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Title: Where Shadows Lie (3/3)
Fandom: Thor (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Pairing: Thor/Loki
Rating: NC-17
Words: 9770 (30120 total)
Summary: “We could call the enemy ‘Walkers’,” offers Bruce. “Like they do on The Walking Dead.”
Thor thinks they should be called Shamblers or Stumblers instead, but keeps his silence. His teammates might take offense to their iconic television show being referred to as The Stumbling Dead.
A/N: Zombie AU. Written to sate my desire for Thor/Loki-centric apocalyptic fiction. Title from Tolkien’s Ring verse.
~
When Thor next wakes, he finds he is sprawled along the bed he and Loki share, the lights in their room dimmed to a soft, pleasing amber. It is a moment more before he realizes they are not lights at all, and instead candles, their flames throwing dark, flickering shadows along the wall.
“Loki?” Thor croaks, shifting beneath the sheets. They scratch at his skin, but are comfortably warm at the least, not the searing heat that anything brushing his skin had felt before. He tries to rise from the bed, before collapsing in pain coupled with fatigue.
At the sound of Thor’s voice, Loki sets down the candle he was tending to, and hurries over. It’s only then he sees Loki up close, with dark shadows lurking beneath his red-rimmed eyes. Loki had likely stayed up all night with Thor, healing him with what seiðr he could, or determining another way to combat the infection.
He sighs as he takes in Thor’s form, hands resting lightly on the coverlet. “Thank the Norns,” Loki mouths to the air, his voice barely above a whisper. He casts his eyes to the ceiling, and closes them as if in prayer. “Thank you.” To Thor he says, “You must rest.”
“Water?” Thor asks, hopeful.
Loki nods and cradles Thor’s head, helping him tip water into his mouth; too much motion on Thor’s part results in pain that lances through his hand and leg like lightning, sharp.
He twitches Loki’s sleeve after, as a gesture of thanks, too tired to do much else. “Loki,” Thor mumbles. He wishes he could bury his face in Loki’s hair and inhale its sweet scent. Wrap his arms around Loki beneath the sheets, and fit his knees in behind Loki’s until they are slotted together like two perfect pieces of a puzzle. Loki is warmth and safety and everything lovely, and the absence of him now stings more keenly than Thor can bear.
“Thor,” Loki murmurs in reply. Thor watches him furtively wipe at the corner of his eyes, like there might be tears forming. Rubbing his eyes as if emotion is a weakness and too much of him will be exposed if Loki does not rid his face of the scant evidence there is.
For a moment, Thor entertains the idea that those are tears Loki is wiping away, and the thought that Loki might cry for him is oddly flattering. He feels the need to reach out, to brush away the tears, be they real or imagined, but his hand is a numb, dead weight, and shifting even the slightest bit brings with it a fresh onslaught of pain.
Something of his hopes to touch Loki, even just the smallest bit of contact, must show on his face, as Loki shuffles over and brushes his hand over Thor’s forehead. Thor whines at the contact; it’s too much, too soon, and he thrashes to throw even Loki’s candle-warmed hands off him. Loki shrinks back, affronted, but Thor makes immediate amends; he reaches out with his uninjured hand to twitch fingers against Loki’s wrist, even if the touch sears his fingers, to reassure.
“Read to me, brother,” Thor rasps. And even when the candles Loki has lit burn to nothing, Loki summons mage-lights, orbs of warm, peridot green that illuminate the room, and reads aloud over the sound of hoarse rattling and scavenging outside. As Loki reads, he strokes gentle fingers through Thor’s hair, until at last, Thor is lulled into a deep, dreamless sleep once again.
~
The next time Thor comes to, the room is dark, lit only by the wan, flickering lights of nearby skyscrapers, likely drawing from their last dregs of power. Only a few are still standing, the rest bombed within an inch of their life or destroyed in the initial air strikes. Several sections of the Avengers tower itself had collapsed after the initial damage from the Midgardian military. When Midgard still had a military.
Thor reaches out questing fingers, fumbling for a light, along with the blind hope to find Loki’s hand in the near-dark. He finds Loki sitting in a chair beside him, and touches his fingers to Loki’s knuckles, his arm. Loki’s touch no longer burns, and for this one small thing, Thor is so immensely grateful that a tear rolls down his cheek, unbidden.
Loki snorts awake at Thor’s tentative fingers along his arm, and raises an inquiring brow. When Thor nods his acquiescence, Loki sheds everything but his trousers, slipping beneath the covers with him. Presses slowly against Thor, letting his chest rest against Thor’s back, his knees slotting in behind Thor’s, a cool, comforting weight.
“How long have I been asleep?” whispers Thor.
Loki shrugs, a roll of his shoulder that nudges Thor’s into echoing the motion. “Not long.” His deliberate vagueness suggests that it has been more than mere hours. Days, perhaps?
“Lokiii.” Thor squeezes the hand that’s wound its way over his belly, curled tight and fiercely protective.
There is a sigh, a soft puff of breath against Thor’s ear. “Two days,” Loki admits finally. “It would have been longer had I not stolen back what was left of the apples to hasten your recovery.”
Thor opens his mouth to chastise him about the apples—those had been for science, for a cure—when Loki leans over and silences him with a kiss, lips pressing over as much of Thor’s as he can reach.
“Before you say anything,” Loki sniffs haughtily, “rest assured that I duplicated the apples for our research division.” He frowns against Thor’s mouth. “The duplicates are not as potent, but they will serve for their purposes.”
Thor harrumphs anyway. It is just like Loki not to let the Avengers have the real apples in the end, but when Loki leans in slow, his breath hot against Thor’s neck, Thor finds he cannot complain, shivering instead at the warmth. Leans back into the kiss Loki presses into the space behind his ear. They shift naturally in the bed, each knowing what the other wants, and Loki goes on pressing soft, nibbling kisses along Thor’s jaw. Down the smooth column of Thor’s throat. Thor forgets himself, bringing a hand up to slide his fingers through Loki’s hair, and at the motion, he sucks in a tense breath; pain, now a dull throb, shoots through his hand all the same.
“Idiot,” Loki mouths into Thor’s neck. He lifts Thor’s hand to examine it. The wound beneath the dressing is still raw and red, but mostly healed, with clean edges and no signs of the telltale rot that plagues those infected. Loki fixes the dressing back in place after he has examined it. He does not touch the wound on Thor’s thigh, which still aches when he moves. Instead, he lifts Thor’s uninjured arm, curling closer into Thor’s side.
“Loki.” Realization strikes Thor, quick and unexpected, and he swallows past the lump building in his throat. “You should not have gotten into the bed with me, never mind being in the same room. Had I turned into a draugr, you would have—”
“You are long past the time permitted for the change to happen,” Loki says frankly. “But,” he adds, cutting Thor’s protest off at the root, “if you had turned, I…I would have turned with you.” He turns his head to nose at Thor’s jawline. “We would take this realm together. Remake them in our image.” Loki smiles, all teeth and sharp edges.
Thor knows Loki is only trying to lighten the mood; had they actually turned, there would be no realm-taking, as they would be driven by mindless hunger. He rolls over in the circle of Loki’s arms, and kisses the corner of his mouth. Tastes the right mixture of sweetness and tart, but there is something else Thor cannot quite identify—
“Oh,” Thor breathes softly, the moment he places the taste of tears. Of salt and desperation and grief. So Loki would mourn for him. And none would have known the depth of his grief, because Loki had kept it hidden so well that even Thor had not known until now. “Oh, Loki.”
“I am glad you saw fit to come back in one piece,” Loki says, as tonelessly as he can. Visibly struggles to feign nonchalance, even as a new, treacherous tear escapes, cresting the curve of Loki’s cheek and stinging Thor’s face where it is pressed to Loki’s. As if there is shame in Thor seeing him at his most vulnerable, and that he must throw walls up around himself, before anyone sees the quivering mess of emotions.
Thor is glad he knows this Loki now, knows not to believe the false indifference, the way Loki makes it sound as if the loss of his brother would have meant nothing, when it would have meant everything. That Loki feels the need to hide his concern behind this false mask at all makes Thor want to pelt him with warm, reassuring kisses and cradle Loki in his arms, such that he will not need to hide, cannot.
He does just that, winding his hands over the jut of Loki’s hips and pulling him in close. Presses gentle, breathy kisses to Loki’s brow, the lids of his eyes, his mouth. Takes a moment to appreciate the way dark lashes fan over pale cheeks, before laying kisses enough to both cheeks until twin spots of crimson blossom in them, like the ripest of Midgard’s peaches, and deciding that Loki would be just as sweet. And when Loki looks up at him, eyes wide with surprise at this new tenderness, he kisses Loki’s shoulder, just an extra press of reassurance, because Loki can always use more.
“I missed you,” Loki whispers, barely audible, his arms curling behind Thor’s shoulders. Then more sure: “I missed you.”
“I missed you too,” Thor laughs softly, before the effort of that takes its toll on his injury and his brows knit tight with pain. He curls shaky fingers around Loki’s wrist, clutching at Loki for comfort as he breathes through the sudden hurt.
“No, no, don’t exert yourself,” Loki hisses. Thor can feel Loki pressing his face into Thor’s shoulder, breathing in hard, as if by breathing in time with Thor, and taking in his scent, no matter how rank he is with blood and sweat, he can affirm Thor is alive.
Thor extends his hand slowly this time, enough to stroke Loki’s hair, and Loki allows it. It’s a gesture Loki always found annoying, as Thor would muss up his hair, but perhaps Loki knows how close they came to losing it, this small act of fondness that was taken for granted, because something seems to snap inside Loki and he makes a broken, hurt sound as he burrows into Thor’s side, clinging and desperate.
“Loki. My Loki,” Thor soothes, and even though they have been of roughly the same height for so long, Thor gathers Loki into his arms and presses Loki’s head to his chest, an age-old gesture that comforts and reassures Loki like nothing else short of their mother’s embrace does. Presses soft kisses to Loki’s hair as he cards through the fine strands with his fingers. “What must I do, to ease your heart?” he murmurs, mindful of the way Loki trembles in his arms. “What will it take, to assure you I am well?”
“You are not well,” Loki says crossly. He nips Thor’s neck with his teeth, as if to prove his point somehow.
“I am well enough,” Thor insists. Loki only huffs and breathes silently into Thor’s neck, letting himself go limp, his body moving only with Thor’s breaths. “Well enough to do this, at least.” Thor grins, mimicking Loki’s smile, all teeth and sharpness, as he palms the front of Loki’s trousers.
Loki moans and presses into Thor’s touch but he draws back just as suddenly. “You are not well enough, and we are not doing this,” he says, rolling away from Thor, curling into the beginnings of a petulant ball before Thor throws his weight against Loki, stopping him. He rests his arms around Loki’s waist, his head lolling lazily on Loki’s shoulder.
“I want you,” Thor says stubbornly, sliding his hand over the bulge in Loki’s trousers. “I want you so much.” He rolls Loki onto his side and tucks his face into Loki’s neck, winding his limbs around Loki until Thor is clinging to him like a limpet. Until Loki has no choice but to give in.
Loki sighs into Thor’s hair. “All right.” He braces hands against Thor’s shoulders and pushes Thor onto his back, careful. “But if you want this, we will do this my way.”
“Your—nngh,” Thor manages, before Loki claims his mouth, sudden, rough and insistent, and then he’s pinching Thor’s nose shut, forcing his mouth to open wide for breath. Then there’s a tongue working its way down his throat, hot and wet and filthy and oh Thor can’t breathe, can’t think, with Loki robbing him so thoroughly of breath, his lips sealed over every inch of Thor’s. “Loki,” he tries, before Loki wrenches another gasp from him, bruising the skin beneath his collarbone with a kiss that is all teeth followed by a sweet, soothing lick.
The bruising, heated kisses continue down the length of his body: one above his right nipple, which is starting to pebble in the cold; then another and another following the line of his abdomen, and one just below his navel. Any lower, and Thor will—
It suddenly occurs to him that Loki is marking Thor as his own, is laying down possessive bruises that leave no doubt about who Thor belongs to, and it doesn’t make sense, because Loki doesn’t do that; he is always so confident in the knowledge, the truth that Thor is his. It’s always Thor who marks him like this, who is afraid that one day he may wake and find Loki has retreated into places known only to himself, retreated into himself again, somewhere Thor cannot follow.
