[ Loki's breath comes out a sharp exhalation as she touches him and brings his cock so close to her only to wait; it takes a great deal of self-control to keep his hips still at that moment. His heels press into the blankets and bedding as his fingers draw across the skin of her back. Her face is still against the skin of his neck so he can't signal his acquiescence with a look, a nod. Instead, he has to swallow, and murmur roughly: ]
Please.
[ He is not a man particularly built for begging on the surface of things, though matters of the bedroom make it changeable in that regard along with almost all others. Still. He would like to believe he will have at least a few more opportunities to prove to her just how much he is hers, if only she'll have him. ]
You have my... [ another noise, low in his throat, a quiet growl as her teeth skim some place earlier worried into a bruise blossoming beneath the skin, ] imprimatur, as it were.
[ If she pulls her mouth away from his throat he'll watch her face; otherwise, he will let his eyes shut, and his hands drift towards her hips as he remembers how to breathe all over again. ]
[ He pleads and it makes her breath catch, stolen by the way he wants her.
And then, slowly, she presses back onto him.
The moment he is seated enough in her that there is no more need for guide, her hands are seeking for his to twine with them and draw them the rest of the way to her hips as she moves.
If she has her way it will be slow; so much she wants to feel every moment of the way she fills herself with him. To show him what it does to her— what he does to her— with the way her head tips back as she sinks down, lips parting on panted breath that becomes half-voiced moan. She flutters around him, quick moments of her body gripping at him that she cannot help and does not want to. Nor can she help the tiny movement that rocks her hips against his when finally they meet, or the way it makes her softly whine each time she does. ]
[ She has her way; it's a slow entry, almost achingly so, and Loki's fingers entwined with hers at her hips squeeze and then relax as she settles, only for him to grasp again as her body tightens around him. Lexie looks stunning above him with her head tilted back and red hair cascading around her shoulders, making small noises that Loki wishes to memorize each note of.
The hedonist in him wants more, immediately, and he can't really help the way his hips lift off the bed to meet her as she's coming down, nor the groan of satisfaction that escapes his lips in the next moment. He is, at least, able to restrain himself enough not to start off too fast or move too harshly against her, but keeping still is simply not in the cards.
Really, he's showing remarkable discipline at this moment in time.
Loki's hands disentangle themselves from hers. One remains at her hip while the other takes a lazy path toward her navel and then down, reaching between them, thumb searching for her clit in order to rub against the sensitive skin and nerve endings he'll find there. ]
[ She knows the ways their bodies fit together, shows him with her hand on his where he can settle fingers into the crease of her hip, gives breathy murmurs of direction for the placement of his thumb until he’s rewarded with a sharp intake of breath, the slight arch of her back, another tight clench of her cunt around him when it’s right.
For all that there are shades of this that are familiar, some near identical, it’s different. They do not know each other’s rhythms yet, the sounds that had become better than words at speaking of what is wanted, needed. What he needs, perhaps, is different. What she finds she needs may be so as well.
But Alexandrie trusts they’ll find it, something of their own. That he is so much like her husband had laid the paths of her open; that he is not her husband means she does not know what will be found along them. For the moment she is reaching back to brace her hands on his thighs, breasts lifting as she curves her back like a bow. Spreading her knees wider to lay herself open to the press of his thumb and meeting each lift of his hips with a sinuous roll of her own, letting all the little breaths and gasps and moans born from how he angles in her, how she drags against his hand, fall readily from her lips as they are made. ]
[ She has overwhelmed him, more than once, in a variety of ways during the scant few hours since their meeting on the battlefield; he's fairly interested in returning the favor, now, but there's a precarious line between overwhelm and taking the lead. He's less interested in the latter, still feeling a little emotionally raw and exposed but doing his level best to set that aside in favor of the physical. It's not difficult. Her sounds, the feel of her around his cock, the press of her hands against his thighs all push aside the emotional memory of both their tears.
It's good, like this. To be beneath her, watch her body open to him in a myriad of ways.
His hand moves up her body, from her hips along the side of her torso, fingertips spreading against muscle and ribs, before settling to cup one breast as she leans back, rolling her nipple between two fingers. His thumb continues its ministrations; Loki's goal is to bring her to orgasm, to experience that collapse of control while within her, and then see if he can't do it again. ]
[ She wants to let go. Wants to let him help her fall into herself so she can pull him along with her, but even though she can feel the low warm buzz of the building of her breaking, her body balks and turns it away in equal measure. Alexandrie, too, is still raw and needs more than skillful fingers to make her safe to shatter the way she needs to. Joined as they are, he is too far from her; she wants to press her chest to his, to have his arms around her, to feel his breath as much as hear it.
Her hands lift to take hold of the hand at her breast and pull it to her mouth so she can kiss his palm and then each finger. To press it to her cheek and turn her face into it, closing her teeth around the heel of his hand with a choked groan and squeezing her eyes shut when he moves his thumb just so and pleasure spikes sharply through her.
