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“Ships in the night,” Natasha called them. Of course she had discerned his... attachment... before anyone else did. The rest of the Avengers were ‘keeping a close eye’ on Loki, as promised, but he was used to that. Close eyes grew tired, bored, and in time, became easy to fool. So he bided his time. Only Natasha was really watching. And she saw more than Loki liked.
Well, it was her trade. And at least she wasn’t trying to make sport of him for it. Strange, that she should have been one of the few to take most seriously Fury’s determined attempts to ‘reform’ Earth’s would-be conqueror, after the Allfather had flatly refused to permit Thor to return him to Asgard.
Her... and Steven.
He looked up at her from his comfortable sprawl on the sofa, where she had found him reading. “Ships?”
“It’s from an old poem. About people who pass each other and maybe exchange a few words, and then go about their lives and never see each other again.”
“How cheery.” Loki opened a new window on his tablet. “Who is the poet?”
“Longfellow, I think.” She leaned in the doorway, her eyes filled with a cautious fondness. Once she had understood the immensity of the duress he had been suffering, during the attack, her attitude – and Steven’s – had changed. They had not trusted him (still did not, which was wise) but they had become more sympathetic to his plight. Loki could easily have taken advantage of their pity and their charity and their... friendship. But with Thor, his only source of familiarity, gone, Loki had groped to find new footholds. And Natasha Romanov reminded him of people. She reminded him of Sif, and perhaps a little of the legends of the Valkyries, but mostly she was what he thought Frigga must have been like in her youth: wry, cunning, utterly loyal to the people she called her own, and to hell with the rest of the world.
Rather as Loki himself had been, a long time ago.
He finished the poem with a slight curl to his lip. “This is drivel. Please tell me this isn’t the best Earth has to offer up as literature.”
“Well, he is an American poet. I could find you ten Russian authors you’d like better. But cut us a little slack. You’re older than widespread literacy in the western hemisphere, so it took us a while to figure this stuff out.” But she said it with a deadpan look that told Loki he’d clearly needled her.
“What does this have to do with myself and Captain Rogers? We are certainly not strangers passing in the street.”
“Certainly not,” Natasha replied blandly.
To his disgust, Loki blushed. “You’re mad, woman. There’s nothing happening.”
“Didn’t say there was. But that illusion you cast of Steve for the reporters the other day, when he was too tired to play along, was pretty damn good. You impersonated his voice, his speech patterns, his mannerisms...”
Loki waved a dismissive hand. “Child’s play. I wouldn’t have the reputation I do, if I didn’t have the skills to back it up. The costume was a bit much, though. So tight.”
“Oh yeah, it doesn’t hide anything." “ Natasha raised a knowing eyebrow at him and Loki colored up again.
“Stop it,” he muttered, concentrating on his tablet. He found other poems by the same author and absorbed them. Their meter and rhythm was atrociously inelegant and the word choices sometimes baffling, but there was a peculiar rustic, plaintive charm to some of them.
“He’s got a sketchbook full of you, you know.”
“What?”
“Steve. He draws you. A lot. All very safe for work stuff. He says it’s because he's drawing from life, but I think he’s scared to draw anything too risque. Doesn’t want to get his hopes up.”
A frown lowered across Loki’s face like a storm cloud. “Natasha...”
“You two. Two battered, bruised, angry little boys in a world that doesn’t know you or what to do with you. Every time you're near each other, you’re drawn together. But otherwise? You might as well be strangers.”
There was a battle. There was always a battle of some kind or other. In his youth, Loki had been sent out to war, or snuck along with Thor when he ought to have been at his books, but on Midgard, the wars came to them. Kree, this time. They were becoming something of a nuisance.
After the fight was over and the alien apprehended, he stood over the prone body of Captain America, and sighed. “You know, in all my time here, I have not wavered from my assessment that Humans are fools. I’ve never seen a people more determined to get themselves killed en masse.”
Steve grinned up at him. “Aw, come on. I’m at least as hard to kill as your brother.”
Loki rolled his eyes and offered him a hand to pull him to his feet.
“Are you shielding us?” Steve asked, looking around at the crowds and emergency personnel, who were seemingly unaware of their presence. “I’m used to getting a bit more mobbed, after a fight.”
“Yes, I know.” Loki shrugged and brushed some concrete dust from his shoulders. “I find it tedious.”
Steve pushed the cowl off his head and scrubbed his hand over his hair a few times. Loki became very interested in an approaching ambulance. “We should go. It will be better if we separate and regroup later. I can hold the glamour on you for a few blocks.”
“Actually... you wanna have a drink with me?”
Loki sighed. “Steven, you know I don’t like bars. And don’t drink with warriors. I learned that lesson a long time ago.”
“No bar. And nothing strong, I promise. Just a couple of beers in my living room.”
Oh.
“Oh, is that all?” Loki replied, as flirtatiously as he could manage, because if he laid it on thick enough, perhaps the sheer ludicrousness of his situation would keep him from making any more of a fool of himself.
But Steve just smiled. “That’s all. No groupies, none of those weird cocktails Tony’s always making... Give me an hour to clean up?”
Loki didn't remember agreeing, but he must have, because an hour later, he was indeed sitting in Steve Rogers’s living room in his apartment in Brooklyn, one hand wrapped around a bottle of Midgardian beer. Steve had showered and changed into civilian clothing, and Loki had done the same – well, his version of the same, exchanging his fighting leathers for linen leggings and wrap tunic, and tying his hair out of his eyes.
