A/N: I love Jane in the movies, especially after the new trailer. I have this image of how she and Loki would interact on good terms, and I'm not sure it would be a whole lot less snark than on bad terms... Please do note that this is part of the series, so a lot has happened since the Avengers movie

Uninvited Guest

He was there for a reason, that much she knew. He never did anything without a reason, but she couldn't for the life of her figure out what that reason was. It's not like he made a habit of visiting her at her home.

It wasn't that they didn't get along. Quite the opposite, actually as Thor had told her that his younger brother was fond of her. She couldn't imagine that he was fond of many mortals with the way that he still sneered, even though she secretly thought they were winning his respect a little more each time he set foot on the planet.

Regardless, he did not simply show up, and certainly not without his elder brother.

Jane sighed as she set her purse down on the kitchen counter, doing the best she could to glare at the innocent look he shot in her direction. She didn't ask him how he got through her locked door. She wasn't sure she wanted to know, but it had, most certainly, been locked when she'd approached it and used her key. The alarm that had been set had not gone off either, and she had even had to type in her code when she first entered. Somehow he had bypassed it all.

"May I help you?" she grumbled, kicking off her shoes.

He had sat on the couch, dressed in slacks and a deep green shirt that was the colour of his cloak that he usually wore. It was clothing would have looked very foreign on his home world. He offered her a charming smile as he stood. "I thought you'd be back a bit sooner. I apologize for the intrusion."

"Cut the crap," she groused, waving off his formal speech.

He looked a bit taken back by her sharp words. "I've come at a bad time?"

"Any time you break into a woman's apartment is a bad time, Loki."

"I did not break anything to enter."

She rolled her eyes. Thor was the one that she found herself explaining turns of phrases to most often, as Loki was very keen on picking up the subtleties of speech. If he did not understand a phrase, it was because he was choosing not to. Damn little shit. "Entering my house without invite," she corrected and tossed her jacket onto the couch next to where he stood. She started for the kitchen, rummaging for anything edible.

"Forgive me, I meant no insult."

Jane sighed, finding a bowl crusted with old oatmeal in a cabinet that housed cereal boxes and cake mix that she would never use. She turned her nose up and shoved it in the sink. One glance back and her frown deepened, but mostly at herself. "I'm sorry," she offered and found what she was looking for, pulling the old mini-grill from the back of the cupboard. "I haven't slept well all week, haven't slept at all in forty-eight hours, and I haven't eaten since dinner last night. It makes me cranky."

"Obviously."

She was ready to lay into him until she saw the smirk that tipped the edges of his lips upward. It was the one that got him out of most anything with Thor. She knew it, but she also knew that few could resist it. Damn the trickster. "Well you're here. Dinner? I don't have much, but I can make some hamburgers on the little grill. Thor loves them."

"Thor would smile and eat it if you handed him dirt between two pieces of bread." He winced at the glare and held his hands up in mock surrender. "Thank you, m'lady," he amended. "I would very much appreciate your cooking."

"Smartass," she grumbled and started searching for what she would need. "I'm not above chucking a pot at your head, you know. So what are you doing here?"

"Am I not allowed to visit a friend?"

"According to SHIELD you're not allowed to be on Earth without Thor, but hey, I won't tell if you won't."

Loki laughed outright at the statement and leaned against the small half-wall that separated her kitchen from her livingroom. His green eyes watched her curiously as she moved around the small space, pulling the meat from the freezer, frowning at it, knocking it against the counter briefly before sighing, and finally unwrapping and plopping the frozen patties onto a plate so that she could shove it in the microwave and setting it to dethaw. She turned back to him with the fakest smile he'd ever seen. "So?"

"So?"

"You're not going to tell me, are you?"

His smile broadened into an outright grin and she suddenly realized that he had been well dubbed as the god of mischief. "In time," he assured her. "Your machine is sparking."

"What?" Jane asked as she turned, seeing the sparks flying from the microwave and she gave a cry of alarm. "Dammit... stupid foil... always gets pieces stuck to the meat..." She glanced back at him. "I wrap it up and it freezes into it. I can never get all the foil off. It killed my last microwave."

"And yet you continue to follow the same path," the trickster chuckled.

