Loki X Reader || Girl With The Gold Earring

21 | Drawing Lessons

Loki returned, art supplies bundled into his long arms, and set about propping the easel upon its spindly legs and arranging trays of pigments and pots of paintbrushes over all the flat surfaces in his immediate vicinity.

Y/N watched him with amused fascination, admittedly glad he had something other than her to occupy his gaze. With every passing second, self-consciousness dug its claws a little deeper, the temptation to correct her posture and wrangle her hair back into its usual bun growing ever stronger. Pushing it away, Y/N turned her attentions back to the prince, now setting down three jars of water on the floor by his feet.

He'd been holding them precariously in one hand by hooking his long fingers under the rims, but they looked even more vulnerable on the ground. Y/N wanted to caution him about knocking them over, but she knew he'd just laugh at her, so instead, she asked curiously:

"When you painted the scene at the market place, how did you get all this stuff down there?"

"I didn't," Loki perched on the lip of the chaise longue, then lifted himself again so he could drag it forwards by a fraction of an inch. "I rested the canvas on my legs and loaded a pallet with paint before I left. I added a lot of the detail from memory once I got back here." Distractedly: "I could do that with this painting, if you like, so you don't have to pose for so long." He met Y/N's eyes, then, his dark hair having fallen like two curtains either side of his face. "I'm so familiar with your features I could just about manage from memory."

Raising one eyebrow and pushing her lips into a pretend moody pout: "Is my face becoming tedious?"

Y/N couldn't see Loki's answering smile because, seemingly content with the nest he'd assembled for himself, he'd taken his place behind the white rectangle of his canvas. She heard his chuckle, though, and a drawling:

"Quite the contrary." One of his pale hands plucked a slim stick of charcoal from the table by his left knee, and the satisfying, abrasive sound of rough sketching filled the room. "I feel that---with you as my muse---this will be one of my most impressive works."

Y/N gave an incredulous laugh. "Very funny."

The prince's head poked out from one side of the canvas, his brow knitted. "I wasn't trying to be." He disappeared again, the scraping starting back up as he dragged the charcoal about over the expanse of blank material.

Not knowing how to reply to that, Y/N simply said nothing, and turned back to concentrating on holding her pose in the window seat; a feat that proved to be more difficult than she'd previously anticipated.

What had drawn Loki to this pose, in particular, was its nonchalant, care-free nature. Thus Y/N understood the importance of keeping her muscles slack and her expression insouciant. However, it is very tricky to remain insouciant and nonchalant when you have a very attractive man's crystalline eyes tracing your body every couple of seconds. Each time Y/N felt herself finally settling, he'd glance at her again---at the angle of her elbow, or the curve of her cheek---and her stomach would curl up like an autumn leaf.

"By the way..." Loki's voice drifted out from behind the canvas again, the scuff of his sketching ceasing. He leaned to the left, so Y/N could see his soft smile. "I'm flattered. That you feel comfortable enough with me to let your hair down. Both figuratively and literally."

A heat dribbled down Y/N's neck and pooled around her exposed collarbones. She had been waiting for the prince to bring that up. She'd tensed every time the breeze from the window brushed a strand of hair against her face and reminded her that she's---in a way---somewhat naked. Y/N had thought the first man to see her with her hair down---besides her father, of course---would be her future husband.