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Title: 5 Times Loki Said "I Love You" (And One Time He Actually Meant It)
Author: tristhe
Rating: R
Fandom(s): Thor (Marvel movie-verse)
Pairing(s): Loki/various, Loki/Thor
Wordcount: 1,880
Status: Complete
Spoilers/Warnings: I know nothing of the comics, so this is a mixture of movie and myth canon. Sexual situations, both het and slash.
Notes: Un-beta'ed. Written for the norsekinkmeme, round two.
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters, and make no money off of them.
Summary: Otherwise titled, "Five times Loki said something he didn't mean, and one time he only sort of did."
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- 1 -
"I love you," Loki whispered to Angrboda, his gloved hand whispering over her blue skin. He was lying, of course. Angrboda was barely even minor nobility, an unnoticed minor plains lord's court member, practically a country hick to his Asgardian sensibilities. Hardly of any import at all, but she was his foot in the door. He had plans - well, he always had plans, but for these particular plans he needed a way into the Jotun temple library; and rough, simple Angrboda, as unimportant as she was, was his key.
Bedding a Jotun posed an interesting challenge to Loki, but hardly the most difficult he'd faced. A complex net of magics kept his skin safe from her innate cold, incidentally making his own skin glow just a little wherever they touched. It was purely coincidence, of course, that Angrboda was enamored of shiny, pretty things.
He made love to her (after some minor size-adjusting magics so he could reach) with the considerable skill he had spent centuries perfecting, and in less than two months she would have died for him.
In fact, seventeen years (and three children (monsters)) later, she did.
Loki only smiled (and licked the blood from his lips).
- 2 -
"I love you," Loki whimpered into the ear of the warrior pushing into him roughly. Too roughly.
Loki had had plenty conquests within Asgard before, but he had always been very, very careful under while Heimdall's watchful eye that every dalliance be above reproach. They were educational and fun and useful, but never more than that, and he made sure to leave no line of broken hearts to taint his image.
Loki had always had his games, but it was only after he'd learned to hide that he truly started to spread his wings. Even then, he had stayed away from Asgard. No need to cause trouble where he slept, after all - at least not until he was ready for it.
This would be his first major scheme within the very heart of Asgard. The adrenalin from the sheer risk of it all was very nearly making him drunk.
He was only a bare month into his plot and already he had seen the tightening of his brother's lips, the dark looks shared amongst his brother's friends. Soon, one of the bruises his 'love' gifted to him would be seen, just briefly, by one of the minor warriors of the court; a good man who usually did not indulge in gossip, but had his limits. A few months would pass as the whispers grew, slowly, organically.
No one would doubt that this particular Asgardian would go so far, not with his history. Adils had never gone so far as to merit punishment before, but there were few prospective partners willing to return his gaze, no matter how charming he could be when he smiled.
Adils grabbed Loki's hair, responding to dark sibilant whispers in his soul that he had no way of knowing were not his own, and Loki let out a pathetic little "ah" as his head was ground against the marble wall.
The year wouldn't be out before Loki would see just how far his father would go for his sons. In the hollow of his heart, where neither Adils nor Heimdall could see, Loki smiled darkly.
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It was actually only a matter of weeks before Adils was tragically, but quietly, listed as missing from a hunt gone wrong. The gossip never made it much further than the capitol's walls, and Odin's frigid stare ensured it stayed that way.
Within the privacy of the family wing Loki feigned fragile outrage, tearfully insisting to his father that he could handle himself, that Odin had no right, and shaking his brother's hesitant soothing hand from his good shoulder. His other arm was cradled and bound to his chest by the healers, and the stark white stood out brightly against his black clothes.
Later, he wept bitter tears of frustration onto Thor's shoulder, extracting sworn oaths to never tell. He hid his face behind his good hand as Thor lightly, tentatively stroked his black hair.
For a man so often shut in libraries and dark spaces, practicing his arcane arts in shadows and the quiet dusty moments no one ever saw, Thor's little brother smelled surprisingly sweet. Of apples and lemongrass, the fresh wind after a storm. Thor tried to be surreptitious as he inhaled, his nose just brushing his little brother's smooth hair.
Behind his hand, Loki smiled.
- 3 -
"I love you," Loki said to Sigyn, eyes clear and steady as they met hers squarely over the marriage-ribbon. She blushed demurely and looked away, as always the perfect maiden.
Loki needed the respectability of a good, solid Asgard wife of impeachable Aesir breeding, and he smiled now at his father as he bowed his head for the king's blessing. His family had been ecstatic from the very start of his very long, public, formal courtship, taking it as a sign of healing from past experiences. They'd supported every step of the process and the celebratory feasts were nearly constant.
Sigyn's family line was not particularly special, but they were all solid, well-regarded Aesir and made a perfectly suitable match for the younger Odinson.
