brandingproblem | au shenanigans for icasm

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?"

au shenanigans for icasm

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