Chapter 1
You would think that, after spending the better part of the last three years living in a quasi-Bachelor-esque reality show, you’d be used to cameras by now. Right?
“Two minutes to rolling!”
Far from it. Instead, you’re practically squirming in your seat, your gaze drifting away from Ricky Morgenstern’s face and towards the blinking red light to your left—and, even worse, the live studio audience behind it.
“You’ve nothing to worry about, you know.” A hand closes over your own on the arm of your chair. “They adore you.”
You glance up to your right, and immediately calm a bit at the sight of those sharp, clever eyes. “Easy for you to say.”
Loki squeezes your hand gently, dimples appearing on either side of his mouth. It really is easy for him to say, because at the very least you know they adore him. How could they not? Even dressed as simply as he is, in a fitted green tee and black jeans (a look more casual than even you’re used to), he’s not just endearing, he’s stunning—all cheekbones and cropped curls and open-mouth grins.
You’re back in modern clothing too, though you’re surprised to see more than a few audience members wearing outfits that more closely resemble any number of your “day dresses” from your competition days. Nothing so intricate as Meg’s embroidery work, but still. It’s strange, wearing pants again. Not necessarily a bad change, but something to get used to. (You’re still wearing your hair up, though, and a delicate circlet on top, almost too thin to be caught by the cameras. Some old habits die harder than others.)
Ashley Marino smiles at you kindly as she takes her seat. “You ready?”
Your stomach drops. You'd known this was coming, but now that you actually have to directly face the judgement of the crowd—a crowd that, for once, is face-to-face, not random names on the other end of a screen—you'd rather be anywhere but here.
Still, a queen—or whatever kind of public figure you are now—must do many unpleasant things for the good of their people. And so you nod.
As ready as I’ll ever be.
“And we’re live in three, two…” The cameraman gives a signal, and Ashley launches in.
“Welcome to Good Evening, America. I’m Ashley Marino, this is Ricky Morgenstern, and today we have perhaps our most highly anticipated guests in the history of the show.” You fix your best cheery-but-not-too-bright smile to your face and keep your eyes fixed on Ashley and Richard as the camera pans over. “I hope you’ll all join us in welcoming his formerly royal highness Loki and his lovely fiancée (Y/N)!”
The round of applause that rises is certainly enthusiastic enough. To be honest, it takes you by surprise. It’s been barely a week since the proposal, and your interactions with the outside world have been limited—you haven’t even seen your family yet. This is your first big television interview since (and, based on the schedule your newly-hired publicist sent over this morning, the first of many).
When the cheers die down, you dial up the smile a few notches, bringing your focus back to Ashley and Richard. “Thank you for having us!” You squeeze Loki’s hand, and he nods.
“Yes, we are both most grateful to be here.”
“The pleasure is ours.”
"Now, (Y/N),” Richard begins. “If I may, you have stunned the entire planet with your rapid development these past two weeks, absolutely taken our breath away."
You laugh in a way that you hope comes across as more witty than nervous. "Development? I'm not a character in a book. I haven't changed so drastically, not really. I've just become more relevant to the, um, plot."
He chuckles. "Yes, well, real as you are, many have been calling your love story a fairytale. My daughter went nuts when I told her I'd be interviewing you—she's six," he explains. "She always calls you 'the princess.'"
"Wow. That's really sweet." You raise a hand to your hair, trying not to disturb the intricate braids as, one by one, you pull out the hairpins and remove the circlet. "Hold on a sec..."
Well, you try to remove it. But either it got caught in your hair or you missed a pin, because it doesn't quite come off.
Ack, next time I - ow - wear one with so many damn rhinestones, I'll have to make sure I - ah - wear my hair down - ouch!
After a few seconds of wrestling with your hair—several times you have to bat away Loki's hands—you hand your headpiece to a bemused-looking Richard Morgenstern. "Here. For your daughter."
You feel a slight pressure on your head, and can't help but smile to see, out of the corner of your eye, Loki trying to smooth down your hair where it must have come loose from your battle with the circlet. You lean up to peck his cheek, an action that receives a collective "awww" from the audience.
"No need to be embarrassed!" laughs Ashley Marino as you blush. “It’s wonderful, seeing that the chemistry we all fell in love with on screen wasn’t just the result of a good edit!”
You laugh at that, and you hear more clapping. Scanning the audience, you realize that Loki was right: this is a room full of people who were—are—rooting for you. Rooting for you not in spite of your awkward moments, but because of them. And with that, it’s much easier to calm your racing heart and let the conversation flow.
That is, until you reach the part you’d been dreading:
"Now, we're going to be taking the first set of questions from our audience."
And just like that, your pulse spikes once more.
"Anyone?” Ashley scans the mob for raised hands, pointing at random. "Yes?"
A thin woman stands up, with intelligent eyes and a sleek, inky black bob. "Hi! I just have to say, I was a huge fan of the show.” You smile politely, not at all expecting for her to hit you with this: “How has your relationship been affected by the age difference?”
Even as you tense up, you feel a fair amount of self-assuredness—this, at least, is a question you can easily answer. “As you all know, I’m just about twenty, while Loki is...it’s one thousand and fifty I believe?” You look to him for confirmation, and he nots, eliciting a quiet rush of disapproving murmurs from the audience. You raise a hand, silencing them. “I do understand the objections. However, I would also take into consideration that, on Asgard, the average life expectancy is around five thousand years, give or take a century or so. Put in terms of total life expectancy, the two of us aren’t actually very far apart at all.”
There is scattered applause—enough to let you know you said the right thing, although you don’t feel ready to relax just yet. If that’s the first question, who knows what’s yet to come?
Another viewer rises. “When are you getting married?” Before either or Loki can so much as open your mouths, she presses on, “Are you planning on having children?”
You feel your jaw drop at that last bit. “Well, I...we…”
The truth was, you haven’t yet discussed it. You know that Loki didn’t expect you to have children—he had told you as much a few months ago, before the proposal, back when you were still convinced that he had resigned himself to a marriage of convenience. But has that changed, now that your relationship has gone from platonic to decidedly less-than-platonic?
The truth is, you don’t know if you ever want kids. Certainly not now, at nineteen. You know Loki wouldn’t particularly care if you decided you wanted to be childless forever—considering he already gave up the monarchy and his secret mind control secret in order to win you over, you doubt that children would be a dealbreaker.
That being said, it’s not exactly a conversation you want to have in front of a live studio audience.
Loki comes to your rescue. “In spite of our proportionally similar ages, we are cognizant of (Y/N)’s relative youth, when compared to the average age of marriage for most Midgardians today. Due to this, we have had some discussions of perhaps postponing the wedding a few years.”
Wait, what?