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Darcy wasn't entirely sure what had started it. Most likely the fact that she was one of the first (only) people to give Loki a chance when he showed up in Thor's wake with a promise of change. Or maybe she was an easy mark and he just liked messing with her head. Whatever the reason, he seemed to have decided she was his good luck charm.
The first time it happened was when he and Thor had to return to Asgard to deal with Odin. They weren't super close at the time, but it didn't take an intimate relationship to peg that the familial relationship was still absolutely fraught with tensions.
She had wished him a simple “Good luck” when they passed in the hallways, and ended up dropping her coffee in shock when he suddenly pressed a swift kiss to the top of her head.
“To seal it in. That is the Midgardian method, yes?” he queried her with his trademark smirk. And then he was gone, leaving her to grumble over her spilled coffee and weirdo aliens.
Three days later he appeared in the lab, set a large coffee on her desk, pressed a brief kiss to her forehead, told her, “Thank you,” and was gone again before she could say anything. At least the coffee bolstered her through the sudden onset interrogation from Jane and Bruce who had watched the whole thing go down.
She blew it off as an anomalous Loki incident and carried on with her life, until the next mission came up. She was in the quinjet helping Jane set up equipment to take readings during the flight when the Avengers on-call began to board.
Darcy hopped out and was still staring at her tablet, adjusting inputs while tossing out a general, “Good luck, y'all stay safe,” when she felt a brief pressure on top of her head. And there was Loki, grinning like the Cheshire cat as he tossed her a wink before boarding the jet. A week later upon the team's return she was gifted another cup of coffee and another kiss to her forehead.
After that it somehow became routine. Even the others seemed to suddenly view her as some kind of good luck charm, though only Loki ever kissed her. But Nat would always nod, Steve would pat her shoulder, Clint made up a secret handshake, and so on.
Loki never volunteered an explanation for the behavior. Darcy never questioned it, assuming it was simply another bit of mischief for him. But the Good Luck Goodbye always seemed to have a bolstering effect on the team, and if she could help them go into their missions feeling just that much more ready to kick ass and come home alive, then she was happy to play the mascot. This was about saving the world after all.
So she went along with it. A hug from Thor, a peck from Loki, a pat, a nod, a secret shake and, whenever they eventually came home, coffee and a brief press of lips to her forehead. It was a comfortable routine.
Until the day they didn't all come home in one piece. Darcy and Jane were waiting to reclaim their equipment for maintenance and calibrations when the back of the plane opened up and disgorged a battered crew of heroes. Clint was helping a limping Nat, Hulk was carrying Tony trapped in a battered suit, and the brothers staggered down the ramp, supporting each other on stumbling, exhausted legs.
Thor checked his brother's stability before peeling away to Jane, for once completely distracted from her science, as she rushed to his side. He gave half a hug to Darcy in passing before fully embracing his fiancée, whispering gentle words of reassurance as they moved indoors. That was fine, she would have booted Jane herself if she tried to stay up here when her man was down. Darcy totally had this One Woman Show on lock, and there wasn't anyone needing her comfort right now.
A large hand settled on her shoulder, turning her around as the other settled on her cheek. Tilting her face up to lay a warm, slow kiss upon her forehead. “Thank you, Darcy,” he murmured, lips still brushing her skin, before turning away and stumbling after the others.
She watched him go, mind reeling over the sudden escalation of their playful little ritual. Still he never said anything about it, treating her with the same bantering snark he always did, and acting like kissing her was simply the done thing when leaving to go risk his life.
She finally worked up the courage to ask him about it one day when it was just the two of them in the common room. All he said was, “You are far more than merely symbolic, you know.”
A few days later he kissed her head, “For luck,” and came back the next day with coffee and another brief kiss to her brow. She spent the evening with ice cream and wine, venting to Jane about stupid space princes who liked to play mind games.
