Chapter Text
Loki groans, long and loud, as he throws himself down on the bed, arms and legs splayed so that he resembles a flaccid, goth starfish, as you walk together into your bedroom, but the good-natured grin on his face as he does so tells you that he’s still giddy, drunk on the sheer euphoria of his win and the congratulations that have trailed in his wake all evening.
You can’t help but laugh at him as he stretches, spine arching against the sheets like an oversized cat dangerously close to tumbling off the edge of the mattress. Loki immediately throws a hand over his forehead in mock anguish, peering up at you as you shake your head lightly at him.
“Oh, how my lady wounds me,” he cries as you grin at his antics but walk past him and into the ensuite bathroom in order to begin erasing the magnificent Look your makeup artist had created on your face. When another handful of seconds slides by without a response from you, he calls again forlornly, “You’ll have to tell them that I’ve died of a broken heart, mocked mercilessly by the one dearest to my heart.”
A theatrical cry of distress rises from the bed as you wipe away your mascara, rubbing your lashes between the damp cloth to get every speck of dry black gel off the delicate skin of your eyelids. “O, I am slain!”
Chuckling, you call back, “When you’re quite done writhing in mortal agony, beloved husband of mine, could you come haunt your cruel wife and help me unzip this dress?”
He’s at the doorway before you’re done with the other eye, leaning suavely against the doorframe as he loosens his tie and sheds his suit jacket with a single practiced motion.
“You only need ask,” he purrs, “and I shall do as you desire. Allow the haunting to commence.”
He leans over your shoulder and meets your eyes in the mirror with a widened, rounded gaze of his own as his lips pucker into an ooh of counterfeit spookiness while his large, long-fingered hands wave about your heads in a spectacle that provokes more amusement than terror.
“Behold, the ghost of an innocent man, wrongfully scorned. He lay dying in the throes of his woeful suffering,” Loki proclaims darkly behind you, voice careening into a wail, “tragically neglected by the only one who could have saved him from this unspeakable fate.”
His hands slide up your back, tracing the dip and surge of your spine on his way to the zipper of your dress as he holds your eyes captive in the mirror, his breath tickling your ear. “And now he is doomed to haunt her forevermore, bound by undying fidelity and love beyond even his mortality.”
Your answering laughter sparkles in the air as Loki unzips your dress with a small smile and a flourish, his perpetually cool hands running over your bare stomach and coming up to rest just under the swell of your breasts as Loki pulls himself flush with your back and nuzzles into you, your dress falling to the floor in a forgotten pool of lush, glimmering fabric.
“I still can’t believe you made your speech with this on your face,” you murmur as you lean back into his embrace, tilting your head back over his arm as you trace your fingers over the remnants of lipstick marring his alabaster complexion.
He attacks you in a flurry of kisses and playful, teasing teeth, tickling your exposed neck with his breath until you squeal in protest. Roguish green eyes glitter down at you as he dips you suddenly, laughing richly as you shriek and scrabble for a firmer hold on his arms and around his chest.
“How else was everyone supposed to know who I belong to?” he retorts mischievously as he sets you back on your feet and graciously allows you to finish cleansing your face.
“Besides,” he ponders with a blasé air that still only comes across half as arrogant as it ought to, “after they chose that scene to act as an example of why I won, I’m sure at least seven tabloid rags will be running stories insisting it was Natasha’s doing by tomorrow morning.”
You freeze halfway into washing your face, water overflowing out of your cupped hands and into the sink. Loki’s words hit you like a slap to the face, and in an instant all your suppressed rage and jealousy flares back like an inferno bursting in your chest.
“Isn’t that what’s been bothering you all night?” Loki asks gently, his eyes slanting towards you probingly, voice excruciatingly soft and patient. It’s just what you want, just what you need, but something rears its contrary head in your skull and you hear yourself answer brightly,
“What? No, nothing’s the matter.”
You close your eyes to avoid his all too perceptive gaze as you violently splash handfuls of water over your face before groping blindly for the faucet handle and shutting off the flow. You turn in search of a towel, only to hear Loki sigh wearily and present you with one, pressing the fluffy material into your outstretched hands.
“When will you learn that it’s useless to lie to me?” he asks as you bury your face in the towel, refusing to relinquish the excuse to continue dodging eye contact. “Darling, if my hand had a throat you would have strangled it past death when the scene played in the theatre, you were fidgeting all through the afterparty, and you looked like you wanted to murder the foolish woman who asked me if offscreen chemistry was important to perform convincing onscreen relationships. What else was there to upset you, if not that?”
Damn. You should have known that Loki could read you like a book.
Reluctantly, you stop patting your face with the towel and look ruefully at Loki. Still, something baleful in your chest was loath to admit the reason for your behaviour. You can’t bear to make this night about you and your insecurities, not when Loki’s just climbed a peak in his career and ought to be celebrating still with champagne and laughter and anything that isn’t you moping and wallowing over his shoulder.