From there they move to splay their fingers across his chest to support her as she curves down to attempt to fasten her mouth insistently to his, finding only the corner before she pleads soft and desperate there: ]
[ There is a beauty in watching her kiss his hands, his fingers. In feeling her teeth sink into the muscle of his palm, muffling her sounds.
His hand falls away from her face as she leans in, turning his head to capture her mouth so much that he almost misses her words against his lips. Almost.
It's an easy enough thing, to do as she asks; to wrap an arm around her body and press her close, chest to chest. He imagines he can feel the beating of Lexie's heart through her skin and perhaps it is just the echo of his own he's feeling and yet. For a little while it is just their breathing and their bodies moving against one another, the twin sensation of her hair against his skin and the blankets at his back, the sound of her breath in his ear while his own turns ragged at the edges; and then he moves his thumb from it's place against her clit in order to extend an arm outward and haul the both of them upright, still chest to chest but now gravity is helping to drive her down into his lap. ]
Like this? [ He asks, hand at her back, teeth at the shell of her ear. He kisses her cheek, her temple, the corner of her eye, and then pulls his face away enough to look her in the eye, ever watchful, ever curious about her expression and her wants and her body. The movement of his hips becomes sharper as he does this, and he presses his forehead to hers as his blood pumps in his ears. ]
[ She wraps her arms around him with wild abandon as soon as he lifts the two of them free of the bed and her whisper is breathless and hoarse with passion: ]
Yes.
[ Held like this— his lips gentle on her, the slide of his chest against hers, the rough shallow huffs of his breath on her skin, his arm tight around her— what had limited her falls away, lets the rising tide of sensation build and keep building until she shudders with the intensity of it, hips feverishly seeking after the more that will push her over the edge.
When she says it again, it is more prayer than answer. ]
Yes.
[ Alexandrie presses her nose hard against his, is beginning to lean to kiss him when of a sudden he hits just right and her eyes widen in surprise as she gasps sharply and breaks with a rough full-voiced cry, head snapping backward, fingers digging numbly into Loki's back as she spasms around and against him. ]
[ It takes him a little by surprise, the force of her orgasm, the look of her head back and wild, the noise she makes. A very pleasant sort of surprise, certainly, even as he knows the moment she's finished he'll be a hair's breadth away from his own.
There are worse things.
Loki watches her for as long as he can tolerate it before he buries his face in her exposed neck and breathes in deeply. He's surrounded by the smell of her perfume, by the smell of their bodies together, by the fainter scents of blood and dirt on their skin, and finds he doesn't mind any of it. He moves his face so that his forehead is resting on her shoulder as he withstands a shudder along his spine, warning him he doesn't have much time before his own nerve endings give up the ghost.
One arm remains wrapped around her while his free hand comes up to her cheek and he tilts his head again to kiss her, sweet yet devouring, as his body begins to shake. ]
[ Alexandrie doesn’t know if she believes in the Maker, but she believes in this. Wonders, as she tries to revive muscles gone weak with release so she can hold him through his own, if he has temples in his world. If there are fires lit for the God of Tricksters, if they sing him songs, murmur prayers, shake open sure and settled hearts in his name.
Wonders in her own shaken heart, as she seeks to sate the urgent hunger in his kisses with the press of open mouth and tongue and shaky hand pulling at the back of his head, if she had called him from the Fade with all the nights she’d wept alone, with her sighs of longing. It had not rung in the four corners of the world, not been any voice but hers; but Andraste once had sung her lover back to her. Andraste once alone had been enough.
If the time comes that he cannot kiss for gasping, she will press her cheek to his and make his name a sacred sound when she calls it hoarse and quiet at his ear; if not, then she will answer kiss for kiss and let it pound in her heart and hope he hears it in her skin, in the way she tries to hold all of his body now with hers. ]
[ When he's finished shaking and falling apart to the sound of his own moans and her voice echoing his name in his ears, the feel of her around him and fingers tangled in his hair, Loki leans back with his arms behind him to keep himself upright. His body would like nothing more than to lay down, curl her into his arms and sleep that way; his mind is terrified that she'll disappear the moment he allows his eyes to close.
So instead he watches her, breathing hard in the aftermath that has left him a little lightheaded. It could just be whatever has changed about him, after falling through a hole in reality from this world's place of dreams, dreamers, magic, and gods, but he's just fine placing the blame squarely at Alexandrie's feet, thanks.
If she told him that she might have summoned him from beyond the Fade he wouldn't laugh at her. Considering he's laughed at just about anyone else who has told him that he is a figment, a matter of dreams, that's perhaps saying something.
