Chapter 6
Admittedly, nothing in the Geneva Convention required captors to allow prisoners into their own private quarters, or to loan prisoners the use of their own clothing, or to helpfully fiddle with the touchscreen of their own ultra-luxurious shower to make sure the water temperature was just right for the prisoner. Steve knew perfectly well that he was blurring the line between captor and host. He could guess with pretty fair certainty what Fury and SHIELD would have to say about it, he didn’t want to guess what Clint or Natasha would say about it, and heck, he even knew what he would have said to anyone under his own command who tried something similar.
He just didn’t care.
This felt good. Taking care of someone, bringing someone into his own space, giving someone the best of what he had. He hadn’t really had anyone he could do things for since – well, since before.
And the fact that this someone was Loki – magical, fascinating, elusive Loki – that made it all a thousand times more enjoyable, more important. It felt good and right to do the little things that would ensure Loki’s comfort, make him feel welcome. Steve showed Loki where to put his ice cream to keep it cold, showed him the huge walk-in closet of clothes that were entirely at his disposal, took down a soft, folded bathrobe from a shelf and pushed it into Loki’s hands, and then led him into the absurdly over-sized bathroom and showed him all of the amenities and how they worked.
Steve was keeping up a running commentary throughout all of this, but it didn’t escape his notice that Loki was becoming more and more terse in his responses. It didn’t seem to be fear that was quieting Loki, but Steve wasn’t quite sure what it was, and Loki certainly didn’t strike him as the kind of person to give a straight answer to a question like ‘what’s the matter?,’ so Steve just kept doing what he was doing.
What Steve was doing, at the moment, was leaning in over the side of the glassed-in Jacuzzi/shower and pointing to various parts of the touchscreen to show what each of them did. Without turning around, he asked, “Oh, say, do you even like hot water? I mean, we all saw you in the hot tub, but Thor says the Jotnar come from a frozen planet, so maybe you’d prefer-”
He turned to look over his shoulder as he spoke and stopped dead at the sight before him.
Loki, pale as Carrara marble and just as finely hewn, stood nude and perfect, combing his elegant fingers through his long black hair. With the hoodie on, Steve hadn’t been able to see how much Loki’s hair had grown, but now the gleaming length of it was cascading down Loki’s alabaster chest like a spill of tar. Loki’s fingers were finding invisible snarls and gently loosening them, and his eyes were heavy-lidded and fixed on Steve. A little smile, very unlike any of the ones that Steve had seen and catalogued in his sketchbooks, was now warming Loki’s ice-sculpture face. The pile of mundane, cast-off clothes at Loki’s feet completed this otherworldly picture.
It took Steve a good minute and a half to remember how to talk.
“Um, excuse me,” he squeaked, and then cleared his throat, which somehow only made his voice more unreliable, “I didn’t realize you’d already – that is – I’ll just get out of your way…”
And he made a sincere effort to do just that, but the actual fact of the matter was that Loki was the one in Steve’s way.
“Ah, pardon me,” Steve said, stepping a bit to one side to indicate that Loki should step to the other, but Loki stood immovable, just watching him, with that little smile.
A thrumming silence fell between them which Steve neither knew how to interpret nor how to break. Why wasn’t Loki letting him out of the bathroom, when it was clear that he was ready to bathe? Was there something else Loki wanted, some special shampoo for his incredible silky hair, perhaps? If he would just name it, Steve would happily travel to Timbuktu and back to get it for him. If Loki would just speak, or move out of the way…
“Is there s-something else I can get you?” Steve asked, mentally cursing the stutter that had snuck in. He had never been a nervous speaker when facing down opponents that were twice his size, or those that had him outgunned or outnumbered, but somehow it was always so much scarier talking to someone he found attractive–
And then he got it.
Loki was looking at him the way Lorraine had looked at him in Phillips’ office, right before she had kissed him.
Loki was about to kiss him.
Steve’s brain whited out and static fuzzed in his ears as Loki stepped gracefully forward, slid a hand around Steve’s waist, and did exactly that.
It was a kiss unlike any of the very few that Steve had experienced before. There was something sinuous, soft yet weighty, patient yet inescapable, almost serpentine about it. Steve was reminded of a boa constrictor slowly, slowly tightening its muscular coils. He was reminded of certain scenes from a German silent movie he had once snuck into with Bucky, before the Hays Code had been adopted. He was reminded of that chapter of the Bible which polite people never mention. He was reminded of a lot of things, but he couldn’t devote any conscious thought to any of them; they just flashed through his obliterated mind, flickering images against the backdrop of overwhelming sensation.
Steve’s whole body responded to Loki. Nerves he never knew he had were zinging like telegraph wires all over his skin, up his spine, down the front of his thighs, across his scalp. His hands felt searingly hot and his fingertips were hypersensitive nearly to the point of pain.
He was touching Loki and he didn’t know when that had started, and he didn’t think he could stop even if half the building blew up under them. His mouth was being slowly, deeply invaded by Loki’s, and his lips felt like they might tingle right off his face. He was simultaneously burning up and as shocked as if someone had dumped a bucket of freezing water over him. He was galvanized, strengthened, rooted to the spot.
In fact, it was a lot like when they had injected him with the serum - if you just replaced all of the pain with pleasure.
When Loki pulled back, Steve found himself panting like a racehorse and realized that his arms had positively locked around Loki’s slim waist. If kissing time was over now, he wasn’t sure how he was going to manage to let go.
He stared into Loki’s eyes, which were no longer heavy-lidded, but wide and round. He had never been close enough to Loki before to decide on their color, and now that he was sinking helplessly into their jewel-like depths he still couldn’t put a single name to it. They were like the shadows in a deep dark forest, they were like the evening sky over the Adriatic, they were like smoked glass. Sapphires came to mind, but so did amethysts and opals. Oh my gosh, he thought, joyously despairing, Am I going to start writing poetry? That particular trouble had afflicted Bucky once or twice.
