bakerstreet | A Picture is Worth... Meme.

A Picture is Worth... Meme.

A Picture is Worth.... Meme
This ain't your mama's meme. Forget your RNG, forget your tired old prompts.
A picture is worth a thousand words.
It's easy. Comment with your character. Then go comment around.
But instead of pre-filled prompts with words or numbers, you find a gif or image (any gif/image from any canon or scenario you please) that sets the scene.
The picture is the prompt.

WARNING: THIS POST WILL BE IMAGE HEAVY. AND POSSIBLY NSFW AND THERE MAY BE TRIGGERS.
Some images will not be able to be hidden behind cuts, so please be aware that triggery material may be found within.

If you post an image that is violent or sexual in nature please LINK it, do not embed it into the comment.

Feel free to use this template to stick your image in there.

Good resources for images/gifs are weheartit or tumblr. For not so safe for work gifs/images go here and here.

Original Meme here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only | Expand All

[ The earth splits between the thrust of ice from Loki's hands, Loki's arms; life freezes and shrivels and withers away, and Thor sees again the cruelty of winter which his beautiful, strong, vulnerable body could no longer abide, all those years ago. Winter kills, winter suffers and sorrows and teaches loneliness and desolation, and even the sweetness of summer's kiss can only warm it for so long. He roars in fury, swings out Mjolnir, shatters the blades of ice in one fell swipe of its blunt savagery. ]

Would you have my plenty as yours? Would you take it now, Loki? You who sang the death of our love the first night we lay together?

[ Mjolnir strikes and the thunder roars, the dark clouds of summer storm and fury driving back the winter. Thor flings himself after his beloved, and the land trembles beneath the clash of their weapons, trembles beneath the booming of thunder, as Mjolnir swings again and again, driving the king of winter back to his own borders. ]

And who will take my penance from me? Will it be you, my heart?

[ Yes, he stole their children. From the jaws of death he stole them into life, that they might grow and become strong, become queen and king, become warriors and mothers and lords of their own choosing, and that they might one day know the father who sowed them. And when the mortals fled to his green lands, Thor opened his arms and took them in, sent daughter and son to show them how to plant and how to harvest, that they might one day understand how to bear the cruel empty months of winter, so that they might one day return to the mountains and learn for themselves the true beauty and quiet peace of that kingdom.

He knew there would be no such return for him. ]

[ Every time the blades shatter, they reform again crueler and sharper than the last. There is no dearth of ice in winter's heart, and no end to the fury of its storm.

Still, Loki is thrust back with each of Mjolnir's blows, hardly able to stand trenchant against the shattering assault. Winter preys upon the flickering life that has been starved and frozen, but summer is no meager creature to be cowed by wind and snow.

Oh, Loki saw this day when he was still young and eager; he saw how Thor would look upon him with pity and rage, and he had feared it, once. He fears it still, but the promise of an end does not figure in those fears — no, he has lived long and lived poorly, and finally only Thor will bow his golden head to mourn him. None other.

Such is the fate of the winterborn.

Loki had come here, once, the gentleness of song upon his lips. It breaks free from him again, but this time it is more akin to the jeering of the raven, the murderous cries of the falcon.

My heart, Thor would call him, as if the chasm between them has not grown teeth; Loki's eyelashes clump with snow and rain and loathsome sentiment. ]

Yes. [ he shouts, with each wheeling cry. ] Bare your throat, King of Summer, and let me anoint the land with your blood — else take up your strength and strike me down now — !

[ His strength and the storms drive winter back to the brink of its own realm, and there Thor catches Loki with one hand around his throat and the other swinging Mjolnir, shattering another gleaming blade of ice that would shatter his ribs apart and pierce heart and lungs in a gushing of dark blood. Then he pulls Loki near with that savage grasp and kisses him, claiming for himself again the cold lips that once parted in sweet yielding for him, that shared laughter and song and passion between their mouths. How diminutive Loki has become, lean and furious as a starving wolf, and Thor drops his weapon and wraps him into his arms, pulling him up against all his own great and brutally hewn frame: a body whose devastating strength has only ever been used in the realization of joy and love.

Then he lets go and thrusts Loki back, standing with one foot in summer and one in winter, torn between them as he has ever been, and Thor stands proud and unafraid and opens wide his arms, lifting his chin to bare his throat. Like the king stag, the great beast who comes every year on the eve of the shortest night: the sacrifice who offers himself. ]

Come then, Loki, my love; take my life if you will have it, then take this war of yours and bear it home to your own realm.

