Darcy woke up grumpy and bloated. She almost texted Agent Hill to tell Loki she was sick but decided it would be better to get it over with. She had to rise above it and salvage what she could.

After a very long shower and just a little extra time staring into the mirror, her lipstick was finally applied to her satisfaction. She grabbed her laptop and her stack of notebooks she had filled longhand in Asgard and locked the door. She turned around and ran smack into Hawkeye's chest. It was a tiny bit softer than running into a wall, but only slightly.

"Dammit! Make some noise when you're sneaking around," she said.

"Sorry, babe. I just wanted to remind you that I'll be very close. If Loki so much as looks at you cross-eyed I can be there in ten seconds or less."

"Seriously? He's not going to hurt me, at least not physically. I've been through this crap before. I'm just waiting for the 'it's not you, it's me' conversation. You may have to protect him from me at that point, magical powers or not." Darcy said, frowning.

"Sure, kid. Here's your coffee." With that, he handed Darcy a venti drip with sugar and half and half. She didn't want to know how he knew how she took her coffee. She watched him walk down the corridor in the opposite direction of the conference room set up for her work.

Whatever, she thought.

Loki was waiting for her in the room. All the books had been transported from her office and set up as needed.

For reasons he didn't want to examine too closely, he had chosen not to wear Asgardian clothing, going with some jeans and a plaid flannel shirt, stolen, er, borrowed, from Thor. It was a little loose, but he thought it fit well enough. He had a book on Asgardian fauna opened up to the natural enemies of Frost Giants that Asgardians had bred to help fight them. As he looked over the snarling wolf-like creature drawn on the parchment, his mind wandered. How was he going to stop himself from falling for Darcy again? It was madness. He should just create a doppelganger and have it nod at her every time she called him "dude."

If he was really honest with himself, he knew he couldn't wait to see her and that's why he came in person. He wanted to talk to her, hear her completely inappropriate observations on life, smell her hair… He really needed to get a grip on himself.

He paused, looked up into the corner, easily spotting the hidden camera. His eyes locked on the camera for a long moment. "Hello, Agent Barton. I hope you like history."

Barton was watching him on the monitor in a secured office nearby. He could hardly miss the wicked smile and the long stare at the camera. This guy doesn't miss a trick, he thought.

Darcy was ten minutes late by the time she made it to the conference room. She bustled in, trying to seem businesslike, setting up her laptop, sipping at her coffee, spreading pens and notebooks out in a little fence-like structure between her and Loki. She could hardly look at him, but when she finally did it was to see him smiling at her.

He looked, if it was possible, even more gorgeous than usual. His earthling clothes and shorter hair set off his beautiful eyes and sharp features. He stood up and she noticed the jeans and just about died. He walked over with the open book he was holding extended out toward her, meaning to set it down in front of her laptop.

"Oooh, dude! What is that monster?" She curled her lip at the picture in the book. She immediately started writing down facts from the book in note form. Loki had come around beside and slightly behind her chair to see what she was writing.

"Spelling, child, spelling." He breathed in her scent and relaxed as he started describing what the wolf-like creature's role had been in the first Frost Giant war on Earth.

Several hours later they had ten new pages written by Darcy, and edited (heavily) by Loki. Darcy stood up and stretched out, arching her back and rolling her shoulders. All that typing was hard on a girl.

"Hey, Loki, can you give me some magic fingers, there, please? My shoulders are killing me." Darcy figured it couldn't hurt to ask.

"Fine. You really should get an ergonomic keyboard. You have the muscle tone of an eighty year old." Loki reached out and brushed her long wavy hair aside and sent a tiny spell racing along all her tensed muscles, relaxing them and relieving the pain with a warm glow. The glow spread all over her body and she almost purred as she leaned back against Loki.

He breathed in her scent, and briefly held her closer before he stiffened and pushed her gently back. "Sorry, darling, that's all the time I have today. The electricians are due in about ten minutes."

"Great, thanks, I almost forgot. Assistance with writing is all I get now." Darcy couldn't tell if this was supposed to be some kind of challenge or a real brush off. Challenge accepted? Why not?

Loki waved his hand at the books and they once again vanished back to Darcy's office. She felt her cheeks flush as she gathered her notebooks and shut her laptop. She would never get used to his casual way of effortlessly working magic while being hot. He left rather mundanely, by opening the door and walking out.

"Okay, bye, see ya, whatever dude." Darcy stuck her tongue out at his back as he walked down the hall.

Loki had lied (big surprise) about the electricians. He had to make up any excuse to get away from her because he had been about a heartbeat away from ravishing her right there on the conference table. He desperately needed advice, but he had nobody to turn to. Thor? Please. Barton? The man hated him and was already sniffing around Darcy. Romanoff, for a female point of view? She hated him more than Barton. The only person he could think that would give him a fair hearing out of sheer politeness was Steve Rogers and his views on relationships were seventy years out of date. Back to Thor. Thor was pathetically eager to reach some kind of new rapport with Loki, and he did have current experience with earth women. He would have to somehow broach the subject without raising too much suspicion because Jane would report back to Darcy in a flash. He had to talk to Thor alone.

Loki found Thor on level 21 of Stark Tower, talking to Tony Stark about lightning generation using Mjolnir. He was having a hard time getting the magic=science aspect across to Tony, who was fiddling around with various EMF and Geiger counter devices trying to get a reading on Thor's hammer, which was propped up on a counter. Occasionally, Tony would reach up and try to lift it, to no avail.

"Thor," Loki said. "I need to talk to you. I need some direction."