Loki huddled against the older boy, his brother’s friend, shivering in the aftermath of the brief, terrifying battle. Fandral adjusted his short cape around his hips, usually smiling lips pressed into a thin line. Once certain the younger prince’s shame was mostly hidden, he lifted the child and carried him to his horse. The beast was well-trained, and knelt so he could mount easily despite his burden.
Such events had become all-too-common now that the boy’s affinity to and frequent usage of magic had become known. It didn’t help that the younger prince was an exquisitely pretty boy, and often was mistaken for a girl due to his languid, swaying way of movement.
This, though, was the first time the youth had ever been so thoroughly outnumbered – the first time his enemies had overpowered him, had done more than tear at his clothes. It was the first time he had slipped everyone’s watch so thoroughly, and not had someone there to rescue him in time.
Fandral looked down at the sobbing teen and sighed. There was no way he could return the boy t the palace in his condition. Instead, he guided his horse to a cache of hunting things, and headed into the woods, Loki held secure against his chest. He crossed the first few streams they found, followed one to a deep, hidden pool.
There he stopped, and carefully tended the boy’s wounds. He also coaxed the story of the attack from the youth, and breathed a sigh of relief on learning he had made it in time – little Loki was still virgin.
“I won’t tell. I swear.”
Fandral stared. ‘Loki… I…”
“Please! I’m… I’m not… not strong enough yet. If… if I get… attacked again… it could… they… I don’t want…” Green eyes swimming with unshed tears lifted to meet his. “Please, Fandral. I’m begging you.”
“Do you even understand what you’re asking me to do?” Fandral demanded angrily.
“They all want to hurt me. You don’t,” Loki whispered, one tear escaping to trickle down his cheek. “I’m asking you to… to make sure that… that I… can surrender myself to a friend instead of being forced by an enemy who wants only to hurt me.”
“Oh, Loki,” Fandral sighed. The boy’s lower lip trembled, more tears escaped. “Come here.” Loki crawled to perch on his knees between Fandral’s legs. Fandral wiped the tears from the boy’s cheeks. “I’ve only… after a battle,” he said awkwardly.
“Then pretend I’m a girl,” Loki whispered, trembling. “Do to me what you would do to a girl, or… or what you would want a girl to do to you.”
Fandral stared at the shivering young thing pleading so desperately for his help; the boy’s skin soft as a woman’s as he brushed more tears from Loki’s cheeks. So soft, so young, and so very, very vulnerable, liquid eyes so wide and hopeful. Unthinkingly, Fandral slid his hand to the back of the boy’s head and drew him into a kiss.
Loki’s lips were soft and pliant, opening to him with no resistance. The touch of his tongue was soft and hesitant, his hands on Fandral’s shoulders holding tightly even as they held the elder boy away. Fandral had not earned his nickname for nothing, however, and in under a minute, Loki was moaning eagerly into his mouth, those long-fingered hands wrapped around his back as the teen pressed closer.
It did not take Fandral long to discover Loki’s nipples were, if anything, even more sensitive than a woman’s. Loki moaned brokenly, writhing beneath him as he tormented the rigid little peaks. “Please, please, Fandral, please!”
His stomach was just as sensitive, and his sides. Fandral tickled him mercilessly for several minutes simply to divert his attention, and then, as the youth had suggested, did something he had often wished the girls he’d had would do to him. Loki shrieked like a girl, clearly startled, and promptly went back to wanton moans and indecent pleadings as Fandral continued to play with him.
Fandral made sure the boy came once and was achingly hard again before he pushed into the teen. Loki’s breath caught and he froze in Fandral’s arms, a high-pitched whine of pain tearing from his throat.
“Shh, Loki,” Fandral murmured, “shh. Just feel me in you, shh.”
“So… big,” Loki whimpered. Fandral bent his head and lapped at an overly sensitive nipple, effectively distracting the teen with an immediate follow-up kiss. It was not long before the younger male was working himself on Fandral, so the elder held the teen down and took charge.
Loki was an extremely sensitive and very vocal lover, but he was not often particularly loud, unless startled or tickled too long. He was also, Fandral soon learned, nearly insatiable, extremely provocative, and a very, very fast learner. To the blond’s shock, he was also utterly submissive, and eager to please.
That, Fandral used to the young prince’s advantage. “I will make you a deal, little prince,” he suggested with Loki arching beneath him.
“What?”
“You will come to weapons practice as you should, and train with us. In return,” he bent his head and lap at a small, straining bud, “you will be rewarded most pleasurably. But if you skip practice,” he bit hard, making Loki cry out in pain, “I will punish you instead.”