One hand comes up to cup her cheek. He's still at a loss for words, something that happens so rarely it should probably be marked on calendars like an eclipse of the sun. ]
[ The hand that had tangled his hair is putting it to rights now, slow and languid motions that match with the weight of Alexandrie's boneless collapse against his chest. She tilts her head up to look at him when he touches her cheek and lifts her other hand to cover his.
She is—
She doesn't know what she is. A creature with a body that wants to be curled into his arms and slept with that way; with a mind that thinks if she does she'll open her eyes in Hightown, the body curled with hers will be Gwenaëlle's, and she will wake her dearest friend with the kind of wretched convulsive sobbing that leaves her empty and raw.
She cannot tell if the dampness beneath the cheek that rests on him is only mingled sweat or if she is crying again until a distinct drop rolls from the corner of her eye and across the bridge of her nose. She closes her eyes and curls her fingers into his hair, around the edges of his hand. Tries to listen only to the sound of his heartbeat, the slowing rise and fall of his breath beneath her. Turns her head for a moment to kiss his chest to ward away any thoughts he might have of her unhappiness. ]
[ She remains on his chest and even though she kisses his skin she won't look at him and his mind begins to spiral. In order to attempt to cut that off instead of silently falling through all the worst cases he can conceive of, he sighs and leans all the way back until his spine is flush with the bedding again, and just holds her.
Breathes in, out. Listens to the sound of the two of them there, the muffled sounds of the camp around them. Nighttime is falling and he wonders idly if someone will come and reclaim this tent or if circumstance will leave them be. His fingers go back to spirals and runic patterns on her spine.
He wants to ask if she's also afraid that this isn't real, that something terrible is going to happen, but the possibility exists that she isn't and won't be until the idea is introduced, and so he keeps quiet. ]
Even if this is real, even if she sleeps in his arms and wakes in his arms, what happens then? What happens when they have to dress, have to leave the tent, have to part?
For all that they had shared— the waking dream of it, the intensity, the look in his eyes, his claim that she was stuck with him— this man is not bound to her the way she cannot help but feel she is to him, sewn to him with thread spun of fear and loneliness and wishes and love. She does love him. This him. And he isn't hers. It doesn't matter that so much is the same, he isn't hers. They have only just met. She cannot possibly mean to him what he means to her and it makes her limbs tighten around him again in her anticipation of loss.
That is the same too. The old fear that still has roots around her bones. She had shrieked at her husband long ago because of it. Now it is soft when she speaks it. ]
I am afraid that I mean little to you. That I am only the grieving wife of someone very like you and you feel no such tie to me and will not stay. Or that I have dreamed this, and you are not real at all.
[ He feels real, but so did the dream shared by the Gallows. The loss, the rebellion. Her children.
Even softer, then: ]
Do you think me a weak and foolish woman? To admit so soon, so readily, I could not bear your loss?
[ Loki's fingers on her back still their movements before he moves it to settle, palm wide, between her shoulderblades. ]
If I have any control over it, I will stay by your side. I will strive to grant you the forever you've asked of me.
[ That is easier to say he knows because he feels very little control over anything at this point in time. That doesn't feel good, exactly, but he can recognize the truth of it. ]
I don't know how to convince you of my reality. [ It feels like a heavy, impossible thing in his chest. In a world where dreams walk into reality, how does one convince another that they're not just a dream? Especially when they're unsure of themselves? ] Or of what even the possibility of you would mean to me. [ That someone loved him, once, a version of him and then himself in turn. It would warm and haunt him by turns to know that and to be removed from it. ]
But know this: I could never think you weak or foolish.
[ The Loki she married is so often circuitous. He plays with words, turns them in his hands. Builds castles of them with secret corridors for truth to dart through out of sight. Shines oblique light across his meanings, winds through the land of conversation like a meandering river with tricks and turns, delights in the cleverness of it all.
Then, sometimes, strikingly direct. Unadorned and unwavering with no back corridors for her fears to hide in; words that she can lean against with the full weight of her uncertainty and know they will not move.
This is almost of a voice, and so she trusts him. Nods where she rests against him and becomes heavy and loose again, free to let her hand go back to slowly carding through the hair that is not pressed against the pillow. To let it wander to trace the shell of his ear, find the corner of his jaw, run down the length of his nose. To touch him merely for the sake of touching him. Because she wants to. Because she can.
It is the blue of evening now, and she tries to wriggle slightly closer, reach to find the blanket and pull it more snugly around them to ward off the chill that is coming to touch the sweat on her skin and take the warmth they'd made.
[ Her touch is so gently, so exploratory, that it brings a soft sort of smile to Loki's face. When is the last time he allowed anyone to be gentle with him? When was the last time he thought he deserved it?
He's not sure he does right now, honestly. ]
It's... it doesn't bother me, exactly.
