#dear god is this ALLOWED?????? IS THIS ALLOWED?

[spookyrea]

Been a While Since I've Held Anything

When a picture of Loki's soulmark goes viral, his mood takes a dramatic turn. He's moody, rude, and trying to ingratiate himself to you in bizarre ways. Maybe it has something to do with the anonymous love letter you sent him while trying to build up the courage to tell him how you really feel. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that your soulmarks match.

Chapter 1 / 3 - read on AO3

A soulmate-identifying mark AU - no warnings, though epilogue will contain smut

(chapter 2) (epilogue)

Dear Loki, you wrote. You’re vile.

The picture was uploaded to Twitter on December 12th at exactly 3:43 pm. It was terrible quality, taken in a dimly-lit bar. Loki’s head was bowed to hear his brother over the din, his hair drawn up for all the heat in the packed bar. A perfect storm of circumstance to allow his shirt collar to ride low on his shoulders, exposing the elegant slope where his neck met his spine - and about three quarters of his soulmark. 

Loki’s mark was a delicate thing. Twenty-two dots of varying sizes, curved in a crescent shape along the top of his spine to disappear into obscurity. It was a shape so familiar that you could have traced it blind – because it was also yours.

I don’t have the words to describe how you make me feel. You make me feel stupid. You frighten me. 

Someone like him left the public particularly susceptible to match hysteria – a phenomenon where infatuated individuals became convinced they were a match despite the obvious fact that they weren’t - and within a matter of hours the Avengers Tower was inundated with love letters. Pepper immediately benched him to the auxiliary rota, essentially dooming Loki to a few weeks of house arrest until the fervor could die down.

I hate your mouth, and your hair, and your eyes. Everything about him made your skin ache, ultraviolet hot like a sunburn. On a good day, Loki was charming; on a bad day, he could bring countries to their knees with a smile. On the rare occasion that that attention had been turned on you, you understood keenly why he was called Silvertongue – it was difficult to remove yourself from the fantasy that he might be interested in you when he leaned in so closely, spoke with such intimate conspiracy in his voice.  I hate how vulnerable you make me feel. 

You hoped that, by getting the awfulness of lovesickness out on paper, you could eventually begin to draft a real love letter. Something to slip through his mailslot alongside the deluge of adoring fans. He would never read it – Loki had made his thoughts on the public’s “meagre attempts at poetry” quite clear. (Though that didn’t stop his preening at the absolute magnitude of letters - and how each one seemed to raise Tony’s blood pressure just that little bit higher).

Yours,

You signed the letter with your name and slid it into a nondescript envelope for the formality of it all, sealed with a lick to the underside, and tucked it away in a junk drawer to be forgotten about.

You would write a dozen more love letters. They would range from sweet to obsessive, pouring onto paper every ounce of affection you felt. You fought gods and monsters and would-be bank robbers; if you could survive having your solar plexus shattered and four-weeks of bed rest, you could mail off one silly letter confessing that your coworker made your brain go fuzzy.

You eventually picked one and mailed it off -- anonymously -- along with your heart and every anxiety you had ever owned. 

(You almost believed it when you told yourself that this put you one step closer to actually telling him to his face.)

You would find that very letter in a drawer, seven weeks later. Untouched. Unsent.

“Look alive, agent.” Steve knocked you with his shoulder. He was too big for the backseat of the smart car you’d rented at the airport, meaning he had to crane his neck to avoid hitting the roof on every speed bump. “Simple extraction mission: escort Loki to the cargo, he’ll do his little magic trick, and we’ll be warm and on our way home before Santa comes.”

Steve wasn’t particularly devout; he didn’t go to mass on Sundays, and he swore like a sailor and drank twice as much (to little effect), but he took Christmas incredibly seriously. He had been compiling lists of possible presents for months and, despite the team running the gamut from Muslim to Jewish to Literal God, everyone would be getting a gift tomorrow morning.

Loki, though not as broad as Steve, was also suffering in the backseat to your right. His legs were folded ungracefully in the meager space behind the passenger seat, twisted to press up tightly to yours. There was nowhere to run between Steve and Loki, so you had to endure the terrible pleasure of the weight of Loki's thigh against yours for the entire ride.

It made the soulmark on the back of your neck burn. You wondered, as Clint took a turn too hard and Steve's weight forced you into Loki's side, if Loki felt that same itch. If the dots scattered down his back also sang whenever your hands brushed.

“Here we are,” Loki growled. The car rolled up two blocks away from your destination - a bank where an artifact said to be able to “control the minds of the weak-willed” was being stored in a safety deposit box. According to FRIDAY, the artifact was warded with a powerful magic that would unwind all but the most powerful sorcerers at the seams.

 (It’s just energy, Tony had grumbled, give me a few days and I can figure it out. 

Loki, with a terrible sneer, responded: Or you could just let the expert handle it.) 

You were there to provide backup should the plan go South. Your super-strength meant you could go toe-to-toe with most armed guards, holding off the worst of it until Steve, Nat and Clint could come to your rescue.

“Shall we, pet?” One of his gloves hands laced through yours. “Try not to get us killed, hmm?”

“What are you going to do about your,” you waved your free hand in front of your face.

His seidr sighed, crossing over him with a light hand; his features didn’t change (same sharp nose and cock-sure smile, though maybe a touch more gaunt) but his hair shortened and lightened to a pale auburn. He fixed you with a doe-eyed stare, dark brown eyes peering up through a fan of pale eyelashes; his attention – preternatural in its intensity – lit something inside of you that made you nervous, made you shy. Because despite the pale hair and the dark eyes, despite the freckles – it was still Loki. Still the most devastating smile you had ever had the pleasure of seeing.

When he spoke, he laid on a thick accent - Brooklyn, maybe. “Who would ever suspect me now?”

Your crush on Loki was basically public knowledge on the team; you could hardly stand to be in the same room as him some days because of how embarrassed he made you feel. It dissolved all human poise and reduced you to animal instinct, it seemed, because every time he turned to you at a party, or at breakfast, or in the backseat of a quin-jet in the early morning hours, you lost any ability to form full sentences and found yourself blinking cow-eyes at him until you could excuse yourself. If your avoidance bothered him, Loki never commented, but he did make an impressive effort to lord over as much of your attention as possible. Rare was the occasion when Loki was not teasing you, or asking after you, seeming to revel in your infatuation.

“Of course,” he continued. “My real soulmate would be able to recognize me based on shape alone. Which is demonstrative of how ridiculous the entire farce is, anyway – it took a picture for these souls to finally realize I was their match? Laughable. I have spent aeons tangling the threads of lovers – why should I trust the Norns to be kind to me?”

Loki stepped out of the car and hauled you along behind him. “Rest assured, pet – no number of pretty things claiming that my heart belongs to them will ever draw my eye. They are but window dressing in my already magnificent life.”

His mark was a heavy iron weight on the back of your neck. “That’s a terrible accent,” you blurted out.

His smile dropped away, affront evident in the way his nose tipped upwards; there was a lingering static charge to him, and you could feel his seidr humming in your back teeth. In his regular voice, he said, “I thought it was alright.”

“No one from Brooklyn talks like that.”

“Well, maybe you’ll appreciate it more once you see the accessories.” Loki drew from thin air a pair of horn-rimmed glasses, which he adjusted to sit high on his nose. “Don’t you think they make me look scholarly? What a gentleman.”

You weren’t sure how to respond. 

“What? You don’t like it?”

“I don’t think I have time to like it. We need to move, now.” A job was at least a welcome distraction; despite the way your skin crawled when Loki looked at you, you could narrow your attention to the work at hand. 

