Chapter Text
You, inexplicably, managed to forget about Loki’s presence until you opened your bedroom door and caught sight of the door to the third bedroom slightly ajar. You whirled back into your room and slammed the door shut, hands pressed flat against the wood panel as if to ward off anyone who tried to enter.
A glance at the clock told you that, as per your usual weekday morning routine, you’d slept in through Hela’s morning shower after she returned from a run at dawn. According to that routine, if you walked into the kitchen within the next fifteen minutes, you’d find Hela at the table, engrossed in blended breakfast and an article or brief on her phone.
This all, of course, failed to account for the new variable in the equation. Or more accurately, in the bedroom across from yours.
Was Loki awake? You pressed your ear against the door, straining to hear any sign of him, but all you heard was the low rumble of the building’s pipes. You cracked the door open and peered out into the hall; still, all that met your gaze was the thin chink of darkness between the third bedroom’s doorframe and door. Well, if it was that dark Loki had to have drawn the curtains, so he was probably still sleeping…but if the door was open, perhaps he was up?
“You’re being ridiculous,” you muttered to yourself as you pulled on casual street clothes. “He’s just her brother. You got on the wrong foot, that’s all.”
You weren’t sure why your brain had decided that Loki’s opinion of you mattered so much, but you weren’t prepared to unpack everything rushing in your mind so early in the morning, let alone examine the inexplicable tangle of regret and embarrassment over attacking him.
The ten steps from your room to the bathroom had never seemed so fraught with risk, but nothing stirred in the darkness as you passed the guest room on the way there, so you decided that it was safe enough to practice how you were going to greet him in the mirror as you brushed your teeth, albeit in an emotive whisper. Just in case.
Did he like coffee? Hela liked coffee.
You decided that coffee was a good peace offering.
When you walked into the kitchen, a yellow sticky note waited for you on the side of your mug; Hela’s bold, angular scrawl informed you that an urgent (underlined thrice) meeting had called her out early, she wouldn’t be reachable by phone until late that afternoon, she expected that she’d be back late (again), and requested that you please refrain from killing-slash-maiming her baby brother or her mother would be terribly upset. A tiny doodle of Hela with horns laughed in the corner above a statement enclosed in parentheses: And I don’t do pro bono!
You groaned over the gurgle of the coffee machine and crumpled up the note. Pouring two perfect pools of creamer effectively served as a focal point for you to push away the aftertaste of embarrassment Hela’s note had elicited, as did filling the two mugs with rich, hot coffee precisely three fingers from the rim. Steam curled up in fragrant, wispy spirals as deep sable swirled with creamy white into a perfect chestnut, lighter dun bubbles rising only to pop at the edges of the mugs.
The deep inhale you took before frothing half a cup of milk and carefully pouring in an even layer over each cup was invigorating; the silky, roasted scent of coffee helped you shake the last fingers of fog clinging to your brain.
A small smile touched your lips as you delicately dusted cinnamon and cocoa powder over each layer of milk foam. Making a good cup of coffee was a meditative process, and it didn’t hurt that the product was delicious.
Light footsteps preceded Loki’s arrival in the kitchen, giving you ample time to arrange your face into a smile that was friendly, but not overbearing. When the footsteps stilled and cloth rustled at the threshold, you turned your carefully prepared smile in Loki’s direction, ready to greet him and launch into the clear-the-air speech you’d rehearsed in the bathroom.
Instead, you promptly dropped the shaker onto the counter, causing a powdery explosion over your hand.
Loki slept shirtless, apparently, and either it had just been an incredibly long time since a shirtless man had surprised you in the kitchen, or Loki had a very aesthetically pleasing bare torso. Maybe both.
Your smile grew too bright and you chirped, in a voice three octaves higher than you’d meant to, “Morning!”
Loki raised an eyebrow, a self-satisfied smirk quirking one corner of his mouth. You knew that smirk; Hela had a very similar one, and after losing one too many “friendly” games of Monopoly to her, you’d grown intimately familiar with how the expression had the unique capability to render her features both irresistible and infuriating.
Your gaze darted down for an instant to the exposed expanse of toned muscle and pale, smooth skin, marred only by a silvery scar on the left side of his chest, below his heart, before snapping back to Loki’s gilded celadon eyes with a shadow of guilt at being caught red-handed—red-eyed?
