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A gentle knock sounds on his doorframe; he does not even have to come fully awake. Instead, he shifts, reaching behind and pulling the blankets up as best he can at an awkward angle. She slips in against his back, wrapping one arm tightly around his ribs and burying her face between his shoulderblades for a long moment. He can feel her shivering a little, and he covers her hand with his, pulling it close to his chest.
“Rough night?” he asks, though it’s barely one in the morning, and she cannot have been asleep for more than an hour or so.
“Yes,” she replies, voice softened by his tank top.
“Would you like to talk about it?”
“Not yet. Maybe when it’s light again.”
He brings her fingers to his lips, kissing them gently before tucking them back against his breastbone. They rest in silence for several minutes, her shivers fading with each passing moment as her breath evens out.
“I’ve missed this,” he says eventually, smoothing his thumb across her hand. “Not the reasons, of course. But this.”
Her voice is quiet and a bit sleepy. “Me, too.”
“My own fault, I suppose,” he observes. “I wasn’t sure what to do after that mess when you tried to wake me up, and I responded by trying to kill you. It frightened me. I didn’t want to be alone, not for a moment, but I was terrified of what I might do to you, so…”
“So you hid. It happens. I’ve done it, too.”
“But isn’t it unavoidable, in the end, regardless of what happened, or how it happened? I mean, wasn’t that the idea in the first place? Leaning on each other? The more nights we spend alone, the stronger we’re getting. Right?” He’s not sure he likes the way his voice sounds. Too young. Too hopeful, perhaps.
“I suppose that’s one way to look at it,” she says slowly.
He chuckles. “Spoken like a true diplomat,” he says and feels her press a kiss to the knot of bone at the base of his neck.
“Scientist,” she corrects him gently. “Evolution. Everything changes. Don’t you recall telling me that?”
“I’ve told you a lot of things,” he replies with a faint grin. “Don’t tell me you remember them all.”
“No,” she admits. “Just the important things.”
“Such as?”
She is almost asleep; he can tell by the way her arm relaxes as she matches the angle of her hips to his, and her words are almost lost in the warm cotton of his shirt.
“All of it.”
***
Aeslin sat curled in the office chair, the lamps and laptop screen dimmed. She tapped a pencil thoughtfully against the sheet of paper on which she’d been making notes, then put it carefully down and began typing rapidly again. She felt more than heard him come into the room, a half-smile coming to her face as she turned to see him squinting against the light. Loki tugged gently at her hoodie (his hoodie, but who was counting these days), and then, when that didn’t work, bent to nuzzle her neck sleepily.
“Come to bed. My back’s gone cold.”
She looked up at him, her smile widening at the picture in front of her. This was a side of Loki that was hers and hers alone, the sleepy, rumpled, affectionate side with just a hint of petulance at being woken in the middle of the night. The side that still managed to be languid and regal while wearing a white tank top and striped sleep pants.
He seemed to realize that she wasn’t going anywhere, and he sighed a little as he tucked a stray lock of hair behind his ear. “What’s this, then?” he said, shifting papers on the desk and picking up a pencil sketch, little more than a series of doodles.
“Curriculum vita,” she said. “My latest work. Graphite on notepaper. It’s Latin for course of life.”
He held up the page, with its tangled paths and interrupted sketches. “I know what a CV is, love. I had to proofread Parker’s, remember? And having seen his, I guarantee if you try to send this to a potential employer, you’re going to have a lot of- hold on. Is this me?” He pointed to one section of the drawing, a half-finished, lanky figure in armor, standing where a firmly sketched pathway veered off into a completely different direction; at her sheepish grin, he laughed.
“Brilliant. I had no idea you’d branched into portraiture.”
“Only the best of subjects. I owe my discerning patrons nothing less.”
Loki rolled his eyes as he shooed her out of the computer chair, sat down and pulled her on to his lap, where he resumed his exploration of her neck in an obvious effort to lure her back toward his abandoned sheets. “What is it really?”
“I’m restless,” she said in answer.
“Hmm. As you were at the Warehouse? You were in quite a mood then, as I remember. Not so much of one now, that I can tell.”
A shrug. “That was different. My mood in the Warehouse had nothing to do with what was happening and everything to do with the time of year.”
He lips paused for a few seconds, and she could sense his mind working. “Your scars.”
“Got it in one. Thirty-one days in October, and I spent nineteen of them in hospitals.”
“Why so long?”
“I’m not exactly a model patient,” she replied, tilting her head a little to one side. “Never have been, and I think you missed a spot. It happens every year, and nothing I’ve tried seems to work, so I just ride it out. I get the feeling that I’m going to hate autumn more than ever now, given the circumstances, but we’ll have to see.”
“And now?”
“Everything was always so clear. I had a plan. I knew - I thought I knew what was supposed to happen. What my path was. Now I’m not so sure. It’s all so upside-down; I’ve been feeling like I don’t have much of a direction, and while everyone and everything down here are helping, it just seems like I’m in a holding pattern. Some sort of cosmic waiting room. I was only asleep for about an hour before my brain kicked in again; it wouldn’t let me go back to sleep, so I decided instead of thrashing around and waking you up, I might as well do some research.” A gentle smirk. “Guess it didn’t work.”
“No matter. I like this better anyway.”
She nudged him. “Fibber.”
