Chapter Text
(Now: Vanaheimr)
Loki Liesmith, son of Laufey and son of Odin, stands with glacier-blue skin and red eyes amid the driving snow. His upper body is bare and his loins girded by steel and hide in the tradition of his forebears. From the helm grasping his bald head curve fearsome horns robust with ridges. His fingernails are as black as frostbite.
He bears no sex organs, neither navel nor nipples nor cock nor cunt, for Jötunn are a primordial race birthed from the first raw elements of a nascent universe. Young Jötnar condensate within their progenitors.
A Jötunn once and The Cask of Ancient Winters twice contended against Odin's sorcery, but neither succeeded at forcing Loki into this primitive, abhorrent form.
The Jötunn stronghold that stands before him is a mighty shadow against the grey sky, her twin towers monuments to jealous vanity from which the Jötnar survey the vast tracts of stony, bleak glacier they call "empire."
Jötunheimr this is, but it is Jötunheimr as Loki has never before seen it. Great pillars line the avenue leading to the stronghold. Each is a single column of solid rock, attesting to the inconceivable feat of the stonemasons of old carving these wonders from the bodies of mountains and carrying them to where they now stand sentry.
Loki walks the empty avenue, bright, fresh snow crunching under his bare feet. Beyond the lines of pillars stand buildings hewn from ice. Homes, perhaps, or establishments of commerce – all empty, silent and still. Their shaved surfaces boast of the considerable prowess of Jötunn architects, loath as Loki is to acknowledge it.
Now Loki comes to the stronghold's courtyard, sheltered from the wind by high walls. Dark paving stone carved with geometric designs lies revealed between snow drifts. Loki's gaze travels to the balcony where years of late he first saw his blood father. There stands upon it a regal and imposing throne framed by pristine masonry – not the decrepit, broken seat Loki remembers.
Loki must assume sloth allowed this public court to have since fallen into such disrepair.
The stronghold confronting Loki is built of stone, not ice, as eternal temple and tribute to the Jötnar's progenitor Ymir, who they call Aurgelmir. How splendid its face. Loki was on dangerous business and never studied it when he stood here before. The regularity of the ornamental carvings becomes fantastic by virtue of its complexity. Ten thousand or more square pillars have been carved into the stronghold's walls, one against another, such that what was rock appears to the beholder crystalline: halite or pyrite. Icicles bedeck its contours, glittering in the winter-grey light.
Loki's bald, ridge-marked brow narrows and he frowns, grinding his fearsome, serrated teeth. Determined to press forward though he despises his destination, he takes to the staircase leading into the stronghold's depths. It is a small entryway for a fortress so vast, but in being small offers the advantage of being defensible with a detail of as few as two Jötnar. Loki remembers the plunge of his stomach as giants poured into the closed courtyard behind him from above. Should he have been the architect in charge the stronghold's design he could have fortified it no better.
He enters into a marvelous hall. The feet of sturdy pillars stand upon the richly engraved floor. They do not reach the ceiling but instead are met by tremendous stalactites of frozen water. The columns are equal parts product of craftsmanship and feat of water. Grey light from the high, open windows gleams through them at prismatic angles.
The throne of Jötunheimr stands at the back of this hall and beside it stands a single Jötunn as slight of stature as Loki himself. The Jötunn's penetrating, red-eyed gaze holds all of the intellect Loki has ever seen in the eyes of their breed. Only in the eyes of Laufey and in mirrors has Loki measured like perspicacity. Distrust of the stranger follows instantly.
The Jötunn presents the stone seat to Asgard's prince with a flourish of his hand.
"Your throne awaits."
Loki stands defiant and sneering, a fist upon his hip.
"Let it wait forever empty. I have no desire to rule from it."
The stranger steps lightly on the frozen floor, swaying as if to music. He twirls – lifting his arms as if conducting an unseen orchestra. When he is again facing Loki he falls into the throne, sprawling there with the heel of one foot in the seat and his other leg cast wide. He drags his black nails against the arm of the mighty chair, scraping loose flecks of ice.
His gaze lies upon Loki; his penetrating attention unusually disquieting.
"The one throne which is yours by right is the one throne you reject," the Jötunn says.
Instinct warns Loki this is no Jötunn at all.
In the world of the flesh, in the goddess Freyja's hall of Sessrúmnir, Loki's body sits unconscious upon a seiðhjallur – the high, isolated terrace where he has entranced himself and left to walk the paths of the spirits.
He speaks a charm of true-seeing. In this plane of will, the air around him ripples with his words. The charm rolls from him in waves, but fails to wash the spirit free of its Jötunn form. The creature leers at Loki, its sick grin equal parts pride and malice.
Loki maintains stoicism. He did not cower before the Other, nor Thanos, nor after his defeat at the hands of the Avengers.
