#badly wrong

Then he takes it up a notch, getting really personal – insulting your age, your size – you’re very small, almost elfin – your looks …

You’re literally taken aback by the extent of his vitriol, feeling yourself automatically stepping a bit away from him in self-defense, trying to shrink physically so that you’re even smaller and thus less of a target, even though what happened really wasn’t your fault – it was one of the other team members who didn’t do as she should have.  He isn’t giving you the chance to say anything, though, so you don’t even begin to try to defend yourself. 

In fact, you were the one who had noticed that the other woman was frozen by her own error and how badly things were going as a result of it, stepping in and taking over her post as well as your own, solving the problem as quickly and efficiently as you could and to the best of your ability, heroically managing to rescue the team from what was rapidly becoming an untenable situation.

Still, you feel you do bear some responsibility for what happened, since you were that person’s supervisor – despite the fact that you’re new here.

And you don’t want to lose this job – you can’t lose this job.  You are the sole support of your brother, who is developmentally disabled and you need the money this job brings in to be able to keep him at a really good facility that he loves and is helping him a lot.

So you endure his verbal scourge for much longer than you might have if the situation had been different, as the rest of the Avenger team quickly surround you, trying to get Loki to stand down, but he gets right in your face, teeth practically bared in anger.

He is an utterly terrifying sight, and you are completely cowed long before he begins to wind down.  You stand there, looking anywhere but at him, stiff and hurt and battling to keep the tears out of your eyes because you don’t want to show any further kind of weakness to him, and you’re already embarrassed enough without adding breaking down in front of him, too.

But, in the end - your body taut and unbending - you say, quietly and stiffly but with as much dignity as you can muster while you force yourself to look him in the eye, “My apologies, Prince Loki.  Be assured that it will never happen again.”

Then you walk away, back straight, head held high, at last until you’re all the way out of the room, even though you can hear Natasha and Thor calling you to come back, making your way to your small apartment in the Tower, aware that you’ve just left a debriefing that you really needed to attend, and realizing that you might well just have lost your job anyway for walking out.

But he’d succeeded in driving you pretty close to a “fuck it” state, closing your door behind you and leaning back against it to dissolve into tears.

Your phone is blowing up, but you just turn it off, then reach up and take down the hair that you always scrape back into a neat bun, allowing it to wave and curve around your face and down past your shoulders, figuring that you are going to take a mental health day after that. 

If ever you’d needed one, it’s now.

Then, still sobbing, you hear a firm knock at your door, and figure that it’s either your very good friend who got you this gig, here to commiserate with you and tell you what happened after you left the meeting, or it’s Mr. Stark – Tony, as he insisted everyone call him – there to personally hand you your pink slip, or maybe it’s – Aja  the employee who screwed up, who was hopefully going to throw herself at your feet and beg for mercy you aren’t sure you’re a good enough person to grant to her.

Or better yet, she’s confessed to Loki himself that she was the cause of the problem, not you, although you couldn’t see that happening, either.

But, when you open the door, it isn’t any of those people standing in front of you, still looking all tall, dark, and intimidated in his armor.

Your back instantly goes up, and you stand a bit straighter, looking all that way up at Loki, wishing you didn’t know that he could plainly see the evidence of your tears as you will yourself not to show just how scared you still are – and were – by him, but your instincts tell you that you need to defend yourself from him.

So you close the door again.

Or rather, you try to.

His big, booted foot is in the way, and even leaning your full weight against the door isn’t enough to make him move it.

You’re still leaning hard, wondering what you’re going to do now that that’s proven useless, when he drawls slowly, but not unkindly, “You do realize that I can simply come in through the door, regardless of any effort you might make to prevent me from doing so, do you not …?”

Sighing in defeat, you step away from the door, opening it, but not able to bring yourself to issue an actual invitation for him to come in.

He pauses for a very short amount of time as if he is expecting one from you, but then realizes that it’s not going to be forthcoming, instead brushing past you to enter your small apartment, which immediately seems just that much smaller with him in it.

You cross your arms over your chest and meet his eyes, willing yours not to fill with tears, and it’s fifty-fifty whether or not you’re going to be able to stave them off.  “Say what you came here to say and get the fuck out.”

For a long moment, he merely stands there, considering you so carefully that it’s disconcerting, then his hand comes up, surprising you, and you rear back, which makes him frown deeply, although he doesn’t stop reaching towards you until he’s slipped a finger into one of the loose corkscrew curls the ends of your hair always fall into whenever it’s down.  “I’ve never seen your hair like this,” all husky and much too intimate.

Even more alarmed by warmth that courses through you at his words and tone, you step further back, yanking your hair away from him, and repeating what you’d just said through gritted teeth.  “Say what you came here to say and get the fuck out.”

His hand falls with surprising reluctance to his side as he meets your eyes, and you can literally feel how heartfelt his words are.  “I came here to apologize to you.  One of your coworkers – not the actual culprit who was responsible for the fiasco, but one of the others who was there – explained that you were the true hero of the day.”  He clears his throat, then continues, “Regardless, I am very sorry for what I said and did - for how I treated you.  It was highly inappropriate and boorish and ungentlemanly.”  Loki straightens, bringing his heels together with a click and bowing his head to you.  “Please accept my sincerest apology.”

He did sound sincere, and your emotions – which are very close to the surface at the moment – cause your eyes to well with tears.  But you force yourself to stiffen your back, saying curtly, “Accepted,” as you head pointedly to the door, realizing as you stand next to it with your hand on the knob that he would likely feel no more compunction about staying – although you couldn’t really see why he would want to - than he had about coming barging in in the first place.  “Now get the fuck out.”

You try not to show it when you’re amazed that he actually walks to the door, where he bows to you again - this time in a more formal, almost courtly manner - putting his foot forward and kind of leaning over it, then standing impossibly tall again and looking down at you intently.  “Thank you for accepting my apology.  If you are going back to the meeting, I would be glad to escort you.”

You give him no sign as to what you intend, although you move as if to follow him out the door, but as soon as he is fully in the hallway, you shut it behind him – between you – locking it, although you realize how utterly useless it is to do that.

Then, figuring he’s long gone in annoyance at the very least, and for the second time in less than a half hour, you lean back against the door and let the tears flow, crumpling messily down it into an ungainly heap on the floor, burying your face in your hands as you sob loudly.

What you can’t see is that Loki is still standing there, in the hallway, facing your door, hearing you dissolve into tears and wrestling with very unfamiliar feelings of guilt, and the equally unusual urge to violate your privacy and ignore the locked door in favor of gathering you into his arms to hold and soothe you as you cry.

His jaw is clenched – a muscle visibly ticcing – as he’s balanced on his toes, ready to do so any second, his hand already raise to make the gesture necessary to transport himself to you, but then he pauses, hesitating uncharacteristically, not wanting to make you feel any worse today than he already has.

So he turns, very reluctantly, and leaves, the sounds of your weeping ringing in his ears and echoing painfully in his chest in a way that he cannot seem to banish, and which gives him troubling dreams that night about how stricken you looked as he was screaming at you, and how horrible he feels about having done that, despite his apology and your understandably brusque acceptance of it.

He’s not sure what he’s going to do to make it up to you.