Archive of Our Own

He wakes, rising slowly, the slumber still heavy in his limbs as he leaves his bed.  The place beside him is still warm, vacant but not for so very long that the heat left behind by her body has yet cooled.  He touches the twisted sheets where they loved each other during the night, bringing the pillow to his face to inhale her warm scent, his nose tickled by a stray hair left behind.  Blue.  Once his least favorite color, now growing on him considerably.

A glance toward the open balcony shows him the falling of night, and he smiles.  This isn't just any night on the calendar.  This isn't just any night at all.  This is a night when the fates smile upon him, when all that is hidden is revealed.

For on this night he walks as the man he truly is, without second glance or stare or look of horror from the mortals.  On this night he is one of a million ghouls that roam the city, free.

He lets his skin turn blue and enters the night.

The chill Autumn air is cool on his skin and it arouses him, a memory of his birth, of the cold and the snow and the ice as he is lain in his frozen cradle, the loved son of the King.  A naked little Prince, swaddled in furs, his tiny horns already sprouting, the bloodstone crimson of his eyes glowing from a face as cerulean as his mother's.

He wishes he had more memories of his short time in Jotunheim, before he was taken by the Aesir King.  But the recollections stay maddeningly beyond his reach, lost to the centuries.  A stolen child, a relic of a world long gone.

Now he is simply Loki, God of New York.

"Ah, the blue demon again this year, eh Mister Laufeyson?"  The night manager nods his approval as Loki crosses the lobby, nodding back, refraining from speaking lest the icy frost that billows from his mouth bring any difficult questions.  It isn't quite cold enough yet for the weather to be blamed, and it's a trick he can't explain convincingly enough.  He smiles at the old woman from 1103 as he pushes the door open and imposes his true self on the world, again.

On the night breeze he hears her, a lilting giggle carried on the shoulders of the city's noise, and he smiles.

Passing an alley he smells her, the warmly sweet scent of her perfumed skin, and his mouth waters. 

In the subway corridor he catches a glimpse of blue, the shade of a robin's egg, and it pulls a grin across his lips.

Through the bustling crowd on the square he spies a bit of pink and reaches for it, the candy colored skulls strung into a bracelet that never leaves her wrist save for this one single night each year.  Plucking it from the low branch of a potted tree, he glances around at the hundreds of faces, of monsters and cartoon characters, of superheros and villains, all glancing back at him with no more interest than he has for them.  For though he is a monster, tonight he is no more monstrous than they themselves, and his costume fits him far more comfortably.  He is in his own skin, his own face on display, while they are hidden behind masks.

It's the one night a year his own mask drops.

He smiles at the irony of it.

Somewhere above their voices he hears her call his name, taunting, and he slides the little skulls around his wrist.

The chase is on.

He pursues her through the night, nearly catching her several times, though he suspects she is allowing him to get close to add excitement to the game.  He knows she is using her powers to stay ahead of him, a rule they're both allowed to break if one is caught breaching it.  He rounds a corner and sees her, watches her run up the side of a building, launching herself across the alley between it and the building next door.  She is definitely using her otherworldly skills and he grins, lowering his head as he takes off running.  All bets are off and he hurls a blast of icy wind at the roof where he sees her running along the parapet.  A wicked laugh escapes his throat when he hears her slip and fall, cursing him in annoyed surprise.  Her foul mouth has always amused him, his little monster's lack of propriety an endearing trait that he enjoys despite his frequent scoldings of her for it.  He stares up at the roof until her head appears above the ledge, her eyes meeting his, a quick flash of her tongue as she taunts him.

He turns out of the alley and charges through the crowd on the square, singleminded, his eyes on her and his own breathing in his ears as the revelers move out of his way;  the natural strength of his Jotun form lends him speed and agility and he is across the sprawling street in seconds, his bare feet leaving icy prints on the concrete behind him, bystanders shivering in a sudden cold that makes them look into the sky for the source of the chill.  They don't realize that the man racing past them is naked, that the deep cerulean blue is neither paint nor a skinsuit but his own flesh, the only barrier against their observing eyes his loincloth and the sculpted brass vambraces he wears on his forearms.  There are gasps of surprise as he tears through them, a huge blue wraith with horns and long black hair flying wild behind him, just another impressive monster roaming the streets on All Hallows.

The faster he runs, the more attuned his nervous system becomes, the stronger his lungs, the quicker his muscle reactions.  His homeworld is inside him, the bitter cold running through his veins making him invincible.

But she is near his equal, her strength a match for his, her speed and agility more finely tuned with more use and more easily accessed by her smaller size.  He has lost sight of her as she scales the buildings, leaping along their roofs and ledges, her high pitched laugh the only evidence that he is still on her trail.

That and he can feel her.