He does not intend to ever cower.
"You forget, whatever thing you are, that I was ennobled the legitimate ruler of Asgard – or mayhap you knew it not, and so I pardon you."
The creature holds up one finger, face still distended by that evil grin.
"That brief chapter in your history concluded with your dearest friends, your brother and your father stripping you of your kingship."
Loki does not deny it. He holds his tongue before anger misuses it.
The thing in the chair lowers its hand and leans forward, hate-filled and hungering, voice black with vehemence.
"The kindest they who adored you offered was ignominy. Imagine, then, if your public had learned of your perverted heritage. A funeral pyre they would have built for their king, and lashed you atop it. Loki – king – would have burned to death screaming."
The small muscles of Loki's brow tighten without flinching. He has worked out what manner of monster confronts him.
"I need no reminders and no instruction. Neither my recent failures nor the injustices visited upon me have so lowered my standards that I would shame myself by exerting lordship over a waste peopled by brute, cannibal serfs crystallized from the discharge of Ginnungagap at the world's creation," he says. "Better no throne at all than lord of the afterbirth of cosmogenesis."
The false-Jötunn's intensity dissipates. He slumps back in the deep stone seat. His leer gives way to ennui and for a silent minute he broods.
"You undersell your kinsman, Jötunn," he decides aloud, glint returning to his eyes. "I suspect that it is not the Jötnar but instead their native aesthetic that you detest. What they lack in cultural refinement they compensate for with their history of unchecked cruelty and violence. Must not one be clever to be truly cruel?"
Loki stands unmoved, disallowing his thoughts to follow where the spirit would lead them, but he now speaks courteously.
"For what have you brought me here, devil? What prize do you seek in turning my thoughts to Jötunheimr?"
The spacious throne room echoes with the slow clapping of the unimpressed-looking false Jötunn reclined upon Loki's forefathers' throne.
It draws itself to its feet, pretense falling away in roiling steam stinking of sulfur and serpentine, living shadows.
This devil is the crimson of crocosmia – the bright, saffron-red irises aptly, it seems, called Lucifer's flowers. Male bodied, he is cloaked in scarlet. His face is elongated to evil effect. He has ears like a bat, and his hair, the brown of dried blood, grows wild. He is eyeless. Where his eyes should be blazes an almost-blinding inner light. His mouth, like Loki's, is full of sharp teeth.
He strides forward from the throne to stand before Loki and bows in the manner of a gentleman of Europe or Asia, a formality Loki, with regal impertinence, does not return. Unconcerned and wearing a smile, the devil speaks plainly:
"The might of the great contenders for cosmic power coalesces around the Cosmic Cube hidden in your father's vaults. I would be an imbecile if I failed to cultivate as healthy a prospect as you."
Loki shakes his bald, horned head. He has been given instruction in the danger inherent if an evil spirit leads a conversation. He speaks as a prince to a supplicant – dismissively.
"You but flatter me."
"You have amounted to little these two millennia, it's true," the devil agrees. It reaches up, touching its fingertips to Loki's naked breast. When Loki neglects to recoil it steps in, canting its head, speaking seductively. "A spark of greatness, the first ember of a will indomitable, burns in you. Devils who now call themselves great in Hell have had less illustrious starts than yours."
"More flattery," Loki says, tone flat and bored.
"Flattery," the devil agrees. "But not lies."
Its exhales not the scent sulfur but the perfumes of hedonism: incense, myrrh, opium, sandalwood and clove.
Loki owns countless perfumes bottled in every conceivable container. He cannot be roused to appreciate it. On the contrary, the devil's intimacy rankles him. His face contorts with annoyance.
He is Loki, prince and sorcerer, and though young among immortals his ire is relentless.
The devil must know it, for it relents, withdrawing its touch.
"Remember it was no fault of mine we couldn't make happy conversation. Flattery comingled with lies makes for the fastest friends," it says, then produces with affected reluctance: "Your future looks bleak from where I'm standing, tainted as you are by the festering sore called love."
This Loki's quick mind latches onto. He attends the devil more closely. Seeing it has achieved his audience, the creature continues, paying closer attention to Loki in return.
"Love is the terror that one's own power should be insufficient to perpetuate the one's survival – a grasping need for succor from those least equipped to provide it. Love marries two creatures wracked with self-doubt – two sodden pieces of flotsam on a storm wracked sea – into an unmoored union bound to splinter upon the mighty shoal of a creature supreme unto itself and as such indivisible."
The challenge transports Loki worlds away. A flood of memories of entertaining guests in Odin's halls and of sitting, himself, by unfamiliar hearths is a stinging reminder he is not always the monster he now appears. It is tradition among the Æsir and Vanir for hosts and guests to test each other in battles of wisdom, posing questions about far places, historic events and the nature of being. Loki is often the victor in such contests.
