Work Text:
The first time Sif sees the man she calls Unfairly Attractive Tailored Coat Guy, he orders a plain black coffee at the cafe she frequents, and then proceeds to dump six packets of sugar into it. She watches him underneath her lashes as he avoids eye contact with everyone, shoves a twenty dollar bill into the tip jar, and somehow billows his tailored coat as he leaves. He’s unfairly attractive and it makes her furious.
She sees him again a few weeks later, the same tailored coat and what looks like a cashmere sweater around his throat, and she stands behind him as he orders a large latte with four pumps of caramel. If she makes a face at the back of his head at the amount of sugar he’s about to consume, no she didn’t. He smells amazing, some surely expensive cologne, and there’s a flush high on his cheeks despite winter already fading into a late spring. He’s the most beautiful man she’s ever seen and she’s basically only seen the back of his head.
She looks for him the next couple of times she comes into the cafe, surreptitiously looking around for a sleek silhouette and dark hair, but he either doesn’t return or she just keeps missing him. She complains to Heimdall who dutifully listens because he’s the best brother she could ever ask for, but Hogun silently judges her with that look he has and she decides it’s probably time to move on.
Which means he shows back up at the shop, sans coat this time because New York City is experiencing the worst heat wave in years, right when she’s given up on seeing him again. He orders an iced coffee, an ungodly sweetened one judging by the description on the board, and two is a coincidence, but three is a pattern, so Sif has to think he has a sweet tooth. His sleeves are rolled up to his elbows and his hair is pulled back into a messy bun and he’s once again avoiding eye contact so she doesn’t try to hide her staring.
So naturally he looks right at her on his way out the door, fingers wrapped around his cup in a way that hides most of his name so she can only see ‘LO.’ His eyes are a striking blue when they catch hers and it feels like her heart flips over in her chest when he smiles at her, absolutely devastatingly handsome. “Holy shit,” she whispers under her breath when he’s out the door and it takes her a full five minutes to pull herself together again.
Sif doesn’t see him again for months. The summer flies by and she writes 400 pages about a dark-haired, blue-eyed businessman who falls for his rival, a dark-haired, hazel-eyed small business owner, and her editor is ecstatic when she reveals she already has an outline for another novel. If May notices the similarity in the main characters from her finished book and the main characters in her outline, she doesn’t say anything to Sif.
She’s not sure what it is about Unfairly Attractive Tailored Coat Guy that’s captured her attention so much over the past few months, but her publisher isn’t complaining and neither is her bank account thanks to the advances the company is sending her. And honestly, writing these short, romantic fantasies feels like a release even if it’s leaving her more frustrated than before. She doesn’t even know the man’s name, but now he’s starred in several fantasies that she’s indulged in writing.
Sif has a rotation of coffee shops she likes to frequent, different places that help to inspire different parts of her novels, but she stays at the cafe all summer, occupying the same table every few days and ordering enough coffee and pastries that she’s afraid of what her next dentist appointment is going to reveal. The weather turns cooler so her drinks become warmer and still she hasn’t seen UATCG again and she knows that the last time she gave up on seeing him, he showed up again, but she can’t help but watch the door whenever she’s there. She gets another novel finished and then stalls on the outline of a third just before the first heavy snowfall of the year.
By this time, she’s worked up an idea in her head about him. She’s only seen him a few times, only knows the first two letters of his name, only knows that his clothing and cologne are expensive and that he has a wicked sweet tooth. Her brain fills in the rest of him, gives him a personality and it’s so, so dangerous to build up his character when she doesn’t even know his name. Still, in her mind he’s a well-to-do entrepreneur, destined to create the next big technology. Or he’s the heir to a vast empire of businesses, traveling the globe to open store after store. No matter who he is, he’s obviously wealthy if the state of his clothes is anything to go by.
