Loki and Thor find a private place in the far gardens
see more spring prompt fills
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Idunn’s orchard was marked off-limits to them as children, though that did not mean they did not enter the grounds. One of the earliest memories Loki could recall involved sneaking inside the orchard along its oldest edge, where the trees had been retired from the annual harvest.
Thor had led the way, of course, for he could be relied upon to find the necessary motivation to commit such a crime. Initially Loki had gone with him because he did not wish to leave his brother alone; in the years that followed, however, he found he enjoyed the illicit taste of trespass, and often took the initiative himself. But for now he followed as they climbed the far wall, its broken mortar offering easy footholds in the stone. Thor dropped onto the distant side, then held up his hands in preparation of catching Loki once he jumped down as well.
Wiping dirt from his hands onto his trousers, Loki rose to height and surveyed the grounds around them. It was early morning yet, the fog of dawn having not yet been burned off from the earth. Cool white light filtered down through the trees, dappling the tangled grass below. Idunn kept the main grounds studiously trimmed and clean, but the old grounds she considered having earned their time, and left nature there to grow as it would.
Around them grew the thickest, most gnarled versions of the orchard. Idunn was known for her golden apples, though here it became clear her preferences extended beyond attending to their horticulture alone. Overhead the crowns of the trees grew crowded and low, their separate branches all interwoven with each other. Loki reached up to one such branch, and plucked a pale white blossom from its nest amid the budding leaves. He sniffed it, then tossed it away when Thor laughed at the soft gesture.
“Come this way,” Thor told him, waving toward a low tangled wall separating the rows. Together, they crouched and climbed through they heavy curtain of blooming ivy, and fell out onto open earth on the other side.
A smattering of silverbacked birds squawked and separated at their arrival, flying up through the spots of morning light. Pale pink blossoms showered down from where their wings brushed the branches, painting the ground in a gentle fall.
Thor rubbed his dewy hands against his knees. He pointed up ahead and shook Loki’s shoulder, as if Loki could not guess which point interested his brother so.
Ahead, in a bright circle within the old trees, grew a blondewood tree far wider than it was tall. Its thick branches arched and curved like the arms of a great candelabra, rising high to the clouds before curling down beneath its own weight toward the earth. Its leaves hung in painted shades of orange and gold; more than that, its springtime blossoms burst in powerful shades of blood red.
Loki approached the blondewood with jaw hanging open, his footsteps dragging behind his brother’s. Thor laughed at his clear awe. He jumped at a low-hanging branch, and plucked a ruby blossom from the branch. “Mother says this was the old line of trees, back before Idunn bred a more plentiful stock. The apples here are red, not gold. She said they tasted different too, like maple and spice.”
Loki approached the nearest branch, hanging so low its amber leaves brushed the ground. “When did she tell you this?” he asked. He did not like thinking about their mother keeping secrets from him.
Thor shrugged, as if the gesture comprised an entire answer. He rounded on the broad main trunk and, after steadying his footing, leaped for the lowest branch and clung to it.
Giggling, Thor made his way up onto the first branch, then reached around and jumped for the next highest. Loki squirmed from where he watched along the ground, taking longer than perhaps necessary to decide that he would follow his brother’s trail.
The initial branch was the most difficult, he found; having not yet hit his growth spurt, he did not have Thor’s height or strength to carry him forward. But Loki managed to find an outcrop of stone that he could use as a step atop a gnarled root, and leveraged up from there until he reached Thor’s position.
Together, they sat in the highest crook of the main trunk, staring out from beneath a curtain of garnet and gold, across a sea of blossoming pink and cream.
Thor leaned more deeply on the branch before them, crossing his arms beneath his chin. “Mother says this tree blooms for only three days a year. Of the blossoms we see, less than a tenth will produce an apple.”
Loki liked how his brother had settled firmly against his side. “Hard to believe we survived at all, with this breed once as Idunn’s main supply.”
Laughing, Thor nudged him with a shoulder. Loki rolled his eyes and mimicked his brother’s position. Leaning forward, they returned their attention to the morning view, both swinging their legs in the open air.
It became an annual tradition of sort, sneaking into Idunn’s grounds during the three days of the blondewood’s blossoming. Loki began to look forward to it each year: the light tap on his door announcing Thor’s unusual pre-dawn arising; the silent shuffle between their rooms as they readied for their trek. They got good enough at sneaking into the orchard that Idunn only caught them half the time, and of those times she scarcely managed to reach them before they outran her wild screaming.
A well-beaten path formed between the palace woods and the ancient orchard over those years, and Loki would have been happy for the pattern to continue always. Thor and he shared a secret ritual, only that carried meaning only for themselves. The place had earned a hallowed quality with each morn that passed within it.
Until Sif ruined everything.
“What are you doing?” Sif called after them on an otherwise unremarkable year, catching Thor one morning with his leg swung over the palace wall. From the other side Loki listened as Thor stumbled through an explanation, first attempting to lie and then finding he had no taste for it. Loki hissed instructions from where he stood, but Thor did not heed him. Eventually he settled for inviting Sif to join them.
As Thor thumped to the ground beside him, Loki leaned in, jeering, “Why did you do that?” But a stern look from Thor told him not to question. Indeed, the look told him to be happy that Sif would be joining them this year.
Sullenly, Loki stomped ahead through the remnants of the wood, listening with burning rage as Thor hung behind and explained to her their secret in the orchard. Loki’s anger built when Sif clearly showed little care for the privacy of the ritual she had intruded upon.
Sif scaled the broken mortar more quickly, the ivy wall with more agility—even the blondewood she climbed better than he did, for she reached the coveted seat beside Thor before Loki could dream of managing it. Loki was delegated to a lower branch, forced to listen as the two of them giggled and gasped out through the gap in the trees, and Sif’s awe became the feeling that Thor most honoured. Though he felt close to tears, Loki fought the impulse to drop to the ground and return home; he couldn’t let Sif take this from him. He couldn’t.
The next year, on the morn the brothers had marked out for their excursion, Sif stood ready at the base of the palace wall, a pack upon her back. Thor waved as he approached, his gaze caught solely upon her. Loki slowed to a plodding pace, loathing every moment of her existence.
How could she? How dare she assume she was welcome?
“I don’t think I want to go this year,” Loki announced, but with a wounded look from Thor he retracted his airy statement. Sighing loudly, he suffered the walk to the orchard behind his brother and his friend, the two of them thick as thieves as they muttered amid themselves.
The blondewood this year appeared as majestic as ever, its burnished colours shining richly in the morning light. Loki circled the base of the tree, noting the moss-covered stone he once used to launch himself into its branches.
An idea came to him, crafty and clean. He rounded upon where Thor and Sif stood chatting with each other. “Brother, might you be willing to survey a race between Sif and myself?”
Thor answered, wary, “A race to where?”
Loki pointed above him. “To the top of the tree, of course. The first one there earns the best perch; the second will have to be satisfied with sitting below.”
“It is a silly challenge,” Thor told him, fists planted upon his waist, but Sif seemed more keen.
“I think it a fine idea,” she answered, so warm Loki’s upper lip curled. “I am glad for the opportunity to share a race with you.”
Thor rolled his eyes, but he ceded to what they requested of him. He stood offside as Sif wandered around the trunk, chin upturned as she searched for which route she best preferred. Loki used his familiarity with the tree to mark out his position, taking up by the stone and the gnarled root.
Thor plucked a rock from the grass at his feet, hefting it in hand. “Start once it hits the ground.” Loki tensed in anticipation.
With a bang the rock hit the open ground, and they were leaping up the branches, racing for the top. Loki dove for the nearest branch, climbed it quick and leaped for another. He found himself ahead initially, his superior knowledge of the tree lending an advantage. But Sif was strong and agile, and made her way upward using branches Loki would have never considered holding his weight.
When she met his pace, then surpassed it, Loki caught his breath. She neatly elbowed her way onto his route, crossing from her branch onto his, ahead of him. The route to the top was clear; she was about to beat him.
Panicking, Loki reached for a branch but grabbed her flailing leg instead. In an instant, Sif dropped enough to lose her attempted hold. Her hands grasped at nothing; she fell, and together they came crashing down the tree.
Branches broke along the way, snapping beneath their combined weight. Sif yelled above the noise, reaching for him. Loki blacked out briefly upon slamming into the ground, Sif’s full weight upon him.
He woke to his brother shaking him alert, holding him half-upright. His back ached; his ribs flared with pain at every breath. Sif sat with her back against the tree, cradling an arm to her chest, favouring an injured shoulder.
At her feet, all around them, was the damage they had wrought upon the tree.
Thor surveyed him with thinned lips, brows pinched with disappointment. He appeared too worried about their injuries to properly chide Loki, though the impulse was clearly caught between his teeth.
Wolfhounds barked in the distance, coming at alert of Idunn. Thor’s attention snapped toward the sound. He pawed at Loki’s arm, clamouring for him to rise. “Hurry, both of you.” He wrapped an arm around Loki’s pained ribs, held a steadying arm out to Sif, and helped them both back over the old wall.
On the way back home, all Loki could think about, besides his aching back, was that this was the first year in more than a decade that he will miss out on the rising morn with Thor.
More than that, there were now broken pieces of the blondewood littering the grounds. They had scattered its garnet blossoms to the dirt.
Humiliated, Loki stood aside and watched when Thor paid extra attention to Sif before they departed, thanking her again for her company. With a muted frown Thor turned back to him, and with a terse, wordless wave gestured him back to their shared parlour.
Loki could feel the increasing tension between them, as heavy and relentless as the earth slamming against his back. Thor shed his soiled shirt and moved without a further glance toward his bedchamber, presumably to leave Loki for the day.
The thought of departing on such terms hit his pulse in the worst way. Before Thor could leave him, Loki blurted, “I’m sorry. For ruining the day. I never meant for what happened.”
Thor nodded at him, though his heart was obviously not in it. As he left into his room, his expression shifted into something sad.
For the remainder of the day Loki curled within his own emotions, uncomfortable with the depths to which he cared what Thor thought of him. He remained distracted and irritable throughout dinner, clearing from the dining room after barely touching his plate.
There had to be some way to make amends. If not to Thor, then for the damage done.
Loki waited in his chambers past twilight, watching the sky above the city fade to orange and mauve. When the spires of the palace shifted from gold to a burnished lavender, he gathered up a heavy spellbook from his shelf and slipped out the parlour door.
The trek to the orchard was trickier with the delicate tome in hand, but Loki managed to climb the walls and skirt the ivy without scuffing much damage into the binding of the book. He moved beneath the boughs of the blondewood and sat in the dirt amid the wilting ruby blossoms. The book he unfolded upon the tufted grass.
Quietly, with much care and concentration, Loki wove soft magics into the limp length of the broken branches around him. With seidr humming beneath his breath, he climbed the tree with branch in arm. Steadying the wounded bough against its broken base, the spell he called in a clear voice, begging for the seidr to take root.
It was too late to save the broken, sadly, though his spell seemed to stir life into the snapped edges of the main trunk. Loki dropped the dead branches to the earth, and focused instead on coaxing out the bud of life blooming amid the splinters. The tree would not offer ruby blossoms from this part of itself, not yet. But in a few years, maybe. Loki may yet look back at this region of the blondewood and not feel immense regret.
When Loki dropped to the ground, and began collecting the broken wood, he heard a snap of a branch offside. Turning, he spied his brother climbing out beneath the curtain wall of ivy.
Thor kept his gaze turned away as he cleaned his hands. He stepped in beside Loki and joined him without a word, the two of them gathering in tandem the dead wood of their favoured tree. They laid out the branches in neat lines at the base of the trunk, their heads bowed in quick prayer.
Thor noted the spellbook open by their feet. He glanced to Loki, eyes shining in the moonlight. “Did it work?”
Loki lifted his chin. “Go look.”
Nodding, Thor reached and rounded upon a low branch. He looked back, encouraging with a quick glance for him to follow.
Together, they climbed back to the highest crook of the tall tree, and sat as they would have years ago. The view was not the same as all those mornings; the blooms upon the trees were closed, leaving room for the perfumed breath of night blossoms to laze upon the breeze. Loki looked out across the silvery green of the budding plants, and felt sorrow once again.
“I’m sorry,” he said again. He could not say it enough. “It is my fault you had to come here, tonight.”
Thor sniffed. “As if it is such a burden.” He gave Loki a weak smile.
When Loki did not return his grin, he leaned across the branch and cupped Loki’s cheek in one hand. Tugging gently, Thor bowed their heads together.
Loki stared at his brother’s black lashes, closed, too close, before him. He felt Thor’s brow shift, growing pinched. He strained to hear him mutter, “I wish…”
Loki bit his lip, felt the gesture carry between his brother’s hands. “What?”
Another deep inhale. Thor leaned back, his vision cleared, returning to the view. “I wish you could enjoy the company of our friends. Each moment with Sif you treat like a burden.”
“But I enjoy being just with you.” Loki felt a telling heat radiate from his cheeks. He was thankful for the darkness; he forced himself to continue. “We hardly spend time together anymore.”
Thor laughed. “We spend plenty of time together. We are in classes together all day.”
But Loki insisted, “It does not count, not in the same way.”
Thor took in his serious tone, and made himself sombre. He crossed his arms upon the branch and leaned into it, considering. A soft nudge with his shoulder, and Thor said, “This matters so much, to you?”
“Does it not to you?”
Thor chewed his lip, thoughtful. “I am sorry. I thought … it would make it even better, to share this day with friends. But I see it now from your side.”
Loki felt his chest brim, growing tight. He shook his head to dispel the strong feeling of knowing Thor understood him, for once. That his brother sat beside him, close to being within his skin. He let Thor wrap around him, his arm slung low around his hip. He shifted closer when Thor tugged at him, settling heavily against his brother’s side.
The view was different this time of night, strange and silver. Yet Loki found he loved it much the same.
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Loki stands in line with the rest of his classmates along the outskirts of the training circle. His back is straight, his toes neatly touching the raised ridge of soft-grained sand. Ahead, their instructor Ussel surveys the clean lines made by the noble children, walking up and down the row with a critical eye.
From around the far corner, a student makes a belated entrance. Loki does not need to turn with Ussel to know who is coming in late; he already missed the earlier tutorships, though it is unlike him to delay practical training.
Thor scurries into line, straightening the winged helm upon his head.
The instructor clicks his tongue. He approaches Thor’s position slowly, and taps his rod pointedly upon the ground before Thor’s feet. “Remove it.”
Loki breaks then, turning to look from the corner of his eye. His brother shirks a little, though he is steadfast as he shakes his head.
Ussel taps the rod again. “I said remove.”
Thor pauses in his breath. “Might an exception be made?”
Of course their instructor refuses. Not only that, but all of the children have turned to watch as Thor is finally forced to take off his helm … revealing a headful of tight, shiny blond ringlets. Thor’s hair curls luxuriously around his peach-fuzzed chin.
One of his classmates breaks, snorting loudly. The sound encourages the others, who one by one begin laughing amid themselves. Loki himself fights back a snigger. By now his brother’s cheeks have coloured a delicious apple red.
“I tried washing them out,” Thor says, defensive. “Each time my hair dried, it returned as this.” He holds his helm before his face, as if it would block out the sight of the rest of him.