Loki thinks of Thor: laughter at jokes shared, warm, calloused fingers on Loki's body, warriors together back to back amidst the melee, a relentless belief in the best Loki can be.
"In love, the fire that dries the flotsam. In love, the shipwright that joins the joints and wedges in the trenails that prove the ship watertight. In love, the oarsmen that row upon stormy waters. In love, the anchor that holds steadfast the ship that she not crash upon the shoal."
The devil sneers with annoyance in his turn. Loki wears a gloating smile.
"Now, a test of my own. I said when I took to the seiðhjallur and called the spirits: 'I seek accomplices, not masters! Which one of you will grow your glory alongside mine?' Will you wed me here today in my ancestor's home, my aims your aims, my glory yours and so, too, my failures?"
The devil raises a hand to buy stillness. Its lips peel back into a shark-toothed grin.
"You ask us, the creatures not of flesh but of will, to marry our might to yours and in matrimony contend against the Titan, Thanos. Your chance of victory is remote, so the manner of deal you seek to make is indeed the kind of gamble only devils take. Only devils glory both in the victory of their champions and their champions' deepest despair. But, Loki, called Silvertongue and Sin-Sly, you'll find no devil to aid you content only to bask in your victory. Not even the meekest among us would ally itself with you save that a debt is incurred upon which you'll owe interest."
Loki laughs. His Jötunn tongue is black behind the icy razors of his teeth. His venomously keen eyes are like two red stones.
"Already I have your advice for free. A little patience and mayhap I'll have more of you."
The devil joins Loki in laughter. An anticipatory, serpentine tongue slides over its grinning lips.
"Brag about it to the wizened Áss that salvaged you when Laufey abandoned you to the wastes if that day ever comes, for the Allfather has never had the better of Mephisto."
The devil is gone.
Where two once stood in the stronghold at the heart of Útgarðar now Loki stands alone.
The prince casts his gaze over the walls of the throne room. The snow outside has intensified. The high windows let in blizzard-white light. Shadowy, narrow staircases lead away into the heights and depths of the fortress.
Loki walks to the foot of the five stairs up to his birth-father's throne. Massive as it is, a paltry prize it would make compared to the mighty golden throne of Asgard, rich in scrollwork.
Loki declines to try the seat, but he stands a long time looking.
He opens his eyes in Sessrúmnir.
Her walls are pristine white and the ceiling above the seiðhjallur open to the sky. The seer's chair, squared under it, stands some twelve feet aloft. The curled tips of vines intruding from the roof they gild in green hang just above eye level. Sunlight warms Loki's skin, but it has rained while he was away. He brushes a wet strand of black hair from his forehead. The vines drip around him, shedding glistening beads that plink in the water-filled, carved moat surrounding the terrace. Such channels are the arteries of Freyja's plant-rich palace.
Loki descends the seiðhjallur, limbs stiff from inactivity. He began his sitting at midnight and passed through dead-haunted and faerie lands upon the journey that led him to that ephemeral mirror of Jötunheimr. He knows not if he has been gone for hours or for days.
He seeks Thor, asking the birds that roost in the palace the way, for Lady Freyja has imparted to him the charm of parlance in bird's tongue.
----
Here in Sessrúmnir open roofs are ever above. Vanir appear, by comparison, unconcerned with security. A handful of ceremonial guards, dressed in cloth, stand its halls each shift. Thor knows well the Vanir are no less warlike than the Æsir. Once, in a time long past, their well-matched races warred. Now the Vanir oft join the might of Vanaheimr with Asgard's in battle.
Contrary to Glaðsheimr, the fastness of their palace is guaranteed by the network of plant and animal life woven across dead stone. Day and night the melodies of bird's songs echo through its halls and hallways – songs rich in meaning to siði, the workers of seiðr, but to Thor only music. He sees the virtue of such a network. No doubt the soldiers of Sessrúmnir can respond to an isolated threat at full strength the more swiftly. The equally valiant warriors of Glaðsheimr man its walls at the call of Heimdall's trumpet, Gjallarhorn. The war-wary Thor has nonetheless been slow to adjust to the atmosphere of quiet peace presiding over this palace. His instincts warn him against idling hours away without thought to martial order.
He lacks not Vanir to test his strength against. Many a Vanr is strong in hamhleypa – the shifting of their shape. His opponents not only wield spear, sword, axe and lance but wrestle him as bears, wolves and boars. He does magnificent battle with them upon the surrounding field of Folkvang, leaving furrows scented of crushed grass where boots and claws dig into the soil. That is Thor's pleasure while elsewhere Loki learns of seiðr from Freya.
