#Ulf Palme | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

champion-prism · 2 years

Text

all it takes (is patience): 1

Pairings: Loki Odinson x F!Reader

Warnings: longfic, reader has anxious thoughts and is triggered slightly in the first chapter, eventual smut. Slow burn.

Summary:

The situation is one of the few instances of Loki being indelibrate. He hadn't meant anything by it but charity- to provide you, so desperate to learn magic, with a few resources to nudge you in the right direction.

But he finds himself here, a fresh young sorcerer enamoured by the idea of asking you to be his first ever apprentice.

Word Count: 3,826

Cross posted on AO3.

The man, Ulf, looks at you sceptically as you put your best face on, trying to look excited.

Bartending is my whole life, you try to communicate through your peppy expression. I live to serve drunkards cheap ale. It is a passion of mine, to watch them grow as inebriated as they can. Bar-wench is my middle name.

“You do realise the shift we have calls for you to be here between 10 pm and 2 am at night?” he says, one eyebrow raised at you. “Says here you’re a city scholar. Don’ you kids need your beauty rest?”

You shake your head at him, smiling the whole time, also hoping that the smiling isn’t getting creepy.

“Most of my classes are in the afternoons and early evenings,” you lie, “I usually go to bed around three or four am!”

The latter isn’t a lie at all, and he believes the whole thing. He has no reason not to.

“Look, kid,” he starts, “we’re in good need of someone to help wit the servin’ and such, so I’m takin’ this seriously. You do me a favour and take it just so, make sure you can handle workin’ four hours every night.”

You nod, hoping your expression is cool and collected rather than over-eager.

“A’ight,” he sighs, pushing back his chair and adjusting the dim light on his desk away from your resume. “Show up at 7.45 tomorrow, Ada will find you an apron. Ya take orders, ya serve drinks. If a lad gets handsy, you holler for me and I’ll break a bone of his, we don’t stand for things like that here.”

You’re profuse in thanking him, relief seeping through your entire body even as some part of you tells you how insane you’re being.

You need a job, but you don’t need it desperately.

Atleast, rationally you know you don’t need it desperately. You have food and lodgings- what you don’t have is pocket money; and you can go without an excess of clothes (although that doesn’t stop you from yearning for them), and you can go without sweets and little trinkets and toys that catch your eye so often.

You’ll still have to go without them, you think as you walk out of the pub, attempting vainly to summon a flicker of light to your palm as you step out into the street. It’s barely a five minute walk to your lodgings, which your landlady hates, but you’re thankful for.

The flicker in your palm comes to naught, and serves only to strengthen your resolve. You need to save money, just enough to afford a private seidr tutor for a few months. Just someone to help you get started, properly, give you a direction in where to go and how to practise your magic.

You wonder how your landlady- Aunt, as you and your fellow lodgers have been calling her all your years of staying with her- is going to take to your finding a job at the dreaded establishment so nearby. Since the pub opened a few years ago, she’s been in constant fear of it impacting her business, parents not wanting to send their young children to board with her in a “ruined neighbourhood”. No such fear has ever come to anything, but that doesn’t stop her.

Your lodgings are quiet as you get back, making it to your singular room without having to interact with anyone. You’re thankful for this, changing into comfortable clothes for the rest of the evening as you sprawl out on your narrow bed, staring up at the ceiling and willing yourself to perhaps study just a little bit.

Instead, you daydream about your new job, and think almost with relish about how much busier you’re going to be. It’s near self punishment, the amount of classes you’re taking, now coupled with the job you’re going to work late nights at.

Perhaps it will all teach you to be a hard worker, after all.

You’re almost falling into a doze as someone knocks rapidly on your door. You get up to answer it groggily, only to find Vanais, Riva, and some of the younger girls, who rush into your room with half spoken, half squealed explanations.

They press up against your window, around four or five of them, as Vanais turns to explain properly.

“The princes are heading out with the contingent to hunt that massive sea serpent that’s appeared near one of the fishing towns,” she says, while her friends peer out your window and into the street. “They should be passing through here in just a little while, the whole lot of them.”

Your eyes widen slightly as you join the girls at the window, giggling a little with them.

“Do you think we’ll get to see Prince Thor?” you muse, telling yourself you’re indulging the girls when you’re really just indulging yourself.

You hear the party before you see them, the faint sound of multiple horse hooves growing stronger until, leaning over the younger girls’ heads, you see two horses turn around the very distant corner of your street, to distinct figures upon them.

There’s yelling and cheering from the other buildings in the street, several people all around having stuck their heads out windows to yell encouragement at the two figures, who you can now clearly see are the princes. They are followed by a solemn, slow procession of soldiers on horses, an altogether smaller group than you expected.

