hokey-pokey-loki - Tumblr blog

hokey-pokey-loki · 2 years

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cherry on top (loki x f. reader)

Loki's messed up. you're mad, and he knows it. so what does a demigod who is learning to be in a functioning relationship decide to do? make you cupcakes. and then fuck the shit out of you.

who doesn't love romantic possessive groveling Loki? come on now.

Word Count: 3300 Warnings: 18+ heavy smut.

Relationships with a god are a weird thing. Particularly one that was still trying to unlearn his sociopathic tendencies.

You thought about this as you angrily washed the dishes, suds flying onto your sweatshirt as you slammed pots into the soapy water. The dirty dishes were just another thing rubbing you the wrong way. It was totally his turn.

First, Loki was gone for two weeks. Something urgent on Asgard. As if you could verify that. He hadn’t given you any details, just suddenly appeared in the doorway one morning with his gold breastplate on, telling you he’d be back as soon as he could.

When was he going to start inviting me? you thought, angrily scrubbing some two-day old pasta sauce from a bowl. You’d think six months would be enough.

Six months of waking him up from his night terrors, the kind that left him drenched in sweat and disoriented. Holding him until he believed that Thor was still alive, or he wasn’t under the Tesseract’s control, or Odin wasn’t here to lock him up. Six months of discovering the Loki he showed to no one else.

Anxiety took over in his absence, convincing you that Loki had returned to his realm permanently, without you. Your heart had leapt when you heard the familiar roar on your balcony, but he hadn’t seemed excited to see you at all when the Bifrost spit him out. He just swept in, looking distracted and worried, a quick peck on your cheek instead of his warm embrace. So you’d decided to withdraw.

And now, despite your anger, you missed him. Even though he was in the same house as you, he felt unreachable.

“Loki, I’m going for a walk,” you called through the closed door of his office. No answer. You scoffed in frustration as you laced up your tennis shoes, the hurt landing like a dull thump in your chest.

____________________

As soon as Loki heard the door click shut, he emerged from his office, getting to work right away. He didn’t know how long you’d walk, but it was usually an hour. Considering how cold you’d been toward him, he felt like you might be gone at least two.

Loki knew it was his fault. He saw the way you shut down after he’d returned from Asgard, and it broke his heart. But he couldn’t tell you why he’d gone. He had no reason for this mental block that was keeping him from you, besides fear. Tonight, he hoped, would be different.

He grimaced as he saw the heaping pile of freshly washed plates and bowls that you’d just finished. He didn’t have an excuse for those.

The dark-haired man sent a green flash over the dishes, drying them instantly. He whisked them away with a flick of his wrist and took a deep breath.

Loki set to work, filling your tiny apartment countertop with flour, eggs, sugar, vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg, mixing bowls and spoons. He raced back to his office where he’d so carefully printed out a recipe and taped it to the cabinet above the stove.

All right Laufeyson, absolutely no magic for this, he told himself, tying an apron around his waist.

For the next hour, Loki succeeded in covering himself in flour, cracking an egg on the ground, and spilling the vanilla. To his own delight, the twelve lopsided cupcakes that emerged from the oven looked perfectly edible. He pried each one out of their tin with the dexterity of a surgeon, wanting every detail to be perfect for you.

He whipped the frosting until he was sweating, then carefully spread it with a knife on top of each cupcake. Finally, breathless but utterly proud of his hard labor, he placed the twelve cupcakes on a plate and stepped back, anxiously waiting for your return.

_______________

You returned to your front door, flushed but refreshed from your long walk. You sniffed the air in the hallway, confused. It smelled…good for a change.

You turned the key in the lock and jumped. There was Loki, sitting expectantly on one of the kitchen stools. Your eyes landed on the piles of dirty dishes in the sink, the eggshells lying on the counter.

“Did you…fucking…bake?” you asked incredulously to the grinning man in front of you.

Loki’s cheeks were flushed. Flour coated his apron and had landed in his black curls, tinting the ends of them gray. He looked so proud of himself, you couldn’t help but smile a little bit.

“All by myself,” Loki said. “No seidr.”

“Wow…” you said, closing the door behind you and moving closer to inspect his work. They were…charming. The frosting sagged a little, and the tops of them were a little singed.

“They’re for you,” Loki said, his voice timid.

“For me?” you said, taking one. His eyes widened as you took a thoughtful bite.

“Oh, fuck, are they disgusting?” he said after you didn’t answer.

You chewed a little longer, relishing the suspense you were giving him.

“I’m very impressed,” you responded, finally, unable to suppress your smile even with your mouth full. His eyes lit up, his cheeks creasing with that smile you loved so much. He looked almost bashful, something you didn’t know he was capable of until very recently.

After a few moments, he spoke again.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve been awful lately.”

