Chapter Text
“Isn’t that sweet,” Loki hums. He seems more amused than anything, one eyebrow arched high.
Charles is standing in the doorway of his apartment. The lease is under his name alone, but when there are two others that stay over so often, Loki simply considers them a household of three. The boy looks disgruntled, and for good reason. In one arm is a massive arrangement of velvety, red roses. The other arm holds a heart-shaped box of Guimauve Chocolat.
“Valentine’s is over, isn’t it?” The striker questions, still casual.
“That’s what I said,” Charles groans. “I guess he did it on purpose. Something about it being tacky to have an anniversary and Valentine’s on the same day.”
Ahh. Yes, that sounds like Hugo. To jump at the prospect of having one more day he can dedicate to Loki. And, an anniversary?
“He must be confident I’ll say yes,” Loki comments.
“You better!” Charles forces the gifts into Loki’s arms, before throwing his own into the air, grumbling. “He’s so weird. I can’t understand that guy at all! Who would wanna go out with you?”
Using his endless patience to brush that insult aside, Loki moves on. “I’m surprised he sent you to do it,” he adds. “He’s not the shy type.”
Far from it, in fact. Hugo will say anything to anyone without any regard for how it makes him come off. Given that Charles is Charles, Loki handles most of the PR for the three of them.
“Think he said he wanted give you time to come up with a response,” Charles shrugs. “I dunno. I wasn’t really listening. Maybe he just doesn’t wanna be rejected to his face.”
France’s news outlets will commend Hugo for accepting his so-called rivalry with Charles with such grace, the two of them fighting to stand next to Loki with pride. The truth is that he doesn’t see it as a fight at all.
“To be your number two is my destiny,” Hugo had affirmed, once. “I’m not worried about him. If it’s meant to work out, it will.”
Destiny. Loki wonders if there’s ever been a time he saw Hugo and didn’t hear that word at least once.
“Okay,” Loki responded, and that was that.
Charles perks up, suddenly realizing something. “Are you gonna reject him?” he asks, looking excited (?) at the prospect. “You think that’d finally get some kind of reaction out of him?”
“Perhaps,” Loki admits, smiling to himself as he turns the box of chocolates around in his hands, setting off to the kitchen to find something for the flowers. “I don’t think we’ll find out, though.”
Charles squints, processing the meaning behind his words, as Loki arranges the roses in a spare vase, trimming off extra leaves and spreading the petals here and there.
“You’re not rejecting him,” Charles gasps, finally figuring it out. Loki’s smile widens, not that Charles can see it.
“No, I suppose not,” Loki concedes.
“You like him!”
“You could call it that.”
Charles shrieks, rolling off the couch and hitting the rug with a thud. Loki doesn’t bother looking back.
After a few moments of silence, Charles seems to suddenly change his mind, crossing his arms with a pout. “Well, you guys are both weird, so I guess you were meant for each other,” he sighs, aggrieved.
Loki pours water into the vase, mixing the plant food into it, and steps back to admire his handiwork. It’s perfect, as he expected.
“Where should I set this,” he muses, mostly to himself. Charles responds anyway with “in the trash,” and Loki ignores him. It ends up on the dining room table.
“Is he coming home tonight?”
“How should I know?” Charles groans again. “Can we talk about anyone else? It’s not like he gives me his daily itinerary. He literally walked up to me in the middle of the sidewalk, told me to give these to you, and left.”
“And you listened,” Loki points out, taking the plastic off of the chocolates.
“What else was I supposed to do? By the time I thought to say no, he was gone!”
“He wouldn’t be as good of a player as he is if he weren’t so fast,” Loki points out, easily side-stepping the pillow that comes soaring past his head.
“Is anything not about football to you?” No.
Despite his grievances, Charles is all too eager to accept one of the chocolates. He even concedes that the brand is high-quality, before deciding he actually never liked chocolate in the first place. Macarons are better, he claims.
“Aren’t these for me, not for you?”
“If he’s going to make me deliver them, he should give me a snack on the way! Even a Doordasher makes tips.”
“...They’re not meant to eat the food they deliver, though.”
Fed up, Charles stalks off, bringing a chocolate with him. Loki rolls his eyes, closing the box and setting it down on the counter. He’ll share them with the sender when he arrives back.
Oh, and speaking of. Charles didn’t have an answer for him, so Loki picks up his phone. He runs his fingertips over the black-and-gold phonecase.
Charles had insisted on something cool; Hugo retorted that Loki deserved luxury. The man in question, feeling like he should have more control over the choice of his phonecase, picked this one in hopes that it would satisfy the both of them.
He presses Hugo’s contact. Neither of them are much for texting, both valuing the sound of the other’s voice more than words on a screen. It’s the opposite with Charles, who will text at any given moment of the day, and has not been trusted on a call since he figured out how to install a soundboard.
Still, Loki feels like he should save his words for their meeting in person.
When will you be back?
Sent, without any hesitation, and the response is near instant.
When do you want?
Not a man of many words, Loki muses.
Right now is fine, he responds, and the sound of the doorbell has him setting his phone down, standing up to get it.