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Loki was absolutely not nervous about this plan.
It wasn't even an important plan, it was just for fun. The discovery of this Midgardian holiday had been a stroke of pure luck, but she had enough time to prepare for it, and genuinely was curious to experience it.
Halloween.
Originally thought by the mortals to be the night the veil between the realms was thinnest, especially the realms of the dead and demons. The idea of wearing masks and leaving out offering to hide from or appease these otherworldly beings was not unheard of, if such things genuinely did come through as these myths suggested, but Loki knew better; demons disliked the material plane and only ventured there with a purpose, not for a holiday.
The dead, on the other hand... well, the mortals kind of had a point.
There were many realms of the dead, and some of them were indeed closer to Midgard at this time of year.
Not Niflheim, though. That one wasn't even for humans.
The modern interpretation of Halloween, however - as with many Midgardian holidays, from what Loki had learned - was very different from its origins.
Children on the streets at night dressed as monsters or heroes, and it was expected to give them candy if they demanded it. Adults in costumes imitating anything from those same monsters, to fictional characters, to real famous people, attending parties that often looked just shy of orgies.
Loki had been invited to a 'costume party' at New York's SHIELD base, since she had chosen to impersonate a SHIELD agent for her cover story. The premise seemed simple enough, and she asked a few of the other agents what they meant to dress as, to be sure of the etiquette.
She didn't know these people well, but was on a casual first-name acquaintance level with them. A couple, who were known among the agency to be dating in spite of regulations against it, were going to be attending dressed as Beauty and the Beast: fairy tale characters, and just begging for their bosses to figure out what the rest of the entire department already knew about the pair. A group of four friends were going to be dressed as a popular band. One man said he would dress as Iron Man. One woman said she would be a 'sexy zombie'. Another man said simply 'It'. Figuring out the last of these was apparently some kind of demonic clown had taken far too long, because the Internet unhelpfully thought she was looking for 'information technology' instead.
Loki decided, given the fact it seemed perfectly acceptable to dress as real people, to dress as herself. The 'sexy zombie' (how do you make a brain-eating dead person sexy?) concept did contribute to her design of the costume. Apparently the human idea of 'sexy' basically meant 'less fabric, more visible skin', though apparently points were given for the strategic placing of the fabric and style. It was, Loki felt, not unlike illusions - suggestion could be far more effective than reality.
In order to ensure no one got too suspicious about any likeness between her true self and the costume, she used cheaper materials to make the 'armour'. She still had standards: it was still real leather and metal, but it was very lightweight and could never serve as any form of protection in combat. She replaced the horned helm with a circlet with two-inch-long horns, allowing her to wear her hair down, fitting more with what she had seen of Earth's idea of 'demon' costumes, and probably qualifying as 'cute'.
To allow for the 'sexy' low neckline, she replaced the gorget with a necklace in the same style. The cheap copy of the coat was the same length, but less bulky, and she wore the shortest skirt she thought she could reasonably get away with instead of leggings. One other detail that showed up in her search for 'sexy' costumes was fishnet stockings; it was effectively no more than a pattern over the bare skin of her legs, but it did kind of look good, in her opinion, especially with the knee-high boots she chose to complete the outfit.
Given what else she had seen on her brief Internet research of Halloween costumes, she also went way over the top on makeup, and used nail polish that glittered . She even purchased a high quality fake dagger - still plastic, like most of Midgard's toy weapons, but at least it didn't look plastic - with a blunt blade that retracted on a spring when used, to give the illusion of stabbing without the actual injury, and wore it on her hip.
Stabbing people randomly was just too much fun to refrain from. Humans were so fragile, after all, and those at SHIELD lived and breathed paranoia.
She also dragged Bucky along to the party with her, wearing the Photostatic Veil to hide his identity. This wasn't a top secret party; dates were allowed. Bucky's real face, however, was very much a secret from the SHIELD agents who would be in attendance.
Because Bucky was going, so was Steve. Loki only realised this when the two showed up on her doorstep together, and Bucky explained that Steve had been invited by SHIELD, but hadn't planned on going to go until he found out Bucky was also invited. Loki didn't blame him for not wanting to attend a SHIELD party alone. Everyone at SHIELD would be eager to meet Captain America, but no one would likely care for Steve himself. That kind of unwanted attention often felt even more lonely and uncomfortable, without the backup a trusted friend provided, than to just be left alone.
