The stranger stands before the throne, proud and calm, impervious to the whispers and the looks traded across the hall by the arrogant Asgardian courtiers, used to lonely petitioners like him to behave more humbly before the king of all the realms.
“We have heard your plea,” announces the Allfather, gripping his spear of power tight.
“It was no plea,” counters the stranger, before Odin King can say another word. “I have not come here to beg.”
More looks, the muffled whispers rise to a bubbling roar. To the Allfather’s right, Prince Thor’s stance is combative and restless, pricked by the stranger’s tone, his words, his very presence and demeanor in the hall of his ancestors. The Lady Sif his wife beside him touches his shoulder once. Just as impetuous and full of fire as the prince himself, still she’s taken on the role of the cold-headed between the two of them, because somebody had to.
Now Odin brings Gungnir down with a loud clang that silences the hall entire.
“We shall hear you again, in a private hearing, as befits a matter of our family,” says the king.
“Your family?” repeats the stranger, with a sly smirk.
Prince Thor’s furious huff comes like that of a raging bull. Odin glares with his one eye, a look that to many feel like being smitten by a thunderbolt. The stranger sustains it without one moment of vacillation.
“The King is retiring,” announces the Allfather.
He is promptly assisted by his chamberlains and secretaries.
The most courageous among them all approaches the stranger.
“Will you be so kind as to follow me, my lord,” he mutters, appropriately subdued.
The stranger casts one last look towards the dais, where prince Loki stands close to his mother still. The stranger bows his head and touches his chest, and the ripples of the one single gesture of deference the stranger has displayed since he stepped into the great hall causes a wave of agitation throughout the court. Prince Loki, unknown to this day to any displays of emotion in public, visibly gulps. He quietly thanks the Norns that the shiver running down his spine is not something that will show.
He watches the stranger exit through a side door with an agitation he can’t quite name.
Mother follows him to his chambers. Loki is silent, his face troubled. He allows her presence because he allows her everything.
“Did father know?” he asks in time. “When he took me, did he know?”
It was some time ago that the prince and the court discovered the young prince’s true heritage. Explained as a gesture of mercy from a compassionate king to an innocent child, it is discouraged at court to make gossip about it, but Loki has felt upon him fearful, unkind, suspicious looks from the Aesir who never quite took to him, even when they believed him blood of the King’s blood. They used to think him a bastard that kind Frigga had taken to her bosom as her own, but everything changed the day the King was attacked in the vaults, and the young prince held the first weapon within reach to protect himself and his father, and the casket of Ancient Winters responded to him like it would only for royal blood of Jotunheim, and his skin turned blue and the unmistakeable marks of the King rose on his body and face, and his secret was revealed to all.
Odin and Thor called him a hero and the protector of Asgard that day, and for years they had endeavored to make him loved and popular among the Aesir, but he had always felt alien and not quite trustworthy, and now they knew why. Loki was embittered, and Thor’s long-overdue marriage to the Lady Sif had only made him worse.
“Did he, mother?” insisted Loki, when no answer came from his mother.
“I don’t know,” she confessed at last. “Your father has kept many secrets from me in his time. It never turns out well for him, but he always thinks he knows best. All I can tell you is that he never told me.”
“I’ve never understood… the use,” mutters Loki.
“Why take me? He was knee-deep in Jotun blood, why take me?”
“You were an innocent babe,” says Frigga. “You think your father is without a heart?”
“He has never told me where he found me.”
“He thinks I’m a fool? Jotunheim has many!” argued Loki, furious.
Frigga keeps her silence. Nothing she says will appease his son.
“We will not just hand you over to this… creature, whatever he claims to be,” she vows instead. “We will do whatever we must to protect you.”
Loki looks out his window, and he isn’t grateful, or trusting.
“I will see your father now,” she says.
He is not my father, thinks Loki to himself.
Alone now, he ambles to his balcony. His rooms open to the private courtyard, where no courtiers or even servants are usually allowed.
When they learned of Loki’s origins, Thor and him both believed Odin’s long plan was… They had been so happy. Loki had overcome his horror quickly, when he realized that by his new, strange body, he was able to bear children. Children that would be half Aes and half Jotun, bringers of peace and harmony among the two warring realms. They could see themselves married already.
And perhaps that had been Odin’s plan after all, except that the court never took to Loki when they thought him Odin’s own, and they hated him and mistrusted him even more once the truth was known.