He has no appetite for battle, today. Loki has spent a long time sitting for wisdom and the practice of leaving his body behind is not without its dangers. Thor has retreated to a small interior garden freshly wet, its leaves all gleaming from the recent downpour, tortured by thoughts of his brother once again walking other worlds beyond reach of his help. He holds Mjölnir by her handle, knuckles white, glaring into her star-forged head of uru. At the heart of her a star still burns. Thor has been named equally formidable to Loki in magic, but subtle workings are for women and ergi, woman-like men. Thor relies on feeding Mjölnir his power and so rouses her to wondrous feats.
He never wondered until these recent days spent watching Loki hone his craft if breaking heads, carrying him through the sky and calling the storm is the limit of what Mjölnir's magic can achieve – those are questions for a rune-crafty dwarf; not a Vanr or Áss.
Loki's voice, softened with concern, disturbs his brooding.
"Bad news from home, brother?"
Thor looks to him with undisguised relief, shaking his head.
"You were long in the high seat."
Loki's eyes widen in a rare moment of undisguised wonder. His cheeks flush with color. Thor laughs; gentle laughter, and fond. Thor knows not if Loki's sudden shyness is that of a lover or an attention-hungry little brother –
No, doubtlessly it is both. Thor is still surprised how Loki comes alive with his attention.
How many years did he waste not spending it upon him freely?
Loki, drenched from the rain, black hair wet and clothes hanging heavy on him, has composed himself. His gaze shifts to the side, to the moss verdant on the stones of the little garden's waterfall. His brow narrows. He speaks, but his voice is hollow.
"It means only that I grow in power. I confess I am weary from exercising it."
Thor sets Mjölnir down beside him. He understands that Loki seeks succor, otherwise his brother would hide his troubles.
"It's more than that," Thor proposes. Loki's silence is his answer. Formidable protective instincts roused, Thor offers out his arm that Loki might sit under it. "Come to me, and share your cares."
Loki remains where he stands, but he now gives Thor his full attention. Thor has learned to read the little signs of Loki's spells of black anxiety, a vocabulary that overlaps with the dictionary by which Thor reads fear in his enemies. His lover is wracked with nervous energy and his voice is quiet:
"You know, Thor, that I am Jötunn – of that race which we despise."
This is a conversation Thor has dreaded, but left to Loki to dredge up. Loki's volatility forbids tangled inquiries. Thor thinks of Jötnar: huge brutes bristling with ice, their snarling maws full of serrated teeth, red eyes like two angry carbuncles in their faces.
If he misplaces his words Loki will spit venom until nightfall. Enduring until Loki trusts again is as explosive a contest as wrestling a Vanr.
Thor has slain countless Jötunn. He lowers his arm, for Loki will not approach him. He prays his voice can express the breadth of his sincerity.
"I know, also, that you are Loki, and Loki you have always been." His own brow knits in turn as his earnesty, difficult to express, deepens. "There must then be more to the Jötnar than I had been willing to give them credit for these two millennia past."
Nerves shatter into malice. Loki cackles, hysteria staining his cracking voice.
"Does Thor crown prince of Asgard speak, or his naivety? Like a child you believe I can overcome the cannibal history of my forebears, yet have we not seen me moved to greatest violence? Have you not seen that violence poured out upon the jewel called Midgard you so prize?"
Thor hates to see his brother like this. Loki's gaze digs for confirmation of his paranoid conviction. Malevolence pours from his poise. It is no more than a subtle line of tension across his shoulders, but Thor knows Loki too well to miss the imminent threat of violence.
He searches himself for what wisdom he has inherited, gleaned from a life in a culture of celebrated skalds. He thinks hard in silence before he speaks but when he speaks is sure:
"I have in my time been reckless, angry, domineering. I have been cruel and abusive, and I am Áss. Mayhap the blood in the veins of a man or a god is only that which nourishes and sustains the body and has no sway over the spirit – little influence over the nature of the soul enshrined within the flesh."
Loki scoffs, hungry for a fight now, moody and spoilt and purposefully abrasive.
"I'll have no philosophy from a man with a head as thick as a stone."
Thor knows the deep scars left by Thanos drive his moody paramour to sudden heights of aggression, but old habits of brotherly rivalry are stirring up his ire. He pleads for peace with a searching gaze.
"Must you keep yourself such a mystery to me? What is it that compels you to hold counsel with Loki and Loki alone?"
Loki waits a beat until he discerns he has failed to provoke the fight in Thor. He sourly relents, tension slumping from his shoulders.
"Few of the thoughts that race through my mind would be to your liking. I will not risk your displeasure when nothing may come of the speculations and schemes that circle in my mind." His voice hardens, stone certain: "The insecurities that haunt me would to you seem foolish and even insulting. You implore me for them now, but better you left wondering in chagrin than to have you incensed and demanding explanations of me."
Loki has seized victory through surrender. Thor's temper kicks like a riled bull.