[ He sighs, settling underneath her and the blankets. It's a complicated thing, isn't it? But she's asking and he feels no particular need to lie to her about it. A strange thing, that, and one he will turn over in his mind... later, maybe. ]
It is a reminder. That I am not what I was raised to believe I was. That I'm not Asgardian but Jotun, an ice giant. [ A scoff. ] Not a particularly large one, however.
[ There is a kind of gratitude in Alexandrie, for the dark.
She misses seeing him— the shifting beauty of his eyes with their blues and greens and sharpness and innocence, self-satisfaction and confidence and hesitance and wonder; the little private game of new-and-old she is playing with the shapes of his body, the way his hair curls, all the little fleeting expressions and the ones that form and stay.
But she likes the way it draws them close and makes speech softer, as if they were being mindful of the resting sun. The way difficult words come easier, spoken into the small space without worrying about what they might see in the other upon the hearing. And she likes the other ways it makes her see; how it means she learns him with fingertips and breath. The curve of his collarbone, of throat, of chin, of shoulder. The places where she can find the beat of his heart. Untangling the scent of him from battle and blood and leather and the ones she knows as her own and trying to breathe only that.
She will miss, she thinks when he replies, the blankets in summer. The way her husband's comfort was far too warm, and the way it became hers because all of her comfort was him. ]
[ In the dark the parts of him that bristle and feel... afraid, frankly, of this topic of conversation — one which he has not had with anyone, even his brother — settle a little. He can pretend he's unafraid, eyes blinking in the dark, soothed by her touch. ]
It would matter to them.
[ It's almost funny, how he was not accepted by Asgardians as one of their own (mostly because of his own behavior, he supposes, but also because he wasn't) but also probably wouldn't have survived very long on Joutenheim either. Unless they, or Laufey, suddenly developed a tolerance for small giants with magical abilities.
Seems unlikely, to him. ]
Considering my biological father left me to die, it would probably matter a great deal.
[ There would have been no welcome for her husband among the Qunari either. Par Vollen would have had him chained and collared. His horns tipped, his clever words taken with muzzle, sewn up with thread, or pulled from him by the root. He would never be alone. If found alone, killed. A saarebas— a dangerous thing.
She does not think they would keep him now. Not as he had grown.
He could have gone to the Vashoth when he knew, if he had wished it— the life of a mercenary— but he had been raised a human, would be an outsider there as well.
And this man; no welcome at his birth, little enough as he grew. Outside, always. They are made alone everywhere they go.
Maybe if he could not belong to the world, the world belonging to him was the closest thing there was. If love would not give, he would take with fear. Had she not chosen the same?
Alexandrie wriggles herself upwards along Loki's body until she can settle again with her head against his, nose against his cheek beside his ear, hand coming up to settle against the other side. Breathes there, thinks I will be your home from somewhere so deep in her chest that it makes her eyes water, though she does not cry.
[ What is the saying? A child who is shunned by the village will burn it down for warmth? It definitely applies to this Loki, even though he attempted to destroy all of Jotunheim instead of just a village, and he'd be entirely unsurprised to find that other versions of himself are very much alike in that regard.
Alexandrie shifts, climbing his torso, and he moves his arm aside to allow her to make herself comfortable once more. Once she's settled his hand returns to fingers against her spine, though this time they're still. No patterns, no distractions. Just the sound of her breathing and his, the feel of her breath warm against his skin.
Her question surprises him; complex in its simplicity. Not what happened, or even why, but what did it mean? That her voice is hoarse makes him worry he's been too forthright, telling her these things, but.
But.
There's something to be said for sharing even the darkest parts of oneself. Of hearing someone else's voice in response to the terrible things he's done, and not hear judgment. Concern, perhaps, which is an odd and complicated feeling, but not judgment.
He swallows. ]
I told myself it was to prove my loyalty. To Odin, my father. To Asgard. That if I orchestrated their downfall while Odin slept, he'd have no choice but to finally see me, regard me as worthy in the same way that Thor was regarded as worthy.
[ He hesitates. Takes a breath. That is not what she asked, exactly. ]
It was revenge. In a very nice package, mind, with quite the bow, but still. For being abandoned, left to die. For being not good enough to keep.
[ The word 'considered' was probably supposed to go in there somewhere, right? ]
She had thought so often of vengeance, but she had never gotten Rolant. His two cronies who had laughed with him she had. One killed in a duel of her orchestration, one ruined so thoroughly he'd fled the court. She'd thought she would be happy, but she wasn't. Vicious, manic, drunk on the power she'd been denied perhaps, but not made whole. She thought she would, if she could get Rolant. He'd burned to death in the civil war and she had been so angry, so denied.
All these years later she'd found him living, having faked it all. Thought about it again, and felt nothing. Knew it wouldn't matter. Ripping out the heart that made her nothing would not undo what he had done. ]
Did it work?
[ It is gentle, careful, because she knows his answer. Knows its bitter taste. Knows it is the same as hers.
