Meant To Be (Loki x reader)

Chapter twenty three - In which you have a small existential crisis

Author's note: Hey guys, 3k reads?! Up by a thousand reads in less than a week?! I love you all ;)) Thank you so much to everyone who's read/voted/commented, this slow burn really is keeping me going through quarantine! <3 Here's chapter twenty three, I hope you enjoy it and this gif of Loki (which literally makes me melt) as much as I did ;) 

...

Two days later you were back on your feet, having thankfully not suffered any internal damage from the electrocution. The beginning of December had been confirmed by the first snow of the year and it was getting colder by the day. There had been no training for you since the mission; Loki and Nat rarely agreed on the same thing, but when it came to you wanting to train so soon after you'd been injured their decision was a unanimous one: you needed to rest. Maybe it was just you, but Loki had been acting kind of weird since the mission; you hadn't talked to him in your mind since you'd made him admit that it wasn't his fault you'd been kidnapped. You didn't want to bring it up, but something was definitely going on with him.

In the back of your mind, there was a small nagging voice which was calling for you to entertain the possibility that he might be having the same problem as you and was trying to hide his feelings from you... but you knew that was just wishful thinking. He was a literal god, you were an abandoned Asgardian left to fend for herself on Midgard with no idea how to use her magic. Not to mention the fact that Loki was immortal like Thor. You made a mental note to ask him how old he was next time you saw him; maybe that would put you off.

Yesterday you had been bored out of your mind with Bruce, Nat, Steve and Loki continuously telling you to sit down and stop straining yourself while the others watched on in amusement. Tony had snuck outside with you when none of them had been around and showed you his cars, and upon learning that you didn't know how to drive (you weren't sure why he was shocked) drove you in an Audi R8 to an abandoned empty car park twenty minutes out of town and spent three hours teaching you how to drive an automatic. By the end you were confident enough to drive back to the tower, and you did so well with Tony's guidance. The others hadn't been impressed that you had snuck away (especially Loki), and you were ordered to go and lie down for a while before dinner. You had planned on telling Loki that you were going out on your way downstairs, but had decided against it because he had closed his mind off to you.

That had been yesterday, and he still hadn't let you in.

Now it was mid-afternoon, and you were lying spread eagled on one of the sofas in the lounge scrolling through your phone while Loki sat opposite you reading with his feet up on the coffee table. He was forever reading; you didn't ask where he got all the books from. The others had been summoned by Nick Fury; Tony had tactfully suggested that you didn't need to tag along for it because it would probably be boring, and thus strongly suggesting that you hadn't been invited. A raised eyebrow from Loki (who had been stood behind Tony at the time) had confirmed he thought the same. The two of you were definitely being discussed, but you didn't mind and you weren't worried – the others would tell you what had been talked about when they got back.

Suddenly you remembered that you'd meant to ask Loki how old he was, and looked up to ask the question before realising he had heard you already.

"One thousand and forty-eight. Why?"

Your phone dropped from your hand on to the rug and your jaw went slack in shock as you stared at him.

Loki smirked at you. "What were you expecting?"

You struggled to form a sentence.

"Not that." you finally managed. "So, how old does that make Thor?"

"He's older by four hundred and forty-seven years, so..." he paused to work it out in his head, while your brain tried in vain to comprehend this new information.