[noxaecor]

#Noxaecor: A highly private, literate multi-muse blog featuring characters from various fandoms. Each muse is set in their own verse unless plotted otherwise. Crossovers, AUs, and canon divergences welcome but not required. Minors and personals DNI. Not currently open to the public, do not follow me unless I follow you first. Curated and observed by Gill. 21+ He/they/it pronouns.

Muse list: Dr William Birkin, Chris Redfield, Victor Gideon, Dr Martin Brenner, Twice / Jin Bubaigawara, Vox, Mimzy, Charlie Morningstar, Husker, Knuckles the Echidna, Rouge the bat, E-123 Omega, The Grandmaster, Steve Rogers, Victor Zsasz + some OCs and anyone else I feel like adding.

[noxaecor]

The Grandmaster blinked, genuinely caught off guard by the sudden transformation of his typically sly, composed lover into this wild-eyed, desperate, stunning creature hovering over him. For a moment, he simply stared, his ancient mind almost struggling to process the enormity of Loki's reaction.

Resurrection was simply... A thing he could do, like breathing or shaping energy or orchestrating an especially satisfying tournament bracket. The weight it carried for mortals, for mayflies, for creatures who actually lost people and stayed lost, had long since faded from his comprehension.

But here was Loki, trembling, begging, utterly shattered by possibility, and something in the Grandmaster's chest twisted uncomfortably, a strange, tender ache he hadn't felt in eons.

He couldn't take advantage. The thought flickered, tempting, ancient predator instinct humming beneath his surface, the one that told him that all life was but a toy granted to him by eternity itself. Loki was stunning in his desperation, beautiful and wild and willing for anything, but he dismissed it. He had done filthy things to Loki, wonderful things, things they had both enjoyed with shameless, hedonistic abandon, but this…

This was different. This wasn't the playful bargaining of the bedroom, the negotiated surrender of bodies and pleasure. This was something raw and holy and terrible, and the Grandmaster found himself, against all expectation, against his cunning, twisted nature, unwilling to tarnish it.

"Hey, hey, hey," he murmured, sitting up to match the trickster, reaching out with uncharacteristic gentleness to cup Loki's face, thumbs brushing over sharp cheekbones with a soothing rhythm. "Popsicle. My sweet, frantic little icicle. Breathe. Just breathe for me, hm? Just breathe."

His voice was gentle now, the manic energy dialled back to something almost gentle, giving Loki that moment to adjust, to settle as he continued. "Now, as much as I'd like to, just for you, because I like you, Loki, I like you, so, so much━ oh, I like you a lot, I can't just... Snap my fingers and make it happen. This comes with rules. Guidelines. A special structure. "

He held Loki's gaze, willing him to understand, to come back from the edge of whatever precipice he had flung himself toward. "There has to be stakes, there has to be a stage, a competition. That's my source. Sport. Contest. Spectacle. The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. If I'm going to resurrect an entire civilisation, it has to be won. It has to be a grand prize."

His hands slid down to Loki's shoulders, for just a moment steadying him, grounding him. "There would need to be an arena. A stage. A spectacular tournament, something worthy of the stakes. Champions fighting for it all. It's the only way. The only way my power would recognise it as real, as solid, as something it could latch onto and make manifest."

He paused, his hands rising again, one brushing through Loki's hair, pushing some of its shining raven strands behind his ear, searching Loki's face, seeing the desperation still burning there but tempered now with something like comprehension.

"I'm not saying no, Popsicle. Oho, no, it is possible. It's absolutely possible. But as much as it pains me, it can't just be a gift. It must be a game, a prize. A prize in the biggest game you have ever played. The kind that spans realms and draws champions from across the cosmos. The kind that makes the stars themselves lean closer to watch." He gestured the way he did, alive and animated, painting an invisible picture of his words in the air around them; his eyes glittering now, ancient and calculating, and perhaps, under it all, even cruel.

