Author's note: I know it's not a Hobbit update, please don't kill me! Work has been . . . ridiculously brain-heavy so all I want to do when I log off is watch YouTube. But this scene's been rattling around in my head for a while and it finally made its way out, so three cheers for words, right? riiiiight?
...anyhow disclaimers! 1)I own nothing but the OC and 2) this is crossposted elsewhere so don't worry if you see it under another name on another fic site. Please enjoy.
"Hello, anyone home? I come bearing pizza!"
Somehow I managed to balance all five pizza boxes in one arm just long enough to get the little house's front door open. A rush of warm air and frenzied shouting swept past me and into the starry sky above Tønsberg. They were in the middle of a match, then, I guessed.
Sure enough, when I made it through the narrow entryway after kicking the door shut behind me and hoping the latch caught, all three of them were focused on the screen, thumbs and—whatever Miek's appendages were properly called—flicking furiously over the controllers.
A familiar voice rumbled out above the others. "I swear, if that weasel pulls that one more time, I'll rip his arms off and—"
"—shove them up his butt?" I grinned as I set the pizzas down on the nearest shabby endtable. "You really need to come up with something new, Thor. Pizza's here whenever you want it!"
"Ooh, did they have any pepperoni today?" Korg perked up.
With a flourish I opened the cardboard box crowning my stack. "One genuine pepperoni pizza, all yours."
"Thank you very much!" Korg's character died just then, and he reached one arm across Miek to grab a slice before the avatar could revive. "Of course, if you'd like any, you are quite welcome to it."
"I'm good with cheese, but thank you though!" Sliding one of the other boxes out of the stack, I folded the lid back and balanced the box on the couch arm next to Miek. "There you go, buddy."
He chittered happily in response.
And that just left Thor. Surprisingly for the significance of the day, this looked like one of his good nights, so getting the pizza down him should be easy. Maybe I should have gone for something homemade, but after an especially long day in Marit and Trine's bakery, fast food had seemed the best option for my regular trek out to Thor's place, even if it might not be as comforting. Thankfully, it seemed not much comfort was needed.
The game finally came to an end, and I took my opportunity to grab a pizza box and dart across the room while I wouldn't be interrupting Korg and Miek's view of the TV. "Dinner is served," I said with a grin, proffering the box.
"And a fine one it looks, too." Thor stacked three pieces and began to eat them as one. "Sit, sit, you look exhausted!" he exclaimed around a mouthful, gesturing at a chair near his own.
"Thanks a lot." I laughed as I dragged the chair closer and plopped down. "Between the kneading all day and the bike ride out here, I guess I am kind of beat." The fact that he'd noticed further confirmed my hopes this would be one of the better evenings.
"Where are my manners, here, have some!" He held out a slice of pizza from his box, and I managed to take it without touching his greasy fingers. I could feel their warmth, though, before his hand pulled away—no, don't do that to yourself, it's just whatever heat was left in the crust. Crap. As usual, a good day for him meant a harder day for me.
"Ready, Thor?" Korg gestured at the screen, where a new round was poised to begin.
"No, you go ahead." Thor waved him onward with another double-slice stack and leaned back in his chair. "So, Cate, what adventures have you been having since last we met?"
"Oh, nothing so grand as an adventure." I shrugged. "I'm here to be done with those, remember?"
"Ah yes, of course. Sorry. What have you been doing that is certainly not adventurous at all, then?"
Trying not to dwell on how your eyes crinkle at the corners when you smile like that, for one. "Just the usual—work at the bakery, walks on the shore, keeping your sorry behind somewhat healthy." I grinned to take the edge off. "How about you? Win any—what are they in this game, tournaments? Cups? I can never keep them all straight."
"Korg's won both, actually." Thor beamed.
"I'll have to congratulate him then!" I looked away and glanced at the screen, where Korg's avatar seemed to be getting shot from three different directions at once. "…Maybe when he's less occupied."
Thor chuckled deeply, I swallowed my next bite of pizza hard, and we watched the game in silence for a minute.
"How are you doing, though?" I asked quietly, once the game music picked up a notch.
"What do you mean? I'm doing quite as well as your last visit." There was a sudden tension under his jovial tones, though.
"Well, with today being—today. You know."
He shrugged and inhaled half of another pizza slice. Nice try. Brunnhilde had asked me to check in on him specifically about this, or I might have let it slide—it was a good evening and he'd been smiling, why spoil it? Oh well.
I waited till he swallowed. "I just thought I'd ask if you wanted to talk about it."
"Did Valkyrie put you up to this?"
My silence was answer enough. He growled something under his breath and let out a guttural sigh. "Tell her she doesn't need to worry about me, I'm perfectly fine!"
