Marvel Cinematic, "A Backwards Courtship" (Thor/Loki)

[sincere]

If Thor wants to become King of Asgard, he must first take a frost giant to be his queen. No one is happy with this. And yet, somehow, happiness is found.
Contains Thor/Loki in an alternate universe where Loki is rescued by a Jotun instead of Odin. Contains a small amount of sexy content, a weird variation on intersex Jotun, pregnancy, discussion of infanticide and miscarriage, coerced marriage, fantasy racism, tangential misogyny, and characters who are flawed and sometimes mean or petty or misinformed but still intended to be likable. But mostly contains fluff. In five parts, posted here together; forms a bingo for my cottoncandy_bingo card. Written for libekory as a ridiculously ambitious Christmas gift! ♥



.a backwards courtship.

.first kiss.
To say that Thor was not looking forward to his impending marriage was to drastically understate it. He had been raised his whole life to be free and proud, to stand tall and know that all the universe was at his feet. He was to be the king of the most glorious of the Nine Realms, the overseer of the highest point on Yggdrasil's trunk. His queen would be even more beautiful than his mother, and she would be devoted, intelligent, and perhaps not quite so much of a firebrand as he had thought he wanted once. She should not be overly independent, should support and believe in him, and should not challenge him. After all, wisdom and power were his birthrights, and there had never been any doubt in his mind that he would be the greatest -- the best -- king that Asgard had ever known... though of course he would not have impugned his father's leadership.

Until, that was, almost a thousand years of rearing suddenly became meaningless: until, that was, Odin suddenly changed his mind, and where once Thor's future had been his own to determine, now it was set in stone, and he was to marry a frost giant.

To marry. A frost giant.

Thor imagined himself standing side by side with his queen, a hulking blue warrior twice his height, and his grand visions of his reign evaporated. He could only imagine his people laughing at him. He could only imagine resenting the union. He found himself longing to wipe out the frost giants before the mockery began.

"There is no choice," Odin had told him, wearily. "Laufey is not wrong. A thousand years he has kept his terms of the truce, and we must allow him the chance to prove himself trustworthy again. Without the Casket of Ancient Winters, Jotunheim will be destroyed. They will give us a prince, and we will give them a treasure."

"They will make us look like fools before all the realm, twice over by putting themselves in our line of succession and then by convincing us to pay them to do it!" Thor seethed.

It had gone downhill from there.

In the end, Odin had been firm, and more than firm. All the shouting Thor could muster was met only with Odin's unyielding will, his steadily growing agitation. He gave Thor a final, definitive ultimatum that ended the whole discussion: his succession to the throne was dependent upon his marriage to the Jotun prince.

The full scale of it took a while to sink in, days after Thor knew that there was no escaping his fate. A lifetime living with an untrustworthy frost giant -- a solitary king, with a lonely bed. But without the frost giant he would be no king at all: his mother would be left with the realm's power, and Thor, like a child, would be kept behind her skirts, letting her govern his life and his affairs and a kingdom he had been too small and selfish to be trusted with.

So he would be married. But that grim certainty did not content Thor, and he informed his friends freely how he chafed at it.

"Now, Thor," Volstagg said, his voice of reason slightly tempered by the audible hesitation in it. "His Majesty made clear that unless a trade is made for their Casket, their whole race will be wiped out."

"So I am to be traded?!" Thor demanded belligerently.

"No, no, no! Of course not! They are trading their prince, in exchange for the Casket-- You know, Thor, I've heard tell that he is not typical for a frost giant!" Volstagg said hastily.

"Yes, yes, he's apparently quite small," Fandral said, and laughed. Little would quash his spirits -- certainly not when he'd been drinking as much as he had. A royal coronation, a royal wedding, and Thor married to a frost giant seemed to have convinced him that he should spend the next few days as intoxicated as possible, though Thor could not have said whether it was in celebration or to get the mental image out of his head. For his own sake, it had better be the latter, because Thor was in no mood for celebration. "He may only be nine feet tall!"

Nine feet was no less of a joke than twelve; especially when Thor was unaccustomed to being shorter than anyone, and often the tallest man in the room, even among the tall Asgardians. His scowl darkened.

"It is better than war," Hogun said soberly.

Privately, Thor disagreed. He would have happily waged war to eliminate their whole race himself before the melt could do it. But his most recent argument with his father, only earlier that morning, still stung fresh in his mind, and so instead of admitting as much, he countered, "Taking one into my bed? Our most ancient and fearsome enemies, whose very touch withers flesh? Are you so sure that will not lead to war?"

It would be a childishly simple circumstance to abuse, he thought grimly. If he so much as attempted to embrace his new queen, let alone share a bed... They were things he most assuredly did not want to do with one of the grizzled and cruel Jotun, but he was offended to find himself in a situation where he would have expected it -- and yet could not manage those basic elements of touch and connection with his partner.

"And to marry a man!" Thor hissed. He was rarely attracted to men, and the long, lanky frost giants were one and all male. Which led to another concern that Odin had failed to satisfy. "How will the line of succession pass from me?"

There was a long silence as his companions glanced among each other, unwilling to speak about something that they obviously had no more answer to than he did.

"You know that Volstagg will follow you anywhere, Thor," the big man pronounced. "But, ah, I think that if you can do something to save two races, you are rather obligated to do that thing. And if you need advice on the, ah, particulars of how this marriage will work, then... you had best ask one of the architects of it. ...Not me."

"Not me!" Fandral agreed, merry.

"Not me," Hogun finished.

His incredibly unhelpful friends were right, Thor conceded miserably. What he needed was to speak to someone who would know what was happening, and what he was going through. Someone whose empathy he could expect to be real -- and whose guilt he could witness in order to satisfy him, or else whose heartlessness would vindicate his own anger.

Which was how he came to his mother.

Frigga was resplendent in her grief, beautiful and composed and sad, her hair set perfectly and her gown settled around her, and when she rose to greet her only son, Thor thought, I wanted a queen that would rival you, and now I will have a beast to wife.

"Are you party to this?" he asked raggedly, more harsh than he meant to be.

Frigga stepped forward, her features drawn, and reached up to cup his neck in her hands. "My dearest, please do not be upset over this."

"You say that like it is not something to be upset over!"

"Your father and I did not want this for you," she said, hushed. "I wanted my son to be free to marry for love. We both wanted that. Nothing was harder than the realization that we would have to force you to take a spouse you did not want, for the sake of the realms."

Thor wanted to calm himself in the face of her correct regret, but the wording flared through him. Spouse, she said, because she could not say wife.

"Is this what is right for the realms?" he snapped. "That I suffer? That Father should sell my future to the highest bidder?!"

"It is because he is willing to make such sacrifices, even with the heaviest of hearts, that he is a good king," Frigga told him. He could see her unhappiness naked on her features. "In a week's time, you will be king. You must understand that."

"A king who beds down with a frost giant," he said, bitterly. "A king who -- who cannot even say if he will be able to have heirs!" He felt his chest tighten, imagining that life, with only a horrible spouse he could not trust even to touch keeping his company; childless and solitary.

Frigga shook her head quickly. "You will," she promised. "The Jotuns, they... they are all capable of bearing children."

A thought almost as distressing, as Thor briefly tried to imagine one of the immense blue warriors heavy with child, and then shook the thought away, angrily. As if he needed more reason to find this marriage upsetting.

"And then we will have a half-giant take the throne after me?!"

"It would not be the first time," she said, softly. "There is no better way to ensure that our people have peace for a few millennia between--"

"Then you reward them for breaking our truces and attacking us! Or else why would the 'first time' not have settled the matter?!"

Frigga was silent, her hands folded in her lap, knuckles tight. In spite of himself Thor began to feel guilt for lashing out; perhaps he was hurting, and perhaps she deserved to see that he was hurting, but she did not deserve the full brunt of his anger. Not when she was so clearly broken-hearted on his behalf.

"I hope that in spite of all of this, you learn to find happiness with what will come to pass," she murmured, her voice low, trembling. "I hope that it goes well, and perhaps -- perhaps that he is even someone you can come to love."

"Love?" he echoed, guilt fading into incredulity. "You want me to find love with a frost giant?!"

"Anything is possible, Thor. With that attitude, how--!"

He sliced a hand through the air, cutting off her words, his lips pressed thin. He didn't need to hear any more. There was no doubt in him. "I could never love a monster," he said, cold and final.

Frigga was unmoved, the faded blue of her eyes impassive. "That was what I said, as well, when I was married."

Thor deflated slowly, his brows drawing together in confusion; why would she have said that? Of whom? His father? Impossible. But she spoke no more on the matter, and he quickly shrugged it off, returning to focus on his own troubles.

By that evening he had devised a plan to save himself from humiliation during the ceremony. He would meet his future queen only a day before they were wed, and the next evening they would be married in a lavish celebration, followed by an even more lavish coronation.

Only one public appearance to suffer through. Only one embarrassing ceremony, sealed with an even more embarrassing kiss, before he could do his level best to ignore his frost giant spouse, or -- if he was feeling generous -- at least live apart from him.

The ceremony required a kiss. He would kiss the giant's hand, thus negating any need for the giant to bend down to him... or for himself to look like a fool, kissing the massive blue man in front of the entirety of his people.

"It's genius, don't you think?" Thor said effusively.

Sif glanced at him sidelong, as if unsure he was serious about the question, and then turned to face him fully. She said, "Thor, even if he is a frost giant, and even if you do not wish to be married to him, this is not some playdate that was arranged by your parents. You are to be married," she said, her voice heavy with significance. "You cannot seek to undermine this, you cannot treat it like it will not influence the rest of your life."

"Oh, I know it will," he said, grimly. He was not looking forward to that life. An eternity of public appearances, side by side with a blue monster; an eternity of dinners seated beside a warrior with a face like a hatchet; an eternity of nights spent alone in his bed while his so-called wife spent his nights across the palace.

"No, I mean--" She shook her head. And then she said, softly, "If you must do this, is it not better to do it... well? To be friends and allies, instead of strangers who barely speak?"

"Are you suggesting I be friends with a Jotun?" he demanded, offended.