They were forbidden from continuing their secret love, which did precisely nothing, but then Odin forced Thor to marry, and two choices presented themselves. They could flee and be nobodies and live their passion, or they could obey. Thor fought tooth and nail, but Loki realized Thor the Wanderer would never be happy as a peaceful farmer or shepherd in some remote corner of the nine. In time, the Wanderer would have gathered an army behind him and become a warlord or mercenary of some sort. And a warlord in the nine realms would have to face Asgard sooner or later. Be destroyed or fight his own people. That wasn’t a choice.
Loki knew his brother well enough. He knew that, once he made his vows, he would take them to heart and honor them. He could have tempted Thor to break them, but that would have only made him more miserable. So Loki had retreated to his studies and his dark corners more and more, that Thor would not be reminded of what they could not have. And Loki knew that even that wasn’t enough. He knew that one day he would have to leave Asgard, and so did their father and mother.
Frigga could vow whatever her heart felt, but Loki suspected that, even now, Odin was brokering a deal with the stranger to get rid of the liability and the disturbance the little Jotun runt had ended up becoming, a pebble in his golden shoes.
He felt the presence behind him and turned, his stance ready for fighting.
“Show yourself,” he muttered harshly. “Make yourself known.”
The stranger stepped from the shadows, his face hardened and marked by many battles, his eyes deeper than a hundred fathoms. Loki’s heart beat faster. This was no ordinary man, but what was he?
“Have the conversations ended?”
“No, they will carry on for quite some time. Your father drives a hard bargain, but he’ll find I have not come to haggle.”
“Then why aren’t you there?”
“You speak in riddles!” said Loki, unnerved, he who never lost his self-possession, reduced to whining like a child. “Who are you?”
“O, but introductions are for strangers,” said the stranger, his voice gravelly. “You know me well.”
“I have been there all your life. Since you were born. I held your tiny hand, and we were bonded. I was never far, that you were safe. And then I lost you.”
Loki frowned, seeking meaning in the riddles.
“They took you away from me, but our bond held. I sought you out, but while I sought, I was never far. You know. You remember.”
“I have no idea what you speak of.”
“In the night, in your dreams,” whispered the stranger. An older brother while you grew up, and then, when you came of age…”
“If we were… bonded, why did Laufey leave me to die? Why did he abandon me?”
“My people and your people brokered our marriage before you even emerged from your father’s womb. When they saw you, they said you were small and weak, that Laufey had wanted to spurn them. The deal fell through, and Jotunheim never earned my people’s help against the Aesir, or its ocean, and the prosperity that comes from it. Laufey cursed you for it. You were no use to him, and he blamed you for their misfortune.”
“If the deal fell through, why are you here?”
“Because I held your hand, and we were bonded. I care not for the deals of mortals, even long-lived as the Aesir and the Jotnar, for I am not one. We were bonded, and we belong together.”
“I belong to myself,” spat Loki.
The stranger smirked, pleased and delighted. He bowed deeply, and Loki again experienced a strange shiver, as if a wave had broken its fall to avoid falling on his head.
“I will not go anywhere with a… creature who won’t even tell me his name,” said Loki.
“Long have I loved you and yearned for you in my loneliness and waited until you were found. I can wait a little more,” said the stranger, and he withdrew into the shadows once more, and was gone.
The stranger dined at the high table that evening, and even though more than a dozen people were between Loki and him, still Loki shifted in his seat as if he was breathing down his neck. The stranger was jolly enough, and told the court many stories. He spoke of a realm beneath the waves, and the many-times-reborn god of waves and storms who protected its people and all its living beings, and he spoke of wonders unimaginable. Loki, who was a fine storyteller himself, admired the skill and elegance of his words, which had enthralled all the presents.
His eyes met the stranger’s once or twice, and they also met his brother’s. He could not hold either one’s stares. He was much troubled.
Thor came to him before he reached his room.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Loki murmured, looking either side. Two chamber-servants scurried away when they spotted them together.
“I will not let him take you anywhere,” whispered Thor, his big hands on Loki’s arms, too tight. “I will protect you.”
His tremendous blue eyes were closer than they had been in a long time, and his mouth. Loki’s chest was heaving. Oh, it never abated, this fire.
