Song of the Chapter: Demons, by Imagine Dragons
Dinner was a marked improvement over anything else he'd had to eat so far on Midgard, an amazing combination of sweetness, salt, and savory that had him going back for seconds. Jane had thanked him for his compliments, but she'd been quieter than even usual since that afternoon, her eyes often going distant as if she were turning some problem over in that quick mind of hers. He had a feeling that, if left to her own devices, she would quickly retreat behind the barrier of her work again and whatever progress he'd made that day towards earning her favor would be ruined unless he could come up with some way to keep her engaged.
He sat at the table still, hands folded across his full stomach as he leaned the chair back on two legs, watching her put the tiny kitchen back in order. Her petite frame was full of a shy sort of grace that he found pleasant to follow, like a doe weaving through the forest.
"Do you play any games?" he asked as finished her cleaning and poured herself a cup of coffee from the ever-present pot. "If I watch any more of the TV I just might scream." She glanced at him over the rim of her mug as she took a sip, a thoughtful crease between her brows.
"I don't know that I have any here." She shook her head ruefully and wrapped both hands about her steaming drink. "I used to play chess a lot, with my father. And with Erik. But the chess set was his, and it never made it to the new lab with me. Not that it's the sort of game you can play alone anyways." She took another slow sip, and then canted her head to one side. "I think that Darcy might have left a deck of cards in one of these boxes somewhere, though. Let me look."
She set her coffee on the counter and went to a pile of boxes and equipment that had been shunted into a corner of the lab, some still spilling wires and papers over their edges. A few minutes of rummaging saw her hand raise triumphantly, a small rectangular box clutched in her fist. Her hair and clothes were disheveled from the search when she took her seat at the table again, and a grin lingered in her chestnut eyes that was only squelched when she held the box up to her nose and took an experimental sniff. "Ugh...these smell like stale beer. I'm guessing Darcy used these for drinking games more than cribbage with her grandma," Jane said in mild disgust. "But it's all we've got to work with. Sorry."
Loki let his chair come to rest on the ground and plucked the stained box from her fingers to wrestled the stuck flap open, relieved to find that the cards inside seemed to have weathered the storm far better than their container. With practiced ease he began to flip through them, examining the pictures and numbers on each. Intricate black designs on the back, white faces with numbers and faces. They weren't quite what he was used to in Asgard, and there seemed to be far less of them, but the meanings and symbols weren't difficult to figure out. He began to shuffle the deck, clumsily at first because his fingers kept insisting the card should be larger, but they picked up the rhythm easily.
"Do you have anything in particular you'd like to play, Jane? I don't think any games of Asgard would translate to this deck very well, so you will have to teach me something." She'd seemed almost hypnotized by the endless cycle of cards as they flowed between his fingers, blinking up at his voice as if startled.
"Only children's games, for the most part," she said, turning her mug between her hands pensively before adding, "And poker. But that's a gambling game, and I haven't played it since college."
"A gambling game, you say?" Loki's attention was caught, and he sat up straighter. Ohyes. He'd always loved cards, and the games of chance that went along with them. Playing one with Jane could work well in his favor, if he baited the proper trap here. "I'm all ears."
"Well...first we'd need something for currency." Jane looked about as if at a loss before her eyes landed on a box of matches beside the unlit fireplace. She rose to retrieve it, opening the sliding compartment to spill a pile of matchsticks out on the tabletop. "We can use these for practice, until you learn the rules. Then we'll think of something else." She carefully divided up the pile between the two of them, and held her hand out for the deck.
There were many varieties of poker, she told him, but the one she showed him was something called five-card draw. It was similar enough to a game he'd learned at home that he picked it up quickly, his previously dwindling pile of matchsticks balancing back out. Jane played well, and had a good grasp of the odds behind every hand she drew, but her tells were like signal flares that Loki could see from miles away.
"Now then, Jane," he said as he shuffled the cards after losing the last hand, glancing between the designs flashing through his fingers and her triumphant face. "Do you care to make a real wager?"
She hesitated a moment, and then started to rise. "I can see what I have in my purse. One second."
Loki chuckled, and set a halting hand on her arm as she passed. It wasn't even fair really...like fleecing a lamb. "No, no. Sit down Jane."
Confusion clouded her expression as she slowly lowered herself back into her seat. Loki placed the neat stack of cards in the center of the table and leaned forward on his elbows, fingers laced together beneath his chin as he locked gazes with her. "I am not interested in your money."
A wary light crept into her eyes, and she sat up straighter. "What do you want to bet, then?" she asked with a healthy dose of suspicion in her voice.
