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

"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.

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