Agent 17 is seated in a quiet coffee house somewhere in Plattling, a small town in Bavaria. She eyes the small line forming at the counter of the shop. A middle aged blonde woman, not a day over forty, is holding an equally tow-headed baby on her hip; an elderly woman with a trembling, veiny hand resting atop a wooden cane; a young couple, fingers intertwined, gazes locked; a tall man in a business suit, with a pinched look on his face and a small mobile device being violently tapped beneath his dexterous thumbs.
Y/N’s eyes flicker to her left, where she catches a flash of movement coming towards her, just into her field of vision. It was just the waiter, name tag reading Wolfgang, bringing her the feta and spinach croissant she’d ordered seven minutes ago. When she had initially come in to sit, the young man had stumbled over his words, flustered and blushing.
Y/N knew she was attractive, and more often than not, she was able to use it to her advantage. She was accustomed to using her body as a weapon; a beguiling gaze had nearly the same effect as solid hit to the solar plexus. Men were easy to take down. Distract, disarm, and destroy.
Returning to her table, his quaking hands set down her coffee, the small cup settled atop a shiny white saucer. Reddened cheeks were visible through the sandy brown waves framing his face. He nearly had the face of a baby, all curves and chub, though his body stood gangly and tall, little to no strength. He would be easy to take down. She nods her head in a ‘thank you’, a polite smile gracing her lips.
With a glance out the window, Y/N’s eyes return to her target, Ludwig Ubel. Today was yet another day of ‘tracking’, as S.H.I.E.L.D. had called it. Since she was still fairly new to the organization and since they knew about her past, they hardly trusted her with many kill missions. For the last nine months, she had only been on stakeout assignments. Writing out her field report, if one could even call it that, was apparently more entertaining than trailing her mark.
He’s another higher figure from Hydra, another old threat to incarcerate. He’s a small elderly man, no larger than five feet nine. His back sits in a crooked hunch, not quite a curve, but nearly a squiggle, to put it into childish terms. Kyphosis, most likely, maybe even some scoliosis. His pale face is dusted in darker patches, pronouncing his old age. There are deep lines around his mouth, parentheses that most call smile lines, but in this case they seem to be a stain of a grimace. He holds a haunted look in his eyes, having seen and done many horrible things. His skin is yellowing and looks to be paper thin. He must be ill.
The manila file that had been slapped onto Y/N’s desk four days prior had probably enclosed Ubel’s medical history, but the agent had only cracked open the folder enough to see her mark’s photo and location. From there, she followed through with her own research, not entirely appreciating S.H.I.E.L.D.’s methods for ‘follow-through’.
The gentleman has seated himself just outside the library after checking out a book, Deutschland 1945: Vom Krieg Zum Frieden . Y/N chuckles to herself bitterly as she thinks about how appropriate it was. A Nazi reading a German book about World War II. Perfect.
He’s been sitting outside the building for a full twenty minutes, seemingly determined on finishing the book. His being less than a quarter of the way through his volume promised the disinterested agent more time than she’d hoped. She hates stakeouts.
With a sigh, Y/N returns her attention to the small crowd in the cafe, and finds a new person standing in line. He seems different than the rest. He’s tall and lean, at least six foot two. The deep olive green button up he wears is rolled partway up his forearms, exposing sinuous veins and eye-catching muscles. The shirt is paired with dark grey slacks and an equally dark grey tie with a gold crisscrossing design. His face is turned away from hers, but from her booth, she can make out a pale neck and a well sculpted jawline and chin.
She makes sure to keep her eyes on him. Something about him felt vaguely familiar, as if she’s been near him before, just not up close. She’s probably seen him before on another stakeout. But that wasn’t quite it. She knew that stance. Narcissistic, regal, almost. As he steps up to order, Y/N listens closely to see if she can recognize his voice.
He leans forward, towards the barista who stands a good foot shorter than he. He tilts his head to the side slightly, as if making a decision about her. “One cup of milk, please-” he nearly spits the last word, as if it’s in a different tongue, foreign, and unfair “-and a plain cake.” The words leave his mouth, even and severe, like honey on a cold blade.
Y/N’s back straightens, and now she is assured that she knows him. Her left hand moves to her hip where a small handgun lays, and her eyes drop to her satchel. Inside it is a Glock 26. Her eyes flicker back to the new threat. She adjusts her hips a bit, angling her back more towards the window, allowing her right hand to casually lay across the top of her bag.
The barista brings him his order, and he turns towards the spy, a slight smirk on his lips. His eyes twinkle with mischief. In just a few strides on his seemingly endless legs, he stands just above the agent, and smiles fully at her now.
“Agent 17,”
“Loki.”
He seats himself at the table, his virtually clear eyes staring straight into her own. She refuses to break eye contact. Y/N leans forward, and continues, lowering her voice. “What do you want?”
He sighs heavily before taking a sip of his milk. Setting his cup back down, he folds his hands in his lap and leans over the table as well. “Why do you humans all assume I want something? I am a god, after all. I could have whatever I please, whenever I please.”
“As long as you don’t try anything stupid, I won’t assume anything. Now. What are you doing here?” She begins to remove her gun from her waistband, leaning forward even further, still keeping her eyes on the god’s. Pressing the barrel of the firearm to his knee, she watches as he raises a brow quizzically. “I asked a question.” Loki smiles fleetingly.
