Loki X Reader || Girl With The Gold Earring

26 | The Barmaid's Book

Their clothes and hair had soon dried, Loki's smooth black locks turning to inky curls without a brush.

Frustrated with the wind playing with it around his face, he had asked Y/N to cut it at their last camp, and sat trustingly while she sliced off the split ends with a knife. All coiled up and springy, it just about tickles his shoulders now, each curl brushing about his collar.

Between them on the table, amongst the chaos of platters and bowls, sits a woven basket of bread heaped with sourdough and pumpernickel and rye. Each roll is so fresh they burn Y/N's fingertips as she tears them open, ribbons of steam pouring out like water.

She digs a spoonful of raw milk butter from the dish and slathers it over half a bun.

It's gritty with flakes of salt and she watches it seep into the dough, turning it from fluffy to sodden, oil dripping onto the tablecloth. Shamelessly scoping another pat of butter:

"I want to eat this whole block as if it were porridge."

"Do as you wish, my queen," Loki makes a flourishing gesture with his hand. "Meanwhile, I shall consume these potatoes with my fingers."

They're all standing up right like golden pencils in a little tin bucket, and Y/N watches as, indeed, he picks up five wedges and slots them into his mouth with a surprising dignity.

His eyes close in quiet bliss.

Forgetting not to talk with his mouthful:

"Fuck Jöttenheim, let's live here. You can work here in the inn, and I'll—I don't know. Teach the local children classical literature."

Y/N shushes him, her eyes darting about—

—but, still, none of the other patrons seem to have heard him mention the land of the frost giants.

"You're pushing your luck, keep throwing that word about. And do you really think there's much need for literature in a mountain village?" She teases.

One of his eyebrows raises and he gestures at her with a potato wedge. "You must not make assumptions. You never know; that man over there might write epic odes to the river, and verse after verse dedicated to his love of the sky."

Y/N looks to the man he'd singled out.

He's rooting around below one of his blackened fingernails with the pring of a fork. His eyes light dully as he finds purchase, and prises something brown out onto the bar triumphantly.

She turns back to her prince. Flatly:

"I stand corrected."

They eat the vegetables and meats and soup and anything else soggy or warm, then, when Loki is about to cut into a pie, Y/N's hand quickly darts out to block his plate.

The prongs of his fork bounce off her palm and he gives her a confused, disappointed frown.

"We need to save some for the rest of the trip." Wrapping her hand in her napkin like an oven glove, she commandeers his pie and begins parcelling it up. "Do you have any twine?"

Nettled—perhaps mourning the loss of his pie, Loki places his knife and fork down moodily. "Can't you be a little more discreet? You look ridiculous. Like a squirrel stashing nuts."

"You won't think it's ridiculous when we're halfway up a mountain and you get a hankering for..." Y/N narrows her eyes at the half-swaddled pastry, purple liquid oozing from a crack in the crust. "What is this?" 

Loki shrugs. "I don't know. Cherry?"

"Where are they going to get cherries up here?" Something occurs to her, and her brows come together. "You were going to eat it and you didn't know what it was?"