Prompt: "'tell me i'm the only one who makes you feel so good, no one could make you feel the way i do, isn't that right?' for Lokane please" —from rosalysaoirse (on tumblr)

Rating: M

Genre: Canon divergence-ish, Drama, Romance

Summary: [Post-Thor: Love and Thunder] He's there in the afterlife she's chosen, always watching, always wanting.

A/N: For a full second, I really considered going crack!fic with this. I swear I did. But alas the muse had other ideas. Important note: despite this being Infinity War Loki, I tend to ignore nearly all canon changes to his (and now Jane's) characterization(s) beyond Thor: The Dark World.

ALIKE BUT NOT

His gaze has substance, she's learned. A touch almost, a whispered caress. She hadn't noticed it when she met him in Asgard, too angry over the Battle of Manhattan, too anemic from the Infinity Stone razing through her insides. But she feels the press of his regard now while she drifts through Valhalla.

Those pale eyes are an unspoken question as he enters the practice yards. It's a strange thing to learn that the destruction of the Realm Eternal wasn't the foretold Ragnarök, that the crowning battle is still somehow yet to come. While there is drinking and feasting and carousing, skills must be kept sharp. And so many want a turn to face off against the Mighty Thor. She's a novelty, the frail mortal who was worthy of Mjölnir. Though she no longer carries the weapon, its power still resides with her.

(Along with a residue of something else too.)

Settling on top of a low wall, he watches her fight, dragging a finger thoughtfully across his lips. She bristles under that unblinking stare, at the bare lift of his brow that seems to ask, "Well?" She answers. Her opponent finds himself laid out within seconds. The next three as well. One of King Valkyrie's sisters gives her a real challenge, and she wins by a hair. It's only then she catches a bare shift in his expression, a trace of respect.

He's not quite maligned, but not truly welcome. It's subtle. He's never denied the opportunity to join in recounting epic battles and even more legendary antics. They'll laugh at his silver-tongued anecdotes. They'll toast. But he's not one of them.

Neither is she.

Because the Mighty Thor is not all she is, but in this bellicose society, it's all that matters. She aches for more and is disturbed when she recognizes the same dissatisfaction in his tactile gaze.

He disappears occasionally. It's impossible to count the hours, the days, in a place without time, yet his absences span too long. As if his weighted interest has become the gravity keeping her tethered to this existence. Without his muted grin as he looks on, sparring in the practice yards feels tedious. Without his bald glances in the dining hall, the tales recited by others are less vibrant, less alive. The halls are too cavernous without his towering stature devouring the space, and she despises that she notices.

She knows who he is, what he was. She hasn't forgotten the aftermath from his failed attempt at world domination. Her beloved mentor never fully recovered. He may have earned his place here by saving his brother (again) and the Asgardian survivors, but she catches glimpses of the truth when no other eyes are on him. He still despises. He still wants. She knows better than to follow when he slips away from the evening banquet.

Yet she does anyway.

His trail meanders through the sprawling palace, to wings she hasn't explored before. There is beauty here surpassing anything she's laid eyes on. Colors so vivid, gold and silver so smooth and pure, that she has trouble not being pulled into rapture. It's distraction enough that a hand on her arm surprises her. She's yanked around a corner, pushed against a wall before she thinks to call on her power in defense.

He grins, and there's a wild delight in it. "The Mighty Thor," he says with a blend of mockery and something else she can't name. "What an honor."

"Let go, Loki," she returns evenly.

His eyes flick to where his fingers cage her wrist against the marble near her head. He raises a brow as if considering whether the price of defying her is worth paying. She lets loose a flare of the electricity that lives in her chest, only enough to galvanize her skin in warning. His smile becomes strained, but he doesn't release her, not until she sends another biting jolt.

"Oh, don't be cross," he says, holding up his hands. "It was only bit of harmless sport."

She snorts. "There's nothing harmless about you."