His smirk widened, seawater eyes glittering. Yep, irresistible and infuriating.
“Do you need help with that?”
The question was less an offer of aid and more a lofty taunt; when you didn’t reply, Loki waved one long-fingered, elegant hand towards the mass of powder scattered over the counter. Somehow, the power of the Odinson smirk extended to his hand, and you had to tear your eyes away from the graceful way his fingers curled back into his palm, leaving only the index outstretched to indicate which ‘that’ he was referring to with a blasé twirl.
Loki took a step forward and your mind suddenly snapped back into gear.
“I made coffee!” you blurted.
Loki paused. Glanced at the counter, where there were indeed two mugs of foam-topped coffee still standing amid the grainy mess that had once been contents of the shaker. Turned back to you with those piercing eyes, and spoke.
“…Yes.”
He managed to tilt the single, bewildered syllable up somewhere between statement and question. You took it as an encouraging invitation to try and salvage the situation.
“One’s for you—if you like coffee,” you added hastily as something fell back over his glacial gaze, turning his eyes into unreadable mirrors. Loki watched flatly as you shook the powder off your hand and raised one mug to offer it to him, turning the handle so he could grab it more easily from your hands.
“I don’t normally accept beverages from people who try to bash my head in with large metal objects,” Loki told you, still watching you with that unreadable gaze. Your face began to fall, another apology forming on your tongue even as you berated yourself for being so easily cowed. “But I suppose I’ll make an exception. If you apologize properly, for assaulting me and blatantly ogling my body.”
The smile that had started to brighten your face suddenly vanished, replaced with an outraged “O” at Loki’s addendum. He smiled smugly down at you, leaning casually against a chair as if he owned the place.
You caught sight of Hela’s note and forced yourself to calm down.
“Fine,” you said lightly. You put the mug down on the table and looked Loki straight in the face. At least the first part would be sincere.
“I’m sorry that I tried to bash your skull in with a baseball bat. My phone died while I was asleep, so I didn’t get your call.”
Your fingers tightened as you crossed your arms over yourself. Loki’s grin glinted as he raised his eyebrows expectantly, obviously enjoying watching you squirm.
“And I’m sorry that you lack the common sense and skillset required for proper communication. You could have just told me that you were Hela’s brother instead of trying the whole lawyer thing and saved yourself the trouble. Could have also told me that you’re a narcissistic, manipulative jerk who thinks his pretty face will get him anything he wants, but hey, can’t win ‘em all.”
His smug grin vanished.
You turned, snatching your own mug so violently off the counter that you nearly spilled your scalding hard work over yourself as you crossed the tiled floor. Unfortunately, there was only one entrance to the kitchen, though the doorway was fairly wide, meaning that you’d have to pass Loki to leave. His scowl burned as you strode around the table, clutching your coffee with white knuckles.
“Feel free to drink it anyway,” you said in his direction, jerking your head towards the coffee you’d so hopefully prepared for him. “I promise it’s not poisoned.”
When you cleared the other side of the table and looked up defiantly at Loki, the dark storm you’d expected on his face wasn’t there—well, not in full force, anyway. There was a certain hardness in his face that suggested he didn’t quite appreciate your snub-cum-apology, but when he spoke, Loki’s voice was the warmest you’d ever heard it.
That is, it was very lukewarm, but lacked the acerbic bite you’d assumed was soldered in place.
“You’re terrible at apologizing.” Your eyebrows flew up, but before you could respond, Loki continued, so unconcernedly that if he hadn’t been staring intently into your eyes, you might have mistaken it as a private afterthought, “Almost as terrible as me.”
With steps so smooth he practically glided over the floor, Loki picked up the second mug from the table and toasted you before raising it to his lips and taking a tiny sip. You watched, speechless, as Loki’s throat pulsed slowly with his swallow and he slowly brought the mug down, the tip of his tongue stretching lithely out to clean the upper corner of his mouth of milk foam.
“It’s good,” he said as he broke away from your gaze to stare into the depths of the mug, sounding almost surprised, and you fought the urge to snap back that of course it was, you took pride in things you prepared. Loki took another quick sip, more of a gulp, really, before his eyes roved back to you and his lips parted hesitantly.
