THE AVENGERS | CANDIED
Title: Candied
Prompts: 31_days | norsekink
Fandom: Thor (2011), The Avengers (2012)
Character/Pairing: Loki/Thor, Iron Man, Captain America, Hawkeye, Black Widow, Hulk
Word Count: 3515
Summary: Loki has recently discovered the existence of lollipops and he is obsessed with them to the extent of starting to obscenely lick and suck on them during battles with the Avengers. Thor cannot find it in himself to object when Loki is trailing the red candy up his pale sinewy belly.
QUOTE: All manner of designer confectionary delights had dislodged from their boxes and bounced off his golden horned head. On the way out, striding angrily with his sceptre glowing in hand, he had first noticed the differently shaped coloured sugars on sticks. He did miss the honeyed indulgences he had become so accustomed to in Asgard rather fiercely.
..
There was a new addition to Loki’s arsenal. It was conveniently portable, easy to keep out of his way when his hands were full, and varied enough to hold his interest. Different sizes, shapes, colours, almost anything really.
And also, they were sweet.
“Is he eating a lollipop, because if I cared at all about respect, I would find that disrespectful,” Iron Man noted conversationally as he ducked an enthusiastic girder.
Loki raised an eyebrow, taking the red heart-shaped candy out of his mouth for a moment. A vividly red tongue poked out to wet his lips. “You do not enjoy them?”
“Oh I like them fine, I’m just thinking I might-rather die at the hands of someone who looked a-little grimmer,” Stark replied distractedly as a swipe from one of the monsters threatened to take a chunk out of his leg. “But each to his own and what not.”
Thor felled his beast, dropping it with a thick thud on the concrete. Loki hefted his sceptre warily.
“I have not seen this food before,” Thor rumbled, brow crinkling with curiosity. “Where did you acquire it, brother?”
“Hey, hey, am I the only one that gets we’re kinda fighting for our damn mortal lives here?” Iron Man yelled over his helmet’s speakers, hovering above their heads. One of the monsters seemed to be sprouting arrows from its back like a demonic pin cushion before the whole creature exploded, courtesy of Hawkeye. Pieces of shell and meat splattered, a chunk thwacking Iron Man across the head. His armour’s posture looked offended.
Loki’s gaze flashed to Stark for the barest second. “Jacques Torres,” he told Thor dryly, popped the sweet-heart treat back into his mouth, and loosed a searing magic bolt at the other God. Thor blocked it but Loki vanished in the chaos the ricochet unleashed.
“No way!” Chortles shook the Iron Man suit, completely disregarding the battle as a beast swept Stark aside and Thor threw Mjölnir to save his sidetracked brother-in-arms.
Not that Stark found the God of Mischief and his lolly and his red mouth in any way diverting-it was just he was still hungover and had a couple of major injuries from when Loki decided that Iron Man throwing him into a sweet shop as a Valentine’s Day joke was an insult to his person.
..
It was not too terrible an incident, only somewhat humiliating as all manner of designer confectionary delights had dislodged from their boxes and bounced off his golden horned head, but it was the principle of the matter. On the way out, striding angrily with his sceptre glowing in hand, he had first noticed the different shaped coloured sugars on sticks. He could discern their useful application, and he did miss the honeyed indulgences he had become so accustomed to in Asgard rather fiercely.
Besides, it miffed Tony Stark to see how serenely he licked the treat during Avenger firefights. All of them resented it to some degree, to his pleasure-except Thor who seemed to take on even more of that puppy-like cheer. Which Loki was always sure to remedy.
Loki had picked up a cheap supermarket lollipop today, chocolate flavoured. He hadn’t time to find better, with Victor running him down. It would not amuse him for long. As he watched the carnage spread below his feet, he slowly crunched into the too-yielding bonbon and pressed the little shards into his tongue, mouth puckering crossly.
The battle ended when his sweet disappeared. It was ridiculously short.
..
“I believe his lolly-pop is the cause,” Thor gravely told Tony. The fights between Loki and the Avengers had become noticeably more intense and dangerous of late, quicker, sharper but much more often.
“Yeah.” Tony stroked his short goatee pensively. “I think I have something that might fix that.”
..
Captain America shook his head when he saw Loki with his mouth latched defiantly onto a huge madly-coloured candy the size of his face. The super villain was entirely incapacitated from the battle, putting all his ministrations into suckling the treat busily, like he had something to prove. He wasn’t even on his feet, perched nonchalantly on the marble balcony of a heritage building, head propped against one of the columns, legs swinging.
Thor’s happiness was blinding.
“It pleases me that my brother enjoys my present so,” Thor beamed as he destroyed a tentacled robot with a vicious clang of his hammer. “Too oft Loki turns his nose up to my entreaties. This is a sign of improvement!”