He runs faster, the mortals nothing more than blurs in his periphery, his hunter instincts now fully in control.  He has her scent, clinging to the little carved skulls around his wrist, the night air carrying the smell of her skin and pheromones and the frantic overflow of her adrenaline.  It sets his libido on fire.

She's close.

She watches him from the shadows, contemplating her options;  take him out now while he has momentarily lost track of her, springing from the darkness like a bad dream, ending the game and claiming her prize with a smug glee and an uncompromising demand for the spoils - his blood, dark and spicy and exotic, unlike anything the other creatures of this world have to offer...or stalk him, teasing, playing, leading him across the city to the outskirts before bringing him down like an unsuspecting zebra.  The chase always makes his blood taste so much better, loaded with adrenaline and laced with desire.

Only Loki is many things, and unsuspecting is not one of them.

A gasp of surprise escapes her lips as he turns his head slowly and brings his eyes directly to hers.

Fuck.

"Run, little monster."

She stands, no longer concerned with hiding, his voice trailing along after her on the chill night air as she darts for the shadows between buildings.

"RUN!!"

The asphalt beneath his feet cracks and shatters under the stress of his weight and speed, but Loki's eyes are only on his prey as he matches her pace from the ground;  a spray of crumbling brick rains down on him from above and he laughs maliciously, watching her scramble to pull herself up onto an almost-missed ledge twenty stories above him.  He knows she must be quickly growing tired - or dangerously over confident - and he turns to race down an alley, ignoring the exclamations of the dark-dwellers and street denizens who shout angrily as he tears past.  A particular blessing of this city, its citizens' willingness to accept any scene no matter how strange, with a simple shrug and a colorful string of curses.  It's something he admires about the people of this place.  A naked blue-skinned giant chasing a building-jumping vampire carries no shock factor and the fact that these humans survived him in his less sane days would bring a smile of fondness to his face at any lesser moment...but Jack has slipped his track and he stops, closing his eyes to listen to the rising wind.  The temperature is dropping and he sighs blissfully at the welcome cold filling his lungs and caressing his skin.  It is far from home, but it carries on its whispering back the promise of winter.

He catches a breath of sound, the padding of his lover's footsteps, several blocks away.

Turning with a wicked grin, he changes course and heads for the park.

Thor loves Midgard, its people so delightfully simple and full of a desire to live.  So many holy days, excuses to stop working and play for the most absurdly contrived of reasons, most of which he's not yet figured out but is more than happy to indulge in, excusing himself from Stark Tower to participate in the humans' merriment at any opportunity he is afforded.  All Hallow's Eve intrigues him - a day of the dead, celebrated by the living.

Hela would love this he thinks fuzzily as he watches the mortals dance in the square.  A celebration of death, of the macabre, of the afterlife and beyond.  Children in the fountain, splashing and squealing;  through the happy haze of his fifth sugary alcoholic atrocity he senses something on the night air, something dark and electric and oddly foreboding, something he always feels on this night.  It's both familiar and foreign, and it never fails to set the hairs at the back of his neck on end.

Loki and Jack are playing again, using the city as their sandbox.

Run he hears on the wind.

A grin tugs at his lips as he downs the rest of his drink, slamming his glass down on the table.  He slides his mask down over his face and heads unsteadily toward the park where he knows, eventually, his brother and the halfling will end up.

The halfling, whom he hates with the fury of a thousand suns, but that Loki loves with just as much intensity.  His brother has earned this bit of happiness, and so Thor puts his personal agenda aside, letting yet another human year slip by without fulfilling his mission.

The abomination must be destroyed, Loki.  You know it as well as I.  If you won't do it -

His brother's reply is always the same;  not so much a reply as a nonverbal response, a sudden silent pleading in his eyes, a stiffening in his posture so slight as to almost be missed by any gaze not so keen as Thor's.

And then that steely iron resolve falls back into place, all softness gone in the space of a breath, and the deadly Trickster God returns.

You'll have to go through me.

Of all the lies Loki has told, this is the one Thor believes without doubt.

But time hasn't ended yet and the gods still walk the realms, so he turns a blind eye to the perverted love affair being played out against the backdrop of the unsuspecting city.

Not that he could catch her if he tried.

Hell, Loki could barely catch her...until she wanted to be caught.  The God of Thunder looks up at the big clock that presides over the square.  Two minutes to midnight.  He'll have to hurry if he wants to catch the yearly freak show.

The shame in his conscience is somehow less potent than the excitement in his gut.

It's always a good show.

Jack is sitting in a swing when Loki steps into the clearing at the edge of the park.  His head is down, his eyes glowing that unsettling red that she's always found so primally, deeply, excruciatingly  exciting.  It sets her nerves alight, knowing that he is behind her, watching.

He's been hunting her all night.

She's already wet for him.

But the chase isn't finished yet.  First he has to catch her, and she isn't ready to be caught yet.  Not quite.

"Looking for someone?"

