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Loki came home after a week of negotiations in Alfheim and found his husband kneeling in the dirt, planting roses.
He cleared his throat politely, but Thor ignored him, patting down some soil and inspecting a leaf with a singular focus.
Loki forced himself not to twitch, or shuffle his feet, or feel like a berated schoolboy.
“Husband,” he said.
Thor did not reply, only shifted his gaze to another rose, running dusk-blue fingers up the delicate cusp of its red blossom. Loki spared a moment to marvel at the delicacy in Thor’s touch. He always handled fragile things with such grace.
But Thor was still ignoring him.
Loki held in a sigh, cursed himself, and murmured, softly, “Beloved, please.”
Thor’s fingers finished their gentle trail across his roses, and finally he turned his gaze away from the flowers and instead glanced up to the heavens—perhaps asking his ancestors, as he always did, how he’d gotten stuck with such an insufferable husband—and then attempted to heave himself up off the ground.
Loki winced, but bit his tongue and simply watched his pregnant Jotun husband hold an arm under his belly and slowly rise to his feet.
“Husband,” Thor greeted finally, turning to look at him. His red eyes glimmered with leftover frustration, even contempt, but there was warmth there, and it filled Loki with relief.
Gods, Loki had missed him.
“You’re still in your travelling clothes,” Thor observed, when Loki said nothing, not having finished taking fill of his husband, standing whole and hale in front of him, and his pregnancy, nine moons waxing, and their child, safe in the womb of his bearer.
“I came here straight from the Bifrost,” Loki said.
“I can see that,” Thor said, then finally relented and held his arms out for Loki. “Come here, you dolt.”
Loki didn’t need telling twice. He closed the space between them and pressed himself into Thor’s arms, melting with relief at the embrace his husband folded him into.
“Beloved,” he sighed, and felt Thor’s arms tighten.
“It was awful, wasn’t it?” Thor said.
“It was,” Loki agreed, muffled against the skin of Thor’s shoulder.
“If you had listened to me...” Thor said, and Loki nodded in agreement.
“I know,” Loki said, pulling away slightly to look at Thor in the eye. He couldn’t help but lay a hand on Thor’s cheek, and felt relief swell in his chest when Thor pressed into the touch. “How can I make amends?”
“No more off-realm trips alone,” Thor said, immediately.
“Yes,” Loki agreed. The trip to Alfheim had been unbearable, in any case, without Thor by his side. A week of sleeping in a large, empty bed, without the furnace of his frost giant husband to keep him warm. A week without Thor’s sharp mind and sharper tongue to cut through the haze of political discussions. It had been stubbornness, only, that had kept him from going home halfway through the week.
“I need you here,” Thor said, plainly. He sighed and placed a hand on his round belly. “We need you here.”
Loki swallowed, throat suddenly gone tight. He nodded, and pressed a hand on top of Thor’s. He tucked his face into the crook of Thor’s neck and pressed a kiss to his skin, feeling the ridges of Thor’s kin-lines against his lips.
Thor accepted it for the apology it was, and pressed a kiss in response to Loki’s forehead.
--
“I thought there must be something,” Loki said, shedding his outer coat in the privacy of his and Thor’s shared rooms. “Some sort of cocktail of hormones and emotions, or some deep and ancient Jotun seidr, something that made it unbearable to be apart. I spent all my free time in Alfheim’s libraries, trying to figure it out.”
“That is a very strange way to say that you missed me, husband,” Thor said, from where he was laying on his back on the bed, a bowl of strawberries perched on his round stomach. Beside him was a pile of letters from his family in Jotunheim. He was holding one to his face, eyes wandering over the large, sprawling handwriting that must have been Helblindi’s.
Loki paused in the act of hanging his coat in the wardrobe, letting Thor’s words sink in.
“You didn’t even consider that, did you?” Thor asked, sounding amused.
Loki refused to turn around, taking his time to smooth out his coat and linger on its dark green color. Thor was right, of course, but Loki could barely understand the breadth of emotion his husband brought out in him. He loved Thor. He knew this. But to feel so helplessly adrift without him...