Loki’s threat today was reduced to nothing more than easy pickings, Tony taken to making the most whimsical noises as he shot down the robots with his repulsor beams, sounding to all the world like a little boy playing pretend soldiers in the backyard, taking his time to finish all them off.
“Pew, pew, pew! SPACE INVADERS! NEXT WAVE!”
Loki rolled his eyes and ignored them. His lips were still wrapped around the edge as his tongue worked to deliquesce the sweet as best he could, the thin pink of his mouth darkened from the artificially coloured rainbow spirals of the round novelty candy.
Very loud music started blaring from all the adjacent buildings.
“MORTAL KOMBAAAT! FIGHT!”
Excellent.
..
“Humans need a leader. You always have-you understand this. The body follows the head does it not? You have all been reduced to a writhing savage half-dead carcass, thrashing about without direction, only to destroy-”
Loki flipped around abruptly, with the shocking speed of a trap snapping shut-and pinned Iron Man by the neck. There was now an indent in the wall. No one sneaked up on the God of Lies.
“Ever tried a gobstopper?” Iron Man said chattily from his precarious position.
Loki frowned. “Sugar is more practical on a stick.”
“Huh. Worth a try to get you to shut up.” Loki dropped back immediately as Stark shot his palm repulsors, fielding the beams with his staff, sizzling-hot flashes raining to the ground.
“Brother! You do not have a lolly-pop today?” Thor boomed, concernedly and with no a hint of irony.
Loki hissed in seething exasperation as he fought Iron Man.
“I have one here-”
“I am going to kill you Thor,” rawly strained and deceptively quiet enough to be lost in Loki’s golden flare of wild power that had even the Thor taking a step back. Stark didn’t miss the rare opportunity and showered shots down. That regained Loki’s attention, the mage’s focus was still imperfect, the grip on his sceptre too tense.
“It is the flavour of honey, I remember how fond you …”
The swipe that Loki gave Tony Stark was just short of a killing blow, knocking the industrialist through four solid walls. The dark-haired God stalked harshly to Thor.
“You will cease your condescending offerings of-”
A surprised cry when Thor firmly gripped his brother’s wrist and pushed a wrapped lollipop in his black-gloved hands. Even more amazingly, Loki looked genuinely upset. But that cycled straight through to fury when he threw the sweet back at Thor. It harmlessly bounced off Thor’s forehead. Loki was gone before it hit the ground.
Thor looked down at the treat desolately.
..
The disappearance of the muesli was a notorious mystery in the Avengers Tower. Mostly because it did not make Bruce happy. It had long arrived at the point where Tony Stark installed surveillance on the pantry. Even though they lived with some of the slyest people on the Earth, Thor was certain he knew who was behind it. He trusted his teammates when they asserted that they were not the thief, so it had to be Loki.
However, this time Thor was the thief. Thor innocently hid the muesli behind his back and put the rejected honey-pop in its place.
Thor checked back next afternoon. The candy was gone. Then Thor had a thought, and checked under his bed. The packet of muesli was opened at one corner and about a cup of it was missing. Thor nodded. That proved that the thief was Loki.
Just to be sure, he inquired of Loki in their evening battle, “What flavour is that, brother?”
The way that the sorcerer sulked for the rest of the fight, Black Widow solemnly wanted to know what Thor had said.
..
Thor kept the muesli under his bed and remembered to stock the larder with more honey candies. He should have thought of this before. It gave him great peace of mind to see the volume of the rolled oats decrease regularly and the sweets disappearing, and to know that Loki was eating and taking care of himself.
He still did not understand why Loki would choose to consume such a food though. Perhaps he did not eat pancakes because he did not want to expend the effort of making them, now they were not possessed of a kitchen staff? Thor was sure his brother would enjoy the maple syrup the mortals used to douse the pancakes with. As princes of Asgard, they were brought up surrounded by indulgent treats at every fanciful feast, but Loki in his childhood perhaps more so. In need of something to distract and placate the unusually sensitive young prince, many of their guardians took to giving him a small piece of loaf sugar to suck on. Doubtless, it occupied his mouth well, and stopped the crying, though for the longest time none of them had discovered exactly how crafty the little boy was. Young Thor had picked up on the technique, and the currency between the brothers for a short while had been stolen kitchen desserts, Loki easily amassing the larger share, the warm memory of it all still lodged in Thor's subconscious.
Coming out of the bathing chamber one morning, hair a wet blond mop in his eyes, he was greeted unexpectedly when he managed to get his towel under control.
“Loki!”
Loki threw a shirt at Thor’s head before going back to his book, the small bulge of one of Thor’s lollies showing through a cheek.
A grin threatened to break Thor’s face as he pulled the t-shirt on. He was so proud and joyous, and Loki … But Thor knew from experience he should approach this slowly.
“Have you taken breakfast?” Thor tried to keep too much affection from his voice, but failed miserably.
