(This scene corresponds with chapter 6 of 'Coffee & Books')
It has been a week since Loki has been injected with the tracker. The first few days he had not left his room, but it slowly came to him that he might as well enjoy the benefits of the devilish device. The range of the tracker was set at approximately one block around Stark Tower. He could go for a short walk, or visit the stores that were inside the range, like the bookstore and the coffee shop.
In fact, that is were Loki is heading now. He ordered some books from Frederikson the other day and told him he would pick them up himself. Well, not completely by himself, as there is a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent discreetly following him a few yards behind him. Loki found it pretty easy to ignore the mortal; he actually had forgotten the human's name already.
There is the store window with the coffee cup and the books, the bookstore next to it. As Loki walks up, the door to the coffee shop is held open by a man who is talking to someone inside. The mortal has the audacity to bump into Loki at turning around. He stoically waits until the blundering human has made the way clear.
And there is the girl again; she seems to always be there. Now, she grabs the door to hold it for him. "I'm sorry, that was..." she starts nervously.
"A nuisance," Loki finishes for her, barely giving the incident any thought.
The girl chuckles. "I guess you could say that." She looks at him and her smile grows bigger. "Come on in, can I get you anything?"
How is it that she relaxes upon seeing him? Loki looks past the girl at the bookstore, his original goal for today. "I only came to pick up some books."
"Oh, alright. Well, we've got plenty of books. You know where to find them." She steps back to let him pass, Loki does so without looking back at the strange girl who sounded disappointed.
Lars Frederikson is expecting him and immediately starts apologizing. "I'm sorry, prince Loki. I'm afraid my supplier delivered the wrong boxes this morning, the books you ordered aren't here yet. At least, not all of them."
Loki is disappointed, but he will not take it out on Frederikson. The man has build up some credits after all. "That's alright. I'm sure they'll be here soon enough. What have you got for me?"
The bookstore owner shows him the book and they talk for a little while before Loki returns to the coffee shop. He notices that the comfortable brown chair he occupied last time is free and he decides to go sit there for a while. He settles in and activates the repelling ward around him. It was actually Thor who had inspired him to do this. Loki had tested it at the apartment and he was able to hold up the ward without his skin turning blue or something equally inconvenient. The mortals probably wouldn't react that well to seeing a Jotun prince in their favourite coffee establishment. Normally Loki wouldn't give the mortals any second thought, but this is in his own interest. A little peace and quiet is very welcome to calm the storms in his mind.
The ward works perfectly, without him having to actively keep guard. For a second he smells a whiff of that horrible perfume, but as quick as it came it was gone again. A good book, a comfortable chair, being left alone; Loki is content. Even the background music in the coffee shop is tolerable.
He notices her jeans first, dark blue and clinging to her legs. She wears low, flat shoes, with a little bow above her toes. She is standing right next to his chair. How in Hel's name did she get through his ward?! Because it is her, Loki knows that even before he looks up at her face. The girl with the light freckles and the strawberry blonde hair. She wears it in a loose braid over her shoulder this time. Her name is written on a coffee cup name tag over her left breast; Little Wolf, Ylva.
"Hello!" She sounds cheerful. "Since you are staying here a little longer, can I get you anything? Tea, coffee? A muffin?"
Loki studies her. Again, there doesn't seem to be anything extraordinary about her. Yes, she's pretty and her welcoming attitude towards him continues to surprise him, but she's not a witch or a sorceress. Or she must be really skilled at hiding her powers. Meanwhile, her big blue eyes start to show a little uncertainty under his gaze.
"Look... uhm... about last week.." Her voice is soft. "I'm sorry. I didn't want to intrude on personal affairs," she says, telling him she had not expected to be there at all before she falls silent again.
She's apologizing to him! Not because she's some servant who's afraid of him or because she did something stupid, but because she seems to know how wrong the situation was. Loki bites his lip. His first reaction to her sudden intrusion should have been anger, but it was not. It's curiosity.
"Tea, please. Earl grey."
Loki watches the girl as she walks back to get his tea. His ward seems to slow her down a little, there's an almost imperceptible pause in her step, but it's as if she determinedly walks through it.
Getting new books is no longer the main objective of visiting Coffee & Books. The girl is. Or rather, her ability to walk right through his magic ward, Loki corrects himself. She continues to do it, each time with less trouble. After a day or three his ward doesn't even pause her anymore, yet it works perfectly fine on other people. Loki can enjoy a quiet visit to the coffee shop, to enjoy his book and a cup of well brewed tea. The only one who comes near him is the girl.