“Thank you.”
The words were so quiet that you weren’t even sure you heard them, but the intensity you glimpsed in Loki’s eyes before he turned sharply and left, mug never drifting below his chin, was sign enough that you hadn’t imagined them.
Slowly, you took a long, deep drink, grounding yourself in the feeling of hot coffee and sweet milk swilling past your teeth. Then, with a short shake of your head, you stepped back around the table and began cleaning up the spilt powder.
In a boardroom across the city, Hela Odinson’s phone buzzed in her pocket. She shifted in her seat and ignored it, pen trailing listlessly over the legal pad in front of her as she tried to pay attention to the words the prosecuting attorney was currently spewing.
Her phone vibrated again. And again.
A muscle in Hela’s cheek twitched. The prosecutor continued raging, stabbing vigorously with a finger at the latest document she’d drawn up drafting a plea bargain, and something in Hela’s overworked, sleep-deprived brain snapped.
“Let’s take a short recess.”
The psychiatrist she’d called in to report on her client’s mental health peered at Hela concernedly as she offered the table a forced, empty smile before stalking out of the room, barely making it through the doors before raking a hand through her hair in frustration.
Hela pulled her phone out, eyes scanning past emails and calendar reminders to the three texts she’d received in the past few minutes. Her lips flattened as one eyebrow quirked at the notification.
Little Lolo never texted her.
A few taps pulled up his messages:
7:23 – She is insufferable.
7:23 – I want to stab her.
7:24 – Don’t you dare make that into an innuendo, or I swear to God I will kill you and make it look like an accident.
Hela stared down at her phone, a shadow of mirth cracking lopsidedly over her mouth. Before she could figure out how to reply, her phone buzzed yet again and another text from her little brother appeared.
7:27 – What brand of coffee do you buy?
Hela’s smile widened, a spark of life flickering in her hollow eyes. A soft chuckle left her lips as she very deliberately opened the settings on her messages and flicked on her read receipts before exiting the chat with Loki.
She made to slip her phone back into her pocket before another, slightly more devious version of the Odinson smirk floated across her features, one that Loki had all but claimed as his own.
A few nimble taps on her phone screen pulled up Hela’s last texts to you, and it was with no little sense of pleasure that she wrote a new one:
You were right, I owe you one. Sorry, I forgot how much of a handful Loki is. You remember the play party thing you were pissed your work wouldn’t get you tix to? You’re going now, cancel your Friday night plans.
Immediately after she hit send, Hela muted her phone completely and slid it back into her pocket. This was going to be fun.
Loki glared at the little tick marks that had appeared by his messages, taunting him with Hela’s lack of response. He stood from where he had been sprawled over the mattress in his sister’s guest room and tossed his phone onto the sheets before turning to pace tersely from the bed to the door and back again. One hand pushed roughly through his hair as Loki paused in his pacing to throw the occasional scowl at the nearly-empty cup of coffee on the nightstand.
“How much did she pay you?” he demanded of the air.
He whirled around, turning his glare and an accusatory finger on the mug. “Did you really think you could fool me? You’re terrible at apologies and even worse at acting.”
The mug was silent under his allegation, although it wasn’t hard to imagine what remained of its contents growing even colder.
“You’re not the first person who’s tried this, you know,” Loki told the cup as he advanced on it. His stride was slow and measured, voice menacing as he continued, “Whatever it is that you want from me, it’ll take much more than a silly little bribe to win me over.”
The mug remained inanimate, as mugs are generally wont to do. Loki’s glare seared its surface a few moments longer before the man exhaled heavily, breath rasping in his chest, and snatched it up by the handle. He paused, fingers tightening around the thick ceramic before he raised it to his lips, grumbling darkly, and downed the rest of the coffee.
You stared at your phone incredulously. Last night’s wild events had to be causing some kind of delirium. There was no way you were reading this correctly.
It wasn’t that Hela’s blunt way of compensation was unfamiliar—no, you’d learned long ago that it was useless to try and fight her when she decided to even things out. A few weeks into living together, she’d lost her keys and you’d rushed back from work to unlock the door for her; when you refused to accept her Venmo-ing you twice the amount your cab back had cost, she’d bought you dinner and tickets for a show you’d been dying to see, slapped the reservation down in front of you the night before the show, and said, “No refunds.”
