𝒲𝓇𝑒𝓉𝒸𝒽𝑒𝒹 & 𝒟𝒾𝓋𝒾𝓃𝑒

[heleerie]

An independent and selective blog 𝓂𝓊𝓁𝓉𝒾 𝓂𝓊𝓈𝑒 𝓇𝓅 𝒷𝓁𝑜𝑔, for muses across multiple fandoms, unaffiliated with any fandom or RPC. Highly sporadic activity. Minors and non-RP blogs DNI. Haunted eternally by ℐ𝓇𝑒𝒶𝓃𝓃𝒾𝓈. 30+ he/him pronouns. All my muses are portrayed independently and may exist across multiple verses, timelines, and alternate universes. Typically written in a 𝓁𝒾𝓉𝑒𝓇𝒶𝓉𝑒 𝓉𝑜 𝓃𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁𝓁𝒶 style.

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𝐷𝐷𝐷𝑁𝐸 ; This blog is 21+ and contains 𝒹𝒶𝓇𝓀 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝓉𝓇𝒾𝑔𝑔𝑒𝓇𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝓉𝒽𝑒𝓂𝑒𝓈, including but not limited to: Violence, gore, sex, nudity, coarse language, body horror, drug use, cannibalism, abuse and bigotry, suicidal ideation, a wide spectrum of trauma 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝓂𝑜𝓇𝑒. Please do not follow this blog if you are under 21 or particularly sensitive to any form of dark, 𝒸𝑜𝓂𝓅𝓁𝑒𝓍 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝓂𝒶𝓉𝓊𝓇𝑒 content in a fictional and literary form.

𝒩𝒶𝓋𝒾𝑔𝒶𝓉𝒾𝑜𝓃 ; 𝚁𝚄𝙻𝙴𝚂 ✦ 𝙼𝚄𝚂𝙴𝚂 ✦ 𝙼𝙴𝙼𝙴𝚂 🕷️

TEMP SEMI-HIATUS.

[heleerie]

OKAY, so, officially, Loki is now moved to @godguile, and this is the blog I'll be most active on until the brain rot goes away. I am not abandoning this blog or any of the muses on it; I'll still be around!! But I need to chase any joy I can get lately, and Loki has been where it's at for me. ILY, moots, and I hope to see you over there, because I'm super down for crossovers and I'm planning to add new verses and re-add some old ones as well.

[heleerie]

Who Loki thinks he is when he's fucking with the Grandmaster vs who Loki actually is.

[heleerie]

The Grandmaster's hands were warm against his shoulders, and Loki found himself leaning into the touch with a desperation that would have humiliated him only moments before. But humiliation was now little more than a garment he had worn and discarded and worn again until its seams were fraying apart. Here, now, with Asgard shimmering like a mirage before him, humiliation was nothing. Nothing at all.

He listened, his heart racing, the words settling into him with the weight of sacred scripture. Rules. Guidelines. A stage, a competition, a tournament. The Grandmaster's source, his power, his obsession. It made sense; it made terrible, wonderful, cosmic sense, and Loki felt something in his chest give way, something that had been sealed since the fires of Ragnarok, since the vacuum of space, since the moment he understood that Thanos had won and Asgard was diminished to nothing but clusters of survivors gathered together into a comical tourist attraction on an alien planet.

❝ I can gather contenders━ champions, ❞ he breathed, the words barely audible, emerald eyes fixed on the Grandmaster's face with an intensity that bordered on worship. ❝ My brother, ❞ he spoke, followed by a sharp, breathless laugh, almost giddy with all his intense, rising hope, ❝ the Avengers, Earth's Mightiest, they will help him, I have no doubt. ❞ The irony was there: the Midgardian warriors assembled to thwart his misguided invasion attempted specifically, soon rallied to fight as his own champions.

He was already calculating, already planning, his magnificent mind spinning through possibilities with the frantic grace of a dying star throwing off light. His brother, the Avengers, the Hulk. They could not lose. With such champions, with such raw power and desperate loyalty, they could not possibly lose. Loki's hands found the Grandmaster's, gripping them, his fingers interlacing, clinging.

