Boltedfruit Archive

It was a mistake. He realizes that too late.

A cruel thing to be so abandoned here, upon muddied filth and forsaken inbred children, borne down so swiftly.

Abandoned to a realm of unruly cries and withering tears, black etched night stretching wide and blank above him. To be left in such a way, cut and bloodied and pain lancing nerve. That he should not have even the strength to stand, let alone be away to the air. Up high. On high.

A blink and then the great pain is a mass upon his shoulders. He can see black wisps, singed in ember sink to the ground. A canopy along concrete to summon bile to the throat.

Smoke fills his nose, stings his eyes. That he should fall, tarred and dethroned. That he should collapse where he would once lift eager arms to heavens deemed merciful, almighty, golden, eternal.

He is not eternal, he is none of those things, he is changing, he is shifting, he is—

The blackened figure closes many eyes for a final time, falling away with the embers, fire burning bright lines over bare skin, sealing away ancient sight. Skin burns black burns gray burns pale, empty, and then the pain is here, there, everywhere at once. A final scream from a scorned lord.

He only wanted to know the worlds. That he might better protect him, protect everyone.

Beloved by one and all, beloved no more but to the blind and the hungry, to the deaf and destitute. Fallen, light upon heaven’s star and yet burned so terribly on the spiral downward. Crown broken uneven and jagged against his skull, cutting through flesh and bone both, left unhealed. Foreign, this torment.

He casts the gold to the ground. He does not hear the footsteps, running towards him.

He refuses to look toward the sky.

Liquid trails down his face and he fancies he might be weeping, the soft hearted fool that he is. To weep for something that is helpless is folly.

But he sobs his master’s name and it is echoed by a sound shocked and concerned, frightened. Then his vision is crept upon by black, arms are entering his hooked, blurred vision.

And then he is falling a final, final time.

He wakes sore and exhausted, eyes swollen and tearful. He cannot stop liquid from trailing down his cheeks as he blinks against the dim light filtering through to him.

He is in a room. On his stomach.

He panics, jerking at the sound of a quiet gasp somewhere near him. Someone is watching him.

“Hey, you’re awake,” comes a tired voice, dragging itself from sleep. A man. Then, after a yawn, “Shit, let me get you some water.”

He tries to raise his head to see but there is a vicious throbbing and so he closes his eyes, dropping his head back to the soft cotton of what he guesses is a bed. A human bed.

Then there is the sound of footsteps, the cool rim of glass touching his lips. He flinches back but the stranger persists.

“Drink this, please. It’s just water.”

He doesn’t dare open his eyes, so he sniffs it instead. It doesn’t smell of copper or mercury, and so he allows it when the stranger tips it in small measures. Minutes pass and he drains the glass.

He is still weeping. He is too tired to care.

A thumb touches his cheek, sweeps back over his temple, then into his hair. He wants to burn this human for daring to be so brazen a fool but he cannot. Cannot deny it feels good to have a gentle sweep of knuckles, of fingers, drawing his hair up and behind his shoulder.

Kind. That is the word he is searching for. Then he is falling to black once more.

He wakes intermittently. Many times, too many to count. But his vision is always blurred, and sometimes he doesn’t understand where he is or who it is that is pressing cold linen to his brow, wiping away night-sweat borne of terrors lost to shadow.

He does manage to hear him as the stranger tells him his name. The tone of his voice makes him believe that the human thinks his words will not be lost on a feverish mind.

Thor. The bloody fool’s name is Thor.

He wakes finally to a hand on his shoulder, gently rocking him back and forth. When he realizes what exactly is happening, he snaps his shoulder back and glares. The human immediately withdraws his hand, looking sheepish.

“Sorry. I just, um…thought you stopped breathing for a second.”

“Never touch me again.” And he draws his hands up as if to drive the point. But he is still sluggish and bone-tired, and it comes across far too weak.

The human holds up his hands, a gesture meaning to reassure. “Okay, alright. No problem at all. I’m Thor, by the way.” He goes to sit in the chair he’d first been sleeping in.

He nods, but it’s lost on the stranger as he fiddles with his hands.

Thor doesn’t stay long. The silence soon grows too tense and he finally stands. He looks ready to say something. But then he leaves and the sounds of him just living fill the house.