Loki conjured an armful of paper bags for the two of you, masquerading as a pair of Christmas shoppers. He ushered you into the bank with a hand on your back before stepping into his charming persona, plastering on the widest grin you had ever seen.

Getting into the bank vaults was easy enough; Loki prattled on about honeymoons and pre-nuptials and getting your valuables in order to a clerk who was clearly quite taken by him. As soon as she left the two of you alone in the back room, Loki leapt into action.

“Tony said we were looking for–”

“I know which one it is.” With a snap of his fingers, the security cameras overhead sizzled and drooped.

“How long do you think it will take them to notice the cameras are down?”

Loki’s seidr pried the door off one of the safety deposit lockers like it was made of plastic and not reinforced steel. “If they’re not completely incompetent? My guess would be a couple of minutes.”

“I’ll keep an eye out, then.”

“You do that.”

You watched him work with a certain kind of love in your eye, admiring the outline of his profile as he unknotted the ropes holding the cargo together. It had been swelling, some sweet thing, in your chest now for some time – your match, it would whisper, growing frantic by the day, you were meant to be!  

If only you could get over the fear; the fear of rejection, of ridicule, or worst of all – patent indifference. The idea that Loki might look at your neck and not laugh, not sneer, but merely shrug, repeating his disinterest in letting fate choose for him.

“Pet,” he drawled. “Are you going to help? Or would you prefer to stand there and glower all day?”

You leaned backwards into the hall, craning your neck to see if anyone was coming. “I don’t glower.”

“Glare. Sneer. You may pick any synonyms you wish. Now, fetch me the gauntlet from my bag before we’re discovered and I have to invent some new ruse to whisk ourselves off to safety.”

He said it all with a scowl. It was rare to see him smile as of late; he seemed to follow the team around the tower like a perpetual storm cloud, sticking his nose into business he had no right to be implicated in; making snide, snobbish comments whenever possible. You imagined it had something to do with his soulmark being revealed; despite his boisterousness, he was a quiet, private sort when intimate details were concerned. He would prefer to keep the public - even his friends - at an arm’s length, lest he need to extricate himself quickly. 

To have something so personal broadcast so carelessly – well, you were sure it was chewing at him.

You handed him the metal glove, which he strapped around his wrist and forearm with a medical precision. His seidr hummed with each tug of the fastenings, speaking in hymns too old for you to understand. A startling quiet overcame Loki’s expression, before he flicked his wrist, conjuring sparks of green at his fingertips, and slowly sank his hand into the packing material in the box.

“You feel any different?”

Loki rolled his eyes. “Please. This is child’s play compared to some of the tricks I played on Thor. I’m not sure I even require the gauntlet, honestly.”

Despite his lofty attitude, dread needled at your ribs. The box gave off a similar energy as Loki did, something that smelled like sea salt and ozone, and the two competing forces were making you feel a bit nauseous. If he needed help, you wouldn’t be much help – it would tear you in two without an afterthought – so you could only trust that he had it under control.

“Stop looking at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like I’m going to die.” Terribly slowly, Loki twisted his arm and began to dredge the artifact up from its packing material. “Have some faith.”

It was the strangest sensation; as soon as the gauntlet - tech that Tony had drafted to interrupt other forces from interacting with Loki’s seidr after a nasty run in with a witch - was removed, you felt a sparkling, smacking kiss on your temple, as if to placate your anxiety. You glanced around but found no potential source of a draft.

“Are you playing some sort of trick on me?”

Loki shot you a glare. “Why would I do that?”

“Is that a rhetorical question?”

He didn’t deign to respond. The two of you abandoned the safety deposit box the clerk had pulled out for you as well as most of your pretend shopping bags and began navigating the halls at random, trying to find an exit in the unfamiliar layout. It was pure luck that the holiday meant the building was understaffed; you somehow made it to a fire exit without being accosted, though you could hear the beginnings of a commotion picking up now that the dead cameras were being discovered.

Beyond the fire escape, there was a familiar flash of blue-and-red as Steve swept past the bank, the brim of his baseball cap pulled low enough to hide his face from an unsuspecting crowd. You threw your shoulder against the door, which dented with a grating crunch. An alarm began to wail overhead.

“You coming?”

Loki’s grin was repugnant and bleeding innuendo – the most attractive thing you’d ever seen, really. “I hope so.”

“I walked right into that one, didn’t I?”

“I’m afraid you make it too easy for me to tease.”

Loki shoved the artifact into a bag (not trusting it off his person in some pocket dimension or another) and then the two of you tried as surreptitiously as possible to blend into the sea of Christmas shoppers.

“Howdy, agents.” Steve tapped you with his elbow, the only physical acknowledgement of your presence. He kept his eyes faced forward, a calculated disinterest in his pursed mouth; if you didn’t know him so well, you would almost believe him to be talking on the phone through some hidden earbud. But then he glanced, side-long, at you and managed to convey everything you needed to know: you’ve been compromised, a car was coming, survive until then.

He grunted. “You got everything?”

You were not nearly as adept at subtle communication. “Yep. No issues.”

“One issue,” Loki growled. His hand curled around your elbow and yanked you backwards just as a convoy turned the corner, crawling down the snow-heavy street. Steve veered right, crossing the road with his shoulders pulled high; you would have made to follow if Loki hadn’t elbowed you aside, out of the sight lines of the convoy, before slinking off ahead. You watched his bright red hair melt into the crowd – and then a great boomerang of green light rocketed off a lamppost, giving you just enough time to scurry down an alleyway and through a chainlink fence.

Loki’s seidr hung heavy in the air, swelling like a thunderstorm. Even as you put one, two, five blocks between yourself and the bank, you could still hearing is humming in your ears; headlights on parked cars would spring to life without prompting; window displays would glow radium-green in your periphery. You had no doubt that Loki was having the time of his life causing a distraction… though you worried what the consequences of too much fun might be if his disguise was discovered.

You kept walking. The city began to recede, thinning out to apartment buildings and stretches of public park lawns. There wasn’t much room to hide out here; you turned a random corner and tried to retrace your steps from a couple of blocks over.

Panic brushed up on you like a hungry stray when another glossy convoy rolled down the road, close enough for you to make out the heavy brow of an enemy agent behind the wheel. You tamped it down and tried to gather your bearings, searching for a street sign – anything that might allow you to collect your bearings. You crossed a road and hurried into an alley; maybe you could climb a fire escape and get to higher ground to await extraction.

A hand closed around your hip, yanking you backwards. You startled, half turning, fists raised to defend yourself, when a staticky sensation licked up your cheek in greeting.

“You’re like a skittish cat,” Loki growled. His fingers pinched the same spot that his seidr had touched you. “Is that what I should call you? Kitten?”

Your heart tripped over itself. “Rude.”

“I can be ruder.”

“Do you know where we are?”

Loki curled, his body one long line of crooked confidence, around you, tipping his head to speak in your ear. “Absolutely no clue.”

“Okay.” The closeness made you a little dumb. You blinked at him, admiring the way the snow caught on his pale eyelashes and didn’t melt. Though his skin felt warm, almost humanly-so, it must have been an illusion. Just one more layer of pretense, like how he and Thor blinked less frequently than normal people, or the strange cadence they adopted when speaking in private. “Do you think your seidr gave you away?”

“Maybe.” 

You weren’t sure why you were whispering. “I hope that disguise of yours is good enough.”

“Not even my soulmate would recognize me, kitten.”

Loki followed you with a hand fisted in the fabric of your coat; the streets were wild, requiring you to dart around passersby at random intervals, and it was safer to stay in pairs than to break off on your own. Occasionally, you thought you caught sight of Steve or Natasha, but neither you nor Loki was willing to stop moving to check. You walked a complicated knot, turning at random, ducking into department stores like every other couple on Christmas Eve. This close, you could hear his seidr rumbling, that tinny sound bouncing off of telephone poles and street lamps in his excitement. 

