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The morning after the royal ball was a tough one. You awoke as early as your body would let you, having very little sleep during the night, only to be later than you should have been. While most of Asgard was able to stay at home, nursing hang-overs or nuzzling companions, Odin had scheduled his warriors in training to all meet for sparring under his watch the morning after the ball. Something about ‘an invasion doesn’t wait for an opportune time from those they are invading’. It made sense to you, but unfortunately you could tell by the amount of light already outside that you needed to run to even make it to the courtyard in time. You managed to drag your limbs out of bed and get the appropriate gear together through your exhaustion and jolted out of the room.
You normally would appreciate the warm sun shining down through the trees surrounding the courtyard, but you didn’t have time to even register it as you trot up to the gathering of others.
“You look lousy.” Fandral commented as you huffed into line beside him at the end of the group.
“Wow Thank you.” You deadpanned.
“Sleepness night?” He pressed with a suggestive tone that made you a bit uncomfortable. “Get lucky after the ball?”
You leaned a may from him and rolled your eyes, “No.” You deadpanned still, “I just didn’t sleep well. Simple as that.”
“Leave her be.” Sif interjected with a glare.
“Fine fine. I was only going to offer my support anyway.” He sighed and turned to the courtyard just in time for Odin to walk into the clearing followed by his sons and small collection of others in full armor.
You tried to not watch Loki approach. He was the main reason you had such troubles sleeping last night. At the ball, the two of you had danced. It was a terrible dance technically, but neither of you were going for technique. You spun around in clumsy circles trying to trip each other and laughed far too loud for such an eloquent event. You had the most fun you’d had in such a long time. Which wasn’t surprising really, knowing how much you enjoyed your time with Loki. What was surprising was how the two of your came extremely close to kissing. Or at least you thought so. You were both giggling after almost intentionally knocking a stiff couple over in a dramatic dip, when you were suddenly so close to Loki that you lost your breath completely. He looked at you with a reverence you’d never experienced before. His eyes so soft and lips so close.
Those eyes and lips haunted you all night. You didn’t know what to think. Loki had been your friend as long as you could remember now. You were just kids when you met and now you were both adults, so kissing him shouldn’t have been such a taboo thought. Yet, it felt like you shouldn’t be thinking about such things, like kissing him would break apart years of friendship. Still, you couldn’t deny that you actually wanted to. Maybe. Probably. Definitely. You couldn’t decide, and the debate in your mind kept you up all night.
Odin gave a quick speach about close combat before asking for trainees to split off into pair or groups and left the crowd to go sit in a shaded area to the side of the courtyard. A nudge to your shoulder pulled your attention to Loki who somehow slipped up next to you with out you noticing.
“Rematch?” He voiced in an almost teasing tone, however he sounded a bit tired himself.
“You want me to kick your butt again?” You laughed lightly.
“We both know that’s not how it went. I went easy on you and I still won quite spectacularly, per usual.” He corrected with pride.
“Or I let you win in order to maintain your fragile ego.” You countered smiling wide.
“I do suppose a rematch is the only way to settle our differences in recollection then.” And with that he walked out to a central part of the field, far enough away from others and turned to you. He mimicked the bow he made last night to initiate your dance before pulling himself back into a defensive stance.
You couldn’t stop the memories triggered by his bow flood your head. Exactly what you didn’t need right now. You rolled your head from side to side and shook your extremities out. You tried to wake your body up more and focus on sparing instead of dancing and kissing. Taking in a deep breath you scanned to field directly around Loki and made a game plan. You wouldn’t be able to match his strength, and with his reach longer than yours, you knew your best bet was to out step him and be too quick for him to ever touch you. Even that was a stretch, you weren’t a great natural warrior, but you have trained enough with Loki to know to his go-to moves and enough with Sif to be pretty good at dodging.
You stalked around in a circle around Loki who simply watched you out of the corner of his eyes. You could feel him watching you. You had a feeling he could even see you when he had his head turned away. A moment before you were going to lunge in his direction, he beat you to it. Loki’s movements were fluid and graceful as he moved swiftly in your direction. You barely dipped away in time for the first strike and pulled a wooden practice dagger out just in time to catch his own wooden dagger inches away from your side.