Not much later, Loki gripped Sigyn's hand in his and finally broke away from the wedding party, laughing good-naturedly at the catcalls and splashes of mead tossed after them. His grin was bright and full as he waved off the room's attention one last time, then darted into the darkness of the hallway. His eyes flicked over his new wife's light blue dress, perfectly proper and modest. If his grin held too many teeth in the shadows of the torches' light, no one but he knew.
- 4 -
"I could have done it, Father!" Loki screamed, dangling above the hungry abyss. "I could have done it! For you!"
But his father, his chosen father, only looked sadly down at him and said, "No, Loki," and nothing more.
Loki desperately, hungrily searched his father's face, looking for something of which even he didn't know, and he didn't find it.
With perfect clarity Loki could see his future rising up before him. To be forgiven, once again, after a suitable enough punishment and length of time. To be welcomed back with more or less open arms, again, and to move on with his family, his people, as if nothing had happened, again, and gradually suffocate under an emptiness, a weight, that he could never name and never capture, ground down under mindless, pointless days until the uselessness of it could make him scream, AGAIN.
The howling winds tore through him, past him, stealing his air before he could breathe, but all Loki could feel was the energy of Gungnir sparking, burning, against his hand and all he could see was his father's sad, set face above him.
What had he even been trying to accomplish here? To prove himself? To make a point, to teach a lesson? Why? Why did he even try?
This was Asgard. Asgard did not change. Asgard never changed, because Odin never changed.
His brother was desperately trying to pull Gungnir, with Loki hanging from it, up closer to the safety of the bridge, but Loki did not notice.
Loki had tried to remake himself into something Odin could be proud of for so long, always aware of the hollow inside himself where the things he should have felt were not. Then he had tried to remake Asgard, instead, or so he thought - but that's not what he'd been doing at all, was it? This was all just yet another attempt at gaining his father's gaze, at twisting himself into impossible patterns and hoping that this time, this time, when the gazes of the gods landed on him in whatever form they would, he would feel something and finally know that he'd gotten it right.
How pathetic. How utterly pathetic.
Loki let go of the spear, and did not smile.
- 5 -
"I love you," Loki panted, writhing and arching under Tony's groaning form.
It was a bit hard to think, and he knew he was going to do something very, very bad to that little purple freak later, but right now all Loki was concerned about was more, deeper, harder, faster, more.
He was dimly aware of muffled shouting coming from somewhere not too far away, but paid no real attention to it as he came, again; was this the fourth time?
His eyelids fluttered with exhaustion as he slumped back, his body still rocking viciously under Tony's frantic thrusting. He must have been on his third by now; and being only human, unlike Loki, Tony was probably twice as exhausted but you wouldn't know it to look at him. Loki languidly gazed up at Tony's too-wide bloodshot eyes that weren't looking at Loki at all, for all that they were pointed in his general direction.
As the friction started to rekindle that burning in his gut again, Loki briefly wondered what Tony was seeing before he stopped caring and the sea of desire rose up to drown him again.
By the time the muffled shouting finally broke through the glass-like barrier Loki was on his seventh and wasn't aware of much beyond how hard it was to draw in a deep enough breath; how sluggish his limbs felt under the crushing heat he could swear he was boiling in; and the always, always punishing, unrelenting compulsion to move and move and move no matter how little he actually could.
Then there were cool, cool hands on him, pulling and lifting him away somewhere, from something he couldn't remember anymore, and there was suffocating softness, and unbearable pressure, and then it was dark.
- 6 -
Loki sighed, exasperated, but with a reluctant, tiny pull upwards to one corner of his lips. Thor pouted like nothing so much as a tired, angry child, rubbing his eyes with one hand while slumped ungracefully on the steps.
Loki, sitting one step above Thor, let his older brother lean against his leg and gazed lethargic at the wreckage of the latest world-endangering extraterrestrial threat.
It was full night, now, though the dying fires still lent a dusk-like glow to the horizon. The two brothers sheltered from the occasional fall of sodden, bloody ash under the half-crushed overhang of an old library's entrance. The fieldstone and mortar had fared better than the more modern constructed buildings.
Loki could see the shadowed outlines of other heroes, and a few of the less insane villains like himself, moving around in the aftermath. Slowly picking out what could be saved. This township would likely never recover.
But here, in this little shelter, it was just Thor and him. Loki watched, absentminded, as his hand rose and settled on Thor's golden head, still miraculously clean through all this mess. He stroked idly as Thor dropped his head to Loki's knee.
The breeze spoke of blood and destruction, but the stars were steady and bright. Loki's mouth twisted wryly and he murmured, "You fool," in a tone so gentle, so soft, that one might be excused for thinking he'd said something else entirely.
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