Then came another assignment that ended with Avengers limping and licking their wounds, and with it came another hot, sweet lingering kiss followed by a trembling word of thanks. And another, and another. The worse the mission the longer he lingered, though he always vanished before it could be construed as pressing her for anything more. Darcy had thought about asking him to quit, more than a few times; the casual affection becoming more than she could bear without some sort of explanation. But then he would find his way to her, worn and weary, and she would watch as something in him eased at the sight of her. She could see the way he calmed in the moment where his lips pressed to her skin, feel the tension release from his hands where they gripped her shoulders. And she found she couldn't deny him that, didn't want to deny him that. Whatever his reasons, she was willing to share that small bit of herself with him.
And so it continued, until the day the tower was attacked. Darcy wasn't stupid, this was more than she could face with just her taser. She ran.
Tony's post-nuke paranoia had given rise to at least a few good things. There were protocols in place, multiple evacuation routes, redundancies is case of... well almost anything. And every single person, including the Avengers, had been drilled in all of them. As Darcy looked out the window from the twentieth story hallway she had been running down she could see people fanning out from various exit points. That was good, it meant all the planning, all the drills, were paying off now.
She hoped Tony would be able to focus on how many lives he had saved, and not the cases where no amount of planning could account for being trapped in a hallway corner, with less than a foot of crumbling floor between them and a life-ending drop to the concrete below... like her.
On the whole, Darcy felt like she was handling this extremely deadly situation very well. She'd blown past her former record for consecutive minutes without moving, what felt like, hours ago. And she managed to restrict herself to nothing more than frightened whimpers instead of full on terrified sobbing. Given the circumstances she was calling it a win. The building shook again, and her last piece of floor began to sag downwards. Okay screw not crying, crying was better because then the world was too blurry for her to see her impending doom.
“-cy!” A voice echoed from down the other side of the void, “-rcy!” A frightened, familiar voice, “DARCY!”
A green and black shape came into into view, and Darcy hastily scrubbed at her face, hope springing up as she lifted clear eyes to catch sight of the smirking trickster come to save her. What she saw was a bloodied, exhausted Loki, staring across the gap between them with something like despair in his eyes. How long, she wondered, had he been fighting? His seiðr was sparking weakly at his fingertips, never successfully materializing. Who had attacked them that he would be so wrecked?
“Darcy...” His voice was rough, fearful. When had he learned how to sound that way? He stared at her from across the twenty foot gap between them, looking close to tears himself.
“Hey Loki,” she managed to keep her voice almost stable. “Too bad I didn't know we were gonna be attacked today. I coulda made sure you got that kiss in before the fighting started,” she added with a small chuckle, just as the floor began to give out beneath her.
“No!” His hand flew out, hopelessly reaching for her as she scrambled to press herself as close to the wall as she could.
Darcy met his eyes again, trying to be brave. She did her best to smile at him like she always did before a mission. “Good luck.”
Then she was falling. She kept her eyes up, not wanting to see the end coming. Which is how she saw Loki, god of mischief and lies leaping from the edge, flinging himself downward like a javelin, arms and legs held tight together, plummeting towards her. She reached for him without thinking, sobbing when she felt his hand clasp her arm, pulling her close until his long frame was curled around her petite form, his face tucked against her head, shielding her as they crashed through the jagged remains of the floors below them. His seiðr flickered around them, one small, desperate flare solidifying protectively, just before they struck the ground.
The final impact knocked the breath from her lungs, and she thought she might have broken an arm somewhere along the way, but she was alive. She lay still for a moment trying to process what in the 90s action movie she had just experienced, when a pained groan beneath her brought her mind sharply into focus.
“Loki!” She rolled off of him, wincing both at the pain in her arm, and the gasps that escaped his mouth when her weight shifted over him. “Holy shit! You just fucking jumped out of a building to catch me!! You...you, jumped after me!! WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU DO THAT?!” Her voice broke, feeling slightly crazed over the whole thing.
“Well, you left before I could finish our routine.” Some back corner of her mind filed a complaint over the fact that he could still somehow sound smug whilst gasping in pain. The rest of her adrenaline-hazed brain was doing a great job of bluescreening over his words.
“Did you seriously just tell me that you jumped, potentially to your death, to ki-mmph!” He cut her off with a kiss, his warm lips straying from their usual territory to instead claim her own. His touch was both familiar and new in the same stroke, and she couldn't stop herself from leaning into him.
