brandingproblem | au shenanigans for icasm

Loki doesn't do this all the time. For one thing he, himself, barely sleeps in the first place and both parties being asleep is more or less necessary for it to work.

For another he's not trying to drive Clint mad. Not really. And Midgardians need their dreams. So. It's not an all the time event.

But sometimes. Tonight. Tonight Clint's dreams start out however his subconscious chooses except Loki is there. Present in an un-dreamlike way. A subversive sense of reality wedged into the otherwise unreal.

And so Clint has two options: he can continue the dream and deal with Loki in the time between it's end and Clint being entirely awake. You know. During such sensations as body paralysis. Or he can interrupt his own dream. Direct himself at Loki. See what happens.

Waking up, though? Not on the menu yet.

Dreams of Loki are not unusual.

They are much rarer than they used to be, in the immediate aftermath of his brain being played with. The months and years after. Dreams of Loki had been far too common for his liking. But now? They are few and far between, and they don't become nightmares with any regularity anymore. Just a reminder. Just a fear. Background radiation.

Until recently. Recently, now and again, once in a while. A dream with Loki wrapped within it. Not a focus, not a manifestation of fear or anger. He simply seems to exist around it, in spite of it. Clint hasn't always noticed how strange he is, but now he does. That he sticks out, like he's on a different wavelength or frequency than everything else around him.

Lucid dreaming has never been something he put much stock in. A dream is a dream, forgotten before the clouds in the mind have dissipated fully. In this dream, he is on a hunt. In this dream, he doesn't know what he's hunting, but he knows he's on the right track. This forest is dark and deep and full of animals. He doesn't feel afraid. There's a path under his feet, like asphalt. And Loki is there.

Not the focus. Not the forefront. But he is there, and there is something wrong and something real. Real? Real. In a way that all this is not.

He tries to ignore it for several steps, steps he can't count because time and distance and numbers themselves don't pass in any meaningful way in a dream. But Loki is there, pressing in on this reality. It's wrong. It's all wrong. Is it Loki he's hunting? Has it been all along? There aren't any lights at the end of this road. He can't see the end of the road. The ambient sounds of the woods echo around. Loki is there. There is a moment when he feels like he forgets which way is up, like he might fall right into the sky.

He brings his weapon to bear on Loki. The bow is simple, wood, sturdy and reliable. Worn from use. The arrow is notched. He seems so real. Please, don't be real. His feet step off the path, and somehow that feels wrong. Like he's going to be lost for sure. The bow creaks under his hands. He doesn't loose the arrow. It would go, he knows, right between the eyes. He doesn't loose it.

He's not sure what it all means.

Does he know what happens if Clint looses that arrow? Loki won't be able to dodge it. He is not in control here, not really, which is why Clint has to come to him in the first place. He imagines it won't kill him.

Some sort of enchanted sleep seems likely. Or a coma. Not that there's much of a difference.

To say he'd rather not find out firsthand is putting it lightly.

They're in the woods. Loki has no shoes on; the ground cover is cool beneath his feet. His clothes are loose and he's unarmed.

Upsetting. But he's not in charge, is he?

He could run. He could become the thing Clint is hunting. That would be... interesting. Potentially rather sexually charged, when all is said and done. Loki really only understands certain ways of being prey. But interesting nonetheless.

He's clearly considering it. Eyes shifting to behind Clint towards the path he's turned from. But he hasn't decided and suddenly Clint is too close. He swallows. Not fear. Hesitation. The telltale amusement.

Should I run? Asked but not spoken. An understanding, a voice in Clint's head that is familiar and undemanding both.

It's like deer, Clint suddenly thinks. Quiet, slow, don't spook or they'll run. But this is Loki, and he isn't spooked. But he's got that stare like a deer, and his feet are frozen in place. Is this Clint's prey? Will he run if shot at?

His feet stop, and the sounds of the woods go mute. It's the two of them, now, and there's a voice in his head that aren't words said aloud and aren't in his own voice, and then all he hears is his own breathing, heavier and harder than it has any reason to be. He is hunting. (This is just a dream.) He is hunting Loki. (This is not just a dream.) Is the god really there, is he really whispering in his head, all the little nightmares he put behind him coming back to the forefront? Will he open his eyes, see through an unnatural blue, find that he's out hurting the ones he loves?

This could be the easiest kill. He doesn't even have to use a bow. He could close the distance and pull the knife from his boot and slit. Loki might let him. Loki might want him to.

"Wouldn't be worth the effort if you just stand there all pathetic." He says the words, and they seem distant but distinct, in the strange way dreams feel. (And Loki is not distant and strange. He is something that feels real in unreality. His brain is still trying to parse that. An intrusion? Who is in control here?) "Are you worth my time? Might have bigger game to hunt."

His tongue darts out and wets Loki's lips. Well. He understands the taunt enough, he thinks, hands balling into fists and then dropping open, too aware of Clint's own breathing, a loud pulse corresponding in his own brain.

Not that that is particularly unusual. For Loki, anyway; he's somewhat used to it being drowned out by the noise of existence otherwise. Here, in Clint's mind, it's different.

There's not a solid decision between standing there and fleeing. He doesn't remember turning away from Clint. One moment he's still and the next he's in motion, surrounded by trees, trying not to make much noise, trying to push aside the sense of thrill that overtakes his fear near immediately.

Wanting to be caught is one thing. Wanting to be a good hunt is perhaps not an unrelated other thing.

It's impossible to tell how long he runs for. Hours? Minutes? Long enough for the rules of the nonreality to state that he becomes tired. Exhausted. Thirsty. His hair sticks to the side of his face, his neck. He tries to listen for the hunter but can't focus on it for very long, the need to flee becoming too pressing for him to remain motionless.

There have been close calls already.

His magic is there but inaccessible. Like a river beyond a mountain. No less true but also not helpful in the moment.

There's a ruin, or a cabin, that Loki becomes aware of. A trap, perhaps. Safer than trying to find open water, either way. There's no door, just an archway. Either he will go in and find that Clint is already there or he will go in and be followed. Trapped.

He goes inside.

Loki flees, barefoot, into the underbrush, into the trees, and something in Clint sings. This hunter. Lets the god go for the sake of fairness.

But not too fair.

Because Loki is an intruder unwelcome guest prey monster, and Clint Barton Does Not Miss. When he gives hunting chase, he does not fire, because he wants to run his prey down and then drive him out thoroughly, completely. Sometimes his boot rustles leaves a little too much, and Loki darts off again, just out of sight. It's exciting. He's having fun with this.

He thinks, maybe, that Loki is having fun with this, too.

But this is his mind, his dream, and he knows these woods. Or his mind tells him he knows them. When Loki ducks into the only standing building in the area, he knows this, too. Out in the woods he would run off to when he snuck away from the building full of other kids--out where civilization fell away for at least a little while, but the touch of people still remained. Knew better than to go poking around in dilapidated buildings. Did anyway. The door is gone. Most of the windows are still there but dusted, warped. Clint perches in a tree to observe if Loki will come out, or if he will try to rest there.

Or if he's being baited. One of them is. He can't tell if he's baited Loki to this place or the other way around.

The inside is not the place he once knew, and he doesn't even blink at the change. Dreams are changeable, strange, shift around and simply make sense to the dreamer. This is not a dilapidated, run down building. This is a barn. This is his barn. And it simply does not strike him to question how they changed states so quickly.

He raises his weapon again.

"I've done this before," he states out in the open. "Hunted you down. Killed you. Tried to." In dreams. They don't always end so well for him. (They usually don't. But sometimes, sometimes they do.)

"Haven't done this before." Whatever the fuck they're doing now. Loki, real Loki, real Loki here and running and hiding and prey and letting himself be prey.

Have you? A question, but not a demand for an explanation, from nowhere and everywhere. He hadn't expected a modern barn, of all things, but there was water and the chance to catch his breath, attempt at catching his bearings. It's difficult when everything else is so mutable, and when the god is the most solid thing present.

He's in a stall, eyes closed, listening. Clint stands in the center. There are no other animals here. He is the prey in question, after all.

He knows, without opening his eyes, that Clint knows exactly where he is. That the archer has an arrow notched towards him even now. His voice, when Loki uses it, is quiet. Winded. The exhaustion has not left him; neither has his arousal.

It's long past the time when Loki would have judged himself as failing for having that reaction.

"A novel experience for us both."

He knows Loki knows he knows. But he doesn't end it. Should. Should put an end to this.

Doesn't.

"Where are you?"

He doesn't mean here, in this barn, in this dream. He means, he thinks he means, out there in the world. Is he in another galaxy? Is he laying right beside him, whispering into his ear? Pressed to him, hands exploring--

No. That's an image unbidden.

"Did you get lost?"

Was this intrusion deliberate or an accident?

Trust is a strange thing to navigate, between them. The Untrustworthy and the Broken. Which is which? Well. Unimportant in the moment, perhaps. Loki isn't even certain that it will work, but this is what happens: in a small studio apartment in Ankeny, Iowa, he forces his consciousness out of his own body with Clint's in tow, and looks around.

There he is, on the bed that takes up the bulk of the room, frowning in his sleep, hair fanned out on the pillow. There is the black cat, Glød, curled up at his feet and staring at them both. There are other details: books, many of them, no television, a suncatcher, heavy curtains framing a view of a highway.

The feeling of being propelled back into Clint's dreamscape is something like the sensation of snapping a rubberband against one's palm.

One question answered.

"I didn't get lost." Loki opens his eyes.

Of course Loki has to do something fucked up and Loki. The first time Loki seems to have actually manipulated things in the dream.

Except when it's suddenly not a dream.

When they are standing--floating?--in an apartment, and Loki's physical body, and he is there, he is...here, on Earth, in the state. And then they're back in the barn.

He drops the bow, the arrow, clattering loudly on the ground. His head spins. There's a sudden wakefulness, a reality that this place does not have that Loki does that now he's certain of. But he's not awake. Yet. Why isn't he awake? And what does he do with the intruder to his dreams?

He throws open the stall, marching to Loki. "What are you doing in my head?"

Back against the wall Loki's desire is to flinch; instead he holds his head a little higher even though he is far from having the higher ground at this moment. It occurs to him, not for the first time, that Clint could do just about anything to him in this state and Loki is not certain what it would mean in the waking world. For him, mostly.

The desire to incite this into violence, sexual or otherwise, is so strong that he bites his lip to refocus. Tastes blood. It'll be interesting to see if there are any droplets on the pillowcase, should wakefullness happen.

Nothing is promised, after all.

"Being hunted." A headtilt. He knows that is not the real question... that is more like "why" or "to what end"... but Clint needs to be better at framing for the information he is actually looking for. "But now I've been caught, and you've thrown away your weapon. What is your plan?"

Loki bites his lip, and the motion so small catches his attention in an intense stare.

Clint is a man of impulses and instinct even outside the shifting unreality of a dream. He moves, is on his knees before he can even consciously recognize that he's straddled Loki's lap, hand gripping at Loki's jaw like prying his mouth open. There is blood. He's not sure, suddenly, why he needed to be certain that there's blood in Loki's mouth.

His other hand grips his blade, slides it neat from its sheath, angles the edge to Loki's throat.

"Lotta things can be done with prey. If you're looking to be consumed-" And there are plenty of ways one can be consumed. He bites off the rest of that thought.

"Why are you walking around in my dreams, smartass?"

Clint's hand is at his jaw; Loki does not struggle, showing slightly blood-stained teeth and a bitten lip. "Yes." Admission. Statement of fact, even, from someone who believes facts and truths are ever-shifting perspectives in the first place. There is blood in his mouth and in his veins; Clint is straddling him in such a way that Loki's arousal is evident and impossible to hide. Not that he's trying, mind, not with the way he rolls his hips slowly upward. Clint might stab him or fuck him or walk off in disgust but, either way. A reaction will be had. An answer given in response.

Loki's pupils are blown wide but still, his irises are green. He is looking to be consumed.

His hands are on the ground, at first, but then one settles, light, against Clint's thigh. The other doesn't move.

"Curiosity. To see if it could be done. To see what you dream about."

Loki is enjoying this. He is, in fact, getting off on this. What aspect of it is really doing it for him? The chase? The violence? His obsessive need to be punished, this longing for death as an end to things? Does he just enjoy the strength of his apparently now lifelong companion, rendered weak in this realm of dreams and fantasy?

There is something inside of him in return that he refuses to acknowledge, will not examine. It's been there so long, a buried itch, something that he thinks wants to manifest as sex, maybe because whatever it is is too big and complicated for his stupid human monkey brain to conceptualize. He is connected to Loki, and has said as much: that for as much as he hates Loki, and he does, god he does, he also cares. That he will not kill Loki is not an act of grace, but one of punishment. But the rest? Loki touched his mind body soul, but just as doors open both ways, so do connections as deep and twisted as that. Touched in return. Sometimes he wonders if a part of him wants that touch to be literal. They are known to each other, deeply seated, a little bit of him in Loki, a little bit of Loki in him.

Loki's hand is on his thigh. Loki's hips move just enough to seek pleasure in this pain.

"Wouldn't know." Clint does not move immediately. He's thinking of blood. He's thinking of connection and skin and blood and being subsumed, to wrap up in one another so completely as to disappear and to become one at the very same time. He's thinking he doesn't know what he wants, but the dream knows what he wants, and those things don't have to be, don't have to mean, the same thing. "Don't usually remember mine much. Probably pretty boring."

He was dreaming of hunting, after all. That's not interesting. Loki made it interesting. He caught his quarry. This is his to do with as he will. It wants to be consumed.

He hates doing what Loki wants, on principle. But he sees this ouroboros. Desperate to eat itself up.

The knife leaves Loki's throat only for it to slam into Loki's hand on the ground, pinning it there. The moment Loki's mouth opens, in pain, in surprise, to say something, Clint is there diving in, pressing hard, lapping at the taste of hot fresh blood.

Loki's immediate reaction is to hiss in pain, teeth bared and neck taunt, his fingers attempting to curl in and failing at that attempt. It hurts, definitely, and will keep him in place, but it does nothing to quell his arousal or desire for more. More contact, more pain, more of something unnamable. A reality woven directly between them. To be consumed by the one he hurt the most, who won't kill him because he believes Loki should live with consequences or something.

He was going to say something. Something about how this dream will not be 'pretty boring', that he'll hold the memory of it near and dear to him once he wakes. If he wakes. He'll probably wake.

Disappointing, perhaps. He could exist in this space of nonreality for a long time.

The way Clint presses in and licks at the blood in his mouth has his breath stuttering out in a moan. Possession. The door swings both ways, it is true; and Loki's innate and twisted sense of fairness is buried within the concept of handing the knife over for recompense after he's cut someone.

Love is a dagger, and all that. Pain is the most real of all the unreal.

He feels a little like a butterfly pinned to the board, bared and beautiful even in death. Loki still, however, refuses to beg aloud, despite the overwhelming desire to do so. His body does it for him, the press of his hips to Clint's more deliberate, his hand moving from thigh upward to reach beneath the hem of Clint's shirt and score nails into his side.

They have done the song and dance of pain before. Clint has pressed his forearm to Loki's throat, pressed and pressed and leaned in close like he wanted to hear the very last struggle of breath, and let him go. He has drawn blood, and he has hurt, and he has refused to give in to the very last drop of desperation that claws at them both.

Loki moans, and he eats that, too, hungry and greedy and wanting and taking. But the god is not passive even now, the electric feeling of fingers on skin, the wonderful pain of nails digging and scraping.

His hands move, taking Loki by the collar, ripping his top open. Is that how the fabric is meant to work? It doesn't matter in a dream. There's skin, and he's thinking about the blood underneath the skin. "I've killed you so many times in my dreams," he says, statement of fact. His hair is gripped tight, a rough handful. And a finger traces an invisible line from Loki's throat down, down, down. "I've never skinned you in any of them before."

Threat, promise, or idle thought?

Loki recognizes that he should be afraid. Perturbed. Disturbed, perhaps, at how much I've killed you so many times in my dreams sounds like a caress feels. At how much he craves pain and suffering and punishment, especially from this man in particular.

He craves other things, too. To trace a path with a fingertip down Clint's spine and chase the shudder with his tongue. Clint's hands at his wrists, at his hip. Pleasure without as much pain.

But he doesn't deserve that, no, so here they are.

"Far be it for me to deny you a new experience." Rolling his hips again, wondering if he can get off before the pain becomes too overwhelming if that's the path they're to take now. "I'll struggle." A bloody smile as his adam's apple bobs when he swallows. "Not that I expect you'll mind, much."

When he bites, it's not gentle, playful thing. He bites like he's aiming to tear into a steak. Like he's an animal enjoying a kill. Already bleeding lip first, while he pulls on that hair, back, back to bare throat, and he bites shoulder next, digging his teeth in, to leave a bruise, to leave angry red marks, to break skin. Just enough to taste blood. He dips his head to take a mouthful of a pectoral, sinking into the feeling. His other hand grazes softly along Loki's side. Ribs, lower, on a hip.

When he's satisfied with the taste of blood, he licks his way up to Loki's throat. Delicate. Wouldn't take much. Rip it out and watch him choke on his own blood. Could do it. He's thinking about doing it, even though right now he's mostly breathing hard against warm skin.

"You get me so confused. I don't know who I am when you're near me. I can't do this out there unless you let me. You'd fucking let me, wouldn't you? You'd fucking let me, and you'd thank me for it."

"You know the answer to that already, and you have a terrible habit of not asking the question you mean to." Part of him is struggling between the softness of touch and the sharpness of teeth, between bruising and bleeding and the goosebumps that rise in the wake of Clint's hand that isn't currently fisted in Loki's hair. Mostly because he doesn't know why. Mostly because he's not sure which interaction he craves more, at this moment, but the idea of being held gently while Clint kills him is one that won't leave his mind now.

"Is this me, or is this you? That's the nature of the thing you're trying to get at. The imbalance of power. The drive to hurt me. My willingness to accept it from you. Is that my doing, or yours? There are no simple answers." Where does that begin or end? Loki doesn't know. He only knows that it exists and he's in no position to ignore it. Nor does he wish to try. Killing him would have freed them both of it, he imagines, but Clint won't see it through in the waking world.

"You hate me, for what I did to you. To cause you to harm those you care about. I hate myself for driving you to it. For not being stronger. Because there is this, now. Because you are worthy of causing me harm and you hate me for it. You don't want it, and I need it. Where does that leave us?"

"You talk," he growls, "too damn much."

The things he says would be easier out there. In the waking world, as it were. His drive to hurt, Loki's willingness to take it (the desire to have it). Those are borne within themselves. Loki might goad him into it deliberately, but it's Clint's own hurt and rage and grief that drives it.

It's confusing when it should be that simple. They're bound to one another, and here, here it should be so damn easy. Rip out his throat. Fuck him on the ground and slit him open. Let him go only to hunt him again. Play this game again and again and again. It might be fun. Clint never says the right thing, and Loki talks too much for someone ragingly hard and pinned with violence. They both hate Loki. Loki's hated Loki for a lot longer. He imagines a long, long line of people Loki has brought to harm, and they've had that conversation, and he isn't sure if he doesn't understand or if he doesn't want to understand.

Is it important where it comes from? Is there something inside of Clint that's prone to the worst of all possible impulses, that revels in Loki's brand of chaos? Does he lash out not just because of hate, the deep sting of betrayal, but also the confusion, a weapon wielded by two masters for differing goals?

At some point instead of ripping and tearing with teeth at a willing and deserving throat, he has simply pinned Loki to the wall with a firm hand. Hard to breathe. But not to choking.

Hard for himself to breathe through this fog of lust violence need harm confusion desire blood blood blood. When he reaches for the blade, dislodges it from Loki's hand, raises it high. Slams it home through Loki's other hand. Pierces his own side with it. Pins Loki to him.

He laughs into the pain. They are bound. If he concentrates, he thinks he can imagine the feeling of Loki's blood seeping into him, mingling with his. It doesn't matter if it's one or the other. It comes from them both. "You think I'm worthy of anything?" He's still laughing. Worth isn't even a slippery slope down. It's a sharp, precipitous cliff with sharp rocks at the bottom. "You think you're worth causing harm to? Fucked, it leaves us both fucked."

The new placement of the knife is not at all what Loki expected when he'd seen it raised; he'd anticipated finding it lodged in his chest, perhaps, or his throat slit so he couldn't speak anymore. This instead, Clint pierced through the side, Loki's hand unable to move from that position, this acquiescence to their connection, being made real in a place that is the height of unreality, being harmed and causing harm simultaneously, Norns, he was not prepared.

Clint could not have shocked him more if he'd confessed love and proposed marriage instead.

One of Clint's children had asked if he loved him, and Loki had hedged. Is love enough of a descriptor for what he feels, the push and pull of desire and need and understanding, the weight of a possession that goes both ways? He's tried, the Fates know, to be fair in the light of what Thanos wrought of them both. To make things even, now.

But he is still chaotic at his core. Demanding and unrelenting in that fact. These things, he cannot change. Doesn't want to.

His other hand is still bleeding from the freed knife when Loki brings it to Clint's face, breathing in a quiet but nonetheless strained wheezing. His thumb traces along Clint's bottom lip and smears blood along Clint's cheek and jawline before Loki leans in, presses their foreheads together, brushes the tip of his nose across Clint's in a gesture of soft sweetness that is, also, complicatedly not a lie at all; the fingers at Clint's side twitch before stretching out and coming to rest.

Clint's laughter would worry him if Loki weren't well acquainted with madness already.

"Yes," Loki rasps. He thinks, knows Clint is worthy. Of this, of him, of whatever blessings he could devise to grant. In another life, at another time, Clint would be a perfect acolyte-turned-champion to a madness-touched god. Here, now, nothing is perfect. Loki is doing what he imagines is his best, either way. "You are worthy. And we are fucked."

The kiss he follows that statement up with is not entirely one thing or another, but teeth and sweetness by turns. An exploration and a demand simultaneously. He is bleeding and still achingly hard; this man has caused him to bleed, and he's always been attracted to and turned on by his own suffering. In shows of power that rival or undermine Loki's own.

This stopped being a hunt some time ago, and Loki's stopped being prey, and somehow he turned this whole scenario on himself. Outside of this, in reality, maybe he would have seriously injured himself. Here, it's like a spear in his side, and he and the devil are walking side by side. Both hands feel like kindness and a devotion that he's not sure a human would ever be capable of.

And oh, it scares him. The ferocity of needing to feel.

If nothing else, they can agree on being fucked. Loki kisses, and there is gentleness and violence in this as well. Clint leans into it, not ripping, not biting as he was before, but matches what he's given this time. Pivots them to wrangle Loki's back to the floor, cool and solid and stray bits of hay. Moves his hips against Loki's, rutting animals. This goes beyond some sexual desire, but it's a dream. They can make it as easy as they want if they put their minds to it. Interpretation is a skill neither of them have time for now.

Funny that he still did as Loki wanted in the end. He is being consumed one way or another.

There is no imagining or scenario in which this isn't bloody, in which Loki doesn't draw a final breath before Clint wakes; what he doesn't know is how much of it will stick with the formerly mortal man, how much he'll remember in the waking world. Loki, for his part, will cherish every drop of blood, every kiss, every hint of pain, every moment of blessed friction.

His bloody hand is now at the back of Clint's neck and he gasps, knees falling apart to give the other man better access. "You should fuck me," he rasps, whispers, pleads despite his best intentions to do anything but that. Its not enough, the rutting, he wants heat possession violence within and without. To make it as real as he can.

There's a chance this will only happen the once, after all. A slim one, but it does exist. He'd be a fool not to take advantage of what he can.

It feels good. It feels too good, in a way some part of him knows absolutely he shouldn't want, that this is sickness. He's stabbed himself just as well as he's stabbed Loki. There's nothing well about this. Maybe Loki's brand of madness is finally seeping into him.

Or maybe it's something burning inside of him that he needs to purge from his system. Maybe none of this matters at all. Could kill the both of them together just as easily as anything else. Could fucking sprout wings if he wanted. Dreams are bullshit.

"No, I shouldn't."

This is Loki asking for it, but if the god wants to use imprecise phrasing against Clint, turnabout is always fair play.

He slides a hand down between them, undoes the fastening of Loki's pants. "You should leave."

But he likes the pain and the pleasure both too much to do what's best for him. Clint finds that aching hardness easily enough. Runs rough fingers along it, up and down. Shouldn't do this, either, but he's here, and he'll do whatever strikes him.

There's a laugh that becomes a cough that becomes a moan as Clint touches him, and yes, it's good, very good actually, but not enough, rather like several drops of water on the tongue of someone dying of thirst. The hand impaled to Clint's side shifts as far as it can before the presence of the blade puts a stop to that, and the one at Clint's neck is now an arm across his shoulders, gripping and encouraging and keeping him from moving too far away.

"You're right." He talks too damned much and he should leave, but he's not going to. "Clint." He never uses the other man's name, for some reason. Foolish ones, probably. Sentiment, and the like. But he needs his attention, now, even as Loki struggles to catch his breath. "Please," and he shuts his eyes because he is reduced to this, yes, and there's a good chance he'll be denied anyway, but. "I need... I need you. Inside of me. If only the once."

Clint hears his name from lips that have never uttered it and stops. His hand stops, any kissing stopped, his own breath had stoppered up in his chest. How much this means to Loki. How important the act is. For some reason. Sex can be a deeply personal act, or it can be just another day. He doesn't know how to read this. This desire to be consumed, to be owned and conquered, overriding all sense?

Not that any of this encounter has had any sense.

It's all mixed and muddled up. This violence and possession and hunting and hurting and killing and softness, desire, want, need. There is blood in their mouths. The knife keeps cutting into soft skin when he moves too much. Loki is caught prey ready, begging for the slaughter, if only he is granted this one wish first, this fulfillment that's pulsing through him.

It isn't as though Clint is unaffected. He's hard as a rock and bewildered and out of his depth but also the winner, the successful hunter, the one in control, the warrior. He will tear the man under him all to pieces and eat the rest. He'll drain him of blood just because, here, he can. And enjoy every moment of it. And he cares.

He kisses Loki, a gentle thing this time. They aren't rutting on a barn floor anymore. Under his knees, softness. There's light streaming in through open bedroom windows. No one is here but the two of them, in this bed, in this room, that Clint knows all too well and that Loki may or may not recognize himself. He pries himself from Loki's arm around him to sit up, like he desperately needs the room for air, to breathe deep. Thankful his dreamscape hasn't conjured Laura up to watch them brutalize each other softly while these deranged men sully their bed.

