A/N: Drabble inspired by a Tumblr prompt by Jetplanejane.
I never thought that I'd be writing this at all, but the prompt was the last straw that broke the camel's back. So I surrender (though resistance was probably always futile).
With a hard clap on the shoulder, Thor simply introduces him as Loki, his younger brother.
Without thought, Jane stretches out a hand for him to shake that he takes with deliberate slowness. She feels every millimetre of his fingers as they slide across hers until they are brought to his lips, his breath whispering a greeting on the back of her hand as her mouth turns to ash.
And then Loki is turning away and bidding her good day with a small smile that's too searing to forget, gliding through the length of the deserted hallway like a ghost skimming tangible surfaces.
Later that night, he raises a toast to her during the feast but all she sees are the motes of fairy lights that come free of the reflective surfaces in the dining hall.
oOo
Being the Midgardian betrothed of the Asgardian firstborn in this day and age means that Jane still insists on the daily Bifrost commute between her lab in Puente Antiguo and the Realm Eternal. Mostly, it's Thor's younger brother who is tasked with overseeing this peculiar mode of transportation.
Within days, he carves out crooked pathways in the branches of Yggdrasil between Earth and Asgard, managing to make travelling along the straight rainbow bridge an unexciting prospect.
It's faster and easier, he tells her. With no need of fanfare.
Jane agrees.
What she doesn't expect is the deep, lingering ache in her stomach when she is pressed hard against him in the split-second they are between worlds, leaving her only with the faint memory of trembling fullness when he's long gone.
Rinse, repeat, day after day, until their rhythm can transform into routine. Except that it doesn't. There's too much subtle variation in the way she curls into him and enough differentiation in the angles in which his arm bands across her waist for her breath to hitch anew.
Loki becomes a problem she's unable to solve, an equation that never balances out.
He doesn't speak much when they meet, but that intense, enigmatic green-eyed stare he levels at her erases all memories of her betrothed. It caresses her the way the wispy tip of a feather curls against skin, stops the breath in her throat and makes her break her equipment just so that her frustration is only slightly alleviated by the sound of it shattering on the floor.
Jane has a million questions – and only a few of them to do with science – that Loki leaves partially answered. Often, it leaves her scowling out at the sand, contemplating the wrongness of everything.
She counts the hours until the next teleport.
oOo
It's all chivalry, gallantry and pomp with Asgard's golden son. Thor had courted her with nothing less than what was expected of his standing, far above what she expected when she'd learnt of his past conquests in the bedroom from whispering servants in the vast kitchens late one night.
With his trickster brother, it is all silk, shadows and secrecy. Jane can't deny the thrill that's Loki Laufeyson or that it's his undeniable presence she craves. She fights her desire by letting it burn into a blackened husk that still gently cradles her darkest fantasies in its impenetrable shell.
Across the room, he's suddenly there, winking into existence in a flare of green light, the space between them abruptly vanishing in the single step she takes towards him.
But nothing is impossible, Jane realises, when her thoughts and desires are mutually twinned with his. They're seeds sown long ago, scattered carelessly in the dim hallway when he'd first taken her hand in greeting, then buried deeper in the fertile soil of her imagination with her arms around him as he bent those pathways of his to bridge unimaginable distances.
She knows that her wedding night will be spent in bed with another man whose face and body are infinitely dearer to her than the man who had promised to love and cherish her in all the right ways. She's almost thankful that her husband who should be in bed with her is called away to the war council that does not wait for time or tide.
This time, Jane meets Loki's bold stare, revelling in the heat and longing that Loki doesn't bother to hide for once. The hand that she lifts to touch his face is strangely bold and steady and in her mind's eye, the constellations start to collide in a pattern that defies all the known laws of physics. He fists his hands in the silver wedding gown she's still wearing as she kisses him deeply, a sound that strangely resembles worlds ripping apart by the sheer force of her adulterous actions. Her teeth break the skin of his shoulder as he pushes her further than she can ever go on her own. They are carried only by momentum that hurls them into ever-widening circles of light and their cries, unrestrained and loud in the bridal suite, go no further than the door where a convenient silencing spell shimmers in place.
Then she feels the crushing weight of guilt snaking tight around her chest that's as familiar as the weight of his body on hers as they lie panting with their legs snagging the silk sheets.
She'll blame herself for this. For kissing him, for whimpering when his fingers move to coax a scream out of her, for having an empty space in her head that can only be occupied by one person who isn't her husband.
She'll keep blaming herself for wanting to continue such clandestine acts, for sprawling contentedly across his body afterwards, the way she'll keep blaming greater and unknown gravitational forces for knocking a planetary body out of its constant orbit.
oOo
It begins with the dissolution of a marriage that had been made in haste.
It ends with her ex-husband's brother's lips on hers and her unapologetic scrabble for purchase as he pushes her onto the nearest hard surface he can find when the decree is made final. For all that they've done, Jane can't help but think that there is still something greater when it comes to the impossibility of the both of them.
It's the only absolution she can grant herself.
Thor will never know, of course, that Loki is the sole interjection in their lives that will in time, unravel the foundations of Asgard.