“Do you not have someplace to be,” Loki disinterestedly answered from the breakfast bar. At that moment, the small card imbued with science in Thor's pocket beeped insistently. The Thunderer was needed.
Loki turned a page.
“Why are you here, brother?” Thor continued, unwilling to leave just yet.
Thoughtfully Loki pressed the sticky golden lolly to his lips. “… I am renovating.”
There was an urgent rap on Thor’s door. “You are welcome to stay if you wish,” Thor told him as if Loki did not do just as he pleased anyway. The God of Thunder gave his younger brother one last lingering look before he left to assemble with the Avengers.
..
“Puny God.”
“This will not lie, we will do fair battle on this issue, beast,” Thor thundered, ramming a large chunk of concrete away from Widow’s head. “However, now is not-”
“Yeah, Deity of Loud Noises,” Stark waved his dismissal and jerked his head to his upper left as more debris rained down on the Avengers, little pieces pinging off his shining red armour from a block he shot out of the sky. “Isn’t that your irksome little bro up there?”
Thor’s forehead furrowed.
“Something else for us to worry about?” Captain America grimaced. “If Loki is responsible for this …”
“More importantly, is Loki having access to that much sugar good for our health?” Stark added seriously, posing perhaps a more pressing concern than the monstrous sphere hovering in noon air, threatening the lives of the city.
Indeed Loki was sliding yet another coloured candy in and out of his mouth as he watched over the destruction with curiosity from the top of a low-rise apartment block. Thor grunted.
“I would have words with my brother.”
Loki tucked his fluttering scarf back under his long coat as Thor whipped up next to him behind Mjölnir.
“Loki.”
“Mmm.” He licked his lips then stuck the pink lollipop back in his mouth, eyes tracking the devastating path of the floating black sphere.
“Loki, what are you doing?” Thor tried again.
Loki gestured carelessly at a No Loitering sign that Thor was sure was not there a moment ago. At least it looked like he was on his day off, only an observer in this latest plot, not seeming to be maintaining any spells to direct the giant orb.
“This is a wonderful food to have your tongue finally so well occupied,” Thor chuckled casually, attempting to lighten the mood. He eyed Loki’s sucking mouth. The younger God’s lips were reddened obscenely with the candy’s colouring.
Thor missed the baleful glare Loki shot him before the master mage swept a hand through the air, drenching it heavy with magic, startling Thor. Screaming erupted anew beneath them.
“Brother, what have you unleashed?”
“Oh my.” Loki was already peering gleefully over the edge of the building. “It’s positively a bloodbath.”
The black sphere had stopped discharging lasers and now spat out many leaves of green paper, flapping in the wind like ineffectual butterflies. “Loki …” Thor snatched one out of the air and examined the face of an old man on it, thumbing the number 50 in one corner. Loki had taken one himself and released it in the guise of a folded paper bird, which drifted into the absolute bedlam below.
“What madness have you induced in the mortals? Reverse it, now!”
Loki finally pulled out the candy with an impatient pop, wintergreen eyes narrowed in contempt. “I’ve always wanted to do that, don’t spoil my fun.”
Thor raised Mjölnir against Loki, who watched his older brother in amusement. Loki made a show out of twirling the sweet outrageously around in his mouth, then suckling on it childishly, the coyest hint of the strawberry-flavoured lolly slipping in and out of his pouting lips. The pout and the innocent eyes …
Thor growled, his grip on Mjölnir flexing in aggravation. Brute force was not always the answer to everything, and hardly anyone knew what to do with his misguided brother in any event. Loki smugly ignored him and went back to watching his social experiment unfold until one of Clint Barton’s arrows nearly burrowed through his skull, if it were not for his reflexes. Loki looked sidelong at the still-trembling arrow disdainfully, slipped himself into a window reflection and disappeared.
..
“Maple bacon flavour.” Loki placed it to Thor’s lips and Thor opened his mouth to accept. “It was so ludicrous it was necessary to show you.”
Thor tongued the lollipop to the side of his cheek. A very intriguing flavour. Loki returned to the fluffy pancakes Thor had set out for him on the breakfast bar, scraping the whipped cream delicately to the side of the plate before forking up a single blueberry.
Thor cut a triangle from his own serving of pancake, scooping a dollop of the cream and a slice of banana on top. Like his brother had done moments before with the lollipop, he held it out to Loki, who stared, biting his lip involuntarily. Pushing it closer until Loki could not recoil any further without toppling off his stool, Thor watched as he silently ate the piece from Thor’s fork, teeth clicking lightly on the utensil, then whisking away some errant cream from the corner of his mouth with a flicker of his tongue.
..
