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….
"Never," I murmured with absolute conviction, pulling her in.
She didn't object; in fact, she leaned into me, meeting me halfway. Our first "serious" kiss was tender, with a heady, tart sweetness to it.
I wanted so desperately to push it further, to let my hands wander, but I somehow managed to summon a truly heroic amount of willpower.
I kept my hands respectfully on the gorgeous woman's waist, simply losing myself in the taste of her lips and the playful, nimble push and pull of her tongue tangling with mine.
We didn't take it any further than that, and our lunch was getting cold anyway. So, successfully convincing Storm to keep me company, I relocated us to the table.
We just sat and talked, sharing little pieces of our personal histories and feelings, occasionally pausing the conversation just to refresh the memory of each other's taste. It was surprisingly nice. Comfortable.
The vibe wasn't even ruined by the school's kids, who had their own scheduled feeding times and swarmed the general area.
And why would it be? We weren't doing anything inappropriate, and absolutely everyone in this mansion who had reached the age of understanding what "courting" meant already knew I was chasing after Ororo.
Honestly, the only thing genuinely worrying me was how Storm was going to react to Yuriko's position in my life.
I didn't have anything going on with the Asian woman, of course, but her lethal looks and her absolute, single-minded determination to be my devoted henchwoman naturally led to certain assumptions.
It was impossible not to make those assumptions. But I figured I'd let that particular bridge catch fire when I came to it.
I certainly wasn't going to be the one to bring it up first and over-explain the nuances of our dynamic. Loki is a smart boy. Loki is not his own worst enemy...
...
That same evening.
The day wrapped up productively and to the mutual satisfaction of both the guests and the estate's residents.
Sarah had a private sit-down with Charles, followed by a guided tour of the school under Jean Grey's attentive wing. It was looking highly likely that the biology teacher position was going to be hers.
Yuriko didn't run into any issues either. She was welcomed quite warmly and given a private room right next to mine.
From what I gathered, the X-Men had simply accepted the girl's status as my personal assistant, and no one was pushing for details beyond that. Honestly, everyone was far too distracted to care.
The primary cause of that distraction was Laura. The combat hamster.
No matter how much I joked around about her, the fact that the girl desperately needed a psychologist, if not a full-blown psychiatrist, was painfully obvious to any individual with an IQ higher than a barstool. I mean, S.H.I.E.L.D. probably wouldn't have figured it out, but let's not speak ill of the intellectually stunted.
Laura was more than adequate in a crisis, but when it came to normal, everyday social interaction, she had massive, glaring problems, and not just with me.
Monosyllabic questions, monosyllabic answers, the constant, robotic addition of "sir" or "ma'am", all of it driven by pure conditioning, without the slightest desire to be polite or even the fundamental understanding of what "politeness" actually was.
She had simply never been taught to communicate any other way, and she had never been allowed to step outside those strict military parameters.
Even with her own biological mother, X-23 still misfired constantly, reflexively blurting out "Miss Kinney," "Dr. Kinney," or "Ma'am."
Sarah talked to her about it constantly, trying to explain things, I'd seen it firsthand during our road trip across New Mexico, even without actively trying to eavesdrop, but trying to crush a decade of brutal brainwashing in two weeks is a tall order.
Naturally, the bleeding-heart mutants of the Xavier Institute, whose entire life's calling was taking care of traumatized kids, simply couldn't walk past this.
They focused entirely on the "small and defenseless" Laura, leaving the "adult and independent" Yuriko alone. I heard they didn't even put Laura in a room with kids her own age, but instead placed her in a quiet wing next to Rogue and Kitty Pryde.
They were deemed "adult" and "responsible" enough to help the girl figure things out without constantly bothering the teachers, and more importantly, they wouldn't pull the kind of stupid, chaotic pranks that the younger mutants were prone to.
I didn't ask why they didn't just put her in the same room as her mother, but I figured there was probably some underlying pedagogical logic to it.
As for me, I spent the evening and a good chunk of the night unloading my Asgardian loot and moving it down into my new laboratory.
