After a time, the screaming ceased. It was replaced by brisk, familiar footsteps alongside shuffling, scraping ones. Before long, Barnes appeared before Loki's cell, a plasma pistol in his metal hand and the neck of an acolyte in his flesh one, the barrel of one digging into the temple of the other.
"Open. It," he said, not to Loki.
A wave of hands and some barely-translatable stammering later, the shimmering wall of Loki's cell shattered, leaving nothing but air between him and what lay without.
"Thanks," Barnes said, thrusting the acolyte away, as if it were something filthy. It began to flee, shuffling still. Barnes raised his pistol, fired without so much at glancing toward it again. The acolyte fell to the hard stone floor, where it would shuffle no longer.
"Ready to get out of here?" Barnes asked, in a tone that was clearly intended to be easy, yet contained a thread of strain that belied his usual equanimity.
To step out of that cell under his own power was a strange thing, by far moreso than the last time Loki had stepped out of one such. Perhaps it was its size, a fraction that of his cell in Asgard. Perhaps it was that the vengeance, such as it was, had already been wreaked, and not by him. Perhaps it was because he was being freed by someone decidedly different than the last time. Or perhaps it was because, even covered by a thick white robe, he felt as naked and vulnerable as an infant, completely without the thing that had been his constant companion since his earliest days.
He found himself fascinated at the sight of the dead. They lay all around the altar, knives between their ribs or brains splattered across the stone floor or necks bent at unnatural angles. Loki had seen little enough of the battle, as the cell door was angled so that he could see only the altar and whatever happened between he and it. Still, this sight only confirmed what he'd seen in flashes. Barnes had fought as lethally as usual, but no matter how the priests and their acolytes had pleaded, had been unusually unwilling to allow his opponents to lay down arms.
Once, it had driven Loki wild, Barnes' refusal to dispose of vanquished enemies, no matter how clearly they were already plotting beneath quaking exteriors; now, he simply thought how strange it was that captivity should have sparked such a change within a man for whom captivity was not precisely a new concept.
"Loki?" Barnes said again. Then, when Loki looked at him: "We should get going."
"Not yet," Loki heard himself say.
It was only then that he looked at the altar itself, as opposed to the bodies that now surrounded it. It seemed to glow in the light from the sun, the one thing in that cavern placed where the light from above would touch it. He stepped toward it, coming closer and closer still, until he was nearly within arms' reach. Even stripped bare, Loki could feel it, thrumming out and through him. Wanting things. Wanting to take, and take, and take some more, bleeding him until there was nothing left of his to give away.
He crouched down to read the lettering that ran down the table's stone legs, which he had always before been too busy being tied to to be able to focus on. It must have been a very old language indeed, for it took many moments before the All-Speak managed to shift the letters into an alphabet Loki could read.
"Loki?" Barnes said, again. There was little enough easiness in his voice now, barely even the attempt.
"We cannot leave," Loki said, standing back up. There were no surprises here, merely a confirmation of what he had suspected from the beginning. "Not quite yet."
"Really? I can't think of a better time to never be here again."
"If we leave now, my magic will never be returned," Loki said.
"Oh. Huh. Okay. So how do we get it back? Smash that thing?" There was a certain vicious eagerness in Barnes' voice, something Loki would surely have pursued in any other situation, but did not have the time for now.
"No," he said sharply, and quickly, out of the sudden fear that this new Barnes might go ahead and attempt it without waiting for an answer. "Something else."
"So, some kind of ritual? Okay. What are we doing?"
"As it was taken, so it must be returned," Loki said.
"...Huh," Barnes said again, sounding decidedly less eager to assist; his tone was, in fact, rather flat, as if he understood perfectly well what Loki had meant, and was not at all pleased by it.
"Someone must fuck me. Here. On the altar," Loki continued, biting back the desire to say that Barnes had never truly balked at previous rituals requiring sex magic, and that it was decidedly inconvenient for him to be considering developing qualms in this particular instance. "I'd much prefer it to be you."
"Um," Barnes said, looking pained.
"I seem to have a dearth of other options," Loki said, speaking quickly into the void before Barnes could say more, or remind Loki of what had happened (or, worse, how much he'd witnessed of what had happened). "As you've slain all the rest. If I had enough for a reanimation, I'd hardly require your assistance in the first place."
