Loki’s expression is beatifically innocent as he lifts his gaze from the laptop monitor which sports a tiny sticker of an ouroboros.
“Oh, what? Whatever did I do?” he chimes, saccharinely.
Tony tries, he really does, to look stern and not give in to the soft, innocent look, but damn it all, it’s as bad as when Peter starts throwing around those soft brown puppy eyes of his. He almost always caves to them, and he’s sure they’re both aware of it – Loki most certainly so, though Peter does seem to be learning it as well.
With an exasperated sigh, he sits next to his lover, leaning in to press an affectionate kiss to his jaw. “You’re as bad as Peter with those looks. Fine, just don’t get caught. Or get me put on yet another watchlist. That’s the last thing I need while trying to get the Accords nullified.”
With another kiss, closer to the corner of the god’s mouth, he murmurs quietly, “Or is this just your way of trying to make sure I provide you with more ‘suitable distractions’?”
“How dare you impugn my honor by suggesting that I, I, ever have ulterior motives?” Loki purrs.
He turns and snatches a kiss from the corner of Tony’s mouth, a sharp bite to mark his territory over the lips from which such witticisms spew.
“Act like that and I’ll hack one of your powerful friends and then force you to choose between them and me, incorrigible brat that I am, but nobody you have ever known is more beautiful, so you see, you’re at an impasse. Make love to me this instant, and I shall consider abandoning my allegedly wicked ways.”
–not because she frightens him, how could she, when her thick plait of hair is strawberries and clean sunshine, when her arms are safety, when her hands no matter the cleanliness bear the slight stains of various dyes and potions and worlds opened unto him when everyone he knew was fair and robust and gregarious and out of his reach, worlds that became his own, a merry mischief that begat his own, Norn stones and chants and the ancient magpie’s cry that is now his own, no–
because he reveres her time alone to forecast the future and to meditate. Because he reveres her.
“If it is an inconvenient time, I can return later, mama,” he assures her, with a warmth spared only for the august queen before him. “The matter is not pressing, only a new spell I have developed, that I believe you would enjoy.”
The wolf approaches the grains that feed its kills, fondly.
The soft crackling of the fireplace and the ambient bubbling of the cauldron are all that break the silence as warm eyes gaze into the turbulent depths of her youngest’s face.
[ a fleeting memory, but cherished. hefty rolls of thunder and driving rain and a warm body in her lap, curled against her chest, her hair hiding him nearly from view. the fire crackled peacefully as she chanted a calming spell, her clear tones ringing around the stone in an ethereal chorus seemingly multiplied despite the single voice.
another memory. jet hair splayed across the paleness of a pillow, a young face far too careworn even in sleep. this time, as her hand brushed against his forehead, settling a lock of hair, the ivory skin briefly flashed cerulean, her own magick dispelling his illusion. taunting her. this is not your child. not the fruit of your loins. a peace-child, a mere cuckoo’s egg, and yet you raise it as your own. you would bleed for him. die for him, exchange the very essence of your being to give this child life. the queen did not return from the depths of her chambers for three days after that. when she did, her animosity towards the Alfodir was tangible.
BY THE NORNS THEMSELVES, if Odin thought for one MOMENTshe was going to treat this child any different than the fruit of their union…
WOE BETIDE HIM. ]
“MAGPIE MINN,”
something seems to shake the Almodir from a stupor, drawing up to her utmost height, an aura of power glimmering faintly around her, a life-giving-wheat-gold as she smiles softly.
“You are never an interruption.”
–had she not always kept this philosophy with this child so desperate for love, for a family… for a mother? had she not always no matter what the circumstances, made it utterly clear that this fragile one, this soul so desperately in need of nurture was welcome in her chambers, her study, her HEART?
the soft murmur falls from her lips as she extends a dry-ink-blotted hand towards him.
“Come, show me what your mind-thoughts have borne.”
All Loki has ever known of his mother is that embrace limitless and omnipresent as water; clean water from the chilliest spring, meant to threaten Loki’s enemies with silky sweetness; or warm sudsy bathwater, meant to wash away the filth and the wounds of living; or driving rain, or the exhilarating rebirth of rising mists. Loki is as water, because Frigga is as water.
And memories of hiding in a warm blond plait, listening to a chorus of song from a single mouth, or kisses on the brow or the cheek when still encased in the warm cocoon of slumber, are still as fresh today as when Loki was a wild changeling.
“Well, I think I have finally mastered a way for us to appear to shift form, yet it is only an illusion, as ever when we cast illusisons, but this time, the illusions remain ostensibly solid.”
He lopes toward her, with a cautious gait that speaks in no way of mistrust toward his mother, but rather, toward existing. Such is the natural side effect of being penalized all one’s life, for living.
Snowy hands reach forward, conjuring a live mouse, and its double, and Loki dangles each carefully, gently, by the tail.
“They even respond to physical stimuli such as an embrace or a weapon wound. Fairly soon, I believe I shall be able to manufacture appropriate viscera, such as blood, when the illusion calls for such a response to external stimuli. Here, feel. I doubt you can tell the difference between the real rodent that I have summoned from another place, and the one that I have conjured from thin air.”