He grips at Loki's hand, digs fingers into the openly bleeding wound of it, and works his newly slickened fingers back to that needing cock. The sheets are white. The sheets are red. They look better red. Loki looks better red.

"What you've got of me in you isn't enough? Is anything ever enough for you?" Is there any good god damn reason why he's jerking Loki off but denying anything for himself? He doesn't look that directly in its eye.

Part of Loki's mind is a little slow on the uptake, now. Due to bloodloss, possibly, or perhaps just the memory and the concept thereof. The driving force of his arousal. The disorientation of being in someone else's mind through a method other than enchantment, one that locks his magic away and twists the use of most of it far out of his reach. And so, at first, it is just a bed. There is light, comfort, and soft kisses. Blood on his cock and pain in his hands and denial of what he wants, what they both want. Clint pulls away and touches him more and refuses him and really, Loki would be proud of his insistence if he wasn't already feeling so neatly unraveled.

He doesn't reach for the other man again, right away. He groans, instead, muscles tensing and relaxing in turns, the fingers in his free hand balling into a fist that bats ineffectually at Clint's shoulder in annoyance before falling back to the bedsheets.

There's something familiar about the shape of the window, he realizes, before he remembers where he's seen it. In a photograph. One saved on his phone. The Barton children all grinning into the camera and sending it to him for some holiday or another.

It's actually his phone's wallpaper, now that he thinks about it.

Ah. That explains a lot of things. Where they are, anyway. But it in turn explains very little. Clint will hunt and hurt and care but take no pleasure in any of it.

Loki can't stand it, conceptually. Even as he sees the appeal.

"No." A simple answer for a complicated question. "It is not enough. If we were only enemies, if this were only about the death of a god who avoids death, there would be an altar, and a knife, consecrated. My blood, and yours. You would fuck me, and take my heart out after you came, and eat it. And then your people would kill you to ensure you wouldn't rise up in my place."

There are tears on his face now. Frustration. Regret. Sorrow. He hates them, as always; attempts to wipe them away just to smear blood all over his own face in the process.

"If we had not..." He frowns, and shakes his head. If there had been no Thanos, if Clint had become Loki's champion via some other means, some other twist of the Norn's threads of Fate, there would have still been this. Violence and the desire to submit. "There is power in what I'm asking of you, Clint. And pleasure. Have you decided you're not allowed either?"

"I could still take out your heart. I could still eat it. You can still die." A breath. Hold it. Let it go. "You're going to die. You just won't be dead." Dream is not reality. He's killed Loki in dreams, just not as often as the other way around or worse. This doesn't have to mean more than that.

It does. But it doesn't have to.

"This isn't a ritual. You're in my head. Begging for a fuck that's only as real as the mind's eye makes it. You're walking in my dreams, where I've got some power. That doesn't make this--"

He's crying. Loki is crying, and Clint doesn't understand any of this anymore. If he ever did to start. "It's your fantasy. But it's my dream." Why is he crying? Tears and blood are mingling and dips in close to lick some of the mess up. Everything is muddled and complicated and confused and maybe he should just wake up and leave them both unfulfilled, a petty desire.

"Why should I give you want you want?"

"You're right; I won't be dead." There will be consequences. A price, perhaps, or possibly merely a side-effect. He doesn't know. Their situation is rather unique, all told. But he's sure he'll feel it, the dream-death. Draw his last breath and feel it rattle before he ceases to be.

He is looking forward to it, in the way he looks forward to anything that might destroy him in its wake.

"You care." He hisses out the word, having closed his eyes again when Clint licked the blood and tears from his face. A feral gentleness he can't hope to have again. "You always cared. You are soft and compassionate and gentle with me, even in your anger, your fury, your disgust. I don't deserve that, we both know it, but that doesn't change it. And... the things you want from me above all others I can't give you. I can't take it back. I can't undo what I've done. And I can't leave you alone. So what am I supposed to do? You won't free me of this, and I cannot. Instead, I'm to be left with the sensation of falling at all times, empty and alone, and disconnected from..."

This time, he doesn't bite down on his lip. He bites his tongue instead, allowing the blood to coat the inside of his mouth. I have never asked you for much, he thinks. Forced, yes, demanded, certainly, but asked? If I were you, I'd deny me out of spite, follows quickly on its heels.

Opening his eyes he gazes at Clint for a moment before tearing his gaze away. "There's no reason why you should."

What is Loki supposed to do? It's not an unfair question. And Clint has no answer.

It's the explanation, the defining of feeling and sensation, that slaps him in the face. Jerks himself back like suddenly Loki is too hot to touch, but he can only really sit up, suck in a breath. Falling and empty and alone and disconnected. Is that how Loki feels, all the time? Five years of it nearly drove Clint mad. And how long can Loki stand it?

It's enough to distract him just enough from the idea of blood, of lapping it hungrily up. The ringing voice in his head. If I were you. And he is not Loki. It's the most damning thing Loki could have said.

Because he does want to deny. Does want to be spiteful. Wants to spit on everything Loki wants and asks for. Tear it to shreds. Tear him to shreds and then make him put himself back together. But Loki is good at getting right under his skin. Have you decided you're not allowed either? Fuck him. Fuck him and his bloodied silver tongue. Maybe he shouldn't be allowed power or pleasure. Where's that gotten him, exactly?

"You don't know what I want from you." He grits it out even as she pulls and shoves at Loki's pants. "You don't know, because I don't fucking know." And his own. Maybe he's angry at himself now, because if this is manipulation, it's such an easy thing to do. "I've never fucking known. Sometimes I think it would've been better--" He cuts himself off with a hissing noise, bent back over his quarry, his unwanted companion. "Oh, never fucking mind. You don't deserve this. Neither do I."

That's apparently not going to stop them, though. Loki feels good sliding in, the kind of thing that feels expected from sex out of a dream, built out of memories, built out of want. He kisses, rough and deep and bloody. It feels wrong. It feels right.

It is, in fact, how Loki feels all the time. How Loki has felt, for centuries. To wonder if you are an outcast, alone, because of your choices or just who you inherently are, and then to learn it's both, both are true, they've always been true and you were lied to about it, a perfect storm of monster and madness that no essence of nurturing could avoid.

Loki would like to be better, sometimes. But he has no real idea how to start without lying about the past whole cloth. Not an option, really, especially not on this planet, and he is stuck on this planet until Clint decides otherwise.

He won't admit that, however. Let the Hawk figure it out on his own, perhaps.

This is what he does to the things he loves is a bitter realization to have, as Clint presses into his body, as Loki tilts into those kisses, as he wraps his legs around Clint's waist to give him better access. This man would kiss him softly, on this bed, but resisted taking more from him, even when offered, even when begged for, and for what?

Perhaps for the same reason that Loki has resisted anything that doesn't come wrapped in suffering. To have anything, briefly, something that helps him forget that feeling, or fills him with faith that he might not live an entire existence of only that, just to have to turn to dust between his fingers each and every time. Because of his choices. Because of the immutable will of the universe.

"You want me out of your head." That has not been a possibility since we met. Loki's expression is rueful as he touches Clint's cheek in a show of softness he likely doesn't desire and Loki does not expect a return on. "You want to know where I begin and you end. You want to know if you could be a good person." Loki could give him many things, but not the answers to those questions. He cannot unmake the past.

It is a terrible thing to realize you are not the best thing for someone you need so completely, he imagines. Mostly, for him, the terrible thing has been realizing he may not be useful to them in some way. A hindrance instead of a help.

For a moment he is not disconnected, the warring sensations of dream and memory colliding inside his head, his body. For a moment he is something important to someone important to him and it feels like what he imagines belonging must feel like. Even if it's terrible, and tainted, and probably wrong for everyone involved. Even if Clint hates him for it.

Even if Clint won't remember in the morning.

Clint wonders if this dreamt up version of touch feeling sensation skin and sweat and sex is going to sate the thing inside him that has wondered after it, that has nursed some horrible curiosity and desire since at least when Loki showed back up in his life. Perhaps before that. Maybe ever since coming to without the haze of unnatural blue.

Maybe before that. Sometimes, in dark and silent moments, the thing he didn't want to give Loki, he thinks of it. That it may have been better if he had stayed under that power, had followed Loki wherever he went. Stayed the willing, devoted right hand. Stayed.

It would certainly have been easier to be ordered instead of making choices for himself. This, too, is a choice, and it would have been easier if that choice had never been there at all. Power is always an issue, and Loki is trying to rectify that, to give him that power, to try and bridge the gaps. But maybe it isn't the imbalance that scares him so much. Maybe it isn't that he wants more power, but less.

(No. A dangerous thought, in a world of dangerous thoughts. He won't be a puppet again. He needs his agency, needs to not be pounding against the inside walls of his skull. It does not change the fact that it would be easier.)

He tilts his head to kiss at Loki's palm, red stained on his cheek, taste of blood sitting heavy on his tongue. These are desires that the god suggests, yes. Knows him well enough that some of the obvious easily floats to the surface. But it has never been as simple as that. There are no easy answers. There always are. He buries his face against Loki's neck, holds him with tenderness as he fulfills a need, something they both need. Kisses at some of the wounds, marks of teeth weeping blood. He can't heal this, won't. He can't heal either one of them. They are going to tear at each other until the sky falls down around their heads.

Reaches for the knife. Solid grip at the handle. Can even now, with each thrust, feel the blade lodged where it is. Pulls it free. He slams against Loki, shuddering, gasping, trembling at the sensation.

And then he is a hunter again. Taking what he wants. Reveling in the sensations as they come, his movements rougher, harder. Wraps a hand around Loki and presses the weapon to his throat. A warning. A promise.

The tenderness is both welcome and terrifying even as it is wholly unexpected. Clint presses his face into Loki's neck and his hand wraps around the other man's shoulders again, less of a demand and more of an embrace. The noises Loki makes in response to those kisses are breathy and sweet and just a bit needy.

Somewhere in the back of his mind Loki can imagine that this is different, that they came at this from some other shared past, that it would be safe and good and expected to be soft for this man, and his awareness that many parts of him long for that to be true while simultaneously believing it is impossible to ever be true is immediately interrupted as Clint pulls the knife free and slams into him.

Loki cries out once, wanton, terrified, his body having relaxed into the earlier pace of things, before the force of Clint's next thrust pushes the air out of his lungs. His hand at his shoulders slips down to Clint's arm, fingers curling around the bicep; the newly freed one settles at Clint's hip and ineffectually scratches at the skin there.

Hawks hunt snakes. He wants to close his eyes but shouldn't, cannot, won't. He wonders how much Clint can see and understand. Does he know that Loki is honestly afraid, and pleased, and sorry, for all the good it will ever do either of them?

His cock jumps in Clint's hand; Loki's back arches a little and the moan that escapes his lips is ragged. It won't take much for Loki to be pushed over the edge into orgasm.

He could see Loki clearest while under the thrall. Can still yet see him, through the lingering, pervasive remnants of their unholy connection, but not nearly to the same extent. To have seen the driving forces behind Loki, back what feels like a lifetime ago, wasn't anything special to him; it seemed downright obvious. Now his vision, sharp as ever, can't always see the shapes that Loki's consciousness forms, the things that he wears just under the skin. Can't pull them out even when cut.

But there are things he can see. And it's so hard to figure out what to do with it all, because he shouldn't have it, doesn't want it, should not be allowed.

Loki doesn't close his eyes to this, and so neither does Clint, not even when he kisses, bites. Not when the building pressure of pleasure in him starts winning out over everything. Is this where Loki belongs? Eternally under someone, desperate to please, and just as desperate to be punished for not pleasing? Desperation drives a lot of what Loki does, is, and maybe it's feedback that drives Clint desperate in ways he finds hard to define. Goads him, baits him, until he feels that there aren't any choices left to him.

Easy to blame him for everything, in spite of knowing that's a lie his mind clings to. Desperately.

Loki won't last long. In every sense. Clint watches him, feels him, the only real thing in this world of unreality, the only thing worth focusing on. Not the breeze from the windows, and not the sheets staining with violence and effort, and not even the hunt. All just parts of a story. He watches, and he feels, and when he thinks there is a rising peak coming, or an edge to hurtle over, that's when he presses the blade in, pulls it neatly across.

Part of Loki is pleased and honored to have deserved a (relatively) clean death. A steady blade, an almost quick release from existence. Painful, yes, but what isn't? The rest of him is too busy dying in the first place, gasping for air that doesn't come, the sense of overwhelm that comes from an intense orgasm colliding into rapid blood loss. His body tenses and doesn't stop tensing. He feels faint; this, too, doesn't improve.

He tries to say something, to grant Clint his thanks, his absolution, but there are no words, no air for them, and his throat is ruined besides.

He smiles. His fingers trail down Clint's arm. Clint is the last thing he sees.

Loki exists, physically, in the dream for a moment. The real in the unreal. And then the god, too, becomes unreal, so much dust in green and glittering gold.

For the next day the connection between them lies dormant, existing but unresponsive, a door that may or may not exist. Something that was once a door, definitely, that now leads to nothingness. It doesn't flare to life again until Clint falls asleep the following night, but there is no god walking his dreams then, either, only a sense of something where there was nearly nothing for a while.

When Clint next wakes it is reformed, reforged. A window, perhaps, or a doorway in which the only real barrier that exists is merely a flimsy bit of fabric. Nothing that can be locked, or slammed.

Here is an arrangement of facts:

Loki dies that night. Literally, in the waking world. He remembers dying, in the dream, and then he remembers the excruciating agony of resurrection into a body that held no life for a time. It only takes roughly twenty-four hours, but he has no real sense of that.

He's covered in wounds. Blood. The sheets, somehow, aren't. His throat hurts (unpleasantly), his ass hurts (in quite the opposite fashion), his hands have knife wounds through both palms. There are cuts and bruises and teeth marks all over. He feels sluggish and overwhelmed by the pain; his magic exists in fits in starts and he's too exhausted to sort out how to fix that, or any of it, so he doesn't.

Instead, he sleeps. For seven more days.

On the fifth day, the Barton children become aware something is amiss. Because Loki has missed an appointment with Lila to gossip about her dating life over sugary beverages. He doesn't answer the series of phonecalls that follow, or several text messages. When Cooper actually goes to the apartment on the next day, the door doesn't open, and the only response he receives from "Is anyone in there?" yelled toward the door is Glød's meow.

It's decided between the two of them that it is Lila who will inform their father that something is wrong, but they're still debating how exactly to go about doing that, when Loki wakes up and responds to text messages stating he'd "been asleep" and "wasn't feeling well", along with apologies for worrying them. When threatened with another visit he sent a photo (after he'd had a bath) as proof of life and told them that he couldn't have visitors or take a video call because he'd lost his voice.

But he was certain that he would get it back in a few days. They shouldn't worry overmuch. Everything would be fine.

So that is the context in which Clint gets a text from his daughter, followed by an address, and several unhappy smiley faces.

There are things he remembers, and there are things he does not. Some of it is reduced to sensation and emotion rather than anything physical. Some of it burns painfully bright. He wakes up achingly, ragingly hard, and he doesn't bother Laura with some fun morning sex about it.

And as far as he's concerned, that's the end of it. At least until the next time Loki comes around or bothers him in his sleep.

Until it's Lila that sends him a concerned text.

He knows the kids care. That 'Uncle Loki' worked his figurative magic and warmed them over, even Cooper in the midst of his disaffected teenagerhood. He knows that Loki genuinely cares about them in return and has at least once (that he's aware of) actually helped one of them out of a dangerous situation. In the most Loki way possible. Clint cares, too, of course, something long established even if it's never simple, just the same as everything else between them, but he's tempted to suggest that it sucks to be Loki and leave it be.

That there is an address bothers him. That he did not know this address before but his eldest children did. That it's in state.

Also that Loki is apparently not just not speaking, but unable to speak. This is Loki. He doesn't just get a sore throat and hoarse voice from simple human illnesses. And he loves to talk. Too much.

He tries to drown some of the worry out on the drive with radio, but it's only background noise. It isn't until he's making his way up that he's starting to think the surroundings of the apartment are irrationally familiar. That gets stuffed in the back of his mind when he picks Loki's lock and does not even bother with knocking.

Except the door isn't even locked. He doesn't know for sure if somehow Loki's in bad enough shape that he didn't lock it at all, or if there are enchantments in place that have recognized one connected and intertwined with Loki's soul and allowed him entrance.

There's a cat at his ankles immediately, and he closes the door again in a panic. Not a panic about there being a cat. Panic that he already knew Loki had a cat. That cat. He knew this. This is familiar. It makes his heart tick up in pace.

Opens the door again and has to navigate around a furball who seems determined to trip him up. He doesn't know what to expect out of Loki.

There is music coming from the bedroom area; something quiet, without lyrics. The bed is pristine, made almost perfectly, with small imperfections in the tucks and folds and placements of pillows that might indicate that Loki did the arrangement by hand, instead of by rote magic. There is a plush couch in the immediate space Clint finds himself in, and a small door that likely leads to a bathroom, along with a large scrying mirror on a wall opposite the entryway.

There are books. Many books. Several plants, also, arranged on windowsills. Glød does not meow at Clint, merely continues to weave her way between his ankles as he proceeds past one large bookcase that blocks the view of the kitchen from the doorway.

The kitchen where Loki is sitting, actually, on a bench beneath another window, a book in his lap and blowing on the surface of a hot cup of tea. Which he nearly drops in his startlement once he notices Clint standing there. It's telling, perhaps, that his capturing of the mug is imperfect, that his hands shake a little, that he nearly drops it again and hisses in annoyance at the hot liquid splashing against his skin, refocusing his attention on the offending mug even though no real sound comes out.

He steadies himself then. Takes the sip of tea he'd been intending to have, swallows, only grimaces for a split second. Returns his gaze to the man in his living room. Why are you here? Not "how did he get here" or "who told him about this place" because Loki is a fool in many ways but not in others.

It is telling, also, perhaps, that there is more communicated in the question in Loki's voice in Clint's brain than just the query itself. That there is emotion behind that, emotion that Clint can perhaps sense: a sense of disquiet, exhaustion, and also... something settled. Some manic, still-sharp edge laid smoother within him.

There is so much going on in just a few short seconds.

Loki is either without magic or without specific aspects of his magic. He still can't speak. He can speak inside Clint's head. (He does not remember this detail of the dream.) He was closed off entirely for a day, then came back, and now, now here and close and with feeling, he does not feel the same. Changed, somehow. Not in a negative way, perhaps. His hands tense. Relax again.

Okay. He's going to scoop up the cat and let her hang out on his shoulder. First thing. Maybe a little bit of weight and something to do with his hands will help ground him in this situation.

"Hi, how are you, I'm great, thanks for asking. Would you like to stay for dinner? Can I get you something to drink? Oh no, I'm just passing through." Deadpan. "You're not a great host." And no one can argue that Clint is unwelcome. The door is attuned to him. That's an open invitation.

He pets the cat and doesn't move any closer. It's entirely possible this whole interaction could last less than five minutes. Likely? No. But possible.

Until: Loki's hands. They catch his eyes. There are scars, fresh enough to catch the light. There's a thin line across his throat. The petting hand flies to his side where a knife had been stabbed in, something he did himself, where there is no scarring, had been no wound.

Breathes out hard. Answer the question. Answer the fucking question, Clint. He doesn't. He's frozen in the moment. Red hot burning blood blood blood in his mouth on his teeth on his tongue. He can feel it sliding down his throat.

Loki sighs, a shift in posture more than a sound, and then sets the mug and book aside on the counter. Stands and moves toward the fridge where he then hands Clint a bottle of his favorite beer. Not whatever he drinks at home but whatever he seeks out abroad, when traveling. Something difficult to import, or at least not usually worth the effort.

If he has to take Clint's hand and wrap it around the chilled bottle himself, so be it. Either way, Loki won't be accused of being a bad host again.

He doesn't indicate that he has noticed Clint's realization, or where that hand was, doesn't ask again why he came; only gestures towards the couch. They should probably sit, yes? He'll collect his tea and join him, even if it means putting a hand at the other man's shoulder, turning him around, and then nudging him toward the couch physically.

Why isn't Loki reacting more? To any of it. Why is he so calm? Oh. Shit. Did exactly what he wanted. Gave him some peace, settled something, and it feels...that should feel better than it does, shouldn't it? Loki is being patient. And it all feels kind of wrong. Where's the sharpness, the baiting banter, even if it's in his head alone?

There's an overseas beer in his hand, a cat on his shoulder happy to stay there, and he's sitting on Loki's couch like they're old friends about to do some catching up. He does not understand this.

He feels like there's a phantom ache in his side. And pointedly ignores it. The beer is appreciated, but he still sets it down so he can scrub at his face with both hands.

"The kids are worried. That's why I'm here."

Holding the mug with both hands is ideal for keeping it steady; seeing Clint here, as Loki slowly but certainly rebuilds his body and connection to magic after being severed from both due to both of their decisions in Clint's dreamscapes is unnerving and a little frightening and also...

And also. There's a reason the door didn't allow Cooper through but didn't even pose a semblance of hesitation at allowing Clint inside. If he'd come days earlier, while Loki was sleeping, it would have been the same. It's an interesting sort of thing, the way this thing between them works. Has grown. Has evolved.

Loki knows that his first thought upon waking (the second time) was a sense of vague disappointment that he'd woken alone. Not that he'd expected anything else. But emotions and desires aren't often made of purely sensible things, in his case.

The part of Loki that is fascinated by a puzzle loves it, everything that he's learned, everything it implies for the future. The part of Loki that is frightened of what it means, represents, the power that it indicates Clint holds over him, unwillingly perhaps, unwittingly at times, is trying to have faith in the idea that, eventually, one day, it'll be fine.

That doesn't mean it'll be fine today. Nor does it mean that he wants Clint to find himself mired in grief over what has occurred, for his role in it. It was wanted. Perhaps even necessary.

I told them I would be fine. Regret, yes. That he worried them. That he lied, via omission, to two of the people he tries very hard not to lie to when he can avoid it. Sometimes it can't be avoided, however.

Loki sets the mug down next to Clint's currently ignored beer and, gently, hesitantly, runs his hand up from the nape of Clint's neck into his hair. I will be fine. I'm just tired. An uncomplicated truth from a being who doesn't really believe in such things. As much for Clint's benefit as his own.

There's a flare of something, anger? No, not as intense as anger. Indignation? Frustration, perhaps. Loki is not fine, he's not fine now, and it's hard to see him being fine in the future if all of that happened to him. Happened to him in the real, waking world. He thinks, briefly, of his bedroom, of spreading red. Blinks it away.

Loki's hand is lovingly petting him.

Clint's relationship with Loki is fraught and confused and an exercise in polarity. This is not a surprise. Attraction and repulsion in equal measure. The touch makes him want to shiver and lean into it while at the very same time want to crawl directly out of his skin and jump out a window. The affection and kindness and softness and familiarity feels nice. But it's too soft, too familiar, too kind.

He jerks, dislodging the cat, turning sharply in his seat to snatch Loki's wrist tightly. His heart is lodged directly in his throat, pounding away.

Glød makes a very catlike noise of protest at being suddenly dislodged from her new favorite perch on the archer's shoulders before settling herself at Clint's hip, paws against his thigh, sharp claws digging in through his pants just a little. Not a threat as it would be for a guest that behaved this way, that dared to touch her master; merely a reminder that she exists.

Petting her was better than whatever this is.

Loki, for his part, narrows his eyes and freezes. Indignation and frustration and the briefest flash of anger mirrored in his expression, in their connection. You're being a poor guest. Which is about the still ignored beer, actually, which Loki clearly obtained just for Clint at some point in the past, and is not directly about the touching. Or Clint's reaction to it. Though Loki did, for a split second, entertain the idea of slapping Clint across the face for what he perceives as a nearly hysterical reaction.

He's just not sure what would happen, as a result. If he would be able to mitigate the force of his hand. If Clint would take offense to that, too. If it would inform the other man that he's sturdier than he used to be.

Too many variables. Loki's nostrils flare. What are you angry at me for, now?

And Loki's the one who's mad about it?

"Tell me to leave, then," he says with a bite, which is weird, because his voice sounds so fucking muted and distant to him, the pounding panic in his ears a familiar roar.

The sharp little pricks in his thigh are actually just grounding enough to keep him from getting actually hysterical about anything. Good thing Loki didn't voice that particular thought, or he might have done something genuinely ill-advised.

It's another long moment, two moments, before he finally lets Loki go, dropping the wrist like it's become far too hot. Reaches for the beer instead, cool in his grip. "Thank you for the drink."

It does not at all surprise him at this point that Loki knows what he likes, that he would keep it stocked just in case. The heavy taste of it feels like it weighs him down, but not in this case in any bad way. Grounding, like the cat. That he finally deigns to stroke.

"I'm not your cat. I'm not your pet." Is what he says as explanation, but it feels weak, like it's a step to the side of what he means.

Don't be daft. Sharp. Annoyed. Clint still has his wrist and this feels like an edge that might be dangerous for either or both of them. Or, perhaps, there might be stairs on the cliffside to the bottom, to the next thing.

He probably won't find out if he moves too fast, so Loki merely raises his eyebrows and waits. Why would I do that?

It pays off. Clint releases him, and Loki sets his hands in his lap and watches the other man with some curiosity.

I know that. Less annoyed, now. Still petulant, however. He doesn't think this is the most direct method of getting to the source of what has upset Clint, but it is... progress, of a sort. His fingers twitch in his lap before he folds them and forces them to relax.

He wants to touch him, reassure himself that he's really here. As something for his hands to do. As a method of chasing and refreshing the memory of that sense of complete connection he'd had before the other man slit his throat.

It's possibly a very stupid thing to want, in light of Clint's... complaint.

We are beyond that. Clint won't look at him, and, well. Loki supposes he shouldn't blame him. He hadn't intended for the man to find out this way, if at all. And to be pedantic, Glød is more than a cat, anyway.

As if in response to her (unspoken, by the literal definition) name, Glød chirps in pleasure and leans into Clint's hand.

Edited 2022-08-19 21:35 (UTC)

"Are we."

Maybe to Loki, yes. He has been chosen in some way. Even if at random, or on accident, or inadvertently. What feels like a lifetime ago, they became connected, because Loki chose him. Not knowing what that meant. Apparently knowing what it means now.