❝ I will bring them to you ❞ he continued, the words tumbling faster now, the cascade of plans and promises and desperate, shameless hope. ❝ I know where they are, how to reach them, what to say. Thor is brooding and bored and aching for purpose. The others, I can find them, persuade them; I can lie and manipulate and beg and bargain with everything I have, everything I am. ❞

He leaned closer, his breath warm and frantic between them. ❝ You will have your torment. You need only tell me where and when,❞ his earlier broken desperation rebuilt itself from the shards into something fierce and radiant and utterly surrendered. He didn't ask what the cost to himself might be. The thought flickered, distant and unimportant, a candle against the supernova of Asgard reborn.

What did it matter? What could the Grandmaster possibly demand that would outweigh the restoration of his people, his mother, his home, the chance to finally, finally be something other than the architect of their destruction? He would be humiliated, degraded, used, displayed, whatever spectacle the Grandmaster required of his prize, his consort, his pet; He would perform it all with a smile, with desperate, grateful enthusiasm, and call it triumph.

If only Asgard might again be what it once was, and he no longer needed to bear the guilt of having destroyed everything wonderful he'd ever known.

[heleerie]

He had been content, he had been curious, he had been transfixed, and then the Grandmaster dropped the bomb, something Loki, in his vast and coloured imagination, would have never dreamed of as a possibility. He sat up immediately, the motion so sudden and graceless that it sent the candy-coloured sheets around him, slithering down to pool, undignified around below his hips. The thought crashed into the calculated serenity of his mind like a wrecking ball through an old wall, shattering composure, shattering performance, shattering everything but the raw, desperate intensity that now blazed in his emerald eyes.

❝ I'm sorry. ❞ he began, his voice very carefully level, the false calm of a thing holding itself together only by the thinnest of threads. ❝ You can do what…? ❞

He hovered over the Grandmaster now, one hand braced flat against the Elder's chest as if to pin him in place, to prevent this revelation from escaping before Loki could fully grasp it. His dark hair fell forward, framing his face, and now in the neon glow of the room he looked almost feral, almost dangerous, suddenly a creature of pure, focused hunger. ❝ Resurrect the dead…? ❞ he repeated, the words tasting foreign on his tongue, too enormous to be real, too impossible to be spoken so casually. ❝ No, not merely the dead but entire civilisations...? ❞

His mind was racing, a cascade of implications and possibilities crashing together like waves against a cliff. Asgard. His mother. Frigga, with her gentle hands and her knowing eyes and her unwavering love, the only person who had ever made him feel like he might be worthy of something beyond scorn. Even his father, perhaps, complicated and cruel and distant, but still his father, even though he rejected him in petty fits of childish spite, the man who had raised him still, who had taught him, who had lied to him and loved him in equal, devastating measure.

The Warriors Three, blustering and loyal, who had tolerated him for Thor's sake but had fought beside him nonetheless. Heimdall, whose golden eyes had seen through every lie Loki had ever told and had never once used that knowledge to destroy him. The thousands upon thousands of Asgardians who had perished during Ragnarok, at the hands of Hela and in the wake of Thanos's mad crusade. The children who had burned. The elders who had been crushed. The soldiers who had fought and died defending a home that was always prophetically doomed.

All of them. Back. Alive. The golden spires of Asgard rising once more, restored from the ashes of prophecy and destruction. A chance to undo the catastrophe that had claimed their people, their culture, their very existence as a race. A chance for Thor to see his homeland reborn. A chance for Loki to finally, finally, be something other than the god who had helped destroy it all.

He would do anything. He knew it with a certainty that settled into his bones like ice, cold and absolute. He would submit himself to centuries of humiliation, degradation, use, whatever price the Grandmaster demanded, whatever needed to be done, whatever needed to be offered. He would crawl. He would beg. He would trade every scrap of dignity he had ever possessed, every illusion of pride and power he had ever constructed, for this one, impossible, miraculous thing.

❝ Please, tell me,❞ Loki said, as his voice cracked on the words, the mask of sardonic detachment utterly shattered, leaving only the raw, desperate creature beneath. ❝ Tell me how. Tell me what I must do.❞ His hand fisted in the sheets beside himself, his breath coming faster now. ❝ I am not above begging. I am not above anything. If you can do this, if you can bring Asgard back from oblivion, if you can give my brother his people, his home, his...❞ He stopped, swallowed, the words catching in his throat like thorns. ❝ Please, Grandmaster. Please, will you? ❞

[heleerie]

He shifted against the Grandmaster's chest, tilting his head up just enough to fix him with a look of genuine, if not playfully edged, curiosity. Surely, if he were less fascinated by the Grandmaster's words, he might have been ashamed of how content he felt, lying here in his arms, being told he was something beautiful, something to build statues for━ with the exact right profile, no less. But shame, it seemed, had little purchase in this garish, neon-drenched sanctuary, and Loki, blessedly, found himself disinclined to go looking for it.

