Loki X Reader || Girl With The Gold Earring

16 | "You did?"

Loki's eyes are trained on Y/N's face as he waits for her reaction.

It took Y/N a while to react at all, and when she did, all she could manage was a weak little:

"What?"

Loki's adam's apple bobbed up and then down the long column of his ivory throat, and he repeated, slowly and carefully: "I wanted to paint you."

Y/N didn't know what to make of this. He might be messing with her, teasing her with some strange, twisted prank---

but she doesn't think he is. He doesn't look like he is. He's tensed up under the gauzy material of his almost-dry shirt, every one of his lean, powerful muscles taught as a bowstring.

"What's stopping you?" Y/N asked cautiously. Her voice was reedy and tight, like she was testing a frozen lake to see if it's solid enough to walk on. She was returning Loki's stare intently, watching the lines and curves of his expression; raking it for any signs of joshing.

He shifted under her gaze and moistened his lips with his pointed tongue, his shoulders almost hunched as if they're wings he wants to hide inside. His tone has an embarrassed, awkward edge as he mutters: "The painting wouldn't be lewd, but it wouldn't be right, me staring for hours on end at you now that you're Arne's--"

"No, I'm not, we only went out once," Y/N said quickly. Very quickly, so quickly both she and Loki blinked in surprise as if her sentences were a wild animal that had darted past them very suddenly. Y/N was more surprised; that statement---that hasty rejection of Arne's affections--- had come from her mouth and yet she had no recollection of thinking it. She'd blurted it out, thrown it up as though it were a feeling, an instinct, rather than a conscious thought, her body working of its own volition.

Loki was the first to recover and said, sounding oddly defeated---like someone who'd just surrendered in a war: "He'll obviously ask you out again in the future."

"If he does I'll turn him down."

That's the first time Y/N has admitted that to herself. Once again, her body appears to be acting beyond her control. It's right though, her subconscious is right; despite her duty, she doesn't want to go out with Arne again. She doesn't want him to be her future but she hadn't let herself think that, let alone declare it out loud.

But now that she has...it felt good. Like she'd been sitting with her spine as rigid as a tree trunk for weeks, and has just now finally allowed herself to slouch. She'd been lying to herself---well, trying to persuade herself---ever since the meteor shower and it was beginning to feel like a tight corset. The lie---the pressure to live the life she knows she should live---had wrapped about her chest and slowly made it more and more difficult to take in a proper breath of air.

"I didn't feel anything," she continued. With every word that constricting sensation lessened, and one of deep relief blossomed like a rose. "I don't feel anything. Not for Arne. I don't think I ever did."

Y/N wanted Loki to know that, for some reason.

He looked up. "You didn't?"

"No." At that moment Y/N felt like grinning, but if she had done she would have disgustedly wiped it off her face with the back of her hand as though it were an unsightly smudge of food. She shouldn't be smiling; dear, sweet Arne. The idea of not being with him shouldn't bring her pleasure.

But it did.

"I went out with him because...never mind. But I didn't feel anything. Nothing happened."

A ghost of a smile was pulling at the corner of Loki's lip, but Y/N didn't see it. She'd dipped her head to stare at her tea, swirling the remaining dregs about the bottom of her cup. Guilt was thumbing the pages of her conscience, rubbing them into scruffy dog ears. Poor Arne. And her parents. How could Y/N be so selfish? And what is she doing, boring a prince with the matters of her love life (or lack thereof)?