Chapter 4
Loki was standing by the refrigerator, thoughtfully eating pink peppermint ice cream, when Steve let himself into their shared rooms. He looked up as Steve approached, and there was a new light in his eyes that Steve had never seen there before. It was somewhat like the vulnerable look he had worn immediately after kissing Steve for the first time, only more so.
Whatever it was, and whatever its cause, Steve found it completely irresistible, and he slowly moved in close enough to put a hand on Loki’s waist. They usually didn’t touch like this outside of the bed, but something was different right now.
Loki set the now-empty carton down on the counter without looking, his eyes fixed on Steve’s.
“Would you consider me worthy of love?” Loki asked, as if it were an abstract mathematical problem.
Steve nodded firmly and answered without hesitation, “Yes.”
Loki’s lips parted slightly, as he stared at Steve in rapt amazement.
Did he not know? Steve wondered.
Loki seemed to think that the question needed some clarification. “Would you consider me worthy of your love?”
“Yes,” said Steve, even more firmly.
They gazed into each other’s eyes, faces less than a foot apart, for a long breathless minute. Steve had no idea what was going on – some result of Loki’s therapy session, he supposed – but he knew that he felt happier in this moment than he had since they shared their first kiss. Maybe they were starting over. Maybe Loki was finally ready to understand what Steve was offering.
“I heard an incredible rumor from a… credible source. Would you like to hear it, Steven?” Loki asked.
“Please,” Steve whispered, watching the subtle play of emotions across Loki’s beautiful face. He saw uncertainty, fear, confusion, and - for the first time - hope.
“Doctor Levitt seems to be under the impression…” Loki’s voice dropped, as if he were afraid of what he was saying, “that you love me.”
“Loki, I do. Of course I do,” Steve murmured, moving closer, “I love you. I would have told you myself - I should have told you myself - but I didn't want to...spook you. Is it...alright?”
And then they were kissing, and it was everything Steve remembered – and more, because this time it meant all that he wanted it to mean.
Loki’s arms were wrapped tightly around him, and Steve lifted his hands to cup Loki’s perfect, haughty, marble face like the treasure it was. All breath seemed to have left his body, as surely as all thoughts had left his head. What he wanted right now was to be as near to Loki as he could possibly get, and to make absolutely sure that Loki felt loved, protected, adored. This was more important than breathing, more important than anything.
It wasn’t until they knocked over the crock of spatulas with a resounding crash, that Steve even considered the bedroom. Then Loki was walking him backwards through the door and pushing him down on the bed, crawling over him, laying his long, lithe body onto Steve’s.
Steve gasped as their thighs, groins, chests rubbed together. Loki was hard, and Steve had never been entirely soft, not since hearing about Loki’s full complement of parts. He was as hard as chiseled steel at the moment, thinking about it. Would Loki get wet between his legs, as well as hard? Bucky had told Steve that ladies got swollen and slippery, like a kiss down there.
Steve suddenly realized that he was on the verge of embarrassing himself, between the fascinating thoughts, and Loki’s weight pressing and moving on his erection. When Loki’s hand snuck down and began to grip and squeeze, Steve had to call a halt.
“Loki, Loki, stop, stop,” he said against Loki’s mouth, putting his hands on Loki’s arms.
A look of panic and hurt, quickly hidden by a thin veneer of rage, swept over Loki’s face, and he pulled away as if Steve had burned him.
“No.” Steve gripped Loki’s arms tight enough to bruise a human, and kept him where he was, half on top of Steve. “Look at me.” In fact, Loki was staring at him already, like he could drill through Steve with his eyes.
“Listen to me. I love you. I wouldn’t say that if I didn’t mean it. Do you believe me?”
Loki stilled, and his glare turned from murderous to merely intense. “You are not given to lying,” he conceded.
“I love you and I want to be with you. I want that more than anything,” Steve told him, and felt Loki relax by a single infinitesimal degree. “But first we need to talk.”
Loki groaned aloud and pushed roughly away, sitting up on the bed beside Steve. “Steven Rogers, you are the MOST infuriating creature in all of the Nine Realms, take it from one who is well-travelled!” He pushed Steve down when he would have tried to sit up. “What is there to talk about? The next step is fucking.”
A cold ball formed in Steve’s stomach at these words. Loki still didn’t understand.
Well, no one else here was going to explain Steve’s intentions. He internally girded his loins, and waded into the difficulty.
“I think we’re talking at cross purposes, Loki. I’m not talking about…fucking.” It was hard for Sarah Rogers’ boy to say the word, especially to his true love. “I want – what I want – is for us…to make love. Do you understand?”
Loki looked down at him as if Steve had suggested that they paint each other green and run naked through the streets. “Make love?” he sneered.
“Yes, I want us to be committed to each other. Um, and only to each other. I want it to mean...” He gulped, “I want it to mean everything. To both of us. You deserve that.”