“You should not be here,” he muttered, limp in his brother’s arms, trying to avoid meeting his eyes. If Thor wished to claim him now, Loki would not be able to fight himself.
His brother’s grip softened, not quite gave up. He felt Thor’s lips on his forehead, tender, but not without an urgent yearning that several years of separation had yet to weaken.
“I’m not yours to protect anymore,” whispered Loki.
“Don’t say that, brother.”
“I’m not your brother. I never was.”
Loki squirmed until Thor’s hands released him. He shut himself up in his room.
He felt the presence at once.
“Is there no place I am safe from you,” he spat.
“I am no threat,” said the stranger, but he was nothing but a voice. A voice in Loki’s head.
“No threat? You have come to claim me, to take what is yours, and you will not leave without it. Weren’t those your words to my… to the King?”
“I wasn’t threatening. It is just the way it will be.”
“I have seen it.”
“Oh, you can see the future too?”
“And do I come willingly?”
“Because you begin to remember.”
“Remember what.”
“You are exhausting,” huffs Loki, and turns his back to the presence, absurdly.
And then he feels it that blow of hot air on the back of his neck, beneath his hair.
“I have been known indeed to exhaust you,” whispers that disembodied voice. “We have known many lives and many nights together.”
“In your dreams,” whispers the stranger, and this time the hot air caresses Loki’s ear, and he shivers. “You called to me, and you gave yourself to me, and I gave you all your body begged for.”
Loki’s panting slightly, his fists clenched tight.
“I remember none of that,” he spits, still holding on to his pride.
“I can remind you,” whispers the voice, and Loki thinks he has felt a brush of lips over his. “Lie down, and I will.”
“I will not,” he mutters, shutting his eyes tight, trembling. “Be gone, creature.”
There is a breath of silence.
“I won’t be far,” says the voice.
And then there is a change in the air, and Loki is alone in the room.
He shivers as he sits on his bed, arms wrapped around his body, shaken.
He wishes he could convince himself that he is afraid, but he has felt fear before, and this isn’t it.
The night goes deeply quiet and Loki wakens, his senses alerted to the unnatural absence, as if he was underwater.
His body is awake too, tingling, wanting. He often wakes up yearning for Thor, remembering the nights they stole. He has fantasized many times about finding him in the room with him, just as desperate, just as hungry. But Thor made his vows, and if he wakes up in the night at all yearning for Loki, he will quench that thirst with his wife, or drown it out in mead.
Tonight Loki has woken up in the night with fire in his veins, and at once he knows he is not alone. He feels him close, the stranger. He knows the stranger knows he is awake, unless he is still dreaming.
“Your body calls me,” says the disembodied voice.
Loki runs his hands between his thighs. His body is calling, that is true.
“So I’ve known you already, you say?” he asks to the dark.
“You have. In your dreams.”
And Loki doesn’t know how can you hear a smirk, but he does.
He’s on fire. He cups himself, presses hard.
“And I am yours, you say?” asks Loki.
“You are. Many times you have given yourself to me, your love, your promise.”
“I don’t even know your name.”
“You do. If you speak it now, I will come to you.”
Loki’s panting hard, writhing with lust. He must be dreaming, because the preternatural absence of noise still fills his ears, and desire emanates from his skin without fear or reservation, and when he looks at his own hand, it’s a deep midnight blue.
“Your name,” whispers Loki, one hand between his thighs, the other stroking down his neck and chest. “Aegir,” he sighs, and now he knows he must be dreaming.
He opens his eyes to see an impossible stream that moves like ink in the water approach from the shadows and slip under the cover of his bed. At once, he feels it, heat that isn’t anything that he has known before, and a body taking weight and density under the sheets with him, and he opens his eyes again (where they closed?) and the stranger’s face is there, hovering close to his.
“You called,” whispers the stranger. “As you’ve called so many times. Remember?”
A glimpse or a thought is scratching at the sides of Loki’s conscience. This is familiar. This is not new. But when? How?
“In your loneliness, I looked over your shoulder. In cold, I warmed you between my arms. In desire, I pleasured you. In your sleep, I watched over you. Remember.”
Loki sees it now, like a shadow, like the wind blowing that fills your hand. He sees it in his dreams, he thought… He had thought it was Thor.
“Call me once again, and I will claim you at last, and we will be one,” says the stranger, who is a stranger no more, but the one whom Loki believed he had invented to feel less lonely, the imaginary friend first, the imaginary lover after. He had thought his mind had fashioned him to resemble Thor…
“I am yours.” His eyes are closed. “I always was.”
