fossilised | werewolves

werewolves

Pumpkin Spice.

It hits the shelves the moment the temperature dips below eighty, before the summer officially ends and the leaves give hint at changing color. It's become an American way of life. Lattes might claim it to be proof of their success and staying power but it's expanded into hand soap and e-cigarettes now. You can't find anything, really, that hasn't been pumpkin spiced these days. Pumpkin pie is too humble to try and reclaim it anyway, and has quietly retreated to Thanksgiving where it waits to mark the end of the most beloved season in New York among straight white girls.

Steve Rogers, while neither straight nor a girl, has whole heartedly embraced the trend and the moment Starbucks announced that it had come back out for a Limited Time Only, Steve had rummaged in his sock drawer for a gift card he was sure had money left on it and stood in line with the masses to claim his holy grail.

It's a comfort. It's a promise that there's going to be something else to look forward to in the coming months when holidays rear their ugly and beautiful heads to remind you that your family is dead and most of the kids you lived with in foster care and group homes have disappeared out of your life. It makes Steve's day and he's already day dreaming about boots and puffy vests the moment he takes his first, iced sip. Steve isn't really a day dreamer, but his head can get stuck in the clouds on the best days and distraction comes easily in a city where you're never and always alone at the same time.

There's charcoal under his nails and a moment of joy in his heart from the iced latte he grasps so fiercely the day he sees Bucky across the street. He'd know him anywhere, even with that long fringe of hair he hasn't seen since before he went off to basic training. The light to cross the street between them is red but Steve ignores the risks. There are two lanes each direction, and all four are packed with yellow cabs and black Uber cars. No one can go fast enough to do him any damage.

The latte gets dropped along the way and Steve doesn't care. It's been over a year and a half since he's seen Bucky. It's been six months since he last heard anything from him actually. He hadn't even gotten a birthday card this year.

"Buck!" Steve is just a skinny guy, five foot four, maybe 100 pounds if he's got art supplies and an easel on him. He has fallen arches and a heart arrhythmia, but they aren't keeping him from shimmying between cars and nearly getting run over. He's out of breath when he makes it across the street and though he's lost his drink, he needs to bend over and cup his hands on his knees to steady himself anyway so it all works out. "Hey." It's smooth and followed by a smile. Something bright and cheery and all too Steve Rogers hopped up on artificial sugar and flavorings.

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Feeling the sting of embarrassment and a rush from explaining his secret desire to be more than just a sick art student with some degree of talent but no ability to sell himself in his previous state, Steve stares Loki directly in his/her deep crimson eyes. He’s not afraid of the person that literally holds his life in their hands, and that’s because he’s afraid of almost nothing.

He’s certainly not afraid of dying.

“It would be a dishonor to stretch out my neck and let you kill me. Something has been right on the verge of killing me from the second I was born. You’re powerful. Your son is powerful. You’ve made me pretty powerful too,” he tells Loki, “but death has had it out for me my entire life and hasn’t gotten me yet. I survive. I survived everything up until this point and I’m going to survive this too.”

Steve Rogers might have the heart of Thor and certainly the tenacity of a warrior, but Loki can understand the scrappy, resilient little thing housed inside the newly muscled bag of meat that is this mortal. He’s an underdog himself, one with immense strength of his own.

“I don’t have any intention of dishonoring you, Loki. I’m not asking for special treatment here either. I just know I can be worth something if you give me the chance.” Once he has some control of himself, well Steve is his own biggest cheerleader. He knows he can do great things with the right tools. Even if he has to make those tools out of dirt and duct tape.

That was more like it.

Loki stepped forward and rippled as he moved, blue skin becoming pale, and red eyes becoming green. Her form grew curves with long legs and breasts, though her voice remained a husky deeper tone. She glanced once at Thor to see his reaction to her Aesir-like form, something she had been practising in recent months to make it easier to bear the heat of Asgard and to touch those of non-Jotnar descent without danger.

She used it now to take Steve's jaw in her fingers, still cool but no longer freezing to the touch, and send a spark of magic through him to determine the truth of his words. Steve would feel it as if being shot with a bullet of pure energy, like his whole mind and soul were bared open for anyone to see, but only for a moment.

"--very well, I will give you the chance you have asked for, son of my son. He will return to Midgard with you to teach you how to control the potency of your blood."

“Wow. That’s... she’s hot. She’s hot right, Banner? Even you have to feel a little stirring down there, right?” Tony’s whisper is not a whisper. The man is incapable of being quiet, even when it really would behoove him to be. He makes a move to nudge Bruce on the shoulder but Thor’s crushing hand is already on the back of his neck and Tony finds himself inextricably forced to his knees.