Darcy's overtaxed brain decided to give up and simply accept whatever was happening. So she let herself relax and enjoy the benefits of Loki's experience. She didn't know how much of her current reactions were influenced by the recent near-death experience, but she wasn't going to argue it right now. Not when the god of mischief was kissing her like his life depended on it.
The need for air finally asserted itself and she broke away, pleased to see he was looking every bit as gobsmacked as she felt. He pulled her close, pressing their foreheads together before whispering, “Thank you, Darcy,” as though she had just given him a blessed gift.
“W-what?!” Her voice was wobbling now, matching the tremors that were beginning to run through her frame. “You were, serious about that?”
He didn't answer, instead gifting her his cheeky smirk before closing his eyes and going limp. Darcy spent a few moments in panic mode, frantically checking for breathing and a pulse. She collapsed against him in relief when she found it. “Not cool dude! You are so gonna pay for that when you wake up again. And I'm using you as a pillow too!” she added for good measure.
Scooting carefully around, she arranged herself as best she could to avoid his injuries before laying her head on his chest, broken arm draped cautiously over him for support. Unconsciousness claimed her almost instantly, her last thought the hope that someone found them before Loki bled out.
The beeping alarm clock was both annoying, and evasive, as she blindly smacked her hand out to shut it off. Cracking one eye open, she was met with an unfamiliar white room, no alarm clock, lots of medical machinery, and her arm suspended in a complicated sling above her prone form.
The beeping increased its pace in time with her accelerating heart rate. ‘Heart monitor,’ her internal voice supplied as the rest of her consciousness scrambled to try and remember what had happened to cause her to end up here. It came in flashes, the attack, the flight, the fall, and... “Loki!” The name flew from her mouth unbidden, worry for her rescuer overcoming everything else.
Her outcry resulted in a sudden scrambling in the corner of her room before the man himself appeared at her side. Her eyes flared in shock at the sight of him looking anything less than impeccable outside of battle. Gone were the leather and brass of his armor, but absent too were the sleek lines of the tailored suits he preferred. Instead he wore a set of ill-fitting scrubs in an odd shade of maroon, his hair was wild and curling instead of slicked back, and he was still favoring the side where she had seen the blood staining his armor when he had first come to find her.
But his face, oh his face was almost more than she could handle. Hope and worry vied for dominance in his expression while something fragile and tender lurked behind them. And every bit of his usual brooding intensity was focused on her. Her eyes drifted to his lips, remembering the way he had kissed her, the shuddering gratitude in his voice when he had thanked her. Looking back to his eyes, his gaze made her feel like he was drinking her in, as though she was water in the desert. It was enough to push her to speak after so many months of silence.
“Why?”
He tilted his head, seeming confused. “You invoked the ritual. I had to complete it or we wouldn't have survived the fall.”
“The.... what? What the hell are you talking about?"
His brow furrowed further, head tilting slightly, as though he was trying to determine whether she was serious or not. “Your spell for good fortune. You cast it every time we leave for a mission.”
It was Darcy's turn to tilt her head like a confused puppy, staring up at him like he'd just started speaking Klingon. ‘Does Allspeak cover Klingon?... not important right now, focus, Darce!’ “What spell are you talking about? I don't know any spells, I'm not magic like you are.”
He went still, staring at her like she had just upended his understanding of some universal constant and turned it inside out. “But, you invoked that charm for luck... that first mission.”
“You mean when I said ‘good luck’? Loki that's not a spell. It's just a way of wishing people well. Like ‘good luck on your test’ means ‘I hope you get a good grade’. There's no magic in it. You just looked like you maybe needed a little bolstering that day.”
She wasn't sure what reaction she had expected, perhaps anger because he thought she was patronizing him, or maybe mockery for thinking he would need the emotional support of a pathetic mortal. What she got was a Loki who looked halfway between shock and elation. Like he had woken up to find that one special gift he had wanted, but was told they couldn't afford, under the Christmas tree.
“L-loki?”
He leaned down over her, his hand a soft touch against her cheek as he pressed warm, comforting kisses to her forehead. “Darcy Lewis,” he breathed the words over her skin. “Thank you. Thank you for caring when you had no reason to. You have saved us more times than I can count, without even knowing what you did. You are magnificent, Min Elskan."