Prince Thor is waving and smiling and yelling back thanks at all his supporters- you blush at the idea of his catching your eye, but you’re on the fourth floor of this building, so while not impossible, it is unlikely. The thought comforts you as you stare shamelessly at him, caught between desiring him, and wondering what it would be like to be that beautiful.

Not that Prince Loki, riding quietly by his side, does his brother any disservice. He is quiet where his brother is boisterous, but he smiles and tips his head slightly from time to time. He is regally handsome, with a colour palette you can appreciate over Thor’s- his dark greens remind you of the lush woods that flanked your childhood home, of ivy crawling over walls and blanketing fences. You wonder if he can make ivy grow with his seidr, and before envy can prick you, you turn to stare at Prince Thor again.

The procession passes, and the princes are soon nothing to you but the backs of their helmets, one silver, one gold. You gaze at the different soldiers, all muscular, well built individuals, impressive with their swords and axes and spears hanging off their backs.

They seem so dignified, so strong, and you tell yourself you’re too old to be swooning over soldiers, in spite of the fact that you’re of the perfect age, the exact demographic of girls that swoon over soldiers.

You back away from the window, giving Riva’s ear a tweak.

“You’ve seen enough soldiers,” you say, something of a laugh in your voice. “Get going to your rooms and let me rest.”

The girls comply, and Samis pinches your cheek as she leaves.

—

The princes and their procession is the most interesting thing that happens in a while, and you fall into a rhythm with your new job- an erratic, perhaps slightly syncopated rhythm, but a rhythm nonetheless.

Your mornings consist of waking up late and rushing to your classes. You resolve every night to wake up on time to be able to make yourself a little presentable before you go to your classes, but every day you show up with dark circles under your eyes, your hair unstyled, your clothes the first ones you could grab.

During the day, you ignore the less urgent of your homework in favour of trying magic.

You sit cross legged on the floor of your room, faltering and fumbling with the illusion of a few wildflowers you saw on your way home. It's alright- blurred at the edges, flickering, but still passably a conjured up bunch of wildflowers.

You know you're supposed to command the refraction of light, and perhaps if you went slow enough to conjure the illusion shade by shade, you might do better.

You sigh as you cease to hold the image, caught between the idea of practising the basics, or trying something new.

You try simple colours but you're bored of those, so you turn your focus to an eraser on your desk and attempt to draw it towards yourself with magic.

It doesn't move so much as a millimetre, but your head does begin to throb- from exertion or frustration, you can't tell.

Levitation is too hard for you anyway, you know that.

It'll be easier with a tutor, you tell yourself. You try not to think of all the valuable time you're giving up on until you can find a tutor. Until you can amass the money you need to hire a tutor.

You're quietly resigned to the idea that you will never be a sorcerer, never be a mage. All you really want is a little bit of basic seidr (which seems to come so naturally to many Asgardians), enough to make you happy simply to practice it and play with it.

You while time away (important time, time you could've used to study the newest trade treatise with Alfheim, perhaps) until it is time to go to work, and you struck with sudden horror at the notion of having to work as a bar-wench forever, lest you ignore your trade and politics studies in this way.

You shudder these ideas away as you make your way to the pub at quarter to ten, slipping in through the back entrance and grabbing an apron from where multiple ones hang.

Ada is bustling around between the kitchen and the seating area, and she gives you a brief smile and a “hello there, hon” as you make your way into the kitchen.

You smile at the cooks, say hello to Magnis, the older man who brings in used dishes and cups, and walk into the pub proper.

It’s filled with the usual post-dinner bustle, depressed drunks clinging to the bar table whilst others sit in the round tables all over the room. One man, in particular, has most of the patrons’ attention- he sits perched neatly on top of one of the tables in the centre, accommodated by his own lean figure, talking out to several people and nobody at once.

“-yes, I’m quite certain of it,” he says as you walk past with a tray of lager one of your coworkers had handed to you. “They are to return by tonight, high spirited at how quickly the hunt was conc-”

Here you walked out of earshot, not really caring to process the man’s words. You work almost automatically, taking slips of orders from your coworkers, taking them to the kitchen, receiving trays with table numbers on them in order to serve. Your workplace is rather more organised than others of its ilk, and you are grateful for the efficiency it affords you, despite Ulf insisting he remains understaffed.

You’re in the process of unloading a tray of used mugs at the sink when one of the girls rushes in, excitement shining on her face.

“Have you been listening to that man ousside?” she asks you, despite Ada’s warning “get back to work” look.

“He seems to think that the princes’ hunting party is going to pass through the city tonight,” she says, “and that we might catch a good glimpse of the serpent’s body as it is carried to the Palace!”

“What are they doing, carrying the beast back to the Palace, of all places?” Ada asks in spite of herself, leaning in with curiosity as most of the dishroom begins to listen.