Part of him was certain he'd never have been desperate enough, even to regain his magic; at the same time, another part of him might even have preferred it to the expression of misery on Barnes' face.
"Loki," Barnes said, awkwardly or kindly or something in-between. "This time, I just don't know--"
Loki abruptly found himself out of the energy or the will to continue discussing whether or not they would be doing this. "Must you make me ask?"
"...Okay," Barnes said, seeming to soften further with some understanding, though of what Loki could not have guessed. "If you're sure you--I mean, if it's the only way. I'll help."
"Good." For some unknown reason, Loki found himself nearly as stung by Barnes' new willingness as he had been by his reluctance.
"So, how are we doing this?" Barnes asked, evidently having moved on entirely from his objections of a moment before.
"The usual way. Surely you haven't forgotten."
"No, I mean...you don't have to be tied up, do you?"
His legs lashed to the altar's legs, his hands to the horn in its center, Loki's all but certain, the first time, this will be a bleeding. That any moment from now they'll pull his head back, slit his throat from one end to the other to drain what they want from him.
He doesn't realize what they mean to do instead until moments after the first priest's cock breeches him. It's not until the third priest that he realizes this is happening, to him, Loki, crown prince of Asgard, who has always before excelled in removing himself from situations before anything permanent can happen--that it is happening, his magic draining out of him along with their uninvited seed--
"No. What was taken from me while I was bound should be more easily returned if I am not." Loki was nearly certain of this, less from what the inscriptions had said than from what they hadn't, all the empty spaces in-between. Those who had made the altar had only intended it to have the one use; fortunately for him, there was no magic in existence that could not be turned back.
He reached for the tie of his robe. For one horrifying moment, he was certain he would be unable to loosen it--but it unlooped just as easily and smoothly for him as it always had for his tormentors when he'd been attempting to deny them, twisting and writhing away from their reach. At the slightest shrug, it fell from his shoulders to pool around his feet, leaving him at the mercy of the breeze that always seemed to run through that space, no more warm or welcoming than it had been any of the other times.
Barnes still stood unmoving, halfway between the altar and Loki's former cell. Part of Loki wondered why he did not wish to come closer, to be near to Loki when they had spent so long parted within their respective cells; another part of him was quite certain he would have fled this place after all, had Barnes been even an inch closer to him.
"Is there anything I need to--do we have to do it a specific way?"
"I must come upon the altar, while being fucked. None of the trappings matter."
"Okay."
Now, at Loki's beckoning, Barnes did come forward. Until he was close enough to reach out to, and to touch. Loki did not desire to touch him. Loki desired to touch him so greatly, he moved before he knew he meant to, pressed a kiss to Barnes' mouth for the first time since they had come here. For a moment, Barnes' warm lips yielded to the touch, his beard scratching softly on Loki's cheeks. His hands landed on Loki's waist, the slightest, most tentative touch, and there was nothing wrong about any of it until Loki grabbed his shoulder, meaning to pull him closer, and found the fabric of Barnes' shirt beneath his fingers.
Loki reared back so hastily he tripped over the robe he'd left behind, and stumbled even farther back than he'd meant to, until he was stopped by the altar. The cold stone scraped against his skin as Barnes stepped forward as if to attempt to steady him, then hesitated.
Loki took a breath. Clenched his fists and took another. Grabbed the altar's edge in his hands and hoisted himself upon it. "Undress, and come here."
Barnes did as asked, stripping away the filthy rags he wore. The body he revealed was nearly as filthy, and markedly slighter than what he had boasted before they'd come here, not leaner so much as lesser. He was soft as he came forward, cock dangling limply between his thighs. This time, it was he who kissed Loki, the slightest brush of his lips.
For a moment, Loki thought of turning the kiss into something harder, sharper. But it wasn't Barnes' lips that mattered here, and so instead he reached between Barnes' legs, fondled his soft cock, his dangling balls, not squeezing as he would have with his own, but exploring, giving only the occasional tug or squeeze. Barnes had always responded well to a light touch, and soon began to stiffen.
When he was hard enough for the task at hand, Loki let go his now-standing cock, and only then noticed that the lukewarm kissing had ended, and that Barnes was looking at him with some strange query in his eyes.
