"Holy hell, Loki. Have you got on a three piece suit?" A stunned Sylvie approached the very anxious man who had been standing and wringing his hands while he waited for her to arrive. "Are we dining with the queen tonight?"
Loki looked down at the navy suit that had been hanging unworn in the back of his closet since the wedding of some relation to his mother's sister years ago. He knew he looked presentable in it, but worried that it was too much for his outing with Sylvie. He didn't want to wear anything black, though, and decided that it was better to go too far than be underdressed for the occasion.
Maybe not the queen, but a queen, Loki thought to himself as he took in Sylvie looking like pure royalty in her bishop sleeved A-line black dress that was adorned with golden designs across the bodice as if it were a piece of kintsugi art.
"I was aiming to out-dress you, but managed to fail spectacularly," Loki said with a bashful smile as he held the door to the restaurant open for her.
They were seated quickly at a reserved table near the back and handed drinks menus with a promise that their waiter would be out shortly. Loki and Sylvie both thanked the hostess and then smiled nervously at each other after she walked away.
Loki flipped over his menu, double checking they offered his favorite brand of whiskey. He had looked at the menu online during the week, but this gave at least one nervous hand something to do.
A votive flickered in a decorative holder. Silk napkins remained untouched on small plates awaiting any appetizers ordered. Crystal water and wine glasses lined the center of the table.
"This is a date," Sylvie said softly. "Isn't it?"
Loki's heart broke a bit as he looked up to see Sylvie looking conflicted. "Well, I guess that kind of depends."
"On what?"
"On if you want it to be," Loki replied. "This could just be dinner, Sylvie. I'm not expecting anything." He let out a sad laugh. "I wasn't even sure you'd show up. But I did hope you would."
It was Sylvie's turn to be a bit heartbroken. Ever since that day in the park, she realized he wasn't the uptight entitled guy she assumed he was based on the few things her uncle had told her about him. She thought she would be able to handle a nice dinner out with a nice man, but it was all a bit too much too soon. Especially since…
"Tomorrow was supposed to be my wedding day," Sylvie said quietly as Loki froze in his seat. "Thomas had planned it, just the two of us, at City Hall. We weren't even engaged, we just were going to get married in secret and then throw a big party on New Year's Eve to tell everyone."
"Oh, Sylvie," Loki uttered as he reached a hand across the table to grab hers, but he stopped himself before making contact.
"You didn't know. No one did." She shook her head and tried to stop the tears that were starting to form, grateful she had put on waterproof mascara. "Not even Mobius." She looked around, hoping no one was watching her fall apart. "I'm so sorry for ruining this. You picked such a nice restaurant."
"Nothing is ruined," Loki said, "I promise. And we don't have to stay. I can get you a car back to your uncle's. We can do whatever you want."
Sylvie gave Loki a sad smile. "I just want to break every single one of these wine glasses."
"Will these wine glasses do?"
Loki handed Sylvie a pair of mismatched stemware. They were both wearing goggles and pants and jackets on loan from the bar where Loki booked a room specifically meant for destroying things.
"They will," Sylvie said as she chucked them one at a time at a wall, grinning like an idiot as each one shattered into pieces. It felt good to ruin something with zero repercussions. Organized chaos. Pure exhilaration combined with safety. "Thank you."
Loki bowed a bit as he handed her a third glass. "My pleasure."
Because it was his pleasure—making Sylvie happy made him happy. He had been so "what about me?" lately with everything that was going on with his family and it felt good to move away from that these past few weeks.
Sylvie threw the glass on the ground and handed a fresh one to Loki. "Go on."
Loki took the glass and threw it at the wall. As soon as it shattered, he shouted "Another!" and Sylvie gladly put a new glass in his hand.
"You wanna go smash that with me?" Sylvie pointed to a broken printer on the other side of their room. "We can pretend we're those guys in Office Space."
With a laugh, Loki said, "Sure."
They each grabbed a baseball bat and started wailing away at the printer. After a minute, Sylvie looked upset and Loki stopped, hoping she would too.
"You okay?"
"Yeah," Sylvie replied, pulling a piece of her hair out of her goggles. "This is far more cathartic than I expected it would be. I kind of want to scream, but I didn't want to scare you."
"Oh," Loki said, a bit surprised. "You can scream. I don't think the room is soundproof, but don't let that stop you."
Sylvie nodded and held her bat up while Loki stepped back to give her some space. She screamed as she swung and hit the printer several times in a row. When she finally stopped, a large piece of the printer had dented and fallen off.
"Did the, uh, scream make you feel better?" Loki asked, genuinely curious. He had never just screamed to scream even though there had definitely been moments in his life where doing just that probably would have helped.
"Loads," Sylvie admitted. "You want to try?"
Loki laughed. "I'm all right, thank you."
"Suit yourself." Sylvie shrugged. "Hey, how did you know about this place? You don't really seem the type to just let loose like this on the regular."
