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Paradigm Shift	By : AlexPhoenix Category: Marvel Verse Movies > Avengers, The Views: 4181 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own anything in the Marvel/Thor/Avengers universes. The only thing I own is Alex, Ronan, and their actions/thoughts. This is all for fun; not monetary values.

Chapter List
- 8
- 9
- 10
Chapter 9: Great Explanations
     Light glistened off of metal like the twinkling of a deadly star. I was poised for anything. If Loki rushed me, I would stab him. If he turned into a snake himself, I would stab him. If he ran away, I would curl into the fetal position and scream until I contracted a bad case of laryngitis, then commit myself to the psych ward. The one and only thing I was not prepared for was the smug triumph that was smeared across the pale face of the tall man in my kitchen.
     "What the fuck was that?!" I cried, panic raising my voice two octaves higher than it should've been. Loki's expression shifted into its usual amusement, with a hint of pure joy behind his eyes. He took a step forward. I countered by taking a step back and raising my knife a hair higher that it had been. If he came at me, he would taste the tangy bite of steel in his chest cavity. I lifted my other hand as if to ward off any more advances, pointing my index finger skyward. "You keep your ass right there, or I will prove to you that the best way to a man's heart is between his fourth and fifth ribs!"
     His good-guy roster burst into flames behind my eyelids. In the back of my head, I started stacking up the pros and cons of having him in my house. The cons were that he was rude, condescending, arrogant, psycho, and could turn coffee pot handles into venomous snakes. The pros were that he was smoking hot. Yeah, the pro was a really good one, but it was not enough to make me want him in my kitchen any longer.
     To my great relief, Loki had stopped moving toward me, apparently taking my warning of imminent death to heart. I gave him a glare that had often melted many Ronan's employees into quivering masses of muscle. The fact that I could make 300 pound manly-men revert into scolded toddlers gave me a great deal of satisfaction. The fact that I couldn't make a comparatively bean-pole sized man even flinch gave me considerably less satisfaction. Actually, it made me all that much more annoyed with him. I gathered my wits about me, rolling my shoulders backward. It was a classic sign of fighting past fear and pain, and I knew the motion all too well.
     "What," I growled through gritted teeth, "the fuck was that?"
     "That was just a bit of fun," he said. His eyebrows crawled up on his forehead. He looked like he was a harmless teenager playing a hilarious prank. But he wasn't a teenager, and it hadn't been hilarious in the slightest. The fact that I, a person who was surely going to Hell for their overly-offensive sense of humor, didn't find his little prank to be humorous meant that it was not funny in the least.
     I swallowed back a bellow of outraged vocabulary, forcing my voice to be low and steady when it finally came out. "If you think a cobra is fun, then you have a fucked up sense of what's fun." He opened his mouth to speak again, his face still too happy for the situation. I cut him off. "How did you do that?"
     "I did nothing," he chuckled. He turned his palms upward and spread his hands out to the side as though he were a showgirl on The Price is Right. He lifted a foot to take a step. My lifted finger stabbed through the air at him, much like my knife would if he didn't stop coming toward me.
     "Stay right there, dammit. Now, lying will get this here knife stabbed through your neck even faster, so I suggest you tell the truth." My usually middle-of-nowhere accent morphed into the Southern one that only came out when I was tired and pissed. Well, really it came out whenever the hell it wanted to, but it usually happened when I was exhausted and angry. The same happened with the Irish accent that I harbored somewhere in the base of my skull.
     A smile tweaked Loki's lips, and he let his hands fall to his sides on a sigh. "Do you really think your little knife can hurt me?"
   "I'm willing to find out. Answer the question." I ordered. I was getting sick of the runaround. If he kept this shit up, I was going to have to learn to like prison orange.
     He sighed again, and this time his smile slipped down to a frown. He pulled his hands behind his back. The move straightened his spine and pulled back his shoulders. His chest puffed out, making the thin, gray cloth stretch across the hard curve of his pecs. I bit down on my tongue, keeping it from darting out to wet my suddenly dry lips. I used the sharp twinge to my advantage, utilizing it to help me focus on turning my fear into anger instead of lust. This was why I didn't do relationships. Or hot men.
     "How did you do that?" I repeated into his silence.
     "Magic," he replied. A harsh laugh tore form my throat in an involuntary sound. I couldn't help it. It was a reflex reaction to my Bullshit-o-meter blowing up from cow dung overload.
