Boltedfruit Archive

   Loki avoids him for two months.

Thor looks for him everywhere. He ventures into the libraries of Asgard, Vanaheim, even Alfheim. Loki spies him heading to Heimdall and chewing on his lower lip, just waiting to ask what Loki knows would be next to his simple mind. Jotunheim. Leave it to Thor, son of Odin, heir to Asgard, to think his Jotun mate would be in the throes of his own kingdom. A kingdom that forgot him the moment the war was lost.

There are sporadic thunderstorms as the days pass and once it strikes the ground he passes, so Loki chooses to stay indoors most days.

He spends his time with Frigga. He thinks she knows, with her ever watchful gaze and kind smile. Knowing, it tells him. She knows. Or suspects.

Loki doesn’t know if Asgard has ever bred a Jotun before, but surely, this is one for the books. Heir to Asgard, impregnates bride won in war. It is laughable.

But still, Frigga, the queen, the Allmother, smiles at him just as she always has.

It makes something long lost within himself crack and hurt, and he doesn’t know what to do with it. But he smiles back, and promises her he will go to Thor, at her behest.

Loki is afraid for the first time in a very long century. And he now shares a bed with famed rage and even greater lust.

He worries Thor, for all his fool kindness, will want more.

Loki will not let him.

   It is late and he is tired when Thor finally catches him. He is sitting on the edge of a large overhang, stone pillars high beside them. Thor comes up behind him, brushes fingers over his sides.

“Found you, my iceling.”

   Loki sighs, debating the use of running off and hiding again, but it would be a waste of energy and he has little enough as it is. Too much time spent pondering the years to come.

“Hello.”

Thor kisses his shoulder, then his neck. They are easy, open kisses, and Loki has since grown used to them in the years he’d been made to marry him. Loki does not mind.

Thor settles his chin in the bend of his neck. “It has been a long few weeks without you, I was wondering where next to look for you.”

“Aye.”

Thor nuzzles his neck, trying to coax the words from him, but Loki won’t give them up. He is tense in Thor’s hold and he knows it.

“You know,” Thor starts, “I wondered when you would show yourself. I thought you were about to let me march into Jotunheim alone.”

Loki scoffs and is speaking before he can willfully halt the words. “Never alone, Thor.”

Thor gives him a proper kiss and comes to stand before him, so he can see his eyes. Thor always had this searching look about him, and whether he knew it or not, it drove Loki mad to no end.

Loki swings his legs up and comes to stand before Thor, nearly matching his height. It’s times like this he would flick his braid back over his shoulders, to toy with as it swung near his navel. His fingers even twitch with the muscle memory of it. But he’d cut it long ago, and those days were past.

As if knowing his thoughts, Thor fingers a lock of dark hair tucked behind his ear. “You should grow it again. I do miss it.”

“Ha, you miss the wildness of it.” Loki is walking into their shared chambers, gut twisting with nerves from the inevitable.

“Perhaps,” Thor says, following after him.

Somewhere behind them there is the distant boom of thunder and Loki looks back to Thor, brow raised. But Thor is worrying his lip between anxious teeth.

“You are troubled.” And it sounds choked, how he says it.

   Thor doesn’t notice. He’s sitting on the bed now. “It is nothing, Loki. Do not worry yourself over it…”

“Then I will not.” And when Loki sees Thor realign himself on the bed, tugging off his tunic, Loki whispers the runes needed to snuff the light, then readies himself for sleep. He slips out of his clothes and climbs in beneath the furs and cotton, preferring Thor’s body heat to the cold of Asgard’s night. Thor thinks it affects him, that he needs Thor’s heat.

It still amuses him how Thor knows so little of Jotnar.

When his arms find the familiar span of Thor’s shoulders, and the line of their bodies are pressed close, Thor breathes him in, nose buried in his hair. A hand finds its way to his neck and rubs soothingly. It relaxes his panicked heartbeat, and he can breathe easier for it. And Loki hates that. He hates that Thor can do that to him, for him, so easily.

He presses tighter, hoping to cut off what little air he must have in the close heat of Loki’s hair and skin, and almost in reply, thunder rolls once more.

There is a startled snort, none too graceful, from where Thor is settled before him, and he goes so still Loki is finally forced to pull back and meet his eyes.

The fear is there again. And Thor’s eyes are wide.

“Loki, you—”

Before he can say anything else, Loki is whispering, “I am sorry, Thor, husband, I am so sorry I—”

Thor pulls away and Loki feels something like terror thread its way into existence inside him, but all Thor does is raise a hand to his stomach. He presses firm, a solid, warm weight, and the action feels awkward. Foreign. Loki wants to squirm, but he remains still.

Then Thor is murmuring, “I was curious about those thunder storms…”

A word hovers on the edge of his usually silver tongue, but Loki cannot bring himself to say it. Instead what bursts forth is a hitched sound and then Thor meets his eyes again.

He seems concerned, surprised. “Loki, why are you crying?”

   Loki jolts, because Thor touches his face, so gently. And he is crying, and oh, what a fool he is for it. He jerks his head, making to be away from the trap of Thor’s warm body and far-reaching embrace.

Thor hugs Loki to him, and in the nude like he is, there is nothing he can do to escape it. Thor kisses him, and it’s so much better than his rage, his temper, his hatred, and Loki feels it break apart inside him and he sobs.