❝ You possess powers? ❞ He prompted, one eyebrow arching with genuine interest, though he was utterly incapable of resisting the playful jab that followed. ❝ And what might they be━ beyond a truly baffling sense of interior design? ❞

The smirk that accompanied the words was fond, affectionate, the sharp edges sanded down by the warmth of the Grandmaster's body against his, the steady rhythm of that ancient heart beneath his ear. But beneath the jest, Loki's mind was already racing, cataloguing possibilities, turning over the implications of what the Grandmaster had revealed about the Elders and their sources of power. Obsessions made manifest. Compulsions that shaped reality itself. It was fascinating, the kind of cosmic secret that would have sent Odin's scholars into fits of academic ecstasy, and here Loki was, curled naked against the source of it all like a satisfied cat.

Longevity, obviously, he contemplated, as he went over his time on Saakar with the Grandmaster. He was a being who orchestrated an entire planet's worth of chaos for the simple pleasure of entertainment━ a feat that suddenly made more sense than it ever had━ but what more was there to it than that? He almost couldn't wait to find out.

[heleerie]

So, the plan so far is to get the important thread I'm doing w/ Gill out of the way so we can sort of convert it into fic format and use it for the set up of the new verse and then I'll PROBABLY chuck Loki over on his own blog for a while, while I deal with the massive brain rot, I just don't feel like moving all that cause we're already hot in the middle of it skjfkdlf.

[therottingbones-sys]

dehumanization as horror is great and all but what about humanization as horror. Being forced into a role that was not made for you. Being forced to fulfill expectations that you can never achieve. Being made to exist in a society that so cruelly expects you to act in a way that is against your nature.

[buttonheart]

Return of the ugly jacket

[heleerie]

❝ No, we are. I mean, Asgard is ━ was ━ is; it's not the... ❞ Loki trailed off, the words catching in his throat as he tried so hard not to sound too defensive of the people who had never really accepted him, but even if that hadn't been the case, it was an uncomfortable topic of conversation that he had not really wanted to be part of.

He shifted, rolling back to face the Grandmaster, the rigid line of his shoulders finally surrendering to something softer, something almost vulnerable. ❝ It is not sex between men that is the problem, not entirely. It is far more complex ━ or far more pathetic than that. ❞

He paused, his gaze flickering away, fixing temporarily on a point somewhere in the dim light beyond the bed. Asgard was a warrior's society. It had always centred strength and virility, two things Loki lacked, particularly in the way Asgard valued them, and though Loki knew well enough what primitive bullshit this actually was, Loki's opinions, as he had spent his entire life learning, meant very little to Asgard.

❝ It isn't about who it is done with. It is about what is done, to whom. And Thor, he... ❞ A sigh, sharp and frustrated. ❝ He doesn't mind that I am bisexual. It's just... When people touch me. My role. The one I often play. It is considered a thing of shame, and my brother does not want that for me, and the Norns know, he has never been particularly good about other people touching his things ━ a vexing classification he considers me, as his slightly younger brother, to be within. ❞

Thor's protectiveness, his ferocious, suffocating, well-meaning protectiveness, generated feelings of fond appreciation and venomous annoyance within him at all times. The way he had glowered at Loki's lovers, had postured and threatened, even outright ended, making it abundantly clear that anyone who so much as wished to touch his little brother in that way, in the wrong way, in the shameful way, would answer to Mjolnir.

As if Loki were a thing to be guarded. As if Loki's choices, Loki's pleasures, Loki's body, were somehow Thor's to protect. ❝ He does not want me to degrade myself, ❞ Loki continued, his voice flattening, the mask of sardonic detachment sliding back into place. ❝ As if I am incapable of not doing so. As if I am some blushing maiden who requires his protection from the big, bad men who would do terrible, improper things to me, because it is forbidden that I should ever like them. ❞ His eyes did roll then, sheer exasperation, embarrassed annoyance gripping him whole. ❝ It's complicated, and It's ridiculous; you are right, and I don't particularly want to talk about it. ❞

He moved then, decisively, closing the small distance between them with the fluid, serpentine grace he possessed as he pressed himself against the Grandmaster's side, one long leg sliding between the Elder's, his head finding its place against his shoulder where it had been after their more passionate dealings earlier in the evening. It was an easy, comfortable intimacy that Loki knew to be rare, but had only allowed himself to phase in his subconscious thus far.

