Chapter Text
“I thought we’d start by picking up my keys,” Aeslin said as the cab wound its way through the DC traffic.
“Thought you didn’t need them,” he replied, recalling the way she’d gotten into her apartment before.
“Car keys,” she clarified. “Jim and Beth have them. They’ve been taking care of it for a while.”
“How so?”
“Driving it around, making sure it gets used,” came the reply. “You can’t just leave one sitting around for six months and expect it to work like it’s supposed to. I left them my keys when I went to Nebraska back in April. It’s all right. They’ve done it before. SHIELD never really told me my assignments too far in advance, so they’re used to having an extra car around for when they might need it. It's the 'date car'.” She glanced out at the buildings around them. “After that I thought maybe we could do some shopping. Explore a little bit. I mean, I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty picky. I like to have more than one outfit to wear.”
Clothes. He kept his smile casual, but he could tell from her face that she wasn’t fooled. She nudged him. “You’ll get to pick them out yourself, even.”
“Norns, girl,” he replied with a laugh. “You’re going to spoil me.”
She grinned as the cab pulled up to the curb. Paying the driver, she led the way back through the vaguely familiar lobby and to the elevator. It stopped on the floor below hers, and he walked next to her down the cool hallway. Aeslin knocked gently, and Loki heard a commotion on the other side of the door.
It opened rapidly to reveal a young man with one hand on the handle and the other wrapped around what appeared to be a pair of ankles.
“Doctor G!” the kid bellowed, surging forward. “Holy buckets here hold this-” he shoved toward Loki, who reached out automatically to grab the flailing pair of ankles as the young man tackled Aeslin into a bear hug and dragged her into the apartment while yelling for his mother.
Loki stood awkwardly in the silence of the hall, then looked down at the kid dangling by his ankles from his grip. They regarded each other for a moment, and then the boy spoke.
“‘Sup,” he said easily, pushing his t-shirt beneath his chin to see Loki better. “You gonna stand out here all day? Mom doesn’t pay to heat the whole hallway, you know. I’m Nate.”
“Loki,” he replied.
“Like the god?”
Loki rolled his eyes just a little as he went through the door and closed it behind him. “Something like that.”
“You seem to be handling this well,” Nate observed as they made their way across the room.
“What,” Loki said as he dropped the kid gently onto the first couch he saw. “You think you’re the only one with an older brother?”
The boy laughed at that as he wriggled upright, knocking pillows to the floor. Loki was helping him gather them when an older man entered. Loki straightened, throw pillows in hand, and the man smiled. “See you’ve already met Nate,” he said and held out his hand. “I’m Jim. Come on in.”
“Thank you,” said Loki, tossing the last of the pillows on the couch and shaking the other man’s hand. He followed him toward the kitchen of the apartment. It was a different layout than Aeslin’s, the more he looked at it, but the noises were unmistakable.
“-could have given us at least a bit more warning,” a woman was saying to Aeslin, who leaned against the counter with her arms folded.
“I wasn’t expecting anything,” Aeslin replied. “We’ll have time to catch up, but right now I just needed to pick up my keys so I can go get some clothes that I didn’t have to borrow from somebody’s Amazon girlfriend.”
The woman looked at Loki expectantly, and Aeslin stepped forward. “Sorry, Beth. This is Loki.”
Loki didn’t miss the once-over, nor could he have misinterpreted the look on the woman’s face when she turned back to Aeslin, and he chuckled. “Loki Laufeyson,” he said smoothly, leaning against the door jamb. “I’m a colleague of Dr. Kindle’s. Got myself stranded in New York, I’m afraid, and Dr. Kindle was kind enough to offer me a way home.”
“You and thousands of other people,” laughed Jim. “You got a place to stay? We’ve got a couch if you need it; I mean, Kindle’s got a great place up there, but it’s only a one bedroom and she’s got to save the couch for Ph-” He trailed off, eyes narrowed at Loki’s attempt at the universal gesture for oh Norns please shut the hell up right this second. It seemed only partially successful, and Loki’s hands were almost back in his pockets before Aeslin had made it all the way around to face him. Loki saw the mask go up, the steel slipping into her veins, but he couldn’t miss the look in her eyes.