[ His voice is gentled now, the storm wrought of fury and grief gone from it, as the storm wrought above is now receding; the clouds thin and the twilit sky shows through, dusky and warm with the first brave gleaming of stars.

Thor does not fear death anymore. He has lived long, and known the hollow ache of a heart torn asunder, and would count it no great tragedy if his blood were spilled today, now that a son or a daughter might take up his crown. ]

Else put down your arms and come with me: there are things I would show you, and matters upon which we must speak.

[ And Loki wavers between the extremes of the decision posed to him, and for once he cannot hide the battle within him from rising to mar his white face.

Because his body still trembles in the aftermath of Thor's embrace, even a scant moment of that coveted warmth a reminder of how poorly his memories have reconstructed what he has missed for an eternity. The guttural rhythm of his death-song dies in the graveyard of his fading hatred, and Loki shifts his weight from foot to foot and back again, his arms wrapped about himself. The blades do not reform again, even though ice creeps past his fingertips to circle his wrists, and even though his scant raiment is stiff with the frost.

The snow and the sleet does not quiet; Loki's hair is whipped up in the torrent, flicking shadows across his face.

Here is victory, waiting for him to reach out and take hold of it. All the lands will thus be enveloped by the ice, and all will know Loki and Loki alone as a king and a god. They will fear him, and they will turn their faces from him, but he will grow fat and content upon the feast of power that he will spread upon his tables. Never again will he know the agony of separation, for summer will become a relic of the past.

(Oh, the winter-king is a liar still.)

When the ice-blade finally renews itself, Loki's teeth have sunk into his own lip, and blood wells and well until it streaks his chin with crimson. In a blur of movement he forces its point to the apple of Thor's throat, where it hovers, where it shakes and trembles and does not press strongly enough to draw the blood of the summer-king. ]

I will come. [ he says, and his voice is nearly lost in the rage of his storm. And then he's shifting away, the blade melting to icy water, the skies above slowly quieting their thunder. ] As a fool and a traitor to my own self, I will come — but do not think that I have forgotten my warmongering.

[ The blade pricks, it burns with cold, but it does not pierce, though Thor waits with patient, liquid eyes and his body opened for the thrust of death. It does not come; it withdraws instead, and Loki stands stark with rage and perhaps longing, too, so that the king of summer aches for him and wishes for their youth, for the days when he could have drawn Loki down into his arms, laid him between sweet-smelling sheets and furs and comforted him with his warmth, with the press of their naked skin. Instead he reaches and takes Loki's hand, drawing him back into the realm of summer.

Once he had thought they could both belong here, that they could both live forever. ]

This way. There is something you have not seen before.

[ It is as it was when they were young, Thor leading Loki by the hand, but this time the lord of winter trembles not in wonder but in fury, and Thor treads gentle but heavy-hearted upon the earth. He does not take him across the long stretch of green and gold field, but leads into the dark forest, by a winding path shrinking narrower and narrower between the broad old trunks of kingly trees, their crowns of thick leaves thrust proudly into the sky. The king of summer has walked this path many times before, and the life which springs beneath his feet is all of twisted vine and dark weed, grasping wild growth.

At last a glen in the wood, and a small hut with thatched roof, wildflowers at the door. Smoke curls gray from the peak of the roof; within, the floor is packed earth strewn with herbs, and more hang in drying bunches from the eaves, and a pot over the brazier fills the space with an earthy scent and the smell of rabbit roasted and stewed. There is a garden to one side of the hut, small and laboriously toiled. The bed in the corner is nearly too small for his frame. ]

My home. [ says Thor, when he has brought Loki within. ] When I am not needed at the palace. It is too sweet there: the dryads sing for me, but I ache for want of your voice. They put feasts before me, but it sits overrich upon my tongue, and there is no one with which to share it. The children did not live long with me; they hungered for the world beyond summer, and I had not the heart to forbid them to fly where their wings would take them. And so this has become my refuge. I have found peace here, but no joy, since our parting.

[ A hundred times does Loki's mind stray from the path at hand, thinking of the edge of his blade, and a hundred times again he slakes his desire for vengeance with a sweeter boon — the weight of Thor's hand in his own, and the warmth of the sun upon skin pulled taut over ragged bone. In his own land, the ice would have reached to meet him, crowning him with shards that glittered like diamond and glass; here, even the vines growing gnarled and wild draw away from his frost-lined footsteps.