You licked the frosting off your fingers as you considered him.

“Continue…” you said slowly.

“I’ve neglected you, darling, for no good reason except my own anxieties.”

“…so this was a peace offering?” you asked reproachfully, motioning to the cupcakes.

“Yes…,” he drawled. “I know it doesn’t make up for anything, but, I-” his voice trailed off and he looked at his hands.

“It certainly didn’t hurt,” you smiled. His face brightened a little.

“I thought you weren’t coming back this time,” you said after a long pause. “From Asgard.”

He looked at you, his concerned eyes searching your face.

“I thought you were done with me. And then you got back and it’s like you can’t stand to be in the same room as me,” you finished. Your voice was quiet, hints of anger still audible. “What’s with that?” you asked, meeting his blue eyes. “I thought we were a team.”

Loki reached for you and stroked a tentative thumb over your chin.

“I’m so sorry, darling,” he said, raising your face to look at him. “I hate that I made you feel like I’d abandoned you. I would have come back sooner I just-”

“Just what?” you prompted, feeling your frustration at him returning.

Loki sighed, grabbing one of your hands and holding it between his.

“I was putting things in order so you could come to Asgard.”

Your mouth fell open.

“And I didn’t know if it was going to be possible at all, and so I didn’t tell you. I’m sorry for that, I just didn’t want to get false hopes. And….” Loki trailed off, looking ashamed. “Then once I got back I somehow convinced myself that you wouldn’t want to come at all. And so I…shut down. And that made you hate me. And now here we are. Cupcakes.” Loki chuckled ruefully, gazing up at you again.

“Oh, Loki,” you sighed, your anger dissolving instantly. “You want me to…”

“You don’t have to come, if you don’t want to.” Loki said, quickly. “I don’t want to put pressure on you. I think I was…afraid. To ask you.”

You were so proud of him. The Loki you knew six months ago was unrecognizable to the man before you. Feeling real emotions, talking about them, not shoving them down.

“Did…did you talk to Odin?” you said incredulously, sinking to rest on his lap.

“Unfortunately,” Loki grimaced. “There was no getting around it.”

You held his face in your hands, your love for him spilling over unbearably.

“I’m so proud of you,” you said, planting a kiss on his cheek. “That must have been so hard.”

“It was,” he replied, tucking a lock of hair behind your ear. “But you made me feel like I could.”

Your chest felt like it was on fire. It was such a good feeling after so many days of longing hurt, feeling like the end was in sight. Now, it seemed like this was just the beginning.

You held his face tighter, looking him dead in the eye. His unwavering gaze stared back at you, his eyes full of relief.

“Look at you,” you grinned, playing with a flour-dusted curl. “Prince Loki, absolutely whipped for a Midgardian girl.”

His gaze grazed over your lips, then flicked back up to your face. You saw desire pooling in his eyes, and knew you were done for.

“Guilty as charged,” he whispered, drawing you closer to him.

“Uh uh,” you put a finger up to his tempting lips, a barrier preventing him from enveloping you in a kiss. “Despite your bribe, Laufeyson, I’m not doing the fucking dishes again,” you whispered into his ear, tickling the sensitive skin on his neck with your breath. You took his chin in your hand, turning his entire head so he stared at the pile of sticky dishes in the sink instead of your lips.

His greedy hands grabbed the curve of your ass harder, undeterred. He grinned, a hint of the wickedness that once consumed him making itself visible again. It didn’t scare you anymore. It just meant you might not be able to walk tomorrow.

His eyes snapped back to yours, so cocky in his magic that he didn’t even have to look at what he was doing. One careless flick of his two fingers dissolved the residue on the dishes and the crumbs on the counter. They stacked themselves in the drain, shining and dry.

He raised one eyebrow at you as the last dish flew into its place.

“Satisfied, my lady?” Loki teased, letting his hands trail higher up your thighs.

“Not yet,” you told him, biting your lip as you reached down to untie his apron.

“Mmm… good answer…” Loki said, sly seduction in his voice. He gripped you tighter, and in one smooth movement, he rose from the stool, lifting you to straddle him as if you weighed nothing. Your body responded before you could register what happened, your legs wrapping around him and your hands instinctively pulling his lips to yours. He moaned appreciatively into your mouth, your kiss sending shockwaves of heat between his legs. God, he’d missed you so much.

Your tongues collided over and over again, each kiss getting sloppier than the last. Your bodies were on autopilot now, falling into each other as if no time had passed. Loki wasted no time striding into your bedroom, kicking the door shut behind him. He kneeled on the bed, still holding you at his waist as he lay you down, refusing to let an inch of air between the two of you. He rolled his hips on top of you, his hungry mouth devouring your lips with such ferocity you thought he’d never let you up for air. You loved it.