“It’s to be gutted and skinned,” the girl grins, “and the head is to be turned into a wall mount, and oh, they shall probably use the skin to fashion armour!”

“If that intelligence is true,” you say, “do you know if they shall pass through our street again? They may choose to enter the city proper by another route.”

“Don’t be a pessimist,” she shoots back, although you weren’t trying to be. “We’re perfectly in their way, an’ I know it cause it was from here they made their exit into the country proper!”

You shrug as you and Ada disperse, getting back to work.

Around midnight, just when the pub seems a little empty and you’ve just gotten the latest bit of gossip out of your head, you hear horse hooves.

Several of them, as it is, but you don’t have the liberty to stop working and go press your nose against the nearest window, wish it though you may.

Your disappointment is baseless, anyway, because the doors of the pub are soon slammed wide open, and a merry party bursts in.

“Bartender!” yells Prince Thor, and the flush on his face tells you he is already a little drunk. He has an arm wound tightly around his brother’s shoulders, whose face is also rosy. Prince Loki looks at ease, but he doesn’t exude the exuberant energy his brother does.

“My brother,” begins Prince Thor, ignoring all the curtsies and bows directed at him and the brother in question, “my brother is a hunter,” he says, “and my brother is a drinker!”

The group of soldiers- over twenty of them, by your estimation- cheer as they begin to crowd inside the pub, finding empty chairs and tabletops to seat themselves on.

“He has undertaken the task,” continues the older prince, “of outdrinking every. Single. Person. In this pub!”

More cheers.

The Prince roars for alcohol to be brought in as you scurry to the kitchen, sharply directed by a slightly frantic Ada who is heading to the back to tap into her stores of lager, ale, and beer.

You’ve never witnessed a scene like this before. A happy, energetic, wild to be drunk hunting party, just returned- with royals, no less- is a blessing for any alcohol serving establishment which may hope to house the rowdiest, richest, most spoiled patrons it can wish for. What brawls and drinking contests might take place, and how many scattered broken teeth might be found on the floor the next morning!

The part about them all carrying back the serpent’s body was just a rumour, you come to know with some relief. You don’t like the idea of a giant bloodied serpent lying in your streets, waiting for the party to conclude its celebration before it is removed.

Ulf’s delight is a test for you all as you busy yourself with taking orders and rushing to the kitchens with them. You’re so busy, answering calls of “oi, girl!” and “hey, gorgeous, get us some beer!” and “yer uncommonly pretty for a bar wench, y’know” that you scarcely have time to process that you’re in proximity to the royal princes.

You’re not serving them, directly, although true to Prince Thor’s words, Prince Loki is now diligently downing jugs of alcohol in competition with some soldier in front of him.

His capacity is wonderful, you observe. Three men drunk and down, and the Prince is uninhibited, downing more drink with cheerful alacrity and nary a sign of drunkenness.

Gone are the dignified, responsible soldiers you saw proceeding through the street. These men are celebrating, drunk and wild and just a little handsy.

You gather all your compliments of being uncommonly pretty and hope they will at least leave good tips.

Meanwhile, Prince Loki’s sobriety is turning into a point of contention.

“You cheat, trickster,” says a man, glaring at the Prince with beady eyes with bags under them. “You’re using that, that Norn-f’rsaken magic o’ yours. No man can possibly drink so much wi’out going for as much as a single piss.”

It’s a fair point, you concede, busy with clearing a table close to theirs. You don’t hear what the Prince says in reply, barely registering his voice before the man stands up abruptly, revealing significant height, and no paltry amount of drunken rage.

“Now, now,” Prince Thor begins as you turn in alarm. The big man is blocking the princes from your view, and you try to back off before the man lunges for the younger Prince, only to be repelled by a blast of green.

The repulsion propels his rather large body directly towards yours, and without thinking, you push forth all the magic you can muster in your own defence.

Your eyes are closed shut as he slams into the wall right beside you- his trajectory wasn’t towards yours, after all.

Your weak, flickering attempt at a shield glows in front of both you, and the man, who shoves at the little barrier and breaks it with ease.

“Blasted amateur sorceress,” he hisses at you. “Stay out of this!” He launches himself at the princes once more, and you do not stay to see the ease with which he is reduced to a drunken, unconscious heap on the floor.

You’re rushing out the back, head ringing with how paltry your little shield was- your shield, those little projections you had been practicing diligently, something you should’ve been able to do but you hadn’t, you hadn’t, and what good was any practice when your seidr failed you when most needed?

What would have happened if the man had slammed into you? You couldn’t afford broken bones; you were a scholar. You had classes to attend, for the Norns’ sake!