As Ussel tuts and rounds them back into obedience, Loki takes a step forward. He clears his throat. “Master? Might I escort my brother to one of my seidr tutors? They may know of a way to have his hair uncurled.”
By their instructor’s expression it is clear he does not approve of the mission, though Thor’s presence makes it increasingly difficult to control the rest of his class. Ussel relents, waving Loki off dismissively. Loki steps out of line and, grabbing his brother’s hand, leads Thor quickly out from the training grounds.
In the hall, outside of earshot, Thor rounds on Loki and presses him to the wall. Loki goes easily, tamed by his brother’s hold on his wrists. Thor searches his expression. “You did not do this to me, did you? Confess if you did, brother.”
Loki shakes out his hands, slipping his grip. He pushes at his brother’s chest. The soft fall of Thor’s hair bounces with the merest motion. “Come on,” Loki tells him. He holds out a palm, and takes his brother’s clammy hand in his.
Loki leads them to their shared parlour, and swings open the balcony doors for a gust of fresh air. He moves Thor to the meridienne, forcing him back until he sits comfortably along its sloped back. Thor frowns, though he goes complacently. “I thought we were going to your tutor.”
“We could.” Loki retreats briefly into his bedroom. He comes out with a bottle and hairbrush in hand. “Or we could try my seidr first, and see if it is enough to help.” He uncorks the bottle, and smears its glossy contents between two fingers.
Thor wriggles in his seat, his nose crinkled. Loki thinks he looks much like Sif did when they were younger, all repugnant glares lurking out from amid a nest of forced curls. He flinches back when Loki moves to swipe the gloss through his hair.
Loki rolls his eyes. “It is a tamer. I use it on my own hair.”
“Yes,” Thor says carefully, “but why do I need it?”
“Because I intend to use it as a conduit for my seidr. Unless you would prefer your hair remains this way…” Loki tugs on a ringlet for emphasis.
Thor wrenches out of his brother’s reach, sparing a fresh scowl over his shoulder. He bundles his hair into two fistfuls on either side of his chin.
Loki cannot help giggling at the sight his brother makes. Thor’s scowl deepens. He takes the bottle from Loki with unnecessary bravado, and begins smearing its contents between both hands. When his hair hangs lank and greasy, yet still clearly curled, Thor turns back to his brother with a pointed stare. “Well? Shall we continue or not?”
Loki extends his hands in a placating gesture. He picks up the fat hairbrush and moves to the back of the meridienne. Muttering a spell beneath his breath, he begins working the brush over his brother’s glossy hair.
While Thor does not precisely relax, each sweep of the brush does settle him deeper against the chair. He frets constantly over which portion of hair Loki is caring for in the moment, though, insisting that he be shown any slight improvement upon the curls. Loki cups Thor’s head and returns his gaze forward. He brushes slowly, drawing from root to tip.
The line of Thor’s shoulders slowly drops; his chin dips closer to his breast. He stops paying attention to the oddity of having Loki brush his hair and savours the gesture instead.
Loki hums a light spell into his hands, infusing his grip on Thor’s hair with an inviting, warm touch. From the mirror across the room he watches as Thor closes his eyes. A soft sigh, and Loki’s gentle coaxing, settles him firmly against the back of the chair.
“It does look rather lovely,” Loki says, conversational, as he fans out his brother’s hair along the seat back. “The curls soften your face.”
“My face is already soft,” Thor mutters, eyes closed.
Loki hmms. He works his seidr-warmed hands beneath Thor’s tipped chin, turning his brother’s upturned face toward him with a light brush of fingertips. The first signs of stubble grace only portions of his cheeks; Thor has a while yet before his beard will grow. Loki has longer still.
Sighing, Loki curls his hands down and around, back to the nape of Thor’s neck. With a quick murmur he cards his fingers through the hair he finds, a gust of warm moisture following in his wake. He repeats the spell while threading his fingers through the rest of Thor’s hair, gliding with ease through the gloss-slicked tresses.
Finally, with his work complete, Loki cups his brother’s temples. He dips down and presses a slow kiss upon Thor’s brow.
Thor frowns, his eyes opening to find his brother upside down above him. Loki smiles and taps his palms against Thor’s cheeks, gently rousing him. “Have a look.” He motions to the mirror across the room.
Groggy, felled by sleep, Thor half-stumbles to his feet. He leans upon the dresser and makes a show of surveying his hair, twisting at all angles to ensure the ringlets are truly gone.
“A fine job,” Thor tells him, gruffly, as if to compensate for the softness shown before. Loki demurs with the hairbrush, offering an ostentatious bow that manages to bring a smile to Thor’s face.
Thor straightens, turning back from the mirror. “Now to uncover the culprit who curled my hair in the first place.”
“Ah.” Loki clicks his tongue. “All has been mended, brother. Why worry about it now?”
“Who is to say it won’t happen again?”
Loki rolls his eyes. “No worthwhile trickster would dare repeat his mischief on the same suspect. It’s paltry.”
“Are you saying I am safe?” Thor surveys him with a shrewd smile.
“I am saying you should see what Ussel will look like at lessons tomorrow.”
That surprises a laugh from Thor. He clasps Loki fondly on the shoulder, his smile growing wide.
Excerpt: “I know it looks a little - septic,” the doctor says. His mouth twitches but his eyes are tired. “That and some relatively strong painkillers are all we have to work with.” He pushes his crooked, taped glasses up the bridge of his nose. “It’s a good thing you’re as tough as you look.”
Right now Thor - lying there covered in sweat and squeezing his brother’s hand convulsively - doesn’t think that must amount to much.
“You were bleeding so much,” Loki says, quietly. His grip on Thor’s fingers turns painfully tight for a second. “He saved you.”
“You did that,” the doctor corrects, raising his hands. “I just cleaned it up a bit.”
When Loki is called upon to help his brother after a quest gone awry, he gloatingly agrees. But he fails to take into account the true nature of the realm to which he wanders, and it leaves them both in desperate states.
complete - 10k. pre-Thor comfort and confessions. warnings for violence and injuries.
It was unusual for Sif to approach him in the library, let alone so sombrely, let alone without Thor somewhere nearby. Stranger still was it to see her between the bookshelves, weapons stowed, hands tucked demurely to her sides. Yet she marched now toward Loki with the Warriors in tow, the men behind her matching the pursed look upon her pinched face. The clank of their armour silenced as they gathered around him in the cramped space.
Loki kept his head down, awareness forcibly buried in the book before him. Sif cleared her throat to elicit his attention. He narrowly shifted his gaze.
They faced Loki like chastened children, helms off and heads bowed low. Loki would have taken a moment to preen at the sight had he not wondered why his brother was not with them.
“What have you done now,” Loki asked dully, as if the question had not gnawed at him for hours already this day. He knew the group of them had gone off-world without him, had known it the entire time he’d sulked around the palace alone, cursing his brother and missing him in equal measures.
Sif chewed her lip, uncharacteristically taciturn. “We need your help. It’s Thor.”
Loki leaned back from the table and properly looked them over. Sif’s face was dewy, her hair matted with sweat. Each of the Warriors looked equally lathered. Loki narrowed his assumptions to the more tropical locales in the realms. “Where have you gone that you shouldn’t have?”
“Muspellheim,” Volstagg pronounced, bluntly. He wrung his hat in his hands. “Your brother meant to test his hammer upon the beirgheists, perhaps come home with a few of their pelts—”
Loki snorted. “Those things are disgusting, even once cleaned of their oils.”
“Aye,” Volstagg agreed, “but they make for an impressive mantle when alight in flames.”
“There was talk of finding Sinmara too,” interrupted Fandral. “Thor mentioned we might commission—”
“You mean steal.”
“—aye, then—steal new weapons for us Warriors as well.” Fandral’s smile turned into a wince. “But our search crossed paths with a crew of Muspelgar. A fight broke out.”
“A storm began,” Hogun muttered, pitched low in library tones. “We urged Thor to return home then. The Bifrost opened eventually—”
“But Thor was too close to the fight, and was not picked up with it,” Sif finished.
Loki consider all the precipitous details the Warriors were not explicitly stating. Muspellheim was a dangerous realm, marked off-limits to all citizens by the All-Father himself. Thor would have had to finagle from Heimdall the right for them to travel there in the first place. Then, for calamity to happen upon their arrival?
Loki tched. He turned back to his book. “I gather that Heimdall remains incapable of returning Thor himself.”
Sif winced, though not entirely with regret. “It is the storm. You know the nature of Muspellheim…”
Loki hmmed, nodding. Long known yet pitifully understood, the primordial essence of Muspellheim itself reacted poorly with any other elemental forces. The Bifrost’s opening would have only stirred up the location and made it worse.
Carefully, Sif began, “Now, I know you two are fighting—”
“We are not fighting,” Loki cut in, hastily.
“As you say,” Sif demurred. “But could you do something to help him? We do not want the All-Father discovering this folly, not so soon after his nameday ceremony.”
“Thor might lose Mjolnir already, not a month since her arrival.” Volstagg chuckled.
And how deserved would that be, Loki thought, bitter. He imagined a scenario where their father discovered Thor’s absence, and its reasons why. Odin would pour down upon Muspellheim with the might of Asgard, gather up his eldest by the scruff of his neck and chastise him within a scrap of his life. All of Thor’s namesake rights would be revoked. He would be but a boy within the courts again.
Loki smirked. It was tempting, but he liked the thought of Thor and the Warriors owing him even more. He closed the book and pushed back from the table. The Warriors stepped back, allowing him as wide a berth as the narrow aisles allowed. They watched him anxiously.
Loki waited a moment, savouring. “Tell Mother that I will be practising a spell of great concentration in my room, and that I will not want to be disrupted for any reason.”
A collective breath released. It was Volstagg who asked, “You’ll help then?”
“Aye,” Loki conceded, “but alone. I do not need you lot mucking up my meticulous plans.”
Sif seemed unimpressed, but she could say nothing without daring Loki to change his mind. Her lips pinched thin as she nodded her thanks. “My gratitude to you, Loki. Your brother will likewise thank you for helping him this way.”
“We shall see,” Loki muttered. He turned away from the lot before rolling his eyes.
Not wanting to rush his decision, Loki took his time gathering supplies. Thor had been on Muspellheim for the greater part of the day, and while he was a god, the preternatural heat of the realm would be taxing to even him. Loki thusly enchanted a kerchief that, when knotted closed, would summon food over time, and into his bag he packed a pair of drinking flasks that likewise replenished slowly due to seidr. His usual armour would be too heavy for Muspellheim’s climate, so Loki swapped the steel for supple leathers. A lightweight cloak he wrapped around his neck and head.
Two items remained of importance. The first was a folded map of Muspellheim, upon which Loki made the Warriors mark their last known location. Once they had served their purpose, Loki had dismissed Thor’s friends and reverted the parchment to its usual appearance: upon the topography came a carefully-denoted map of all known rifts to the fire realm. The map was outdated, considering that the last competent sorcerers travelled to Muspellheim many centuries ago, but it at least gave Loki a rough idea of which rifts he wished to use to traverse realms.
The second item was not in his room, but found in the vaults instead. Using seidr, Loki sneaked his way past the guards into the weapons cache, searching for a blade he knew belonged to the treasury. Searched for and found, near the back on a shelf of nigh-discarded weapons.
The dagger was old, the ironbone grip nearly white from handling, its blade black and smoky from the compounded years of primal forces bleeding from its edge. Knowing he would never be worthy of Mjolnir, Loki had chosen the knife to become his nameday weapon, and had been teased mercilessly for the selection; the Warriors admired the large, strenuous weapons of the treasury, not those carved from the brittle bones of fallen civilisations.
Loki thought of the blade fondly, if not a little distantly. It was like him, in a way: out of sorts in its surroundings, useful for a restricted purpose, yet deadly when called to action. The others didn’t understand it, but Loki did. It held a private trick for only superior minds to know.
What the Warriors failed to realise was that Loki wanted the dagger for its unique properties regarding elementals: it was capable of wounding beasts that gathered strength from the ether, such as the Jotnar or the Muspelgar themselves. A regular weapon might wound, but the creatures of such primordial realms could draw from their surroundings to heal and revive themselves.
Now, the blade would be brought on the off-chance Loki faced battle with a beirgheist or a fire giant. Loki trusted the dagger to at least cut at the vital essence that gave them life, to disrupt that connection to the realm. With this blade, a small wound could prove deadly. It would be the trump card in Loki’s hand.
Tucking the dagger into his knife belt, Loki wove seidr around himself and sneaked out from the vaults once again.
Loki’s chosen rift exited Asgard via a copse of trees beyond the city, and dumped him out southeast of where he thought Thor would be.
The oppressive heat of Muspellheim stole his breath upon arrival, leaving him coughing and flushed red as he slowly acclimated. Bowing over, he fought to steady himself, and narrowed his attention to memorizing the details of his immediate surroundings for when he returned.
He was in a wide ravine of sorts, a gritty cliff face to his back. All around Loki was a tall basin of stone pitted in tremendous stratified colours. The usual scarlet and amber hues piled in thick layers far above his head, though the earth sometimes shifted up to coral pinks seamed with gold, all the way down to grungy browns and glossy obsidian blacks. It dazzled his eyes to stare too long.
Above, in the distant sky, Loki spied the massive black-edged clouds he suspected came from the Warriors’ storm. A hot wind blew, rocking him unsteadily. Loki wrapped the cloak tightly around his neck. The storm was upon him already at this distance, gusting fire and ash.
Squinting against the low, ever-present glare of the realm, Loki scanned ahead in search of the heart of the storm. Spotting a massive vortex of black ash to the north, he marched with purpose towards the thick, twisting clouds.
The earth beneath him was not earth at all, but embers burned low enough they fell to rusted umber. Loki felt through his soles the heat of the realm; each step reignited the flames beneath him, kicking the embers back to an orange glare. He spotted a few locations where footfalls came before him, most all of them in pairs or more. He noted these positions, but kept away; if anything, the tracks came from locals, and Loki did not want to cross paths with them.
He stopped often to reinforce his shoes with small douses of seidr, so that the earth could not burn the leathers through. When ember devils began to kick up in his wake, skirting behind his steps like playful dogs, Loki drew out the impulse to use seidr to longer and longer intervals. The trail of magics would only further give him away.
Finally, up ahead he spotted a lurking shape that sat out of sorts with the striated earth behind it. A trail of fiery footsteps burned low beyond the shape. Loki waited until he had walked closer before he hailed the shape’s attention.
Thor withdrew from the soot-stained cape upon him, and looked up at Loki through the shower of fine embers falling from the sky. His face seemed aged, somehow, haggard from the wind and the heat. Yet he smiled at Loki’s approach and, wincing, forced himself to his feet.
Thor greeted him with a hesitant, one-armed embrace, stopping short of touching Loki with any sort of affection. His cape whipped around them. Loki suffered the stiff hug for a moment before pushing his brother back.
Thor winced again, rubbing at his side. “I did not think anyone was coming, let alone you.”
“Yes, why would I,” Loki simpered.
Thor sighed. “That is not what I meant.”
“No, you merely thought I’d leave the crown prince to die. How generous.”
One instant with his brother and already Loki’s temper was flaring. He turned aside to mute his anger, slung off his pack and opened it. Thor hovered close by with doe-eyes, sighing out relief when Loki reluctantly handed him one of the enchanted flasks. Thor popped the flask open and drank it down to empty, nary spilling a drop.