“For someone so intelligent, you can be very foolish,” Thor said.
Loki sighed, and turned around.
Thor was grinning around a strawberry, bright red, swollen with ripeness. Like Thor himself, Loki thought, and had to suppress a shudder. Thor bit down on the fruit, deliberate. He chewed and swallowed, keeping his eyes locked with Loki’s. And damn him, Loki could feel himself beginning to blush.
“Come here,” Thor said, putting the bowl of strawberries away, and Loki was helpless to obey.
“I did miss you,” Loki said, lifting a leg to kneel on the bed and hover over Thor. His hand drifted over to Thor’s stomach, and he met Thor’s eyes, asking for permission. The child was as much his as it was Thor’s, but he knew he would never comprehend what it was to be a bearer. Knew that it was something near-sacred, for the Jotun, to bear young.
In response, Thor took his hand and placed it on his swollen belly, and a gentle humming thrill ran through Loki.
“Welcome home, beloved,” Thor said, pressing a hand to Loki’s jaw and guiding his head down into a kiss.
Finally, Loki thought, a sense of utter calm and contentment washing over him.
“You have that dazed look about you,” Thor said, smug, when they pulled away.
“Hormones,” Loki said, just to be contrary. “Jotun sorcery.”
“Love,” Thor laughed, cupping the back of Loki’s neck and bearing him down onto the bed to curl up against him.
Loki closed his eyes and tucked his face into the crook of Thor’s neck while Thor read his letters, humming as he chewed on strawberries and sucked their juice from his fingers.
Eventually, Loki fell asleep with his hand resting on Thor’s stomach, and Thor’s hand on top of his.
It was very good to be home.
--
“Loki? Loki.”
Loki blinked, setting his tea down a tad too hard and sending it sloshing against the sides of his cup.
It was late afternoon in Frigga’s gardens, and sunlight pooled into their cups and saucers like melted honey. One section of the garden had been cleared for Thor, who showed a penchant for growing plants that Frigga was only too happy to cultivate.
Loki’s eyes kept slinking over to Thor’s roses, blooming heavily on their bushes, unfurling still-happily with no regard for the arriving autumn chill.
Beside him, Frigga reached out to stroke his wrist.
“Your head is off somewhere else today, my son,” she said, smiling serenely.
“I apologize, mother,” Loki said, inclining his head. “I’m...it’s only...”
“Are the preparations all ready for your trip?” she asked, peering knowingly at Loki as she brought her teacup to her mouth for a sip.
“Yes, everything’s been prepared,” Loki said. The palace staff were always efficient, and most of their belongings had been packed and sent off ahead of them through the Bifrost.
“It’s quite cold in Jotunheim this time of year,” Frigga said, mildly.
“The fact has been made abundantly clear to me,” Loki said, dry. “But all preparations have been made, and we’re bringing the coats you wove us. Thank you for those, by the way. They’re wonderful.”
“Of course. If we can’t personally be there for the birth of your child, at least I know we can keep the little one warm.”
“Warm,” Loki muttered under his breath. Warm in Jotunheim, the land of ice and frost. His husband’s realm, and the place that would be home for the next six weeks as Thor gave birth and then recovered from his pregnancy. It had been non-negotiable from the start, that Thor would bear their child in his own home, and that he and Loki would stay there with their newborn for the next few weeks.
It was not an unreasonable request, and Loki was generally loathe to deny his husband anything, but the whole idea still filled him with apprehension.
“He’s going to want to come back, you know,” Frigga said, pouring herself more tea.
“Of course he is,” Loki said, his thumb restlessly stroking the rim of his teacup.
“In any case, you should ask him about it yourself,” Frigga said, nodding to a point over Loki’s shoulder. She rose gracefully, squeezing Loki’s shoulder. Whether it was reassurance or a reprimand, Loki wasn’t quite sure.
She and Thor met halfway, and Loki watched as his mother and husband greeted each other cheerfully, spoke for a few moments, and then parted.
He got up out of his chair as Thor neared, and pulled out a seat for his husband.