"Come now, Jane - matchsticks are so boring. And money is so bloodless. Surely we can come up with something more entertaining to wager." Loki drummed his fingers against the tabletop as if deep in thought, although he'd had this moment planned since she'd unearthed the deck of cards an hour ago. "Something of interest to each of us."
Jane just shifted uncomfortably in her seat and twisted her hands in her lap. "Nothing's really coming to mind."
Loki tilted his head and raised a finger. "How about this; for every hand you win, you get to ask me a question, and I will answer truthfully. Without repercussion." He saw a spark jump into her eyes at that, and knew that he'd chosen just the right bait to reel her in. There had been no way that Jane would turn down knowledge, a chance to answer to all the questions about Asgard or Thor that gnawed at her.
Then she picked up on the unfinished half of his offer, and her eyes narrowed at him. "And what if you win?"
"Ah," he said, and deliberately squared the deck between them before slanting a wolfish grin in her direction. "If I win, I get a kiss."
Her reaction was instant, shock stiffening her spine and shoulders as her mouth fell open to gape at him. Her eyes had gone so wide he could see the whites of them all around, and he chuckled as her throat worked soundlessly. "A what?" she finally managed, her voice gone to a squeak.
"A kiss," he repeated as he leaned back in his chair, the hint of a smile still curling his lips. "Surely you've given one of those away before. It's not as if you are some shy young maiden."
"Yes. I mean, no, but-" Her cheekbones took on a pink glow as she scowled at him. "That's none of your business."
"Look at you, full of prim and proper outrage!" He laughed, and her faint blush deepened into a full stain, her features taking on a mulish cast. "It's not as if I'm asking to take you to bed. Lighten up, Jane."
She glared up at him sullenly but he could see how she teetered on the edge of acquiescence. She wanted answers so badly, he could see the yearning in her eyes as plain as the nose on her face. "You're a...a..." Her hands opened and closed in her lap, as if she could pull the words she wanted right from the air. "A pig," she finally spat out.
He grinned at that, and crossed his arms. "Perhaps. But mostly I'm just curious. What is it about Jane Foster that so captivated Thor? Indulge me, Jane. And I will indulge you." Her shoulders slumped with resignation, and inwardly he crowed. He'd lain the snare, and she'd stepped right into it.
"I'll only play three hands," she declared.
He nodded and smothered a triumphant smile. "Fair enough. Perhaps you will even get lucky, and win all three."
She shot him a dark look before pulling her chair up to the table, a grim sort of acceptance on her face that told him she had little hope of that coming true. Loki reached for the deck that sat like a landmine between them, but Jane's hand darted in first to snatch it up. "There's no way I'm letting you deal," she said. "I wasn't born yesterday."
"Why Jane, I'm hurt. You don't trust me."
She eyed him warily as she shuffled the deck a couple more times. "I do. About as far as I can throw you."
A grin crept onto his face. He was content to let her cling to whatever security she could find. She'd never manage to win all three hands.
Jane's nimble fingers had some luck lurking in them, because she beat him easily in the first match. What he could only describe as a smirk curled her lips as she gathered the cards together into a neat pile and squared the corners.
"Ask away," he sighed, with a long-suffering wave of his hand. "I can see you're practically choking on the question." He braced himself for some probably tooth-achingly sentimental question about Thor.
Instead she drew out the silence, rising from her chair to refresh her drink from the carafe on the counter. She sat again and took a long sip, her brows furrowing as she seemed deep in thought. At long last she set the mug down and leaned her elbows on the table, pinning him with her coffee gaze. "How did you end up being adopted by Odin? I know what the myths say. But I want to hear the real version."
His stomach lurched strangely at her question, and he covered his surprise at her choice and his own odd reaction with a smirk. "You want to waste your question on something as boring as my past? I could describe to you what the death of a star looks like. Or how it feels to race against gravity as you rush through a gap between universes." He glanced up slyly, and arched a brow. "Or perhaps a time I embarrassed Thor."
She just shook her head firmly, and planted one chin in her hand expectantly. Loki let out a long breath and ran both hands over the fine wool of the trousers he still wore, the fabric cool and smooth beneath his clammy palms. Of all the things to ask, it had to be that. He scowled at the weave of his pants as if they were to blame for the situation, and the urge to lie danced like a mad itch beneath his skin. He'd do almost anything to avoid hashing this over with a mortal, but he had a suspicion that a few crumbs of truth scattered here would do more towards winning her favor than any lie he could concoct. And if he gave her that small courtesy, perhaps she would return the favor.
