brandingproblem | au shenanigans for icasm

au shenanigans for icasm

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

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

au shenanigans for icasm

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