“And I, dear mortal, have not supplied an answer.” Her eyes narrow at his sardonic tone. What is his game ? “Now, if you are wondering, which I am sure you are, I am not here to kill you. I do not wish to kill you,” she quirks her brow, “I am here to sit with you.” Y/N scoffs, and glances back outside at her mark, who seems to have only made it another fifteen or twenty pages.
“You came all this way to sit with me?” Her tone is incredulous, and it shows on her face as she lays her gun across her lap and uses her leather jacket to hide it. “That’s new.”
“Why is it so hard to trust, Agent? Perhaps I get bored with other mortals. Of them all, you seem the least dreadful.” The god looks around the café and wrinkles his nose at the young couple, now seated in a booth on the other side of the room. They are kissing in a way that should not be permissible in public places. Y/N watches them for a moment, a rather disgusted look on her face.
“I’m flattered, really, but I don’t care,” She flips the safety off, and looks back at Loki. “Be real with me. My lack of dreadfulness deserves that, at the least.”
He takes another sip of his coffee and looks at her thoughtfully. “You are… fascinating. I almost want to respect you, 17. I just came to sit with you.” He huffs a bitter laugh, as if frustrated with himself for having admitted that aloud. He toys with the sugar packets on the table and avoids her gaze. He’s so transparent it’s practically unbelievable.
Y/N’s eyes briefly light up with surprise at having received the Norse god’s praise, but she swiftly disguises it with a face of indifference as her eyes settle back on her target. She smirks minutely at seeing that the old man hasn’t made it much farther in his novel. T his could be a while. Having some company wouldn’t hurt. She uses her thumb to check that the safety is still off, sitting back against the booth and bringing her eyes to rest on Loki’s face once again. His look is focused out the window, and Y/N waits until he feels her stare and turns back to her, reconnecting their gazes. With a hardly identifiable look of hesitation, she tilts her head as a welcome.
“Sit with me, then.”
And he does.
***
Twelve days later, Agent 17 is seated in a coffee shop, nearly identical to the one she’d been in when Loki had kept her company. This day is nearly the same; she has a feta and spinach croissant in front of her, alongside a steaming cup of fresh black coffee. The weather even seems to be trying to mirror that day, clouds pushed out of view, the sun shining buttery rays across the pavement outside, warming up an otherwise chilly day.
The wooden tables of the café are all warm and sun kissed, though the leather seats all seem to have evaded the heat, comfortably cool to the touch. In the café, there are just over a dozen people, half of them sitting down, the rest standing at the counter. The staff for today is just three people, all young, fresh out of their teens. The tiny crowd in the small establishment seems nearly identical to the one from before—ordinary, predictable—putting Y/N at ease.
There are subtle differences, however. For instance, Agent 17’s disguise for today. This time, she has a novel, Anna Karenina , and she has a purple ink pen with her, smudges along the pads of her fingers, and she clicks the cap on and off quietly. Her hair is nearly the same as before, but it is now tied into a messy ponytail, reminiscent of hurried mornings to college. She wears a thin white headband paired with some vintage glasses set atop her nose. A try-hard hipster, it seems, maybe even an art history student.
The jingling bell at the café’s main entrance signals the arrival of a new customer. Y/N’s eyes immediately follow the subsequent movement, and she groans inwardly when she recognizes the god of mischief’s familiar narcissistic swagger. His eyes find hers and a small smile lights up his face as he inclines his head in greeting. The agent mirrors the movement and turns her eyes back to her target. He’s seated at a park bench, headphones on, listening to an audio book. A tall shadow passes over the booth, and without having to take her eyes off of her mark, Y/N greets her acquaintance—if that was even an expression suitable for their association.
“Loki,” she tilts her head in the god’s direction. Today he is outfitted in straight-legged black jeans with a deep emerald V-neck shirt and a black blazer with gold buttons— how mundane , Y/N can’t help but think to herself. The shoulders of the blazer seem to make the deity’s broad upper torso seem even more colossal, as if he was taking up all of the space in the room. The slim fit of the jeans to his hips give away his authentic svelte build, all wiry muscle and sharp bones. His dark curtain of hair is now tied back in a ponytail at the nape of his neck, and his pale throat stands out against the rest of his dark apparel.
“To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?” The god’s mouth just barely twitches to one side, enough for Y/N to read as a smile. He takes a seat on the bench across from her, and folds his hands on the table in front of him. The waiter returns to the table, now setting a cup down in front of Loki. Y/N offers the young man a small expression of gratitude, knowing that Loki was too vain to provide one himself.
“I am surprised that you have yet to point one of your useless bullet-spitting mechanisms at me, Agent 17,” His smooth tone makes Y/N sit up a bit straighter. The words flow too easily, too casually. “Maybe you’ve gone soft.” He sniffs at his coffee, and makes a displeased face at the sweet-smelling beverage.
“I’m running through more than a few eradication scenarios in my head, Loki; don’t fret over my brutality.” The agent leans back in her seat and takes a sip from her coffee, nodding towards Loki’s. “Try it, why don’t you? This place makes a great cappuccino.” One eyebrow quirks slightly in question, and Y/N makes a face of mild exasperation.