“Loki.” Thor bites back a gasp of pain when Loki nips teeth just the wrong amount of sharp against his belly. “Stop. Please.”
“No,” Loki rasps, whisper-quiet. He rests his forehead against Thor’s stomach, as if he is ready to rub his face into it. “No, I will not, until you realize.”
“Realize what?” Thor asks, as Loki’s fingers tremble where they are in contact with Thor’s arms.
Loki raises his head to glare at Thor. “That you are mine,” he hisses. He slides his fingers down, digs them deep into the sides of Thor’s belly. “That you are not allowed to throw this body into reckless peril, because it belongs to me.”
“Loki, my friends were in danger—”
“If such danger calls, you will wait for me. So that we may watch each other’s backs.” He grips Thor’s injured hand, not hard, but Thor lets out a yelp of surprise. “This happened,” Loki whispers, “because I was not there.” He buries his face into Thor’s belly, shifting his way up until he’s safely in Thor’s arms again. “How dare you let those creatures taste the flesh of a god, when you belong to me?”
“I didn’t—”
“And how dare they partake of you,” Loki continues, silencing Thor with a greedy, sucking kiss that leaves Thor trembling beneath him, “when the only one fit to feast on your blood—” Loki nips Thor’s lip until a perfect pearl of blood rises to Loki’s waiting tongue. “—your flesh, is me?”
“Loki,” Thor whines, dizzy with want, as he shifts against Loki, hoping for friction. He wants more: wants Loki’s tongue in his mouth, wants Loki’s cock to slide against his, and—they have not done it often—but for Loki to be inside him, to claim Thor in all the ways that he can. “Please.”
Loki ignores Thor’s pleas. “You will have care with your life from now on,” Loki says, reinforcing the trail of bruises he made earlier, sucking the marks darker into his skin. “You will not throw yourself into danger.” He licks his way down Thor’s stomach, swirling his tongue at the navel, the way he might lick Thor’s cock if only he was a little lower.
“Yes,” Thor whimpers, and Loki rewards him with a flick of tongue to the head of his cock, at the same time he punishes him, with light, feathery kisses to the slit that hardly give Thor the friction he needs, the sensations he craves.
“Your body is mine,” Loki rasps. “Your essence.” He licks the head of Thor’s cock again, lapping the precome beading at the tip. “Your everything. From the follicle of each hair, each flake of your skin, to each precious pearl of your blood. Every part of you is mine,” Loki whispers, harsh against Thor’s skin. He bites a trail of rose-red bruises into Thor’s thighs, fingers leaving wine-dark marks on the insides of Thor’s knees. “Do you understand?” hisses Loki.
“Yes,” Thor whispers, “yes. Loki, please—”
“Say the words,” Loki insists. He wraps his hand around Thor’s cock and squeezes, until it gives a desperate twitch, more precome welling up at the tip and spilling over Loki’s hand. “Say the words, so I know you have taken my lesson to heart.”
“I—I understand,” Thor gasps, whimpering at the burst of pain, the pleasure Loki holds just out of reach.
“Good,” says Loki, sounding entirely too pleased. “You would do well not to forget it.” And finally, finally, he takes the entirety of Thor’s length into the hot, wet heat of his mouth.
Thor groans, savoring the sweet slide of Loki’s lips along the length of his cock. The soft wetness of his tongue laving the underside. The way his tongue swirls around the head and flicks along the slit, just the way Thor likes it. And just when Thor clenches his teeth, his legs pulling taut and balls tightening at the pleasure, Loki hums, the bastard.
“Loki. Loki, I’m—” Thor manages, fingers twitching at Loki’s scalp, the tension at the base of his spine cresting until he’s about to spill.
Loki grins, wicked, and circles the base of Thor’s cock with a finger, binding it with a golden thread of seiðr. “You will have your pleasure,” says Loki, “but I shall take mine first.”
“Brother, please,” Thor begs. He wants Loki inside him, to fill him until Thor begs for mercy, pleading Loki for harder, faster, more until he’s screaming for his own release. He fits his mouth to Loki’s, reveling in the taste of himself on Loki’s lips, the way Loki takes command of their kiss, sliding his tongue deep into Thor’s throat, but it’s not nearly enough—he wants Loki to fill him in every way, to plunge his tongue deeper into Thor’s mouth, to push himself into Thor until he finds the sweet nub of flesh that will have Thor crying out on every stroke. “Want you,” he breathes, and he wants so much that his chest heaves with the effort. “Want you inside me.”
“Yes,” Loki hisses, pushing Thor back against the headboard, crawling his way up the length of Thor’s body, each press of his hands against Thor’s hips, his torso, his neck the practiced motions of a hunter stalking its prey.
Thor releases a breathy moan as Loki pushes apart Thor’s legs with his knees, his hands braced by Thor’s head. Tries and fails to hold in the needy sounds he makes when Loki seals their mouths together in a greedy kiss, one that leaves Thor’s lips swollen and red and steals the breath from his lungs, a desperate, hungry thing that lets Thor know just how much Loki wants in return. He gasps into Loki’s mouth, a burning ache in his lungs for lack of air, and surges forward, to claim his fill of Loki’s taste and breathe his air.
“Loki,” Thor pleads. “Need you.” He rakes his fingers over the line of Loki’s pale shoulders, relishing the needy hiss that Loki makes. Takes pleasure in the way it makes Loki rut forward, his cock bumping into Thor’s belly, angry and red, leaking a trail down Thor’s navel.
“Patience, Thor,” says Loki, but for all that, he presses two fingers into Thor at once, grinning sharp at the way he gasps at the intrusion.
“Mmhnn.” Thor shifts his ass until it’s flush against the base of Loki’s fingers, trying to get used to the burn. When he feels sufficiently stretched, he hisses, “Give me you. All of you. Now.”
“Like this?” Loki asks coyly, guiding his cock to the tight ring of muscle, then letting it slide out and against the crease of Thor’s ass. He scrapes a fingernail against Thor’s cock, teasing. Swipes his thumb through the pool of precome pooling on Thor’s belly and dribbles it over Thor’s hole, before slicking his own cock with it. He presses his cock against Thor again, but just when Thor thinks Loki will press inside him, he slides out again on purpose, this time bumping against the flesh behind Thor’s balls.
“Enough,” Thor growls in frustration, and when Loki thinks to tease him again, sliding the head of his cock against the pucker of his ass, Thor surges forward, gripping Loki’s hips to press him down and in, until—yes, there—his cock presses the slightest bit inside, and Thor cries out, a soft yelp of surprise as Loki sinks into Thor.
It is the only concession Loki allows him, as he wrests Thor’s hands from his hips and pins them on either side of the pillow.
“You will take what I give you,” Loki snarls, even as he sinks further in. He continues advancing, slow, pausing each time Thor whimpers or shivers at the pressure. And when he is all the way in, when his hips are flush with Thor’s, Loki stills, and they lie there, breathing each other’s air in the quiet darkness.
“Move,” Thor pleads. He bucks his hips even as Loki traps his wrists. Loki ignores him, laving his tongue along the line of Thor’s jaw, maddeningly still where they are connected. Thor attempts to sit up, to reach for Loki’s hips with eager hands, but Loki tightens his grip on Thor’s wrists, pressing them, painful, into the sheets.
“You will remember what I have told you today,” he says, punctuating each word with a nipping kiss to the flesh of Thor’s neck. “Repeat the words back to me.”
“Loki,” Thor protests, whining and straining against his restraints, soft and sinuous as they are. He tries again to shift his hips, to urge Loki to move, but Loki only laughs, low and wicked, and traps Thor beneath him with an extra hard push that digs into that spot inside him. Has Thor crying out, startled at the unexpected prod.
“The words, Thor,” Loki whispers, his voice harsh, his breath against Thor’s ear hot and wet like the brand of heat Thor is clenched around.
“My body,” Thor gasps into Loki’s neck. “My blood, my essence—everything—yours.”
“And?” prompts Loki softly. “What else?”
“My life. All of it, yours, Loki, please, please—” The last word is little more than a sob.
At this, Loki allows their dynamic to shift, freeing Thor’s arms from his grasp. He lets Thor reach for him, and Thor does, his hands closing greedily around Loki’s neck, his ankles digging into Loki’s back as he pulls Loki into him, guiding him deeper as Loki drives breathy cries from Thor by force.
“Loki—Loki, please, more—” Thor gasps, fingers curling shakily around Loki’s shoulders.
“More,” Loki concedes, nodding. He wraps his arms under and around Thor’s shoulders, keeping him in place as he drives into Thor, with harsh, brutal thrusts that have Thor keening and twisting beneath him.
Yes, thinks Thor; this is what he wants, to have Loki close, to have Loki deep inside him, on him, in him, filling the space around Thor, an affirmation, a reassurance for both of them that they are here, that they are alive.
“Louder,” urges Loki, and Thor throws his head back and cries out all the harder, that Loki may know each gasp, each cry he wrings from Thor is all for him.
It must please Loki the way Thor thinks it does, because he grins into Thor’s neck, pressing kisses like promises into his skin. He whispers words of endearment, of love, of pet names they had for each other when they were young, into the hollow of Thor’s neck, the softness of his ear, his lips a brand of fire as he kisses Thor’s cheeks and nips at Thor’s lower lip.
And when Thor’s cries turn into lengthy, incoherent moans, Loki urges Thor’s ankles off his back and slides them over his shoulders, pressing in deep again, until Thor is bent almost in half, barely able to breathe. Loki presses fingers into the curve of Thor’s shoulders, eager and hungry, thumbs clenching hard into his clavicles, the force of his grip heartened by the way Thor’s cock leaks against his own belly, proof of how much he wants Loki in return.
“Thor, I—” Loki gasps, strained. “I’m—ah—” He braces himself to pull out of Thor before Thor wraps his arms around Loki’s shoulders and tugs him in.
“Spend inside me,” Thor breathes. “I want it. I want it.”
The words must trigger something in Loki, because he slams his hips in, once, twice, and spends with such force that Thor thinks he can feel it all the way up in his throat. He’s sure that if Loki had not spent inside him, it might have streaked across Thor’s torso, uneven dashes that would paint the length of Thor’s body, from navel to jaw. Loki chokes out a keening cry as he spills, his fingers scrabbling at Thor’s thighs for purchase, and his hand lights on Thor’s injured thigh, gripping hard.
Thor winces, and without quite meaning to, whimpers in pain, a soft, hurt noise. Perhaps he could have bore it, had circumstances been different, but Loki has torn down his defences, has made him vulnerable in all the ways only Loki knows how, and the pleasure from before only makes the pain that lances through his leg all the more unbearable.
“You fool,” Loki says, horrified, as a blot of fresh, crimson blood blooms beneath the bandage. He lets Thor’s legs slip from his shoulders, and slows the motion of his hips, realization having come at Thor’s cry of pain, so at odds with those of pleasure. “You imbecile. I told you were not well enough and still—”
“Loki, please,” whispers Thor, and it borders on a whine with how desperate he is for it, despite the pain. “Finish this first.”
With a long-suffering sigh, Loki undoes the binding of seiðr around Thor’s cock and strokes him to completion, but spends the next while redressing Thor’s bandages, assessing the damage beneath.
“You are supposed to let the apples do their work,” Loki says, waspish, though his voice lacks the edge he reserves for when he is truly angry.
“Yes, yes,” Thor nods, hiding a watery smile. He takes Loki’s scolding in stride because it’s punctuated with angry, nipping kisses. And when Loki has finished with dressing the injury, he cuddles against Thor’s chest, pushing his way into Thor’s arms.
That is, until he remembers himself and rolls away from the comfort of Thor’s arms, vindictive.
By the time Thor is close to slumber, though, they are curled back together, pliant and warm like two cozy peas in a fluff-lined pod.
~
It is not even dawn yet when Loki nudges Thor awake.
Thor curls into him with a soft moan; it is too early to get up and too early for breakfast, so he noses at the nape of Loki’s neck, seeking his warmth in the cool air of early morning. Perhaps if he nuzzles Loki long enough, Thor can convince him to stay abed a moment longer.