Her company is nice too, Loki allows himself to think after a couple of days. She talks to him about little things and she is quite the reader herself. The girl's inviting him to talk too, but she's never intrusive: she has a good intuition and picks up on the smallest signs of body language. It's what makes her intriguing to Loki, next to the mystery of his ward not working on her.
It's a quiet morning in the coffee shop when she comes to sit next to him, perching on the wide armrest of the brown leather couch. Usually she just keeps standing when she talks to him, but this time she seems to have some more time on her hands. His cup of Earl grey tea sits steaming on the coffee table.
"I read a big piece about you and Thor in the New York Times yesterday. I didn't know you got interviewed?"
Loki sighs when he thinks back to the interview. They are pushing him into being the posterboy for Asgard, along with Thor. He is to be paraded around in front of the mortals, a humiliating job. "Tony Stark's idea. He thinks the people should know more about us, about Asgard, now we're staying on Earth for a longer period of time."
"Ah..." Ylva answers with a slight shrug. "So it's to charm the people? Well, I guess you guys are technically aliens, real out-of-space aliens. Maybe it's not such a bad idea to let the public get to know you a little better."
It's the first time she calls him an alien, although she knew from the beginning he came with Thor from Asgard. It's not something that seems to bother her though. Just like her uncle she doesn't treat him any different, unlike other people do. Granted, most other people he has met until now are S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, and those have a bad opinion of him anyway.
"Maybe," Loki says to her. "Or it just draws unwanted attention."
Ylva looks around at the vacant seats in his vicinity, his ward still keeps everyone away except her. "Yeah, I can see you don't like a lot of attention," she says, a hint of laughter in her voice.
Loki just shrugs. "I like my peace." She is, with the exception of her uncle, the only mortal whose attention he can tolerate at bad days. He even found himself starting to look forward to his daily visit to the coffee shop.
The girl just thought of something important apparently, she lowers herself on the couch and leans over to him. "You did this, right?" she hisses at him between her teeth. "You use magic to keep the other people at a distance."
It's funny how she says 'the other people', as his ward is supposed to keep her out too. Loki is impressed she figured it out, humans are usually blind as a bat when it comes to magic. There is definitely something about her and it amuses him. He smirks and winks at her. "Shhh... our little secret."
Her eyes grow big and Loki can see different emotions flash across her face. He sees surprise, anger and then she suddenly starts laughing uncontrollably. She even rolls to her side on the couch, clutching her stomach. It's not the reaction he had expected, but this girl has a pleasant way of surprising him.
Eventually she wipes the happy tears from her eyes and sits up again. "I guess I should have known," she chuckles. "Loki the Trickster. What else can you do? Make this table disappear? Transform me into a mouse? Oh! Can you make this carpet fly?!" Her feet tap the old Persian rug that's underneath the coffee table.
Her list of cheap party tricks shows she has a very human view of magic, but it stings him that he is not even able to do the silly tricks she mentions. Unconsciously he touches one of the metal cuffs on his wrists, the reason his main entertainment of the day is going to a coffee shop to have a read and chat a little with a mortal girl.
"Are those made by Stark?" the girl asks, nodding to his cuffs. Loki looks away from her, feeling his insides turn to ice.
This time she doesn't pick up on his negative body language. Or she just ignores it. She even gets up from the couch to take a seat on the coffee table, right in front of him. The girl is so close, he can count her eyelashes.
"What do they do?" she whispers softly, motioning at the cuffs.
Loki levels his breathing to calm himself down. The girl probably means well, but she's touching a subject he definitely doesn't want to talk about. Not with some mortal. A little mortal who even tries to take his hand, like he needs comforting.
"Loki, what do they do? Can you please tell me?" she pleads. Her big blue eyes are filled with worry.
"Go back to work, Ylva," he states curtly, getting up from his chair. At the last moment he remembers to take his book and jacket, leaving the bookstore in a hurry.
Her concern is genuine and that is what disturbs him most. Or is it the fact that he actually wants to answer her questions, to tell her what's going on with him?
Author's note: Well? What do you think? How did you like Loki's side of the story? I stopped at this point, because... well... we all know what happens after this.
Image found on Google. Credit to the artist.