He listens for hours.

There is a point when the sun is creeping below the far away hills that he sees the human in the doorway again. He is holding cloth, folded as if a satchel and fear clings low. He knows what it is before Thor even enters the room.

“Take that infernal ash away.”

Thor looks surprised but he does not drop it or leave it. He approaches the bed, standing so close with, with—

He cannot even bear to think the words.

“I thought—”

“What did you think? What was the thought that ran so freely through your head when you gathered me up, collected those. When you brought me here?” It comes out a terrible hiss and the stranger flinches, well and true.

He shrugs. “I don’t know. I wanted to help you, I suppose.”

“Help me?” he half shrieks, dropping all pretense. They both know what he is. What he used to be. “I, who have sinned so terribly. They will not return. They are not blossoms to be picked and grown with the bite of new spring.”

Thor seems affected. He takes a shaky step back, staggering and then merely lowers the cloth bundle to the floor. The effort is gentle, far too gentle for a useless thing.

“I didn’t know.”

“What are you trying at? Why do this for a broken creature? Cast out like trash. Left like a mortal.” He can barely form the final word, can only just spit it out before cutting off entirely.

Thor takes a step forward, stopping when the pale being shrinks back on the bed, still splayed on his stomach, in the nude. He feels far too bare, and the feeling, he realizes with well-kept shock, is shame. He has never felt it before.

Thor frowns, eyes watery bright. “I was walking when I saw you. Just leaving a friend’s place and then there was this shot of light straight out of the sky. Like a comet, or…uh. Like ribbons of light, you know? Like someone dipped their brush in the stars but the brush had chunks torn out, these streaks left in its path. Streaks of fire. I saw you paint across the sky, clear as day, this shock of light. I was frozen. I was terrified of it—of you. I couldn’t move at all. Thought of every sci-fi movie I’ve ever seen.”

There is only silence in reply and so Thor goes on.

“I was afraid you were dead, when the smoke cleared. Thought there would be all these big black SUV’s crowding the street, the alleyway. But it was already late. Nobody else on the streets. Lucky, I guess. That I found you. I was so afraid.” He sucks in a huge breath. “God, I thought you were dead.”

He laughs from his spot on the bed, startling Thor to wincing. “God. You don’t realize what you’ve done. What you’ve invited into your home.”

“I think I have some idea.”

He feels his temper flare. He can practically hear the others scolding him for it. But they are only memories.

“You speak too prettily for such a fright cast down from the heavens. What drove you to go to a mound of tar and flame such as I? The sight must have been a horror, for as much it felt like one.”

Thor’s eyes rake over his split shoulder blades and so he angles himself slightly on his side.

“I, cast out for wanting only to help him. Rejected for treasures I sought to gift the fool. That I would end a realm for the holy, holy, holy and bright and be gifted with betrayal.” He cannot stop his tongue from the well-practiced chant. “Banished by my own brother!” he sobs, clawing his hands into the sheets, body rocking and ribs standing sharp beneath his skin. “I, who bore the plagues across my shoulders, carried for another to deliver. I, who spread green across flesh to bear witness to the breeding of insects fat and vile, poison-full. I, who bared the yoke of a thousand thousand years, who wept when word finally broke of my brother’s life. He who would deliver and divulge, who would protect and destroy. He who was— is—so terrible a thing. So cruel, vicious of tongue, meaner even than I can tell. He who painted the spines of serpents to whisper words you humans think kindling to half-truths of men long dead. Lie-maker and truth-barer. My brother. My father. He, that desires my fall, my burning. He who burned me and my siblings from coal and flame, breathed into us life like smoke.”

There is a pause, his sobs long petering off to give way for his ranting. That his words would not choke on their way out his bind-free throat, free. There is some relief here, in having fallen. But it is little in the wake of his despair.

He hears a breath catch and it is not his own. He jerks his head to the side, bright, tear-sore eyes sweeping across the length of the human. The hum-Thor, is weeping. Slow tears slide down full cheeks, catching in his beard. Thor is watching him like he is possessed of the action. The tears forced from him, a baseless compunction borne of a man self-proclaimed ‘lacking in faith’, and yet here he is— weeping for a seraph he does not believe in.