"Shut up. It didn't even dethaw it," she grumbled. "I think this machine's dead too. This just isn't my night."

Loki laughed at her and moved around the wall and into the kitchen, making a gesture that she thought was suppose to mean that he meant her no harm, but she hardly believed it. "May I?" he asked, motioning to the plate and she handed it to him. He continued to laugh softly to himself, obviously very entertained with his brother's mortal as his fingers ghosted over the meat, the ice melting off of it. He handed it back. "Is that what you were looking for?"

The physicist opened her mouth, closed it, and opened it again. She followed this pattern several times before she finally mumbled "yes" and took it back.

Loki returned to lean against his wall and watch.

Jane worked in silence, fearing that anything she said would be turned into an amusement for the Asgardian prince. It struck her as she plopped the two meat patties on the grill and they sent up a puff of sizzling smoke, that she had not spent an enormous amount of time alone with Loki. She got on with him much better than she expected - better than Erik would have liked - and if Thor were around or not he often regaled her with very theatrically told stories of their childhood. His stories were often coupled with detailed illusions that his brother said he manipulated to fit how he remembered the tale which Thor did not always think was how it should be remembered. Like the time that Loki had said Thor pushed him into their mother's pond one too many times and the younger brother had tricked him into jumping in himself, freezing the water around him. Jane had tried not to laugh at the furious expression on child-Thor's face as his cheeks turned red and he yelled and screamed, beating against the thick ice to no avail. A dark hair child with bright green eyes and a wide smile had been laughing so hard that he couldn't stand and had sunk to the ground, nearly rolling there.

"You're thinking awfully hard about something."

She looked up, finding those same bright green eyes - older and perhaps a little wiser now - staring at her with all the mischief of the Nine Realms shining in them. "I was just thinking about all the stories you tell me. About you and Thor when you were kids?"

"Mm. We had many great adventures as children. I suppose not much has changed."

"I didn't have siblings. Mom left when I was little and Dad was all I had. He was a professor at a university and I would play in the halls after the students had gone home. I had this one game that I played that I had a twin, someone to share everything with, and she and I would fight monsters and solve riddles. It was a lot of fun. I could only imagine if I had your ability to actually create it."

Loki offered her a smile that was not mocking. "I'm sure you did quite well creating it."

Jane shrugged. "I guess. It passed the time and kept me entertained. The library was huge there, you would have loved it."

"Larger than the one we have?"

"Well, no... I don't know if they come larger than yours." She flipped both patties over and pulled the bus out of the bread box. When they'd tumbled out of the bag, she checked them for mold. With a triumphant look she plopped them each down on separate plates and began digging half-finished bottles of ketchup, mayonnaise, mustard, and a jar with one pickle left floating in the juice from her fridge. "What do you like on your hamburger?"

"I wouldn't know. I've never tried one before."

"I guess they're pretty Midgardian, huh?" she asked with a laugh. She thought it was funny that they called Earth by a different name, but why not? With all the languages just on her planet, she hadn't put a lot of thought into how many names that Earth truly went by just there. What was one more?

"I will trust your expertise," Loki answered.

She studied him for a moment, brown eyes seeming to take him in. He straightened under her gaze, looking as though he were suddenly uncomfortable in being studied, rather than doing so. "I'm going to say mayonnaise, cheese... and I'll put ketchup on the side. Thor loves it, but you two are too different to go off just that."

Loki chuckled. "That is a truth if I've ever heard one."

Jane slapped the burger together, the meat steaming and melting the cheese, and handed it to him. "Uhh... I'm a little more sparsely decorated than you're used to. I don't have a table yet. You mind using the coffee table?"

"Not at all. I've become accustomed to all sorts of decorating and lack thereof over my lifetime."

She winced at the words as they took a seat on the floor on either side of the low table. She rarely heard him mention anything close to his time in "exile", as Thor had said he referred to it, but Thor had told her enough that she knew it had been bad. He didn't seem to dwell on it though as he sniffed at the food and tilted his head to the side, as if intrigued.

"It's not going to bite back."

Green eyes flickered to look at her and she knew she'd opened herself up for it. "Are you sure? You were the cook."