Loki kept silent, watching until he was certain his pitch had been coaxed back to neutral. “What were you thinking, travelling to Muspellheim without supplies?”
Thor forced in the cork, and slung the flask on his own belt. “We only planned for a day’s trek, perhaps two at most. No one thought there would be a storm.” He sounded aggravatingly unperturbed, confident in his exclusion of Loki from such plans.
“It is out of season,” Loki agreed carefully. He eyed his brother with suspicion. “You didn’t do something, did you?”
Thor shrugged, sheepish. “I thought to speed our battles with Mjolnir’s lightning.”
“Of course.” Loki sighed. “Here I thought you knew better than to use an elemental power upon an elemental world.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Did you not think your hammer would stir up chaos like no other blend of magics?”
“I learned quickly.” Thor gave him that damnable, self-assured grin. “Where to now, brother? I assume you have a plan to leave.”
“I do.” Loki pointed back along his path, towards the distant edge of the gorge he’d climbed out from. “Back that way, we might find the rift that will take us home.”
Thor gestured forward, amiable. “Lead the way, then.”
It was not so easy.
The return trip left Loki with a perturbed feeling that did not go away. Though he had not memorized the full route as he’d walked, Loki was certain the glowing remnants of his footsteps no longer reflected the straightforward path he had taken to finding Thor. They meandered now in soft spirals, as if coaxed out of place by the wind. The ravine should not have changed, yet Loki followed the path over mounds and through valleys that had not been there before.
Thor trailed behind him, silent, trusting. But Loki walked forward with increasing dread.
Indeed, his trail came to a dead end in the shadow of a cliff he had not seen before. Loki looked around, rejected the location against his initial memories. He extended a whisper of his seidr, felt the surrounding walls for some sign of the rift that had brought him here.
Nothing came. They stood before useless earth.
Loki inhaled slowly through his nose. No, this should not have been possible. He had this all properly planned.
Removing his pack, Loki riffled through its contents for the folded square of old parchment. Pulling out the map, he confirmed what he could of their location, which wasn’t much.
Thor leaned in over Loki’s shoulder, reading alongside. His breathing paused. Cautiously, he asked, “Is there a problem?”
Loki bit his lip, shrugged his shoulder to dislodge his brother. “The next rift is south again, but quite far away.” He quickly folded the map and stowed it away. “Come. If we hurry, we can be there within half a day.”
Thor did not have any supplies to gather; wiping his brow free of sweat, he waited patiently for Loki to close his pack and set their pace.
Loki marched forward, though a gnawing feeling left him wondering whether it would be wiser to turn back. Perhaps he had mistaken his trail with one of the others he had seen before; in his confusion, he might have veered them off track.
No. Thor would tease him mercilessly if he admitted to an error. They would head out in search of the next best location. At least the ravine was beautiful to look at while they wandered.
Worryingly, as they rounded a mesa some time later, there came shapes moving on the horizon ahead. Shadows, mostly, black silhouettes cast against the ravine walls. But the footfalls Loki had seen in pairs now glowed in increasing fresh and dense clusters, and low chittering noises echoed up ahead.
Loki did not want to come close enough to discover the source of the black shadows, but the ravine did not provide many options for evasion. They remained stone-silent and still until the shadows went away.
Loki shielded his eyes and glanced at the plateaus above. “Do you think we could climb out from this place?”
When Thor did not answer, Loki looked back. His brother stood with arms stiffly wrapped around himself, watching the heights of the ravine with a grimace. Loki took his silence for an answer, and started them walking away from the trails once again.
The attack struck them by surprise, from a place concealed.
The brothers were climbing up the cliff face of the gorge—hands pressed to either side of the claustrophobic tunnel, rising embers in their wake. At this point in the ravine their options for moving forward were either upon the open, flat basin of lava flowing to the left, or through a narrow crevice dug into the upper walls to the right. They had chosen the latter, which ultimately led to the ambush.
The end of the crevice burst out upon an airy plateau more than half way up the ravine’s side. Its farthest edge hung out two arms’ lengths from the cliff face, and dragged out to the right as far as the eye could see.
Less conveniently, this part of the plateau was also home to a pack of beirgheists, sunning themselves on the sizzling stone.
Loki halted at the sight of them. He flung out an arm, instinctively stopping Thor in his tracks. The gesture knocked a breath out of Thor, who clutched his side.
The sound pricked the ear of the nearest beirgheist. The beast sat up, stretching itself like a cat. Muscles rippled beneath its slimy fur. Toxic teeth revealed themselves in a yawn.
Blinking, the beirgheist spotted them. Hackles rising, its growl alerted the others.
“Which way?” Loki whispered, breath hissing out quick. The tunnel would be too slow; there was no room to fight in it, and the pack could overtake them easily. Yet remaining on the plateau would be suicide.
Thor stated the answer the moment Loki came to it: “Down.” He withdrew Mjolnir, and extended his arm to Loki.
The weapon was yet new to Thor, his flying unsteady. He did not manage heights well, but Thor brought them on a clunky descent that fared them slightly better than simply jumping off the plateau and praying for the rest. They landed in a pile at a distance from the lava flow, Thor grunting with pain, Loki’s breath gutted out from him. Ember devils the size of dogs stirred to life around them.
“Don’t do that again,” Loki gasped. “Run.”
Thor tucked away his hammer, and did as he was told.
Above, the beirgheists were sliding down the sides of the ravine. Their long claws kept their descent narrowed, purposeful. They landed in the lava below, and burst out from it wearing collars of surreal blue flame, burning so hot it seemed white. They stampeded across the basin, crushing the ember devils with ease.
“Hurry,” Loki shouted, not daring to look back again. It was odd that Thor was not already out ahead, not already making this flight look simple.
No matter. The beirgheists were faster—they ran on fours, upon their natural terrain. When their snarls grew too loud, too close, Loki stopped running the instant Thor did. They both turned around, hammer raised, Loki with a fistful of throwing knives from his belt, the ironbone dagger clutched in his right hand.
“Left,” Thor shouted.
“Right,” Loki agreed.
It was all the coordination they needed. As a pair, they stormed the beirgheists slathering at their backs.
Loki lost himself in the rush of heat, and violence. He felt claws sink into his shoulder, jaws snapping around the leathers on his arms. Flames singed his face, his hands. Sweat poured into his eyes. He used seidr when he had to, sending bursts of light at the beirgheist, waves of pain into the blows Thor’s hammer had wrought.
The fight went on for what felt like hours, the ceaseless heat of the realm sapping Loki’s strength away. But bit by bit they chipped away at their pursuers; Loki’s dagger ended lives, and the beirgheists eventually decided they preferred sunning themselves to joining the trio of dead kin at Loki’s feet, or the wounded one limping away from Thor.
The beirgheists slunk away, yipping and snarling. Breathing hard, Loki stepped toward the nearest corpse and pulled a throwing knife free from its eye. “You got your pelt after all, brother,” Loki snarled. He wiped gore off the ironbone blade, sank it back into its slot on his belt. “Tell me it still interests you.”
Thor did not answer. His breathing was heavier than Loki’s, his hand clutched again to his side. He flicked blood from Mjolnir’s head, and stomped out the fire burning yet on the nearest pelt. Wearily, he gestured back the way they came. “We cannot wait for them to change their minds and return again. Which way is your rift from here?”
Loki scanned the ravine haphazardly. Truth be told, he no longer knew—his maps were too outdated, their escape too frenzied. He didn’t dare pull them out again. Loki hazarded a guess and motioned them offside, toward a box canyon far up ahead. With a tight breath he said, “There.”
They walked a clipped pace, glancing back once and a while to ensure they walked alone. Loki consulted the maps in his head, debating how far they had truly come from their initial destination.
Behind him, Thor was slowing, his steps growing stiffer the longer they travelled. Loki wondered whether he had suffered wounds, or if his dehydration was more significant than initially anticipated. Unfortunately for Thor, his flask would not fully refill for several hours still, and Loki was not yet feeling generous enough to share his own supply.
Loki was not sure how much time had truly passed. The realm had no cyclical sense of time; there was no sun, and thusly no true day or night. He felt tired, though, truly winded from the events of the day. He did not doubt that Thor felt the same. When they came across a small cave partway up the side of the box canyon, and Loki offered that they take a break, Thor did not hesitate to accept.
Loki climbed the wall easily, scoured the inside of the cave to confirm it was empty. Thor needed help rising to his height, however. Loki had to lean down from the edge and bodily lift Thor up. The moment Thor was hunched within the cave, his hand clasped again at his ribcage.
Drinking from his flask, Loki no longer doubted that Thor had been injured sometime during the fight. “Let me see,” he said, gesturing idly.
Thor spared him an irritated look. He slapped away Loki’s hand when it touched at his ribs.
Loki felt a flash of annoyance. “What, were you scratched by a beirgheist?” He gestured to the fragments of his cloak, and held up his arms. The tattered pieces of his leather armour hung by his elbow. “Well, so was I.” He dropped his arm again. “Now let me see.”
Again, Thor seemed intent on misunderstanding what Loki was saying. He acted as if he thought himself as a man beyond Loki’s calibre, as though he did not wish to be tainted with the same loathsome heart his brother housed.
Loki bristled, the thought taking him too far. “After all I have had to put up with you today. Your slowness, your stupidity. You put yourself in this position—put me in this position—and yet you have the audacity to act as though I am useless to you.”
Thor huffed. “That is not—”
“You are still upset with me, aren’t you?” Loki snapped. “Back home, whatever I did to make you hate me…” Loki’s breath shivered. The hate and anger, the misery and abandonment he’d felt at his brother’s absence coming back to him. “It’s carried forward, hasn’t it? You’ve been quiet, ignoring me even here.”
“Loki, I haven’t—”
“Do not lie,” Loki said. “It’s as though you are trying to will me out of existence through sheer avoidance.”
Thor protested, but Loki did not care to listen; he threw off and open his bag and, casting a small spell, rewove the food kerchief to conjure healing herbs instead.
They lapsed into silence, Loki counting the hours until the kerchief would be prepared. Thor lapsed into sleep, arms stubbornly crossed on his body. When the moment came, Loki threw open the kerchief and prepped the herbs. Selfishly he treated himself first, chewing the leaves and sticking them to his cuts and scratches. He then woke Thor, and offered the scraps to his brother. Thor pushed aside his hand.
“Are you so pigheaded you will refuse to feel better?”
Thor snorted. “I am a man, I can heal myself.”
“Then what does that make me,” Loki grumbled.
Thor, tired as he was, at least had the wits to look admonished.
Perhaps it was the sheepishness he felt in that moment, or the tiredness, or some combination thereupon, but this time Thor permitted Loki’s hands upon his armour. Loki snapped open the familiar latches, pulled off the fragments of metal yet intact. Thor breathed relief at the weight no longer upon him. He then froze, flinching, as Loki lifted the ruddy soaked undershirt from his side.
The wound upon Thor’s ribs was deep, and bleeding sluggishly. Loki took a fragment of cloak and wiped the worst of the blood away.
Loki inhaled sharply. What lay beneath was infinitely worse. It was no scratch, but a beirgheist bite, ragged and open thanks to the toxins in its fangs. Worst of all, the wound was old, and festering; red lines crept out from its jagged edges.
Sepsis, Loki thought, though he tried instinctively to banish the word away. But it was true. A blood infection had been toddling far from its birthplace in Thor’s body, judging by the distant edges tracing his chest.
Fear lanced through Loki’s body, congesting his speech. “How long?” he asked, his tone kept cold to reduce its tremors. He touched his hand to the inflamed edges of the wound. The flesh was deep red and infected hot.
“A while,” Thor replied, humbled. “From the battle with the Warriors. They left on the Bifrost. I dealt with the remaining foes. One proved more opportunistic than the others.”
Loki remained quiet, thinking rapidly to himself. His thumb worried over his lips. How could he heal an injury upon a realm where there was no water, no escape, and no plant life grew?
Loki squeezed the fragments of herbs left upon the kerchief. A plan slowly came to mind. “I know of a healing compress,” he told Thor as he thought aloud, “but it has more than a dozen ingredients. It will take over a week to summon them with the kerchief, and I … do not know if you will last that long.” Hurriedly, Loki added, “The trick becomes the strongest herbs; they must be kept fresh, summoned later … but I could cut the compress down to nine herbs—perhaps seven, at the lowest. If we starve ourselves and use the kerchief exclusively for summoning medicine, that will take the time to slightly more than four days. Add another day to brew…”
“Do I have five days, brother?”
Loki bit his tongue. “I’ll see if I can whittle it down to four herbs.”
Thor swallowed thickly. He knew what such an answer meant.
Loki lied: he summoned the most potent herb first, and gave half of it to Thor to chew and then pack into the wound straight away. The remainder he mixed with an astringent solution he summoned in his own flask. He cleansed torn squares of his cloak with it, and poured the blend gingerly over the wound, pausing whenever Thor hissed a breath and lurched from the liquid’s path. They could not waste a drop; there was no time.
The concoction bit back the brunt of the pain from the infection, dropping Thor into an easier sleep. It was risky, using a day of summoning they could not afford to lose. But Loki feared that following his initial plan would prove too late—Thor looked terrible even after a long night’s sleep, his body flushed and sweaty, breathing laboured. The walk had been more than he should have managed, though Thor had kept up with him without complaint.
Loki suspected it would not be long before the infection reached Thor’s heart. Something had to be done in the interim.
The herb he picked had the side effect of drowsiness, leaving Thor in a sluggish stupor for most of the day. He sat with his back propped against the ravine wall, his mantle splayed between himself and the heated earth. Loki spared small doses of seidr, to keep him comfortable and the cape from burning. He spent the rest of the time between conjurings tracking the area, searching for rifts and studying the storm for signs that the Bifrost might be capable of breaching its coverage.
It did not look good. The eternal nature of Muspellheim meant the storm might rage on for months or years—centuries, even, considering the potent force of Mjolnir and the Bifrost combined. To escape the storm, they would have to travel distances impossible to reach in Thor’s current state. Even flying out with Mjolnir would prove useless—her powers would merely bring the storm with them, stirring primordial fields in their wake.
Loki scoured the landscape for signs of weakness in the walls between worlds, but there were none. His estimations of a rift’s location were wrong. He had made a grave mistake in leading them here.
Returning to the cave, Loki had no stomach for meeting Thor’s eye, though he would; his brother needed the comfort of his smile, the assurance of the lie that all would be well. Thor would not last as long without it.
Thor was asleep this time, when he arrived, for which Loki was grateful. He pillowed the scraps of his cloak not yet used for bandages, and tucked them securely behind Thor’s head.
With his clothes heavy and drenched in blood, Thor wore Loki’s own light undershirt now, its tail ends cut open to give Thor room to breathe. His brow was flushed, his chest shuddering with each exhale; beads of sweat pooled in the hollow of his neck. Fingers twitched, sensitive to dreams. He mumbled in his sleep.
Loki uncorked the flask, and woke Thor long enough for him to drink a little before falling back to sleep. He took a draught for himself, and dipped his fingers into the mouth of the bottle so that he might spare a swipe of cool relief along the back of his neck.
Loki then set the flask aside, and proceeded what meagre preparations he could manage with the herbs he had at this time. With the kerchief empty again, Loki curled up along the wall and tried to sleep as well.