"You would need the fiercest warriors, the most cunning strategists, the luckiest, the most desperate. And if they win, if they triumph through the rounds, through the trials, through the spectacle..." His smile is smug, almost a smirk, entirely aware of the weight of everything he now says. "Then Asgard lives again. Reborn. Restored. Every soul that perished in its fall, returned to live their lives again free from their ends. A prize worthy of the greatest game ever played."

He couldn't say the stakes, not directly, not in the way he should before sending Loki's hope skyrocketing out to orbit━ why? Because he was cruel at his core, a creature with one singular desire, and as much as he liked Loki, maybe even loved him, the thrill of a game, of such stakes, of such spectacle━ well, it was his thing; he couldn't risk his beautiful little snowflake backing out now. It had to happen. It had to be real, and with Loki's help he knew it would be.

[crocodile-dandy]

I’ve come to make an announcement: Shadow the Hedgehog’s a bitch-ass motherfucker, he pissed on my fucking wife! That’s right, he took his hedgehog-fuckin’ quilly dick out and he pissed on my fucking wife, and he said his dick was “this big,” and I said “that’s disgusting,” so I’m making a callout post on my Twitter.com: Shadow the Hedgehog, you’ve got a small dick, It’s the size of this walnut except WAY smaller. And guess what? Here’s what my dong looks like! That’s right, baby, tall points, no quills, no pillows — look at that, it looks like two balls and a bong! He fucked my wife, so guess what, I’m gonna fuck the Earth! That’s right, this is what you get: my SUPER LASER PISS!! Except I’m not gonna piss on the Earth, I’m gonna go higher!! I’m pissing ON THE MOON! How do you like that, Obama?! I PISSED ON THE MOON, YOU IDIOT!! You have twenty-three hours before the piss drrrrroplllllllets hit the fucking Earth! Now get outta my fucking sight, before I piss on you too!

[noxaecor]

"Hey, rude. I have excellent taste." The Grandmaster sniffed in a pathetic display of faux-offence, utterly undermined by the way his eyes sparkled with delight. "Lots of things. Longevity, obviously. We're all billions of years old. Give or take. I've got a certain amount of control over matter and energy on Sakaar, or wherever I'm anchored. Shaping things, bending them to the game, you know how it is. The arena, the palace, all the little flourishes and flourishes within flourishes." He gestured expansively, as if the neon-drenched room around them were merely a casual demonstration of this particular talent.

"And, oh, this one's fun!" He paused for dramatic effect, his expression shifting into something almost coy, almost teasing, the look of a man who had held back a particularly magnificent card until the precise moment of maximum impact. "I can resurrect the dead."

The words hung in the air between them, offensive in how casual the enormity of them actually was, dropped like a pebble into still water that rippled outward into infinity. Ah, but he wasn't finished there; he spoke as though immortality's greatest miracle was a party trick he'd half-forgotten he possessed.

"Whole civilisations, if I wanted to. Pop them right back into existence, good as new. Or better, if I've been practising. There's almost no limit to what I can offer under the right circumstance."

He laughed, bright and infectious, utterly unaware or perhaps deliberately oblivious to the magnitude of what he had just revealed. To him, it was simply another feature, another amusing facet of his endless, ancient capabilities, one of the many prizes that might be won by sport.

What he did not mention, what he never mentioned, what he kept tucked away in the deepest, most private vaults of his memory, was the truth of Sakaar itself. That the planet had been a prison, designed specifically for him, his powers stripped and bound by one of the few games he'd ever lost. He had crashed there, or been deposited there, a million years prior, diminished and raging and utterly helpless, crawling among the savage remnants of whatever civilisations had been discarded by the wormhole's indifferent maw.

For epoch upon epoch, he had struggled to maintain even the faintest echo of his former glory, his source starved by the absence of anything resembling games, of competition, of the structured play that fed his fundamental nature.