It had not been so, when he had first ventured here. The sun and the sky and the fields of gold had welcomed him as joyfully as their king.

Loki draws closer, stepping only in the great shadow fallen behind Thor, hiding his face in shame. Winter had once known a brightness equal to its cruelty; it had once known color and light as compelling as that of the summerlands. No longer is that true.

And his shame only heightens when Thor leads him into the secret glen hidden beyond the tangle of the woods. There is no magic that crowns the trees with gold, no ancient will that beautifies the thatched roof and the hanging herbs, and yet in the midst of this simplicity Loki finds his breath catching in his throat. He stills in the doorway, the earth warm under his bare feet, and he pulls his hand away when the attempt is made to draw him within. ]

You should not have brought me here. [ says Loki. The rage was a shackle, moments ago, and now the cold iron bite of it has been replaced by heavier resignation. His hands are curled over the shaft of wood rising to form the doorway, and his fingertips idly stroking the smooth grain, again, again, feverishly.

(If only—)

Already the wildflowers at his feet begin to blacken. ]

You have seen what I have become. You saw it, when you left my lands heavy with the life we wrought. You ache for a creature lost.

[ He does not mean to cause Loki agony or shame by bringing him again into his kingdom, taking him deep into the heart of the woods to this ascetic shelter amidst the old trees. He only means to show him how he lives now, the turning of his life since the days when they were lovers. Yet Loki stands at the door with suffering in every line of his body, and Thor knows that the shame is his, that he had ever brought pain to the winter king's hard, that he had ever let him know betrayal and abandonment, no matter how necessary.

Thor moves towards him and lifts his fingers to touch Loki's raven hair. The dark strands fall straight and unadorned, without crystals or crowns or any of the accoutrements his lover once wore, bedecked in the beauty and glory of a king. How Thor had loved to see him so, how he had ached for him when he lived with his lord in the winter palace. He watches Loki's fingers stroke the frame of the threshold with an absent fervor, and he wishes that elegant white touch was upon him, upon his own skin. That pleasure, that intimacy could smooth away pain. ]

Will you tell me now my own desire, my heart?

[ He sweeps aside the black curtain of Loki's hair and leans down to kiss the vulnerable white nape of his neck. His hands settle upon narrow hips, Loki's body thin and bony in his hands; while he has grown ever more beautiful in his age and sorrow, Loki has withered and starved, as though bereft not only of joy and laughter but of sustenance itself. ]

If you will not destroy me, then what would you do? I would have you live here with me. [ His lips are tender on Loki's skin. An arm winds around his waist, his hand resting low on his belly, drawing their hips together, as though in memory of the intimacy they once shared. ] I would renounce my kingship. I would live only for you.

[ Loki stiffens in the embrace, every new tenderness awakening in him yearnings that he has learned to thrust deep beyond the encasement of ice that his heart has become. Yet Thor's arms are the foundation upon which he had once stood to drag his fingertips through the sky. If the winter had given Loki life, then it had been Thor who had made life more than an endless search for victuals and firelit warmth. ]

Can the sun and the moon hide away? Do the stars know to sit upon their thrones?

[ Still, his hands slide down the smooth grain of wood, until they drop away entirely to rest over Thor's own. After a moment of silence — not hesitation, but a gathering of will, a steeling of a mind accustomed instead to icy gyre and black rime — he presses his fingers between, twining the hands of winter and summer with true meaning for the first time in a millennium. ]

No. [ says Loki, before Thor can offer an answer. He is twisting in Thor's arms, suddenly, his hands a white flash of motion before they settle upon Thor's bearded cheeks.

Oh, the difference between them — the ruddy golden flesh against the paper-thin white. Even the cruelty of winter's frost is a meager defiance. ] You are a king. Even at the perilous summit of my anger, I have never wished it any other way.

[ Loki's eyes meet his and the green of them is so dark as to be nearly black, the light that once glowed in them gone now, trampled out beneath the ages of suffering and grief and bitter rage. And it is like a blade to Thor's heart to see that, so painful it nearly sets him to gasping; but instead he leans down and covers Loki's mouth with his, stealing for himself the tender desire he would have them share with one another again. Even as Loki cups his face between his hands, Thor gathers him into his arms, arms even stronger and harder than those that once held the king of winter in their forbidden embraces.