His rock-hard cock made its presence known on your stomach as he pressed his body into you. You felt it twitch with every sweet noise you made into his mouth. He wanted you so badly.

“Mmm…babygirl…” Loki breathed into your neck after your lips broke apart. “Did you think of me?”

Your back arched against him, remembering all the nights he was gone and how your body ached for him, an unbearably deep craving. How despite your best efforts, your own fingers could produce only a fleeting climax that temporarily dulled the ache.

“Tell me…how you touched yourself to the thought of me…” he groaned, licking a hot stripe up your abdomen with his wicked tongue.

“I did, Loki…I did…” you gasped, knowing just how to stroke his ego. “So many times. Every night. I craved you and only you.”

“That’s right, darling,” he crooned, tugging the edge of your panties down your hips a little with his teeth. “Only I can make you scream…”

“I couldn’t bear it…” you gasped, three weeks of aching for him much too long. “You drive me crazy…”

“Let me make it up to you…” Loki replied, making your panties disappear in a glimmer of green light, baring yourself to him. The kisses he lay on your inner thighs burned white-hot, your skin on fire from his touch.

“Please…” you begged him. You spread your legs wider, to his delight, desperation evident in your dripping cunt.

At the first toe-curling contact of his tongue against your clit, your back arched and your mouth fell open, curses of anguished pleasure tumbling off your lips.

His teasing flicks soon became deep strokes as your moans encouraged him, his tongue consuming you with such vigor, it was like he thought you were going to dissolve at any moment.

“Fuck…baby…” Loki moaned against your skin, attacking your clit with more of those addicting swirls of the tip of his tongue. “You unravel me…” he said in a lusty voice, sucking the juices that flowed onto his fingers when they teased your entrance. He looked at you when he did this, sending a shiver down your spine. His eyes blazed, showing you how much he loved to destroy you.

His head dipped again, this time his tongue darting in and out of you with incomprehensible speed. You were going to come, so much faster than you wanted to.

“Loki…oh” your voice hitching on another wave of pleasure that ricocheted from his tongue.

“Loki…” you called again, fumbling for his curls. Reluctantly, he emerged from between your legs.

“Mhmm?” he groaned, lapping your juices with a long, slow lick up the length of your slit. God, it was so hard to make him stop. “Darling, what is it?”

“Please…” you felt your pleasure start to deflate with the denial you put yourself through. But you needed something else from him.

“I want…” you whimpered, writhing your hips under him, urging him forward. “I want to come on your cock…” He understood instantly, his hands flying to his belt to rip it off. Your greedy hands reached for him, tearing his shirt over his head and tossing it aside. His cock strained in his boxers, the sight of it sending fresh floods to your cunt. You were desperate to be filled by every inch of him, and you told him so.

In an instant, he was on top of you, pressing his delicious weight into you as he kissed you fervently. The taste of your cunt still lingered on his tongue, a reminder of how he possessed you.

“Augh…” Loki moaned your name as you swiped the head of his cock with your thumb, taking a drop of his precome with it. You raised it to your lips and sucked it off, your eyes locked on his as you did so.

“You taste so fucking good, my prince…” you said with a breathy moan, his salt dancing on your tongue.

Loki looked at you with a primal intensity, his chest heaving as he watched you. More slick leaked out of his tip onto your chest. It slid down your breasts, an image that made his cock impossibly harder, twitching with want as he panted into your mouth, both your juices mingling between your tongues.

“Gods…you’re exquisite…” panted Loki, swiping his dripping tip up and down your entrance. “You know that?” His velvet voice and your aching core were too much.

“Show me, then.” Your voice wasn’t harsh, but commanding nonetheless. Loki understood, his urgent movements slowing to look you in the eye. He’d let you down when he left, and he knew that he couldn’t in good conscience let you sleep tonight until you collapsed on top of him, utterly spent.

“For you, my darling, anything,” he groaned, gathering some of your juices in his palm to stroke himself with. He positioned himself between your hips, rubbing your clit with a lazy thumb as he began to press into you. You opened nearly instantly, your body so desperate to feel him inside you that he slid in nearly to the hilt.

“Ohh…Loki…oh my god…” you gasped at his fullness, your fingers digging into his back as you beckoned him closer, deeper, further inside of you.

“Mmfffuck…” Loki groaned as he sank himself into you, lips locked on yours. His tongue in your mouth and his cock splitting you open made you feel utterly full, complete in his arms. Your body quivered with pleasure as his hips rolled gracefully, beginning to fuck you in the most sensual way a man could.

“Oh.hh..hh,” you cried as you felt the ridges of his head beginning to ram that sweet spot inside of you.

“That’s it, my sweet girl,” Loki growled. “Look at you, taking my cock so well…Fuck.”