"What?" Loki demanded, and then decided he did not wish to know. Before Barnes could answer, Loki kissed him again, and this time it was hard, sharp, a brutal thing that might have ended in teeth if he had desired this to be anything real. "Come on," he said, spreading his legs farther, so that he could draw Barnes forward, between his own thighs.
"Uh," Barnes said, and this time his expression was much the easier to read, as he cast a glance to the side and beneath the table's edge, at the small shelf that held the supplies for the deed: coiled lengths of spell-strengthened twine, curled into a neat coil beside a small, golden bottle. "Shouldn't we--"
For a moment, Loki meant to refuse. Allowing Barnes to prepare him would take that much longer,
would remind him of the writing the priests do, fingers moving along his skin, words of a spell or words to the being they worship, it hardly matters which. Sometimes days go by between instances, but though he sometimes manages to forget what their cocks feel like inside him, the most incidental thought can return the most repulsive moments: their robes brushing against him with each thrust; and their fingers, cool and moist along his back.
but then he thought of how each entry had hurt, how they'd had all that oil and yet gone in dry each time, the previous priests' spend being the only thing to make it any easier. If pain had been the least of his concerns then, he abruptly found that he had no desire whatsoever to experience it again now.
"Very well," Loki said, and instead of watching as Barnes spread the bottle's contents over his fingers, looked beyond him. From this position, he could see the doorway of his cell; could almost see the mat he'd spend the last few months lying upon, sleeping and attempting not to sleep, dreaming and wishing not to dream.
He did not have to be looking at Barnes to know precisely when it would happen. Barnes' hand trailed up Loki's inner thigh, just barely warm and aimless enough not to bring another reminder of the priests. When his hand reached his destination, his fingers trailed around Loki's entrance for much longer than necessary, his fingertip projecting what was to come for nearly a minute before it slipped in.
Loki pulled Barnes closer by his shoulders, one warm and soft, the other cold and hard. Still looking around, at the cell door and the bodies strewn around like so much rubbish, he turned to where he knew Barnes' ear would be, and said, "Don't toy with me."
"Okay," Barnes said, and slid more of his finger in, and then the next beside it, working Loki open, if not quite vigorously, then more workmanlike than he'd been attempting previously. Soon a third finger had joined it, and he said, his breath brushing against Loki's shoulder, "You want anything else?"
At any other time, Loki would have been shivering out of desire for Barnes' hands. Or better yet, for Barnes' mouth, and for his own hands in Barnes' hair, tugging him this way and that, an abuse Barnes seemed to enjoy just as much as the lighter touch.
"No," he said, and very nearly added that Barnes knew as well as he did that he would be hard by the middle of this endeavor either way. "I told you, you have to fuck me. Foreplay is not required."
"Okay," Barnes said. He pulled away for a moment, just slightly, enough to reposition himself and to give Loki another look--not the searching look of minutes before, but one so casual it could only have been rehearsed. It was perhaps the only expression he could have worn that would have made Loki feel even slightly less on edge, even as he was certain there was no other he would have resented quite as much.
Instead of finding an answer for that expression, Loki grasped for Barnes' stiffened cock, guided it to where it needed to be. Then Barnes, still-casual, pushed in, not eagerly but with no apparent reluctance, in an unhalting stretch and burn, until he was seated. Then he paused with an undesired and unspoken question, buried hilt-deep within Loki's body.
"Do it," Loki said, resenting the question all the more because Barnes had never felt the need to stop and check on him before.
"Okay," Barnes said, which was a word that was growing decidedly tedious.
He drew most of the way back out, with that same lack of desire or non-desire, then thrust his hips forward again, a fucking that was steady rather than quick or slow. He knew precisely which spot to brush against, and thus hit it unerringly with each thrust in and out. It sparked a slow-rising pleasure that Loki liked a great deal at other times, when it came with Barnes' laughter and slow kisses against his neck. But now that they were here, Loki found he did not desire to be here any longer than he had to be. Every thrust made him desire nothing more than to be done. To be away from here.
"Fuck me like you mean it," he said. "Fuck me and feel something ."
The priests fuck him like a duty, never any telling if they're pleased or displeased with the chore. It's always the same: business-like fucking that happens to go on long enough for Loki to grow hard from nothing more than the edge of roughness in it.