“But I –“
He bit the other nipple. Loki shrieked again, body jerking. “Yes!” the boy cried.
“You will tell no one of our deal,” Fandral warned, nipping lightly. “Swear it.”
“I swear!”
“You’ll swear to learn the magic necessary to keep anyone from knowing our activities.”
“But I – ow! I swear!” Loki sobbed. “Please Fandral!”
“Swear you’ll learn to please me.” That, of course, was much more selfish.
“I swear!”
“Swear that I will be the only male you ever surrender your sweet body to,” Fandral ordered. Loki was too sweet, too responsive, and he did not want to share.
Loki looked up at him, wild-eyed and panting. “I swear, Fandral. I will always only surrender my body to you.”
“Good boy,” Fandral groaned, and took them over the edge once more.
“Swear me one thing more, little Loki. Swear you will not betray by look, word, or deed anything you have sworn to me this night.”
“I swear, Fandral,” Loki murmured sleepily, and cuddled closer.
They rode back two days later, with a fine large stag to show for their hunting, and none save perhaps Heimdell the wiser.
Loki attended weapons training, and spent much of the rest of his time at his books, especially after Fandral told him there would be no rewards until he was sure no one would know of them. It took the younger prince only two months to find and learn the spell required, including those to make clones of himself so that he would be seen where he was not.
Loki quickly became Fandral’s favorite of his many lovers. The teen was simply so eager to please that he would let Fandral do anything he wished, and would learn anything he could about any act Fandral mentioned sounded interesting. The boy was ridiculously devoted to the elder blond – in the bedroom. Outside it, none would know that Fandral was more to him than his elder brother’s near-constant, womanizing companion. Nor would anyone know that there were days that his reason for staying away from weapons practice was to make Fandral punish him.
For seven extremely pleasant years, their affair remained unchanged – and then Odin sent Loki away on some sort of diplomatic mission. Fandral had no difficulty replacing him with a series of eager women, but none were as willing or wanton as the younger prince, and certainly not as kinky. Fandral was pleased to hear his younger lover was returning three years later.
He was horrified by the man’s condition upon his return. Loki’s cheekbones were sharper than ever, his eyes ringed with dark circles, his slim frame far too thin. It wasn’t until later that night that the scars around his wrists and ankles, the whiplashes and the burns, and the rest of the abuses he had undergone during his three years away became apparent. Miserable, broken, almost incoherent apologies spilled from dry lips as tears leaked from the bruised eyes to trail down the thin cheeks.
Fandral soothed him, bathed him, fed him, and tenderly loved him. The broken boy sobbed himself to sleep in the blond’s arms. It took him several days to get the story of a diplomatic mission that had actually been a diplomatic marriage, and his boy’s refusal to consummate the marriage he hadn’t wanted had resulted in three years worth of rape and torture. Loki apologized to him – him! – for not remaining true to his word.
It took him three days to convince the boy that being raped was not surrendering, even though his body had responded to the woman’s gentleness after the men’s cruelties. It wasn’t until then the younger man began to recover from his ordeal.
Loki began going to weapons practice again, then skipped three in a row. Fandral went to see if he was sick – Thor hadn’t seen the boy and couldn’t say – and found Loki waiting for him. “Are you ill?”
“Father… has asked me to delay the wall,” Loki replied softly, white-knuckled fingers tightly crapped around his knees. “He wants me to use my magic. My… my shape-shifting.”
“How?” Fandral settled next to the distraught prince.
“A mare. In heat. To distract the stallion.”
“Huh. Makes sense. That horse is damned strong,” Fandral said thoughtfully. “Without it, he would not be able to finish in time. Can you do it?”
Loki shifted slowly into a delicate, beautiful white mare, and then back. “I’m afraid. It… it takes a lot of concentration to shift. If I… if I don’t run fast enough… if I can’t… can’t find a place to shift…”
“Ah,” Fandral said. “You’re afraid the stallion might catch and mount you.”
Loki nodded slowly. “It takes so long to shift,” he whispered, “so much concentration.”
“Asgard only agreed to the price because they did not believe the builder could complete the work,” Fandral mused. “Thor told me that.”
“The price? Father… did not tell me…”
“Asgard is to pay the sun, the moon, and give the builder Freya’s hand in marriage,” Fandral said lightly. “These are all things we did not expect to pay, and can’t, actually.”
The green eyes welled. “I must do it?”
Fandral pulled the prince into his lap, hands running soothingly over the bare skin. “Is there any other way your magic might aid us?”
