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Two thousand years was a long time to wander the realms alone. There had been periods over the centuries when Loki had believed a mate would add a layer of surprise and delight to his life. On other occasions, he’d been so sure the bond would prove a weakness - or even worse, a prison - that he’d hated on principle this one being meant for him.
But there were also times, like the last couple of decades, when he'd felt the weight of millennia spent alone scheming mischief for no one’s true appreciation but his own. When he'd felt… envy. Envy towards the lovesick fools in the palace who couldn’t spend a day without waxing poetry about their other half. And more recently, envy towards his own brother, who’d just discovered his soulmate on Midgard, of all places.
At first, Loki had pitied his brother. Mortals were such unimpressive creatures, so fragile and unimaginative. They’d evolved a bit for sure, but they weren’t gods, even though a large number of them liked to play this role among themselves, and wreak havoc on their equally fragile world.
Loki had scorned his brother, and only met Jane to settle a bet between them.
He lost.
Jane was mortal and delicate, but she had a brilliant mind - for a mortal - and a sharp tongue that Loki could appreciate, even though he’d never admit to it out loud. She was a far better conversationalist than his oaf of a brother, and she’d lived but a fraction of an Asgardian’s life.
“I know there’s someone out there for you,” Thor told him that night, as they stared at the night sky from the roof of Jane’s apartment building. “Someone who understands you. Someone who’s just right for you.”
Loki scoffed, and kept staring at the field of stars, so strangely arranged from this perspective. Humans had actually stepped on the moon. Not something he’d ever had believed within their grasp.
He closed a fist around a pattern of stars, and sighed. “I have no need for a liability or a distraction.”
“You are lonely.” Thor patted his shoulder, unbothered by the snarl his liberty earned him. “You need not lie to me.”
“Do lies not fall within my purview?”
“You forget chaos.”
Loki shot to his feet and walked over the ledge, until his feet stood on nothing but air. The harsh wind knocked a long strand of dark hair from his braid. “Chaos is an island you could never hope to glimpse in the sea of your delusions of optimism and righteousness, Thor.”
Thor lost his smile, but his gaze remained soft. And sad.
“Someone will see, Loki. Someday, somewhere, you will be seen as you truly are, and loved wholeheartedly.”
*
Loki dismissed Thor’s words for a week. Two years later, he barely remembered them anymore.
Until one night, about five years and four months after the night on Jane’s rooftop.
“ Norns .”
Loki woke up to an excruciating pain the likes of which he’d never experienced before. With a gasp, he shoved the sweat-drenched sheets away and looked down at his chest.
Intact. The skin was warm to the touch, sticky with sweat, but untouched by any wounds besides a small, round scar he didn’t remember having the day before.
No, he thought, even as a voice at the back of his mind whispered: yes.
A shift in focus lit up the room, and another whisper of seiðr told him what he already suspected: this was not a scar, but a brand-new soul mark. It hurt terribly, as though something - or someone - had yanked his heart out of his chest without much care at all. He couldn’t make go away, and he curled onto his side with gritted teeth as the pain ebbed and flowed through the night.
Even when it stopped hurting, near dawn, he was unable to sleep. His mind was abuzz with frantic thoughts, contradictory urges that made him equally nauseous. Part of him wanted for all of this to be nothing more than a dream, and another part, the one that caused his heart to speed up after it had finally settled, was yearning .
He buried his face in his pillow with a groan and cursed the Norns.
Thor, too, for good measure.
A few minutes later, he was up, and dressing in his battle gear.
*
The cave he materialized in was the theater of screams and explosions, and Loki immediately felt both better and worse. Chaos was his domain, but the pain was back, and with it, the knowledge that if he didn’t do something fast, the damn mortal he’d been assigned by the Norns would die. Mortals weren’t overly resistant to pain, after all.
Such fragile creatures, he thought fiercely, snapping the necks of the one standing in his way with a snarl.
The small bullets barely hurt, but he invoked a shield anyway. With another tendril of seiðr, he choked the dozen or so men aiming their pathetic guns at him. The last time he’d seen weapons on Midgard, they’d been a lot less useful, or accurate, and had he been Thor, he might have applauded the fool whose bullet glanced off his shield in between his eyes before extinguishing the man’s lifeforce.
Growing impatient at the swarm of humans blocking his way, Loki parted it in two rows and slammed them against the rock of the tunnel. Sand drifted from the rocky ceiling, and a boulder threatened to collapse as well. Loki ventured deeper into the dark corridor and came to an abrupt half in front of a door blasted open. The room beyond was empty, but Loki could feel his mate’s life energy lingering there, the despair permeating the metal tools spread everywhere. Loki spun around, annoyance giving way to concern. He might not have wished for a soulmate, but he’d read everything there was to know about the concept, and knew very well that their life forces were linked - for better or for worse.
