Round 4
Round 4 is now closed.
Welcome to norsekink .
Keep up the awesome, folks.
Attention: Spoiler policy is now in place. For more information, go here.
NOTE: We've noticed that some of the prompts being posted have Thor characters only making cameos or not featured at all. We realize that Thor is closely involved in the Avengers, but we're requesting that any ( Read more... )
Welcome to norsekink .
Keep up the awesome, folks.
Attention: Spoiler policy is now in place. For more information, go here.
NOTE: We've noticed that some of the prompts being posted have Thor characters only making cameos or not featured at all. We realize that Thor is closely involved in the Avengers, but we're requesting that any ( Read more... )
In a turn of events that have been at first bizarre, then escalated to utterly depressing, Loki had died. Finer point to it: Loki killed himself, somehow, though Norse gods didn't seem to have much "god"-ness as far as god-deaths go - and in his dying moments in a battlefield that he'd been party to, Loki let go of the last of himself to meet his daughter on the other side.
Call it fate's mysteriously cruel humor that Steven Rogers, the ever-dear Captain America, had been the one present to hear the whole of Loki's soul-song.
One act of kindness given during the dying breaths of an immortal, and suddenly you're stuck with a cat.
"Really, Tony didn't mean what he said," Steve repeats more urgently, as he sits in the common lounge of Tony Stark's Malibu home, the glass walls overlooking the view of the cliff and the churlish-looking waters below. There's a cat in his hands, green-eyed like he'd had eyes swapped out for emeralds, and there's a cat paw on his nose now, claws just threatening to come out and introduce Steve to modern-day Bactine and mediplast. "You're not getting neutered, okay, Tony's just really angry over the mask. You're not getting cut, no one's gonna do anything to you that'll... sterilize you."
A beat. A paw warily moves away from his face.
"...You're a boy cat, right?"
Steve winces as four perfect claws sink into his forearm.
Loki had followed him back, like a mocking Eurydice to Steve's reluctant (extremely hesitant) Orpheus, when his own daughter had turned him away for a debt owed until the kindness has been repaid. Steve hasn't told anyone yet - not Fury, not Tony, definitely not Thor; how would you even begin to explain that a former/previous/currrently-in-Limbo-in-the-most-awkward-definition-yet enemy now sits at your bed every morning, green eyes watching the back of your head as you change in and out of your clothes?
Loki hisses, like he can hear him think.
...Actually, no, that wouldn't be so surprising.
Steve sighs heavily, his shoulders rising and falling like bridges being raised with such grace, and puts Loki down to sit on his lap. The cat-god narrows his eyes at him, front paws so neatly placed in front of him like a man might fold his hands over his own lap, and Steve gets the frustratingly embarrassing feeling of being severely judged by a cat.
"You peed into the Iron Man mask," he begins, feeling foolish by the minute. "I don't even want to know how you found it in the first place; the point is-"
"DON'T TALK TO THAT CAT," Tony yells as he walks by in a bathrobe, sunglasses and a walking cane(?!). "That cat is sneaky and evil and everything wrong in the world and you shouldn't be talking to it like it's a person. It's encouraging it. Don' encourage it, Steve. Love your own species and stop fraternizing with the cat."
Tony disappears from view in his usual dramatic fashion ("FRATERNIZING WITH THE CAT OF SATAN IS EVIL, STEVE") and. And. Well. Loki strokes his thigh with a paw in amused pity.
"...He'll get over it," Steve tells himself, unsure, as Loki nuzzles his stomach until Steve caves in and pets his tail.
*
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Blue boots crunched the dirt and rock, while gloved hands pushed broken bits of wall away.
Color drained from each other's faces, for different reasons.
Loki's throat was cut wide open. In his hand was the knife. Behind them, out from beyond this small smashed-in corner of the battlefield, Thor waged war with a horde of demon-like half-hounds. Above them the pneumatic bass of Tony's repulsor blasts echoed in the air.
Loki coughed wetly. Bright red air bubbles come up from the cut.
Steve took the knife. He didn't ask, won't ask any more.
"I'm sure he didn't mean it," Steve assured him, as Thor's hollers thundered through the air; the fight went on without them. "But if he did, I'm sorry."
Steve took the knife.
He finished what the other started.
*
Steve traces a scar on Loki's shoulder, visible even beneath the fur. "Where did you get this?"
Loki jumps off the bed and out the window instead of answering, and doesn't return for a couple days.
*
"Where'd you find your cat?" Clint asks, just the once.
Steve stares deep into his coffee mug. "He followed me home."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah." Loki pops his head out from under the couch, when the television noises change from car-crash effects to a song-and-dance number, then darts across the room and around the chairs to curl himself around Steve's ankle. "I guess he likes it here."
"Maybe he wasn't doing so good where he was before," Clint offers with a shrug, as he drains his beer can empty.
"Yeah, maybe," Steve echoes, and bends down to run a hand through Loki's fur.
*
"Even dead gods can dream, you know," Loki murmured into his ear, as they lay against Steve's sheets. They're in that place between waking and sleeping, when the world is dark-blue and grey, but still beautiful. "And I'm not really dead, not yet. I can't die."
Loki's head is pillowed against Steve's shoulder; every now and then he'd sigh so deeply Steve wondered just how much air his lungs could hold. "It's not right," Steve answered, feeling himself slip closer to consciousness; Loki's human face flickers out of view, the lines around him growing fainter and fainter. "It's not fair that... It's not..."
"Just wake up, son of Rogers," Loki chuckles quietly. "We can talk again tonight."
Steve wakes up to a cat tail brushing his nostrils over and over again, and sneezes.
He spends most of the morning playing with the cat, until Fury calls the Avengers away for a briefing, and gets back to find Tony's mask on the floor looking like it's been p-
*
"He didn't mean it," Steve says earnestly, as a black kitty paw presses harder against his chin.
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[idk where this came from but while taking a break from typing more stuff for my other fills I saw this prompt and this happened. I hope this is okay, OP. ;;]
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This pleases me.
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I'm now seeing Loki as a Nyarlathotep figure, thanks to your dead-but-dreaming comparison, and the whole fact that he's a shapeshifter.
Nyarlathotep!Loki has my inner (and, who are we kidding, outer) Lovecraft geek squeeing, and the saner bits of me terrified out of my fucking mind. And I think it's this contrasting emotional bits which make me love this so much. The idea of it only being during the night puts one in the mind of the cait sídhe, and if that was intentional, I love you and gift you my firstborn. Because I have never seen anyone write a good cait sídhe esque fic, and this, my dear, is fantastic. SPAWN OF SATAN, XD
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