He tries to gather his breath several times, tongue clicking against his pallet, before he finally manages to shut his mouth altogether.

“What is your name?” he finally asks, voice deep and breathy. Thor sounds sad and he cannot fathom why.

“You are gazing upon the first of the fallen.” And oh, he has already decided that yes, there will be more. “How dare you.”

Thor bows his head but it hardly lasts two minutes before he manages to conjure voice to his thoughts once more. “I only thought you’d like to have them. I hoped—I thought there would be some way…”

He doesn’t finish and he doesn’t have to. They both know what he means.

Thor watches as he buries his face once more in his pale arms, black hair spilling like ink, everywhere. The colors are still so foreign to him. He looks like one of them, paler even.

He says, “Just leave me to my rest.” And that is exactly what Thor does.

Thor doesn’t believe in the religious. He never had. Felt there were too many faiths in the world to devote to just one. Then when he realized how similar so many were, wondered why anyone could commit to any for too long.

But he thought this particular event had happened a long time ago. In the beginning. Wasn’t that how it usually went?

Unless history was repeating itself. Was it all happening again? Just on some alternate…thing.

He huffs at himself.

He doesn’t know where to gauge it on his scale of things to altogether avoid, when dealing with something not quite set in reality. Not his anyway. There was history; the history of the Earth, history of the universe. Then there was religious history; mythological creation stories, tales of siblings betrayed and lovers scorned, bent on vengeance and rebuttal. Tales of the birth of demons and fire. Fire—both of destruction and rebirth.

He doesn’t know what peg this falls under.

He saw an angel fall from the skies in a burst of flame and oil. Saw six wings fall like silk from skin to ground, each one burning fine and pretty to ash. He didn’t even know one could have so many.

He doesn’t know what to do. What to believe.

Thor doesn’t even know what to call him.

“I didn’t even know your were alive, until you…well.”

Screamed, is what he knows Thor was going to say. Screamed his brother’s name.

“I brought you food. It’s just a tuna sandwich and some cola. Um.” He’s nervous. He should be. “Sorry, I don’t have too much. Was going to make a run to the market, but then you sort of fell out of the sky.”

“Terribly sorry I interrupted your plans.”

Thor smiles, weak. Then he sets the plate down within reach and he almost reaches for it. Realm food.

“It smells sickening.”

“Well, you haven’t eaten in three days, so.”

That does surprise him. Not the lack of food, for he could go years, eons without, but the time.

“I’ve been asleep for three days?”

Thor nods, slow. He points at his own eyes. “You were sobbing quite a bit too. Had to wipe your eyes or you probably wouldn’t be able to open them now.” Then he walks over to his wardrobe, shuffles around inside a drawer for a moment before bringing forth an instrument.

“Blades that small won’t kill me,” he says, matter of fact. He reaches across and picks at the food, finding the bread soft and grainy.

Thor laughs outright, genuinely amused. “These are scissors. I figured you might want to trim your hair a bit, you know, so you won’t trip on it at least?” “My hair.” He had not noticed, truthfully.

Thor makes a face. He sets the scissors down and just stares.

“What do I call you?”

He bristles, sitting up despite the pain in his back. He hisses and then Thor is back to rummaging in his drawer. He pulls out a small box and then leaves the room entirely.

Water runs and somewhere in the house, Thor is shutting cupboards.

He comes back with a cloth wetted through, a roll of white gauze sat firm in his other fist.

Thor is fast approaching.

“What exactly do you intend to do with that?” he asks, voice perhaps pitched too high for his liking. He backs away when Thor nears him, hovering when he is still sitting on the bed.

“Your back is a mess. At least let me clean the wounds a bit?”

“What makes you think I’ll let you touch me?”

“When you get it through that thick head that you have jagged pieces of what looks like bone still sticking out of your back. I have a whole med kit. For you just need tweezers, antiseptic and bandages. I even have stitching materials if I need to stitch you up.”

“I will heal on my own. I always heal fine. We heal swiftly.”

Thor clucks his tongue. “Then maybe I just don’t want you bleeding through to my mattress.”

They watch each other for a long time. So long that Thor finally sighs, placing the materials on his bedside table.

