Work Text:
There was something haunting in the air, cold and deliberate, like a spider crawling along a web. Blue opened to the darkness, mind waking from a slumber not quite so tranquil. Distantly, he wondered if there was still ash in the air, still sobs in quiet. Were there still people mourning those lost, stolen from the world in a prime? The ceiling above was swirling and swimming with black, with darkness. What time was it?
The resounding snap echoed with the blink of his eyes. Over. Over. Over. That same cold tone, the sharp click as a body in his hands vanished, as he was knelt on the cold dirt with empty palms, shouting to the skies the name that haunted him still. That name still haunted him. That echo, that snap. He blinked in the shadows, watched the swirls and sways of the darkness dance over the ceiling like a macabre ballet. Snap. Snap. Snap. He should have gone for--
His breath caught, heart halting its race as chilled fingers touched his rapidly heating skin, as they settled to his flesh and coursed up his chest, bare and scarred, scuffed from battles and wars waged. Paint chipped nails crawled like spider legs, moved with the same slow, deliberate chill the air held. His eyes closed under the ministrations, a silence steady in the inky black. The cold drew up, danced along a throat, a jaw scruffed with blond, along a cheek with scars and marks to match a chest, into the short of blond atop his head. He found he liked it cut. A wrist wrapped beneath his chin, a hand cupped behind his ear, and a cold touch placed itself to his shoulder, above a scar adopted from childhood, when a sparring match turned ugly and Baldur's rage sent a blade through his skin.
Eyes opened again, gaze upon the ceiling once more, lost in the ebbs and flows of the shadows. Then, a voice. Whispers, slithering like an invading snake, poisoning his mind... or perhaps cleansing it. Venom with no fatality, but life instead. A serpent that healed. The whispers washed through his mind, cleaned his thoughts of the foulness that lay residual beyond his dreams, and by the time those lips touched his skin again, to the underside of his jaw, he was alert, aware. In the shadows, his gaze fell from the dark-whipped ceiling to green clouded by night. "I did not mean to wake you," he murmured, voice no louder than a whisper, quiet enough to keep the dead long asleep. Distantly, he begged the Norns to grant that goal.
"Do not be ridiculous," hummed a voice as tender as the kiss laid just before its fall. Another hand coursed much the same as the first, inching along his chest with pointed nails, careful in its path, "I was awake long before you." And that seemed enough reason for him to move. An arm rose from its sleep-settled placement across his middle, slipped beneath a lithe frame, under the narrowness of a shoulder across the backs of the blades. His fingers curled around an arm, pulled, and in he drew that frame. In that body moved, welcomed by that arm, wanted by its owner. They settled in the closeness and his eyes fell shut once more, willed the darkness to swallow his mind and slip him back to a peaceful sleep. Perhaps he’d dream of gold and gardens. Wildlife, fauna, clouds that shrouded the sun, puffy and white, and children that played through crystalline waters. Soft petals that fluttered in the wind, picked peonies brought home, carried up steps to a waiting hand. Smiles and laughter. Joy, delight, home .
His eyes opened again to the shadows that danced, to the body settled against him, a head on his breast and hands just below. Spider-leg fingers stroked across scars, traced the marring of his body, aged by wars, by invaders. Intruders in lands that were not their own. Nor were they his, some. But that was of little importance; it always would be, so long as the ash was gone and the tears no longer fell. For him, some nights, they still did. He suspected they always would.
He felt that fear mount again, the worries that this was naught more than an illusion, that the body that began to move at his side was his mind wishing for what he had lost. Perhaps the war was still being waged, still ongoing. The ash, still falling. His friends, still mourning. All that still lived believing this, all of this , the end. Maybe this was nothing more than a dream. This was his mind playing tricks, wishing him to believe what was never real as just that. But that lithe frame had a difference of opinion. Didn’t he always? Even in their youth.
Tendrils of green melted into sun-stroked flesh, lit the room in its shade, and for a moment, he believed this no illusion. Perhaps that was the naivety of his blood, forever infecting him. His own hands settled at a waist, a lean body settled atop his own. “Many a night,” one hand began an ascent, “I fear I will wake,” smoothed over a rib-poked side, “and find my bed void of you,” and curved around until fingertips could dance over each bump bump bump of a spine. He expected quiet, perhaps a simple insistence that he was a fool, bull-headed as always. Instead, a chuckle. Light and soft, no doubt twisting a steady face into a grin, albeit slight. He could feel the weight over his chest fade, just enough to offer a flutter across his heart.
A kiss to the underside of his jaw and the fluttering blew to butterflies, all flying from him by the graces of green. Wisps and orbs, both as beautiful as their creator, their captor. "Need I remind," that voice hissed, no true heat beneath its softly spoken words, "that I am no conquest. You do not own me. If I wished to leave," a nip and a breath, a squeezing hand at a hip bearing bruises in privacy, "I would."