     "Magic?" I repeated, derisively. One of his eyebrows quirked up on his forehead. "Do you honestly expect me to believe that? I didn't fall off the orange truck yesterday, dude. You can't expec-"
     "You demand the truth from me, yet you do not believe it when I speak it," Loki cut me off. I tweaked my own eyebrow up to mirror his.
     "Because magic doesn't exist," I argued, pulling my brow back down to pinch the lines of hair together. A smile pulled at the corners of his mouth. Very elegantly, he shuffled one foot around the other, crossing his slender legs in a slow sidestep. My knife lifted itself a centimeter higher.
     "Perhaps in your world, it does not. However, in mine, it is very real," he said.
     My eyes widened of their own accord. Deep within my soul, I felt a pang of childish hope. The last remaining spark of innocence, the only one that hadn't been destroyed by years of torturous hardship, still wished that magic existed. It still wished that a wand and a spell could mend a broken life; that it could repair a shattered heart and repair the parts of me that had become jaded. That tiny piece of the bright-eyed toddler I'd once been peeked out from under the safety blankets, searching for the fairy godmother that would make it all better.
     Darkness quickly quenched the hope. My older, wiser mind recognized the hope of its undamaged counterpart, and instantly shot down the idea of an angel in disguise coming to the rescue. No magic could ever fix my past, present, or future. No spell could ever bring back what was ripped away from me. No glass slipper could give me my dreams, and no rose could grant me a prince. No enchanted brooms could sweep the dirt from my slate. No wish on a star had ever made my life bearable.
     I shoved the painful thoughts aside in favor of glaring at the man in my kitchen. My mouth stayed closed, unable to come up with even a syllable good enough to express my doubt. Loki, who was ever so slowly gliding his way closer to me, lifted a single eyebrow.
     "You still do not believe that I come from another realm?" he asked. His tone was slightly disappointed, as though he couldn't comprehend why I wouldn't trust my own eyes. With a slow, deliberate motion, I shook my head at him, my eyebrows still knitted together over my eyes. The tightness of my scowl was giving me a headache. But, my mind didn't care about the physical pain in my forehead as much as the vexation that itched at my temples, so my eyebrows stayed screwed together.
     "Do you wish for me to demonstrate?" he asked, unlatching one hand from behind his back to sweep it toward the counter. His lowered eyebrow had joined his lifted one high on his forehead, trying their hardest to push against his hairline, until wrinkles creased the pale skin.
     "No, I don't want you to demonstrate!" I snapped. Impossibly, his eyebrows raised a bit higher out of surprise at my sudden outburst. I didn't blame him for being shocked. My explosive mouth had even caught me off guard. I opened my mouth to tell him that I wanted him to get out of my house, when the doorbell echoed its chime throughout my small home. My eyes widened on his before they flicked over his shoulder to stare at the foyer. I spared him another glance, sidestepping around him as much as my measly kitchen would allow. His eyes followed me, humor and irritated confusion flashing behind the blue-gray orbs as they did.
     I inched my way past him as the bell chimed again. I didn't lower my knife until I was well out of his reach. Stalking to the door gave me enough time to wonder who was bothering me on my day off. My mind slipped in a nugget of wondering just what else in my house Loki was going to animorph while I was shooing the intruder away. I set the knife on the foyer table so I didn't scare the person on the other side of the sealed entryway, and yanked the door open as knuckles met wood.
     A leggy blonde in white shorts and flowing, cleavage baring light blue top stood on my step. A white purse with gold accents was slung over her shoulder. Her shoulder blade length hair was styled into beach waves, and her cornflower blue eyes were lined with subtle shades of smoky gray. A pearlescent pink was painted on her thin lips, and a sweep of coral blush colored the apples of her high cheekbones. Her jaw rolled, and I saw a blue lump swirl around behind her impossibly white teeth. She was standing a few inches taller than her usual five foot five. Looking down, I saw that her feet were squeezed into bright blue, four inch stiletto pumps. I rolled my eyes back up to stare at her, confused as hell as to why she was ringing my doorbell at...What time was it?
     "I need you to watch Mikey for me today," she announced, pushing her way past me. Stunned, I stared at the outside world for a few silent moments. The neighborhood looked like it did every day: barren and tan. There was nothing new out there, except for maybe a few birds flying south for the winter. There was no reason for me to stand there with my mouth hanging open like a fish out of water, but I was doing just that.