Sif looked away again, her eyes faraway and the set of her mouth bitter. "I don't know," she confessed.

At the least, in the spirit of cooperation, Thor nobly decided that he could tell the other prince in advance about his intentions to only kiss him on the knuckles. They would have the one chance to speak with each other alone, so that they might get to know one another -- an unexpected gift, since they would be thrust together in the public eye a dozen times before their next chance to speak privately.

Sif was right. By telling his future spouse in advance, the giant would have no cause to be surprised or offended. Perhaps he would even appreciate the explanation. A good way to start off a partnership, even if an unwanted and disgusting one.



But on the day itself, nothing turned out as Thor had imagined.

Of course the Jotun would want to arrive in a display of their power: he assumed they would come with a large escort of warriors, probably in their finest gold armor, carrying artisan weapons instead of their usual rough-hewn metalwork. Maybe they would bring gifts. They must make something in their empty, barren home realm, right? They could not survive if there were so little there.

What did frost giants do in their spare time? he wondered as he waited for them to travel from the Bifrost to the foot of the palace. What would his queen want to do when he was not attending dinners or appearing in public, as he was required to do? Did they hunt for sport? What animals did they have in frozen Jotunheim? Probably monsters, massive and dangerous. Thor was suddenly struck by the thought, What if my new queen does not recognize even so basic a creature as a horse? and then he felt ill.

Why was this happening to him? What had he done to deserve this?

And then the frost giants appeared down the street, and all went silent.

No applause greeted them, no musical fanfare. They were a frightening sight: massive blue giants, striding down the main thoroughfare of great Asgard with their bare skin, covered in bizarre scars, bared to the world. They were hairless, and without horns, despite the stories, and for all that they had allegedly come in peace, they certainly looked ready for combat -- they bore spears and swords, and their evil red eyes were fixed intently on their surroundings, evaluating and sweeping over the Asgardians around them.

It chilled Thor to the bone, somewhat literally -- the temperature dropping as they drew closer to the pedestal where the Asgardian court waited. In the middle of the crowd was their king, Laufey: not the tallest of them, or the most muscular; but his lean, stony face was recognizable, and his ceremonial gold armor covered his arms, legs and back, oddly leaving his chest and belly bare. A heavy rope of gold filigree draped his shoulders, and he wore several large jeweled bracelets on each wrist. He carried no weapons, yet there was a tension in him, unmistakable to any who had ever seen combat.

But when he spoke, his low voice rang out in the arena, smooth and even. "We of Jotunheim join you of Asgard, to bring our two realms together and face a future united. We offer up one of our own to serve as proof of our word and our intentions to abide by the terms of our agreement. He will become the symbol of our peace."

The Jotun who stepped forward from the crowd behind Laufey was small, though perfectly formed: his heritage was unmistakable, with his skin powder-blue and lined with mysterious markings, his eyes red like blood, and he was clad only in sandals and a heavy leather loincloth with thick straps that shrouded his hips snugly. In that way he was no different than the others, but in every other way...

He stood only half the height of the giants who surrounded him, and long, straight black hair crowned his head, curling at the edge and just brushing his shoulders. He wore a thick rope of gold strung around his neck, similar to Laufey's, and a gold ring with an inset ruby bigger than an eye adorned his left hand.

He was almost a person, and if Thor let himself look closer at what might have been a person, he was almost beautiful.

"My oldest son," said the Jotun king, glancing at the slight creature. "Loki, of Jotunheim."

No one so much as glanced at Thor, but he felt himself start to sweat anyway. Thor stole a look behind him, to see the Warriors Three and Sif, and what he saw reassured him only in that he could see they were just as astonished as he was, even Hogun staring with brows drawn together in bewilderment.

Loki was not what any of them imagined when they thought frost giant.

But it wasn't truly awkward until they were alone, until the Jotun had been brought to a sitting room while Thor awaited the banquet, and then silence fell as they studied each other and suddenly the worst thing that Thor could think of was that they would not have anything to say to one another.

Then, "Greetings, Thor Odinson," the little frost giant said, smoothly. His voice was low, vibrant. He spread his hands, a gesture of recognition that was ever so slightly alien, but Thor could see that his red eyes were on Thor, studying him -- measuring him. "I have been told that you will gain your crown tomorrow after we are wedded. Congratulations."

And he was eloquent; another thing that Thor had somehow not expected, although he knew better than to think that Jotun were all savage brutes that communicated in grunts. Thor cleared his throat and said, "Yes-- Thank you. Loki Laufeyjarson."

He said it with a tiny bit of pride, straightening himself up, reminding both of them that he was informed and was equally competent. He knew the proper patronymic for a frost giant was -- a matronymic, as little as he understood the details, beyond Frigga's vague assurances that his queen would be able to provide him an heir.

A small smile curved up Loki's lips. "Very nice," he admired. "Are you so educated, about our ways in Jotunheim?"

Perhaps the pride had been slightly premature. He could not fake more knowledge than he actually possessed, and most of that knowledge was little more than rumors, gossip, and whispered teasing of adults to wide-eyed children about how the frost giants would come for them if they didn't finish their vegetables. Looking at Loki now, he could hardly make a case for their well-known passion in the balanced diet of Aesir youth.

"Some," he said. Jotunheim was a barren world of ice, the frost giants were large and blue and aggressive... But he was conscious of his questions earlier, and his surprise. With Sif and his mother's voices in his mind, he admitted further, "Perhaps not as much as I'd like." There, that was a fair thing to say. "What of you, about Asgard?"

"Isn't everyone?" Loki inquired, with the oddest curl to his voice. Thor gave him a hard look, trying to decipher that tone, but Loki was already brushing past -- literally, turning to circle the room idly, observing the furniture and the hangings that decorated the wall. "But this little meeting is meant to help us learn about each other. So, please." He glanced back, offering Thor a smile. It looked strange on his face, white teeth splitting his thick blue skin, red eyes making it seem dangerous. "There must be questions you would like to ask me."

Thor cleared his throat, shifting and forcing himself not to stare warily as the Jotun circled the room. Relax, he scolded himself. Come from a place of strength. This is your -- your... queen. It was the easiest word he could come up with. Show him what you are capable of.

"Quite a number, actually. For instance, I myself have seen the touch of a frost giant wither Aesir flesh." Thor turned, casual, to face Loki again, gaze flickering over his substantial amount of exposed skin.

Loki glanced at Thor, and that red, intense stare was difficult to read: was he evaluating how gullible his future husband would be? deciding on a tactic while masking his true intentions? caught at his scheme before it even began?

But all the Jotun said was a soft, measured, "You think a marriage would be arranged with one you could not touch?"

"I could not be sure," Thor answered, warily.

Loki turned to face him, stepping closer. "The withering touch is something that my kind may summon at will. It is not on all the time, or by default." Another step, until he was so close that they were only a breath apart, close enough that Thor could almost feel his every movement. It was nerve-wracking, but Loki's eyes were steady. "And I swear that I will never use it on you," he ended, his voice a notch lower.

Most nerve-wracking of all, Thor decided, was the way that Loki defied his expectations so utterly. How could this exotic, intelligent creature be his Jotun queen? Why was he so intense, so... attentive?

"I appreciate that," Thor said. He sounded unfamiliar in his own ears.

Loki smiled, slightly. "Well, I have been told that mutual agreement to do no harm is an important foundation of a marriage." He lifted a hand, palm up, as if offering him the opportunity to test that agreement.

Thor did not move. "Do your people -- not marry?"

"No," Loki said, unconcerned. "But have no worry. I have been informed of your expectations, and I will abide by them."

Words that immediately conjured up the idea of Loki in Fandral's personal space, with those lidded eyes and that husky voice and that promise of intimacy, oh so close, and, perhaps, no concept of monogamy. Thor started to scowl.

"What do you do, if not wed?" he demanded. "How foreign are these expectations you speak of?! I would have thought them self-evident in any relationship!" Asgard did not require servitutde or arcane rituals in their marriages. What sort of animal would find an Asgardian marriage strange?

Loki lifted his eyebrows; perhaps he heard the agitation, and it gave him pause. "We take mates, as you do," he said. "A Jotun chooses who he will live with, and who will sire his children, if he wishes them. They are informal unions, dissolved if either party decides it is time. Not a marriage as you would call it, but not so dissimilar, is it?"

Thor pressed his lips together and said nothing. It was rather dissimilar, when Loki put it that way. Not only because a male Jotun would bear children like a female -- but because this union was not one of Loki's 'choosing'. If a frost giant considered himself entitled to just walk out of any relationship he grew bored of, what was to stop this frost giant from simply waiting a few months, declaring the marriage over, and returning to Jotunheim with the Casket?

He had struggled against a Jotun being his queen, although this creature was not the sort of Jotun he had envisioned. But while his pride stung to think that he was being forced to marry against his will, and still more to think of that marriage being a sham that would turn them into a laughingstock and rob them of a dangerous treasure... The worst insult of all would be for Thor's queen to endure being with him when he felt he should have the right to leave, but was trapped within because Asgardians did not take vows of marriage lightly.

Somehow, that was worse than his own suffering. He could make the sacrifice of his own happiness, as king, for the sake of Asgard. But he could not force another person to endure the same misery.

"Our marriage will be quite dissimilar, I think," he said stiffly, after a long beat. "You do not have that choice, do you? You... must have wanted something else."

Then the strangest thoughts began to cross his mind. Did this little giant prince have -- have friends or lovers that he had been forced to leave behind? If he did not recognize horses, would he find them pointless and uninteresting? Had he thrown the same tantrums that Thor had, railing at a disinterested father that he wanted to own his future once more? Was he as displeased about this marriage as Thor had been?

Could he be happy, in Asgard?

"It is..." Loki hesitated a beat, and his red eyes were directed elsewhere, thinking. "...not a fate I had imagined for myself." But he looked up at Thor, and he smiled again, the expression lingering, some thought behind those upturned blue lips that Thor could not name. "Short-sighted of me, perhaps. A different route to the same end is no less a success, is it?"