When Loki dreamed—finally dreamed, rather than tossed and turned in restless sweat—his dreams were of empty rooms, of furnaces and fire raining down from a bleeding sky. His body burned itself up from within, taking with it all that he loved and held dear.
Loki woke when a hand worked its way through his hair, coaxing back the damp curls from his face.
He did not move, though he knew his breathing had changed. He allowed Thor to continue petting his hair, soothing the damp tendrils into place.
“I was not angry with you,” Thor murmured, low. “At home … I have changed, brother, in incomplete ways. I did not want you to suffer from my presence.”
Loki inhaled through his nose. Thor’s moments of consciousness were coming more sparsely the longer time passed. He held the breath, willing it to steady him. “I suffered without you,” Loki said, quietly. “I did not know why we were fighting. I still do not know what I have done to make you turn away.”
“You did nothing.” Thor rushed through a breath. “It was me. All me. I … I house a craven heart.” His grip tightened fractionally in Loki’s hair. It relaxed in small increments.
Loki turned slowly, twisting onto his back, knees crooked to fit against the wall. He stared up at his brother. The ephemeral glow of the cave made Thor’s face seem bruised. His expression remained miserable, his eyes glossy and unfocused, even as he brushed a thumb across Loki’s cheek.
Thor cupped his hand along the side of Loki’s face. Fingers curled into the hair at Loki’s temple, winding down to cradle him. Loki inhaled, unsteady. He waited with heart stopped for Thor to speak. “I … I wanted—” Thor hissed, sluggishly shaking his head. “I want you, Loki. In manners no brother should.”
Loki lost his breath. It was as if someone had doused him in cold water.
“I did not—I could not think in the same room as you,” Thor continued blearily. “And I have not your talents for deceit, brother. There was no way for me to hide this truth. So I hid myself, kept you from my presence.” A weak smile, shiny with perspiration. “I am craven, as I’ve said.”
Loki’s head buzzed. He did not know what to say. “You think I lie?” he murmured. He butted his knees against Thor’s body, eliciting a sharp wince from Thor he immediately regretted. “You are my brother. Nothing about this shall change.”
“It should,” Thor muttered. “It will.” To himself: “If only it could.”
Loki closed his eyes. He felt dizzy. His vision swum with sudden tears. “Damn you,” he spat without volition. “Damn you, confessing such a thing. Why? Why now?”
Thor winced. His eyes closed. His next breath came thin. “You should know, while there is time. If I am to die—”
Loki flinched, knocking aside Thor’s hand as he hastily sat upright. “No,” he gritted out, jabbing an angry finger at Thor. “You do not get to die and leave me alone with this burden. Do you understand? You aren’t going to Hel or Valhalla or wherever else may take you because you are stuck here, with me. There will be no death today, brother. You cannot die, I could not bear it.”
His last words were choked out, his voice too unsteady to continue. Emotions roiled within him in impossible waves, so strong Loki felt them thrashing beneath his skin, swaying him where he sat. How Thor could talk to him like this, not for any purpose besides a cleanse of conscience? A confessional, meant for consideration of the next life, with no care placed on the repercussions of the present.
Loki snorted, tears brimming at the thought. His brother was such a heartless other half of him.
“I am sorry to have hurt you,” Thor mumbled, low and sincere. “I only could not stand the deceit between us. Even though it shall taint your memory of me, I wanted you to know. You needed to know that what was broken between us was not your fault. It was because I loved you too much, and in all the wrong ways.”
Loki swallowed. He could say nothing. What was he to do about a brother convinced that he was dying? Particularly when no evidence existed to indicate any other outcome? He merely took Thor’s hand as idle comfort, and held it bone-white tight until Thor’s brief moment of clarity succumbed again to fitful dreams.
Loki sat for a long time, thinking about what Thor had said. The fights, the confusion … The way they longed for each other and yet had to keep their place. Everything that was wrong with them came from the same source.
How sad was it that the only other person Loki had found inflicted with his malady was his brother? And that it was revealed too late; anything Loki said now would taste like supplications to the dying. Thor would not believe his affections might be returned.
Loki stifled a laugh, breaking partway into a sob. He rubbed his eyes until they cleared.
There was work yet to be done, and Muspellheim was not a land that would forgive his tears.
It was night again, or as close as Loki came to believing in such a thing. He should be asleep, but he wasn’t. His head was too heavy to cede itself to rest.
Four herbs had been summoned and survived into a useful state. Three remained. Loki contemplated the minor reagents he would need to complete the compress, permitting himself for a moment to pretend it would be enough to help. It was a fool’s errand; even if the compress culled the worse of the infection, Thor’s sickness was too far-gone for such field medicine to cure him. He needed to get off-world. They needed some way to escape this realm.
Beside him, Thor stirred, turning onto his side, his wound facing the stars. Loki watched a moment, then reached out and brushed Thor’s hair back onto the mantle, saving it from crisping upon the ethereal heat of the earth.
They had not spoken much, since Thor’s confession. There was no need, and little time. Thor fell often into restless slumber, and when he woke he rambled more often than he actually talked—memories, mostly, of their childhood. Small grievances for which he wanted forgiveness. Loki gave what comforts he could, but Thor never seemed to hear him. Thor did not know how the sight of his illness overwhelmed Loki where he sat.
Thor was the elder, the stronger, the better. Loki was never meant to fill a caregiver’s role.
Thor groaned, a rumbling thing that escaped his breast in reedy tones. His tunic—Loki’s tunic—was drenched in large circles of sweat. His hair hung in damp, dull tresses. His chest heaved with each breath.
Loki gave up contemplating his hodge-podged poultice, and moved from where he sat. He pulled up Thor’s tunic, checked the bandages. The fabric was well-seeped in plasma and reeked of infection, but they had not enough water to afford a proper washing. He peeled off the bandages not sealed against Thor’s flesh, cleaned the wound and replaced them with new. He rested his hand carefully atop the area, feeling the heat of Thor’s flesh rival the world around them.
Such a small injury, and because of circumstances it may claim Thor’s life. How cruel the Norns could be.
Thor’s distant hand crept up across his body, catching Loki’s unaware. Loki did not flinch, did not move, just felt the heat of Thor’s fevered skin and the unsteady rise and fall of his breathing.
Thor did not move straight away. He merely held Loki’s hand, its comfort enough. But then Loki slotted his fingers through his brother’s, and let Thor drag the limb back across his breast.
Loki accepted the movement. He lay down beside Thor, his arm draped carefully over his brother’s side. His heart pounded through the intimacy of the gesture.
It took him long moments to curl up close to his brother, to tuck his face against Thor’s neck and hold him, truly. Nothing changed in his stature, yet Thor relaxed somehow, with this. Loki felt it in the way his cheek better met the curve of Thor’s shoulder, how Thor’s breathing steadied in minor increments. They were locked up together in this. Thor would not suffer alone.
Eventually Thor returned to sleep, his hand falling loose within Loki’s fingers. Loki did not move; he was where he wanted to be. He touched gently at Thor’s chest, and imagined his fingers trailing the red lines of infection creeping towards his heart. His breathing trembled at the thought.
Loki tightened his grip. He planted their conjoined fist against Thor’s chest and let it rest there, wrapped up in Thor, as he slept.
Loki woke in the morning coated in sweat and stuck against his brother, who lay on his back with the wound between them. He started as he returned to himself, half-rising on a quick breath. When he saw that Thor slept, that he still breathed, Loki relaxed again. He brushed out Thor’s tangled hair, and accepted when Thor woke fractionally and pulled him in, touching their brows together.
He should feel guilty for this, the touch of dry lips Thor gave him at the corner of his mouth. He knew of shame and guilt, had befriended them long before Thor had finally cast him away. But he would indulge this, for Thor’s sake.
(This was a lie, crafted from logic meant to excuse. The Nine help him; he wanted this too.)
Loki could not stomach himself long before he had to pull away. He distracted himself with the kerchief, fiddling with the casting on the cloth. Thor needed to drink and eat, and he did, though he protested how little Loki took for himself.
They did not talk much; too many burdens had been unparcelled, and too many minutiae in their relationship had changed. It was unclear where they stood with each other, so they kept silent, leaving space to breathe.
But they were learning; more often than not Loki made sure his seat was within arm’s reach of where Thor lay. He sat ready for when Thor extended a palm to him, and took it, and held it until Thor slept. When Loki grew tired, he lay so that he was close to Thor, sharing the protection the mantle offered so that they might both escape the heat permeating from the ground.
He was laying in such a manner now, curled at an angle around Thor, the crown of his head butted up against Thor’s hip. He stared at the embers burning beneath his hand, the chapped way his fingers bled whenever he flexed. Finally, he admitted, “I don’t know how to fix this.”
“Us?” Thor asked, glancing down at him. His eyes were foggy, his chest heaving, but he understood well enough.
Loki rolled his eyes. He lifted his chin. “The circumstances. We must find a way to escape the storm, but our very survival feeds into it. I cannot keep toying with the kerchief’s castings and expect the storm to play out, but if I stop conjuring…”
Thor heard what he left unsaid. They remained quiet, contemplating what hung in the air.
Then: “You must let me die.”
“No.” A quick, sharp response.
“The food, the water, it will all be enough for one—”
Loki sat up, inching close to his brother. “No, Thor. You do not get to die and leave me alone. There must be a way. There is one. I just have not thought of it yet.”
Thor waved offside. “Search through your pack again, then.”
“There is nothing,” Loki replied, irritated.
“Humour me.” Thor’s voice was low, slow, but still so sweet. Loki could not deny him.
Carefully he helped Thor from his recline, watching his brother wince as he rose into a fully seated position. Loki dropped his bag between them. He pulled each item out and patronisingly presented it to Thor. The flasks, the map, and the kerchief were set in a line beside Thor’s hammer and Loki’s loosened belt of blades. “What now, thunderer? Do you see puzzle pieces I do not?”
Thor prodded at the flask, at the cloth; at his weapon and Loki’s daggers. He made Loki explain each item’s nature in turn, listening patiently to the seidr mechanisms that allowed each item to work.
Thor turned the ironbone blade cautiously between shaky fingers. “It wounds the elemental?”
Loki sighed. “Yes, Thor. It was what made my attacks against the beirgheist killing blows, while your hammer only wounded.”
Thor, distracted, did not listen. He nicked the knife against a stone. “Could it cut the storm?”
Loki frowned. “What? No, that’s—it’s not the same. The storm is…” He trailed off, thinking hard. The blade could cut the elemental. It disrupted the connection between such creatures and their realms. The creatures did not follow normal rules because their realms were not normal, they were—
“Muspellheim is elemental too,” Loki murmured quickly, on a breath. He plucked the dagger back from Thor’s hands. His arm trembling, he shook open the map of Muspellheim, consulting again the outdated locations of known rifts.
“What is it?” Thor muttered, forcing open his eyes.
“Have you wondered at the odd nature of the storm? How it can last so long without being fed additional fire?” Loki said, mostly to himself. “The nature of the storm is different because Muspellheim itself is different. It is the bloodwater of air and fire and earth all clashing together on the physical side of the realms. But Muspellheim is an illusion, Thor. It isn’t a physical realm, at least not in the way that Asgard is.”
Thor shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
“Think of two types of cloth: one is canvas, the other netting. Both will support weight, take shape as directed. But one captures the wind while the other lets it pass through. Muspellheim is much the same; it is a realm, just as ours, but its walls are thin. It lets the elemental forces of Yggdrasil spill through like water, blending our understanding of physical and primal energies. Here, the two forces become one.”
Loki had come to the realm expecting to find a mapped rift and pull himself and Thor through it. But with the tidal nature of the landscape, the known locations were now gone.
“I’ve been searching for weakness between the worlds,” Loki mumbled, tracing his finger over the map, “hoping to find a rift. I never thought to create one myself.”
With the dagger, it was possible to create a fine cut in the elemental walls of Muspellheim. Once through, they might seek out the roots of Yggdrasil, and climb the World Tree’s branches to a safer realm, much like a rift. If Loki found a proper place, one where the walls between worlds were thin in the proper places, he could focus his seidr and slip them through to another realm.
Loki turned over the map, considering the layout of the old rifts. If there was a pattern to the known locations, then even if the realm bent the pattern out of shape, rough guidelines would yet exist—
Thor asked, “What do you mean to do, brother? Won’t…” Thor was wary, even in his weakened state. He waved impotently at the blade. “Will it not merely repeat what happened with Mjolnir, how she sparked the current storm? Won’t using a weapon such as this ignite it further?”
“No, it won’t,” Loki said, insistent. “This blade negates; it makes the primal physical. It is not like your hammer, its lighting and rain clashing with fire and earth.” Thor continued to stare at him, doubting. Loki crept back to his brother’s side. He touched a hand to Thor’s flushed cheek. “Trust me on this. Please. Give me half a day and I will find the perfect place to lead us home.”
Thor leaned into him, partly from desire, partly from exhaustion. “Alright, brother. Do what you can.”
Loki, gratified, helped Thor resume his inclined position. He lay the map across Thor’s lap and explained to him the particulars of his plan, speaking in low tones until he was certain Thor had fallen asleep.
The weight of dehydrated days hung heavily on Loki as he wandered. Without his cloak to protect him, the wind seemed harsher, hotter. He flinched each time an ember landed on his neck, or in his hair. He felt more distracted than he ever had in his life, in a moment when he needed to be most focused.
Thor had followed, against Loki’s insistence that he remain in the cave until a proper spot had been found to make a rift. Thor had said it would be a waste of time, returning to the cave to bring him to a place Loki only just left. Besides, the shifting nature of the landscape did not guarantee Loki’s found position would be there if they returned. Reluctantly Loki agreed.
Loki honed his concentration onto the unseen layers of the realm, touching the blade against the membranes between the worlds. Thor stood behind him, slumped around his injury. Loki’s bag was slung over a shoulder. Mjolnir hung from the strap on his belt. Thor’s knees trembled with effort to keep him upright.
When he collapsed, Loki startled, and the blade gouged the realms on accident.
A gale force wind bled out beneath his fingers, opening a rift in a place Loki had not intended. Loki cursed; power was pouring out from the makeshift rift, forcing it wider than intended. Light and wind overwhelmed Loki’s vision as he searched the extending cut, praying for an appropriate realm. He was torn: the blade was caught in the forming rift, melting partway due to the forces of the realms. If he let go, it would be lost, and they would have no guarantee of escaping through the other side. Yet if he did not grab Thor, he would be left behind.
Cursing, Loki let go of the knife. He leapt for Thor, bundling his brother up in his arms, no time to consider his injury. Loki closed his eyes against the blinding light, his ears made deaf by the roar of the wind. With Thor secure in his arms, he pushed them both into the stream of force from the realms.
So many things could go wrong. Loki had not thought there would be such power wrought from such a small nick. This rift was like no other he had experienced; he could scarcely breathe inside its cavern, could not hear or see or smell a thing, could only feel the blood of the universe wash over him like a current, forcing him back. Offside. Curling him in directions he did not know whether he wished to go.
Loki fell beneath its power. Felt his hold on his brother slip. Loki cried out. He forced himself atop Thor, wound their arms and legs tightly together. There was no way to tell where they were going, what time had passed or where they were. The roil of the current of power knocked against his head, choking him on its incorporeal state.