Gutting someone else has never stopped the bleeding. All it means is everyone dies. ]
[ Loki scoffs, as if the idea itself is ridiculous. Perhaps it is.
It occurs to him that Odin's acceptance of himself is simply a memory of a recording from the TVA, not even a memory of his own making. It twists in his chest, brings his breathing up short. ]
Definitely not.
[ He remembers how he'd felt, in that moment. Devastated, empty, like none of it had mattered, like he hadn't mattered. He closes his eyes and remembers the rushing silence of the abyss before the wormhole, and how he'd been willing to let that be it. Allow his story to end there.
Then it hadn't. Because Lokis are survivors, or perhaps because he was too weighted with the glorious purpose of proving himself worthy. To Odin, to everyone.
The words 'I tried to die' are on the tip of his tongue but he can't bring himself to say them. He hasn't tried since then, not really, but something about that acceptance of the nothing that may follow never really leaves him. He survives, and he fights, but that little part of him is never truly gone. ]
[ She strokes the side of his face, and nods against him, and her heart breaks because his did. Because she knows there is a spot of numb silence that lives in him. That wakes with him, and walks with him, is waiting when he laughs.
They had crawled out of it together, she and her husband, blinking into the sun of what it meant to have given their hearts to someone who wanted them. What it had meant to be loved. What it had meant to let themselves be loved.
Here in the dark she tightens her hold and presses her lips to that space just in front of this Loki's ear and silently promises she will go back for him. She would go back a thousand times.
And he had told her where to find him when they met. That his truth is in his leaving, that he is still left there. It is living in his name.
Tender, and careful— so careful— when she reaches. ]
[ He's not sure, anymore, if his eyes are opened or closed. Blinking in the dark does nothing to diffuse the feeling of emotional vertigo, or make it any easier to tell, so he shifts away just enough to turn onto his side and face her. He can make out the vague shapes and planes of her face, here in the encroaching dark of this tent, and moves his hand to keep hers against his face.
It's quiet outside and warm in here, beneath the blankets and tangled up in her, but he feels cold and a little hollow. Like there is a fire that can't quite reach the corners of the room it's lit within.
That fire is, of course, the redhead in his arms. ]
It seemed... more honest. Thor is Odin's son; I am not.
I don't know, [ he says, and his voice is tired. A small bit afraid. If he is not Odin's son or Laufey's son, then whose is he? Is he no one's at all? Maybe it's foolish to be this concerned with a naming convention, but that doesn't make it any less important in his personal cosmology. ]
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no subject
Please.
[ He is not a man particularly built for begging on the surface of things, though matters of the bedroom make it changeable in that regard along with almost all others. Still. He would like to believe he will have at least a few more opportunities to prove to her just how much he is hers, if only she'll have him. ]
You have my... [ another noise, low in his throat, a quiet growl as her teeth skim some place earlier worried into a bruise blossoming beneath the skin, ] imprimatur, as it were.
[ If she pulls her mouth away from his throat he'll watch her face; otherwise, he will let his eyes shut, and his hands drift towards her hips as he remembers how to breathe all over again. ]
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And then, slowly, she presses back onto him.
The moment he is seated enough in her that there is no more need for guide, her hands are seeking for his to twine with them and draw them the rest of the way to her hips as she moves.
If she has her way it will be slow; so much she wants to feel every moment of the way she fills herself with him. To show him what it does to her— what he does to her— with the way her head tips back as she sinks down, lips parting on panted breath that becomes half-voiced moan. She flutters around him, quick moments of her body gripping at him that she cannot help and does not want to. Nor can she help the tiny movement that rocks her hips against his when finally they meet, or the way it makes her softly whine each time she does. ]
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The hedonist in him wants more, immediately, and he can't really help the way his hips lift off the bed to meet her as she's coming down, nor the groan of satisfaction that escapes his lips in the next moment. He is, at least, able to restrain himself enough not to start off too fast or move too harshly against her, but keeping still is simply not in the cards.
Really, he's showing remarkable discipline at this moment in time.
Loki's hands disentangle themselves from hers. One remains at her hip while the other takes a lazy path toward her navel and then down, reaching between them, thumb searching for her clit in order to rub against the sensitive skin and nerve endings he'll find there. ]
no subject
For all that there are shades of this that are familiar, some near identical, it’s different. They do not know each other’s rhythms yet, the sounds that had become better than words at speaking of what is wanted, needed. What he needs, perhaps, is different. What she finds she needs may be so as well.
But Alexandrie trusts they’ll find it, something of their own. That he is so much like her husband had laid the paths of her open; that he is not her husband means she does not know what will be found along them. For the moment she is reaching back to brace her hands on his thighs, breasts lifting as she curves her back like a bow. Spreading her knees wider to lay herself open to the press of his thumb and meeting each lift of his hips with a sinuous roll of her own, letting all the little breaths and gasps and moans born from how he angles in her, how she drags against his hand, fall readily from her lips as they are made. ]
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It's good, like this. To be beneath her, watch her body open to him in a myriad of ways.