“Go away,” Loki mumbled gently, burrowing deeper into Thor’s pillows. Thor had just returned from a conference at the SHIELD complex. Loki never came to the Tower after breakfast, and had not come for weeks on end, yet now he was snuggled in Thor’s bed in the middle of the day.
And his dark green armour lay discarded and ruined and bloodied by the bedside. This was not the work of the Avengers.
“Who did this to you, brother?” Thor sonorously demanded. He dragged the blanket away from his brother’s bare curled form to reveal an assortment of red marks like little strawberries, cuts and bruises on his pale skin, already rapidly healing under the light buzz of Loki’s magic.
Loki looked at him, tugging the blanket back to cover his thin chest. “Thor,” he warned, exhaustion thrumming through his tone, before turning away.
Thor scowled unhappily, but darkened the windows to let Loki sleep. He tenderly squeezed Loki’s arm before closing the bedroom door, resolving to grill him later.
Later, Thor does not find Loki, but he does find a red heart-shaped lollipop under his pillow like the first one he saw Loki lick. He keeps it wrapped, keeps it where he found it along with the familiar and missed scent of his brother on the sheets.
Thor fell asleep with a soft smile every night.
..
It was insensibly long, a twisty lollipop reminiscent of hazy cloying carnival evenings, impossible to even think of fitting all the way into his mouth.
So Loki licked it from bottom to top, following the swirl of candy, again and again, his tongue tracing the treat up and down, patiently working to dissolve it, as Iron Man swore like a sailor.
Loki continued to give the lolly slow lascivious licks.
“Okay this has gotten out of hand, he’s just playing us for fools now,” Clint Barton snapped. “Someone get Hulk to dump him in a candy factory and be done with it.”
Captain America looked over to the elder God. “Thor.” Deal with this.
“This is obscene,” Thor said uncomfortably, halting Mjölnir’s spin and landing beside his brother. “You are a prince, Loki.”
Loki inclined his head and Thor was conflicted. He adored seeing this wickedly mischievous look on Loki’s face-instead of that twisted snarling anger that had too smoothly become the norm, clawing Thor’s heart ragged every time he saw it.
Thor sat down at Loki’s side. “Loki, please turn the birds back,” he said mildly. A jellyfish floated along in midair, clear flesh undulating. The sun was going down, a full bold orange glazing the skies, tall buildings silhouetted like black cardboard cut-outs against the brilliance.
When Loki still did not respond, Thor gave up with being careful and thinking with his head. It was all too protracted and so tiresome, he missed Loki too much, it felt like a physical bleeding maw in his chest-and pulled his brother into a tight strong embrace that shifted some of Loki’s bones in unfavourable directions.
Loki’s whine was muffled, but Thor let him up only to place a kiss on his mouth. Loki’s coated lips were so sticky and fruity and sugared it could not have been much different from sucking on the lolly. Thor brushed his tongue across Loki’s closed mouth and it opened under the pressure like a candied flower blooming.
The air trembled with a huge wave of displacement and Thor let go, lifting his hammer to face the threat.
The jellyfish had turned back into birds, all tweeting confusedly and starting to return to their nests for the night.
Before he looked back he already knew. Loki’s long lollipop was tossed dirtied on the roof of the building, and as usual, Loki himself was nowhere to be seen.
..
That night when Thor returned to his floor in the Avengers Tower, he saw Loki’s clothes again. This time they were shucked off heedlessly on the lounge. It looked to be the entirety of Loki’s heavy ornamented armour, and his underclothes. Thor imagined Loki padding around like a babe, completely nude.
Thor headed to his lit bedroom.
“You are supposed to eat the lollipop when I give it to you,” Loki began instructively, sitting up cuddled in the pile of pillows in Thor’s bed, blanket tangled around his long legs. He had found the heart-shaped lolly he had left Thor. “I thought I had shown you enough times.”
Loki pulled the coloured sucker out of his mouth before touching it to his thigh, just above his knee. “Here, lick it off,” Loki pointed to the sticky spot. Thor was already nibbling at the sweet mark, pulling away his own armour, and soon enough Loki had trailed the red candy up his pale sinewy belly, Thor’s hot mouth following.
“You learn fast,” Loki whispered wryly, the sugar fragrant on his breath. Green eyes glinting he pressed a print onto Thor’s muscled shoulder, moist, syrupy, sweet. Loki leaned in to suckle at it, cleaning it off with flashes of his fabled tongue teasing at the tanned skin, then licked a trail up the strong column of Thor’s neck, their hot limbs entwined, locked together, pushing.
Thor took Loki’s sweetened mouth in his own again, running his hands along the tight curve of Loki's rump. Loki squirmed when a hand found its way between his thighs, then Thor unexpectedly felt the cool sticky lolly touching just below his throbbing navel. The lollipop was hanging undirected, loose and forgotten by Loki’s fingers.
He will be sure to make Loki clean that mark off too.
..