Bucky was a good match for Loki, personality wise. He felt absolutely no shame in wearing a cheap store-brought imitation of the latest Captain America uniform, purely because he knew it would annoy his friend.
Steve lectured them both on their irreverence for the recent and serious tragedy of the Incident, but both were unrepentant.
It didn’t help that it was rather difficult to take him seriously when he was dressed as Marty McFly. Loki had a guess that he likely chose that outfit because he empathised with the young friend of a mad scientist, who got involved in said scientist's experiments. Then there was the time travel aspect, of course, with the use and abuse of future knowledge being critical to the plot, suggesting a rather more sophisticated sense of humour and capacity for finely judged irony than Loki had previously credited him with. It was also partly Clint and Natasha's fault, for showing them that movie in the first place.
"I could have done worse," Loki declared defiantly. "Have you read the Poetic Eddas? I could make you boys dress as a horse."
Bucky nearly fell over laughing. He was (hopefully) the only human to know Loki's true identity, at this point, and they had had a perfectly serious conversation about the total lack of veracity in those old legends. Steve seemed not to know the reference, as he only looked mildly confused. He had, however, been about to respond, before Loki moved smoothly on.
"And given your costume... should I be asking questions about your relationship with your mother?"
The indignant spluttering had lasted the whole way to the party.
---
The party itself was very lively. The music wasn't too loud, but it was omnipresent, with a low background tone underpinning it that literally felt - there was no other word for it - eerie. There was also an artificial scent in the air that did a very good job of replicating the 'earthy' sort of smell most commonly associated with the grave - Loki could detect the artificial quality to it, but doubted the humans could - and a thin ankle-height fog across the stone tile floor. There was a buffet and tables to sit at on one side, and a dance floor - already somewhat busy in spite of the early hour - on the other.
It seemed like at least two thirds of the local SHIELD employees had turned up for this event, and a fair few from farther afield as well.
Loki quickly recognised the man dressed as 'It', and was mildly disappointed that it was just the basic clown look, and lacked the demonic teeth. The man talking to him was wearing a corset, stockings and suspenders.
"What's that meant to be from?" she asked idly, pretending not to notice the way Steve stared like this was somehow shocking and/or scandalous.
"Same actor, I think," Bucky answered, with a shrug. Of the three of them, Bucky was probably the most up-to-date on modern Earth culture, having had a lot more free time, and having chosen to use it acquiring such trivial information. Loki theorised that he did this out of some degree of spite for Tony Stark's constant use of unfamiliar references.
"Don't look so shocked, Steve," Loki laughed. "The horse joke was worse, trust me."
She was pretty sure the horse story was always going to beat any other offensive joke anyone could tell. If it had been true, Loki would long ago have killed everyone who dared spread such abhorrent tales, but as it wasn't she was happy to laugh at the fools who believed such falsehoods.
"Well, this is horrifically inappropriate," Clint Barton declared, as he joined Loki, Bucky and Steve. Loki was leaning against Bucky, her arm through his, in a very clear 'this my date' gesture. "No one should be allowed to make evil that sexy. It's just wrong."
"Why thank you," Loki preened.
"You're dressed as Dracula," Bucky retorted. "He's evil-sexy, too."
Steve stared at Bucky, who kept a perfectly straight face, in spite of the light of amusement in his eyes. Clint responded with a fang-baring grin and a rude hand-gesture that had been particularly popular with the British during World War II.
As the group moved over to the buffet table, and began to collect food, Clint rattled on about his latest mission. Apparently it wasn't at all classified, as he was talking in front of Bucky - who he knew wasn't SHIELD - in great detail. It was also perfectly boring, in Loki's opinion, but Bucky and Steve were either genuinely interested or too polite to interrupt.
The food was interesting, at least. It was all designed to look quite gruesome; pastries baked and cut to resemble mummified fingers, very realistically painted 'eyeballs' that were labelled as being made of cheese, little pies with the top crust cut to look like screaming faces, and, of course, the liberal use of a red sauce that probably looked a lot like blood to the uneducated eye, over all the meat-based snacks.
And the desserts...
There was a large pink mousse in the shape of a brain, with a clear glossy coating, and drizzled in a different sauce that still only almost looked like blood, in a way that made it look quite realistic... if it hadn't already had a few scoops taken out of it by the time Loki saw it. Cupcakes with pieces of sugar in them that looked like pieces of glass, coated in more of the red sauce from the 'brain'. Cookies cut and decorated to look like bats with their wings spread out, cats arching their backs, skulls, tombstones, pumpkins, and 'ghosts'... and bundles of white cotton candy that looked at first glance to be infested with tiny spiders... which turned out to also be made of sugar.