His hand moves up her body, from her hips along the side of her torso, fingertips spreading against muscle and ribs, before settling to cup one breast as she leans back, rolling her nipple between two fingers. His thumb continues its ministrations; Loki's goal is to bring her to orgasm, to experience that collapse of control while within her, and then see if he can't do it again. ]
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Her hands lift to take hold of the hand at her breast and pull it to her mouth so she can kiss his palm and then each finger. To press it to her cheek and turn her face into it, closing her teeth around the heel of his hand with a choked groan and squeezing her eyes shut when he moves his thumb just so and pleasure spikes sharply through her.
From there they move to splay their fingers across his chest to support her as she curves down to attempt to fasten her mouth insistently to his, finding only the corner before she pleads soft and desperate there: ]
Hold me.
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His hand falls away from her face as she leans in, turning his head to capture her mouth so much that he almost misses her words against his lips. Almost.
It's an easy enough thing, to do as she asks; to wrap an arm around her body and press her close, chest to chest. He imagines he can feel the beating of Lexie's heart through her skin and perhaps it is just the echo of his own he's feeling and yet. For a little while it is just their breathing and their bodies moving against one another, the twin sensation of her hair against his skin and the blankets at his back, the sound of her breath in his ear while his own turns ragged at the edges; and then he moves his thumb from it's place against her clit in order to extend an arm outward and haul the both of them upright, still chest to chest but now gravity is helping to drive her down into his lap. ]
Like this? [ He asks, hand at her back, teeth at the shell of her ear. He kisses her cheek, her temple, the corner of her eye, and then pulls his face away enough to look her in the eye, ever watchful, ever curious about her expression and her wants and her body. The movement of his hips becomes sharper as he does this, and he presses his forehead to hers as his blood pumps in his ears. ]
no subject
Yes.
[ Held like this— his lips gentle on her, the slide of his chest against hers, the rough shallow huffs of his breath on her skin, his arm tight around her— what had limited her falls away, lets the rising tide of sensation build and keep building until she shudders with the intensity of it, hips feverishly seeking after the more that will push her over the edge.
When she says it again, it is more prayer than answer. ]
Yes.
[ Alexandrie presses her nose hard against his, is beginning to lean to kiss him when of a sudden he hits just right and her eyes widen in surprise as she gasps sharply and breaks with a rough full-voiced cry, head snapping backward, fingers digging numbly into Loki's back as she spasms around and against him. ]
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There are worse things.
Loki watches her for as long as he can tolerate it before he buries his face in her exposed neck and breathes in deeply. He's surrounded by the smell of her perfume, by the smell of their bodies together, by the fainter scents of blood and dirt on their skin, and finds he doesn't mind any of it. He moves his face so that his forehead is resting on her shoulder as he withstands a shudder along his spine, warning him he doesn't have much time before his own nerve endings give up the ghost.
One arm remains wrapped around her while his free hand comes up to her cheek and he tilts his head again to kiss her, sweet yet devouring, as his body begins to shake. ]
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Wonders in her own shaken heart, as she seeks to sate the urgent hunger in his kisses with the press of open mouth and tongue and shaky hand pulling at the back of his head, if she had called him from the Fade with all the nights she’d wept alone, with her sighs of longing. It had not rung in the four corners of the world, not been any voice but hers; but Andraste once had sung her lover back to her. Andraste once alone had been enough.
If the time comes that he cannot kiss for gasping, she will press her cheek to his and make his name a sacred sound when she calls it hoarse and quiet at his ear; if not, then she will answer kiss for kiss and let it pound in her heart and hope he hears it in her skin, in the way she tries to hold all of his body now with hers. ]
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So instead he watches her, breathing hard in the aftermath that has left him a little lightheaded. It could just be whatever has changed about him, after falling through a hole in reality from this world's place of dreams, dreamers, magic, and gods, but he's just fine placing the blame squarely at Alexandrie's feet, thanks.
If she told him that she might have summoned him from beyond the Fade he wouldn't laugh at her. Considering he's laughed at just about anyone else who has told him that he is a figment, a matter of dreams, that's perhaps saying something.
One hand comes up to cup her cheek. He's still at a loss for words, something that happens so rarely it should probably be marked on calendars like an eclipse of the sun. ]
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She is—
She doesn't know what she is. A creature with a body that wants to be curled into his arms and slept with that way; with a mind that thinks if she does she'll open her eyes in Hightown, the body curled with hers will be Gwenaëlle's, and she will wake her dearest friend with the kind of wretched convulsive sobbing that leaves her empty and raw.