There was no identifying the look on Loki’s face, so Steve thought he’d better ask.
“What, uh – what brought that on?”
Loki took a step back, requiring Steve’s arms to unhappily release him.
The heavy-liddedness and the little smile came back, and Steve suddenly found that he didn’t especially like them. He somehow preferred the look of wide-eyed uncertainty that had temporarily replaced them.
“You’ve been so kind, so solicitous,” Loki purred, “I simply thought it was high time I repaid you.” He ran his fingertips down Steve’s body from throat to groin.
Steve jerked back. He didn’t know what to say, but it was clear that his facial expression was saying something for him, because Loki’s own face froze and he slowly took his hand away.
They stared at each other, while Steve’s heart plummeted and kept on plummeting.
“No?” Loki finally said, quietly.
“No.” Steve was very sure of that.
Loki’s mouth twisted, and he turned away from Steve. His hands were now gripped together, fingers woven, wrenching at each other, and his shoulders had tightened up and lifted almost to his ears.
Steve didn’t know what was wrong, only that he was desperate to put it right. Loki whispered something, seemingly to himself, but Steve’s enhanced hearing caught it.
“I couldn’t have been mistaken-”
Now Loki began to shake. Steve noticed that Loki was keeping his eyes carefully averted from any of his own reflections, which was no mean feat in a room where approximately three-quarters of all the surfaces were mirrors.
Once again Steve was struck with a realization, this one much less pleasant than the earlier one: Loki thought he was being rejected. Was it possible that he felt unattractive? The very idea boggled what little was left of Steve’s mind. True, Loki had lost quite a bit of weight and was white as a paraffin candle, but his conformation was so perfect, so classical, that he could literally never be ugly. The only thing that the signs of Loki’s neglected health did to Steve was to invest him with a powerful urge to feed and cosset and protect.
Loki seemed to be regaining some measure of control over himself, straightening his posture and no longer knotting his fingers so tightly that it looked painful, but he still wouldn’t look at either Steve or himself.
“Loki,” Steve said quietly, “Um. Would you like hot water, or do you prefer cold?”
“As you see fit,” Loki replied in a steady but toneless voice.
Steve thought for a moment, then asked, “Was the hot tub comfortable for you?”
Loki snickered and finally turned to face Steve again, although he wouldn’t meet Steve’s eyes. “I have never been in the hot tub. That was an illusion.”
Steve couldn’t help but smile, “To annoy Tony?”
“To test how far I could confuse his mechanical eyes using my magic.”
“So… to annoy Tony.”
Loki snickered again.
“Alright, well,” Steve continued, “How are you feeling right now? Too warm? Kind of chilly?”
Loki glanced up, making eye contact again finally. “I am chilled to the bone,” he said, “Extremes of temperature are conducive to spirit-walking, and intense heat is no longer - tolerable – for me, so I have been keeping my body refrigerated.”
Being kept in a refrigerator was Steve’s personal nightmare, but this was about Loki, and what Loki liked.
“Okay, so something warming but not too hot?” He doubted that Loki was familiar with either Fahrenheit or Celsius metrics, so he cast around for a comparison that would make sense. “If the water was the temperature of me, would that be comfortable?” Steve knew he ran at around 102 degrees since the serum, and Loki had certainly ‘taken his temperature,’ you might say.
Loki was staring at him, and the wide-eyed, uncertain look was back.
“Yes, that would be…agreeable,” he said.
Tony’s fancy water heaters could be set to a specific degree, so Steve tapped at the panel until it said 102F.
“Shower, or bath?” he asked as he did so.
A pause followed his question, so Steve turned again to look at Loki, wondering if maybe he was unfamiliar with the concept of showers.
Loki was looking at Steve, with an expression on his face that teetered between haughty and awkward. “That depends,” he said, his voice wavering with his continued shivering, “Will you be joining me?”
He looked and sounded so unsure.
And that did it. Steve couldn’t hold back for one second more. Before his brain had even caught up to what he meant to do, his arms were wrapping around Loki’s angular shoulders, and he was pulling the trembling demigod into a hug.
“Loki, I don’t know what you want,” he murmured with his mouth against Loki’s hair, no longer talking about showers, “And until I know, I can’t give it to you.”
They stood like that for awhile. Loki’s body incrementally melded against Steve’s as he slowly relaxed into the embrace. It almost seemed as if Loki had forgotten how to touch another person in a way that was neither sexual nor combative. Steve wondered how long it had been since Loki had had a good old-fashioned hug. Probably even longer than it had been for Steve.
Loki’s shivering eventually slowed, but Steve could feel that he was still disconcertingly cool to the touch. What the healthy resting body temperature for a Jotun was, Steve had no way of knowing, but Loki had complained of feeling cold, so Steve just wanted to warm him up until he was feeling good. There wasn’t too much he wouldn’t do to get this unbelievable person in his arms feeling good.
Steve reluctantly pulled away and started the water, which sprang from the three showerheads at exactly the programmed temperature, with no waiting. Thinking of some of the baths and showers he had endured in the distant past, Steve was glad he had something better to offer Loki now.
“I’ll be right outside in the bedroom,” he told Loki, as he let himself out of the bathroom, “I won’t let anyone disturb you, and the hot water never runs out here, so you just take as long as you want.”
His last glimpse of Loki’s face showed the wide-eyed uncertain look on it once more.
Steve threw himself down on the bed and rubbed his hands, hard, up and down his forehead. He just wanted to lie there and go over every instant of that electrifying kiss in his mind, to relive every touch and squeeze - but he knew that, if he wanted to keep Loki safe and sane, right now he needed to strategize.