Perhaps there was nothing in which their love could have ended but sorrow or death. Yet he had made a promise to Loki never to fall by his hand, and Thor had kept his vow. ]

Is it so?

[ His voice is soft, his lips at Loki's cheek, yet Thor pushes him back against the wall of the hut with hunger in the broad hands which hold him. The lord of winter is thin and narrow and brittle beneath his touch, but still he hitches him up between wood and the unyielding press of his own body. He has strength enough for them both; let that strength be breathed back into his lover's form. Can they not know each other again, share heat and desire again, and perhaps find, if not new joy, healing and wholeness? ]

Then come and be my subject, my beauty, my prince of winter. Come and live beside me as my own. [ His voice is rough, whispering, his mouth at Loki's ear. ] If you will not let me renounce my kingdom for you, then renounce yours for me: for I have never let you go from my heart. You know that, do you not?

[ Oh, it would be simplicity itself to name Thor the worst of liars, to fly off the precipice of his fury, and to die here amongst the rubble of a life Thor had crafted for want of him alone. It would be a divine end to a story writ and acted by the divine themselves, and Loki would not begrudge the King of Summer one last vow broken.

Because Loki-king had forgotten himself in the wake of a betrayal he had seen as motivated by condescension, by malice, by anger. That Thor had left him, and taken the last gifts that Loki had sown, because he had finally seen the truth of it — that winter was no place for a king of his stature, of his great and glorious warmth. That Loki himself was but a leech of his majesty, and hardly a king in his own right.

But there is forgiveness and there is the seeking of forgiveness in Thor's eyes. That gold-fringed gaze has never known malice and anger the likes of which Loki has cultivated over the centuries; to name him liar and betrayer would be worse than committing murder upon a blade of ice. ]

I know it now. [ says Loki, in a soft, faltering voice. His mouth is a broken curve, his words lost against the press of Thor's skin. ] Yet — even if I make a dowry of my lands, winter will follow. Your country will know both the warmth of the summer sun and the blade of the north wind's scythe. [ And though his eyes are black, and his skin white and thin and run through with blue veins, there is steel yet in the set of his jaw, in the grasping strength of his hands upon Thor's shoulders. ] Can you bear it — [ And, after but a heartbeat of hesitation: ] —my king?

To have you, beloved, there is nothing else I would wish for more.

[ His answer is a quiet one, but there is the weight of sincerity upon every word. To have light, to have plenty, to have the warmth of the sun upon his back and the growth of crops which come spilling over to his table, more a feast than even the god of the summer could ever consumer--what good any of it when his table is empty, his palace without a consort, his bed without a lover to warm the sheets?

Summer is beauty and plenty still, but where once Thor knew nothing more than contentment beneath the endlessly blue skies and the soft fields of grass in which to lie, when all his desire was in the warmth and peace of his own kingdom, then came Loki to show him so much more than he had ever known of fulfillment.

Thor's kingdom is empty without him. ]

Why now should our realms be apart, when we have known each other as though we were one body? [ He turns his head, kisses Loki's mouth, and speaks longing at his lips, holding him pinned. ] When you have sown me and I have given you children of your blood, when we have been thrall and master in turn to one another? Give yourself to me, my love, and I will take all that comes with you. Or else put your blade to my throat and spill my blood upon this earth. I cannot bear to be apart from you.

[ The mortals will suffer. The children born of the braided fiber of divinity: they, too, will suffer. If summer was unselfish in its generosity, it would drive out the incumbent winter before its breath could sweep the life from the valleys of plenty, from the mortal villages filled with cheer. If Thor could forget his own heart, none in all the world would again know the pain of a starving belly again. ]

You have become more selfish than ever you taught me to be. [ And yet even as he speaks the shadows in his eyes begin to fragment. He does not fight against the hold; no, he surrenders himself to it, his dark head falling back to rest against the wooden slats of the wall.

The future spirals into shadows in the distance, and even Loki's gift of prophecy is not enough to illuminate the path set ahead. A choice, then, a fork in the road — but Loki knew which turn he would choose before even Thor looked upon him with love in his eyes. He knew, when he woke to a bedchamber bereft of all but ice and shadow. What is Loki without Thor?

He takes a shallow breath, enough to whet his lungs with the warm sunlit musk of summer's king. His arms tighten about Thor's shoulders, drawing him closer still. His voice is nigh inaudible, so softly does he speak. ] Then come nearer to me, my king. I have been so very cold.