“I’ve spent these last three days trying. They are warded with something I do not have the knowledge or skill to break as yet.”
“Then do it,” Fandral told him, meeting the tear-filled eyes. “Do your best to escape. But, if you can’t…” He paused, licked his lips. “If you can’t, you will not have broken your word to me.”
His little lover’s eyes widened. “But if it –“
“Shh, Loki. Nothing will change for us when we are alone, whether you succeed without getting caught, or whether you are mounted. In public, of course, I will follow Thor’s lead.”
Tears spilled. Fandral kissed them away, and simply cuddled the boy for the remainder of their evening. When morning came, he left Loki sleeping on the couch, and went to lay in the supplies he feared he would need, and make highly-suggestive excuses to his friends for his upcoming absence.
His horse, laden with supplies, was far slower than the fleet, dainty mare and the more powerful stallion. He knew, watching the two cross the clearing, that his little lover was not going to escape unscathed. The stallion was faster, and Loki still healing from the damages done him during the course of his failed marriage. Then the two were in the trees, and he set off in pursuit.
He heard the mare’s scream, and drove his own horse harder. Even so, it was over by the time he caught up. The stallion was grazing, completely unconcerned. Loki was collapsed beside a tree, still in the form of the mare, twitching spasmodically.
Fandral put an arrow through the stallion’s eye as it lifted its head when he charged into the clearing. He pulled his horse up and slid from the saddle. Loki fell still as he approached, but still did not shift forms. The mare’s hide was covered in bites and blood, and if Fandral wasn’t mistaken, she wasn’t standing because she couldn’t.
“Easy there,” he murmured, running his hands carefully down each leg. All four held the familiar heat of sprain or strain. “Calm down, little one. Can you shift?”
*No!* The terrified answer echoed in his head. *I don’t know why!*
“Shh, just be calm,” Fandral soothed. “I’ll tend to your injuries.”
She calmed under his hands, and he treated the wounds just as he would for any horse savaged as the mare had been. Then he skinned the stallion and, after washing the hide, rigged a sling for Loki, since she could not yet stand on her own. The meat he roasted, eating a good deal of it for his supper that evening.
After four days, Loki could stand on her own, but she still could not shift to her proper form. Fandral checked her other wounds, and found them also healed. “I don’t understand. You’ve healed. There shouldn’t be any – oh.”
White ears pricked. *Fandral?* Loki asked anxiously, his mental voice much softer after four days of practice.
“Would… you be able to shift if… you’re pregnant?”
Loki very slowly collapsed, though her wide, frightened eyes remained focused on Fandral. A soft wave of green magic slowly rolled over her, and the white head drooped. If horses could cry, Fandral knew his lover would be sobbing helplessly.
“Come on. We’d better get you back to the palace.”
Fandral spent the next three days chasing Loki through the woods, trying to convince her to go back to the palace. “Fine!” he said at last, throwing up his hands. “Not the palace! I’ll take you to my father’s home. You need someone to care for you, Loki! Imagine what could happen to you if some commoner caught you!”
The mare’s ears drooped, and she slowly closed the distance between them. Meekly, she allowed him to slide a halter over her head, and followed docilely at the end of the lead when he remounted his own horse. Fandral returned to the palace once he was assured of Loki’s health and safety.
“Fandral! My friend! Tell me, have you seen my brother?”
“Loki? I saw him on my way home. He’s working some sort of magic on the corpse of that builder’s stallion. Did he not tell you?”
“Corpse?”
“He ran it a merry chase, it seems,” Fandral replied with a laugh, “but it proved no challenge for your brother. He led it on until its heart burst.”
“What magic does he work?”
Fandral stiffened at Odin’s voice, but turned to face him. ‘My king,” he said, saluting, “I fear I have no idea. I am a warrior, not a magician. Blood and smelly herbs seem to have been involved, but he told me to leave him to his working, and I did not care to learn details.”
Odin huffed, but accepted his answer as Thor asked, “And this woman you’re been to visit, Fandral?”
“Pregnant,” Fandral said disgustedly, “and with no babe of mine! I shall have to find another pretty wench to slake my needs.”
For the next several months, Fandral made trips home to check on his pretty little mare. When it came near her time, Fandral took her, and his usual mount, to a secluded clearing, where he helped deliver the extremely large eight-legged foal she bore. It took only a day for Fandral to realize the colt grew abnormally fast, and by the fourth day of its life, the colt was grazing.