“She is of Jotunheim’s blood,” Thor growls protectively, though it’s any wonder he can speak. He’d been dumbstruck by the change and the same rippling of the loins Tony spoke of has happened to him as well. “And is anything but warm. You will hold your tongue, mortal.”

“Woah, okay, wow, it was a compliment. Good job, buddy!” Tony says with his hands up. He might not be very good with self preservation but having the weight of Thor’s strength on his spinal column helps steer him in the right direction.

They miss the way Steve twitches at Loki’s touch, or the sweat that pours from his body when she releases him. His breathing is hard, muscles still shivering, and he sinks to the ground to gather himself back up. It’s not easy.

“I will make you proud of me,” he promises, connected to Loki as he is to Fenris. Loki might not care about the outcome of a mortal, even one of his blood now, but Steve still wants to be thought of well just the same.

Edited 2018-11-08 15:38 (UTC)

Bucky doesn't miss the way that Steve twitches and he's by his friend's side before Loki has even finished withdrawing her fingers. He doesn't know what he can do against a shapeshifting god (apparently), but his self-given mission is to protect Steve Rogers, and damn it all he's going to do it.

So he stands over his friend, straight backed, and just glares a silent challenge into Loki's eyes. Loki merely responds with a smirk, and a ripple back to blue form now that he no longer needs to touch mortal skin.

"You may let him up, Thor, in the mortal vernacular he was merely calling me attractive. It has been too long since you were on Midgard, you know nothing of their world any longer."

Loki knows more, though mostly through connection to his children who wander far and wide.

"Now, our business is concluded and I am sure you wish to get these mortals off Asgardian soil before Heimdall informs the All-Father of their presence here?"

“All the more reason to keep him on his knees. He should not gaze at you as such,” Thor intones, which has an effect of rattling the entry way to the observatory. Heimdall doesn’t appear to mind, though he has already retreated back to open the Bifrost for the humans to return to their planet.

Seeing one little room in a newly expanded cosmos just isn’t going to do it for Tony, though. As Steve picks himself up, gazing at the new awakened Bucky Barnes with too many emotions, Tony does so as well. It’s just much less graceful, and he uses Banner’s arm to give himself the needed boost.

“Hey.” Most eyes turn towards him, but he’s only interested in the Avatar right now. “We just got here. You’re not really sending us back already, are you? We haven’t even been properly introduced. Tony Stark. Hi. And yes, I was calling you attractive. Your boyfriend is a lucky, far too muscular linebacker.”

Loki arched an eyebrow at the bumptious human who dared to address him so. Perhaps he too had been too long from Midgard if things had changed so much, once his blue skin had been trembled at and his status as a Jotnar revered as something godlike. Now this mortal addressed him as if they were equals. It was interesting and irritating in equal amounts.

"I am not in the habit of introducing myself to mortals, to do so would be as pointless as to introduce myself to the ants crawling in the dirt. And even if I were, your opinions as to Thor's luck are odd and wrong. If his only achievement were to have found a mate of passing physical attraction, he would have poor luck indeed, such things are easily found and a poor reward for courtship."

That wasn't to say that he didn't find Thor attractive in return, or that he didn't want to be desired, but it was a thoroughly alien concept that such a thing could have any bearing on what would be desirable in a long-term mate. A night of bedsport, naturally, but in a spouse one looked for different things.

"Tell me, Tony Stark, what do you hope to gain by calling me attractive? Do you think to take me to your furs?"

He snorted in amusement. Not because the idea of sleeping with someone else, or even discussing it in front of Thor, was absurd, but for the idea that he would sleep with a mortal. Both he and Thor would likely have hundreds of partners in their years, before and after marriage, and likely children with others, that was just healthy. But with a human?

Surely that was only one step above sleeping with a corpse, they were so near death already.

In berating Tony Stark (such an odd name), Loki neglected to notice that he had all but confirmed that he intended to accept Thor's courtship at some point.

Edited 2018-11-08 17:42 (UTC)

It doesn’t seem to matter to Tony that he’s blunt. Or short. Or that Loki pretty much just equated him with an ant. A super genius ant, maybe, but still an ant. He likes hard to get. Strangely, he likes rejection. He likes people that are too good for him. Or that at least think they are. The whole exchange makes him smile. “I wax,” he says, purposefully misinterpreting what Loki means by furs. “But I have been told that my mustache rides are pretty good.”

For emphasis, he smooths down his facial hair, amusement in eyes already crinkling with crows feet.

“What I hope is to take a look around, though. Flattery can get people pretty far. I’ve never visited Asgard before. Shouldn’t we get least get dinner? Don’t you guys practice guest rights?”