[ Then let mortals and gods alike know that life, that joy and generosity and love, are as precious as they are fleeting; that the dark valleys of sorrow make the bright peaks of happiness all the more golden and beautiful. The winter sang to him of this, the first night they lay together, and Thor did not understand it then. He did not understand it in the years they passed together, in summer first and then in winter; he learned it at last the night he kissed Loki farewell and walked away from his realm heavy with his children. Then he knew what grief was, and a pain so piercing that only the memory of his greatest love could sustain him.

And if it is selfishness to love his lord of winter more than he does anything else--if, when the chance to have him again is put within his reach, it is selfishness to grasp him with both hands and vow never to let go, then let him be selfish. Let all the world be bound by the love between them.

He hushes Loki with his mouth, strength and tenderness in the hands which hold him, and a swelling of desire in all his body which holds his beloved pinned to the wall of this hut which has been his only solace for long seasons. He will not take him back to the greenwood palace, not yet. Let them have this small hidden place all to themselves, let them live in the unspoiled joy of reunion for as long as they might before the rest of the world intrudes; only then will Thor go back with him, hand in hand, not merely as lovers this time but as consorts, as sovereigns together. ]

Does this warm you? [ A kiss and a kiss again, his voice murmuring and rough with wanting. ] My mouth upon you? My touch?

[ He pulls open the plain fur shift which hides Loki's body from him, lets it slip to the ground to be discarded and forgotten; only his hands, his body, the sheets of his bed to cover Loki's nakedness now. Oh, pale and thin and hungry, his beloved lord of winter: how he has starved and suffered, how cruelly he has used himself in the years since their parting; Thor's hands are warm upon him, smoothing over his skin as though his touch might heal all pain.

Then he goes to his knees before him, kissing his hip, taking his cock in hand and bringing it to his mouth to taste. His lips and tongue play at the tip, soft and teasing, flirting, stroking, slow wetness and heat lathed at the crown of sweet arousal. ]

[ If they are gods, do they not have the right of self-indulgence? Loki has spent his existence walking the lands created by his own footsteps; he has taught the mountains to tower, the trees to grow, the birds to sing. He taught the mortals to speak, to walk, to eat from the sacrificed beasts of the land. Is it not time for him to reap the fields he has sown?

If he is a god, it is his right.

And yet looking upon the spill of sunlit hair across his own naked white thighs, Loki feels less a god and more of a worm white upon the black earth, worthy of neither the warmth of Thor's hands or mouth. Or of the sweet comfort of his words, those that have already shown Loki's heart again what it means to be whole and unhurt.

Oh, perhaps one day he will be the consort of a great god-king, and he will eat of a table provided by the sun and the earth, by mortals who will always love their summer-king more than his silvered shadow.

And will Loki not be amongst their numbers, offering his body to slake and be slaked in turn? Will he not offer tribute with every glance askance? ]

Not yet. [ He says, softly. His body cants backwards, unsteady, trembling, and he barely manages to brace himself before he falls splayed against the narrow bed of Thor's crafting. His breath catches between his teeth. He speaks as if bespelled, the words spoken as if from a dream. ] The cold has sunk deep. Deeper than your reach.

[ And Loki dare not reach out and touch the golden hair, nor the rough cheek, for he knows that he would draw forth heat and love and succor more than even the summer-king can provide. Loki would drink him dry, and thus murder him with plaintive desire instead of hatred alone. ]

Hush, beloved. Be patient; I will warm you.

[ A rough voice, a promise made that perhaps he cannot keep, but Thor is reckless and relentless both, following Loki to where he has sprawled back against the simple mattress, made of clean linen and stuffed with down. Dried bunches of herbs fragrant between the sheets; a soft reddish-brown animal pelt which was once a gentle-eyed doe. He has lived simply here and sadly, but sweetly, too, filling his days with the quiet fulfillment of work and crafting. Now Loki lies upon the bed of the only home he could bear to make for himself, and he realizes now how he had always hoped to have his love in his arms here. How he had hoped to share its peace with him.

His mouth brushes at his inner thigh, his beard, and Thor nuzzles then at Loki's cock, kisses, noses and plays at the underside of the shaft; his hands brace themselves upon the bed with the beautiful, desolate lord of winter between them, and he climbs up the length of his body, pushes him down to the mattress, settles his own weight, the great breadth and length of his body down against him. Thor kisses him slowly, catching his face between his two hands, while all his body knows desire and wanting and more than that: the urge to shelter him, to caress and cradle him to wholeness.