❝ You have heard plenty about me and Asgard, and its tedious provincialisms.❞ He said, quieter now, the deflection gentle but firm. ❝ More than enough for one evening. I would hear more about you. About your brothers. The other Elders. ❞ He paused, for just a moment, settling into the warm comfort of the Grandmaster's chest once more. ❝ Tell me, Grandmaster. Tell me of Taneleer and his trinkets, of the Champion and his fury, of the Runner who never stays, the Gardener and his eternal patience. Tell me how you became what you are. What any of you are.❞ A small, almost vulnerable smile found itself against his lips, though this was little more than coy seduction ❝ I find I am... curious. About you. In ways I do not fully understand. ❞

Not entirely true; no, Loki understood. It was the old habit of his, the one that gathered information and stored it away in the vast archive of his sharp mind, should he ever find himself having use of it, and oh, so often, he found himself having use of it. And maybe. Maybe he just wanted to know more, entirely without an ulterior motive, because The Grandmaster, in his weird and wonderful way, understood him in a way his brother hadn't. Couldn't. Not from malice, no, it wasn't that from Thor; it was simply because he was naturally incapable of understanding the architecture of Loki's resentments, the loneliness of being the shadow cast by too much light and of living in a world tailored so specifically to reject everything that he was or ever could be.

[heleerie]

It was pathetic... But he was new to this: this being cared for thing, this mattering thing, this someone caring about what he thought or how he felt. It was humiliating on its own, the way Loki could hardly recall ever really mattering, the way all his protests had been met with jest, or dismissal or outright violence until he would yield because he always did. He always had to. Because he was small, unassertive, pathetic. Asgard's silly little trickster, the god of mischief, a comical sidekick to his glorious and mighty brother. A gimmick. Nothing more.

But then, in another way, he was everything more; he was everything his family, his people, his entire world had hated, had despised, had demonised throughout countless centuries, he was this even before he knew it, before they all knew it, before he was Jotnar, and no matter how hard he tried to conform, to appeal, to cooperate, to fit in, to level his handicap amongst them, he was not them, he was not like them and his mother and father always knew, yet they let him try anyway; they let him try just so they could watch him fail over and over again. It was all a lie, a wound, a betrayal crueller and deeper than any lie or any trick he'd ever performed.

His shoulders loosened; that rigid finality he had worn before slipping away. He turned his head just enough to glance over his shoulder, one brilliant green eye visible, wary and watchful and still so terribly young beneath all that ancient cunning.

❝ I mean it,❞ he said, his voice quieter now, the sharp edges sanded down. ❝ Thor should not know about this. About us. Honestly, if you must bed my brother, go ahead and try, but I suspect you'll find him far less obliging than you imagine, and I would at least prefer this... What we do. To remain between only us. ❞

It wasn't shame ━ at least, it wasn't the kind of shame he expected the Grandmaster, in his unbridled hedonism, to understand, and it was a shame Loki knew to be foolish and irrelevant, but he still knew it mattered all the same. Of course Loki had bedded men before, often enough to call it a habit, done with all the same fluid, opportunistic grace he brought to everything else. Indeed, his bisexuality was perhaps the least complicated thing about him.

But this was Asgard's problem, a pathetic, complicated little matter of cultural cruelty. As a man, or something most commonly seen as one, it wasn't about who you loved or who you bedded. It was about what you did with them. The one who gave, the one who penetrated, the one who dominated: he was still worthy, still respected. But the one who received, the one who took, the one who surrendered, he was something lesser. Something diminished. That was true weakness, that was degeneracy, and Loki had spent his entire existence clawing against all confirmation of the unworthiness that Mjolnir had already proclaimed to all of Asgard.

He was not Asgardian in blood, but he was raised among them and Thor? His stupid, loving, noble brother had taken issue with Loki's male lovers over the centuries with a ferocious, misguided protectiveness that made Loki want to scream and cry and laugh all at the same time. It wasn't because Thor disapproved of the sex entirely, but because he understood, in his simple, righteous way, what it meant for Loki to be seen this way, what it cost him in the whispered corridors of Asgard, the subtle diminishment of status and respect. Thor wanted to spare him that shame, and in wanting it, only confirmed it, only made Loki more aware of how thoroughly he was seen as something lesser, something that could be, would be and was, tarnished in some vile and inherent way.