He hummed in approval of your block then was off away from you immediately. The two of you glided and whipped around each other, exchanging blows in a display that was notably more elegant than your dance the night before. The sparring went on for a few minutes with out either of you landing a hit. You even attracted a small crowd that watched you go at it instead of practicing themselves.
Suddenly you lost your footing and instead of sliding away to avoid a whirling side slash from Loki you ended up doing an awkward lunge to the left and fell hard onto one knee. You braced for the impact, but it didn’t come. You whipped your head around, but couldn’t see Loki anywhere. You let out a breath in relief dispute your confusion. Then just as suddenly as he was gone, you felt a hand grasp yours and disarm you quickly as your hand was pinned to your back and you were pulled up to your feet. Loki’s other slinked around your front and you felt the tip of his practice dagger gently poke you under your ribs.
You had a comment on your tongue about how it wasn’t fair for him to use his illusions to trick you, but he spoke first. Leaning close to your ear from behind, whispering, “Caught you.”
Simply put, your brain short-circuited. You went from being just able to focus on the fight to being able to focus on nothing but how close Loki was standing behind you. His breath warm against your ear. His arm snaked around your waste. It was a simple restraint position wasn’t it? Oh but it was setting all your nerves on fire. Was his voice always this smooth? This was bad. You gulped down a hard breath and pushed out of Loki’s embrace. You almost trip over your feet in the process to put as much distance between you as you could. You turned back to face him only to see his smug smirk in place.
“I win.” He laughed.
“Yes, uh good, yea. Rematch goes to you.” you mumbled too quickly. You nodded to him and turned to leave the area with haste. You could feel a warmth flooding your face in what could only be a strong blush and your breathing was uneasy. You needed space. You needed to get away.
Loki watched you make a quick line to another side of the courtyard and make what was an obvious attempt to feign interest in a couple of trainees trying, and failing, to take on Hogun at the same time. His rush from winning your little fight wore off quickly as he watched you. You were breathing heavy and fidgety. Both were new. You were usually up for best-two-out-of-three, and never out of energy this quickly. He had to admit he was tired today also, but he didn’t expect you to be quite so out if it.
Later that day after Odin seemed pleased with his lot of exhausted warriors, everyone dispersed and went on with their normal day. Loki meant to catch you as soon as training ended, but you were no where to be found when the time came. Sif alerted Loki that you snuck out of the courtyard just as Odin was dismissing everyone.
A knock on your door startled you into reality as you were changing into some more comfortable clothes. Your daydream about the night before fading as you pulled the shirt over your head quickly.
“Come in” You call as you sit on the edge of your bed and pull on slippers.
Loki slides into your room, gently shutting the door behind him. “Are you alright?” He asked simply, not wasting time.
You thought about how you would deal with these feelings that were blossoming so strongly inside you on your walk to your room and made a simple decision, you wouldn’t act upon them as to not endanger your most important friendship.
“I’m fine. I didn’t sleep well last night, so I just wasn’t at my best today.” You said, and Loki smiled at the normally chipper tone in your voice.
“You too?” He exchanged, “I had the hardest time turning my brain off last night and it definitely kept me awake later than expected.”
You pushed down your desire to ask him to elaborate or worse yet tell him what you couldn’t get your mind off of was in fact Loki himself. Luckily he didn’t pry either and the two of you fell into easy conversation about other matters as you sat on the edge of your bed together.
The next day, you met Loki at the library to study and before you could stop yourself you sat yourself down beside him, which wasn’t the normal way you two studied together. You normally sat across the table from him in order to allow more room for all your scrolls, books, and notes. However, when he gave a lopsided smile at your proximity, you knew you made the right decision. Even if having him this close now released butterflies in your stomach.
Little did you realize at the time, all these changes were leading you exactly where you needed to be. Leading you to exactly who you needed to be with.