It was only as more and more beings found themselves trapped on Sakaar, as the detritus of the cosmos accumulated into something resembling population, that he had begun to rebuild. To shape the chaos into spectacle, to transform the prison into a playground, to slowly, agonisingly, restore himself through the only means available to him. And even then, even at the height of his Sakaarian empire, he had known himself diminished, a pale, almost unrecognisable shadow of the cosmic force he had once been, the Elder who could challenge galaxies and reshape reality on a whim.

The discovery that the wormhole could work both ways, that Thor and Loki's arrival had catalysed something in the fundamental structure of his prison, that he too could finally, finally escape, had been a revelation almost too overwhelming to process. He had fled without looking back, without consideration for the empire he had built, for the revolution its sad populace had hoped to achieve, the games he had orchestrated, the fleeting, temporary entertainments that had sustained him for so long.

And he had found Loki again, here on this wonderful, fascinating little planet called "Earth", something that felt like fate, the way they had crossed so seamlessly into each other's chaos, and felt only renewed for it.

But none of this he said. None of this he would ever say, the shame of his imprisonment, the terror of his diminishment, the desperate, clawing hunger that had driven him to build Sakaar into something tolerable, something that could sustain him. The Grandmaster was performance, always performance, even in his most intimate moments, and the raw vulnerability of that truth was a costume he would never don, even for Loki.

Especially not for Loki, his sweet little popsicle, who mattered in ways that made the Grandmaster's ancient heart ache with something perilously close to fear and who, he thought, might have been the one lone being in all the cosmos to understand all of it, and to not hold it against him.

[noxaecor]

The Grandmaster's face lit up again, the previous awkwardness evaporating away like mist before the sunrise. There were very few things in life he loved more than talking about himself, and talking about himself in relation to other impossibly ancient, cosmic beings was near the very top of the list. The fact that Loki, his beautiful, feisty, endlessly fascinating Loki, was the one asking, was curled against his side with genuine curiosity softening his sharp, clever features, only made it sweeter.

"Well, you know me," he began, settling back against the pillows with content, one arm tightening around Loki, drawing him closer against his chest where, the Grandmaster had decided, in some quiet, private part of himself, Loki belonged. "I'm the Grandmaster. Games, competitions, the whole deal. That's my thing. My source, if you want to get technical about it."

He paused, savouring the moment, the weight of Loki's attention on him not unlike a physical warmth. "All of us Elders have one. An obsession, a domain, whatever you want to call it. It's where our power comes from. What we are, fundamentally. The core of our being, the thing that keeps us ticking along while everything else in the universe flickers and dies. The Collector collects. The Champion fights. The Gardener grows things. The Runner runs." He gestured expansively, his free hand tracing constellations in the air above them. "Ego, well, he was himself. Literally, his obsession was himself, and boy did he find a way to capitalize on that, wow. Turned himself into an entire planet. A whole planet, Popsicle. Just... became one. Grew a face in it and everything. Very impressive, very narcissistic, very on-brand, and oh boy, we won't even start on the seeding the entire cosmos thing; that was far out even by my standards."

He chuckled then, the sound rumbling through his chest where Loki's head rested. "We're all that way, really. Each of us defined by this one, consuming drive. It's what makes us Elders. What separates us from all the other immortal beings floating around out there. We're not just long-lived; we're focused. Obsessed, you might say. Compulsive. It's a blessing and a curse, honestly, because you can't ever turn it off. The Collector will always collect. The Champion will always fight. The Runner will always run. And I will always, always, always be looking for the next game, the next competition, the next grand spectacle."

He tilted his head, looking down at Loki with something almost tender in his ancient, glittering eyes. "You'd like them, I think. Well, some of them. Taneleer would absolutely try to put you in a display case, so maybe avoid him. Seriously. But the Gardener, he's lovely. Very quiet. Very patient. Grows the most extraordinary things, plants that sing, flowers that remember your dreams, trees that grow entire civilizations in their branches. The Runner, you'd never catch him, literally; he's too fast, but he's got great stories if you can get him to sit still for five minutes, which you can't. And the Champion..." He laughed, a bright, delighted sound. "The Champion would adore you. He loves beautiful things. Loves fighting them even more, but still. Adore."