Thor says, “I need to go shopping for food. If you stay here, you won’t cause too much trouble, right?” He doesn’t answer.

“Right. Okay, well.” He walks to his closet, pulls out one of several coats and pulls his arms through. He walks out the door without looking back.

When the front door shuts, he brings the food to his lap, sniffing at the fish—which doesn’t smell of fish in the least. He takes a bite. He eats everything.

He finds the ‘cola’ bubbles along his tongue, and so he drinks it all.

He wiles away the time eyeing the medicinal materials and wonders on his name.

He lost his when he fell. He figures a new one might not hurt.

Thor returns and there is a long time where there is only the wild rustling of plastic in the kitchen before he finally peeks his blond head around the threshold. His eyes go wide at the sight of the empty plate and glass. Go even wider when he sees the medicine spread out in a neat row at the edge of his bed.

“Loki.”

Thor blinks, walks fully into the room. “What?”

“My name.”

Thor raises an eyebrow. “That’s Norse.”

“I am a brother betrayed. It fits well enough. What I was called before means nothing now.”

Thor nods, swallowing around the fact that Thor is also Norse and perhaps had some influence on his choice. But he’s smarter than that, and so he says nothing.

“Will you let me clean your injuries?” he says instead.

Loki is quiet, silently staring down at the bandages, the tweezers. His long, pale fingers are smudged red, like he’d been picking experimentally at his wounds.

“Loki?” Thor murmurs.

He nods, not meeting Thor’s eyes.

Loki is sitting cross-legged on the bed, back facing out, letting Thor kneel and wipe at his back in long, soothing strokes. He soaks the cloth until a large pot is clouded in red, then he starts on the bone fragments. The tool he uses is quick, not sharp, and has a second bowl full of bloodied bone and the remnants of feathers singed to ash. It is a fair mess, quite the tedious ordeal.

But Thor is patient as he works and so Loki holds his tongue.

He fingers the wool pooled in his lap.

“You gave this to me when I was delirious?”

Thor hums. Then, “Yeah, you were shaking.”

“You have yet to comment on the state of my undress.”

That draws a loud laugh from Thor. “Figured it was just your way, I guess.”

Loki nods, staring down at the thick woolen fiber, feeling each and every sting as Thor pulls bone free.

He counts to four hundred and seventy five before Thor is done and then he is having the wounds themselves wiped clean. He pours a stinging substance into each gash and hears a thoughtful hum from behind him.

“Going to have to stitch them, I think. They’re too wide to just leave them be. That alright with you?”

Loki shrugs, liking that it’s enough of an answer.

“Okay, hold tight.” Then Thor is standing, hand a gentle pressure at his shoulder. He squeezes once and then he’s gathering up the bowls and bringing them to his bathroom. Water starts running and Loki knows he’s cleaning them out before moving on to the rest of it.

It’s quick work when Thor returns. He is no stranger to pain, and it’s almost a soothing distraction, something to draw his focus as the needle slips in and out of his skin.

He thinks of Thor’s hand on his shoulder.

He wonders why he found comfort it.

The next week Loki spends observing. He was delirious the first three days after he fell, and he missed much. Now, he has the time to look. To watch as Thor effortlessly moves about his home, living in spite of the creature he dragged to his bed.

Thor sleeps in the living area, he discovered. Said it wasn’t a problem. Of course it’s an issue, but would Loki so willingly give up his own resting place? Maybe, once. Not now.

He can afford to be selfish now. There is no one watching him.

They have agreed upon a mutual silence. Thor is always the first one to break it, usually entering his room only to bring out clothes, or tie back his long hair.

It spills like gold over his shoulders, a cruel reminder of home.

He always look at Loki a little odd, unnerved by his unblinking, pitiless stare.

But truth be told, Loki is simply curious about the handsome mortal who braved a fool’s errand.

Thor is watching one of his favorite movies when he hears the familiar creak of wood in his hallway. He has to bite his lip to keep the smile from his face.

He’s been trying hard not to let on how fascinated he really is by Loki. Has tried to keep their interactions down to a degree so not to scare him away.

Thor honestly wasn’t sure if he could even walk, but he’s glad that he can.