Loki blacked out, his last thought a prayer to the Norns that they both make it out alive.
When Loki opened his eyes again, he was stung by the sight of green. His skin felt cold. The earth smelled of decay. He could not believe there were birds singing on the soft breeze.
Leaves stirred around him as he sat up, his arms pushing aside the reeds crowded over his body. Water sloshed around him—he was waist-deep in a bog, somewhere. Based on the bird cries, he guessed Alfheim.
Loki rose, fumbling over the rot underfoot. He scanned the greens and soft browns, his eyes refusing to adjust after so long spent in bright and bleeding reds. He spotted Thor’s hair just breaching the water, bright in the soft wood light. Loki splashed through the bog, and tried to pull his brother’s mouth above water level. When he failed, he fumbled, unstrapping Thor’s belt so that Mjolnir would let him rise. Loki bent down, and listened, but did not hear a breath. He dragged Thor out of the water, and began resuscitations.
“No,” Loki whispered, the word coming in tandem with each force against Thor’s breast. He leaned in often, listened for heartbeat. Found one, weak. He worked until Thor’s airway was cleared.
Coughing, Thor turned onto his side, then immediate recoiled at the brush of earth against his wound. He was bleeding again, profusely. He pushed, uncomprehending, at the water in his eyes.
Thor began in questions of what and where, but Loki urged him to silence, told him to keep his energies while he could. Loki swept the edges of the bog for plants that would help staunch the bleeding. He slumped Thor against a log and promised him he would return as quick as he could.
Thor called after him, but Loki could not allow himself to turn back. If he looked, he would not be able to leave his brother there. And Thor needed him to find help, now.
Loki ran, following well-worn paths through the trees. Found a cabin and banged against its walls so hard its windows shattered, and the owners came howling out from the woods nearby. Loki shouted over their anger, forced them to understand, to return with him to Thor’s location. Only once they were en route for the nearby village did Loki collapse, exhausted, knowing they might be safe.
They were brought to a small clinic run by a lone provincial doctor, who woke with a start at the crowd pounding down her door. The cabin owner explained the circumstances—two princes, injured and fallen between realms. The brothers were promptly separated; Loki was taken straight to the infirmary, while Thor was prepped for recovery by a team of curates called in from the surrounding towns.
Loki did not remember much of what happened. He had been surrounded by his own crew of healers, who fed and hydrated him, and treated his wounds, caring for him so closely that they even scrubbed the remaining ephemeral grit out from his hair down to his fingers. Loki ended up with his hair trimmed short to his scalp, once the worst of his singed locks had been cut away. He fingered the feathered tresses at the back of his neck, wondering at how cool the air felt against his skin. He marvelled at the silken texture of the relatively plain sheets.
His parents came, quickly, likely on word from Heimdall. Frigga gathered him up, held him close. Brushed aside his tears and assured him it was alright, he was not in trouble. How glad she was to find them both here. She sat on Loki’s bed while Odin paced the halls, grumbling. The curates had to bow their heads to the king each time they passed.
When news came that Thor was available for visitations, Loki waited while his parents saw him first. He did not think he could manage the company of his brother without crying; after all that had passed, it felt surreal to think that Thor might actually be alright.
“He’s asking for you,” Odin mumbled, gripping Loki tight on his shoulder, the closest the king would come to showing his relief. Loki felt slightly off-put, that Odin would visit Thor first, but he pushed the feeling aside as, uncharacteristically, his father pulled him in to a stiff hug.
Quiet, beard scratching at his ear, Loki heard him say, “I thought I had lost both of my boys.” Then, stronger, with distance and a compensatory pat, “Thor is blessed to have you as a brother. Thank you, my son.”
Loki felt as though his fever had returned. He fought to keep composure, eyes watering as he merely nodded at what his father said.
He kept expecting to be yelled at for his foolishness, and knew it wouldn’t be long. His punishment would arise once their parents’ worries dropped down to normal levels. But for now they let him pass, exiting to Thor’s room alone.
Loki walked the provincial halls, floorboards creaking underfoot. He opened Thor’s door, found the windows open on the opposing side. A light breeze carried bird song in between the shutters. From the lone bed, against the wall in the centre of the room, Thor looked up from the medical orb in hand and waved him closer. Quietly Loki latched the door, and stepped inside.
“What does it say?” whispered Loki, gesturing to the orb.
Thor shrugged, tossing it toward him. The orb glided through the air, landing delicately between his hands. Loki flitted through the screens, reading the charts. Discovering how close Thor had come to death before shying away. Loki set the orb back on the bedside table, and took a seat at his brother’s side.
“They cut your hair,” Thor murmured, though they had trimmed his hair too. His hand stretched out of its own volition. Thor flinched when he caught himself, pulling back. Loki leaned in, encouraging. Thor spared a neutral touch. His hands folded back into his lap.
They sat awkwardly next to one another. Loki’s gaze flickered over the bandages across Thor’s skin, his minor injuries now mostly healed. With permission, he pulled back the sheets and saw what had been done to the grievous wound along Thor’s ribs. The flesh there was pink and tender, but the terrible lines of red had mostly retreated, caught beneath glowing compresses that would pull out the remaining infection.
“You look good,” Loki said, quiet. His fingertips trailed the fresh scars until Thor took his hand and pulled him away. Loki did not let his grip release; Thor sat uncomfortably with their hands wound together.
Thor’s mouth opened several times. He dared not meet Loki in the eye. Finally, his grip squeezing tight, he said, “I have ruined us.”
Loki shook his head. “No.”
“I have,” Thor insisted. “Had I not been so cowardly—had I not confessed—we would still be alright. We would be—”
“Brothers?” Loki finished, a lone brow raised. He sighed, shuffling closer. “Brothers who were arguing, and spending more time apart than they were with each other.” He squeezed Thor’s hand. “I was miserable without you. How was that better than this?”
Thor flushed, clearly ashamed. “How do we continue, then? After what I have said. Have felt. For you.”
Loki closed his eyes, listened for a moment to the chirp of birds. It pained him to see Thor like this.
Breathing out long through his nose, Loki sat forward along the bed. He dropped Thor’s hands and held his cheeks, forcing those blue eyes to meet his. Thor frowned, and sighed as Loki leaned in and kissed his brow, taking for a moment the weight of him against his lips. Then Loki lilt him back, kissed beneath his eye, on his cheek. He paused, waiting, until he was certain Thor knew what was about to come.
Loki kissed his brother slowly, lips overlapping the corner of Thor’s mouth. He felt Thor sigh against him, felt his whole body be drawn in to Loki’s kiss, melting. Holding him, Loki kissed him again, and again, until he knew that Thor understood.
“You are not alone in this,” Loki murmured, breath ghosting upon his brother’s lips. Thor licked them on instinct, and waited with breath held. Tempted by the gesture, Loki kissed him again.
He knew. And Thor knew. They both shared the same craven heart.
A soft knock on the door broke them apart. Loki wiped his mouth with his sleeve and straightened Thor’s bedsheets, taking to the chair beside him before their parents entered.
Frigga hugged him again, and felt Thor’s brow for fever. They chatted idly as a family, until Odin got to the point and said, “It’s time we leave, son.”
Thor frowned, puzzled; Loki knew why—his charts had said he’d need several more days of rest at the sanatorium before travel was recommended. “Are you leaving me here?” Thor asked.
Odin waved cursorily Loki’s way. “You’ll have company. Norns know your foolish friends will be the next ones over on Bifrost.”
“We will be back again to visit,” Frigga assured. Turning to Loki, she asked, “You were intending to stay, weren’t you? Or did your ‘spell of great concentration’ require you back home again so soon?”
Loki took the admonishment, concealed as it was. “Aye, mother. I will stay.”
“Good.” Nodding warmly, she kissed them both farewell again. Arm extended to her husband, she said, “Come now; let’s go home.”
They waved farewell, watching as their family departed. Loki waited for the door to close before taking again his brother’s hand.
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It was hard for Thor, seeing his brother in chains.
Not long ago, Loki’s hand would have been offered to him freely. His help would have come without a bargain. But those times were gone to Thor now, swept over the falls of the Bifrost. His brother fell beyond his grasp; a stranger stood now in his midst.
The chains kept the worst of Thor’s anger at bay. They reminded him that this was not Loki beside him now, not the boy that played and laughed and smiled with him throughout their childhood. This was the shadow of his brother shouting at him, reminding Thor of his failures. It was a wounded beast who repeated to Thor the death of their mother, throwing words like acid. Sharing private pains meant to make him burn.
The funeral passed without a sibling at his side. Thor had watched the rites with no brother to hold his hand, no one to suffer with him as the falls claimed their mother too. There was only the dark stranger leering at him, extending a barbed hand and wringing out an agreement that would make them both bleed.
Thor clasped his brother’s wrists, undid the chain. Turned a blind eye to the betrayal that would quickly come.
At his own word, by his own vice, Thor would accept this betrayal. For a briefest moment, he would have his brother once again.
The bauble sat in a bird’s nest built atop the tallest tree. When the wind blew, and the tree shook, the magpie nestled down, bodily fixing the bauble in place.
They were waiting for the storm to clear. Harsh temperatures and chin-deep snowdrifts made the pass impenetrable by land. The wind chased them down the side of the crater whenever they flew for it. Thusly they waited, ruffled and low in the nest, quivering with each gust of the cold, arctic breeze.
Beneath them, on level with the earth, ice wolves skirted around the frozen lake. They traversed the unsteady ground in a small pack, heads low and watchful. They moved for the crater path as well.
“Enough of this,” the magpie grumbled. Chest feathers ruffling, she plucked up the bauble’s chain in her claws and took flight once again.
The wind took its cue to blow more harshly. Clouds of sharp, glittering ice swept up from the lake and pelted the would-be trespassers. The wolves laid low, and the magpie herself fluttered off-course. She aimed her freefall for the path, dumping herself into a snowdrift more than halfway up the crater.
She shifted forms as she sat up in the drift. Shaking snow from her dark hair, she gave an elaborate shudder. “Well, that was interesting,” said Loki.
From the chain around her wrist, the bauble glowed, releasing a wisp of life. The wisp solidified, as much as a shade could. Verity turned to her friend with a pinched glare. “How many attempts has this been?”
“Twelve. Perhaps more, depending on whether you count the approaches from the frozen sea.”
“I do.”
“Very well. Sixteen, then.” Loki lifted a brow, conceding. She straightened her loose coronet and, straightening her furs, hauled herself up unsteadily. With a quick summoning, she grasped her staff from midair, and used it as a walking stick.
The crater grew steeper the higher they climbed. Loki carried them forward, sluggish yet determined, while Verity hovered encouragingly nearby. She feared Loki would set off an avalanche with her efforts. The snow here was hard-packed, yet without warning it crumbled and swept downhill. Loki seemed nonplussed, however. She kept her legs and the staff kicking forward, buried up to her chin in her furs.
Finally, when the lip of the crater approached a steady eighty degree incline, Loki paused for breath. The wind clutched at her hood, clawing for her to drag her away. She lay down flat against the crater face and closed her eyes, brows knitted against the ice grit endangering her breaths.
Verity hovered over her, helpless. Despite her incorporeality, her hands darted futilely for her friend. At this height, having travelled this far, she hesitated to speak. “Loki … We don’t have to do this.”
“You need your body back,” Loki replied dully. Her breathing panged.
“But are you sure it’s even worth it?”
“See for yourself.”
A sharp, short gesture guided Verity toward the crater. Attentive to the limits of her confines, Verity floated up the final heights of the mountainside.
The scene below took her breath away. She turned to find Loki climbing, slow and steady, up beside her.
The Raudir basin was one of the few places in Jotunheim protected from the nature of the realm itself. The icy winds here could never cut into its depths with enough strength. Snow melted before it could fall in force within the crater, pooling instead as crystalline lakes along its centre. Cut off from the rest of the realm, life had a chance here to thrive.
Verity had never seen such unfrozen land upon Jotunheim. She turned to her friend, found her watching with a grin. Loki patted the place where Verity’s shoulder would have been, had she been corporeal. “Come, now. Let’s go.”
Loki vaulted the last lip of delineating the crater, and came to rest on a stone face lightly powdered with snow. With the hard work done, she closed the gap with the rest of the crater. Taking a long look, she spared Verity a grin before leaping out into the basin.
In a fell swoop, Verity was flying, gliding down the inner face of the crater at great speed. Loki whooped and laughed as she tobogganed through the snow. Her arms acted as rudders, veering her side to side from rocks and trees. Verity flinched at each approach; Loki tended to keep her course until the last moment, then dig in her hands and slide away.
When her velocity petered out, Loki came to rest beneath the fog line, not far from a forest of unfrozen trees. Once more she dusted herself free from snow. Glancing back, she waved for Verity to follow.
The thicket was unlike any Verity had seen on Jotunheim thus far. The trees here were a dingy grey hue, and almost seemed normal, compared to the vast woods of frozen treants found in the world beyond. The rustle and crash of underbrush belonged to prey animals, now, not ice wolves or scaly frost beasts. Birdsong flittered softly overhead, muffled like ghosts in the fog.
They walked deeper into the iron woods, to where the trees grew taller, the fog thicker. If Verity could feel anything, the press of nature upon her would make her feel tight and small.
The trees gave way to a delicately woven fence line, made from branches and living trees alike. Trinkets hung on a rope around the fence. Smoke came through on a breeze, carried from a fire beyond the fog.
Loki pushed aside a curtain of lichen hanging from a branch, and stepped into the circlet of wood. “Keep quiet, in here. Let me do the talking.” She offered Verity a friendly smile that did not quite reassure.
A stone pathway came into view, marked out by tufts of healing grasses beneath the snow. Fur pelts were stretched on racks around the front yard, in various stages of treatment. Ahead came a low hut made of iron wood, its front an open face entrance. The smoke came from a fire at the path’s end. A shade sat on the fire’s far side, its features obscured.
Verity bristled. Something in here reeked of a lie.
Loki called out a hail in approach, and once she received a curt nod took her place beside the shadow at the fire. Verity confirmed the shade was a Jotun, with long braided hair swept beneath a leather hood. She watched them approach with bloody red eyes.
If Loki was afraid, she kept it well-hidden. Warming her hands over the fire, she turned to the Jotun with an amicable smile. “Much thanks, friend. Hard to believe you can keep such a splendid corner of the world to yourself.”
The Jotun grunted, her lips peeling back from thick tusks. “Not thought I would see you again, Trickster.”
“Ah.” Loki’s mouth twisted. “Well, the world remakes in odd ways. The strangest patterns resurface.”
“By force or design, I wonder.”
Loki mumbled, “Don’t we all.”
The fire snapped between them. The Jotun resumed braiding beads onto a thin rope. Verity bore it with forced calmness. She knew the Jotun was watching her from the corner of her eyes.
Finally the Jotun grunted in interest. She flicked thick fingers toward the bauble on Loki’s wrist. “Your revenant, who is she?”
“A mortal,” Loki replied quickly, “left without form at the end of the world. It was the safest way to ensure her survival.”
“Safest,” the Jotun mumbled, forcing another bead onto her braid. “But not the best. I thought I’d taught you better than that.”
Loki’s smile twisted into something sour. She shook herself free from whatever was curling her grin. “It was other ages, other lives, Angrboda. Who I am now hardly knows who all I’ve been.”
