Loki X Reader || Girl With The Gold Earring

14 | Soap Tablets

It took Loki several minutes to explain the concept of 'help' to Y/N, then several minutes more to persuade her to let him actually do it.

"I used to clean every single one of these rooms myself before you came along," he protested indignantly---a curt reminder that he isn't exactly useless.

"I don't mean you don't have the ability to help me," Y/N spelt out, her cheeks heating at the thought that she'd insulted him. "I mean you shouldn't help me. A prince helping a maid clean?" The words felt wrong on her tongue, amorphous blobs of syllables clunking about her mouth. "If Alfdis knew I'd let you do my chores for me she'd---"

With a shrug: "Alfdis won't find out. And I'm not doing them for you, I'm doing them with you. What I don't understand is why you aren't leaping at a paid day off. You should be out there right now, enjoying the sun, or whatever."

Is that what he would rather she do? Y/N wondered, a lump forming somewhere between her mouth and her chest. Would he rather she leave him be?

He's been friendly with her all day---despite whatever had happened yesterday evening---and yet Y/N still felt as though their relationship had shifted somehow. Not in any noticeable way; an observer wouldn't be able to tell any difference from today's paint-making-session to last week's, or even last month's. Loki is still just as kind. Just as generous. Attentive. Funny. Every giggle he can pull from Y/N's lungs makes him grin; he revels in it, beaming just because he managed to tug one little peel of laughter from Y/N's chest. He's still as pleasant and utterly likeable as before.

The shift is more a feeling nibbling at Y/N's brain, an inkling that something has changed. Like how you know the ground is constantly moving about beneath your feet, or that the planet isn't in the same position in space it had been a minute ago. The exact nature of the change is hard to pinpoint. It's almost as though a divide has been neatly slotted between Y/N and the prince; a slim sheet of glass; like she's looking at him through a window. He's more reserved than before, not just with his painting but with everything. He seems to have bundled up any emotions, feelings, and scraps of information about his personal life that he'd dropped and is now clutching them all close to his chest.

"Are you trying to get rid of me?" Y/N teased. Well, half-teased. Her tone is light with humour but her heart is ready to sink like a stone.

Loki dipped his head to the paint he's stirring. "Actually, I find your company incredibly desirable."

-- ❈ --

Y/N permitted Loki to assist her with the cleaning of his rooms on the condition that he doesn't tell Alfdis ("Or anyone , for that matter."

"Who would I tell?"), and that he doesn't refer to it as 'assisting'. Or 'helping'.

"In fact," Y/N stated as they located her mop and bucket---still in the same place it has been for about a day now. "Don't call it anything. You're not doing anything, you're just...following me around and occasionally wiping surfaces. Because you w ant to. Okay?"

Loki smirked down at her, and it made Y/N's cheeks go pink. This made him smirk more. What is he finding so entertaining? Her (a little maid) bossing him (a six-foot-two prince) around? Her obvious distaste for being assisted? Or her new take-charge attitude; fists squarely planted on her hips as she spells out exactly how this whole 'helping' thing is going to work, expression firmed up with sternness and purpose?