Chapter Text
The remaining light of day was a ripple of red across the horizon. A figure appeared at the connecting balcony, casting a large shadow that swallowed the sun and half of Loki’s face in the mirror.
"Going somewhere, brother?"
"Ask me again, why don't you," Loki said with a sniff. "I love being asked questions you very well know the answers to."
Unflustered, Thor decided tonight was as good a time as any to feed his long-contained curiosity. "So it is serious, then? You and the Winter Soldier?"
"Don't call him that," Loki rebuked his brother sharply. "He has not been that for a long time."
"Sorry."
"People forget." Loki softened his weighted statement with a pensive, "He mourns."
The mood in the room turned sombre.
"As do we all," Thor said quietly. "At this time of year."
"I would have liked to have known the man," Loki said. "What I know of him I learned from others."
"He was a great man," Thor said gravely. "A great king."
Mismatched eyes met green ones in the mirror, both pairs steeped in varying degrees of sorrow.
Thor had come to his brother's chamber looking for gossip, but now he found himself disheartened by the sudden turn in conversation.
"High praise, brother," Loki murmured. "Coming from you."
"There was no one more deserving of it than T'challa. He was the best of us."
Loki exhaled slowly. "Of course he was."
He had heard it all, of the late king's limitless kindness…not from Bucky, but from people around him. Bucky was no more forthcoming with his past than Loki himself.
"What are you planning to do?" Thor queried.
Loki turned his head, allowing Thor a glimpse of the half-smirk the mirror did not catch. "Get absolutely plastered. I am Asgardian, after all."
Thor clapped his brother on the back a few times and quietly closed the door behind him.
Loki had found someone. A complicated man with a complicated past but who remained a good man, as claimed by Thor's own friends.
As far as Thor was concerned, that was all that mattered.
"Tell me about him."
"You've seen him," Bucky said. "When he was alive."
Loki was nothing if not persistent. "Tell me what I didn't see."
Bucky tried to think of the right words to say, but the strongest memory was of his first tussle with the Black Panther all those years ago in Bucharest. "He wanted me dead the first time we met."
Loki bumped their shoulders together. "Hey. Don't feel bad. I too have that effect on people."
Bucky sighed. His gaze fell on the empty bottles and cans lying in disarray on the coffee table.
"He blamed me for his father's death."
"Oh."
When Loki stayed quiet, Bucky felt his anxiety stir to life. "I didn't do it."
“I know.” A brush of Loki’s lips against his temple quietened his nerves. “Wilson told me.”
“He did, huh?”
Loki’s fingers were gentle as they sifted through his hair. “You need not fear judgement from me, Bucky.”
Inexplicably, Bucky's eyes watered. He blinked furiously, but tears still clung to his lashes.
"Wolf."
"Sorry." Bucky pressed the heel of his hands into his eye sockets, so hard it made his head throb. "I'm not really good company today, I guess."
"You're perfectly acceptable company, no matter the day," Loki said with an unwavering conviction that rendered Bucky momentarily speechless.
“How did I deserve you?” Bucky wondered aloud when he could finally put into words his awe.
“Hmm. Perhaps you’re kind to animals?” Loki ventured a cheeky guess. “I personally think it's your overwhelming sense of guilt. The universe has had enough of it and sent you me to set you straight."
"Wow. You're brutally honest."
"I am known throughout the cosmos for my radical candour," Loki said modestly. "It's one thing your scholars got right about me in the books."
"Nah. I'm not much of a reader." Bucky stretched his legs and leaned back on his hands. "And I don't think I'm…straight? At least I don't think I am. Not anymore. I'm not sure. It's all very confusing.
"Allow me to unconfuse you." Loki pushed Bucky onto the floor, pinning him down by the shoulders. "Close your eyes."
Bucky did as he was told, and was soon rewarded with a series of kisses. He was not a romantic, but if he could describe Loki's kisses tonight, they were tender yet careful, yearning yet patient.
Something tickled Bucky's cheeks. It was soft, the caress of breath against skin, but proved to be too much of a distraction.
He opened his eyes a fraction.
"Loki?"
"Hi," the vision before him said shyly.
Bucky prised the long lock of hair off the side of his face and fingered its unearthly silkiness.
He gazed up at the Goddess of Mischief, eyes unreadable. "This is you?”
“Part of me. The real me. All of me.”
The vision then made an outrageous offer, an offer no man could refuse. "All yours."
“Loki…” he moaned. Yes.
In this form Loki felt delicate, as opposed to the usual solid mass of muscle Bucky was used to, but Bucky knew better; the fragility was an illusion.