You eventually found some quiet in a side street a few blocks off the main drag, tucked between two apartment blocks with plenty of exit strategies. You leaned against a short fence, pausing to catch your breath. “You can let go of me. I’m not going anywhere.”

Loki vanished the shopping bags he had been holding in both hands. “I’m not touching you?”

As he blinked back at you, you felt the distinct impression of five warm fingerprints soothing over your lower back. The twinkling sound returned, followed by a humming in your molars that betrayed the presence of magic. “You’re sure about that?”

You expected some snide comment or witty response, but Loki’s head only titled. He raised a finger to his lips; his eyes were narrowed, cast to the side as if to focus. A wave of green light glanced off his hand; the air around you warped and bent like a mirage, just in time for a silver drone to zip by over your heads.

Your breath felt a little thin. “Good catch.”

“I have some decent qualities.” A pause drew on between the two of you. “If we stay like this… we should be able to avoid detection.”

You shifted your weight, leaning ever so slightly away in order to calm your racing heart. This seemed to upset Loki; the phantom hand on your back wriggled, urging you deeper into his personal space.

This close, you had little choice but to admire the shape of him. There was a military poise to him, a rigidness to his shoulders that gave the impression that he was wearing heavy plate-armour and not a wool coat. 

“Why red hair?”

“In your myths, I’m sometimes depicted as a red-head. I might have worn this version once or twice on my excursions as a youth.” He eyed you strangely. “Come now, kitten. Do you like what you see? This new Loki, he’s– sweet. He’ll even hold doors open.”

It was different, definitely – the light hair made him seem softer somehow, younger maybe, and he had topped the disguise off with a smattering of freckles on the bridge of his nose. It sent a secret thrill of delight through your chest when, upon closer examination, you discovered the shape of his soulmark scattered among them. Like fingerprints and tree rings – something innate, a secret coded in his DNA.

“Hmm…” You tried to feign nonchalance. “I think I like my usual Loki better.”

His mouth tipped up in one of those rare smiles, the quiet kind where the creases beside his eyes kissed, the slightest curve of shyness in his slanted brows. His hand, which was trailing a lazy path up and down your forearm, circled your elbow and gave you a squeeze. “Your Loki?”

“Our Loki,” you corrected. “Loki-Loki. You.”

“I could be anything, really. It’s all an illusion.” He drew you in by the sash tying your winter coat shut. You had a sneaking suspicion that, if you wore pigtails, he would be tugging on those too. “You seem to like this version. You certainly talk to it more. So come now, tell me – what is this version of me like? This fair-haired gentleman.”

“He’s nice, I guess.”

Loki nodded, his eyes fixed on your mouth. “I could be nice.”

“Nice?”

“Mhm. I can be anything at all.”

The streetlamps overhead sighed in the presence of magic. Loki’s seidr was a living thing swelling in the space between you; you felt it like a phantom mouth over yours, sliding over your skin, adoring and exotic. It seemed to thrill Loki, who leaned in even closer, his pale eyelashes fluttering, heavy with snowflakes and the weight of an almost-kiss.

“It doesn’t really matter what disguise you wear,” you mumbled, turning your face to the side. A car ambled past the mouth of the alley, digging deep wells in the snow. “You already know you’re hopelessly handsome.”

“Careful now,” Loki said quietly. “It almost sounds like you’re starting to like me.”

You scoffed – understatement of the century. When you gathered the courage to look back at him, Loki was frowning.

“I do like you,” you said quietly.

“You have a very strange way of showing it.”

“I like… how clever you are.”

“I like how I feel when you look at me.” Even in a moment of vulnerability such as this, Loki watched you like a wild animal. His hand walked a lazy path from your elbow up to your bicep. His eyes tracked the entire journey until he reached your shoulder, where his hand flattened and ghosted up the curve of your neck, so the tips of his fingers laid across the highest notches of your spine. A sigh escaped him, unbidden, coloured with a flush of wanting. An ardent sound. “ Ketlinkr… Kome nhér. Kis kis kis kis…” .

Softly, with a tentativeness you didn’t know him capable of, he closed his lips over your bottom one. A great tenderness swept over you; though both of his hands stood still, curved around your sides, a phantom sensation whispered over your neck, your temples, your cheeks, giggling in tiny, electric bursts, as if Loki’s emotions had spilled over and been animated by magic.

“In my most lecherous dreams, as of late, it’s my mark on your neck. Did you know that?” He drew himself closer, a slave to some innate gravity, and pressed his next words into the clammy skin where your pulse thrummed. “Do you ever think of me like that?”

It was half innuendo and half heartbreak. There was attraction, definitely, burning a hole in your skin where his hand was drawing a complicated figure-eight over your shoulder. But beneath that, sticky and nefarious like tar, was a desperation for validation. 

His lips slotted against yours again, firmer this time, at such an angle that the tip of his nose dug into your cheek. Strange magic welled, pooling in the hollow between your ribs – matched, you matched! 

You pulled away without finesse, sputtering. Loki followed as if to silence you, lurching, just missing your mouth to kiss the corner instead. “Wait– wait, stop,” you started.

Loki snatched himself away, his expression tense. “I can be nice. I have been nice, as of late.”

You were still a little fuzzy, disoriented by the kiss; your blood seemed to be rushing backwards, pumped out through your veins and back through your arteries. “What?”

“Do you really loathe me that much? Not even a new face can sway my – my vile image?”

“I feel left out of this conversation. I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”

“You don't look at me.” He scrubbed his hands through his hair, vanishing the red from it to wisps of smoke until his natural hair colour returned, startlingly dark against his pale skin. “You turn your face. You find excuses to leave the room. You don’t do that with anyone else.”

You tilted your cheek to hide the heat creeping up under your skin. “I don’t turn away.”

Loki crowded up against you, taking your face between both his hands and manoeuvring you to look him in the eyes, green eyes, the glamour forgotten. Frustration carved a deep line between his brows; he opened his mouth as if to barrel on – before a self-deprecating laugh rushed out of him and he sank back on his heels. “There are hundreds of creatures pouring their love for me through my mailslot and I’m out chasing the one woman who wants nothing to do with me.”

“That’s not–”

“What’s not fair is that when I’m a perfect gentleman, you look away. No matter what face I put on, or how docile a creature I become, you slink off like you don’t trust me. I’m good. I have a purpose.” He threw his hands up in frustration. “What do I have to do to prove myself? Perhaps you’d prefer it if I prostrated myself on the ground?”

“I don’t not like you. I never didn’t like you.”

“I frighten you.”

“Yes!” You chewed on your lip. “Of course you do.”

He walked you backwards, a dangerous energy roiling in the air between you. Cold brick bit into the small of your back where it brushed the strip between your jacket and your jeans. “I can be anything. I���ve been many things, worn many faces. I’m good at it. Good at pretending. Just tell me how to act.”

“You frighten me because I like you.” You stumbled over your words in a rush. “Because I’m attracted to you.”

The phantom mouth was back; his seidr slid up the column of your throat, whispering a staticky sound just under your ear. “Because you don’t want to be.”

“Because we–” You cut yourself off. For all your waiting, for all the days spent agonising over how you wanted to tell him that you were soulmates - this was not how you wanted it to go. It was a hollow confession. “Because we match.”

His terrible expression stilled. It was a particular cruelty to reveal it in a moment such as this, but what other reason could you have given? It was the truth, plain and simple: you matched. He scrubbed a hand over his mouth, then raked the same fingers through his hair. “I see.”

“Loki–”

“Bendr. The Asgardian word for soulmate. It translates to ‘wound’. Our ‘mortal wound’.”

