driftfleet | (no subject)

Perhaps some day I shall trust you enough to lend you my eyes.

[Likely not. That would require the level of trust he gave only to Frigga, and then only too late.

Trust he'd offered to Rogue once, come to think of it. So perhaps not as impossible as it could be.]

Edited 2016-04-24 07:16 (UTC)

[ He softens at that. For Loki to even speak of it is an large decision. ]

Then for now, I'll continue to trust what you say.

Beautiful fool.

[Speak to him so sweetly, Leto, and you will turn his head.]

I have never denied it.

[He considers for a moment, then holds out his hand to Leto. It may be the time for some small measure of truth.]

[ He takes it without hesitation. ]

Closer. [He gives Leto's hand a little tug. Ultimate, he wants the man sitting in front of him, so that they face the same direction.]

[ He tilts his head, a slight smile playing on his lips before he follows and kneels, sitting on his knees and looking demure. ]

[Loki leans forward to slide his arms under Leto's, picking his hands up and turning them so they rest, palm up, on Loki's palms.]

Attend well.

[He presses palms together, then unfolds them like opening a book, light shattering in the space between. Leto's hands are so curiously warm against his, but for once his own skin might match, the warm flow of his magic melting away natural chill. He speaks near Leto's ear, letting that magic play up through his fingers.]

Stir [thy--no, he is still not so familiar with Leto as that] your fingers, and you shall feel the waves of light vibrating as strings on a lute.

[ His eye lashes flutter at that. ]

Shall I play a tune?

[ But he obeys. He pulls out the memory of playing a lute and his fingers move accordingly. ]

[Magic is an act of will, at its base. He knows that Leto lacks the ability as it manifests in him, as Frigga called it forth when she showed him the start of this lesson. But if he focuses, eyes closed, he can translate what he feels to something more palpable that Leto ought to be able to pick up.

He moves his fingers with Leto's, and there is the wash of energy, the vibration at different pitches that can't quite be heard but can be felt, the color like temperature, the wavelength like music.]

And know, then, thou art made of this too, forged in the heart of stars. [A slip up, an echo of his mother's words, but he wishes that feeling, he could convey as well.]

[ His eyes are wide, brightest blue. It is hard not to find them a little unnerving, especially when he stares. Leto has touched magic a little. It was hard not to when he began in Aather, but this was his magic brought to colour. ]

You make me sound so unique.

[It is not a shade of blue that unnerves Loki. Only one does that. And his eyes are still almost closed in concentration, but more than that--a moment of abandoning himself to this simple pleasure. Not something he has time to do when he's utilizing magic in its more combat-oriented forms.]

For you are. Each the same, and each unique. Just as this-- [He stirs Leto's index finger with his own, playing at those eddies of light, shifting them.] --this moment when we have come together in spite of all odds shall never be repeated across the myriad universes and repeated endlessly. Both are true.

[ His truth-sense flares within him, confirming this. It was his connection to Loki that led him here, but he never foresaw this depth. Visions are incomplete creatures and there were many roads that led nowhere.

A gift. A silent miracle. ]

I hear the truth in it.

This is the greatest truth I know. [And to have shared even such a small corner of it is... not something he had set out to do today, at all. What an unexpected turn. But he does go where his instinct and emotion leads.

He stirs their fingers through the light again, reading the shape of it, tasting the star from which is originated, the lump of iron at its heart. That star, in miniature, forms briefly in the air over their hands as he thinks of it, twists the light back to the shape of its origin.]

[ He watches it unfold, in spirals of light and magic. His heart clenches at the beauty of it. Leto is beauty and harshness folded together in the form of a desert creature. He does not think less of himself, but he pushes himself further and further away from beauty as it slips from his physical form.

He remembers the sandworms. Perhaps he had beauty in his own way. He dips his fingers in the light. He is Fremen, so he does not cry. But it is a near thing. ]

[He feels the emotion there, the advantage for the taking, but he does not go on the attack in that way. This is perhaps something too personally important to him.

Or perhaps not. There is kindness in cruelty, and cruelty in kindness. He follows that movement of Leto's fingers, unwinds the light as instinct says it directs.]

Wouldst see thyself as I see thee?

[An offer he has only ever made to one other person.]

[ That is dangerous and he knows it.