Thor frowned in consideration as he gazed at the smaller man. A different route to the same end... Perhaps. Certainly he would be king, given this course of action. And he would be a good king. And his queen would not be a grizzled frost giant warrior, but a slender sorcerer who stood not even so tall as himself; he even began to see how it might be possible to avoid mockery and laughter... and to see that, perhaps, in time, that laughter would fade, and others would look at his queen and see that he was actually rather personable.

Perhaps.

"Our marriage need not be any different than what you would have from one of your women," Loki said, softer. He had long ago tired of waiting for Thor to take his hand, but now he reached out properly, taking the golden god's hand between his own, curving fingers that were oddly rough and strong over Thor's -- cool to the touch, but not unpleasant. "Asgardian, or Jotun... The pair functions as a single unit, making decisions together, seeking to do what would be best for them both. I will look out for your interests, and you mine. You will save my people from their fate, and I..." His voice lowered, suddenly husky. "...I will do my utmost to see to it that you are pleased to have done so."

The way he curled the word pleased in his mouth, sensuous, as if savoring it, left little doubt as to his meaning. Thor felt heat creep up in his face, flushing him, very aware of where their skin touched, the trace of Loki's fingers over the back of his hand. If it was a ploy somehow, to catch him off-guard, it was wildly successful, and he was left imagining Loki in his bed, enthusiastically pursuing Thor's pleasure with his body.

Any thought that he might have had about merely kissing his bride's knuckles had evaporated, like mist in the morning.



On the day of their wedding, Thor in his grandest ceremonial armor and brilliant red cape met Loki in shimmering white fur and dyed leather loincloth, decked in gold and gems enough to make a dwarf jealous. They stood for the ceremony, their gazes locked together, each unyielding, daring each other to go forward into a future as one.

When it was time, Thor stepped close without hesitation and kissed Loki on the mouth, firm and heady and promising a partnership that he found himself, strangely, looking forward to.






.furnishing the home.
For some reason, Thor was nervous about visiting the rooms that had been set aside for his new queen.

There were many ways in which the anxiety was ridiculous. For one thing, it was the castle that he had lived in all his life, the castle that belonged to him now, being in the realm he now ruled, of which he was king. There was nowhere in all Asgard where he did not have the right to enter if he so chose. For another thing, it was hardly as if Loki were overly concerned about privacy. He had settled down in Thor's chambers without a second thought, and spent all his nights there. Thor had learned that he was not shy.

In fact, Loki spent those nights thoroughly and enthusiastically demonstrating that while he might be many things -- shameless, and tempting, and wanton -- no, he was not shy.

Thor stood outside the door to Loki's chambers, lost in a reverie of the hedonistic nights he had spent with his new bride. If Loki's plan was to destroy a thousand years of racial resentment through lascivious acts, it was working well indeed, and Thor would even approve of it happily. But he shook his head for now, casting the thoughts away.

It had come to his attention that while Loki's nights were spent in Thor's chambers, most of his days were spent here, in the rooms he had requested for himself. Thor was growing curious about what he did there -- and, perhaps more relevantly, growing bored with endless political discourse -- so he had come to see for himself.

Only, it was not Loki who came to the door to greet him.

Thor stared at the massive figure of the frost giant, standing just inside the door that would have been slightly too small for him to walk through without ducking. The frost giant stared back, his lined features unmoved, his red eyes flat. He was muscular, clad only in a loincloth, and in the private quarters of Thor's queen.

Thor cleared his throat, and then said, imperiously, "I have come to see Loki."

And the Jotun did not blink. "He is outside," he said, in a voice that was slightly more melodious than rocks scraping together.

He was somewhat mesmerizing. Thor's lips thinned, and he stared at the frost giant a moment longer, taking in his thick blue skin and the scars that marred it, for the first time noting their difference from the raised lines that traced the skin of the giants. Thor had learned that Loki liked to have his stroked, with the flat of a palm and occasionally with the skim of a nail, light. He didn't know what they were for, other than they were somewhat sensitive.

But it was hard not to notice that this creature's lines were different than Loki's. Loki's were rigidly symmetrical, each side a perfect mirror, all straight lines and sharp, geometric angles; this one's were swirling and winding, curved and intricate, and each one different.

And he was not moving, nor leaving, nor speaking. Thor was not about to leave either, and now he only had more of a sense that he did not belong here, making him certain that he would be trespassing if he shoved his way past. So he felt obligated to make conversation instead.

"Your -- markings," Thor said, waving vaguely to indicate his chest. "They are very different from Loki's."

The frost giant's red gaze flickered behind him, to the Einherjar stationed warily in the hallway across from Loki's room. "Your nose is very different from his."

Thor frowned, also glancing at the guard. The man's nose was, in fact, quite pronounced, flat at the bridge. He turned back, and agreed, "Well, yes. We are not related. There is no reason we should have similar features..."

The Jotun shrugged, unimpressed, and said nothing.

Ah. Helpful, in the extremely abstract, although also embarrassing and awkward. The frost giant's behavior was starting to wear on Thor's limited reserves of patience. "Why don't you tell me what they are for, then," he demanded irritably.

A short sound from the giant had Thor even more defensive. It sounded like it might have been amusement -- a bark of laughter -- but he could not have been sure. "They are for sensing disturbances in the wind and air," he said, simply. His lips curve up. "You will never be able to sneak up on him, you know."

Thor's eyes narrowed.

"You would be well-advised not to even try," the Jotun told him, his tone low.

It sounded like a threat. Thor's hesitation was gone, his discomfort evaporated, and he shifted, prepared to reach for Mjolnir's familiar weight at his side, before Loki's voice sliced through his distraction effortlessly.

"My lord Thor," he said, stepping into the room from the balcony. He left the doors wide open, though it was still early spring and they let in a chilly draft. Loki was dressed in his ornate gold loincloth and little else, and he was -- perhaps unsurprisingly -- not bothered by the cold. "What an unexpected pleasure, to see you here. And I see you have met Angrboda."

"Angrboda?" Thor gave the Jotun a hard, unforgiving look. "Is that his name? He was not so forthcoming."

Angrboda smiled, baring his teeth. The urge to strike him in his smug mouth with the hammer was still almost unbearably strong, but Loki slid neatly between them, tucking his hands into Thor's, making it difficult to reach for Mjolnir. Thor let his eyes fall to Loki. After only three weeks he already seemed to be more ethereal than alien, his curved jaw and high cheekbones and sloping brow all refined, the hallmarks of beauty. The sight of him was almost soothing, becoming familiar.

Thor did not trust him, no. But he was Thor's partner, nonetheless, and so far that had proven him in good stead.

"He is not terribly forthcoming, it's true," Loki agreed, lips curved up. He seemed so relaxed and comfortable, it was almost contagious; Thor felt some of the tension easing out of him. "But Angrboda is the one who taught me -- why, almost everything I know about Asgard's ways. He is quite knowledgable, if you can get him to give a straight answer."

Thor glanced up at Angrboda again, grudgingly reconsidering his initial impression. He had simply assumed that Angrboda was snide and unhelpful the way that all Jotun were, and it was strange to think of that as being traits of an individual personality rather than a cultural, racial tendency.

"Have you traveled to Asgard so often in the past, then?" Thor made himself ask.

Angrboda chuckled, low. "Everywhere," he said.

Why did everything he say sound so dangerous? Thor wondered mistrustfully, eyeing him, until Loki drew him past Angrboda into the room.

"Is this a social call?" Loki asked, idly. His eyes lidded, and he cast a glance over his shoulder at Thor. "Are you tired of our bed -- and our wall, and our floor -- and seeking new places to enjoy ourselves?"

An intriguing, scandalous suggestion, although Thor was intensely aware of Angrboda behind them, perhaps far enough away to not have heard, but perhaps still in earshot. He opened his mouth to begin to say one thing, and instead what came out of his mouth was a dumbstruck, "What have you done to the room?"

These quarters had once been Asgard's most lavish guest chambers, afforded only to the highest-ranking of visitors, kings and queens of other realms who found the time to visit Asgard for a summit or a negotiation. Sprawling and elegant, with the richest of furnishings and the most beautiful of tapestries, it was an honor even to be permitted within it. Thor had gotten in endless trouble as a very young child tumbling into this room while playing, because rambunctious children carrying filth and sweat were strictly disallowed.

Now that he had a better look of the interior, he realized that Loki had dismantled it entirely. The beautiful tapestries had been taken down from the walls, leaving them bare, and the furnishings had been mostly removed, chairs and tables all but gone and replaced with larger, foreign decorations, and the bed obscured with a pile of fur and cloth and pillow that almost doubled the original height of it.

If he was not mistaken, it was also a few degrees colder inside the room than it had been outside it.

"Is that-- Is that the wall-hanging on the bed?!" he demanded, and even knowing that Loki did not sleep here, he had a sudden vision of the little frost giant sleeping atop the priceless antique fabric. Or the not so little frost giant who had greeted him at the door, and therefore must sleep somewhere.

Loki glanced at it, and said, thoughtful, "Yes, I think it was originally on the wall."

"Then why is it now on the bed!"

Patiently, Loki explained, "The architecture should be allowed to speak for itself. You have no need to hide it. The room is more appealing and looks bigger without it."

Thor stared at him, blankly. He was interested in -- the architecture? It slowly crossed his mind that perhaps this was a cultural misunderstanding, that Loki had different expectations of beauty than he did, but then the notion fled again. He didn't have to desecrate the wall-hangings to fix their presence in the room!

"They are not meant to be used as blankets," he said stiffly. "They wouldn't even keep you warm."

"This may shock you, my lord, but I am not interested in them for the warmth they provide." Loki looked amused. "I want them for the nest. They're very stiff and provide excellent structure." Then, while Thor still felt paralyzed, he added, "Perhaps I should explain -- my people are not attached to beds the way you Asgardians are. We do not need soft mattresses or flat surfaces, but we do require thorough coverage. I thought I heard you speaking to Angrboda about our markings?"

Thor frowned, glancing at the narrow lines that traced Loki's skin. "I believe I mentioned that he was not forthcoming," he said, grudgingly.

