1.
Thor drops by the laundromat every evening after work. He clocks out at 6 PM and takes the 30-minute walk back home, stopping halfway at the bright neon display that says: OPEN 24/7 - Maxi Load Bargain for 7 Credits! Bring Your Friends! (Maximum 5 Participants Allowed).
A ward of the state needs to earn 20 credits to get three full meals. Thor fulfills his duty and goes inside.
At the very end of the row of slaves is Loki. He’s beautiful—at least what Thor can see of him, with the upper half of his body inside the machine. Thor doesn’t know what sort of things they play for the slaves to watch 8 hours a day, but it’s supposed to help turn them into better citizens.
He doesn’t waste any time—he’s already running a bit late today, and Loki’s credit meter reads: 18. It’s one credit for one fuck. Thor only needs to come inside him twice to get him up to 20, and then Loki can get dinner and take the rest of the night off.
Thor pats that pale ass as a greeting. Loki shifts slightly, spreads his legs a bit more, toes brushing against the dull white linoleum. The bruises on his hips are lurid in the harsh fluorescent lights of the laundromat.
Without any more indication, Thor unzips his pants, takes out his cock, and slides in.
Loki’s wet inside, sloppy with the spend of other men. Thor ruts hard and fast, efficient. He rubs soothing circles around Loki’s lower back as he comes, trying not to be too rough, and Loki’s hole twitches and clenches, as if in gratitude.
Thor takes it slower for the second time, closes his eyes as he rolls his hips. The humming of the machines almost drowns out the slick squelch of his cock in Loki’s ruined hole.
He comes for a second time with a sigh, then pulls out and plucks a few wet paper towels from the stand next to him and cleans up.
“Thanks,” he says, slightly awkward. He doesn’t know if Loki can even hear him in there, if he has any idea that Thor comes in here every night to use his body.
Thor zips up, pays for the service, and walks out into the cold air.
At least, he thinks, as he makes his way home, it’s warm inside the laundromat.
2.
They call them laundromats because they’re supposed to “wash up” the worst of the citizens of Sakaar. A rightful and just punishment for the most hopeless of cases. It’s almost mundane, now, to see one of them next to cafes and actual laundry-washing establishments.
Thor doesn’t care much for it, but he’d rather help feed criminals to reach his yearly Good Citizen quota and keep his apartment. It beats picking trash off the streets during the weekends.
3.
Sometimes, Thor wonders what it would be like to fuck Loki’s mouth. None of the slaves are allowed to show their faces and have no identifying features except their first name. All tattoos and birthmarks and scars are scrubbed clean after they’re sentenced. The state is benevolent: it doesn’t want slaves being abused for their crimes. The punishment that the government decrees is enough.
Loki would be good, though, Thor thinks. He’s been in the laundromat for a few months, and has likely taken hundreds of cocks. And there’s those videos he watches all day, twisting his brain around, spinning his thoughts, making him clean.
He wonders if Loki’s mouth would be as good as his ass. If he would know how to suck someone off, or if it would take some time. They’re not training his throat, after all.
He knows he shouldn’t—knows it’s wrong—but he wants to take Loki home. Wants to lay him down on a bed and suck his nipples. Wants to play with the cock that gets hard, untouched and ignored, while Loki’s working for his food.
Thor wants to be tender. He tries his best.
But there’s no room for it in Sakaar, not amongst the bleeding neon lights and the daily blood matches on TV.
Thor had wanted to be a gladiator, as a kid.
Now, he’s just glad he gets to sit at his office and stare at a screen.
4.
One night, Thor arrives and there’s a group of three men gathered around Loki.
They probably took the Maxi Load Bargain, he thinks, sitting on one of the plastic chairs in the corner and waiting for his turn. They seem to be almost done, anyway, which Thor is glad for. Work was long today. He wants to go home and have a beer and pass out.
He hears them arguing. It’s 7 credits for unlimited fucks, and at one credit a fuck, a group of 3 would have to come at least twice each—one person thrice—to make the most of it.
Maybe someone wasn’t up for it. They’re shoving each other now, jeering, but they leave soon.
Loki’s meter reads: 23 credits.
He should be good to go, but he stays there, as if he’s waiting.
Thor comes up to him and pats his ass.
Come drips to the floor as those pale legs spread open. Thor is reminded of a butterfly’s wings. He doesn’t know why. Butterflies are outlawed in Sakaar.
He tries to fuck as gently as he can, knowing Loki must be sore. But the slave works his ass into the thrusts. Thor can see his legs shaking as he fucks himself into Thor’s cock. Sees his hard cock sputter and twitch, and decides to cup it in his hand.
Three strokes and Loki’s entire body goes rigid. He spills all over the floor.
Thor comes and pulls out, cleans himself up. The attendant at the front desk makes a disgruntled noise as he comes over and shoves a mop in Thor’s hand before he can even zip his pants up.
Loki is still as Thor cleans up the mess.
He leaves before the attendant can release Loki from the machine.
5.
Sometimes Thor has daydreams. Silly ones. Ones about butterflies, and fields of wheat and lavender. About the ocean. He finds it hard to believe that any body of water could be that big, extending all the way into the horizon.