He leans upward at last, rearing upright upon his knees, and Thor makes swift work of his own garments, stripping them away. Naked and golden, he bends again for another kiss, then shifts up against the headboard, drawing apart the pelt and sheets so that he and Loki might slip beneath them. ]

Come here, come lie in my arms.

[ Isolation has left him greedy for the sight of each shifting moment of bared skin, and yet his body remains a torn strip of vellum, sodden and frayed at the edges. Even the touch of mouth and tongue upon his cock had done little more than to draw out sunlit memory of a hundred such moments in the handful of months that summer and winter had once known communion.

Loki rises to his knees, crawling forward across the doeskin, the ladder of his spine shifting obscenely under the naked cloak of his skin; he draws himself upwards just enough to touch a palm to the warmth of Thor's shoulder, to sweep along the swell of it until his fingertips rest in the hollow of Thor's throat.

A temptation, even now.

Yet the moment passes soon into silence, and Loki casts off his malice into the sea lapping at the rocky shore of his mind — there it sinks, hiding beneath the black waves until Loki would cast his net again to call it hence.

Now he slips beneath the warm drape proffered to him, his hand steady upon the join of golden throat to shoulder, and he spreads his knees to straddle the width of Thor's hips below. The heat rises to warm his skin as if the open flame of Thor's body lies a thousand leagues away, so deeply has the cold wrapped itself about winter's king. ]

Did they seek to leave your kingdom because they share the coldness of my heart? [ asks Loki Winterborn, his hands splayed upon Thor's chest, his head bowed, his hair a tumbling chaos of shadow. The words have no bearing on the graceful shift of movement wrought by the fragmented body upon Thor's great thighs. Yet he speaks like a child, with the same plaintive note that had once kept Thor near to him through summer breeze and winter blizzard both. ] The children. Our children.

[ Loki beds down against him, a vole shivering in its dark empty den while the storm rages all around, and Thor's arms closing around him are the shelter, or so he would have it; he pulls up the furs and blankets to cover them both, and draws the lord of winter with tender strength against him, wrapping as much of his own frame around him as he possibly can. The king of summer is risen for him, swelled by the depths of longing which have welled up within him again and turned themselves into a simmering heart of desire like the heart of an ember, but there is more patience in him, perhaps, than there was when he was young. He is satisfied enough, cradling Loki near.

For he has missed this intimacy perhaps most of all. Cool white skin, soft raven hair tickling his lips, the dip and ridge of a narrow spine, too stark against the translucent skin and muscle of his back. Narrow, sharp, hard, thin plains: this is Loki's body, the landscape of all the years of emptiness and hunger and rage. Thor strokes him with great hands holding great strength, made tender by his own grief. Tears come, silent and hot, trickling down his cheeks into his beard, and he weeps them unashamedly, only holding Loki still closer so that his black hair dampens and Thor's lips are pressed to the top of his head. ]

No. They had no coldness to them, though Autumn was solemn, and wished for solitude, and Spring sand as sweetly as you do, so that the dogs and the deer used to lay at her feet to listen. [ His voice is hoarse. ] They were strong, eager children. There was nothing for them here.

[ Loki remains quiet and dry-eyed, though his body is a hook cast into the bolstering strength of Thor about him. Every breath is full and hot with the scent of sun-warmed skin, of desire sharpened and polished for his focus alone. In the end, the summer-king had chosen foremost with his heart — the winter-king might have sneered upon the tears and the fool's paradise of generosity so freely given, but Loki himself only dips his lips to the golden arch of Thor's throat, so as to better leave his gleaming mark.

And his hands are as cruel as the mind that lies beyond the brackish green of Loki's eyes, but now they smooth and slide and press, across skin once more familiar than his own. When the weight of Thor's cock finally rests in the circle of his fingers, Loki looses a fragment of a sigh, stroking once and again the heated swell, remembering well the life and vigor Thor had once given him with the merest shift of his hips. ]

Will I never see them? [ asks Loki, after he has quieted the bile of jealous anger that had risen again — oh, that his children had shared his gifts and his terrors, and yet not once he had not been allowed to soothe and to share his own with them in turn. ]

[ Cold fingers stroke along his warm skin, so that Thor shivers remembering those hands upon him in the bed where he was sown by Loki's seed, a marriage bed in all but name, where he knew soft quiescent joy beneath the icy ardor of winter. Where he would lie, and Loki would come within him, and the long, slow, sweet fucking was as an endless stroking of his lord's cock into the warm yielding depths of him, a joining that would last hours, days, weeks before cool, plentiful seed flooded within him and he knew his own exhausted satiation. How dangerously seductive it had been to dwell in that bed, to wish to dwell in it forever, lost to sleep and dreaming in between the eternity of their joining.