He shifted, settling deeper into the pillows, his hand finding Loki's hair again and stroking absently, the gesture so natural he didn't even register he was doing it. "We're brothers, all of us. Not by biology, whatever that even means for beings like us, but by... circumstance. By isolation. By the simple fact that we're the only ones who understand what it's like to be this old, this strange, this utterly incapable of being anything other than what we are."

[noxaecor]

"Why-why is that, Popsicle?" The familiar lilt had almost returned to the Grandmaster's voice, bright curiosity with genuine bafflement. It was the tone of a man who had encountered an unexpected puzzle in the middle of an otherwise delightful game. He propped himself up properly now, abandoning the tentative apologetic posture for something more animated, more him, his eyes wide and fascinated as they fixed on Loki's half-averted profile. "I thought Asgardians were an advanced civilisation. You know, 'gods' and all. I mean, I figured you'd be beyond the whole 'who's sleeping with who' hang-up thing."

His words came with an air quote, his wrist rising momentarily from its place against Loki's shoulder before falling back down, resting against it once again, reassuringly. "Is it uh, I've heard of this before, a bunch of other cultures from around the cosmos have had it from time to time, it's really ridiculous━ you know, homo━ homofright━ homophobia! Homophobia, that's what I'm thinking of━ the whole problem with men who have sex with other men, like, what's the issue? We're all sentient; we're all energy; we all have wants and needs and preferences; it just flies right over their heads somehow, like," He made a whooshing sound, accompanied by a sweeping gesture past his own silver hair. "woosh, gone. Crazy."

The Grandmaster shook his head, genuinely perplexed, his expression that of a being who had witnessed species evolve beyond physical form entirely, who had seen civilisations embrace pleasures and configurations that would baffle even Loki's considerable imagination, and who simply could not comprehend why anyone, let alone a culture of self-proclaimed gods, would concern themselves with such trivialities. 

"Thor especially," he pressed on, warming to his subject, his voice taking on the cadence of a man working through a particularly fascinating puzzle. "I mean, big guy, lots of muscles, very open-minded in the arena, very 'we're all warriors here, let's celebrate with mead and whatever.' I just can't picture him being... judgey? About who you enjoy? Who anyone enjoys? It seems so small for him. So provincial. And I know that's one of your favourite words, Popsicle, provincial, so help me understand, because I'm really, truly trying here." 

He reached out, his touch lighter this time, almost hesitant in a way that would have been unrecognisable on Sakaar, his fingers barely grazing Loki's cheek as if the god might vanish entirely beneath too much pressure. "I don't want to hide us. I know, I know, that sounds weird, I'm saying it, me, the king of casual, the emperor of temporary. But you make me want to... I don't know. Put up a statue. A better one than Thor's. With your nose exactly right."

[noxaecor]

The pillow smacked his face and bounced off, landing somewhere off the edge of the bed, but he couldn't have cared less about that. Hell, it might have been hilarious if he hadn't immediately tuned into Loki's genuine upset. "Hey, hey now." The Grandmaster's voice was softer now, the playfulness dialled back to something almost unrecognisable, a frequency he rarely tuned to. He reached out, resting his hand on Loki's shoulder, shuffling closer across the candy-coloured sheets in a gentle, tentative, apologetic way that was almost childlike in itself. "Oh, I'm sorry, Popsicle. Really. I didn't mean to upset you."

The words continued, stumbling out with an earnestness that almost surprised even himself. "For what it's worth, I'm technically an adoptive brother too. All of us Elders consider each other brothers. The Collector, The Champion, The Runner, The Gardener, The Ego, though I'm told he uh... Exploded... But never mind that." He paused, his hand carefully, soothingly rubbing Loki's shoulder. "We don't really have anyone else. Just each other, and, well. That's pretty complicated too, so I get it. I do."

