ONCE, PERHAPS HE DREAMED OF GLORY. These days, his dreams are messy, tangled ‘round prophecy and things long banished from memory. At best, they are mostly benign and confusing; at worst, Midgard burns, a serpent rises, a great wolf swallows the sun. A titan reaches and breaks the cosmos. A god-killer leaves a trail of blood that he is helpless to stop.
No wonder he doesn’t sleep often. A god’s luxury, perhaps, to be able to not need sleep as humans do.
His breathing is even, but he’s snagged neatly between that pleasant haze of satiation and drowsy half-sleep, mind blank but distantly aware of that warmth that still curls through his belly and leaves a pleasant burn at the base of his spine that threatens to want more but when is he ever truly done?
Fingers on his stomach, shift of weight against him, he doesn’t bother opening his eyes. There’s a question in that sound, low and in his chest, proper words dying somewhere in his throat.
The answer gets a short huff, more amusement than aught else, but perhaps there is agreement. It is, and he distantly thinks perhaps he should get up, open a window, turn on a fan. He doesn’t mind the heat; it reminds him of a time long ago, vaguely, distantly, when his life was less complicated. Tangled with humans much as he is now, against the crackle of a fire in a hearth and goatskins under them, too hot for comfort but too lazy to move, and the howling Scandinavian winters outside.
The howling has been replaced with the distant noises of a city that never sleeps, but it slips the same old fondness into his bones.
Kisses press along his jaw, and the Stormbringer rouses, turns toward them —— rolls over to prop half up on an elbow and mouth a kiss with only the faintest edge of teeth against Clint’s shoulder. It’s heavy, lazy, perhaps poking at the beginning of something else coming but there’s no rush, there’s never any rush. ❛ I could open the window, ❜ he says at last, almost an offer, uncertain if it’s heard but inclined just to get up and do it anyway. In a minute.