“That’s morbid.”

Loki laughed. It was not a nice sound. “It’s true though, isn’t it? A soulmate is only one more flaw in my armour to have to account for. It– norns, this hurts. ”

Loki drew from thin air a piece of paper. One of the innumerable love letters he’d received, written on green parchment. Crinkled, weakened in the middle from how many times it had been opened and then refolded. 

"What is that?"

"You," he said gravely. "Wrote me a letter."

Your stomach twisted; you had written him a letter, but you were certain you hadn't signed it. It was all complimentary, though maybe a little over-the-top. You'd waxed poetic about his smile, and his sense of humour, and how every time he looked at you you felt like your heart was learning to beat all over again.

“Dear Loki,” he began. “You’re vile.”

It wasn’t a love letter – or at least, it hadn’t had the chance to be. Too embarrassed by your feelings, you’d struggled to put into words anything other than despair. You couldn’t conjure up clauses to any of your statements - you’re vile in a way that makes me laugh. Handsome in a way so infuriating that I can’t help but steal glances. Terribly witty. 

“... I hate the way you make me feel. I hate your mouth, and your hair, and your eyes….”

It wasn’t a love letter, yet Loki had kept it all the same. Folded and unfolded it. Ruminated on your poor opinion of him.

“A cruel joke,” he continued. “I thought you were shy, at first. I thought – I thought, perhaps, that I could charm you with jokes, or with some severe attentiveness. You're so skittish... Maybe I could prove I was worth the hassle, or… Make you see – I’m not sure what. I haven’t changed. I’m exactly the same insecure bastard that I always have been.” He winced. “And then I read your note.”

“I must’ve written a dozen letters.”

“All equally as eloquent, I'm sure.”

“I didn’t mean to send that one. The one I wanted to send was nice.”

He laughed - hollowed out. “We match.” 

“Loki…”

Tires crunched over fresh snow; a dark green jeep pulled up at the end of the alley. Loki took one step sideways, inserting himself in between you and the car, before his shoulders bent and drooped under a sudden weight. Natasha leant out of the driver’s side window, a knitted cap balanced on top of a mop of red curls. “Morning, strangers. You wouldn’t happen to know the way to the airport, would you?”

Strange magic – that's what people said about soulmates. It’s that strange magic. Like disappearing car keys or an extra spoon in the cutlery drawer. It was strange magic that placed that letter in front of Loki. Strange magic that hummed and chewed at you now, watching Loki fold himself into the back of your getaway car. 

Fate wasn’t kind to Loki, and it definitely wasn’t kind to you.

You didn’t leave your room all morning. Curled up in your bed, you traced the photo of Loki’s mark with your fingers and wondered at the mess you’d made. 

Loki had left you a letter the day following your return; he’d made himself scarce after, and seemingly bribed FRIDAY into refusing to disclose his location.

Thor and and I were born with star maps across our backs. On Asgard, this meant that we were destined to fight side-by-side. Thor was born with your Midgardian Ares – the ram. His letter began.

Mine Ours is one of Asgard’s constellations. Canavirna-hundr - the beast. 

He had included a drawing. You weren’t aware that he could draw, but it would later occur to you that he was thousands of years old, and so likely had mastered every art form to exist. A huge creature with sharp ears and the saddest eyes you had ever seen, outlined by the curve of twenty-two dots.

There was a wolf more beautiful than any other. A wolf with fur like seafoam and eyes as black as the darkest night. Hunters from every corner of the galaxy coveted her – but she was quick, too quick for even my father Odin to pursue. He chased her for three days and three nights by following the tracks left by her mate, Canavirna-hundr, a hulking beast too large to ever catch up. But love makes fools of even the most graceful creatures, and she slowed her pace.  

At dawn on the fourth day, when her mate finally fell in step, Odin struck. Blinded by guilt and fear for his beloved, Canavirna-hundr leapt ahead and let the arrow pierce his heart instead of hers. Moved as they were, the gods put him in the sky to watch over her 

The constellation pictured was your soulmark – yours with a capital Y, belonging to you and Loki. Twenty-two dots of varying sizes, the largest at the farthest point on the left.

This was my favourite of the constellations as a child. I fancied myself a hero, to one day be memorialized in the stars next to my brother. I wondered - what would be my legend? When generations referred to Loki, the constellation - would I be exalted for love? 

It doesn’t exist anymore – none of them do. Destroyed by Ragnarok. Like my friend Atlas, I carry a little piece of my planet everywhere I go.  

I’ll stop pretending. Maybe one day I won’t frighten you any longer. 

Yours, 

He didn’t sign his name. But then – he didn’t have to. You would know the impression of him anywhere.

[jazeswhbhaven]

The domestic AU from Raphael gives me fluffy feelings like omg thats kinda nice if he was actually that way- *mc cries in canon*

Anyway how about the domestic au with the two seraph(separate) too? Though i also would want to see my dear lovely andrealphus again♡♡

Thank you for waiting anon, I as a Rara fan love writing domestic fluff stuff about him despite his attitude pretty much being the opposite of fluff. But he's learning. This feeling is new.

Now in a perfect world.....his Seraphim brethren would also behave even though we know they wouldn't...but that's what AU's are for and I'm happy to write them.

Domestic!Gabriel

✝Morning routine starts with prayer, hymns, planning out battles, recouping afterward, more prayer, worship, and study of the "commandments"

✝He enjoys a nice glass of wine with you for dinner each time

✝Kisses on the cheeks are permitted, and he wants you to walk close to him whenever you're both strolling about in Heaven

✝No one is allowed to gaze upon you without a good reason, Gabriel would assume they are thining "unholy thoughts" of trying to take you away from him

✝He lets you plan some of the battles on your own, (even if you are trying to low key sabotage them because you don't want the devils to get hurt)

✝Once you found out he loves compliments and praise for what he does, you've pinpointed that words of affirmation and quality time are his love languages

✝When it comes to arguments and fights he gets really emotional and sometimes tongue tied. You can only soothe him if suggest to pray together.

✝You sleep in separate beds, but in the same room. There is one night though where he wants the bed pushed together. He's..."cold" (which oddly, he always cold to the touch...)

✝Everytime you joke about getting a kiss on the lips, he side eyes you and prays to himself about his "partner's dirty mind" (though secretly he really wants to kiss you too lol)

Domestic!Michael

✝He doesn't care if you sleep in the same bed, just stay on your side of it and don't hog the blankets (he ends up cuddling with you anyway)

✝He's killed lower angels before because they accidentally bumped into you or even met eyes with you

✝Likes to vent to you about his older brother Lucifer and how he misses him, he appreciates you for listening

✝The wing on the back of his head is sensitive, but he likes it when you pet him right at the base, lightly scratching

✝He lets you braid his hair from time to time, and even wash it!

✝Prayer times are always before or after Gabriel is done, he apparently doesn't like to be doing it at the same time as him because Gabriel is "loud and annoying"

✝When it comes to battles, he likes to go solo and not include you. He says it's because you'd be "in the way" but it's mostly because he's afraid they might capture you

✝He cries easily, mostly because he thinks about how technically, he shouldn't have feelings for you, but if God created someone like you and you love him...maybe it's not so bad after all?

✝His love language is acts of service, with occasional words of affirmation

✝Morning routine is, wake up, yell at Gabriel for being loud, tell Raphael he should stop eating everything and threaten him, and then spending time with you as you walk through Heaven. (You notice that he doesn't seem to pray as much but mostly just try to figure out how to get his brother back to Heaven)

[waitmyturtles]

Thank you so much for the tags, dear friend @lurkingshan, and what a way to kick off 2025 Asian QL discourse!

