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You met Loki – well, bumped into him really hard – in your mandatory Calculus class. Exhausted from the whole day of classes, you rushed towards the door to hopefully get home as soon as you could and take a long, well deserved nap, when you crashed into a wall of a man. His books scattered to the floor, along with you.
You cursed under your breath. Of course this had to happen to you just now. Just when you thought you’d get the chance to get some damn rest, something incredibly inconvenient had to happen. How predictable. You could only hope that your tumble to the floor didn’t break anything. It wasn’t a particularly hard fall either, but with your luck, you never knew.
“Oh dear, are you alright?” the smoothest, deepest, most luxurious, beautifully accented voice flowed through your ears. It was so beautiful, in fact, that you shut your eyes and nearly sighed. That was until you realized that the voice was addressing you.
You snapped your eyes open and looked up slowly to the owner of the beautiful voice.
Please don’t be hot, please don’t be hot.
When your eyes settled on the form, you found that he was, in fact, hot.
You cursed again under your breath again before letting out an awkward chuckle.
“Are you?” he repeated and you found your ear drums basking again, in that wonderfully delicious voice.
“Huh?”
He smiled and your heart skipped a beat. This was likely the most attractive man you had ever set your eyes on and you had forgotten how to speak. You had forgotten how to breathe. But most importantly, you had forgotten to listen to what he had said to you.
“Are you alright?” he held out a hand to you.
His hand was beautiful too. Lithe, long, muscled perfectly, visible veins weaving through, going up his forearm disappearing into the sleeve of his shirt, which he had pulled back.
You answered him before you could get lost in his arm and forget what he had said to you.
“Oh, yes. I’m so sorry.” you managed to breathe out. Then you realized his hand was still extended. For an awkwardly long time. And he hadn’t retracted it yet.
So you reached for it, shakily, with yours, hoping he didn’t notice how sweaty you were.
When he pulled you to your feet, you were amazed at how much more stunning he was up close. And tall too. And had you mentioned beautiful? He was pale and his dark locks falling just above his shoulders contrasted wonderfully with his penetrating blue-green eyes. He had the most devastatingly high and sharp cheekbones, his jawline looked like it could slice right through you. In fact, you were certain it already had, because you weren’t feeling particularly real at the moment. Or maybe it was him, maybe he wasn’t real at all. Maybe he was a hallucination.
Someone cleared their throat behind you and you jumped, looking back. It was your professor, a bespectacled man in his fifties. A sweet guy, really. Excellent teacher too, apparently. But you could never quite grasp what he was saying so you chalked it up to a you problem.
He smiled at you and looked awkwardly between the handsome guy and you. Well, guy would be doing him a disservice. He wasn’t really a guy. But whatever he was, your professor looked between the two of you when you realized you were blocking the door.
Your cheeks flared red and you stepped to the side, letting him pass.
The Whatever-He-Was stared at you quizzically and you avoided eye contact.
“I’m so sorry.” you said, looking at your feet.
“It’s quite alright.”
His books were magically in his hands again. Were you out of it for so long that he had picked up all his books and hadn’t even noticed?
Your cheeks flared even brighter and you readied yourself to speed away. You took one hasty step and a sharp pain shot itself through your ankle, up your leg and you crumpled, letting out a yelp. But you didn’t hit the floor. The Whatever He Was had caught you by the forearm.
At this point, you were quite sure that your face had simply morphed into a tomato and you wanted nothing more than for someone to chop you up and cook you into a sauce.
“Oh no,” you squeaked. “I think I messed up my ankle.”
Whatever-He-Was held his books in one hand and propped you up with the other in the most insanely sexy display of strength you had ever seen in real life – and probably in fiction too – and it took everything in you to not fall to the floor again.
“It appears so,” he responded. “Do you think you can walk?”
“I guess so.” you muttered. Whatever He Was released your arm and you took one tentative step, putting a little weight on your bad ankle, only for it to give way again. He caught you this time too.
“Never mind.” you said, resigned.
“Put your arm around me,” he said. Before you could respond, he slung your arm over his shoulders and grabbed you by the waist.
You nearly passed out.