The admission was strange and raw. The Grandmaster didn't do complication, not really. He surfed across the surface of existence, collecting pleasures and distractions, sampling excitement, entertainment, and excess. Avoiding the unnecessary little hang-ups that had proven themselves incompatible with a being like himself, but here it was anyway, that awkward, unwelcome thing: love, or whatever approximation of it his ancient, scattered heart could still manage. The sobering realisation that Loki's pain had resonated somewhere in his own body.

He thought of Taneleer, of their fractious, competitive bond, the way they hoarded and performed and circled each other across the cosmos. He thought of the Champion, all fury and appetite, The Runner forever fleeing, The Gardener tending to things that outlived every civilisation. They were brothers in the only way that mattered to beings like them: shared isolation, shared strangeness, shared incomprehensibility to the mayflies that flickered and died around them.

And Loki, his sweet, complicated, prickly little icicle, was the same in a way, not as infinite, but one of the few beings in all eons of existence that made him feel this odd little thing━ this spark ━this connection━ this awkward, tender, terrifying thing that was closer to love than he had permitted himself in longer than he could accurately recall.

"Family's messy," he said finally, his voice barely above a murmur, uncharacteristically stripped of its usual theatrical brightness. "Even when you choose it. Especially when you choose it, maybe. I just... I like you, Loki. I want you to be happy. And sometimes my ideas about happy are, uh. Cosmically inappropriate." A small, self-deprecating laugh, almost genuine, came with that admission. Nothing lived as long as he had, nothing really got him, and yet, he knew Loki always came close.

[noxaecor]

"See, now you're getting it!" The Grandmaster beamed, either missing or wilfully ignoring the sarcasm, too caught up in the velvet of Loki's voice against his temple, the proximity of their naked bodies, the dark, impossible beauty of the creature in his arms. Loki was a masterpiece, truly, sharp angles, pale, perfect skin, and sparkling jade eyes that held centuries of cunning and sorrow in equal measure.

The Grandmaster had bedded gods before, had bedded beings that would make gods weep with inadequacy, but it had been a tremendously long time since anyone had ever made him feel quite so present, quite so alive.

He didn't examine that too closely. He couldn't. Attachments were dangerous for someone like him, someone who had watched civilisations rise and fall like breath, who had outlived everything he had ever touched. Loki would die someday. Not soon, fortunately; the longevity of Jotnar was nothing to scoff at; Yimir, their common ancestor, a being touched by the primordial himself, but still, one day, somehow, Loki would die, and the Grandmaster would remain, as he always remained. The thought of that loss, that eventual, inevitable absence, was something he tucked very carefully into a corner of his mind he visited only in his most private, most unguarded moments.

Instead, he focused on what was in front of him. The warmth of Loki's hand on his shoulder. The sardonic, delicious curl of that smirk. The way his voice dropped into something conspiratorial and intimate, as if they were the only two beings in the universe who understood the joke.

"Aha, anyway," the Grandmaster said, his expression shifting, turning thoughtful, almost sly in its own right, "I seem to recall you mentioning something about being adopted. Soooo, technically..."

He let the word trail off, hanging in the air between them, obscene and suggestive and utterly without shame, his eyes bright with the particular delight of someone who believed he had just solved a very simple problem with very simple logic.

There was really no shared biology, so nothing that made incest so icky to some of the less durable cultures in the cosmos. Just two beings who happened to have grown up in the same golden halls, who happened to call each other brother, who happened to orbit one another with the gravitational pull of dying stars. What was the big deal, really? The Grandmaster had seen species who reproduced by splitting into three and then recombining with their own offspring. He'd seen beings who changed sex as casually as changing clothes, who married their own clones, who considered monogamy a form of mental illness. The Asgardian hang-ups about family and propriety were, frankly, adorable. Quaint. Entirely surmountable with the right perspective.

And Loki, his sweet, complicated Loki, was adopted. Which meant the whole thing was just... Semantics! Social construction. A label that could be peeled away as easily as the sheets currently tangled around their waists. A label he had already seen Loki use, discard, and pick up again at his own leisure. He didn't say any of that out loud, of course; he simply let the suggestion hang there, his expression one of cheerful, obscene optimism, waiting to see what his sweet, feisty little icicle would do with it.

