Loki pours a generous amount of gravy over his steamed vegetables. He can almost see them soak the moisture up in real-time, their dry wrinkles rehydrating like a sponge.
A place has been set for Thor, but he's not there. He's very rarely there; Loki can't understand why the servants bother re-setting eighteen pieces of cutlery every mealtime. Why take it away? Just leave it.
Even though his absence is not unusual, he finds my mouth spitting some words before he can stop it:
"Are we not blessed by the company of the future king?"
However, Frigga doesn't rise to Loki's thinly veiled, somewhat childish, provocation. Pretending she didn't catch his tone, she answers as if his question had been genuine:
"Well, I heard he was to return this morning, but a raven came about midday to say he'll be staying a little while longer—" Delicately, she slices off a slither of mutton from the monstrous beast occupying the centre of the table.
The paper-thin meat curls over, folding itself onto her plate like a ribbon.
"As you know, your father will also be away for quite some time; he's travelling south, all the way down to the border."
Loki doesn't point out that he didn't ask.
"Take some bread, darling." She pushes the platter towards him.
They're solid little spheres, a pale, sickly white on one side and a waxy, shiny orange on the other.
Loki thinks the whole meal looks like it is made of modelling clay.
His teeth squish through a honey-glazed carrot.
It's as hard as modelling clay too.
He and Thor used to have a dollhouse in their playroom when they were younger. It's still there, Loki thinks, waiting for the next set of children to wake the tiny wooden family from their tiny wooden beds and walk them stiffly about their little rooms.
The dollhouse was their mother's, and her mother's before her, and so on, so the paint on the father's face had started to peel away, and the little platters of food were all starting to look like peasant foods; the roast boar turning to a soft pink cut of ham, the tarts turning to simple yellow pies, and the bowls of caviar to hearty oatmeal.
Frigga sent it to a man in town who makes beautiful, intricate doors and chairs and tables and things from wood. He is the same man who made the oak mirror on Loki's dresser; the one patterned with carved leaves and tiny creatures, and a sculpture or two about the palace.
He gave the dollhouse a fresh lick of paint, but Loki didn't like how the father's face looked when he was handed back.
His grey beard and friendly eyes had been dabbed over with a clownish, leering mouth, and the food had become garish, iridescent primary colours.
He and Thor stopped playing with the dollhouse after that.
"You should have painted them," Loki remembers Thor saying. "You would have done it much better."
If his brother were here, would Loki tell him about the woman on the steps?
Probably not, he decides.
Loki doesn't think he'd understand.
Thor is never been obsessed with a woman; they're obsessed with him. He courts whichever one is within close proximity and forgets they ever existed if they leave his immediate field of vision. At the last Winter Ball, Loki witnessed him attempt to seduce one woman, then start from scratch with another just because the first crossed the room to refill her plate with shrimp.
YOU ARE READING
Loki X Reader One Shots || 𝐹𝐿𝑈𝐹𝐹 + 𝑆𝑀𝑈𝑇
Fanfiction🔞 Mostly tasteful, steamy, atmospheric smut so far 😅 Some stuff set on Earth, some on Asgard. Loki's Jöttunn form included 🧊❄️. I do take requests 💬