When he can cow his grin, he turns, arching a brow when he sees Loki standing there naked. His long hair spills over one shoulder and it swings by his legs as he stands there, staring.

“I smell fetid.”

Thor has to bite his tongue, hard, to keep the laughter from bubbling out from him. “You want a shower?”

“I wish to bathe, yes,” he says. He’s looking at Thor like he’s stupid.

He switches off the television and stands, going over to where Loki is. He reaches into his hall closet and pulls out several large, fluffy towels and hands them over. Loki takes them gingerly.

“Come on,” Thor tells him. He’s relieved when Loki follows.

Thor stands just outside the door, in case Loki falls or stumbles.

It takes a long time and he ends up soaking the floor, but he seems unmoved when Thor follows after him when he steps out, wiping the floor with more towels. It’s a patchwork of colorful fabric when Loki steps out, ringing his hair in turns.

“Want me to cut that?”

Loki fingers the long strands, staring at Thor by way of the large mirror. He starts several small braids before letting it hang loose again at his shoulder.

He turns suddenly and crowds Thor’s space. Thor can feel cool breath puff across his face, see the light reflect off Loki’s long lashes.

Loki does not close his eyes. He hovers close, let’s his lips tingle over Thor’s own, moving over his cheek and his jaw, his ear. His hands find paths over his arms and sides, palming at his hips before he releases Thor altogether.

“I think I should like that, yes.”

Thor swallows hard, nods jerkily.

Loki drags his lips over Thor’s own once more, dry and chaste, a curiosity being explored. Then green eyes flick up to his own before he moves away entirely, waiting for Thor to pass him.

Thor can feel those eyes on him all the way down the hall.

Loki is standing behind him when he grabs up the scissors. He’s standing too close, eyes too searching.

Thor feels like he’s being analyzed, it makes him want to shrink back. Makes him rethink why exactly he helped this person.

Loki surprises him by speaking all throughout the haircut.

“What do you do? Why do you live in a slum?”

Thor rolls his eyes. “It’s not a slum. It’s a flat. And I work in triage actually.”

“Triage,” he repeats, slow. “What is triage?”

“Part of the ER in the hospital I work at. I um,” he tries, not knowing what Loki will understand. “I heal people, as best I can.”

Loki hums and Thor is just finishing removing three feet of hair, letting the uneven strands stand stark just at the top of his shoulders.

“How short do you want it?”

“I thought you knew what you were doing?”

Thor runs his fingers through the soft strands. He’s never seen such jet black hair before. “Never had to cut someone’s hair before, but I do trim my own. And besides, it’s personal preference.”

“Personal.” Loki pauses, rolling the word slow on his tongue. “Preferences aren’t afforded to my kind.”

“Well you get one here.”

Loki hums again and Thor can see his shoulders slump after a moment. Relaxed.

“Here, I’ll just trim past your ears, alright? It’ll always grow back.”

Loki hums again. “How many years have you lived?”

Thor’s lips twitch. “Thirty-three.”

Loki huffs. “A babe.”

Thor snips more hair, watches as it stains Loki’s shoulders. “How old are you?”

Loki isn’t quiet for long. “Too many years to count.”

“You’re an old man, then.” He can see the shadow of a scowl on Loki’s brow. “You look great for it though. Not a wrinkle or liver spot in sight.” “Do not mock me!” he says, caustic.

But Thor laughs, petting gentle fingers through his hair until Loki calms down.

“Hey, hey, it’s alright. I’m just saying you’re pretty hot for an old man.” And he can’t repress the laughter that follows when Loki just sighs.

“You’re a lust-addled fool.”

Thor snorts. “You’re the one that’s been in the nude all week. People might get the wrong idea, might talk.”

“What people?”

It sounds a little sad for Thor’s liking. It makes him go quiet.

“Just me, to you. Nobody else. Doesn’t have to be anybody else.”

Loki doesn’t say anything and Thor is afraid he’s fucked up, overstepped. He can’t stop his fingers from twitching at Loki’s temple, but thankfully he doesn’t comment on it.

“We get on well enough I think.”

Loki doesn’t grace it with an answer. “Do you have a brother?”

