Chapter Text
The phone rang once, twice, three times before it was answered, and with each ring Skye grew more convinced that calling him was a bad idea.
“This is Liesmith,” came the answer on the other end, voice just as smooth and formal as it had been when they’d met.
“Uh, yeah, hi,” she replied - this had definitely been a mistake, but she wasn’t about to back down now.
“Skye?” asked Loki after a pause.
“Yeah,” said Skye, a small smile touching her face. They’d only worked together in person once, and all their other communication had been via email. It was reassuring that she’d been remembered as more than a username.
“This is unexpected,” he said, and she heard shuffling on the other end of the line.
It was almost a relief to be given an out, and Skye seized it. “I mean if this is a bad time I can -”
“No no,” interrupted Loki. “Unexpected, not unwelcome. I had assumed you would always prefer email.”
“Usually,” said Skye, chewing on her lip. “I just, um… this call is probably being tracked, just so you know,” she said, once again looking for an excuse to hang up. This was so stupid. “I just had a question, it can wait if you need to -”
“I am in the penthouse suite of Stark Tower in New York,” said Loki. “And I apologize, but if that was a hint that you are in trouble and I should be tracking this call to you, you have wasted your opportunity for rescue, I am afraid.”
Skye laughed properly for the first time in what felt like days. “No, it’s nothing like that.”
“Well -”
“Wait, Stark Tower?” asked Skye. “Really?”
“I blinded him with science,” dismissed Loki. “Please stop stalling.”
Skye took a breath to reply with something both barbed and curious, realized that Loki was exactly the kind of person who would hang up if she gave him too much bullshit, and blurted out the truth. “I was exposed to some crystals in an ancient alien city under the ocean and now whenever I get upset I make everything around me shake.”
“Huh,” he said after a moment to take in her words. “Fury is still alive.”
“... That’s what you’re gonna take from this?” asked Skye, divided on whether to laugh or hang up. “Because he’s definitely dead and the ancient alien city is definitely the weirdest part of what I just said. I don’t even know how Fury is related to this.”
“Yes,” said Loki, his voice distracted. “I suppose that’s true. Just a moment.”
Skye waited with growing impatience, listening to the sound of more shuffling, two doors opening and closing, and Loki saying Jarvis? Jarvis can you hear me? from several feet away from the microphone.
“Apologies,” he said a few seconds later. “This seemed like a rather private conversation, and the only place in this entire damned building that isn’t possessed by Stark’s Artificial Intelligence is apparently the closet inside the walk in closet.”
The absurd image of Loki crammed into a closet while wearing his melodramatic all black suit surrounded by old shoes and coat hangers sprang to mind, and Skye found herself softly laughing. For someone who looked so dignified, he managed to be impressively relatable.
“Stark is useful, but exasperating,” confirmed Loki. “Now. You said you had a question, which I presume is related to aliens and your shaking.”
“I…” Skye paused to gather her thoughts. “It’s… not so much a question, I just… everyone is freaking out,” she decided as she glanced around at the inside of the cabin, “and I thought that maybe, since you’re…”
“A part alien with magic?” he prompted when she trailed off.
“That maybe you wouldn’t,” she finished.
“I would not,” he confirmed.
“And that maybe you’d be able to tell me how to control this… thing that’s happening,” she added. “Did you ever have trouble with your magic?”
“No,” he stated, and Skye’s stomach sank. “What I have is more… one does not play an instrument by accident,” he explained.
Skye sighed deeply, biting back her instinct to snap at his comparison.
“But I have met a number of people more like you in the past,” he continued. “Are you still lucid when it happens?”
“Yeah,” said Skye, her brow furrowing. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Good,” said Loki without bothering to explain. “That means all you have to do is find a place to cool your heels for a while and learn to play.”
“Learn to play?” asked Skye with horror. “This isn’t - this isn’t some kind of game, this is - I hate this, I feel like I have a thousand bees under my skin all the time, I - I might not even be human -"
"So what?" interrupted Loki, and the casual dismissal of her concern paradoxically did more to calm the slowly rising tremble of the cabin around her than any amount of concern or sympathy would have.
“So -” Skye briefly cut herself off; she’d called him specifically because he was part alien. “It’s different,” she said, her voice going miserable instead of angry, one hand reaching out to hold down the mug that was still rattling on the coffee table. “You’ve always known what you are. I thought I knew what I was, and… apparently I was wrong.”