Millennia passed in competitive brotherhood leave Thor loathing when Loki speaks down to him. Thor has asked again and again to be trusted with explanations of Loki's shifting moods. He has begged him for them to no effect.
His outrage that Loki decided without trying him that he could not maturely handle whatever facts sweeps aside thoughts of anything else. Anger has whet Thor's tongue into an instrument of Loki's disembowelment. Thor holds it despite the tightness at his temples and in his throat that retribution would alleviate, determined to deny Loki the satisfaction of a shouting match.
Loki makes himself sweet with widened eyes and boyish hesitance. The years melt from his face. He is timelessly innocent.
Thor grimaces and looks away. He battles to maintain his clutch upon the anger he deserves to feel at Loki's purposeful neglect and is victorious, resentment steeling him against Loki's first ploy to win forgiveness in light of losing the contest.
Loki quietly approaches him, footsteps silent on the paving stones. Thor turns a scowl on him as Loki cautiously lowers himself to the ground and sits at his side, moving with all possible care. Thor makes it no secret that he's angry enough to punch him, his hands clenched to fists. At these tension-rife junctures they are all of two hundred again – Frigga's scrapping little boys: both arrogant, the one brash and the other snobbish.
A subtle shift in body language Loki reminds him they are boys no longer, but men.
Loki first touches Thor's cheek and then leans over to press his lips to Thor's. Thor shuts his eyes and except for breathing sits statue still. Loki persists at kissing him, leaving a broader and broader swathe of skin slick with spit.
The iron knot of indifference in Thor's breast rises in temperature as Loki plies Thor with kisses. Now it's searing hot, now molten – become liquid. Now that heat suffuses Thor's chest and arousal blazes through his cock, calling on him to let bygones be.
The collapse of Thor's tensions and with them Thor's defiance announces Loki's second successive triumph; Thor's need-thick groan affirms it. He turns his head into the kiss.
Loki's hands make fast work of dispatching Thor's cloak as their mouths so pleasurably duel and next long fingers are sliding up beneath Thor's breastplate to unfasten Thor's leather trousers. Their nimble workings brush across and press against Thor's stirring cock, brief pleasures promising greater pleasure to come.
Loki pauses to whistle, his birdlike twittering answered in kind by some nearby nuthatch.
He smiles impishly as he pulls off Thor's boots and aids Thor in stripping his legs bare.
"Quite the secluded refuge you chose to fret in. There are no Vanir near to us. I'll have warning of any that approach. I am not over concerned about birds and rabbits spying me making love to your cock."
The expectations conjured by the words fill Thor with so powerful an ache of longing it's as if his breast has been pulled in half.
Thor wonders when Loki acquired his unbridled sexual prowess. How many days did Thor spend bashing opponents on the training grounds while in the shadows Loki sampled the flesh of paramours unknown to Thor?
Loki leaves Thor half naked and comfortable now that he has his brother's cock hard enough for Thor to forgive and forget. The trickster dispatches with a few of his own garments until he is clothed in but the steel, leather and fabric of his attire that flatter and reveal his narrow, muscular frame. Thor looks upon him appreciatively, yearning after the pale skin hidden by Loki's tailored trappings; already he prefers Loki dressed down.
In a forge a galaxy away Loki wrought armor engraved with the Fenris Wolf and World Serpent from the Human myth of Ragnarök. He has yet to forsake those ominous trappings; he visibly enjoys their disquieting effect on other Asgardians. Thor would prefer them discarded.
Loki's smile widens to a grin as he exults in holding Thor's complete attention and so the reins of power.
"Crawl," Loki whispers, his word a command, sprawled upon the skins of vanquished beasts strewn before their blazing fireplace. His cock lies insouciantly against his abdomen, while his long, pale thighs lay open, offering full sight of his lightly haired perineum where that soft, taut line of skin stretches between his tightened balls and the puckered flesh of his anus – a pucker shining wet with freshly and liberally applied oil.
The word burns in Thor's ears. It promises a powerful body given up to penetration; a lover assuaged, that Thor may be free with both his lust and his hands. Thor crawls. On hands and knees he covers the floor, both bare and pelt-covered, that separates them. Triumph gleams in Loki's eyes. Loki sinks back against the skins as Thor crawls over him. Thor's gaze is fierce and ravenous and Loki takes pause in breathless wonder.
Thor crawled on command, but next Loki is whimpering and cursing beneath him as Thor gives his saucy little brother a taste of his ardor.
Loki bids Thor sit upon the lip of the pool with the waterfall that feeds it coursing behind him. The lyrical cascade of the rushing water softens all sounds from beyond the garden, strengthening the illusion that theirs is a private retreat. The damp stone is cool beneath Thor's bare buttocks. His balls rest against the coarse, stony edge of his seat.
Loki pushes Thor's knees wide, making room for himself between his brother's muscle-thick thighs. He takes Thor's low-hanging, semi-aroused cock into his mouth. The organ firms and lengthens under his passionate attention.