Loki lifts his cup again, tilting the drink towards his lips, and as he drinks, his expression of curiosity quickly drops to one of revulsion. “Oh, gods,” he sets the drink back onto the saucer with a slight clink, and pushes it towards the spy. “Midgardian drinks are far too saccharine to be regarded as a daily inevitability.” Y/N chuckles quietly at that, setting her cup down in front of her.
“Don’t be such a god, Loki,” She slides the small dish holding her croissant towards him, nodding her head, offering some of her meal.
“My dear Y/N, it is all a part of my façade.” The statement comes off hollow, his attention having been redirected towards the snack in front of him. The god lifts up the crescent shaped pastry, and looks around the whole of it. He squints thoughtfully, lifting it towards his nose. Once again, he sniffs at the treat before him, seeming a bit pleased with its aroma.
The Asgardian lifts the pastry to his lips and takes a bite, eyes widening at the flakiness of the food, crumbs finding their way all around his mouth. Y/N can’t help but laugh quietly at his reaction. A hum of appreciation rumbles through Loki’s chest, and he smiles, reaching for a napkin to clean his mouth with.
“Well, what do you think?” Y/N rests her elbows on the table—manners be damned—and crosses her forearms over one another. An amused light glimmers behind her eyes, and Loki can’t help but think of how nonthreatening she looks now. Not quite without a wall put up, but not as rigid as before. It’s as if the lines of her face have softened and rounded. She looks years younger.
“I am pleasantly surprised, to say the least.” At that the spy’s face turns smug, almost looking childish as she mumbles something that sounds peculiarly similar to ‘I told you so’, but Loki chooses to ignore it, instead smiling along with her. As he finishes wiping around the corners of his mouth, he laughs quietly and glances outside. “Agent?”
“Hmm?”
“It seems your target is on the move.” He gestures vaguely towards the window—smart enough to know not to point directly—towards the frail man rising from the park bench and stuffing his headphones into his haversack. “Shall I sponsor this meal?” He begins raising a hand to signal to the waiter that he was prepared for the check. Y/N shakes her head in the negative, and tosses a fifty dollar bill onto the table.
“I’m on the move then. Thank-” She cuts herself off as she realizes just what she was about to say. She had just had a nice few minutes with the man. What the hell. “Thank you, Loki. You were…decent company.” With a slight bow of her head, she rises from her seat and begins making her way to the door, that is, until he calls after her. Turning from the door and facing Loki in the booth, she raises her eyebrows expectantly, ushering him to go on.
“Again sometime, yes?”
His eyes are wide, seemingly hopeful. What Y/N can see in those clear eyes is optimism, but what she doesn’t see is the desperation, how much he needs this. Loki is lost, alone, not even his brother accepting him. He figures that Y/N, of all people, should understand. They have much more in common than either of them would ever willingly admit.
She, too, has innocent blood on her hands. Not as much as Loki does, granted, but enough to weigh down her shoulders and delay her once easy smile. They both have red on their ledgers, each drop sodden with faith in the greater good.
No matter how hated, how feared, how cruel either of them was, or have the potential to be, they are both floating souls, searching for a grounding to call their own. Both orphans, neither having a home.
At best, Y/N has her safe houses throughout the world, some S.H.I.E.L.D. knew about, others they pretended not to know about. Every escape felt like a trip to some variation of home. Loki had his robes and his regal walk to set him atop an invisible throne. His Asgardian attire drapes him in a shield of reassurance. He dons his illusion of a home.
They’d found each other, or Loki had found Y/N, really, and they had found something. Not a home, not even close, but a mental reprieve from their destitute lives. A porch to lie on when it got too cold.
Agent 17 looks thoughtfully at her brunch mate, and a small smile tugs at the right side of her mouth. She glances back outside to see her target moving away from her location, and she knows that if she doesn’t track him down within three or four minutes and hit S.H.I.E.L.D. with an update, they’d be on her ass for lords know how long. Settling her gaze back on Loki, she nods quickly, and she can see the tension in his shoulders ease.
“Again, sometime.”
With that she was gone.
***
Eight more times they’d done this. Y/N would be on a stakeout, and Loki would order himself a drink, sometimes even a pastry, but he’d only grumble about the syrupiness of ‘Midgardian sustenance’, and end up stealing some—more like most—of Y/N’s spinach and feta croissants. Every once in a while, the agent would order something different, depending on where she was at, and with each new pastry came a hilarious look of disgust on the god’s face.
Every time this occurred, Y/N would laugh, and not her usual laugh. Her laugh at work consisted of a small smile and a huff of her chest. Even her laugh with her teammates wasn’t much more than a smile and an amused sideways glance. The laughter that she experienced with Loki was the kind of laughter that teenagers at lunch tables cackled out. The kind that made her eyes crinkle into nothing more than slits. The kind where she threw her head back and had to lay a hand across her chest to steady herself.
The kind where she felt okay, for once. She felt safe. Yes she’d felt secure before, but never like this.