They are certainly well past Loki trying to worm his way inside to use him, to control him utterly. Sometimes it feels like the actual opposite. He keeps petting the cat that is something other than a cat, and sure, might as well be, whatever. A familiar, enchanted, an alien? He doesn't ask. Looks like a cat, sounds like a cat, acts like a cat.

He savors another sip, looking across the room. Looking at--not Loki. Deliberately not looking at him and his healing wounds right now. Keep it...lighter, maybe.

"I'm guessing you can only talk in my head because of what we've got. You didn't suddenly become a telepath, or you'd talk to the kiddos."

Do you feel like a pet? Indentured to me for protection and sustenance? In no way or sense my equal? Loki scoffs, even though the action causes him a bit of pain as he reaches for his tea. Not like he's unused to pain, is he? Besides, it's worth it to express his distaste for the frankly ridiculous association at this point in time. In the beginning, perhaps. A very loyal pet, who in turn ensured that I ate. Rather a reversal of the roles implied there, I would think.

He rolls his eyes (even though Clint isn't looking) and takes a sip of his tea. At least it's still hot and soothing. Glød is purring, now, making gentle kneading gestures into Clint's thigh. Claws still out, though.

No, I didn't suddenly become a telepath. Could he talk directly into the minds of the Barton children? Possibly, all things considered, with the correct materials, time, and spells, but he'd rather keep this to the two of them anyway.

Besides, he enjoys his text and phone video conversations with Lila and Cooper and the occasional incomprehensible meme from young Nate. Why give that up in favor of something that might just terrify them in the end?

I don't particularly feel up to croaking my way uncomfortably through a conversation you only seem half interested in actually having, when this is an available alternative.

Edited (lmao whoops names) 2022-08-19 22:13 (UTC)

Fine. Fine. Loki seems perfectly okay with all of this, maybe because he asked for it, wanted it so damn badly and was given it on a fucking platter. Clint sets down his drink and lifts both hands to sign as well as speak.

"We have a lot of different ways of talking. But it seems like this one isn't going to suit you, either."

He resists the urge to end that by flipping Loki off. It's a very adult decision of him. Very adult. So mature. He continues petting the pretty kitty.

"Why did--" A huff, a pause, rethinking his phrasing. Loki picks at him about how he never asks the right questions to what he wants to know. "Why did you think it was appropriate to touch me like that?" There. That...seems somewhat more specific than 'why did you touch me'.

Glowering, Loki puts down the tea and signs back as the words echo in Clint's brain. You would have to fucking look at me for signing to be worth my time or consideration. Besides, his hands hurt, even with that little bit, though he won't admit it aloud or via their connection.

It's likely obvious in the fact that his hands, which are usually quick moving and full of fluent gestures, appear a little stiff and slow. The scarring doesn't help.

If he'd flipped Loki off he would have probably laughed aloud, or at least tried to, and then flipped him off in response. Slowly and purposefully. Because he thinks this is just about the dumbest possible thing for them to be having a pseudo-argument about in the first place.

I wasn't thinking about the appropriateness of it. He pauses, hands stilling. I wanted to touch you. I still do. Feel free to praise him for his self-control. Or don't; he's not expecting any praise for it, anyway. I don't know what you'll deem appropriate for me to do, in regards to you.

"That's what I meant, asshole. Your hands are a little fucked right now. I'm not gonna make you sign if it's--whatever." This is. so dumb. This is very dumb, and Loki is still taking all of this very well, and the fact that Clint isn't just annoys him further.

There are a lot of ways Loki could touch, too. Hand. Leg. Arm. Cheek. Back of the neck and stroking lovingly into his hair seemed like such a deliberately intimate thing to do, where he cannot see. Like, what, now that they had a fucked up dream full of dream sex, now they're boyfriends?

(He doesn't know how dream magic works, and he wonders if Loki does either.)

"You want to touch me." Repeated. Stated. Okay. A light huff. "You usually stop yourself." Because of course Loki wants to touch. And they have, sometimes, touched. Deliberately, with silent permission, or inadvertently, accidentally brushing together. Sometimes Loki did it to stoke the embers of anger and get a reaction, to provoke. Sometimes softer. Sometimes harder. Sometimes not at all, the desire hanging there heavy between them.

He's touched Loki, in a world of unreality. Fairness means allowing him to touch back in some way. Hand on his side, sliding down to grab him, dig in nails-- Thinks of hands running up his back, down his spine, gripping short hair, stroking thighs. Thinks of arms holding him.

It makes him feel dizzy, and he thinks instead about the taste of good beer and the warmth of a cat. Shifts the little sentient void so that he can move, swinging his legs up and stretching out along the couch, calves neatly resting on Loki's lap, back propped up by the corner of the seat. Now he's looking at Loki. Now Loki gets to touch him. In a way that Clint can see and approve of. For the moment.

It is small and childish. And he does not give a fuck.

"I guess nothing about us is really 'appropriate' anyway. Sorry. I'm trying to be a little more careful with my words, and I'm not great at it."

He swallows. Tastes blood. Reaches for his drink and swallows away that taste.

"Do you want me to apologize for what I did? I know the answer is no, but I want to hear you say it." ...Hm. "You know what I mean." He'll still hear it, in a sense!

To be fair, the word (or even the concept) of 'boyfriends' has not crossed Loki's mind. In part because he's never had one, so what the fuck would that exactly mean? In part, because they belong to one another, and he's been doing his best, accidentally and purposefully, to make that as an equivalent exchange between them as possible.

Now, honestly, has he informed Clint of all the ways he's done this? No. Does he plan on doing that? Probably not until directly approached about it. Would he be opposed to being lovers, somewhere other than in Clint's dreams, surrounded by his own blood? Definitely not, though he does doubt that asking for that would be considered "appropriate" at this point. If ever.

Still. Clint rearranges himself on the couch and once Loki gets over the brief flash of annoyance at anyone's outside shoes being anywhere near the upholstery he's filled with a sense of thrill. Contact. The invitation of touch. The fact that Clint had reacted poorly because he couldn't see but could only feel how Loki touched him in the first place has not occurred to him, either.

He might need to explain that to Loki, actually.

I usually stop myself. A nod; his hands aren't signing, now, having taken Clint's earlier annoyance as proof that he doesn't, actually, have to keep up with that. Instead, they're hovering over Clint's legs a moment before he settles them on the calves in his lap, just below the knee, one thumb tracing back and forth in a slightly unsteady line. Unsteady due to pain, yes, but also...

There's a thin, uncertain thread of unadulterated joy at the contact that radiates from Loki. Who is afraid of letting it grow into anything more solid than that, just as yet. Maybe after the tenth, or twentieth, time of being invited to touch. Of it not necessarily inciting a fight, as much as part of him enjoys fighting with Clint for a myriad of reasons.

He takes a breath. Swallows. "No." It croaks out, obviously, voice rough and unused, quieter than normal, but still. He said it. Be proud of him, Clint. Or be annoyed that he possibly slightly damaged his vocal cords further just to prove a point and also be a literal shit in the process, he's not (exactly) the boss of you these days.

He squeezes Clint's leg closest to his own chest in a gesture he hopes is at least somewhat reassuring. I don't want you to apologize. I don't want you to feel guilty either. I knew there would likely be consequences to my demands in that setting. I didn't know what they were, and I am not sorry it happened.

There's so much joy in such a little thing. A casual night in for him and Laura. And Loki takes so much happiness at the implicit permission.

They are all clothed here, and the touch isn't sexual, and it's cautious but hopeful. He'll stand that. For now. See how long it lasts before one of them inevitably fucks it all up.

Frowns at Loki using his voice. But. He did say it. Say-say it.

"I didn't know there would be any consequences at all. I don't think I knew anything for certain. It was a dream. Only you were real. And I still don't know what that means." Real where things are not real. "I shouldn't have done it. You shouldn't have stayed, but I shouldn't have given in to you."

I am not sorry, he repeats, annoyance flaring but there is also a sense of hesitation. He, too, is wondering how long it will take for one of them to fuck it all up, and historically, as far as he's concerned, usually, the blame for that sort of thing rests firmly on Loki's shoulders.

Why? He turns his head to look Clint in the eye, now, instead of staring at his hands on the other man's legs. Why does it upset you so much? Why do you think you shouldn't have done what I begged you to do?

He honestly doesn't understand. Like, at all.

"Because you begged me to." That seems obvious. "Doing what you want has not been my MO when I'm not being controlled, generally. And you want to die so bad. You want shit that I'm not going to give you. I don't want you to have the satisfaction of--"

His eyes narrow. Flit to the mark at Loki's throat. His connection to his magic is fucked. There was a day, a blessed day of not having the niggling if now comfortable feeling weighing in the back of his soul of Loki.

"Motherfucker."

So you hinge your entire decision-making process, in regards to me, on whether or not you're doing something I want. Incredulous, certainly. He raises his eyebrows as Clint looks at Loki's throat and tilts his head in obvious query. That seems very... limiting.

He leans back into the couch and keeps his eyes on Clint. You didn't wish for me to have the satisfaction of leaving consequence behind via a permanent escape. A shrug. He's still here; clearly, he's not escaped consequences, of all things.

Edited (html jesus) 2022-08-19 23:46 (UTC)

He wants to say yes, that's exactly what he does, stupid as it sounds. He wants to yell that dying is still dying. He wants to throttle this god-man for once again successfully getting him to do exactly what was wanted, manipulating him deftly, reading him like an open book, pulling all the strings, to get the desired outcome that Clint specifically did not want.

Instead, he tilts his head back, eyes at the ceiling. Sips at his drink and now only tastes blood. He remembers that so very clearly. Works his jaw until there's an audible click.

"Maybe I should've eaten your heart," he utters, voice rough for it.

Loki knows and understands Clint well enough to recognize that the other man feels played, in a sense, by him. Manipulated. And he was, to a degree, in that Loki was relentless in his quest to up the ante in a variety of dangerous (to him and his well-being, specifically) ways. But he thinks, perhaps, that Clint is giving him a little too much credit.

Everyone presumes there's a master plan as though Loki doesn't just plot for various long-term possibilities while simultaneously flying by the seat of his pants.

He wants to reach out and grab Clint's chin, forcing him to look Loki in the eye again. He wants to hit him, a little. He wants to laugh, to sigh, to cry maybe, to curl up against the other man and just ignore how dumb this all is.

Somehow I find myself doubting you would have enjoyed whatever the result of that was either. Norns, he'd probably just have been even more obsessed with Clint than he already is while his heart literally reformed in his chest. Set aside, for the moment, the idea that I went there knowing what I was doing. Because it is neither true nor accurate nor helpful in the moment. And tell me, please, why you are actually upset.

He doesn't understand why Loki doesn't understand. What isn't there to be upset about? Everything's all fucked up. Everything's god damn upside down. He doesn't know where they are, where they stand, what any of it means, and Loki is so fucking content with it all. Made a liar out of Clint, and sure, yeah, everything that happened makes Loki happy, but it doesn't seem too far a stretch to see why that might not be the best thing for his counterpart.

There is a part of him that wants to refuse. Let Loki stew in it. Let it drive him mad.

"I don't want you to die." Seems the easiest place to start. "Here. In reality." It's a start.

I didn't know I was going to. He didn't even know if it was a reasonable thing to be concerned about, at the time. Not that his feelings could've been qualified as concern, but still. I imagined that something would happen, yes. The best one for me to have asked about what might have happened to me, as a result, is long dead. Frigga would have known, or known how to find out. Where to look. And probably would have attempted to dissuade him from walking into Clint's dreams unprepared and unannounced in the first place.

It likely wouldn't have worked, her protesting, but still.

What he really wants to ask, the question he isn't sure Clint is prepared to answer directly, is why? Why doesn't Clint want him to die in reality? It can't be as simple as 'because Loki has clearly wanted it for so long', can it?

But maybe it could. He'd rather not learn that to be true and then be disappointed by it.

Speaking of lying: I try, very hard I might add, not to lie to you. Just. Putting that out there. I'm not interested in a repeat of that particular aspect of the dream. That's good, isn't it? That dying once, for real, appears to have sated that particular desire?

"Okay."

Quiet. Not fighting it.

He doesn't believe that for a single moment. Not a one. Not even knowing how much Loki tries not to lie to him. That he never truly did. Does not matter. He doesn't believe what Loki says to him regarding this.

"Are you going to come back?"

Loki sighs, loudly, rolling his eyes again. He can tell that Clint doesn't believe him and is, in turn, rather annoyed about it. But it's fine. Whatever.

He'll deal.

Do you want me to swear that I won't? He doesn't understand the purpose of asking that question, actually, especially when Clint doesn't clarify what he'd prefer the answer to be.

It's very much Clint's turn to be annoyed, huffing at the ceiling and sparing Loki only a passing glance.

"No, I want you to tell me if you plan on doing it again. Why is every question a god damn production with you?"

Because you so rarely ask exactly what you mean, and I would like us to understand one another. Loki is five seconds from literally throwing his hands up. I hadn't decided, nor had I made any plans beyond attempting to restore my voice as quickly as possible, but I am not opposed to it. Conceptually. I'd rather not die again, but I suspect that could be... avoided.

He huffs out another sigh, looking forward and gazing at Clint through his peripheral vision.

He sits up straighter and glares directly at Loki. "I am trying to ask what I mean, and no matter what I say, you end up finding some way to twist it around. No one else seems to have this kind of issue; I'm pretty sure this is just a you problem."

He's pretty sure this entire situation is a Loki problem that just happens to also be a Clint problem.

"Do you want me to get into how I feel about it? Because I don't think it's going to help. If I start explaining the things that felt weird and wrong and sick and disturbing, those are all the parts you're going to like and encourage and enjoy. You're not going to understand my point of view or validate my perspective on it, and you're not my fucking therapist!"

Loki slowly turns his head to look at Clint straight on as he speaks. The man probably isn't wrong; Loki does tend to twist things to suit him, words especially, and it's not as though he's likely to have set that particular skill or impulse aside just when dealing with Clint.

He doesn't know how to bridge this, in particular. He knows what he wants, from Clint; he has a sense of what he thinks he deserves, but a more nebulous series of ideas of what Clint thinks he deserves. Or is acceptable. "Appropriate", even.

As if they can't just make the fucking rules up as they go along. As if they're going to somehow get in trouble. As if that were even a real threat at this point.

Then tell me what you liked about it. Is there anything that didn't feel weird, or sick, or wrong, or disturbing? His expression is put upon, but his emotional response is... hesitant, not quite hopeful, but something close to it, before he frowns sharply and looks away, feeling distinctly foolish for having hoped for something so soft in the first damned place.

The anger seems to dissipate rapidly. Replaced by something more distressed. Clint looks away as well.

"I liked a lot of it, too. What I remember of it. Hunting felt good. Hurting you. Touching you." And that's the thing. A lot that he liked is also what felt wrong and disturbing. "I get so pulled inside out with you. It's all backwards. I love it and I hate it, just the same. I don't know who I am when I'm around you. I don't know that I like him. And in a dream...I didn't think it would..."

Matter? Is what he would normally say, if he weren't trying to also consider his words more carefully.

"Reflect, manifest, here. I don't know how fully in control I was, how lucid, but I know I was trying to let myself do and feel things I don't want to or don't get to. Here."

Sighing, Loki allows his head to drop a little, chin angled towards his own chest as he stares at his hands and Clint's legs. He understands. Kind of. The idea, at least, of not knowing who he is being rather unsettling. Upsetting. Uncomfortable. That Clint may not know if he likes that version of himself.

At the same time he doesn't understand, because he's rarely been a creature who hesitates to indulge, good or bad.

Who do you want to be? Still not looking up. Maybe that's a goal. Or at least a good place to start. Loki swallows. Someone who wouldn't be here in the first place, I suspect. Which, again, circles back around to the things Loki can't do: change the past, or let go.

"Yeah. Well. I can't hope for that, because it's not in anyone's power to do anything about it. Not my fault. In some ways, it's not yours, either." A little shake of the head. "I don't think that's the right question."

What the right question is eludes him, of course. But it's not about who he wants to be. Or at least, that's not the right question for him right now.

"Didn't used to think I was complicated; now I wish you'd picked up someone easier to deal with."

Loki doesn't look up. He keeps his focus downward, on the scars on his hands, on the texture in the material of Clint's pants.

He knows how he would answer the question if it were turned back on him. That he wants to be someone worthy. Of Clint's care, or his violence as necessary, without Clint hating himself for it.

There's little point in saying that without being asked first, however.

How would I even begin to handle a simple person? How would I ever trust anything they say, or feel, or do?

"You could trust everything they did. It'd be simple. You sure as hell can't trust me. You do, but you also can't. Everything's a contradiction with us."

He drains the rest of the beer, sets the bottle aside, sits up straighter. Looks at Loki. Wants, for once, to catch his gaze.

"Name something I can do to make this better for you."

He picks off an invisible bit of lint from Clint's pant leg. Trust doesn't mean believing everything you do or will do would be only in my best interest. He realizes that's... probably not ideal, for anyone else, and that trusting someone who doubts who they are when they're around Loki is likely the height of foolishness but here they are.

Foolish.

The request does get Loki to look at Clint, as if staring at the other man's face for several long moments will somehow make what he means clearer to Loki. It doesn't; he's not exactly surprised, but he also doesn't demand clarification. Loki is annoyed, clearly, and afraid, kind of, mostly of saying the wrong thing. Showing too much, too early, and thus making the desirable become ultimately unattainable.

Besides, what is this? Dying? Having some of his greatest fears realized in his lack of voice, a magic that doesn't work as it has for ages, a sense of powerlessness? Or is this the thing that this usually is, for him: the pervasive sense of loneliness coupled with the belief that it is what he deserves and all he's worth?

He could hedge. He could say 'I don't know'. He could be petty. But he's simultaneously afraid of being too specific. Clint could hold him; it would help, but he'd be too concerned that it would only happen the once, now, and he's not sure how he feels about that. So it goes with any number of other primarily physical comforts he can think of.

You could care, is what he settles on, in whatever way will not make you hate yourself for it.

Edited 2022-08-20 02:17 (UTC)

It is very easy to take this the worst of all ways. Maybe he's starting to see why Loki reacts some of the ways that he does. If you don't get your hopes up, you won't be disappointed.

Because there's a thought that comes to mind. That he could alter the parameters of what he wants out of this, that he could blithely say name something I can actually do, just to twist the dagger a little deeper. Out of anger, pettiness. Spite.

Instead, he scoots closer, pushing off the corner of the couch he'd settled against. Knees over Loki's lap instead. "Give me your hands." And then, after a moment, "Please." Because Loki has been polite, save that scare with being pet, and it's the least he can do to try and attempt it in return.

There is hesitation, confusion, curiosity, all within Loki in the moments it takes Clint to realign his body. When Clint's legs move Loki's hands shift to press into the couch at either side of his hips. He had, in all honesty, expected the other man to inform him that he'd already reached that particular limit just by being here in the first place. In Loki's apartment, in his presence.

If you don't get your hopes up, you won't be disappointed. If you expect the worst you can be surprised by things being not as terrible as that, even when they're still fairly terrible.

The confusion remains even as Loki twists his body, angles himself more in Clint's direction, and holds out hands that are immediately unsteady without something to apply constant pressure to.

There are... several reasons for that, honestly. Instead of being precious about it, Loki decides instead to focus on the fact that the tremors are less bad than they were merely two days ago. So is the pain. He suspects that the scars will always be visible, to the two of them especially and in particular, but he sees little reason to be upset about that.

Scars are a mark of survival.

He cups Loki's hands in his, gentle, palm up. Focuses on the scarring there, and on long fingers lightly curled, and on the shake in them. Presses his thumbs into certain points, the meat of Loki's hands, feeling him out.

Nods to himself, sets one of Loki's hands back down--on Clint's knee, even, rather than anywhere else. A deliberate choice. And sets both of his hands to the task of rubbing the one between them. Massaging his thumbs into the muscles. Pulling firmly but gently at fingers, rolling joints, rubbing long lines down the whole length of Loki's hand. If anything in particular seems to hurt or pull, he turns his attention there.

Having spent a lifetime using his hands for his work, he knows plenty about caring for them, exercises to retain flexibility and mobility, has had doctors massage at them before. He can't say he's ever been pierced through and through in the middle of them, but Loki's body is healing itself rapidly enough. When Clint is satisfied with his work on one hand, he takes the other back up for the same thorough attention.

At first, Loki more or less holds his breath in an attempt not to overreact. To balk from or desire too much of what he asked for: care. Which for him could cover a large swath of behaviors that aren't necessarily limited to acts of kindness, compassion; and while he knows that there can be a level of care in pain if applied for certain reasons, certain necessities, certain ends, it's definitely not the sort of thing he would expect out of Clint at this moment.

It's... nice? Not so gentle that Loki feels physically uncertain about it, in that way he has of being twitchy around unexpectedly soft and gentle things he's not prepared for (and this, actually, is what has him realize that perhaps the way he'd touched Clint earlier had not been the best idea). There's pain, of course there is... the muscles are stiff, the nerves are shot, but Loki makes a valiant attempt not to make any noises of discomfort, even when it does hurt.

Clint can tell, anyway, either by the involuntary movement of his hands or just by virtue of knowing Loki. Perhaps it's a ridiculous endeavor to begin with but Loki has always been a man of pride at odd turns, even when it does not suit or support him.

That his libido responds is not entirely surprising, honestly. It's touch and contact from the person he craves it from the most these days, after all. It is, however, embarrassing to become hard at this moment when he is trying very sincerely not to push, or make demands, or be...

Whatever it is that makes him difficult for Clint. Beyond the troubled history. Being himself, he thinks ruefully. Who gets horny at every single inappropriate damned moment, it would seem.

Really, it is one thing to find violence sensual. To be attracted to the things that others tell themselves cannot possibly be attractive. It is quite another to spend centuries sublimating suffering into ecstasy just to get incredibly aroused by soft kindness from someone who is offering nothing else.

He tries ignoring it, ensuring to keep his hip incredibly still, trying not to remember the moments of soft sensuality before pain that had taken him by surprise in Clint's dream, until he realizes the hand that had been set at Clint's knee is now, weakly, gripping into the fabric of his pant leg. Loki keeps his eyes on Clint's hands and forces himself to relax. It half works; his weakened death grip on Clint's knee lets up, at least.

Loki is not going to look up, however.

He works in this not-so-casual silence, focused. Will not demand that Loki look at him. Won't scoff that he needs to get a grip on himself. Feels that hold on his knee, curled into the denim, does not comment on it.

Loki wanted care. This is him, caring, without hating himself for it. Maybe hating what he did in some regards, but not hating this. He refuses, too, to feel self-hate for this giving into Loki's wants again so easily. In a sense, Clint asked for this himself.

At least this is something that makes full sense to find attractive. A desire that he can wrap his mind around. He doesn't think on it much, because that will get awkward fast, because he might instead think of pulling those fingers into his mouth, or elegant hands wrapped tight around his windpipe, or nails digging into his skin. Clint lets out one little breath about it and refocuses.

Until he feels done with that hand, too, and sets it back down as well. A moment where his hand is over Loki's, on his leg. This could be cozy if they wanted it to be.

"Does that feel any better?"

Loki nods, breathes. Doesn't look up. He wants to lift his hands and sign 'thank you', keep his mouth shut and his voice out of Clint's head, but he also doesn't want to break the contact at all.

So. Another breath, and then: Thank you. The jumble of emotions behind that lead with desire and shame at the forefront.

The kind thing, or perhaps the sensible one, would be to gently imply that Clint should leave. Or perhaps just ask him to, outright. He's going to fuck it up, Loki's even more certain of it now, this fragile moment of peace; it is merely a kindness that Clint hasn't laughed at him, or rolled his eyes, or grown irritated or disgusted or what have you.

'Why are you incapable of self-control?' is Odin's voice, in his head. An argument centuries past, a man years dead. 'What need have I for that?' had been his response, at the time, but now?

He screws his eyes shut. Clint will decide what happens next. He'll probably leave before it becomes too strange to handle. And Loki will refuse to make any move to stop him.

They are sometimes way more similar than Clint feels entirely comfortable pointing out. Because there is shame that filters through, which is something he wasn't sure Loki was even capable of feeling at all, much less about...whatever this is. That he's horny for touch? That hands are one of the most sensitive parts of the body for obvious reason, that interest and warmth and kindness and tenderness and arousal intertwine in this case, that he likes something that isn't pain and horror and blood?

Loki does not technically answer the question, but Clint doesn't feel like being pedantic about it.

This is a nice moment. They come so few and far between with them. He wants to frame it and hang it on a wall to remind himself he is capable of this. So he keeps his hand there over Loki's. Warm and secure.

He should go.

"Do you need any help with anything around here?"

A furrow between his brow, heat rising in his cheeks, are both responses Loki tries to push aside in his own mind in favor of extracting Loki's overwhelming and unrelenting desire away from Clint's question. The warmth of the other man's hand on his.

The shock that Clint hasn't opted to leave yet, despite the fact that both of them know he should.

He opens his eyes. Doesn't look directly at Clint. Looks around the apartment instead. Some of the plants need watering. He could probably manage it, or at least the bulk of it now that Clint has alleviated some of the pain in his hands, but. Well.

Loki doesn't actually want Clint to leave.

Clint does not comment on the blush. He's being nice. He's being kind, maybe because Loki deserves it, maybe not, maybe out of guilt, maybe not. So he's going to make an effort. Sees it, notes it, says nothing.

They are both trying right now, trying to live in a moment that is not likely to happen this way again, doesn't want to scare it off like a skittish wild animal. Loki makes a suggestion, something that may or may not really need doing, to keep him around. Avoids anything wild or lewd or strange or annoying. Clint could go, should go.

"Okay."

There's a question that's been sitting right under his ribcage that even now he wants to ask, but he's not sure he'll like the answer. Not sure he needs it, can guess at it, maybe. He moves, slow and easy, off Loki's lap, makes to stand. Whatever's left of the tea is cold now, and he takes the mug and empty beer bottle to help clear up. Rummages around a little, until he finds a little watering can to fill. Loki has taken good care of his plants, but some are looking a little bit parched. No wonder, if his hands cramp up enough that holding anything for long is a burden. Does this chore, without complaint. Sees the view out the windows. Shivers at the deja vu.