Loki shifted on the fifth day, and sobbed like a child in the safety of Fandral’s arms. Once he calmed, Fandral told him the story he had concocted to explain his disappearance. Loki spent the next several weeks training the swiftly growing colt, now named Sleipnir, as a warhorse
“He’s as smart as you are, isn’t he?” Fandral asked soberly during one of his visits.
“Yes, but he can’t shift, or do magic. He’s… big and strong and smart, but he’s… a horse,” Loki replied softly. Sleipnir whickered, and nudged his mother’s shoulder. “He understands everything we’ve said, but he can’t speak, neither aloud nor in our heads.”
“Have you explained what happened, and what must happen?”
“Yes,” Loki whispered. “And we are ready, Fandral. When you return, tell my father that my working is complete, and that I will return six days hence.”
“Alright.” Fandral mounted his horse, and did as his prince had asked. For the next several days, he entertained himself with women and hunts, and thoughts of the damaged young man soon to return to the palace.
It was a serving wench that alerted him as to what was to happen to the younger prince when he finally did return, when he asked if she would be pleased to be serving the younger prince again. “Oh, won’t be but a week or two we’ll have to be doing for him,” she giggled. “He’s to be sent off, use that Silvertongue on the Jotuns.”
“Is he?” Fandral murmured, remembering the last diplomatic mission’s results.
“Indeed! Why, me brother’s already packing his warmest clothes for him!”
Loki arrived two days later on Sleipnir’s back, and gave his first-born son to his father as a gift. Fandral slipped into his quarters that evening. “I’m being sent away,” Loki said softly. “I had not been back even an hour, and he told me I was to… to go on a diplomatic mission to Jotunheim.”
“We are going to modify the oath you gave to me,” Fandral decided, looking at the too-thin, dejected, tragic figure of the young prince.
“How?”
“I told you to swear to surrender your body only to me.”
“Yes.”
“Swear now that if there is reason to share your body with another, you will take the other, and be taken voluntarily only by me.”
“I swear,” Loki told him, “but what reasons will you accept?”
“What reason should I accept?” Fandral countered.
“Marriage,” Loki answered immediately, shuddering hard. “Revenge. Education.”
“What, not to slake your lust?” Fandral teased gently.
“My only lust is for you,” Loki said quietly.
“You’ll tell no one that.”
“You have my word,” the younger man told him.
“When do you leave?”
“The end of next week.”
The ugly ripples of rumor started the next day. Fandral, as he said he would, took his tone from Thor. Unfortunately, Thor found the rumors that his brother’s magic had allowed him to birth Sleipnir amusing, and teased him so mercilessly that Fandral was forced to punish him for skipping weapons practice even though he understood why the young man avoided it.
He was exceedingly gentle once the punishments were over, however, murmuring reassurances as he brought them both to exquisite release. On the night before he was to leave, Fandral did nothing more than hold him close, and hope they were both wrong about what was to happen.
They were separated for ten years that time, ten years in which his little lover’s sorcery grew, and his power over it increased dramatically. Ten years in which the boy was trapped in a loveless marriage that resulted in three monstrous children that the boy brought with him when the marriage finally failed and he returned.
Children that Odin ripped from his arms and cast out of Asgard, or imprisoned in the dank pits of his dungeons. Loki vanished for years, not returning until his daughter was the firmly established Queen of Hel nearly fifty years later. She was the only one of his children, besides Sleipnir, he had been able to give anything related to a home.
Once again, he was far too thin; his cheekbones so sharp Fandral expected them to slice his fingers when he traced those bitter features. The bright green eyes glittered with rage instead of tears, and perhaps a little madness as well. Still, they slipped into their old relationship as if he had never been gone, and Fandral soon learned everything that had happened over the sixty years they had been parted.
Asgard became crueler to the younger prince. Fandral did not blame him for the increasingly malicious pranks, especially after his attempt to win favor once more ended with his mouth sewn shut instead. That had put a severe dent into their sexcapades, and made punishments more difficult to accomplish without causing more pain than he’d intended. It also kept his lover from being able to eat or drink much of anything, so most of their evenings together, Fandral spent trying to feed the desperately thin man through the cruel stitches.
He wasn’t the least surprised when the boy won an eating contest only a few months after the damned magical stitches finally lost their war against his lover’s magic, and vanished. Loki ate copious amounts of food at every opportunity after that, but burned through it nearly as fast as he ate it. Fandral didn’t know what magic the boy was working, but he knew it wore the younger to a thread on a nightly basis. Other than that, little changed in their relationship. In fact, to Fandral it seemed nothing changed at all for hundreds of years, except for his little lover’s nickname of Silvertongue gaining a considerably more sexual meaning.
