AN: Sorry this one took so long. Major lack of inspiration for it, knew where I wanted this to go, but not how to get there so I've been working on a couple other projects as well that I'm going to start posting up here in the next couple days. Hope you enjoy this chapter though, I really love how it turned out!
Chapter 9 - Magic
The next morning Amber, still reeling from the previous night's activities and the subsequent revelations. She got ready slowly, taking her time to carefully put her hair up, dressing in a paint splattered shirt and some cutoff jean shorts that had seen better days.
She breezed into the room with breakfast for Loki, not quite wanting to broach the subject yet, only to find that he was still asleep.
She set the food down on the nightstand and took up her place at the easel again, content to just paint in silence for a while until she got her thoughts in order.
After an hour or so, Loki finally stirred awake. "Breakfast is right next to you," Amber said, not yet moving. "I can still help you if you'd like but I figured since you can move your arm that you might want to feed yourself."
"Thank you," Loki said, moving his neck slowly, gingerly to the side to notice the plate of cut fruit and pastries placed on the nightstand. He reached out with his magic and the plate floated within reach on a glittering green breeze. He was grateful to get some semblance of control back to his life after the humiliation of the last few days being completely helpless.
He ate in silence, watching Amber work, and noticing how much she seemed to be avoiding eye contact.
Eventually, when he'd finished eating and replaced the plate on the nightstand, he broke the silence, "We should probably talk about last night."
Amber froze at the easel, paintbrush poised above the canvas. She took a long breath before returning to painting, "What about it?" she asked, feigning nonchalance while silently willing her heart to stop pounding in her chest like a bass drum.
"Well for starters, I recognized that balcony. It's one of the balconies along the grand ballroom at the palace in Asgard," he was quiet for a moment as he considered. "The bed from the previous vision as well, that was in my quarters at the palace."
At this rage twisted Amber's features. "So you ARE responsible for the visions then," she snapped, slamming down the paintbrush on the easel. "I'd heard you were the god of mischief, but that's just not okay.
"Just because I recognized the locations," Loki said defensively, "doesn't mean I'm responsible, at least not consciously. It seems like an automatic reaction when our magics meet," Loki stated.
Amber considered it for a few moments, calming herself. "So what exactly does that mean?"
"I'm not sure yet, as much as that pains me to admit. I've been practicing for over a thousand years and I've never quite had a reaction like that." Loki admitted. "But regardless of the visions, whatever is going on is clearly accelerating the healing process, so I can't claim to be all that upset by it." Loki reached out his hand, a wave of green magic tucking a loose lock of hair behind her ear.
Amber, frustrated, lashed out with her own magic, knocking Loki's magic back and pinning his hand to the mattress to keep him from casting again.
"And how, exactly, am I supposed to trust you on that," she asked, frustrated. The well of magic inside her was rising up and the harder she tried to suppress it, the more it just roiled under her skin, like an ocean in a hurricane until she was drowning in it.
"I mean you no harm," Loki said quietly, feeling her magic filling the room, the force of which startled him and completely eclipsed his own abilities. He wondered back to his previous hopes about being fortunate at having encountered a healer and now was quite concerned that she was something else entirely.
She stepped forward, a wild look in her eyes, her hands glowing silver and tendrils of magic rising from her like steam, her control slipping.
Loki swallowed carefully as she sat down on the bed next to him, moving to kneel over him before she reached out, almost against her will, placing one hand on his chest, over his heart, and the other on the top of his head.
He screamed out as an eruption of magic flowed through his veins like lava, searing right down to his very soul. He tried to keep his own magic out of it, afraid of what she'd do if he triggered another vision, but it rose up in him involuntarily, crashing into hers at the spot where his neck had broken, where her magic seemed to pool and concentrate.
The very second their magics met, they found themselves dragged into yet another vision.
Loki sat on the rocks, admiring his favorite swimming hole in the mountains. It was hidden in a pocket of the universe that not even Heimdall seemed to be able to see. He was lost in thought, watching the ripple on the water as the waterfall poured pure clear water into the pond. The pool of water was so crystal clear he could see the glimmering rocks at the bottom, glistening like gemstones in the summer sun.
He was taken off guard, however, when hands suddenly wrapped over his eyes from behind, and a familiar voice called out, "Guess who!" playfully.