The Grandmaster was beyond all of this; he knew. More than that, the Grandmaster wanted him, specifically, the lone being who preferred him to Thor's blustering golden appeal. The Grandmaster, who apparently found him fascinating and delightful and worth building statues for. It was healing, in some bizarre way. A salve on wounds so old Loki had forgotten they could still ache.

[heleerie]

Alright, that was it. He couldn't say why it was, either; too many complex and shameful emotions churning inside him. The idea of losing Thor, as a brother, or in any way, was too much to bear, even if the idea that he might have to share such a thought with the object of it himself was presently incomprehensible.

He moved with the speed of a striking viper, his fingers closing around a small, round, yellow pillow that lay decoratively on the bed in no particular place before his conscious mind had even registered the impulse. The pillow caught the Grandmaster square in the face with a soft, undignified whump, and Loki sat upright in the same fluid motion, his expression gone sharp and cold at the edges, all pretence of amusement evaporated like frost before flame...

❝ Enough! Thor is my brother, ❞ he said, the words intense and final, the door finally slamming closed on this obscene little fantasy. ❝ He will not be joining us for group sex or otherwise, and if I am completely honest, I would prefer it if he never even knows that we have sex. ❞

Though it wasn't like Loki to ever be so honest, there were some things he simply had no mask for, and this, decidedly, was one of them. He lay back down with that, now rolling over in one fluid motion, presenting his back to the Grandmaster. He pulled the blanket up further around himself, as if the garish fabric could shield him from the conversation, from the feelings, from the treacherous yearning thing that had stirred in his chest at the Grandmaster's words.

The way Thor talked about you. The way you orbit each other.

He didn't want to think about it. He didn't want to think about how desperately he missed his brother, even now, even after everything. Thor was the only family he had left and he was always the only one who might have still believed, against all evidence and reason, that Loki could be saved, could be good, could be the person he had once been, and Loki clung to that belief like a drowning man to driftwood, even as he resented it, even as he tested it, even as he pushed and pushed and pushed to see if this time, finally, Thor would let him go.

Adopted or not, Thor was his brother. And Loki loved him. Loki loved him as much as he could or would ever love anything, even if that love had turned into an aching, festering wound. It was just too complicated a thing to be prodded at by the Grandmaster's well-meaning and utterly shameless fingers.

So he lay still, tight, brows furrowed, curled against himself and his candy-coloured blanket shield, the ludicrousness of it lost on him in a moment of nearly childish temper.

[gumisharx]

I think the part that upsets me most about RS discourse is the assumption that Vox’s anger and resentment of Alastor are only about his unrequited ROMANTIC (and implicitly sexual) feelings for him, with an undercurrent of those feelings being seen as inherently selfish and shallow.

When in reality what Vox seems most torn up about is losing what he thought was his first ever FRIENDSHIP, and that pain haunting him well into the present day even when he’s found new friends who love him unconditionally. Alastor’s favorite way to play into this is to refer to him with friendly terms like “old pal” or “my friend.” Season 2 centers heavily on recognizing the friends that are there for you and it’s because of their love for Vox that Velvette and Valentino are the ones to both defeat and save him.

So it’s frustrating to see Vox’s feelings for Al reduced to just “he’s just a bitter incel who’s mad he didn’t get to fuck him” out of people who allegedly recognize there are other kinds of love besides romantic or sexual. Even if Vox’s feelings were ALSO romantic, acting like “romantic=sex=shallow and selfish” is ALSO incredibly short-sighted.

And even if Alastor didn’t reciprocate Vox’s romantic feelings, he still had no respect for Vox’s platonic feelings, either. It wasn’t just the fact that Alastor rejected him, but that he did so in such a purposefully cruel way that included denying he ever liked Vox platonically. That is what seemed to hurt Vox the most. So, once again, framing it as though Alastor was “betrayed” by Vox isn’t accurate, because Alastor had no respect for Vox’s platonic feelings, either.

Is Vox wrong to keep holding a grudge? Of course he is! But he’s not a Nice Guy or an incel, and Alastor is not innocent in this either. That’s what makes their whole dynamic so fascinating! But reducing it to *just* an unrequited romance is pretty shallow and misses how much is built on their platonic feelings for each other!