"Thor, there are two recycling bins of bottles from the last week at your doorstep that say otherwise. She just wants to be sure you're okay."
"I'll tell you what, the next time she says that to you, you say I told you to say to worry about herself."
"Finger out of my face, please." I poked my pizza crust at the offending digit until he backed down with a disgruntled noise. "It's not just her that's worried about you, though. We all are. I am."
"You are?" His blue eyes searched my face questioningly.
"Of course I am! You're my—you're our friend!" Great going there, letting him fluster you. "I mean, we care about you and we know you're hurting and I know this day could be one of the bad ones so I just wanted to see if there was anything I could do to help!"
"And asking me a hundred times if I'm 'okay' is supposed to help?" He scoffed and turned his head away.
I leaped up and circled around the chair where he could see me again. "Then tell me what I can do that would!"
"Oh, I don't know. Maybe if you stopped dragging out all my worst memories and looking at me with those sad eyes and that, that pity, that could be a start!"
"I know it hurts, Thor, believe me. I know—"
He lurched to his feet, towering head and shoulders above me. "Don't tell me you know what hurts, Cate. Don't tell me you know what this feels like." He stabbed a finger toward his heart as his voice broke. "Go lose people who were counting on you to save them, go lose your brother and hear him breathe his dying words because you could not save him, and then, then tell me you know—"
THUD.
My palm burned where he'd caught it before it could make contact with his jaw. "Don't. You. Dare," I breathed. "Don't you dare start comparing pains. One, that's not how it works and two, you think I haven't lost anyone? I lost my entire life when I had to go underground after the Triskelion. What's left of my family still think I'm dead and post memorials on Facebook every April. And I lost half my team just like you did. Thor, I watched my platonic soulmate crumble into dust and blow away into the sky and there was nothing I could do about it except wish my heart could disappear along with her. I know I haven't lost in the same ways you have, but don't you dare tell me I don't know how it hurts."
We stared at each other for a moment, breathing hard, before I realized something was wrong. The burning in my hand wasn't going away. "You can let go now."
"I—I can't." His eyes widened as the burning flared hotter between our palms.
"Thor, what's going on? Wha—"
He reached out with his free hand and took mine—I winced in anticipation, but there was no pain this time. Only the warmth of him that I was now realizing I'd never felt before. Somehow after an entire year, this was the first time we'd actually touched like this. The burning in our linked palms finally faded, and I yanked mine away, only to gasp as I looked at it.
A single Asgardian rune was etched in silver across my palm, from the base of my middle finger all the way to the heel of my hand. I pulled my other hand free from Thor's grasp to poke experimentally at the strange marking. There was no more pain now, and it wasn't raised or hot to the touch. For all intents and purposes it was like any of the freckles or moles elsewhere on my body, part of my skin like it had always been there.
I looked up to see Thor holding his hand out toward me, palm up. Wordlessly he indicated that I should look. There on his wide palm in my messy cursive were scrawled the words, "You couldn't have started the light show like ten minutes ago?"
Before I knew what I was doing I'd reached out a tentative finger to trace the markings. "I—I don't understand, what is this?" I breathed. Somewhere behind me Korg was mumbling something cheerful and shuffling a chirpy Miek out of the room, but I couldn't be bothered to care at the moment.
"Your first words to me when we met on the battlefield in Wakanda. Do you not remember?" His words rumbled down from somewhere over my bent head, the bitter pain from earlier now subdued to a soft sadness.
"My first words—but I don't—I only have Wanda's soulmark," I stammered, still mesmerized by the sight of my words—my words!—in cobalt blue on his skin.
"Ah, but these marks are different among Asgardians. Ours appear when we first touch, and they show one another's names." He turned my marked hand palm-up and stroked over the rune with his thumb. "This is my name in our runes."
"But I'm sure—haven't we—before?" I distinctly remembered multiple instances poking him in the shoulder, or elbowing him in the side, or even once when I fell asleep on the couch after a late movie night and could have sworn I felt him touch my hair as I was drifting off. (I'd lived off that particular memory for a solid month.)
"Not like this." His thumb was still stroking my palm—no, caressing was probably the right word at this point, much as it upset the flock of winged horses currently residing in my stomach. Right, he meant it had to be skin-on-skin.
"I see."
Back and forth, back and forth. I still couldn't look away. Couldn't look up at him. My hand might not have been burning anymore but my face definitely was.
"I'm sorry—"
We spoke at the same time.
"You go—"
"No, you may—"
"Okay." I took a deep steadying breath. "Thor, I'm sorry I yelled at you. And pestered you to talk when you didn't want to. I wasn't respecting your wishes. You should get to grieve in whatever way works best for you, not what Brunnhilde or I think would be best."