"Do you want more tea?" To help soothe that throat further. To keep his aching hands nice and warm. This might all be honest; this might all be a lie. But it doesn't bother him right now to keep it going.

His gaze does affix itself to Clint's face when he acquiesces to Loki's request. Clint moves away from him carefully and Loki's hands slide back to settle into the seat of the couch as he attempts to breathe and will his arousal down to a manageable and less embarrassing state.

There is always something oddly fascinating about watching someone else navigate a space in which Loki spends a great deal of time alone. The children know where he lives, yes, but he can count on one hand the number of times they've been inside for more than a handful of minutes; usually Loki meets them out in the world, shape-shifted into a different form, a different gender presentation, in order to avoid attention or scrutiny from those that would recognize him otherwise.

The Bartons always recognize him, though. That he allows for, on purpose.

Clint's new question startles him out of his considerations. The sense of longing for something as simple as this to continue rises in his chest, his throat. He can't, won't, ask for it. The presumption and imposition inherent in the concept of it are too much. What would he even say? 'I'm desperately lonely could you just stay and be here? I won't fight you. You wouldn't have to touch me.'

Desperate. Pathetic. His hands ball into fists.

Yes, thank you. Predominantly Loki feels thankful, in his uncertain and wary way, though the longing remains; Loki can't help it but he will continue to ignore it. So too, remains the self-disgust quick on its heels. He rises, then, because his kitchen is full of things both potent and dangerous, even though the tea in question is still on the counter, the kettle half full of water on the stove. But if he doesn't do something, if he just continues to passively accept Clint's help in this way, if he remains consumed by wanting with no real outlet, he's certain that he will say or do something foolish.

Ruin it. He's so afraid of ruining it. Of proving that he doesn't deserve this because he can't even pull it together long enough for a trial run.

In the kitchen he gathers the few things that aren't still out. The honey, the lemon, the tea ball. A spoon. Arranges them on the counter as something to do with his hands, something else to focus on, as the cat follows and leaps up into the window seat, cleaning herself.

Loki finally gets up, and that feels so much better than him staying seated right there, watching him, trying to breathe through arousal and all else. It's better than him being entirely passive. Clint could have withstood it, yes, but it feels like some kind of oppressive weight is starting to lift off his shoulders as he puts the kettle back on.

Someone's going to break this silence, this niceness. It might as well be him, hands curled on the counter, watching the kettle, suddenly lacking anything else to do immediately before things are ready to go.

"I'm not sorry for the things I did in a dream where I don't think I was ever in full control and where I didn't have all the information." Start with that. "I do feel guilty about it." He blinks, sucks in a breath. "You're going to be frustrated with that and ask me why. Don't ask me why. I think we both know I'm not going to have any satisfying answers for it. But I feel it. Guilty and used. A little like a monster. Which I know. I know you'd scoff at it. What's a monster to the likes of you, to the likes of people much more awful than you ever were or could be? Logic doesn't have a place in dreams, and it doesn't always have one in feelings, either."

I don't think you're a monster, Loki starts and then pauses. He's a good negotiator, knows how to understand others well enough to get them to do things that are more aligned with his interests than their own. But it's not often he turns that ability around, forces himself to listen, not for the cracks where he can slip in, but for the shift in perspective. For many reasons. But I don't think a monster would feel guilty about it at all.

He's not trying to change Clint's mind. It's not insistent, or cajoling. He meant what he said earlier, when he'd told Clint that he wanted them to understand each other. This is him, making an attempt to understand in the face of the certainty that he will fail at it.

About feeling used, well. Accurate, perhaps. Loki did use him to an end. Trusted him with something he still feels relatively certain needed to happen, though he can also see how perhaps it went further than Clint feels was necessary. To that end he almost asks if Clint would still feel the same way if Loki had merely been injured, not dead, and then he remembers his own reaction the last time he unintentionally broke Clint's arm. In a crowded place, in the middle of an argument.

He'd fled. Not far. But still.

Sometimes a scale is only bad to worse and 'better' has no place in it.

He could tell Clint that he hadn't meant for him to find out, or a least not until Loki was better healed, more himself, but he doubts that would help.

I don't know how to improve any of that. The guilt. That I used you. That you feel like a monster as a result.

Edited 2022-08-20 15:56 (UTC)

"I know." That Loki doesn't think him monstrous. That guilt has no place in the heart of a monster. "I know I'm not one, not for those reasons. I think it's...that I want things, enjoy things, that I don't think I should. They make some part of me feel that sickness. Like I said before. That...I liked it. A lot of it. And hated it, too. I'm not supposed to..."

He breathes out slow, leans heavy over the counter, counts to five in his head. "I'm not supposed to like any of that. I can deal with wanting, but liking feels like I'm crossing a line. I'm a weapon." Saying that feels grounding. Grounds him, solidifies him, makes him whole. "Weapon's not supposed to like it, just do."

He's been a weapon without a master for longer than sits well with him. SHIELD fell, but there was still work to do. The Avengers fell, and the law came down on him, forced him into another retirement. And it was good. Enough space on the homestead that he didn't always feel caged, quality time with the family. The caged feeling could be set aside and mitigated by other shit. Or he tried to.

And then Thanos happened, and there was work to do, and now that that's done, he has to keep finding work, but without someone to tell him exactly what to do. If Fury calls him, he'll answer. If one of the Avengers that are left called for him, he'd consider it. Apparently, given one Kate Bishop, he can get into his own damn trouble just fine. There's still shit out there. And with two birds having left the nest now and another on his way to growing up, everything's starting to feel like a cage again. Laura's given him permission to go and do. Whatever he needs to, so long as he comes home. But he doesn't have anyone but Fury to answer to now, and who knows where that son of a bitch is. He'll never be Ronin again, never don the outfit and run around with a fucking sword cleaning up the sorry shit that filled every fucking vacuum of power. But he'd be something not dissimilar if left to his own devices.

The kettle starts to whistle. He turns off the heat, thankful for even something small to break him out of this feeling threatening to pull him under.

"Am I your weapon? Am I a weapon you use against yourself?"

Watching Clint breathe through to voice the idea that he has function but is not meant to have... violent desires? No, that's not entirely correct. Take pleasure in the fulfillment of violent desire, yes, that's more accurate, puts a few pieces of their differences into perspective.

Loki's frowning, as Clint speaks, as he listens feels senses his way through the emotional response on the other side of their connection. Being a weapon elicits the same response in Clint that knowing Clint killed him elicits in Loki. It's probably not the healthiest thing, in the broader sense, for most people, but.

Neither of them are most people.

The question has him huffing, slightly amused as his hands spoon honey into the mug, add tea into the tea ball, arranging both items so that Clint can add the hot water.

Often. It is not all he wants of Clint nor does it encompass all that he believes the archer is capable of, but. It's not an inaccurate assessment of how things have been between them. Ideally that would not be all.

There's a frown light on his lips, a divot between his brows, as he sets to pouring the water over tea leaves. Tea ceremonies are meant to imbue harmony and balance and patience, beauty in the mundane, tight control, everything perfect and in its place. Mindfulness of the everyday, enhance the aroma and taste.

Pretty sure he couldn't do any of that shit. It's leaf water. You drink it. But he's trying to internalize some of that as Loki's uncomplicated words wash over and in him.

He doesn't think he needs to ask what more he would be. Ideally. 'Partner' seems like the safest word for it, and it feels tremendously inadequate. "I'm yours, and you're mine." If he is a weapon, and he is Loki's, then he is Loki's weapon. Stands to reason.

Question it from the side, then. Direct and yet indirect at the same time. "What else would you use me for besides your instrument of suicide?"

There is a flush of fondness, pride, and no little possessiveness at Clint's acknowledgement of their state of belonging to one another that comes through without Loki expressing anything else directly, though he is watching Clint with an enigmatic smile that the archer is very familiar with.

There's a wind-up kitchen timer on the counter. Loki sets it to three minutes.

You could consider it my rebirth, if that helps at all. Since one must die in order to be reborn, no matter what some insane evangelical Christians might insist. For myself? A corrective measure. For others? Well. He shrugs, hands open, palms up. There are many things I would show you, many places different from this. And there are some methods of behavior that even I cannot tolerate, that should be also be corrected in those we may encounter.

He knows about the Ronin, even though it has mostly been Nate who has explained to Loki the history and cultural references at play there. He thinks Clint didn't have a terrible idea, really, he just doesn't thrive without an external sense of direction.

"You just wanna go on a space adventure with me and fuck up some assholes who need fucked up?" Clint squints his eyes at Loki. That seems so simple. That seems too simple. But then, Loki has no home, no kingdom. An agent of chaos across the stars.

Be Hawkeye, just for the likes of a sad and lonely prince who thinks a little step sideways has him reformed.

"Seems like you're just gonna have to get used to life on boring old Earth for the next couple decades and then find someone else to hurt you 'til you cum."

A possibility I am... more or less prepared for. A possibility he has actively plotted against, more like.

There's a moment's hesitation; not to tell Clint about Idunn's apples but for the admission that not every orgasm has to be led by pain. That he craves Clint's softness, as well, before. During. After.

There's that longing, again. Softer than before. Immediately tinged by embarrassment. Stop making him feel soft things, Clint, he doesn't know what to make of it at his big age.

He shrugs, swirling the tea ball in the mug.

Edited 2022-08-20 20:19 (UTC)

He huffs out of his nose and raises a hand like he's going to--he doesn't know what. It moves unbidden. Like he's going to rest it on Loki's shoulder? Stroke his cheek? Take him by the jaw?

Lowers it again. Flexes, once, like shaking off whatever drove the impulse to begin with.

"It's not like you to be shy." Shy with--is it desire? It's not exactly desire that bleeds through but something like it. "You talk too much, remember? So what is it?"

Green eyes track the lifting movement and drop of Clint's hand, before the alarm begins to rattle, and Loki reaches out to silence it.

Any of those gestures would have been welcome. There's a sense of thrill at what almost occurs, that doesn't quite dissipate despite Clint's decision not to see it through.

Loki picks up the mug, removes the tea ball and sets it into the sink, and blows against the surface of the liquid.

They are standing very close to one another, now. Loki turns to fully face Clint, leaning slightly against the counter.

I am not a creature that tends toward gentleness. I, perhaps, have never been, or at least not after I reached adulthood. I thrive in the absurd, the outcast, the subversive. That which has been deemed outside of reasonable desire. Pain is part of that.

You know this. An incline of his head.

And yet. I find that I crave your care, your gentleness, even in the face of my belief that I do not, could not, possibly be deserving of it. It's complicated. Confusing, even, at times. I know how to navigate a desire for suffering, for pain. How to encourage it, pursue it. I don't know what I'm doing with the rest.

So. Shyness. Embarrassment. He takes another sip and shifts his gaze away.

Loki tends to be confused about Clint's dual state of mind, and yet when Loki explains his desire for pain and craving for care, he thinks it's the clearest he's ever seen Loki. Maybe the reasonings they hold differ, but the idea of being split down that middle, wondering at what it means to deserve, juggling desires that are unusual, that makes so much god damn sense he could choke.

"You don't ask me to. You only ever ask for..." Loki barely asks for anything, honestly. He thinks about the taste of tears and blood. Blinks. It's gone again. But when he licks his lips, just a brief darting to wet them, the warm metallic taste lingers in the background.

He tips his head, searching. Drums fingers on the countertop for a moment before flattening his hand on the surface. Phrasing. It's interesting. Curious.

"Am I outside of reasonable desire?"

He expects the answer to be a scoffed no, but he wonders. Loki thriving off the chaotic and unwanted and strange and set apart. Did Clint seem that way when he was chosen? Was there something of his difference in his eyes that Loki had seen?

Asking for things is difficult, for there always exists the potential for denial.

A sigh. Another sip.

I suppose it could be worked on, my habit of only allowing for and making implied and explicit demands.

Is that Loki giving Clint the room to tell him to ask for things more? To take the risk of being denied? (Will small miracles never cease? Apparently today is the day for it.)

Another sip as he turns Clint's question over in his mind. Yes. A breath. Some of that is my fault, if there's fault to be had.

He pulls a hand through his hair, causing the curls to bounce and rearrange themselves around his face.

It's not a no. It's a yes. He doesn't know why this feels settling and upsetting at once.

Hasn't he always known he was different, outside, undesirable? Look at the Avengers, at who they were, at the ones who claim to be them now. Fuckups and assholes and broken, damaged people. All of them. You have to be to do the things they do.

"Think if there's fault, it's to the guy that knocked up a young girl and left her all alone." Red noseless fuck had named him, son of Edith, and not anyone else. "You didn't help by reaching in my head and squeezing my brain like a sponge, no, but I don't think any of it's your fault."

One of the few things he doesn't think Loki can be faulted for, really.

"Still managed to get married to the greatest woman in history." He's allowed to be dramatic and sappy about his wife, thanks. "Raise a bunch of kids who are smarter and kinder than I'll ever be. Have a house. Have two houses, even if moving was kind of just a necessity of having a bunch of people suddenly know where your incredibly secret and private off the radar life is. Saved the world a couple times. I think that's pretty good for an outcast weirdo nobody dipshit who should've been dead decades ago."

Nose wrinkle. I take some offense to the idea that you're a dipshit. Also, Clint is definitely not a nobody at this point, even amongst his own people but especially in Loki's regard; still, that might be a pointless fight for another time.

Loki suspects it's a well-known secret amongst the Barton clan the high regard with which he considers Clint's family; even Laura who occasionally asks him pointedly (in his opinion) ridiculous questions he refuses to properly answer. You know how I feel about the children you've raised, the father you are. High praise, from a creature that has staunchly avoided parenthood for two millennia and also cannot stand a single person he ever has or could call 'father'.

"Hey, I'm the dumbass who never finished school; I can call myself a dipshit if I want." And maybe he's not a nobody now, but he most certainly was for a good bit of his life. "You attached yourself to a dipshit. Good job."

(Affectionate. Somehow.)

"You've been good." There's an emotion working its way up his throat, and he clears it, looks away. It's still there trying to claw. "You've been good to the kids. And to Laura. You didn't have to be. Pretty sure you only started trying to be part of the family just to piss me off," which worked at the time, "but you are, now. You're a good uncle. I know your family's complicated as hell, but I think if you ever wanted kids of your own? You wouldn't be a half-bad dad."

Eye-rolling. Also fondly. Yes, a good and somewhat predictable attachment for me, historically. You've met Thor. If we're going to talk about Loki's ability to handle being connected to a dipshit, then they might as well identify the first one he ever aligned himself with.

'You've been good', the emotion in Clint's voice, that he can simultaneously hear and feel coming from him, drives Loki to keep his mug up in front of his face, eyebrows slightly elevated. This is nice, this back and forth, but the compliment regarding his estimated parenting abilities is making him a little uncomfortable. Besides, it's not like Clint is wrong; Loki did begin ingratiating himself to the rest of the Barton family as a way of pissing Clint off.

It's just that he... actually enjoys children. In a broad sense. When they're old enough to reason. Usually. So that helped. And then, suddenly, somewhat to his own surprise, he'd managed to make friends with Clint's children.

Thank you. He isn't going to demand a subject change but it's a near thing. He will, however, continue sipping.

Thor's been less of a sticking point with them than Clint thought he would be. Mostly because Thor is so used to Loki's shenanigans by now that little is surprising, and because he's mostly pulling a Captain Marvel and roaming the universe looking for purpose and people to save. Visits New Asgard sometimes. Drops by the house specifically whenever Loki is not around even less frequently but no less unwelcome. He knows that there's a connection, and he knows no way of breaking that which a primordial force of the universe forged between them.

Clint respects Thor. Really got that balance of being so smart and so dumb at the same time nailed down. It's impressive.

Loki's probably as surprised as Clint is that this moderate softness is continuing, at any rate. The tight emotion of family. The acknowledgement that Loki is part of it, that he hasn't been bad for them. Making things all the more complicated. He nods in acknowledgement of the thanks but doesn't trust himself to say more. Because it's going to get worse if he says more. The one most likely to break the uneasy peace.

Loki frowns, softly, and sets the mug back down on the counter. Even if he weren't connected to the other man in such a way he'd be aware of his discomfort. Could trace it back to himself, as the reason.

He should encourage Clint to leave before this gets ruined by one or both of them.

He's too selfish to do that just yet.

How do you ask for forgiveness when you're not sorry for the thing you've done, when you only feel bad that it hurt someone else? Unaccustomed and unused to apologizing on the first place means Loki doesn't have the faintest idea. But that sense is there, bouncing around inside of him.

He wants to kiss Clint but that is an always state, for him. Neverending. He should ask permission, first, but the fear of rejection, the possibility that he'll ruin this moment in the asking, has him considering his other options, for once.

So he stands a little more upright, opens his arms a bit. Would you like a hug?

Thank your children for training him out of asking that particular question in a much more convoluted way.

Loki is plotting something, and Clint braces himself for whatever's about to happen or come out of his mouth (figuratively).

And then it's asking if he wants a hug. It's so...unexpected. A little childish? But in a good way. That'll be the kids, then, teaching him a few things. Trying them out on him. He laughs, actually. Surprised. In a good way.

"No," he says, even while laughing. Not from Loki. And not even really over this. It's kind of cute, though. "Do you want a hug?"

The rejection stings, causing a small flare of hurt and anger even though Clint is laughing and not in malice, even as Clint offers him the opportunity to he more honest and possibly get what he wants in the end. Touch and contact.

So he's not looking Clint in the eye when he responds. Yes. Does he expect to get one, at this point? Hard to say!

His lips are smirking, but he lets out a sigh. Loki doesn't ask him for much, and when he does, it's either something distressing, or in such a roundabout way that he can't figure out what it actually is at the heart of it. So this is new. They're trying a lot of new things, lately.

"Okay." He will try not to hurt Loki in the process. Even knowing that Loki would like it if he did. Steps up into Loki's space, curls an arm around his waist, another up, into Loki's hair, to draw him down a little, rest chin on shoulder. Holds him.

Loki spends Clint's entire yet short approach towards him glaring at somewhere around the other man's midsection. He closes his eyes as Clint embraces him and tries to relax into it, despite everything else. It's nice. It helps, actually, and he returns the embrace, wrapping his arms around Clint's back and breathing for a few moments.

Just that. Nothing else.

However. Loki recognizes that the next thing he says, or does, will either be several steps in the wrong direction between them or a demand that Clint is not prepared to meet. Because he feels raw and on edge, now. Too much honesty between them.

Better to stop before that happens.

So. He counts to twenty, in his head, and then lets go. Pulls back. Thank you for coming. He looks Clint in the eye, now. You should go.

It's strange. A sense of...calm. Maybe not contentment, but a quieting of the anger and hate and disgust. The idea that if they can have this, now, then what if they could have this moving forward?

That's not who they are. They both have too much baggage with themselves and with each other to keep it up for long. Loki's holding back, and Clint's letting him. They both have impulses that are ugly and unwise, and they can't set all that aside forever.

It's still not okay. It might not ever be okay. As a whole and for the situation that they found themselves in. Clint takes a step back, steels himself. "Yeah, I should. I'll tell the kids I checked up on you. That you're probably gonna be okay. I think Lila's kind of upset; you should probably text her more." He stands there for a beat longer. Like he doesn't want to move. Like he's waiting. Like he's debating with himself about touching Loki again. Blood doesn't come to mind this time. (But he knows it will later.)

And then he turns and goes.

Loki was a door, before. They were always connected, but they could each open and close the door as they wanted, muffle the sound, stuff a towel underneath to block out the light.

It's a window, now. Can peer in, see one another more clearly, slide it open with not much effort. After Loki stepped deliberately into his dreams and back into his head. After Clint used that opportunity to kill, and the effects lingered into the waking world. Loki can speak in his mind directly if he wants. A thing he has not been happy with. They feel the confused twists of emotions in each other. Clint sometimes wishes he could break it, smash the glass, do something violent and harmful and severing. And he can't. Or, he could, but the damage done would be too awful to bear.

But he's also always thought of it as something that Loki does and Clint simply deals with. Loki is the one with magic, who bridged the gap deliberately, who went in with curiosity and overstayed his welcome and reaped the benefits and consequences both.

They rarely are asleep at the same time. So when Clint finds himself in a world of dreams, he simply assumes it is his own. Except that it doesn't feel quite right. He shouldn't know it's a dream, directly. He shouldn't feel so...whatever this is. He freezes. He waits. Perhaps to wake up.

One of the reasons Loki is so hesitant to sleep in the first place is the nature of his own dreams. A mess of prophecy, fear, trauma, longing. The whispered and screamed prayers of acolytes and believers, past and present. Occasionally with a none too terrible memory sprinkled in.

It's Nate and Lila's fault he's sleeping at all, actually. Between the two of them there have been bath bombs and sleep playlists and any number of other gifts that Loki refuses to refuse outright but definitely engaged in a little eye-rolling about, but. It's fine. It's sweet? They care and he is several years too invested in their well-being to get very prissy about them being invested in his as well.

Instead? Only a little prissy. Mostly directed at Lila who is old enough not to be too phased by it. Nate also wouldn't be, but he would call Loki out about it, so.

The dream starts here: a library with no ceiling. Where the ceiling would be are stars, constellations, the ever unfolding and branching fo the multiverse. Some of the books on the shelves speak in dead languages to each other. Some of them are screaming, but the awareness of that fact is not coupled with the actual sounds of their distress (thankfully).

There's a garden visible through a large picture window on one wall: the plants are all frozen over and the statuary is weeping blood. Thunder booms in the distance but is more of a calming presence than not.

Fun times, in the dreaming unconsciousness of one Loki Laufeyson, once Odinson, now mostly just Loki.

Oddly enough: Loki himself is not immediately present. Where does Clint focus his attention?

It's not something he thinks he would dream about. Loki hasn't deliberately stepped into his since the incident--that he's aware of, anyway--and while sometimes things get a little twisted up and weird for their connection, it's nothing like this. Could he be dreaming about Loki dreaming? Fuck if he knows.

His steps are silent in spite of his boots, as though an extension of his body, as though padded like a wolf. He does not have a bow. He has no weapon. He is not a hunter in this place. Shivers in a shirt too thin for a place like this. He steps between aisles of books, the titles meaning nothing, though he has the incessant thought that if he opened any of them up, he would see something, a memory, a thought, a secret. It tempts his fingers. They do not reach.

What he does reach for is the window. It does not open, was not meant to open, only show off the landscape beyond it. Which isn't good enough for him. He doesn't want to shatter the glass, but he presses a hand to it--cold cold cold--like he can will it to move or disappear or turn into a door.

None of that happens. (This is not his mind or his will or his to control. He has no control. This is Not For Him.) He breathes against the glass, and instead of a fogging mist to disappear in moments, it forms ice crystals, spreads out and freezes in place.

The ice keeps growing, actually, moving from the window out to the wall and reaching several bookshelves. The temperature drops even lower in this room. Some of the books protest their complaint.

One of the bookshelves moves away from the wall that is half encased in ice by this point. A door opens in the wall. There is warmth, there, beyond it. Music and light and the noise of many people all in the same space.

(The library, more or less, encourages Clint to go that way. Away from the books, the furniture, the rapidly spreading cold. If he hesitates or resists it'll simply shift, force the perspective, make it so there's nowhere else for Clint to go. Up to him how that pans out.)

The doorknob is warm beneath Clint's hand and the door itself swings open at the mere suggestion of intent. Much like Loki's apartment door. The room beyond is definitely not Loki's studio apartment in Iowa.

Instead the space is massive. High ceilings. Tables of food. Some sort of feast or celebration is the first impression; the light is strange and it is difficult for Clint to get a fix on what's happening in the center of the room. Dancing, perhaps? The impression of movement, of bodies, and then that's when the clarity of the sounds catches up with the rest of it.

This is clearly an orgy of some kind.

There are no humans involved, and very few people that look even passingly human. Some are species that Clint might recognize; many are not. Some folks are dancing with one another, primarily in the nude, but most of them are fucking. None of them have noticed Clint. It's unlikely that they'd care.

Loki is not in the center of the room. He's seated on a sort of dais off to the side, drinking wine, and watching everything happening around him with a mix of pride and longing and also a distinct sense of disconnect. This is happening because of him but he is not directly involved. It's more as if he's been invoked as witness than asked to participate.

It's then that Loki notices Clint across the room, and frowns a little.

This is deliberate, and that unnerves him. That this place could be alive, the books that whisper-scream, the spread of sky above watching him. The door is inviting. He moves--

--away, and the library twists around him. The door is before him. He swallows thick like there's ice forming in his throat and moves away again, turns, as the library turns with him, and he is even closer to the door now.

Fine. He gets it. He reaches for it, and it opens before he can even turn the knob. The library all but vanishes behind him as he's encompassed by the light and the warmth. He finds that he is already stripping off his shirt before he seems consciously aware that he's doing so. Something about warmth and sweat and sound that gets to him before anything else forms. It's heady, scent of sex and desires fulfilled. The room glitters and glints in a strange way, hard to pick out anything specific unless he blinks, really concentrates. There are limbs that he doesn't always recognize, but it's very clear what's happening now. It makes his head dizzy for a moment, and he turns to step back into the library, to embrace how much cooler it is, just to clear his head. But the door is gone.

He stumbles for just one step before righting himself with a deep breath. Reaches for a drink on a table. There's a warning in the back of his mind, about eating the food from the table of a fairy. Drinks anyway, deeply. It's sweet and light and satisfying and warming even more than the atmosphere.

Loki is there. Of course Loki's there. Why wouldn't Loki be there. But he's not part of the action. He's aside. Almost like an afterthought. Clint is still not entirely sure of what's happening, if this is Loki's mind, if this is his own, if this is just a spectacularly odd dream where someone left the window open and so much of the god wafting through. If he'll remember in the morning or if it'll leave him like smoke.

His tongue feels heavy, and he's not sure if he should give in to figuring out which it is. But he opens his mouth anyway. Doesn't look at Loki when he says: "You started the party without me." He doesn't raise his voice against the din. He does not imagine that he needs to.

Clint has taken his shirt off. It's a blessing, certainly, to Loki anyway that that is as far as he's opted to get in terms of disrobing. Loki hasn't stopped frowning; he has, instead, risen to his feet and crossed the space between them, picking up a handful of grapes along the way and popping one into his mouth. His eyes glance across Clint's bare skin, though it's clear in the next second that he's annoyed with himself for not resisting that particular urge.