Afterward, seething in his cell, he goes back and forth often on whether being passionately ravished would actually be better. He's fairly certain, every time, that it could hardly be any worse.
What did it matter if Barnes were disgusted with the entire affair, or if what filled his eyes was pity? Hate and love and everything in between, they were all the same. Anything was fine, as long as it wasn't indifference, or this new, careful non-feeling.
Still, for a moment Loki hardly dared to look at Barnes' face. When he did, what he found there was strange, for Barnes, who typically settled on one expression for minutes as a time, seemed to be flitting through them one by one. There was something like guilt there (why?), and anger, and then something sadder and more tender, like and unlike pity--and, most surprisingly, desire, not quite the aspect Loki was accustomed to seeing, but close enough for him to be sure.
"Fuck me," Loki said again, and Barnes nodded and began to drive into him, much rougher than the priests had been.
For a minute, his body failed to respond to Barnes' newfound efforts, and Loki began to wonder if it would, after all. If his cock, having risen so many times when he'd wished otherwise, would now refuse to do so when it was most needed.
Then, just as he might have begun to well and truly panic, Barnes reached between them and wrapped his metal fingers around him. After a mere handful of brusque tugs, his hand no gentler than his cock, Loki's own cock began to stiffen.
He was left barely any time to feel relief, for as soon as he was fully erect, Barnes' hips began to snap into him even harder than before as if there were something else driving him. The altar grew warm beneath his back. The air around began to shine, green with shards of gold, not quite solid enough to grasp.
"Is it working?" Barnes asked.
The altar grows colder with every priest, the air an ever-darkening sludge as more of Loki seeps away, quickly at first and then maddeningly slowly, a sickening draining--
"Yes," Loki said. "I believe so. As long as I actually do come --no, not like that."
Barnes' hand, which had reached between them again, fell away. His efforts elsewhere seemed, somehow, to renew. His upper half leaned into Loki as he pressed his forehead to Loki's shoulders. His breath came harsh, ragged gasps.
With some alarm, Loki gasped, "Don't you spill first. You'll ruin everything."
"Not going to," Barnes gasped back. "Stop your nitpicking."
For a moment, it might be any of the other times. A ritual to bring the rain, not long after they've begun fucking to while away the weeks between star systems, Barnes snickering about how ridiculous the whole thing is even as the sky opens, mere moments after they've both finished. A ritual to raise a ward over a village that has thrice been raided by creatures that look like, but are not, a bizarre hybrid between a spider and a dragon, Barnes loudly supposing through the entire event that hunting down the nest might actually have been easier, not to mention less messy. A fertility ritual months after that, a silly thing Barnes suspects and Loki knows has no basis in reality, but that they both throw themselves into anyway, even as Barnes insists that pretending one of them is impregnating the other would perhaps work better if either of them was capable of carrying a child.
"Come on," Barnes said, and perhaps he'd remembered, as well, that half of the appeal of the thing had always been his good-natured complaints, for he added, "If you'll hurry up and finish, then we can hurry up and leave."
Loki did not intend to respond to this sentiment. He responded anyway, the tide sweeping over and through him, until there was nothing left to do but to reach out and absorb the waves. The altar's power crashed into him, and built and built, within and without, the longest fall in memory. For a moment, Loki might have feared he could not hold all that he grasped for, all that he took. He might have feared it, if he'd been any less intent on leaving nothing for whatever future priests there might be.
"Yeah," Barnes said, when the light and the warmth had gone, and what was left was the two of them on top of a magic altar that was now simply an altar. He must have come at some point as well, his wet cock softening against Loki's thigh in the moment before he straightened up and backed away. "That did something, anyway."
Loki, filled with what he thought might be more power than ever before, held a palm up, and called forth a spellfire. A green crackling thing, every child's first casting, it swept in as easily as if he'd never spent months in a cell calling on a flame that refused to spark.
"That's amazing," Barnes said. With anyone else, Loki would have assumed mockery--but Barnes had always been thrilled by even the smallest iterations of Loki's magic, and so instead of finding some way to subtly punish Barnes for his sarcasm, Loki instead waved a hand and clothed them both. "Now can we go?"
"Please," Loki said.
If stepping over all those bodies on the way out was satisfying, then doing it knowing he'd come away with far more than had been taken was satisfaction indeed.