Thor rolled his eyes but thanked Loki with a kiss to his cheek.
Loki sipped at his tea as Thor buttered his scones and ate them in two bites each, finishing off the basket of pastries in the middle of the table. His appetite had waned at the start of his pregnancy, and Loki had fretted over it for months. Now, Thor was pleasantly plump in the face—and in the thighs, and hips, and, well, everywhere. It was, Loki admitted only to himself, a bit of a distraction.
“You’re blushing,” Thor said, around a mouthful of muffin.
Loki cleared his throat, but didn’t demur.
“Looking forward to going home?” he asked instead, reaching for the teapot and pouring himself another cupful.
With a contented sigh, Thor leaned heavily against his chair, patting his stomach and brushing crumbs out of his beard.
“I’ve missed Jotunheim,” Thor said, sounding wistful.
Loki eyed a spot of jam on the corner of Thor’s mouth, and inevitably gave in to the urge to wipe it off with the pad of his thumb.
“I’m sorry we haven’t been able to visit before now,” Loki said. He wiped his thumb off with a napkin instead licking it off himself, and gave himself a pat on the back for that show of self-control.
Thor waved a hand dismissively.
“We were busy,” he said. “And the early months of my pregnancy were...difficult.”
Loki had to agree, though he didn’t say it out loud. Thor was better now, safer as the time for him to give birth drew closer—safer as the child grew well enough to survive outside of his bearer’s womb—but Loki still hadn’t shaken off the fears from those first few months.
“My brothers were probably happy to get a break from me,” Thor said as he picked the teapot off the table, and, finding it empty, swiped Loki’s teacup instead, and gulped down his tea.
“Something’s bothering you,” Thor said, after setting Loki’s tea down. “You didn’t even pretend to be angry with me for that.”
“Perhaps I’ve simply grown accustomed to your thieving ways,” Loki said.
“I’ve gotten predictable,” Thor said, nodding gravely. “Have you grown bored of me, husband?”
“Never,” Loki said, too sharp. He winced as soon as he said it, and Thor frowned, placing a hand on top of Loki’s.
“It was a jest, beloved,” Thor said, rubbing his thumb along the mountain range of Loki’s knuckles. “Tell me what’s wrong, Loki.”
Loki winced. Thor was getting eerily good at reading him, which, in any other situation, with any other person, would have horrified him. Instead, it only made him feel warm, which was horrifying in itself.
“It’s about Jotunheim,” Loki admitted.
Thor didn’t even have the decency to look surprised.
“It’s going to be fine, you know,” Thor said, steadily. “I know everyone says it will be too cold this time of the year, but it will also be beautiful.” His eyes took on a shine, and Loki’s heart ached.
“I’ll show you the gardens,” Thor continued, “and the North Tower, and the South Tower, and the—well, there are a lot of towers and they’re all beautiful. The sun never rises during the Bracing, but the aurora snakes through the sky for the whole season. I never get tired of it.”
As Thor talked about his home, Loki felt his heart sink lower and lower. He felt like a monster for having kept Thor away from Jotunheim for almost a year, now.
“—and I’m sure Helblindi and Byleistr will be happy to show you—”
Loki placed a hand on Thor’s and leaned in to kiss him.
“Thank you,” Loki said, against Thor’s lips, “for reassuring me.”
Loki felt Thor’s mouth curve into a smile.
“It will be wonderful,” Thor said. “You’ll see.”
--
It was wonderful, was the worst thing about it.
Loki had gone to Jotunheim once, sneaking in through one of his secret ways and ending up somewhere far removed from the capital, a remote forest that he learned was called the Ironwood. It had been a harrowing journey, not made any easier by his meeting and subsequent entanglement with Angrboda—but that was in the past.
Now, with Thor by his side, Jotunheim took on a new light.
For a given definition of light, anyway. Jotunheim during the Bracing, the deepest of its winter, was in perpetual twilight.
“The sun is below the horizon,” Byleistr explained, after Loki had expressed his fascination. “But the light is scattered by refraction in the upper atmosphere—” Byleistr raised a hand to gesture to the sky, and Loki followed it.