Loki was looking at him mockingly now, and at the last words he actually laughed derisively. “What in the world are you talking about, Steven? I am not some blushing virgin.”
Something squirmed and died a painful death in the pit of Steve’s stomach. “No, I guess I know that.” He dropped his gaze. His throat was closing, and his voice gave out on the final word, “But I - am.”
Loki took his hand away from Steve’s shoulder and went as still as stone beside him.
Eventually, Steve forced himself to look up at Loki’s face. The expression there was not at all what he had hoped to see. Loki looked appalled and even angry. Steve sat up and tried to put a hand on Loki’s knee, but Loki moved away and got up from the bed.
He paced tightly back and forth several times, and then stopped and stared down at Steve. “Are you insane?” he hissed.
Steve had to clench his jaw until a normal person’s teeth would have shattered from the strain. He refused to cry. This was even worse than when he had told Bucky how he felt about him. At least Bucky had made some effort to spare his feelings, and Steve could understand why he had said no. This was so much more painful, and confusing.
“Are you actually deranged?!” Loki asked, sounding furious.
Steve’s head drooped and he glared at his own fists in his lap, willing them to stop shaking.
“You want to give your priceless virtue to me? You have in your keeping the most pure and gleaming pearl, and you would cast it before the whore of the Nine Realms?”
Steve snapped his head up to stare at Loki.
Loki laughed one of his nastier laughs. “Do you have any idea what I have done, and what I have had done to me? If you want to enjoy what thousands before you have enjoyed, I bid you do so – but you wish to, what? Make a sweet and precious bridal night with the slag of the galaxy?” He sat down on the edge of the bed, put his face into his hands, and snickered until Steve wasn’t sure if he was laughing or quietly weeping.
“Oh, what are you thinking, Steven?”
“I’ve told you what I’m thinking,” Steve whispered, daring to scoot closer.
Loki heaved a shaky sigh, “You cannot make love to a midden-heap of rotting troll jism, Steven.” He laughed again, and scrubbed at his face. “Do you know how many Chitauri, aye, and worse creatures, have had their way-” He choked, and stopped talking.
Steve reached an arm around Loki’s waist from behind, and drew him near, until they were sitting back-to-chest, Loki fitted between Steve’s thighs. Steve leaned forward and pressed his face to Loki’s spine, breathing in the sweet, wild scent of him.
“You see why I said we needed to talk first?” he asked quietly into Loki’s sweater, and a weak laugh broke from Loki.
Winding his other arm around Loki as well, Steve held him in silence until they had both stopped shaking.
He spoke into Loki’s hair, “I love you. I want my first time to be with you. I want all of my times to be with you.” Loki huffed, but Steve went on. “If that’s not what you want, alright. But if it is what you want, but you think you can’t have it for some reason, that’s something for us to talk about, wouldn’t you say?”
Loki gripped at Steve’s hands where they were wrapped around his ribcage.
“You are so foolish, Steven Rogers, that I have not words to convey the magnitude of it.”
“Just want to make you happy,” Steve murmured, rubbing his face on the back of Loki’s shoulder.
“And what if that is an impossible task?”
“Well,” Steve said, undaunted, “I am a superhero.”
*****
They lay on top of the covers, several minutes later, with Loki’s face buried in Steve’s chest, Steve’s arms wrapped around him.
“It is absurd, it is absurd, it is absurd,” Loki was trying to tell him.
Steve nodded against Loki’s hair. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but absurd things do happen.”
“Yes, but not usually the absurd things that I want to happen.”
Then Loki did want this to happen. The knowledge lit a warmth behind Steve’s sternum. It hadn’t escaped his notice that, while he had declared his love for Loki, Loki had yet to say the words in return. That was fine. Steve was used to unrequited love. The most important thing was for his loved ones to know they were loved.
When Bucky died, that had been Steve’s only faint glimmer of comfort, At least I told him, at least he knew. In the end it hadn’t been nearly enough to prevent the grief from ripping through him, sending him into the ice, but Steve still believed it would have been worse if Bucky hadn’t known. It would still be plaguing Steve now, if he thought that Bucky had died not knowing how much he was loved.
As long as Loki felt loved, Steve was content. Already, this was more than he had ever had with Bucky. He was permitted to hold Loki all night, and they had kissed three times now, and Loki was not ashamed that everyone knew they shared a bed. Things were looking up, in Steve’s world.
Steve sighed into Loki’s hair. Of course, he was not at all thrilled about Loki calling himself a whore or a…midden-heap? That sounded like what Dr. Levitt would call a ‘self-image issue.’ And it certainly wasn’t ideal that they were all facing annihilation at the hands of a Titan. But Steve had learned long, long ago to grasp whatever little moments of happiness he could, and be grateful.
Right now, just here, he was profoundly grateful.