It's clear that Loki is annoyed about something, anyway. Despite the air of physical desire fulfilled, despite the various states of undress of those around them, Loki is in a collared shirt, buttoned up to his throat, and he shoves the hand that is not holding grapes into the pocket of his slacks. There's a sense of tension in him, muscles taunt and unrelated like he's holding something back and possibly not doing too well, physically, as a result. "The party is in our honor," he explains, "but it is not for us."

Question is, does he mean the royal 'we' or he and Clint, specifically? The answer, it would seem, is yes. Loki eats another grape. "I didn't think this was quite your 'scene', as it were, anyway."

Loki comes to him. Ah. This is Loki's dream. Clint has no control here, or at least none to a certain extent. He takes another drink, tipping his head back, bare throat working as he drains the glass.

"I didn't mean to come here." Both to this as a dream, to invade Loki's space, and also this room when he had intended to stay in the cold of the library.

He watches Loki sidelong, from periphery. His legs want to give, not for collapse but for another too familiar want that he chokes back. Stays standing just as he is.

"You're looking very Earth-y." Rather than the royal Asgardian leathers. Or nothing at all. Or anything else he could or could not be wearing.

Does not bring up, just yet, his questions on what the honor is really about.

"I know." He has no doubt of that, actually. "You're not unwelcome. But the library is not safe for you right now if you're alone." The library was his sanctuary for many years, in Asgard. The one in his mind holds a host of horrors both known and unspeakable, alongside no real desire to allow Clint to come to harm within its walls.

So it pushed him out and further into the dream, toward the dreamer.

Something else for him to be annoyed with himself about, clearly. Later.

Now he has to manage... this. Clint here, in the vortex of Loki's unexpressed physical desire. He glances at himself and rolls another grape between his tongue and the roof of his mouth. "I suppose I am." He holds the grapes out towards Clint as an offering.

"Would it be safer if I wasn't alone?"

Not that he's necessarily eager to go back to the cold now that he's settling into this surrounding desire a little more, trying not to be overwhelmed by it, trying very hard not to just strip off everything and throw himself into the pile. There's a stray thought of eating a grape right out of Loki's hand. Breathes it out.

Grabs a couple to pop into his mouth. Actually looks at Loki. All done up for business, or like the guy in charge but just not in the midst of it all, like he'd rather watch.

"It would be." He isn't sure if he should offer to take Clint back there, in part because it would mean that Clint would have to put his shirt back on. The hand in his pocket flexes, relaxes, at how much that actually carries weight against what Loki might consider. "Do you wish to return?" Politely inquiring minds want to know.

Something Clint might pick up on, or become aware of over time: the lack of violence in the setting amongst the orgy. There are no restraints, no methods of inflicting pain. Some partners are rougher in their actions than others but everyone seems to be rather invested in having a good time for good time's sake.

Loki raises an eyebrow as Clint looks him over. Finishes his grape. Takes his other hand out of his pocket in order to wipe away a bit of wine from the corner of Clint's mouth with his thumb as Loki's own jaw clenches.

It's a bold move, but is it any bolder than being half naked in this dreamscape? Clint grabs at Loki's wrist--not unkindly, as in the waking world. More wary, but also, holding him there. Loki doesn't feel any more or less real here, but he doesn't give off that same heavy weight of reality around him as in the dream before. That must be how Clint feels to the one he's intruding on.

He doesn't answer the question. Asks another instead.

"A party about us but not for us. Did I miss an anniversary?"

He's being obtuse deliberately, because sometimes asking the right questions with Loki is fucking exhausting.

"What makes you imagine that I keep track of a Midgardian calendar?" Strange lie, Loki, considering you know when his children's birthdays are. Still. His pulse has ticked up and the slacks he has on are tight, much in the style he prefers in public. Or preferred, actually, before he stopped being himself in public.

Every time he does anything in the world with the Barton children he's shapeshifted himself into someone else. For years it's been that way.

Anyway. The tight pants? Not hiding his physical reactions to Clint's touch. Loki's nostrils flare. "I know what I want. It's considered a cause for celebration. I can't have what I want. So I am not allowed to participate."

Someone laughs, near the center of the room, before it becomes a different sound entirely. Loki's spine stiffens. They are laughing at him; he's laughing at himself. He knows himself better than that, especially here.

Thing is, he wasn't lying. But Clint's arrival has changed things. The real within the unreal. And even though Loki is more experienced with shaping dreams to his will, he cannot deny that Clint has power here.

"That is not how I think you would put it. Would you like to hear how I think you would put it?"

No one's laughing now.

"As I remember it, you had exactly what you wanted." He can see the physical reaction well enough. Is starting to get used to it, that that's just Loki's default state when having skin to skin contact with him. But he can feel the heightened pulse rabbiting under his fingers, not letting go. "Didn't think that needed a belated party and a 'congrats on the sex' cake. Or an imaginary orgy for you to imaginary jack off to, or whatever it is your subconscious is doing."

Which conveniently also doesn't answer the new question Loki posed. But it doesn't feel terribly important. Go on. Tell him how he would put it.

"I died and was resurrected. That deserves a party I suppose but that's not what the party is for." Loki takes a sharp breath. He'd had a point, before Clint neatly sidestepped it with his own interpretation which is not entirely wrong but it is missing some crucial details.

"I got what I wanted. Past tense. I know what I want. Present tense." Still following, his eyebrows seem to ask.

He'd had a point. He knew what he was going to say but now he's irritated and annoyed because why would Loki wait to throw a party, even an imaginary one? Does Clint not know him at all?

"What I want is you, Clint. Still present tense. What I want is to fuck you. Not in a dream, but in reality. Present tense. In that tiny fucking apartment where I have fucked no one. Perfect participle."

Edited 2022-08-21 22:51 (UTC)

There's that use of his name, that Loki so rarely seems to want to use. Somehow that makes everything seem suddenly more intimate. In the midst of an orgy.

"So you want to up the ante. Make dreams a reality." It at least is better than 'no shit', he thinks. "So, what, your brain's mocking you cuz you want a romp in the actual sheets and can't have it? Is that why there's a party and there's some arbitrary rule that you can't get in there and get your fuck on?"

"See, that wasn't terribly difficult, was it? Congratulations. You have figured me out."

He actually is, oddly enough, proud of Clint for getting it. He's just also an asshole and this is his brain, he's allowed to be cagey and poetic about what things mean.

"Besides, a romp implies a passing fancy." Or it did when he was first introduced to the term.

"Ohhhh, you wanna be friends with benefits about it, huh? Does belonging to each other mean fucking every other night? Fortnightly, maybe? Having the connection isn't enough, you have to have more of me in you, or you start going crazier? Want us to be doting boyfriends?"

He moves forward as he speaks, into Loki's space, and further still, to back him up into the nearest table, to corner him or pin him in some manner.

"Aw, do you want me to move in, be a cute couple, have the kids over for dinners and holidays? Or maybe you want to keep me and be kept and never leave and spend as much time as possible in bed and any other flat surface."

He still has not let go of Loki's wrist. His grip might be a little harder, though.

"I'm not in this dream. Do you not dream of me and having me any way you want me? I know it's not the real deal, but you'd think your fucked up brain might tease you with that much."

"I don't understand the necessity to mock me for this; do you think, perhaps, that I am not mocking myself enough already?" Does he want those things? Some of them. Mostly he wants, what he manages to imagine he wants anyway, is Clint holding him gently and fucking him more or less mercilessly.

The 'being kept' part is actually what hits all the notes, there. Currently anyway. He's (generally) open to change.

Clint's looming, pinning presence isn't doing Loki's arousal any favors. He's coming to accept that it's just Clint, no matter what he's doing, that his body is responding to (or even just the subconscious representation of his body, whatever); when he's focused on Loki, anyway.

"No, I don't tend to." Not to say he hasn't, but. He clearly isn't.

Edited 2022-08-21 23:27 (UTC)

He knows this is getting Loki off. He can't do anything to change that. He can think of very little, at this point, that might keep that kind of reaction from happening.

But fine. Lean into it, then. Clint finally lets go so his hands can start working at the buttons of Loki's shirt. He isn't particularly gentle about it, but he doesn't go ripping buttons off. Slides the fabric from Loki's shoulders.

His knees hit the floor hard enough that were this reality, it would jostle and hurt, but the impact does neither to him here. These are all details, working slacks open and off, and so on, that maybe normally he might gloss over in a dream, but it all seems to stick out particularly. Every pull and slide of the belt, every button, every tooth of the zipper. The expensive feel of fabric and leather. Details.

He is not at all surprised to find nothing underneath the slacks as he slides them down all the way to the floor with the intention of Loki stepping out of them.

Perhaps disappointingly, Clint doesn't stay on the floor. Right back up to his feet. Grabs Loki again, this time by the back of the neck, as though he were scruffing an unruly kitten. And takes them toward the mass of bodies at the center of the room.

By the time Loki is being led into the center of the room his cock is aching, leaking just a little, his face is flushed and his hands don't know what to do with themselves. He's aware that Clint still has his pants and boots on and that he is, by contrast, utterly naked; the blushing has spread from his face down his chest and his breathing is heavy.

The party around them moves, and shifts. The collected partygoers murmur their approval as they pass, some with amusement, some jeering. There are cushioned benches before them now, some with high arched backs and curved sides, but some that seem to only function as a soft place to bend someone over.

Loki stops, at this point, in part because he doesn't want to make a decision about which experience they're having. Since clearly an experience is to be had.

"Dare I ask what you have in mind, exactly?" Or is Loki just supposed to wait and see?

He doesn't really like that they're parting the Red Sea here, but he supposes that if Loki's subconscious doesn't want there to be fucking, they might avoid him.

Still, it's an experiment that seems worth trying. Clint shoves, and it won't matter very much if Loki stumbles or not, because the idea is to get Loki in the middle of this fuckfest.

And leave him there.

Clint turns and makes his way back through the throng of flesh, back to the outer ring of it all, and grabs a fresh goblet of wine.

It's impossible to see what happens to Loki when Clint leaves, the way that the rest of the bodies involved immediately fill the space in his wake. Not that anyone is assuming he attempts to look and find out, at least not before he finishes that goblet of wine. He does stumble, when Clint shoves him, glaring at the man's retreating back over his shoulder before he, too, loses sight of Clint.

When Clint finishes with that drink something hits him square in the shoulder. A book. Of sex positions, actually, and Loki is furiously climbing his way out of the throngs of people, who are not shy about touching him now but he is also not shy about shoving people's hands off of him.

He's wearing a robe but doesn't bother belting it.

"Must you always be such an ass?" He should have convinced the library to let him freeze, clearly.

A book hits him, some kama sutra-ass nonsense, and Loki huffing and puffing and naked but robed and very unhappy out of the people who seem perfectly fine with touching him, and Clint practically giggles. Blame it on the drink.

"It was your arbitrary rule. Looks like nobody else is interested in abiding by it. Go have fun. You're allowed that in your own head."

"If I wanted to fuck random strangers my mind made up to specifically not remind me of you, I would be doing that right now. As you can well see, I am not." Loki snatches his own goblet off the table, folding an arm across his chest and glowering before taking a long drink. He can't get drunk in most situations on Midgard but he can get extraordinarily fucked up in his own dreamscape, so why the Hel not. "I don't want to fuck strangers, and it is causing me problems, and that is how we got to this."

"Then don't dream up strangers; just make them a pile of me."

...Hold on, on second thought: "Wait until I leave if you do, though. I am not prepared to watch a bunch of me fuck me."

Loki's eyebrows go up because he cannot believe that Clint actually suggested that, and then down into a glower. "I don't want a godsdamned pile. What the Hel is wrong with you?"

Honestly, in a different situation Loki would be... more understanding of Clint's positionality here. But right now he's sexually frustrated, with the source of his desire more or less telling him to hurry up and get over it with some dream version, and while Loki could do that (and has, in the last few months, at least once) he doesn't want to.

It's not very satisfying, for him, is the problem. And Clint is standing right in front of him. "I'm going to my rooms," he announces to the party at large. "Have fun." That is directed at Clint before he turns on his heel and walks out, an archway appearing in front of him and leading off somewhere else. Somewhere not the library. He drains the goblet and drops it on the flor as he exits.

"I'm sorry they're not real enough to kill you again for real or whatever!" Clint calls after the retreating form.

He could follow Loki. The doorway hasn't vanished. Which might actually be an invitation, else he would have just stranded Clint here. Invitation to Loki's room (sorry, his rooms), alone, away from the crowd. Just the two of them.

It might be nice. It's very, very warm in here, and not just from drink. There's the idea that he knows, now, that things that happen in a dream can manifest in reality, but none of the crowd is getting rough. It's all just a good time.

He's had weirder dreams than alien orgy. Probably. If Loki wants to huff and throw a fit and then disappear just because ~you can't always get what you want~, and Clint does not otherwise know how to get out of here without, uh, dying in some manner, then his options are down to following Loki or hanging around. He could try to find the library again, but he imagines Loki might deliberately keep that from him.

Hang around it is. Nobody approaches him, delved in their good times. It's unclear if they're interested in someone like him, or just interested in him with Loki, but it's a fascinating enough watch. Chews through some grapes. Gets into his third goblet before he's loose and a little bored and a lot interested in saying fuck it, literally, and stripping the rest of the way down, wading into the band of bodies to get lost in some sensation for a while.

Is Loki aware of what Clint is getting up to? Yes. More or less. It's difficult not to be, honestly, when Clint is his own force to be reckoned with in his brain. And yes, the open entryway had been an invitation, because Loki cannot and will not shut Clint out completely even when he is being the most frustrating creature Loki has ever had the pleasure of knowing.

He's not surprised that he isn't followed, and he won't admit to disappointment either. Instead, while Clint is enjoying the grapes and the wine and the revelry, Loki gets extraordinarily high, a sensation he has missed quite a good deal, on Midgard. Which is somewhere he's chosen to exile himself, it would appear, until either the planet crumbles to dust or Clint decides to handle matters himself, whichever comes first.

The orgy participants let out little laughs and cheers as Clint joins them. They ask questions before they touch, but they are very engaged. Very thorough. Very invested in his enjoyment, and their own. However. Every party ends eventually.

There's a sense of people drifting off from the margins of the event, before there are fewer and fewer participants and then, suddenly, just Clint. At one of the chaises in the center of the room. It's clean, at least. Across the room is Loki, robe finally tied shut, holding a goblet of wine very loosely and looking less peevish and more simply unimpressed.

"You couldn't figure out how to leave, could you? Did it ever occur to you to ask anyone?"

The thing Loki most certainly is right about is that getting his brains fucked out by dream people isn't really that satisfying. Like, there's pleasure, the dreamsense of pleasure, the knowledge that there is and should be pleasure. His dreamed up body is feeling fucked, sure, but also, he's not very satiated by the whole experience. On one hand, it was great? On the other, it wasn't actually enough.

If Clint's at all embarrassed about being found laid out on the chaise, covered in fluids, some of them his own and some not, naked and befucked, then he doesn't show it. Annoyed? Maybe frustrated. Or exhausted but not in a satisfying way. He wonders what if any of it he might feel on waking.

He flips Loki off.

"I'm not asking fake people how to ditch their reality. And I wasn't gonna chase after you."

Loki rolls his eyes at being flipped off and simply has another sip of wine. "Well they would have told you, fake people or no. Besides, you clearly weren't too discerning in what you were willing to ask them." Nosewrinkle. Really, Clint. "Do you need a towel? A basin of water?"

"Sometimes it's nice just to lay back and let things happen."

That suddenly seems like the wrong thing to say. Like it's too close. Like he didn't actually mean to say it, and he pushes himself up to sitting to try and hide the fact that the words cut a little.

"Does my state of uncleanliness distress you? Maybe you should dream me all squeaky clean for you to touch."

Loki's nostrils flare and his head tilts in a way that implies he is displeased with Clint's particular choice of words. He sees Clint's attempt at... redirection or perhaps just his awareness that it was the wrong thing to say, and he knows Clint often doesn't say the right thing to begin with, but.

Still.

Loki turns away from him and waves his hand. The sensation of being dunked in warm water hits Clint full force for several moments before it dissipates and Clint is left sitting there, clean and only a tiny bit damp.

Loki doesn't turn back around. Apparently the taunt about touching was not taken as invitation. Apparently the strawberries on the table are more interesting than Clint right now.

"There was a time in which dreaming about sex with you would have been a welcome and enjoyable distraction from the active desire that plagues my waking hours." The problem is that it doesn't hold up. Doesn't exhaust and satisfy. It more or less feels like a daydream and not worth it, at that.

Edited 2022-08-22 13:44 (UTC)

Clint makes an undignified noise at the imaginary dunking, wipes at his face. Well, hey, at least Loki actually...did it. Even if in kind of an asshole way, which, sure, is deserved, fully. Fine.

He glances at Loki. "Kinda like having a whole alien orgy is an enjoyable distraction." And not enough. Not quite right, not quite there. "But it's not the same as the real deal, so it's not good enough."

He sighs, pulling his knees up under him on the soft cushion, feeling out the dull ache that does feel good but is also not-- "You want it, out there, and you want it to be enthusiastic and consensual and not full of pain and blood and all that shit I hurl at you." Given the antics of the orgy. He rubs his palms down his thighs. "You know it's complicated. With us."

"I do know it's complicated." Loki appears frustrated, voice tight, muscles taunt. Still not turning around. He picks up a strawberry, eyes focused on it and attention wholly elsewhere. "It is complicated for you. That you care, that I desire. It is complicated for me." For the same reasons but... not exactly.

Another complication though not one Loki is unused to. Since when do his desires and motivations align perfectly with someone else?

The problem of complications, again. To desire softness when there has been none desired before. From this man. When everything Loki learns about their connection and everything he is informs him that he is likely to continue desiring from this man for as long as he lives.

Frankly terrifying, thank you very much.

Somehow it was easier when he wanted a violent end that Clint was reluctant and unwilling to provide. Yes he was frustrated and angry at not being granted what he wanted but he'd found a way to get it anyway and then everything changed.

Or it didn't. Perhaps it's more of a losing of artifice. Perhaps he was correct, that he needed to die or else he'd be unable to change.

(Frankly terrifying, thank you very much.)

"I want it to balance, perhaps. A concept I tend to despise." Clint is his weapon yes. He tends to turn his weapons on himself from time to time. To test their sharpness. To improve his own.

Loki sighs. "Do you want a robe?"
Now, he'll turn around.

Edited 2022-08-22 19:16 (UTC)

He doesn't answer the question. Again. Directly. He feels like he can get away with that more in this space than he can out in the waking world, somehow.

"I can give you pain," he starts, quiet, staring at a spot on the chaise now than at Loki, "and I can give you softness. I know I'm capable of giving you both of these things," rubbing hands, an offered hug, "I just...don't know how to balance it myself, I think."

He is bare, physically. But he feels more bare emotionally, and it has an effect on him in this world. He is still Real. Solid, in a sense, where the rest is less so. How can one be more naked than naked? But Loki will be able to get that kind of sense, on looking at him. The same way that existing here, he appears more real. Like he could be translucent, but isn't. Like he could be shining bright, but doesn't. Like he could start to pull a loose thread on his person and unwind himself, but no such thread exists.

He thinks, for the briefest moment, should I run? Like Loki might suddenly become a hunter descending on prey himself.

"Sometimes I don't know if the things I want are the things I want." And that scares him. He breathes out, feeling near dizzy with the imagined effort of pleasing and being pleased by a number of strange bodies, the wine gone to his head that isn't even real. He feels barer than bare. He shivers.

"Yeah. I think I'd like a robe, please."

Loki notices. How could he not, when Clint seems more Real than anything has any right to be, when Clint is honest and exposed and shining, but clearly opting not to be exactly that?

He should look away, perhaps, and grant the other man a modicum of... decency, perhaps, or even just the suggestion of it. But this is Loki, in his own mind, dreaming his own dreams. He's already turned around; he makes a gesture with his hands, summoning a robe not unlike his own, expensively made, a little heavy, long and flowing; he doesn't look away.

Instead, he walks the space between them and offers the folded robe to Clint. He could ask for clarification; if the things Clint desires are not housed and created from within himself then where else could they come from? But Loki knows the answer runs the risk of being just as complicated, just as frustrating, as any conversation on the nature of desire or the locus of where they begin between them tend to be, and so he leaves it.

"...do you want me to show you the way out?"

Well. Mostly leaves it.

Edited 2022-08-29 23:00 (UTC)

There's nothing for Loki to see that hasn't already been seen, and in some ways felt, before. But that more naked than naked feeling remains. It's not his body he wants to cover, but his self. He takes the robe with a grateful nod and dons it, ties it off. Eventually, finally, stretches himself out to standing. If there's some wooziness, he tries not to show it.

Loki doesn't ask the obvious question. But then, Loki never really does.

Part of him thinks the question that he does ask should feel like a trap. But it doesn't. He's the intruder here, after all, and while perhaps he's welcome in some way, he doesn't belong, he shouldn't stay.

"I didn't mean to come here." He's said that before, but it feels like he should say it again anyway. "I don't know how I did. So I don't know how to get back out. Without you waking up or without me dying." Which he would very much like to avoid thanks.

Loki gives Clint a small smile. It means I know these things already; it means that Loki understands Clint's reluctance towards death between them, again, here in this new and yet familiar landscape. "I trust you," is what he says, instead.

Because he does trust Clint, even where and where Clint doesn't trust himself. That is regarding the extraction of Clint from his dreams, yes, but mostly it is about the idea of balance between them. Clint doesn't trust himself to determine where the line is; Loki trusts that when Clint becomes concerned that he's crossed it, that is when Loki should recognize it exists.

But that is a lot to put on anyone's shoulders and perhaps this is enough.

"It's not the only way." And perhaps, once this happens again (and he knows it will, now; the door is now just an entryway with no real sense of division, how could it not happen again?) he will begin the process of instructing a mortal in how to navigate others' dreams. "But I can wake myself easily."

Loki trusts him, and Clint shivers again, not from any cold. He knows it intrinsically, but saying it makes it mean something different. It's there, spoken, on the outside, like an object with actual mass, with heft to it. Thinks about the first time Natasha said it and meant it, how it had changed something between them to have it said aloud instead of merely silently understood.

Thinks for a moment he catches a glimpse of familiar red hair and--blinks it away.

Loki did not leave his dream. He stuck around. Wanted what happened to happen. Here, now, there's apparently options. Could wake himself up. That would be easiest, it seems like. Clint licks his lips. "But there's a way I could leave whenever I want to?"

Clint licks his lips and Loki's nostrils flare. There is, briefly, the awareness of something else introduced into the dream, but Clint blinks, and it's gone.

He won't ask.

"Yes. There are many ways, and one way, in the end." A slight lift of one shoulder. "You have to believe you can. The rest is merely the structure in which a mind could determine they possess the ability to do it, but that can be the part that takes the longest to learn."

"Click my heels together and say 'there's no place like home' a couple times, huh?" Whether Loki understands the reference or not doesn't matter to him. Clint moves past him, carefully, to the strawberries. Munches on one, also carefully. Does it taste like a strawberry because Loki knows what they taste like? Or does it taste like a strawberry because that's what Clint believes it's supposed to taste like?

"Do you want to wake up?"

Is Loki going to ask Nate what that particular reference might mean once he's awake? Signs point to yes. As it is, Loki does shift himself out of Clint's way as he walks back to the tables and their offerings, turning in place and folding his hands behind his back.

He's not looking at Clint when the next question is asked. Of course the answer is 'no'. Of course Loki doesn't make that simple. "Is that important right now?"

He could always sleep at three in the afternoon. Some other unlikely time for Clint to also be sleeping. It's fine.

"Yeah. That's important." He leans on the table and looks at Loki. "It's your head, your dream, your sleep. What you want," and he says it slowly, because...it's difficult for him to say, and it might be difficult for Loki to hear, "is important."

Doesn't mean he has to get what he wants. But keeping it all a secret isn't going to do either of them any favors, right?

Why, petulant and demanding, rises to the top and is almost spoken between them before Loki swallows it down. He doesn't have to believe Clint is right; Clint believes that enough for the both of them right now anyway.

"I suppose." A shrug. His eyes slide to Clint's and then away again. "You know the answer, anyway."

It's a good thing he doesn't ask. The answer might not be a fully coherent one anyway. But Loki has already made it clear: he trusts Clint. Which means trusting that he believes what he says.

"Yeah. I do." Could have saved them the trouble by not asking, but what kind of example would that set if he just went around making assumptions about what someone like Loki does or does not want? "So. We're both asleep; it's not like we're not getting rest. Should I just go hang out unobtrusively in a corner, let this thing keep rolling, until one of us wakes up naturally?"

He knows the answer to that is also no, but that one is not really the point.

The expression Loki fixes Clint is fully unimpressed, to say the least. Does the other man really believe this is how anything works? That he could just sit in the corner of Loki's awareness and be ignored?

Seriously?

"Definitely not, don't be ridiculous." Besides the primary goal of the dream was fulfilled in the orgy and Loki's uncertain what else his mind would come up with if he were to allow it to 'keep rolling' all on its own. "Do you want to return to the library? Perhaps the garden."

His rooms are still an available locale, as well, but. He's not sure about offering that either.

"Aw, what, you don't want me to be an irritating, niggling thought in the back of your mind? Isn't that what I usually am?"

There's no heat to it. Honestly more amused than anything. He pops another strawberry in his mouth and considers his options. Loki could wake himself up, end the dream, go the hell back to sleep. That'd be easier. He doesn't actually want to needlessly interrupt the sleep, though. "Don't most dreams sort of end when they've reached a kind of narrative conclusion? Or, no, you're doing that lucid dreaming thing. You can dream up whatever you want. Sure, we could go to the garden. I was actually...trying to get there, before? And then your library shoved me here instead. Or if you wanted to dream of somewhere else... It's your headspace. What do you want to have happen besides me either fucking you or killing you?"

"I wouldn't know about most dreams," he points out, because sometimes it feels like Clint forgets he's not human and what that means. "I'm familir with my own, and more recently, yours. That encompasses the bulk of what I know on the subject."

This is his dreamscape; he knows that and is, briefly, annoyed that Clint feels the need to remind him. Like Loki isn't trying to... be considerate of the fact that Clint never intended to come here in the first place.

"Nothing in a dream," he says more tired than annoyed, suddenly, and starts walking toward the door that once led to the library. The garden, apparently. it is.