Thank you copycatgirl, for being my missing brain...
Prompts: 31_days | norsekink
Fandom: Thor (2011), The Avengers (2012)
Character/Pairing: Loki/Thor, Iron Man, Captain America, Hawkeye, Black Widow, Hulk
Word Count: 3515
Summary: Loki has recently discovered the existence of lollipops and he is obsessed with them to the extent of starting to obscenely lick and suck on them during battles with the Avengers. Thor cannot find it in himself to object when Loki is trailing the red candy up his pale sinewy belly.
QUOTE: All manner of designer confectionary delights had dislodged from their boxes and bounced off his golden horned head. On the way out, striding angrily with his sceptre glowing in hand, he had first noticed the differently shaped coloured sugars on sticks. He did miss the honeyed indulgences he had become so accustomed to in Asgard rather fiercely.
..
There was a new addition to Loki’s arsenal. It was conveniently portable, easy to keep out of his way when his hands were full, and varied enough to hold his interest. Different sizes, shapes, colours, almost anything really.
And also, they were sweet.
“Is he eating a lollipop, because if I cared at all about respect, I would find that disrespectful,” Iron Man noted conversationally as he ducked an enthusiastic girder.
Loki raised an eyebrow, taking the red heart-shaped candy out of his mouth for a moment. A vividly red tongue poked out to wet his lips. “You do not enjoy them?”
“Oh I like them fine, I’m just thinking I might-rather die at the hands of someone who looked a-little grimmer,” Stark replied distractedly as a swipe from one of the monsters threatened to take a chunk out of his leg. “But each to his own and what not.”
Thor felled his beast, dropping it with a thick thud on the concrete. Loki hefted his sceptre warily.
“I have not seen this food before,” Thor rumbled, brow crinkling with curiosity. “Where did you acquire it, brother?”
“Hey, hey, am I the only one that gets we’re kinda fighting for our damn mortal lives here?” Iron Man yelled over his helmet’s speakers, hovering above their heads. One of the monsters seemed to be sprouting arrows from its back like a demonic pin cushion before the whole creature exploded, courtesy of Hawkeye. Pieces of shell and meat splattered, a chunk thwacking Iron Man across the head. His armour’s posture looked offended.
Loki’s gaze flashed to Stark for the barest second. “Jacques Torres,” he told Thor dryly, popped the sweet-heart treat back into his mouth, and loosed a searing magic bolt at the other God. Thor blocked it but Loki vanished in the chaos the ricochet unleashed.
“No way!” Chortles shook the Iron Man suit, completely disregarding the battle as a beast swept Stark aside and Thor threw Mjölnir to save his sidetracked brother-in-arms.
Not that Stark found the God of Mischief and his lolly and his red mouth in any way diverting-it was just he was still hungover and had a couple of major injuries from when Loki decided that Iron Man throwing him into a sweet shop as a Valentine’s Day joke was an insult to his person.
..
It was not too terrible an incident, only somewhat humiliating as all manner of designer confectionary delights had dislodged from their boxes and bounced off his golden horned head, but it was the principle of the matter. On the way out, striding angrily with his sceptre glowing in hand, he had first noticed the different shaped coloured sugars on sticks. He could discern their useful application, and he did miss the honeyed indulgences he had become so accustomed to in Asgard rather fiercely.
Besides, it miffed Tony Stark to see how serenely he licked the treat during Avenger firefights. All of them resented it to some degree, to his pleasure-except Thor who seemed to take on even more of that puppy-like cheer. Which Loki was always sure to remedy.
Loki had picked up a cheap supermarket lollipop today, chocolate flavoured. He hadn’t time to find better, with Victor running him down. It would not amuse him for long. As he watched the carnage spread below his feet, he slowly crunched into the too-yielding bonbon and pressed the little shards into his tongue, mouth puckering crossly.
The battle ended when his sweet disappeared. It was ridiculously short.
..
“I believe his lolly-pop is the cause,” Thor gravely told Tony. The fights between Loki and the Avengers had become noticeably more intense and dangerous of late, quicker, sharper but much more often.
“Yeah.” Tony stroked his short goatee pensively. “I think I have something that might fix that.”
..
Captain America shook his head when he saw Loki with his mouth latched defiantly onto a huge madly-coloured candy the size of his face. The super villain was entirely incapacitated from the battle, putting all his ministrations into suckling the treat busily, like he had something to prove. He wasn’t even on his feet, perched nonchalantly on the marble balcony of a heritage building, head propped against one of the columns, legs swinging.
Thor’s happiness was blinding.
“It pleases me that my brother enjoys my present so,” Thor beamed as he destroyed a tentacled robot with a vicious clang of his hammer. “Too oft Loki turns his nose up to my entreaties. This is a sign of improvement!”