The next thing he knew, Loki had transported them both onto the bed, and was now straddling his thighs; as she rode him faster and faster, her glossy dark hair tumbled past delectable collarbones and tickled Bucky's chest.
Bucky made love to her deep into the night, his grief a distant memory. He explored every inch of Loki’s body, spending many minutes kissing all the curves and edges, old and new, vaguely familiar yet different. All Loki.
All mine.
"I love you," he blurted out at one point.
"Say it again when you're sober," was all Loki answered, not unkindly.
"I am cursed. I am cursed. I am cursed."
It had been more than five minutes since Bucky had awakened to Loki's frantic mutterings, and he was starting to get really worried now.
"Can you please tell me what's going on?" Bucky implored as Loki, now back in his male form, paced up and down the room like a caged tiger.
Loki whirled around, eyes wild and crazed. "I can't find it."
Bucky was not sure what he could do to help, but knew he would accomplish nothing by sitting around while Loki scampered around like a headless chicken. "If you could just tell me what exactly you're looking for, I can help you look for it."
"That thing!"
"What thing?" Bucky asked in growing exasperation.
"I don't know what it's called in your language," Loki muttered.
"Okay…" Bucky scratched the back of his head, and looked around the bed, gloriously rumpled from the frolics of the night before.
He had absolutely no clue what he was looking for, but he had to be seen doing something. "When, uh, when did you last see it?"
Loki's panicky expression turned sheepish as he ran his hands down his naked torso. "Two hundred years ago, give or take a few decades?"
A soft gasp. "Do you think when I died and then came back that it didn't come back with me?"
Bucky's heart skipped a beat, before it began to pound like a sledgehammer. "Loki, you are not making any sense. What is 'it'?"
"Something invisible. Something potent." Loki's throat bobbed up and down in fear. "Something important."
Bucky was wiser than many people gave him credit for, on account of all the things he had seen and done. Loki was the same, so whatever he had lost, it must be damn big for Loki to react this way.
"Calm down," Bucky said in his most soothing voice. "This thing. Is it going to kill you if you don't have it?"
"Yes!" Then Loki caught himself. "No. Maybe." He winced. "I'm not sure. I can't tell yet."
"Good. Okay. I can deal with maybe," Bucky said. "When can we know for sure?"
Loki did not answer, so Bucky lunged and caught a wrist the next time the frantic demigod walked past the bed. "Hey. Sit down. Talk to me."
Loki plopped heavily onto the bed.
"In a few months," he huffed. "We'll find out in a few months."
"About what?"
Loki did not answer. He cupped the side of Bucky's face. "Are you sober?"
"Yes." Bad hangover aside, Bucky was stone cold sober now.
"I love you," Loki confessed.
"You cheat. I said it first," Bucky said.
"You're going to change your mind."
It was too early for one of Loki's riddles, but for some reason, Loki sounded close to tears, and that scared Bucky more than anything.
"Nothing's going to make me change my mind," Bucky stressed, making his voice hard on purpose, but instead of convinced, Loki only looked more stricken.
"I have to go," Loki said abruptly.
"Loki, what's wrong?"
"Nothing." Loki gently extricated himself out of Bucky's embrace. "Simply…an inconvenience."
"Will I see you later at Sam's?" Bucky asked.
Loki gave him a pasty smile. "I wouldn't miss it."
"Wait," Bucky exclaimed, desperate for Loki not to go, but his lover could not stay for a moment longer.
In a blink, Loki disappeared in a whirlwind of green magic, leaving Bucky alone to his racing thoughts.
What the hell is going on?
Only the day before, Loki had stood in front of the mirror, in anticipation of the night ahead.
Today, stripped of every piece of clothing, Loki stood before it again, this time scrutinising his reflection for the smallest, most minute change.
It was too soon to see any, of course.
Impossible.
Loki had realised it this morning when he awakened with a sinking feeling in his gut.
If he had not been so inebriated, he would have sensed it…sensed its absence, before he took the risky move to shift his form into one that he had not taken in a long, long time.
And for good reason too.
Not impossible.
The protective spell that his late Mother had weaved for him centuries ago had unravelled, God knew when, and he did not even realise it.
Loki laid a hand on his belly.
All it takes is a bit of magic, he cajoled himself. Take a look.
"No, I won't," he said aloud. "I can't."
Take a look. This time, he heard it in Bucky's voice, loud and clear.
Here goes nothing.
Loki surrendered himself to the call of the trance and reached out with his seidr, seeking for any sign of life deep inside him.
And there it was. A flutter. A caress of breath on skin, from within.
Loki sank to the floor, his knees slapping the hard, cold tiles, but he hardly felt it.
Norns, have mercy.