The Jotun, Angrboda, did not seem to care. “You’ve forgotten what matters, Loptr. Now your mortal hangs upon the precipice of unknown.”
Verity felt the chill again, the one that came with lies and half-truths. She looked for something to say. “Do you remember the world before?” she asked. It was rare, in this remaking, to find people who knew of their past lives.
Loki shot her an atypical, unhappy look. Angrboda, however, seemed pleased. “Our past cycles inform our futures,” said the Jotun. “I see many things, child. It is how I knew Loptr would bring you here.”
With that, Angrboda set aside her braid. She plucked up a length of wood and delved it into the fire, pushing aside logs and embers alike. From deep in the flames, she dragged out what looked like a stone. It sizzled in the snow at Loki’s feet, cooling to the angry, red shade of a welt. Of blood.
Verity’s gaze wavered; for a moment, the heat lines looked like a heart beating.
To Loki, Angrboda said, “It is what you came for, isn’t it? Take it, then, and begone.” She waved the wooden stick, dropped it into the fire. Angrboda took up the rope again and resumed her braid.
Loki touched the heated stone tentatively with her foot. She spared Verity a sympathetic look. “It will be a while until we see each other again, my friend. Know that what I do, I do for your sake. I hope you’ll forgive me, in the end.”
Verity frowned, speechless. “Loki, what—” she began. But her friend picked the fiery stone up in both hands, and with a quick beat swallowed it whole.
Verity felt the world spin, suddenly akimbo. Stars sparked in her gaze. “Loki,” she mumbled as she fell, tumbling to the earth, landing in a place that was soft and warm and dark and closed.
She fell asleep. Her long months began. Loki would care for her until life resumed again.
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14 days and 13 fics totaling nearly 23,000 words. Never thought it could be managed, yet here we are. Thank you everyone for putting up with the spam on your dash! The fills are all linked here for posterity’s sake.
Friend(s) date and Secret admirer/Admitting a crush
it’s the last one, so why not go out on a slowburn bang
5,200 wc - merfolk AU
Thor was a man both blessed and cursed by the sea.
As a child a shipwreck claimed his family, leaving him the sole survivor washed ashore amid the debris. An unlucky turn, was that, but there were accompanying whispers.
He grew up an orphan in the village, cutting wood for food each day until his hands blistered. A fisherman’s family took pity on him, and brought him onto their crew. He had a knack at this line of work; his lines never broke and his nets always came in full. The family’s wealth grew. But then a second storm blew in across the clear, so quickly the boat had no chance to escape. Coughing, clinging to life as he struggled ashore, the fisherman gave Thor his second, cursed name.
They called him the Stormbringer, the caller of portentous weather. He caught fish like no other, but attached to his skill was a price too severe. None in the village would bring Thor with them out to sea.
So Thor worked. He turned again to the forest, cut and sold wood enough seasons that he could buy a boat of his own. He returned to the sea a strapping young man, alone in his trawler. He kept his head down and his nets in line. He made enough money to get by.
Which brought him to his third cursed encounter, this time a victim of a pirate ship skimming the far coast. The pirates capsized Thor’s boat as he fished along the current. They roped him up and brought him aboard, labelled him fit for slave labour and beat him when he growled out his refusal. The beatings grew worse until, without warning, just as before, a storm crackled near. The pirate ship sank, and Thor with it, his hands bound in ropes behind his back.
Bad luck comes in threes, Thor thought, as the last held breath burst from his body. It had taken his whole life, but at least now his curse was done.
His next breath came gritted with earth.
Coughing, Thor dug his fingers into the sand, relishing the feel beneath his hands. Life slowly returned to his body. His head throbbed; his back ached from the beatings. But he was alive, somewhere, beneath the bright heat of day.
Slowly Thor rose, pushing back stringy clumps of saltwater hair. He managed a moment on all fours before his arms warbled and he collapsed back down, twisting to his side. If he was going to lie here being useless, he would do so with the sun on his face.
Later, when his vision had steadied, he scanned the beach around him. The land here was pristine, the sand fine and pale. Black stone rose in a rocky lagoon around where he lay. The rope from his wrists were halved by his feet, and beyond them was the serpentine shape of a creature sunning itself along the sand.
Thor sat up, startled; the creature lunged back into the water lightning-quick, leaving Thor with only a flash of icy blue fin.
Rising to his feet, Thor brushed his hands clean on his damp trousers. With a cautious eye on the water, he turned to the brush at his back.
The island was moderately small, and the portions Thor searched quickly revealed themselves to be uninhabited. He found traces of visitors there in the years before him—empty clay pots and mouldering grass huts, mostly, though there was one half-bottle of liquor where the cork yet snugly fit. Thor wandered as far inland as he dared, then returned to the beach and dug with stones beneath the bases of several trees, but found no hidden food cache.
There were no people here. Deeper in there had been a pool of fresh groundwater, a tiny stream leading off to a distant beach. But no songbirds sang overhead, no animals rushed underfoot. Thor barely counted a berry bush within the island’s depths.
Sighing, Thor turned his explorations to the sea line. He began searching for debris washed in with the waves, but the beaches were clean. Strange, he thought, that there was no sign of the shipwreck. Not even a pirate had likewise washed ashore.
Thor returned to the lagoon, head down, wistful.
Ahead, six feet in from the water line, there sat a fat barnacled bucket Thor swore had not been there before.
Out farther from it, a dark head peered above the water.
Thor approached the bucket slowly, eyes trained on the stranger staring out at him. “Who are you?” he called, but the shadow ducked and disappeared.
The bucket, he found, was slowly leaking water, but within it was a churning blur of silverback fish.
Thor looked up hurriedly, watched the water for long minutes. But the stranger did not return.
As night approached, Thor turned his worries to warmth and shelter. He peeled up the rotting scraps of frond mats found deeper in the jungle, and propped them up along the shoreline against what he assumed would be a midnight storm. Bundles of sticks he gathered into a fire; he then cooked and ate the bucketed fish until his belly was full.
It was wiser to build shelter deeper into the tree line, but Thor was curious about the strange shape he’d seen earlier in the water. A better shelter would be worried about in the morning; tonight he would spare watching for the shadow in the sea.
He’d underestimated his exhaustion, however, and before the fire had even cooled to embers Thor had drifted off to sleep. He woke with a start as the storm spat its first droplets against his cheeks, and then spent the next several hours struggling to keep himself dry and the fire alight.
Morning came with no small measure of relief from the night’s misery. Thor rung out his clothes and lay them along the beach to dry, and likewise flattened himself along the sand. He needed the sun’s warmth, now, to make it through the rest of the day.
He had a third of the bucket’s fish yet, and there was fresh water. Small blessings in the both of those; Thor would survive at least another nightfall. Dozing with eyes closed, he listened to the lull of the ocean, the ebb and slide of the waves against the beach, and thought about what best to do with his time.
His ears pricked upon odd splashing and sliding noises, ones that ran counter to what he anticipated from the waves. Then came a subtle rasp, coming closer.
Thor kept his eyes closed until he was certain the noise had moved to his side. With heart pounding, Thor peered through barely-parted lids. At what he saw, he forced himself still.
A man was crouched above his side, staring down. A man, perhaps, or a woman, its high cheekbones marking out its face in indeterminate, angular planes. Dark hair clung slick to the back of its neck, tucked behind pointed ears. It stared down at Thor with blood-red eyes, its brows pinched as it puzzled over his body.
Thor inhaled. A siren. A mer. It was a merfolk with him, here.
The siren quirked at his draw of breath. It glanced up at his face, caught his gaze. Sharp teeth peered behind pale blue lips. Red eyes widened. Thor made to speak, but too late—the creature was thrashing back, kicking up sand as it slithered into the water.
“Wait!” Thor called, but it was no matter. Thor caught a whisper of blue tail before the creature was gone.
He stared out at the water, breathing heavy. More pieces of wood littered the beach now. There was even a length of the broken mizzen mast poking out from the water; upon closer inspection, Thor found it complete with yard, cordage, and a heavy segment of canvas sail. All good things that would help him survive.
A siren was here, helping him. Bringing him pieces of the shipwreck.
A siren. But why?
It did him no good to waste time waiting for the creature’s return, so Thor turned with reluctance back to the tasks of building fire and shelter. He hauled the mizzen up from the water, and picked the beach clean of wooden debris. There was not much he could do without a knife or hammer, but Thor leaned the mast into the crook of one tree and roped the canvas tightly across the yard, forming a makeshift lean-to against the tree.
From the flatwood he built a bed above the ground, tying the pieces together with lengths of vine. It was slipshod but it would hold for now.
His visitor, he learned, watched him from the water, perched upon crooked arms so that its eyes were the only height revealed above the waves. Thor caught glimpses of the siren more than a few times, but so long as he was moving it never left the water’s edge.
It did, though, once Thor sat down finally, his hands warming above the fire through the chill leeching into the evening. Thor moved so that he was hard to spot from the lagoon, his back twisted slightly toward the spray. Sure enough, curiosity soon drove the siren from the sea. Thor listened to its slippery approach.
He wondered how far the creature would dare come from the water, whether it would travel beyond the sand. Thor wanted to look so desperately, but he knew the moment he did the siren would slip away. Instead, he kept still, his hands hovering above the fire. A wet log fizzled, and snapped. The slither of the siren paused.
Calmly, carefully, Thor turned his head toward the water. There, at eight paces away, the siren lay flat upon its belly, chin against the sand. Its arms were bent, its webbed hands poised for push off.
In tiny increments, Thor relaxed his own hands. He spread his palms across his knees, kept his body still. He caught the creature’s gaze without showing a flicker of fear.
The siren stared back at him, its body a rigid line. Thor could see the flowing dorsal fin on its back, laying flat beneath the long length of its hair. The pale blue of its upper body gave way to midnight farther down its tail. Its icy flukes paled to white, its tail flicking like a cat’s in the open air.
It held his eye, returning his attentions. They watched each other without moving for long, slow breaths.
Thor did not know what to do. He wanted to step forward, to move in closer. But he did not want to drive the siren away.
He made up his mind. Rising at a purposeful pace, Thor turned toward the creature and walked toward the beach, slow enough that he hoped he wouldn’t startle the creature.
The siren launched itself back, however, skittering away in a flash of fin. Thor flinched at the thrashing of water that broke with its escape. Unlike the times before, though, Thor saw the mer circling close to the shoreline, its shoulders yet hanging out of the waves.
Thor sat down in the sand, skirted off his shirt and trousers. Inching slowly forward, he tucked himself in to the lagoon’s approaching tide.
The water felt colder, this time of night, as it swept over him. Thor’s body broke out in goosepimples. He tried not to show his shivers.
Within the water, the siren seemed more daring. It swam not far from where Thor sat, its tail flexing, holding its position steady.
This was a foolish decision, Thor thought, as the tide swept his hair back from his neck. He had crawled into the territory of a dangerous creature in hopes of winning its favour, giving the siren entirely the upper hand.
The mer came toward him now, strangely bold, cutting the water like a pale knife. Thor had a moment to gasp before the siren was upon him, long tail thudding against his legs. It brought their bodies chest to chest as it pulled Thor under, dunking him in a chilling bath.
Thor clamped a hand to his mouth beneath the water, fought the most feral impulse to struggle. He kicked free one leg, the rubbery skin of the mer’s tail now winding strongly against the other. The siren pinned him to the seabed with its hips, heavy but otherwise not forced.
Dark eyes glinted like rubies before him, darting through the cloud of its black hair. It pushed sharp nails through Thor’s own blond mess, gripping his head to face it straight-on. It bobbed in, so close their brows nearly touched, staring into each of Thor’s eyes.
Thor calmed. The siren was merely looking him over, gripping him so that he might not attack.
Thor relaxed as much as he could, pinned beneath the water with one breath. He released his hand and opened his mouth at the siren’s prodding, showed it his blunted teeth and nails. The siren’s tail slowly unfurled. It swam back suddenly, releasing him for air.
Thor broke the surface of the water, and took several steadying breaths. His heart was pounding wildly, frightened by the threat of drowning. But he inhaled deeply and ducked down beneath the waves again.
The mer was waiting for him. It lunged in the moment Thor touched bottom, its hands planting upon his knees, coiling itself closer. It touched at Thor’s shoulders, his arms; his hands. Thor watched the ways its gills trembled, as if excited. No other expression gave the siren’s thoughts away.
Thor came up for a second breath, and a third, returning each time to allow the mer to continue its ministrations. It liked revisiting Thor’s eyes, again and again, staring into each in turn. It touched Thor’s chest and tweaked his nipple, sending him reeling to the surface for breath. When he came back, its tail wrapped absently around his legs. It stretched out its neck, a vision of preening. Thor took it as his invitation to touch.
The skin on its shoulder was smooth, and cold. His fingers slipped up its neck like rubber. He touched his knuckles to its ear.
The mer thrashed back, kicking up sediment. Thor shut his eyes. He came up for breath, and returned shortly, but no matter where he looked the siren was gone.
Thor swam to the shore, disappointed in himself yet pleased with tonight’s progress. He towelled dry with his trousers, and wrung the majority of water from his hair, then dressed. He stoked the fire up from coals and stared out to the sea for long hours yet.
In the morning, he gathered more firewood, and used the excuse to explore deeper into the island. He found a berry bush whose juices did not inflame his skin when he rubbed them near his lips, and mouthed one before bringing back a small handful for potential breakfast. Returning to the shore, he picked through rocks and pools of water, gathering up mussels and captured fish. The former he dropped into the bucket, now refilled with water. The fish he cleaned, cooked, and ate by the fire.
Thor did not see the mer at all throughout the morning, but signs of its presence were clear. The beach was busy again: more shattered hull was pushed beyond the tide line, gathered with other driftwood; the bottom half of a broken pot sat filled with water, and more fish; and a copper cooking spoon stuck out from the lip, trailing with it a length of seaweed.
Closer to the water, a menagerie of baubles were piled in a bland lump. Thor sifted through these, and came out ahead a bread knife and a wrapped leather wallet of fishing hooks. Thor spent the rest of the day determining how he might use the latter.
The mer appeared late in the afternoon, hauling a massive bundle of wet canvas with it. Thor paused in his rope finagling to watch it struggle with the bundle on shore. Smiling, he felt himself relax finally. He got up and moved with a quick pace to where the creature lay.
“Hello,” Thor called out; he couldn’t help himself.
The mer looked to him, coiling back. Thor traced its sharp glare to the knife in his hand. He dropped it without a second thought and continued his slow approach.
When it seemed certain not to flee, Thor bent down and helped reel in the canvas, which seemed to be struggling against both of their grips. The mer swam out again once it was settled, leaving Thor to unfold the sail.
A grouper flopped out from the canvas, wriggling for air. Thor lunged for its tail, stopping the fish before it could escape to the water. He hauled it far from the shoreline and stunned it with a rock, and with a firm slice from the knife bled it out. Once it was prepped, he sat and waited for the mer’s return.
It came not long later, bring with it a ratty knot of netting. Thor rose without thinking; if he had netting, he could make a line for the hooks and go fishing.
The mer paused at the blood on his hands. It did not relinquish the its gift.
“It was the fish,” Thor told it, gesturing back to the shelter. He made a soft fist and brought it to his palm. When that garnered no response, he sighed and bent toward the water, washing his hands.
