Captive Hour Summary:
{…}
"I hate this. And I hate bugs."
Loki nods sagely and grins, understanding the sentiment. He loathes bugs.
And he would have said something more soothing in commiseration if not for the glare that Jane Foster is pinning on him. With a grimace, he watches her enthusiastically crush a roach with the heel of her boot, his lips pursing bloodlessly as she sends the flattened carcass across the tiny space until it lands in front of him.
Where, he wonders absently, had she learned about his phobia to these critters?
With the tip of his shoe, he hoofs it back at her without hesitating and takes no small bit of satisfaction as she yelps when the dead critter hits her in the calf and bounces harmlessly back to the ground.
"I understand that it's part of the incarceration experience."
"Did I mention I hate the jail experience?"
"You might have, once or twice," he tells her casually. "Did you not threaten Lauren Moss in the pantry earlier with an act of violence when she revealed to all who were listening about your spontaneous strip down the mile-long boulevard during one particular night of inebriation?"
She pales a little, clearly not expecting that morsel of information to bite her in the ass when she needs it least. Loki leans back and watches the flush creep across her cheeks, noting with some irritation, how the rest of their jail mates (read: Jane's colleagues) had perked up at that revelation.
"That's besides the point," she huffs after a full minute of glaring everyone down. "You got me and everyone else into jail just so that you could talk to me! I know you're the boss and all but this has got to be a new low, even for you."
"So you've said. About eight times in the past hour. Don't you get tired of repeating yourself?"
Loki watches her sputter and turn an even deeper shade of cherry that's beguilingly comely on her cheeks. Unperturbed by her outrage, he takes another step into her personal space, which, admittedly, wasn't that large to begin with in this tiny cell.
"You left me no choice, Jane."
There's little that he cannot stomach after having successfully stared down Thor's beloved Great Dane who has the misfortune of being called Mjolnir. And between entertaining his very British family's Viking fantasies and keeping his father's newest takeover thriving in this godforsaken place of sand, dust and rubbish beer, he thinks that he is at least entitled to a little mischief of his own to whittle the boredom down to a manageable level—beginning with Jane Foster.
"I left you no choice? Ugh. You…you little, snivelling, self-absorbed, son of a—"
Loki smirks, watching her veritable intellect falter as she is reduced to name-calling and shouting other unmentionables. Truthfully, nothing that she says will spoil his exceedingly good mood.
He gives her a practised smile through it all (the very one that she thinks is smarmy and has already said so to his face) and a bored look as she unleashes a truckload of expletives that has him itching to buy a boxful of mouthwash as a Christmas present for her.
"—small-minded, no-good piece of sh—"
With a pointed glance at the minute hand on his watch, he waits to see how many adjectives she can yank out of her entire word bank. And it's apparently quite an impressive one, filled with funny, little Americanisms that he actually thinks should be inserted into the British thesaurus.
Jane's clearly on a roll. And she keeps going, (even though she has been doing so, for seventeen minutes and three seconds without showing signs of stopping), aided by the murmurs of consent by her other co-workers who are working themselves quickly into strike mode.
As much as he appreciates the excitement of a good riot, he'd rather not fan the flames of worker dissatisfaction today.
"Jane."
Her jaw flaps open at his quiet command.
"What, Mr. Odinson?" Exhausted for now, she all but snaps at him and doesn't bother with politeness.
Again, her rudeness doesn't bother him. "Loki," he corrects her.
She grimaces in discomfort. "Loki. If you haven't noticed, this isn't the best time. Or place. "
"For an uninterrupted talk, this is perfect for our purposes," he disagrees immediately. Of course, he'd also like for her to treat her co-workers as non-entities while they get to know each other better. But her personal chagrin isn't going to put off the devious plotting that he'd been putting in place for hours on end.
And apparently, that is enough to get her started up again.
"What's wrong with a chat over coffee in the pantry? Or during the tea break? Or you know, a dinner, followed by a nightcap—" Jane clamps her mouth shut before she can complete the sentence, a pinched expression coming on to her face.
He gives himself a moment to entertain the connotations of this seemingly innocuous phrase. If the nightcap is essentially what his very-British mind translates as a late, after-dinner romp, then he must be way deeper under Jane's skin than he thought he'd been.
Jane reads the triumph unfolding on his face as clearly as he's feeling it.
"A nightcap," he echoes significantly with a raise of his brow.
"My point being," she snaps and waves away the wealth of meaning in his words in dismissal, "there could have been better ways."
"If I remember this correctly, it isn't for the lack of trying."
With that, he recalls the very unfamiliar emotion of frustration that has accompanied every thwarted attempt to get Jane alone in the workplace.
His first try at introducing himself had involved two giggling secretaries, moreish cookies and a pot of scalding coffee on his pristine white shirt. His second try hadn't been any better, after the discovery of two peacefully-snoozing pythons in Jane's workstation drawer (it must be the sloppy way she arranges her files that pythons are wont to build warm nesting sites in them) that had disrupted his carefully-laid plans to ask her to dinner. For the third try, he'd gotten within two feet of her before a blasted fire-drill alarm had near gutted his eardrums. It had turned out to be a real fire, caused by a short-circuiting laptop and a cigarette butt thrown at his desk, thanks to a disgruntled, overworked accountant who was tired of processing an unending list of funding requests. As for his fourth try…he thinks it's best to leave the combination of three chickens, a broken violin string and a bleeding Thor to the imagination.
