watch your mouth

However, Loki’s dislike for bees surpassed the humor they brought him, and now sitting in a park surrounded by endless amounts of hives elevated his nerves. 

“I don’t understand why you focus so much on them. If you don’t bother them, they won’t bother you.”

“They trouble me regardless of my efforts to stay away from them, it’s annoying,” Loki snapped. Across from him, you continued to arrange a plate of assorted fruits and cookies with a roll of your eyes and a sly smile. In silence, Loki watched you move a strawberry to match one of the pink biscuits on the side of the dish, and replace a few blueberries with grapes. He found your dedicated patience to the aesthetic of the picnic to be almost as hilarious as the aftermath of a bee sting, but, of course, he had more affection for one than he would ever care to admit. 

“Do you think this looks nice?” you asked him, holding up the organized tray. 

“Yes, it looks very pretty, now may I eat it?” Loki taunted.

“Well, you have to say please first.” Loki feigned annoyance, having come to terms a long time ago that he could never truly be annoyed when in your presence, and muttered an obedient “please.” 

The both of you ate and discussed a few novels you had been reading for school. Like always, he gave you his input on the book itself, another on your theories and how they were inherently wrong and misinformed. You opted to just listen to his teasing whenever he got like this, now understanding he did it out of love rather than general disapproval. Loki’s voice could put the most exhilarated lunatic to sleep, and with the warmness of the summer sun against your face and a full stomach, you were falling victim to it. 

“Does my insight bore you so much that you’re falling asleep at noon?”

Rocking with the breeze and with half-closed eyes, you answered calmly, “I just really like your voice.” 

Such a trifling statement caused a grown man, foreign to your home planet, to lose his sense of thought. Loki stayed silent, unsure of how he could possibly recover from that and not make a fool of himself in responding. More than a few seconds passed, sufficiently enough to where you nearly forgot he was still there, sitting right across from you. You truly loved moments like these, where you could say the most trivial things to Loki and make the most eloquent man stumble on his words. 

“Would you like me to read to you?” Loki inquired, voice low and whisper-like. You hummed. 

The rest of the time at Central Park was spent with Loki reading almost half of Wuthering Heights--one of his favorite classics-- and taking small breaks to talk about themes and drinking lemonade.