the_variant | (no subject)

Entry tags:

loki,
mothman

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Sylvie keeps seeing her idiot brother.

She sees him as he was, not as the man Loki or Bucky might know, but as the boy she had grown up with. The glimpses she gets of him are always fleeting, a flash of his stupid gold armour (play armour, he's a child) through a crowd, or his eyes meeting hers from across the street, just for a moment before someone crosses in front of her and he's gone. He'll turn a corner ahead of her and when she follows, he's nowhere to be seen.

Twice now, he's stayed a bit longer. Staring from a distance too great for her to cross before he disappears and when he holds her gaze, she feels like he has something he's trying to tell her.

But Thor was always a bit too thick even for message delivery and maybe she's just gone insane.

Her dreams aren't much better, strange and dark, with details that become bogged down in a sense of ruination. In one, she vaguely remembers Loki sitting cross legged in a dark room with a handsome stag resting at his side. But the stag had started shedding his velvet and it hung in bloody strips from his rack, which Loki had been pulling off bit by bit, laying the bloody velvet at his feet. He had beckoned her closer and when Sylvie knelt, it was in the blood. Loki leaned in, his lips to her ear, and he had said something to her in the dream, but she doesn't remember his words, only that they had left her chest feeling tight, as if something was coming for them both.

Tonight she's sleeping in her own room, having started off alone, but at some point Loki had joined her. When she wakes with a start, a warning on her lips from a new, ominous dream she can't remember, it takes her a moment make sense of the shape in the bed beside her. Before long, his familiar sprawl becomes apparent, dark hair on a pale cheek, and Sylvie exhales shakily as she rests her forehead on his shoulder.

It's clear she isn't going to fall asleep easily, so after several moments, Sylvie rises and hooks a silky robe from where she'd left it on a nearby chair. Pulling it over her shoulders, she wanders to the window to look down on their yard, their home, and centre herself.

Thor is standing below. Her breath catches as their eyes meet, his large and sorrowful, and she's suddenly furious.

"What?" she barks, then slaps her palm against the glass. "What do you want?"

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"It's a window, darling. I don't believe it wants anything," Loki drawled, knowing full well that he was likely to draw her ire. He could take it. In fact, he often enjoyed it.

She wasn't, however, in the type of bristling mood that often lead to more amusement than pain. This, he could tell, was unusual.

"What is it?" He asked, more sincerely, crossing the room in his underwear, a robe hanging open from his shoulders. He stood next to her, peering down into the yard.

He saw nothing.

Below, Thor stares back up at them, small and somber, so unlike Sylvie remembers him being. Her brother had been boisterous, loud and filled with energy, the bright light to her darkness. Somehow, this both is and isn't her brother.

Loki's words answer her unasked question and she pulls her gaze away from Thor so she can look at him instead. When she glances back, a quick dart of her eyes, he's gone.

"I keep seeing Thor," she whispers, jaw set hard, the fingers of one hand curling in the front of Loki's robe. "And I've been having these dreams that... they feel like warnings."

The smirk on Loki's face fell away and he frowned, leaning closer to the window to have a better look. Still, there was nothing.

"It's funny you should say that," he said warily, "The other day, I thought... I was certain it must've been some sort of trick of the eye, but it's not easy to mistake someone else for a man like Thor."

Sylvie knows what her brother grows up to be. When one sees enough timelines, eventually one finds variants of their loved ones, whether looking for them or not. She's seen Thor as an adult in more than one iteration, large and blond and carelessly handsome.

A man her brother never got to become.

"Your Thor?" she asks, needing to be certain. "Not some variant?"

"Not a variant, no. Bit older, perhaps. As he was in the holofilm they showed me the TVA."

A true king, not the arrogant child his father had exiled on Earth, nor the newly minted Avenger, who'd fought him in New York.

"Mine, all the same."

Mine. He hated to admit it, but he could be honest with her, if no one else.

Sylvie nods and glances down at the yard once more, but it remains empty. For a time, she says nothing at all, trying to work through what she's seeing and feeling, what Loki has just told her, but she can't find a way to fit it all together.

What she does know is that whatever is happening, it's individual to them. What she's seeing is not what he's seeing.

"I've been seeing my Thor," she admits finally. "He's still just a child, he looks exactly like he did when our timeline was erased."

"That's... strange," Loki observed, his frown deepening. Glancing into the yard, he said, "And he was here, now? In the yard."

He leaned closer, peering out into the darkness, but there was nothing.

"He hasn't come 'round, for me. At the market once. On the boardwalk, but only glimpses." Turning to her, he asked, "What sort of dreams?"

"This is the closest he's been," she says, staring a moment longer before she returns to the bed and sinks down onto its edge. Her bedroom is the closest she's had to a space all her own and even now, with her nerves feeling frayed, there's a sense of safety to it. Slowly, her shoulders relax.