@wen-kexing-apologist done dropped an outstanding response to Shan's piece here that continues the conversation about the stripping of real queer perspectives and frameworks from Asian queer media that is very much worth reading. Just to set up how I want to respond to Shan's piece, I want to emphasize the inverse relationship of the mainstreaming of queer media to both the quantity and the quality of the queerness in queer shows.

A lot of Shan's and WKA's pieces focus on Thailand, which I will as well, because QL discourse on Tumblr is dominated by what's happening in Thailand vis à vis what scholar Thomas Baudinette calls the "T-wave" of media flowing out of Thailand that includes dramas and music, frontally led by international distribution of Thai queer media. Dr. Baudinette speaks briefly about the behavior of fans in the link above, and I want to unwind on this a bit more by way of what we're talking about with the de-queering of queer media.

I've been really critical, in my Old GMMTV Challenge project on the development of the Thai QL genre, of branded pairs, and the subsequent act by fans of shipping two real-life actors into fantasies of queer relationships. Shan above links to an incredibly important piece by @bengiyo from last year where he took fans to task for conflating their fantasies about real-life actors and projecting those fantasies on their understanding of the storytelling of fictional characters. Within that, as Shan quotes above, Ben asks his audience, and I paraphrase -- can you ask yourself if you REALLY like queer people, and queerness as a whole?

I want to propose that the branded pair system, and/or the subsequent fantastical shipping of otherwise real-life people, contributes to the erasure of queerness we are currently seeing in many shows from Thailand; the high majority of them coming from GMMTV, but to the points made above, we have now seen that happen in One31's Spare Me Your Mercy, with the SMYM screenwriter going so far as to say that NC scenes -- queer sex -- would have been distracting to the telling of the show's story. That's wrenching, to say the least, because of the sheer lack of truth behind that assumption of how stories can otherwise be told with sex and romance as important context in queer stories.

How can I prove this? I'm thinking of the controversy last year between Tay Tawan and Gun Atthaphan, both members of their own TayNew and OffGun branded pairs, who were unwittingly caught sharing a brief and playful smooch while playing a game on live camera.

The "Polca" TayNew fans were subsequently up in arms online, challenging Tay Tawan to his devotion to the TayNew "ship." In other words, his fans were angry at him for popping the balloon of their shipping fantasies.

In this case, I would like to note that while we see GMMTV reducing blatant queer perspectives and frameworks from their shows, and promoting friend-ships or bro-ships, in the case of High School Frenemy and the SkyNani branded pair, we see GMMTV's (and Thai BL's) rise continue to grow in certain Asian countries (like China, Malaysia, and Indonesia, among others) that do not allow for public displays of queerness, among other restrictions. GMMTV does not hold branded pair fan meetings in these countries, and yet, these countries are some of the channel's biggest markets for its queer shows and pairs. As well, these countries (I am part-Malaysian myself) do not have public programs of sex education. Thus, if I am to assume that the majority fan bases of these shows are young folks in countries that do not offer robust sex education, then these young folks (of any gender) might not be inclined to join in and participate in conversations about queer equality.

We, thus, get the outcry that occurred after Tay and Gun smooched. God forbid fantasies were to have been destroyed because two real-life people kissed. Two men, kissing, outside of the context of their branded pairs and outside the context of a drama. Some people have never been to the club before.

It seems to me that the fantasies of the fans are worth more, as an investment by GMMTV and other studios in Thailand, than actual artistic material that focuses on queerness at this point. Capitalism and mainstreaming go very well hand-in-hand when there's money to be made, and this, to me, speaks loudly to the excellent points that Shan has made above about really great queer art being anathema to center- and conservative-mainstreams. We're getting less of really great queer art in Thailand, because the dampening of queerness in Thai shows might very well mean more bucks for the studios.

Finally, a last point about capitalism that I'd like to make. I've been seeing a rising number of posts and comments taking Tumblr bloggers to task for being critical (like, objectively critical) of bad shows. Many folks don't want to read criticism of their fave shows and stars.

I want to note that if one takes this position -- the capitalists have won again. If you're someone who's trying to prevent critical takes from being published, well, you got got by the capitalists -- the studios, the managers who want you to be so in love with your faves that you will ponder asking a writer to censor themselves from making a critical take. You might feel ownership of your blorbo, protective of your favorite star. Those critical takes may feel, to you, like a takedown of your fave.

The studios and managers of your faves also don't want these takedowns, because if a star's reputation is dampened, that'll affect their economic bottom line, and the studio's economic bottom line. Just listen to two Thai BL dudes who've been through the ringer on this very issue. This kind of capitalism and social media frenzy can have actual and harmful effects on the human actors performing these fantastical works.

The capitalists are making their play on Asian QL. It was a hell of a move for the makers of Love In The Big City to get that show out the way that it did. And I very much hope that LITBC will have a lasting impact on South Korean media -- as the earlier, and very queer, shows of the Thai QL industry once had, and might have again, if we can support really great Asian queer art with the same gusto and strength as currently popular shows enjoy.

Spare Me Your Mercy, Love in the Big City, and the Trap of Pursuing Mainstream Popularity for Queer Art

I read this excellent post by @waitmyturtles yesterday tackling the frustrating failures of Spare Me Your Mercy, a show that was one of my most anticipated of the year, but that ended up so lost in its own confusing blend of sauces that I didn't even finish it. I appreciated her clarity that despite the show receiving strong ratings and finding popularity with the mainstream domestic audience, that doesn't actually make it a success as a piece of narrative storytelling. And if anything, its popularity underlines why it was a failure as a queer narrative, in particular.

Because here's the thing about great queer art—it's almost never popular with mainstream audiences, especially in socially conservative countries. High quality, well-executed, honest and authentic queer art is more likely to be protested than celebrated in places where real queer people are not safe to live free lives. For an illustration of this, look no further than another highly anticipated queer drama of this year in Love in the Big City. Easily the queerest show to ever get made and aired on Korean television, it drew major protests before it even started, forcing the production to release it quickly in one go to ensure it would reach audiences. And why were those conservative groups so afraid of this little old drama? Because even just in its trailer and promotional materials, it was clear this was no sanitized, G-rated drama created to make gay people seem more palatable to the masses (unlike the film version with the same name, which not coincidentally has been much more warmly received by the Korean media establishment). This show was real, and raw, and QUEER in a way that terrified those bigots, because they know one of the most important ways the oppressed can advocate for themselves is by demonstrating their humanity through art. 

Which brings me back to turtles’ post, and the importance of separating the concerns of art and commerce when discussing the different ways media can succeed. This is something I had some good dialogue about with @biochemjess @pharawee @clairedaring @flowerbeasblog and turtles (and even more of you in the tags) when I was still watching and posting about Spare Me Your Mercy. I originally posted to unpack why the show was flopping narratively, which turned into a discussion of the fact that it was getting good ratings from the domestic audience despite this. And while I appreciated understanding how the show is landing with its priority audience, for me, it’s very important to keep a distinction between these two different kinds of success. Especially in discussions of queer art, and especially for a show whose creators explicitly said they were intentionally downplaying the queer romance part of the queer romance ( @benkaben) to avoid “distracting” from their other messaging goals. 

The important thing to keep in mind is that for queer stories, when they are popular with a mainstream audience it’s often because they are stripping any authenticity from the representation of queer people. Turtles addressed this well in her review of 2gether when she posited that part of the reason it was such a phenomenon in conservative Asian countries (aside from the timing of its release in the early days of the global pandemic), was because its presentation of queerness was mostly unrecognizable to real queer people, stripped of any true notion of queer sexuality or the realities of homophobia. Compare the reception of The Miracle of Teddy Bear—a show that absolutely refused to make its central queer character palatable for a mainstream audience, because the fact that he wasn’t palatable was the point—to that of Spare Me Your Mercy, a show whose creators chose to censor their own story. The ugly truth is that when we’re talking about queer dramas, the best and most vital shows are pretty much anathema to mainstream ratings success.