There were other foods as well, with only the unusual colours and/or the 'blood' sauces to differentiate them from normal Midgardian fare.
And the centrepiece of it all was a smoking punch bowl that Loki quickly figured out was a trick using two bowls, the larger containing frozen carbon dioxide, the sublimation of which generated a thin fog, the smaller sitting within it to keep the drink chilled yet separate from the less edible source of that cold. Loki was fairly sure this 'dry ice' was harmless to her, even if consumed in solid form, but it would definitely not be good for the humans, hence the clever design required to achieve the desired effect harmlessly.
Naturally, the punch was blood-red, as well, and the glasses provided appeared to be the type of beakers that Midgardian scientists used for their hazardous chemicals. Whoever organised this party certainly knew how to follow a theme.
The whole thing was very artfully done, creating the illusion that the feast was terribly gruesome and unnatural, when in fact it was made of quite normal ingredients manipulated by skillful chefs.
Meanwhile, Loki noticed the room's decorations included more 'spiderwebs', made of soft cotton and inhabited by rubber models of spiders in varying sizes. More such models, this time of bats, hung from the ceiling as if mid-flight. Streamers of black, orange, and purple metallic paper were strung up over the open spaces, woven together with strings of tiny twinkling lights. Simple light-projectors created images of various nebulous creatures moving through shadows on the walls, and there was a life-sized plastic model of a skeleton holding a ladle, carefully strung up behind the buffet table to look like it was serving the food.
There was also an incredibly realistic model of a raven with red eyes, perched upon the head of a statue, which from this distance looked marble, over the entrance to the room. The raven reminded Loki very strongly of Muninn - the only way to tell those two apart was that Huginn had golden eyes - and quite frankly it was the creepiest thing in the room.
Everyone on Asgard would have at least been confused by the mere concept of such a theme for a feast, but far more likely they would have hated the tricks and illusions, both for the unpleasant and uncomfortable things they impersonated, and the fact they were not real, at the same time.
Loki, by contrast, found that she very much enjoyed the ambience they created, and, as one illusionist to another, appreciated the skill that went into creating them without magic.
"Fake bats and spiders, but no snakes?" she asked idly, still scanning the room, as she picked one of the pieces of sugar 'glass' out of a cupcake, and then began licking the 'blood' off it. It tasted like summer berries.
"I hear Fury dislikes snakes," Clint answered with a vague shrug. "I'm about ninety-five percent sure it's because of a movie about a plane."
"Good to know," Loki said with a nod and a smile. She had no idea which movie Clint was speaking of, but it couldn't be that hard to figure out.
"You know that's just creepy to look at, right?" Clint asked her pointedly. Loki had chosen to sit right next to Bucky, turned to face him slightly, so that her legs stretched out across his lap as she leaned against him.
"What, this didn't happen six months ago?" she asked, resting her head on Bucky's shoulder.
Steve spluttered, mildly horrified at the insinuation based on Loki and Bucky's choice of costumes. Bucky grinned and wrapped his arm around Loki's waist, pulling her closer. "You two are impossible!" Steve declared.
"Dracula. Really?" a woman asked, seating herself at their table, next to Steve and across from Clint. Loki recognised her from the other timeline, as Sharon Carter. She did not recognise the costume, which seemed to be just loose hair, a black tank top, red leather leggings, and a Christian religious symbol on a silver chain around her neck.
Clint rolled his eyes. "You've seen my movies."
Sharon laughed, as if this was an in-joke, and nodded, waving a sharpened piece of wood in Clint's general direction. "You always come back."
Loki was vaguely aware of vampire myth on Midgard. She knew of Dracula, from the other timeline. She still didn't know who Sharon was meant to be, but the wooden stake was a giveaway that it was some other part of the vampire lore, at least.
Clint rolled his eyes. "I need more alcohol," he muttered. "Then, for dressing like that, you owe me a dance, Sharon," he added, grinning to once again show off the plastic fangs he wore, before leaving the group.
Steve chose that moment to take a bite of a meat pie with the screaming-face design on it, and yelped and dropped something back onto his plate that, at first glance, resembled a severed finger.
