( darling, everything's on fire )

[treachery]

[ Loki shifts from shadow to shadow in the halls of the greenwood palace, a plain wooden goblet of Thor's favored honeyed mead in one hand, and a sprig of braided sweetgrass in the other. Though his draped crystals remain strung about his limbs, chiming gently with each step that he takes, he is otherwise dressed as a creature wrought of summer: in green-edged linen, with flowers tucked into the thick spill of his hair, with a cape of white draped across his shoulders, and silver and gold circling his throat. If not for the cloud of ice upon the air every time he exhales, he may have been born of summer, a brother of Thor, meant to lie languid in the soft warmth of sun-dappled earth for the rest of eternity.

He is saying his farewells: to the red-cheeked dryads, to the soft-footed deer, to the very walls and rafters of Thor's summer palace. He leaves gifts where he may, a blue feather for the sweetest of the dryads, a tinny silver bell for each of the fawns to wear strung about their necks.

Twice has the moon grown fat, and twice has she cut herself away to a mere sliver — Loki has come to love the summerlands as much as he loves the lands of his own crafting. They have taught him to love, and to raise his whispering voice in laughter. They have taught him to cup the warmth of the sun in his hands and still brim with more.

Most of all, they have given him Thor, and even Loki's songs cannot paint the intricacies of the summer-king as he lives: warm and broad and filled with bounteous plenty. Loki has learned of all the secret hidden knolls of Thor's country, and he has learned of all the secrets hidden upon his golden skin; so winter begins it ascent into the mountains with Thor's antlers shadowed like wings upon his back. ]

If you miss your country overmuch, you must tell me. [ says Loki, when they have climbed halfway to the lands of ice. His gaze is a quick, flitting thing, darting from Thor to the peaks in the distance and back again.

After a moment, he reaches out and takes Thor's hand in his own; his thumb strokes across the back of that sun-warmed hand. ]

Comments

[treachery]

[ The horrible encumbrance of permission, and of rebellion — for Loki has seen the roots of the future spread through land fertile and barren, he has seen with certainty the loss which already aches within him, pain no less terrible for the fact that the wound is yet to come.

Is it possible, then, to turn away, to stray from the path set before them, to lose themselves in the dense thicket of the wilderness beyond?

Perhaps, if they were children of the earth instead of children born of eternity. If they were born from clay and rain, if the rhythm of their hearts was quieted by the frailty of old age or the impotent pain of illness. If the fates could martyr summer and winter by raising them up and striking them down, then, perhaps, they could stage a rebellion.

No. They are the ones who wrought eternity, and who taught life to live, who taught death to grasp and cling. They can no more escape the boundaries of fate than the mortals can escape the maws of oblivion.

Yet Loki thinks of none of this as Thor again comes to life under the swift stroke of his fingers. His grip is cool but not yet cold; his fingertips grasp and twist with focused intensity. Thor is beautiful, and Thor belongs here — let the prophecy fall to snuff out the very stars themselves, it matters not. Because now Loki drives inwards with the liquid slap of skin against skin marring the perfect susurrant silence about them, his mind roils and tumbles;nhis cock is again a tool of desire and ownership and fearsome possession, fucking in and jerking out, repeating the joy and the transience of joining with grim purpose. ]

No. [ hisses Loki, as the black frost again swallows the green of his eyes. ] I will not. [ And only then does the ring of ice about Thor's cock melt to icy rivulets of water, only then does Loki arch the spindle of his spine and fill the clutch of Thor's body with spurt after spurt of his seed. ]

[beworthy]

[ Yes, yes, he has found his place. He has vowed it, and in the vowing given Loki more than he can ever imagine, yet the stretch of eternity is gone now from his thoughts for the urgency of the moment has come back into him, it has returned with Loki's touch, the determined stroke of his cool fingers and the pulse and thrust of his cock within. Thor is all at once undone, meltwater running cold between his legs but all the rest of him burning with bright ardor, his cock throbbing and his hole hot and stinging and tender, loose and hungrily welcoming the renewed pitch and thrust of Loki's cock. And then the king of winter is spurting and spurting, filling him with sweet, cool seed, so that Thor's own release seems scalding by comparison, striped thickly over Loki's belly and his own. He cries out roughly and bucks his hips into the final thrusts, feeling seed spill and trickle down his thighs, Loki's spending overflowing him.

And as it is done he lies gasping, shivering, lifting tremorous hands to draw Loki down to him; he kisses his mouth with sweet passion, parting his lips, offering up still more of himself for the winter's pleasure. Loki is splintery and thin beneath his searching hands, and Thor caresses him with loving urgency, with ardor at last growing softer and drowsier as lassitude begins to set into his limbs. ]

My heart. [ he murmurs thickly, with sinking eyelids and a hand pulling Loki's fingers to his mouth, that he might kiss and kiss them. He is cold and he is warm all at once, warmed as though a hearth glows softly within him. He lifts his lips to the snapping black frost of Loki's eyes and smiles without fear. ] Now you have promised me, beloved, and I will hold you to it.

[treachery]

[ A blind man may smile without fear when an abyss gapes before him, so Thor smiles now, sweet and pliant and effortlessly warm in the aftermoments of his release. Loki loves him as the wild loves the tamed, as the beast loves the beautiful — because there is light now in the dark phastasmic corners of his chambers, and light spilling into the chambers of his heart, too. If death beckons, there is no meaning to it. Loki's blood may run black and his flesh melt from his bones, and still Thor's vow will keep him locked here within the winterlands, so that snow and ice and sleet may gain new vigor from the warmth of the hearth glowing within him.

Loki draws in soft breath after breath, learning again what it is to be himself alone. His cock slides free from its sheath, and the cool spill of his release follows. His gaze dips, watching with dark eyes how Thor's hole clutches desperately for what it has lost.

Such is the future: freed from constraint, walking with hands clasped through the lands of Loki's crafting, learning the songs of the winds, watching the sun fade and the stars rise. Loki will show Thor to love the cold as dearly as he loves the sun's warmth — and if that too fails, he will bring him night upon night to the furs of his bed, and master the needs of heart and body until Thor misplaces the memory of his origins. ]

Promises made in winter's lands are bolstered by my own magic, my love. Have I pleased you? [ asks Loki, and though he has grown into the cruelty of the frost he commands, there is a note of hesitation when he curls into the arms proffered. ]

[beworthy]

[ Seed and slick stains his thighs and the sensation is luxurious, all his body grown heavy and pliant now in the wake of such thorough use, and Thor lays indolently across the mattress, the furs, the bed of the winter king, here turned from a king in his own right to a sweet consort, generously open for the winter's pleasure. Indeed, the thought of his own throne, the palace of greenwood and the warm lands of summer blessed by sun and gentle rain are far from him; had they been nearer perhaps he would not have so readily vowed himself to this: Loki's bed his throne, Loki's love his kingdom, the summer made a plentiful feast upon which the lonely winter might sup.

But he has fallen in love. Now he knows nothing more than desire, and joy in his beloved's presence.

Thor nuzzles Loki's palm, smiles as he beds down hesitantly in his embrace, closing those broad arms around him. Loki's head is upon his breast, Thor's mouth pressed to his hair. ] I am pleased. Very pleased. I had not known it could be so sweet, Loki.

[ To have the king of winter within him. To spread his legs, to offer his body and be given such devastating pleasure in return. ]