Loki's lips curved up. "They are a sensory organ. I can read the air, provided these are bared to it. If I am not well-protected from the air, I will sleep fitfully, as if there were hours of conversation going on directly beside you while you rested. So we burrow and build nests: with walls to provide a barrier to wind, and thick coverings all around, and wrapped up to keep us sheltered."

So there was a method to his blanket-stealing. And then Thor said, further understanding dawning on him, "That is why you have refused requests to dress more modestly." Many attendants were somewhat discomfited by their queen wandering about Asgard in a heavy, decorated scrap of leather, but Loki had always refused shirt and trousers. Now Thor realized that they would cover his markings, almost all of which decorated his shoulders, arms, chest, back and thighs; then he would not be able to sense the... air, whatever that truly meant.

Loki bared his teeth in a grin. "I tell them I will wear Asgardian clothes when Asgardians wear blindfolds about."

Thor cast another glance at the room. It seemed less of an offense, now that he could understand the reason behind what had been done to the bed. Thor rubbed the back of his neck, eyeing the tangled pile and wondering if perhaps a few alterations to his own chambers might be in order, since Loki spent the majority of his nights there.

The other changes made sense, as well. The small chairs and tables that had been in the room originally would not have accommodated frost giant guests and friends very well.

"Thank you for taking the time to tell me," Thor said, nodding his head, feeling better about this. It had seemed bizarre and aggravating at first, but now he saw it for what it was: a learning experience. Still feeling out the territory with his new spouse, learning what he was like and what he believed and what he desired. Nothing but good. "I will keep that in mind."

"My considerate lord," Loki murmured in acknowledgment, his tone too sweet, one that he used whenever he was needling Thor for his grandiose generosity. Thor always overlooked it... generously.

"That -- Angrboda," Thor said, clearing his throat. He looked back at the door, but Angrboda had slipped away, leaving it shut behind him. They were alone now. "How long will he be staying here?"

Loki chuckled. "Oh, forever, I imagine."

Forever? Thor scowled. That had not been part of his expectations. He understood a small retainer while Loki was still adjusting to life in Asgard; perhaps Laufey's insurance that he was not being mistreated and that he would have the respect that his status demanded. Both things that, as far as Thor was concerned, Loki was entitled to, and Laufey was entitled to know. But to have a massive frost giant tromping around shining Asgard after its queen like a pet troll?

"Burkhart will leave when it becomes summer," Loki said agreeably. "You haven't met him, but he is here as well. Angrboda is my personal manservant, and he will stay by my side unless it grows too hot for his comfort, and then he will return when the weather cools again." He tilted his head to the side, studying Thor's face. "Does that bother you?"

Thor composed his thoughts before saying only, "Are you so dissatisfied with the servants we have here in Asgard? If you tell me what it is that you need, I will see to it that they provide it. You do not need to keep a Jotun warrior here to do it for you."

Loki smiled, shaking his head. "Need to? No. But I am more comfortable with him here."

The hot flare that he felt was some emotion that Thor did not quite recognize, and hadn't felt in a long time. He protested, "I want you to be comfortable with my people, with your life in Asgard! How can you do that when you surround yourself with all that reminds you of Jotunheim?"

"You would have me be alone here, without any of my own kind? To bear your child, surrounded only by people who do not even know how such a thing is possible, much less how to help me through it?" Loki pressed.

A dirty tactic, to bring up a child as if it were all for the sake of bearing Thor an heir. A child had been the furthest thing on Thor's mind before this marriage became an issue, and now he found that the idea flustered him.

Not least because he still did not know how such a thing would be possible. Intimate encounters with Loki had very definitively proven him male, though he was always quick to point out that it was not yet his fertile time. Thor did not like to think on it.

"Of course not," he muttered, and then turned on his heel, stalking to the bed and sinking down to seat himself on the edge as best he could, piled as it was with fur and tapestry. He ran a hand through his hair.

He didn't like this. A frost giant warrior, living under his roof, with his blessing, utterly trusted with his queen's well-being, even to the point of helping him through the birth of Thor's child, the way that Thor was not and could not. The way Loki turned his very home into a refuge of his barren, iced-over world. How easy it would be for all this to mask something more sinister, something more angering. It forced him to doubt where only an hour ago he had held in him nothing but good memories of the fun Loki had given him in his bed.

But the moment he was out of Thor's sight... And it made him feel like he was being manipulated into compliance, as he had feared but not allowed himself to consider before.

"You are out of sorts, Thor," Loki observed, sinking onto the bed beside his husband. "I know that these are things you were not expecting, and find strange. But I did not think they would truly upset you."

He sounded as if he were trying to be reasonable, which made Thor feel like his surprise was not reasonable. He said, crossly, "Perhaps if they were explained to me before I discovered them by accident, they would not upset me so much!"

Loki barely blinked, only conceding, "Perhaps they would not." He lifted his head, gazing off into the distance. "You seem to have little understanding of what I have sacrificed, what I have lost, to come here."

That took the wind out of Thor's sails quickly. "You know I do not mean to make this more difficult for you," he murmured.

"If taking down the tapestry is such a slight, I will give it back, and you may hang it elsewhere."

"I care not for the tapestry."

"Angrboda is the only one I may ever see again, of all who I grew up with and cared for."

"I was only startled to learn that he would become a permanent member of my court."

"Change is not accomplished in a month," Loki finished, looking up at him. "I do not grow angry with you when I must explain why I might wish to have a nest available if my sleep becomes too restless. I know that you cannot be an expert on my people in mere weeks. But are you giving me the same patience? Do I not deserve it?"

Thor felt the regret creeping up on him. Perhaps his repeated surprise and indignation had seemed to Loki to be a rejection; perhaps, in a way, it had been. But it had not been his intention. "Forgive me," he murmured. "I will try to be more tolerant. I am not... used to this."

It was the smallest admission he could get away with, and still he felt exposed; that tiny core of him that feared that perhaps he was not wise enough to follow in his father's footsteps, that perhaps he would make mistakes and misjudgments -- ones that might cost Asgard dearly. It was a possibility that ate at him under his skin, but which he never acknowledged, even only to himself.

Loki shifted closer, catching his attention and then lifting a hand to stroke his jaw, trailing fingers over his beard. "You are my mate. And so long as I know that you will always try to do what you believe is best for us, you will always be forgiven."

Perhaps it was all a manipulation. Perhaps it was just another way of getting under his skin, of making Thor pliable to his moods and his wishes, the same way the willing, wanton sex was all to win a benevolence he might not have merited on his own.

But Thor imagined that he saw sincerity, lurking in the depths of those red eyes, in the softness about the lines of his face.

And he wanted to believe that.

He turned his head and kissed those fingers, smiling. "I could not ask for more faith."

And then Loki took a grip on the collar of his tunic, tugging him closer, starting to lean back atop the bed -- the nest, as he called it. "Then reward that faith," the Jotun purred. "Let us enjoy ourselves."

Right on top of the priceless tapestry.







.quest.
Loki always kept rigorous, studious track of his fertility. It was not something he liked to come upon him by surprise: after all, the first few hours were rather uncomfortable, and of course he would need contraceptives on hand if he had a partner at the time. His approach to it was methodical and matter-of-fact. He knew the rhythms of his own body the same way he knew any magical working he cast: inside and out.

So when time grew short, and he knew that he would only have a day or two left, he took the opportunity to speak to Thor -- if not directly.

"We must speak of something," Loki murmured.

He was on his back after their passion, blissfully cooling off. Thor was curled onto his side, facing away, prepared to sleep, and he was silent, silent, silent, until Loki began to think that perhaps his ridiculously simplistic mate intended to feign sleep to avoid the conversation, perhaps with a loud, comical snore sound. But finally the golden god shifted, rolling onto his back as well, and he turned his head to look at Loki. "Now?" he rumbled.

That part was reflex, something Loki had done ever since childhood. Good little Jotun runts starved to death before they could be a burden on anyone, and any Jotun warrior worth his hide woud be happy to introduce one to death if he brought up obnoxious topics in public. Loki had always waited until the dead of night to ask Angrboda any questions that he found embarrassing or confrontational. He wanted this conversation to be part of the twilight: unendingly dark, hush unbroken by any meaningful noise or movement, so that if it went poorly it could be as easily forgotten as a nightmare that had woken Thor in the middle of the night.

He explained, soft, "Soon, I will be fertile. If not not now, when? We have not yet discussed what that truly means."

There was another pause. Loki could see the visible white of Thor's eyes shift, his gaze skimming down the length of Loki's body curiously. His mind went to precisely the least important aspect of the situation.

Ridiculously simplistic. Loki reached out to touch fingers to Thor's bearded chin, and tipped his head up until he was sure those eyes were on his face again -- or, at least, what could be seen of his face, since Loki blended into the dark far more than Thor, with his light skin and light hair and light eyes.

"Are you prepared to be a father?" he pressed.

Loki heard Thor's breath catch. They had spoken of it before, matter-of-factly. Loki would need to provide an heir. He would be fertile soon. But never in terms of what it would mean to Thor, or whether he wanted that for himself. And Loki knew that for Thor, it would be no insignificant thing.

"I... had not given it thought before," Thor confessed.

"I know," Loki said, stroking fingers lightly. "That is why I ask. If you think you are unready, or it is not of interest to you, then it needn't happen now. I can delay it until it is your choice."

That obviously caught Thor off-guard. He asked, "You can?" As if he thought it was a grand working of mysticism.

Loki kept from rolling his eyes. Thor was young, but he certainly had not been virginal in his marriage bed. Had the man only bedded adult females of his species in his thousand years of life, and never bothered to speak to them save to point at his loins and grunt? Had he not met anyone who had ever been pregnant? Did he even know his own mother?

"Yes, Thor. There are herbs and potions that can see to it that I do not become with child before we choose it."

Another few heartbeats of silence passed while Thor considered this, frowning. He must have found something objectionable in it, for he said, "Well, it takes a long time to conceive a child. Some people wait years and decades. Perhaps we will let fate decide for us."

"Some Asgardian people," Loki corrected. "My people have no such difficulty."

"Truly?!"