Beth spoke first. “Oh, honey.”
“When?” asked Jim.
Aeslin took a deep breath, and Loki could almost see her skin crawl beneath where Beth had placed a gentle hand on her arm. “Last week.”
Colleague. Colleague. Loki’s arms ached from the strain of keeping his hands in his pockets.
“In the invasion?”
“No,” she managed. “Before. A little before. I can’t really-”
“Of course.” Jim stopped for a moment, twisting his hands. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s all right. I think I just need time.”
Loki glanced behind Beth to the open cupboard; several sets of keys hung from tiny pegs on the inside of the door. His fingers itched to do something, and he made an educated guess and grabbed the set of keys that bore a tiny, decorative trowel on one of the links. Aeslin gave him a grateful look.
Aeslin grabbed Beth in a quick hug, then did the same to Jim. “Sorry to run,” she said. “We’ll get together soon. I’m just a bit of a mess.”
Beth led her into the great room again, headed for the door, and Loki and Jim followed. The other man’s voice was quiet. “Colleague, huh?”
Loki grinned a little at him, one finger to his lips, and followed her rapidly out the door.
***
The door closed behind him with the familiar thump of machinery, and they stood together in the quiet of her abandoned living room.
“Do you want to rest?” he asked. “It might be a good thing for you.”
“Later, maybe.”
He slid a hand along the nape of her neck, feeling the knots along her spine, and he stroked his thumb gently along one of them.
“I need to get the card to my savings account,” she said. “Then we can go get clothes.” She didn’t move, though, standing in the center of the room with her arms wrapped around herself, the muscles beneath his hand smooth and unyielding as sun-warmed stone.
“I’ll get it,” he told her after a moment. “Just tell me where to go.”
“Bedroom. Second door on your left, upper drawer in the nightstand. There’s a clip.”
He brushed his lips to her temple. “I’ll be right back.”
A slight shrug. “Take your time. We’ve got all afternoon.”
Her room was large, sunlit and could not have belonged to anyone but her. Pillows scattered haphazardly across the bed, an easel in one corner and a woven chair dangling from the ceiling in another, a sketchbook resting on the cushion. He found himself staring at the work on the easel, and he realized that this was the companion piece she had mentioned what seemed like a lifetime ago. It was unfinished, the pencil work sloping down from the upper left corner and stopping somewhere in the middle. He dragged his gaze away, kneeling quickly next to the bed and opening the top drawer of the chest there. There was a metal band tucked into one corner of the drawer, a few cards in the clipped-together paper sleeves, and he pulled the whole thing out and shut the drawer again. Sparing one last look for the unfinished piece, he pulled the door closed softly behind him and went back to the living room. She hadn’t really moved; she was merely staring at the images above her sofa as though she’d never seen them before. He wasn’t even sure she knew he was there.
“Aeslin?”
Her arms tightened around her ribs. “We need to go.”
“Of course,” he said calmly. “I thought that was the plan.”
That was when she turned to him, and in her face he saw exactly what he had feared, and what he had been awaiting for days. The inevitable.
“No,” she said. “We need to go. We can’t stay here. It’s not… we need to go.” Her voice became a little stronger, a little more business-like. She went to a small table at the end of the couch, pulling out what looked like a miniature tablet and shoving it into her pocket. “There’s a laptop under the sofa if you want to grab it; the cords should already be in the bag. Take whatever books you want; the rest can come later. You’d probably like anything on the third shelf down, but don’t limit yourself on my account. They’re all good. It’s why I bought them. The laptop case has extra room for three or four, or there’s a backpack in the closet.”
He selected a few of the more intriguing books at random, more to appease her than anything else, then pushed them into the bag she pulled from beneath the couch. She slipped it over her head, the clip he had handed her already in her back pocket, and she looked at him with a bit of apology on her face.
“I’m s-” was all she got out before he put a finger to her lips.
“Clothes now? Clothes later?”
“Now,” she said against his index finger before he slid it away. “But don’t take too long. I want to beat traffic.” A slight scoff. “Like that’s possible in this town.”
He slipped the bag from her shoulder, smoothing her hair as the strap came free. Loki handed her the keys, and she took his hand as the door shut and locked behind them for the last time.