She cannot tell if the dampness beneath the cheek that rests on him is only mingled sweat or if she is crying again until a distinct drop rolls from the corner of her eye and across the bridge of her nose. She closes her eyes and curls her fingers into his hair, around the edges of his hand. Tries to listen only to the sound of his heartbeat, the slowing rise and fall of his breath beneath her. Turns her head for a moment to kiss his chest to ward away any thoughts he might have of her unhappiness. ]
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Breathes in, out. Listens to the sound of the two of them there, the muffled sounds of the camp around them. Nighttime is falling and he wonders idly if someone will come and reclaim this tent or if circumstance will leave them be. His fingers go back to spirals and runic patterns on her spine.
He wants to ask if she's also afraid that this isn't real, that something terrible is going to happen, but the possibility exists that she isn't and won't be until the idea is introduced, and so he keeps quiet. ]
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Even if this is real, even if she sleeps in his arms and wakes in his arms, what happens then? What happens when they have to dress, have to leave the tent, have to part?
For all that they had shared— the waking dream of it, the intensity, the look in his eyes, his claim that she was stuck with him— this man is not bound to her the way she cannot help but feel she is to him, sewn to him with thread spun of fear and loneliness and wishes and love. She does love him. This him. And he isn't hers. It doesn't matter that so much is the same, he isn't hers. They have only just met. She cannot possibly mean to him what he means to her and it makes her limbs tighten around him again in her anticipation of loss.
That is the same too. The old fear that still has roots around her bones. She had shrieked at her husband long ago because of it. Now it is soft when she speaks it. ]
I am afraid that I mean little to you. That I am only the grieving wife of someone very like you and you feel no such tie to me and will not stay. Or that I have dreamed this, and you are not real at all.
[ He feels real, but so did the dream shared by the Gallows. The loss, the rebellion. Her children.
Even softer, then: ]
Do you think me a weak and foolish woman? To admit so soon, so readily, I could not bear your loss?
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If I have any control over it, I will stay by your side. I will strive to grant you the forever you've asked of me.
[ That is easier to say he knows because he feels very little control over anything at this point in time. That doesn't feel good, exactly, but he can recognize the truth of it. ]
I don't know how to convince you of my reality. [ It feels like a heavy, impossible thing in his chest. In a world where dreams walk into reality, how does one convince another that they're not just a dream? Especially when they're unsure of themselves? ] Or of what even the possibility of you would mean to me. [ That someone loved him, once, a version of him and then himself in turn. It would warm and haunt him by turns to know that and to be removed from it. ]
But know this: I could never think you weak or foolish.
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Then, sometimes, strikingly direct. Unadorned and unwavering with no back corridors for her fears to hide in; words that she can lean against with the full weight of her uncertainty and know they will not move.
This is almost of a voice, and so she trusts him. Nods where she rests against him and becomes heavy and loose again, free to let her hand go back to slowly carding through the hair that is not pressed against the pillow. To let it wander to trace the shell of his ear, find the corner of his jaw, run down the length of his nose. To touch him merely for the sake of touching him. Because she wants to. Because she can.
It is the blue of evening now, and she tries to wriggle slightly closer, reach to find the blanket and pull it more snugly around them to ward off the chill that is coming to touch the sweat on her skin and take the warmth they'd made.
After she does so, with a quiet curiosity: ]
Do you hate to be cold?
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He's not sure he does right now, honestly. ]
It's... it doesn't bother me, exactly.
[ He sighs, settling underneath her and the blankets. It's a complicated thing, isn't it? But she's asking and he feels no particular need to lie to her about it. A strange thing, that, and one he will turn over in his mind... later, maybe. ]
It is a reminder. That I am not what I was raised to believe I was. That I'm not Asgardian but Jotun, an ice giant. [ A scoff. ] Not a particularly large one, however.
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She misses seeing him— the shifting beauty of his eyes with their blues and greens and sharpness and innocence, self-satisfaction and confidence and hesitance and wonder; the little private game of new-and-old she is playing with the shapes of his body, the way his hair curls, all the little fleeting expressions and the ones that form and stay.
But she likes the way it draws them close and makes speech softer, as if they were being mindful of the resting sun. The way difficult words come easier, spoken into the small space without worrying about what they might see in the other upon the hearing. And she likes the other ways it makes her see; how it means she learns him with fingertips and breath. The curve of his collarbone, of throat, of chin, of shoulder. The places where she can find the beat of his heart. Untangling the scent of him from battle and blood and leather and the ones she knows as her own and trying to breathe only that.
She will miss, she thinks when he replies, the blankets in summer. The way her husband's comfort was far too warm, and the way it became hers because all of her comfort was him. ]
Does that matter? [ Clarification: ] The last.
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It would matter to them.
[ It's almost funny, how he was not accepted by Asgardians as one of their own (mostly because of his own behavior, he supposes, but also because he wasn't) but also probably wouldn't have survived very long on Joutenheim either. Unless they, or Laufey, suddenly developed a tolerance for small giants with magical abilities.