The impulse to pursue mainstream popularity and commercial success for queer art inevitably leads to watering down queer stories ( @twig-tea) to make them more light, comfortable and familiar to a majority heterosexual and socially conservative audience. And yes, of course, some degree of commercial success is necessary for queer art to get made in the first place. This is how the Thai BL market took off, by recognizing that there was an audience beyond queer people who were open to watching stories about boys falling in love, as long as it didn’t get too real. But there is a careful line to walk here, and it’s so important not to confuse popularity with artistic merit. Queer people won’t win liberation by self-censoring queer media to make it more palatable for mainstream audiences. We win when we make queer art so good and so honest that the mainstream is forced to acknowledge it. We win by challenging the mainstream perspective on queer people and how they should behave, not by catering to it. As @bengiyo said in a completely different discourse, the question is not whether the audience can love queer characters whose actual queerness is suppressed for their comfort. That kind of respectability politics is old hat and it never fucking gets us anywhere. The real question he posed is this: “Do you love us when we’re ugly, when we’re sick, when we’re old, when we’re being mean or catty?”

Which is why a show like Love in the Big City ultimately won by being so excellent, and so true, and so undeniable, that it broke through with audiences around the world and achieved some measure of recognition in spite of how very unpalatable it was to its domestic audience. Unlike Spare Me Your Mercy, this show did not get amazing domestic ratings, but its message was heard far beyond those who watched it on Korean television. And that is the point. Making authentic art that advances the struggle of queer people and making nominally queer art that can achieve mainstream popularity are completely different pursuits, and we must keep that in mind when we discuss whether and how these shows succeeded or failed. And while both must exist in a healthy media ecosystem, one will always be more vital for the survival of queer people than the other. 

[casualavocados]

im gonna break down my last gifset: the second half of the ep12 intimacy scene, because nat and louis are such good actors ive been rendered slightly braindead more than once due to how well they SOLD this scene and SOLD ai di and chen yi's love for each other through their physicality.

WARNING: if you read this and then use the words top or bottom to describe anything going on here, i will deadass block you. ♥️ don't even think about it. ♥️

this is gonna be unhinged but the mix of horny and pure adoring each other is an ever-crisscrossing line that is simply underappreciated from what ive seen in previous posts of this particular part.

so they've been making out for a while with ai di in chen yi's lap and chen yi decides to push them over… i did not cut a single frame of this btw.

starting with the first two gifs:

i love the way ai di's hand comes to rest perfectly at the nape of chen yi's neck during the impact. then there's a brief "are we gonna kiss?" half of a second before chen yi goes for ai di's neck. and ai di responds appreciatively: with his head tilted back, his hand in chen yi's hair… you see in the second gif his fingers curling a little, to gently trail his nails down chen yi's neck, wordlessly telling chen yi to keep going. and he does, moving from ai di's neck to his chest.

and here we get a moment of ai di going oh. his mouth literally opens a little wider—

—and he lifts up his head as if to check that that's really chen yi doing this to him. all the while his hand has moved from chen yi's neck/hair to rubbing chen yi's shoulder. again in a reassuring "yes that's good" way, and also, i imagine, just for the sake of touching chen yi too.

he looks at chen yi and then full body relaxes into feeling it, while still rubbing chen yi's shoulder. i cant get over ai di's face here, i can't. the whole shot is art, with chen yi kissing just below his ribs.

bc chen yi is so focused on adoring him, on pouring all this love he has for ai di into these gentle kisses and the way he's touching him, too: sliding his hand up ai di's chest to grip his shoulder in return. (also notice ai di's sweatshirt from four years ago hanging up in the background. chen yi has been waiting so long for this too and needs to show it.)

and then— WELL. then ai di slides his hand back up into chen yi's hair…

and chen yi responds to the feeling of it immediately. it's almost like ai di is saying yes, that's good, now come here, and you see chen yi's eyes open and his body immediately follow that cue. perfect wordless communication. ai di's hand is literally pulling him closer (with barely any pressure) and chen yi instinctively responds to it by making his way back up with another soft kiss.

and ai di is watching him, waiting for him. chen yi's hand is sliding along ai di's chest again… you even see ai di's legs open a little at the end of the gif to make room for chen yi to take that space again.

and chen yi does. he really does:

and he does that on purpose. (it's like he's responding to ai di's satisfaction by saying, "let me make it feel even better". while also saying "i love you this much".)

and ai di responds by intentionally adjusting himself to feel more of it:

chen yi moves back from the neck kiss and ai di really said with his body: no, don't you dare take that pressure away.

there is so much going on in those two gifs. starting with the former: you can see ai di leaning back for the neck kiss, and then his hand moves down to chen yi's hip the instant he feels the pressure between his legs, in such a perfectly instinctive movement you can literally see his fingers tighten in chen yi's hair and his toes curl at the edge of the gif. he is completely 100% feeling it. he lifts his head to look.

—& i can't get over the way ai di is always trying to see, to watch chen yi doing this to him. it's chen yi. he has to make sure it's real. he has waited for and wanted this for so long and he isnt dreaming anymore.

and then in the latter: ai di tilts his head back again a little before his shift. his very intentional shifting of hips that physically lifts his back from the bed a little to align them more comfortably and to keep the friction. this movement stops chen yi from kissing ai di's neck again, bringing him to his mouth instead— but not until after ai di's hand on the back of chen yi's neck slides down to cup his cheek. (as if this whole gif says, not only "yes, that feels good, don't stop", but also, "i need you to know i love you".)

they kiss like that: pressed together, looking at each other, ai di cradling chen yi's face with one of his hands. you can see his thumb holding the base of chen yi's jaw in the next gif:

while chen yi in turn pulls his arm out from underneath ai di to prop (only) his chest up a bit higher for the express purpose of just looking at ai di. feeling ai di touching him like this, too. both of them gentle and needy, adoring and eager; all of that fully communicated through their body language.

there is not an inch of them that isnt feeling this moment and isnt completely tuned in to both themselves and the other. it's so intimate and vulnerable and so intentional. and the fact that they are taking their time, always looking at each other, is what makes it so loving and sweet and is also exactly what makes it so hot.

it's chen yi's turn now to check that this is real. to soak this all in and breathe. that's ai di beneath him. against him. loving him.

and it takes a full gif but ai di allows maybe 2 seconds more of looking at each other before reaching up and pulling chen yi into a deeper kiss. he's waited for this for so long—

although first you see ai di's eyes flick down and back up. and let me tell you— he's not looking at chen yi's lips.

chen yi's hand perfectly supports the back of ai di's head and neck as ai di surges up to wrap chen yi in his arms—cup the nape of chen yi's neck in his fingers—pulling himself up and chen yi closer in the same movement.

and this is when and why the camera pans away. because those kisses are getting deeper. they are locked in, they're attached, they are feeling all of it, everything is intentional and loving and very clear about where this scene will be going next.

i just— this is a lot, for me. because it is so intensely loving. and also so intensely horny. like, i've seen some good sex scenes, but it takes some really incredible acting to pull off seeming so fully, devotedly, in love, and be able to show that alongside and through attraction. personally? i haven't seen any bl actors do it better than nat and louis in this scene right here. please notice, as well, that all thirteen of these gifs are of one, continuous, shot.

simply put, it's a very. very. well done scene. AND I NEED TO CHEW DRYWALL.

