brandingproblem | au shenanigans for icasm

"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)

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