"But you do not," he countered, and back that body pulled, sharp as the crack of a whip, as though he was struck by the force of the blond's words. There was no worry that passed then, no fret over his words as he would in his youth, as he had , countless times before. Those narrowed green no longer frightened him, no longer plagued him with the certainty he would wake alone, for that was the past. His certainty lay in the curious tilt of a calculating head, in the way those greens studied him like a novel, searching for hidden meaning and untruths. The hands that did not leave his skin, the wisps that did not diminish. His certainty was not of waking alone, but of waking to a vow unbroken. In essence, the same. "You speak a fool," the words spat out should've stung, but he was not one so easily wounded, not by the mouth that uttered such cruelties. Instead, they warmed. They warmed more than the furs of Asgard, the heats of Muspelheim. They warmed in a way only obtained by the adoration that swam in ocean blue. "Aye," he agreed, a hand drifting from a lean back to a face shrouded by curtains of black. "A fool smitten with a cruel prince."
A hand swiped quick as a flash, captured before nails could dig into tanned flesh and a palm could crack against scruffy skin. Broad fingers wrapped 'round a lithe wrist, held the spasming appendage in place as fury-laden green paired with the calm storm of blue. Beard-wrapped lips curled up, warm and inviting, like an embrace to an old flame. That captured wrist was drawn, then, up-ticked lips pressing a phantom peck to the lines of a chilled palm. His eyes never retreated, never tore from the green watching him so intently. "I long for thee, in my slumber." The fire of the green doused ever so slightly, silence from thin lips. "For thy touch, thy breath, thy voice." The sharp curl of clawed fingers loosened, laxed in the grip of a lithe wrist. "I want all that I once was deprived of."
"You have all that you were once deprived of," the voice cut in, quiet and slow, calculating, waiting for the insult or the jest. He despised the moments like this, the quiet that followed, the warmth in the words. The way his heart would flutter behind his ribs, would wish to grow wings and flit away. He despised the way he melted under such kindness, under such truth . In all his days, in every instance, in every blessing the Fates handed his way, he was brought back here. Back to a bed, to thin sheets and a thinner wall each time over. At first, it was thick as the thunder only the blond could control. And then... it became paper-thin. Tearable, if the hands responsible wished him bound until the end of days. He despised him. Utterly loathed the man beneath him.
"Aye. In my deprivation lingered fear," coiffed brows tangled at the words, studied the face spitting them as though they dared to be truth, "and in my fear, bred hatred. For all that I had lost, for all that I would never hold again."
"You speak in riddles," he murmured, confusion lacing the green of his eyes. "Nay," the response was quick, certain, and silence reigned momentarily. "You hear in riddles," he released that captured wrist, another kiss to the tips of cold fingers to cement his words, "but I speak in truth. I longed for many moons to embrace again. If I am a fool, I shall embrace such a title. A King and a Jester, stood hand in hand, a Queen to checkmate."
Thin lips tugged up, then, the phantom echo of a chuckle on them. "You do not know the rules of Chess."
"Nay," a smile reigned then, bloomed over scruffy skin as though a ray of the sun had filtered in and plastered itself upon his face, "a truly dreadful hobby, that." Laughter rained then, quiet, morning-soft and it seemed everything melted. Soft hands coursed across his chest and a frame lowered to meet a broad grin. Before he granted pass, allowed the press of a familiar mouth to his, an echoed whisper fell from his lips. A promise, born of their youth, sworn in the ears of the Fates. "I love you."
A smile shared between, lips fell and breaths were exchanged. Hands grappled and grabbed, pushed and tugged until raven hair blossomed over the body-warmed sheets below, until it was a broad frame that curtained a lithe body. Hands at wrists, a mouth in a lean throat, gasps of a name on kiss-red lips. "And I, you," the three words fell in a breathy sound, bouncing from the walls like they were wrapped in rubber. Teeth bit at a neck, remarked skin healed by the same green wisps tendril-wrapped around his flesh, flickering across him like fire-less flames, wishing to burn him but unable.
The trio of words came again, later, a hum in the night. A kiss to his shoulder, to the same scar on the back, just above the blade, just out of range of true damage. They echoed, mirrored in a voice not his own, and scruffed lips drew up as an arm wrapped 'round, pulled down. He was a fool. A madman that fought through hordes and hung above pits of flame and fire with a single desire, a single goal; to lay as he did, to feel wisps of chill in his skin, to hear hums of contentment beside him. That snap still echoed, pounded in his head like a hammer beating at his skull, longing to break through, to reenact and reinstate all that was once done, all that was reversed.
Yes, the snap echoed. It replayed. The words of warning, the emptiness of his hands and the void in his chest, the scream he gave to the heavens and the pleas he made to the Fates to right whatever wrongs he had committed to deserve such madness, such pain.
But lain there, a long arm around his back, softening breaths in his side, it didn't matter if he woke again in the night to those words, to the sobs and the pain that a name unforgivable brought to so many. If he relived the fire and flame that consumed all he knew, all he loved, it wouldn't matter. Not once his eyes opened to the truth. Not once those fingers slipped over his flesh and drew him from his mind. Not once he heard the gasp of his name and the declaration that followed.
Not once Loki confessed - "I love you, too."