There was a pause so long and so quiet that concern started to rise in Skye’s chest, and just as she was about to bring the phone away from her face to check if something had gone wrong with the speaker, Loki spoke.
“I assume that if this call might be tracked, it might also be recorded, yes?”
“I dunno,” said Skye. She half smiled. “Not a lot of trust going around right now, though, so…”
Loki hummed. “Where are you?” he asked, and once again there was the sound of shuffling and a door.
“Uh,” said Skye, glancing around the building at the fire she’d lit, at the kitchen table, the window where warm evening sunlight cast shadows through the thin curtains. “I’m in a cabin. An old SHIELD safehouse. One with…” she sighed. “A perimeter fence to keep things in. Captain America stayed here for a while, apparently,” she added with a half-laugh.
“Jarvis,” came Loki’s voice, his pronunciation firm in a way that implied he was addressing someone other than her. “Do a search in Tony’s SHIELD database for a cabin safehouse with a perimeter fence that Rogers stayed in.”
“You’re not planning on coming here, are you?” asked Skye with surprise, ignoring whatever Jarvis’ reply was. “Pretty sure it’s nowhere near New York.”
“Distance is of no consequence,” replied Loki. “I will arrive in ten minutes sharp.”
Before Skye could respond there came a sharp clack, and her phone beeped the ‘call ended’ tone.
“Does he still use a flip phone?” Skye whispered to herself incredulously as the familiarity of the noise dawned on her. She thought of his overly formal language and snorted. “Of course he still uses a flip phone.”
Then she adjusted her posture on the couch, setting up a timer on her phone for ten minutes from the end of their call.
She spent the time watching the timer, chewing on her thumbnail, and mulling over whether Loki would show. She’d seen his Index entry, and there was a note on the longest recorded teleportation he’d demonstrated theorizing on whether or not it was actually a series of smaller jumps to locations they couldn’t track.
In fact, there were notes on almost all of his demonstrated powers and what he’d said about them, and almost none of it quite added up - it wasn’t just possible that his Index entry was wrong, but likely. Even based on his emails he seemed like the kind of person who would enjoy messing with assessments.
At nine minutes and fifty-three seconds her phone rang.
“That’s what I thought,” Skye muttered, the hope that had risen despite her best efforts fizzling out as she reached for her phone.
“I am on the dock,” said Loki the second she answered the call.
“What, really?” asked Skye, leaping up from the couch and to the window to push aside the curtain.
“You are not restricted to the cabin, are you?” he asked, looking over his shoulder from where he stood over the water.
He did, in fact, use a flip phone.
Skye laughed, hung up, and grabbed her jacket, putting it on only after she’d opened the door and started to walk towards the dock. A chill was starting to touch the evening air, the setting sun breaking against the horizon just to the right of the lake.
“You couldn’t just knock?” asked Skye with a smile as she came up behind Loki.
“Dramatic effect,” explained Loki, smiling in return, hands in the pockets of his dress jacket over -
“Are those jeans?” asked Skye, eyeing the dark wash along Loki’s leg. She leaned forward in suspicion. “Is that a Black Sabbath t-shirt?”
“I am only wearing the shirt because it was nearby,” said Loki, his voice faintly defensive. “Ten minutes did not allow for much decision making.”
“Where were you that -” Skye’s eyes widened. “Are you fucking Tony Stark?”
“It would be harder not to, really,” replied Loki with a deep sigh. “Him and his beard are just so… there.”
“Uh huh,” said Skye, drawing the syllables out long and impressed.
“But I didn’t come here so that you could judge Stark’s fashion choices,” said Loki, the sentence spoken as though there was going to be more explanation immediately after. Instead he looked away, face turned towards the lake with his eyes focused on the horizon, and said nothing.
“Why did you come here?” asked Skye when she couldn’t bear the silence. “It’s not like I couldn’t have handled the ‘it’s going to be alright’ speech over the phone.” She paused. “From you it might have been kind of convincing.”
“I…” Loki briefly let his head fall back, exhaled all the air in his lungs out at once, and crossed his arms. “Came to see what your shaking was all about.”
They stared at each other, and then Skye smiled before mirroring his crossed arms. “No you didn’t.”
“Yes I did,” insisted Loki, not quite managing to school his expression into total sincerity.
“For someone named ‘Liesmith’, you’re a really bad liar,” said Skye with her eyebrows raised.
“I am a spectacular liar,” objected Loki, his offense genuine.
Skye gave him her best Agent May glare, and against all odds he cracked.