Thor has to stop himself from nearly snipping Loki’s ear in half. He’s nearly finished.

“Once. Died when he was still a kid, though.”

“I have had brothers die as well.”

Thor doesn’t know exactly what he means when he talks about his brother, versus when he talks about his brothers. It seems the singular is not the plural and he’s afraid to ask. He has theories.

“I’m sorry.”

“The sky is not. It is no matter.”

Thor combs Loki’s hair this way and that before clipping the very ends to an even length for a final time. He comes around to the front and finds Loki staring at his hands.

“I used to be able to reach into fire. Into the hearts of stars. And now I can hardly tend my own body. I’m a failure for what I was born to be. A failure and a damned fool, a sinner of the worst sort.”

Thor shakes his head, crouching. “Hey. I don’t know what happened to you, I mean I can guess but…well. We both know it’s not the same as knowing. And I’m sorry I can’t understand just what it was that made you fall out of the sky, but I’m glad you did. I’m glad I found you. That you’re here in my kitchen.”

Loki’s eyes are still downcast, and Thor sees tears drip down to trail over his fingers.

Thor weighs the outcome of what he wants to do as opposed to what he should do. He risks and it’s reward in the same breath. He reaches out and grabs up Loki’s hands. Loki is frowning at him but allows it.

“They will hunt me. I have made a grievous error and will not be forgiven. I need you to see me, Thor. You are a mortal man and you know I am not.”

Loki is gripping his hands tightly now, and Thor sees a flicker of bright flame dance in his eyes.

“You will be safe. Please. Let me help you.”

Loki’s eyes are welling over again and he looks furious. “You are a mortal. A human. You will be destroyed in the wake of what I will do. Of what I must. Your soul forfeit. Your very existence reclaimed by nothing.”

Thor snatches his hands back and grabs Loki’s neck in a strong grip. Loki lets his head fall to Thor’s, a dull pain from the clash. He looks like he’s in agony, hands clawing at Thor’s shirt.

“I will help you, sinner or not.” The words sound choked out, hard to say, and he realizes he is also crying. He doesn’t even understand why. “Please, Loki. Whoever you were before, you brilliant fire-star. I will not let you fall any further. I will help you, if only you will let me.”

Loki’s hand finds his jaw and he clutches at it. “How can you sacrifice yourself like this? For a creature you don’t believe in. Your kind is not so just. I have seen the horrors you would put upon others under the same sky.”

Thor just closes his eyes. Because he doesn’t know, he doesn’t know any of it. Doesn’t get why his heart is racing or why Loki is drawing him closer, why his lips are dragging warm over his chin, his lips, his forehead.

“You would give yourself to me, the first, the only? You would do that for a fire stamped out.”

Thor feels dizzy.

“Thor, oh Thor, my Thor. You look at me and see a beauty, it is not true. You see nothing.”

Thor shakes his head. “You betrayed your maker, right? You were cast out for lying, scheming, maybe even murder. You could have killed me, the moment you realized where you were. Could have killed yourself in that alleyway. I just knew I had to go to you. I saw a dying star and sobbed and I just don’t know why I feel like I’m falling apart when I look at you for too long.”

It’s Loki’s mouth, already open, drawing in huge breaths, that has Thor meeting him. He licks into Loki’s mouth, groaning when Loki sucks his tongue. It lasts barely a moment, but it’s enough to have Thor feeling faint. He has to lie down.

Loki takes his face in two strong hands, much stronger and more sure than Thor has seen from him yet. He takes Thor and yanks his face close, dragging them both to the floor to stare down at him, into his eyes. He wipes at Thor’s tears, kisses them away, licks them and tastes his skin.

His nails are sharp and Thor can’t breathe.

“You will bare yourself to me, will you? You think you can look inside and see me for what I am? My potential? Would you wilt to see yourself in me?”

Thor is having trouble gathering his thoughts but Loki’s words ring through loud and clear. He twists a hand at Loki’s hip, clawing at bare skin until Loki must part his lips on a hiss of pain. Thor likes he can make Loki feel that, and it scares him.

“I already see you,” Thor says, the words a bite, breathy but ripping. “I think you see me.”

Loki smiles and Thor sees for the first time his teeth are sharp.