She was maddening.

Two weeks. Fourteen nights. And not once had she come willingly.

He hadn't touched her. Hadn't even asked.
The door was never locked, yet she stayed. Cold and distant on the edge of his world — tucked up on his damn couch like a stubborn little stormcloud.

Loki had conquered Midgard — shattered its mightiest defenders and silenced its nations — with less effort than it took to get a single smile from her.

And yet… she was the reason he’d come here in the first place. Not for glory. Not for vengeance.

For her.

He’d had her name etched into his wrist since birth. In quiet Asgardian script, burning like fate itself. And when Midgard fell, he had searched. Not for a general. Not for a queen. For the one.

He found her in a broken city, bleeding defiance and disbelief. And when he saw the curve of his name on her wrist, his world — the one he’d clawed and bled to build — stopped.

She was the match the universe had made for him — he felt it in his bones, in the sharp pull of magic whenever she was near. Her soul sang to his.

And she hated him for it.

Fine.

If hate was all she had to offer, then so be it.

Still… tonight, he was tired of pretending. Tired of the invisible line drawn through the room like a battlefield trench.

Tired of the frost in her voice that bit deeper than his own magic ever could.

So he gives in to a petty impulse.

With a flick of his wrist, the air shifts.

The warmth bleeds out of the room slowly, so subtly she might not notice at first —just a quiet chill, crawling along the floor, seeping through the fabric of the sofa.

He lounges back on the bed, book in hand, as if entirely innocent.

She’d freeze before she asked for help.
But maybe… just maybe, she’d come to him.