“Put your weight on me.” he instructed further. You were so bamboozled by the turn of events that you complied without protest.
And then he walked you down the hall. He asked for your name and you gave it to him. He muttered it under his breath, like he was tasting how it sounded, and you thought that was incredibly scandalous.
When he gave you his name, you were firstly relieved, because you were getting tired of calling him a Whatever-He-Was in your head – no other descriptor did him justice, really. And secondly, you couldn’t hide your incredulity.
“You’re named after the Norse God?” you asked.
He grinned sheepishly. “Well, yes. Something like that.”
“The God of Mischief and Chaos, right?” he nodded, “So, do you embody any of those characteristics?”
“More than you’d think,” he said, winking at you. Even your good leg didn’t feel right after that.
When you reached the exit, you stopped, expecting him to separate from you.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Oh, I live a few blocks from campus. So you can just drop me off here,” you explained.
“Don’t be absurd. I’ll walk you home.”
You blinked at him. “That’s not necessary at all.”
“You are a lady in distress. I cannot leave you here.”
Normally, the feminist in you would have protested vehemently at that. I can walk myself home, I don’t need special treatment just because I’m a ‘lady’. But when he said it, you wanted to be melted and reshaped into a car just so he could ride you.
“Oh. Okay.” was your response.
So he walked you home.
As you approached your door and fumbled with your keys, you realized, this guy could very well be a serial killer. But when you looked at his face you also realized it wouldn’t be a bad way to go. So you opened your door and hopped in on your one good leg.
Then you realized – you were realizing a lot that day – that you’d have to invite him inside because he literally walked three blocks with you while holding you up. So you did, and he entered your little apartment. You shut the door behind him and stood for a second, processing the fact that an incredibly handsome, no, beautiful man was currently inside your house.
You motioned him to the couch, which was a very secondhand, cheap piece of furniture and offered to make him some coffee.
“I would accept, but I don’t think you’re in much of a position to move around freely.”
You blushed.
“How about this,” he offered, helping you towards the couch. “You tell me where the coffee is, and I’ll make us some. Even better if you have tea.” he set you on the couch and took a seat beside you.
“Are you crazy? I can’t let you make coffee after you walked me, a stranger, all this way, literally out of the goodness of your heart.”
“I insist.” He took your hand and clasped it in his and that’s all it took for you to cave. So he made you a cup of coffee, and himself a cup of tea. You pointed him to some cookies and you chatted over your respective drinks and the cookies.
When you told him that you were looking for a roommate to split the increasing rent with and asked him to let you know if he knew anyone that needed a place to stay, he lit up.
Turns out he needed a place to stay.
Two weeks later, he had moved into the room adjacent to yours.
The first morning after he moved, you had completely forgotten about your fresh new roommate in your sleepy haze. So when Loki walked into the kitchen while you waited for the microwave to heat up your coffee, and stood behind you, you shrieked. And when you remembered his existence, you realized that this attractive Whatever-He-Was would see you everyday, messy hair, no makeup and all.
But you convinced yourself that it was fine, because there was no way he found you attractive even when you were all dolled up. He was way way out of your league.
However, that didn’t change the fact that you were secretly, but aggressively and painfully attracted to your roommate. It helped that he spent most of his time cooped up in his room, studying, but it didn’t help that a singular person could be this attractive, hardworking, and smart all in one. It also sucked a little that literally the most attractive person on the planet lived in your house, but you saw so little of him. But maybe it was a good thing because you’d have less opportunity to embarrass yourself in front of him.
He was studying Physics, too, so it made sense why he was always studying so much. You couldn’t hold a candle to him as a Data Science major.
A week after he moved in, he found some use of you. He needed a large document of numbers to be crunched and asked you to write a program that could help him do it quickly. While he explained what he needed, you tried to focus on what he was saying and not his lips. You partially succeeded.
You sat in your chair to start working on the code, but Loki decided that it would be a good idea to watch your process. So he stood behind you and bent over your screen, as you typed in the code.