He captured your lips in another deep kiss, but this time, his strong arms wrapped around your waist and rolled you on top of him, his cock still deep inside you. You yelped in surprise, but cried out as soon as you felt his hands on your waist again, pushing you deeper into his length. You moved your hips side to side, enjoying how Loki’s face contorted in pleasure as your walls clenched around him.

“Fuck me, sweet girl, that’s it,” he moaned, his fingers bruising on the small of your waist. “Use my cock…ohhhhmmmfuck…that’s a good girl.”

Your entire body began to feel tense, the denied pleasure from before returning with double its previous strength. Wetness flowed down your thighs as he stretched you open, fueled by the mewling noises he was making as you rode him. Your legs shook as you raised yourself up and down his shaft, rolling your hips onto him faster and faster, your pulses becoming more urgent as you approached your peak.

You grabbed his hands desperately as you fucked onto his cock, guiding them in a slow, sensual trail down your body. First your breasts, then the soft skin of your abdomen, the fullness of your thighs. You loved feeling his hands on you, and you knew it was guaranteed to drive him over the edge. Loki quivered, his breath coming in desperate gasps, his release growing dangerously close as he was enraptured by your body.

“Darling…augh..fuck..” he panted, his cock tightening within you. “I’m gonna come, darling, please, come with me, come on my cock…” he rambled, his voice hoarse with lust.

You took this as an opportunity to fuck him harder. You raised yourself nearly to his tip, slamming down into him until you swore his head hit your cervix. His head fell back with a strained moan of your name, his eyes forced shut as he tried to restrain his release. Your tight cunt squeezed his cock in rythmmic pulses as you fucked down on him again and again, the both of you hurtling towards ecstasy.

You knew you were coming undone when your vision began to blur, the muscles in your core pulsing around Loki’s cock tighter than they ever had before.

“Please…come with me, darling,” Loki’s strangled voice begged you one more time, and you could hold back no longer. You sank down onto him one final time, your head falling back in pure pleasure as you came, throbbing around Loki.

“Holy…fuck…” Your climax sent your prince over the edge. When your walls clenched around him, Loki saw stars as he exploded inside of you. You felt his warm liquid flowing down your walls as you rode out your pleasure together, sweaty and panting as you came back to Earth.

You melted into his chest, your head coming to rest in the crook of his neck. He was still wedged inside you, his release beginning to drip out of you onto the bed sheets. You kissed his damp collarbones, feeling him twitch and shudder inside you with the overstimulation.

“Gods, woman,” he hissed as he reluctantly slipped himself out of you. He held you tighter to his chest, his breath still unsteady thanks to you. “Remind me to bake more often.”

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thanks for reading :) reblogs and comments (!!) are always appreciated smooches

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hokey-pokey-loki · 2 years

Text

self-indulgent

This is what it really means to love something death can touch.

Characters: Loki Laufeyson/(f)Reader

Warnings: 18+ (no smut) strong language, religion, death, reincarnation, weird timelines, angst, wildly different than most things i write

Word Count: 4365

A/N: Thanks for reading! This one is a wild one. Here, take a dose of avant-garde fanfiction that I wrote in like a day a few months back after listening to Achilles Come Down on repeat. This is not good fanfiction, nor good writing, fair warning. But I come back to this story time and time again because I love it, so I hope you do too. Remember to follow @divine-library to get the latest fic updates!

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His hand burns your temple when he brushes a tangle of hair away from your face. Beneath the wide sleeve of his robe, a flash of blackened skin meets your gaze until he pulls back, the sweeping fabric of his clothes causing minute ripples in the air as he returns to his throne. It’s not much of a throne, you think. It’s a rickety old kitchen chair he falls into, but when it frames his body and he situates his long legs to spread out before you, it might as well be. His throne. The throne you’ve given him.

“Will you not worship me?” he spits at you, but where there’s venom in his teeth, there is a warmth—a fondness—in his glacier eyes.

Your knees ache against the wooden floor. He hides his hands in his lap, covered by silk, but you know by now that his right is soot-black, decaying from the soft touches he’s spent on your body. When he tosses his head, impatient and a little indignant, and his satin black locks fall in front of his eyes, you smile.

“No,” you tell him, with a bow of your head.

In a moment—a blink—he seizes your hair with a vice-like grip, but there’s no pain. He snatches your head back, forcing you to gaze into his cool eyes, a twitch of a frown on his lips. His fingers work their way into your hair, tangling in the threads of silk that he once said bewitched him.

It is the only part of you that he may touch freely.

“Insolent girl,” he says. It almost sounds tender. “You will bow to my dominion yet.”

His lips fall to the crook of your shoulder, but don’t touch your skin. Instead, he lets his breath kiss the column of your neck—a parting gift. He raises his knuckles to your mouth, where you press your lips to the metal of the golden ring he wears on his middle finger.