The slinking fey form of the Trickster God meanders through the halls of New Asgard, with its dearly crude lumber stave architecture, and its novice frescoes of the Norns and the Gods painted directly onto the timber.
But Loki is looking for his most troublesome child, who is sure, left to his own wily devices, to be defacing those very frescoes.
“Ragni, I seeeee youuu.”
His eyes glow a brilliant lime-gold, the hue of his Seidhrs, with a spell catching the aura of his most raucous child, who seems to have his elder brother’s boisterousness matched with his own icnonoclasm.
“I see you behind that barrel and I shall snatch you up… !”
@icyxmischief who also did not ask for this, but loud muse is loud.
“You know, I like to think I’ve been alive long enough to be knowledgeable about a vast majority of topics, but..you, Loki, are a hard one to figure out. Care to enlighten me?”
Were Loki a Great Dane staring down a Chihuahua, he could not look more bemused, or more disdainful. “Cold bitch” exudes, as a demeanor and as an aesthetic, off his fey form.
After working for hours on planning this year’s Halloween party – a kid friendlyHalloween party, thanks to his own inability to say ‘no’ to Peter’s puppy eyes – Tony is more than happy to welcome a distraction. Especially when that distraction comes from Loki.
Spinning around on his stool to face the god, he reaches up quickly to wrap a hand against the back of his neck, pulling him down into a deeply passionate kiss, nipping teasingly at the other’s lip before pulling back just slightly to murmur huskily, “Treat. Definitely treat. And if you ask nicely, I might even feed you some of your chocolates later.”
Loki, ever competitive, ever impish, bites back all the harder, but provides enough tongue into the kiss to apologize for his roughness.
He pulls back only eventually, heavy-lidded pale eyes exploring Tony head to toe before he purrs,
“I don’t like chocolate. At least, not the mass-produced chain store variety. Get me hand-made chocolate whose cocoa powder I can still taste. Get me candied fruits from exotic climes. Work for me. I am well worth your effort.”
A shaky, out of focus picture is received from an unknown number, and it shows a series of runes burned into a thin, alarmingly pallid forearm. A split second later, the phone rings.
“Hi, um, it’s- fuck, you d-don’t actually know my name- I-It’s hobbit, I got your number from Cas’ phone-”
There was a long pause as she fought for breath.
“Those runes, a-are they a-ancient Norse? I-I-I think this w-witch might be Asgardian. I kn-know you don’t owe me shit, but can you t-tell me what to do? I-I think it’s f-freezing me slowly.
Loki indulges himself in a luxuriant eye-roll; he has already deciphered the runes, which are, despite the nasty and alarmingly rapid effects they have, fairly rudimentary: go figure, of course a human would tamper with them, and have no clue how to reverse their effects.
When the phone rings, he strives to get a word in edgewise, and gestures at the air for poor Bernadette to hasten her words.
“Yes, yes, they’re Norse runes, and lucky you, I’m particularly well-versed in ice magic, given that I’m a Frost Giant.”
He decides, on some rare whim of compassion, to spare her the exact truth: that she’s an idiot.
“I can meet you if you’re near Wakanda, but if you’re not, which I suspect, listen closely … oh blast, you know. Move. Literally. Move about as much as you can. Jog in place, flail your arms. I’m going to just cast a teleportation spell and come to you. You won’t be able to learn the spell fast enough. Also, the sight of you looking like a drunk marionette will amuse me.”
He snatches some chalk from his desk drawer, shoves stacks of paperwork and various vibranium weapons aside, and draws a large circle. He hastens to draw startlingly well-rendered Runes around its perimeter. Then he frantically murmurs a watery, fluid incantation.
He appears in a blast of green and gold mist inside the Winchester Bunker.
“Hobbit. I’ve arrived. I do hope your hunters are muzzled.”
At the first touch, Tony flinches, a quiet whimper escaping him as terrified, grief filled eyes blink unseeingly in the dimly lit dark of the room. It is the persistent gentleness that finally draws his focus back to the present, his gaze sharpening as it settles on the Trickster god.
“Loki,” he breathes, the god’s name falling from his lips with all the relieved hope and reverence of a prayer before he’s all but throwing himself at the other in a desperate need for the comfort he offers.
He sobs brokenly as he curls into the god’s chest, hiding himself from the world and his nightmares, finallyallowing himself to actually grieve, knowing and trusting that he’s completely safe in Loki’s presence.
He’s not even sure how much time passes before he quiets once more, exhaustion settling in in the aftermath, though he refuses to let go, instead trying to hold on even tighter.
“Stay?” he begs weakly against his chest, unable to bring himself to look up to meet the god’s gaze, as if afraid of his plea being rejected. “Please? Just… stay with me? I don’t want to be alone…”
“You needn’t ask,” Loki half-reassures, and half-chides. “One moment, love. Let me get into the bed.”
He disentangles himself gently, keeping a hand in Tony’s, maintaining a lifeline of contact with the physical, the present and the safe. He remembers how crucial it was to grasp hold of something, anything, to convince himself that there would be an end to the agony and the isolation.
