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"Drink," he says, his voice loud and commanding, a joke. The hall is loud and crowded, the gods celebrating another success.
Loki smiles, sly, and for a brief second Sif can see how this goes: shorn gold and the look on his face. She blinks and the vision is gone.
"M'lady," he says and Sif flinches, startled. His fingers brush hers at the exchange of mead, but they stay just a moment, two, three, too long. The warmth of him is so different from the loud press of the hall. She knows she's had too much already, her head starting to go fuzzy around the edges, but she takes a long drink anyway.
She's lost Thor, minutes or hours, she can't quite remember, and all there is now is Loki, his fingers tangled up in hers as he tells her joke after joke, each more crude than the last. He enjoys the flush of her skin, she thinks. He likes how she shifts against him, closer, and the breathless way she giggles. She watches his mouth, the words tripping over each other in their haste to get away, and wonders, just for a second, what they would feel like on hers.
Sif leans closer before she can remember why she shouldn't, why it's wrong, and she sees the way Loki pauses, his words momentarily forgotten. And too late she remembers.
They both startle when she moves away, jerky and too abrupt.
There's a frozen moment, Loki focused on something else, Odin or Thor maybe, off in the distance. The din of the hall surrounds her and Sif isn't sure what she's doing, or thinking. It must be the mead, the mead and the heat, all of it going to her head as if she were a young schoolgirl.
"Taken in with a bit of flirting," Sif chides herself.
Loki's been silent too long, too still for her liking, but Sif takes the chance to examine him. He's handsome in ways Thor isn't, muscles thinner, more lean. Her eyes trace the slope of his nose, down over his lips to the curve of his neck. He's different, so different from Thor that Sif must force herself to look away.
Their fingers are still tangled together and she can't quite figure out how to untangle them, her coordination slipping further and further away. She takes another sip of mead, for the distraction and the soothing it gives her throat.
"Loki," she says, soft, and she means to say, "It's late, I must go," but he turns to look at her and when she opens her mouth nothing comes out. His lips quirk up into a grin and it's not quite what it was when he first sat down, holding out a mug of mead. It's not nearly as sly, much more genuine and Sif finds that she likes it, likes this version of Loki than the one she meets most often, the one she's heard tales of.
Thor rarely speaks of him with pleasure, his face twisting into a grimace as he describes the latest trouble. But this Loki doesn't seem to match; she's having trouble lining the two up, making them fit together. Loki's grin starts to falter and Sif forces a smile to her own lips, saying, "It's late," and nothing else.
Loki's grin returns and it's the real one still. He leans in closer and says, "What was I saying?" breath warm against Sif's cheek.
He continues his jokes, but his voice is low and he hasn't returned to his former distance, a less than appropriate space between them now. Sif almost wonders if anyone will notice, but it's still incredibly loud and no one is paying them any attention. She curls her fingers around her mug, and when Loki finishes another joke she pushes it toward him, saying, "Drink." He gives her a long look and does.
He finishes the mead and from the turn of his body Sif knows he's seeking out more. Before he can secure some she presses her hand to his arm and holds the contact for a moment, deliberate. Her bare skin tingles at the contact and Sif thinks of Thor for a second. His hands and his dark eyes; she can almost feel him there for the briefest of moments before he's gone and it's just them again.
Sif meets Loki's eyes, watching them go dark, and then leans away, forcing herself to stand. She says, "If you would see me home, Loki, I would very much appreciate it." She doesn't see his reaction, only hears his soft, "Yes, of course," and feels the warm press of his hand on her lower back as she leads him out of the hall.
The night is startlingly cold; Sif shivers and wraps her arms around herself, staying just far enough from Loki that she won't reach out for him.
She shivers again, though, and he cuts the distance in half and then closes it completely, wrapping his arm around her shoulders. It's not quite enough to keep the cold away, but Loki's warmth is distracting enough that Sif can almost forget.
The walk is short and they see no one on the way. Instead of stopping at her door, though, Loki nudges her on, guiding her back to his own room. He doesn't hesitate at the doorway and Sif finds that she's not nervous at all.
The cold's started to sink into her bones, but there's a fire ready, and Loki's mouth is warm on hers. It's not exactly what she expected; it's much easier. Loki's hands are warm on her face, neck, shoulders, and his kisses are surprisingly sweet. Sif knows that it won't be quite so easy in the morning, once the mead is gone, and Loki. There will be a price to pay, there always is.
Loki knows what he's doing, his hands and his mouth skilled in making her sigh and gasp.
In the morning Sif knows. Before she's even opened her eyes she knows she's paid the price for this affair. She doesn't remember much, just the press of him and the feel of his hands in her hair, his words soft in the low light of the moon. And though she's left her own mark on Loki, the one he's left on her will be much more visible.
Sif slides from Loki's bed with care, even though he's already gone, and steps over the beams of gold streaked across the floor.