[noxaecor]

Yeah, now you're with me!" The Grandmaster's entire body seemed to brighten, as if Loki's tentative comprehension was sunlight finally breaching the grey clouds. He squirmed and bounced slightly, sending ripples through the candy-coloured sheets, utterly delighted. "My brother would be there, I would be there, a whole bunch of other people would be there. To my knowledge, we hardly ever touched each other or, you know," he gestured vaguely, a loose flourish that could have indicated anything or nothing, a wiggle of his fingers that was both disturbingly obscene and stupidly innocent. "felt each other deep and uhh━ intimately," he said, a particular, suggestive emphasis on the last word.

His expression gave away nothing but cheerful optimism. Whether this represented a genuine boundary or merely a circumstantial happenstance was impossible to determine. His eyes, ancient and strange, sparkled with the same uncomplicated pleasure as always, no shadow of shame or even careful consideration crossing their alien depths.

"And that's the beautiful thing, right?" He pressed on, warming to his subject, his free hand finding Loki's hip and squeezing with possessive affection. "It's all just... Bodies. Energy. Connection. The labels, the little boxes, the 'you must not touch this one because of these reasons'━ all of that is just so tiring, isn't it? So very, very provincial."

He leaned closer, his voice dropping to something conspiratorial and warm, breath ghosting against Loki's jaw. "You and Thor, you have this thing. This fraught, complicated, gorgeous thing. I could feel it even when he was a contender in my arena. The way he talked about you, the way you looked at him. The way you orbit each other even when you're trying to fly apart." A soft laugh followed, genuinely delighted. "Imagine if you just... Stopped fighting it. Stopped translating everything into anger or absence or this weird, repressed longing that isn't quite any one thing. Imagine if you just were together, with me, with others, in a space where none of the rules applied."

A moment passed; he'd gotten close to Loki again, nuzzled against him. "But no pressure, obviously. I just think it would be fun. Very cosmic. Very beautiful." And he knew, Loki, his sweet, sharp, feisty little icicle, would shine like a crystal halo in the centre of it all.

[noxaecor]

"No, no, he totally can!" He, too, propped himself up on one elbow, facing Loki right back, suddenly animated, the brightness of a being who had never once in his billions of years of existence encountered a social boundary he didn't immediately attempt to pirouette through. "I used to do it with my brother all the time. Well, brothers. Plural. It was a whole thing." He gestured expansively, his free hand tracing patterns in the air as if conjuring the memory from the neon-lit haze of his own long and peculiar history.

"Taneleer and I, mostly, back in the day. We'd host these gatherings, oh, absolute ragers, the kind of thing that makes what I was doing on Sakaar look like a particularly sedate book club." As he spoke, his eyes sparkled with genuine, unguarded delight, the kind of enthusiasm that alarms as much as it does disarm.

[noxaecor]

The Grandmaster was, at his core, a creature of enthusiasm. He'd been alive for so many billions of years that the universe had long since run out of things that could genuinely surprise him, but it had never, ever run out of things that could delight him. And Loki? Loki was delightful. The most delightful thing he'd come across in so long he could hardly remember when. Sharp and complicated in ways that reminded him of a puzzle box he'd once acquired from his brother, the kind that required seventeen specific manipulations to open and then tried to stab you anyway. He'd loved that box. He'd loved it even more after it tried to stab him.

So when Loki's expression did that thing, that fascinating little cascade of micro-expressions that flickered across his beautiful, angular features like a lightning storm in slow motion, the Grandmaster watched with the same absorbed pleasure he might have given to a particularly gripping round of galatorial combat he'd likely arranged himself.