Bucky laughed. "Our caterer is Sweeney Todd!"
Steve shoved him, in a gesture clearly meant to say 'shut up!' He seemed unable to make up his mind between horror if it was real and laughing if it wasn't, himself.
"Oh, that's clever!" Sharon said, clearly not believing the finger was real for a moment.
Loki carefully prodded the offending object with one of the 'mummified finger' pastries from her own plate. "Nope, not a real finger," she assured them, beginning to laugh, herself.
"Think it's sausage, and the 'nail' looks like onion," Sharon agreed.
"Very clever," Loki agreed with a nod. "This almost makes me want to learn to cook."
Bucky gave her a sidelong look of mild horror at that, but didn't comment. They both knew that if she did, no one would be safe from such tricks in their food ever again.
Steve must have had a stronger stomach than most, because none of this put him off continuing to eat, once he knew it was just another trick.
The more Loki learned about humans, the more she liked the species as a whole. Individuals could be irritating, their primitivism could be laughable and frustrating by turns, and the quaint little categories they liked to put in were half hilarious, half insulting. Yet their greatest redeeming feature was that they so comfortably accepted this sort of casual deception as the entertainment it was intended to be. It was a pleasant change from the stodgy attitudes of Asgard.
Sharon subtly began to flirt with Steve, and it was interesting to watch the underhanded war of words that broke out between her and Bucky, who was trying a combination of putting her off and testing if she was worthy of his friend. Steve either didn't notice the flirting, or far more likely, feigned that ignorance. Meanwhile, Bucky held his own against the trained spy quite impressively.
Eventually, Sharon took the hint, and left, but not without a faint nod at Bucky like a fencer’s salute to a worthy opponent, and a rather longer look at Steve that made clear that she wasn’t giving up so easily.
By the time she finished eating, Loki had determined that she deeply disliked the taste of the black food dye, and she really wanted to know where she could purchase more of that berry-flavoured 'blood' sauce.
"I don't recognise any of this music," Steve said suddenly, perhaps a bit disappointed at that fact.
"You know, we could probably fix that," Loki told him. "They might take requests."
"They've got a theme going," Bucky observed. "Most of the songs from our era are, well... less creepy."
"Most of the songs you know are less appropriate," Steve retorted.
"Oh?" Loki said, feigning innocence. "I think I need to hear these inappropriate songs."
"Just because you're dressed like a horrible person, doesn't mean we want to subject you to his singing," Steve laughed. "Nevermind the kind of lyrics that he usually chooses." His tone implied that those lyrics were not, in his opinion, suitable for the company of ladies, which Loki found mildly adorable, in a puppyish sort of way, and interesting. Unlike most, she knew that Steve had quite a repertoire of foul language in his own right
It was at this moment that Agent Hill - dressed in a skintight bodysuit with a long thin furry tale, and cat-ear headband, all in black, with her hair down and whiskered painted on her face - approached the table.
"Why are you not dancing, Agent Snow?" she demanded of Loki. Loki raised an eyebrow at this, and Hill clarified the question with a request. "Dance with me?"
When Loki hesitated, Bucky elbowed her sharply, in a way that basically gave her the choice of either standing up or falling off her chair... so she stood.
Loki didn't recognise the music either, but it was fast. As soon as they reached the dance floor, Hill took the lead with great skill. It must have been entertaining for those who knew about the Incident to see Loki being dipped and spun by a shorter, somewhat dainty, woman in a cat costume.
Loki didn't complain, in fact she quite enjoyed it. She hadn't had a dance partner who actually knew how to lead in decades. As the song ended, Hill idly commented, "Nice footwork, agent," in something close to a purr.
And now that she was on the dance floor, it seemed the other agents saw her as fair game. As soon as the first song ended, a man in a decent - if plastic - imitation of the Iron Man armour asked her for the next dance. Her idle threat of defenestration was taken as a yes, which amused her to no end.
After that, she was approached by Brock Rumlow, who wore something resembling an oversimplified version of Grecian armour, with a blue cape. As he started to lead her third dance, she took a guess and asked, "Heracles?"
Rumlow grinned, "Yeah."
Loki laughed lightly, "Nice." The irony of a HYDRA agent dressed as the Olympian demigod who slew the real Hydra was almost beautiful... and clearly, he knew it.
SHIELD (or was it HYDRA?) threw the best parties.