"Hmm," Loki said, chuckling, "I wonder, could it be the Lady Sif?"
"Not funny," she said, removing her hands from his eyes and smacking him on the shoulder.
She sat next to him, resting her head on his shoulder for a long moment before standing up, facing him with a smile on her face, "Shall we go for a swim?" she asked, removing her cloak before slowly and deliberately removing each piece of jewelry, then her shoes, before reaching around to the back of her dress. "I don't think I can reach, can you help?" She turned her back to Loki, throwing her hair over her shoulder to expose the long row of buttons down the back of her dress.
"How exactly did you put this on?" he asked, curiously as his deft fingers made quick work of the buttons, unbuttoning one after another, exposing the pale flesh of her upper back and then the corset beneath her dress.
"You do realize half the job of my ladies maids is dressing me each morning, do you not?" she asked playfully, sighing as his fingertips brushed her skin, sliding the dress off of her shoulders, placing a gentle kiss on each shoulder as it was exposed before dropping the rich material to the ground, leaving her in her corset and a thin petticoat.
She turned around in his arms and he wrapped his hands around her waist, pulling her closer, "And it is my greatest pleasure undoing their hard work," he said, leaning down to steal a chaste kiss as he reached up and began unfastening her corset, one metal hook at a time, trailing the back of his knuckles gently down the skin that was exposed.
She closed her eyes, her head falling back at the sensation as he freed her from her confinement, letting the material of her corset drop to the ground, exposing her breasts to the air.
He made no move to touch them yet, however, as he simply wrapped his arms around her, circling her waist, leaning down and placing gentle kisses down her neck and shoulders as she unbuttoned his jacket, slipping it past his own shoulders, smiling as she found he wore no other shirt beneath.
She moved her hands to the front of his pants, unbuttoning those as well, earning a chuckle from Loki, "So eager," he said, slipping his fingertips below the band of her petticoat, slipping it and her panties over her hips as she pulled down his own pants. He'd already removed his shoes when he'd arrived, dipping his feet into the clear water, so when she pulled them all the way down, the leather meeting the ground just as the last scraps of her own clothing did, he simply stepped out of them before picking her up gently by the waist, pulling her against him as he walked into the water, their naked bodies pressed together as the cool water lapped up their legs until they were in up to his chest.
He kept holding her, since he was so much taller than she was, wanting to keep her comfortable in the water, and she wrapped her legs around his waist, pulling him closer still and resting her head against his chest.
"I can't go back there," she said gently, "I can't keep pretending to be happy about the decision that has been made. Maybe we'll get lucky and one of our encounters will leave me with child, surely then we wouldn't have to keep hiding away like this."
"I will certainly try my best, darling," Loki said, putting his fingertips under her chin and tilting her head up before bringing his lips down to hers. This was his favorite place in all the realms, not just in the crystal clear water, quieted by the solitude that his little hideaway afforded, but in her arms here where they had the luxury of time and the freedom from prying eyes.
Their kiss was gentle and passionate and unhurried, lips moving against one another like each knew precisely the way the other would react, what the other wanted and needed.
He felt his excitement grow as they kissed, her naked breasts pressed to his chest, her legs encircling him, her heated core pressed just above where he most wanted her to be.
He broke the kiss long enough to give her a questioning look, to which she nodded and reached a hand between them, lining him up at her entrance before leaning back up to kiss him again as he slowly pressed himself inside her, gently moving until he was fully enveloped in her warmth before starting up a rather slow pace, just enjoying the feeling of her there with him, not needing to rush to find their release, just experiencing the joy of slow, caring, passionate intimacy with one another.
They were connected for a long while, kissing and touching every inch of skin they could reach on one another as he slowly moved in and out of her, building gradually to a release they both could feel coming, but neither chased, languidly moving together, as if the longer they stayed here, wrapped in each other's embrace, the longer the problems of the world would disappear from their minds.
When finally at last they finished together, Loki spilling himself inside of her, desparately hoping to have fulfilled her wish, they realized they'd been gone for a couple of hours, and that questions would be raised if they didn't get back soon.
He carried her from the water, using his magic to dry them off before carefully helping to dress her again, before dressing himself. They knew they could not leave together, so he placed one last chaste kiss on her lips before she slipped between one of the cracks in the universe that led to his hiding place, waiting a suitable amount of time before slipping through a different one and heading home.