His options and his patience had finally been run to the ground. With his best-laid plans on a straight ticket to hell (and seeing as he subscribed wholeheartedly to the mantra of desperate times calling for desperate measures), Loki had simply upped his game and engineered an interdepartmental disagreement that had easily escalated into a chaotic situation.
And because he didn't do things in half-measures, it predictably led to most of Jane's research team, himself included, getting thrown straight into prison—a cue that he'd pilfered straight from Monopoly's penchant for sending players behind bars without collecting their hard-earned two hundred dollars.
Loki doesn't bother to conceal his mirth as he recalls the last but oh-so-memorable two hours as the panicking white coattails ran around like headless chickens and tripped over themselves when the police cars squealed to a stop in front of Odinson & Sons.
He raises a hand and Jane's tirade stops suddenly. "We have bail. I ensured that."
The little cheer behind them makes him realise they aren't alone. He whips around to see the scientists' faces brighten immediately when they hear that magic word.
Bail.
Assured of their eventual release, they huddle together and before long, get lost in a discussion about distant galaxy clusters and magnetar formation, ignorant of the glare that Jane's now levelling on them like the traitors that they are to her lost cause.
"Bail?" She turns back to him suspiciously. "How? Where?"
"All in good time."
She frowns at his placid, self-satisfied response. "Would it be too much to ask for a few more details, seeing as you're the one who orchestrated this whole shebang?"
Loki sighs. At the rate they're going, they'd be here till sundown arguing over things that matter the least.
Tired of the direction this conversation is going, he finally asks the question that had been bugging him ever since he'd seen her on the rooftop of the building cursing the thick cover of clouds for obscuring the constellations she was studying.
"Where do you buy all your clothes?"
Jane blinks at the non-sequitur, thrown by his question into speechlessness. "Huh?"
With another sigh, he repeats himself and wonders absently if her famed IQ is merely a random number generated by a program that throws out questions even a pre-schooler can answer without much thinking.
Self-conscious embarrassment spreads its pink fingers across her cheeks once again as she looks down to examine her red wellies and the green-and-blue flannel shirt that has definitely seen better days.
"Uh, I've had them for years and they're comfortable."
Loki hears the defensiveness in her reply and smiles slightly in satisfaction. They are finally getting somewhere in the getting-to-know-each-other-better stage.
"You didn't answer my question," he observes.
She bristles indignantly. "Look, I don't remember, okay? It's been years since I—"
"—bought proper garments to clothe yourself that are not rat-worn," Loki completes her sentence for her without missing a beat.
Her admission is as clear as day in the short silence following his pronouncement.
"Hey, I may not be as coiffed and snootily dressed as you are, Mr. Suit-and-tie but my clothes are clean and—"
"Rat-worn."
"Has anyone told you that you can be such a jerk?"
"I prefer the term 'odious bastard'," he tells her matter-of-factly and adds as an afterthought, "And yes, there are many who have had the honour of using it where I am concerned. But there are certainly worse insults you could have thought of, which I'm grateful you didn't."
Verbal tussles have always been his strong suit. Word play, double-entendres, extended metaphors…all of them wielded too easily as his charm and his shield.
Her groan is loud enough to turn heads. "God, Loki—"
"As much as I love hearing my name affixed to any deity, we should move on. What brought you on the path to Astrophysics?"
Jane blinks incredulously. "What's with all the questions? Is this some crazy idea of speed dating? In a jail cell?"
He shrugs dismissively. "Call it office bonding. In a manner of speaking."
The suspicious lines in her eyes ease slightly. "Why do you want to know?"
Loki gestures vaguely around them. "Time is what we have in abundance," he lies easily, knowing that Jane's intern is probably already doing something drastic to get them out of this place.
Doubt furrows her brow but before he knows it, he's listening to her entire life story and getting entangled in a bewildering list of names of college mentors, nosey neighbours and school crushes—all who have played a part (whether major or minor) in cultivating her love for the stars. Which then leads her to her greatest obsession with the Einstein-Rosen bridge and the calculations that are needed for the lab computer's latest feed and then to the miraculous day when, after the takeover, Odinson & Sons had decided to retain the small merry band of scientists—that included her—on their payroll.
He's just about to get comfortable when a distant crash tells him that their little bonding time is almost up.
"Loki!" Thor's voice booms down the narrow corridor. "You had better have good reason for tearing me away from my Budweiser!"
Not quite what Loki has in mind.
But because his brother has never been and never will be known for anything that comes remotely close to subtlety, he doesn't expect anything less than an overtly outraged reaction from him.
Jane leaps to her feet, as do the rest of her co-workers, their arms curling hard around the bars of the cell. But she is tiny compared to everyone else and her awkward grip around those bars makes him snicker.
"Loki!"