“I’m not upset with you,” you say honestly, clumsily skirting his question. “I’m just tired, today was just so long and I didn’t want to make you feel like I wasn’t excited for you, because I am—”
He cuts you off, raising one elegant hand in the air to stop your babbling. It’s a weak excuse, transparent at best, and you know that Loki sees right through it, but he lets his hand fall without questioning you further.
“Alright,” he tells you as he leans forward and begins to dab away the makeup on his face too, “no more explanations.” You feel a twinge of remorse as he adds drily, “Especially if they’re all that pathetic.”
There’s a tiny smile flickering on his lips as he glances at you before returning his piercing gaze to the mirror and asking his reflection as a sort of final olive branch, “You’re sure it’s not something I can kiss all better?”
You hear the kind, teasing lilt in his voice and know that he’s just trying to make you feel better and offer you one last out, complete with a promise that he won’t force the truth from you, but at the moment, all you can remember is how infuriating his glib little remarks were when you first started dating, and it’s only by forcing yourself to look at the concern streaked below the playfulness in his eyes that you manage to fight the sudden urge to throw your makeup wipe at his head.
You force yourself to laugh lightly and tell him in a voice so airy it almost feels like a huff, “I suppose a kiss wouldn’t hurt,” as you change into an old, comfortable shirt of his and head to the bed before Loki has a chance to see the frown creasing your features.
The bed slopes for a moment under Loki’s weight as he crawls in beside you, and you’re tempted to turn over to face him; you feel his eyes on you, waiting hesitantly in the silence. You hope he knows that you really aren’t upset with him, but you simply can’t bring yourself to even attempt your customary goodnight for fear of your fragile façade crumbling altogether.
The lamp clicks off and your bedroom is doused in darkness save for the slanted rhombi of clear, silvery moonlight falling through slats in the half-open blinds. He must look unearthly in this light, you think, bathed in pure, liquid silver like the prince of some fantastic alien kingdom.
It occurs to you, rather belatedly, that for all your efforts not to end what should have been a long, celebratory night on a sour note, you’ve managed to do exactly that. A pang wracks your heart and you exhale heavily, warring with yourself before a second wave of regret and pain ripples through you, deciding the matter for you.
You falter, but muster your courage: “Loki?”
There’s a second of silence in response. You groan internally; you know he’s not asleep yet and that with the way you brushed him off earlier, you can’t expect his annoyance to simply evaporate, but that doesn’t mean his dedication to a certain amount of spite makes this any easier.
Still, you wait, drowning in the rush of your too-loud heartbeat as you listen to Loki’s even breathing and fall into a dizzying spiral of hypothetical scenarios in your head.
Finally, he says your name, copying the way your own voice tapered the final syllable into a question. He does so carefully, measuring out his concern into a perfect little dollop of emotion that leaves you enough room to back out again with an “I love you, goodnight”.
This is how Loki shows that he cares, that despite his scathing, icy lines of defense and his absolute lack of hesitance to employ them, he would still throw himself off a cliff if you asked. This is one of the many reasons you fell in love with him.
You’re tempted to take the easy escape, but there’s also an edge of coolness in his voice that stops you; Loki is many things, among them caring and magnanimous (when he wants to be, at least), but his patience for being toyed with is minimal, and though his love for you gives you a buffer of tolerance, you are testing its limits now.
So you swallow past the lump in your throat, roll around to face him before you lose your courage, and say in one rushed breath, voice rising unbidden into a cry, “I know it’s your job and you don’t feel anything for Natasha or any of your love interest co-cast but that scene tonight really bothered me and I’m jealous.”
Loki blinks, looking mildly taken aback, and you realize that perhaps you have actually fazed him into speechlessness, in some bizarre turn of events, before his expressions smooths into dispassion and he quips,
“Oh, is that all?”
You know that he probably deserves at least one little jibe, but your cheeks still burn in a blend of shame and indignance, and you can’t stop the hurt irritation from rising up and coloring your reply even as Loki reaches out to cradle you against his bare chest, his false nonchalance giving way to fond exasperation.
"Yes, Loki, that's all. Your wife is just feeling petty, and stupid, and jealous because her Oscar-winning husband—”
“—Has taken entirely too long to remind her that she is the only person on this earth that he wishes to hold so intimately." He punctuates each word with a flutter of his lips on your skin, working his way from the base of your throat up to your jaw. "To dream of, to fall asleep and wake up beside, to think of when he must be away."
His trail of kisses starts again at the center of your forehead, cool hands gently brushing hair away from your face. When a strangled cross between whimper and laugh escapes from your lips, he places the soft pad of his thumb over the plush, naked surface of your lower lip, pressing lightly into the skin until you lift your eyes to meet his, and smiles tenderly, his eyes illuminating with rosy affection over the high arches of his flawless cheeks. You soak in the sight until your corneas burn from dryness, and when your eyelids flutter closed to soothe the sting, he brushes two light kisses there too.