"Why do you think there are so many of us to keep wasting on wars with you?" he asked, sweet. A half-dozen Asgardians could take down a regiment of frost giants, but sheer numbers the Jotun had in spades. He had never known a Jotun to fail to conceive if he intended to -- and, in fact, even sometimes if all his intentions were to not conceive.

Thor scowled; Loki could see it even in the darkness. But he said, slowly, "Then -- if the decision is truly ours... It must be both of ours." He looked at Loki again, hesitant. "What do you wish?"

A sweet thought, although perhaps sweeter still was the hesitant, almost shy way that he said it. Loki felt his lips quirk up slightly, and stroked Thor's jaw again. It was hard not to be fond of his foolish mate -- hard not to feel that he would make an almost shamefully indulgent and proud father. "I wish for what will be best for the peace between our people. I think that would likely be a symbol that our marriage is true -- a child. But I also wish for it to continue to be a happy union, and so if you do not want this, then neither do I."

Thor shook his head, stubbornly. "You do not tell me what you want for yourself, and you are the one who will carry it. It must be something you wish as well."

There was no way to explain to him that Jotun were not particularly attached to their children, and did not lay particular significance on having them. It was a matter of course for them: they would have them, or else reach a point in their life when they felt it was time to have them, or else go into heat and have them. Loki hesitated for a beat before saying, "I have no objections to the idea. I am not afraid or reluctant. I will happily have this child." He settled his hand on Thor's chest. "But if any of that is not true for you, then it can wait."

Slowly, Thor shifted, curling closer to Loki, resting his forehead on Loki's chest; Loki shifted accordingly, wrapping his arms behind Thor's shoulders. "I..." His voice sounded strange, rusty. "...I would be... honored."

He did not sound fully convinced, more as if he were still adjusting to the idea. But Loki had done all he could. He tangled fingers in Thor's long, thick hair, quietly marveling at the softness of it, as he always did. "Then there is just... one tiny thing," he added mildly.

Thor frowned, drawing back to look up at him. "What is that?" he asked, suspiciously.

Loki smiled, innocent, though he doubted Thor could see it. "Well-- I need an offering."

"You need a what?" Thor said, and there was a flicker of outrage in his voice.

"Often, a courting Jotun will present an offering to display his value as a mate and a sire," Loki told him. "His prowess as an ice-shaper, or as a hunter, or as a warrior... That sort of thing."

"I am not courting you, I am your-- your mate, your husband."

"I know that, but even among mated partners, it is customary to win the right to sire a child." He put on his most earnest tones. "Your title alone qualifies you to care for my offspring. But that is an intellectual knowledge. My people do not content ourselves with intellectual knowledge. We require more... physical demonstration. I must have proof that my child's sire is one who can provide for me, for us." And then Loki let his voice lower, tempting. "Surely it would not be so difficult for you, son of Odin, king of Asgard, to show me such proof."

It was an attack on every front he could manage without reaching too far: the appeal to Thor's racist confidence in the savagery of the Jotun, the plea for understanding of his cultural differences, the combined stroke of his ego and subtle doubt of his ability... And he had immediate, visceral evidence of how effective it was: Thor's hands found his elbows, tightened enough to begin to be uncomfortable, and he let out a breath, hot and conflicted.

After a long beat, Thor demanded, "What manner of proof?"

Loki's lips curved up again. He said, lightly, "I want... a necklace. Strung with ten dragon's teeth, from ten different dragons."

Now to bait the trap with his lust for battle and adventure, which had been buried in the handful of months since he had inherited his throne. Dragons were rare, powerful, solitary creatures; it would be a journey to find one, and a trial to slay one, much less ten of them. Thor made a noise, not quite agitation, and accused, "That is a wholly unreasonable request!"

"It may be," Loki admitted. "I was trying to imagine a gift worthy of a queen. Certainly I do not need anything so extravagant... If you feel I should settle for a more modest--"

And then to seal it shut with the idea that his queen would settle for a modest offering. Thor wound around him possessively, and he promised, firmly, "You are the most unreasonable creature I have ever met, but if that is what you want, I will shower you with dragon teeth."

Loki's eyes lidded, briefly imagining his offering and -- quite pleased at the image. It was a ruse, of course, but not outright false, and his necklace would be quite the display of his mate's power. Even thinking of it was quite... stirring. He nuzzled in closer, lips sliding against Thor's neck, and he murmured against the skin, "If you think you have seen me satisfied before..."

Thor made a husky sound in his throat, hands sliding down Loki's back, cupping his ass. "Again? A fourth time?" But when he rocked his hips close, Loki could feel him already thickening. "You will never cease demanding things of me," he said, husky and smiling.

The next morning Thor made plans for his departure, startling his aides and attendants. Loki retreated to his chamber, as he usually did when Thor was otherwise occupied; he loved taunting the court with his bare blue skin and sweet eloquent mockery, but he could only take so much of that before it grew dull, and right now he was not in the mood for games.

Angrboda was draped over the nest when he got there, his long legs bent over the edge. He lazily bit into his apple, and asked, "This place is in an uproar. Your fault?"

"Yes," Loki said, unperturbed. "Are you slipping, Angrboda? Already becoming so lazy that you do not care for what is happening around you, and so I find you lying on your back eating instead of investigating?"

"What is that useless oaf Burkhart here for if not to investigate on my behalf?" Angrboda snorted a laugh. "I raised you for a decade when you had been left out to die, and then sheltered you for decades more before you were any use to me, so I consider myself now reaping the rewards of my generosity."

Loki's lips quirked up. "I told Thor you were my manservant," he said, putting his hands on his hips. "So if you want to continue living this life of luxury once Burkhart is not here to be your beast of burden, you had best act more the part. Or else you will be cast back to Jotunheim to live in your crumbling little house."

Angrboda made another dismissive noise. "Laufey had best kiss my feet in gratitude when I return. If not for my foresight, his precious realm would be disintegrating." He tossed the rest of the apple into his mouth whole, and then eyed Loki consideringly as he chewed it. Loki recognized the question in his eyes.

"I sent my mate to fetch me an offering," Loki told him.

The big lanky Jotun choked, and sat up abruptly. "The king of Asgard? Fetching you an offering?"

"You needn't make it sound like I don't deserve one," he returned, more crossly. "Though I may have implied that even kings are obligated to prove that they are worthy to sire children."

Angrboda rumbled an amused, "I suppose the idea has merit. Half of Jotunheim would scramble to prove themselves worthy of siring Laufey's child if he did not have Farbauti, but no one would care if he wanted to sire someone else's child. So why not make him pay for the right?"

"Asgardian kings do not have the option of bearing their own young, as you well know," Loki reminded him patiently. "According to their system, a child is of the line of his sire, not the one who bore him."

They both shrugged, mutually finding this a silly system, but not caring enough to make the protests.

"You chose to tell him that. You sent him away on purpose, little mouse," Angrboda observed. "Why?"

Angrboda would not believe that he solely wanted an impressive necklace. He was a jewelry-maker, and ever since Loki had earned his position at his father's side, he had lavished Loki with extravagant gifts as a reward for not disappointing his grand expectations when he found an abandoned royal runt out in the snow. They had both expected that once he was Laufey's heir, his succession to Jotunheim's throne was all but certain.

Instead, Loki's brother Helblindi would be king, and Loki was -- queen of Asgard, father of its future king.

"I didn't care to explain to him why I spend tomorrow unwilling to be in his company," he said, with a little toss of his head, heading to the tray of fruits, cheeses, and breads that some terrified Asgardian servant had brought in as a breakfast. Asgard had a far wider variety of fruit than Jotunheim, and he spent a beat being impressed by the strange skin of a kiwifruit. A cursory glance revealed that the only apples were green and red, like the one Angrboda had been eating when he arrived; none gold. "So I told him that if he wanted children of me, he must pay the price, and leave."

That got a chuckle from Angrboda. "Conniving child," he said, almost fondly. "What would you have done if he had told you he did not want one yet? Your fertile time would still come, and he would still be present."

"I knew he would not," Loki said confidently. "The pressure from his people is too great. He knows that he needs to get me with child to show that Asgard's bargain has been a success, rather than an act of foolishness." And then he grinned, showing teeth. "And even if he had, I would have been quick to turn that selfish behavior into an argument and spent the next day or two in a furious state."

Angrboda laughed as he bit into the bitter skin of the kiwifruit, to find the sweetness beneath.

The brief hours of the change were always uncomfortable; the hormones made him feel flushed, and his body cramped as it altered his anatomy. This time, as he had no responsibilities to attend to that might distract him, he treated himself to a painkilling medication and tried to sleep through it. He had undergone this change twice a year for a thousand years, and he had never actually put it to use before -- never actually conceived a child.

He had the suspicion it was going to unsettle the comfortable, familiar rhythms of his body.

Thor returned home within only three days, flushed and happy, his hair and eyes and grin wild. He hopped down from his mount at Loki's feet in the courtyard and swept him straight off the ground, spinning him around in a tight embrace that threatened to cut off his circulation. Loki let out a breath in a rush, squirming in his grasp until Thor laughed and set him down.

"I have your prize for you, greedy thing," Thor said, fondly.

Loki's lips curved up. "Show it to me!" He found he was somewhat giddy with anticipation. Angrboda's jewels and precious metals were one thing, reward because his success elevated Angrboda to a life of luxury. But no one had ever been so avid to win his favor as to hunt down dragons for the privilege of mating with him.

Thor drew it from a pouch on his horse's tack: a heavy strand of silver rope, fitted into small holes bored through the polished white of the dragon's teeth, each one almost as long as Loki's spread hand perfectly symmetrically arranged to curve into each other, that would draw to a point in the center of his chest. Loki marveled at it quietly, touching it with his fingers. Thor must have found someone to craft it into a piece that was already wearable, instead of simply delivering the yellowed, chipped teeth on a string.

"Is it satisfactory?" Thor asked, and reached up to fasten the necklace behind Loki's head. "I was assured by my blacksmith that it would be a royal gift for any Jotun, but I am hardly fit to judge for myself."

Loki let out a shaky breath, feeling the fangs trace delicately over his bare skin, and then his gaze focused on Thor, slightly heated already. "More than satisfactory," he said, low.

