Meant To Be (Loki x reader)

Chapter twenty four - In which you prepare to kidnap a criminal mastermind

Author's note: Hey guys, thank you so much for 4k! Love you all <3 :)) For some reason it won't let me upload gifs to the chapter at the mo, I'll fix this when I can! Here's chapter twenty four, enjoy! x

...

Nine days later, it was the day of the mission and there was a palpable sense of tension in the air around the tower. For the last week and a bit you had been training almost non-stop with Loki trying to learn how to cast and hold an illusion; it was the hardest magic you had attempted yet and you'd only mastered it two days ago. You and Loki had had some pretty intense arguments during the first couple of days; you hadn't been able to change even your hair colour for three whole days, but once you'd overcome that hurdle things had gone much better, mainly due to the fact that you were actually making progress each day. Annoyingly, arguing with him had only magnified your feelings for him by tenfold, and this had made you even more frustrated, which led to more arguing, and thus you were stuck in a vicious cycle.

If only you knew that he was stuck in the exact same cycle as you were.

Between training with Loki you'd had to find time to train with Nat, who for the last week had been training you in stilettos in preparation for the party 'and who knows what else.' You'd been walking around in those stupid shoes all week to try and get used to them, and were outraged when you discovered you still weren't nearly as tall as Loki with them on. At the start of the week you'd looked like a new-born giraffe walking around in them, but with Nat's insistence that you wear them every day with insoles and your persistence, yesterday you'd even admitted that they were actually quite comfortable. Nat had told everyone that she could now die happy because she'd completed a seemingly impossible goal.

"Now you'll never have trouble wearing them again." she had told you triumphantly.

On top of this, you'd had to research this Penelope girl you were imitating in order to ensure that you acted and sounded just like her so as not to raise too much suspicion. Her excessive British accent which you had been practicing had been the cause of much amusement during the last week. You were quite good at it if you said so yourself.

Today however, there was no joking around, everything was deadly serious. Breakfast had been a sordid affair, no one had talked much and you were unsure whether Loki had actually spoken all morning. His mind remained as shut off as ever, and you'd decided to return the favour so that now you couldn't communicate with each other at all without talking. He hadn't brought it up. It felt weird.

It was now mid-afternoon and Tony had decided to call the seventh meeting about this mission since last week; you all gathered in his lab to go over the plan yet again; you sat on a work surface again and tried not to overthink the situation when Loki joined you. It didn't go well. You were rather preoccupied during the first five minutes of Tony's speech, mainly due to the fact that Loki's hand was resting about two inches away from your thigh on the table. It was only when you heard your name that you re-joined the meeting and engaged with Tony's speech (which you had heard numerous times before anyway).

The plan was this: you, Loki, Bucky, Clint and Nat (who had been outraged when Tony suggested her not going) would go to the party in disguise (Nat had seen to it that your fake identities had make their way on to the guest list). Once inside, you would find Penelope and 'make sure that she was out of the way' as Tony had so deftly put it, and then you would cast your illusion to make yourself an exact copy of her. After that it was up to you to get Ricci drunk and lure him out the back of the mansion by the pool where the Tony, Steve, Bruce and Thor would be waiting nearby, and get him to the jet without a struggle. Loki, Bucky, Clint and Nat were essentially there for if anything went horribly wrong, which it inevitably would. There would be armed security there and CCTV cameras surrounded the mansion, it would be a miracle if you weren't caught. But hopefully by the time they'd worked out what was happening you'd have Ricci and be out of there. There had been numerous arguments about whether you should even be attempting this with you in such a dangerous position, but with your consistent nailing down of your belief that you could get yourself out of any bad situation you might get into with your magic you'd finally won everyone over. Well, almost everyone... Loki still wasn't thrilled about the idea. You had a feeling that that wasn't going to change.