He closes his eyes, breathes out shaken, his cock heavily weighted in Loki's hand, hot and thick between the gentle stroke of cold fingers. His own hands delve into his hair and he draws the long black strands over his wet cheeks, over his lips, strands soft as silk. So much beauty still in the stark creature Loki has become, that he almost cannot bear it: and how easy it would be to vow himself again, to give his life once more into the hands of the prince of winter, to willingly lay body and spirit before him in recompense for the betrayals, the agonies of the past. ]

Surely they will seek you. Often they asked after their father.

[ He speaks murmuring at Loki's temple, and wraps him closer still in his arms. Broad arms, broad strength to hold him near. He shall never let him go again. ]

[ Perhaps he would not take it, were it to be offered so; no gift of body or spirit can ease the eternity of isolation that has frozen and shattered heart-blood once sweet and crimson with love. Perhaps it was folly to see himself as master, and the golden spread of summer's love upon his bed as mastered — for are they not god and god alike, sewn from the fabric of eternity, stitched through with silver and golden thread? Even now, when Loki curls his hand into a cool fist about the heft of Thor's cock, even now he is but a channel, a conduit, meant to carry the warmth of Thor's love within himself. There is no master between them, and thus neither can be mastered.

Loki knows this, beyond the corruption that his jealousy has inflicted. No longer can he call upon the ice and the snow to shackle Thor-king to himself; he had been a fool once to believe himself capable of overwhelming prophecy, but no longer will he descend into the same gaping chasm of complacency. ]

They will not see what you see. Your children, your people — they will look upon you with pity, not pride.

[ His tone a steady murmur, without inflection. His hand works still, his thumb pressing into the tender skin below the crown's ridge, his fingers spread and curled about the heavy heat of the shaft. His thigh rises below the drape of fur and linen, his leg hooking over Thor's, fitting them inextricably together. ]

And yet I do not love you enough to release you from your own folly. [ As he lifts his chin to seek a kiss, the light slants across his face, blanching the last of the color from his face. He looks as if he is wrought from marble, from ivory.

And in the next moment, Loki remembers the heat and the pain of lust. His breath falls from parted lips, soft and sibilant. ]

[ He has mastered and been mastered in turn. And knowing the both, he knows only that all love, all passion, all cruelty and heartbreak can come only from this shard of winter who rests in his arms, for no matter what they are to one another there is only each other. There is nothing else. That same spirit and body, the great heart which beats within his breast all cry out their hunger for Loki, the pain of their parting, with no hour of peace known to him since he tore himself from his beloved's side. So did Thor learn what love is. It is a shackle, to him, yet he wears this golden chain with sorrowful pride. To have been young and ignorant is the folly of a hundred years ago. He thought himself content, in those indolent years; he had never known what completion was.

So as Loki's fingers work steadily at the swell of his cock, a great tremor comes upon him like the earth shaking underfoot, but he neither urges nor retreats; his hands are tender as they cup Loki's face, as the winter presses near enough for the kiss, his lips parting easily under the spell of it. It is as though he never left Loki's bed. Yet it is all changed, and the weight of grief and betrayal lays between them, with Thor's strong hands and Loki's bitter love to reach between them.

He shifts, pushing the winter to his back, weighing him down from above. Thor kisses and kisses him, tender, thorough, patiently searching his mouth as though to learn anew the cold sweet taste of him. ]

They have seen a king broken and fled from his own palace. [ His voice comes heavy, his lips gently explore the sharp pale features of Loki's face. ] Now they will see him return and sit his throne with the winter in his arms. They will be as one, the summer and winter, they will be woven so tightly that none may part them, so that the snow falls to blanket the fertile fields and the sun warms the mountain peaks to falls of water.

[ Loki takes each kiss and crafts it anew, his tongue sliding past soft wind-chapped lips to taste again the warmth he had once nearly extinguished.