Loki had been experiencing the same kinds of changes within himself when he was around Y/N. He would share tales of encounters on different planets, experiences he’d had with unbearable humans. Each one would have an amusing bit in it, factual or not, because to be truthful, he just wanted to see her laugh. He’d never seen her so exposed, so cheerful. In battle, she was ferocious and strong minded, eyes calculating. Here, she was genuinely happy and unbothered, her eyes twinkling with mirth and rimmed with tears, not from pain, for once, but from delight.
He likes this side of Y/N, he decides, and he is determined to see it every chance he gets.
Shifting forward in his seat to lean across the table, Loki lays a hand on top of Y/N’s. Her left hand is currently gripping desperately to the side of the table because she fears she might accidentally throw herself out of the booth. Loki had just told her how, on a planet known as Gattaca, he had been in a battle with some kind of beast known as the ‘fisa monster’, or the ‘fart monster’.
“He was a truly horrendous beast, oh gods, Y/N, was he ugly. He looked like a gargantuan pile of excrement. He was green and lumpy and had these-” he begins gesturing towards his face, searching for the word, “-these boils. These disgusting, oozing boils, and they smelled so terribly badly. He smelled like a big sack of farts.” The spy laughs, and as she starts to reach for her croissant, her nose crinkles as she looks down at her green-leaf-stuffed pastry, then pushes the plate away. Loki’s eyes widen in apology, but she just shakes her head, a small smile on her face.
At that, Loki picks up the croissant and takes a big bite out of it, humming in delight. The flaky breading practically melts in his mouth, and the taste of the spinach and feta, folded delicately between the layers of buttery dough is better than conquering a hundred unsuspecting kingdoms. He looks back at Y/N to see her giggling, and he raises an eyebrow questioningly.
“You have a bit of-” she points at her mouth and her eyes twinkle again “-crumbs. Just a little bit everywhere.” She starts laughing quietly, and when Loki grabs the metal napkin holder to look at his reflection, they both break into laughter, not boisterous enough to be a disturbance, but not quite low enough to go unnoticed.
Y/N seems to calm down enough to drink more of her coffee and keep herself upright. Glancing outside, she sees that her target has stayed unmoving, only flipping through a few more pages of his book. It felt like they had been laughing for hours on end, how could he possibly read so slow? Checking her watch, her eyes widen in panic.
She lays her left hand on her hip, resting on top of the handgun she keeps there, the same one that she had pointed at Loki the first day he kept her company. Her back is straight now, and Loki immediately recognizes that as her face before going into combat; something is wrong.
“Loki, I need you to do something for me.” Her voice is low and serious, the frightening tone that he hasn’t heard in very long. She isn’t Y/N anymore, she’s Agent 17.
“Anything,” he leans forward some, now sobered up as well, and deep lines etching themselves between his brows and around his mouth.
“I need you to use some kind of spell to figure out what Ubel is doing over there. I don’t know how your magic exactly works, but an invisibility incantation or something could be useful.” She doesn’t look back out the window, and, taking her unyielding eye contact as a signal, neither does he. “I don’t think he’s been reading all this time.”
“Of course, darling,” with a small smile, he stands and moves towards the bathroom down the hall, entering, and closing and locking the door behind himself. Knowing him, the second the door closes, he’s already across the street, investigating for her. Y/N sips from her now mostly empty coffee cup, and glances around the café. Everyone is doing exactly what they had been doing just minutes before, putting the spy at ease.
Loki walks out from the restroom and sits back at the table, a polite smile on his face, just an element in the act. Sitting down, he begins to speak in a low, rushed voice. “He is speaking with someone on one of those earpieces,” he lowers his voice a bit more, slowing his speech. “He is speaking in German, which I do not know well, but I did catch a few things here and there: Folgende; Ivans Mädchen; Verstärkung.” His pronunciation was dreadful--shocking, considering his allspeak ability--but Y/N got the point. There was one thing bothering her, though.
“Are you one hundred percent certain that he said Ivans Mädchen?” Loki nods fervently. Y/N’s eyes harden and she holds a hand out, ready to grab her bag to find her S.H.I.E.L.D. earpiece. Loki’s face shifts into an expression of both concern and fear.
“Y/N/N, are you alright?” She doesn’t answer. “What is wrong? Who is he speaking of?” He lays a hand on her shoulder, and she stiffens, but he doesn’t pull away. He leaves it there, patiently waiting for his friend to stop staring at the table and to look back up at him.
She finally forces her eyes to meet his, and what he sees there shocks him enough to finally remove his hand from her shoulder. Her eyes look dead, emotionless. He has yet to have that look directed towards him, and he knows that the lifelessness wasn’t because of anything he’d done, but the thought did nothing to ease his mind.
“Ubel knows that I am following him. He knows Ivan, somehow, and he knows that I was one of his girls He’s calling for backup.” She forces the words through her teeth, feeling bile rising up in the back of her throat as soon as she says her mentor’s name. “Meaning we need to move, now.”
The god’s eyebrows bunch in concern, and his eyes seem to darken slightly. He doesn’t know what this ‘Ivan’ did to Y/N, but the way that she spits out his name, with a wave of pure hatred closely drowning out the crack in her voice, he doesn’t like it at all.