Confusion, wariness, a flash of something that might have been horror or might have been intrigue, and then that smirk, frozen in place like an old banner that someone had forgotten to take down. He meant it, too. In his mind's eye, the image was already forming, painted in the lurid, saturated colours of one of his personal pleasure murals: Thor, all golden and noble, that ridiculous body of his taking up far more than its fair share of the mattress. Loki, pale and serpentine, caught somewhere between them like the delicious filling in a very attractive, very argumentative sandwich.

A few more layers of bodies, perhaps that beautiful, red-headed singer he'd encountered at a bar earlier in the week, and himself, naturally, orchestrating the whole affair with the practised ease of a being who had been hosting orgies since before most of the known universe had figured out what genitals were for.

It wasn't even a sexual thing, really. Well, it was. Obviously it was. But it was also an aesthetic thing, a compositional thing. The Grandmaster had always appreciated symmetry, balance, the pleasing arrangement of beautiful objects in space. Two brothers, one dark and one light, one sharp and one hard, both of them radiating that particular Asgardian vitality that hummed at a frequency he found deeply agreeable. Why wouldn't he want them both in his bed? It would be like owning a matched set. The sun and the moon.

And that, unfortunately, was perhaps his brother's influence coming out in him. Oh, how envious dear Taneleer would be.  

His mind drifted, as it often did, to specifics. The logistics. Thor would probably be shy at first; he'd seemed like the shy type underneath all that bravado, the kind who needed to be coaxed and flattered into letting go. Loki, on the other hand, would be performing. He was always performing. Even now, with that smirk frozen on his face and his brain clearly short-circuiting behind his brilliant emerald eyes, he was performing. The trick would be getting him to stop. To let the performance crack just enough that something real slipped through.

The Grandmaster imagined Loki in the middle. It was where he naturally gravitated, wasn't it? Caught between forces, between loyalties, between identities. Between his brother's warmth and the Grandmaster's own peculiar brand of attention. It would be a lot for him. A lot of sensation, a lot of emotion, a lot of everything. He'd probably complain. He'd definitely complain. But he wouldn't leave. He never leaves.

"Yeah!" he beamed, utterly unperturbed. "In bed. Could be fun. Very cosmic."

[noxaecor]

Ah, a slightly brighter look passed over the Grandmaster's face at Loki's correction, as if some very old, very dusty little door had just swung open somewhere in the vast archive of his memory. His fingers stopped halfway through another lazy pass through Loki's hair, blue nails catching momentarily against the dark strands.

"Wait, former Sakaarians? Oh yeah! Yes, the revolution! Oh, that's right; we had a big revolution. That was a whole thing! Big thing. Oh wow, I can't believe they made it here━that's fantastic. I'd love to see those guys again, too!" There was such genuine delight in the declaration that one could almost forget those particular Sakaarians had escaped him by violently overthrowing his government. Almost.

En, naturally, seemed to have forgotten that part entirely, or perhaps he just had a different perspective on it. That strange, peculiar way he tended to look at things.

His hand resumed its slow path through Loki's hair while he stared somewhere toward the ceiling, apparently picturing the reunion already. His favourite scrapper, some of the gladiators. Great people. Very spirited. Perhaps there would be drinks. Maybe music. Hopefully nobody brought up the melting stick. He left that at Daryl's place.

Then another thought occurred to him. The Grandmaster's brows lifted, and his voice took on that particular lilt that meant he was about to say something either exceptionally profound or just profoundly stupid.

"You know what, we should invite him. Thor. Here sometime. He could join us; that might be some real fun." He glanced down at Loki, pleased with himself. Join them in the sherbet-coloured sheets. His fingers gave Loki's hair a little affectionate twirl. "Big bed. Plenty of room."

[noxaecor]

The Grandmaster's fingers had been toying with a strand of Loki's long, shiny raven hair, as his humming tapered into a thoughtful little vibration beneath Loki's ear, as though the matter of Thor, the god of Thunder's immortalisation, required some serious contemplation on his part. Which it did, of course. Lots of things about Thor to contemplate, board-strapping figure of manliness that he was.