His lips land softly, precisely, on the very tip of your nose, and you can feel them purse in amusement when you wrinkle your nose in response, a heavy shot of warm air hitting your skin as he attempts to muffle his laughter. You open your eyes to find him gazing at you with a tender adoration that nearly frightens you; he looks so very soft and open and vulnerable like this, so removed from the polished, untouchable charisma that he wears like a second skin during the day.
Your cheeks flush under the solemn, sincere reverence of his gaze, and you hope futilely that he cannot feel the heat of your reddened skin under his lips; he chuckles knowingly as he pulls away and you hit his shoulder in embarrassment and mock indignation, eyes lowering to a safe spot on his triceps in the hopes that your blush will calm without Loki’s unfairly enthralling face to fuel its fire. However, there’s no stopping your ears from hearing in vivid, glorious, punishing clarity as Loki continues to detail all the ways you uniquely possess his mind and heart, and his smooth, low voice keeps your blood simmering.
Loki's face moves closer and your breath hitches as he whispers slowly, "The only person I wish to share a bed with, to share my love and my life with..."
Loki doesn't acknowledge the weak blow of your open palm, but his pale eyes do drift down and linger at your lips before returning to your eyes as he leans close and murmurs against the corner of your mouth, his voice no more than the suggestion of sound as his breath ghosts over your skin, "To kiss."
He draws out the word like spun sugar against your skin, and suddenly, before the electric tingling his utterance has elicited at the nape of your neck fades away, you are filled with the sweet, heady sensation of his lips on yours. His kiss is insistent, and he works against you like a drowning man in search of air, pulling you close, one hand cradling the back of your head as the other loops around your waist and tightens until your body is flush against his under the covers.
Your eyes have long shut, and in the darkness your universe is composed of Loki and Loki alone as he reminds you of his love. There is a hint of clean, crisp mint on his breath, standing out like a sliver of glacial ice from the smoky mélange of soap and cologne and something uniquely Loki which clings to his skin, and if he weren't so intent on kissing you breathless (an endeavor which he pursues quite successfully), you would have tried to suck the addictive note into your lungs as you went after his plumped lower lip. But as things stand, you find yourself rather helpless, at your husband's sweet mercy as his lips work at spilling love into your very soul, and it takes all the effort you can muster to groan his name pleadingly into his mouth.
He presses harder into your mouth for a moment, devouring you with renewed intensity before his passion smolders into tenderness and he draws back slowly after one last caress. The sight of him practically glowing in the slanted moonlight is utterly ethereal. Divine, your thoughts echo again in your mind. Absolutely divine. And mine.
"This sorry fool of a husband has also forgotten to tell his wife that he loves her beyond measure, and that he begs forgiveness for upsetting her,” Loki breathes, eyes fixed on you in a way that makes you feel rather as if you’re the only being in existence at the moment.
It’s a gratifying, special sort of feeling, and you let it go to your head long enough for a bashful smile to appear on your tingling lips, still reddened from Loki’s vigorous determination to kiss it into you that he is not only faithful but gregariously and unequivocally passionate about being so.
At the sight of your curving mouth, Loki’s own face breaks into a rare but brilliant illumination of joy. The light in his eyes rivals the brightness and purity of the moonlight gilding his skin, and not for the first time you wonder how someone so clearly divine had fallen in love and sworn themselves to you.
As if sensing your thoughts, Loki’s eyebrows furrow and he pulls you close once more, nestling your head under his chin and against his chest so that his slow, steady heartbeat thumps comfortingly in your ear. Soft, feather-light kisses scatter themselves over the crown of your head as he whispers sternly, “Stop thinking so much.”
You mumble some half-thought out excuse into his chest and he pokes your cheek firmly in reprimand.
“I love you,” he declares, in a resonant voice that you’ve heard him use to embody kings and emperors and gods, “I love you, I’ve loved you since before the day we swore ourselves to each other, and I’ll love you long after we pass through this stage into eternity.”
You feel rather than see the tilt of his smirk when he adds, “And you, silly woman, can do nothing about it.”
You intend to scoff at his ridiculous smugness, but the tenderness in his fingers as he runs them through your hair turns it into a tiny laugh as you plant a chaste kiss on the square of skin under your lips and nuzzle into him, wrapping your arms around his chest so that you can feel the steady rise and fall of his even breathing.
“I love you too,” you murmur in response, and you know he hears you despite your voice being muffled, because his heart quickens under your ear and his arms tighten ever so slightly around you.
Loki’s embrace surrounds you with quiet, unassuming safety, his pulse lulling you to sleep alongside the uniform rhythm of his breathing. Your eyes have drifted shut, your mind floating off to some hazy median between slumber and wakefulness when you hear his purring voice, gliding sleekly through the lavender whispers of dreams that coil thickly around your mind.
“I told you I could kiss it better.”