Everything || Loki x Reader

⇝ Chapter Four

You continue stretching your limbs and doing simple push-ups until Loki arrives for his training session. It's 7:58a.m. and you hope you won't have to reprimand him for being late on his first day.

Just before the clock strikes eight, Loki walks into the huge training facility... in his normal clothing. Armor and all.

"No, no, no, no," you mumble, walking over to him. "No armor. We train in Midgardian workout clothes whether you like it or not. I don't care if you're in a sports bra and yoga pants or t-shirt and shorts, go change."

"What I wear is my business," Loki retorts, crossing his arms over his chest.

"No, not this time. Unless you want to be sweating your ass off, change right now," you demand, matching his stance although he's at least twice your size.

You and Loki get in to a stare-off until he huffs and rolls his eyes. With a snap of his fingers, a green mist appears and disappears to reveal Loki with a ponytail, black t-shirt, black basketball shorts and black sneakers.

"Perfect," you cheer, clasping your hands together then moving to the side to point to the track at the other side of the facility. "Fifteen laps. Go."

"Mewling quim ordering me around," Loki grumbles, walking toward the track.

"Language!" you yell.

Wow, I'm hanging out with Steve too much.

You turn to take a sip of your water and twist the cap back on before jogging over to run beside Loki halfway through the first lap.

"What are you doing?" he asks.

"I told you that we're in this together. I wouldn't make you do something that I wouldn't do on a regular basis. Running builds stamina and I know you probably don't do much of it because of your magic," you answer, keeping a respectable distance between your bodies to keep him comfortable.

You see Loki's mouth open, and when you think he's going to say thank you, he closes it and continues forward. By the fourth lap, Loki is breathing heavily while you still have full energy. You've slowed down to a light jog to keep his pace, but this won't build anything.

"Come on, Loki! What if you were being chased by an army of trolls?!" you shout.

"I would teleport myself, obviously," Loki gasps out.

"No! You have no magic. These trolls are coming after you, and at the end of the laps, there's your only escape. Now, run!" you yell.

"How do you even know about trolls?" he asks, pushing forward a little more.

"I read my fair share of Norse Mythology. I'm not some ignorant 'mewling quim'," you reply. "No more questions. Run!"

Loki takes in a breath before running faster. He can't believe he is letting some mortal order him around, but he doesn't want to go back to his cell. He is taking this seriously as he slowly sees the errors of his ways. He is trying and that's all that matters. Loki is also grateful that he didn't get stuck with one of the other idiots to watch over him.

After the fifteen laps, Loki collapses on his back on the ground in a spread-eagle position with sweat dripping down his face. You stand over him with furrowed brows and not even a sheen of sweat showing.

"In all your centuries alive, have you worked out, or even ran, once?" you ask.

Loki seems to take the question seriously. "Maybe twice."

You chuckle and offer him a hand up. He doesn't hesitate to stand on his own and your arm falls to your side in defeat.

"Have you at least had experience in hand-to-hand combat?" you question.

"You would be surprised," he responds.

"Let's jump right in and see what you got then."

You lead him to the mats set up near the exit of the room and get into a fighting stance. Loki just stands in his usual perfect posture. You decide to not go full-force on him just yet and take it easy.

"Go."

In the blind of an eye, Loki grabs your left forearm and brings it behind your back, trapping your wrist between your shoulder blades and kicking the back of your knee so you have to kneel on the mat and Loki is behind you.

"Shit," you curse. "That's not what I expected."

"I may not run, but I still was forced to train with Thor over hundreds of years," Loki says, being very close to your ear.

For a second you notice how his skin feels against yours. His calloused hands with a strong grip around your arm is unnaturally warming, but it's gone quickly as he stands up. You get up too and turn around to face him.

"It seems that we won't have to worry at all if that's the case, but we can still improve by building your muscle," you say, walking over to grab some white tape out of a cabinet.

You return to your position and grab Loki's hands, wrapping the tape around them individually before tossing the rest of the roll on the ground. You walk over to one of the punching bags and stand beside it.

"Start going at it. Release all that pent of anger and frustrations that you're holding in," you say.

"Anger? I do not have anger, and if I did, you would know nothing of it, mortal," he replies, slipping back to the complete ass he usually is.

"I don't need to be a mind reader to know how frustrating most of your life must have been. Instead of world domination, this is a better way to get the anger out, so go for it."

Loki sighs and closes his eyes briefly as he thinks of his life and all that have done him wrong. He opens his eyelids and throws his fists at the bag with incredible speed and impact.

It takes a while until he slows down, but when he does, he turns to you.

"About The Avengers thing, what's your name? I may have heard about you and didn't even know it."

"They call me Virus," you reply with your arms crossed.

Loki stops laying into the bag and starts doing the unexpected--laughs. He freaking laughs so hard he has to lay his forearm against the punching bag and lean his forehead against it.

"Virus? What kind of superhero name is that? Were Disease and Bacteria already taken?" Loki chokes out between laughs.

If this were actually a funny situation, you might have said his laugh was nice and deep, almost alluring. But your superhero name means a lot to you because it was the first thing you ever worked toward when you escaped. It was yours. The one thing. And the meaning is close to your heart.

"It was better than being called Test Subject 0009," you comment barely above a whisper before turning and walking straight out of the room.