     I snapped back into myself when I remembered that Loki was still in my kitchen turning handles into snakes. To the dry landscape I said, in my usual accent, "Come on in, why don't you?"
     I turned around to face the woman standing on the middle of my living room. She had a look on her face that said she felt like she was about to get an STD just from standing on my carpet. In all actuality, I was worried about my carpet getting an STD from her. The woman was looser than a piece of paper in a category five hurricane. It was a wonder you couldn't smell herpes on her.
     "I'm not watching your son for you, Andrea," I said, swinging my door closed behind my back. I cast a longing glance at the butcher knife on the half-circle table, wishing a good threat would get her out of my house. Then again, that hadn't worked very well on Loki. Plus, she would probably have me arrested for assault with a deadly weapon. She was a bitch like that.
     "Why not?" she asked with a subtle scoff, rolling the piece of gum around in her mouth.
     "It's my day off, and he isn't my kid. Why don't you take care of him for a change?" I said, strolling into my living room. I crossed my arms under my breasts.
     She let out a louder scoff at my recommendation. "What? Like you're doing anything?" I wanted to punch her in the ovaries. I sucked in a deep breath, promising myself more coffee if I could just keep myself from physically assaulting her. She was always pawning her son off on someone in the neighborhood. It was a shame, too. He was a good kid. He was an excellent kid when you took into consideration who his mother was.
     "Yes, actually, I am. But even if I weren't," I said, carefully, trying to not rip her head off with my tone, "Mike isn't my kid. He's yours."
     "I know that!" she snipped. "I just have a date tonight. And you're always watching the neighborhood kids anyway. I figured it wouldn't be too much trouble for you to watch him for a few hours."
     "Everyone else pays me to watch their offspring," I reasoned.
     And, they usually don't go on dates with ten different men a week, I said to myself. Apparently, I didn't say the last part to just myself, because red swept her cheeks. Her lips pursed themselves together in a thin line, and her eyebrows knitted down over her cornflower orbs. This is what happens when my filter doesn't work. I say shit out loud that I never mean to actually say out loud.
     "I do not date ten different men a week!" she scowled with unjustified indignation.
     "Seems that way to me," I replied, tweaking one side of my mouth up in a sneer. "How many of these dudes have even met your son? Do you even tell them you have a kid? Or do you just bone 'em and leave 'em?"
     "How dare you!" she cried, her face contorting with fury. "I came here t-"
     "Pardon me, ladies," a smooth male voice said from the doorway of my kitchen, cutting off Andrea's ill-founded tirade. Andrea's face smoothed over with surprise. Her head snapped to her right, immediately morphing into a flirty expression the second she set her eyes on Loki. I followed her gaze. I couldn't blame her for wanting to flirt with the man. He looked scrumptious standing in the doorway with his hands pulled behind his back and the gray fabric straining across the expanse of his chest. Thankfully, I knew that all six foot two of him was packed with crazy. My body, however, didn't care how certifiably insane he was. My arms loosened their grips on my stomach to dangle themselves at my sides.
     It took Loki stepping into my living room for me to notice that his hair was much messier than it had been when I'd left him in my kitchen. Before, it had been mostly straight with a few bedhead waves. Now, it was mussed and messy, with much more frizz and waves than before. If I hadn't known any better, I'd say that he had sex-hair. My own mouth fell open ever so slightly, more from shock than from lust. At least my brain had partial control over my mouth's actions.
     "I am quite sorry to interrupt, Ms..." he let the question of Andrea's name hang in the air as he reached for her hand. She lifted a tanned appendage to meet his pale one. He bowed at the waist as he took her hand in his, in a graceful motion that I was pretty sure had stopped being used sometime in the 1940's.
     "Watson. Andrea Watson," she said. Her voice was velvety soft, and had a hint of bewilderment nestled under a blanket of fervor. I couldn't blame her for being bewildered as to why such a handsome man was in my house. I barely believed it, myself. But, again, I knew that he was a whackadoo, so that made it a bit more believable for me.
     Loki twisted her hand ever so delicately, bringing it to his lips to plant a gentle kiss on the back of it. I gagged a little. I couldn't help it. It was my natural reaction to watching people being romantic. It dawned on me that I had a lot of natural reactions when it came to dealing with other people, and that most of those reactions tended to incite rage in said people.