Two more agents approached her to dance, after that. Victoria Hand, wearing a beautiful red ballgown covered in embroidered hearts... and then a younger agent Loki didn't know yet, who had fair hair and wore a plain off-white tunic with a plastic glow-stick hanging from his waist as though it were a sword.
After that, she ducked away from a man who had chosen to dress as her brother, and grabbed Bucky's hand, to pull him onto the dancefloor instead. She shared two dances with Bucky, and had to rebuff the poor fool who thought it was a good idea to impersonate Thor twice more, before he finally took the hint and went off to sit with Rumlow and a very austere looking woman in a black scale-mail dress and glasses.
When they returned to their table, they found Nick Fury sitting there, talking to Steve.
Bucky quietly took his seat, pretending to mind his own business, while Loki drew Fury's attention somewhat more dramatically, as she sat down next to him.
She looked at Fury with confusion. He wasn't wearing a costume, or at least nothing other than his usual attire. But then he turned to face her more directly, and she saw the red and white sticky-paper nametag on his leather coat, which said: 'My Name Is: GOD '.
"You've got the eyes for it, Fury," she told him bluntly, staring at the nametag.
Fury gave her a suspicious look. Bucky laughed. Steve clearly didn't get it.
The legends on Earth claimed Odin traded his eye for wisdom, in some kind of ritual sacrifice. In reality, he lost it in the Jotun war, though considering his change in policy thereafter, she had to grudgingly consider that it wasn’t entirely incorrect - if in a metaphorical sense. Either way, it wouldn't seem too out of place for an educated human to make the same joke Loki just did.
"Oh, come on, Steve," Bucky teased, probably trying to cover for the suspicious nature of Loki's comment. "The Eddas are several centuries old; being frozen for less than one is no excuse."
Steve rolled his eyes. "It's still more homework," he complained. "Thanks for that."
"Speaking of the Eddas... is this a bad time to make the 'old Soviet Russia' joke?" Natasha asked, joining them from somewhere behind Loki. It was eerie how she managed to sneak up on her like that.
"Wait, what?" Steve asked, clearly confused.
This was one of the few actual 'jokes' Natasha would tell, and it had taken Steve and Bucky a while to figure it out, because she never actually finished the joke. Apparently it was actually so old a joke that it didn't even need finishing, for most people... but Natasha had been the first to introduce the pair to it. Usually it went something like this; Tony or Clint would say something, and then Natasha would simply reply, "In old Soviet Russia..." and allow her audience to fill in the gaps.
"The horse," Bucky said flatly, before covering his face with one hand, as if exasperated by the whole thing. To be fair, it did get old a few hours ago.
Steve's eyes widened as he finally made the connection, and did the calculations to realise what, exactly, this running joke had in fact entailed. He looked mortified. Bucky started laughing again.
"I think I love you," Loki told Natasha, grinning as she finally looked up at her.
Natasha was wearing a blue velvet ankle-length dress, with small details of gold embroidery around the edges of the fabric, and open at the shoulders and elbows to allow a white linen undershirt to show through. The cut of the dress was wide enough that it relied on gravity and the heavier fabric, to pool in closer to her legs; this gave it an illusion of being restrictive, but Loki had no doubt that Natasha could kick a man in the face without ripping it. Her makeup was tactfully applied to make her face seem rounder, softer, and more innocent looking, and her bold red hair was clearly augmented with a wig that Loki couldn't quite find the edges of, and curled into ringlets so tight they made it look positively bushy.
"That's just horrible, Nat," Clint declared, scowling at her as he stalked far more audibly over to the group. "How could you betray me like this?"
"What?" Steve asked, clueless.
Clint was facing off against Nat, arms folded and glaring daggers at her, now. "This abomination, it's just..."
It seemed clear to Loki that this exchange was in fact not about either herself or the horse joke. Loki really had meant to let that joke go, by now... but Natasha must have overheard them earlier. Loki had in fact seen her around the room, throughout the night, but hadn't realised it was her, due to the quality of the costume. Loki wasn't sure who this character was, but she didn't look at all like Natasha, and it had taken hearing her voice for Loki to recognise her.
"I think it's a Brave choice," Fury announced, earning a hateful glare from Clint. Loki could literally hear the capitalisation, and wondered at the joke there. "I'm more annoyed by Agent Hill's costume, if I'm honest," Fury added. "She knows better."