(final note: a reminder of my warning at the start of this post bc i am serious. there are too many infinitesimal things happening in this scene for these characters to be reduced to stereotypes that, frankly, do not matter in real life. ♥️ no need to respond to this warning either… feel free to focus on what the post is saying instead.)

and that's why chen yi and ai di are better and more real than every other bl couple in existence. ok bye.

[erinwantstowrite]

saw some pants on pinterest.... thought of discowing... couldn't be stopped...

[will80sbyers]

the silliest

[dovewingkinnie]

ai x computer cursor my favorite

[dirtytransmasc]

when you read an absolutely heart wrenching, soul destroying, tear jerking, yet simultaneously sweet, hilarious, down right beautiful fic you've ever read in your life, you've gone through every stage of grief, you've cried, you've laughed, you've mourned... and you have to act normal to everyone around you....

I hate this

[tojisun]

the gaz drabble with reader and her daughter penelope was so so beautiful and sweet I loved it <3

thank you so so much omg 🥹🫶🏼

it’s just one of those days yk when you hear something so nostalgic you begin longing for something you’ve never had? projected it as much as i can to kyle and rambled and ended up falling in love w it :(

little pen and mama dancing in the rain. little pen (she’s two!) stumbling and laughing and chasing after her mom. little pen and mama matching raincoats and boots. little pen who lets rain water pool in her boots before jumping to make the loudest sploosh sound that makes her and mama giggle.

oh how precious she is 🥹

(kyle and little pen having matching boas and tiaras during her grand tea pary.

kyle and little pen drinking their teas with pinkies up. she shows mr. kyle what proper ‘pinky up’ is because mama said little pen is her smart duckling so she’s gots to teach mr. kyle so mr. kyle can impress mama.

kyle and little pen passing out in the living room in their exhaustion, and both waking up to the wafting aroma of hot chocolate.

kyle and little pen stumbling to the kitchen, both groggy, and drawing out their sleepy, “thank you” to mama who just giggles because her two treasures are so alike, even in drowsiness.

kyle and little pen being best friends because they both love mama and people who love mama should stick together.)

[feathers-little-nest]

I think there's not enough G cup Mobei-Jun fanarts. Everyone is talking about large Mobei-Jun boobs and how much Shang Qinghua loves them, but no one actually gives him boobs. I feel like I'm being gaslighted here

[dreamingofep]

You know how Elvis would “smoke” those cigarettes but not really smoke them because he said we just wanted something to do with his hands/mouth? It got me thinking about how much Elvis seemed to have an oral fixation as you can always see him putting things in his mouth (fingers and body parts included). I just thought this was funny because I am now imagining vampire Elvis using cigarettes as a way to calm his need to suck blood. Like he’s trying to cut back sucking on necks by instead sucking on cigarettes 😆 This was just a funny little thought I had that I thought you would appreciate lol

Anon you just made my whole day 😂 Oh my god I can’t stop laughing this is hilarious! This was very unexpected but I love it! I love this anecdote! I think that’s a great way to look at it of why he smokes as a vampire. I have written some parts where he is smoking a cigar because, 1.) he looks so hot when he’s smoking, dear god! [I believe the first time I mentioned he smoked a cigar in the fic was where he was sitting there naked right after some intense love making 🫠] But 2.) I chose to make him do that because I thought it would remind him of his human side and make him feel like less a monster. But the way of thinking that he does it to distract himself from feeding! Oh this is fantastic 🤭 Thank you for sharing your thoughts about vampire Elvis with me! He never fails to make us✨think✨huh?😏😮‍💨

[liquidstar]

WHAT DID HE SAY????????????????????????????????????

[dont-open-dead-inside-25]

ugh. now that i bought the eggs i have to actually make something with them. fuck my stupid baka life

[mutantfactor]

Till The End Of The Moon | The Devil God

[casualavocados]

Chen Bowen as CHEN YI & Chiang Tien as AI DI KISEKI: DEAR TO ME (2023) behind the scenes

[iffeelscouldkill]

Lost in a Familiar Place pt. 5

(Aka the ‘Nicholas never applied to Kings Row’ AU)

A/N: I'm kind of on a roll with this fic??? Idek how, but I've already written the next chapter. There'll be at least 2 more instalments after this, and possibly a small epilogue depending on how the last chapter plays out.

Anyway - when I originally wrote the concept for this fic, there were two things I imagined playing out differently: Nicholas would take a different path to Kings Row, and Aiden would have a wake-up call when it came to his participation in the team. We've spent a few chapters on the first one - now it's time for the second.

(But don't worry, we'll be coming back to Nicholas!)

Or: in which Harvard and Aiden have A Conversation, and Nicholas and Seiji are misinterpreted. (Or are they?)

Previous chapters: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

---

After fencing practice officially ended, the students hung around chattering in groups, dissecting the unexpected match that had taken place between Seiji Katayama and a complete fencing nobody.

Harvard was impressed that Nicholas had scored a point on Seiji at all. The holes in his technique were huge and evident, but there were times when he could strike at an opening before you even knew what was happening. Harvard had noticed Seiji watching him during drills; he knew that his teammate was turning the contradiction over in his mind, trying to make sense of it.

And Nicholas had beaten Aiden. That couldn’t just be put down to left-handedness and the element of surprise.

Harvard sought Aiden out in the middle of the throng of students. He was talking to two of the boys that Harvard thought of (a little uncharitably) as Aiden’s groupies; they grudgingly made way for Harvard, shooting him looks. “Hey. Good practice today.”

Aiden arched an eyebrow. He seemed back to his old self, more or less. “You don’t need to coddle me, Captain. I lost to a total rookie.”

Harvard shrugged. He could say, ‘Maybe you should come to practice more often, then,’ but this wasn’t how and where he wanted to have that conversation. “Do you want me to make you feel better about it?”

Aiden snorted and put his hands behind his head. The groupies drifted away, losing interest when Aiden’s attention wasn’t on them. “No, a night of drowning my sorrows in the nearest warm body and I’ll be back on form.”

Harvard normally shrugged off Aiden’s jokes about sleeping around, but this time it didn’t land quite right. Aiden noticed his expression and smiled wryly. “Ah, too soon.”

“Aiden-” Harvard began, but just then, Coach Williams called them both over. She threw Aiden a set of keys and handed Harvard a stack of orange field markers. Some poor sap had been made to run suicides that morning after he forgot his mask.

“Do me a favour, and run these back to the supply cupboard,” she instructed. “And this-” She handed Aiden the épée that Nicholas had borrowed for practice. “And if you see Nicholas, make sure he doesn’t accidentally walk off with those fencing whites he borrowed.”

That was a good point. Where was Nicholas? Harvard couldn’t remember seeing Seiji leave, either.

An awkward silence hung between them as they set off along the corridor. Harvard was suddenly sick of this. “Aiden, listen,” he said. “I’m not about to get on your case about sleeping around. It’s your choice, even if I wish you’d be less… harsh about it most of the time.”

Aiden acknowledged this with a wry twist of his lips. “But?” he prompted Harvard.

Harvard stopped in the corridor and turned to face Aiden. “But I need you to commit to one thing, at least, and that’s the team. You know as well as I do that one exceptional fencer doesn’t make a winning team, and we need everyone to be on form if we’re going to have a shot this year. I can’t just keep subbing in Eugene every time you don’t feel like showing. He’s a solid fencer, but you made the team, and you need to show up for it.”

Aiden put his free hand on his hip. “And what are you going to do if I don’t?” he asked Harvard, almost taunting. Harvard wasn’t often on the receiving end of his best friend’s cutting tongue, and he didn’t enjoy it. “Cut me from the team?”

Harvard swallowed, but he couldn’t say this if he wasn’t prepared to back it up. “Yes, if I have to.”

“Then you’ll be a fencer down.”