He tasted the alcohol tentatively. “This is... a little strong,” he said, licking some from his lips. “But it certainly tastes better than that pale piss-making swill that Thor drinks by the gallon when he comes to visit.”
“It’s been a while since he turned up,” Steve said. “Any news from home?”
That I am still not welcome to return, Loki thought bitterly. Aloud, he said, “There has been great unrest in the Nine Realms. Thor’s presence has been needed to quell it. Apparently, it’s taking him a while.”
“Must be a tough job.”
“Hmm.”
“Especially without his right-hand man.”
“...Hmm? Who do you—? Oh!” Loki gaped at Steve for a second or two and then shook his head emphatically. “You are grossly mistaken, Captain, if you think Thor is lacking for my presence.”
“I dunno. I mean, I would be, in his place.” Steve’s gaze was kind (and his eyes very blue), and his smile was small but genuine (and his lips very red). “You’re part of the team now. An important part. I’d hate to lose you.”
And I would hate to go, to pass you by like a ship in the night... what?
Fuck.
“No need to worry about that, alas,” Loki said, with a laugh that sounded hollow even to him. “Asgard could be approaching the end of days, and still the Allfather would not call me back.” He took a swig from the bottle and let the dark, bitter liquid wash over his tongue. There was a slight sweetness to it that he had not noticed at first. Strange, but... pleasant.
“You must miss it. Asgard. Home.”
“Well, it doesn’t miss me, so there’s little point in pining for it.” There were things that he missed – favorite books, his horse, familiar food – and there was his mother. But on the whole... “I don’t, you know. Miss it. Asgard and I never seemed to quite... fit. It is a beautiful place, though. An artist would appreciate it.”
“Maybe I’ll get to see it someday,” Steve smiled.
“Mortals aren’t permitted to visit Asgard. But I could sneak you in without a problem.”
“Sounds like fun. The uniform might look a little out of place, though.”
“Oh, I could disguise you...” Loki pictured Steven in the armor of an Einherjar, all gold and shining, and felt something twist below his stomach. He was no artist himself, but he would have given much to see a portrait of Steve Rogers as an elite warrior of Asgard. “It wouldn’t even be much of a disguise. “Though I don’t see you standing on ceremony to the king.”
“Not if I could help it.” Steve hesitated and took a swig of his own beer before continuing. “From everything you’ve told me, your father sounds like, well... kind of a bully.”
“And you believe everything I tell you?”
“There’s a lot you don’t say, too.”
The drink turned sour in Loki's mouth. “That’s a bit simplistic, but... not inaccurate. Thor was much the same, before he spent time here. Strange...”
“What?”
“I wanted so much to be like them both, once. And I tried... I tried to make Father proud of me, tried to make Thor see me as something worthy of his attention... and it was all for nothing.”
“Not nothing.”
“Ah, how quickly the mortal mind forgets...”
“I haven’t forgotten anything,” said Steve sharply. “None of us have. But you weren’t in your right mind. And you’ve spent the last year and a half trying to do better.” He leaned forward across the coffee table. “You did some godawful things. And you can’t make that right. But you can do better, and you are doing better. You listened to the people you hurt, and you’re trying to make amends. Sounds like more than your dad’s ever tried to do.”
His words and their tone rang in Loki’s head like a horn blown too close to his ear. For a moment, he was blind, stunned, and paralyzed. When he could move again, he put the bottle to his lips and drained in, and then lurched up from the sofa.
“I think I need another,” he laughed, resisting the urge to slam the glass bottle to the floor and shatter it. Something felt on the verge of breaking, and if he wasn’t careful, it was going to be him.
He was a step away from the refrigerator before he noticed Steve behind him. “Hey,” said Steve gently. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine.” Loki wrenched open the refrigerator door and stared into it blankly, waiting for his heart to stop trying to beat its way through his ribcage. The looming presence of the super-soldier behind him wasn't helping that hunted feeling, either.
Except... it was. It was helping. Steven’s solid bulk at his back, standing between him and the horrors that still lurked in the periphery of Loki's vision. And after a moment, he felt a hand on his back, landing lightly between his shoulder blades, rubbing just a little.
“It’s okay,” Steve murmured. “Whatever it is... it’s okay.”
Loki closed the fridge door and turned, facing the captain head-on. It was immensely reassuring to be able to look someone directly in the eye, and not have them flinch or their gaze dart away, but to look back at him with calm, steady... what?
He gnawed his lower lip briefly, considering, eyes flicking over Steve’s face, and he saw the exact second where Steve’s expression altered subtly. Just enough. Against the instincts of a lifetime, Loki leaned forward, sliding his hands up Steve’s chest. Steve bent his head slightly, his hand reaching up to rest against the side of Loki's neck.
Their lips barely touched, just brushing the one over the other, but it was enough to let them smell the beer on their breaths, Loki to catch a whiff of Steve’s shampoo and for Steve to wonder if that slightly foresty scent was cologne or just Loki. And then for a moment, they simply stood there, in Steve’s kitchen, their foreheads pressed together. Loki’s fingers were curled into Steve’s shirt, while Steve gently stroked his thumb over the line of Loki's jaw.
And then the moment of caution passed, and they crumpled together like paper being set alight. Steve’s hands framed Loki’s lean face to keep him steady while they devoured each other with soft (at first) hungry kisses. Loki wrapped arms and then legs around Steve’s body and hung on as though he intended to take root there, and felt his back slam against the refrigerator door, rocking it.
Inside, the rest of the beer bottles toppled over and shattered.