He rises from the seat and watches as she drops a fifty onto the table and grabs her rucksack. She pulls out her S.H.I.E.L.D. earpiece and presses a button on the side. The red circle beside the agency’s logo lights up green, and she presses the button again. Placing the earpiece into her ear, Agent 17 begins walking towards the exit and immediately starts to speak codes and numbers into it, confirming her identity.
“Yeah, guys, I’m gonna need backup. Ubel knows who I am, but I don’t think he knows that I’m S.H.I.E.L.D. now….Great… I’m closest to where Lowell is stationed…He called for reinforcements, so be quick…Copy that. Out.” Pressing her middle finger to the button again, she switches off active communications and turns to address Loki. “No offense pal, but I don’t think my guys will be all that glad to see you here, you know, Destroyer of Worlds and all.” She chuckles slightly and looks at Loki, whose eyes have begun to crinkle at the corners in a silent laugh.
“Have no worries, darling, I’ll be gone as soon as you wish. Is there anything else that you need of me?” He raises his eyebrows expectantly. Y/N can’t help the wave of grateful warmth that flows through her chest just then, and she shakes her head in the negative.
“No, Loki, but thank you. You’ve done enough for me today and I’m glad you were here to keep me company and save my ass.”
“Your ass wouldn’t require saving if it hadn’t been for me. I apologize.”
Y/N’s head whips around, her eyes searching for the source of the movement she’d detected out of the corner of her eye. Catching sight of the men coming around the corners, she goes back into Battle Mode, tightening the strap on her satchel and turning and waving her arm, trying to catch the thugs’ attention.
The trio at the north end of the street notice her, speak into their receivers, and four more show up at the south end. She waves to them as well, and turns towards Loki, a playful smile on her face. “I’ll be right back,” and she turns and sprints across the street and into the alleyway lying just across the way.
Loki watches as the group of now seven men chase her into the alley, and four minutes and thirty seven seconds later, Y/N emerges from the shady alley, wiping blood from her brow, and popping her wrist back into place. She rolls her shoulders and neck, popping a few joints, and smiles triumphantly.
Her shirt is ripped in many places across the front, blood seeping through the light fabric and sticking her top to her. A decent sized shard of glass is sticking out of her right thigh—thankfully nowhere near a major artery—and she wraps the hem of her shirt around her hand and unceremoniously yanks it out, throwing it over her shoulder. She rips a strip of her shirt off and ties a half-assed tourniquet above the injury, just in case.
She limps across the street, thankful for Ubel picking a town with such a low population, seeing as the local law enforcement would probably be swarming had anyone seen her this bloodied and beaten. She looks as if she’s been thrown in a blender set on chop, yet she somehow holds a victorious smirk on her face.
Standing in front of Loki again, glee in her eyes, fear and concern in his, she uses an elastic off of her wrist to tie her hair into a high ponytail, removing it all from sticking to her sweaty neck. “Okay, so I wanted to do that, and then say goodbye.” Leaning up for a one armed hug—her left shoulder was begging for some heavy duty ibuprofen—she latches her arm around his neck, feeling his hands settle on the small of her back.
“Are you alright, Y/N? I have seen you fight before, so I am well aware of your abilities, but you seem far too injured to be this happy. I can heal you, you know.” She steps back and waves her hand dismissively.
“No need, Loki. I’m fine. In the meantime, my team is probably wrapping up Ubel right now, so you should probably leave before they go all ‘incapacitate and incarcerate’ on you.” A small laugh escapes her lips and she settles a hand on her hip.
“Of course.” Loki bows politely, rather dramatically, and smirks up at her. “Again, sometime, yes?”
Y/N smiles fondly at his reference to one of their first little stakeout days together. A little laugh bubbles out of her chest, and she nods.
“Again, sometime.”
***
As she throws her keys and bag onto the small stand next to her front door, Y/N sighs, exhausted from her tedious day. Ubel was apprehended more than two weeks ago, but S.H.I.E.L.D still has her doing scope outs around his office, where some of his known 'associates' have been frequenting as of late. She hasn't learned much, really. Well, that's a lie. Now she knows that all elderly German men were boring, not just Ubel.
The tired spy rubs at her heavy eyes, and starts shuffling towards her bathroom, ready for a shower hotter than the grounds of perdition. She strides to all of her windows, checking that they are latched shut and that the security sensor is in the green. Moving to the balcony door, and the front door, she checks their sensors as well, and then moves on to the security panel.
Answering the voice recognition requests, she arms her tiny safe house, and finally begins removing her clothes, starting with her aggravatingly sweat-sticky shirt. Y/N throws the garment onto the back of the couch, mentally vowing to get it up later, and shakes her hair down from its tight ponytail.
She moves towards her bathroom, removing her belt, undoing the top button and then the zipper of her dark blue jeans. Going over to her shower, she turns on the water. She pauses before standing, sticking her hand under the tap and letting the water run over her fingers. She stares at her hand beneath the faucet and watches the skin there turn bright pink, agitated by the unmannerly temperatures.
Relieving her hand of the heat, Y/N moves to the sink and clutches the glossy porcelain, dropping her head to hang beneath her shoulders. The spy squeezes her eyes shut so tightly that her ears start to roar. Her knuckles begin to throb and her forearms start to shake with the effort that she’s putting into her grip. Lifting her head up, she glares at her reflection, jaw muscle jumping as she bites the inside of her cheek.