A frown, sharp. Clint doesn't flinch, but he does tighten the robe around himself as he follows. Worries for a moment about the temperature. It had been cold in the library. What of the garden?

"You're telling me you haven't done the dreamhopping thing before me? So this is all new shit to you, too." Loki the magician would still have a much better grasp on all of this than he would, obviously. But it's telling.

And wisely doesn't comment on the rest. Nothing in a dream. Doesn't want to wake up (and have Clint leave) but also only has a few things he really wants out of Clint--which doesn't seem right. That feels a little reductive. Hm.

Tuck that feeling away for later.

"You made a mind palace. That's what the library is, right, a safe place deep inside your mind where you can store a lot of information, arranged in a way that you can easily find it again." Or he's conflating aliens and humans again, whatever. "Why's it cold?"

"Once or twice but in very different circumstances." Less than a dozen times, all told; not nearly enough for Loki to feel that he has any sense of what he's doing, certainly.

There are a lot of things Loki could imagine doing with Clint, here. Sparring or cuddling or reading. Showing him places Clint has never been, places long removed from the fabric of Fate. The problem is that Loki is currently much too fixated on desires unspoken and unrealized. The problem is that it doesn't feel equivalent between the two of them.

The problem is Loki wants, and is annoyed with himself for wanting. Still.

"Because I'm a Frost Giant," Loki explains. Does Clint actually know this? Nate does. Nate asked him once about what it meant to have lost everyone twice when he had to do an assignment about immigrant families for school. But Nate is very good at keeping Loki's secrets.

"Because I'm cold-hearted, perhaps." He glances over his shoulder at Clint before the throws the doors open.

The library, this time, is much more welcoming, much less a place of half-frozen and frightful things. Sure, they still exist there, but they aren't in stark focus at the moment.

"But you don't always need things cold. You don't crank the AC up and turn your place to an ice box." Hm. "But it's still more comfortable for you for things to be colder, huh. Wintertime must be a blast for you. Aside from the usual reasons."

The kids playing in the snow, making forts, throwing snowballs, making angels. Loki occasionally joining in the fun. In the air, from an indistinct Somewhere: children's laughter. It seems so natural a thing that Clint doesn't even find it strange or that he must have done that himself, smiling at the thought, the memory, the sound.

"You're not cold to me."

"I do enjoy it moreso than late summer." Which is when Loki's temper grows its shortest and he spends the most time isolated; being out in the heat in August or September is not his idea of a good time but often is the children's idea of a good time, so sometimes he just suffers through it all anyway.

He almost asks what Clint means by 'the usual reasons' before the laughter causes him to freeze, slightly. Clint is smiling; this is probably his doing, his own capability leaking out of him at the edges.

Loki's not sure if he's upset or excited at the prospect.

"There is an exception that proves every rule." Also, he's a contrary bitch, what do you expect?

"Give me your hand."

And yes, he's gonna come up beside Loki. Wiggles his fingers. Hand, give. Loki could make himself cold here, or as hot as an open flame.

And neither prospect seems to make him mind.

"I don't know that I could dream up anything like this."

Loki stops walking, then, now that Clint is at his side; with a small frown he offers his hand. A little cooler than usual, to the touch, but that's the only real difference.

Once again, why is wondered but unspoken.

"You could if you wanted to."

Nothing special. Just holding hands. Softness that he can offer.

Why? Because. It's a dream. Does there have to be a why?

Clint shakes his head. "I'm too down to earth. Sure, I've seen some wild shit for a human, but this is all...something way beyond me."

"Why do you insist on this falsehood that you're simple," which is not at all what he said, Loki, but it is how it was taken apparently. Loki's hand flexes in Clint's hold but he makes no move to try to let go or pull away; if anything, he's holding a little tighter. "Why does being a no one appeal to you so much when it goes directly against everything you're comfortable with?"

"I didn't say simple," explained simply. Calmly. "I said down to earth. Grounded, not stupid." He knows he's not stupid. Not in any of the ways that matter to what he is and what he does. He's never let a few pieces of official paper stop him from his goals, and he crafts his own trick arrows and gear even if the materials come from somewhere else.

"Once upon a time, I was a spy and an assassin, a covert agent. Being a no one appeals. I disappear. Get to have a cozy family life without worrying about safety. I don't get stopped on the street much more often, and I don't even wear a mask. What is it you think I'm comfortable with? Fame and fortune?"

"No," Loki sighs, shaking his head. They never understand one another in the first two statements, it seems. Or even the first two hundred. "But being 'grounded', down to Earth, merely human is not a thing that determines who and what you are. Instead of wearing these things like a jacket, protection from the elements that would otherwise run roughshod over you due to your past and involvements, you... cling to them as if they were a shield. A shelter. They aren't.

Is the idea of being more, something... different from your common man, on this planet, so very frightening?"

"Why do I get the feeling this isn't about dreams anymore?" It's a rhetorical question, Loki, please do not answer that.

"I'm not different." Is that true? Does he believe that? Clint looks up at the vast and beautiful ceiling, nostrils flaring. Counts to five in his head. "I don't have a suit of armor; I don't have super strength; I don't have an experimental serum running through my veins. I don't call lightning, don't control thunder. I don't fly or shoot magic from my fingers or any of that. I'm just a guy. I'm a common man only made uncommon through means that any other man would be able to accomplish if they put their mind and body to it."

But does that even answer Loki's question? No, it doesn't. At least he realizes this after a moment, centering himself again to Loki. "I don't know if it would be scary, to be something more. I don't think I would want it, though."

He isn't going to answer that, don't worry.

Loki thinks he understands what Clint is getting at, even if it doesn't answer his question immediately. There is something to be said for the person who does what they can merely through the strength of their own bodies, but that ignores the strengths that originate from elsewhere. Like community and resources and secret serums running through the veins.

But that's getting pedantic, perhaps; either way, Loki doesn't say anything about it, despite his clear desire to pontificate on his opinions of Clint's feelings. As per semi-usual.

To ask him what he would do if it happened to him, the way things happen to people all the time, people who don't choose but are chosen by something else, someone else, some other if not necessarily higher power... well that would be showing Loki's hand a little too much, wouldn't it?

Whenever Clint realizes he's different from the rest of humanity, well. Loki will deal with the fallout. Not a moment before.

He realizes they're meandering a little in his thoughts; a problem of traveling in dreams, he knows, and so the demigod takes a breath in, out. The door to outside, to the frozen former gardens of Asgard and several other places Loki has seen in his long life appears before them, swings out and open.

Things are still frozen, but a little less bitingly cold. Clint will know it's cold, but it poses no real risk to him now. "Here we are." That is where they were headed, right?

It won't be too much longer before the realization hits, probably. Better bask in the bliss of not knowing in the time they have.

Loki's silence is...interesting. It's not often that the god chooses not to speak. Because it seems like he disagrees with several of Clint's notions. Maybe he's holding himself back in this dreamscape, or simply doesn't want another argument.

When they step into the garden, yes, he feels the cold, through the robe tied around him, but he also doesn't actually feel it. As dreams do.

"Why?"

Not why are they here. Clint wanted to see it, to be on the other side of the glass that turned to ice. Why this. Why is it this.

One day he will beg and beseech this man to ask detailed questions of him.

Apparently, it is not this day.

As it is, Loki sighs a little at the question; he has not let go of Clint's hand and shows no particular desire to do so. Why here? Clint had wanted to see it, and does Loki know why that is? No.

Why does it exist? Well, that is a 'why' he can imagine being asked by Clint, so that will be the presupposition he runs on at this moment.

"I'm an ice giant; I enjoy when things are cold. I don't like myself; things aren't inclined to grow in hateful soil, I've found. Plus this is a collection of places that are gone, or that I can no longer reach. I like to remember them."

It's true that not much grows but there are still winter flowers and fruits in bloom in this cold garden, with it's snowed over hedges and frozen leaves. They're just tucked away, hidden in the shadows of weeping blood statues and stone benches scattered here and there.

"It seems sad." Which, true, Loki does hate himself. And if this is a collection of mental mementos from places that no longer exist, there would be an air of melancholy. The statues are creepy, but beautiful all the same.

Loki has allowed him here, welcomed him here, so he doesn't feel in any danger. Still, it feels like he shouldn't disturb the peace here.

So he'll be polite. He's learning, bit by bit. "Am I allowed to touch anything?"

"I am often sad, I suppose," Loki admits as though he's never considered the possibility with any certainty (a Lie, if ever there was one). His hold on Clint's hand loosens, a bit, as he considers the request but it's only a heartbeat longer before he lets go completely with a nod.

"Touch whatever you like."

The problem, if a problem exists, is that in the span of not!time it's taken them to get outside Loki has accepted and come to desire even just the idea of Clint rifling through his brain, callused hands touching the spines of the books in the library, etcetera. He could let it become erotic, that sort of desire, and instinctually he wants to, but he's afraid it will bleed through in some uncomfortable way (for Clint) and so instead he allows it just to remain the wanting of a thing, for no particular reason or endgame in sight.

"Nothing will hurt you here."

He has to bite his tongue. It might become clear, through the connection that they share on a subconscious level, and from the look on his face, that he's deeply considering something.

And it's not the wanting. It's that nothing will hurt him, and he's trying to figure out why, exactly, even as he moves with care.

Maybe that's a stupid question. Loki might want and desire pain for himself, has wrapped up the idea of desire in pain, so intrinsically connected to his own self-worth, but he cares about Clint. Who is a little bit more disinclined to pain. (But maybe only a little bit. There is eroticism inherent to violence, especially in situations where things are so emotionally muddled that he barely knows which way is up. What's a little stabbing in the side between partner-enemy-lovers?)

But at the same time, why shouldn't Loki have dangerous things tucked away in his mind and in his dreams, things to protect himself? Why not show off who's in control, or threaten some punishment for the downright childish way Clint had acted before? Why not offer up pain as pleasure in its own right? Where the hell are the boundaries in a place like this?

He brushes a hand overtop the sharply flat cut of a hedge, disturbing the dusting of snow from atop. Toes a looping design on the ground in the white, just to disturb the pristine blanket. Twists off some berries, gives them a squeeze between his fingers, looks at them as though he could possibly identify alien fruit though doesn't dare to eat them just yet. That's what pockets are for, things for later. He approaches a statue and stops before it. Considers keeping his hands to himself, but the distress in the image begs investigation. Reaches a hand up to touch the edge of a jaw, side of a face, a thumb brushing as though to wipe away tears.

"Do you ever let yourself be happy in your dreams?"

"Not... for a very long time."

Childhood? Later. The fall from the lightbridge? Ah, yes, that's about when the possibility of happy dreams were chased out by horrible realities. And even when Loki's dreams have fleeting moments of joy, something changes the tenor, ruins the vibe.

Just like reality, in his experience. Colored and tainted by his own actions, every iota of happiness is merely snowfall in a dirty city, awaiting the shift from white to grey.

Things Loki is aware of, immediately: the conflict of texture between cold stone and Clint's warmer hands against the statue's face. The flavor of the berries in Clint's pocket (tart, like lemons if lemons were more like cherries in texture).

Things Loki is not aware of, as immediately: the way his skin has changed hues, from pale cream to a lighter shade of dusty blue, ritualized hereditary lines rising and falling in his skin like magical tattoos. He's sat down on a stone bench when it occurs to him that the air feels different on what of his skin is exposed, that his own breath no longer pools floating condensation clouds in front of his own mouth.

Uncertain how he feels about it, Loki does nothing to bring Clint's physical awareness to his transformation, but Loki's moment of surprise and then reluctant acceptance can likely be felt nonetheless.

He does become aware of it, as it happens. But Clint doesn't want to draw attention to it right away. Continues his exploration before turning and coming to sit by Loki.

If the appearance startles him in any way, well, then he's suddenly gotten very good at hiding things.

"We don't have to stay here if this upsets you." Clint will do his best not to remind and reiterate that this is, ultimately, Loki's dream, Loki's headspace that he is intruding on. "If you don't want to be this."

The fact that Clint is so rarely a man who possesses what Loki understands guile and deceitfulness to be, it goes a long way that Clint is neither upset nor startled by Loki's transformation. He turns his own hands over, palms up on his thighs, and curls his fingers inward. Even like this, his nails are pristine, clean, strong. Another sign of how unlike his brothers he has ever been, in any direction one could take that.

"I'm not upset." Honest. "I had forgotten it would happen." He's not often here, anymore. They exist, but for him, mostly to be viewed through the window. It's a strange thing, to make a memory within a place of memories, but not wholly unpleasant.

Thanks to the company. "I won't regret it."

"I get that it's complicated." He doesn't know what it's like, obviously, but he can get that it's fucking complicated to be raised as one thing only to find out you are wholly another, an Other thing that is near universally despised in some fashion. "But if you want to be like this around me, it's not gonna scare me off."

Banner turns into a giant green hulking beast with a personality and mind of his own. This is nothing in comparison.

"Why's the statuary like that?"

"It is. But you're unlikely to see another. And it is... me."

Unlike Banner, he does not have the excuse of a strict alter-ego to blame on his poor choices and bad behaviors. But he does feel like there is less baggage in being a creature whose overall look he has so little control over.

As thought it were more honest, by design.

Like that has him furrowing his brow for a moment, trying to place the question and then its answer. "Oh, I saw it once in the gardens of the sultans of Krylor Five. I thought it was beautiful, and fitting. I never learned what caused it, or how they came to be that way. If it were design or chemistry or some other thing."

A shrug. He's always been a melodramatic thing.

"You change your looks all the time when you're out and about." When Loki meets up with the kids, when they're in public, when Loki looks like anyone but himself but makes sure all the Bartons can identify him immediately at a glance. "But obviously it's your looks to do with as you want."

The fact that he thought there might be more explanation to the statues means that maybe, maybe he gives Loki a little too much credit. They are gothic and dramatic and sad, therefore it appeals to him. Of course that's the reasoning, and Clint actually gives a scoffing cough of a laugh about it.

If Loki looks, there in the corner, there might just be a lopsided snowman that wasn't there before.

"Show me more."

Another shrug. He's decided not to be bothered: by the shift to frost giant, by Clint's insistence that he do what makes him comfortable (the Hel is that, even? conceptually?), by the presence of that lopsided snow monstrosity claiming to be a 'man' off in the corner. Yes, he noticed it. No, he doesn't care, even though it's uglier than sin and not on purpose.

It reminds him of the Bartons. The one here and the ones sleeping elsewhere.

"There's a maze, here." If Barton wants to literally get lost, but Loki suspects that wouldn't exactly be the case. "With a temple at the center. That's about all that's left out here."

"More of the library, then? Now that seems like a maze. To me. Or." His brow furrows. "Am I overstepping? I already fucked up your orgy thing; I don't necessarily want to mess anything else up. We could just...I don't know. Talk until we wake up. Or figure out more stuff I can do in dreams."

Has he realized he's done anything at all? Seems unlikely.

Loki shakes his head a little. "Your presence is no longer a disruption." In part because Loki has decided to roll with it; as long as Clint is with him, whatever he sees or touches or interacts with is fine. Loki will see to it. "Besides, the orgy was mostly an exercise in the comingling of praise and self-pity. Not much was lost.

There is the library, which is still a little more dangerous than being out here, or there are my rooms. You've seen the hall. That's all there is, really, or at least most of the time."

He rises to his feet and points at the snowman. "Do you think I summoned that into being?"

The library was spooky and spectacular, and he wouldn't mind seeing more of that. Loki's rooms might be more...intimate, a reason he hadn't followed before. But he hasn't seen any of that. So maybe that, for some small sake of completion.

But then there's the snowman, which he's pretty sure wasn't there, but then again, it's kind of tucked away. It's hardly perfect or pristine. Looks--

"You could have," he says, casual, careful though. "Building snowmen with the kids. That'd be a memory to cherish." The image of it seems to fade, stutter, like it isn't completely solid, like it might disappear.

"You could show me your rooms," he moves on, maybe a little too quickly.

Loki doesn't understand what he reads to be Clint's fear about what's happening here. Is it power? Is it about power over Loki? He knows that prying won't necessarily net him an answer that makes any more sense than the things he's observed, but he does wave a hand toward the snowman —— you he thinks at it, are not to go ANYWHERE — and then he and Clint are on their feet and moving toward the doors to the library once more.

There's no rules that state they have to traverse one to reach the other, but Loki knows Clint was fascinated by the library and he wishes to see the other man there; there's nothing to say they can't visit both locations.

So. Inside, first, and then into the library, which is markedly less freezing than the first time Clint was here.

Clint frowns, but his voice is amused. "Did you just talk to the snowman?"

Not with his voice, but. There was Something.

Probably good that Loki doesn't ask, at least not immediately, because Clint does not have any answers at all, least of all satisfying ones. The library is, of course, far more interesting than any half-assed snowman. Clearly! Because now it's less threatening, and he feels like he's allowed to explore things now. The distant screaming sounds are a little unsettling, yeah, but it's kind of background noise at this point.

"It's not gonna mess anything in your head up if I start...doing anything? Pulling books? Poking around?" Because he's already reaching for the spine of one with an ornate runic design he can't decipher in brilliant silver.

"It seems likely." Completely unaffected air you've got there, Loki, but; Look. He may not have put it here but it's here now and here it shall remain. Clint made it happen (whether or not he wants to admit it or likes that truth) and Loki loves Clint, so.

It. Stays. Put.

He remains a frost giant when they're inside, which is more a mark of how comfortable he is with Clint knowing his secrets as they are and having less to do with how cold the library may or may not be still. "Purposefully damaging the books would probably be painful in a way I wouldn't enjoy, but I doubt you'd do that anyway." Plus the library would likely defend itself from such an attack as it stands. "It should be fine. I'll let you know if anything feels... off, I suppose."

Mostly he wants to stand there and watch Clint handle the binding, the pages, moving drawings of things Loki knows, places he's been, people he's met and encountered along the way. This is a book of languages; the faces in it are of those who taught or opened the door for Loki to learn a new dialect, to expand the AllSpeak, to study the written word as it was intended to be understood.

It's a pretty heavy tome.

It is heavy. And, funnily enough, the words inside of it are indecipherable to him. Which may be because there are so many different languages, or it could be the library attempting to protect Clint from himself. Literal centuries of knowledge do not necessarily belong in a mortal human's head.

And immortal human, well. Save that for later.

But even if the specific words are impossible for him to read, he still understands the gist of it. As is what tends to happen in a dream, he realizes. There's a joke to be had that this is a hint, that they need to sort out their god damn communication issues. But he's not going to be the one to say it, and puts it back.

He plucks another at seemingly random, a few rows down. This one is slighter, a balmy blue, and full of--weather facts and figures. Details on the constant volcanic rains on Cyrellus, the volatile silver seas of Ganid, the hottest and coldest days ever recorded in the history of Asgard's existence. He flips to a page on snowy Iowa days, near the very end of the book. By sheer coincidence. Surely. Clint smirks and slots it back.

Lets his fingers trail along the spines as he ambles down the aisle. There's so much. And it's all so beautiful.

The next is a little black book. Literally. "Oh, is this a universal concept?" he jokes.

Surprise, it's details on the mating rituals of serpents through the universe!

"Nnnnnevermind."

Loki chuckles a little; he can't help it at all, not really. Is that where any of those books belong? The language one, yes, perhaps, but the book on weather should be several aisles over while the tome on snake sex (appropriately black as it is bound) should be much farther afield. What's happening, Loki guesses, is that he thinks of certain things when Clint is around. Snakes and arrows and cornfield skies. The difficulty of communication (yes, he caught the hint, thanks). The pervasive desire for touch, sex, connection between himself and this man.

Sex as a snake is definitely a form of communal connection. It would be easier than this dance they've engaged in now, certainly, but perhaps not as much fun in the long run.

"You don't like snakes?" A raised eyebrow.

He tosses it at Loki's head. Knowing that it will be caught, or magicked away.

"I'm starting to think your dewey decimal system is really fucked." does loki even know what that is "Or your brain's giving us hints. Free association, maybe."

He's...more cautious with the next book. Literally flips right into the middle, and it's instructions on how to tango.

"Are you doing this on purpose?"

Caught, easily, and then shelved behind him.

"My what now?" No, he doesn't, he's not an ancient Earth librarian after all, "I'm going to presume that is some method of organization and you being here has made things more... flexible, in terms of its location in the library. So no, I'm not doing it on purpose. Ask it for what you want," he offers, extending a blue hand towards the stacks, "otherwise it will continue filtering through my own thoughts as you literally rifle through whatever is at the top of my mind at the moment."

"What makes you think your brain library is going to listen to-"

Oh. Because Loki is head over heels attached to one Clint Barton. Why wouldn't something inside Loki's brain listen to Clint?

He purses his lips, slots the dance book back, keeps staring at Loki, holds out his hand to press it against the stack. Like thinking it is going to summon it right to his hand like Mjolnir. What does he want to know? Or, what does he want to see that's in Loki's memory bank? Something Clint would recognize. Archery? Does Loki know anything about the use of a bow and arrow?

His hand starts to move of its own accord, then stops. Archery's too obvious, too simple. Grew up a prince, probably learned hunting when young. Something else. The family. Knowledge and thoughts and feelings on the Barton clan. His hand starts to move again, in a different direction. Stops again.

Because that could be a very bad idea. His fingers flex, and he closes his eyes. Fine. Something more neutral.

Had dance. What about music? Instruments and the playing thereof.

He takes a few steps, eyes still closed, hand reaching down to pluck a new book out. Images of instruments, many he doesn't fully recognize. Bits of sheet music.

Somewhere in the distance, music begins to play. If Clint stops to think about it, he's pretty sure he'd recognize it.

Loki doesn't recognize the song, which is saying something... it must be from some part of Clint's past that Loki wasn't a part of, or some event where there was music but Loki wasn't there? Either way, he's not displeased, it isn't bad music, it's just interesting, and Loki tilts his head a little to better catch the snatches of it.

He knows where it would be loudest: the hall/ballroom/location of the former orgy. That is where all celebrations are loudest. But it could also be centered in his own rooms. That, he supposes, depends on how comfortable Clint is thinking about that particular location right now.

"What is your favorite type of dance?" He could ask Clint's favorite instrument but the man might say 'bass guitar' and Loki will have to groan into the next millenia.

Good beat, energy. Clint's not trying to pay attention, but he is tapping his foot. The question catches him off guard. "Type of dance?" Jesus, are there all that many? "The kind where you move to music, I don't know, I like a good club scene just fine. Slow dancing when appropriate."

One day, Loki decides, he will expose this man to some blessed culture. Or at least the proper terms for the things he likes. Loki also enjoys a good club scene, but for very different reasons, and while this is good music to move to it's not quite that.

"Did you ever learn to dance or has it always just been a matter of the heart meets rhythm?"

"Learned a little waltzing during SHIELD training, went undercover at a fancy shindig. Not usually my place." He sees better from a distance, after all. Nat usually did the up close and personal. "I feel like most dancing should just be natural, go with the rhythm. But what would I know? There's a reason you've got a memory dream book on dancing. I've never done the tango in my life. I'm sure you've got some Asgardian folk dances in there somewhere."

"Waltzing is good." Loki's mouth raises in a half-smile and he shrugs. "The folk dances were mostly lost to the atrocities that were courtly dances by the time Ragnarok rolled around, but waltzing is a perennial favorite. Tango might be fun, actually. It's up close fast dancing. I have memory dream books on dancing because I love dancing and because I'm obsessed with knowing and learning things."

"Well, you definitely know...a lot of things." Given the size of the library and all. From there, he kind of fades off. Because he doesn't know shit for shit about any formal dancing, so he doesn't feel like he can comment on it other than waltzing is constantly counting 'one two three, one two three' in your head. Flips a few more pages, shelves the music book. Tries not to suddenly feel very small in the shadow of a millennium and change of knowledge. "Never seen you dance."

"Your children have." Clubbing, parties, that kind of thing. Loki's smile is soft, fond. The music changes; a tune that seems ever fluid, the sort of thing you absolutely love but won't be able to quite remember the next morning.

Loki pushes himself off from the bookcase behind him, extending a hand out toward Clint. "Will you dance with me? I promise you won't have to count."

"Sounds like we should be going to parties more often then."

It's a joke. Kind of. Sometimes he wonders if it's maybe, maybe time he just let Loki into his life more fully. Not like he'll be getting rid of the god anytime soon. Or ever. They belong to each other, and there's no fixing or changing that.

He eyes the hand. This doesn't seem like a joke or any attempt at humiliation. Loki looks, feels, like this might be a genuine good time. Considers it a moment longer before finally taking the offer. "Show me what you've got."

"I would like that." Not much reason to be coy about it; he enjoys spending time with the Bartons, he is connected to Clint, he loves parties. Dancing, dressing up, showing out. What's not to like?

The music swells. The bookcases move to make room. It's just them and Loki more or less likes it that way, for now. In the waking world, things are different.

He'll take every moment he can steal with abandon.

There's no leading or following in this dance. It's not slow but not so fast as to end up out of breath too fast. The music teaches the steps; this is dream logic, yes, but also the truth of this particular trip of composition.

Loki has always loved this dance. It changes every time. And Clint doesn't step on his toes even once.

The kind of dance where he might remember the moves on hearing the music again or when his mind is far away but not necessarily when he tries to pluck out the memory specifically. As dreams do. Though naturally one as deft as he would make sure not to step on toes even if he doesn't dance with any formality. Too mindful of his own body for that.

His outfit, too, changes. Out of the robe offered as cover and into jeans, a tee, both tighter and dipping lower on his body than he normally wears casually, looking a little more ready to pick up some attention at a club than work on another addition to the house.

It's fun, is the thing he thinks he's surprised about the most. Not that dancing is fun, of course it is, but it's Loki. In his odd mindspace with the moving shelves, the air having enough of a chill to keep from getting too warm from the moving, and the music feels like it's going through him rather than hanging around overhead. It feels good, better than a room of fake orgiastic glory for how much more real this feels. Which is going to feel silly on waking, but how else could he describe it rather than Real and Not Real?

Loki isn't so caught up in the magic of dancing in his own dream that he doesn't notice the costume change, or how tight and low both articles of clothing are. At some point he, too, had changed, from the ice giant in robes back to his more or less Asgardian-appearing self, wearing jeans and a button-up with short sleeves and a collar that isn't done.