“God of mischief,” he corrected with a trace of long-suffering. “And I never bother to lie to you anymore, especially when the truth can be so much more fun.” He glanced up long enough to see what was on the laptop screen. “Have you found any answers?”
“I think so,” she admitted. “I’d toyed with the idea a little after my dissertation defense, even had a couple of offers, but then it kind of got lost in the shuffle.” She took a breath. “I want to teach. Here, look.” She swiped the mouse to banish the screensaver, then pulled up the page she’d been looking at.
“This is where I got my degree. They don’t have any current openings, but I’ve already been in touch with the head of my committee. It’s midmorning there; I must have caught him in a tea break. He’s given me a couple of places that are looking. This one,” she went on, “is specifically looking for someone with my background, and this one wants a teacher that’s also willing to sacrifice part of their summer to run the undergraduate field school. Apparently the gentleman who’s been running it for the last two and a half decades is finally hanging up his trowel at the end of this summer’s season, which I don’t see why, because he’s only eighty-four, after all.”
“You know him?”
“I wish,” she said. “I’ve never had the chance to meet him. We’ve crossed paths a few times, but alas.” She scrolled back a page. “But look. Field school. The last three summers they’ve been on a communal project in the Outer Hebrides, but from what I understand, they’re willing to work with whatever the candidate might have experience in.” She sat back a little, his arm comfortably supporting her. “Back on a dig. Do you know how clarifying those can be? Trapped in a test pit for hours at a time. Sorting through potsherds. Sampling a wattle and daub to see what’s inside. My very own field school. My very own students. Just imagine. ”
He gave a sudden laugh, and she worried her lip as she looked at him, feeling the blush spreading across her cheekbones and kicking herself for it. “What?”
Loki wiggled her lower lip from beneath her teeth with a gentle thumb and kissed it as it came free. “And you only think this is your solution? Norns, little one. You should see your face right now. You’re practically glowing. I haven’t seen you this happy in weeks.”
She looked back at the screen. “You think I could do it?”
His smile was lazy as he ran his fingers along her spine. “Well, speaking as one of your current students, I think it’s safe to say they’ll be hard pressed to find a better candidate. Intelligence, passion, wisdom, patience, and one hell of a left hook.” He teased his fingers along her sleeve. “Not to mention a keen sense of fashion and impeccable taste in men.”
“I don’t know that those two count.”
“One never knows,” he merely said. “Personally, I’m quite impressed by that last one.”
She grinned as she kissed him; he responded, lips unhurried and thorough as though there were nothing else in the world to be concerned with, and she realized in that moment that to him, there likely wasn’t. She broke the kiss gently, and he smiled crookedly as if reading her thoughts.
“Parker’s going to murder me,” she said in the second before their lips met again. “He just got here.”
He hummed gently into the kiss, sending the barest trace of a shiver down her spine. “Probably,” he agreed after a brief thought, “unless you spin it just right.”
“Isn’t that your job?”
A bit of his familiar, predatory grin. “I suppose, but it’s almost too easy. Shall we make a wager? I’ll convince him to spare you in ten words or less.”
“Seven. What are the stakes?”
“Four,” he countered, “and it doesn’t really matter. We always both seem to come out ahead when we do this.” He nestled his face in the hollow of her shoulder. “Now. Will you please come back to bed? I’ve only got a few hours before I have to get up again.”
“Do I get to know the words?”
He boosted her up from his lap. “Simple,” he said, taking her hand as he stood as well, tugging her gently but firmly toward his room. “‘Visit London for free.’”
***
The Guardian stands at his post, the cosmos stretched before him like windswept sand. He turns his gaze toward Midgard, the tiny speck that escaped his interest for so long. His sight narrows further, concentrating on a single spot, infinitesimal in the vast sea of stars.
They fascinate him now, the fallen prince and the curious, quicksilver once-mortal who has ensnared him so completely. Long has the son of Frigga been a mystery to Heimdall; where his brother (not brother) is open, his love and affection carried where all can see, Loki has ever been secretive. He never lacked for partners or even the occasional bedwarmer, but this is something else entirely. Something most believed the prince incapable of. The Watcher studies them, seeing at last how wrong he has been. Loki’s capacity for love, for true devotion is plain to see now that the prince has been stripped of his veils and shadows, revealing itself to be at least as strong as his brother’s and twice as vicious. Thor defends his family and those he loves with words and deeds. Loki has never required such sentimentality under the best of circumstances, and Heimdall feels a small swell of pity for the unlucky soul who stands between the broken prince and the family he has built from the ashes of his former life.
A scent, a feeling, and the Watcher smiles. “I thought that might be you.”
“Can you see him?”
“Whom, my lady?”
Frigga comes to stand next to him, starlight glinting on her gown. “My son, of course.”
“Your son,” he replies, not unkindly, “is still at the feast, sitting next to the chaise you left not ten minutes past.”
“Do not play games, Gatekeeper. You know who I mean.”
“I see him.” He allows a bit of warmth into his tone, with enough warning that Frigga, senses honed by millennia, gives him a patient smile.
“I need no particulars, old friend. I just - is he well? Is he happy?”
The prince and his newborn godling sleep back to back, as they nearly always do, and Heimdall cannot help but think of warriors on a battlefield, protecting each other against an enemy that presses from all sides and confident that if they fall, it will be sudden, bloody, and as one. He smiles, just a little.
“Yes, my Queen,” he says after a long moment. “I think he just might be.”