Where was the damn fool?
He materialized a few miles off the cave, and felt the pull he’d been following increase - and the pain as well. The wind was fierce, but as Loki casted his eyes down, he found footprints in the sand. They were gone almost immediately, but it was enough for Loki to know that the mortal had been vertical not too long ago. With the pain they were experiencing, that may not be the cause anymore, though. But they couldn’t be far.
They weren’t.
Loki took in the being that he was supposed to claim as his own, unable to pinpoint the feeling spreading in his chest.
The mortal was male. Middle-aged, dirty, bloodied, and unconscious. A metal contraption resembling an exoskeleton lay at his side, fuming, half-buried in the sand, as were the man’s legs and half his back already.
Loki knelt in the sand, and rolled the man over onto his back. A shudder ran through him as his hand made contact with the mortal’s chest. He magicked the man’s tunic away and stared at the round metallic thing embedded in his chest. Not magic. Something else. Something that strangely, impossibly, kept him alive.
“What happened to you?” he said. And then, louder: “Heimdall!”
*
The mortal got better fast, but then Asgard healers were a lot more skilled than the human who’d kept Anthony alive using some vehicle battery and a magnet of sorts.
“It’s called an electromagnet, and it saved my life, so be grateful. My name is Tony, by the way, not Anthony. ”
Loki crossed his arms and leveled the man with an unimpressed look. He had to give it to the Midgardian: he had spunk. He needed to have some, to be Loki’s mate. Not that Loki was overjoyed by the news he was now responsible for this little addition to the palace. The Allfather had been really clear on that point.
“Anthony fits you better,” was all he said in response to the mortal’s rant as he pushed away from the wall and came to sit beside him.
Anthony stiffened, but didn’t try to move away as Loki reached for his hand. Loki bit back a smile. The mortal didn’t enjoy this situation any more than the god himself, and somehow, that made everything easier. Loki turned his soulmate’s hand the other way, and ran a finger over the hard calluses. “A warrior’s hand,” he said, somewhat interested despite himself. He had no love for warriors. “What is it you do with your life, Anthony?”
“Looks are deceiving, and I’m not a warrior.” The mortal scoffed, and blew at the strand of brown hair that had fallen down between his eyes. Brown eyes, alert, haunted. “Although I do… did make weapons.”
Loki’s interest spiked even as hope flared in his chest. “What changed?”
“The weapons I made were used against me,” Anthony confessed, and promptly snapped his mouth shut with a frown. “Is there something to eat that doesn’t taste like crap in this place?”
The blatant change in subject - and the equally obvious insult - startled a laugh from the god.
“Come,” he said, and pulled his snarky mate to his feet. “There must be something in the kitchens that meets your ridiculously high standards.”
Later, as Anthony munched hungrily on the single fruit Loki hated with a passion in all the realm, Loki felt the hope morph into interest.
*
Anthony was the adventurous type, and Loki learned early on not to let him wander alone.
“These woods are dangerous.”
“Obviously.”
Loki nudged the bilgesnipe he’d put to sleep with a raised brow. “And yet here you were, teasing a beast that far surpasses you in strength. A beast you know nothing of.”
“Isn’t this how you learn things around him? Back where I come from…” Anthony stuck his hands in his pockets, and returned the challenging look. “It’s by poking the beast you figure out mysteries.”
Loki wasn’t sure what - or who - the mortal was talking about anymore, and that, added to the fact that Anthony obviously had not the slightest inclination to resist his inquiring mind, roused the ridiculous urge within him to grab the mortal by the dark green tunic he seemed to like and kiss him senseless.
“And what have you learned today?” he asked instead.
Anthony’s eyes twinkled with amusement.
“Don’t play fetch with the bilgesnipe.”
That night, for the first time in three weeks, Anthony didn’t mention going back on Midgard.
*
It stood to reason that Anthony’s curiosity would extend to all aspects of Asgard, which included, to most Asgardians’ chagrin, magic.
Anthony seemed to be fascinated by it… once he stopped pretending magic wasn’t possible.
“Magic is just science that isn’t understood yet.”
Loki found that he didn’t mind the constant barrage of questions, even if Anthony had the worst sense of timing ever and kept interrupting him when he was in the middle of a delicate spell or agonizing over a last-minute incredibly important missive for Vanaheim.
Or half naked.