He makes full use of his long limber frame, to curl like a nautilus shell around his lover, and provide him a living nest in which to burrow.
“What you must do, is breathe. That is all … breathe, and listen to my voice. There is nothing else. Nothing, but your breath, and my voice.”
His words are hypnotic, woven with the quelling power of Seidhr, a web of tranquility spun over Tony’s frantically firing synapses. Loki waits for Tony’s breathing to deepen, before he ventures, very softly,
“When you wish to tell me what you saw, in your dreams … I will listen.”
A desperate whine escapes him the moment Loki starts to move away from him, brown eyes seeking out green for reassurance even as Tony clutches tightly onto the offered hand. It’s only when they’re both laying down, and he’s able to hide in the safety the other provides, that he even remotely starts to calm once more, even as he still faintly trembles with the leftover adrenaline from the nightmares.
He sucks in a deep breath at the other’s instruction, though the release is much too quick to be beneficial toward calming him once more. He breathes a quieter whine of frustration then, trying to press even closer to his lover despite already being about as close as they can possibly get. He listens intently to Loki’s words, and slowly his trembling begins to fade as his breath steadies to match the god’s.
The last, though, has him shaking his head in stubborn defiance. He doesn’t want to talk about it, or even think about it. He knows he should, though, having learned that much from finally seeking the therapy he’s desperately needed for years, but it doesn’t make it any easier.
He’s quiet for several minutes, just soaking in the comfort of his lover before he finally manages to speak. “Everything… All over again, back to Afghanistan,” he admits quietly. “Only… twisted. People who weren’t there suddenly are, usually replacing people who were. Like Bruce is there instead of Yinsen… and Raza is replaced by Steve, with his team being there with him…”
A bitter, choked laugh escapes him at that, shaking his head as he continues, “Almost every time I’ve nearly died, or when I’ve nearly got someone else killed, or failed to protect them… It’s always himnow. Ever since Siberia, when he left me for dead.”
“All I can think of now is what if he hadn’t held back in Germany? After my dragging Peter into that fight that I had no business bringing him into in the first place… What if Rogers or one of the others had fucking killed him? I mean, hell, Rhodey was nearly killed in the fight, and it’s only with my tech that he’s able to even walk at all now. If anything had happened to the kid…”
Loki guides Tony slower still onto his side. He knows nothing, nothing, of the startlingly progressive human comprehension of mental illness, though he suffers from so many of his own. He only knows that warriors feel ashamed to confess that the sight of too much blood and viscera, the robbery of too much personal dignity, the debasement of choice and control. He only knows that Tony is a warrior, and so, in his own cunning way, is he. So it is with that shame, which somewhere within himself he knows is misplaced, that he empathizes.
When dark eyes seek his own, pale and verdant, the eyes of the one so often called “Liar” hold fast with a promise of partnership in darkness.
“It is alright,” he voices that promise, very softly. And then, when Tony refuses to voice his terrors, “And that is alright also. Only do so eventually. Even if it is years from now.”
He knows the night will not even be over before Tony spills over his confidence.
Because Loki knows how desperately he wishes someone would have offered to listen to him.
And no one ever did.
No one.
Tony stumbles over his own eagerness to share. And Loki smiles, just slightly, while stroking his hair in mesmerizing rhythms. He does not interrupt, save to murmur an occasional “mm” or “mhm” or “aye.”
“ … the loss of a comrade in arms … is grievous. It is an open wound, which lags in closing. And you must tend to it constantly, so that it does not become infected over the long period that it takes to heal. It is particularly keen for you because Rogers is … well. He personifies, represents, all that your father admired in a man, and never granted you.”
Loki thinks on Odin, and on Thor. There are many differences. But the similarities are keen enough that, again, he wields personal insight.
He speaks no more, and kisses the top of Tony’s head. Tony, the allegedly invincible.
Loki stares at her brother’s shoulder blades, and the weight they carry. She’s seated across from him in their joint quarters in Wakanda, oblivious to the Renaissance of supernatural and technological collaboration all around her. There’ll be time enough for that soon. Right now, for better or worse, it’s her default spiritual mechanism to orbit the Thunder God and fret after his welfare, all while cloaking it as “pragmatism” or “common sense,” or even the far less believable excuse for her sentimentality, “filial duty.”
“ … what’ll it take to get you to rest?” she asks, bluntly, into their companionable, familiar silence.
“I really must insist that you share your oft-hoarded wisdom with me, my lady,” Loki demurs. “For I’m the son and the daughter of the greatest Witch Asgard ever knew. Please. In the Allmother’s honor.”
The raven haired she-wolf, clad from neck to toe in mossy green, burnished gold and inky black, trimmed with the pelt of a beast akin to her son Fenrir, lifts her deferent gaze to the Queen of the Fae.
“I entreat you to aid me in learning healing magics. They have ever been my weakness, and it is my wish, in the days to come, to prove a source of hope to those I love.”
She draws a dagger and turns it on her own wrist, awaiting.
icyxmischief 