When she finally sees him again, it’s been four months. Long enough that she should be over him, but his smile plays on repeat in her mind and she just keeps hoping he’ll come into the shop. The weather has turned bad again even though it’s barely into Fall, so when she steps into the shop, she stops and takes a moment to stamp her feet and swipe the snow off her hat and shoulders onto the welcome mat under her. The weather had turned bitter and it makes for truly challenging inspiration for writing, even with the promise of Christmas in just a couple months time.
“Pardon me,” a smooth voice says from directly in front of her and she barely looks up before stepping to the side to let the person pass.
And then does a double take, jaw dropping open.
It’s him.
“Oh,” Sif breathes out, a quiet exhalation of surprise that the object of her almost year long obsession is standing in front of her. He’s standing in front of her in that same tailored suit from the first time she saw him, his hair slightly longer than it had been then, and a devastating half-smile, half-smirk on his face. His eyebrow is inching up incrementally with every second she stares up at him, one hand still on her head where she’d been brushing snow from her beanie.
She swallows hard, hears it audibly click in her throat, and some primal, instinctive part of her brain knows she looks like an idiot. It’s that thought that kicks her into gear, her feet moving before she realizes, standing to the side to let him by. He’s as handsome as she remembers, and she’s happy to realize that she hasn’t imagined him a certain way, that he’s just like she’s been remembering all this time.
“Thanks,” he mutters once she’s moved, and strangely, a blush stains high on his cheekbones, even as the smile on his face widens. He passes next to her, close enough that the fabric of his coat brushes her and his scent surrounds her, on his way out the door.
The bell above the door has barely started to jingle when her brain kicks back online, just enough for her to blurt out her name. “Sif,” she says and she’s immediately internally kicking herself because now it’s not just the primal part of her brain that knows she’s an idiot. “Sif…is me,” she continues and then drops her gaze to the ground, embarrassed for herself. She should leave. She should walk away from him, find a back door to the cafe, and throw herself in the dumpster she knows is out back.
“Loki,” she hears instead. How she doesn’t get whiplash from jerking her head up so fast, she’ll never know. She remembers the ‘LO’ on the cup from months ago and now it makes sense. “I’ve seen you in here a few times,” Loki continues, shifting out of the way of the door as someone shimmies past them.
“Um, yes,” Sif answers, finally connecting her mouth and her brain. “It makes for a good writing background. And the coffee is decent.”
“I’ve yet to be disappointed,” he says and his eyes travel along her body in a way that makes her flush across her thankfully covered chest. “Maybe I could get you a cup?” he asks and the blush creeps higher up her neck.
“That would be…great,” Sif replies, surprising herself with how calm she sounds in contrast with how her stomach is doing flips. She’d been thinking of this man since early in the year, had built up these ideas and thoughts about him and here he is! Asking her to get a coffee! She couldn’t write a better ending than this.
Or hopefully a beginning.
Epilogue:
It turns out that pretty much every background and personality she’d thought up for the imaginary Loki in her head is wildly incorrect. He’s not a successful entrepreneur or a CEO or a pilot, but he is an heir to a fortune and really just an artist trying to make a name for himself instead of relying on his father’s.
He’s not overly romantic like she’s written him in all her stories; he is stoic and sometimes taciturn. But he loves her so much that she feels it coming off of him in waves sometimes. They don’t have a storybook romance like she writes about in her novels, but he takes her to meet his brother and they spend Christmas at his family’s estate and she holds his hand while drinking hot cocoa, so maybe it’s a little close.
They have a bunch of little fights throughout the next year and one really big one right after Halloween, but the make up is almost worth the tears and the yelling. They celebrate one year together and he takes her to the same coffee shop that they never really stopped going to and he buys her a drink and writes ‘I love you’ on the side because she’s found that he’s not as good at words as she is.
They spend another Christmas together, this time in their own tiny apartment, decorated with multicolored lights and a tree that leans a little to the right. Sif thinks back sometimes to that early spring day when she first saw him in his tailored coat with his unfairly attractive face and she’s just so glad that she got to know the real Loki.
No fictional character could come close.