As if that wasn’t distracting enough. When he got particularly focused, he leaned in closer to ask you a question, pointing at the monitor. But at that point, you had lost all attention because his breath was deliciously tickling your neck. You shooed him away, saying something about being unable to work under duress, so you could finish the job in peace. But you got no peace with thoughts of his breath caressing your throat continually plaguing your mind, and that night you touched yourself to the thought of his face between your legs. The subsequent orgasm was so blinding that you had to hold a towel against your mouth to muffle the scream.
For two days you couldn’t look him in the eye.
A few weeks later, his workload seemed to have reduced significantly and you started seeing more of him around the house, which made it significantly harder for you to focus on your growing workload. But it was around this time you noticed a peculiarity about him.
He was so incredibly touchy.
It wasn’t anything salacious. Just little things like brushing his hand over the small of your back in the morning while you made your coffee, or a gentle squeeze of your shoulder when you worked on the couch instead of your room, or holding your waist when you accidentally bumped into each other to steady you. But you convinced yourself that it was a European thing. He was being a gentleman, you’d tell yourself, calming your racing heart and suppressing the stirring in your core.
However, sometimes, he would do things that you couldn’t confirm were European or not. Like when you were chopping vegetables one night for dinner and he came up behind you, caging you with his arms pressed against the counter, on either side of you. He didn’t touch you. Just stood there, painfully close to you, so much so that you could smell him, feel his body heat on your back, as he watched you slice away. You cut your finger that day and he panicked at the barely two drops of blood that sprouted out of the tiny cut.
“Can you relax?” you said, suppressing a giggle. “I’ve had worse paper cuts.”
He whipped his head to you like he had never heard of such a concept as paper cuts but didn’t say anything and you left to wash your finger and band-aid it.
Then, there was that other time, when it appeared he had nothing to do, or was bored, while you were hunched over your laptop in your room, typing aggressively. He came in, two cups of tea in hand and placed one on your table. You smiled at him in thanks and he stood behind you, again, caging you with his arms. One hand holding his cup and the other holding the edge of the table. He watched your screen and you tried to ignore him and focus on the problem at hand. Eventually, his chin made its way to your neck as he rested it there snugly and you stiffened. Before you could freak out, he pointed at the screen and asked what something meant.
While you explained it to him, you thought you saw his eyes flutter shut in the reflection on your screen.
You touched yourself again that night.
A couple months after he had moved in, you woke up once in the middle of the night to a stuttering heart and dried tears in the corner of your eyes. The stress of college was getting to you and you were teetering on the edge of burnout. You would have nightmares about failing subjects or being left jobless and penniless after finishing school, or having to redo projects over and over again without any reprieve. It was silly, but it didn’t stop the stress from being very real and completely terrifying.
You got out of bed and decided to settle for some tea, not wanting to risk a caffeine rush from coffee in the middle of the night. When you headed to the balcony to drink your tea under the night sky, you found Loki already there, a mug of tea in his own hand. You watched him. His raven locks flew gently as the wind bristled through them, the moonlight hit his face, reflecting off of him, giving him a nearly angelic halo.
As if he could sense you watching, he turned around. He gave you a smile and you took it as an invitation to join him. You leaned against the railing alongside him, the wind cooling your face, which you warmed with a sip of tea.
A comfortable silence fell, filled with just the sounds of your breaths. You looked to the streets below, empty, save for a few random pieces of plastic and paper tumbling in the air and sighed.
“I miss home,” Loki whispered solemnly. It was so quiet, you wouldn’t have heard him if the wind hadn’t ceased blowing momentarily. You could feel his pain and you knew there were no words that would bring him comfort, so you placed your hand over his, rubbing his knuckles with the pad of your thumb comfortingly.
Loki basked in your touch. He was shocked at the contact at first. You had never initiated it before and he feared that he had forced you into it by being vulnerable, but when he snuck a look at your face, you were already looking at him. He feared you pitied him, but he could see that what you had etched on your face was not pity, but understanding. He turned your hand over and entwined your fingers through his.
You stood silently, in the cold wind, warmed only by each others’ touch and your quickly cooling drinks.
When your cups were empty, Loki pulled you close, holding your face in his hands. He placed a tentative kiss against your hairline. “Thank you,” he muttered. And then he was gone.
You stood in the dark, dumbfounded.