au shenanigans for icasm

[brandingproblem]

there should be a name for this at some point
we'll figure it out shh

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[brandingproblem]

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.

[icasm]

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.

[brandingproblem]

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.

[icasm]

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.