     "Ms. Watson," he repeated, ignoring my sounds of revulsion. He lowered her hand away from his mouth, and straightening his spine again, said, "I am very sorry, but you have come at a rather inconvenient time." He had no idea how wrong he was. I had been getting ready to stab him when she'd rang the doorbell. I guessed I should've been thanking her for keeping me out of jail instead of belittling her adulterous ways, but I wasn't that good of a person. Besides, she was lucky that I hadn't stabbed her when she'd barged into my house without so much as questioning look as to whether she could enter or not. She was still lucky, because Loki had just saved her dumb ass from getting a foot shoved up it.
     During my inward replaying of how lucky everyone in the house was, I hadn't noticed that Loki had walked his way behind me. His hand settling itself on my right hip brought me back to the situation at hand. I opened my mouth to protest his sudden touching of my body, but was abruptly stopped when he started talking again.
     "Alex and I were..." he paused for a second, taking in a breath as though he were trying to think of the right words to say. He settled on, "rather busy when you came to call."
     His hand on my hip snaked around my waist to press my back against him. It must've been one hell of an awkward angle for his arm to be in, seeing as I was so much shorter than he was. At that point, even a monkey could've understood what he was insinuating. Which made it surprising as hell that Andrea's eyes darkened with jealousy. I'd always pegged her as being dumber than our ancestral counterparts. I actually thought her IQ was somewhere in the negative numbers. I guessed I’d thought wrong.
     She smacked her gum against the roof of her mouth before nestling it into the hollow of her cheek. Her lips thinned out a touch more, pulling against her teeth in irritation. Loki's left hand smoothed down the curve of my side, disappearing from Andrea's sight to caress my butt. I bit down on my tongue so hard that I drew blood, trying to not whirl around and ram my knee between his legs.
     The sharp pain and the metallic taste of pennies helped to clear my mind of vicious thoughts. It was odd how pain was able to make me focus on what should logically be done instead of what I was emotionally wanting to enact. I pulled out the skills that my high school drama class has instilled in me a lifetime ago, focusing on acting like a smitten lover. All the while, I was telling myself that Loki's hand violating my backside would be worth it if Andrea turned green with envy. Was it petty of me to want to make her jealous, even if she had nothing to be jealous about? Yes. Did I care? No. Was I going to punch Loki in the throat after this for grabbing my ass? Oh, hell yes.
     Andrea's eyes narrowed a little at me when Loki's hand disappeared from her view, as if it were my fault that she wasn't the one getting petted by the mysteriously handsome tall dude. She shifted her weight, dragging the toes of her heels across my carpet as she did. Loki's arm tightened around my waist again, pressing me into him further. The thin fabric of my pants, combined with the thin fabric of his, did nothing in the way of modesty. No, there was no modesty to be had on this day, because I could feel everything he had going on in his downtown, and it was not a small situation.
     Blood surged to my cheeks in a blush. My entire face felt like it was on fire. I dipped my eyes to stare at Andrea's feet, cursing both Loki and my body for making me turn the color of a ripe cherry. I tried to shove the blush back down to my toes, but with Loki still pressing his body into my back, I ended up failing miserably.
     Maintain an air of badassery, Alex, I told myself. Keep some semblance of your dignity during this. You can make him pay later. And think of how pissed off Andrea will be if you manage to keep cool.
     I liked the way I was thinking! Even if I was blushing like a prude in a dildo factory, I could still force myself to be some kind of a hardass. Women did this kind of stuff all the time in public, especially at the bar where I worked. If they could do it, then by the gods, so could I. I lifted my still red face to stare at Andrea. She glared at me like I was the anti-Christ. I gave her my sweetest smile in return as a kind of kick to her perfect teeth. There's nothing like someone desperately wanting what they think you have.
     "Perhaps," Loki started, brushing his cheek against my ear, "you can return at a later time? I've many more plans for Alex and myself, and I wish to carry them out as soon as possible." He placed a gentle kiss behind my right ear. My immediate reaction was to pull away. Unfortunately, that wouldn't make Andrea look like an Irish hillside, so I fluttered my eyes closed and wrapped my arms over Loki's so I could more easily nuzzle myself into his chest.