Either way, Clint's bad temper - manifesting in sniping at Natasha, and insulting the archery skills of someone called Merida; likely who Natasha was dressed as, by the sound of things - quickly drove off Steve, and Loki decided to follow him in this tactical retreat. Bucky stuck with her, because avoiding an irate Fury was a good sign of a healthy self-preservation instinct in humans.
The last thing Loki heard from that table was Natasha casually pointing out, "You're doing a poor job of dissuading repeat offenses, Clint."
They didn't go far, just to the other side of the dance floor, where a group of SHIELD's science division had gathered, dressed as very much non-human creatures.
Three of the five were varying shades of blue.
On closer inspection, it was easy to see the marks where the makeup rubbed against the necklines of their clothes, on the four of them with non-human skin-tones. The only one not in such makeup still had strange ridges on her forehead, and wore more black leather than Loki. The other non-blue one had a red and black face - the only exposed skin under his heavy black robes - with horns on his head.
The other man had pale blue makeup, and a white wig, with what was clearly intended to be antennae protruding from said wig. One woman had sky blue makeup, and strange tentacle-like ridges in place of hair. Both she, and the woman with ridges on her forehead, had very faint visible lines where these decorative pieces met their real skin, but to human eyes it was probably seamless.
The other woman had cobalt blue makeup, short navy hair (probably also a wig, but it was harder to tell), and her eyes were completely red. Loki had known that humans could disguise the colour of their irises with 'contact lenses' - the red-and-black-faced man had clearly done so - but she hadn't known they had the ability to disguise their entire eyes; iris, pupil and sclera, like that.
But then Loki looked closer, more carefully, and she noticed that this woman was in fact staring ahead, not looking at anyone. It was harder to tell when the red covered the whole eye, but the iris and sclera were very slightly different shades of red. She also stood arm in arm with the red-and-black faced man. Either she was blind, or this trick of her eyes impeded her vision. Or it could be both: one might be more willing to wear something obstructive like that if they were at that disadvantage already.
Steve was already asking them what they were meant to be, by the time Loki and Bucky joined them, and since Loki was sincerely curious, she just listened quietly, tuning out the idle chatter, and only taking in the valuable information.
The woman with ridges on her forehead, and the man with antennae were both dressed as average citizens of fictional species from a television show called Star Trek. Klingon and Andorian, respectively. Apparently Klingons were a violent honour-bound warrior race, while Andorians were a more pragmatic and paranoid militant species from an ice planet.
"We all know Hoth was here first," the red-eyed woman chided, causing the group of 'aliens' to laugh.
The woman with the strange ridges instead of hair was meant to be an Asari, from a video game called Mass Effect. A race of single-sexed, mostly peaceful xenophiliacs.
And the other two were from Star Wars. The man was dressed as a character named Darth Maul: his species designation was Zabrak, and he wielded a double-bladed sword called a 'lightsaber'. The red-eyed woman was not from the (in?)famous movies, but rather a novel based on them. She was dressed as a Chiss: the same species as an Admiral in that novel, named Thrawn.
Between the ice planet, the single-sex species, and the red eyes... Loki had to believe the influence of the Jotuns on Earth's culture must have been greater than she had first thought.
"Is it just me, or are there a lot of blue aliens here?" Bucky asked, oblivious. He might know Loki's identity - and even that she was Jotun - but he had no idea what she truly looked like.
It was the Andorian who spoke up. "I'm not sure why, but I am quite certain that people like blue aliens best. Everyone talks about 'little green men from Mars', or whatever other unrealistic rubbish, but give them a choice of which fictional species they can either be or sleep with, and the majority inevitably pick the blue ones."
"You have got to be kidding me," Loki muttered, slightly shocked by this declaration.
" Mass Effect lets you sleep with any of maybe half the people on your ship. Everyone picks the one Asari, even over the human options," the Andorian insisted, indicating the woman dressed as an Asari for emphasis.
"I picked Tali," the Klingon retorted bluntly. The insinuation in her tone was that Tali was probably not blue.
"Wait, there's a video game where you can sleep with aliens?" Steve asked, sounding quite shocked and somewhat mortified.
"Your avatar can romance the characters, but it tastefully fades to black," the Asari assured him. Bucky was now laughing at Steve's expression.
"Avatar," Maul chuckled, as if this itself was somehow a significant reference all on its own.
