Art: Secret Admirer: Part II
This is a continuation of "Secret Admirer". Unabashed hurt/comfort. Also, angst/blood warning. Implied Thor/Loki.
SECRET ADMIRER: PART II
There’s a glint of metal under the dirt, then a shock of red fabric, and strands of flaxen hair darkened with grime. Loki tears at the earth with his bare hands now, desperate to get to his brother buried beneath.
The youth has literally done what he said: flung Thor into a crevice of earth and piled dirt on top of him.
"Thor," Loki gasps, brushing the dirt from his face. It clings to his skin, stuck there by the dramatic head wound against his brow. His fingers fasten around the clasps where his cape meets the pauldron and Loki pulls hard, heaving Thor up against him. The God of Thunder is a dead weight against his chest and he cradles him like a child in the circle of his arms.
“You damn fool,” Loki whispers, his voice sounding strange to his own ears.
He tilts Thor's head to the side and dirt leaks from his mouth.
Aesir are terribly difficult to kill, and Thor more stubborn than most. For a moment, Loki fears the deranged youth has succeeded where others have failed, where he himself had failed.
Loki does not know how long Thor has been buried, nor how long he can survive without water, nor air, nor light, nor how long he can survive all these hardships while injured.
The young mutant who has done this refused to tell him. Recalling his last few hours, Loki's wrath redoubles.
Loki fought the crazed young mutant fiercely-- their battle was one of spurned affection and love lost, strong emotions that gave rise to great energies within.
The youth was a strong opponent, wielding power to manipulate the earth and the atmosphere right out from under Loki's feet, but he was an inexperienced warrior making costly mistakes that Loki exploited to his full advantage.
Using the earth to crush Loki, to lift him upward and send him headlong into the ground, the youth had nearly cleaved Loki's arm from the socket, breaking his clavicle without question.
Pain shot down his limb and splintered across his chest and he reasoned, during that moment of delirious agony, that the little beast had snapped him open. In that white hot burst of pain, his thoughts turned to Thor, entombed in an unmarked grave, damned to eternal rest there if Loki did not get up.
Loki spared just enough time and seidr to set his bones and pop his shoulder back into the socket as he could not rescue Thor without the use of his arm.
The young man snarled with rage when Loki rose from the ground, injured but ready to continue fighting for Thor. He cursed Loki for being another letdown in his short, disappointing life, for failing to live up to his romantic fantasy of supremacy, for refusing to submit to him and be his.
These were merely words. The deranged youth had nothing left but words, his physical powers spent too soon on eagerness and ego.
Even as the youth lay bleeding, his life in peril, he refused to give Loki the only words he coveted-- words revealing where Thor was laid to rest.
It was petulant spite and nothing more that held his tongue. He would not say, no matter how Loki pressed him, because this was the most grievous wound he could inflict upon Loki and he knew it. The youth would die for his spitefulness, and in doing so would take Thor's resting place with him.
When the youth’s throat no longer worked, when no amount of reasoning, threatening or pleading could reach him, Loki left him in a pool of his own fluids to seek out his brother, as he had done once before through Thor’s beloved weapon, Mjolnir. It was his last hope that he could find Thor in this vast realm before any prospect of finding his brother alive was destroyed.
The Norns smiled on him this day because Loki found Mjolnir before the sun set, discarded in a crater of its own making. The flash of triumph was soon eclipsed by dismay as he surveyed the surrounding land and did not see disturbed ground, nor any trace of battle, nor where Thor might rest. The setting sun was upon him. He would lose the light and so would lose Thor with it.
Thor was maddeningly close, he had to be, but where exactly eluded him. Exhausted and in pain, Loki felt suddenly overwhelmed while he looked in all directions and saw no trace of his brother.
As his panic mounted, Loki recalled the youth’s words. Lifted rock from the earth and laid the God of Thunder to rest underneath. I thought a mountain was a rather fitting headstone.
With a flourish of cape, Loki transfigured into a falcon, flying towards the mountain looming in the distance, and there in the lee of the rocky summit, Loki spied a large patch of disturbed earth.
This is where he fervently dug his brother up and where he now clings to Thor’s unconscious form in the waning light of early evening.
Loki envelops his sorcery around Thor like a cloak, raising him up from the grave, and laying him out on an undisturbed patch of grass. Spinning gossamer wisps of seidr between his fingers, Loki sends the tendrils after every speck of dirt in Thor's throat, pulling it from his lungs and his stomach, sweeping it from his eyes and nose, purging the dirt from all his wounds.