"The dreams are things of blood and shadows and the most obtuse attempts at divination," she tells him, emboldened a little now. She turns, sitting cross legged on the bed and moving to make space for Loki to sit facing her. "In one, Hilde was writing on a wall. Huge, scrawling words, and I couldn't read them, but I knew they meant something was wrong. In another, you were peeling the shedding velvet from a stag's antlers. Your hands were bloody. You told me you had a secret, but I don't remember what you said."

"Very macabre," he observed wryly, his brow arched. He settled on the bed across from her, mirroring her position without a second thought. "At our age, I'm certain we have our share of secrets, but I can't say there are any that would hold any particular interest for you."

It was more likely her own mind attempting to provide her with a warning, but the possibility that there was some entity walking within her dreams was undeniably unnerving.

"You made me lean in. You whispered it into my ear." She pauses, then manages a small twist of a smile, feeling a little better now that she can no longer see her brother even in her periphery. "It would have almost been sexy if not for all the blood and the giant stag just taking up space."

It's a joke, a stupid one besides, but her way of telling him she'll be fine, at least for the time being.

The smile fades and she exhales slowly, using one hand to push her hair back from her face. "It could be nothing," she says. "But it all feels like something and it might be a bit odd, given what we're capable of, but I hate illusions."

"Odd, but not particularly surprising," Loki pointed out, with a faint twist of a smile curving his lips.

Then, a bit more seriously, he added, "Coupled with our visitor, it seems unlikely that it's nothing."

"Unless we've both gone mad at exactly the same time," she says. "No, it's something. Whatever it is, I'd really rather it piss off and let me get some sleep."

Or, if it can't do that, at least let her speak to Thor. Allow her to really see him, even if it's for the very last time.

"Oh, I think we've always been half mad," he pointed out, but no, she was right. It was definitely something, and it unsettled him to think that neither of them could pinpoint what.

"If it's sleep you want, I might be able to do something about that," he said. He was offering magic, but the other implications weren't lost on him, and his eyes crinkled at the corners with amusement.

She has a good idea he's offering magical assistance, but Sylvie just rises onto her knees on the bed and then slides into his lap, her arms draped over his shoulders, hands draped over one other behind his neck.

"Are you going to wear me out, then?" she asks, head tilted as if in a challenge.

Everything has changed since he arrived here, absolutely everything and yet she still can't help but goad him a little. The edge has disappeared from it in the past year and the light in her eyes has changed, but the dare in her voice is still present.

"Well, I could certainly try," he said, a grin slowly stretching across his face. Reaching for the belt of her robe, he gave it a tug, the silk parting. Still, it was her face he didn't seem to be able to look away from, his hand lifting to gently cradle her jaw.

"Thought, it could be counter-productive. It could take some time, you see."

"Time well spent, I assume," she answers, still with that challenge in her voice even as she tips her cheek into his palm. This was never meant for her, never something had allowed herself to consider, because feeling this way for anyone meant she might turn her back on everything she'd fought for just to be with them.

She hadn't. Not for Loki, not at first. It was a mistake, she's told him as much, and now she intends on making sure he understands it every day of their time here.

Sylvie's hands come forward, palms sliding over the back of his neck before she tucks them under the material of his robe and slips it back off his pale shoulders.

"Hm, let's hope," he drawled, ducking to kiss her exposed collarbone, her own robe pooling around her waist. Hooking an arm around her, he lifted her easily, though only because she allowed him to.

She had a tendency to best him, whenever she put in the effort, a fact which he didn't mind in the slightest.

Laying her out on the tangle of ridiculously lavish pillows, he crawled over her, kissing between her breasts. One hand finding hers, he tangled their fingers together, palm to palm.

Sylvie's fingers tighten on Loki's as he slides their hands together, and she hooks one leg around him, shaking free of her robe entirely, skin against skin. Whatever kind of magic Darrow is using on them, she only hopes it has the good sense not to send either Thor to them in the next while.

She has no intention of stopping for anything.

With her free hand, Sylvie tangles her fingers in Loki's hair to guide him, to press his mouth against her breast, a shiver drawing through her at the touch of his lips.

A faint smile curling his lips, Loki trailed his mouth over the swell of her breast, circling the bud of her nipple, scraping very lightly with his teeth. His free hand palmed her other breast, kneading gently, taking his time. This was always preferable to sleep, and if it served to distract her, he was more than willing to oblige.

He trailed lower, kissing the flat plane of her stomach, the dip in her navel, smirking faintly as he hitched one of her legs over his shoulder, his lips grazing the tender inside of one thigh.

At the touch of his lips along the inside of her thigh, Sylvie's breath hitches and she lifts her hips a little in encouragement. There are times when they're impatient, hungry, and she'd sooner shove Loki up against a wall or some random bit of furniture than wait to find a bed, but then there are times like this, too.

She loves these times.