By the end of the first day, Loki’s neck was so sore from being craned upwards that Thor had brought him to the healers for a tonic, barely able to stop himself from giggling at the predicament.
As much as there was to see in Jotunheim’s sky—stars, brighter and clearer than Loki had ever seen; the aurora, twisting and rippling like a snake; the twin moons hanging heavy and proud over their dominion—Loki knew there was more to see on the land. In the water. That bright and luminous ocean, Aurgelmir, which not even the Jotun had been able to circumnavigate.
“You’ll have to come back to see it all,” Helblindi said, with a pointed look at Loki, who hastily agreed. Thor, sitting beside him at the dinner table, coughed politely into a napkin.
They could not wander far from the palace, though that in itself was a wonder that Loki could spend months exploring. The valaisin , Jotunheim’s House of Light, the home of its Royal Family, was said to be spun (as Thor relayed in a sing-song voice) of sunlight and snow and salt and seidr —it shone with an intrinsic light, even in the darkest of nights.
And to go with Jotunheim’s eventide beauty was its expanse. There was freedom in its vastness, its unknown borders, that called to a part of Loki that he had long denied himself.
Waking up tangled in Thor every morning was the only thing that kept him from bursting into feathers and flinging himself into Jotunheim’s clouds.
“Maybe after the child is born, dear,” Thor told him placatingly, knowingly, after Loki had expressed, haltingly, his strange urge.
“Of course,” Loki said, blushing in the cold, and stepped off the balcony into Thor’s embrace.
“I might even join you,” Thor said, bending so that Loki could press a kiss to the tip of his horn. Even then, Loki had to go up on the tips of his toes, which he did with no embarrassment.
“I would not go without you,” Loki said, firm, as he steadied himself on his feet, and Thor beamed, and kissed him on the mouth.
There was freedom, also, in Loki’s role here: which was to say, that he held none.
Here, he was relieved of any royal duties, Asgard loathe to be involved in Jotunheim’s political affairs. He was in Jotunheim not as a prince or a diplomat, but as Thor’s consort.
His duties largely involved reading books by a roaring, seidr-fueled fire, and giving Thor footrubs.
It was, unfortunately, entirely to his liking.
“We should never leave,” Loki sighed, melting into a rug that used to be the skin of some unfathomably large beast. It felt like a cloud.
“Who knew you would be so well-suited to a life of indolence,” Thor laughed, spooned up behind Loki.
They had had too much wine with dinner tonight, something sweet that went down all too easily. Loki had realized halfway through a bottle that the alcohol was much stronger, to make up for the Jotnar’s much larger constitutions. He’d finished the bottle anyway.
“I was worried you wouldn’t want to come back to Asgard with me,” Loki murmured, tongue loosened by inebriation, by relief, by the feeling of Thor’s lips pressing into his hair. “I didn’t think I’d be the one wanting to stay.”
“You—” Thor made an incredulous noise against the back of Loki’s neck. “You thought I wouldn’t want to go back?”
Loki shrugged.
“You could barely survive a week in Alfheim without me, but you thought I’d be fine being apart from you?” Thor didn’t sound amused. In his alcohol-induced haze, Loki fought to grasp some understanding.
“I only meant—that is—if you wanted to, to stay in Jotunheim—I would let you.” Loki’s heart pounded in his ears, too loud, as Thor went stock-still behind him.
After what seemed like an eternity, Thor moved, only to pull away from Loki, leaving him cold despite the roaring fire.
“You would let me,” Thor said, bitter.
“That wasn’t what I meant,” Loki groaned, fighting to sit up.
“Then tell me what you mean tomorrow, when you’ve sobered up from sleeping on the floor,” Thor said. “I’m going to bed.”
“Thor,” Loki sighed, but Thor was already leaving, wobbling away.
Loki fell back on the rug, feeling deeply, drunkenly distraught. Thor was only in the other room, he knew, but even that distance seemed impossible.