     My acting must've been phenomenal, because I heard a strangled groan of frustration bubble and die in Andrea's throat. She expertly covered it with a cough. I opened my eyes as she sucked in a deep breath in an effort to control her vexation at me. Her hands were twitching with anger, and I could see in her eyes just how unfair she thought this situation was. It wasn't like she boned every hot guy who ever asked her out. It wasn't like she was constantly having men fawning over her every move. Sure, they had no idea that eighty percent of her was made of plastic, but that didn't matter much to the men when they were bumping uglies with clinically enhanced perfection. You'd think she'd realize that she had a literal leg up on me. I never dated anyone. And I certainly never boned hot dudes. Logically, she had nothing to be jealous of.
     Too bad for her, she wasn't a very logical creature. No, she was one of those people who told you one thing and magically expected you to know that she meant something else entirely. She was one of those chicks that would tell you to go hang out with your friends and be pissed when you did just that. Maybe that was why the dudes she dated never stuck around for more than a day and a half. That was what I was putting my money on, at least.
     She forced a tight smile to her painted lips, settling her eyes on Loki. "Of course," she said, her voice taught with animosity. The words were directed at Loki; the animosity was all for me. It made me smile with sick glee that she thought I actually cared if she hated me. Well, I did care, but not how she wanted me to. "Will you walk me out, Mr..."
     "Loki," he said, much in the same way she had. He didn't add a last name on to his first like she had, though. Come to think of it, he hadn't done that when I'd met him either. Did space aliens not have last names, or was Loki kind of like Cher or Madonna? Whatever the case may have been, Andrea mistook his first name as his last.
     "Will you walk me out, Mr. Loki?" she asked. Her voice had turned to honey as I'd listened. I was ninety-nine point nine percent sure that she was going to put the moves on him the second she thought I was out of ear shot. Such a considerate young woman, that Andrea.
     "Of course, Ms. Watson," Loki replied. He released me, and my mind clung to the fact that he basically sounded like Sherlock Holmes in that instant. The British accent and the Ms. Watson thing was what did it for me. I was about to cough out a chuckle when my body realized that it was no longer pressed against Loki's and decided to try to collapse. I caught myself, locking my knees so I didn't meet floor for the second time that morning.
     I staggered a little, and instantly began hoping that neither Andrea nor Loki saw my reaction. Actually, Andrea seeing it wouldn't be so bad, because it would reinforce for her that Loki was a good enough lover to make me stumble even though he was only leaving my side. Loki seeing it, however, might give him some small semblance of elation at the fact that he could make my body go weak without even trying. I did not want him thinking he could make me turn into a puddle of goo on a whim, especially when the reaction wasn't of my own volition.
     Loki was already escorting the whore, I mean Andrea, to the front door. I turned to watch them walk, happy that my knees kept themselves locked like a high security prison. Andrea had her hands clasped in front of her. Her shoulders were lifted and her head was ducked ever so slightly, in body language that seemingly innocent little girls had when they were asking an impure question. I almost expected her to start grinding her toe into my carpet when they stopped at the front door. She didn't, and I was thankful. I'd hate for her faux bashfulness to ruin my floor.
     Loki reached past her arm to grab the knob, and Andrea's hand broke away from its timid state to boldly grab his wrist. He shot her what I could only describe as a death glare before softening the glance into something more seductively dangerous, rather than just flat out dangerous. She lowered her head a little more and leaned forward to whisper something to him. Her head moved just a little bit in my direction, like she wanted to glance over her shoulder at me, but almost instantly thought better of it. Loki spared me a glance, though, before a charming smile curled his lips up at the corners.
     He twisted the knob to open the door as he parted his lips to speak. While Andrea had made sure to whisper so I couldn't make out what she was saying, Loki raised his voice so I could clearly hear the words he spoke to the blonde ingenue. "I'm afraid that you will never be able to rival Alex in beauty or skill, Ms. Watson. Frankly, I don't understand why any man would choose you over such a beautiful creature as she."
     Andrea took a step back like she'd just been slapped in the face, and turned to glare at me. Her mouth gaped open, her jaw landing somewhere in a small Chinese village on the other side of the world. In that moment, I could have kissed Loki for wounding her ego so skillfully. I wasn't going to. I was actually going to punch him in the throat. But, he deserved at least a peck on the cheek for degrading her so completely while also paying me a huge compliment. Maybe I wouldn't frog him in the throat after all. Maybe I would just slug his arm. Then again, he still deserved to be stabbed for doing whatever the hell he did to my coffee maker and bacon. It was then that I realized that he was more than likely behind the bacon fiasco as well. Yep. I was going to punch him.
