Chapter Text
”The boy’s back,” she says with a smile in her voice, and Loki sighs, mostly because he’s really biting back a snapped ’he’s not a boy’, but a little because he was so sure he’d run that not-a-boy off by now and this persistence is starting to wear at him.
“Ignore him,” he instructs instead, pointedly not looking up to where Sigyn is gleefully looking towards the table at which sits the boy – not-a-boy-at-all-a-proper-man Loki reminds himself irritably – with what Loki knows will be a becoming flush on his face and clever hands engaged in something artistic, because Loki has seen it before and has no desire to see it again. None whatsoever. Absolutely not.
“You know he comes for you,” Sigyn admonishes, and Loki smirks, a sharp, thin thing on lips poised to say something very hurtful, but instead all he says is,
“Yes, I know. I already told you how prettily he came for me that night. I even showed you the charming thank-you card he sent. I don’t doubt that’s why he’s here all the time now,” rather sarcastically, and Sigyn shakes her head a little sadly.
“I know you’ve grown fond of the idea, but I really don’t think he’s this persistent because you give fabulous head. And that thank-you card was the sweetest, most awkward thing ever. Judging by that alone I’d say he was infatuated with you,” she says, and Loki huffs.
“No, judging by that alone we can surmise that I was the first person to ever perform that particular service for him, and that he’s been raised astonishingly well. Nothing more can be taken from it,” he insists, and Sigyn just sighs.
“If that’s what you’ve decided. I still think you’re being a fool.”
It’s not until she’s turned away and Loki’s field of vision is solely books and shelves once more that he breathes deeply and reminds himself that he doesn’t actually care for her opinion on the matter of sweeter-than-sweet blue-eyed not-boys whom Loki services orally at parties he never originally wanted to attend and then send him adorably awkward thank-you cards with Loki’s name spelled correctly and not a hint of vulgar language anywhere to be found even though the main subject of the card itself is rather difficult to reference without resorting to such things.
Loki doesn’t care if these not-boys with wide, innocent eyes and hitching stammers to their softly polite voices return to Loki’s library again and again for more than a month and always only when Loki is the one on duty, always to sit at the same table within viewing distance of the front desk, and always with something interestingly artistic to work on. Never to speak to Loki, but always to cast long looks after him with a faint blush dusting a pleasingly handsome face, and of course Loki has no reason to care for any of this.
The not-a-boy doesn’t stay for Loki’s entire shift, whether out of some understanding that it would be a little bit unsettling for Loki if he did, or because he actually has somewhere else to be – perhaps even plans to go off and moon over someone else, Loki could not possibly say and in any case he is not interested in such speculation – but he does linger a little longer in the door than usual, a slight frown making blue eyes shine sadder than Loki has yet seen, and despite himself Loki looks straight at him, meeting his eyes for the first time since the first day he appeared in the library after their little interlude and the card, and Loki has to work not to ask questions with his own eyes and to simply observe.
In the end, the frown disappears and a tentative but brilliant smile replaces it, and Loki feels somewhat flattered that a simple acknowledgment from him can have such effects, but the boy-who-isn’t-a-boy-at-all doesn’t just smile, he waves as well - a funny, awkward, sweet little gesture like an excitable child catching itself in an overly enthusiastic display of emotion - and Loki doesn’t know how to counter it because he has no suitable weapon in his arsenal for something so simple and innocuous but simultaneously loaded, and so Loki raises a hand but keeps it too close to his body and in the end he merely smoothes back his hair as if he meant to do so all along.
Either this is enough, or Loki’s absolutely-not-a-boy knows more than Loki likes to imagine, for the smile grows and the pleased blush staining his cheeks as he ducks out of the door to leave is the fieriest version Loki’s seen on his face yet barring the one he’s only seen while looking up from a semi-uncomfortable kneeling position on the floor of a bathroom in a house he hadn’t meant to be anywhere near upon the evening in question.
Loki almost privately decides he likes it before he remembers that he doesn’t care.
Loki has neither the time nor the energy to care. Not these days.