“Fandral?” Soft, diffident, rather than the sneering tone so often heard in the palace halls. Fandral much preferred his younger lover’s private voice, but he still waited a moment before looking up. “I… want revenge. For everything. For me, for my children.”
Fandral sat up a little straighter. “All the slights, the insults, the jeers. For never being good enough for anyone…” wet green eyes lifted, “…including you.”
“Me?” he repeated, startled.
“I know I’m not,” the boy replied softly. “And I know why, now. I finally learned the truth. I… I am… I am not… what or who… we believed.”
“Loki? You aren’t making any sense.”
“I want revenge. But I… I want to prove that I’m just as worth as Thor, even though… even though… even though I can never be.” Tears welled, spilled. “Father only banished him. I’m… I’m scared Fandral. I’m scared of what he’ll do to me now that I’m of no use to him, now that I know the truth.”
Loki sank to his knees in front of the blond. “I… I’m afraid of what you’ll do… once you know.”
“What are you talking about?” Fandral demanded, starting to become frustrated.
“Odin. He… finally… he’s not….” Loki collapsed into his lap, incoherent because of his sobbing.
Fandral petted his hair and rubbed at his shoulder, murmuring soothing nonsense. He was quite accustomed to Loki’s overly-sensitive nature and emotional collapses, being the only one around whom the younger prince dared display such weakness, the only one the young man trusted not to betray him. Eventually, he calmed beneath Fandral’s hand and voice. “Tell me.”
“I’m not Odin’s son. I’m… I’m Laufey’s.”
“Laufey’s?” Fandral repeated incredulously. “King Laufey? The Frost Giant?”
“Odin… found me in the temple. A runt. Left to die. He took me… to use. But Thor… the war… Odin doesn’t have a use for me now,” Loki tried to explain.
“You’re Jotun?” Fandral said flatly. There was absolutely nothing about his lover of centuries that remotely resembled Kin Laufey – or any other Jotun Fandral had seen – and he had a very intimate knowledge of every inch of Loki’s slender body.
“I can… prove it.”
Fandral followed the other to the weapons vault. Loki went straight to the Casket of Ancient Winters, and lifted it slowly before turning to face him. “Bilgesnipe pus!” Fandral yelped, stumbling back and landing hard on his ass. Loki spun back around, the Casket landing hard on its pedestal. Loki’s hands gripped his arms just above his elbows, and he swayed slightly back and forth. Fandral could hear the hitched breaths of nearly-silent sobs.
Fandral rose slowly, still staring at the other’s back. Even more slowly, he approached the taller male, and slid his arm around the slender waist. “We’ve been together over 900 years, Loki,” he said quietly, leaning his cheek against the other’s back. “This changes nothing.”
The quivering ceased, the tiny motions of his breathing. Loki held himself entirely still, so that only the frantic beating of his heart beneath Fandral’s ear proved him not a statue. “No – nothing?” the boy finally asked.
“Nothing. I’ll act in public as I always do, say those things Thor’s dearest friends would be expected to say. But as always, when we are alone,” Fandral pressed a kiss against the lovely, slim neck, “you are my love.”
Loki gasped sharply, relaxing entirely in a moment. “My… revenge?” he whispered.
“I think you’re entitled to some revenge,” Fandral admitted, “aside from screwing everyone’s wives. What do you plan?”
“I… I don’t know. I’ve had… I just found out!”
“Mm, no time to plan.”
“Yes.” Loki shook his head. “No. No, I haven’t even had time to… to even understand why… or what I should do now. I… I….”
“Shh. Maybe you should go sit with him. Talk to your –“ Fandral hesitated, “– Queen.”
“Yes. You’re right. I… maybe she can… help me understand,” Loki said helplessly.
Fandral went with him as far as the corridor that led to the King’s chamber, and continued on to his own quarters in a far more thoughtful mood. How, exactly, was he to play this latest quirk in their affair?
Well, probably by subtly prodding Sif into asking the All-Father to reconsider Thor’s banishment. It wasn’t yet common knowledge that he was in an unplanned Odin-sleep, after all. She would find Loki on the throne instead. Well, actually, they all would, given that the Warriors Three would naturally tag along. With Thor banished, and no one knowing the truth about Loki, he would take the throne as Odin’s successor.
He’d have to make some sort of stink about that, of course. It would be expected of him as one of Thor’s closest friends.
Three nights later, alone in his quarters, Fandral cursed himself for not staying at his lover’s side, and drank himself stupid as he mourned the loss of his young prince, his lover, his love.