Seems unlikely, to him. ]
Considering my biological father left me to die, it would probably matter a great deal.
[ A beat. ]
I killed him. Later, of course, not as an infant.
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She does not think they would keep him now. Not as he had grown.
He could have gone to the Vashoth when he knew, if he had wished it— the life of a mercenary— but he had been raised a human, would be an outsider there as well.
And this man; no welcome at his birth, little enough as he grew. Outside, always. They are made alone everywhere they go.
Maybe if he could not belong to the world, the world belonging to him was the closest thing there was. If love would not give, he would take with fear. Had she not chosen the same?
Alexandrie wriggles herself upwards along Loki's body until she can settle again with her head against his, nose against his cheek beside his ear, hand coming up to settle against the other side. Breathes there, thinks I will be your home from somewhere so deep in her chest that it makes her eyes water, though she does not cry.
After a moment there, a little hoarse: ]
What did it mean to you, to do so?
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Alexandrie shifts, climbing his torso, and he moves his arm aside to allow her to make herself comfortable once more. Once she's settled his hand returns to fingers against her spine, though this time they're still. No patterns, no distractions. Just the sound of her breathing and his, the feel of her breath warm against his skin.
Her question surprises him; complex in its simplicity. Not what happened, or even why, but what did it mean? That her voice is hoarse makes him worry he's been too forthright, telling her these things, but.
But.
There's something to be said for sharing even the darkest parts of oneself. Of hearing someone else's voice in response to the terrible things he's done, and not hear judgment. Concern, perhaps, which is an odd and complicated feeling, but not judgment.
He swallows. ]
I told myself it was to prove my loyalty. To Odin, my father. To Asgard. That if I orchestrated their downfall while Odin slept, he'd have no choice but to finally see me, regard me as worthy in the same way that Thor was regarded as worthy.
[ He hesitates. Takes a breath. That is not what she asked, exactly. ]
It was revenge. In a very nice package, mind, with quite the bow, but still. For being abandoned, left to die. For being not good enough to keep.
[ The word 'considered' was probably supposed to go in there somewhere, right? ]
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She had thought so often of vengeance, but she had never gotten Rolant. His two cronies who had laughed with him she had. One killed in a duel of her orchestration, one ruined so thoroughly he'd fled the court. She'd thought she would be happy, but she wasn't. Vicious, manic, drunk on the power she'd been denied perhaps, but not made whole. She thought she would, if she could get Rolant. He'd burned to death in the civil war and she had been so angry, so denied.
All these years later she'd found him living, having faked it all. Thought about it again, and felt nothing. Knew it wouldn't matter. Ripping out the heart that made her nothing would not undo what he had done. ]
Did it work?
[ It is gentle, careful, because she knows his answer. Knows its bitter taste. Knows it is the same as hers.
Gutting someone else has never stopped the bleeding. All it means is everyone dies. ]
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It occurs to him that Odin's acceptance of himself is simply a memory of a recording from the TVA, not even a memory of his own making. It twists in his chest, brings his breathing up short. ]
Definitely not.
[ He remembers how he'd felt, in that moment. Devastated, empty, like none of it had mattered, like he hadn't mattered. He closes his eyes and remembers the rushing silence of the abyss before the wormhole, and how he'd been willing to let that be it. Allow his story to end there.
Then it hadn't. Because Lokis are survivors, or perhaps because he was too weighted with the glorious purpose of proving himself worthy. To Odin, to everyone.
The words 'I tried to die' are on the tip of his tongue but he can't bring himself to say them. He hasn't tried since then, not really, but something about that acceptance of the nothing that may follow never really leaves him. He survives, and he fights, but that little part of him is never truly gone. ]
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They had crawled out of it together, she and her husband, blinking into the sun of what it meant to have given their hearts to someone who wanted them. What it had meant to be loved. What it had meant to let themselves be loved.
Here in the dark she tightens her hold and presses her lips to that space just in front of this Loki's ear and silently promises she will go back for him. She would go back a thousand times.
And he had told her where to find him when they met. That his truth is in his leaving, that he is still left there. It is living in his name.
Tender, and careful— so careful— when she reaches. ]
And Laufey's son, more than Odin's?
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It's quiet outside and warm in here, beneath the blankets and tangled up in her, but he feels cold and a little hollow. Like there is a fire that can't quite reach the corners of the room it's lit within.
That fire is, of course, the redhead in his arms. ]
It seemed... more honest. Thor is Odin's son; I am not.
I don't know, [ he says, and his voice is tired. A small bit afraid. If he is not Odin's son or Laufey's son, then whose is he? Is he no one's at all? Maybe it's foolish to be this concerned with a naming convention, but that doesn't make it any less important in his personal cosmology. ]
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