Thor's eyes were fixed on his in return. "Good," he murmured. "Because I want -- to mount you while you wear it."

Loki's fingers fisted in Thor's tunic, and he purred, "Right here in the courtyard, in the relative shelter of the stables, or will you make me wait until we may find a bedroom?"

That level of willingness was obviously not something Thor had planned for, and he let out a surprised groan and swept Loki up off the ground again, heading for the palace as fast as his long legs could take them. He did, in fact, make Loki wait until they found a bedroom, because of the irritating Asgardian prudishness that made Loki itch to scandalize them. But the moment the door shut behind them, Thor tossed him onto his back on the bed, necklace jangling over his skin, and Loki had scarcely parted his legs for his mate before Thor dove between them, pinning him down and kissing him hungrily.

Loki felt his stomach knot with hunger, and he twisted his head away, breathing, "I have -- a surprise for you, Thor."

Thor made an insensate noise against his neck, lips searing hotly over blue skin and fixing on the side, biting down. Loki's breath caught, vision blurring briefly as teeth skimmed his sensory markings roughly, pleasurepain jolting his awareness. He might not have had the presence of mind to speak again for a few beats, but Thor ground hotly between his legs and paused, not feeling the pronounced bulge that should have been there beneath his heavy gilded loincloth. His gaze flickered down and then back up again, confused; he lifted himself up, obviously concerned that perhaps Loki wasn't as eager for this as he was.

It made Loki laugh a little, shallow and unsteady. He found Thor's hand on his hip and drew it down, slipping beneath the outer cover of the loincloth, to brush over the leather that cupped his body more intimately, growing damp with the evidence of Loki's arousal.

Thor's eyes widened. He stroked the mound again with his fingers, seeking something that wasn't there, realizing... And then he groaned, reaching down to tear away the leather loincloth, so that he could see for himself. The flesh bared to his sight was smooth curving between his legs, hairless, splitting into a neat seam between his thighs. Fascinated, Thor ran one finger along his folds, spreading them apart and revealing the wet, glistening violet within. The touch made Loki shiver, his breath quickly speeding out of control.

"This -- is how you will bear a child," Thor said, thickly, wondering. "Witchcraft?"

Loki chuckled again, but the sound was interrupted as that finger found his clit, nudged it gently up, and his body clenched, shuddering. "It is natural. All -- Jotun go through it..."

And that was all he got out before Thor ducked down, hitching up his thighs and burying his mouth between Loki's legs, and words ceased to be at all important.






.intimate.
"What do you think it will be?" Thor had asked him, leaning against Loki's side, hand on the Jotun's still-flat stomach.

There had been a brief pause, which he easily dismissed as consideration until Loki said, "Oh, you mean, male or female? Male, of course." He had sounded amused, but then in another heartbeat he mused, "I suppose... There is a chance the child could be female, now that you mention it. Probably a small chance. If that is the case, I can kill it and we can try again."

He had sounded almost casual, but Thor had shot upright in the bed, staring at him in the darkness in horror. "What-- No! Do not even think it! Why would you suggest such an act?!"

"Well, my people have no interest in a female child. I thought yours would have none, either. Cannot only male children inherit the throne?"

The memory of those words lingered in his mind even now, weeks later, long after Loki had announced that the child's sex was male. He heard them again in his mind whenever it wandered from the pressing affairs that people brought to him, the conferences and councils that he held to organize the daily running of the realm.

His callous queen. Words that he would have thought with some fondness, before that callousness had been turned upon the child they had conceived. Did it mean so little to Loki, the life they had created, that it could be ended solely because it was not to be king of Asgard someday... Was that Loki's only interest, birthing a child who could be put into power in Asgard? Or did he simply not care for a child who could not adhere to his standards? Would Loki feel that they should kill their son if he was born with a lame leg or without hearing -- or if he had no sensory markings on his skin, or if he were born with pale skin instead of blue?

But inevitably, whenever he went to bring these concerns to Loki, they fell away. He entered Loki's chamber, where the Jotun spent more and more of his time now, and found his queen asleep in his nest, cheek tucked against the raised edge of it, a book folded over his fingers. He was not even covered, and Thor thought affectionately that he could not be comfortable, nor sleep well, in such a state.

He drifted closer, taking the book gently from Loki's grasp. Loki made a dim noise, protesting, but he was already awake -- probably from the moment Thor stepped silently into the room, disturbing the air.

"If you are tired, you should get more rest," Thor chided him, smiling in spite of himself. "Do not attempt stoicism until you pass out on your face."

Loki turned onto his back, his eyes lidded and a dark, carnelian red with his lingering sleep. "I am resting well," he disagreed. "If you manage to gestate life from nothing to infancy without any weariness, do let me know. It is exhausting."

Thor chuckled, easing onto the mattress beside him. "Then I apologize for disturbing your nap. I only wanted to see to it that you were covered, so that you did not wake at the first stirring of air."

A simple enough statement, though it seemed to surprise Loki somewhat: he was still, watching Thor, something uncertain and searching in his expression. Then he made a noise, reaching out to find Thor's wrist and tug. "So thoughtful," he said lightly. "Have you any more work to see to this day?"

"None so pressing," Thor said. He slid into the nest, nudging Loki onto his side and curling against his back , drawing the heavy quilt over them. He nuzzled the back of Loki's neck.

Loki made a humming sound of pleasure, but warned, "If you are hoping that I will be insatiable and wanton with hormones -- the way I was yesterday -- you are to be disappointed. I have quite the headache and I don't care to move."

There was a small part of him that was disappointed -- yesterday had been quite pleasant, after all -- but Thor promised the back of his neck, "I am happy to provide you with whatever you need, no matter what that may be."

And honestly, although it was strange to admit it, even to himself, he was happy. Even if all Loki wanted him to do was provide body heat... His hand skimmed over the Jotun's rounding stomach. That was a rare enough task. Loki was not normally one for meaningless sentimental embraces and sweet words; he usually complained bitterly that Thor's tender moments were too hot or too stifling or too foolish for his tastes. But like this -- with Loki worn and emotional from the changes his body wrought around the child, he seemed more content to suffer his husband's hold.

"I think I know what it is that actually makes you happy," Loki said, his eyes closed. His blue lips were curved up at the edges. "This child! You have been half floating ever since I felt its life."

Though he knew the child was male, still he said 'it'. Thor's hand stroked over the rough blue skin, slow. "Are you -- not happy about it?" he asked, quiet.

Loki let out a breath. "Why ask such a thing? I have not complained, have I?"

Hardly at all. In almost two months, aside from a few jesting comments about how Thor's child was making him sick, or how Thor's child demanded pudding, or how Thor's child tired him out, he had said scarcely a word of displeasure, and never anything truly aggravated with his state.

Thor pressed his lips again to the back of Loki's neck, and murmured against his spine, "He."

The little frost giant paused, and then husked a quiet laugh. "Your people are so unlucky in childbirth. A mated pair of Aesir may take decades to conceive a child. Your females have only an acceptable track record when it comes to carrying infants to term. I thought you would be hesitant to get your hopes up before the child was well along and healthy."

It was not an unfair critique. "Perhaps that is why I insist on making it seem more real," Thor admitted. "But you know that -- for that reason, children are precious to us. They are few and far between. If I put great hopes on a life only two months conceived, it is because for me, that life seems a great blessing."

He hoped fervently that those words were better than the questions that had haunted him ever since Loki asked him if he would wish to kill a female child. Those were questions he could never say aloud: hurtful even to consider, much less to actually address. If Loki truly were so callous, then Thor would have to live with the knowledge that his queen could murder their children without a second thought; if Loki were not, surely he would find the mere wondering offensive.

If he could not ask, then at the least he could make his own feelings clear, so that Loki knew what this meant to him. At the time, he had been shocked, sputtering at first and then falling into silence and then allowing the topic to be changed. But he thought perhaps that now he had found a way to let Loki know that he did not care if the child was male or female, blue or pink, strong or sickly. Any child was his child.

Loki made a soft noise, thoughtful, and said nothing for a long beat. "...Tell me about your youth. Tell me -- what it is like, for a child to grow up in such a world."

The request caught him off-guard. He had been so caught up in the layers that he had put into his words that he had forgotten about what they meant on the surface, and what thoughts that might stir. Immediately Thor felt foolish for his surprise: of course Loki would be curious about what their son's life would be like. No doubt it was -- literally -- worlds away from the lifestyle he had led on Jotunheim, and he would have difficulty imagining it on his own.

Thor tilted his head back, thinking. "I was very spoiled as a boy."

"You don't say?" Loki gasped, mocking wonder evident in his tone.

Thor squeezed his arms tighter around the imp. "Because Asgard's castle sees so few children -- I can count my peers on one hand. Other than Sif, there was only Balder near my age, and so I spent most of my time with them. We trained together, and studied together, but mostly we played about Asgard's gardens and fields and forests, went on adventures, and thought we had all of Yggdrasil at our feet."

They had been good days. He thought about Sif, and suddenly he felt that he had wasted a long, long time thinking on the time when they had been in love, or how hurt he had been when she finally left him, and in doing so he had not been truly friends with her the way he should have been. It was a sad thought, but he rubbed Loki's rounded stomach and told himself that he would make amends.

He continued, thoughtful, "Few people tried to correct or corral my behavior. I think... everyone just believed it would sort itself out on its own as I aged." It had not been entirely unsuccessful; certainly there had been occasions when he had been talked or shamed into wisdom, but those lessons rarely stayed with him, and if anything, he now felt that he had grown more cocky and sure of himself the older he became. It had taken Loki to show him that he did not know all there was to know.

"It was only a few years, and long ago; I do not remember it very well," he admitted. "Aesir age quickly, and then hardly at all, between our natural lifespan and Idunn's golden apples. It took me twenty years to reach adulthood, and then another thousand to become as I am now."

It occurred to him that Jotun did not live so long as Aesir, even those who did not eat Idunn's bounty, in the same moment that it occurred to Loki. The queen rolled onto his back and looked up at Thor, curiously. "Am I to have some of these famed golden apples of yours, or is that -- forbidden?"

Thor chuckled, in spite of himself. "You have had them," he said.