"I was born Loki Laufeyson," he began, and even those few words sat bitterly like wormwood on his tongue. His stomach churned sourly with the effort of forcing himself to continue, to air out his very private shame. "Child of the Jotun king, Laufey, but too small for him to value. Not a proper frost giant at all. And so I was left to die, like the runt of the litter, in the chaos of war where Odin found me." The Allfather's pained face swam before his mind's eye, how he'd flinched from Loki's anger at uncovering the truth like it was a visceral thing. Lies were all Odin had ever spoken to Loki, so many layers that no one could find the bottom anymore. Was it any wonder that he was so adept at them? He'd been weaned on them, had them dripped into his mouth like mother's milk from birth. "He took me to Asgard - changed my appearance and raised Thor and I as brothers, never telling me the truth. All so he could use me, as some sort of...living bargaining chip, a tool to stave off war between the races." His lip curled with disgust - at Odin's clumsy machinations, and at himself, still stinging from the sharp fangs of betrayal that pierced his heart.
"I'm sorry. I didn't realize..." Jane's voice was small in the silence that had mushroomed between them, barely a flicker of sound.
Loki pressed his mouth into a grim line and stared down at his hands, still and limp in his lap like broken white birds. He'd thought to herd Jane into a corner with his little games, but it would seem that thus far he'd only managed to maneuver himself. The thought of what else she might ask him, of what other unfortunate truths this little gambit might force him to expose, was gutting him as neatly as the compassionate brown eyes that stared across the table at him.
"Spare me your pity. Did you really think it would be a happy story?" The words were harsh and scraped like sandpaper in his throat, and as soon as the look on her face folded into a frozen half-smile he realized they were the wrong ones.
"Right," she said quickly, and busied herself shuffling the deck again. Halfway through the motions her hands slowed and came to rest on the table, and she stared at a spot between them for a moment before glancing up at him. "Thank you for answering. I'm sure you would have rather not."
He just looked away and slid the cards she'd dealt towards himself, resigned to the fact that the way things were going so far he'd lose this hand too.
Sure enough, on the show Jane's pair of queens seemed to stare smugly up at him, as if mocking his lowly jacks. With a decidedly graceless shove of the worthless hand in her direction, he folded his arms across his chest and slumped back in his chair. "It seems the Norns like you better Jane," he groused.
"Or maybe I'm just not as bad as I thought I was," she shot back. She straightened the cards and tilted her head, tapping idly at the ornate design on the back of the cards. It didn't seem to take her long at all to settle on her next question, asking it with a wistful sort of curiosity in her eyes. "What do you miss the most about Asgard?"
Odd, that she hadn't asked about Thor once yet. He wasn't quite sure what to make of that. Regardless, he was relieved that she'd left the more treacherous waters of his past in favor of something a little easier to answer. There were plenty of things he would say that he did miss about Asgard - regardless of the circumstances under which he'd left, or the plans he'd had, he'd always loved the realm. He'd seen and visited all nine of them in his life, had spent many idle days wandering the spaces between the stars to ferret out pathways to each world. But none of them pulled him back the way Asgard had, with its shining towers and pearlescent sky. If he was right about Jane though, there was one place she'd enjoy hearing about more than any other.
"The library," he said without hesitation, and it was mostly true. "The Aesir may not be the most scholarly of people, but the Allfather is wise enough to value knowledge. In the palace there is a grand library filled with books from all of the nine realms, with shelves that soar upwards until they meet the arching ceiling far overhead, and great sweeping stairs that lead to galleries so you can reach them all. A man could spend his whole life there, and never read every word." A lopsided smile tugged at his mouth. "I spent countless afternoons there as a child, hiding from the master of arms. I was never as enthusiastic about those lessons as Thor was."
A soft smile crept onto Jane's face as she listened. "It sounds amazing." She hesitated a moment, and ducked her own head almost shyly. "I spent a lot of time in the library at school, as a kid. I was always younger than the other children." She lifted her shoulders in a small shrug and studied the cards between her hands. "Sometimes books made better friends, you know?"
Ah. Loki smothered his grin of triumph, did his best to simply nod quietly but inwardly he was cheering. Her small admission was endearing, in its own way...and an advantage he intended to press. "Yes," he nodded slowly in agreement, and held her gaze carefully when she glanced up, startled. "I do know."
His words were tinged with empathy and slipped effortlessly from his glib tongue, warming her brown eyes as the moments stretched out until he found himself looking away. The easiest lies to tell were always those grounded in truth.
"Last hand, Jane. Do you think your luck will hold?" he broke the silence with a wink, and she busied herself with the deck grimly, looking for all the world like a man marching to his execution. She let out a squeak of protest when he swiped it from her grip. "I think it's only fair I get a turn to deal, don't you?" he chided with a crooked grin. She wrinkled her nose in protest but didn't put up a fight.