Loki turns and quickly places his hand over Thor’s mouth, an unspoken, age-old gesture that he needs Thor to be silent—which is when Thor hears the hoarse, dry moans of the draugar. Their telltale death rattle and mindless clicking of teeth. Loki motions toward the door with his eyes, and it strikes Thor then that the creatures are just outside.
A thud sounds against the door, followed by an assortment of shuffling, shambling sounds. The draugar must have broken through the fortifications and barriers that Thor and the other Avengers had erected to hold the lower floors. By now, the main lobby is likely overrun.
Thor looks to Loki for guidance, as stealth has always been Loki’s forte. They could throw open the doors and kill the draugar that have gathered outside, but with no of way of knowing just how many are out there, they could soon be outnumbered. He summons Mjölnir regardless, reassured when she leaps into his hand.
“Loki?” he whispers desperately, breaking the silence. Loki glares at him and tightens his hand over Thor’s mouth. The sound of hoarse moaning and thudding decreases, and for one glorious, foolish moment, Thor thinks they can fight their way out of the room and warn the others, perhaps even hold the breach.
He is just about to suggest it, when the door splinters inward, and a horde of draugar pour into the room, swarming toward them on the bed.
Without warning, Loki slips his arms around Thor’s waist and twists them away, as if he has pinched together the very edges of the fabric of reality and folded them to a place elsewhere. They land in a tangled heap of arms and legs in the room where Clint and Natasha sleep. All of the Avengers sleep in groups now: Clint with Natasha, Steve, Tony and Bruce together, and of course Loki with Thor.
Thor rights himself quickly, untangling himself from his brother. “My friends,” Thor whispers as loudly as he dares, shaking Natasha’s shoulder, “we must go.” Loki simply jabs Clint in the chest, startling him awake.
Natasha blinks groggily. “Okay, this trumps all the weird dreams I’ve ever had.” She lifts a perfect brow. “I never thought I’d dream of you and Loki being naked.”
Thor blinks back, confused, just as Loki huffs a sigh, and mutters something that sounds like priorities, before conjuring a set of clothes as close to their full armour as he can for Thor and himself.
They do not tarry for long; by the time Clint and Natasha have grabbed their weapons, Loki is already impatiently shepherding them to the room of the last few Avengers.
“So you’re saying we just have to up and run?” Tony whispers, when Clint relates the danger of their abode now. “We’re talking about leaving our home—our everything.” He rakes a hand through his hair. “You’re sure about this?”
Clint jerks a thumb in Thor and Loki’s direction. “They are.”
Loki nods. “I have sent out duplicates of myself to survey the tower. With the exception of the laboratory and the top two floors, the tower has been overrun.” He pauses, before his haughty demeanor drops, and he hunches his shoulders, as if curling in on himself. “I—I am sorry, I was too preoccupied with—I was tending to—” Loki stops and says frankly, “I let the wards drop. The fault is mine.” His voice cracks oddly on the last word, as if bordering on a sob.
Steve lays a hand on Loki’s shoulder, kind. “You were worried about your brother. It happens. Besides, we wouldn’t have lasted this long without you.”
Thor slips his arm around Loki’s waist, stroking careful fingers along his side to soothe. “The fault lies with no one, Loki.”
They all look toward Tony, because he is the one who has housed them through all of this, has come up with the zany schemes to forage for food and supplies, and is one half of their research division. He will come up with the plan for their extrication, or have the final say on what they will do.
To their surprise, Tony has no plan.
He rests against the wall, sliding down until his knees touch his chin. “Well, so much for the last stand here and all. Thanks, guys; Scouts camp’s been fun, but the bears have stormed the camp.” He laughs, a bitter, hollow sound in which Thor can read volumes of heartbreak and loss, and in truth, this blow must hit him harder than most, because the tower is his, was his home before it was theirs, and he starts forward to offer words of comfort. Steve and Bruce, however, are well ahead of him.
“What now?” asks Tony, holding his head in his hands. For once, it terrifies Thor, to see Tony, the one who has all the answers, all the flippant but workable ideas, at a loss.
Steve and Bruce have each rested a hand on Tony’s shoulders. “If we need to, we’ll bring the fight to them,” says Steve, squeezing Tony’s shoulder.
“But first we’ll need to prepare our arsenal,” nods Bruce. “And salvage what we can of the research we’ve made headway into.” He prods at Tony’s knee. “Remember how far we’ve gotten? How we’re this close to figuring out a way to use the apples?”
Tony sucks in a breath. “Yeah. Yeah, okay.” He closes his eyes. “I guess we could—yeah.” When he opens his eyes, he gives Bruce a weak, watery smile. “You’re right. We’re so close. If we give up now—everyone’s screwed, right?”
“That’s right,” nods Bruce. “It’s up to us to figure this out. You’re with us, aren’t you?”
“Yeah,” Tony says, rolling his shoulders, as if he is working himself up toward something. “Yeah.”
Thor beams at Tony, and kneels down to meet his eyes. “We will make it through this,” he says. “Together.” He stands and offers Tony a hand, which Tony reaches for gratefully, and hoists him to a standing position.
“Together,” Tony nods, breathing in deep again, steeling his resolve. When Loki’s back is turned, Tony winks at Thor and thumps him on the back. “It’s good to have you back, by the way,” he whispers, conspiratorially. “Loki’s a scary little shit when you’re down for the count.”
Thor frowns; he thinks it ironic that for all he had been terrified he would lose Loki, he was the one who had nearly left Loki alone.
As if he has sensed Thor’s tumultuous thoughts, Loki turns to touch fingers to Thor’s elbow, gentle. At the contact, Thor remembers that they are both still here, they are both still alive and they will make it through this, together.
~
Bruce herds Tony to the laboratory to gather what they can of their research, while the others fan out to still-safe rooms to hunt for provisions for their journey.
“There’s a small, independent lab I used to work at,” Bruce had said, before they spread out to gather supplies. “It’s unlikely to have been broken into by the draugar, mainly because it’s below ground. Tony and I can continue our research there, and there’s plenty of room for all of us.”
His words are like a beacon of hope, giving them focus. A goal.
In the next half-hour after, Loki spells all their bags to remain lightweight but to hold more than they physically can, and Thor and the others busy themselves with trying to pack what provisions they can from areas not overrun by the draugar. Thor grabs bottles of water, sliding them carefully and soundlessly into a pack, while Loki slips dried foods and non-perishables into his.
When Natasha and Clint move onto loading up on ammunition and readying their arsenal, Thor makes sure Mjölnir is hitched securely to his belt. He is never far from her these days.
Tony gathers his suit of iron into a small metal case. Thor has been informed numerous times that it is actually made of a gold-titanium alloy, but Tony stopped pointing it out when Thor once called him Gold-And-Titanium-Alloy Man, agreeing once and for all that ‘iron’ was so much simpler. He will likely rig a charging unit or power supply where they are headed, or ask Thor to charge it through Mjölnir’s power. Steve joins them with his own pack, armed with his armor and shield.
When they are ready to set out, Loki casts a spell of invisibility over them, alongside spells meant to mask their movement and smell from the draugar. Thor is about to ask for an additional spell for Natasha and Clint, before remembering they still have an extra layer of protection in the amulets from Frigga. During the gathering of supplies, they told Thor they had tried to return the amulets to Loki, so that he and Thor could use them, but Loki would have none of it.
Thor smiles at the thought. Smiles at Loki.
Loki scowls back. Focus, he seems to say.
They all move as one entity, making their way down the emergency staircase, winding their way through the clusters of draugar stumbling aimlessly between floors. Bruce leads them to the little-used entrance of the Avengers tower, where delivery trucks used to unload their wares, taking care to remain quiet. He presses the door open carefully, all of them waiting with bated breath for a sound—a creak or telltale squeak of the door—to give their location away and set the horde of draugar on them.
It opens with a soft swish that does not draw the attention of the draugar, and Bruce herds them out quickly before closing the door just as gently.
As soon as Thor exits the tower, he catches up with Loki, slipping one hand into his. Loki glowers at him, as if to reprimand him about the foolishness of not having both hands free, in case of attack, before giving in and tightening his fingers around Thor’s. The other Avengers follow suit, and in no time at all, they all form what Tony will later term the “Kindergarten Buddy System”. Clint links hands with Natasha, while Tony loosely clutches Bruce’s shirt. Steve twists trembling fingers into the hem of Tony’s sweatshirt.
The conglomerate of Bruce-Tony-Steve leads the vanguard forward, winding through back alleys and narrow streets, taking care to avoid the draugar where they can. Thor watches old, tattered newspapers flutter by as they creep through the streets. Maneuvers around vehicles abandoned by the sides of the road, some even in the middle of the thoroughfare, as if their owners had simply left the vehicle mid-journey and never come back.
It is incredibly silent, so unlike New York with its usual lively hustle and bustle, that it makes something churn uncomfortably in Thor’s stomach. This is not the Midgard he had grown to love, and he feels bereft at the loss of its people, the Midgardians who always did so much with the time they were allotted.
Yes, Thor thinks, as he looks at his teammates, unflinching in their own resolve. I will do anything I can to help them.
He is startled out of his thoughts by Loki’s tug on his hand. Look, Loki motions with his head, and points.
Piles of burnt bodies litter the streets, blackened and charred, the remnants of bonfires that had sputtered out. Loki prods at what looks like a mass of bone and ash with a stick, and a mottled grey arm springs out of the pile, limp; these are the remains of reanimated corpses, these small hills remnants of their broken flesh. Made when there were still more people than them to make bonfires.
Bruce turns to looks behind him as they trudge past the piles of smoking flesh. Not much farther, he mouths, motioning at their destination with his head.
They follow him to a manhole obscured by two tall buildings. Draugar mill about at the mouths of the street, but thankfully, none have wandered into this junction between the buildings.
Tony gestures frantically, pointing to the manhole cover. How are we going to lift that without a ton of noise?
With a smile, Bruce lifts the cover soundlessly. Instead of metal, it is a small, plastic hatch disguised to look like a manhole cover. He ushers them all down the sturdy metal ladder, before following them in and closing the hatch. Leads them through a labyrinth of tunnels, and crank doors fitted with extra latch handles and deadbolts.
“Here we are,” Bruce says finally, reaching out into what seems like a dark gloom, and pulling a chain, bathing the entire chamber in muted, white-green light.
“Wow,” breathes Steve. “Just. Wow.”
There are several grand archways set into the structure of the chamber. Each is supported by thick columns of not-quite brick, some spiraled into beautiful, twisting shapes, while others are marred with sharp, jagged edges, or wicked spikes. Upon closer inspection, Thor notices that the supporting columns are engraved with runes, but these are not runes that Thor knows.
He touches his fingers to the archaic architecture. The design of their abode does not follow any laws of geometry that he knows, and he sees Loki eyeing it curiously as well. Mortar crumbles slightly at his touch, skittering over his fingers, but the overall masonry appears impossibly strong. He wonders if Bruce had had this place built to withstand his prior transformations into the Hulk. Or more likely purchased the place, from zealots who worshipped strange gods, and made it his own. He will not question Bruce’s judgment, though; not when they have finally found a place to rest and regroup.
Tony, however, has other ideas. Questions.
“Where did you find this place?” asks Tony, nearly stumbling on some uneven stone steps. He looks up at the dusty light fixtures, wan fluorescents that flicker ominously, and eyes the drip drip coming from pipes overhead. “It’s like it came straight from a Lovecraftian novel.”
“Well,” says Bruce, sounding rather put out, “when I said independent lab, I meant private. And by private, I meant—” He adjust his glasses to perch just so on his nose. “It’s mine,” he huffs, finally. “I mean, it is now. I’ve made upgrades,” he adds, proudly. He spreads his palms to refer to the small touches and improvements he has made, from the added door locks to the presence of hand-cranked generators that provide their power.
“Oh,” Tony blinks. He breaks into a grin that is much too wide to be genuine. “It’s a little subterranean, but it’ll do,” he nods approvingly. “Seriously though, are you hiding one of the Old Ones down here?”
Bruce casts his eyes toward the pipes, where a ceiling would be, in a gesture of exasperation. “The only ‘Old Ones’ here would probably be those two,” he says, pointing at Thor and Loki. “Now put what we have of the first-stage vaccines down on that lab bench over there. Gently. We have work to do.”