Loki’s threat today was reduced to nothing more than easy pickings, Tony taken to making the most whimsical noises as he shot down the robots with his repulsor beams, sounding to all the world like a little boy playing pretend soldiers in the backyard, taking his time to finish all them off.
“Pew, pew, pew! SPACE INVADERS! NEXT WAVE!”
Loki rolled his eyes and ignored them. His lips were still wrapped around the edge as his tongue worked to deliquesce the sweet as best he could, the thin pink of his mouth darkened from the artificially coloured rainbow spirals of the round novelty candy.
Very loud music started blaring from all the adjacent buildings.
“MORTAL KOMBAAAT! FIGHT!”
Excellent.
..
“Humans need a leader. You always have-you understand this. The body follows the head does it not? You have all been reduced to a writhing savage half-dead carcass, thrashing about without direction, only to destroy-”
Loki flipped around abruptly, with the shocking speed of a trap snapping shut-and pinned Iron Man by the neck. There was now an indent in the wall. No one sneaked up on the God of Lies.
“Ever tried a gobstopper?” Iron Man said chattily from his precarious position.
Loki frowned. “Sugar is more practical on a stick.”
“Huh. Worth a try to get you to shut up.” Loki dropped back immediately as Stark shot his palm repulsors, fielding the beams with his staff, sizzling-hot flashes raining to the ground.
“Brother! You do not have a lolly-pop today?” Thor boomed, concernedly and with no a hint of irony.
Loki hissed in seething exasperation as he fought Iron Man.
“I have one here-”
“I am going to kill you Thor,” rawly strained and deceptively quiet enough to be lost in Loki’s golden flare of wild power that had even the Thor taking a step back. Stark didn’t miss the rare opportunity and showered shots down. That regained Loki’s attention, the mage’s focus was still imperfect, the grip on his sceptre too tense.
“It is the flavour of honey, I remember how fond you …”
The swipe that Loki gave Tony Stark was just short of a killing blow, knocking the industrialist through four solid walls. The dark-haired God stalked harshly to Thor.
“You will cease your condescending offerings of-”
A surprised cry when Thor firmly gripped his brother’s wrist and pushed a wrapped lollipop in his black-gloved hands. Even more amazingly, Loki looked genuinely upset. But that cycled straight through to fury when he threw the sweet back at Thor. It harmlessly bounced off Thor’s forehead. Loki was gone before it hit the ground.
Thor looked down at the treat desolately.
..
The disappearance of the muesli was a notorious mystery in the Avengers Tower. Mostly because it did not make Bruce happy. It had long arrived at the point where Tony Stark installed surveillance on the pantry. Even though they lived with some of the slyest people on the Earth, Thor was certain he knew who was behind it. He trusted his teammates when they asserted that they were not the thief, so it had to be Loki.
However, this time Thor was the thief. Thor innocently hid the muesli behind his back and put the rejected honey-pop in its place.
Thor checked back next afternoon. The candy was gone. Then Thor had a thought, and checked under his bed. The packet of muesli was opened at one corner and about a cup of it was missing. Thor nodded. That proved that the thief was Loki.
Just to be sure, he inquired of Loki in their evening battle, “What flavour is that, brother?”
The way that the sorcerer sulked for the rest of the fight, Black Widow solemnly wanted to know what Thor had said.
..
Thor kept the muesli under his bed and remembered to stock the larder with more honey candies. He should have thought of this before. It gave him great peace of mind to see the volume of the rolled oats decrease regularly and the sweets disappearing, and to know that Loki was eating and taking care of himself.
He still did not understand why Loki would choose to consume such a food though. Perhaps he did not eat pancakes because he did not want to expend the effort of making them, now they were not possessed of a kitchen staff? Thor was sure his brother would enjoy the maple syrup the mortals used to douse the pancakes with. As princes of Asgard, they were brought up surrounded by indulgent treats at every fanciful feast, but Loki in his childhood perhaps more so. In need of something to distract and placate the unusually sensitive young prince, many of their guardians took to giving him a small piece of loaf sugar to suck on. Doubtless, it occupied his mouth well, and stopped the crying, though for the longest time none of them had discovered exactly how crafty the little boy was. Young Thor had picked up on the technique, and the currency between the brothers for a short while had been stolen kitchen desserts, Loki easily amassing the larger share, the warm memory of it all still lodged in Thor's subconscious.
Coming out of the bathing chamber one morning, hair a wet blond mop in his eyes, he was greeted unexpectedly when he managed to get his towel under control.
“Loki!”
Loki threw a shirt at Thor’s head before going back to his book, the small bulge of one of Thor’s lollies showing through a cheek.
A grin threatened to break Thor’s face as he pulled the t-shirt on. He was so proud and joyous, and Loki … But Thor knew from experience he should approach this slowly.
“Have you taken breakfast?” Thor tried to keep too much affection from his voice, but failed miserably.