There isn’t anything wrong, really, it’s just that ever since she was a child, nothing was right. It isn’t anything new for her, she’s been dealing with all of her demons for years, it’s just that sometimes, when she’s all alone, and she’s tired after an assignment, it all just crashes back. Whenever she’s on assignment, she is sent in to observe a target, to track them and their activities, but throughout the day, the spy’s attention will be caught by more interesting people, carrying out their mundane daily duties. People watching has its advantages and disadvantages.
Most of the time, people live fairly normal lives, and they’ll pass by the S.H.I.E.L.D agent without incident, moving to and from work, going to the market for groceries, and other commonplace errands. These are the people that Y/N likes the best. They have average lives, existing blissfully unaware of the countless dangers fluttering beneath their feet every day. Sometimes she will pretend that she’s like them, and she’ll become her disguise.
She is no longer Agent 17, an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D, or Y/N Y/L/N. She becomes Isabella Brown, the Berkeley student traveling around Europe over the summer before returning home to complete her secondary education. She transforms into Kaitlin Whitley, the all American girl that plays volleyball and soccer, and who has three newspaper articles about her performances in Regionals. She becomes a lump of clay, squeezed into the mold of her imagination.
There are other times when she is observing the population, she finds that some of them live crappy lives. Not as crappy as hers, for sure, but crappy enough for her to want to feel sympathetic. She can’t even recall the amount of times she’s seen prostitutes beaten, children dropped on side roads, homeless people run over, hell, she’s even witnessed a couple dozen gunshot murders in civilian towns. None of those things matter to S.H.I.E.L.D., though. The assignment is to track the mark, not save the day. Agent 17 has never really been one to go against direct orders.
All alone in her tiny apartment, Y/N remembers these bad days, all of the horrible things she’s seen on assignment. The amount of people she could have saved is many, but the amount that she was ordered to save is incredibly few. Arms still shaking, Y/N pushes off of the counter and steps back. She runs her hands down her face and huffs a self-deprecating laugh before looking back into the mirror, now looking at her whole body.
Gazing at herself in the mirror, only in a bra and jeans, she dances her fingertips over the raised scar tissue decorating her torso. One mark, the most recent and conspicuous, lays a few centimeters north of her hip bone. It's only an inch or so long, three fourths of an inch wide, but it holds the roughest shape out of all of her scars. Most of her scars are the products of clean knife blows, high-arching slices and steadfast stabs.
This one, though, is from a bullet wound. It isn't much different from some of her other surface wounds. She's been grazed quite a few times, nicked while advancing on a suspecting target, skimmed by a ricocheting slug. In terms of weapons, if it exists, it's been aimed at her. Enemies don’t particularly care about her comfort zones, and since discovering that she has none, they have certainly tried it all. The scar on her hip is a different story.
It was a friendly fire incident, though if you ask her, nothing about the situation was 'friendly'. There was a turncoat in her unit, and he had tried to take her out. Moving through a tiny slum in northern Zambia, he’d turned his gun on her, but she had been ready. There had been a short struggle, and a total of four shots fired. The first landed in the side of a house, not a foot from her left ear. The second hit one of their other teammates, Riley Chase, in the shoulder. The third shot hit her, and created the blemished memory on her hip. The fourth shot hit the traitor right between his eyes.
That event is one of the many reasons that Y/N now works alone. It's not that she can't trust people, it's just that things are simpler for everyone when she just doesn't . S.H.I.E.L.D discovered this laden cynicism, and now she only does unaccompanied operations, much to her and everyone else's relief.
Running her index finger over the scar once more, she turns away from the mirror, sheds the rest of her clothing and steps into the shower. The searing water immediately turns her skin an angry reddish color, and steam fills the small room. She tangles her fingers through her hair and sighs, relishing the sweltering water cascading over her sore body. Her muscles loosen and she rolls her neck, feeling the pull and pop of the tendons and bones.
Lathering her hands in body soap, she begins cleaning herself, purposefully raking her nails over cuts and increasing pressure on bruises, just to feel. Grabbing the shampoo, the spy washes her hair, uncharacteristically gently, but before she finishes, she makes sure to scratch a bit at her scalp while rinsing. Stepping out of the shower, Y/N wraps a towel about her body and makes her way back over to the sink. She swipes a hand across the mirror, clearing off some of the condensation.
Wide eyes stare right back at her, and even she can see how hollow her gaze is. There are small bags under her eyes, not large enough to be concerned about, but enough for her scrutinizing stare to detect and dislike. Her cheeks are a blushing pinkish color as a result of her hellfire hot shower, and without her hard glare, she looks almost childish. A curious child that has much to be afraid of , she thinks grimly.
Turning to her bedroom, Y/N grabs and throws on underwear and the first nightclothes she can find: a pair of gray fleece pajama shorts and a loose white tank top. She ties her hair into a messy bun on top of her head, and climbs beneath her sheets, sighing at the cool silk slipping across her hot skin. She sighs again, and turns onto her back, staring up at the white popcorn ceiling that she could never get over. It was just so ugly.