Amber gasped, pulling her hands back instinctively and backing away, thrown off guard by the nature of that particular vision, only to be stopped by Loki's hand encircling her wrist, keeping her from running away.
It took them both a moment to adjust, since that vision had been such a long one, and she found herself exhausted by the magic use, wobbling on her feet. Loki, fighting off his own exhaustion from the pain of the power that had been poured through him but unwilling to let her run off before they had a chance to talk, especially since she seemed on the verge of collapse, pulled her down to the bed, wrapping her in the arm he held her wrist with, laying her down in the bed with him, her back to his side as they were both dragged under into unconsciousness.
A couple hours later, Loki woke up first, finding himself able to move both arms now with relative ease. Amber's warm, solid weight was still pressed to him, though in her sleep she'd shifted, turning in his arms so that her head rested on his chest just over his heart, as though her unconscious mind couldn't rest until she'd heard his heartbeat.
Loki was not a gentle man, by any means. The thought of simply cuddling a romantic partner had always left a sour taste in his mouth, as there was no emotion involved in his bedroom encounters, as few and far between as those even were considering his age.
That being said, he was entirely unfamiliar with the feeling of waking up with someone in his arms, though something about the way she felt pressed to him, her strawberry blonde hair which had escaped it's tie fanned out over his shoulder, the feeling of her breath across his skin near the opening of the robe he still wore, something about it felt right. She felt like home in his arms, and that was a thought that haunted him.
He'd long been convinced that he needed no one in his life. Not even Thor or Odin were truly necessary fixtures in his days, though is mother had been important, he could live without her as well. It was unexplainable though, how a series of visions and one nap fueled by overuse of magic had him questioning so much about himself and his life, how exactly he'd ended up here, and what the meaning of the stirrings of feeling he had were.
He was drawn from his existential crisis as she shifted in his arms, blinking up blearily at him, her ice blue eyes meeting his pale green ones in a questioning look as she struggled to remember exactly where she was and what events had led to her waking up wrapped in his arms.
He considered what to say in this situation, unsure whether speaking at all would make things worse, but he wasn't left considering his next move long as she sleepily muttered, "It's definitely not you conjuring the visions, or at least not just you."
With that, she wriggled free of his grasp, and headed for the door. He wanted to protest, but he was curious what she meant by that as she walked out of the room, rubbing her tired eyes.
He heard her head for the stairs and contemplated briefly sending a double after her, but as he reached for his own magic he found that their earlier exertions had left his magic quite inaccessible again.
He listened for her, hearing her soft footfalls on the ground above him, as well as a small scraping sound as though things were being moved around before her footsteps down the stairs and back towards the guest room could be heard.
She walked into the room carrying a framed canvas, the image faced towards her own body and Loki looked at her quizzically.
"I paint a lot, it's calming and obviously I do it for a living currently, but there are a few paintings over the years I've done just for myself, never with the intention of selling," she said quietly, holding the painting with one hand as she scrubbed the other through her hair in thought.
"Some were just things I thought I imagined, others were images that came to me in a dream. I thought at one point that they may be shadows of memory, so I had to get them down on canvas, just so that I wouldn't lose them, but it was never really enough to place where I'd come from or really put any pieces together of my past."
She flipped the canvas around, holding it up for Loki to see, and a soft gasp left his lips at the image before him.
On the soft canvas, was an incredibly detailed, picturesque image of his favorite place in the universe. His swimming hole, the one that existed in a pocket dimension he conjured portals to where no one knew to find him. The one place he never told anyone else existed, where he went to compose himself when the loneliness of being Odin's second favorite child was a little too much, not wanting to show weakness and fall out of favor even more.
His waterfall was there, the shape of the water was in perfect detail, showing each gap and path it always fell as though it were a photograph rather than a painting.
The most striking piece of the painting, however, was what was just in the center of the pond. A lean, muscular back, submerged in the water to the shoulderblades. A strong hand with long slender fingers reaching up and combing through shoulder length raven colored curls.
He'd conjured his own image enough times to recognize himself, even though his back was turned.
He looked up at Amber, trying to place what the meaning of all this was, only to find tears streaming down her face.
"I don't understand what's happening," she said quietly, placing the painting aside and sitting down on the edge of the bed, her face falling to her hands.