Intertwine

73 - Playing With Fire

ROARA

"Loki?" I knocked on his door. I got no response. I pushed it open. "I'm leaving."

He glanced up at me, a hardcover book in his hands.

"I just wanted to say bye." I said to him.

"Bye." He waved and then flicked a hand. The door began to close on me, but I stopped it with my fist.

"Don't telekensis this door in my face. Are you really going to be like that?" I asked, wheeling myself in.

"How do you want me to be?" He asked. Then he grinned. "I heard that."

"Stop reading my mind!" I snapped, cheeks turning red as a cherry. I hadn't meant to, but a word had cropped up in my head in response to his question. Naked. I'd always has a dirty mouth, and a dirtier mind, but it was frustrating when someone could know everything I thought as I thought it.

He closed his book, laying a hand over the dark blue cover. "This isn't easy for me." He said at last.

"I know." I sighed. "This isn't easy for me either, but I think that's for other reasons." I knew what he was saying. It's not easy for me to watch you go to live with another man. "Thank you, though. I appreciate you encouraging to do what's best for me."

He snorted. "You sound like a therapist."

"Have you ever been to therapy? You might need it." I rubbed my eyes. I was tired, I'd just had another dose of my medication. It was in fact helping, my leg was becoming less achy every day, and I could barely feel my broken ribs. "But I mean it." I put my hand over his, feeling the material of the book on the outsides of my fingers. It was one of those old ones, the ones without a cover and just the name on the spine.

He looked down at our hands, and I thought for a second he was going to move his hand away. The relief I felt when he realised he wouldn't was washed away by the guilt of wanting his hand there.

"I'm coming back." I promised him. "This is only temporary."

"Roara you're the only thing keeping me here." He looked me in the eye. "I don't want to work with these people."

"I know. But I am so proud of you for doing this. Not just for me, but for the people you're helping." I paused. "But also, yeah, for me."

He smiled a little. "I might also be staying for the rat too."

"I hate it when you call Alina that." I groaned.

"She likes it." He shrugged, and I felt the back of his hand shift slightly under mine with the movement. I glanced at the side of the book. Sense and Sensibility, the Jane Austen book I'd been reading that day, but this was clearly his own copy. I smiled to myself slightly. "Besides, as you said, this is temporary." His words jolted me back to reality.

I nodded. "I'll be back before you know it and ready to kick your ass."

He turned his hand over underneath mine so our palms were touching. "I'll wait for that day then." His fingers slowly but surely curled around my wrist, and after a moments hesitation I did the same. It was almost like holding hands, but our palms were in different directions.

"I would invite you over, but I don't know how much Bucky would appreciate that. It is his place after all." I saw his face fall. "He doesn't know still. About the engagement."

Loki sighed. "You should tell him."

"What?"

"You should tell him. If it was me, I'd want to know." He looked down as he said this, as though he genuinely couldn't look me in the eye as he spoke those words. It was unlike him, doing something for someone else like that, something that might benefit them at his expense. I was taken aback. And then I heard it. It was as though it was being spoken very far away, through a tube or underwater, faint but somehow I could still understand it.