The mortal kept entering the room - their room, really - when Loki was either dressing or undressing. And although he did his best to hide his reaction to the sight, the god could tell that his mate was attracted. Which made sense, because mates always were, according to the books. Loki wished he could be angry at yet another display of fate, but the truth was, his mate’s desire felt right. Good.
The mortal wasn’t hard on the eye either. Loki didn’t ‘surprise’ him near enough as Anthony did, but whenever he did, he wondered how all those scars, earned in so few years, would feel under his own smooth palms. How those nipples would harden under the action of his fingertips. If Anthony was as well-endowed as the occasional bulge in his breeches, tailored-made to a sinful cut, seemed to suggest.
*
The first time they kissed, Loki had ink-stained fingers fisted in Anthony’s sweaty hair. His mate tasted like the coffee the kitchens had learned to brew, and something uniquely Anthony that made Loki’s head spin as he licked into the welcoming mouth.
“Have I mentioned how hot you are?” Anthony said, a tad breathless, lips caressing the god’s.
Loki pulled gently at the mortal’s hair, and felt his cock harden at the delighted gasp that escaped his mate. “On occasion.
Anthony straddled him in short order, hard cock pressing into Loki’s own. His lips were spit-slick and of a tempting red, his cheeks dusted with the pink hue of arousal. Loki cupped his mate’s cock through his breeches and hissed in delight at the full-body shiver that went through Anthony.
“Quite a handful, aren’t you?” He squeezed for emphasis. “What should we do about that?”
It turned out that Anthony’s adventurous streak extended to carnal pleasures, and Loki found deep satisfaction in the knowledge that no one else had ever touched the mortal there, let alone fucked him.
“I love your magic,” Anthony gasped when Loki rerouted more blood to his waned erection, for a third round. “Have I told you how much I love you?”
Pretty sure the mortal was too far gone to know what he was saying anymore, Loki refused to linger on those burning words and flipped his mate onto his belly, sliding back into his welcoming heat.
*
The first and only time Anthony died, Loki felt like he’d been stabbed himself.
“Anthony!”
They were on Midgard, fighting a threat to the whole of Yggdrasil, a deranged being who thought it wise to court Death by killing off half the universe’s population. Anthony had insisted to fight, and Loki had seen what his mate’s suit of armor could do, and what his wits could achieve beyond that.
As the Titan tore through Anthony’s chest with his own technology, Loki felt a rush of power so vast the pain seemed to fade. He slammed into the Titan with a roar, pulling at the gauntlet with a force well beyond that even a god could wield, high on grief, desperate to annihilate the being who’d dare harm his mate so very horribly.
“Here’s your offering, Hela,” he hissed as the Titan fell to the ground, surprise still in his eyes, even in death.
Loki tossed the gauntlet and the stones in a pocket dimension and sank to his knees by Anthony’s side. The power still hummed in his veins, and it wasn’t the stones. He didn’t understand it, only had hypotheses, but he could feel that it was finite. Something had to be done with it now .
And Loki, cradling Anthony’s face with one hand and framing the bleeding wound in his torso with the other, thought the words he’d never dared to say with the strength of will he used for the most difficult spell.
I love you.
*
“Why are you giving me an apple?”
Anthony was lying into the cradle of Loki’s body, the lines of exhaustion deep on his face. He’d almost fallen asleep twice already, but he’d fought it, and now he weighed the fruit of Iðunn’s gardens with an inquisitive expression.
Loki nudged the priceless fruit toward Anthony’s mouth. “No science in the world could ever protect you like this apple could.”
“… it’s going to make me immortal or something, isn’t it?”
Loki heard no hesitation in the quip, only wonder. Perhaps the words Anthony had said the night they’d first made love was no accident.
“Yes,” he said.
Anthony twisted around, and winced in pain. Before Loki could chastise him, the mortal - his mortal - leaned until their lips touched. An almost kiss that became perfect when Anthony said those words in the not-space between them.
“I love you. Stop worrying so much because I have trouble with words.”
Loki’s chest hurt , and he had to blink quickly to keep the tears at bay. Anthony bit into the apple. Loki watched him in awe. How could he have ever thought that being alone was better, when someone like Anthony existed? This now immortal man was perfect. He was him like Loki truly was, understood him, relished Loki’s mischievous and chaotic nature, because he, too, loved to upset the status quo of the universe.
And this marvel of a mortal - this gem that far surpassed all of those still hidden away in his pocket dimension - was all Loki’s.
“You do speak too much,” he said, affection and wonder lacing the words.
Anthony waved the apple core at him, and then gasped as it turned to golden dust. “Magic,” he gasped, delighted like a child.
Loki kissed him properly, then.
It was the best feeling in the world, to know that he would get to do that for a long, long time.