The mer seemed cautious about its latest gift; it kept the netting gripped firmly in its arms, knotted and messy. Thor wondered belatedly how many times it had been tangled in fishing lines, to have learned such discretion.
“You’ll be safe,” Thor said. “I won’t hurt you.” He gave his warmest smile. The same implacable stare greeted him, but the mer dropped the netting, and within an instant was gone.
Blinking, Thor was left with time to wonder. He fished the netting from the water, and began the arduous task of untying its knots.
A week into his stranding, Thor had built a commendable shelter with a fire he never let go out. He brought rope and a fishing hook to the edge of the lagoon each morning, and spent hours a day staring out into the ocean. Beneath him, the mer made a game of scaring fish either into his nets or off his hook, depending on its mood.
A further two weeks had him using his time to learn grass weaves. He built heavy frond mats and soft baskets for his spoils. He gathered berries, and cooked mussels in an old pot scavenged from the sea. The mer grew accustomed enough to his presence that it would doze alongside him on the sand, sunning itself as he weaved. Thor kept an eye to the horizon, scanning for the sight of sails.
Thor’s beard had grown in; his muscles were strong from a steady diet of protein, but his skin was growing weathered, hardened by the sun. The mer beside him remained a pale, supple blue, however, no matter how long it bathed without shade. It lay beside him on its belly, hair drying soft upon its shoulders. Its tail flicked lazily.
He paused in his basket and glanced over the creature, tracing the androgynous lines of its sleek body. He wondered not for the first time where it came from, where it lived when it was not with him. He wondered whether it had abandoned a pod in order to take care of him. And of all the crew that had drowned that day, why had it chosen to save him?
Thor thought about the sudden severity of the storm, the waves that roiled without source. He wondered how long the mer had known him before they had finally met.
The mer sighed beside him, breaking his concentration. It picked at the pile of palm fronds, ran one against its lips. Thor splashed some water onto its back, earning him a subtle grin. He kept at it until the mer was dozing once again.
After searching for food, Thor came down the shore one day to find the mer out from the water, nearly at the tree line. It was propped up high, gills ruffling as it gave low chirrups: it was worried, and looking for him. Thor sped up his steps and called out when he was close enough. The mer fell silent, and coiled back to the sand.
The mer relaxed to the water once Thor joined it, recounting to it the minor details of the day. But it tensed again when Thor stood, returning to the trees.
“I’m thirsty,” Thor explained, pointing into the forest. “There’s fresh water in there.”
The mer did not seem to understand. It perched within the waterline, making the same chirrups for him to come back.
Thor did not know how to tell it that he could not stomach the sun for much longer, not without a drink. Not even sitting in the shade seemed to satisfy it; it wanted him close by.
Thinking for a moment, Thor pulled off his clothes and went into the water, shifting so that he knelt beside the mer. Slowly, so that it knew what he was doing, Thor touched an arm to its back, another around its tail. Its flesh was cool and smooth against his hands. Carefully, he tightened around it, and lifted the mer in the basket of his arms.
The mer startled as he hoisted it, gripping him fiercely around his neck. Its nails dug into his shoulders; its tail thrashed for a moment before the mer settled itself. Thor wriggled until the grip on his neck loosened. He struggled with his first steps; outside the water, the mer was heavier than it looked. But gamely he continued to the tree line, and on toward the spring.
Thor moved cautiously, prepared at any moment for the mer to change its mind. But it remained still, frightened but steady, seemingly safe within Thor’s arms.
Thor, for his part, ensured no more than brush came in contact with the mer. The mer darted its gaze in every direction, peering at rocks and trees with equal interest. Its breaths were coming quick; it clung tightly to Thor’s chest.
He motioned his chin toward the pool of groundwater. As the mer looked, it nearly shook with excitement, so much so that Thor struggled to set it down. The mer dove silently into the spring, settling at the bottom of the clear water.
Breathing heavily, Thor followed it in, dipping up to his nose in the cool water, and drinking deeply. He washed his hair and arms, the back of his neck. He felt the mer tickling his toes. Laughing, he tucked his legs back.
The mer bobbed up beside him, the crown of its head cresting the water. It looked to him with wide ruby eyes.
“Do you like it?” Thor asked, grinning as he treaded water. He glanced around the trees above them, closing his eyes as he listened to the breeze. “It reminds me of home, a little. In the forest where I chopped wood, there was a place much like this. A small stream that fed off from the mountains. But it was colder than here.”
When he looked back, Thor found the mer’s expression had not changed. But it watched him speak with rapt attention, aware without understanding. Thor felt a fond affection for it once again.
“You’ve kept me company, you know? And I thank you for that. Thank you for saving me.”
The mer swam close, its gaze flickering between Thor’s eyes. It touched one finger to his cheek, rubbing his beard. Chirruping, it leaned in to touch the same with its lips.
Heat rose in Thor’s body. He thought it meant to kiss him, but no, it wanted the feel of his stubble upon its lips. The knowledge did not help the feelings he was having; he could not stop the instinctive rise of his pulse as the mer touched him. He tamped down the desire to pull the mer near.
When the heat of the day finally broke, Thor hoisted the mer again and brought it back to the ocean. The mer came away more relaxed this time, confident enough in Thor’s ministrations that it reached out and stroked the brush as they walked. Pulling a handful of leaves from a bush, the mer touched the greenery to its lips in slow fashion, feeling the leaf slide against its skin.
Thor walked into the water, deep enough for the mer to float in his arms, but the mer did not swim away. It held him for a moment longer, tail swishing gently by Thor’s legs. It leaned back in the water, head resting on Thor’s arm. Closing its eyes, it offered him a dreamy smile.
Oh, how Thor’s heart stuttered beneath that soft gaze. Could he have ever dreamt of such a moment, with a siren in his arms? Had he thought for one instant such a thing could happen?
Feeling romantic, Thor brought a hand to the mer’s cheek, touching it gently. The mer did not move, though it chirruped a little. It let him run his knuckles along the length of its pale underbelly, touching as much tail as was within reach. He swept back the mer’s hair, cupped its head toward him. He leaned down to touch its lips with his. But at that the mer pushed him aside, turning him away.
Thor remembered himself, then, as the mer swam out from the shore. He thought of the tales of sirens traded within the tavern. A song lured men to death; a kiss sealed their fate. He considered how much of it was true.
No wonder the mer had been silent with him this whole time.
The mer joined him often, in the days that followed, seldom straying from Thor’s side. It hung out from the water in longer intervals, sometimes going so far as to remain at the shelter through the evening, watching as Thor cooked fish for supper. Thor offered the mer cooked bites, though after the first it was clear the mer didn’t much care for them, and preferred only to chew the bones Thor passed to it.
The thrum of night insects filled the silence between them. Thor thought again about the village he’d left behind, the small hut he called his home. The ways his life differed there from here, and the ways they were the same. His missed the innkeeper, one of the few in the village who worried whether he came back from a day on the ocean. He wondered if she worried for him now.
The mer shook his arm, gently. Rousing to himself, Thor let it pull the morsel of fish from his fingers, sucking the bones clean.
Thor caught his breath. An old thought came to him, then, of his family—not the fisherman’s lot, but his true one, the one that came before. His father, standing stoic at the bow of his ship; his mother, her hands weathered by salt water, tucking back windblown strands of Thor’s hair; and his brother, running across the deck to greet him, taking the sweet offered from Thor’s sticky hands.
“You remind me of him,” Thor murmured, struggling against the sweep of emotion.
The mer flicked its ruby gaze toward him. When it caught his expression, it sprung up, worried. Chuckling, Thor allowed it to paw at his face, its talons feeling out the dampness at his eyes. His throat grew tight as it wrapped him in a hug.
“Thank you, Loki,” Thor whispered, quiet into its hair.
The mer chirruped low, and held him more tightly in reply.
Sometime within the night the mer disappeared. Not an unusual event, except Thor did not see it the following day. Or the day thereafter.
Worried, Thor scoured the beach in both directions, an eye kept out for debris or dark hair. He reeled in his nets earlier, confirmed them empty. Nothing appeared out of the ordinary, save for the absence of his friend.
Soon Thor realised just how empty his days were without the mer. He ate more mussels, snared more fish. Repaired the woven mats damaged by the rain. He cooked his supper and ate it, tasting nothing. He lay down for bed and slept with deep reluctance, eager only for the opportunity brought with another day.
But the mer did not return. Thor hung around the lagoon feeling listless and lost.
After a week of this, Thor left the nets where they were. He got up only to drink water and relieve himself, and on occasion to scrounge up a bit of food before crawling back into bed. He listened to the ocean and found it only an endless cycle of noise. There was no point to any of it. He stared out onto the horizon until the sun dropped low on another day.
A morning came where it was not clouds that greeted Thor, but instead a set of sails.
His body stuttered, only half-remembering what to do in such circumstances. But Thor soon sprung up, and thrust a stick from the fire into the bonfire stack he had prepared. He began hauling more and more wood into the stack, and as the flames grew he stepped back and stared out to the sea.
The heading for the ship had changed. It was coming now for him.
Thor’s arms shook as the crewman helped him into the scouting boat they’d sent for him. He could scarcely climb his way back onto the main ship. All the noise, the sights and smells of other people … Thor’s mind boggled. He could only stare.
“A big lout, aren’t you?” one of the naval officers told him, glancing him over with a cheeky grin. “Seems to me you did alright out there.”
“Not like the other one,” another crewman shouted.
Thor’s ears pricked up. He tucked the towel around his neck. “There was another rescue?”
The crewman gestured a thumb over his shoulder. “Aye, some runt showed up in the water after a storm blew us off course. He practically begged for us to sail this way instead. Lucky for you then, eh?”
Thor stood, trembling on his weakened legs. “Where. Show me where.”
The officers shrugged, but they saw no reason to bar him from moving. They led him to where the other stranded man sat.
On a bench, tucked beneath a heavy bundle of oilskins, a pale shadow trembled from the cold and wet. His head hung low, his arms wrapped around his knees. He was shivering, his shoulders bunched up around his ears. His bare toes rubbed at each other beneath the blankets.
Thor could not mistake that dark crown anywhere. His heart was pounding. He fought to find his voice. “Loki?”
Glancing up, Thor found the mer’s sharp gaze had softened with its new green eyes. It offered him a cheeky grin.
The Valentine's prompt fics are each perfect little jewels! But... either you missed #9 or didn't you get a prompt? Greedy Siggy is greedy...
Haha, you are sweet! You’re right too; #9 is being worked on presently, and if all goes well it should be up tomorrow with the next (and last) prompt fill.
this family is always so sad; let’s go back to simpler times
1,100 wc - pre-Thor gen/kidfic
Odin returned to his chambers with thoughts swimming of the day. The high doors rasped closed behind him, stirring Frigga from where she dozed upon a low divan. She smiled at him, eyes dropping closed, head rising from her shoulder. With her free hand she waved for him to continue his approach.
“Aisla fell ill,” Frigga whispered, when he was close enough to kiss her cheek. “I told her to rest; I would care for the boys tonight.”
Swaddled in a receiving quilt, the latest addition to their family dozed within her arms. Odin brushed aside the blanket’s hem, ran a lone finger down the boy’s soft cheek. Loki clutched his tiny fists in reply.
“Do not wake him,” Frigga warned him, though her voice carried a smile. Odin saw no point in the chastisement; though the council demanded much of his time, he had spent enough evenings with his son to know Loki bawled nearly half as much as Thor had at the same age.
“Where is Thor?” Odin cast his attention around the room, honing in on the chirruping self-conversations of a child. Frigga followed his gaze, and lilted her chin to the terrace. Setting aside his staff, Odin tread quietly toward the balcony.
Breathing in the fresh air from the palace gardens, relaxed along his belly, Thor directed the toy soldiers spread about him, whispering formations Odin could hardly hear. He watched for a moment, savouring the delight that came to Thor when, with realization dawning, he found his father near. Jumping up, knocking toys aside, Thor leapt forward into his father’s arms, spinning through the air as Odin pulled him near.
“You’re here!” Thor squealed, hugging him. Both hands flew quickly to his mouth, as if he could call back his cry. Odin and he both turned to Frigga. A glance assured them the babe had not woken yet.
Thor whispered in a rush all the things he’d done today—the dull lessons following breakfast, the morn spent reciting Asgard’s history. The afternoon had contained his favourite class: armed combat. Eitri would be starting the younger boys on practice staves soon.
Odin gamely listened as his son spoke, increasingly aware of the ache growing in his lower back. He carried Thor over to the divan, sat down beside his wife. Thor’s voice dropped so low neither of his parents understood him anymore, though they nodded and smiled with whatever he said.
With his stories told, Thor’s attention strayed back to his brother. “Is he better now? He was coughing earlier.” Thor turned the latter to Odin, the former to Frigga. Odin looked to his wife, brow raised in query.
“Just a small cold, nothing to worry about,” Frigga replied. She shifted the swaddling so that both Odin and Thor could see the babe. Now that he looked again, Odin could see that the boy’s cheeks were pinched too pink. He would call the healers in if he did not improve by the morn.
Little Loki heaved a big sigh, arms trembling with exertion. Thor giggled, outstretched his hand in spite of himself. With a little coaxing, his brother clasped his finger; Thor smiled wildly. “See? He likes me already.”
“Of course he does.” Frigga nodded, reassuring. “You are brothers. You have a place in each other’s hearts always.”
Thor sighed at that, shifting closer. He sprawled ungainly across his father’s lap.
“Why don’t you bring us a book to read?” Frigga suggested, once it became clear that Thor’s constant readjustment came from overbundled energy. “One Loki would like,” she added, as Thor vaulted off the divan, running for the stack of tomes brought with him to his mother’s chambers.
“You don’t mind reading, do you?” she murmured to her husband, once their eldest was beyond earshot.
Sighing, Odin scratched at his still-healing eye, feigning inconvenience. He was tired, yes, but not so much he would see his wife displeased. When Thor returned, he held out his hand and accepted the leather-bound book. Thor resumed his place, crawling up the divan and back into Odin’s arms.
Odin flipped open the book, deftly cracking its spine. “Which one is it tonight, then?”
Thor rushed through the pages, nearly tearing some in his enthusiasm. Belatedly, Odin realized his son had brought him The Book of Yggdrasil.
“Tell me the one about the Frost Giants,” Thor whispered, turning the filigree pages.
The suggestion caught Odin by surprise. He glanced to his wife, saw her quickly shake her head. Privately, he agreed.
“Not tonight,” Odin said, prying aside his son’s hands. “Why not learn about Svartalfheim instead, hmm?” Turning to the page, he began to read. “’Long before the birth of light, there was darkness. And from that darkness came the Dark Elves…’”
Later, when the story had ended and Thor began to doze, Odin turned to his wife. “Should we have told him?” he murmured. The thought came, never-ending, in the days since he brought Loki home.
Frigga seems likewise torn by the consideration. She looked to the fragile bundle in her arms, his face a rosy sheen. She swept aside a curl of dark hair, her thumb lingering on Loki’s cheek. “I don’t know,” she admitted. Her soft look bordered on sorrow. “I would like to think they’ll both find out before they’re older.”
Odin nodded with false bluster, though he felt equally unsure. “At the right time, perhaps. When it won’t make a difference.”