Nobody pays you any mind. Your fellow servers are delighted at the prospect of having witness a brawl, much less a brawl concluded by the princes. Ada and Ulf are out in the front, trying to calm down as many people as they can, trying to make sure the fight doesn’t escalate and no property is damaged. You burst out of the back door and shut it behind you, cold night air on your cheeks as you stand in the empty alley, eyes stinging.

You find yourself with your back pressed against the wall of the pub, desperate tears rolling down your cheeks. You take deep breaths, more out of necessity than to calm yourself down, your fists clenched and nails digging into your palms. You suppress the urge to dig them with more ferocity into your arms, draw your claws out and leave burning marks on your own skin to stop you from crying.

This is it, you think miserably. You’ve entered one of your upset moods. You cry harder when you think of Prince Loki, the ease of his magic enveloping the area, how a simple flick of his hand could make so much energy bend to his command; effortless, fluid, talented.

You think of your own failed, flickering shield, the words blasted amateur sorceress and the man’s pasty, unshaven, ugly goddamn face burned into your head.

“Surely you’ve heard worse,” a smooth voice rings out, and you start to see Prince Loki standing by the door you exited from, a few feet away from you.

His expression is impassive but for his raised eyebrows, green eyes trained intently on your face.

“Wha-?” you sniffle, wiping your face with your hands in what you’re sure must be the most vulgar display anyone has ever dared to attempt in front of a Prince of Asgard.

If he’s disgusted, he doesn’t show it.

“Midnight frequenters of public houses don’t seem to be the most gracious people one meets these days,” he drawls. “Surely, worse patrons have said nastier things to you in the past.”

“But they’re rarely ever right,” you say, voice cracking. “And this one was. I’m terrible at seidr. I’ll never get any better!”

You dissolve into fresh tears, barely realising you’ve just conversed with a Prince without any of the marked deference you should have been showing. As if he were just another patron, just another man.

You cry harder.

Prince Loki steps closer to you, waving his hand in what you recognise immediately as a muffling charm, from how the sounds from the pub immediately grow muted.

“I’m sorry, you don’t have to- I’ll stop crying,” you say, trying to calm yourself.

“Don’t have to what?” he asks, tilting his head. His stance is relaxed, as if he has all the time in the world.

“Don’t have to muffle- the sounds, I shall stop crying and nobody shall hear,” you clarify, breathing easier now.

“I’m not concerned with that. But how did you know I used a muffling charm?”

You speak concisely now, drawing from your theoretical knowledge of seidr as you talk about the signs you noticed- the upward flick of his wrist, the muted sounds from outside, the mild feeling of the air literally thickening to slow down sound.

“Well articulated,” Prince Loki muses, now barely a foot away from you and leaning against the wall like you are. “Are you a sorceress?”

“Don’t insult me,” you gripe, immediately wishing you could bite your tongue. “I’m sorry, Your Highness, I mean no impertinence. I am not a sorceress.”

“But you’re theoretically versed in it.”

“Only a little,” you admit with a wince. “Only things from the few books I could get my hands on. The man in there was right,” you breathe, admitting your shame out loud. “I wish I was a sorceress. I’m just… not talented.”

He says nothing, looking at you with a contemplative look.

“You’re rather pathetic,” he observes, after a while.

You blanch, but say nothing.

“Not because you’re terrible at seidr, which I don’t really think is as desperate a situation as you depict it,” he clarifies, “but you’re rather a defeatist little thing, aren’t you?”

You give him a pointed look.

“If I might, Your Highness,” you say, “My interest in seidr developed rather late, and I have not had the advantage of books and classes to cultivate any skills. If not a natural, I might have developed technical skills given time- do I not have the right to lament my obvious deficiency in the only field that engages me?”

Here your eyes fill with tears again, and the prince seems to straighten in some alarm.

“Don’t go crying again,” he says. “I don’t think you’re deficient. If it’s books you want,” he draws his hand into a pocket, “try the Royal library. The seidr section, the one locked away. Now don’t ever say I’m not a benevolent prince, for I am trying to be charitable.”

You don’t know when you ever accused him of malevolence, but you have no time to wonder out loud- he pulls your hand forward and presses something cold into it, walking back inside the public house.

He is gone as suddenly as he had appeared, and you have a small, golden key in the palm of your hand.

#CRINGE MARVEL PHASE I MISSED YOU MY BELOVED #loki laufeyson #loki odinson #loki friggason #bastard has three surnames what m i to tag #loki x reader #thor #thor and loki #loki odinson x reader #loki odinson x you #loki laufeyson x reader #loki laufeyson x you #loki friggason x reader #loki friggason x you #loki of asgard #loki bastard sorcerer benevolent prince #back on my loki bs that none of you knew about but it is spreading to this blog!!!!!!!!

21 notes · View notes