The roar is louder this time, accompanied by the heavy, determined trudge of footsteps, like a snorting bull that has just charged out of its pen to approach its adoring audience.
Loki rolls his eyes and gets to his feet nimbly. He sees Jane's grumpy intern standing behind the prison warden and to his surprise, his frowning brother is at her side, dressed for his latest wrestling match.
Thor must be here to provide the extra muscle in a seedy place such as this, he suspects. As well as to provide the ride back of course, in that ridiculous mode of transport he calls a 'muscle car' that looks more suitable for driving on the moon than on the narrow, dusty roads of Puente Antiguo. (Thor is unrelenting when it comes to his cars. And that's after he has destroyed a few dumpsters and nicked more than his share of ambulances.)
Oh yes, his brother is equally well-known among the law-enforcement officer than he'd liked to be but it helps that he is a famous mixed-martial artist that most of the guards root for and are hence willing to overlook the little transgression of his preferred choice of car.
"Darcy! Thor!"
"Jane!" Darcy and Thor say her name together, like puppets on a stick.
"The bail money cost me my ipad."
Darcy looks as surly as Thor on a rare day when an opponent manages to get a right hook in his pretty face. She pantomimes something that vaguely resembles a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat. "And just like that, I've no more movies to watch, no more apps to-"
"There's always the TV, you know," Jane puts in dryly.
"The ipad?" Loki frowns, unable to mask his affront. "I hadn't known we were collectively worth so little."
"Yeah, well, they must be desperate for money."
"Darcy, I'll get you another—" Jane hastily promises then pauses, rethinking her stance. With narrowed eyes, she whips around and glares at him. "Actually, since Loki is responsible for this whole mess, he'll be buying a new one for you instead."
Loki doesn't even blink at that threat, unbothered by the monetary issues that Darcy and Jane seem to be fussing over. Nor does he really worry about the wretched police record that he and Thor seem to be keeping these days.
"Put up a formal request with the accounts department."
Darcy eyes him in awed disbelief. "Really?"
He really doesn't see the fuss over it all. "It's only an ipad."
"It's not just—"
The sound of a key turning in a rusty keyhole keeps Jane's intern from saying anything more.
A raucous cheer issues from the scientists, who scramble out of the dank, musty cell and disappear down the corridor with such eagerness that Loki wonders if they're really scurrying back into the sunless, cheerless labs to work on their simulations.
Jane contemplates them for a moment and heaves a tired sigh. "I could so use a coffee right now."
"Black, espresso," Darcy chimes in longingly.
"Loki, you and I will have words tonight but for now, I have an unfinished beer, a match and an angry wife waiting for me," Thor cuts in darkly.
His brother, though he'd never admit to it, is a bona fide worrier.
"Tomorrow night, Thor." Loki glances at Jane pointedly as he speaks to his brother. "I am busy tonight."
With a displeased look, Thor says nothing and stomps towards the stairs. "Mother will hear of your misdemeanour."
Loki rolls his eyes again, refusing to be baited into another stupid game that's reminiscent of the ones they used to play as children—games that had gotten out of hand so quickly that it took the constant intervention of their mother and weeks' worth of gardening duties to solve.
As though sensing the ratcheting tension, Darcy gives them a half-hearted wave and looks in the direction of the exit sign. "Dude, I'll be waiting in the van." Then she points at him. "And I won't be forgetting the ipad."
Jane stares after her intern almost mournfully, lost in her own thoughts.
"This is an excellent start," he pronounces, deliberately startling her out of her private musings.
"It's a bad one," she mutters in exasperation. "What the hell do you want, Loki?"
Without realising it, Jane has given him the perfect opening.
"A whole lot more than a jail cell and the game of ten questions," he tells her smugly. "Would you like to have dinner with me tonight, Miss Foster?"
"But…but…you're the…the boss!"
"A technically incorrect observation."
The huff that she gives him would have withered flowers. "I know that your father owns the company but you run its operations here and—"
His shoulders are already lifting in an unconcerned shrug. "You'll find how easily I can be persuaded to make exceptions when it suits me."
Her jaw flaps open as she struggles for a suitable response. But only a strangled sound issues from her mouth as he takes a step forward and threads a hand through her hair, grinning at the conflict that runs rampant on her face.
"You can't just—"
"I think you have just found out that I can do anything I want. And in this case, I shall take your silence as consent then, Jane," he continues smoothly without giving her time to take it all in as he pulls her flush against him. "You will find a snooty dress that will do you justice when you return to your lab, as well as all the—" he looks her once over in mock-despair, "—grooming services you will need for an evening out with me."
Demanding a woman's company is as close to grovelling as he would get, but there has never been a more painfully obvious conclusion to this whole debacle.
"I will come for you at 7.30," he pauses, waiting for the comeback and isn't disappointed when she hurls her outrage at him in a manner that is entirely expected.
"Bastard. You odious bastard."
"Vocabulary, my dear Jane," he whispers laughingly into her ear as he stalks past her out of the smelly cell, already itching to get himself under a shower and into a newly pressed suit that will more than suffice for dinner.
They're off to such a flying start.
And it has never felt this good.