brandingproblem | au shenanigans for icasm

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.

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