When the kiss falls on his lips, Loki knows he is not dreaming. The weight of another body on top of his is not a fiction either.
And he never belonged in this place, and he was always meant to leave it, because he already has a place, in a realm beneath the waves, in the arms of a god.
His husband’s kiss takes his lips assuredly, his hands seek under the sheets. Loki’s Aes disguise has melted from him. His Jotun skin has a strange glow in the night. And between his thighs, his body is wetting. He wraps his legs around his husband.
“I will breed you, and you will birth wonders,” whispers his husband.
“Yes,” sighs Loki. And he can see them in his future, the great world snake, the giant wolf, the half-faced queen of the underworld. So powerful, bringer of disasters and rebirths, legends and tales.
The Ocean God thrusts inside him and it’s like the push of the tide.
“Can you feel me now, my one, sváss mín,” whispers the stranger who never was a stranger after all.
Loki presses his mouth against his husband’s and lifts his hips and he demands.
“What you promised,” he pants, “all that pleasure. Give it now.”
The Ocean God grins, and Loki knows why he mistook him in his visions for his brother, and he knows too that, if Thor was never meant to be his, it’s because Loki was never free in the first place.
The Ocean God fucks him slow and deep, the pull and push of the tides abating over his body, shaking him.
“Our children will make the realms shake and crumble and rise again,” says his husband, taking Loki hard now.
Loki smiles, and fucks up to meet him, and he moans, and his husband is on top of him and inside him and he’s also everywhere, all around him, pressing on him, lifting him, enfolding him. With every thrust, Loki is the one who goes deeper. His husband’s hips slamming against him fast and hard now, and like the cliff eternal facing the waves, he knows he can go harder, that he can go on forever, and that he can take it, he will welcome it, for that is his fate and his place in the order and chaos of all the things that exist.
They fuck until sun dawn, Loki’s ecstasy rising and peaking and rising again soon after. When the Ocean God finally spills inside him, Loki wonders which god or monster will he be carrying first.
The stranger stands before the throne, and Odin king proclaims the whole of Asgard will fight him if the stranger insists on taking a prince of Asgard against his will.
“That is fair,” he says. And he offers his hand to the prince. “Will you come with me of your own free will, sváss mín?”
Loki looks at his brother for the last time, and wishes one day there will be time to explain. Loki had accepted that dark corner he had been pushed to as his rightful place for the rest of his days. He would not have fought it. He would have had to leave in time, when his pain or his brother’s would have been too much. He had accepted this fate, not knowing it wasn’t what the Norns had dictated for him.
“I will,” he says, descending from the dais to his husband. “A pledge was made, today it is fulfilled. I belong with you, Aegir, Ocean God.”
Aegir bows his head and kisses both of Loki’s hands, which he holds warmly between both of his. So big and strong, covered in strange markings. Loki stares into the god’s eyes in the light of day, and in the light of day, he is still a stranger. But a stranger Loki already loves and desires and trusts. They will reveal to each other their many secrets, in time, and it will be exciting.
“Asgard is under my protection now, if you so desire,” proclaims the Ocean God. “And should you build a shrine to Loki, your once-prince, consort of the Lord of Waves and Tides, Mother of Gods and Monsters, and you speak to him there, he will always be able to hear you.”
He enfolds Loki in arms as strong as any god of war, and Loki feels a pull inside, and they are gone.
When he finds himself again, his hair floats around him, his hands move slowly and with strange grace.
“Welcome home, my love,” says his husband, floating before him.
Loki waves his arms and feet and breathes in and he is amazed.
“You will soon learn all that you are capable of in our world,” says his husband.
Loki struggles to remain in place, currents swaying him. He has a question of a very practical nature he doesn’t dare ask, but his husband smirks as if he’d read his thoughts.
“Suffice to know for now that in our world, we have currents for beds, and seaweed forests for bedchambers,” he whispers. “You care to learn that first?”
Not sure if it’s his husband’s voice in this strange atmosphere, or his tone, or that accursed smirk, or all of it piling up on Loki’s memories of last night, but he shivers and finds himself that ocean water does not dampen lust or does anything to put out his desire. He swims to his husband as gracefully as he can.
“I do have to start somewhere,” he grins.
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