california 02 // loki's romanoff prelude

twenty-four // loki's stratagem

Driving to Queens. It took them three days - three days of just them, the pouring rain, and the freeway. It was one of Loki's sweetest and most painful memories. He would remember it forever.

Not just in flashes. In waves - softer and gentler. They sang along to Duran Duran, Queen, Abba, Five Stairsteps. They danced best they could in the car. Once, when the car ran out of gas, they walked three miles to the nearest gas station and danced like fools on the freeway, not caring that anybody could see them, not caring that it was pouring with rain. It was just full out dancing and singing as if they were pop stars; air guitars and everything.

Natasha was worried, he could tell. She had only agreed to go to New York because the S.H.I.E.L.D headquarters were there, and the week was almost up.

'Everything will be fine,' he told her.

She only looked at him, and he saw she had tears in her eyes.

'Everything will be fine.'

Didn't Loki see?

Everything wasn't fine. The universe was finding so many ways to keep them apart. It was during those three days on the drive to Queens that Natasha knew that she and Loki would never, ever last. Their run was almost over.

On that last night as they drove, she stole a perfume bottle from a gas station. It was Chanel Number Five, her favourite scent. It smelt like flowers, but with the saturation turned way up.

'You taste like perfume,' Loki told her, when they kissed. They kissed under a street lamp beside the gas station. He tasted like cigarettes. She remembered their first kiss in that forest more than three thousand miles away. She didn't want this to end. She wanted to go back in time. Back through those three thousand miles right back to where they started.

She kissed him harder. They fell asleep with him lying between her hips in the back seat of the car. They didn't have sex, but it wasn't about that. With Loki, it was never about sex. It was about closeness, and feeling, and holding, and loving.

She cried into his hair as he slept.

'I need to do something when we're here,' Natasha told him, as Loki parked outside Central Park. It had turned just about ten in the night.

There was something decidedly anxious about her, something in the way she tapped her fingers against her wrists, something in the way she was scanning the crowd. Loki wanted to put her mind at rest, but how could he, when he didn't know a single thing she was thinking?

'It'll probably be better if you don't come,' she added, staring straight ahead.

That hurt, but at the same time he was relieved, because he needed to carry out his own plan, too. 'Okay.'

She turned to look at him. 'Just okay?'

'Yes.' He swallowed. 'I'll wait for you. I'll pick you up here - at what time?'

'An hour,' Natasha said. She smiled, but her eyes looked pained. 'Less than.'

'We can go and get ice creams after,' Loki said, to reassure her. 'I saw a twenty four hour place just when we were driving.'

She laughed, and pressed her mouth against his. For a moment, a deadly fear caught him, and he wanted to hold her there, grab her hands and beg her to never let him go, that they had to get out of this city and that she shouldn't leave him, because if she did, terrible things were going to happen, to the both of them ...

She pulled away. 'See you later, Loki.'

'Bye, Natasha.'

He waited until she'd turned a corner, and then he pulled his hood up all the way. He tightened the cords and he flicked his fingers, removing his black nail varnish.