But he's come too far to shy away from what is personal. ]

Show me.

[This is an exceptionally dangerous, personal thing for both. The key to understanding someone was knowing how to look through their eyes, after all. That lead to anticipating, controlling, all manner of useful things.

But he had offered.

He opens his eyes fully and considers how he perceives Leto, the sight, the sound, the smell of him, the light that touches on other senses not so easily translated. And how to put that in a way that can be perceived? A challenge. He can address it as such.

What he makes with the light, moving his fingers gently under Leto's, has a vaguely recognizable shape to it, but it is not so contained by a simple boundary like an outline. There is a universe within it for a heart, blue galaxies for eyes, movements wrapped and woven of vector and lines of possibility. There is warmth and the sound of tickling laughter and shifting grains of sand, countless voices murmuring in a low undertone of conversation, and woven through it wyrm rather than worm.

Upon that is another layer of color and sound and the light brush of kinetic touch to convey the sense of kinship, amusement, shared secrets, flirtations, enemy and friend and not-quite-lover all together. Frustration and fatalism and the heavy weight of quarks unwinding second by second with infinite time made finite. The scent of old blood and new. The feeling of a heart waiting to be crushed between fingers, and the heavy salt taste of sweat and tears and grief. A silvery laugh. A slit of sly blue.

And it is without a doubt both beautiful and terrible, and beautiful because it is terrible, like Loki himself.]

[ Oh. He can feel his heart splinter. It was beautiful and awful, a reckoning for the both of them. Still, Leto is entranced and touched by it. He had lived his life, thinking that he cannot touch others. His mark can easily fade from their memories. After all, he had nothing to offer. No physicality, no real promises. There's nothing he can give that he hasn't already given away.

He gave everything away. At times, it rankles that nobody knew this, that nobody understood the depth of his sacrifice, the depth of his love.

But it seems at least one person saw him and not the shades he covered himself in. And it was still never meant to be.

He closes his eyes, and lets a tear slip. Water for the dead. Water for what could be, what was, what can never fully be ]

You have won.

[Victory. Like that, he has won. And all it required was to render himself entirely naked in all ways that count, risk the soft heart that he has not been able to eat, drain the well dry.

This, he will remember. And there is a certain internal smugness, with having won, but that was not his aim. This was an honest offer, the rarest sort of thing from him. He does not sharpen his truths the way he whets his lies, yet they seem to cut much more cruelly all the same, whether he wills or no. There's an irony to be had there. He wonders, if he shall ever have a victory that is the pure sort Thor seems to enjoy.

What is for Thor is not for Loki.

He reaches to wipe that tear from Leto's cheek with his thumb. He licks the drop of moisture away. It tastes as he imagined. Salt and water and Leto.

And then he slides his arm around Leto to pull the warm man to him,]

May I be saved from other such victories.

Edited 2016-04-27 08:40 (UTC)

[ Leto rests his head on Loki's shoulder. I want to die, he thinks absently, I want my sister. He feels like a worthless craven creature, not the bold sacrificial lamb he had made himself out to be.

Someone had to accept the agony, Ghanima had said once. She had never forgiven him for taking it.

Is this how he was meant to live? To come so close to the genuine bond of love only to know it will never come to pass? To always turn away when the spark is at its brightest?

Yes. The Golden Path was assured. There was no escape.

But he could still cry. ]

[Loki rests his chin against Leto's head. Absently, he smooths a hand over the man's hair.

This isn't the first time he's held someone who is weeping. There has been Rogue. There has been his little brother. But this is different, as the other two were from each other.

Loki isn't meant to comfort others. But if he cannot break his own rules, what's the purpose in having them?

And after a time, he touches Leto's chin lightly with his fingers to tilt it up, so he can place an equally light kiss on his lips.]

[ He lets out a quiet sigh at the kiss, recognizing the gesture for what it is. Leto finds it in him to smile. ]

You did me a great kindness today.

[ And that's why it hurt so much, but they both knew that. They knew how badly it could hurt. ]

[Loki offers him a crooked smile.]

Don't tell anyone. I've a reputation to maintain.

[He strokes Leto's cheek with the backs of his fingers. Once he's gotten to the point that he's willing to actually touch someone else, offer them some sort of intimacy, he tends to be greedy about it. Like a starving man confronted with a feast.]

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