“Not that I am not deeply enjoying this side of you, but could you please give me an explanation that includes actual information?”
He laughed at that and oh, that sound should have been illegal. He kissed her once more, a sweet press against her lips, before pulling his chair to sit beside her, his large hand enveloping hers as he spoke. “When you first wished me good luck, I assumed you were speaking to me in my capacity as a sorcerer, as a mark of respect from one magic wielder to another. That you were invoking a simple, but ancient magic. You offered a form of aid, I accepted, and upon return brought your repayment.”
“You paid me in kisses?”
“No, Elskan, in coffee. It seemed a paltry sum, I admit, until I realized how deeply you revere the beverage.”
“...Okay, I suppose I can't argue that. But if the coffee was payment --where the heck did you get that idea anyway?-- then why all the kissing?”
“You dropped your coffee that first day. I had assumed that was the Midgardian method of citing required payment by demonstrating the deficit caused by granting your assistance.”
“And the kissing?”
“Was it not pleasurable?”
“That is not the issue here and you know it.” Darcy tried to be stern but it is difficult to be intimidating when you're dressed in a hospital gown with your arm dangling around uselessly.
“Mmm, I shouldn't think it was.” The smug little brat was practically purring the words. “As I said, the kiss upon your head was to accept your offering and ‘seal it’ as is Midgardian tradition. And the kiss upon my return was to thank you for the protection you gave.”
“Tradition... are you talking about the phrase ‘sealed with a kiss’?”
“A quaint but effective method. It suited your personality from what I knew of it.”
“....So, lemme see if I have this straight... I unintentionally invoked a protection spell simply because you were not familiar with Earth lingo, and you accepted it because you thought I was showing respect from one magic user to another, and... oh my gosh, you thought I dropped my coffee on purpose all Asgard style, didn't you? Of course you did, why am I asking. And, what? It worked because you believed it would? Isn't that just confirmation bias because y'all were good enough to make it back alive?”
Loki had begun looking, of all things, abashed when she began reciting the misconceptions that had led them here. But he brightened again when she mentioned confirmation bias. “You're a clever one, Darcy darling. But no, your magic held true. Odin was softened towards me that first time. And in every mission that I carried your blessing, there was always a moment when I could feel it awaken around me. Always in a moment when some hole in my defense had appeared. You have saved my life time after time, and the others as well.”
“Is that why you jumped after me? To pay me back for protecting you?”
“I jumped to save you. Whether you had invoked the ritual or not, I would have followed you down.”
Tears began pricking her eyes, her voice shaky as she told him, “I thought I was saying goodbye. You.... you were hurt, and so tired, I could see it in your eyes. Even your seiðr was gone.”
“Thank the Norns you're you, Min Elskan. You gave me the chance to save you with those parting words. I caught you in time to kiss you.”
A half-frantic laugh slipped from her lips. “Who would have thought I'd save my life by trying to be nice to the weird emo kid? But...wait, did you know you'd make it? Did you know you'd be able to catch me?”
“I knew I would rather fail in the attempt than live with myself if I just let you fall.”
“Loki...I...”
“I told you that you were more than merely symbolic, Darcy. I may have mistaken your intentions that first day, but not so very greatly. You wished to offer me some measure of comfort and support, at a time when no one yet trusted me. You endeared yourself to me then, and I find I have no desire to uproot you from the place you have claimed in my soul.”
“Is that why you've suddenly started calling me darling?”
His eyebrows lifted in pleased surprise. “You know what that means?”
“Mmm, Thor says it to Jane when they think no one can hear them.”
“Mmm that presents something of a problem then, for I cannot bring myself to grant you the same endearment my brother has chosen. Perhaps Min Elskeð would be better.”
“What does that mean?”
“Would you be willing to let me show you?”
“How?” She squinted at him half-suspicion, half-play.
“I should very much like to court you, if you will allow me.”
“Who I am to say no when you have such good taste?” He laughed, she tried to hide the fact that she swooned a little bit, and then he kissed her. It was slow and sweet and she felt like she was falling all over again.
“So,” she said when she had come back down to earth again. “Will you teach me how to do magic for real?”