Unfettered (Loki x Reader)

Chapter 51 - Summons

"This is wonderful news, brother!"

"Is it?"

"Of course! Why would you think otherwise?"

"Salt and sugar oft look the same, brother."

Thor and Loki's whispered voices pull you to consciousness. But the moment you're awake, every ache and every hurt comes rushing back all at once. Your neck is stiff and your head throbs. You're covered in a thin layer of sweat from all the blankets you're trapped beneath, and you start to panic. For a moment, you can't hear the familiar voices bickering softly just an arm's length away. You can only hear those drops of water on concrete. 

You're frozen, eyes wide open in fear, petrified in a soft bed of feathered down. 

"My love?" 

You hear Loki before you see him and reach blindly for him as he sits on the side of the bed and welcomes you into his arms. 

"Shh," he hushes, placing a hand on your forehead. Your vision fills with a green glow and warm, static trickles down your temples. "I'm here," he whispers, as your fear seems to suddenly...disappear. For a moment, Loki simply holds you, bathing you in his light, until your breathing slows and your fear abates. As it does you realize that your hands are cold.  

Really cold. 

Newly calmed, you glance down to find that your hands have each been carefully wrapped in gauze, with two little icepacks across your knuckles and your wrists on each hand. Over Loki's shoulder on the nightstand rest at least a dozen more - warm and discarded. 

"Do they still ache?" Loki inquires, hovering his hand over yours as the green glow of his magic now envelops your wrists and fingers. But there's no pain. Only that tingling sensation. You try to sit up further, but your body moves sluggishly as if made of lead weights. Loki can sense your struggle, and adjusts his position to let you lean against him more comfortably. "Better?" he asks. 

"Yeah...better," you answer as your bearings return, and you glance around the room. Your room. You're back in Stark tower. "We're home?" you question, confused and disoriented. The last thing you remember you were...outside. On the ground. Watching a green plume of smoke rising in the distance.

"You were asleep for a long while," Loki answers. "You were injected with a sedative."

"How long?" you ask.

"A day or so," Loki answers. "But you needed it, darling. And it gave me time to tend to your wounds."

You reach for your neck, fingers drifting over where there had no doubt been dozens of bruised injection sites. A quick glance beneath the bandages on your wrists tell you the bruising there is gone as well.

"You did this?" you question, looking up into earnest green eyes. "You healed me?"

"I...well,  yes," he says, almost bashfully. "I did what I could. Although the Captain seemed to believe his mortal remedy would do just as well," he says, rolling his eyes as he flicks a warm ice pack off the side of the bed. It lands with a wet *plop* on the ground.

Overcome by gratitude, by love, you reach for Loki's face and pull him gently into a kiss, which he returns eagerly. You sigh unto his lips as you realize that sweet mint taste you had grown to love so much is back on his tongue. Your own mouth tastes sour in return - rancid - but Loki seems not to mind as he takes your chin between his fingers and tils your head further to the side, deepening the kiss.

"You're...okay," you whisper between kisses. "I thought you were dead, but...you're okay."

Loki hums in affirmation, sliding his fingers up the back of your neck and threading them into your hair.