Then there was the time she had spilled wine on a blanket you’d left on the couch during one of her Saturday night rant-cum-vent-cum-roommate-friendship-building sessions. You’d assured her that it was fine (although you were secretly rather upset—it’d been your nice blanket, the one that kept your feet toasty in winter) and went to bed sure that with the amount of slurring in Hela’s last complaint about her family, she’d forget about it if you didn’t remind her. Two days later, you’d come home to find a cashmere blanket wrapped neatly on top of your bed and tied with a ridiculously perfect silk bow, all in your favourite colour.
Hela wasn’t warm-and-fuzzy, but she paid her debts, and then some. Even so, you were finding it exceptionally difficult to believe that she had gotten you an invite to one of the most exclusive events happening in the theatre world less than a week before it happened.
Nick Fury’s Shakespeare in the Park premiere afterparty???
You have got to be shitting me, Hela, no one even knows who the cast is, how tf did you get an invite??
Press has literally been PAID to keep their noses out of this, HOW DID YOU GET AN INVITATION FOR A THEATRE CRITIC??? I CAN’T EVEN GET IN TO SEE THE PLAY
I’M LITERALLY BANNED FROM THE PRODUCTION
HELA
Your fingers trembled as you shot out rapid-fire texts to Hela and watched as ticks appeared beside the bubbles as each was delivered successfully. Of course, nothing appeared to indicate she had opened your messages, and you nearly screamed in frustration.
It wasn’t that you weren’t excited at the prospect of going. Hell, you’d considered trying to crash the production despite the temporary restraining order Nicolas Fury, legendary actor-turned-theatre director, had put on media critics for the first two weeks of his Shakespeare in the Park revival series.
He reappeared out of a sudden and mysterious retirement with an announcement that he would be directing a full season of Shakespeare in Central Park, free admission and open-air as according to tradition. The names of his chosen company had been kept under wraps so tight they might as well have been mummified; the rumors ranged from the biggest names in theatre to aspiring actors to literal cats, but no one had any solid information. Fury wanted to return to the original tenets of Shakespeare in the Park: demystify fine art and make it accessible for anyone who wanted to be in the audience.
It was a nice gesture in the name of generosity, except for the one condition that made you want to throttle the man: in the spirit of keeping his season “truly accessible”, Fury had also issued a ban on all media critics for the first fortnight of the run. He’d released a statement explaining that he wanted to separate theatre from its popular image of stuffy, pretentious reviews and elitism masquerading as legitimate, constructive criticism.
Naturally, the performing arts world imploded after his statement. Reactionary op-eds flooded the internet and Twitter was an ongoing warzone between theatregoers defensive of Fury’s attempt to open up the park, incensed people in the media review industry, and actors gone rogue from their PR teams.
You’d spent a fair amount of time alternating between awe and anger yourself, given your standing as a fairly well-known and respected theatre critic. You held yourself to strict standards of impartiality while writing your reviews for technical aspects of shows, but when your entire career was built on people putting massive stock in your opinions, publishing purely neutral, objective reviews was akin to suicide. On one hand, you had to admit that Fury had a bit of a point; your profession did tend to barricade performances into a dichotomy of good and bad, with a heavy dose of intimidation. On the other hand, how could something be truly accessible if certain people were literally forbidden from watching it?
Your phone buzzed and you pounced on it, unlocking it more furiously than you’d ever done before. Something soared inside your chest at the sight of a message from Hela; your thumb swiped it open and you gaped at the PDF that loaded onto your phone.
She’d sent you a nondisclosure agreement securing your silence about everything you might see, hear, taste, smell, and touch at the afterparty. This was the real deal.
“Oh my God.”
You were going to a party celebrating the biggest mystery your field had seen in the past century, and it was all because you’d attacked your apartment-mate’s brother with a metal bat. Slowly you scrolled through the NDA, suddenly afraid that it would disappear in a puff of smoke. Reality seeped in like wet concrete over your brain before setting in a flash.
“I need more coffee.”