"Wide open," she admitted to herself in a grumbling voice. She took a bite of her own as if to prove its worth and he followed the example. They ate in silence and he seemed perfectly satisfied with the food and ate it all. "You want another one? They're a bit small."

"No, I'm afraid I don't eat quite as much as Thor," he said with a smile.

She nodded and paused, sighing after a few moments of silence. "Why are you here, Loki?"

"Thor's birthday is tomorrow."

"His... what?" She'd never thought about it. She had known the crowned prince for several years now, had been - dating? - him for nearly as long and she'd never heard either of the brothers say anything about a birthday. She hadn't put a lot of thought into it, but she assumed that immortals didn't bother with them. "But he hasn't celebrated it before."

Loki blinked, as if confused, but then realization seemed to dawn and his shook his head. "You celebrate them every year, don't you?"

"Yeah."

"Ah, that makes sense. It would be rather repetitive to do that as immortals. We celebrate them every century."

Jane stared at him. "So... this is the only birthday of his that I'll ever get to celebrate with him?"

"I suppose so," the dark haired prince said slowly, as if he were being careful with the words he chose.

"Well... It's no secret that that's the kind of a problem," the scientist said sadly. "It doesn't matter how much I love him, he'll stay young and I'll grow old and then I'll die." She glanced up, feeling the suddenly as if Loki were keeping something from her. "Right?"

"In the natural progression of life, yes," he answered and stood, reaching a hand out for her plate.

She handed it to him. "You know you don't get to leave it there."

The prince shrugged and walked to the kitchen. She remained seated and heard him turn the water on in the sink, presumably washing the dishes. The water stopped after a moment and she heard him setting them down on the counter and he returned to the living room. For the first time she noticed that his feet were bare and she wondered how he knew that she tried to keep shoes off her carpet. Something would be clean in there if she could help it. It didn't take time that she didn't have to pop her shoes off at the door.

Loki retook his seat, back straight and shoulders squared. Even dressed down as he was, his entire posture spoke of authority. "There is not anything else to say, I'm afraid. I am searching, but until I find anything solid I cannot, in good conscious, bring the idea to the forefront."

Jane felt like the floor had dropped out under her and she resisted the urge to leap over the table at him. "Are you saying that you might be able to... I don't know? Make me immortal?" she asked, feeling as if the question were absurd.

"There are many things in the Nine Realms and beyond that are simply unanswered questions, Jane. It could be something as simple as our diet that extends our lives beyond yours or it could be in our very being that cannot be replicated." He paused, something in his eyes telling the mortal woman that he had not meant to allow the conversation to move in this direction, but she supposed she should feel greatly respected that he would be willing to tell her at all. "It is a question that I have not found the answer to yet."

"But you're looking?"

"I am."

Without warning Jane stood up and rounded the table. Her lover's younger brother shot her a questioning look before she knelt down in front of where he sat and wrapped her arms around his neck. She could feel him stiffen in surprise at the sudden contact and she tightened her grip so that he could not squirm away as she'd seen him do to Thor on his more irritable days. "I know you may not find it in my lifetime, but... Thank you for looking."

He sighed in her ear, raising one arm to return the embrace. "You've done more for him in a few brief years than many of us could do in a lifetime, Jane Foster. I could not claim to love my brother if I did not at least try."

She let go of him, and swatted at him in a joking manner. "You made me cry, you jerk," she sniffed, wiping at the tears.

"None of that now," he said with a smile. "Gather your things. You've never been to an Asgardian party until you've been to a celebration of Thor's birth." He watched as she nodded and set off for her bag in her room. He unfolded himself from the floor and stood, speaking a bit louder so that she could hear him. "Last century he somehow convinced Mother that wrestling a bilgesnipe in the main hall was all in good fun. I thought she'd never forgive him..."

"How did it get in there without being seen? Those things are huge, aren't they?"

"Rather large. Well, I suppose sneaking you into Asgard will be a much better birthday treat than a bilgesnipe. Mother will approve more, at any rate."

She laughed as she walked back out with a small bag in hand. He offered her an arm and she knew that they would not be using the Bifrost to travel. She'd only slipped through branches of Yggdrasil with him a handful of times and it often left her woozy, but it was a thrilling ride. She took his arm to steady herself in it and they faded through the dimensions.

END