“Do not pray to me,” he whispers into your hair. You close your eyes. You know what comes next.

When you blink away the darkness, he is gone. His throne is empty, leaving behind a rickety kitchen chair pushed against a mismatched table, the cup of tea you brewed just before he arrived gone cold on its surface. The smell of him, crisp citrus and ash, lingers in your hair.

In the night, you pray to him anyway. As usual, it’s for forgiveness.

The woods are burning. Char and smoke fill your lungs and you cannot breathe.

When you fall to your hands and knees on the forest floor, legs buckling beneath the weight of the chase as you run toward the fire, a hand descends upon your back. It’s a man you’ve seen before. You can’t remember his name. His blond hair is familiar and his eyes are blue but they are deep and the color of berries, not ice.

“Loki—” you try to say, but his name tastes like blood in your mouth. “He’s—”

“I know,” your savior says. He pulls you off the ground and you watch in wonder at how his skin doesn’t blacken when his bare hands touch your arms. “He will be alright.”

Even as your savior drags you away from the woods, your fingers are outstretched toward the billowing smoke that covers the treetops. It’s all orange and red. He hates those colors, you know. His favorites are the greens and golds and blacks of the forest. Autumn doesn’t suit him, you think.

Soon, you are deemed too slow and your savior picks you up by the waist and slings you across his shoulder, and then you are moving through the world so quickly that the colors blend together and images are blurry.

The man takes you to a temple—his own temple, you realize, the streaks of red and blue and gold like lightning across your eyes. Your savior is Thor, and you aren’t sure if that means you are safe or if you should run. Run now. Loki always told you to run if Thor sought after you.

Loki said Thor could never keep his selfish hands to himself, but you wonder why Thor’s selfish hands did not turn black at your touch.

As if he notices your inner turmoil, Thor turns and smiles at you, bringing a warmth to your bones that just reminds you of the burning tinder you’ve left behind.

“Don’t worry,” he says. “You and Loki are not my business.”

You shift uncomfortably under his stare. “It is not like that.” You don’t dare call him by any name. You don’t dare to worship him the way you worship his brother.

Thor smiles wider. “I will not kill you, nor will I kill Loki, if that is what you are wondering.”

“Then take me to him.” Your voice sounds foreign, even to yourself.

He frowns, then, and you shiver. “I cannot do that.”

It takes less than a second for you to turn and flee, following the smell of smoke in the air toward the burning forest you dared to call home. Thor grabs you before you make it far, his arm winding around your waist to capture you.

“I promised I would keep you safe,” he tells you. “I promised my brother.”

“I was never safe,” you snarl, fighting against his grasp. “He knew that—he knew!”

The last thought you have as Thor drags you further into his temple is that Loki was always cold, and you hoped the fire wouldn’t melt the ice that kept his eyes hardened when he looked at everyone except you.

When you first meet him, he is dressed in a suit that drips sex and sin. He looks like a god. He looks like he will devour you, red miniskirt and all, if you even glance his way. And god, you look his way, and you know that he knows you are looking at him from the way his lips purse into a cruel sort of smile. He steals a drink off a passing tray and presents it to you—an offering. You tell him you don’t drink, and you pour your whiskey sour out on the floor beside you.

His eyes are frost; a lake that had iced over; blood was spilt, children had drowned in its depths.

He tells you he is the God of Something. You laugh in his face and twirl away to the dance floor. When you look back, he’s gone. You wish you had given him your number. Or maybe slipped away to the bathroom with him. Something. Anything.

In the morning, you wonder if he had been real.

The next time, he isn’t dressed in a suit. He’s in a soft green sweater that brings out something devious in his eyes and a pair of brand name jeans. His raven hair falls in soft waves around his jaw, sweeping just over his shoulder. You don’t know how he finds you. Maybe you don’t really mind. There’s something about him that’s familiar. Something about him that’s dangerous. Something about him feels safe.

“Loki,” he introduces himself finally, as he rifles through his wallet to buy you a cheap cup of coffee.

“That’s a weird name,” you say.

“You liked it, once.”

When you look at him, his eyes have melted. They are less icy, more like ocean waves rolling against a rocky shore. There’s something so predatory and yet so enticing about the way he looks at you, and you feel inhuman under his gaze.

“You never told me your name,” you say with narrowed eyes.

He tilts his head, a knowing smile on his lips. “Did I not? My mistake.”

The third time you meet him, he smells of fire and gunpowder and smoke and mirrors and mulch from the graveyard. You don’t know why you like it. When he stands too close, you feel dizzy. You’re sitting on a park bench and he takes up the space beside you without asking. How does he keep finding you?

“Hello again, girl,” he addresses you. Somehow, you find the strength not to slap him across his perfect mouth.