She barely hears him step up behind her, her keen ears straining to detect his footsteps, sniffing the air to track him when his nearly silent footfalls fail to register.  He's getting better at it, but he can't keep her from picking up his scent, that earthy smell of ozone and cold electricity that his Jotun form emits.  A groan escapes her throat at the sheer sexual nature of it.

"Not someone.  Something."

"Ah.  Well that's not nice."

"I'm not a nice person."

"You're not a person at all."  She reaches up behind her head, pricking her finger on the sharp tip of one of his horns as he lowers his head to breathe hotly on the back of her neck.

"No, I'm not."

His hands are on the chains of the swing, yanking her back, tipping her head down and her legs up.  He can see her fangs are already down and her eyes are shifting quickly as she looks up at him.  Her words are labored, spoken breathlessly in her rising excitement.

"Are you ever going to tell me?"

"Tell you what."

"What I am."

He lets go, giving her a push.

"You're Jack."

There's a smile, full of sharp teeth and sharper curiosity, and Loki knows what's coming.

"The way your brother looks at me.  He's looking through me at something else."  She swings herself higher, tipping backward to look at him upside down as she swings back.  "What's standing behind me, Loki?"

You know what she is, Brother.

Half human, half vampire?  Yes, I'm aware.  An unfortunate genetic combination, but useful.

You know what I mean.  You know why you're bound to her.

Ah, that would be because I married her.  We'd have invited you, but last I heard you were banned from Vegas.  Something about a drunken mishap involving electricity and the fountain light show at the Bellaggio - ?

Stop playing games, Loki.  You're bound to her through eternity no matter what form she takes - what if next time it's a shape you can't hold?

Thor, as long as I'm with her, you and all your precious godkind are safe.  Have a little faith...when have I ever failed you?

He grabs the chains, yanking her to a sudden stop that nearly unseats her.

"There's nothing behind you except me."

The frenzy that overtakes them is unlike anything this world has seen, and the ground hardens to ice under them before bursting into flame, the very elements confused and unsure how to respond to the shockwaves of two opposing forces melding into a single entity.

A god and an impossible being, a living undead with both mortality and invincibility, imprinting on the universe.

There is a momentary shift in the dimensions, a hiccup in time...

Somewhere in the vast endless distance of the cosmos a wall between worlds shimmers briefly, blinks for a stuttering moment, and falls.

The blast lights the east end of the city, drawing a collective gasp of amazement followed by cheers and applause from the crowds in the city square.  Fireworks, they assume - mainly because their human comprehension can't widen far enough to make allowance for the reality of the sudden flash, for the unnerving sway of the east end bridge and the momentary trembling of the ground beneath their feet.  The simple reality of two immortals marking their territory, hallowed ground where their bodies twist and grind and push each other into the scorched earth while their cries and moans of unbridled ecstasy fill the night air with a sound the mortals interpret as an approaching storm.

Thor watches from atop an abandoned warehouse, lending them his protection during these unguarded moments.  The sight of his brother in his monstrous Jotun form is growing less and less repulsive to him as the years pass, though he doesn't quite understand the vampire's preoccupation with the hideous twisted horns protruding from his ridged forehead.  The girl holds onto them as if her soul is bound to this realm only through her grip on the exposed bones.

He pulls his mask back down over his face, noting with no small amount of irony that the little pointed ears are similar to horns themselves.  Bat ears.  He didn't understand Stark's look of distaste when he'd first put it on, nor his muttered comment about rival billionaire superheroes with daddy issues.  It allows him to walk unrecognized among the humans, that's all that matters.

Through the darkened eye holes, he watches the night's most authentic monsters celebrate their freedom - Loki's, bound up in his life, Jack's in her death, together creating and loudly reveling in a twisted sort of new existence only possible in their little realm of exile.

Neither is hiding.

This is the night they're free.

He can't begrudge them that.

"Let's hunt Thor."

Loki stares at her, trying to hide his creeping grin with a grimace.  She is laughing excitedly, waiting for his permission to begin a new chase.  He knows his brother is celebrating with the mortals tonight, as always...but he also knows he has crept away from the merriment to spy on their trysting, as habit has dictated in recent years.

The thought of his brother, the good one, the upright one, the blameless and pure Thor Odinsson...tucked away in one of the surrounding buildings - which one this year, the offices at the corner of the lot?  The half delapidated management trailer on the outskirts of the construction site? - watching them copulate in the cold darkness of this heathen night brings a twitch of perverted delight to his lips.

Jack is tugging at his hand, and as he slips the skull bracelet off his wrist and back onto hers, an indulgent benevolence overcomes him.  A quick glance over his shoulder affords him a glimpse of shadow on a distant roof.  It looks like a giant bat, and he chuckles quietly as he stands and adjusts his loincloth.

"Go get him, sweetheart."

~The End~