Loki lifted an eyebrow, skeptical. "I should think I'd remember."

"Every day," Thor told him. "In cider, in dessert pastries, in bread, in applesauce..." He laughed again. "We do not eat them only whole. They do not bring them to my rooms because I do not eat there, and I imagine they have not brought them to your rooms because they are not meant for your entourage who stay here."

"Stayed," Loki corrected, quiet. "I told you that they would leave when it became summer."

Thor was startled for a beat, and then -- angry. His queen's personal escort, his bodyguard and his manservant, who had followed him from Jotunheim to ensure that he would not be alone here among a foreign people, had simply left him here by himself without ceremony? When he was with child?

"Is that what they consider duty to their charge?" he asked, trying to rein in his temper. "It would seem you have been left alone after all, and I had nothing to do with it."

Loki's lips quirked up. "I thought you would be happy to hear that most of the monsters were gone from under your roof," he said, and lifted a hand to stroke Thor's jaw, light.

Thor let out a breath, and then turned his head to kiss Loki's fingers. "They are only monsters because they abandoned you," he murmured. "And you not at all." He meant it.

Loki tapped his lips. "Angrboda will be back before it is my time. But he would be useless to me when it grows hotter than this. I would have to take care of him. He is sparing me by leaving." He sounded amused.

Probably he was; probably he laughed at his foolish husband, getting worked up over something that seemed so obvious to him. "Then I suppose I will not hold it against him when he returns," he allowed, and then leaned in, pressing his forehead to Loki's. "--What of your childhood?"

If he had not been so close he might not even have noticed the tiny widening of Loki's eyes, a scant instant before he teased, "Oh, just like yours, really. I went on adventures about the Nine Realms with my many friends and we acted like we owned them. You haven't heard of my great exploits? I am the source of quite a few Vanir plays."

Thor laughed, but he was not dissuaded. "Tell me," he said. "I want to hear it. I told you, didn't I?"

"You don't want to hear it," Loki said mildly. "You have no context for it, nor any interest in the context. You have made no special effort to adjust to the idea that I am from a wholly different species, in a wholly different realm, and that there may be differences in how we live and how you do. You only want to hear me say things that are within your understanding of the world, that make me seem more like you."

The words stung, moreso because Loki so rarely spoke to him that way: when he felt the need to, his were always gentle lessons, often coming from a position of weakness or vulnerability, pleading for understanding -- not this cool wholesale dismissal. Which was why Thor suspected those moments were artifice, designed to upset and manipulate him, and why he suspected this moment was defensive, trying to drive Thor away from learning something about who Loki truly was.

He realized that as much as he had grown accustomed to Loki's quirks and mannerisms, he did not know much of anything about his queen.

"That all sounds like excuses not to tell me," Thor said, quiet. "It seems like you will not share with me the same way that I share everything with you, because you have decided out of hand that I am not interested in truth, only flattery. So stop flattering me and we will see if your low opinion of me is deserved or not."

Loki paused, his red gaze flickering down, studying Thor's tunic with some interest.

Then he murmured, soft and steady, "Raising children is considered a task for the whole community, and so they do not ordinarily have much sense of connection to their biological family, because everyone feeds and shelters and looks after them. They are given few rules, but much is expected of them, and they often spend their days practicing skills they will need as adults, like hunting, or foraging, or ice-shaping, until they they come of age, at forty years old. But children are common, and so one child's life -- or one adult's life -- is not considered terribly significant. After the war, they fell on hard times, as Jotunheim began to melt and break apart without the Casket. And so what was once a strong community bond was undermined by the need for individual survival and self-preservation. No one had the time or the means to look after every child together, when they had difficulty feeding themselves. Perhaps what a Jotun child would experience next year would be very different than what he would have experienced when I was growing up."

Thor listened in silence, swallowing his instinctive reaction to many of those words. It painted a stark picture of a people that had been torn apart by the aftermath of war, and once he would have surged forward with insistences that it was their own fault, that taking the Casket of Ancient Winters had been necessary, that the frost giants had made war upon the mortal realm at no provocation and for no known benefit...

Whether Loki knew those things or not, whether Loki blamed him for what happened, was not important. Loki was telling him this now as a test, to see if he could simply accept the reality of what it had been like to grow up as a Jotun.

Although he had very studiously avoided saying what it was like to grow up as Loki. Thor could not help noticing that he had said 'they', not 'we'; he had not experienced any of that, for himself.

And then, all at once, it came together, and Thor thought: They have no interest in a female child, and so Loki would have killed it.

Why would they have had more use for an undersized child? With Loki's sorcery, he could already feel the life growing within him, but Laufey was no sorcerer. If he had not known, he would have birthed the child... and, even if that child was not killed, he would be an outcast, considered unworthy of the care afforded other children who would one day grow to be warriors and hunters, all expected to take equal share in providing for everyone.

Thor didn't ask. "I am sure it will be easier. But there is some merit to hardship, too," he said, his voice almost a whisper. "If struggling in childhood leads to adults as clever and resourceful and impressive as you, then they should all be grateful." Grateful you were born this way, and that you lived through those trials.

Loki looked up at him, studying his face, measuring him. Whatever he was searching for, he seemed content with it, because after a long beat he relaxed against Thor's body, tipping his head to rest on the bigger man's shoulder. "Sentimental nonsense, as usual. You will spoil our son, and I will give him no quarter," Loki drawled. "Either he will grow to be a perfect adult, or he will go mad before a decade is out."

He had called the child 'he' instead of 'it'. Whether it was a concession, or whether it was simply that Thor had made him think on their son's future enough that he could no longer distance himself from it, Thor felt a thrill of pleasure go through him, and he laughed. "I think we will manage," he said, confidently.

Loki drifted to sleep in his arms, and Thor stared at the wall beyond his bent head, thinking about how Loki never wanted to be held and never told him anything about himself.

He had never felt closer to him. His heart had never felt more full.






.asking someone out.
"We will have been married for a year soon, you know."

Loki looked up from the raveled scroll, his lips quirking up with some small amusement. "I'm aware of the date," he told Thor.

Thor laughed, hearty, and reached out to pull the scroll away. "But not its significance. We will have been married for a year! It is an anniversary. Our first."

"Oh, by my breath." His lips twitched up, but he reached for the scroll again, to show Thor that he had no time for such thoughts. "What do you want? For it to be a holiday throughout Asgard?"

"Perhaps it will be," Thor said firmly. "Why pass up an excuse for a feast?"

He rolled his eyes. Ridiculous talk. These Asgardians would turn anything into a celebration. Every arrival, every departure, every reunion, every successful mission or hunt or quest... Anything that could be interpreted as fortunate, and everything they wanted to be fortunate, and a few things that would just be too depressing if they didn't all agree to make it a celebration.

"By the time Vali is a year old you will have made holidays for his first step, his first word, his first night sleeping uninterrupted..."

"That will be something to celebrate," Thor agreed, and then looked around. "Where is he?"

Loki lifted an eyebrow at him. "Do you think I have so little to do other than fuss over him at all hours of the day and night? Do I not have a treaty in my hands that I am trying to read, so that you do not have to?"

Thor gave him a matching challenging stare, although he let his amusement show plain on his face. He let everything show; he wore his heart on his sleeve. "Where is he?"

Loki tossed his hair over his shoulders and said mildly, "He is with your mother, as usual. She likes to take him everywhere."

Now a fond smile turned Thor's lips up. He seemed to adore every part of being a parent, including late-night screaming fits, and so naturally Frigga's similarly adoring coos and cuddles of her grandson was one of his favorite parts.

For his part, Loki was pleased that he had more responsibilities. He was used to dealing with the affairs of a realm after he had struggled to prove himself worthy of his place as Laufey's heir, and even though he was that no longer, he knew that he could be of service to Thor -- who, after all, had never had to struggle for or to prove anything in his whole life. Loki had the patience to read and to learn that Thor lacked; he had the head for figures and probabilities that Thor lacked. And he had subtly, deliberately reinforced in Thor's mind for weeks and weeks that he was willing and able to share the burden of ruling, without productive end.

But it seemed like after Vali was born, Thor permitted him anything. When he'd asked if Thor would read him the treaties he pored over for hours -- as if to help him drift off to sleep -- Thor obliged; when he offered opinions, Thor listened; and now Thor sought his help as a matter of course.

"We could leave her to take care of him for a time," Thor said. Loki looked up at him, not following the train of thought, and Thor clarified helpfully, "On the anniversary."

Loki felt his lips quirk up. Thor liked to pretend that Angrboda was not just as capable and willing to look after Vali. "So that we could do -- what, precisely?"

Thor stammered and flushed but had no answer to that, and Loki returned to his work.

He gave it no further thought until he saw the Queen Mother later that day. Frigga brought Vali to the rooms that had been hers only a year ago, holding him tightly swaddled in her arms; Loki could hear her singing to him all the way down the hall, and in spite of himself he smiled fleetingly.

"Here you go," she sang, sweeping over to him with her attention wholly on the infant.

Loki held out his arms, asking, "Did he pose you any trouble, Your Highness?"

"None at all, Your Highness!" she returned, winking at him. She was obviously in high spirits, and Loki barely kept from smirking. He was learning that babies had that effect on Asgardians. "He has been perfectly well-behaved!"

"I should not be surprised. You know you are his favorite," he said warmly. He had gone out of his way to make sure that Frigga thought well of him: in fact, he went out of his way to ensure that all of Thor's closest companions and trusted allies thought well of him. "He is never so quiet for me as he is for you."

Vali looked up at him and burbled, reaching for his face; Loki suspected that when so many of the people Vali saw from day to day were pink-toned, he liked seeing the blue, and perhaps seeing his own blue fingers against blue skin. The boy was not so different from the Aesir: he was small, and his eyes were blue, and his little round belly was pale. But his father's blood showed around the edges. The soft hair growing in thickly over his skull was a deep black, and that soft pink skin turned to blue around the edges -- fingers and toes, elbows and knees, and shoulders, with so-slightly raised skin at his temples and over his arms.

The Aesir whispered among themselves that the blue would fade in time, and then he would look much like any other halfling; but Loki looked at him and thought, Some things are more than skin deep, and he was satisfied.