“That’s not my name,” you say. He smiles.

Then, he reaches out and moves a strand of your hair behind your ear, fingers grazing over the bones of your cheek. You flinch, and when you blink, you expect to see his skin turn black.

You don’t know why, but you do.

Instead, you pull back, glancing away from him.

“Are you stalking me?”

He throws his head back and laughs, and the milky skin of his throat seems like it should be coated in blood. You wonder if those dark marks you see are scars. They wrap around his neck like barbed wire. Slashed skin. Blood. Why do you always follow the smoke when you know it leads to fire?

“No, girl, I’m not stalking you,” he says. “Perhaps we are destined to meet this way.”

There’s a tugging in the back of your mind, something that someone told you once, long ago.

Perhaps we are destined to die this way.

But you don’t follow it, and you don’t answer it, and you push it to the recesses of your mind again. Instead, you stare up at Loki, eyes piercing through the white skin of his that has yet to turn black. There is something about him that makes your heart feel like it could jump off cliffs and dive into oceans. Danger. Safety.

“Don’t follow me again,” you hiss, and his eyes crinkle at that.

“You’ll miss me,” he says. And then he shoves his hands into the pockets of his impossibly tight slacks and saunters off without another word, and you wonder if you should have made him promise not to say he told you so.

Loki doesn’t make promises he can’t keep, you know.

“It is his punishment,” Thor explains, “not death.”

His words don’t stop your tears. You can’t stop crying, sobs shattering your shoulders as you hunch over yourself in front of the temple statue. Maybe you should pray to Thor. Maybe you should pray to the Gods that are burning your home instead.

Thor tries to comfort you, his hand rubbing smooth circles on your back. You don’t understand why he’s touching you. You wait for his skin to turn black but it never does.

“Loki knew this was the only way it could end,” he whispers. “He knew this was coming. The Gods always punish those who fall to sin—even Gods themselves.”

“Then why did he let it happen?”

Thor is quiet. The sounds of the cicadas surrounding the temple is a hallowed screeching to your ears. You want to run away from here. The smoke is gone now—the woods, decimated. There is no more fire, none burning in the hearth, none burning in your heart. You asked Thor to put out the candles. You can’t handle the smell of flames anymore.

“Because he—”

“Don’t say it,” you plead. “Don’t say it.”

You repeat it like the prayers you repeated before bed at night. You always ask for forgiveness— never to be saved. You don’t want to be saved. Not by him. Certainly not by Thor. You won’t be saved, you know, nor will you be forgiven for the sins you’ve committed in worship.

But Gods, you wish he would forgive you for what you did to him.

Thor’s skin doesn’t decay when he touches you.

“He will come back,” he says quietly. “Eventually. We all do.”

“I will be dead,” you tell him.

Thor is quiet again. You realize he gets quiet when he has nothing to say. Loki isn’t like that. Loki always knows what to say and when he doesn’t, he makes something up. A liar, The God of Mischief. God of Lies. God of the sins you’ve committed against him.

“You will be,” Thor says, and you wonder if Loki lied about that too. “But life and death are cyclical, for Gods and mortals alike. Death, too, will come to pass.”

Maybe Thor is the true God of Lies. Maybe Thor was the one you should have been praying to all along. Death only comes to pass for those who don’t know love. You don’t understand. Maybe you aren’t meant to. Maybe Thor is just trying to comfort you.

“It should have been me,” you say. “I should have been punished.”

“Gods do not punish mortals for their love,” he says, and when you look up from beneath your tear-stained lashes, he is staring at the darkened sky. A bolt of lightning breaks through the cloud coverage. His eyes cut to you, and you realize they are cold, like Loki’s. Brothers.

“Gods cannot love things death can touch.”

You think maybe that’s why Thor’s hands never turn black when they touch you.

The fourth time you see him, he looks surprised. You slide into the other side of his booth at some diner at three in the morning, awakened yet again by a dream you cannot decipher. You don’t know how you found him. You put one foot in front of the other and something led you here—to him.

He stares at you, pleased, but confusion muddles his brow. “Are you stalking me now?” he asks, gleeful.

“No,” you tell him, but he looks entirely too happy that you’re sitting across from him. You relish in that joy. It makes his face more beautiful, softens the sharp lines of his bones, brightens the shadows that settle under his eyes. You might have believed him a god, had he not introduced himself as one.

“Pancakes?”

“Please.”

The waitress leaves you alone. The diner is empty. He stares, stares, and stares at you and it makes you uneasy. It makes you weak-kneed. There is a silence that surrounds your table that seems like it can’t be broken.

So you break it.

“Why do I dream of you?”

He smiles at this. You think there is mischief in his lake-like eyes, sparkling just beneath the surface.