The thunder god revels in the debauched sight of his rain-wet lover dutifully nursing the erection that soon stands high. Loki's long fingers wrap around the lower length of Thor's cock as he rises a little on his knees, and Thor shudders under Loki's cool, damp touch. It is still with some disbelief that he looks upon his little brother engrossed in pleasuring him, applying the suction of his lips and the stroke of his tongue. Loki is half-lidded eyes, slanted cheekbones and the straight, flat bridge of his nose, a high forehead and wet, black hair swept back close to his scalp as he bobs forward and back, dragging Thor's pleasure with him. He has gathered his long body at Thor's feet, knees folded beneath him, its strength undeniable and undiminished. The cool fingertips of Loki's free hand rest on Thor's inner thigh, near his knee, subtle contact as electric as Mjölnir's power crackling across Thor's skin.
His brother relinquishes his suction with a lurid slurp, Loki's eyes two pale jades sparkling with mischief that trail up Thor's armored body to savor Thor's rapt gaze.
He moves back upon the pavement to lower himself further, one hand grasping at Thor's waist, fingernails digging at his breastplate for traction. He leans down and in to take one of Thor's balls into his mouth, soaking the wiry hair growing from it in curls with his saliva as he rolls the soft testicle inside it on his tongue. He lavishes the same ministrations on the second. Thor's eyelids flicker, yearning to shut as he contends with the powerful vulnerability Loki simultaneously exposes and carnally rewards.
Thor's pulse throbs in his cock. His own fingernails scrape across the pool's stone edging as he fights off the urge to grasp a handful of Loki's hair. Loki is shrewd about the limits of Thor's patience and endurance; his affections are temporarily withdrawn, leaving Thor at the dizzy edge of orgasm.
"What a throne you'd make for me," Loki drawls as he eyes Thor's erection, smiling as if enjoying a private joke.
The licentious implications wring a deep groan from Thor.
When Thor's emotions have retreated, Loki begins to lick his way up his brother's rigid shaft, now leaking precum from its crown. Breathing heavily, Thor regards him in reverent silence.
Loki is possessed of a noble beauty, and Loki is proud: proud to be fellating his older brother's cock, a fact all but incomprehensible when Loki invested so much so violently in asserting his independence. Pride and confidence firm each purposeful, ostentatious stroke of Loki's tongue. This gentler demand to be seen overwhelms Thor with as much emotion as Loki's rebellion.
Thor can only barely grasp how beautiful Loki is to him and that what they share is real. Loki's earlier transgressions are all but forgotten.
Thor murmurs his brother's name once, and once again: "Loki…"
His lover takes his cock in hand, easing it down to an angle amenable for someday taking back into his mouth.
Loki's lips slide along his length, a wet velvet caress. Each time he withdraws it is to the ridges outstanding at the bottom of its head, and then down he sinks again. Bliss overcomes Thor's every sense. The scent of water, wet plant life, and the wet leather of Loki's armor hangs in the humid air. Loki's thumb strokes long caresses along the thick, spongy flesh on the underside of Thor's erection as Loki tongues hard the underside of Thor's cock's head, stroking narrow crevasse of flesh punctuated at its height by Thor's slit from which precum flows freely.
Thor's cock spasms once in his grasp. Loki withdraws, making a shushing sound at its dusky pink crown as if soothing a child or an animal. He flicks his tongue against the slit; a tiny, torturous lick.
"You remain a cruel tease," Thor accuses, voice roughened by the deep pleasure he takes in such agonies.
"Your cock and I have an understanding," Loki says. "I'm training it up to behave in ways that please me."
"And your older brother is only an accessory to his cock?"
"An attractive accessory – never fear that you'll be forgotten."
Loki's hand strokes Thor's long shaft all the while as they banter, keeping Thor's flesh stoked to a roaring heat beneath his touch.
Another spasm beneath Loki's grasp.
"You'll be sore with me if I'm spent early," Thor warns, voice sticking.
He does not relish the thought of Loki returning to sulking. Loki is opposed to Thor coming on his face, as sweetly willing as Thor may be to lick his own offending semen off.
Loki hums in contemplative agreement. He continues humming when he has Thor's erection in his mouth again. The vibrations send Thor reeling. Now he does grasp a fistful of Loki's wet hair – clutches it in his hand to bind him to Loki while he shuts his eyes and braces his bare heels against the pavement and blazing streaks of raw, carnal sensation sear through his cock.
After a bliss-blind punctuation in consciousness, Thor is vividly aware he's flooding Loki's attentive mouth with each hot stream of cum surging up through his manhood. Each discharge leaves the empty delight of release in its wake. Loki is still humming, although he's interrupted each time he swallows, and his lips suck hard against Thor's passion-scorched skin.
