Work Text:
The apartment smelled like rain, fresh coffee, and the faint ozone tang that always clung to Loki after he’d been playing with seiðr too long.
(y/n) was sprawled across the couch on her stomach, laptop balanced on a pillow, legs kicking absently in the air. The screen glowed with the latest build of her passion project — a cozy fantasy RPG she’d been chipping away at for years. The new patch had just gone live on her private test server, and she was stress-refreshing the bug tracker like it owed her money.
Loki sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the coffee table, back against the couch, one of her thighs pressed warmly against his shoulder. He was reading on his own tablet — some dense academic paper on compiler optimization he’d found “amusingly primitive” — but every few minutes his eyes flicked sideways to her screen.
He hadn’t said anything yet.
That was suspicious.
(y/n) finally broke. “You’re staring.”
“I am appreciating,” Loki corrected without looking up. His voice was velvet and smug in equal measure. “There is a difference.”
She rolled her eyes, but the corner of her mouth twitched. “Appreciating what, exactly?”
“The way you chew your lip when a stack trace insults your ancestry.” He turned a page on his tablet with exaggerated nonchalance. “It’s endearing.”
“I do not—”
“You do. Right now, in fact.”
She huffed and deliberately bit her lip harder just to spite him.
Loki’s laugh was low, pleased, the sound she’d come to associate with lazy Sunday mornings and stolen kisses in the kitchen. He set the tablet aside, twisted at the waist, and propped an elbow on the couch cushion so he could look up at her properly.
“Show me,” he said.
“Show you what?”
“The bug that’s making you frown like the renderer personally betrayed you.”
(y/n) hesitated. “It’s stupid. It’s just… pathfinding. There are a small handful of NPCs that keep walking into walls like they’re auditioning for a slapstick routine.”
Loki’s eyes lit with immediate, predatory interest.
“Show me.”
She sighed the sigh of someone who knew resistance was futile and turned the laptop so he could see. Loki shifted closer until his shoulder pressed fully against her side, chin nearly resting on her arm as he studied the screen.
For a long minute he was silent — the focused, almost reverent silence he only used when something genuinely intrigued him.
Then:
“Oh, darling,” he murmured, delighted. “You’ve given them a greedy best-first search and forgotten to penalize diagonal movement properly. They’re optimizing for Euclidean distance instead of Manhattan with an obstacle heuristic. Of course they’re clipping corners like drunks.”
(y/n) stared at him. “Okay, okay. You don't have to be such a show off and solve my entire problem in 13 seconds.”
“I diagnosed it in nine,” he corrected primly. “The extra four were for appreciating how beautifully catastrophic it is.”
She laughed despite herself. “You’re the worst.”
“I’m the best,” he countered, already reaching for the keyboard. “May I?”
She slid the laptop fully into his lap without protest.
Loki’s fingers flew — elegant, precise, almost dancing. Lines of code scrolled past faster than she could read them. He muttered half to himself as he worked:
“Add a small penalty for diagonal… yes… now reroute through the clearance check… delightful… and a touch of smoothing so they don’t look like they’re moonwalking… there.”
He hit enter.
The test NPC on screen paused, re-evaluated, then glided around the wall in a smooth, natural arc.
Loki turned to (y/n) to say something.
Then she grabbed his face with both hands and kissed him — hard, grateful, a little messy.
Loki made a startled, pleased sound against her mouth before melting into it, one hand coming up to cradle the back of her neck like she was something precious and breakable. When they parted he was smiling — not the sharp, public smirk, but the soft, private one he saved only for her.
“What was that for?” he asked, though he clearly already knew.
“For being a menace who’s also stupidly brilliant,” she said, breathless. “And for fixing my code in under a minute.”
“I live to serve,” he drawled, but his thumb was stroking gentle circles behind her ear.
(y/n) laughed again — lighter this time, the earlier stress unraveling like bad spaghetti code.
“Okay, fine. You win. You’re officially allowed to backseat-drive my AI from now on.”
“How generous.” Loki’s eyes sparkled. “Though I prefer to think of it as… collaborative mischief.”
She rolled her eyes fondly. “You would.”
He shifted so he could pull her down onto his lap, arms looping around her waist. She went willingly, straddling him, knees sinking into the couch cushions on either side of his hips. Their foreheads rested together.
“You know,” he murmured, “I used to think mortal systems were beneath me. Rigid. Predictable. Dull.”
“And now?”
“Now I find them…” He brushed his nose against hers. “…endlessly fascinating. Especially when they’re yours.”
(y/n)’s heart did the flip thing again — slower this time, warmer.
“You’re such a sap,” she whispered.
“Only for you.” He kissed the corner of her mouth. “And only when no one else is watching.”
She laughed softly. “We’re alone.”
“Precisely.”
He kissed her again — slower, deeper, the kind of kiss that felt like a promise. She melted against him, fingers threading through his hair, tugging just enough to make him hum in approval.
When they broke apart she rested her forehead against his, breathing hard.
“I love you,” she said — quiet, certain, no hesitation.
Loki went very still.
Then his arms tightened around her like he was afraid she’d vanish if he let go.
“I know,” he whispered, voice rougher than usual. “And I—”
He stopped. Swallowed. Tried again.
“I have spent centuries running from the idea that anyone could love me — truly love me — once they saw everything. The lies. The flaws. The… cold places I try to hide.”
His fingers flexed against her back.
“But you…” He pulled back just enough to meet her eyes. “You see the monster and you still choose to kiss me. You see the god and you still choose to tease me. You see the fool who pretended to be a barista for months and you still choose to love me.”
He rested his forehead against hers again, voice barely audible.
“I love you too. Desperately. Completely. In every form I have ever worn and every one I never will.”
(y/n)’s eyes stung.
She kissed him — soft, slow, full of everything she couldn’t put into words.
When they parted she whispered against his lips:
“Wanna help me break something else?”
Loki’s answering grin was pure mischief.
“Always.”
He reached for the laptop again.
She laughed and pulled him back down.
The code could wait.
Some bugs were more important to fix first.