Dimples press deeper into his cheeks when he laughs softly. He likes that she seems to know him. That she won't underestimate him like the others do. His gaze dips, taking her measure in languid appreciation—as if he doesn't underestimate her either. Her stomach stirs with a fetid blend of repulsion and promise.

He turns, heads down the hall a few steps before casting a glance over his shoulder. "What?" he says. "Already bored with playing my shadow?"

She scoffs at the notion, almost leaves out of spite, but curiosity has always been her siren song. With a glower, she gestures for him to lead on.

A few more corners and then their destination is before them with spanning, gilded arches. Of all the possibilities, she would never have guessed that this is his hiding place. Shelves extend beyond sight, filled with scrolls and leatherbound tomes. Her heart leaps, the sting of almost-tears in her eyes as she steps through the entrance.

"The great archive," he says behind her, though she barely hears him. "Where all the knowledge of Yggdrasil lives."

This is where she belongs. This is home.

She pulls down a book, tenderly cracking it open. But she can't read the runic language on its vellum pages. Replacing the book, she takes another. Then another and another. Every one inked in the same strange hand. Revelation sinks like poisoned lead in her middle. All the information she could ever want at her fingertips, and she doesn't have the literacy to access it.

"Oh, dear," he murmurs next to her. "Did my vaulted brother never teach you Aesir?" He sucks in a breath in feigned condolence. "How terribly sad for you."

She glares at him, but her anger, her disappointment is clearly the food and drink he craves. Swallowing back a rising invective, she tips her chin up. "I'll figure it out." One way or another.

He raises his brows as if her obstinacy amuses him. "This I will have to see."

Hours, days, or more pass under his unwavering eyes as she makes very little headway in deciphering the foreign writings. He sprawls across a recamier in a corner of the archive, near the table where she's laid out a dozen open books and scrolls. There are sheets of parchment with notes scratched in pen and ink. His only commentary on her efforts is the smirk he barely hides behind his own tome.

Linguistics isn't her field, but she thinks that it can't be all that different from extrapolating data from the models in her lab. It is, though. Frustration sets her nerves alight, sparks her fingers with blue-white energy. He huffs a laugh, and she's tempted to hurl a bolt at him.

She goes back to the practice yards. He doesn't follow.

It becomes an unending round. Retreat and return. No matter how she promises herself she'll stay away from the archives, from him, eventually the clarion bell of it—of them both—becomes too loud to ignore. She cannot resist what is at the core of who she is, that insatiable appetite for learning. She cannot go long without being seen, even if it is through his eyes. But then the impossibility of her self-inflicted task and the taunt in his laugh grows oppressive, and she flees again. Over and over.

He breaks this cycle with a hand over hers as, on tip-toes, she reaches for a scroll high on the shelves. His fingers are smooth, cool, and she hides a shiver, ignores the chills sweeping down her arm.

"Let me," he says, grazing her skin as he stretches over her. He retrieves a different scroll—not that it matters; they're all the same to her untrained eye.

When he steps back, she turns, holds out her hand with a grudging "thank you" ready on her tongue.

He cocks his head with a vulpine grin. "Admit defeat."

She scoffs. "No." Never. Not to him.

He advances on her, forces her to back into the shelves. "Say you need me."

"I don't." She squares her shoulders, sets her jaw, though her pulse falters when his tongue briefly crests his bottom lip.

He leans forward, warm breath against her cheek, and whispers, "Liar." His nose brushes against her hair, and her eyes flutter closed. "Tell me the truth, Jane. Tell me you need me."

She opens her mouth to deny him, but something inside of her sings. It's faint, straining toward him, and she can almost feel an answering harmony resonating from him. Alike yet not. He draws back, holds her gaze, and in this timeless place, the moment is suspended. A hitched breath between one blink and the next.

She remembers who he is, what he was. Yet, like before, it's not warning enough to keep her away, not completely.

"I do need you," she confesses, and before triumph can fully bloom on his angular features, she finishes, "to teach me Aesir."

His grin turns both sardonic and wider. With a gaze that flicks briefly to her lips, he says, "Ask me nicely."

