The weight of Balder in Loki's arms is familiar, repeated over and over again over too many years to count until sometimes Loki thinks he breathes better with that burden than without it. But something's wrong. His vision is blurred, his cheeks are wet, and his hands are shaking against the blond's shoulders; how can he give Balder the support he needs when he can't stop his own hands from trembling?
"Loki." The blond sounds exhausted, worn out and heavy with the painful aftereffects of emotion. His hand comes up, touches lightly against Loki's braid like a talisman. "It's okay."
"It's not," Loki says, but it comes out as a sob, as a wail of protest.
"It is," Balder soothes, and his voice is like summer, it soothes Loki even as the redhead tries to push the comfort away. Balder leans in against the other's shoulder, his hair falls forward over his face, but Loki can feel his smile, the sad resignation under the peace of it.
He can watch his hand come up, can see the bloodless white of his knuckles on the hilt of the dagger, but he can't stop the motion. His mind is too busy screaming conflicting commands at him - do it, don't do it, you have to save him, you have to kill him, you love him, you love him, you love him - and he's in the middle of trying to decide what to do when his arm jerks forward as if someone's pushing it down, when his own hand buries the dagger in Balder's body.
The blond jerks in Loki's arms and Loki's letting go, snatching his hand back from the weapon with a wordless wail of protest, but it doesn't matter, it's too late, it's done. The hand against his hair drops like it's too heavy for Balder to hold up and Loki is lifting a hand to the other's hair, he can't see anything but gold in the blur of tears.
"Loki," Balder's voice is even weaker now, his smile lingering in his voice but starting to fade. There's warmth all across Loki's skin, blood spilling over his hands and staining Balder's pale hair and pristine clothes. "Loki, I -"
"I love you," Loki blurts, his hand making a fist of Balder's hair and his throat closing off into tears. "I love you."
"Loki." Balder's voice is so quiet Loki can barely hear it, even with his ear all but pressed against the other's lips. "I -"
He coughs. There's a gasping sound, shaking and so loud Loki startles, and then nothing.
"Balder?" Loki knows he'll get nothing but silence, of course he won't, not when he's the one who put out the light, but his throat is as uncontrolled as his hand was, it's grabbing his vocal chords and forcing them into a wail, a childish desperation for reassurance. "Balder!"
The weight in his arms is going heavy, his strength is suddenly absent as if it died with Balder himself, but Loki can't let him go, he can't, he thinks he may never be able to move on from this exact moment in all the eternity of life left to him. "Balder, no, no no." He's sobbing, incoherent protest at a world gone wrong, at a world that has left him without even the warmth of the sun to look for, just the dead weight of necessary crimes on his hands. He curls in forward, drops down to the ground without letting go so he's pressed in against Balder's body, as if sheer nearness can let Loki give his useless existence back in exchange for the crime of stealing the other's.
"Loki."
There's motion, shaking at his shoulder, contact like fire in his chilled skin.
"Loki."
More shaking. Balder is fading from his arms, the weight evaporating, and Loki reaches out, desperate to hold to whatever he can find and…
His fingers land on warm skin, collect moisture from the contact, and there's motion against his hand in time with the sound of soft laughter.
"Loki." More contact, fingers closing around his wrist, and Loki jerks fully away, blinks his eyes open to see Balder's face inches from his own, his fingers pressed in against the blond's lips. The blond's features are very soft in the darkness, the clear blue of his eyes smudged into something more like Loki's silver in the dim light. He's smiling under Loki's touch, a pull of reaction at the corner of his mouth, but there's worry in the corners of his eyes, concern in the fingers that reach out to touch Loki's cheek. "You were crying in your sleep."
Loki blinks, and for a moment the dream and reality war for his attention, hope waging a heated battle with pessimism for precedence. Then Balder's thumb drags over his cheek, the blond presses his lips in a idle kiss against Loki's hand, and Loki gives up resisting, lets his hand slide down Balder's neck to the back of his head so he can slide in close, press himself in against the blond until he can feel the other's heartbeat humming through his own skin.
"I'm sorry I woke you," Balder is saying, though he's not protesting the closeness. His fingers slide through Loki's hair, he shifts his weight to fit his leg in between the redhead's so their limbs are fully entangled. "Should I have let you sleep?"
"No," Loki says, or tries to say. It's more of a whimper than otherwise, his throat is remembering that he was crying and offering unreasonable response to the relief that's leaving his hands shaking on Balder's warm skin. "No, I'm glad you woke me."
"Are you okay?" Balder asks. Loki can hear the concern lacing his voice, it's as clear to his ears as the warmth against his skin from the fingers in his hair.
"I love you," Loki says instead of answering. The words are warm in his mouth, like he's stealing the blond's voice to say them.
There's another laugh. Balder's hand slides down across Loki's back, his mouth comes in to press against the redhead's forehead. "I love you."
Loki takes a breath. His throat is still tight, his eyes are still wet with delayed tears, but when he lifts his head Balder is there, smiling and warm and alive, and when he leans in the other meets him without hesitation to fit the heat of his lips to Loki's. The lingering panic of the dream starts to fade, then, knots of adrenaline and imagined loss unwinding from Loki's body, and when his fingers slide into long blond hair Balder shudders against him and makes a sound in the back of his throat that effectively puts an end to sleeping further, at least for a while.
Loki doesn't mind. In Balder's sunlight it's easy to chase away the demons of the night. When they eventually fall back asleep it's tangled together, skin and hair and lips pressed close, and Loki doesn't dream again.