Squares of black piled up before each of them like tea leaves waiting to be read. Loki gathered his up, fanned them neatly and looked them over, trying to remember what Jane had said about the various hands. He thought he had something useful here - four cards in order, starting with the seven, and all that odd black shape she called a spade. But the fifth card...it didn't match at all, and he was sure Jane had said he'd need all five for it to count. He waited patiently while Jane pondered her own cards, and when she slid her discards toward him he carefully counted her replacements off the top of the pile.
Then it was his own turn. He peeled the top card off to take the place of the odd one he'd thrown back and the Jack of Spades winked up at him. He lifted his eyes to find Jane staring down at her own hand, the hint of a smile hovering about her mouth.
"You show first," he reminded her, and that hint bloomed into a full grin as she slapped her handful of cards down gleefully.
"Ha!" she shouted, and banged her palms on the table for emphasis. "A full house. Beat that!" She beamed happily and wiggled in her seat like an excited puppy, and he couldn't help but chuckle at her excitement.
"That's a good hand," he agreed with a mournful sigh. "I'm not sure if mine beats that or not." With exaggerated slowness he laid the spread of his cards flat on the table and peered coyly up at Jane through hooded eyes. "You tell me, Jane."
She should have had this game in the bag. She'd won the first two hands on lucky pairs, nothing special, and it wasn't as if a full house was the sort of hand to scoff at. But Loki's show lay baldly on the table before her, the neat string of spades and numbers a stark contrast to the chaotic whirl of her thoughts. Her mouth opened and shut a few times before she seemed to find her voice. "That's a...you just got a straight flush."
"Did I?" he exclaimed with wide innocent eyes, and rested his chin on his hand to stare piercingly across the table at her. "That beats your full house, if I remember correctly. Doesn't it?"
Jane couldn't seem to string words into any coherent order, so she settled for nodding. Her heart was free-falling, tumbling over and over in her chest embarrassingly. It wasn't as if she was some silly teenager, playing spin the bottle. She'd certainly done more than kiss a man in her life...so why was she so nervous?
Perhaps because she'd never had a man stare at her the way Loki was right now, his unearthly eyes almost feral in their intensity, as if he were considering ways to literally devour her.
With a languid deliberateness he stood and sauntered the too-short distance around the table that separated their chairs. Nervousness shifted ever so slightly to something electric, mixing with anticipation into a spark that crackled along her nerves and coiled in her stomach like she'd swallowed lightning. She half expected to see a flash when his hands wrapped themselves around her arms and pulled her, unresisting, to her feet.
"Time to pay up then, I think." His smooth voice had gone dark, rubbing over her skin like sable. She had a moment to wonder if this breathless terror was what Faust had felt when the Devil demanded his due, and then his fingers were burying themselves in her hair and there was no more room for thought in her head.
The first warm brush of his lips was feather-soft and brief, like a feint to test her guard. Two, three more times came those butterfly touches of his mouth to hers, and then - as if he'd convinced himself she wasn't about to run away, he slanted his lips across hers and the kiss became something much more dangerous. He nipped softly at the curve of her lower lip, and when it fell open with her tiny gasp he followed that breath into her mouth, his tongue dancing along the ridge of her teeth, beckoning. He smelled of cedar and tasted of spice, exotic and beguiling. The threads that bound her bones together began to fray and she clung to the lean strength of him as her own traitorous tongue flickered to life, teasing along the firm lines of his mouth.
It was both too soon and not quickly enough when he pulled sharply away, and to Jane's eternal embarrassment a tiny whimper of protest slipped out. Her lashes trembled open as Loki's hands untangled from her hair and he stepped from her grip, his seafoam eyes gone dark. They roiled with some inscrutable emotion like an ocean in the grip of a storm as he stared down at her, the beat of his pulse hammering in the hollow curve of his throat.
"Well played, Jane." The husky edge on his voice shot straight to her belly like a swallow of good whiskey, warm and liquid. She couldn't quite puzzle out his meaning, her head was still trying desperately to catch up to the moment, but there was an oddly rueful tone to it - as if they'd played one last hand she hadn't been aware of, but had somehow won. She could only nod weakly as he put more distance between them and she ran an unsteady hand through her tousled hair.
"I think...I will bid you goodnight. Thank you for the game," he said, and turned towards the spare room with staccato steps. Jane blinked at the abrupt exit, and frowned down at the table she'd gripped to steady herself. Had it been that awful? He hadn't exactly seemed unaffected.
Confusion melded into irritation as she gathered up the scattered cards. It had been his idea, in the first place...she refused to feel insulted by his retreat. She was trying to stuff the uncooperative deck back into its mangled box when something odd about the cards caught her eye, and she pulled them back out to spread the stack of them across the surface of the table. She could only shake her head in disbelief at what she saw.
Thirty-nine Jacks of Spades staring cheekily back up at her.