"Ha, well, I was here for a stag night once. For one of Thor's friends. I did mostly just watch, but this has been fun too."
They went back to hitting the printer for a while longer until Sylvie stopped.
"Are you going to scream again?" Loki asked.
"No," Sylvie said with a smile. "But I am kinda starving now. Can I buy you dinner?"
"Here you go," Sylvie said as she handed Loki one of the soft serve cones that was already starting to drip on her hand. His had chocolate sprinkles on it, hers were rainbow. "Dinner is served."
"Thank you," Loki said, his insides swirling a bit when their fingers touched for the briefest of moments. "Though I'm not quite sure this quantifies as dinner."
"Anything can be dinner, Loki. It's a time of day thing, not a food-specific thing. Ergo…" Sylvie held up her cone. "Dinner."
Loki chuckled and nodded his head in respect to her logic, accepting defeat. He bit the top of his cone off and chewed the sprinkles, smiling as he swallowed. "You know, I can't remember the last time I had ice cream."
Sylvie frowned as she quickly licked the soft serve that was melting onto the wafer part of the cone. "That's kind of sad. I have ice cream at least once a week. For dinner, probably once a month."
"Perks of being an adult?"
Sylvie laughed, "No! Ever since I was a kid. If my parents or I were having a really bad day or one of us wanted to celebrate something special, we'd get ice cream for dinner."
Loki nodded slowly. "So what's tonight's occasion?"
After contemplating for a moment, Sylvie replied, "A bit of both, I think."
Loki hummed, wondering what specifically Sylvie meant, but too afraid to ask. "So do you always get vanilla with rainbow sprinkles?"
Sylvie laughed, "For soft serve, yes. For actual ice cream, I always get chocolate chip cookie dough because you basically get two desserts in one. It's my mum's favorite too. Dad fancies rocky road, but I can't handle all that chocolate. So he's always like, 'More for me.' Every. Single. Time."
She used a really bad American accent for her dad, which Loki took to mean that her dad and Mobius were brothers. It made Loki smile. "Do you miss your parents?"
"I do," Sylvie said quickly. "It sucks being so far away from them, but at the same time I'm glad to be doing my own thing here. Or, trying to do my own thing, anyway. To be honest, I'm glad I have Mobius. I didn't know him all that well when I was growing up, but he's a good guy and I'm glad he took me in."
"You'll land on your feet soon, I'm sure," Loki said confidently. "But, in the meantime, I'm glad you have your uncle too."
"As a kid, I always thought I would have my shit together and be this awesome adult. But no one does. No one is. They should tell you that at university so you don't get your hopes up once you leave," Sylvie said in between bites of her cone.
Loki laughed. "I agree."
"So how are you doing with your parents and everything?"
"Well," Loki said with a sigh as they finished their cones, "I thought about what you said, actually. About how they are my parents and that I literally wouldn't be here without them. So, even though it was surprising to find out what I did, when I did, it doesn't really change anything because my biological parents were gone. Someone would have had to raise me. So ending up with Odin and Frigga really was the best case scenario. I'm lucky they took me in. And I do love them."
"Do they know that?"
"Probably not in as many words. But I will tell them," Loki promised. "And I'm sure Mobius will be pleased he won't have to waste any more of his free time trying to get me to see how poorly I've been handling things lately. You won't have to either, I suppose." The words were out of his mouth before he realized what he was saying.
"Hey…" Sylvie grabbed Loki's jacket sleeve and they both stopped walking. "You have not wasted my time."
Loki turned toward her and saw a determined look on her face. He found himself wondering if he kissed her if he would taste vanilla on her tongue. Her eyes darted to his lips and she rose ever so slightly on her tiptoes, but stopped when her phone dinged loudly from the depths of her purse and then twice more in quick succession. She sank back down until her black ankle booted feet were flat on the ground.
The moment was gone, but tension lingered in the air between them.
"Maybe you should check that," Loki said quietly. "In case it's an emergency or something."
Sylvie huffed out a deep breath through her nose and dug her phone out of her bag. Her mouth screwed into an angry frown as she read the missed texts.
"Is everything okay?" Loki asked as Sylvie shoved her phone back into her bag without sending any texts herself.
"No," she said, frustrated.
"Is there anything I can do?"
"Thank you, but no. This is something I have to deal with on my own." Sylvie said with a sad smile. "I should probably go."
Loki nodded, doing his best to hide his disappointment. "Okay. Can I get you a car, or—"
"—I think I'm going to walk, actually," Sylvie said quickly. "But thank you. For tonight, I mean."
"And thank you for dinner," Loki said with a sheepish smile, shoving his hands in his pockets.
Sylvie hesitated a moment before reaching out and tugging Loki down a bit by his lapel. She kissed him softly on the cheek, let go of his jacket, and then turned and hightailed it down the street before Loki had a chance to do or say anything.
Bewildered, he watched her walk farther and farther away from him. Unlike Orpheus, she never once looked back.