Or maybe that’s just Game of Thrones influencing his understanding of otherworldly cultures.

"Then you are flattering the wrong person, Tony Stark, for Asgard is not my dominion and I have no authorisation to offer you guest right or to allow you further than this observatory. It is only through Thor Odinson's kindness that we all stand here now."

Loki grinned sudden and sharp, a very predatory look in his eyes even if his words remained polite and seemingly neutral in tone.

"If you wish to see Jotunheim, for but a moment, that is something I have the authority to grant."

And it would be only for a moment, because a mortal would freeze to death in a heartbeat even with the thickest clothes. The land of the frost giants was dangerous even for those of Aesir and Vanir blood, after all.

Having been too stunned to speak before, Thor somehow feels at least partially indebted to these mortals now that they have caused Loki’s tongue and true intentions to slip. It’s an every day occurrence that he gets what he wants but there is just something all together magical to get what he feels like he’s had dangling in front of him for so long that it’s less bait and more of a dream. He can not, therefore, allow these mortals to die. Even the annoying one with the oddly cropped beard. Thor makes a gesture with one step and the stretch of an arm to put himself between Stark and Loki, red cap creating a barrier between them.

“It would be unwise to send such soft creatures to Jotunheim. I shall host them, and you and your kin. Surely you will not decline an invitation from the Prince of Asgard to sup in his halls? I shall name the feast in your honour. The blood of your blood and their companions shall all enjoy the splendors of the Eternal Kingdom.” Thor always makes these grand gestures and while his father is wont to find folly with the lack of wit his son shows, the All-Mother is all for adding Loki to their many branches of kin. None so well as Frigga can soothe Odin, so all will eventually be well.

Thor holds his hand out to Loki, for though the skin of his Jotun love will burn him, he finds the pain easy enough to manage.

“And perhaps you will show me the form you’ve newly crafted for yourself once the meal is at its conclusion...?” He does all but waggle his eyebrows.

Though it was sure that Frigga would be happy to see Loki and Fenris join them, and perhaps even Steve Rogers now that he was altered, even the benevolent Queen of Asgard would surely take issue to the remaining coterie of mortals being feasted in the great hall. Odin certainly would, he had certain ideas about who or what was worthy to enter his halls and this plan would no doubt backfire spectacularly.

Which was exactly why Loki was all for it. He loved some fireworks, he adored stirring the pot, and it was always good to let his future in-laws know that he planned to remain his own free spirit even when he was finally shackled to Asgard. Although the joy of a fraught dinner was suddenly rudely interrupted by a realisation of what he had said.

Damn.

With a frustrated growl, Loki suddenly whipped out a silver tipped dagger and thrust it into Thor's ribs, before stalking off down the rainbow bridge alone. But he left the dagger in the wound, which Thor should interpret as an invitation to bring it back later and see that form that he might want.

The subtleties of being stabbed as a form of courtship were, however, lost on Bruce who leapt forwards with a startled sound of concern.

"Remain still, we'll get help for you. Don't try to take it out yet, it'll bleed more."

Before Bruce can cease speaking, Thor has already pulled the dagger from his side, grinning like he’s gone mad. There is very little blood on the blade, and nothing blooming through his armour. The belt shines in his gloved palm and flashes in the shadows of the observatory. “Mmm, a fortunate sign indeed,” Thor says to himself and turns to watch Loki go.

Fenris is already trotting behind him, but Steve is torn, stuck in some tidal lock with a still partially drugged up Bucky.

Tony, however, has decided to take his chances with the crazy shapeshifting stabber, heading off behind wolf and blue figured Jotun, his boots leaving no sound at all as he walks across an impossible bridge over the void of space. It’s amazing. He can’t help but love every insane moment of this trip. Even if he’s chasing a viper.

Being half drugged at least means that Bucky isn't about to flip out again, if only because his brain can't get enough adrenaline. But he does still glare around at everybody and anybody as he stands beside Steve, as if he could possibly be an effective bodyguard, and as if Steve isn't now bigger than he is.

"What the hell kind of dream is this?"

It's a quiet mutter as Bucky takes a half step out onto the rainbow bridge, quickly followed by Bruce in case Bucky is still unsteady and needs to be saved from falling over the edge.

Heimdall, golden eyes kind, look down on the three remaining people in his observatory and gestures to where the others are already a fair distance away.

"Go, you will come to no harm, and it is best not to fall behind."

They need to talk. Steve needs so badly to sit down with his friend and just have it out, but considering that they're on another world and he has been completely tainted by alien blood, he isn't sure where to even start. The whole thing goes so far beyond a dream that Steve doesn't even think Bucky will believe him.

