, and listened as Pepper shifted slightly in the chair.
Silence permeated the space for several hours more, until he began noticing Pepper dozing off in the chair. The rest of the apartment had grown dead silent, and it wouldn’t have surprised him to find that the little dim lamp on Cerys’ nightstand was the only source of light as well.
“You can go home,” he finally said, and his voice was small in the quiet darkness that had filled the space. “I’ll stay with her.”
Pepper blinked tiredly at Cerys before looking back up at him. “What?”
“I’ll stay with her. Make sure she’s alright. And I’ll be gone before she wakes.”
“So she’ll wake up alone?”
“Her friends will be here, and I’m sure she’ll call if she needs anything. Besides, we don’t know how long she’ll be asleep. Could be another day, but we at least know that she’ll be alright in the end.”
She stared for a few moments, as though considering his offer carefully, and finally nodded as she stared down at Cerys. “You’re right…”
Loki merely watched as Pepper trailed over to the side of her bed once more, bending over to feel Cerys’ temperature. Seemingly satisfied with her progression, she stepped away from the bed and bobbed her head, gathering her belongings. “Thanks.” He eyed her as she opened and closed the door carefully, making her way silently through the apartment until he heard the front door close faintly.
There was nothing to thank for. Sleep was a luxury to a god, but not a necessity, and Loki hardly grew tired in the hours he’d spent at Cerys’ side. The worst of it was watching her writhe occasionally in bouts of pain—as she’d begun doing once more, though this interval was greater than the last one. A sign of improvement.
Loki shifted as her face contorted painfully, her chest rising and falling heavily. Keeping his body upright, he reached out and brushed his fingers reassuringly over her damp cheek, hoping that it brought her some semblance of awareness that she was being cared for. Her face was damp, but trembling—in fact, her whole body had been trembling, and covered in bumps that broke out along her skin, as though she were cold. He looked over her for a moment, waiting for the episode to pass, and sighed with relief after a few minutes, when her face finally began to relax.
No less lovely than ever, he admitted to himself.
It’d take a fool not to see that she was a woman of high caliber, with her sweeping jaw, beautiful eyes and soft, full lips… But even without the benefit of her physical beauty, the pleasure it brought him to simply regard her at any given moment always drew warmth to his chest, and it steeped each time she smiled at him.
For the first time that night, his eyelids grew heavy, and a grin touched his lips as her brows relaxed fully, relieved of the pain. He’d have made a liar of himself to say that he wasn’t wishing to relive a tender moment from better times, to feel her breath fanning his face as the soft depth of her lips pressed against his…
The current moment may have been opportune, but there was obviously a matter of respect that stood in the way. He would never advance on her in any such way, unless invited—and if he were, there would be fire.
Obviously, she was not in a state to even consider being so welcoming… Not that she was ever in such a state these days, even when she was awake. Not for him, at least.
Cerys hadn’t stopped trembling in some time, despite the stuffiness of the room. Pepper had mentioned that her body might start to chill, and that it was a normal process of overcoming the fever. Loki released her hand slightly as he slid it under her shoulder, nudging her gently to the side as he sat beside her shoulders at the top of her—of his—bed, allowing the warmth of his torso to seep over the space between them. As a frost giant, his bodily heat was lesser than that of his brother’s—but as a god, he still could will it to be more intense than the average human’s.
He blinked away the images that suddenly rose, of Cerys and that man tumbling about in this bed, and instead focused on how her trembling calmed—just as he’d expected. Though he continuously kept a distance from her as she slept, he allowed the same power he’d been using to heal her, to emanate from him just strongly enough to ensconce her in warmth. From there, he continued holding her hand for some time as her recovery progressed, empowering it with his magic as he sat beside her. When all signs of the fever and the trembling finally stopped, and the marks had faded entirely from her wrist, Cerys turned over in the bed, seemingly falling into a deep, peaceful sleep.
Loki glanced at the clock—it would be morning soon.
He slid his hand from hers gently as he rose from the bed, taking his own phone out to update Pepper on Cerys’ recovery upon her waking. He would not, however, be here when Cerys woke.
With one last look at her across the room, Loki followed after Pepper’s trail—out of the room, out of the apartment, and into the dawn.