"But the blue alien thing is pretty much proven," the Andorian persisted. "You can see it in MMO games like Star Wars: blue Twi'lek are supposed to be uncommon in the Star Wars universe, but most players pick them. Chiss aren't even in the movies, but they're all over the game, too. And don't get me started on Warcraft ..."
"Yes, let's not," the Klingon said.
"I imagine this is why you're currently dressed as a blue alien, then," Loki said to the Andorian, rather bluntly.
"Yes," he admitted, straightening his shoulders as if proud of this.
Loki shook her head. "So if any of you met a real blue alien, what would you do?"
"Depends, does it look more like us, or him?" the Asari asked, gesturing to the Andorian. This comparison elicited laughter from the other women present.
Loki looked from one to the other for a moment, before nodding to the Chiss, "Like her."
"I'd tap that," Maul said with a definitive nod.
"I'm your wife, genius," the Chiss chided him.
Loki elbowed Bucky in the ribs. "What about you, handsome?"
"I am not going to say anything about Darth Maul's wife!" Bucky protested. "Besides…" he continued, throwing an arm around Loki's shoulders, "You know you're the only evil alien I'm interested in."
"I think I was better off sitting between an angry Barton and Fury," Steve muttered, shaking his head.
When he turned to walk away, he almost ran directly into Sharon, who asked him to dance. To get away from Loki and Bucky's bad behaviour, he accepted.
---
"So... are you really blue?" Bucky asked Loki, as he walked her home. Steve had left the party earlier than them, so there was no risk of him overhearing.
Loki cast a concealment from prying eyes and ears, anyway.
"Yes."
"Like the Chiss lady?" he prodded.
"Jotun eyes have visible pupils."
"That's it?"
"Close enough," Loki lied.
"Cool."
"Yes," Loki said bluntly. "My internal body temperature in my natural form is well below the freezing point of water, so you could call me 'cool'."
"Wow, that's..."
"Ice planet."
"Like the Andorians... I'm sensing a pattern here."
Loki frowned, but kept her head down as they continued to walk.
"Waaait..." Bucky said suddenly, "You're deliberately not saying something, aren't you?"
Loki hesitated for a long moment, before admitting. "Most Jotun are both male and female."
"That's creepy," he said softly, before quickly correcting himself. "Not that it's creepy you're like that. I mean the way our fictional aliens are so close to guessing it right."
Loki shrugged and kept walking. Categories again. She expected Bucky to practically run away from her the second she made it safely to her apartment... so she was surprised when he waited, and then followed her in as soon as she indicated he could.
"Can I see?" he asked, once they were inside the apartment.
Loki was startled, and stared at him for several long seconds, before slowly nodding. "If you want."
A female representation of her Jotun form wouldn't look that different from the Chiss woman, really. The main difference was that the Chiss appeared to have perfectly smooth skin, while Jotuns had clan markings. It truly shocked and fascinated her to imagine that humans found such things appealing, given the preconceptions Loki had been raised with.
Slowly she shifted her body into Jotun form, maintaining her female shape as she did so. It was quite common, from what she had read since discovering her true nature, for Jotuns to be shapeshifters, and to use that ability to choose their preferred - rather than true - appearance.
When she looked back to Bucky, she saw that he looked fascinated, not horrified as she had expected.
He reached out to touch her, but she quickly took a step back, away from him. "Don't," she said quickly. "A Jotun's touch can cause severe frostbite, almost instantly. I... don't want to hurt you."
"You're beautiful, Loki," he said softly, even as he met her blood-red eyes.
"You can't really believe that," she said bitterly, folding her arms defensively, and melting back into her Aesir form.
"You heard the science guys," he replied bluntly. "I'm not even the only person who thinks so."
"Humans are so strange..."
"Well I think it's Asgardians who're strange," he retorted. "If they think there's anything wrong with you."
Loki raised an eyebrow sceptically. "Besides the regicide, patricide, and attempted genocide, you mean?"
Bucky chuckled bitterly. "I'm right there with you on the regicide, y'know. We've all done things we regret."
And... that was true. Loki did regret the attempted genocide part. Sure, killing Laufey had been a military necessity, but who did she really think she would fool here? She was talking to a man who had been a seasoned soldier, even before he became a brainwashed weapon.
She took a step forward, closing the distance she had put between them when she wore her Jotun form, and fell into his arms easily.
She liked him. She liked these humans' outlook on their short little lives.
And she really liked this holiday.
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