     When I snapped out of my thoughts again, I found that Andrea's gaze held the promise of years of agonizing torture that were to be carried out in the depths of Hell. I think she expected me to flinch. Too bad for her, I'd lived through those years of Hell torture already, and only gave her a little smile and a curt wave. Her face flushed red with anger. She wheeled around on the spikes of her heels in a flair of blonde hair, and stomped out of the door that Loki held open for her. I had to admit, it was impressive watching her navigate on those things. If I'd spun around on those pumps like she had, I'd have broken my ankle, and, subsequently, my neck.
     My introspective admiration of her strong ankles came to an end when Loki clicked the door shut. He turned to face me, a little smirk quirking the left side of his mouth. He made his way back into the living room while I stood there wondering what I should do first. Should I hit him, or thank him? Should I punch first and show gratitude later, or vice versa? My mouth, uninhibited little bastard that it is, decided for me.
     "Thanks for getting her out of my hair," I said. His smirk blossomed into a smile. He stopped in front of me with a grin threatening to split his face.
     "I require no gratitude from you. Her reaction was thanks enough for me. I quite enjoyed it," he replied, his grin dimming ever so slightly as he spoke.
     Man, it was hard to be mad at him when he was smiling at me like that. I almost didn't want to hit him. But then I remembered the look on his face when I was freaking out over my coffee pot turning into a snake. I remembered his hand cupping my ass when the need to do so was nonexistent. I was going to frog him in the throat before, but I figured it would be rude of me to ram the knuckle of my middle finger into his windpipe after he'd helped me get a super bitch out of my house. So, I punched him in the shoulder as hard as I could. People could say a lot of things about me, but they couldn't say that I didn't follow through with threats.
     Loki let out a grunt and stumbled backward. Even though I worked out on a regular basis, the stumble was probably more from surprise than from any physical pain caused by my punch. Nonetheless, it still sent a thrill of victory through me that he lost control of his feet. He shot a death glare my way, similar to the one that he had given Andrea, only with a lot more promise of impending eternal sleep. He straightened his spine, which made me realize that he'd folded in on himself a little as he'd moved backwards, and opened his mouth to threaten my life. I beat him to the punch.
     "That was for scaring the shit out of me and grabbing my ass!" I exclaimed, jabbing a finger through the air at him. His mouth quickly cranked itself closed like the moat door on a castle. It didn't take long for him to regain his bearings after my minimal outburst.
     "After all I've done for you?" he asked, his voice taking on a little wavering lilt at the end to make it a question.
     "I should be saying that," I countered, stalking past him to grab my butcher knife off of the foyer table. I snatched the utensil up and spun around on my heel to face him again. I waggled the point of the knife at his head. "You're lucky I didn't stab you for turning my coffee pot into a fucking cobra."
     "Did I not apologize for that?" he asked. He stayed standing in the middle of my living room. It was a wise choice on his part, seeing as I had a knife in my hand.
     "No, you didn't," I replied, stepping around the corner of the wall so I could return the knife to its rightful place in the kitchen. I made it to the entryway of the tiny room before he spoke again.
     "Are you certain?" he asked. I stopped in the kitchen doorway, my left hand bracing itself on the wall corner. I twisted the handle of the knife in my hand, letting out a soft sigh. I didn't know if he was trying to manipulate me into thinking that he had actually apologized or not, but whatever he was trying to do, it wasn't going to work.
     I pulled my lips away from my teeth, making a wet sucking noise when the flesh shucked itself away from enamel, and pursed my lips into a thin line as I glanced over my shoulder at him. "Yes," I replied succinctly. I turned back around and stalked into my kitchen.
     I'd already stabbed the knife back into the red bubble man and put away the food by the time Loki joined me. I was putting the dirty dishes into the sink when he walked into the cooking room. His hair was smoothed back down as much as it could possibly be. His face, handsome as it was, would've been bordering on solemn if there hadn't been a sparkle of amusement in his eyes. I was beginning to think that the humor was always just beneath the surface with him. I liked a man with a sense of humor. If he didn't keep creeping me out and changing primary emotions like a chameleon, I would think about dating him. Then again, I didn't have much room to talk on the whole emotional lizard analogy aspect of things. I changed my emotions almost as much as he did. Well, this morning I did, anyway.
     "I did not meant to frighten you," he said as he walked up behind me. "It was simply a bit of fun."