“Breathe for me,” Loki says, splaying his hands across Thor’s chest and they uncontrollably tremble against his mud-caked breastplate.
From the shoulder injury, Loki thinks, and does not dwell on the tightness in his throat nor the tears welling in his eyes.
He pulses magic through his chest. Thor's body shudders, then lies still.
"Do not dare to ignore me," Loki says as he forces another pulse through, and then another, in futile, useless attempts to revive his brother.
His vision blurs, wavering, and in the dimming light, it is as sheltered a place as any to let loose a heaving sob.
Just as despair clenches around Loki’s heart, Thor gasps, his eyes opening wide and startled, and he shoots upwards.
Scrambling back, Loki just barely manages to avoid getting cracked in the head by Thor’s thick skull as he clambers to his feet as if to escape.
Thor manages not more than a few tottering steps before his legs buckle and he collapses hard onto his side, arms clutching around his chest, curling into himself as he takes large heaving gulps of air. Visibly trembling, Thor writhes on the ground against the tremendous strain that has been imposed on his body.
On hands and knees, Loki approaches him, slowly and with rapt attention, as one would a wounded animal, until he’s kneeling within an arm’s reach of his brother.
Shaking all over, Thor eyes him warily, shying back, a pathetic attempt to keep distance between them.
A splinter of remorse pricks at Loki's heart and he says, "Peace, Thor. Peace," as he realizes Thor thinks Loki is there to harm him further. "I mean to help you, if you’ll let me."
Thor stares at him, his eyes such an electric blue that Loki wonders how he ever thought Thor’s life could be snuffed out. But still, the dolt is hurt, and quite seriously by the look of his trembling. He needs Loki’s assistance whether he wants to accept it or not.
Moving closer, Loki asks, “May I touch you?”
Thor nods, but looks no less tense.
Curling a hand around Thor’s forearm, Loki holds his firm but gentle grip there in reassurance until Thor unwinds a bit, the strain softening from the lines of his brow, and then with his other hand, Loki reaches for his face, tilting his chin to get a better look at the head wound.
Thor swallows, screwing his eyes tight against the discomfort that slight movement caused.
Loki slides his arm under Thor’s shoulders, helping him to sit up, and he conjures a flask of water.
He holds the flask to Thor's lips, whispering “Easy,” as Thor chokes down a greedy gulp. He coughs and sputters, the water coming up pink.
His breath pulls sharp and strained through his lips as Thor labors to breathe. Holding Thor firmly upright, Loki bends, pressing his ear to Thor's chest, hearing a terrible wheeze as breath rattles in his chest like a great whistling wind.
Punctured lung, he thinks. Fractured ribs.
“How?” Thor whispers, the one word an agony. How did you find me?
“The youth presented me with your helmet. Proclaimed he'd killed you. I needed to see something like that with my own eyes.”
“Would have,” Thor rasps. “If,” he says clasping a hand over Loki's wrist. If not for you, he means.
He coughs again, failing to quash a moan of pain.
"What a terrible state you are in Thor," Loki says. “One would think you battled an army, not merely a child.”
Loki says this in jest, but knows that the youth was not a child, and certainly not a mere anything. Thor was buried deep in a rift of the earth, which the youth used as a vise to crush Thor and crack his ribcage like a walnut shell.
His coughing is a terrible sound, and Thor clutches hard at his chest as he tries to get breath in his lungs again.
“Be calm, Thor,” Loki says, smoothing his hand along the taut planes of his back. “Do not panic.”
The pain and the sudden lack of breath is too great for him, and Thor falls back against his hold, unconscious.
“Oh, my brother,” Loki whispers, cradling him close. These tender feelings, Loki does not understand them, but he cannot deny what he feels is anything less than deep-seated affection.
He wraps Thor in the folds of his green cape and magics him away to his home, laying his brother down in his bed. Removing his armor piece by piece, Loki examines his body for hidden wounds as he had not done since they were young princelings both, with all of Asgard and its shining wonders laid out before them.
Cleansing Thor’s skin and smoothing Thor's hair from his face, Loki feels a sudden pang of sentiment overtake him. He could be laying his brother on funeral pyre right now, instead of simply putting him to bed.
This grief stricken thought causes Loki to bend, resting his forehead against Thor’s. Waiting there, Loki screws his eyes shut against the emotions roiling inside him until he’s calmed somewhat. Loki presses his lips just aside of Thor’s mouth, bestowing a kiss, a gentle token to mark his affection for the reckless lout. Loki brushes his smooth cheek against Thor’s bristled one, for a moment wishing that there existed more tenderness between them, that he might have nerve to show these sentiments plainly and receive whatever endearments Thor would offer him without pretense.