Frigga admitted freely, "Tis because I spend all my waking time with him." She sighed, soft. "Sometimes I take him in to see Odin, to tell him about his grandson... But it is not the same for Vali, when he cannot interact with him."

Loki flickered a glance up at her. "So Odin will know him better than he knows me, even having slept through the entire year in which he was conceived," he teased.

She smiled at him, certain. "He will love you."

Not one of Loki's most pressing concerns, not yet. He turned, crossing to the cradle, and gently set Vali down, offering him a rattle to entertain him. Vali grasped it tightly and shook it, laughing brightly at the sound it made. When Loki straightened up again, he could see that Frigga was still watching the baby, an utterly guileless look on her face. She was the one in love.

But she shook her head, clearing it, when she noticed Loki's attention. Frigga cleared her throat and said, "Thor is planning something, you know."

"--For the anniversary of our union?" Loki felt amusement and exasperation war within him. These Asgardians, and their obsession over dates, and celebrations... "I thought we had already established that that was a silly idea."

"He is very attached to that silly idea." Frigga chuckled. "Thor has a big heart, and he wants to make grand gestures. Make no mistake, he will do something, one way or another. You are his queen, after all."

Loki shook his head. "You can surely say something to him? Tell him I have no need for any grand gifts or parties, and we both have better things to do with our time."

Frigga's lips were curved up in a wide smile, and she reached up to take him by the arms. Loki looked down at her, thrown. He still had not grown used to the possessive way the Aesir touched everyone they knew.

She said, "He has already asked everyone for their thoughts on what he might do. You are much too late for that, my dear. Besides, even a queen and mother needs to take time for himself." She chuckled, amused at herself.

Loki's lips quirked up, sharing in her amusement at the strange wording. But he took his complaints to Angrboda later that evening.

"The Aesir are so insistent that if you bear a child, you must be its mother," he muttered.

Angrboda looked up at him from where he was dangling fingers above the baby, letting him grab for them. "We have discussed this before, or something similar," he pointed out. "Do you remember? Asgardian men cannot carry their own children. They must have a word for those who do."

"I grow tired of the Asgardians and their traditions," Loki proclaimed. He dropped his pen to the desk and folded his arms.

The frost giant husked out a laugh. "You are becoming more like them every day," he said. "Listen to you pout because there are those different than you, little mouse."

Loki glanced at him, scowling. "I could teach them better. I could explain to him that I am the boy's father, and Thor is his sire. The sire is the one who provides the seed. The term is familiar to them; even they would know that much. It isn't that difficult."

"Is it worth the aggravation of explaining it to every soul in Asgard?" Angrboda asked him mildly.

"Maybe."

"Then think you that the king of Asgard will be content for his child to call him 'Thor' because a child was never meant to call his sire by anything but his bare name?"

Loki frowned at the window. No, he didn't imagine Thor would like that. "Vali is important to him," he admitted. It would crush Thor -- and anger him -- to learn that Loki's people would consider him little more than a donor of material required to create the true father's child; that the child was Loki's, in every way that mattered.

Angrboda made a quiet grunt of acknowledgment. Then he said, "As long as you teach the pup better than to call you 'Mother', it won't matter."

That much was true, and it made him feel somewhat more comfortable with the idea. He slanted a look at Angrboda, though, lips quirking up. "Pup?" he asked. "Because I am a mouse, he is a pup?"

"What else would he be?" Angrboda asked, lifting Vali from his cradle. The infant fit easily in the palm of one of his hands, and Vali raised his arms, flailing eagerly for more contact. "Look at how small he is. Too small. How am I meant to carry him?"

"How can't you carry him, he's so small," Loki said dryly.

"He would drown if I put him in a sling on my back," Angrboda muttered.

"How did you carry me?"

Angrboda chuckled. "I didn't," he said, freely. "I left you at home. No one else had any use for you."

Loki's lips quirked up. That was what he liked about Angrboda. He was unflinchingly honest -- and he was not sentimental.

When the scowl came across his lips again, Angrboda observed, "You are being petty because you are upset about something."

"Thor is insistent upon doing something for our anniversary," Loki said, crossly. "I don't know how to talk him out of it."

Angrboda waited perhaps three seconds before asking, "And why is that a priority?"

He was accustomed to Angrboda questioning his logic and his reasons, but it irritated him now. "Because the date is meaningless!"

"If it were meaningless, it would not matter whether or not he chose to have a celebration on that day. It means something to you."

And that was why it irritated him: damn Angrboda and his insightful wit, those eyes that saw right through his attempts at deception after a thousand years of living together. "Of course it means something to me," he said, sourly. "It means, let's have the whole of Asgard rejoice the day when we both sacrificed our futures to one another to broker a peace. A whole year has passed and we are neither dead nor unable to bear each other's presence! Huzzah."

Angrboda chuckled, lowering his head again as he drew Vali close to his chest. He told the infant, light, "Your father is inventing slights again. It is the curse of an overactive mind. Pray that you are dumb as rocks, pup." And treacherous Vali laughed.

The simple fact of the matter was that they were not celebrating a wedding, or even a happy occasion. They would celebrate a day of defeat. A day when they had both conceded that their kingdoms were more important than their own plans and desires. They would celebrate that, although that concession could have been disastrous, they did not yet regret it as much as they could have.

Loki found the idea of pretending to be thrilled that they did not hate each other to be utterly pathetic.

Did they have to make an ordeal of it? A first anniversary might be significant for a couple who had been in love and were still in love, but for them it was only a recognition that they had needed to make it work, and they had made it work. They didn't need to sit together and feign excitement while they were both still haunted by the specter of the lives they could have led. A year was nothing, and in that year they had achieved little of value other than not strangling one another. Ten years, twenty years, fifty years down the line -- then, perhaps, it would be time to celebrate the success of their union, if indeed it still seemed like something to celebrate.

He slipped out of bed early on the day that it was a year since he'd been married, and he went to the adjoining room to curve over Vali's cradle. He was old enough now that he occasionally managed to sleep through the night, and he had not yet woken, flat on his back and oblivious to everything around him.

"I am very lucky, you know," Loki whispered to him. "Your sire is just clever enough to be a good king, and just dumb enough to let me help him without question. And he is not unlikable."

He was not... unlikable.

Thor found him there a short while later, and stepped up beside him, slipping an arm casually about his waist; they watched Vali together wordlessly, for a long beat.

"He is beautiful," Thor murmured. He said it often, and meant it each time.

Loki sighed, soft. "Of course he is," he said, matter-of-factly.

That made Thor laugh, and he steered them both around so that they faced each other. "I have stated the obvious again. My apologies."

Thor was in a good mood, which blunted the edge of Loki's distaste for the whole affair. He supposed that if -- for whatever foolish reason -- Thor was genuinely happy about this day, then it would not be so terrible. He could easily sublimate his own loss: after all, his prospects had been far less impressive. He had bit and clawed and fought to earn the respect of the Jotun, and proven to them time and again that he would be a worthy heir, but he could only ever have been king of crumbling Jotunheim that way; perhaps a solitary king, with no mate and no heirs, because the other frost giants treated him like glass.

If Thor could look past all the women he could not be with, and all the perfectly normal Aesir children he might have had, and all the freedom that he had lost, then Loki supposed that he had less to mourn, and thus no place to ruin whatever Thor had planned.

But he still was not expecting it when Thor began, "I want... I think that perhaps we have gone about this somewhat backward. Moving... too soon -- though of course we had little choice in the matter, but -- there is also some... virtue, to some of those small steps along the way, that we... ah, missed."

Loki lifted his eyebrows as Thor kept talking without saying anything. Slowly color was coming into his face, reddening his cheeks, and it took Loki a long moment to realize that he was blushing.

"What has come over you?" he asked, bemused.

Thor lifted a hand to rake impatiently through his hair, and then he turned back around and said, seriously, "Would you like to -- do something together?"

A mysterious question. Loki paused, and then laughed a little, and then pointed through the door to their bed. Something? How coy.

"No, no! Not that -- as lovely as that would be." Now, somehow, Thor was even more red-faced. "I would like to take you out. As if we were going courting."

"Courting?" Loki echoed, lifting his eyebrows. Had Thor not protested a similar turn of phrase before Vali was conceived? "We are already married. Our son is right here."

Thor huffed out a breath, a rueful chuckle escaping him. "I recall that much, yes. But I feel..." He curled his fingers around Loki's hand, holding on to him tightly. Loki darted his gaze downward as if to confirm the ridiculous gesture before looking back up at his mate. "I feel like we were married so fast. And though our time together has been happy, and you have brought great joy into my life," Thor slanted that adoring look at Vali that Loki had grown so familiar with, "so too have I occasionally felt that haste keenly. We do not know each other as well as we should. As well as I would like. And I..." He lifted Loki's fingers to his lips. "...I would like to remedy that."

It was completely not what Loki had expected, and for a long beat he could not even find the words to respond to it. Thor wanted to -- take him to scenic spots and sit with him, asking questions about Loki and talking about himself, holding hands and stealing kisses like shy adolescents.

"This is complete and total madness," he said, frankly.

Thor only grinned at him and laughed.

But it was not an unpleasant sort of madness. The idea had its appeal. And at least he would know, for certain, that Thor was not spending the day thinking about what could have been, and who he could have been with. Instead, he was thinking about... how they could be happier, together.

Suddenly it all felt very overwhelming. "When?" he managed.

"This afternoon? We can take a lunch out together..."

Loki ducked his head, to hide his smile. "And Vali?"

"Mother will look after him."

He closed his eyes, and then lifted his head again, composed and eyebrows raised. "I expect this lunch to contain pie."

But he had expected a great many things, a great many times, since the day that Laufey told him that he would be of use to Jotunheim in a different way than he had planned. And a great many times, Thor had actually managed to exceed those expectations. Somehow, he knew that nothing would be missing that would ruin the afternoon.

Loki would just have to hold on to the reassuring knowledge that he could never have his expectations confounded so thoroughly as Thor had. Even if the one who had surprised Thor the most was Thor, himself.