“Do you not have someplace to be,” Loki disinterestedly answered from the breakfast bar. At that moment, the small card imbued with science in Thor's pocket beeped insistently. The Thunderer was needed.
Loki turned a page.
“Why are you here, brother?” Thor continued, unwilling to leave just yet.
Thoughtfully Loki pressed the sticky golden lolly to his lips. “… I am renovating.”
There was an urgent rap on Thor’s door. “You are welcome to stay if you wish,” Thor told him as if Loki did not do just as he pleased anyway. The God of Thunder gave his younger brother one last lingering look before he left to assemble with the Avengers.
..
“Puny God.”
“This will not lie, we will do fair battle on this issue, beast,” Thor thundered, ramming a large chunk of concrete away from Widow’s head. “However, now is not-”
“Yeah, Deity of Loud Noises,” Stark waved his dismissal and jerked his head to his upper left as more debris rained down on the Avengers, little pieces pinging off his shining red armour from a block he shot out of the sky. “Isn’t that your irksome little bro up there?”
Thor’s forehead furrowed.
“Something else for us to worry about?” Captain America grimaced. “If Loki is responsible for this …”
“More importantly, is Loki having access to that much sugar good for our health?” Stark added seriously, posing perhaps a more pressing concern than the monstrous sphere hovering in noon air, threatening the lives of the city.
Indeed Loki was sliding yet another coloured candy in and out of his mouth as he watched over the destruction with curiosity from the top of a low-rise apartment block. Thor grunted.
“I would have words with my brother.”
Loki tucked his fluttering scarf back under his long coat as Thor whipped up next to him behind Mjölnir.
“Loki.”
“Mmm.” He licked his lips then stuck the pink lollipop back in his mouth, eyes tracking the devastating path of the floating black sphere.
“Loki, what are you doing?” Thor tried again.
Loki gestured carelessly at a No Loitering sign that Thor was sure was not there a moment ago. At least it looked like he was on his day off, only an observer in this latest plot, not seeming to be maintaining any spells to direct the giant orb.
“This is a wonderful food to have your tongue finally so well occupied,” Thor chuckled casually, attempting to lighten the mood. He eyed Loki’s sucking mouth. The younger God’s lips were reddened obscenely with the candy’s colouring.
Thor missed the baleful glare Loki shot him before the master mage swept a hand through the air, drenching it heavy with magic, startling Thor. Screaming erupted anew beneath them.
“Brother, what have you unleashed?”
“Oh my.” Loki was already peering gleefully over the edge of the building. “It’s positively a bloodbath.”
The black sphere had stopped discharging lasers and now spat out many leaves of green paper, flapping in the wind like ineffectual butterflies. “Loki …” Thor snatched one out of the air and examined the face of an old man on it, thumbing the number 50 in one corner. Loki had taken one himself and released it in the guise of a folded paper bird, which drifted into the absolute bedlam below.
“What madness have you induced in the mortals? Reverse it, now!”
Loki finally pulled out the candy with an impatient pop, wintergreen eyes narrowed in contempt. “I’ve always wanted to do that, don’t spoil my fun.”
Thor raised Mjölnir against Loki, who watched his older brother in amusement. Loki made a show out of twirling the sweet outrageously around in his mouth, then suckling on it childishly, the coyest hint of the strawberry-flavoured lolly slipping in and out of his pouting lips. The pout and the innocent eyes …
Thor growled, his grip on Mjölnir flexing in aggravation. Brute force was not always the answer to everything, and hardly anyone knew what to do with his misguided brother in any event. Loki smugly ignored him and went back to watching his social experiment unfold until one of Clint Barton’s arrows nearly burrowed through his skull, if it were not for his reflexes. Loki looked sidelong at the still-trembling arrow disdainfully, slipped himself into a window reflection and disappeared.
..
“Maple bacon flavour.” Loki placed it to Thor’s lips and Thor opened his mouth to accept. “It was so ludicrous it was necessary to show you.”
Thor tongued the lollipop to the side of his cheek. A very intriguing flavour. Loki returned to the fluffy pancakes Thor had set out for him on the breakfast bar, scraping the whipped cream delicately to the side of the plate before forking up a single blueberry.
Thor cut a triangle from his own serving of pancake, scooping a dollop of the cream and a slice of banana on top. Like his brother had done moments before with the lollipop, he held it out to Loki, who stared, biting his lip involuntarily. Pushing it closer until Loki could not recoil any further without toppling off his stool, Thor watched as he silently ate the piece from Thor’s fork, teeth clicking lightly on the utensil, then whisking away some errant cream from the corner of his mouth with a flicker of his tongue.
..
“Go away,” Loki mumbled gently, burrowing deeper into Thor’s pillows. Thor had just returned from a conference at the SHIELD complex. Loki never came to the Tower after breakfast, and had not come for weeks on end, yet now he was snuggled in Thor’s bed in the middle of the day.