     "Venomous coffee pot handles are not what most people would consider fun, Loki," I replied, moving toward the aforementioned appliance. I eyed the pot warily as I reached for it, much like I had with the bacon. "More coffee?" I asked him, turning my head enough to put him in my peripheral vision.
     "Please," he said with a slight nod. I picked up the pot cautiously, waiting for the glass to turn into a porcupine. I was ready to fling the bitch against the wall if that happened. It didn't. I was grateful.
     "Was the spider you, too?" I asked. I poured the remaining coffee into the two mugs, doctoring them up as I waited for Loki to respond.
     His prolonged silence was enough of an answer for me, but still, he had the grace to say "Yes."
     I turned to give him his coffee cup, knitting my brows together with his admission. My lip rolled under to be grabbed by my teeth. I hadn't expected him to reply to that question with honesty. After all, he'd lied about his involvement in the spider bacon before the coffee pot incident. Well, he didn't so much deny his hand in it as he made fun of me for thinking the food had turned into a bug, but still. He took the mug from my hand with an appreciative little nod.
     "I guess I should've hit you with the frying pan, after all," I said in a slightly joking tone. I raised my own mug to take a sip of the dark roast.
     "I am grateful that you did not," he replied into his own mug. We drank from our cups at the same time, bringing poetic thoughts into my head about married couples at weddings, and Loki and I being in unison with one another. My stomach, repulsed by the idea of happy honeymooners, did a backflip in an attempt to expel the new wave of coffee from my esophagus. I spluttered and choked on the warm liquid, almost spitting it out onto Loki. I was, thankfully, able to roughly swallow the java down before that happened.
     Loki, the poor, confused bastard, nearly leaped back as I started hacking up part of my trachea. I pressed a closed fist to my mouth, trying to stop the coughing from escaping through clamped lips. It didn't work nearly as well as I'd wanted it to. The coughs raked through my lungs, forcing my mouth open behind my hand and spilling out between my fingers.
     "Are you-" Loki started. I waved a hand through the air to silence him, nodding my head as another cough tore from my mouth.
     "Yeah, no. I'm good. Just, give me a second to"- another cough rattled my lungs- "keep myself from dying." Steadying hands grabbed hold of my shoulders as one last cough ripped through my throat. They straightened me up so I was standing at my full height. I hadn't even realized that I'd doubled myself over during my hacking fit. My mug was, somehow, sitting on the counter and not missing a single drop of precious brown liquid from it. Next to it sat Loki's brass knuckles mug. Loki himself had his large hands on my shoulders, keeping me upright while I gaped at the mugs.
     I felt his finger crook itself under my chin, and turned my head as the pressure he put there guided me to do. A hint of concern tightened the skin around his eyes, which danced over my twisted features. My face slackened with something akin to masked horror. This was way too intimate for my liking. In my mind, even his display of affection toward me when Andrea had been here hadn't been so...affectionate.
     "Are you certain you are all right?" he asked. His eyes locked on to mine, holding me in place just as efficaciously as his hands did. The little voices in the back of my head had a screaming match, trying to yell over each other within the confines of my head. One was telling me to punch him and the other was telling me to kiss him. Neither choice seemed appropriate. Especially not the kissing one. I'd just met the man, for chrissake. Instead of kissing or hitting him, like the annoying little voices were ordering me to, I stepped back and batted his hand under my chin away.
     "I'm fine," I replied hoarsely. Coughing like I'd just been told I'd swallowed poison did nothing for maintaining a smooth voice. No, it actually made me sound like I smoked three packs a day. "Thanks for caring, though."
     His hand fell away from my shoulder as I stepped back. I snatched up my coffee, mentally telling both my stomach and the liquid to not try to murder me again or I'd have them forcibly removed from the premises. I doubted either of them cared much, especially because they knew I would do no such thing. Threats kind of turn hollow when said threats would end up killing you quicker than the thing you were threatening would. I replayed that logic in my head to make sure it made sense, found that it did, and shrugged my shoulders as I took a sip of coffee. It didn't try to kill me. All was right with the world. Really, things were fucked up beyond belief, and that was just in my kitchen, let alone around the rest of the planet.
     If Loki had said anything while my mind had threatened inanimate objects, I hadn't heard him. Instead of asking him if he'd said anything, like any respectful person would do, I skipped straight to demanding answers from him about his supposed magic.
     "So, you used magic to turn my bacon into a spider, and turn my coffee pot into a cobra?" I asked into my coffee.