Not even standing on a bridge made of rainbows leading across space towards a golden city.

It's not just surreal. Its unimaginable.

It takes quite a long time to get to the massive gates of the city, though they're thrown wide for them and all sorts of people, each and every last one utterly beautiful, have come to see what's entering their city. Their prince has long since made it through the gates and so they have all stayed to bear witness to the stragglers. Steve can just about make out their astonished whispers as the mortals walk alabaster inlaid streets towards the central palace. It takes all of his strength not to put an arm around Bucky for protection, his friend's and his own. Instead, he waves a little and wonders what's become of Bucky's friend, Stark. The guy had disappeared after his potential grandmother.

A small part of Bucky's brain has noticed that Tony has disappeared and is a little concerned, but too much of him is focused on Steve and the sole overriding mission that he has to keep himself from completely losing it. Protect Steve. Stay near Steve.

The people staring only make him step closer, until he's practically stepping on his poor friend with every step, his expression totally blank as though he's actually a guard dog. Poor Bruce, slightly left out of this, is tagging along behind trying to make himself look as inconspicuous as possible.

"Um, Steve?"

Bruce half reached out and then put his hand back by his side.

"I may need your help in keeping Tony from causing an international incident, they might-- um, listen to you, since you're, uh, one of them now."

"You're making it sound like I'm part of the borg," Steve mutters, a little bit of nerd leaking out of his otherwise massive, still fairly unclothed form. At least he can manage to keep his voice to himself, even while he occasionally feels Bucky's knuckles brushing him in potentially inappropriate places. "But yeah. He's a little rough for being a rich genius."

Rough might be in the eye of the beholder, because Tony can and often is a lot of things to a lot of different people. He's capable of containing his bravado on most occasions. He's even more capable of fanning it into something people tend to either admire or hate, though.

The trouble with the latter might just be that he is in danger of being eaten whole but a house-sized wolf.

Never a good thing.

"I'll try."

The guards at the palace let the straggling trio go through the secondary gates into a beautiful, peaceful courtyard. The city almost seems to melt away and Steve can practically smell Bucky relax. It's nice out here. Soothing. And it makes him feel a little less bare skinned too.

Bucky felt something seep through his skin, like a whispered voice telling him that everything would be okay. He couldn't know that this was the will of Frigga, that her gardens were always kept as a place of healing with her magic, and that's what spoke to his frightened mind and let him come back to himself.

"...Steve?"

His throat feels dry, but he sounds more human than he did.

"Do we have to follow them right now? Can we talk first? This is all kinda-- uh, nuts."

To put it very mildly.

Bucky doesn't need to ask. He glances at Bruce and cups the air around Bucky's elbow. "Can you go and find your friend for us? We'll be right there." Bruce is pretty safe here. Steve can smell it on him, that ability to take good care of himself. He's not a person to protect, but maybe to learn from. His control smells so very strong, a comfort to a guy who is always right on the verge of falling off of the wagon.

At least he doesn't feel so warm anymore. At least he doesn't feel like he's stretching anymore.

A little stroll through an alien garden (that seems more like an ancient European garden than anything planned by environmentalists these days) is probably just the thing for them. "You doing all right?" he asks, half glancing at Bucky, half keeping his eyes on the beautiful fruit trees dipping and bending overhead to shade their path. "Other then the fact that we accidentally took you with us to an alien planet or other dimension or something after I doped you up...uh.. Sorry about that."

Doing alright isn't exactly how he'd put it, but he shrugs as if he's doing as okay as anyone on a weird alien world could be doing. This has gone way beyond PTSD and soldiers returning home, and he doesn't have the right to bring his issues into it. Steve needs him, he's been changed from being goddamn human, if he's followed this correctly, and that's way bigger than anything.

"I think I missed some stuff while I was out. Steve, what the hell is going on? Are you gonna be okay? Are you gonna-- you can come back with us, can't you?"

Because otherwise he's going to have to find a way to stay here too, and he has a feeling that he might be slightly less welcome than Steve.

"Come back? Yeah, obviously. I can't leave you alone to just eat pizza with a dog the rest of your life. Who's gonna look out for you? I'm not going anywhere, Buck. I just have to learn how not to be an idiot around you first." Steve rubs the back of his neck like he's still just a scrawny little guy.

And not this big, hulking linebacker. It's a little odd to see him like this, shoulders hunching to try to make himself smaller, more familiar a person to Bucky. He knows everything else isn't right.

"I guess I kinda... I am a werewolf. Sort of. Or like...part frost giant? I don't know how that translates now. But I'm still me. With like...control issues."