~
For now, Thor and the others ignore the ornate strangeness of the place, and settle into the smaller chambers that Bruce points them to. Loki sets up bedding with Thor’s help, drawing from Mjölnir’s own well of seiðr to transfigure rubble of what seem like ruins into rudimentary bed frames and mattresses.
Steve and Clint head out to scout the underground for a source of fresh water, while Tony and Bruce pore over their previous results. Natasha secures the perimeter, checking for vulnerabilities, though evidently she still feels edgy, walking the perimeter three times over.
“Thor,” Loki croaks, when he has finished transforming the last rubble into a bed. Thor catches Loki before his knees buckle beneath him, and scoops Loki into his arms without question.
“My brother needs rest,” Thor explains, when Tony looks up from his work as they pass by.
“Oh, right. Yeah, you guys totally deserve it,” Tony nods. He tips Thor a wink. “Just make sure not to be too loud. Stuff really echoes down here, y’know?”
Thor laughs softly. Loki is already dozing lightly in his arms, fatigued by the amount of energy and seiðr he has exhausted for the sake of Thor and his friends. “I shall remember that,” says Thor, “but Loki may be another matter entirely.”
He leaves Tony to make whatever assumptions he will as he carries Loki away, and true to form, Tony sputters after them, his face the hue of Midgard’s ripest tomatoes.
~
In the end, it only takes one errant comment from Tony for things to escalate out of proportion.
“Guess it’s kinda fitting that the vaccine for this draugar infection should be made in an underground research lab, huh?” he says, elbowing Bruce, when they are in the final stages of completing their vaccine. The dosage and makeup of the new vaccines have long since been recalibrated, to account for Loki’s earlier duplication of the apples.
The others go very silent and still. “Why, exactly,” Bruce asks slowly, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose, “would it be fitting?”
Tony blinks. “Oh,” he says sheepishly, “guess I dropped the ball on that one; we were sort of more preoccupied with looking for food at the time.” He looks to Thor and Loki. “Little help here, guys?”
Loki sighs. “He means that there is a kind of perverse poetry in the fact that the draugar infection itself was created in a lab, in much the same conditions as this one.” He goes on to relate the things he had seen when Fury sent him out to investigate a remote outpost where the infection had supposedly first broken out.
“Wait,” Steve says, “so you’re saying this whole thing, this massive catastrophe and all the—this is all SHIELD’s doing?”
Clint grits his teeth. “I always knew there was something was weird about this.”
Though Tony was the one who instigated this growing distrust of SHIELD, he is also the one to bring the situation back under control. “Look, I get it,” he says. “We don’t trust the powers that be anymore. But think of it like this: whatever we accomplish here, whatever we’ve done up until now, this is for the people. For mankind. We’re not doing this for SHIELD.”
“He’s right,” Steve says finally, after several moments of utter silence. “We’ve got nothing to gain by pointing fingers anyway. Let’s just get back to what we were doing.”
Later, Tony starts the first trials. They have a steady supply of mice in the underground, and so Tony injects a mouse with a sample of saliva rife with the draugar virus. Within a minute, he injects the same mouse with the vaccine he and Bruce seem to have perfected.
They will know within an hour if the vaccine is effective.
When the hour is up, they all find the mouse still sniffing and scratching curiously at its makeshift cage.
By the time the day is over, the mouse is still very much alive, nibbling at a piece of jerky Bruce drops into its cage, its whiskers twitching as it shreds its food into edible strips.
When he’s finished inspecting the mouse for the last time that day, Tony drops all pretences and bounds over to hug Thor and Loki both. The others follow suit, enveloping them in various permutations of hugs, from awkward and one-armed to full-on, crushing embraces.
“Thank you,” rasps Tony. “Thank you.” There are tears in his eyes when he looks up.
“But your human trials have yet to—” Loki starts, before Thor pulls him close and silences him with a kiss.
“Let them have this, brother,” Thor whispers, squeezing Loki’s shoulder. “They need it.”
Loki stops, and Thor notes the moment Loki really sees, the desperation and relief both of their teammates, as he nods his agreement; their failures have been so many and close between, that each success is dear and must be cherished all the more.
~
It is not long, however, before Loki brings up the subject of human test subjects again. After all, a vaccine that is not utilized is, for the most part, useless.
“Good point,” Tony says. “Where are we going to find a live human test subject for this? We can’t exactly waltz up to the surface and use a megaphone to call the humans to us. Or ask the draugar, ‘Excuse me, have you seen an unmauled human, with brains and internal organs preferably still intact?’”
“How about me?” Steve suggests. “I’m a human experiment already. It couldn’t hurt to be one more.”
“How about no,” Tony replies instantly. “If things go south, the last thing we need is a draugr supersoldier on our hands.”
Thor thinks to suggest himself or Loki, but Aesir and Jötnar physiologies are likely affected differently by the course of this disease. Besides, Loki would only call him a self-sacrificing twit and have his hide for it.
“I’ll do it,” says Natasha. She bares her arm and steps up to Tony. “If I turn, you guys shouldn’t have any trouble taking me out.”
“Nat, no. What are you doing?” Clint hisses. He bares his arm also and crowds closer to Tony. “Use me instead.”
“There you are, then,” Loki says, his smile grim. “You certainly have no dearth of volunteers.”
Tony and Bruce take extreme care in explaining the procedure to Clint, before strapping him down and sterilising his skin. Loki hums and nods thoughtfully as he listens, but there are terms Thor does not understand. Regardless, he nods when Loki nods, and throws in the occasional hmm, maintaining a façade of comprehension until they are ushered out of the chamber to give Clint a moment of privacy. Clint will have a chance to say the things he needs to, to the people he wants to, before the virus is applied. The vaccine is to follow almost immediately after.
“Be honest,” Loki says, when they are back in their own chamber. The crude bedframe of stone does not creak under their weight, a fact Thor is thankful for when he takes Loki against it most nights. “Did you understand any of that?”
Thor’s throat dries as he speaks. “I—no,” he says, deflating a little. He is no fool, but even on Asgard, he left such matters as these to the healers. Thor turns to Loki, hopeful for an explanation, as Loki has long translated things into phrases he can understand.
Loki touches the small of Thor’s back, reassuring. “Think of everything to be under the blanket term ‘science’,” he says. “In time, however, your mortals will call it nothing short of a ‘miracle’.”
“Ah,” says Thor. That, he does understand, and together, he and Loki share a knowing smile.
“Now then,” Loki grins coyly, his hand dipping beneath the waist of Thor’s trousers. He trails clever, daring fingers over Thor’s cock. “Shall we engage in a pre-emptive celebration of the vaccine’s success?”
“You sound rather assured of success,” Thor frowns, stilling Loki’s hand. “We have yet to find proof it will even work. What if Clint—”
Loki flaps his free hand and huffs, exasperated. “It worked on you, did it not? Their vaccine will not be as potent, no, but it will serve for the Midgardians and their frailer bodies.”
“Oh.” Thor grins back, his expression equally hungry and sharp as he cups Loki’s cheek and surges forward to meet his mouth. “Then pre-emptively celebrate we shall.”
~
It is another month before Bruce and Tony can create enough of the vaccine to help a large batch of survivors, as their resources in Bruce’s lab are limited. Loki is responsible for replicating a large volume of the new apples, while Steve is relegated to filling the clean syringes they have on hand for injection.
Clint and Natasha are put in charge of scouring the city, and in their reconnaissance, find small pockets of survivors, holed in underground shelters and more rural homes where the draugar were fewer and farther between. When the vaccine is ready, he, Natasha and Steve travel by foot, with small kits, to inoculate the survivors against the virus.
In time, Tony and Bruce start circulating more kits, instructing Thor and Loki in the art of giving vaccines.
They use their status as Avengers to gain the people’s trust; it seems that their names are still worth something, at least. Both Thor and Loki traverse the city, tacking news bulletins regarding the vaccine to telephone poles, bulletin boards, broad spans of blank wall and shop windows.
As a result, more and more people emerge from hiding, clustering in small groups at the locations advertised in the Avengers’ notices, for vaccination.
“Does this really work?” asks a small child once, watching Thor with wide eyes.
Loki is about to snap some form of You hardly have a choice, when Clint cuts in, “Yeah. I got bitten by a drau—one of them after I got it. And look at me.” He jerks a thumb toward himself, manages a feeble grin. “Still here. Still me.”
The children end up flocking to Clint like small ducklings, pawing at his legs with their tiny hands for autographs and lifts into the air. And because they have won over the children, have given them a sliver of hope that brings the brightness and joy back into their eyes, the adults follow suit, and quickly.
Thor would not have guessed Clint could become the poster boy for this new cure they are trying to promote. If anyone, he thought it would be Steve, known for being America’s beloved golden hero, but this is what it is.
Their efforts draw the attention of SHIELD bases that had gone to ground when the disaster started, small clusters of agents who had survived in secret fallout shelters. Communications are re-established between different bases and though the Avengers are initially grudging in their cooperation, even they can see the need for SHIELD’s resources. Within several more months, the vaccines are being produced on an international scale, with agents and recruited survivors primed to spread the vaccine to less accessible areas.
Thor feels a measure of hope when he hears on the one re-established radio network that the Midgardians have begun to fight back, not having to worry about falling ill when bitten by the infected. He does not yet know if other countries, other continents in Midgard have progressed as far as they have here, but what he does know is that right here, in New York, the living are taking back their city.
And this, this is a start; the start of everything again, instead of the end.
~
“What are you looking at?” Loki asks, winding his arms around Thor’s waist from behind. He hooks his chin over Thor’s shoulder, watching as an organized group of people herd draugar into an old, half-destroyed building and bar them in, before methodically and permanently silencing each one. Others pile half-twitching corpses into the ruins of apartment buildings, before setting the structures ablaze. “Oh, I see,” Loki says drily. “I suppose your mortals are a more welcoming vista than the draugar we have grown used to.”
“Loki,” Thor chides gently. He rests a palm over the knot of Loki’s hands around him, warm from the sun’s early glow.
They stand on the rooftop of a ruined skyscraper, overlooking Midtown Manhattan. Thor can see the Avengers tower from here, a home which he and the others, like most Midgardians, have plans underway to reclaim.
“They are fighting back,” says Thor, as he watches the people below. It warms his heart so, to know that he has helped them in this fight to survive. “This is the spirit of the Midgardians that I know.”
“Yes, that ‘spirit’ you speak of will last quite some time, I think,” Loki says sourly, as Thor shifts out of Loki’s grasp and turns to envelope Loki in his arms. “There may be unnaturally long life in them because of the apples we made the vaccine from. Though,” Loki adds grudgingly, “I suppose they are a hardy race of people. Look at them: forced to become a warrior race to stave off elimination, with the product of seiðr flowing in their veins.” Loki stops suddenly, his eyes aglow with delight. “Oh.” He laughs against Thor’s mouth, soft and low.
“What amuses you so, brother?” Thor asks.
“We have won,” Loki explains. His eyes are positively gleaming with mirth now. “We have succeeded.”
Thor furrows his brow. “In what?” That they have helped his friends and their people stave off elimination, giving them the chance to thrive again is success enough, but there’s something else here, something Loki is eager to reveal, to demonstrate how clever he’s been—
“Remaking the human race in our image,” Loki grins. “With your example of brute might and my seiðr, we have reforged this world. This is a world made new, by our hands. ”
Thor sighs; he knows better than to argue over what Loki considers a victory. Instead, he pulls Loki close, against the wind that buffets them at this altitude, thinking to claim Loki’s mouth fully and thoroughly. But when Loki starts pressing a flurry of light, fluttering kisses to his cheeks and lips, Thor draws back, surprised.
“Oh?” Thor asks, smiling. “What are these for?”
“I don’t suppose your friends’ betting pool is still on, do you?” Loki says cheekily. “So that we may bet on ourselves and win?”
Thor laughs, and hitches Loki closer in his arms. “Not likely,” he says, pressing his lips firmly to Loki’s brow, once, twice, then kissing his mouth. Loki tastes of buttered syrup in fresh fallen snow, the flavours of Midgard’s coming winter, and Thor licks boldly into his mouth, unconcerned of the audience they may have. “But it does not hurt to try.”
[End]
(Coda: Keepsakes Eternal)
* Note: The lab mentioned in the latter part is a hybrid of the underground bunker in Skyfall, seen here, and concept designs of R’lyeh, found here and here.
