Chapter Text
It happened afterwards, after the celebrations and the drinks and laughing with friends. After the reconciliation with lost siblings and getting somewhere a little safer. After far too much drink and things left unsaid still brimming between everyone, after falling into the first bed they found, a trail of clothes and bottles in their wake, after kissing and loving and holding each other firm and precious, after the glow simmered from bright burning to something more manageable, they were still tangled together, legs thrown over each other, hands aimlessly drawing patterns on whatever bare skin they could find.
Perfectly content with each other, yet lost in their own worlds, Thor traced constellations across Bruce’s back as Bruce doodled equations across Valkyrie’s thigh and she drew ancient Asgardian symbols on Thor’s chest. There would be time for actual words tomorrow. Time to give out new assignments, to plan the future and know their place within it. There would be time to figure out this tentative thing they’d fallen into, time to understand why it shone brighter than the stars that gazed in jealousy as they drifted through space.
Tomorrow they would talk, for there would be a tomorrow. The war was won and there would be an after. An after to live, to love, to do both hand in hand and in harmony. It had happened afterwards, and now afterwards they were free to find each other, to find in each other the missing pieces they had always been searching for.