Trusting
They were much too comfortable around one another that often their minds pause and question: where fails the need to maintain poise and vigilance and quick tongues?
Their minds were much too leveled to name threats or hazards, thus emerged in most raw forms that sometimes surprised their selves, how easily they speak of things they’ve spoken to none else, how easily they settle with their backs turned, trusting.
Often Loki wonders why she trusts him, how she can trust him, as she lays her head in his lap one evening, facing the tv. Her tank-top showed off bare arms, half the reactor peeked from the cloth, margins of scars that have Loki frown, seidr itched to reach out and heal, though it could not. The hand on his lap stretched that fingertips grazed the top of Toni’s head, her soft hair. He lightly scratched and she let him. His heart aches and he scolds it.
She deserves so much better than him, is a thought too quick to the front of his mind that he loathes, but concedes.
Yet would disapprove of all characters unless they knew her, as thoroughly and intimately as he and doubts that any can. She is so many layers so many colors, so much thought and emotion he doubts any can withstand let alone respond to.
She stays with him, stays this way, open and vulnerable with her back turned. He frowns and strokes her hair, other hand tangled in the short locks, careful not to tug, brushing and rubbing circles along the base of her head, and she lets out a breath, slackened. Loki wants to pull her into his arms and keep her, an urge he waved off. She makes it increasingly difficult to deny these inclinations.