AN: Short chapter; next one will be a nice long one, because there's plot shenanigans that will be happening (also finals will be done—yay!)
CHAPTER TEN
Darcy shuddered and pulled her cloak tightly about her shoulders as a breeze rippled across the cliff-top. It might have been early spring on Earth, but the hours just before dawn on Vanaheim were bitterly cold. As the minutes crept past, Darcy imagined that she could almost hear the ground cracking and groaning in protest as it froze solid beneath her boots. Yet for some strange reason, it refused to snow; the rain came and went in a flickering drizzle, but the water droplets refused to turn to ice. She internally debated waking up Loki-he seemed to enjoy the cold, understandably enough. But her pride got the better of her; she couldn't wake him up and ask him to take her shift after practically forcing him to go to sleep. Then again...it was very cold. Not to mention, he would probably be less than thrilled if he awoke to find that her lips had frozen solid...or her fingers, for that matter.
Darcy sighed and turned to look at Loki, surrendering to the goosebumps upon goosebumps that peppered her skin. She wondered momentarily how on earth she would ask him to get up and take her shift. She got as far as bemoaning the fact that she would in all likelihood be forced to admit that she was mistaken, possibly on bent knee, when her eyes came to rest upon Loki's sleeping figure. Her breath caught in her throat as though snatched away by a sudden gust of cold wind.
It suddenly dawned on her that she had never seen Loki sleeping. On their journey to Jotunheim, when they were dating, after they got married...the only time she was ever awake in the presence of a sleeping Loki was when she awoke for the briefest instant in the dark of the night after a strange dream and inevitably turned on her side, or slid between his arms, before falling fast asleep. She was never the first one up in the morning. When she awoke, it was either to see a pair of green eyes looking down at her or to find that Loki had vacated his side of the bed early and was off creating or resolving some sort of mischief.
She vowed silently to start waking up earlier and curled up beside him to get a better look. Watching Loki sleep was the most strangely compelling thing she had ever done in her life. It wasn't that he became prettier in sleep, or that his wickedly crooked smirk traded places with an angelic smile in his dreams-on the contrary, Darcy loved the weird little facial expressions he made when he was thinking to himself or going about his daily routine. She couldn't put her finger on it, but something about watching him sleep made her whole hum with quiet, thrilling energy. Part of it might have been that she could watch him unguarded. She could stare at him all she liked and not worry about getting "caught." Part of it may have been seeing his true face. Darcy could practically see the dreams playing across his face as he slept: the twitch of an eyelid, the smirk of his lips, the furrow of a brow. And part of it may have been peace. When Darcy watched his chest rise and fall, his heartbeat thudding in harmony with her own, his deep, sweet scent enveloping her, every thought and worry in her mind faded away. It was as though they were two stars without planets, orbiting each other without a care in the world for what anyone else did, or what anyone else thought. They were alone in the universe, together.
Her musings were interrupted by the sudden, resounding CRACK of a twig snapping. She immediately stood up and looked about, searching for the source of the noise. The cliff was bare but for the sparse grass and small shrubs scattered around. She frowned. It must have been her imagination.
As she relaxed and began to sit down, she heard the soft sound of footsteps upon the grass. She glimpsed a large shape in her peripheral vision that had not been there moments before. Instinctively, she whirled around to strike the intruder with a yell, her fists flying madly and eyes scrunched tightly closed.
"I'm warning you!" she shouted. "Get away or I'll—" She stopped abruptly. Her punches were having no effect. In fact, she suspected that her knuckles might be bruising, because it felt as though she were punching a rock. She opened her eyes and gaped for a moment.
"Uh…Hi, Thor."
On an unrelated note, I'm currently working on a screenplay that I'm super-excited about, and I would love to have some people read it for the purposes of getting constructive criticism. If anyone's interested in that sort of thing, feel free to Private Message me and I'll shoot you the draft so you can mark it up with comments.