When Thor is spent, his fingers uncurl from Loki's hair. He doubts not he left Loki's scalp sore, but Loki is far too self-pleased to be troubled.
Loki breathes heavily from his last exertions, which left no time for taking up air. Thor gazes on him in light-headed wonder, love effulgent in his breast. A warm smile stretches over his lips.
"A fine repast after I sat so long without dining," Loki muses, matching Thor's smile.
Thor's heart leaps to see it. He slips from the rough lip of the pool and kneels on the paving stones with his lover, taking him gently into his arms for worshipful, post-coital kisses.
Loki is his least guarded when he has wrecked Thor with passion. Thor is at his own most unguarded in the minutes after he comes. There is nothing Loki need possibly defend against.
Loki remains hard, trousers bulging with a weighty burden, but Thor has the sense to spend these rare minutes stealing a romantic interlude. Loki allows him to be free with both his mouth and his hands, to be brash in flirtation.
Thor's thumbs brush sentimental caresses across bare skin, or he straightens Loki's garments just-so; Thor grins between kisses, proud and confident; Thor is free with his strength in holding Loki close against him and he takes Loki's hand to so-suavely kiss his brother's knuckles.
Loki's embarrassment over Thor so overtly playing his lover – an artifact of the two thousand years he has been Thor's younger brother – is matched only by his pleasure with it.
Thor is, in turn, slowly learning neither to feel guilty nor to fear doing Loki harm. In time these artifacts may be left behind as forgotten relics. For now it takes all of Thor's wits to guess when Loki will embrace happy overtures and when, instead, they will come to some awkward, agitated impasse.
Thor often reflects on the first time he took Loki for himself. He remembers the muscles of Loki's shoulders; Loki clutching tightly to the rim of the bathtub; the pale mounds of Loki's ass as distorted through the water; the scent of Loki's wet hair.
He does not remember Loki's face. He did not see it.
In the heat of passion and with Loki making demands he had not realized his brother had positioned himself to guard his expression. Later Thor wondered what face Loki wore when he first drove inside him. Did Loki smile, or did he express a moment's hesitation – even a moment's regret?
Thor cannot know but wonders still, so he gives everything to flatter his little brother each chance he wins to do so. He gives everything to flatter him here in this hidden garden, today.
(Then: Asgard)
Loki feels like a little boy stealing down to the kitchens at night as he approaches his mother's chambers. She has her rooms and Odin his, king and queen sharing only their bedchamber. Loki has himself announced by a guard who returns shortly with his mother's invitation.
He thanks the guard and slips inside. Historical tapestries hang in Frigga's salon. She has much of her jewelry on display along with a dulcimer. Seated near the fire central to her room, she is brushing her hair with an elegantly crafted ivory comb that she sets aside as she rises to come embrace her son.
"Mother…" Loki hesitates to say more – to say anything at all. Instead, he stands in his mother's embrace, cleaving to her in return, unsure of himself and overcome with emotion.
Frigga holds him at arm's length, scrutinizing him with a mother's keen eye but still comporting herself with stately reserve.
"Is the Lady Freyja well?"
"She is," Loki says. He has eyes only for Frigga's careworn face.
"And Thor will be accompanying you to abide for a time in Vanaheimr?"
Loki holds his tongue, ashamed he was not the first to tell Frigga of his plans and anxious not to disappoint her further. He holds no illusions that she is anything less than disappointed in him, though with how many aspects of his conduct he does not know.
"Come and sit," Frigga commands. They return to her couch. Loki begins to relax knowing he won't soon be sent off. The stern lines of Frigga's regal face promise the reprimand soon produced: "It wounds me that the two of you chose to act like truant infants."
Loki's stomach turns, nausea rising to his throat. He looks sidelong upon his mother with desperation, his hands clutching his knees.
"Be there two children more truant in all the Nine Realms? We went into exile one after the other, and having been recovered mean to steal away."
Frigga watches him in silence. Loki sinks into deeper despair. He is granted one reprieve: Frigga looks away, retrieving her comb, and returns to stroking it through her long, blond hair. The domesticity of the scene allows Loki to relax again, hands unclenching. He cautiously sits back against the couch, attentive to the woman who raised him who he holds in such high esteem.
"Darling boys though you both were, I have never clung to nostalgia," Frigga says, her expression softening. Her eyes are the blue of storm-clouded seas. "I am pleased that you've both chosen to take responsibility for the havoc you wreaked and mean to move ahead as adult men, although it means I must let you go."
Loki can no longer maintain his gaze. He tastes bile at the back of his throat. He has dreaded for weeks what he must now ask.
"Do we sicken you?" Loki whispers, head hung in shame.