A small swishing noise snaps the spy out of her sleepy trance and she has her Glock in hand before even she can register what all happened. A tall figure is standing in her doorway, and they cast long shadows across the cramped room. The barrel of Y/N’s firearm is trained on what would be the head area. An airy snicker rings out from the silhouette and Y/N sits up, depositing her gun near her feet. Leaning against the headboard, she smooths back extra flyaway hairs and huffs out an incredulous laugh.
“Loki, I almost shot you!” The god laughs again and Y/N chuckles breathlessly as well, heart still racing a bit. No matter how many times she’s pointed a gun at someone, she always gets a hearty rush of adrenaline pumping through her veins.
“You say that as if your little metal beads could hurt me, Agent 17.” He flippantly waves a hand in Y/N’s direction, and she exhales heavily, starting to shift down in the bed again. Loki strolls into the room and sits in a cushioned chair a few feet away from the head of the bed. “I just came to sit with you.” At that he smirks, throwing in another reference to an earlier meeting. Y/N smiles back.
“I understood that reference.” They both break into snort-filled laughter, trying—and failing—to keep it down. After their amusement dies down a bit, they settle into a comfortable quiet. The agent looks towards her deity friend, and a sleepy smile settles on her lips. “So what are you doing here, Loki?” The god looks up from his hands, and Y/N swears he looks… nervous? His tongue darts out across his lips, dragging his lower one between his teeth to worry it as he looks back to his hands. Y/N props herself up on an elbow and her brows furrow in concern. “Are you alright?”
The god shrugs his expansive shoulders and shifts in the seat. “Yes, Y/N/N, I just, um…” he fretfully bites his lip again, and it is so painfully out of character that Y/N tenses up, prepared to leap for her gun again. “Well, due to some complications that are too challenging to describe, I’m temporarily stranded on this planet and dimension. Since you’re the only mortal that I don’t despise, I was wondering if I could spend tonight here. I do not wish for this to amount to some kind of sexual escapade, however, I just wish to be in your company. If that is alright with you.” He says it all in a rush, and he breathes deeply. Y/N doesn’t say or do anything for a moment, just silently regards the God of Mischief sitting in her bedroom. Something about what he’s said feels off, and it makes the spy bristle slightly.
“What do you want, Loki?”
The question isn’t accusatory or rude, and though she is definitely exhausted, she doesn’t make it sound defeated. She just truly wants to know what this man, this god, rather, wants. She likes his presence and she finds comfort in it, and over time, she’s learned that he feels the same. Though both of them are too proud to admit it, they appreciate being near one another, and, like it or not, they are friends . Chums, confidants, acquaintances, brunch buddies, whatever term they’re to use for it. They are with one another often, not because it is convenient or endurable, but because they enjoy each other.
“To be here.” He states simply. There is no haughtiness to his voice and he doesn’t shrug, like he typically would in a way of being dismissive. He speaks again, and his voice is softer this time, and more wary. “Please.” His pale eyes are wide, and for once, all of his walls are broken down for Y/N to see. He looks so young and vulnerable, and Y/N is sure that this is one of very few times that he’s been this way with someone else, and at that her heart swells.
“Okay,” she says simply, and she lays down, her back to Loki, her gun forgotten at the foot of the bed.
She gets the best night’s sleep that she’s gotten in weeks.
***
It is another month before Y/N hears from Loki. Knowing that he has a habit of both planet and dimension hopping, it doesn’t particularly concern her. She carries on inane surveillance assignments for S.H.I.E.L.D, sitting by herself in coffee shops, a new identity every day.
Returning home from another dull job, she removes her baby pink cardigan at the door, throwing her backpack onto the table along with her keys. Walking into the kitchen, Y/N opens the fridge and grabs a beer. After using the edge of her counter to slam off the cap, she takes a long sip and moves into her living room, ready to sit down and read for a bit.
She notices a towering, lean figure sitting on her couch, just the silhouette visible in her apartment, seeing as none of the lights were on yet. She recognizes those wide shoulders, and she reaches to flip on a light.
“Loki, I thought I told you not-” she stops, finally seeing her companion fully now that the light is on. “Oh my god, what happened?”
The god is seated on her couch, wrists and ankles bound with what appears to be fishing line but thicker and more translucent. Dew drops twinkle upon the surface of the steel silk, puzzling the secret agent. Loki is shaking, and his skin looks pale—even more so than usual. He seems almost alight, as white as starlight on frost. The binding has also been used to quiet him, thick ropes of it wrapped around his mouth, in a seemingly excess amount. The threads are so crystalline that she can see his mouth through the strands. His lips have taken on a horrendously vibrant blue shade, and his eyes are red-rimmed. How in the hell does a frost giant get frostbite?
His skin glistens with sweat, and she can hear the muffled clatter of his teeth behind the silky weaves. When the god grunts in exasperation, she sets down her beer and moves over to him, beginning to inspect his bindings fervently. She retrieves a blade from a holster on her thigh, and begins slicing at the threads around his head. Once his mouth is freed, Loki immediately starts to speak, rushing and stuttering through his wobbly lips.