“I’m a fencer down anyway, Aiden!” Harvard exclaimed, gesticulating and forgetting that he was holding a set of field markers. “I never know if I can count on you or not! What’s the point of making the team if you don’t act like you’re a part of it? Why do you bother to try out if you’re just going to make a show of being too good for us?”

Aiden’s cheeks flushed, and Harvard wished he could walk back his outburst, but part of him felt lighter for getting it out into the open. It was everything he should have said last year, and hadn’t. They’d treated it as a bit of a joke, laughing about being the worst team, and Aiden had shown up for some matches, for the bake sale – even if he’d been on his phone the whole time.

But this year felt different. Harvard wanted to take things seriously, and it felt jarring how little Aiden did.

“You’d really do that to me?” Aiden asked him, his voice taut like steel wire. “Cut me out because I’m no good to you any more?”

Harvard exhaled. This was treading dangerously close to Aiden’s many complicated issues stemming from his family, something that Aiden would never, ever so much as hint at in front of anyone who wasn’t Harvard. But Aiden also wasn’t being fair.

“I’ve defended your spot on the team for a long time,” he said. “Because I know what you can do, and I’ve always believed you come through for us when it matters. But – it goes both ways, Aiden. How can I treat you like a member of the team when you don’t act like one?”

He kept his voice low, trying to stay calm and reasonable. “At this point, I can’t help wondering why you try out for the team in the first place. What are you doing this for, Aiden? Who is it for?”

Aiden gave Harvard a long, steady look, long enough that Harvard wondered if he was meant to be reading something into it. What was he missing?

“You remember when we both made the team for the first time, back in sophomore year?” Aiden said suddenly.

“Of course,” Harvard replied, a little surprised at the direction this was going. “The captain was Elias Ortiz, and he was so inspiring. I really looked up to him. I wanted to do what he did.”

Aiden nodded. “You wanted to be team captain one day,” he said, fondness in his voice. “And you persuaded me to try out with you.”

Harvard had forgotten that part. “You practiced with me all the time,” he said. “There was no reason you couldn’t make the cut too – and you did. You made the cut ahead of me, even.” Aiden had handily won enough matches to be accepted as one of the fencing team’s ‘main three’, while Harvard had endured the heart-in-mouth wait to find out who had been selected as reserve. Aiden had threatened – promised? – to give up his spot on the team if Harvard wasn’t selected. Harvard had assumed he was joking.

“You were a shoo-in for reserve,” Aiden said, waving a hand. “There was no question about it.”

Harvard wasn’t sure about that, but Aiden was biased on his behalf. “Still – where are you going with this?”

Aiden sighed, looking away and resting the point of the épée he was carrying against the ground. “Before we started practicing together, fencing was just this dumb thing that my dad made me do,” he said. “I would have quit years ago if not for that. But you loved it, and that made it not suck for the first time in ages.

“I tried out for the team because I knew how much it meant to you for us to both make the cut. And I like being good at things.” He shrugged and smirked diffidently, but Harvard could see more vulnerability in Aiden’s eyes than he’d shown in a long while.

“I like to win, but being in the fencing team together is our thing. That’s why I’m on the team.”

Harvard’s heart lurched. He would never in a million years have expected himself to be the reason that Aiden tried out for the team. Winning, sure – showing off, even – and schooling upstart fencing newcomers who thought they were hot stuff. But doing it all for him?

“But… why don’t you try properly, then?” he asked, because that part still didn’t make sense. If being on the team was important, then why act like it wasn’t?

Aiden’s eyes flicked over Harvard’s face and he smiled. It was a sad smile. “It doesn’t do to go getting too attached,” he said, barely loud enough for Harvard to hear him.

Then he turned and strode away down the corridor, calling back, “Coach is going to wonder where the hell we’ve got to.”

Harvard was left blinking at nothing, wondering what Aiden could possibly mean by – “Aiden? Hold on, what do you-”

He jogged to catch up with his best friend, but Aiden was already opening the door to the supply cupboard – throwing light onto two figures inside.

Nicholas and Seiji were standing nose-to-nose, Nicholas gripping the neck of Seiji’s uniform. Both boys looked flushed. Well, that explained where they’d both disappeared to, at least.

“Oh. Are we interrupting something?” Aiden asked, and Nicholas instantly let go of Seiji.

“No.” “No.” Both boys spoke in unison, Seiji turning away from Nicholas as if to reinforce his denial. Harvard raised an eyebrow.

“I mean, no judgement,” he said, and Aiden snorted as he walked past to put the épée away, then reached back for the field markers, which Harvard handed to him. “Just be aware that the supply cupboard does get some use around this time of day. In case you wanted to find another location.”

Nicholas turned even redder. “That’s not – it’s really not like that,” he said, rushed.

Harvard shrugged. “Like I said, no judgement. Oh, and Coach said to make sure you don’t forget to return your fencing whites.”

Nicholas looked down, apparently realising that he was still in his borrowed uniform. “Oh, yeah.”

Seiji nodded formally to Aiden and to Harvard. “Captain,” he said, and then strode out of the cupboard. Nicholas scrambled after him.

“Seiji!” he called after the other boy. “I meant what I said.”

Seiji paused, then looked back and gave Nicholas a nod before disappearing in the direction of the changing rooms.

Riiight. Harvard turned to Nicholas. “If you need someone to walk you out after you get changed, I can show you the way back into town.”

At that moment, Bobby and Eugene emerged from the door leading off to changing rooms, Bobby beaming as he caught sight of Nicholas. “Nicholas! We were looking for you!” he enthused. “Do you want to come and get smoothies with us?”

“Uh, sure,” Nicholas said, seeming surprised, but pleased.

“Oh – Harvard! And Aiden! Would you like to come too?” Bobby asked, as he spotted them both.

Harvard glanced at Aiden, then smiled at Bobby and shook his head. “Thanks, but we’re okay – you guys go ahead.”

“I just need to get changed and give these back to Coach–” Nicholas said, walking quickly towards the changing rooms. The three of them disappeared, and Harvard and Aiden were left alone again.

“Well,” Harvard said. “I guess that means Nicholas isn’t hung up on you, at least.” He was wearily accustomed to the pining looks thrown at Aiden in the corridors, the guys showing up at their dorm room door with flowers and heartfelt notes that Harvard always promised he’d pass onto Aiden (who was more often than not already out on another date). And, sometimes, the uglier responses – a graffitied locker, a malicious rumour, damage done to Aiden’s things while they were both out of the room. Aiden always forbade Harvard from going after anyone on his behalf, even if they could work out who’d done it. “It’s nothing, Harvard. I can handle it.”

Aiden snorted. “Nicholas stopped being hung up on me the second he laid eyes on Seiji Katayama.”

Harvard smiled as they both stepped out of the cupboard, Aiden pulling the doors closed and locking them. It was fun to gossip and trade theories about their fellow fencers, something they’d indulged in at many a practice match and regional or state competition (when Aiden was present, of course). But Harvard quickly remembered the conversation they’d been having before they happened on Nicholas and Seiji.

“Aiden?” he asked. “What did you mean when you said, ‘It doesn’t do to get too attached’?”

“Nothing,” Aiden said quickly, flashing Harvard a quick and (to Harvard’s expert eyes) insincere smile. “Forget I said that.” He tried to start back towards the fencing salle.

“No, come on-” Harvard objected, catching hold of Aiden’s arm – gently. “I know you meant something by it. Whatever it is, you can tell me.” He frowned, suddenly worried about what Aiden might not want to say. “You can trust me.”

Aiden gave Harvard that rueful smile again. “I think it’ll be better if you figure it out yourself. But if you haven’t figured it out by tonight, then I’ll tell you,” he said, then slipped his arm out of Harvard’s grip and walked away.