There’s a train that would take him right to the border. It’s illegal to pass through it, of course, but he’s heard rumors. Everyone has.
Thor doesn’t want to end up like the criminals in the laundromat.
But he has his dreams.
6.
“Your papers seem to be in order, Mr. Odinson.” The man at the Bureau of Punishment lazily hands Thor back his documents.
“The slave will be delivered to you in 4-6 business days.”
See, the thing is, Thor is a model citizen. He’s got a near-perfect Good Citizen rating, and has exceeded his quota every year since he came of age. He’s the perfect candidate to rehome a slave. Thor doesn’t have many vices. Just one. And it has a vice grip on him, as exquisite as the clutch of Loki’s body around his cock.
Thor can barely concentrate on work for the next few days, but his performance doesn’t flag. He’s worked too hard now to falter.
He doesn’t come to visit Loki that week. Maybe stringing out the anticipation will make the next meeting taste sweeter.
7.
There’s a cafe in the Lower District that’s run by a Valkyrie. As all things in Sakaar, it’s not entirely what it seems.
Thor goes in early one morning and asks for a latte with three pumps of sugar syrup. The server looks at him strangely, and asks him if he wants anything else with it. Thor takes a look around at the other patrons—they have injections at the cafe. Tinctures, pills, powders. Dreams and wishes on tap at the bar. Things to fulfil people’s wildest fantasies, for a time.
Thor is looking for something more tangible.
The server goes into the backroom and comes back with the manager.
Thor gets his order in a take-away cup and sips at it carefully as he heads to work, taking the rickety train through the underbelly of the city while massive billboards blare overhead. The person beside him is slumped over, dead or unconscious, their veins a bright blue color.
Thor finishes his coffee. At the bottom of the cup are two chips containing everything he needs.
Passports. Train tickets. False identification.
This is his only chance.
8.
A large box arrives at his apartment the next day.
Thor thanks the delivery man and tips him a bit too much. His hands shake as he heaves the box—large enough to fit a small person—inside.
He presses a button on the side and the lid slides open, revealing a man with pale limbs and dark hair, and an ass that Thor has seen almost everyday for the past few months.
He reaches in and brushes a strand of hair from Loki’s cheek, and those eyes flutter open. Butterfly wings, Thor thinks.
“Fuck,” Loki says, his voice hoarse. His mouth spasms into a grin. “Fucking finally.”
Thor helps his brother into a hot bath, watches his body sink into the milky water.
Loki grabs his hand before he leaves, and suddenly Thor realizes: Loki knows. Of course.
Loki knows it the way he knows most things. It’s why he was sent to study at the Academy while Thor stayed behind in the city; why he was charged with sedition and treason; why they tried so hard to warp his beautiful, wonderful mind into something else.
Why Loki knows that Thor has been fucking him these past few months.
“Help me get clean,” Loki says, tugging Thor into the bath with him.
Thor gets naked and slides into the water, settles himself behind Loki—gentle as his brother startles, unused to the touch—and lets Loki sink down on his cock.
He watches Loki tug at himself, his cock and his nipples, watches him squirm as he tries to come.
“Can’t,” Loki pants, face twisted in despair. “I need you—need you to—“
Thor understands. He hooks Loki’s knees over his arms, and starts to pound into him.
Loki wanted this, Thor tells himself. Wants this. Has been made to want this.
Loki climaxes with a cry, hands clutched tight around the rim of the tub.
“Again,” he demands, when Thor falters. “Again.”
9.
Loki knows which trains to take because Loki has done this before. Has attempted it before.
It didn’t exactly end well, but that’s the price you pay for experience.
There’s a moment when they’re at the border and Thor’s chip doesn’t scan.
For a brief, hysterical moment, he imagines himself in Loki’s place at the laundromat.
The office frowns, slides the chip under the sensor again, and the light goes green.
10.
They ditch all their belongings. Get as far away as they can, towards the direction of the coast.
Loki’s friends help them, the friends he made trying to get out of Sakaar in the first place. He was supposed to go first, then send for Thor afterwards. Thor had spent a month scouring every laundromat in the Lower District to find his brother.
Even from the first fuck, Thor thinks, Loki had known it was him.
They’ve come too far now to ever go back.
+ 1.
The tattoo on Loki’s back takes three weeks to heal, and the whole time, Thor is itching to get into the water. He waits, though, because he was the one who’d convinced Loki to get it. They’d erased his last one, a black-and-white snake eating its own tail.
In its place is a butterfly with its wings unfurled. Thor likes to put his hand over it, on Loki’s lower back. Likes to rub soothing circles around it when they fuck. Sometimes, Loki gets a glazed look on his face, and Thor wonders what he hears in his head. What they forced into his mind in those long, terrible days of discipline and correction.
The ocean is, to Thor’s surprise, salty. Its waves scroll endlessly towards the shore, the water free and unconfined. He wants to replace the noises in Loki’s head with the sound of the ocean’s hum.
They wash all their clothes by hand, and live by candlelight. They have no duties, except to each other.
In the far distance, Sakaar lurks, glittering in the darkness.