“S-Stupid Arachnians and th-their stupid laws.” He shudders violently and shakes his head, as if to clear the quake from his spine. “They t-tied me up and threw me b-back into this dimen-mension. I h-hate them.” Y/N tries not to laugh, because she is certain that whatever Loki did, he probably did deserve to be bound this way.
“What did you do this time, Loke?” Y/N sighs, feigning exasperation, as she moves to undo his ankles with her blade. Loki huffs indignantly, obviously thinking himself innocent in the situation. He slams his hands onto his legs, and drops his shoulders stiffly.
“I just w-wanted some th-thread. It is spiders’ thread, Y-Y/N, how could that be a cr-crime?” His eyes are wide and he raises his voice even more. The side of her mouth twitches upwards as she tries to suppress another laugh. Even though the situation appears funny, Loki does seem to be in legitimate distress. She gets the final cut across the wrist bindings, and Loki sighs in relief, rolling his wrists.
Standing, Y/N walks to her hallway closet and retrieves a large fleece blanket—sap green, of course—and wraps it about the deity’s shoulders. He leans back against the couch and uses cold, clammy hands to grip the blanket about his shaking body even tighter. His fingers twitch and shake, and Y/N remembers those hands clasped around hers as they laughed about some foolish tale the god had told.
“You stole spider’s thread from a planet full of spider people. It doesn’t sound like something that I would appreciate.” She shrugs like a mother explaining something to a small child. “In fact, I would find it quite rude.” Picking up the big ball of silk, Y/N raises it in Loki’s direction. “I mean, at least you got some .”
Loki’s eyes narrow and he purses his lips as she laughs at her own joke. “Ha, ha, Agent. Very funny. The thread was for you, actually.” At that, her eyebrow ticks up in question. She shifts so that she’s sitting on her feet, crossed beneath her body, and she’s fully facing the idol.
“Oh, really?”
“Yes, darling. I was planning on pranking you. I thought it would be fun to bind some of your possessions together and make them unusable. I saw it in a Midgardian film that Thor showed me once.” He smiles fondly as he burrows even further into the fluffy blanket, turning his head to the side to gaze at his friend. When he sees her disapproving glare, he shrugs innocently. “I am the God of Mischief, Y/N.” They both laugh, eventually settling into a comfortable silence.
Y/N watches her companion, and sees that his skin is slowly returning to his naturally pale complexion. He seems to have nearly stopped shivering, and his lips are becoming a rosy tone again. He’ll be fine. He looks exhausted and the spy knows that he should rest, whether he truly needs sleep or not. She rises to move to the kitchen and begins boiling water, moving around as she collects loose tea leaves, honey, and a lemon. Once done with the tea, Y/N sits down next to Loki again and hands him the mug. He raises an eyebrow questioningly, and sniffs at the tea. Y/N’s eyes crinkle at the corners as she smiles, shaking her head.
“I’m not trying to drug you, Loki. It’s a recipe for resting. One of the girls back in the-” she stops mid-sentence, swallowing thickly. “Back in my old training grounds, one of my friends had a grandma who made the best ‘Lullaby Tea’, as she called it. I would drink it every night,” she pauses and glances up at Loki to see that he is paying attention. “It would help me whenever I would have nightmares.”
Instead of responding, Loki simply takes a sip of the tea. His mouth folds into a pleasant smile, and he looks back to Y/N. “It is very delicious. It tastes like…” He trails off, not knowing the correct word for it.
“Home.” Y/N supplies, eyes hopeful. Hoping that it wasn’t just her that didn’t have anything. Hoping that she wasn’t the only one who had nowhere to go back to. Even though she was pretty broken, she knew that Loki was too, and she knew that they’d found something there, together. A bond. She just wanted to know that they both felt it.
“Yes. Like home.” He exhales serenely. “It tastes like home.”
Another lovely smile from Loki. Y/N grins back and leans her head against the back of the couch, her eyelids heavy from the day. A few minutes of quiet go by, the only noise in the room is the sound of the young agent breathing and Loki sipping at his tea. When he leans forward to set his mug down on the coffee table, Y/N glances at him, seeing that his eyelids are droopy.
He curls in on himself slightly, knees to his chest as he turns to the side a bit, looking at his companion. They gaze into one another’s eyes, reading each other. Y/N nudges Loki with her foot, another small smile on her lips.
“What is it?” Loki asks sleepily, his tongue thick with exhaustion.
“Hmm?”
“What do you want, Y/N/N?” He shifts a little so that he is sitting up straighter. The god tilts his head to the side and raises his brows, looking for an honest answer.
She considers for a moment. What does she really want? She knows that most anything she desires, she can get, whether she do it herself or she persuade someone else to do it. There is one thing, however, that she’s never had, and that she’s never known to ask for. A home . She’s never had one before, not that she can remember really, but that little bit of a memory, that fragment of consciousness, sits in the back of her mind and makes itself known sometimes.
When she drinks Lullaby Tea, when she laughs over a spinach and feta croissant, when she smiles so hard her cheeks hurt, she can just feel a whisper of something. A barely-there tug at the recesses of her consciousness reminding her that this is where she needs to be, where she belongs. She has been feeling that pull make itself known, practically every time she’s near Loki.
“What do you want, Y/N?”
“To be here.”