“... When I am trying,” he admitted. “And in my defense,” he added, shifting his weight to one foot, “Liesmith was a joke.”
For almost half a second Skye considered following up on the name, realized that it was a distraction tactic, and held her ground. “You are not going to get out of telling me what you came here for by making me shake things.”
Loki opened his mouth to speak and the words that came out seemed to surprise him just as much as they surprised her. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”
Skye laughed, but couldn’t hold his eyes for long, staring down at the deck and swallowing.
“I told you,” she said, her voice lowered. “This isn’t a game.”
“Everything is a game,” said Loki, his voice a mixture of sympathy, exhausted resignation, and the feverish enthusiasm of an addict. “The only thing that ever changes are the stakes.”
Skye raised her head to watch him look out over the lake at the slowly setting sun. Nothing about him had particularly changed, and yet something in his expression made him look old.
“You really believe that,” she said.
“I do,” he said with a shrug, and the spell was broken.
“Alright,” said Skye, struggling to keep herself from wringing her hands as she took a deep breath in and out, looking not across the lake but down at it.
She reached out her hands, steadied her breathing, set her feet shoulder width apart, and shut her eyes. Spreading ripples on the water - that seemed easy enough.
Her courage failed her and she dropped her hands to turn to Loki.
“What if I break the dock,” she asked.
“I’ll fix it,” said Loki, blinking at her like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
“Just like that?” asked Skye, looking him over and trying to grasp hold of which Index listed power he could use to do so.
“Just like that,” confirmed Loki, nodding at the lake to prompt her to continue.
“We’ll get wet,” said Skye, stalling the same as she had on the phone.
“So I will look undignified while I fix it,” said Loki, hypocritical annoyance rising in his expression.
“Right,” muttered Skye. “Okay.” She reset her posture - closed eyes, firm feet, arms outstretched. “If I break the dock you’ll deserve it.”
She waited for Loki to say something so that she could pretend he’d broken her concentration, but he stayed silent, leaving her no choice but to focus on the disgusting sensation under her skin.
Slowly she spread her fingers, tried to touch the water with her thoughts - nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Nothing at all, until she thought of Simmons and her talk of plagues, of the way that Fitz had first lost his mind and then lied on her behalf. Of her frustration, the way Coulson had looked at her with - with pity, it was pity on the quinjet, talking about Captain America like the alien mistake that had gotten Trip killed was anything at all like a man who had chosen to be a science experiment.
“Interesting,” said Loki, his voice betraying absolutely no secret fear or concern.
“What’s interesting?” asked Skye, dropping one hand and jerking her head around to look at him.
He nodded out over the water at where whatever she was doing was happening.
For the first time Skye did her best to keep the bees under her skin moving, hesitantly looking at the lake. The water was… shivering, vibrations rising and falling, threatening to turn to spray before losing momentum and reuniting with the lake.
“It looks like a bass speaker in a pool,” said Loki.
The comparison was so out of left field and mundane that Skye laughed, startling when the vibrations in the lake jumped in intensity, droplets splashing against the dock.
“Sleep is not my friend,” explained Loki, his smile wry. “So I watch a lot of youtube.”
Skye laughed and dropped her hands, the uncomfortable crawling in her bones somehow soothed by his spectacular nonreaction. He might have been able to give her the ‘it’s going to be alright’ speech over the phone, but this was so much better, the first calm - bland, almost - observation of her new... powers.
“You’re different from how I thought you were,” she observed, absently wringing her hands against the shaking in her bones.
“An arrogant prick who believes in his own superiority because he knows where to get a suit tailored?” asked Loki, the look he cast her from the corner of his eye accompanied by a sly smile.
“I mean,” said Skye, “you said it.”
“Self awareness is two thirds of likeability,” replied Loki with absolute confidence.
“And the last third?” asked Skye.
Loki hummed as though choosing the best response. “Occasionally petting dogs,” he decided.
“You read tv tropes when you can’t sleep too,” said Skye with a laugh, catching the movie trope reference just quick enough to avoid expressing confusion.
“It is as good a way as any to track the prevailing winds of human society,” he replied, shrugging with his hands kept in his pockets. “And in any case, there can be no judgement of a person’s four AM browser history.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” said Skye.
For a moment Skye looked out at the lake, enjoying the sense of almost-calm that she hadn’t felt since before the underground Kree city. At first she assumed that Loki was doing the same, and so she was surprised when she glanced over and found that the companionable silence involved him regarding her instead of the lake.