If things were perfect... if things could be perfect, even if only in a dream, Loki would kiss Clint as the song ends and they'd both wake up after that moment and life would go on. But Loki doesn't really believe in perfect. Not for him and not for his dreams. So when the music ends and it's clear he wants to kiss Clint, he doesn't. Just offers the man a smile and lets go of his hand.

"That was a lot of fun." A gesture towards Clint's torso. "I like the outfit."

Things can't be perfect, won't be perfect, not in either of their lifetimes. Then that would, truly, make this a dream rather than reality.

But here, this is fun, a good time that they both know is constantly under threat of being ruined, but it isn't ruined yet. He can tell that Loki wants him, wants more--not just because he always does, and not just through the thrum of want that stretches between the expanse of their connection. It would be easy for Clint to take the offer of letting it drop, never acknowledging. Loki is being considerate.

He glances down at himself, shrugs, smiles in such an easy and casually lopsided way that he looks nearly a decade younger for it. Nearly says something, but instead:

The music kicks up again, with a decidedly Latino type of flair to it, and he retakes Loki's hand, surges forward, a hand to his waist. Does Clint actually know how to tango? He does not. But he's seen movies. Occasional videos on youtube. Maybe even seen a dance or two himself out on missions. In a dream, he can cobble together the idea of the dance, and also supplement in whatever Loki might happen to know himself. The footwork is precise, as is the legwork, close and intimate. A spin here, and a dip as well. Loki might be taller and more knowledgeable about dance as a whole, but that doesn't apparently keep Clint from leading.

There's a startled sort of amusement on Loki's face that replaces the fond, wanting smile he'd had, as Clint surges forward in time with the music and grabs his hand. Does Loki know tango? Yes, and between dream!logic and desire and the fact that Loki would pour at least a third of the things he knows directly into Clint's brain if he wasn't sure it would hurt the other man somehow, the execution is flawless.

It's been decades since Loki has done anything this intricate, and more years than he'd like to bother counting since he's let anyone lead him across a dance floor, no matter who or what he looks like. This? This is better than nice, this gets his heart racing and blood pumping and part of him wishes it was happening in the waking world just so that someone could take a photo or a video of it. Permanence, in a digital sense; Loki fears his memory might never do this justice.

One of the things he'd forgotten about tango is how much of the dance moves involve the following partner being softly and sensually dragged across the dancefloor by the lead. The library is nothing if not accommodating to this detail, and while, since it's a dream, there's not much point to Loki being breathless and aching pressed against Clint's leg at the end of the dance...

Some things are just true, it would seem.

Catching his breath takes a few long moments, where he has his eyes closed and is remembering deep in and then slow, deep out. He's not sure what he expects to see when he opens his eyes to look at Clint again, but. He can only forestall it so long.

In the waking world, he would not be allowed this for the most part. Loki looks like someone Clint could lift if he needed to, but the reality of Asgardian (or Jotun or whatever) physiology actually would make it impossible. At least without the help of a lot of magic. Huh. So it's effortless, now, the way they drift together, the way he slides Loki across the floor.

Effortless the way it feels good to do this, to let everything that hangs between them fall away for at least a short time. He knows better, now, about these dreams. That they are not as removed from reality as he once thought. There are, can be, consequences.

He knows this, but it's not what he's thinking about if he's thinking at all. There's a bookshelf pressed hard to his back, or rather, a shelf is there close behind him suddenly as he presses himself hard to it, dragging Loki with him, pulled close against him. Certainly close enough to kiss. Which he might want to do, the way he breathes heavily against Loki's mouth.

Loki goes when Clint pulls him with absolutely no resistance. It doesn't even cross his mind to pull away or give them any time to consider what they're doing. What Clint has started.

There's a brief... Something. Not of hesitation exactly but of savoring the moment.

And then Loki has moved forward, pressing his lips against Clint's. It's not at all violent, not from him, not yet anyway, but it is passionate. Full of heady longing and rough desire. Loki's hands are fisted in the material of Clint's shirt and it's going to be very difficult to convince him to let go, at this rate.

There's no surprise when the kiss happens properly. Heated and needing. Feeling good. One hand in Loki's hair, tight enough to sting but not distract, and one on his hip, to keep him pressed in close and tight.

Is it only in dreams that he can let himself have? He'd been accused before of denying himself to spite Loki, denying himself out of some sense of self-punishment as well. Undeserving of it, afraid of it.

That might all be true. But he's not trying to think about it, or to overthink about it. Clint is trying to live in the moment without regret or revulsion or pesky thoughts cloud him up. And dream logic, well, that still is in play. If Clint's smile had made him seem younger, now he does look it, some lines on his face smoothed back, some invisible weight lifting. If only for a few dreamy, illusory moments.

Through the power of it being his own damned dream, Loki is aware of it. Aware of what it might mean. Perhaps this is a Clint before Loki met him, or just as. One without the shared baggage of what he'd done, been driven to do, between them.

He's not drawing attention to it. He's not asking questions. He's just matching the intensity of the kisses long enough to up the ante, to graduate to deeper kisses and biting teeth and pressing the palms of his hands against Clint's chest beneath his shirt.

There is, in his mind, a sense of impending doom. But it's not at a level of anxiety, yet, and so Loki ignores it, or at least notes it and moves on. The impending doom could be anything, and there are no guarantees he'll get this opportunity again.

He can bite. They know he can bite. And Clint's been thinking of the length of Loki's neck every time he's been dipped back toward the floor. So the kissing and biting moves, from mouth to the sharp line of his jaw to his neck. There is none of that animal-hunter-predator-prey sensation now, no bloody urge to sink his teeth into throat and rip and tear. Just being in the moment as he tugs Loki's hair to encourage baring of neck a little more.

There's the first real wonder he acknowledges of if he should be doing this. Encouraging Loki, dipping into the obvious wants and desires, even in the wake of what happened in dreams before. This won't help them. This will only complicate matters.

(Will it? Are they not complicated enough that, perhaps, this will actually simplify things? Is chasing an impulsive high in a dreamscape comparable to needs met in reality? He doesn't know anymore.)

But to his credit, he tries to push the doubt aside. Not shove away, not cause violence. Stay right here, indulging them both.

Loki should ask if Clint is certain about this (he won't) or if they should stop (he doesn't) long before he considers the possibility of dropping to his knees in front of his man, whose consciousness is present in Loki's own dreams, where things have an effect on the real-world.

Surely.

Well. Does any of that sound like Loki?

He does drop to his knees and here he hesitates, mostly to look up at Clint's face and see what kind of an effect this is having on the other man. If there's hesitation or revulsion in Clint's expression, he'll pivot, but otherwise?

Despite the now constant chiming of warning bells in the back of his mind, he will get this man's cock in his mouth.

Maybe it was in one of them, or maybe both, but the warning feels like it bounces back and forth between them, felt deeply and with certainty.

But just as deeply, or deeper, is the desperate want. Ignoring all the flashing warning signs and ringing bells of alarm, when Loki sinks, Clint exhales a shivery breath out, head leaned back on the shelf. Hooded eyes focused on Loki, on his eager mouth. If there's revulsion in this moment, it isn't present on his face. It might simply be a background feeling set aside along with every warning, something that mingles with everything else the archer feels, all the conflict and confusion.

But he's here. In this moment. Opens up his pants with one hand, keeps the other fisted in Loki's hair.

He is aware, distantly, of the shifting shelves, coming closer, closing rank. Not trapping them, but certainly decreasing the space now that they're not using it for dancing. And while the orgy had been great in a way that was only distantly satisfying but not so much on his real level, Loki's full attention and heat and desire and need and eager slickness feels much more solid, much more satisfying already. Like it could actually be happening.

It isn't. Probably. Not really. But really enough that maybe he'll feel it on waking. He doesn't know how it works just yet. But it's not important in this moment, not now, not as he's enjoying himself with a pleased noise.

Which is when several books from a shelf above them come clattering down on them.

This perhaps might only be an annoyance rather than a problem, except for the very thick, solid tome that smacks Clint right in the head, making him see stars, woozy for a weird few moments--

--and starts to fall--

--and vanishes from the dream entirely. Wakes with a start and a hiss in bed. Headachy and ragingly hard.

When Clint pitches forward Loki panics, centering his emotions on the need for the other man to wake up without head trauma; whatever he does works, either in spite of or in combination with the blow to the head (it's a book about Clint, he realizes, one that focuses on all the physical aspects of him, of fucking course). Clint vanishes and the bookcase continues to tilt forward, raining other Clint Barton-related texts onto Loki's head as he laughs.

He wakes up laughing (also with a sore head), and while it takes him a few moments to pull himself together, Loki does decide to go against his better instincts and texts Clint instead of waiting for a text to be headed his way. Or an impromptu visit. However the man might decide to reach out anywhere between an hour and a month from now.

I hope your head doesn't hurt too much.

He does not respond right away. Because he is not in the mood for it. He's in the mood for something different entirely, but he feels like he has to sort himself out again first, and that's just a weird feeling all around.

(He doesn't tell Laura about it, about the specifics of the dreams that he has. Just that he has weird dreams, that they're connected to Loki, that it's probably magic. She doesn't have to know that some very thoroughly enjoyed morning sex is because Loki was going to dream-blow him.)

Does his head also hurt, yes, but he isn't concussed. He's had plenty of those in his life. It's just a general 'whacked in the head with something heavy' kind of pain to take something with breakfast and go about his day and ignore the text.

He does realize that the longer he goes without answering, the more worried Loki might become. But their open window, open door, open everything at this point connection might have enough leeway to feel that he's fine, honestly, without ever having to say anything.

It takes a week. A full week. Before he finally replies to the damn text that's been sitting on his phone like some kind of guilty specter sitting on his chest: I think your library hates us.

Loki would become worried if not for the window and the lack of cryptic or less than cryptic texts from the Barton's children. So he's not worried.

Annoyed. Pressed. Frustrated. All of the above, but not worried.

Clint is left on read for several hours. Just three, or four. Until dinner, or maybe a little after that.

Perhaps a little.

The kids are traitors all whether they text updates to Loki or not.

Being left on read doesn't bother him, given the treatment he just offered up. Especially for something that seems so minor in comparison. Let Loki be frustrated. What did he expect in the waking world, immediate open honest conversation?

He debates even bothering to reply. Is there much point?

No hanky panky around the books, got it. Might as well say something.

Somehow I honestly doubt it is on the table as it stands, books or no.

He sighs, sets the phone down. That was unfairly handled, but. What did he expect?

What did Loki expect?

Something else, something different, something that matched how he'd felt inside after learning how Clint might taste, without violence, in more than one sense of the word.

I suppose there's a chance I'm wrong.

Ugh. Ok he should really. Get a drink, or something

Clint was expecting more from Loki. A conversation? Something regarding feelings? Something needling and pointed and jabbing? Instead of this whatever this is. Because he's not sure what this is. Is this passive aggression or...

He frowns at his phone. They don't talk well in text, in verbal communication, not even in dreams when that shit should probably be easiest. Is that always going to be a barrier between them?

Do we need to talk?

This answer is timely, at least. And Loki is... Trying. He's just also still annoyed.

Only if you want to.

You know me. I can always talk.

About the shit we aren't talking about.

Now it's Clint who's annoyed, because once again Loki damn well knows what he means, and Loki never thinks he's specific enough. So, fine, whatever. If Loki actually wants/needs to talk things out, it'll happen one stupid way or another, and if not, then they just won't.

I'm well aware of what we'd need to talk about. But if you don't feel that it is necessary for your own well-being I'm hesitant to bother with it for the sake of only my own.

We aren't good at it besides.

Edited (Words. Phone tagging) 2022-11-15 04:46 (UTC)

Do you need it?

Keep it short and simple and difficult to misinterpret. Maybe that will help.

I hope not because I do not want to talk about it.

A slow exhale. Okay. That he can understand. He lets it sit on read for another hour, finishing cleaning up from dinner, doing some things around the house. It's quieter without all of the kids running around or blasting music loudly, only Nate doing his homework and being frankly one of the quieter and more thoughtful of the trio.

Sometimes he thinks about how much quieter it'll be when the youngest, too, finally leaves.

The house is big enough that he could sequester himself away in a room without being interrupted or overheard, but he heads out to the barn instead, climbs up into the loft, settles in. Gives Loki a call.

It rings once. It rings twice.

On pickup: "We don't have to talk about it. But maybe we could talk."

Loki considered letting Clint's call go to voicemail, which he checks once a month at the most frequent interval. He does tend to save messages he receives from Clint's children, though, no matter when they were left or how long they are. Sentiment, or something. However, after the ringtone beings to repeat he picks up, sighing loudly into the receiver.

What Clint says surprises him, somehow. He'd thought that perhaps they were back to square negative five thousand, or something.

"What would you have us talk about instead? Other dreams we've had?"

"No, god, maybe we shouldn't talk about dreams. Unless you really want to hear some of the ones I can barely remember." He really can't imagine that being interesting, but then again, Loki is a very lucid dreamer and probably finds the human idea of just dreaming shit up and not having any control to be fascinating.

"I don't actually...know what about. But we fucking suck at talking, so, maybe practicing...talking, maybe that'll work better for us in the long run."

"...alright." Loki sighs again, though a great deal quieter this time around, and settles himself into the couch, summoning his tea from the kitchen and allowing his cat to curl up at his hip while he sets the phone down and puts Clint on speaker. What? Tea takes two hands if one's doing it right.

"We could start with a simple exchange of information. One of us says something that is true, and the other responds, so on and so forth, until we need a new topic.

I can begin, even," and before Clint has much leeway to interrupt one way or another, "by saying that I thought perhaps you were angry with me, but now I am unsure that is true." Was true? Maybe. He doesn't care if Clint was angry with him but does care if Clint remains angry with him.

That there's an extended silence at the other end is always hard to interpret. Loki does love to talk, though, and Clint is fine with letting himself do most of the talking. He just has to think about how to reply to it.

"I don't think I was angry with you. I might have been angry at myself." But this is already skirting really fucking close to Talking About It, which they both have mutually agreed they don't want to do. "I'm not angry right now. Not with you."

"Good. Because it is a difficult thing to tolerate, you being angry with me. And now I feel like a depiction of a human teenager, ugh." Loki takes a sip of tea. "Tell me something you're concerned about that has little or nothing to do with me?" Isn't that what friends do? Discuss their lives in common, and otherwise?

He does want to be Clint's friend. He wants more, certainly, but none of this will work if they're constantly at odds. Even he, chaos incarnate, is aware of that much.

"Nothing to do with you?" A wild request from Loki, and he actually has to lean back and think about the things that--aren't Loki, when talking to Loki.

"I...was actually thinking about what to do with the house once Nate's gone." He and Laura have had short little discussions, but nothing concrete planned. "I mean, we're not gonna get rid of it; it's a good place, really is home now, and I'm not about to turn it into a rental or an airbnb or anything like that and compromise the location. But it'll be really quiet. It already feels like too much space." A short laugh: "Until the holidays come around, then it'll feel like just the right size again."

"It's my understanding that friends know things about one another's lives, concerns, whathaveyou." Offhand. Like he hadn't thought about it, or read books on the subject, or read articles, or countless internet forums and memes and short videos by humans struggling to emotionally connect with other humans.

Like he hasn't done research on the topic.

"The quiet is one of the hardest parts of living alone. Or alone-ish, in your case. Sometimes a benefit but often it's just... empty." Smaller spaces are easier to manage, in that way, but Clint isn't looking for solutions or suggestions so Loki doesn't mention it.

"Do you like the quiet?" Without mentioning the whole friend thing. Whatever. But he's curious now. "I mean, you grew up in a palace full of people, presumably. Is being on your own too quiet, or do you like it better that way now?"

"I like quiet in the sense of not having other people around in certain situations. Reading, painting, studying, that sort of thing." The audio equivalent of a shrug at the end of that sentence. "When I was a child I thought that I preferred quiet, but what I actually preferred was knowing when and how I was going to be interrupted from the quiet.

I'm used to it, I suppose? I don't know that I would say that I like it better now. I wouldn't live with strangers, however, at this rate, ever again if it could at all be avoided."

"I guess it must be nice to have your own space, anyway." Seeing as he can't imagine not sharing space with someone for most of his life. He's really not sure what it's like on a more permanent basis. "Can't see you with strangers, though, no. Get on your nerves, and you'd be too intense for them."

"It is nice, yes." Lonely and strange at its worst times, but it remains the least stressful living arrangement he's had in quite a while. "I'm too intense for most, whether or not I'm already annoyed.

"Will you become the sort of people who host parties in order to fil the house with noise? I imagine not." But it does beg the question, what will the Bartons do with an empty house?

"I don't know. Maybe. For some of the people that are left, and some of the new kids, maybe. Probably not. We haven't really made any decisions and probably won't until Nate's about ready to graduate."

And then it really will be too quiet. What are they going to do with themselves?

"I imagine he'll be like his siblings and make sure to keep in touch with Uncle Loki all the time."

That seems like a late point to make decisions, but he supposes something should be said for avoidance tendencies.

"I'm not concerned about that, really." Mostly because he and Nate already have a shared language of memes and strange references to build off of, and he already texts Loki more often than his siblings do. "I am concerned about you, in the future, in a quiet house. What happens when you're bored more often than not?"

"Maybe we'll go back in the field."

Laura's been out of it long enough that she probably would only be logistical support. For whatever group she might fall in with. SWORD maybe.

"There's still plenty of trouble I can help right in the world. Or get into and get myself half killed. Could always try and take on new building projects, though. Keep my hands busy."

He squints out into the night. "Or maybe that's when you'll swoop in and really harp on the whole being your chosen weapon thing. Maybe you've got some chores for me to do."

"Hm."

Another sip of tea. He's not sure how he feels about either of those particular options, honestly. Clint and Laura going back into the field make him feel like his own actions towards making Clint stronger and longer lived than the typical earthbound human would probably hit the light nearly immediately.

"I would prefer you about as close to death as you are today."

A soft scoff. "You know the offer stands to see other worlds, at the very least. I am not going to force it on you." Once again, skirting too close to things they don't talk about. "Not this decade."

"I dunno, if you were going to, I'd hurry if I were you. God knows the next time I go somewhere and trouble lands right in my lap, I've lived on borrowed time for half my life."

"You say that as though I don't have the means to keep tabs on where you are when you wander away from home." A beat. Loki finishes his tea and sets it down on the coffee table. "Do you want me to convince you?"

"I'm not getting whisked away on intergalactic adventures with you." Not yet. Not just yet. Nate still needs to be cared for until he's out of the house. "Might be able to convince Laura she needs a vacation, though. What's a place you'd like to show me?"

"Well if I'm to take people on a vacation there's any number of spots." Loki hums. "Gibborum is beautiful mid-winter, Indigarr has gorgeous sunsets and fascinating horticulture. I could do a whirlwind tour, I suppose. Sights to see around the galaxy."

"What's your favorite place?"

He winces to himself after, recognizing that maybe Loki's favorite place is probably someplace that doesn't even exist anymore. "Favorite that we could go to, I mean."

A long pause on Loki's end. "I don't know, really. It's been... complicated."

People usually know who he is. Trouble occurs. Memories haunt him.

"Perhaps somewhere new."

It occurs to Clint what this whirlwind tour might actually be. "Starting to think this isn't actually a vacation you're planning." More of a leave and never look back, keep going until eventually one of them (Clint) croaks. Cause as much trouble somewhere as possible, take off to parts unknown, rinse repeat.

"Is there anywhere on Earth you want to see that you haven't already?"

"There are some places. Some of them possibly mythical, the rest simply uninterested in contact with the broader outside world. Should I compile a list?"

"Well..." Does Atlantis exist? He's not taking the likes of Loki to Wakanda. Shit, does Loki know more about the planet than he does? "I can't promise I'd be able to get you to any of those places."

But it's nice to dream? Ugh.

That's too bad because Loki would really like to see Wakanda.

"That's fine. This is an exercise, anyway."

"In futility?"

There's a soft sound that might be Clint thudding his head back against the wall. "Sorry, that was...rude. This was my idea in the first place." To talk. Just talk. Try not to ruin everything. "A list would be nice."

Loki makes a sound between humming and sighing. "An exercise meaning practice, not in futility, actually. I can send a list.

Anything else I should send you?"

"If I say anything, you're going to actually send it, and I'll feel kind of weird about it." He mulls it over. "Some heavy duty painkillers. Dignity if you have any to spare."

"Hm." There's the noise of Loki getting up, going to the kitchen, going through his cabinets. "Do you want pharmaceuticals or magic?"

"Can you send magic?" Actually curious. Because frankly, with the life Clint's led, of course they've got some heavy duty shit in their medicine cabinet. Some stuff they probably shouldn't legally have in an emergency kit. "Or do you have to do that in person? Or you mean like, runes, or a pouch of enchanted herbs to steep in tea, or something like that?"

"I can send items with magical properties, or I could send a potion of sorts. It would be an object, not... raw power. Is this for now or later?"

"It's for hopefully never but just in case."

He licks his lips. It seems dangerous, but fuck, if Loki was going to do something to him, he would've a long time ago. Or else this is the longest con.

"Did you learn it from your mom?"

Things that'll make interesting topics of conversation in a year or two, certainly.

"Ah, I see." The rattle of glass bottles being moved around. "She did. Some of my fondest memories are with her, learning magic and potioncraft.

Do you have any good memories with your mother?"

Loki might be able to hear the grin on Clint's face. "Yeah. Yeah, we were really close when I was growing up. Did everything together. Had dreams of a place just like this. Nice farmhouse...tree out front to practice shooting at...I think she'd be proud."

He can. It's nice, actually. "I have no reasons to believe otherwise. You've done well for yourself, to remain true to those dreams in the first place."

His mother, honestly, would be amazed that he decided to live here. On Earth. In this place.

"I think yours might be a reason you're good with the kids. Had a parental figure who gave a shit. That means something, when you're young."

Loki takes in a sharp breath, says nothing for a moment. Memories of his mother often hurt. The loss feels both prescient at all times and monumentally secondhand. "She would have liked you."

That feels...heavy. Important. He never knew Thor's mother but knew how much it hurt him when she died. That she was very respected, for all the right reasons, rather than Odin, respected for...a lot of the wrong.

"Mom would've liked a trickster, I think. But," he says with a a sardonic laugh, "she also had real shit taste in men, so."

"What's not to like?" Don't answer that, Clint. "And yet she managed to raise you, or so one presumes." It's meant as a compliment, though in a very vague way; Loki is concerned that if he is too direct in his regard toward Clint he'll just get rebuffed.

Loki might be able to hear or at least imagine the pull of a smirk on Clint's face as he decides not to answer that. He's not averse to low-hanging fruit, but even he can tell to leave that one where it's at.

"To a point. Not always a good thing. But she did her best with the circumstances. I can't always say I did the same, but I guess I turned out okay."

"Well you already know my opinion on that matter." Whether or not Clint turned out 'okay' is something that, by and large, Loki feels is a matter of understatement. His children are wonderful and the world is safer because of him. Wouldn't that count towards being more than just 'okay'?

But he's trying rather hard not to start an argument on this phone call.

"I'm sorry she didn't get to see your farmstead."

"Yeah, well. She didn't get to see a lot of things. Heard about plenty."

It's such an oddly stifled conversation, for all the good will being built up here. He blows out a little air. "Loki." To redirect attention. "Eggshells. You're walking on them. You know you're allowed to say what you think."

A sigh, not as sharp as it might be otherwise. "You are more than merely okay, but that may be an argument I'd be better placed taking up with a brick wall, yes? Because that is how you feel. That you aren't."

"Is that what's bothering you? I'm a former Avenger with an amazing family and a wild penchant for staying alive like a cockroach. Yeah, pretty sure I'm more than just okay. I was being...humble, I guess. I don't go around strutting my stuff telling everyone I'm the world's greatest archer. I've always been more low key about things. You know this."

There's a carnival of some kind going on here.

That's what originally drew Loki's attention to this place. Games of chance (more or less), fried foods, bright colors. Loud children and families. It's bright and colorful and much more along the lines of what Loki would be interested in seeing than the things that his father and brother are up to right now. Politicking and feats of amazing strength, etcetera, etcetera.

Loki ditched that scene almost as fast as he could. Was he interested in other realms? Definitely. But he wanted to know about the people, not the governments or the ones who had all the power. Eventually they would die off, or the people would replace them, and things would change. Boring in the extreme.

Ultimately, though, Loki finds himself wandering beyond the borders of the carnival towards some fields, following an odd but familiar sound. Odd because he knows what it is — the sound of an arrow being loosed and then striking a target, or at least various targets — but not how it's happening to be here. On Midgard. In the 1980s or whatever their calendar reads.

(One of the hardest parts of traveling between realms is that there is not any sort of unified calendar. Loki gets it but hates it simultaneously.)

The point is, Midgardians have broadly moved on from archery and arrows to metal projectiles, Loki knows to be true. So it's weird that anyone could do it in the first place, much less strike a target with as much frequency as Loki hears. So it's weird. A puzzle to be solved. Loki moves silently through sparse woods and fields of grain alike until he reaches the source of the sounds: a man, no, a boy closer to his own age equivalent, surrounded by targets made of various materials. Some bottles, some actual targets, some just... various and sundry objects, held aloft by heavy string or rope.

It's impressive, the amount of skill he (Loki is guessing at the pronouns) has in the first place. In an outmoded technology, at that. He doesn't miss a single shot he takes, in the ten, fifteen minutes Loki spends watching, and it's doubtful that any of the earlier shots were misses either.

Something happens as Loki watches him. Stares at the way his muscles move underneath his shirt, the form his body takes as he draws the bow. It's a buzzing in his head, a weight in his stomach. He wants to stand behind the other boy, to run his fingers across his shoulders as he pulls the bowline taut. Wants to gather some of the sweat at his brow on his fingertips and see how it tastes.

Now. Loki is neither sheltered nor a fool, despite his age; Thor has had an interest in various people of an assortment of genders, defined and otherwise by this point, much to Odin's amusement and Frigga's concern, but Loki has never felt interested enough in anyone to bother entertaining them, or the idea of their naked bodies in his presence. Before today.

The other boy has stopped shooting while Loki has puzzled this new feeling over, he realizes... because, of course, the other boy has to go and collect his arrows from their locations now that his quiver is empty before he can set them loose again, and Loki purposefully decides to step on a twig in order to make his presence known. "You're a good archer," he announces, raising his eyebrows. "I didn't know people bothered learning how, here, anymore." He gives a smile that he hopes indicates that he's not a dangerous threat (to this other person). "Hi. I'm Loki."