"No," Frigga says. Her voice is neither tempered with affection nor forgiveness. She speaks only truth. "It is as it must be. Now that it has come to pass I am already making my peace with it. For my part, I wish only that you were not fated to forge what you now share amidst such bitter pain."
Awash in emotion and emboldened by his mother's measured reasoning, Loki looks to her – wide-eyed – and blurts now the question he has since his origins were unveiled never dared ask:
"Have you ever wished it was me who died and not Baldur, your true born son?"
Sadness envelops the queen, but so, too, compassion. She is at such peace with what Loki has feared since the revelation unfolded she does not halt at running the comb through her hair. She looks upon her son with as much adoration as when she spoke of the reasons he was denied knowledge of his heritage over her comatose husband's bed.
"My darling. I loved you before Laufey ever conceived you."
Loki takes a deep, steadying breath, breathing his mother's perfume – hints of verbena and elderflower. He thinks of his and Thor's youngest brother, a fair haired child with an ebullient smile who followed eagerly in the footsteps of his elder siblings. As a young man – for no older than a young man he ever grew – he was ever bold in battle with a joyful fearlessness that lifted hearts.
Not the feckless brute Thor is in combat, Baldur had a certain cleverness about him that had, misguided as it now seems, convinced Loki he had a closer kinsman than the eldest brother that he often despaired to understand. Long nights they spent together, Baldur slipping into Loki's bedroom and climbing beneath the covers to listen to him spin tales half history and half fantasy while illusions spooled from Loki's imaginings into the air above them. Some nights, still, when Baldur was much too old but not too jaded for stories.
Then Surtr of Múspellsheimr made war, and brave Baldur died by fire.
Frigga speaks the thoughts that have shadowed her son's footsteps since that day:
"Loki, you have always watched over your brothers and friends and taken on responsibility for the least of their wounds, but Baldur was fated to die. Had I given you warning, he would have fallen still. That is the way of Fate."
The words offer scant succor.
Contemplative, Loki dares now to trespass upon topics left unremarked upon for a lifetime.
"What is it you see of the future, mother?"
Frigga leaves aside her comb to take her son's hand between her own. He thinks of his personal weakness at spá, the art of prophecy. It is a keenly individual weakness. He knows from his studies the Jötnar have produced great seers, particularly those Jötnar like Loki himself who the Æsir consider the more feminine in attribute.
"In the weft and warp of the Wyrd I see when lives will end and at whose hands. I see where in the future children will be born, like buds on a vine that in the fullness of time will unfurl," Frigga says. "So, then, I look upon you today and see who you shall slay and what children if any you shall sire. I know your end. Of all the living to be done in between I have only impressions." The queen bestows a quiet smile upon her son. "I knew even as a girl that you would be born and that you would bring me both joy and sorrow. I saw it in the threads the Norns have spun for you. In those sisters' tapestry, past, present and future are all one thing. My knowledge of Fate becomes no clearer with time, although we dwell now in the time in which our threads intersect."
Loki smarts with ire.
"My heart rebels that we are but thralls of the Norns."
He knows the Norns are not women. Not as mortal beings would understand it. Their names are That Which Happened, That Which is Happening, and That Which Shall Be. All the same, neither are they without consciousness.
Frigga nods, caressing Loki's hand in consolation.
"In another age of the Nine Worlds, in my girlhood, I searched for hidden knowledge by which to thwart the Wyrd and learned all too well the pain of seeing that whatever actions I took ultimately brought about exactly what I had foreseen. Yet when I bore your little brother and first held him in my arms, I loved him as I knew I would love him and finally it all became too terrible. My heart, too, rebelled."
Loki frowns, not in the least consoled.
"Yet Baldur now dwells in Hel. Your search came to nothing."
Frigga hushes her voice, speaking so softly her words can barely be distinguished from the hissing and crackling of the fire.
"No, Loki. That search bore fruit – fruit I dared not pluck."
Loki swears that but for a moment his heart ceases beating. Next he is afraid: gripped by such a terror that he hardly dares breathe.
A simple truth becomes clear to him. He, too, whispers:
"You would not reveal such a thing to me unless you hate what you have foreseen for me more than you hated the death of my fair little brother."
Frigga is stoic, betraying nothing, and yet nothing more need be said. She speaks her secret, instead:
"The Tesseract is alive, yet in no way connected to the Wyrd. That's why, six hundred years ago, I urged your father to entrust it to human hands. I foresaw so much death upon that small planet. It resulted, ultimately, in the 'Avengers' your brother speaks so highly of. Now it is we who most need it."
Loki swallows around the fear that is a cold lump lodged in his throat. He rests his own hand atop the hand which covers his, the faintest nod marking his comprehension. A sadness he cannot name comes upon him.
"I hope never to disappoint you again."
His mother smiles, love alone in her ancient eyes.
"You and your brother are more precious to me than I can ever express."
No statement of faith, this.