Frigga did not meet him with the same bravado, though she smiled through her doubt nonetheless. Leaning in, Odin met his wife with a kiss upon her brow, dry and sweet.
Thor shifted in his arms, groaning. He wiped at his eyes. “Come now,” Frigga told him. “Off to bed.”
Breathing in heavily, Thor made burbled protests even as his father rose, lifting him in his arms. He reached back for Frigga, wrapping around her neck as he offered her an upside down kiss. As Odin drew him back, Thor carefully petted Loki’s brow with his knuckles, and murmured to his brother goodnight.
Odin lingered as he approached the door, glancing back. “I’ll be back shortly, wife.”
Frigga hummed through her smile, waving him off. The last glance Odin saw through the door was her leaning down, smelling the crown of their infant’s head.
How lucky was he to have this family, Odin thought. The start of a great many new things.
Thor held out hope for the morning, but as the afternoon passed he knew there was no point.
The florist had been by earlier with a bucket of generic bouquets, enough for each person in the company. The rest of the office had received deliveries from their significant others as well—chocolates and roses, candies and cards now littered every cubicle except his. It made the call from reception that more irritating, when she informed Thor that Mr Laufeyson wanted to see him.
Thor didn’t much care what Loki had to say to him right now, but Loki was his boss and Thor must do as he ordered. Barely. There was room for leeway, perhaps.
The receptionist Carol was busy on her headset, but she greeted Thor with a warm smile and waved him in. Thor crossed the waiting area to the corner office and knocked, perfunctory, on the heavy oaken door. He then turned the knob and peered inside.
Loki was hunched over his desk, hand pressed to his brow, thinking. The window was shuttered behind him, the overhead light dimmed. He did not look up from his folder of papers. “Close the door, please.”
Petulantly, Thor left the door precisely where it was. Jaw clenching, he bottled his temper and stepped inside, his footfalls hushed as he crossed onto the plush rug before Loki’s desk. He sat in one of the twin winged armchairs, his legs splayed. Leaning sideways, Thor toyed his fingers along his bottom lip. He refused to speak first.
Loki seemed not to notice the cold shoulder. He continued scanning the leaflet of papers, pen poised in one hand. His jacket was folded across the side table, his tie loosened from its place beneath his vest. With his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, Thor could watch the muscles in Loki’s arm twitch with every tap of the pen.
“Well?” Loki asked him, once the silence grew too still. He still hadn’t bothered to make eye contact with Thor.
Thor hunkered down lower. He mashed his fingers against his mouth, stymieing his impulse to speak.
Loki folded his hands together. He raised one brow at Thor. “Will you tell me why you’ve been avoiding me all day?”
The way Loki talked, his low murmur, it rubbed Thor the wrong way. “You should know already,” Thor replied smoothly. “And if you don’t know, then you’re in deeper trouble yet.”
Loki sighed. He reclined in small increments into his chair. “Don’t tell me you care about this sorry excuse for a ‘holiday’.”
“No,” Thor spat, “but I thought maybe I’d get something from a secret admirer. Anything. But no, I’ve had to stomach everyone’s pity all day instead.”
Loki ushered for Thor to keep his voice down; his gaze flickered to the door. “What were you expecting, a dozen roses? I thought we were keeping this private.”
“We are. So private, I’m not even sure it exists.”
A frown came at that. “Do you truly think I brought you nothing?”
Thor flicked at a nail. “Until I get something, I’m not sure what to think.”
Loki clasped his hands before his face. Thor saw the cogs turning in his employer’s head, determining the best route to placate him. Loki tapped the pen, thinking, then reached into the desk. From the top drawer he pulled a brown-bordered laminate page, long as a legal paper but only half as wide. With his fingertips, he reversed it on the desktop and slid it toward Thor.
Thor plucked the sheet and held it up between them. He skimmed the cream page, its lilting black scrawl. It was a menu, from one of the top-end restaurants to which Loki brought only their best clients.
“We will have dinner,” Loki pronounced.
“Out?” Thor had to ask, though he already knew the answer.
“No, there’s too much left to do here.” Gesturing to the menu, Loki said, “Call in with my name and place an order for yourself. I’ll have my usual. When the delivery arrives have Carol bring it in. I will then tell Carol to send the rest of the staff home early. Find an excuse to linger. When you’re certain everyone else has gone, come back here and join me.”
Nodding absently, Thor rose, his gaze trained on the menu. He manoeuvred around the desk, gait slow and purposeful. When he reached the back edge, he flicked Loki the menu and boldly sat beside him. Without a second glance, Thor turned to phone and depressed the intercom button. “Carol? Mr Laufeyson asks that we send the staff home now. Yes, I know. No, it’s alright, I can finish the filing myself.”
Thor released the intercom with a satisfying click. He turned to Loki, his grin smug. Loki watched him with fuming impunity. Thor leaned in, savouring the glare. “Oh no, I’m not leaving any room for you to wiggle out of this mess. And I’m not leaving this office until I get my gift.” The last he whispered straight into Loki’s ear.
When Thor rose, he found Loki’s frustration had shifted into something more sly. Thor felt his footing slip.
Loki glanced him over, reclining again in his chair. He reached out a hand, touched the end of Thor’s tie. Slipped the fabric between two fingers and rubbed, gently. “This cheap brand yet again.”
Reeling in the fabric, he bowed Thor forward, forcing him along the desk’s edge. “I hate how you still use the four-in-one,” Loki continued. “A year’s passed and still you haven’t learned a proper half-Windsor.” Thor knocked against the chair with his knees, wriggling so that he might skirt the stacks of paper and fit around where Loki sat. Loki’s fingers slid slowly upward; he took his time loosening Thor’s tie.
Thor became aware of the noise of the office behind him, the bustle that came with the end of day. “If you didn’t get me something, that’s fine,” Thor murmured, heat rising. “Just admit it. Then I’ll go.”
“But you doubt me.” Loki pouted. His hands moved down the front of Thor’s shirt, opening the buttons in pointed increments.
Thor swallowed. He was finally whispering. “Shouldn’t we shut the door?”
Loki shrugged. “You already made your choice about that.” Reaching the last button, he spread open the two sides of the shirt, baring Thor’s chest. With a curt tug he untucked the tail ends. Loki then leaned in, and touched his mouth to the apple of Thor’s throat.
Thor felt his blood lunge up through his body, pounding in his throat. His vision swam. He closed his eyes, willing away the world beyond this office, and concentrated instead on the feel of Loki’s lips, mouthing along his clavicle.
Loki murmured against his skin. He brushed aside Thor’s hair in a practised sweep. Bowing in, Loki sucked a hickey into his shoulder. Thor groaned, curling into it. His head dropped as Loki pulled away.
Glancing over him, Loki paused, humming in near satisfaction. He straightened Thor’s collar, then dropped his hands to Thor’s nipples, relishing the hiss of breath Thor gave as his thumbs swiped across them. Loki leaned in, laving his tongue across one pebbled point. Thor cursed, rocking up from the desk; he bit back a moan as Loki sucked the nipple in between his teeth.
From outside the office, Carol called to them: “Goodnight!”
Thor burbled a response, fighting back a groan as Loki continued to suckle him, his fingers working the buckle of Thor’s belt. The outside office lights clicked off. Thor prayed it meant they were finally alone.
Thor lifted up as Loki unstrapped him, undoing the zipper. Tapered fingers curled around Thor’s hips, drew him up; peeled down his trousers and then pressed him down.
Loki pulled back, face flushed and breathing heavy. His kisses began again at Thor’s throat, wending down the planes of his chest. As he reached Thor’s navel, he peeled down Thor’s underwear, pulling free his cock.
A hot breath came across the beading tip, a gust that prickled the hairs on Thor’s belly. Then Loki was bending down, mouth open and wet. Thor bit his lip, groaning. He set a hand on the back of Loki’s head.
Loki drew back, knocking away his grip. “Hold the desk,” he growled, voice raspy and low. Reluctantly Thor did as he said.
Instincts warring, Thor fought for control, his knuckles turning white along the desk’s edge. Loki worked him with methodical precision, taking him deep. Thor bucked a little, hips lifting from the desk. Loki pulled off, mouth shining. He tutted. “Control yourself.”
“I’m trying,” Thor breathed, but when he failed again Loki rose from the chair, and bowed Thor back along the desk top, removing his leverage. Thor anchored his view on a crooked elbow; he knocked aside a stack of folders as he spread his legs.
Loki chuckled, vibrations pooling in Thor’s crotch. He pulled back with a wet pop. “You’ll have to pick that up later,” he teased, then paused a moment to rifle through a side drawer. A lid snapped open, then Loki was pulling down the last of Thor’s underwear. Without warning, he buried a cold slicked finger into the bud of Thor’s ass.
Thor shivered, instinct telling him to bear down even as his body rebelled. Loki was curling within him expertly, coaxing out places that made Thor squirm. He was just getting used to the finger in his ass when the digit was removed, and there came the hot slide of something more—a wet tongue came plunging in its place.
Thor jolted up, startled. Loki planted a hand on his thigh, curled him down again. He continued laving his tongue until Thor was nearly keening, then re-lubed his fingers and switched back to them.
It wasn’t long until three knuckles were buried within him, and Thor heard a foil tearing. He struggled up onto his elbows, saw Loki sliding a condom on. Groaning, Thor flexed his back and found grip on the desk behind him. Spreading his legs, he held steady, breath trembling, until Loki had bullied his way inside.
Then they were rutting, Thor with a star-dotted view of the ceiling, his arms straining. He coiled up, planted one hand on the back of Loki’s neck, the other like a prop behind him, slipping steadily back along the desk.
Loki was leaning over him, forcing him supplant. But Thor did not go willingly; fisting the front of his vest, he jerked Loki closer, forcing him into a sloppy kiss.
They were panting and frantic as they crested, their grip around each other painfully tight. Loki pumped his fist until Thor was keening, shuddering onto his chest.
Thor groaned, fell pliant. He dug in his heels until Loki finally came with a gasp.
Messy, panting, Thor laughed at the case notes stuck to back. “Can you still read these?” he said, gesturing toward them.
Loki swiped the pages away. He sat back in his chair, sweaty and mildly irritated. He knotted the condom and dropped it in the bin. “Now do you see why I couldn’t give this to you earlier?”
Thor laughed, rocking teasingly along the desk. “Your dick doesn’t count as a gift.”
Loki hummed, unaffected. “If you say so.” He threaded his fingers through his mussed hair. “Now get on your knees and clean up your mess.” He gestured to the spill of papers along the floor, offside the desk.
Thor groaned. “You’re kidding me.”
“Afraid not, darling,” Loki told him. He leaned back in his chair like a king, encouraging him on with a pageantry wave.
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His shift was noon ‘til midnight, meaning Loki expected to be home sometime closer to two instead, perhaps even later on such an auspicious day. The senior pastry chef had called in his retirement months before, but somehow Loki never truly expected the day in question would arrive, that tonight the senior chef would plate his last desserts, and tomorrow Loki’s kingdom would come.
Already it was half past ten, which typically meant last tickets had been printed and prepped. Today, however, final reservations had been set by the chef himself, long after the doors had closed. Family and friends, mostly, though a handful of esteemed colleagues made the cut. The executive and sous chefs were on order waiting for tickets, while dessert’s preparatory measures were ongoing.
Loki hovered with a syringe over a long crock of chilled vegetable oil, piping in beads of pomegranate juice in slow, steady drops. After a minute, he drained the beads into a bowl of clear oil glaze, and resumed the process once again.
Around him his fellow pastry chefs worked their specialties: mango mousse came together with caramelized white chocolate upon miniature apricot cannelés; rhubarb was poached to blushing rosée and arranged in fluted glasses topped with elderflower and vanilla sabayon. Even the ginger tea cakes were cut and arranged into perfect petal crowns, prepared for the final servings of dark chocolate wafers atop masala chai ice cream.
The senior chef came in, clapped his hands. Like the chefs around him Loki turned to attention one last time. They listened, humbled by the honour of the years given by this man. Then the tickets were printing, slapped to the rail, and the main kitchen was hopping. The pastry kitchen left behind its quiet solemnity and resumed double pace. Within no time, the wait staff were running the pass.
Loki could not count the hours that passed; there was no time. He merely kept his head down, working the line, shoulder to shoulder with his fellow chefs. Dicing fruit, cutting cakes. Trimming toffee to size by the centimetre. Then the dessert tickets came and the plating began. Loki stepped back so that the senior could plate one of each of his specialties, one final time.
“I will miss this place,” he said, solemn, surveying the pass with a damp eye. He patted Loki on the back, smiling. “Take good care of it, would you?” One of each dessert he then set upon a tray, and ran the tray himself to the table.
From beyond the kitchen came a round of cheers. Loki listened from the pass, eyes closed, breathing in the moment. A few years more, he might feel the same.
With the bluster of the evening over, Loki joined his colleagues in cleaning the kitchen. He stowed away the last of the unused fruit, plating for himself a small portion of raspberry tarts and soft ginger cake, delicately drizzled with his signature honey caviar.
An arm wrapped around his waist, teasing him close. Lost in thought, appreciating his final touches, Loki nearly jumped out of his skin. He spun so quickly, Thor nearly lost a grip on his plate.
“Hey, careful,” Thor said, bowing back. The dish came to rest carefully beside Loki’s on the pass.
Loki looked him over, feeling out of place. Thor still wore his sous chef garb, though with the work day done for him he’d pulled off his netting. His blond hair remained knotted in a bun, damp at the base of his neck.
“Long day for you,” Thor said, surveying him. Crossing over to the pass, he nudged the plate closer. “Eat.”
Loki held his breath, his heart pausing. Thor had brought him a sandwich, served with rapidly cooling kettle chips. His stomach churned immediately with hunger; he grabbed a half of the chicken sandwich, and bit heartily into the fougasse bread. Plum tomato and rosemary herbs burst across his palate, followed closely by the crunch of argula and smoky undertones to the chicken, the umame slide of the baby swiss cheese.
Head dropping back, Loki closed his eyes to rapture. He suffered Thor chuckling with his own scarcely-hidden grin. “It’s just a sandwich, Loki.”
“Yes, but after a day spent staring down sugars, a full-face punch of protein is a goddamn delight.”
Thor beamed, his smile impossible to hide. He picked through the plate of chips beside him, the other half of the sandwich in hand. Chewing slowly, Loki touched his knuckles to the dessert tray, skimming it closer to where Thor leaned.
Brows rising, Thor cleared his mouth and plucked one delicate tart from the dessert tray. His first bite garnered a moan so sumptuous Loki felt his spine melt with glee. “You’re killing me, Lo. When I end up with diabetes, I’m gonna blame you.” He grinned as Loki rolled his eyes.
Loki swiped his finger across Thor’s cheek, plucking away a bead of honey caviar. Thor nipped it from his finger. “That’s mine,” he growled when Thor went for the second tart. Thor made a feigned effort to stop him, but Loki forced Thor’s hand away mid-bite, redirected the dessert so it ended in his mouth instead.
Thor paused partway through his laughter. With Thor’s hand held steady, Loki licked the digits caught between his lips.
“Congrats on the promotion,” Thor murmured. He drew back his hand, suddenly shy.
Loki savoured the blush crawling up his cheeks. He pointedly licked his lips, then looked away. “It’s not a sure thing yet.”