"Please." She doesn't bother to soften the barbed edge in her tone.

He hums in approval, and the sound pebbles on her skin. "All that fire in such a tiny form," he says. "So much life. He didn't know what to do with it, did he?" But I do. The unspoken affirmation is written in his predacious expression.

She pretends not to see it. "Are you going to help me or not?"

He presses the scroll into her hand. "Since there's nothing better to do in this never-ending purgatory, I think I will."

Hours, days, or more pass under his exacting tutelage. He is her Rosetta Stone, the cypher to unlock the texts. At times he is too impatient. Others he is too indifferent. Always, though, he is too close. Hovering over her in the stacks, thigh pressed against hers at the table. She reasons that it's a small price to pay to finally have access to limitless knowledge.

It has nothing to do with that tune buzzing inside her chest. Still faint but growing.

He stays at her side even when she no longer needs his help with the words. She doesn't complain. Because he can bandy theories with her as easily as the others cross weapons with her in the practice yards. She still goes, though not often, and only when he sours their enthusiastic discussions with a cutting reference to his brother—how the God of Thunder couldn't have hoped to keep up with her singular mind.

But I can.

He follows her there too. Sitting on the low wall with his ubiquitous gaze trained on her. It's less a whispered caress, more grasping. Not a question. Not even a dare. But intention. She throws herself into every skirmish as if each opponent she bests will crack the steely blade of his focus. Again and again. Until the archive calls to her.

He breaks this cycle too.

She's reaching for another scroll to high for her fingertips, and he crowds her into the shelves. But he isn't there to help. Instead, his hand slides against her hip, down and forward, while his sigh smolders against her neck. The song inside of her swells at the heady sensation.

"Stop," she whispers with fragile resolve.

"Why?" he asks in an equally fractured voice. His lips brush where her flesh curves toward her shoulder. "You have been touched by a power greater than any of them can fathom. You were chosen—as was I."

His words are a voltaic truth that she can deny no longer. It's not only his gaze that is ever stretching toward her, but the fragment of the Tesseract he carries in his soul. Calling endlessly to the Aether in hers.

She doesn't have the will to fight it anymore.

When he tangles his other hand in her hair, nudges her head to the side, she relents without argument. She leans back into him, eyes closed as he marks a path on her skin with his mouth.

She expects him to hurry. He doesn't. He draws out each touch, each kiss. Undoes a buckle, a tie in their clothing between each step toward the recamier, between each press of his lips and tongue against hers. She expects him to be rough. He isn't. He lays her down gently like a devoted acolyte preparing to worship his deity. The music inside builds to a blinding crescendo as he, with rapt attention, raises her body to the same staggering heights.

It's only when he joins her, when he has her at the precipice once more that she sees a shade of the depraved dark prince.

"Tell me," he rasps, clearly affected but stubbornly refusing to let her fall, "that no one else can give you this. Tell me you need me."

She's furious, but she thinks she might go mad if she remains balanced on the knife edge between critical urgency and blessed release. "Yes," she hisses, digging her heel into his spine to encourage him to finish the job. "Yes, I need you."

He smirks before capturing her mouth with his. She doesn't leave him unscathed when he tumbles with her from their soaring peak.

He laughs afterward at the scorch marks her lightning left down his back. She thinks she should feel guilty, though she can't manage even a facsimile of the emotion. Not guilt for her retaliation, but for giving him what he's always coveted—anything that belonged to his brother. Yet, he's right. Who else has had a taste of something as old as the cosmos and been irrevocably changed by it? Who else drinks from the fountain of knowledge and is never sated? Who else can equal her?

Who else can equal him?

"You need me." Cradled against his bare chest, she says the words in the same moment that revelation dawns. She did not succumb to him. They succumbed together. Though she isn't sure that he will admit to such weakness—

"Oh, yes."

She smiles.

~FIN~

A/N: Thank you so much for reading! Kind reviews are always welcome!