And his dark green armour lay discarded and ruined and bloodied by the bedside. This was not the work of the Avengers.
“Who did this to you, brother?” Thor sonorously demanded. He dragged the blanket away from his brother’s bare curled form to reveal an assortment of red marks like little strawberries, cuts and bruises on his pale skin, already rapidly healing under the light buzz of Loki’s magic.
Loki looked at him, tugging the blanket back to cover his thin chest. “Thor,” he warned, exhaustion thrumming through his tone, before turning away.
Thor scowled unhappily, but darkened the windows to let Loki sleep. He tenderly squeezed Loki’s arm before closing the bedroom door, resolving to grill him later.
Later, Thor does not find Loki, but he does find a red heart-shaped lollipop under his pillow like the first one he saw Loki lick. He keeps it wrapped, keeps it where he found it along with the familiar and missed scent of his brother on the sheets.
Thor fell asleep with a soft smile every night.
..
It was insensibly long, a twisty lollipop reminiscent of hazy cloying carnival evenings, impossible to even think of fitting all the way into his mouth.
So Loki licked it from bottom to top, following the swirl of candy, again and again, his tongue tracing the treat up and down, patiently working to dissolve it, as Iron Man swore like a sailor.
Loki continued to give the lolly slow lascivious licks.
“Okay this has gotten out of hand, he’s just playing us for fools now,” Clint Barton snapped. “Someone get Hulk to dump him in a candy factory and be done with it.”
Captain America looked over to the elder God. “Thor.” Deal with this.
“This is obscene,” Thor said uncomfortably, halting Mjölnir’s spin and landing beside his brother. “You are a prince, Loki.”
Loki inclined his head and Thor was conflicted. He adored seeing this wickedly mischievous look on Loki’s face-instead of that twisted snarling anger that had too smoothly become the norm, clawing Thor’s heart ragged every time he saw it.
Thor sat down at Loki’s side. “Loki, please turn the birds back,” he said mildly. A jellyfish floated along in midair, clear flesh undulating. The sun was going down, a full bold orange glazing the skies, tall buildings silhouetted like black cardboard cut-outs against the brilliance.
When Loki still did not respond, Thor gave up with being careful and thinking with his head. It was all too protracted and so tiresome, he missed Loki too much, it felt like a physical bleeding maw in his chest-and pulled his brother into a tight strong embrace that shifted some of Loki’s bones in unfavourable directions.
Loki’s whine was muffled, but Thor let him up only to place a kiss on his mouth. Loki’s coated lips were so sticky and fruity and sugared it could not have been much different from sucking on the lolly. Thor brushed his tongue across Loki’s closed mouth and it opened under the pressure like a candied flower blooming.
The air trembled with a huge wave of displacement and Thor let go, lifting his hammer to face the threat.
The jellyfish had turned back into birds, all tweeting confusedly and starting to return to their nests for the night.
Before he looked back he already knew. Loki’s long lollipop was tossed dirtied on the roof of the building, and as usual, Loki himself was nowhere to be seen.
..
That night when Thor returned to his floor in the Avengers Tower, he saw Loki’s clothes again. This time they were shucked off heedlessly on the lounge. It looked to be the entirety of Loki’s heavy ornamented armour, and his underclothes. Thor imagined Loki padding around like a babe, completely nude.
Thor headed to his lit bedroom.
“You are supposed to eat the lollipop when I give it to you,” Loki began instructively, sitting up cuddled in the pile of pillows in Thor’s bed, blanket tangled around his long legs. He had found the heart-shaped lolly he had left Thor. “I thought I had shown you enough times.”
Loki pulled the coloured sucker out of his mouth before touching it to his thigh, just above his knee. “Here, lick it off,” Loki pointed to the sticky spot. Thor was already nibbling at the sweet mark, pulling away his own armour, and soon enough Loki had trailed the red candy up his pale sinewy belly, Thor’s hot mouth following.
“You learn fast,” Loki whispered wryly, the sugar fragrant on his breath. Green eyes glinting he pressed a print onto Thor’s muscled shoulder, moist, syrupy, sweet. Loki leaned in to suckle at it, cleaning it off with flashes of his fabled tongue teasing at the tanned skin, then licked a trail up the strong column of Thor’s neck, their hot limbs entwined, locked together, pushing.
Thor took Loki’s sweetened mouth in his own again, running his hands along the tight curve of Loki's rump. Loki squirmed when a hand found its way between his thighs, then Thor unexpectedly felt the cool sticky lolly touching just below his throbbing navel. The lollipop was hanging undirected, loose and forgotten by Loki’s fingers.
He will be sure to make Loki clean that mark off too.
..
Thank you copycatgirl, for being my missing brain...