Fandom: Thor (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Pairing: Thor/Loki
Rating: NC-17
Words: 9770 (30120 total)
Summary: “We could call the enemy ‘Walkers’,” offers Bruce. “Like they do on The Walking Dead.”
Thor thinks they should be called Shamblers or Stumblers instead, but keeps his silence. His teammates might take offense to their iconic television show being referred to as The Stumbling Dead.
A/N: Zombie AU. Written to sate my desire for Thor/Loki-centric apocalyptic fiction. Title from Tolkien’s Ring verse.
When Thor next wakes, he finds he is sprawled along the bed he and Loki share, the lights in their room dimmed to a soft, pleasing amber. It is a moment more before he realizes they are not lights at all, and instead candles, their flames throwing dark, flickering shadows along the wall.
“Loki?” Thor croaks, shifting beneath the sheets. They scratch at his skin, but are comfortably warm at the least, not the searing heat that anything brushing his skin had felt before. He tries to rise from the bed, before collapsing in pain coupled with fatigue.
At the sound of Thor’s voice, Loki sets down the candle he was tending to, and hurries over. It’s only then he sees Loki up close, with dark shadows lurking beneath his red-rimmed eyes. Loki had likely stayed up all night with Thor, healing him with what seiðr he could, or determining another way to combat the infection.
He sighs as he takes in Thor’s form, hands resting lightly on the coverlet. “Thank the Norns,” Loki mouths to the air, his voice barely above a whisper. He casts his eyes to the ceiling, and closes them as if in prayer. “Thank you.” To Thor he says, “You must rest.”
“Water?” Thor asks, hopeful.
Loki nods and cradles Thor’s head, helping him tip water into his mouth; too much motion on Thor’s part results in pain that lances through his hand and leg like lightning, sharp.
He twitches Loki’s sleeve after, as a gesture of thanks, too tired to do much else. “Loki,” Thor mumbles. He wishes he could bury his face in Loki’s hair and inhale its sweet scent. Wrap his arms around Loki beneath the sheets, and fit his knees in behind Loki’s until they are slotted together like two perfect pieces of a puzzle. Loki is warmth and safety and everything lovely, and the absence of him now stings more keenly than Thor can bear.
“Thor,” Loki murmurs in reply. Thor watches him furtively wipe at the corner of his eyes, like there might be tears forming. Rubbing his eyes as if emotion is a weakness and too much of him will be exposed if Loki does not rid his face of the scant evidence there is.
For a moment, Thor entertains the idea that those are tears Loki is wiping away, and the thought that Loki might cry for him is oddly flattering. He feels the need to reach out, to brush away the tears, be they real or imagined, but his hand is a numb, dead weight, and shifting even the slightest bit brings with it a fresh onslaught of pain.
Something of his hopes to touch Loki, even just the smallest bit of contact, must show on his face, as Loki shuffles over and brushes his hand over Thor’s forehead. Thor whines at the contact; it’s too much, too soon, and he thrashes to throw even Loki’s candle-warmed hands off him. Loki shrinks back, affronted, but Thor makes immediate amends; he reaches out with his uninjured hand to twitch fingers against Loki’s wrist, even if the touch sears his fingers, to reassure.
“Read to me, brother,” Thor rasps. And even when the candles Loki has lit burn to nothing, Loki summons mage-lights, orbs of warm, peridot green that illuminate the room, and reads aloud over the sound of hoarse rattling and scavenging outside. As Loki reads, he strokes gentle fingers through Thor’s hair, until at last, Thor is lulled into a deep, dreamless sleep once again.
The next time Thor comes to, the room is dark, lit only by the wan, flickering lights of nearby skyscrapers, likely drawing from their last dregs of power. Only a few are still standing, the rest bombed within an inch of their life or destroyed in the initial air strikes. Several sections of the Avengers tower itself had collapsed after the initial damage from the Midgardian military. When Midgard still had a military.
Thor reaches out questing fingers, fumbling for a light, along with the blind hope to find Loki’s hand in the near-dark. He finds Loki sitting in a chair beside him, and touches his fingers to Loki’s knuckles, his arm. Loki’s touch no longer burns, and for this one small thing, Thor is so immensely grateful that a tear rolls down his cheek, unbidden.
Loki snorts awake at Thor’s tentative fingers along his arm, and raises an inquiring brow. When Thor nods his acquiescence, Loki sheds everything but his trousers, slipping beneath the covers with him. Presses slowly against Thor, letting his chest rest against Thor’s back, his knees slotting in behind Thor’s, a cool, comforting weight.
“How long have I been asleep?” whispers Thor.
Loki shrugs, a roll of his shoulder that nudges Thor’s into echoing the motion. “Not long.” His deliberate vagueness suggests that it has been more than mere hours. Days, perhaps?
“Lokiii.” Thor squeezes the hand that’s wound its way over his belly, curled tight and fiercely protective.
There is a sigh, a soft puff of breath against Thor’s ear. “Two days,” Loki admits finally. “It would have been longer had I not stolen back what was left of the apples to hasten your recovery.”
Thor opens his mouth to chastise him about the apples—those had been for science, for a cure—when Loki leans over and silences him with a kiss, lips pressing over as much of Thor’s as he can reach.
“Before you say anything,” Loki sniffs haughtily, “rest assured that I duplicated the apples for our research division.” He frowns against Thor’s mouth. “The duplicates are not as potent, but they will serve for their purposes.”
Thor harrumphs anyway. It is just like Loki not to let the Avengers have the real apples in the end, but when Loki leans in slow, his breath hot against Thor’s neck, Thor finds he cannot complain, shivering instead at the warmth. Leans back into the kiss Loki presses into the space behind his ear. They shift naturally in the bed, each knowing what the other wants, and Loki goes on pressing soft, nibbling kisses along Thor’s jaw. Down the smooth column of Thor’s throat. Thor forgets himself, bringing a hand up to slide his fingers through Loki’s hair, and at the motion, he sucks in a tense breath; pain, now a dull throb, shoots through his hand all the same.
“Idiot,” Loki mouths into Thor’s neck. He lifts Thor’s hand to examine it. The wound beneath the dressing is still raw and red, but mostly healed, with clean edges and no signs of the telltale rot that plagues those infected. Loki fixes the dressing back in place after he has examined it. He does not touch the wound on Thor’s thigh, which still aches when he moves. Instead, he lifts Thor’s uninjured arm, curling closer into Thor’s side.
“Loki.” Realization strikes Thor, quick and unexpected, and he swallows past the lump building in his throat. “You should not have gotten into the bed with me, never mind being in the same room. Had I turned into a draugr, you would have—”
“You are long past the time permitted for the change to happen,” Loki says frankly. “But,” he adds, cutting Thor’s protest off at the root, “if you had turned, I…I would have turned with you.” He turns his head to nose at Thor’s jawline. “We would take this realm together. Remake them in our image.” Loki smiles, all teeth and sharp edges.
Thor knows Loki is only trying to lighten the mood; had they actually turned, there would be no realm-taking, as they would be driven by mindless hunger. He rolls over in the circle of Loki’s arms, and kisses the corner of his mouth. Tastes the right mixture of sweetness and tart, but there is something else Thor cannot quite identify—
“Oh,” Thor breathes softly, the moment he places the taste of tears. Of salt and desperation and grief. So Loki would mourn for him. And none would have known the depth of his grief, because Loki had kept it hidden so well that even Thor had not known until now. “Oh, Loki.”
“I am glad you saw fit to come back in one piece,” Loki says, as tonelessly as he can. Visibly struggles to feign nonchalance, even as a new, treacherous tear escapes, cresting the curve of Loki’s cheek and stinging Thor’s face where it is pressed to Loki’s. As if there is shame in Thor seeing him at his most vulnerable, and that he must throw walls up around himself, before anyone sees the quivering mess of emotions.
Thor is glad he knows this Loki now, knows not to believe the false indifference, the way Loki makes it sound as if the loss of his brother would have meant nothing, when it would have meant everything. That Loki feels the need to hide his concern behind this false mask at all makes Thor want to pelt him with warm, reassuring kisses and cradle Loki in his arms, such that he will not need to hide, cannot.
He does just that, winding his hands over the jut of Loki’s hips and pulling him in close. Presses gentle, breathy kisses to Loki’s brow, the lids of his eyes, his mouth. Takes a moment to appreciate the way dark lashes fan over pale cheeks, before laying kisses enough to both cheeks until twin spots of crimson blossom in them, like the ripest of Midgard’s peaches, and deciding that Loki would be just as sweet. And when Loki looks up at him, eyes wide with surprise at this new tenderness, he kisses Loki’s shoulder, just an extra press of reassurance, because Loki can always use more.
“I missed you,” Loki whispers, barely audible, his arms curling behind Thor’s shoulders. Then more sure: “I missed you.”
“I missed you too,” Thor laughs softly, before the effort of that takes its toll on his injury and his brows knit tight with pain. He curls shaky fingers around Loki’s wrist, clutching at Loki for comfort as he breathes through the sudden hurt.
“No, no, don’t exert yourself,” Loki hisses. Thor can feel Loki pressing his face into Thor’s shoulder, breathing in hard, as if by breathing in time with Thor, and taking in his scent, no matter how rank he is with blood and sweat, he can affirm Thor is alive.
Thor extends his hand slowly this time, enough to stroke Loki’s hair, and Loki allows it. It’s a gesture Loki always found annoying, as Thor would muss up his hair, but perhaps Loki knows how close they came to losing it, this small act of fondness that was taken for granted, because something seems to snap inside Loki and he makes a broken, hurt sound as he burrows into Thor’s side, clinging and desperate.
“Loki. My Loki,” Thor soothes, and even though they have been of roughly the same height for so long, Thor gathers Loki into his arms and presses Loki’s head to his chest, an age-old gesture that comforts and reassures Loki like nothing else short of their mother’s embrace does. Presses soft kisses to Loki’s hair as he cards through the fine strands with his fingers. “What must I do, to ease your heart?” he murmurs, mindful of the way Loki trembles in his arms. “What will it take, to assure you I am well?”
“You are not well,” Loki says crossly. He nips Thor’s neck with his teeth, as if to prove his point somehow.
“I am well enough,” Thor insists. Loki only huffs and breathes silently into Thor’s neck, letting himself go limp, his body moving only with Thor’s breaths. “Well enough to do this, at least.” Thor grins, mimicking Loki’s smile, all teeth and sharpness, as he palms the front of Loki’s trousers.
Loki moans and presses into Thor’s touch but he draws back just as suddenly. “You are not well enough, and we are not doing this,” he says, rolling away from Thor, curling into the beginnings of a petulant ball before Thor throws his weight against Loki, stopping him. He rests his arms around Loki’s waist, his head lolling lazily on Loki’s shoulder.
“I want you,” Thor says stubbornly, sliding his hand over the bulge in Loki’s trousers. “I want you so much.” He rolls Loki onto his side and tucks his face into Loki’s neck, winding his limbs around Loki until Thor is clinging to him like a limpet. Until Loki has no choice but to give in.
Loki sighs into Thor’s hair. “All right.” He braces hands against Thor’s shoulders and pushes Thor onto his back, careful. “But if you want this, we will do this my way.”
“Your—nngh,” Thor manages, before Loki claims his mouth, sudden, rough and insistent, and then he’s pinching Thor’s nose shut, forcing his mouth to open wide for breath. Then there’s a tongue working its way down his throat, hot and wet and filthy and oh Thor can’t breathe, can’t think, with Loki robbing him so thoroughly of breath, his lips sealed over every inch of Thor’s. “Loki,” he tries, before Loki wrenches another gasp from him, bruising the skin beneath his collarbone with a kiss that is all teeth followed by a sweet, soothing lick.
The bruising, heated kisses continue down the length of his body: one above his right nipple, which is starting to pebble in the cold; then another and another following the line of his abdomen, and one just below his navel. Any lower, and Thor will—
It suddenly occurs to him that Loki is marking Thor as his own, is laying down possessive bruises that leave no doubt about who Thor belongs to, and it doesn’t make sense, because Loki doesn’t do that; he is always so confident in the knowledge, the truth that Thor is his. It’s always Thor who marks him like this, who is afraid that one day he may wake and find Loki has retreated into places known only to himself, retreated into himself again, somewhere Thor cannot follow.
