Intertwine

45 - We're Inviting Queens?

ALINA

After dinner I sat with Steve in the living room, a beer in hand.

"I mean... we should have told her." Steve sighed.

"Yeah. But she didn't have to split the floor in half." I groaned, rolling my head back. I had a splitting headache.

"Tony said it's all good as his home has been fixed." Steve reminded me. "I knew she'd been through a lot, but..."

"I know." I agreed. "Did you know Bucky used to know her?"

"I didn't realise they knew each other that well. Bucky had mentioned a girl called Hazel, but stopped talking about her pretty quickly. I also didn't realise that she'd been... quite that alone for so long. I'd get mad too if I had been kept from something like that for 400 years if it could have saved me a lot of pain." Steve thought aloud, taking a sip of his beer.

"Please, let's stop talking about Roara. We've apologised, heard her side of the story on the whole keeping the secret and her relationship with Bucky, and she's even given us a nod which is about as good as we're going to get in terms of accepting our apology from her. We've heard all about her encounter with her mom, and the promise of a sacrifice in order to save Loki. I mean that's a big thing, sure, and he should have been way less of  jerk to her. All that jazz. But please. Let's just...talk about something other than her?" I stood up and stretched. My body felt super tired and achy. "I'm getting another beer, want one?"

Steve picked up his beer and looked at how much was left. "I'm alright, thank you though."

I padded off to the kitchen. It was a wide open space, with a dining table that could fit all of us plus more, and a lot of cooking area. I opened one of the fridges and pulled out a beer, opening it with my teeth. I took a long drink. God I'd missed beer when I'd been in the labs.

I heard someone behind me and turned around, a ball of light in my hands ready to strike.

"Loki?" I asked.

He gritted his teeth in the doorway, mid-retreat.

"Hey man, do you want a beer?" I asked.

"I don't drink your midgardian-"

"Tony bought them."

He grinned that sly grin of his. "A beer would be wonderful."

I pulled another one out of the fridge and cracked it open. He came up to and took it from me as I jumped onto the counter as I couldn't be bothered to walk all the way to a chair.

"C'mon snakey, talk to me." I looked him up and down. He was in bad shape. "Are you wearing Thor's hoodie?"

"It is no concern of yours rat." Loki made a disgusted face at the bottle before chugging it down in one.

"Right. While I wouldn't say we're friends, comrades might fit the brief. And I care about my comrades." I put a hand to my chest. "Very deeply. And you, my comrade, you look like shit."

"I thought you Americans were supposed to against communism." He shifted his eyes to looked at me.

I shrugged. "I thought you Asgardians were supposed to be tough, but here you are moping over some girl, as though she's the centre of the universe."

"She's the centre of my universe." Loki muttered.

"I'm sorry," I cupped a hand to my ear, "I didn't quite catch that?"

"It's nothing." Loki pulled open the fridge and wipe a swipe of his hand over the bottle, the cap popped off. "I'm not moping."

"I don't care what it is you're doing, pull yourself together Loki. She could have dated so many men in the period you two weren't seeing each other. She didn't. She could have had sex with so many men, but she didn't." I took a sip of my beer. "I mean you've got to give it to her, she must have had a lot of offers, I mean she's gorgeous, but she did her best to stay loyal to you even though she thought it was your fault. The whole she didn't know it was your fault, that's something to take up with Thor and your father, that's family business, I'm not getting into that. But Bucky's a decent guy, even if he's an ass to the rest of us."