Thor Odinson shifted on his belly and blinked drowsy into early morning light.
He sighed himself a smile and shifted again among the bed clothes. He felt sore, delightfully used, and was still so sweetly wet with it.
He wanted that again.
The king of Asgard curled onto his side and gazed on his consort-king. Bare but curled close on their bed, Loki's eyes danced beneath his lids in deep dreaming. Thor watched for awhile, as he always did, suspecting of whom his lover dreamt and pleased with his suspicions.
Did you know I love him too, my brother, your long-ago beauty? That sweet, fragile human helped bring you to me at last, aye that he did.
Thor wished to run fingertips over his own beauty's deep-set eyes, but feared it might wake him, so he contented himself with gazing at his dreaming love and perhaps the tender god dozed a little, and dreamt a bit, too. He usually dreams of peaceful things, does Thor, his night reveries so often hazed in colours red and flesh-blue, steeped in laughing sighs and familiar moans. His sleep now was light as rain ash however, for when Loki hmmm'ed in languid wakefulness, Thor woke, watched, then carefully insinuated his arm beneath a lean back. Waiting until Loki grinned, Thor curled that strong arm until his husband was on top of him, heavy-lidded and smiling down.
"You were dreaming that old dream again my love, were you not?" whispered the besotted king. "Dreaming of your long ago Midgardian and his pretty beau."
Body blue and sleep-warm, Loki rubbed belly to belly, then shifted down just a little, until his heavy erection drooped between his brother's open legs. He closed red eyes and undulated slow, his cock poking against then sliding away from the slick seam of Thor's arse.
"Don't be jealous my love," whispered the consort-king, pleased as ever that, though Thor was frankly terrible at reading minds—"Including your own most of the time you fine, hulking ninny"—he was sometimes so very good at knowing Loki's.
Thor knew his own mind most of the time, he would say in mock defense. He proved this truth with another wanting sigh, tilting his hips, thighs clasping, calves wrapping and pulling until they both moaned as Loki sunk in deep.
"Never of you," groaned Thor. "Y-you may bed…who you will my only, my one, my love, so long as you ever come back to me."
Loki Laufeyson grumbled soft and pleasant curses into his brother's mouth, as he ever will, for sometimes he wished Thor was a little more…possessive of this, of them. Yet, though this god is by nature a man mischievous, he's no fool. Another mischievous man five hundred years dead and dust taught him a few things about being content with what you need, and grateful when you get the things you want.
Loki hadn't expected to learn a lesson that centuries-gone night he insinuated himself into Sherlock Holmes' dream. Both restless and lethargic, full of desire and yet fitful in his own skin, Loki had simply sought diversion. Like his brother he'd always had a weak spot for unpredictable humans, so he'd looked for and found such a pretty distraction, a flash-bright blaze of pique and purpose on London's Oxford Street, striding along as if he walked through the halls of a palace.
Enthralled immediately, Loki had glamoured himself plainer than plain and followed Sherlock Holmes, thinking, You move like a prince sweet beauty but look at you: Soft skinned, pale as a winter sky, fingers slim as tapers…yet delicate as you know yourself to be, you stride and stomp and frown at everything around you! I know what that's like, to stalk through the world as if sheer force of will will move mountains of your own manufacture, to be so small but with the grandest of purpose.
The lure of the rare Midgardian was great and so Loki followed him for all the hours of that long-gone day, glamouring himself over and again so he could toy with this brilliant beauty.
First the god became a girl grinning and giggling as she blinked wide-eyed and asked for directions. Sherlock gave them with a strange sort of curt kindness—"Left, left, left, and you're right there." Then Loki had clutched briefly at Sherlock's arm ten minutes later, wearing that same girl's face only grown sixty years older. He'd watched in delight as Sherlock's gaze narrowed, eyes darting across deep-set wrinkles and grey hair, his brain a bright fretwork of deductive thoughts, then just before Loki suspected discovery he quick-smart murmured something silly and ducked into a shop.
So it went for hour after hour of a London morning and an afternoon.
Loki became a cabbie sipping coffee against the hood of his car, smiling at the tall passerby; he was a doctor in a lift at St. Bart's complaining about the cafeteria's terrible coffee; he let himself almost be discovered by a fit of giggles when he masqueraded as a particularly well-preserved corpse.
He became a mounted police officer in the park, then that officer's head-tossing horse. When Sherlock touched the velvet of his equine nose Loki went giddy with glamours that would let him touch. He became a bee landing on the back of Sherlock's hand, spread-winged and shivering as Sherlock breathed soft words over him. He took soaring flight and at the edge of the Midgardian's perception became a cooing pigeon, then a butterfly, then best of all a bulldog pup bowling Sherlock off his feet when he squatted down to pet, licking Sherlock's sharp-boned face in happy, slightly sexual abandon.
With each glamour Loki was certain he could taste-hear-smell quicksilver awareness just beneath Sherlock's conscious thoughts, a primeval part of that great brain again and again sensing a familiar animal creeping close.
After all that, Loki was quite done for, so that evening he insinuated himself into Sherlock's dream, keen to continue toying with his sweet human. But then, oh then, then, then…this magnificent mortal in no way mere, he turned round in the mist of their shared reverie and Sherlock Holmes began to toy with him.
What a dream it had been.
The orgasms were sweet as pomegranates have no doubt, yet even sweeter had been a thing far more fine—knowing and being known. In dreams, where a god and a man are equal, a stranger had, strangely, become a friend. And though it would take Loki a long time to truly learn the lessons Sherlock taught him that night, Loki would indeed learn.