“Loki.” Thor bites back a gasp of pain when Loki nips teeth just the wrong amount of sharp against his belly. “Stop. Please.”
“No,” Loki rasps, whisper-quiet. He rests his forehead against Thor’s stomach, as if he is ready to rub his face into it. “No, I will not, until you realize.”
“Realize what?” Thor asks, as Loki’s fingers tremble where they are in contact with Thor’s arms.
Loki raises his head to glare at Thor. “That you are mine,” he hisses. He slides his fingers down, digs them deep into the sides of Thor’s belly. “That you are not allowed to throw this body into reckless peril, because it belongs to me.”
“Loki, my friends were in danger—”
“If such danger calls, you will wait for me. So that we may watch each other’s backs.” He grips Thor’s injured hand, not hard, but Thor lets out a yelp of surprise. “This happened,” Loki whispers, “because I was not there.” He buries his face into Thor’s belly, shifting his way up until he’s safely in Thor’s arms again. “How dare you let those creatures taste the flesh of a god, when you belong to me?”
“I didn’t—”
“And how dare they partake of you,” Loki continues, silencing Thor with a greedy, sucking kiss that leaves Thor trembling beneath him, “when the only one fit to feast on your blood—” Loki nips Thor’s lip until a perfect pearl of blood rises to Loki’s waiting tongue. “—your flesh, is me?”
“Loki,” Thor whines, dizzy with want, as he shifts against Loki, hoping for friction. He wants more: wants Loki’s tongue in his mouth, wants Loki’s cock to slide against his, and—they have not done it often—but for Loki to be inside him, to claim Thor in all the ways that he can. “Please.”
Loki ignores Thor’s pleas. “You will have care with your life from now on,” Loki says, reinforcing the trail of bruises he made earlier, sucking the marks darker into his skin. “You will not throw yourself into danger.” He licks his way down Thor’s stomach, swirling his tongue at the navel, the way he might lick Thor’s cock if only he was a little lower.
“Yes,” Thor whimpers, and Loki rewards him with a flick of tongue to the head of his cock, at the same time he punishes him, with light, feathery kisses to the slit that hardly give Thor the friction he needs, the sensations he craves.
“Your body is mine,” Loki rasps. “Your essence.” He licks the head of Thor’s cock again, lapping the precome beading at the tip. “Your everything. From the follicle of each hair, each flake of your skin, to each precious pearl of your blood. Every part of you is mine,” Loki whispers, harsh against Thor’s skin. He bites a trail of rose-red bruises into Thor’s thighs, fingers leaving wine-dark marks on the insides of Thor’s knees. “Do you understand?” hisses Loki.
“Yes,” Thor whispers, “yes. Loki, please—”
“Say the words,” Loki insists. He wraps his hand around Thor’s cock and squeezes, until it gives a desperate twitch, more precome welling up at the tip and spilling over Loki’s hand. “Say the words, so I know you have taken my lesson to heart.”
“I—I understand,” Thor gasps, whimpering at the burst of pain, the pleasure Loki holds just out of reach.
“Good,” says Loki, sounding entirely too pleased. “You would do well not to forget it.” And finally, finally, he takes the entirety of Thor’s length into the hot, wet heat of his mouth.
Thor groans, savoring the sweet slide of Loki’s lips along the length of his cock. The soft wetness of his tongue laving the underside. The way his tongue swirls around the head and flicks along the slit, just the way Thor likes it. And just when Thor clenches his teeth, his legs pulling taut and balls tightening at the pleasure, Loki hums, the bastard.
“Loki. Loki, I’m—” Thor manages, fingers twitching at Loki’s scalp, the tension at the base of his spine cresting until he’s about to spill.
Loki grins, wicked, and circles the base of Thor’s cock with a finger, binding it with a golden thread of seiðr. “You will have your pleasure,” says Loki, “but I shall take mine first.”
“Brother, please,” Thor begs. He wants Loki inside him, to fill him until Thor begs for mercy, pleading Loki for harder, faster, more until he’s screaming for his own release. He fits his mouth to Loki’s, reveling in the taste of himself on Loki’s lips, the way Loki takes command of their kiss, sliding his tongue deep into Thor’s throat, but it’s not nearly enough—he wants Loki to fill him in every way, to plunge his tongue deeper into Thor’s mouth, to push himself into Thor until he finds the sweet nub of flesh that will have Thor crying out on every stroke. “Want you,” he breathes, and he wants so much that his chest heaves with the effort. “Want you inside me.”
“Yes,” Loki hisses, pushing Thor back against the headboard, crawling his way up the length of Thor’s body, each press of his hands against Thor’s hips, his torso, his neck the practiced motions of a hunter stalking its prey.
Thor releases a breathy moan as Loki pushes apart Thor’s legs with his knees, his hands braced by Thor’s head. Tries and fails to hold in the needy sounds he makes when Loki seals their mouths together in a greedy kiss, one that leaves Thor’s lips swollen and red and steals the breath from his lungs, a desperate, hungry thing that lets Thor know just how much Loki wants in return. He gasps into Loki’s mouth, a burning ache in his lungs for lack of air, and surges forward, to claim his fill of Loki’s taste and breathe his air.
“Loki,” Thor pleads. “Need you.” He rakes his fingers over the line of Loki’s pale shoulders, relishing the needy hiss that Loki makes. Takes pleasure in the way it makes Loki rut forward, his cock bumping into Thor’s belly, angry and red, leaking a trail down Thor’s navel.
“Patience, Thor,” says Loki, but for all that, he presses two fingers into Thor at once, grinning sharp at the way he gasps at the intrusion.
“Mmhnn.” Thor shifts his ass until it’s flush against the base of Loki’s fingers, trying to get used to the burn. When he feels sufficiently stretched, he hisses, “Give me you. All of you. Now.”
“Like this?” Loki asks coyly, guiding his cock to the tight ring of muscle, then letting it slide out and against the crease of Thor’s ass. He scrapes a fingernail against Thor’s cock, teasing. Swipes his thumb through the pool of precome pooling on Thor’s belly and dribbles it over Thor’s hole, before slicking his own cock with it. He presses his cock against Thor again, but just when Thor thinks Loki will press inside him, he slides out again on purpose, this time bumping against the flesh behind Thor’s balls.
“Enough,” Thor growls in frustration, and when Loki thinks to tease him again, sliding the head of his cock against the pucker of his ass, Thor surges forward, gripping Loki’s hips to press him down and in, until—yes, there—his cock presses the slightest bit inside, and Thor cries out, a soft yelp of surprise as Loki sinks into Thor.
It is the only concession Loki allows him, as he wrests Thor’s hands from his hips and pins them on either side of the pillow.
“You will take what I give you,” Loki snarls, even as he sinks further in. He continues advancing, slow, pausing each time Thor whimpers or shivers at the pressure. And when he is all the way in, when his hips are flush with Thor’s, Loki stills, and they lie there, breathing each other’s air in the quiet darkness.
“Move,” Thor pleads. He bucks his hips even as Loki traps his wrists. Loki ignores him, laving his tongue along the line of Thor’s jaw, maddeningly still where they are connected. Thor attempts to sit up, to reach for Loki’s hips with eager hands, but Loki tightens his grip on Thor’s wrists, pressing them, painful, into the sheets.
“You will remember what I have told you today,” he says, punctuating each word with a nipping kiss to the flesh of Thor’s neck. “Repeat the words back to me.”
“Loki,” Thor protests, whining and straining against his restraints, soft and sinuous as they are. He tries again to shift his hips, to urge Loki to move, but Loki only laughs, low and wicked, and traps Thor beneath him with an extra hard push that digs into that spot inside him. Has Thor crying out, startled at the unexpected prod.
“The words, Thor,” Loki whispers, his voice harsh, his breath against Thor’s ear hot and wet like the brand of heat Thor is clenched around.
“My body,” Thor gasps into Loki’s neck. “My blood, my essence—everything—yours.”
“And?” prompts Loki softly. “What else?”
“My life. All of it, yours, Loki, please, please—” The last word is little more than a sob.
At this, Loki allows their dynamic to shift, freeing Thor’s arms from his grasp. He lets Thor reach for him, and Thor does, his hands closing greedily around Loki’s neck, his ankles digging into Loki’s back as he pulls Loki into him, guiding him deeper as Loki drives breathy cries from Thor by force.
“Loki—Loki, please, more—” Thor gasps, fingers curling shakily around Loki’s shoulders.
“More,” Loki concedes, nodding. He wraps his arms under and around Thor’s shoulders, keeping him in place as he drives into Thor, with harsh, brutal thrusts that have Thor keening and twisting beneath him.
Yes, thinks Thor; this is what he wants, to have Loki close, to have Loki deep inside him, on him, in him, filling the space around Thor, an affirmation, a reassurance for both of them that they are here, that they are alive.
“Louder,” urges Loki, and Thor throws his head back and cries out all the harder, that Loki may know each gasp, each cry he wrings from Thor is all for him.
It must please Loki the way Thor thinks it does, because he grins into Thor’s neck, pressing kisses like promises into his skin. He whispers words of endearment, of love, of pet names they had for each other when they were young, into the hollow of Thor’s neck, the softness of his ear, his lips a brand of fire as he kisses Thor’s cheeks and nips at Thor’s lower lip.
And when Thor’s cries turn into lengthy, incoherent moans, Loki urges Thor’s ankles off his back and slides them over his shoulders, pressing in deep again, until Thor is bent almost in half, barely able to breathe. Loki presses fingers into the curve of Thor’s shoulders, eager and hungry, thumbs clenching hard into his clavicles, the force of his grip heartened by the way Thor’s cock leaks against his own belly, proof of how much he wants Loki in return.
“Thor, I—” Loki gasps, strained. “I’m—ah—” He braces himself to pull out of Thor before Thor wraps his arms around Loki’s shoulders and tugs him in.
“Spend inside me,” Thor breathes. “I want it. I want it.”
The words must trigger something in Loki, because he slams his hips in, once, twice, and spends with such force that Thor thinks he can feel it all the way up in his throat. He’s sure that if Loki had not spent inside him, it might have streaked across Thor’s torso, uneven dashes that would paint the length of Thor’s body, from navel to jaw. Loki chokes out a keening cry as he spills, his fingers scrabbling at Thor’s thighs for purchase, and his hand lights on Thor’s injured thigh, gripping hard.
Thor winces, and without quite meaning to, whimpers in pain, a soft, hurt noise. Perhaps he could have bore it, had circumstances been different, but Loki has torn down his defences, has made him vulnerable in all the ways only Loki knows how, and the pleasure from before only makes the pain that lances through his leg all the more unbearable.
“You fool,” Loki says, horrified, as a blot of fresh, crimson blood blooms beneath the bandage. He lets Thor’s legs slip from his shoulders, and slows the motion of his hips, realization having come at Thor’s cry of pain, so at odds with those of pleasure. “You imbecile. I told you were not well enough and still—”
“Loki, please,” whispers Thor, and it borders on a whine with how desperate he is for it, despite the pain. “Finish this first.”
With a long-suffering sigh, Loki undoes the binding of seiðr around Thor’s cock and strokes him to completion, but spends the next while redressing Thor’s bandages, assessing the damage beneath.
“You are supposed to let the apples do their work,” Loki says, waspish, though his voice lacks the edge he reserves for when he is truly angry.
“Yes, yes,” Thor nods, hiding a watery smile. He takes Loki’s scolding in stride because it’s punctuated with angry, nipping kisses. And when Loki has finished with dressing the injury, he cuddles against Thor’s chest, pushing his way into Thor’s arms.
That is, until he remembers himself and rolls away from the comfort of Thor’s arms, vindictive.
By the time Thor is close to slumber, though, they are curled back together, pliant and warm like two cozy peas in a fluff-lined pod.
It is not even dawn yet when Loki nudges Thor awake.
Thor curls into him with a soft moan; it is too early to get up and too early for breakfast, so he noses at the nape of Loki’s neck, seeking his warmth in the cool air of early morning. Perhaps if he nuzzles Loki long enough, Thor can convince him to stay abed a moment longer.