“Oh, girl, I told you that you would miss me.”

“That’s not my name,” you snap at him, teeth gnashing. “Answer the question. Who are you?”

Loki stirs his coffee and shrugs. “A God,” he says easily.

“That isn’t true.”

His eyes flick up to meet yours as he takes a sip from his mug, hiding his cheshire grin.

“Perhaps not.”

You slam your palm against the table.

For the past month, you’ve had dreams that seem to weave together, showing images of places and people you’ve never seen before. The only familiar thing is his face, but his hair is much longer and tied in the back, and he wears intricate robes lined with golden thread. He never touches you.

So now, you reach out and touch him, grabbing his hand. Loki startles, pulling away, but you lace your fingers in his. You wait for it—for the black marks to come. They don’t come. They never do like this.

When you meet his gaze, it’s fond again. Maybe it’s always fond and you just never notice.

“Who are you?” you ask again. Then, his gaze is faraway, and it seems like he’s looking right through you.

“A mortal, this time,” he says, and you snatch your hand from his, snapping the web of longing that threatens to ensnare you every single time you meet, and break away from the table, leaving the diner with the bell ringing overhead.

It’s all meaningless.

His lips feel like snow against your own when he kisses you, and you want to close your eyes and press against him but you can’t stop watching horror that unfolds before you. As his mouth moves upon yours, his tongue sweeping along the seam of your lips, you watch as the skin at his jaw slowly turns black, deteriorating, eroding the lines of his glass cheekbones as he continues to kiss you.

“I will corrupt you,” he once said when you sat between his legs, your hair wrapped around his wrist in a tight hold—the only hold he could afford you. “There are so many things I wish to do to you,” he said, “and not all of them are kind. Not all of them are blessings.”

You looked up at him, hazy eyes and bliss and all, and smiled. “Tell me all of your violent delights,” you said, “and I assure you I will still beg for your forgiveness.”

His hold tightened, your eyes weeping with salt and sin and pleasure.

“You want me to corrupt you, you insolent girl,” he growled.

“You think I won’t do the same to you.”

You were. You would. You will.

You are.

Even as you try and push him away, fingers pressed against the sliver of his chest that peeks through his robe, black forms where your skin meets his. You are corrupting him, just as you once said that you would. You stumble away from him and he lets you go. When you look up, there is panic in his iced-over eyes, a red hot alert in blue that you haven’t seen before. He’s worried. He thinks he’s hurt you.

You’ve hurt him worse.

“You can’t kiss me,” you say. “You can’t—you can’t keep touching me.”

He takes a step forward. “I can,” he tells you. Another step. “I will.”

You step back. “Not anymore.”

That makes him stop. Loki looks at you with something in his eyes that you don’t want to name. You can’t name it. The moment you say it out loud, you are doomed. He’s already corrupted by your mere presence. You’ve done this to him.

“Will you not worship me?” he asks you.

“No,” you say.

He smiles, but his eyes are a storm brewing at the center of a gulf.

“Then, will you not love me?” he asks, holding out a hand to you. His skin there is black, decay trailing up his arm where it hides beneath his sleeve. At his shoulder, behind the neckline of his robe, there is black there, too.

“No,” you say, and his fingers curl into a fist.

He chases after you outside the diner. It’s snowing outside. You are reminded of ash from a burning forest.

“Don’t leave me again,” he says, and you turn. With caution, he reaches out, fingers grasping a strand of your hair between them. “Your hair is still spun silk,” he says, a soft sigh that you think is too gentle for someone who once burned for your sins. You don’t know why you think that.

“I don’t know you,” you tell him. “I don’t know who you are.”

His eyes are not cold. They are not warm. They are drowning.

“You do,” he says. “You do know me—from a long, long time ago.”

“A memory?” you ask. You don’t know why it’s what you think of, but he nods.

“Perhaps.”

“Tell me,” you demand, and he reaches out toward you again, but this time, he lets his hand fall back to his side as if he is afraid. Could a god fear a mortal?

“I can’t,” he says. “I can’t tell you.”

So you turn and you walk off, shuffling through the snow, and when you look back to see if he’s following you, he’s gone.

It isn’t the woods that are burning—it is Loki.

But Thor is there and he takes you, suffocating you with his hand over your mouth, and drags you away as you scream into his palm.

You don’t know if it's corruption or fire, but Loki’s naked skin is all black.

This is what it really means to love something death can touch.

“Thor and Loki were brothers,” the tour guide tells you, pulling at her stuffy museum uniform as she stands there awkwardly. You’ve been rooted in place for far too long, staring at the ancient paintings that depict the same imagery found in your dreams. Here, Loki is falling from Thor’s grasp into a fiery pit of Hell. Thor’s blond hair is billowing behind him on Heaven’s breeze. Loki’s hair is longer than it is in the present, longer than in your dreams, and the ends are catching fire.