“I’m a damned fool,” Loki muttered to himself.
Sleep, when it came, was little comfort.
--
Loki was woken up in the middle of the night by a loud cry.
He jerked upright, disoriented, but another cry cut clear through his confusion.
That was Thor. Thor was crying out loud like that.
Panic spilled over Loki like a bucket of ice water. He stumbled to his feet, tearing through to the other room.
Thor was on the side of the bed, bent over, one hand clenched into the sheets, another under his belly.
Fear gripped Loki, choking him.
“Get back on the bed,” Loki barked, frozen on the spot. “I’ll call a healer. Stay.”
Thor panted, nodding, eyes squeezed shut.
“It’s going to be okay,” Loki said, even as he turned to go.
Thor only let out a pained gasp in response.
Loki sprinted out of the room.
--
Loki all but collapsed against Thor’s side when he was finally allowed to see his husband and their child.
Thor’s labor had not been overly-long, but every minute apart from him passed by with aching slowness. Loki’s nerves were frayed, as if someone had dragged a saw through them, and he felt delirious with it, near-hysterical as he listened to Thor cry out from behind a door he was not allowed to enter. He wanted to burn it to the ground, wanted to go to his spouse and comfort him, and it was only Helblindi’s large hand on his back that stopped him.
“Thor is strong,” Byleistr said, though his face had taken a green turn after a particularly loud cry from his brother.
“I know,” Loki said, all but snapping. “I know,” he said again, softer, and tried not to shake.
Here on Jotunheim, they called matched pairs mates. It made Loki feel like some sort of prowling animal, anxious about the state of his consort and child.
Hormones, Jotun sorcery.
Love.
Whatever it was—you know what it is, Loki snapped to himself—it caused Loki's heart to nearly stop at the sight of Thor, eyes closed, body slack, holding their child to his breast.
“Loki?” Thor rasped, voice hoarse, and Loki found he could breathe again. Thor's hand lifted feebly from the bed, and Loki strode over to enclose it in his own.
“I’m sorry,” Loki said voice too loud in the quiet healing room, not caring if the whole room could hear. “I was a fool. I’m sorry. I could never be apart from you—I couldn’t bear it. I love you. You must know this.”
“You are a fool,” Thor sighed. “One that I have the misfortune of loving entirely.” His eyes opened, and Loki could have wept at the fondness he saw there. “Say hello to your child.”
Loki closed his eyes as he took in a shuddering breath, and felt tears roll down his cheeks. He leaned over and carefully pressed a kiss to the child’s blue forehead, warm and soft under his lips. The child yawned, face contorting delightfully.
“Beautiful,” he whispered, and then pressed a kiss to Thor’s forehead as well. “The both of you.”
“No more talk of being apart,” Thor sighed, though there was a hint of steel to it.
“Never,” Loki promised, gripping Thor’s hand tight.
--
They extended their stay in Jotunheim for another month. Loki sent a raven to his father with a letter that explained the change in schedule, but did not ask for permission.
To his credit, Odin sent back a raven bearing only a golden apple for their child, who as yet did not have a name. The name would come at the proper time, Thor had said. He hadn’t had a name until he was a century old. Loki supposed that darling and love and sweetheart would suffice for now.
Loki returned to their rooms, apple in his hand, with the idea of presenting it to Thor, but when he arrived, both child and bearer were sleeping, nestled into each other. Loki left the fruit on the table by the bed and tucked himself on the other side of the newborn, relishing in the tiny bonfire of warmth the little one gave off. So very much like his bearer.
In a few weeks, Jotunheim’s twilight would give in to the Thawing, and with the melting ice would come months of endless sun. Loki would miss the deep, dusky days as much as he looked forward to greeting the morning. In Asgard, Thor’s roses would give in to the winter, but there would be bulbs left over to see the spring.
There was never any need to choose, Loki realized, his thoughts slow and syrupy as sleep crept up on him. He only had to give himself in, wholly, and Thor would be there, by his side, through darkness and sunshine both.
It had been a year since their marriage. Loki looked forward to the centuries to come.