Loki lies down beside Thor on the bed, watching him sleep. His breath is still labored, but Thor breathes, having already started to mend under his ministrations, and that is all Loki cares about. Thor's body is a comforting heat, as he remembers, his golden skin warm and pleasing to the touch.
He closes his eyes and curls on his side into Thor's shoulder, pretending that they are young and innocent once more.
*****
Loki wakes slowly. He's exhausted and his shoulder is stiff and screaming. His head is pillowed on Thor's chest, Thor's arms firmly around him, their legs entangled. They shifted in their sleep, unconsciously seeking each other out.
Thor is awake, the fool tightening his grip around him when he senses Loki waking, as if Thor means to keep him, as if he could by brute strength alone.
Loki is too tired to fight, but not so tired to refrain from a little mischief, so he rolls over, stretching out languid like a cat on top of Thor, slinging an arm around his neck, pressing his hips to Thor's, sliding a knee between his legs. If Thor means to keep him close, then Loki will show him how close he should be kept.
Thor breathes a chuckle, but otherwise doesn't comment. He's tired, too, but his eyes are joyous, pleased to have Loki so near once more, even if it borders on indecent. His breathing hitches in the rise and fall, still laboring a bit, and Loki's weight on top of him can't be helping.
Thor is strong, Loki reminds himself, he needn't worry.
"Hi, brother," Thor whispers, his hands idling up and down Loki’s back.
"Hi yourself," Loki says. "My, trouble has a way of finding you."
Thor hums in agreement.
There are words upon the tip of his tongue which Loki dares not speak out loud and so rather than release them, he rests his cheek down on Thor’s chest, simply laying there for awhile, enjoying the heat of his brother's body.
Truthfully, he's not felt such reassuring warmth since falling from the Bifrost. The spaces between Yggdrasil's branches are cold, cold enough for even a Jotun to be chilled by it. Thor has always felt hot to his touch, the feeling bringing about a sense of comfort, for never was he safer than in the shelter of his brother's embrace.
“Thank you, brother," Thor says quietly. "Confined as I was, I would have perished there, if not for you."
"Nonsense," Loki says at once. "The God of Thunder could not have died thus,” he says. You can never die, Thor, not without me beside you, nor by any other’s hand but mine own.
“If only that were so, brother,” Thor says. “I am as vulnerable to death as any man.”
“Not as any man,” Loki whispers. No man has Loki in his pocket as Thor has, even if the fool doesn’t realize what he possesses.
“How ever did you find yourself at the mercy of that brat?" Loki asks. He knows how, the young mutant told him so himself, but Loki wonders how much Thor knows, how much he will admit to him.
"Misfortune," Thor says, pausing, and it’s this hesitation that tells him that Thor knows everything-- what the youth had planned for Loki and why he went after Thor in the first place.
"He sought me out and would not be satisfied until he spilled my lifesblood,” Thor explains. “It was luck that lended him the upper hand. Tis a difficult thing, to battle when the battlefield will not stay under your feet."
Loki's throat tightens and a whispered, "Fool," is all he can get out.
Thor doesn't say, It was your fault he came after me. He doesn't comment on how Loki has curled up on top of him, clutching to him like a frightened child clinging to a doll. And he doesn't challenge his motives, how he can call for Thor's death one moment and murder someone for daring to achieve that very thing in the next.
Instead, Thor says nothing. He lays a large hand on the back of Loki's head, gentle in his strength, reverent in his touch, his fingers carding though his dark hair absently, and Thor lets Loki hold him for a bit longer.
****
A/N:
Due to the overwhelming response to “Secret Admirer”, I decided write a little bit more and offer up a “part 2” as a THANK YOU for your support. xposted on tumblr
This offering was 100% pure hurt/comfort and if you came here for substance, then I do apologize that I gave you the wrong impression-- you will find nothing of substance here!
Some of you might not have liked where this went, (as I’m sure you all have your own ideas on the rather ambiguous way I left part 1), but I assure you this is always what I had imagined-- Loki digging Thor up, reviving him, and then taking him home to recover. See, Loki may have had a secret admirer, but Thor does too-- Thor’s secret admirer is Loki, though I’m pretty sure he just outed himself.
I’m kind of digging the art/drabble combo-- do you guys like it? Should I do more like this?
Questions? Comments? If you like this, let me know! My inbox is open, I love hearing from people. :)
Oh, and a shout out to creedsgalbirdy who totally came through on my cry for help! You rock! :D