Because what kind of God of Magic am I without a proper molecular disruptor with a dispersion matrix, an atomic forge, and a Soul Forge?
I wanted to assemble and mount everything right away, but I decided not to rush it. This whole sprawling adventure demanded some legitimate, well-earned rest, which, the Universe knows, I absolutely deserved.
So, assembling and booting up the tech was pushed to tomorrow. Tonight, for once, I was going to get some real sleep.
And so, I civilized myself. I took a hot shower, stripped down, crawled into a clean, soft bed, and pressed my cheek into the pillow. I let Gungnir, still in its cane form, sparkle majestically on the nightstand.
(I'm not joking! It planned to do that all night. Well, insofar as the concepts of "feelings" and "intentions" apply to a magical spear...)
I closed my eyes, letting my brain mechanically sift through my plans for the near future... when suddenly, an entirely original thought struck me.
And when I thought about how exactly I was planning to search for Kamar-Taj, I realized that...
"I'm an idiot!"
The blunt statement of fact shattered the silence of the bedroom. It was a realization so painful and shocking that sleep instantly ejected itself from my body, fleeing ahead of its own terrified scream.
"I forgot to use the Throne to find Kamar-Taj!"
The crushing awareness that I had literally been sitting on the most perfect, omniscient surveillance and tracking tool in the Nine Realms, a device designed for finding needles in galactic haystacks, and, like an absolute sheep, hadn't even thought to use it for the one thing I actually needed... oh, it hit my self-esteem like a freight train.
"Right. Sleep is canceled!" I threw the blanket aside, my bare feet hitting the floor. "Get up, chop-chop, time to orchestrate a lightning raid on Asgard! Before Odin decides to wake up..."
Fueled by that thought, I threw my clothes on in record time, wrapped myself stealthily in a handful of illusion spells, and hurried out into the night.
I needed to get to the exact coordinates where the Rainbow Bridge had dropped us off earlier. It is vastly easier to lock onto a recently used drop point, since the transit beam leaves a residual runic signature burned into the ground.
I could have used the Shadow Paths, of course, but there were no entry points nearby, and I couldn't afford to waste the time.
Besides, looking eccentric and stupid in front of Heimdall was becoming a regular hobby of mine lately...
Reaching the spot on the lawn, I threw up a dense privacy ward to block any wandering eyes or security cameras.
A quick shift of my will, and my Earth suit rippled back into my Asgardian armor, while the fancy cane elongated back into the golden, lethal length of the King's spear.
I took a deep breath, raised Gungnir, and slammed the heel of the weapon hard into the dirt, bypassing the Guardian entirely and sending the King's direct summons straight to the Bifrost.
The roaring, rainbow-colored beam of light struck down from the heavens that very second, yanking me violently upward and pulling me into the interdimensional slipstream.
A few seconds of blinding, rushing flight, and the soles of my boots slammed onto the crystalline floor plates of the observatory, the rush of displaced Earth air hitting my back.
"Loki?"
The Guardian of the Bridge met me with a thoroughly bewildered stare, his long fingers slowly relaxing their white-knuckled grip on the hilt of his greatsword.
"Heimdall," I returned the greeting. And then, my eyes snagged on something resting on a console right next to the towering, stoic Aesir.
An open mini-keg. And a goblet filled with a suspiciously familiar, amber-colored liquid...
"I haven't even been gone for twenty-four hours, and you're already drinking on duty..." I clicked my tongue, shaking my head mournfully as I started walking past him toward the exit. "What is this universe coming to?"
"This is... a misunderstanding," the big man forced out, desperately trying to maintain his stone-faced, majestic composure.
"Yes, yes, of course it is..." I pinched the bridge of my nose, not breaking my stride and absolutely refusing to look back. "Let's... let's just pretend we never saw each other tonight."
"..."
The Gatekeeper of Asgard remained completely silent. Which, honestly, was a remarkably wise decision on his part.
….
If you want to read ahead by 20+ chapters from here you can visit my Patre-on.
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