Master and mastered, mastered and master. The dark instincts within Loki's heart of ice sing to him, calling for the love he had once bound to himself beyond fate's cruelty, beyond even the safety of the summer-king and the babes that grew within his fertile body. He smothers them with sheer force of will, his teeth slotted together in a grimace.

And when Thor rises above him, the sunlight setting each strand of golden hair ablaze, Loki's hands cannot help but reach up to him, and to draw him again down for the comfort of skin against skin. The power of Thor's body comes with no insubstantial weight, and Loki feels like the spread of a butterfly pinned to the sheets below.

A thought oozes from the darkness, taking prominence with insidious strength. ]

And if I should forget myself even in your arms, and again take up my blade of malice? [ His hands shift, cupping Thor's face, stilling the flow of restless kisses. ] Will you have the strength to do what you must?

[ The door is left open; sunlight and warmth filter through the cracks in the crude logs which make this crude cottage, this little offering of gentle solace. The light warms his back, as his body warms Loki in turn better than any sheets or furs could do; and all around them is the pungent herbs and the scent of sweat and skin, drawn on every breath, a taste of life and desire and renewal. If Loki's words remind him of the shadows of their love, it is only that which Thor accepts and shoulders willingly as the burden of care. With life there is death, with joy there is grief, and with summer there is winter; they are vital to one another.

So Loki taught him. He leans down his head so that they rest brow to brow, reluctant to answer. He knows what he ought to say, yet this is the first truth and the last: that he cannot tear his life away from Loki's hands again, if the king of winter should want it. There is so little left to tear. ]

Once you bade me vow that I would never fall by your hand. I kept my oath; but please, my heart, do not ask me to keep it again.

[ His eyes open and he looks at Loki beneath him, held between Loki's hands. ]

Will you not vow yourself to me this time? That we will know and love one another, and that if the knowing should ever fade, better we fall together than be torn apart once again?

[ Once, an eternity past, Loki had believed himself capable of immolating thought and desire both. He had seen himself alone and forgotten, a creature whittled to naught but bone and blackened heart. He had reached within himself and found no song, no words worth speaking; he had thought himself meant only as fate's perpetrator of destruction.

Now, again, he'd thought to immolate hatred and malice instead, and thus find perpetuity for the verdant fields, for the children blossomed from his own seed. For Thor.

Because the world will suffer, if Thor falls. Loki has loved him and hated him beyond all others, and still one truth beats singularly in his heart: that no moment of birdsong, no wide open sky of blue, no wine or mead or sweet meltwater can compare to the warmth of Thor's embrace.

Loki's fingers spread, drifting over the curve of Thor's cheekbones, down the slope of his nose; his thumbs brush along the arch of eyebrows, down the strong jut of his chin. ]

Very well. [ he whispers, his voice a ruin of sound; his fingers are tracing the curl of Thor's mouth, restless, fervent. There is sorrow in him: old, quiet sorrow that has stripped the all other emotion from him. He lies as a corpse in Thor's arms, but still he smiles, still his eyes gleam wetly. ] Here I will remain, until winter and summer clasp hands and invoke oblivion's hospitality. I swear it upon the love I bear for you. [ His smile twists; his sorrow is like cold metal at his own throat. ] And so we shall damn all others to fall alongside what we have wrought.

Have no fear, beloved. [ His lips fall gentle upon the arch of Loki's cheekbone and at the corner of his eye, tasting the salt of tears; his kisses are like drops of rain. ] The world has changed, even as we have gone old; it is a harder place, and it will grow harder still, but mortal life will change itself as it must to persevere.

[ And if it should not? Then let all fade away to dust and shadow, as surely he and Loki must, for he cannot bear to live long in a world without the king of winter lain sweet and yielding in his arms.

Still Loki is a twisted creature, cold and quiet with sorrow, and Thor has known grief that weighs him as heavily as a stone. He has grown, he has changed himself to bear it, but the pain has worn him, printed lines and shadows upon his face, in his eyes. He will not go back to the palace but that Loki is there beside him, forever his consort; and this here will be their shelter, their solace, until strength is returned, until sorrow has faded and grown soft with the bittersweetness of memory. ]

Kiss me, my heart. [ he murmurs to him, as Loki's fingers trace his skin. ] Yield up your sweetness for me, as you did when we were young. I have not had your love upon me for so long, and I have ached so for you. We can know happiness again.

A Picture is Worth... Meme.

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