Loki turns and quickly places his hand over Thor’s mouth, an unspoken, age-old gesture that he needs Thor to be silent—which is when Thor hears the hoarse, dry moans of the draugar. Their telltale death rattle and mindless clicking of teeth. Loki motions toward the door with his eyes, and it strikes Thor then that the creatures are just outside.
A thud sounds against the door, followed by an assortment of shuffling, shambling sounds. The draugar must have broken through the fortifications and barriers that Thor and the other Avengers had erected to hold the lower floors. By now, the main lobby is likely overrun.
Thor looks to Loki for guidance, as stealth has always been Loki’s forte. They could throw open the doors and kill the draugar that have gathered outside, but with no of way of knowing just how many are out there, they could soon be outnumbered. He summons Mjölnir regardless, reassured when she leaps into his hand.
“Loki?” he whispers desperately, breaking the silence. Loki glares at him and tightens his hand over Thor’s mouth. The sound of hoarse moaning and thudding decreases, and for one glorious, foolish moment, Thor thinks they can fight their way out of the room and warn the others, perhaps even hold the breach.
He is just about to suggest it, when the door splinters inward, and a horde of draugar pour into the room, swarming toward them on the bed.
Without warning, Loki slips his arms around Thor’s waist and twists them away, as if he has pinched together the very edges of the fabric of reality and folded them to a place elsewhere. They land in a tangled heap of arms and legs in the room where Clint and Natasha sleep. All of the Avengers sleep in groups now: Clint with Natasha, Steve, Tony and Bruce together, and of course Loki with Thor.
Thor rights himself quickly, untangling himself from his brother. “My friends,” Thor whispers as loudly as he dares, shaking Natasha’s shoulder, “we must go.” Loki simply jabs Clint in the chest, startling him awake.
Natasha blinks groggily. “Okay, this trumps all the weird dreams I’ve ever had.” She lifts a perfect brow. “I never thought I’d dream of you and Loki being naked.”
Thor blinks back, confused, just as Loki huffs a sigh, and mutters something that sounds like priorities, before conjuring a set of clothes as close to their full armour as he can for Thor and himself.
They do not tarry for long; by the time Clint and Natasha have grabbed their weapons, Loki is already impatiently shepherding them to the room of the last few Avengers.
“So you’re saying we just have to up and run?” Tony whispers, when Clint relates the danger of their abode now. “We’re talking about leaving our home—our everything.” He rakes a hand through his hair. “You’re sure about this?”
Clint jerks a thumb in Thor and Loki’s direction. “They are.”
Loki nods. “I have sent out duplicates of myself to survey the tower. With the exception of the laboratory and the top two floors, the tower has been overrun.” He pauses, before his haughty demeanor drops, and he hunches his shoulders, as if curling in on himself. “I—I am sorry, I was too preoccupied with—I was tending to—” Loki stops and says frankly, “I let the wards drop. The fault is mine.” His voice cracks oddly on the last word, as if bordering on a sob.
Steve lays a hand on Loki’s shoulder, kind. “You were worried about your brother. It happens. Besides, we wouldn’t have lasted this long without you.”
Thor slips his arm around Loki’s waist, stroking careful fingers along his side to soothe. “The fault lies with no one, Loki.”
They all look toward Tony, because he is the one who has housed them through all of this, has come up with the zany schemes to forage for food and supplies, and is one half of their research division. He will come up with the plan for their extrication, or have the final say on what they will do.
To their surprise, Tony has no plan.
He rests against the wall, sliding down until his knees touch his chin. “Well, so much for the last stand here and all. Thanks, guys; Scouts camp’s been fun, but the bears have stormed the camp.” He laughs, a bitter, hollow sound in which Thor can read volumes of heartbreak and loss, and in truth, this blow must hit him harder than most, because the tower is his, was his home before it was theirs, and he starts forward to offer words of comfort. Steve and Bruce, however, are well ahead of him.
“What now?” asks Tony, holding his head in his hands. For once, it terrifies Thor, to see Tony, the one who has all the answers, all the flippant but workable ideas, at a loss.
Steve and Bruce have each rested a hand on Tony’s shoulders. “If we need to, we’ll bring the fight to them,” says Steve, squeezing Tony’s shoulder.
“But first we’ll need to prepare our arsenal,” nods Bruce. “And salvage what we can of the research we’ve made headway into.” He prods at Tony’s knee. “Remember how far we’ve gotten? How we’re this close to figuring out a way to use the apples?”
Tony sucks in a breath. “Yeah. Yeah, okay.” He closes his eyes. “I guess we could—yeah.” When he opens his eyes, he gives Bruce a weak, watery smile. “You’re right. We’re so close. If we give up now—everyone’s screwed, right?”
“That’s right,” nods Bruce. “It’s up to us to figure this out. You’re with us, aren’t you?”
“Yeah,” Tony says, rolling his shoulders, as if he is working himself up toward something. “Yeah.”
Thor beams at Tony, and kneels down to meet his eyes. “We will make it through this,” he says. “Together.” He stands and offers Tony a hand, which Tony reaches for gratefully, and hoists him to a standing position.
“Together,” Tony nods, breathing in deep again, steeling his resolve. When Loki’s back is turned, Tony winks at Thor and thumps him on the back. “It’s good to have you back, by the way,” he whispers, conspiratorially. “Loki’s a scary little shit when you’re down for the count.”
Thor frowns; he thinks it ironic that for all he had been terrified he would lose Loki, he was the one who had nearly left Loki alone.
As if he has sensed Thor’s tumultuous thoughts, Loki turns to touch fingers to Thor’s elbow, gentle. At the contact, Thor remembers that they are both still here, they are both still alive and they will make it through this, together.
Bruce herds Tony to the laboratory to gather what they can of their research, while the others fan out to still-safe rooms to hunt for provisions for their journey.
“There’s a small, independent lab I used to work at,” Bruce had said, before they spread out to gather supplies. “It’s unlikely to have been broken into by the draugar, mainly because it’s below ground. Tony and I can continue our research there, and there’s plenty of room for all of us.”
His words are like a beacon of hope, giving them focus. A goal.
In the next half-hour after, Loki spells all their bags to remain lightweight but to hold more than they physically can, and Thor and the others busy themselves with trying to pack what provisions they can from areas not overrun by the draugar. Thor grabs bottles of water, sliding them carefully and soundlessly into a pack, while Loki slips dried foods and non-perishables into his.
When Natasha and Clint move onto loading up on ammunition and readying their arsenal, Thor makes sure Mjölnir is hitched securely to his belt. He is never far from her these days.
Tony gathers his suit of iron into a small metal case. Thor has been informed numerous times that it is actually made of a gold-titanium alloy, but Tony stopped pointing it out when Thor once called him Gold-And-Titanium-Alloy Man, agreeing once and for all that ‘iron’ was so much simpler. He will likely rig a charging unit or power supply where they are headed, or ask Thor to charge it through Mjölnir’s power. Steve joins them with his own pack, armed with his armor and shield.
When they are ready to set out, Loki casts a spell of invisibility over them, alongside spells meant to mask their movement and smell from the draugar. Thor is about to ask for an additional spell for Natasha and Clint, before remembering they still have an extra layer of protection in the amulets from Frigga. During the gathering of supplies, they told Thor they had tried to return the amulets to Loki, so that he and Thor could use them, but Loki would have none of it.
Thor smiles at the thought. Smiles at Loki.
Loki scowls back. Focus, he seems to say.
They all move as one entity, making their way down the emergency staircase, winding their way through the clusters of draugar stumbling aimlessly between floors. Bruce leads them to the little-used entrance of the Avengers tower, where delivery trucks used to unload their wares, taking care to remain quiet. He presses the door open carefully, all of them waiting with bated breath for a sound—a creak or telltale squeak of the door—to give their location away and set the horde of draugar on them.
It opens with a soft swish that does not draw the attention of the draugar, and Bruce herds them out quickly before closing the door just as gently.
As soon as Thor exits the tower, he catches up with Loki, slipping one hand into his. Loki glowers at him, as if to reprimand him about the foolishness of not having both hands free, in case of attack, before giving in and tightening his fingers around Thor’s. The other Avengers follow suit, and in no time at all, they all form what Tony will later term the “Kindergarten Buddy System”. Clint links hands with Natasha, while Tony loosely clutches Bruce’s shirt. Steve twists trembling fingers into the hem of Tony’s sweatshirt.
The conglomerate of Bruce-Tony-Steve leads the vanguard forward, winding through back alleys and narrow streets, taking care to avoid the draugar where they can. Thor watches old, tattered newspapers flutter by as they creep through the streets. Maneuvers around vehicles abandoned by the sides of the road, some even in the middle of the thoroughfare, as if their owners had simply left the vehicle mid-journey and never come back.
It is incredibly silent, so unlike New York with its usual lively hustle and bustle, that it makes something churn uncomfortably in Thor’s stomach. This is not the Midgard he had grown to love, and he feels bereft at the loss of its people, the Midgardians who always did so much with the time they were allotted.
Yes, Thor thinks, as he looks at his teammates, unflinching in their own resolve. I will do anything I can to help them.
He is startled out of his thoughts by Loki’s tug on his hand. Look, Loki motions with his head, and points.
Piles of burnt bodies litter the streets, blackened and charred, the remnants of bonfires that had sputtered out. Loki prods at what looks like a mass of bone and ash with a stick, and a mottled grey arm springs out of the pile, limp; these are the remains of reanimated corpses, these small hills remnants of their broken flesh. Made when there were still more people than them to make bonfires.
Bruce turns to looks behind him as they trudge past the piles of smoking flesh. Not much farther, he mouths, motioning at their destination with his head.
They follow him to a manhole obscured by two tall buildings. Draugar mill about at the mouths of the street, but thankfully, none have wandered into this junction between the buildings.
Tony gestures frantically, pointing to the manhole cover. How are we going to lift that without a ton of noise?
With a smile, Bruce lifts the cover soundlessly. Instead of metal, it is a small, plastic hatch disguised to look like a manhole cover. He ushers them all down the sturdy metal ladder, before following them in and closing the hatch. Leads them through a labyrinth of tunnels, and crank doors fitted with extra latch handles and deadbolts.
“Here we are,” Bruce says finally, reaching out into what seems like a dark gloom, and pulling a chain, bathing the entire chamber in muted, white-green light.
“Wow,” breathes Steve. “Just. Wow.”
There are several grand archways set into the structure of the chamber. Each is supported by thick columns of not-quite brick, some spiraled into beautiful, twisting shapes, while others are marred with sharp, jagged edges, or wicked spikes. Upon closer inspection, Thor notices that the supporting columns are engraved with runes, but these are not runes that Thor knows.
He touches his fingers to the archaic architecture. The design of their abode does not follow any laws of geometry that he knows, and he sees Loki eyeing it curiously as well. Mortar crumbles slightly at his touch, skittering over his fingers, but the overall masonry appears impossibly strong. He wonders if Bruce had had this place built to withstand his prior transformations into the Hulk. Or more likely purchased the place, from zealots who worshipped strange gods, and made it his own. He will not question Bruce’s judgment, though; not when they have finally found a place to rest and regroup.
Tony, however, has other ideas. Questions.
“Where did you find this place?” asks Tony, nearly stumbling on some uneven stone steps. He looks up at the dusty light fixtures, wan fluorescents that flicker ominously, and eyes the drip drip coming from pipes overhead. “It’s like it came straight from a Lovecraftian novel.”
“Well,” says Bruce, sounding rather put out, “when I said independent lab, I meant private. And by private, I meant—” He adjust his glasses to perch just so on his nose. “It’s mine,” he huffs, finally. “I mean, it is now. I’ve made upgrades,” he adds, proudly. He spreads his palms to refer to the small touches and improvements he has made, from the added door locks to the presence of hand-cranked generators that provide their power.
“Oh,” Tony blinks. He breaks into a grin that is much too wide to be genuine. “It’s a little subterranean, but it’ll do,” he nods approvingly. “Seriously though, are you hiding one of the Old Ones down here?”
Bruce casts his eyes toward the pipes, where a ceiling would be, in a gesture of exasperation. “The only ‘Old Ones’ here would probably be those two,” he says, pointing at Thor and Loki. “Now put what we have of the first-stage vaccines down on that lab bench over there. Gently. We have work to do.”
