Just Go Along With It ✔️

In A Birdwatcher's Bedroom

It feels almost like you'd forgotten taking a breath, and finally, let it out from your lungs. A weight off your chest. Fury and hellfire directed elsewhere than your own soul. You're still sitting in the deck chair and its peeling wicker sides, and you're still in your own body, and Loki is still beside you, but the pain that was in your body has dispelled, and it feels almost...good. If you were a more direct person, you'd find a courage and go downstairs and fight your ex, fight Jane, fight everyone and anyone involved in the crime. The nerve he had, calling you the cheater. The buffoon had done nothing but ignore you, and treat you like a second-hand vest when he'd had a perfectly good shirt all along.

But you aren't a direct person. You're a nurse in training, and you know what it means to your parents, your reputation, hell, the school if you're involved in any kind of scuffle. So, the weight is off your chest, and you still are in the deck chair.

"Love?" Loki's voice is barely a whisper. "Are you okay?" Slowly, you turn to face him. In the moonlight and lowlight of the colours below in the pool area, his face is aglow, an alabaster moon, green eyes, lips parted, a questioning look to them that creates a feeling within you that almost near replaces the need for revenge. "________?"

You nod, distracted. "If I say yes, I'm stupidly well-adjusted, and if I say no, I'm a crazy asshole."

He makes a noise. "Yeah, but you're my crazy well-adjusted asshole."

You huff, half in amusement. "Gods, I just want to tear my hair out. Grab a time machine and go back to when I started dating –," you take a deep breath, and frown. "But then I'd never have met you."

Loki makes the same noise again, but this time, it sounds more like a somewhat dark chuckle. "When Odin would get drunk, he'd say things like that. You'll only get your brother's leftovers. Took me years to figure out I was adopted, and years more not to care. Thor's an ass at the best of times, but he's not bad. It used to be better, between us."

You're silent. It's a lot to take in, but truly, you're quiet, mulling over what it would feel like to be subtly belittled by the man you were supposed to love and respect, for a whole childhood. It would be a torment.

"I don't want to be that person..." you can't find it in yourself to hold your gaze while saying the words, and instead, take his hand in yours, and drawing a pattern with your thumb upon his skin. "Would you think any less of me if I –,"

Loki frowns. "Throw rocks in his windows?"

You burst out laughing, despite yourself. "No! No, gosh, no. I was, uh, going to ask you if you wanted to, er, go to somewhere a little more, private. You know what I mean?"

His brow quirks quizzically. "What are you proposing, ______?"

You feel a blush take over your face. "I just saw my ex-boyfriend, and your brother ravishing a friend of a friend of mine. I'm distressed. Hell, emotional." You look to Loki, making sure not to break the eye-contact, a strange overconfidence taking over your soul and enveloping you whole. "Can't a person ask their boyfriend to take advantage of the situation in a house party...where several rooms are left unattended?"

His eyes widen, and seeing his hand is in yours, leans back to stand, taking you with him. It's like in movies, when the background music dulls, and the camera tunnels, and the love interest is in the centre of the screen, looking as gorgeous as ever. That's what it feels like, looking at Loki, taking in his hair that brushes the tip of his shoulders, his nose that is so long, and so straight, lips as gorgeous as lips can be. He's leading you inside, and opening a door, and seeing none inside, brings you inside with him.

The room is decorated in shades of first place ribbons and posters of birds and books on nursing. But you don't see those, you see the bed, made neat with pressed sheets, and you see Loki and you clambering onto the top of the sheets, so close to one another that you can see every detail on his body, the pale freckles by his ears, the way his hair curled at the ends.

"Are you sure?" The words leave his lips almost reluctantly. You know this, because this is where you two could have ended up that day after watching movies. You know this, because there's a hesitation. "_______?"

You nod. "I need a distraction."

Loki's lips lift into a small smile. "I know, just...I wouldn't want our first to be out of anything else but adoration."

You make a noise. Slowly, expelling your breath, you lay back, your head on the stranger's bed's pillow, looking to Loki. "Then adore me, Odinson." A blush came across his face, a crimson you cannot help but feel proud of causing. He acted like no stranger to sex any other times (perhaps it was just your misunderstanding), but here, you cannot help but see it. "Are you sure?" you repeat his words.

Pushing yourself up to sit, you inspect Loki. But his words come before your assessment, "I don't think of you as a distraction. Shitty things happen to un-shitty people, and you're a very un-shitty person, sweetling. I don't want to be remembered as a stone in a window or...or a brutish Odinson." You remember his words from earlier in the night. You'll only get your brother's leftovers. "Love?"

"If you are a mango, he is a lemon," you whisper, voice barely there, a hard-to-hear mumbling over the thrum of bass below. "I spent too long on the wrong Odinson, and I won't spend another second on him while you are here. He's an ill-timed coward, and you're a knight, a goddamned knight in green armour."

Loki's head bows, eyes downcast. You lay a kiss upon his brow, and breathe in his scent.

"Lay in my arms," you tell him. "No sex. Kisses. Hugs." You propose.

Loki looks to you. "My insecurities are taking over my life."

You chuckle, leaning back, tugging Loki to lay beside you. "I still like you, Lokes. Remember the date you crashed? I think about how hot you looked in that suit all the time. Well, not all the time, that would be unreasonable. Loads. I think about how hot you look lots of times."

He cracks a smile. "I think about how intelligent, and resilient you are." His hand goes to stroke your cheek, cradling his cold fingers against your skin. "And...how good you look tonight, you're absolutely priceless."

"Cost thirty-seven dollars, actually, for this," you mumble.

"Worth every cent, then, darling." He grins.