You think you smell smoke and cedar and citrus and sex and for a minute, you want to tell her that the woods never burned—it was only him.

But she never mentions a forest.

“Loki is known as the God of Lies, while Thor is the God of Forgiveness, though those are their lesser known dominions. People wonder why these two were brothers, but I think that there’s something sacred in honesty and forgiveness being intertwined, don’t you?”

No, you think, but you don’t dare to say that aloud. Instead, you nod, and ask for more.

“Well, it was said that Thor was considered the sun, and Loki was considered the moon, to the ancient people. The night may bring mischief and liars in the dark, but when the next day comes, there is forgiveness on the horizon. Thor was always well-liked, whereas Loki was a bit of a troublemaker. When we look at religions today, some scholars believe that Loki may be akin to our idea of sin, whereas we associate Thor with forgiveness of those sins.”

Yes, you think. That is much closer to the truth.

She leaves after a while, realizing that you aren’t moving from the painting of Loki’s fall. There’s something about it that’s wrong. Something false. Fake. The painting is not correct. You don’t know why you know that.

“Thor didn’t try to save him,” someone says from behind you, their quiet voice making you jump. When you turn around, it’s a blond man. He’s tall, well-built, muscular. His hair is cropped short, and your first thought is that he’s your savior.

“Excuse me?”

“Thor,” he says again, smiling. “Thor didn’t try to save his brother from falling, like in the painting. All the historians or whatever, that’s what they think. That Thor was holding onto Loki until Loki let go and fell into Hell. But it’s not true. Thor watched Loki burn, knowing that his brother wished to fall from grace and become mortal.”

The museum here is quiet. This room isn’t frequented. No one cares much about gods that don’t exist and might never have existed. An unnamed religion is a dead religion. You wished the tour guide would come back and save you. This man can’t possibly be your savior.

“Do I know you?” you ask him. He hums, looking up at the painting, and then glances down at you.

“You tell me,” he says.

Together, you stare at the painting of Loki’s fall, and when you swallow before you leave, you taste soot and dirt and fresh spring water in your mouth.

The first time he touches you and his skin turns black, he tells you that Gods are not allowed to touch mortals.

The second time he touches you, it is reverent, and you wonder if you will be killed for heresy.

The third time he touches you, he tells you that you are his, and that if you worship any other God’s name in your mouth or on your naked skin, he will punish you.

When Thor touches you, his skin doesn’t turn black.

In Loki’s temple, after the woods are gone, you find scripture that says it is a sin for a God to love a mortal.

“You died,” someone says, and you don’t know if it's him or you.

Maybe it’s both of you.

“You died,” you repeat again. “You died because of me.”

He looks at you, and it’s the only time his eyes harden like water freezing, cracking under pressure, threatening to take you with it to a deathly slumber.

“Yes,” he says. “I died for you.”

“No,” you shake your head. “Because of me.”

His eyes twinkle with something mischievous and the corner of his lip twitches in a grin. “What difference does it make?”

“Everything,” you tell him. “I shouldn’t have been the reason you died.”

He shrugs at that. “You weren’t—not really.” He stalks toward you, pressing you against the wall of your home, the hall light illuminating his soft glacier eyes. He traps you there, his hands falling beside your head, not touching you. Never touching you.

“You were a god.”

He smiles. “I was.”

You swallow. You wish his eyes were fire now so you could remember what it felt like to watch him burn, because it would take away the flutter of your heart that his ice-blue gaze sets within you; a tremble.

“Do you miss it?”

He cocks his head to the side and looks away, jaw rolling in thought. “No,” he finally answers.

“Are you lying?”

He huffs out a laugh. “I am the God of Lies, girl, but I have never lied to you.”

“Not anymore,” you say. “You fell because of me.”

When his fingers brush ever-so-lightly against your cheek, you hesitate. You want to move away. It’s in your nature—instilled in you that your touch is dangerous. A mortal corrupting a God. How sacrilegious.

But his hand doesn’t turn black, and you lean ever-so-slightly into his palm. He smiles again, eyes crinkling.

“I fell for you,” he says.

“Should I ask for forgiveness?” you question, captured in his stare.

“Will you not worship me?”

“No,” you say, as always.

“Then no,” he tells you. “No, you shouldn’t ask for forgiveness, girl.”

There is something in the way he says it, something in the way he calls after you. It’s something familiar. Something fond. Something that could corrupt you in the deepest, darkest parts of you when he calls you by your name at night. The night is for sinning, you think. The morning is for asking forgiveness.

“Even gods love things that death can touch,” you say, a memory on your tongue.

“Oh, you insolent girl,” he says, longing in his voice. “Are they even gods, then?”

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