Loki X Reader || Girl With The Gold Earring

12 | Boat Life

Y/N is the first to wake the next morning.

The rest of the boat is silent besides Aasta's deep snores, and Loki still dozes beside her.

Wet with dew, early morning sun gushes from the hull's little porthole and pools on the bedcovers.

Dawn is grey in Asgard, stubborn slabs of mist, but they're gold in the Vanir kingdom, warm and slow like honey. It sets everything sparkling, the moisture collected around the little window glistening Iike a cluster of tiny suns.

Loki had slept on top of the covers but, at some point in the night, Y/N had pulled a linen sheet over her naked body, niggled by childish fears of demons biting her exposed toes.

Loki doesn't seem to worry about demons biting his toes; his ankles dangling over the lip of the little mattress.

Y/N guesses he's never needed to; there aren't many dark places for them to lurk in The Palace's shining golden rooms.

This isn't The Palace, though.

These days, Y/N often feels like something is reaching out to get her, even in the daytime.

Well, not to get her, but to get Loki—to snatch him away again.

Before she'd opened her eyes she'd dreamed of horses' hooves thundering through the bullrushes, and guard's armoured hands crawling around the bedroom door.

Laying stock still, she'd cracked open a tentative eye, and listened. She'd been sure she could hear heavy boots jumping aboard the deck, harsh voices hissing words she didn't understand—

—But it had just been the boat bumping against a tree trunk, the voices merely river birds chattering amongst the reeds.

She'd let herself slacken.

Y/N does not mind waking up early. Sometimes she does it by accident; the clock in her head still ticking to a maid's schedule.

On those mornings, she'd toast some bread and hoist the anchor, getting a few miles out of the way before the sun is even up.

Aasta wakes early too, her mind apparently still convinced it has to bake cakes for a queue of two hundred people. However, with no ingredients and no hungry customers, she'd join Y/N at the wheel, look around sleepily, confused as to why she's surrounded by jungle rather than market stalls.

Yawning, Y/N flexes her arm resting on the bed covers, watching the sun trickle between her fingers and onto the planked floor. She pictures the river below, the starboard side of the boat snug against the bank; the cracked old wood blending into the reeds like the feathers of a bittern.

She'll let Aasta be the first to hoist the anchor today.

Loki breathes slowly beside her, and Y/N turns onto her other side to watch him.

He'd fallen asleep curled around her back, but had ended up on his front at some point, arms crossed below the misshapen pillow, the ridges of his shoulders rising and falling.

The bones are sharper than Y/N remembers. He'd felt more hollow in her arms when she'd held him last night, the hills of softness she'd clasp onto gone.

A few weeks of Aasta's cooking will fix that, she thinks with a smile and moves closer to his side.

A gentle coolness radiates from him, and Y/N seeks it, sweaty from her dreams.

Her chest meets his back and he stirs, turning over to face her.

A dash of green peeks out from between his lashes as his eyes open drowsily. Finding Y/N next to him, his face breaks into a sloppy grin. "Hello."