Until he did however, Loki Laufeyson would do many foolish things. He'd hurt those he loved and who loved him. His petulance would change the course of cultures, cities, worlds. Yet of all the people he for so many years hurt, it was his own body and soul which suffered most. In those dark times, he'd revisit that night so many years gone and he'd hold close the alikeness, the acceptance he'd found there.
Then bit by bit by year by year Loki stayed Loki where it mattered but he became better where it was needed. Over time he thought of the dream less, needed it less.
Then there was Thor.
There was always Thor.
Thor, who had loved Loki without reservation since they were both babes, who had seen always the bright heart caged inside a maelstrom of emotion and uncertainty—am I weak? strong? prince? potential king? Asgardian? Frost Giant? what what what? Thor knew his one true love was rather like a living Tesseract, potential incalculable but so easy to misuse, most especially by himself.
Revelations can be slow-blooming things and for all his godly grandeur, for all his pomp and certainty of his circumstance, Loki was slow, slower, slowest in realising what he wanted was what he already had: A small and fine dominion. Which is to say he wanted to know and be known and when he realised that, he also realised he already had it, had always had it.
He knew every corner of Thor's mind and heart, he damn well ruled it. And knowing this—despite it? because of it?—Thor wanted, needed, knew him.
Revelation complete.
Nothing had prepared Loki for at last loving his brother as his brother had always loved him. Nothing prepared Loki for want as big as time, desire as vast as the Nine Realms. They have been together a hundred years in mortal measures, these brother-kings, but nearly the blink of an eye for a long-lived god. So Loki Laufeyson? He's still just a bit ravenous for his gentle-sweet giant.
Sometimes that hunger manifests in dreaming dreams of sex right after they've had it. The sweeter the coming in their bed, the more likely Loki is to want more, so more he gets in memory-dreams.
Somehow the dreaming wakes Thor, nearly every time, and the gentlest ruler Asgard has ever known reaches for his one true love and gathers him close. Then, like now, they press and push at each other, they tease and promise, and…and…and…
"Oh…oh sweet prince, my king, my love—" Thor's back arched high as he came over his belly and Loki's hand, scoring his brother's back fierce with his nails because that is what Loki so often begs. Feeling the delicious prick of blood and pain, Loki came too, filling Thor again in a place he'd already filled, until the perfect sticky mess of them was everywhere.
…and…and…and then, when they'd settled, curled toward one another and warm, hands on one another's hearts, Thor rumbled, "Tell me again, my love, about your mortal prince and his bright brain."
In their own very personal mythology, these gods of myth had long since agreed that Sherlock Holmes was of course a stand in for Loki Laufeyson. The casting had been near-flawless: A feverish beauty who drew the eye of mortal and god, a reedy strength inside a seemingly-delicate frame, petulance and need and want and demand as big as a world of suns, and so much damned shouting about it that for the longest time both man and god had misunderstood exactly where and who their obstacles were.
"Tell me of your mortal beauty's tiny, true love."
Of course in this mythology, Thor Odinson was played by John Watson. Here the casting had veered from type and yet not really so very much, for that long ago doctor, he had been in his own way the biggest of men, his loyalty and love larger than the frame in which it was housed, his faith in his dearheart, his fury to protect him even when from himself…oh yes that small man's love had been as big as thunder.
"Tell me the pleasures he gave you and the things he taught you so long ago."
Loki Laufeyson, a god not-quite-immortal, finally and at last content in his own rare skin, looked at Thor Odinson with mischievous scarlet eyes. "Why do you wish to know my king?"
Though there was a limit to their love making (even gods must rest between times), there was no such limit to how much they could talk about it. So Loki teased and Thor let himself be teased, sometimes even teasing back as far as his serious nature let him, and so it went until they were rested and ready again.
"Because I watch you dream of those long ago men and I wonder what time has embellished in that beautiful head of yours. Is your earthly prince taller, wiser, prettier still? Is the king of his own heart fiercer, gentler, more piquant-sweet?"
Thor shifted restless, moaned thunder-low, a sound so deep Loki felt it in flesh and bone and cock.
"I want to know…because I wonder what new memories you may have unearthed since the last time you dreamt those dreams, my beautiful mate. How sweet-tasting was his white skin, can you say? Did his love sigh with their pleasures or did he moan dark? Tell me the tale again so I can watch your body blush and your cock grow thick. And while you do…"
Thor turned away from his brother just a little, so he could run a big hand from broad chest to belly. Then Thor spread his legs and down low between them his hand went. A moment later he groaned his pleasure and sighed, "…I will keep my body ready for you."
If it's a weakness to relish power over the strong then Loki is one of the weakest creatures he knows. Fortunately the strongest one he knows happily gets on his metaphorical—and literal—knees before him and gives him that power again and again.
Loki pressed his forehead against Thor's shoulder, draped over him a long blue arm, a long blue leg, and said, "W-we were at a fine London restaurant. I should have taken you there all those years ago. You'd have been the most beautiful blonde bull amidst all its glass fuss and finery."
Loki weaved long fingers in Thor's blonde finery, kissed softly a kingly throat.
"The pretty little godling wore a second skin of black linen and blue, my love. And I didn't know it yet, but that sweet prince, well he wanted to seduce me…"
—
Again, a million pardons for somehow not publishing all the chapters to this story in a timely fashion. All up-to-date writing is on AO3 under the same name only with no space between Atlin and Merrick. Thank you!