Of course Clint's drawn to the fairgrounds. They feel next best thing to home. He's already picked plenty of pockets, got enough to get himself some grub and maybe a couple of bus tickets. Not sure where he's going to run off to this time, or when, but the fact that he can go somewhere else is at least alluring. He's played all the games, beat most of them, gave the non-useful prizes away to awed little kids. And then he grabbed his bag of shit and went out to the field where he's got his little setup all--set up.

Adds a few items to the rotation. Some breakable, some that'll last at least a couple shots. Gets his bow, gets his arrows, trains.

And he is both so attuned to everything around him and also in his own little timezone when he's like this. Loses track of time but feels like he's got heightened senses. He hopes it stays like this forever. That he'll only get better. He's incorporating trickshots into his routine, and while he sucks at physics, at math, at all the boring shit his teachers bemoan and berate for, it all seems so simple when it comes to eyeballing trajectory, feeling the wind. He can't translate it into numbers. But he can translate it into the tension of the string, the angle of the arrow, in breaths in his chest.

He's pretty sure he's being watched. Doesn't hear or see anything at first, doesn't go looking, but just that prickle at the back of the neck, that sixth sense. So when the newcomer makes noise to officially announce his presence, Clint doesn't loose an arrow into the boy's shoulder for his trouble. Just looks over his shoulder as he tugs an arrow from an old tractor trailer tire tilted against a tree, shoves it in the quiver.

"I'm a great archer," he corrects. "People still hunt with bows. And archery's still a sport." Rolls his shoulders, grabs a few more that have gone through their targets and landed half buried in the dirt. "Fair's still going strong back the way you came. This isn't a prize game."

"I know where the... fair is," a dismissive handwave behind him that is still unerringly in the correct direction, "I'm not interested in that anymore." He hadn't thought of challenging the other boy to a contest if skill — too fascinated in the moment, clearly — but it's not the worst idea ever presented to him. "You are a great archer, but. You don't know me. I could… make you flee for your coin." Is that how that phrase works? Nose wrinkle. "Besides. If it was a prize game what would I even win?" Said offhandedly in the tone of someone who is pretending very hard to seem bored when they are the complete opposite. "Your name, maybe? Hm. You could lie, though. You think I'm just some dumb kid.

Something more real, then. Three truths."

Loki dematerializes in a poof of green and gold sparks before reappearing a little closer, pulling one of the arrows embedded deep in tree bark with ease. "We could use your bow. Each of us sets the targets for the other. Or just points and decides. No magic, no tricks. Three truths. If we tie, we both share."

He offers the arrow to the other boy. "Or we could not. You could just tell me."

The second Loki says 'flee for your coin' is when Clint stops paying as much attention to his wayward arrows and more to the fellow boy. Brow furrowed. And then he just...keeps talking? In the strangest fucking way? Opens his mouth to argue that he doesn't think Loki is just some dumb kid, that he doesn't think anything about him, but he's starting to think he's a weirdo who needs picked up by whatever guardian he wandered away from--but Loki keeps talking, and Clint's brow keeps furrowing.

And then the motherfucker uses some kind of genuine actual magic, and Clint startles back several steps.

His bow is half raised. He does not take the arrow. Looks at it suspiciously like it's going to disappear (and find itself embedded suddenly in his back). Looks at Loki.

"What the fuck are you? Did I step in a damn fairy circle?"

"I'm Asgardian, not a fairy. Which doesn't mean much to Midgardians like you, in this part of this planet..." Loki twirls the arrow on his fingertips since the other boy is clearly resistant to taking it back, rotating it around with speed and grace like one might a switchblade. "You would probably have to go, ah, further northwest than this continent can reach to find people who'd recognize the word alone as what it is anymore." He shrugs and changes hand with the arrow, still twirling. "Godhood is weird like that."

Loki gives Clint a slightly more genuine smile. Mischievous and perhaps a little shy, all things considered. "Anyway, you should tell me your name. It's only fair; i told you mine. I haven't even lied at all and I usually do because people are so boring sometimes, especially when you first meet them."

He's watching the arrow, because those are some impressive moves. Even if the words coming out don't make much sense to him. "Loki's a viking god, I think." It sounds kind of dumb when he says it, though. Because the kid fucking poofed himself around. Was that actual magic, or like...stage magic? What even is an Asgard and a Midgard?

His hand lashes out suddenly, snatching he arrow from Loki mid-spin. "If you're looking for not-boring, I don't know why you came to the ass end of nowhere." No one should come here. Everyone should be struggling to leave. What is with this guy? "If I say my name's Clint, do you have any reason to believe me?"

Loki's eyes go a little wide when Clint snatches the arrow from him. A bit of shock plus some admiration with a dash of refusal to pout. "Yes, that's true. Not many vikings left now, or at least not people calling themselves that. Plus some of the modern intense worshippers are kind of crazed, even for me."

Nazis. It's Nazis he's thinking of.

"Clint. Is it short for something? Why are you out here alone? Do you live by yourself? You don't like it here, and it is boring on this planet.

Maybe you should see a different one."

"You ask a lot of questions, Loki the Asgardian." It'd be a lot more suspicious if he was an adult. This kid can't be much older than him.

He sets the quiver down to make quick work of the rest of the arrows, grabbing them together as a handful and stuffing them in, making sure nothing's broken along the way. "Do I really seem all that interesting for shooting a bow at some shit?" Which, of course, doesn't answer any of the several questions asked of him.

"You're interesting. You can shoot arrows, yes, and that is also interesting but. The why of you being interesting is different."

Loki stays in one spot and watches Clint, hands at his sides. "You must be alone. You haven't said anything about parents or going home. Are you a runaway?"

"Hold still."

Once again, not super interested in answering questions, apparently. Whether Loki holds still or not is not important, because either way, Clint's going to nock an arrow, whirl it on Loki, and fire, in a very short amount of time. A lock of Loki's raven hair is pinned to the tree.

"Are you a runaway? Don't you want to go back northwest and to your Asgard?"

Loki does, in fact, hold still, though one eyebrow is immediately up.

He's rewarded with his momentary patience with the soft swoosh of an arrow going through his hair near his ear. Loki whips his head around to see the hair pinned down to the tree bark.

"I've... sort of run away. I got bored with the politics, I don't think anyone should blame me for that, and I will go home. Eventually. So not really a runaway, like you are."

"That was exciting." Hope you're prepared to keep that lock of hair for the rest of your life Clint, natural or otherwise.

He does seem to be willing to keep the hair, from the way Clint takes some string, wraps it around his prize, shoves the little rabbits foot of Loki hair in his pocket. "I haven't technically run away from my newest foster home yet, but it's only a matter of time."

But, lest Loki get the wrong idea: "They're okay. The family. There's nothing wrong with them, really. Nothing wrong with any of them, it's just kinda not for me, I guess." Clearly just some bum kid slinking his way through the system without getting arrested for his troubles. That's all. Nothing exciting. Nothing interesting. He'll probably end up just like his mom, eventually.

"You should probably go. Back to your politics and whatever."

Loki is clearly pleased by the fact that Clint keeps the lock of his hair. Maybe it means Clint feels it too, the sensation as though the Norns themselves were pounding a gong where his heartbeat should be.

He could ask why they're not for him, the foster families, but instead Loki is trying to figure out how to convince Clint to come back to Asgard with him. Because he knows, with an intensity he couldn't begin to explain, that if he loses track of the other boy due to him running away from this place, due to them living in different realms, due to the passage of time, that it's going to drive Loki a particular sort of mad. The kind where you become obsessed and mean and a bit unhinged.

Maybe that would be best avoided.

Loki has never liked anyone on sight before, or even after a few moments of conversation; he doesn't know if what he's feeling is normal, if it will pass. He'd rather not find out, honestly.

"What if I could promise you adventure? For the rest of your life? In a place very different from this one. Would you want to come with me?"

If asked, he wouldn't say it's anything so dramatic. He wouldn't be able to say what specifically drove him to such a move in the first place. Might have to make something up, but he's just going with the flow. Not making plans.

It does feel like this is one of those Moments, when you make a big decision, when something enormous is about to happen. Just meeting this strange otherworldly kid. Strange otherworldly kid who says something like that, like right out of some kind of fantastic adventure movie or something.

"I'd say it's an empty promise, but I did just see you do your little poofy disappearing reappearing acts, so what do I know?"

He wants to bite something back hat he can go on his own life of adventures, far from here. The money is burning in his pocket. But. He knows, honestly, that he'll probably just spend it on food, a new hoodie, some more shit at the sporting good store if he can afford it. Not a bus ticket. He'll just run off again until he's picked up and faced with worried/disappointed faces, again.

"I don't know anything about you or your life."

"I'm sure you know some things. Midgardian-type things. Archery things." Loki grins, and summons a copy of one of Clint's arrows, though it's green and made of flames. "Magic, though, that's my purview."

Twirling the arrow between his fingers once more Loki considers the things it best for Clint to know before approaching Asgard, even under his protection. "I'm a prince, but the second born, so I will probably never rule. Which I'm okay with because it'll mean I get to do other more fun things instead, in the name of diplomacy. My older brother's name is Thor; he's a little thick sometimes but I'm told 'his heart is in the right place' which I'm supposing means somewhere other than in his chest, where it belongs. Right now he's the worst to spend time with, because he has to go to a million council meetings this season with the Allfather but Mother has forbidden me from helping him to remember his schedule or what each one is for."

By magic, of course.

"I like books. I like magic. I'm best at illusions. I'm smarter than people expect and usually I'm bored with things in general. I can fight, though people often forget because I'm not going to turn out to a berserker like Thor probably will, but I like daggers the way you like your arrows.

What else do you want to know?

It's a life. Sometimes there's nothing to do but there's usually a feast, or a foreign delegation, or someone else's feast. There are festivals like this one here only more wonderful that cover an entire city for days.

Or there are hunts. Tournaments. Quests. That sort of thing."

"So you're a prince of a fairytale land." Is what he's taking away from that. Which still sounds like bullshit, except there's that flaming green arrow being spun around, and Clint is tempted to try and snatch that, too. Would it hurt? Would his hand go right through?

"Daggers mean you fight up close." An observation. "I'm better at a distance. Could be a deadly combo. If you get into actual fights, I guess." He's never been in any kind of life or death fight, not really. Risk getting picked up by the cops for assault with a fucking arrow? No thanks. Picked some fights before punching-wise, though. He's what the state would generously call troubled. "Most of what you said sounds like stick around your home and go to some parties and sometimes hunt. But you promised adventure. What kind of adventures do you go on?"

It's an illusion arrow; it would feel weird but wouldn't burn Clint at all.

"I've gotten into actual fights before." Slightly defensive. Fights he started, most likely, and usually with people who didn't know who his parents were. "Nothing to the death though. Quests are adventures. So are hunts if it's an uncommon prey. Sometimes there are puzzles or riddles to be solved in order to be awarded something." Thor adventures for trinkets; Loki usually is more taken up with the promise of magical artifacts or books on the topic, though he kind of doubts Clint would be as interested.

"Being here is kind of an adventure." It sounds a little pathetic to say so, even to him. He shrugs. "No one will force you to learn quadratic equations or whatever passes for mathematics here, at least."

Edited 2022-12-07 15:11 (UTC)

Clint makes a face at the math part. "I don't have a head for numbers like that. I just know that I'm the best shot there's ever been, and at the rate I'm going, I'll probably end up in the army being a sharpshooter, pick off bad guys in another country overseas or something."

At least he is, at times, realistic.

He flashes his hand out to snatch the illusion arrow, but Loki's seen him move before, can see it coming, and he misses. Not by much, though. "You go on quests a lot, Prince? You and your brother and your king dad?" And then he squints, pulls back. "Are you like...trying to adopt me or something? Cuz that hasn't worked out so far."

Loki grins when Clint attempts for the arrow and misses. The fact that he got that close a second time means he's good. "The Allfather doesn't really quest anymore. He makes appearances in the courts of others, or disguises himself to know the people of a realm better."

The arrow vanishesintoa whiff of green smoke. Loki narrows his eyes at Clint a little. "Not exactly. I don't want another brother. I want us to be friends but I can't stay here and you're obviously miserable and bored here so why not travel somewhere new? Somewhere no Midgardian has been in at least an age."

"Aw man, I wouldn't even be the first?" But he says it with a mischievous little smirk. "I guess that would be okay. I don't have anywhere else I was planning on going." Since 'home' doesn't exist but 'the house' doesn't seem to be an option at the moment. He hefts his quiver, his bow, and his bag.

"Do I click my heels three times, or do you do some kinda magic incantation or what?"

"No." Loki's grin gets a little wider. "I'll ask Heimdall to summon the Bifrost. It might make you a little dizzy though, using it the first time."

He offers a hand out to Clint, and once the other boy takes it, draws a breath. For courage. For... something.

"Heimdall." He knows the Watcher has been fulfilling both title and role. Other than leaving his brother and father behind Loki has been more or less on his best behavior this trip so certainly that shouldn't weigh against him for bringing a mortal home, right?

Right?

Hopefully.

"We want to go back to Asgard. I know Mother will wish to speak with us."

There's a moment in which Loki thinks 'oh no, I'm going to have to properly beg aren't I?' before the ground beneath their feet lights up in runes and he gives Clint's hand a squeeze just as the Bifrost comes crashing down on them in all its technicolor glory.

"Ask whowa to summon the whatnow?" Does not stop from eventually taking Loki's hand, because he's half being a shit (but only half), and if nothing happens, then he's had a memorable encounter, and if something does happen, holy shit his life is about to get wildly interesting.

Loki talks to the air, and at first, nothing, but between breaths, light, nothing but dazzling light. He means to say something, or curse a lot, but he's pretty sure he just screams as he clutches Loki's hand tight and his feet leave the ground like the trippiest alien abduction he could've conjured. It feels like everything is moving around them, and the rainbow of lights swirls around them, and when his feet finally touch something solid again, he's pretty sure his ears are popping and also just, like, everything is still moving in dizzying circles? But he's stopped screaming before that point, so he's mostly just still clinging to the other boy's hand, other hand clinging to the strap of his bag and quiver and bow, eyes darting around.

"What," he says quietly, intently, "the fuuuuoh god, hi-"

That is a very large man in very shiny armor with the biggest fucking sword he's ever seen.

"Heimdall."

The Watcher simply stares at them in silence, which Loki expected, though he does not let go of Clint's hand at any point.

"I've done what you asked of me; I've made a friend." Loki lifts his chin and squares his shoulders as one gets the impression that if Heimdall had pupils he'd be rolling his eyes at these words.

"And in my infinite wisdom I neglected to give you the caveat of not kidnapping mortals to the end of endeavoring towards friendship?"

"... it's not kidnapping if they want to leave," Loki replies sullenly. "And he's important. A worthy champion."

Heimdall's gaze settles on Clint for a moment before he inclines his head in their direction. "You are correct: your Mother wishes to speak with you both.

Welcome to Asgard, Clint Barton, and well met."

"...Hi, um. Hello, Hhhheimdall? How do you know my name?"

"I know many things," he says cryptically, with just enough wryness that it sounds like it could be a joke, or having a private laugh to himself at least. Though if it's supposed to be funny, it goes over Clint's head.

Outside is a long crystalline bridge, and blue skies and white clouds that seem normal save that they are the backdrop to a glimmering kingdom. There's a long drop below, but heights have never scared him.

"You really are a prince, huh? II thought...you might've been pulling my leg." Clint shakes his head a little, but everything is still in front of him just as clear as ever. "You think I'm important?"

Loki grins at Clint. "You're the first person I've never lied to." Yet, anyway, though he doesn't think that hesitating to tell the entire truth as he knows it is quite the same as lying. "You're very important. To me, especially."

He raises his chin and his grin dies down to a shy sort of smile. "I hope you like it here. Come on; Mother will want to talk to both of us. Want to race?"

"The day's young, I think." Is this still part of Earth? Or is this...a whole other world entirely? There's a lot that he's going to need to learn, and he isn't convinced that he won't be going back, to the foster family that will decide he's too much of a handful, to the system that's just waiting for him to age out.

"Aw, c'mon, I've got this stuff I'm carrying; you'll beat me in a straight race." And he's not letting go of his stuff if he doesn't know where it's going. "You've got those long legs going on." Long everything and probably still growing.

"A shame," Loki intones, but he is actually quite proud of Clint for realizing Loki would win a race at this rate.

Their hands are connected and Loki takes his time pointing out parts of the capitol city as they walk. Here is the marketplace, here is the training years just beyond that gate, here are the stables, etcetera, etcetera. "Do you know how to ride? I could teach you."

There's a woman at the gate connecting the path from where they arrived to the castle, surrounded by a handful of ladies-in-waiting who bow toward Loki as he approaches with Clint. Frigga opens her arms in greeting and, reluctantly, Loki let's go fo Clint's hand in order to be hugged by his mother. "Please don't send him away," he whispers into her hair, more pleading than he'd like to admit; Frigga merely shushes him and then, with one arm around Loki's shoulders, opens another arm out toward Clint. "Welcome to Asgard, Clint Barton, son of Edith. Are you hungry?"

It's all so medieval high fantasy, and it still doesn't feel real, but he's trying to take it all in. "Never been on a horse before." Seen them, never rode. Why would Loki insist on bringing some kid he just met to his home? To show off? It can't be something mean-spirited like that. He's important to Loki. They held hands. Clint's keeping a lock of his hair.

When they get to the beautiful woman who looks old enough to be either one of their mothers (and Loki doesn't look a thing like her), Clint straightens. Tenses with a frown at the way he's greeted. Maybe Heimdall's whole magical thing is to know everything, but now this is hitting him close to home.

But he'll be polite. "Yes, ma'am." Because Edith may have raised a thieving sharpshooter, but also a midwestern boy who knows his manners. And also because he's a teenager, and the only time he isn't hungry is when he's asleep. "You don't have to go out of your way on my account, though."

Frigga drops her arm and lets go of Loki while giving Clint a serene yet apologetic smile, a gentle incline of her head. "Forgive me. I did not mean to cause any discomfort by my greeting. I'm afraid Loki has taken us all by surprise with the turn of events today." She gives her son a pointed look.

Loki has, for his part, moved back to stand at Clint's side but hasn't reached for the other boy's hand again just yet. Now feels like possibly the wrong time to make that gesture of declaration.

"It is no imposition; we will eat in the herb garden." She looks at one of the ladies-in-waiting, who nods in acquiescence, and the women split off -- one half of them toward the kitchen, the other half following behind Frigga as she leads Loki and Clint through the gardens toward the one she has in mind for this particular conversation.

Loki gives Clint a smile. He is fairly certain that his mother won't allow for Clint to be sent away, but that she also wants to understand why he's done... this in particular. He hadn't even wanted to go to Midgard, originally, and for him to come home early with a mortal in tow is doing a lot, even for the God of Mischief.

The herb garden is small, as Asgardian palace gardens go, with fragrant pockets of various blooms along a winding path with a pond in the very center. Still and yet, it's quite bigger than the parking lot the fair was being held in. There are benches at the pond and Frigga gestures for them to sit, each one in their own small bench in a sort of semi-circle around a larger table set with various foodstuffs; none of which, Clint might notice, that's processed. This is all food that's been cooked by hand or magic but none by a factory.

Loki sits on the center bench of the three, after his mother chooses the one closest to the pond's edge, because he'd rather be close to both of them and forcing Clint to be in the middle seems a little unfair. In the moment, anyway.

He expects to be questioned. What was he thinking, how does he imagine this will go? Instead, Frigga startles him by addressing her first question to Clint: "If my son hadn't convinced you to accompany him back home, tell me: what would the next month or so have looked like, for you? Please," she holds up a hand, "eat some, first, but do not lie to me. Either--" and this is with a pointed look at Loki, "of you."

It's no small amount of food, too. Reminds him of his first foster family, the way they tried to make a big traditional Thanksgiving meal, and he hadn't seen so much food just out in the open for him. He ate until he was sick.

He's a little more wary about it all this time, because he's still thinking somewhere in the back of his mind about fairies and how you shouldn't eat their food unless you want to be stuck with them. But he's stuck now, isn't he? Until he gets put back where he was from. Or maybe he's not stuck at all. Maybe he's somewhere he's going to have cool adventures and feel like he's worth something.

So he piles on his plate and digs in. Considers Frigga's question while he does so. Not lying is fine; he isn't about to try and pull any bullshit on--the queen, he guesses. Never dined with a queen before. Never met royalty before today. This is all a little much.

"I don't know." It's an honest answer, really. "Probably keep doing a lot of bow practice. Spend as much time away from the house as I can." He lowers his head closer to the plate, shoulders hunching up. "Get picked up by the cops and get taken back to the house. Have a social worker come by looking disappointed. Go to school, I guess, sometimes."

"I am told you are very skilled with a bow already." Frigga sounds appropriately impressed. "Perhaps you could give Loki here some pointers; he is usually much more interested in throwing his knives than bothering to notch a bow." The look she gives her son is pointed and full of some other subtext; Loki makes a slightly started face and decides that eating a pastry is better than addressing that aloud.

"Is there anything you would prefer to learn that the Midgardian educational system is lacking? If you're to stay here —" Another pointed look at Loki, "it would be in everyone's best interest, I believe, if it is an improvement over where you came from."

"Um. Practical skills, I think? I like working with my hands. I don't think I'm smart enough to ever be a chemist or a biologist or write essays about novels for a living. I could be military, with an aim like mine. Maybe I could build things. Or work on a farm? I don't know how practical a bow is for any kind of job, back there. Except teaching other people archery, I guess."

The kindly queen seems like she's talking like he really might stay. And that's just wild to think about. He looks up at her at last. "Can I ask, how did you know my name, and my mom's name?"

"I know your name from Heimdall, who was watching over Loki as soon as he slipped away from his father and brother; I know your mother's name because i asked the Norns about the safety of your being here, and that is the name they addressed you by.

Farmwork is easily found; there is someone in the guard, I believe, who might be a suitable fit for you. Aerik's family has a farm not far from here."

Loki opens his mouth to protest but Frigga cuts him off. "I know, darling, you would likely prefer if your new friend were to stay in the castle, and perhaps that can happen someday but in the meantime... this will have to be suitable, yes?"

Loki draws a breath. He understands what's not being said, here. Neither of them are considered adults just yet, and Loki will have to wait it seems, for just one more thing that is briefly out of his reach. He looks at Clint and then at his hands. "Yes, mother."

"It doesn't have to be farmwork, just...anything. That I can do physically. That I can do to be useful." He scrunches up his nose. "Because I'm pretty sure you don't need a pickpocket around. Dunno what kind of punishments go on here, but I'd like to keep my hands if at all possible."

Frigga blinks and then laughs, politely behind her hand at first, and glances at her son again. It's a look that suggests he certainly knows how to pick them if he brought home a nearly homeless thief to adore. "We certainly would like you to keep the hands that you care to work with, yes. And if you would like to increase your skill with your weapon of choice, we've warriors plenty who might take on a ward."

Which just makes him think 'ward of the state' but he tries not to make a face about it. "Who are the Norns?"

"The Norns weave the Fate of everyone, gods and mortals alike," Loki explains, though he frowns a little. Why did his mother consult them before she met Clint? What did they say, exactly? (Was it good, bad, or just... vagueness?) "They are gods to us, who are gods to Midgardians."

"Their names are Urðr, Verðandi, and Skuld." Frigga thinks perhaps names are important in this context, even if they are unfamiliar to Clint. "They water the tree at the center of all the cosmos, named Yggdrasil, which is how Asgard is connected to Midgard."

Clint looks skeptical. "I don't know about all that," he says, slowly. Is it actual religion if someone can also actually talk to their gods? And what's this about a tree? The universe isn't a tree.

"But there's a lot I don't know. I didn't think magic was real until Loki showed me." And he sure never dreamed he could see all this through a magical rainbow beam. Wild shit.

"Yggdrasil is not a literal tree..." Loki starts, but he's not sure how to explain it further. "Maybe we could go see it at some point. That'd be an adventure, though it would probably take a while."

Frigga nods. The boys will have to speak with the Norns eventually, that much she knows. "If you're interested in how it all works, in terms of physics, there are tutors for that."

"I'm not good at--" But he cuts himself off there. Frigga is probably not interested in the things he doesn't think he's good at. And he is interested in how things work, but he's so new he wouldn't know where to start, and maybe astrophysics is not...the best place to start. He mulls this over some meat.

Nods and swallows. "I do want to learn things, but I should start small first. This is all..." He looks around them at this massive herb garden. He can see the gold glinting from the spires above. "...It's a lot. If I stay. Ma'am." But he's also nosy, so he can't help but ask: "Are you really gods?"

"That depends on your definition of godhood, I would think." Frigga smiles. "We Asgardians are very different from Midgardians. We live longer. We are stronger, faster, our senses are more acute." A glance at Loki, whose ears are literally burning, thanks. However, he did hear Clint shooting arrows from some distance in an otherwise noisy and crowded venue. So.

"All Asgardians are not worthy of worship by others," Frigga continues. "Some are just regular, everyday citizens. Bakers and soldiers, craftspeople and artisans. Servants. But some of us are different, unique, and singled out by the Norns to receive powers beyond the average of our world. From the moment we can articulate ourselves, we are aware of this difference, this... weight. In this, we are considered gods."

Clint takes this in, the idea of long lives, better physically, the idea of specialness bestowed on certain people. Like Loki, he guesses. And Thor. And so on.

"Would anyone even want me here? An outsider who's not gonna live so long and who doesn't have super senses? Besides Loki, I mean. I don't exactly fit in." In any sense. Does he fit in back on Earth-Midgard? Not really either. So what exactly does it matter?

"The matter of a shorter lifetime is a problem easily solved, without any pain or effort on your part. Midgardians have lived amongst us before, though it has been quite some time..." Frigga sighs, and folds her hands together in her lap. "The rest can be trained for, honestly. What does fitting in look like, for you? What would you need to feel like you belong?"

He's never really...fit in before. So he doesn't know what that looks like. Never really belonged except with his mom. So he ignores the question, valid as it is. What really perks him up is what she said first. "Wait, are you gonna make me live a long time? Who else has been here before? Are they still here? Can I meet them? How long can I live? Wouldn't that be...dangerous for me?"

au shenanigans for icasm

In dreams

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after the dream

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