"No, you were right." Thor sighed, and I felt his breath against the top of my head. When had we gotten so close? "I am sorry I shouted as well. We have both known pain, and loss—the Norns may have woven our threads together for this very reason. I was wrong to use my hurt as a weapon against you so it would not stab my own heart so deeply for a moment, after all the care you have shown me."
I hummed in acknowledgement, though inside I was still very much freaking out because—soulmate? Thor? Me? Clearly there was some kind of mistake, this was just supposed to be a crush and now what was I supposed to do?
"I think," Thor rumbled gently, "you could begin with looking at me again."
Ok maybe the freaking out wasn't all on the inside. I tore my eyes away from my hand in his and slowly—ever so slowly—managed to drag my gaze up, up, up his t-shirt-clad chest, to his neck, his adam's apple, his beard just on the wrong side of thick, his mouth, his mouth, oh his mouth stop it, his nose, and finally a spot just above his blue, blue eyes.
His unmarked palm came up to rest on one side of my face, warm fingertips sliding just barely into the hair behind my ear, and I found myself leaning into him ever so slightly. My stomach was leaping wildly, and surely he could hear my heartbeat as well—but those thoughts disappeared as he tipped my head back downward just a touch, and I found myself staring up directly into his eyes.
"There, that wasn't so hard." He smiled softly.
"Don't be too sure about that," I managed to choke out with a trembling smile.
His brow furrowed and he took a step back. "Forgive me, I did not mean—"
"No, no, not like that!" My free hand flew up to rest over his before he could pull away completely. "I just—you're just—when I look at you, I—I don't know. I thought I only had the one Mark. I want—I don't know what I want."
He nodded in comprehension and drew closer again, fingers sinking farther into my hair as I only barely kept myself from an embarrassing noise at the sensation. "We may be able to work that out. Don't you think?"
"I—I think we should figure it out soon then. Before my neck gets a permanent crick from looking up at you like this."
The smile that spread across his face was like the sun appearing on a rainy day. "I think something could be arranged."
Before I had time to think, one strong arm wrapped around my hips and effortlessly lifted me so our eyes were on a level. His other arm supported my back, big hand still cradling my head. "Better?" he asked, very low and very gentle.
I nodded once, jerkily. He was so close now. Almost without my realizing it, my marked hand inched up and dared rest over his bearded jawline. For all it had begun to look like a shag carpet, it was surprisingly soft, and my fingers curled into it involuntarily.
Thor let out a short, hot breath and rested his forehead against mine, murmuring, "If you still don't know what you want, you should be very careful what you do next."
My heart was pounding straight out of my chest at this point, and my words came out in little more than a whisper. "I do know one thing—I'm sick and tired of being careful."
And then, hardly able to believe that I was doing it, I tilted my head and brushed a kiss against the corner of his mouth.
Or at least, that was the intention.
He turned his head just at the right moment to catch my kiss full-on, and without hesitation he took expert control. His mouth was hot over mine, and his grasp tightened around me, and when he deepened the kiss I forgot how to talk, how to think, how to breathe, how to feel anything but him.
At last we pulled back to catch our breath, and I realized somewhere along the way I'd wrapped my legs around his waist for better balance and had both hands in his hair. With an actual squeak I let go. Thor let me down to the floor but kept me close, and I felt his chuckle as I hid my burning face against his broad chest. "'s not funny," I tried to protest, but I couldn't help but laugh too.
He dropped a kiss on the top of my head. "Of course, of course. We'll make no further mention of it." This would quite probably not be the case, but that didn't matter at the moment.
I held onto him for a moment longer before leaning back to look up at him. "Thor?"
"Yes?" He smiled back at me with the smile I knew had always been mine.
"We should probably let Korg and Miek know they can come back now. Their pizza'll be cold if—"
Thor nudged me to turn around, directing my attention to the table on the far side of the couch—the table now conspicuously empty of any pizza boxes whatsoever. "I think they took care of that."
"But what about their game, we can't just—"
"They'll have moved to the computer in the other room, it's no bother." He turned me back facing him as he spoke.
"Are you—"
He rested a finger against my lips. "Do you want them to come back so badly?" His eyes were sparkling with a light I'd never seen in them before today.
"I suppose—if you're quite sure—"
"Quite."
As he began showing me just how sure he was, I knew this wouldn't magically bandage over everything we'd been feeling. The pain, the anger, the helplessness—they would still be there tomorrow, and next week, and next year. But at least we could sit with them together.
(The kissing was pretty good too.)