"Do you know," she says in a breathless voice, "how rarely I had sex on the run? It was impossible to find the time in most of the timelines I went to, but every so often there'd be someone. Some beautiful waitress in a diner at the end of the world or once a truck driver who picked me up. Never like this. There was never time to be slow."

She's not sure why she's telling him any of this. It feels so intimate, secrets of a life she's never shared with anyone, but maybe that's why she tells him now.

When she spoke, he paused, surprised by her candor. So many years, on the run. Never relaxing. Never connecting with anyone. She had a convenient excuse for all her years of emotional distance. He did not.

"And now?" He teased, breathing warm across her skin, mouth warm and open along the crease of her thigh. "Are you enjoying your newfound life of leisure?"

"I'm enjoying you," she replies, burying her hands deeper in his hair.

Being without a goal is still sometimes a bit disorienting, something she struggles to fit into her new view of the world in which they live, but with Loki, that part of her falls quiet. As for the rest, it will either come or it won't, but she can deal with it because of him.

"And who wouldn't?" she asks in a teasing tone, slipping one hand from his hair to brush her thumb over her cheekbone. "You look beautiful right where you are."

"You say such lovely things," he teased back, eyes on hers as he buried his face between her legs. Letting out a low rumbled of a groan at the taste of her, hands gripping her thighs.

If taking her time was rare, over all those years on the run, he intended to touch her now with the care and reverence she deserved. They'd had their share of passionate fumbling. Now, he planned to be as thorough as possible.

No one would have said to that to her before him. No one would have had cause to, because Sylvie hasn't had reason to be kind for a very long time. Her fingers twist in his hair again and she gasps at the touch of his mouth, his lips on her clit, the press of his tongue inside of her.

One leg lifts and hooks properly over his shoulders as Sylvie's back arches and she moans again. Then, on a gasp, "Fingers, please."

She rarely says please, but here she will. Here, it feels appropriate, like she isn't giving anything up.

His eyes smiled up at her and he hesitated only for a moment before doing as he was told. Two fingers, pressed deep and curling upward as his tongue worked at her clit. It took a lot out of her to ask for what she wanted, instead of demanding it, and he wasn't so foolish to take that moment of vulnerability for granted.

Gripping her thigh in one hand, he pumped his fingers into her firmly, slowly, angling the stroke of his fingertips where he knew she'd appreciate it most. He sucked gently at her clit, then a bit harder when he felt her begin to clench down around his fingers. The rhythm of it was easy to fall into. She was easy to fall into, and moments like this, everything else faded away. The noise in his mind, the flightiness and artifice of The God of Mischief disappeared and he could simply be.

"Fuck," she breathes as she feels warmth creeping into her, low and tight, and tingling beginning in her toes, her cheeks. It's as if all other sensation flees, heading to the places Loki is touching her, where he's inside her, where his tongue is dragging over her, where he is instead of anywhere else. She loves him so much it sometimes feels like it's burning up the angrier parts of her, leaving her fumbling and stupid and new, and instead of running from it, she just slips deeper into it. Him.

"Fuck," she says again, back arching beneath him. "Loki, I-" Whatever else she might say is cut off as she comes, riding each wave of pleasure with a flex of her thighs, her back lifting, pressing herself to him, to his mouth and his fingers.

He worked her through it, finally lifting his head to watch as she arched beneath him, his thumb taking over where his tongue had been.

Smiling lazily, his cheek rested against her thigh and his hand slowed, letting her cool down a bit. "What was that?" he teased, as if he'd interrupted her in the middle of something important she'd needed to say.

Sated, and somehow not, Sylvie tips her head in the same direction, cheek against her shoulder, looking down at Loki. There's a sheen of sweat on her skin and her chest is still heaving as she catches her breath, but a grin flickers over her lips.

"I think," she begins, stroking her fingers through his hair, "I was preparing to ask for your cock."

Her gaze is warm, still a little hungry, and while she thinks she could easily fall asleep now, she still wants him. She wants to feel him close against her. It isn't just about sex, it's about needing him in a way that usually makes her nervous.

"Ah, only that," Loki said, playfully flippant as he crawled up her body, pausing to kiss her here and there as he went. Catching her lips with his own, he settled between her thighs, cock sliding into her to the hilt. She was warm beneath him, almost sleepy, and he rolled his hips lazily, taking the cue for her that they could be in no particular hurry.

He wanted only to be near her, and would always take whatever excuse she would give him.

They've had plenty of times together that have ended on floors or outdoors, against walls, bent over different surfaces around the townhouse, and times like this, too. But this feels much more rare and Sylvie's hands slide down Loki's back as he presses inside of her, gentle and slow.

"Only nothing, darling," she teases, then nips gently at his lower lip. "Be kinder to yourself than that."

As if he has any insecurity about his body. She's the same, at home in the form she wears, confident, content, and easily able to change it, should she want to.

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