[candycoatedrox]

getting characters into world-endingly intense codependent queerplatonic relationships is literally what life is all about. it is literally what we were put here on this earth to do

[vorpalfae]

🩸 𝔳𝔞𝔪𝔭𝔦𝔯𝔢 𝔥𝔲𝔫𝔱𝔢𝔯 𝔡: 𝔟𝔩𝔬𝔬𝔡𝔩𝔲𝔰𝔱 🩸

[heleerie]

Loki nearly rolled his eyes ━ instead, he scoffed, that he couldn't help: it was crazy, the kind of crazy only the Grandmaster could concoct, the smirk playing against his lips deepening into something sly and disbelieving, a hum of seductive amusement threading into his voice even as something tighter, more complicated, settled beneath his ribs.

❝ So you propose this,❞ he continued, his voice dropping to something almost conspiratorial, leaning closer to the Grandmaster, almost as if they were plotting a coup rather than an orgy, his breath at the Elder's temple. ❝ as a solution to my brother's evident displeasure with my methodology. That we might simply... Fuck our way to familial reconciliation? ❞ Something like a laugh escaped him, again still more a scoff, however, than a genuine chuckle, surprised even now by the sheer absurdity and the obscenity of the proposition. His hand moved across the Grandmaster's chest, resting over his shoulder, a gesture that was half-affection and half-steadying himself against the vertigo of the conversation as he continued.

❝ Yes, I can see it now, my brother and I, exchanging polite nods across the room while being serviced by a dozen strange and some familiar orgy-goers. ❞ He let the image sit there, deliberately ridiculous and thus deliberately deflecting. ❝ Very therapeutic, I'm sure. Perhaps we could schedule it between the grief counselling and the rebuilding efforts. 'Thor, lovely to see you, do pass the lubricant, and by the way, I'm still furious about the whole life imprisonment thing.❞

His eyes glittered, sharp and guarded; the humour was a shield, the only kind he really knew how to wield, an armour he dressed himself in, because beneath the jest, beneath the performance, the Grandmaster's words found their way to somewhere soft and sore, somewhere Loki preferred to pretend didn't exist. The way Thor talked about you. The way you orbit each other. He didn't want to examine that. Didn't want to acknowledge how desperately he craved exactly what the Grandmaster was offering: a space where none of their history applied, where the tangled, thorny mess of his relationship with Thor could be something other than a wound.

Something more like it used to be, before the botched coronation, before the terrible, crushing truth came out, back when Thor's light was a warmth to him and not a blinding eclipse. There was a time when they were inseparable, and perhaps, in some way they always would be, but he recalled his brother's words in that elevator that dayon Sakaar, the proclamation of their path's divergence, and just then Loki felt small again, like the child who followed Thor from room to room, from realm to realm, adventure to adventure, because he was his brother, and who else did he have but his brother? His stupid, arrogant, noble, infuriating brother who had never once understood him and had never once stopped loving him anyway.

[heleerie]

Loki's eyebrow climbed toward his hairline, a smirk once again playing at the corner of his mouth, this one different from the one before. This one.. Thawed, genuine and curious. ❝ Are you truly, ❞ he began, his words specially emphasised. ❝ unabashedly, telling me you have had sex with your brother? ❞ He paused, recalibrating, the full scope of the Grandmaster's vision finally clicking into place, the lurid mural expanding beyond just himself and Thor to encompass a writhing, ecstatic constellation of bodies.

❝ Or at least with him present, in the same room, the same bed, even? That you simply gather together and have enormous orgies where you all rut together with one another's friends and partners, and that this is something you do often? ❞

The words tumbled out even as he tried to organise them, all sounding somewhere between accusation and genuine, bewildered inquiry. Truth be told, Loki was no stranger to excess, had sampled more than his fair share of it across the centuries, but the casual, familial nature of the Grandmaster's debauchery was something else entirely. Something almost admirable, in its complete disregard for convention.

The smirk deepened as he watched the Grandmaster's expression, hunting for any crack in that effervescent certainty, any sign that this being of cosmic excess might finally encounter a boundary even he would acknowledge. Loki found none, of course. The Grandmaster's delight remained undimmed. And he found himself, against all better judgment, charmed. It was absurd. It was insane. It was, he realised with a small, private thrill, precisely the kind of thing that had drawn him into a friendship ━ a partnership, of some kind, with this strange and utterly shameless ancient being in the first place.