"Mmm. Big guy. Big statue. Makes sense. Y'know that's a guy I'd like to see again, Thor. Funny thing, I tried to send him a friend request on this video game console, PlayStation. Marvellous invention. The game I've been into recently is called Overwatch. Fantastic stuff—anyhow I think he may have uh, what do you call it, barred me—blocked me? Yeah, blocked me, I think he blocked me. I tried to explain to him that I was like— the god of games, and, ohoho, boy he did NOT like that one. Anyway, he was fun. Really threw himself into the whole Gladiator thing. You just don't get that kind of commitment from most prisoners."

One might have put En's tendency to ramble slightly down to his age from time to time; however, he chuckled in what was absolutely fond remembrance, without the faintest indication that he recognised anything objectionable in the final word.

One might have passed this off as an old mind going senile. Then his hand moved again, now combing lazily through Loki's hair.

"Statues never get noses right, though. Difficult feature. Very political, noses. Had seventy-three statues of myself once—different civilisation, lovely people, all extinct now—and not one captured my profile." He tilted his head, considering. "Maybe we should make you one. Bigger than Thor's. Better nose. That'd cheer you up."

He says that as if he knows it for a fact. Little did he know Loki already had a statue of himself erected on Asgard and that it, apparently, had made him feel better somehow.

[mxgicdave]

had a bit of nostalgia for these two today

[noxaecor]

@heleerie

[iamtheonewhodraws]

Portrait thing I did

[noxaecor]

@heleerie

[noorahnoorahnoorah]

[heleerie]

@noxaecor

[noxaecor]

@heleerie

A thin sheen of sweat clung to the back of her neck despite the chill. In the real world, somewhere distant and unimportant, her body sat cross-legged in a darkened room, her fingers curled against her knees hard enough to ache. She sat on the cold floor. Jane, her sister, was suspended in a tank of water, using the same trick with greater capacity. The two of them had travelled together in search of their wayward brother, the would-be destroyer of the world.

Henry. One. She remembered him clearly. A pale young man, blue eyes, blond hair, a strange, haunting angelic quality about him, or perhaps she had just assigned him as much as a saviour. She had thought of him every day since she had escaped that place ━ Hawkins Laboratory ━ a feat that would not have been possible without him. She thought, as she aged, if she could track down every man involved in their capture, in their imprisonment, and kill them, she might be able to free him in return.

And now the task of killing him was set before her. But was it him she wanted dead? Or was it everyone else? And was it not easier to end herself? She would kill him ━ she would try ━ because it was the only way. The only way to truly put an end to any of this.

Eleven had taken the lead, of course, she had; her powers could be offensive when needed, and Kali possessed no such talent. So she had brandished a knife, had taken her chance to dive on top of him, to look down into a face she remembered, his eyes no less blue, his hair no less blond, his brows furrowed into a look that wasn't as much rage as it was confusion.

He was not a nightmare; she could not see the thing the children of Hawkins called Vecna. Underneath her was not a rotting, maimed god dragging the world down into hell by its roots, but beneath her for a moment was Henry, the boy from the lab she remembered.

Still, she brought the knife down, and the heart she aimed for vanished into the air. She keeled on the table, the space between her knees empty, the knife lodged in the mahogany where he had once been. The air had grown colder, the room had gone darker, and she realised, he had found her.

Jane was gone. "Henry?" She hated how soft it still sounded. She hated the small, helpless part of her that remembered he had never seen her as a number. She remembered him kneeling in front of her, long limbs folded awkwardly, his gaze flicking once toward the camera in the corner before he lowered his voice. She remembered him telling her not to cry. She remembered him making a guard look the other way. He had given her the access cards to unlock the doors to her prison.

So why, then, did every whisper that reached her now carry his name like a curse? Kali's breath caught before she could stop it. She continues, knowing he is there, knowing he could hear her. "Why have you betrayed us, Brother? You helped me. You were good. You were going to help me; we were going to put an end to Hawkins Laboratory, to the bad men who hurt us. Don't you remember?"