     "Yes. Did we not just discuss this?" he replied. He sounded slightly irritated with me. One sideways glance confirmed my suspicion. I guess he had been talking, which meant that I had ignored anything that he might've said about his caring nature. Oops.
     "We did, but I wasn't done discussing it," I shrugged. I turned to face him again, trying to connect with him a deeper level than surface, but not so deep as to be as intimate as before. I hated intimacy. Maybe that's why I didn't have many friends. That would make a lot of sense. "How did you do it?"
     A gentle sigh escaped Loki's lips and he glanced down. I expected him to start shaking his head at my supposed ignorance, but instead he cocked his head to the side to look up at me through his eyebrows. It was an extremely attractive look on him. It made him seem more like the guy that you didn't want to take home to meet your parents than he already seemed. Throw a leather jacket and some torn jeans on him and you'd have the quintessential bad boy persona that was so commonly portrayed in movies.
     "I told you this, as well," he said, with just a hint of tired exasperation seeping into his tone. "T'was magic."
     I furrowed my brows, somehow more concerned with his Old English speech patterns than the fact that he was repeating what I already knew instead of answering my question. "Did you seriously just say 't'was'?" He opened his mouth to answer my rhetorical question, and I sliced a dismissive hand through the air to stop him. I screwed my eyes shut, trying to refocus my attention on the information I was attempting to milk from him. I pinched the bridge of my nose before continuing. "Okay. Rephrase. How did you do the magic?"
     "I've no idea how to explain it to someone who has not experienced it," he said. I cast a sideways glance up at him, much like he'd done to me only a few minutes before. His eyes widened a little bit, and I was pretty sure that if he hadn't had his lips wrapped around ceramic, that he would be licking them. Apparently, he thought I was just as attractive in that position as I'd thought he had been. I distantly wondered if Ronan would lend me money for a man whore. Maybe then my libido would shut itself down long enough for me to get Loki out of my house without me jumping him beforehand.
     "Try," I ordered. He lifted an eyebrow up, pulling the mug away from his lips. His thumb wiped away the excess liquid that threatened to slide down his chin. I could all but hear the wheels in his head turning as he tried to think of a way to explain his version of how to perform magic to a muggle. A few long minutes of silence passed, and it didn't seem he was any closer to finding an explanation. I licked my bottom lip, biting back a sigh. I was about to tell him to forget it, but his smooth baritone broke the silence first.
     "Magic is simply the mind bending the world to its will," he started carefully. "I willed the meat to transform its shape, and with a flick of my wrist, it was so. I willed the handle to become a snake, and it was so. All I did was will the objects to my do my bidding, and they did."
     It took me a second or two to will myself to say only one of my multiple questions, instead of releasing them in a barrage of interrogative phrases. "So, you bend the object to become what you want?"
     "Yes," was the reply.
     "And there's no power involved in this? Just will?"
     "There is power involved, yes. The will simply commands the power to carry out a specific action," he said simply. That seemed logical enough. Except we weren't talking about science, which was all logic-based. We were talking about magic, which was the stuff of impossible fairy tales.
     "Do you have to move your hand to do it?" I asked.
     "No, but sometimes my body moves of its own accord," he said. The tone in his voice confirmed that this was indeed true. It also confirmed, for me, that we were a touch too similar for my liking. We were both crazy people who couldn’t control our bodies. In my mind, this did not bode well.
     I took a deep breath, trying to absorb the given information as if the information itself were the air I sucked into my lungs. It wasn't, and it didn't do anything but make my chest hurt from expanding too far. I released a bit of air in a small sigh so I was no longer trying to break my physical parameters, and glanced away from Loki's still contemplative face.
     "Okay," I said slowly, trying to control the level of skepticism in my voice. "So you use power to will objects to transform into animals. What else can you do?"
     "You will learn the rest of my abilities in time," he responded cryptically. Something flashed in his eyes, the emotion moving too quick behind his irises to name. I didn't know if that was meant to send a cold chill of foreboding down my spine or not, but it did. It also sent a thrill of hot, lascivious promise up my spine. The two met in the middle, clashing so hard into each other that a shiver wracked my body. I thanked myself for already drinking three-quarters of the coffee so that the shiver didn't make the java splash out onto my hands. I opened my mouth to ask what he meant, when Foghat's "Slow Ride" sounded from the living room.
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Paradigm Shift