Work Text:
Christmas Miracles
Written for Lokane Week 2020
Prompt: Wrapping gifts | College/University AU
He lies on the sofa and watches her, watches as scissors, held in her deft fingers, slide through a sheaf of green metallic foil paper, the soft hiss of their passage like a slithering snake. It's a soothing sound, but it sets his teeth on edge. Last weekend he lounged in the living room while he watched her in the kitchen, watched her mix dough, spoon cookies, and cut thick slices of her buttery pound cake. Jane is a big believer in handmade presents.
He loves that about her, loves the time she takes about it all, all this ridiculous holiday pageantry. He adores tracing her fingers as they precisely bend a corner of paper and deftly tape a seam down. She treats this task like she treats her work, like she treats so many aspects of her life; as something to be respected and studied and given due care and attention. She treats him that way too. It was what first drew him to her, that excruciating care. Long before they even started dating, when they were just working as lecturers together in the Physics department, she knew how he took his coffee, what movies he liked, what books he read. He's convinced Jane knew more about his dissertation topic at times than he did, and all because she listened.
No one has ever looked at him in quite the way Jane does. Like he matters, and isn't just a throwaway, an afterthought. Like he's seen, and for himself, not for what he represents to a family legacy.
"You haven't touched your cocoa, babe," she drags a scissor-blade through the ribbon, leaving it curled in her wake, "Is it okay? I put in the crushed peppermint you like."
"It's great," he says, rolling over and upright, "I'm letting it cool. Are there any coconut crumbles left?"
"In the kitchen," she sets aside her completed stack of presents—care packages for her professors—and starts on the scarf and mittens she's knitted for Darcy, "But don't touch the chocolate chips, okay? I'm taking those with us to your parents."
He nods but she doesn't see, already wrapping an embroidered ribbon around the lumpy bulk of her present. In the kitchen he takes care to stand out of her sight, shoving one, then two of her delicious cookies down his throat. He doesn't even chew.
God, he hates the holidays. He can just imagine the scene in his own home now. Nothing like Jane's apartment, decked out in last year's garlands and a tabletop Christmas tree decorated with dollar-store plastic ornaments. It would never smell like this, warm and buttery and sweet. And the instant a sofa started sagging or a pillow lost its sharp, four-cornered edge, it would be tossed into the gutter. The Odinson household does not fade, or age, or appear—in any season—to be lived in at all.
But their colossal tree doesn't glow like the one Jane set up. Their meals, cooked by their own live-in chef, are never so filling or comfortable. Their holidays are a beautiful façade, and nothing more.
He wishes Jane didn't take Christmas so much to heart. It had been hard for her last year, to celebrate away from her family, and his didn't do much to welcome her in their place. The way his father talked about her afterwards...Loki's fist twitches. If he says it again this year, Loki will start the new year a disinherited pauper, and he won't regret a thing.
This year they're switching—Christmas Eve at his and Christmas Day at hers—so he hopes it will be better. Either way, it can't be worse. Already she's compromised too much of what makes her herself when it comes to dealing with his ghoulish relatives.
"Finished!" she crows, "C'mon, slowpoke! You've only finished your mom's, and we're leaving soon."
Loki swallows hastily. "What d'you mean? There's still two days until we have to go."
"Right, right. Come here for a second, will you? I want you to have an early present. Ooh, and pass me a crumble too, please."
He snags three cookies for her and feeds the first one into her smiling mouth, chasing each bite with a kiss. For a while, they linger like this, sugar and sweetness in their mouths. He lives for Jane's smile; sometimes he thinks he lives in Jane's smile.
She plucks the other two cookies from his hand. "You're distracting me. I want you to open your present."
"This isn't my present?"
"I think I can do a little better than a few kisses," she steps back, fishes a white envelope from her backpack, and presents it with a flourish, "Merry Christmas, Loki."
He takes the envelope. "This is better than kissing you?"
"Well," she bites her lip, and it's a completely unconscious gesture that drives him wild, "maybe only a little. But I think you'll like it. Go on."
He slides his finger under the silver "Happy Holidays!" sticker she's sealed the letter with, and tears it up.
Scanning the printout inside only takes a moment, but he has to reread the dates three times before he understands them.
"This is a hotel reservation."
"A B&B, actually. I can't wait for you to see it, it looks so ridiculously cute! There's a skating rink and ski slopes near town for you, and it's far enough north that I might get a glimpse at the Aurora. And I swear, I won't even wake you up to come stargazing with me!"
"Jane," he wants to let her down easy; she takes gift-giving so seriously, "You made the reservation from the 23rd through the 27th. That's tomorrow."
But she's not phased. If anything, she looks even happier. "Uh-huh. Why do you think it's a present?"
"You," realization begins to dawn, brilliant sunshine on a dark horizon, "What about your parents?"
"They understand. Besides, we've spent the last two holidays bouncing between our families like a ping-pong ball. Time to make some traditions of our own, don't you think?"
"You," he grins, delighted, seizing her around the waist. A sudden thought stills him. "What did you—should I tell my parents?"
"About that," Jane winces, "So, I was too scared to talk to your dad, I'm pretty sure your sister wants to gut me, and the last time I talked to your brother he hit on me, so I texted your mom."
"What did she say?"
"She said, and I quote," Jane pulls out her phone, dedicated as ever to total accuracy, "'Dear God, please go and have some fun! And if my idiot son objects, tell him that his present to me this year can be not seeing him flagellate himself over his father's approval.'"
Loki shakes his head, wondering and lost.
Jane steps closer, insinuates herself carefully under his chin, looks up at his face through her lashes. Watching him so carefully, loving him so attentively. "Merry Christmas?"
He breathes out, huffing an amazed , disbelieving laugh. God, this woman. She's a miracle.
"You know what? Yeah. Yes. Merry Christmas, Jane."