For now, Thor and the others ignore the ornate strangeness of the place, and settle into the smaller chambers that Bruce points them to. Loki sets up bedding with Thor’s help, drawing from Mjölnir’s own well of seiðr to transfigure rubble of what seem like ruins into rudimentary bed frames and mattresses.
Steve and Clint head out to scout the underground for a source of fresh water, while Tony and Bruce pore over their previous results. Natasha secures the perimeter, checking for vulnerabilities, though evidently she still feels edgy, walking the perimeter three times over.
“Thor,” Loki croaks, when he has finished transforming the last rubble into a bed. Thor catches Loki before his knees buckle beneath him, and scoops Loki into his arms without question.
“My brother needs rest,” Thor explains, when Tony looks up from his work as they pass by.
“Oh, right. Yeah, you guys totally deserve it,” Tony nods. He tips Thor a wink. “Just make sure not to be too loud. Stuff really echoes down here, y’know?”
Thor laughs softly. Loki is already dozing lightly in his arms, fatigued by the amount of energy and seiðr he has exhausted for the sake of Thor and his friends. “I shall remember that,” says Thor, “but Loki may be another matter entirely.”
He leaves Tony to make whatever assumptions he will as he carries Loki away, and true to form, Tony sputters after them, his face the hue of Midgard’s ripest tomatoes.
In the end, it only takes one errant comment from Tony for things to escalate out of proportion.
“Guess it’s kinda fitting that the vaccine for this draugar infection should be made in an underground research lab, huh?” he says, elbowing Bruce, when they are in the final stages of completing their vaccine. The dosage and makeup of the new vaccines have long since been recalibrated, to account for Loki’s earlier duplication of the apples.
The others go very silent and still. “Why, exactly,” Bruce asks slowly, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose, “would it be fitting?”
Tony blinks. “Oh,” he says sheepishly, “guess I dropped the ball on that one; we were sort of more preoccupied with looking for food at the time.” He looks to Thor and Loki. “Little help here, guys?”
Loki sighs. “He means that there is a kind of perverse poetry in the fact that the draugar infection itself was created in a lab, in much the same conditions as this one.” He goes on to relate the things he had seen when Fury sent him out to investigate a remote outpost where the infection had supposedly first broken out.
“Wait,” Steve says, “so you’re saying this whole thing, this massive catastrophe and all the—this is all SHIELD’s doing?”
Clint grits his teeth. “I always knew there was something was weird about this.”
Though Tony was the one who instigated this growing distrust of SHIELD, he is also the one to bring the situation back under control. “Look, I get it,” he says. “We don’t trust the powers that be anymore. But think of it like this: whatever we accomplish here, whatever we’ve done up until now, this is for the people. For mankind. We’re not doing this for SHIELD.”
“He’s right,” Steve says finally, after several moments of utter silence. “We’ve got nothing to gain by pointing fingers anyway. Let’s just get back to what we were doing.”
Later, Tony starts the first trials. They have a steady supply of mice in the underground, and so Tony injects a mouse with a sample of saliva rife with the draugar virus. Within a minute, he injects the same mouse with the vaccine he and Bruce seem to have perfected.
They will know within an hour if the vaccine is effective.
When the hour is up, they all find the mouse still sniffing and scratching curiously at its makeshift cage.
By the time the day is over, the mouse is still very much alive, nibbling at a piece of jerky Bruce drops into its cage, its whiskers twitching as it shreds its food into edible strips.
When he’s finished inspecting the mouse for the last time that day, Tony drops all pretences and bounds over to hug Thor and Loki both. The others follow suit, enveloping them in various permutations of hugs, from awkward and one-armed to full-on, crushing embraces.
“Thank you,” rasps Tony. “Thank you.” There are tears in his eyes when he looks up.
“But your human trials have yet to—” Loki starts, before Thor pulls him close and silences him with a kiss.
“Let them have this, brother,” Thor whispers, squeezing Loki’s shoulder. “They need it.”
Loki stops, and Thor notes the moment Loki really sees, the desperation and relief both of their teammates, as he nods his agreement; their failures have been so many and close between, that each success is dear and must be cherished all the more.
It is not long, however, before Loki brings up the subject of human test subjects again. After all, a vaccine that is not utilized is, for the most part, useless.
“Good point,” Tony says. “Where are we going to find a live human test subject for this? We can’t exactly waltz up to the surface and use a megaphone to call the humans to us. Or ask the draugar, ‘Excuse me, have you seen an unmauled human, with brains and internal organs preferably still intact?’”
“How about me?” Steve suggests. “I’m a human experiment already. It couldn’t hurt to be one more.”
“How about no,” Tony replies instantly. “If things go south, the last thing we need is a draugr supersoldier on our hands.”
Thor thinks to suggest himself or Loki, but Aesir and Jötnar physiologies are likely affected differently by the course of this disease. Besides, Loki would only call him a self-sacrificing twit and have his hide for it.
“I’ll do it,” says Natasha. She bares her arm and steps up to Tony. “If I turn, you guys shouldn’t have any trouble taking me out.”
“Nat, no. What are you doing?” Clint hisses. He bares his arm also and crowds closer to Tony. “Use me instead.”
“There you are, then,” Loki says, his smile grim. “You certainly have no dearth of volunteers.”
Tony and Bruce take extreme care in explaining the procedure to Clint, before strapping him down and sterilising his skin. Loki hums and nods thoughtfully as he listens, but there are terms Thor does not understand. Regardless, he nods when Loki nods, and throws in the occasional hmm, maintaining a façade of comprehension until they are ushered out of the chamber to give Clint a moment of privacy. Clint will have a chance to say the things he needs to, to the people he wants to, before the virus is applied. The vaccine is to follow almost immediately after.
“Be honest,” Loki says, when they are back in their own chamber. The crude bedframe of stone does not creak under their weight, a fact Thor is thankful for when he takes Loki against it most nights. “Did you understand any of that?”
Thor’s throat dries as he speaks. “I—no,” he says, deflating a little. He is no fool, but even on Asgard, he left such matters as these to the healers. Thor turns to Loki, hopeful for an explanation, as Loki has long translated things into phrases he can understand.
Loki touches the small of Thor’s back, reassuring. “Think of everything to be under the blanket term ‘science’,” he says. “In time, however, your mortals will call it nothing short of a ‘miracle’.”
“Ah,” says Thor. That, he does understand, and together, he and Loki share a knowing smile.
“Now then,” Loki grins coyly, his hand dipping beneath the waist of Thor’s trousers. He trails clever, daring fingers over Thor’s cock. “Shall we engage in a pre-emptive celebration of the vaccine’s success?”
“You sound rather assured of success,” Thor frowns, stilling Loki’s hand. “We have yet to find proof it will even work. What if Clint—”
Loki flaps his free hand and huffs, exasperated. “It worked on you, did it not? Their vaccine will not be as potent, no, but it will serve for the Midgardians and their frailer bodies.”
“Oh.” Thor grins back, his expression equally hungry and sharp as he cups Loki’s cheek and surges forward to meet his mouth. “Then pre-emptively celebrate we shall.”
It is another month before Bruce and Tony can create enough of the vaccine to help a large batch of survivors, as their resources in Bruce’s lab are limited. Loki is responsible for replicating a large volume of the new apples, while Steve is relegated to filling the clean syringes they have on hand for injection.
Clint and Natasha are put in charge of scouring the city, and in their reconnaissance, find small pockets of survivors, holed in underground shelters and more rural homes where the draugar were fewer and farther between. When the vaccine is ready, he, Natasha and Steve travel by foot, with small kits, to inoculate the survivors against the virus.
In time, Tony and Bruce start circulating more kits, instructing Thor and Loki in the art of giving vaccines.
They use their status as Avengers to gain the people’s trust; it seems that their names are still worth something, at least. Both Thor and Loki traverse the city, tacking news bulletins regarding the vaccine to telephone poles, bulletin boards, broad spans of blank wall and shop windows.
As a result, more and more people emerge from hiding, clustering in small groups at the locations advertised in the Avengers’ notices, for vaccination.
“Does this really work?” asks a small child once, watching Thor with wide eyes.
Loki is about to snap some form of You hardly have a choice, when Clint cuts in, “Yeah. I got bitten by a drau—one of them after I got it. And look at me.” He jerks a thumb toward himself, manages a feeble grin. “Still here. Still me.”
The children end up flocking to Clint like small ducklings, pawing at his legs with their tiny hands for autographs and lifts into the air. And because they have won over the children, have given them a sliver of hope that brings the brightness and joy back into their eyes, the adults follow suit, and quickly.
Thor would not have guessed Clint could become the poster boy for this new cure they are trying to promote. If anyone, he thought it would be Steve, known for being America’s beloved golden hero, but this is what it is.
Their efforts draw the attention of SHIELD bases that had gone to ground when the disaster started, small clusters of agents who had survived in secret fallout shelters. Communications are re-established between different bases and though the Avengers are initially grudging in their cooperation, even they can see the need for SHIELD’s resources. Within several more months, the vaccines are being produced on an international scale, with agents and recruited survivors primed to spread the vaccine to less accessible areas.
Thor feels a measure of hope when he hears on the one re-established radio network that the Midgardians have begun to fight back, not having to worry about falling ill when bitten by the infected. He does not yet know if other countries, other continents in Midgard have progressed as far as they have here, but what he does know is that right here, in New York, the living are taking back their city.
And this, this is a start; the start of everything again, instead of the end.
“What are you looking at?” Loki asks, winding his arms around Thor’s waist from behind. He hooks his chin over Thor’s shoulder, watching as an organized group of people herd draugar into an old, half-destroyed building and bar them in, before methodically and permanently silencing each one. Others pile half-twitching corpses into the ruins of apartment buildings, before setting the structures ablaze. “Oh, I see,” Loki says drily. “I suppose your mortals are a more welcoming vista than the draugar we have grown used to.”
“Loki,” Thor chides gently. He rests a palm over the knot of Loki’s hands around him, warm from the sun’s early glow.
They stand on the rooftop of a ruined skyscraper, overlooking Midtown Manhattan. Thor can see the Avengers tower from here, a home which he and the others, like most Midgardians, have plans underway to reclaim.
“They are fighting back,” says Thor, as he watches the people below. It warms his heart so, to know that he has helped them in this fight to survive. “This is the spirit of the Midgardians that I know.”
“Yes, that ‘spirit’ you speak of will last quite some time, I think,” Loki says sourly, as Thor shifts out of Loki’s grasp and turns to envelope Loki in his arms. “There may be unnaturally long life in them because of the apples we made the vaccine from. Though,” Loki adds grudgingly, “I suppose they are a hardy race of people. Look at them: forced to become a warrior race to stave off elimination, with the product of seiðr flowing in their veins.” Loki stops suddenly, his eyes aglow with delight. “Oh.” He laughs against Thor’s mouth, soft and low.
“What amuses you so, brother?” Thor asks.
“We have won,” Loki explains. His eyes are positively gleaming with mirth now. “We have succeeded.”
Thor furrows his brow. “In what?” That they have helped his friends and their people stave off elimination, giving them the chance to thrive again is success enough, but there’s something else here, something Loki is eager to reveal, to demonstrate how clever he’s been—
“Remaking the human race in our image,” Loki grins. “With your example of brute might and my seiðr, we have reforged this world. This is a world made new, by our hands. ”
Thor sighs; he knows better than to argue over what Loki considers a victory. Instead, he pulls Loki close, against the wind that buffets them at this altitude, thinking to claim Loki’s mouth fully and thoroughly. But when Loki starts pressing a flurry of light, fluttering kisses to his cheeks and lips, Thor draws back, surprised.
“Oh?” Thor asks, smiling. “What are these for?”
“I don’t suppose your friends’ betting pool is still on, do you?” Loki says cheekily. “So that we may bet on ourselves and win?”
Thor laughs, and hitches Loki closer in his arms. “Not likely,” he says, pressing his lips firmly to Loki’s brow, once, twice, then kissing his mouth. Loki tastes of buttered syrup in fresh fallen snow, the flavours of Midgard’s coming winter, and Thor licks boldly into his mouth, unconcerned of the audience they may have. “But it does not hurt to try.”
[End]
(Coda: Keepsakes Eternal)
* Note: The lab mentioned in the latter part is a hybrid of the underground bunker in Skyfall, seen here, and concept designs of R’lyeh, found here and here.