"What kind of control issues?"

Bucky could never be scared of Steve Rogers, his friend was the best guy he ever met and control issues or not, he was incapable of hurting someone else unless they deserved it. Muscles or no, Bucky wasn't scared of Steve. He was scared for him.

"When you say werewolf, do you mean you're going to grow fur and bite people on the full moon? Because we can deal with those kind of control issues."

A part of him was honestly wondering if he had gone legitimately insane and this was all a fevered hallucination.

“So...” There goes that furious neck rubbing again. He’s going to rip the skin right off at this point, the way he’s going at it like he’s got fleas or more embarrassment than a kid his age can handle. “I guess no one knows because... um—. Okay. Hear me out before you start questioning. I don’t even know if I can keep it straight myself.”

He pauses in a spot of sun, feeling the delicious warmth of Asgard’s sun against his skin. He almost plops himself down on the grass, but he doesn’t really want to be looking up at Bucky. It’s one of those sticking points that bothers him a lot more than he likes. Luckily, there’s a beautifully carved bench with an apple and ivy motif not too far away from the sun and Steve stalks towards it, sitting so that his lower half is turned towards the empty space he half demands with his eyes that Bucky sit himself in.

“So my grandmother is a frost giant from Jotunheim, one of their rulers. He is a She but gender isn’t a thing for them. Non binary people would be so happy to hear it—“ But he digresses. “And somehow, they had a son who is a magic wolf and now I’ve got a little bit of magic in me too. Maybe I get hairy. Maybe I don’t. But they’re going to teach me not to be so... so overbearing. I might still freak out once a month and maybe you’ll need to cage me? Actually that might be something to talk about later.”

At least Bucky did as Steve asked and didn't interrupt him while he spoke, even though he genuinely wondered if what he was hearing was at all possible or just total nonsense. No. Not nonsense, the fact that he was stood in a garden on another world was pretty much proof of that, and he had seen both the blue genderless thing and the giant wolf, so... God, what the hell was going on?

He swallowed hard and then reached out, oh so carefully, and laid his hand on Steve's knee as he sits beside him.

"I can't pretend I understand any of this, but I know that it doesn't really matter because I'm still gonna be with you no matter what. I just don't want this to hurt you or whatever the hell was happening before when you didn't even want to come into my house."

Because neither of those things were acceptable.

"What-- what do you want to do about all of this?"

Steve’s eyes travel slowly down Bucky’s covered arm to the hand resting on his leg. Bare skin to bare skin. It’s not enough kindling to really start the fire again, but the spark is happy for a little company. Steve’s fingers lift as if to play over his knuckles but he drops his hand to his own knee instead, fingers clutching the tattered fabric.

He almost manages to control his breathing but the muscle under his skin twitches. Thankfully, in Frigga’s garden, he’s able to retain a little more control over himself.

And he’s finding it hard to keep all of his secrets to himself.

A small whine rolls in the back of his throat as his eyes turn to gaze out towards the palace wall, covered in crawling ivy. “I want to keep living,” he says. “And I want to make sure I’m not going to do anything else dumb to hurt you. I—uh... This is going to sound weird but you smell really good. Not like I want to know what after shave or deodorant you’re using.” Heat rises up his neck and into his cheeks. “Shit, Buck. Please don’t take this for anything more than it is but you smell like something I want to roll in.”

Yeah. So that came out really wrong.

Oh.

That kind of hurt, considering what dogs usually liked to roll around in, things like mud or the shit of other dogs. He was trying not to be offended, considering that Steve had prefaced that by saying that he smelled good, and even Steve as a dog surely wouldn't say that shit smelled good. So what the hell is he talking about?

"What the hell are you talking about?"

The words come right on the heels of the thought, too tired and overwhelmed to really dance around the topic any more, wanting the bluntness of truth.

"Just come out and say it, Steve."

He acts like a guy half his size, shoulders hunched down, staring into massive hands whose fingers have laced together. He makes for such a lovely profile now, masculine but with long lashes and clear, smooth skin. Greco-Roman sculptors would have vied for the chance to commit him to history in marble if they could have.

It takes a moment but eventually, a half smile comes over Steve’s lips and he turns his head just enough to look at Bucky when he speaks.

“I’ve been attracted to you since before I knew what that meant. I know you’re straight,” he follows with quickly, rolling back his shoulders as the confession gives him confidence. “So I let it go. But whatever is in me now is just making it hard for me to keep doing that. It’s nothing you did or are doing. It’s my messed up brain giving me signals I’m trying to stop.”

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later, friendo! finally going to see venom

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