Behind them, Asgard burned. Before them, emptiness loomed. It took Loki moments to determine he did not care for it, minutes more to remember he did not have to stay. He had the means to leave whenever he wished to. To retrieve it was nothing; a finger's twitch, a whim he had only to act upon.
This should have been comforting. For the first few hours, perhaps it was. Then chaos descended, a cacophony he had caused but hardly planned. Everyone began to wonder what, where, how. What they would eat. Where they would sleep. How they would obtain fuel enough to get them to Earth. When they would be attacked by pirates. Whether any of the other questions mattered if they starved first.
Thor began to wonder barely in advance of the rest, so that Loki and a few others were forced to endure the longest and least-organized council meeting ever envisioned. By the end of it, everyone was drooping and snappish, save perhaps Heimdall.
"Is there a reason you're following me?" Loki sniped after they'd been dismissed, finding the two of them in step on his way to the quarters Thor had eventually gotten around to assigning him.
"We're to share our quarters," Heimdall said, sounding mildly amused at Loki's misfortunes, just as he had about everything that had happened during Loki's stint as Odin.
Now that he mentioned it, Loki did vaguely remember Thor saying something about that. He also vaguely remembered having objected to the idea at the time. But the discussion of how quarters would be assigned had come long before the assignments themselves, so that by that latter time all he had wanted to know was which direction to walk, so that he could sleep, so that he could wake up tomorrow and decide he really did prefer to be elsewhere.
"Of course. So you can keep an eye on me," Loki said, offended but out of the energy necessary to perform offense. "Clever. Don't hog the covers."
Heimdall did not hog the covers. He was standing at the window when Loki crawled beneath them; he was still there twelve hours later, when they were obliged to vacate the room for the next shift of sleepers. What he'd seen as he stood there, there was no telling. Asgard behind them, perhaps, and emptiness before.
*
The next day was even more exhausting. It was downright depressing, in fact. They spent all day in what passed for the throne room, listening to everyone else's misfortunes. Everyone had lost someone. A spouse or a child or a brother. Everyone had lost everything, except the clothes on their back and the metal planks beneath their feet. It would be days before they reached a planet, which meant there would be days of having to hear about it before they could obtain supplies (and the renown from having obtained said supplies).
The day after that wasn't much better, nor the day after that. Every night, Loki went to bed thinking that he would most likely use the Tesseract to take him somewhere, anywhere, else in the morning. Every morning, he woke up without feeling quite like doing it yet.
And every night, Heimdall stood watch. At first, Loki didn't mind having the bed to himself. Then, he began to grow annoyed. Save for council meetings, Heimdall spent every waking hour at his post on the bridge. Was it truly necessary for him to be at it even now?
"Even you must sleep," Loki pointed out on the eighth sleeping shift, when, for the first time in memory, he could see that Heimdall was the one who was beginning to droop. There was a haggard look around his eyes, which no one else seemed to have noticed in the process of fretting about all the rest. "If I were king, I would relieve you of your duties until you did."
"Didn't you relieve me?" came the answer, though Heimdall didn't even bother to turn around from his view of the stars.
Did he sound amused, or merely weary? Either way, Loki knew his way around misdirections, and didn't intend to follow this one.
"If I were the king's brother, perhaps I would tell him to relieve you of your duties," he said.
This time, Heimdall did turn to look at him, a stare Loki had always loathed. He'd hated being watched when it meant Heimdall might see what he was doing, guess what he was planning; he'd hated it even more ever since he'd discovered his true heritage, realizing Heimdall must have known all along, must always have seen him as he truly was beneath.
"I promise not to execute you while you sleep," Loki said, a jest that fell hollow in the space between. He tried again: "If I try to stab you, I assume you'd see it coming."
"My sight is not what it was," Heimdall said, with a reluctance that Loki might not have recognized, had it not been for seeing Heimdall's other minute reactions at a hundred council meetings. "Asgard cannot be left defenseless."
"Asgard will survive a few hours without you. Besides, if you're not at your best, there's no telling what might slip around the corners of your vision. Now is there?"
Loki didn't truly expect anything to come of it. He'd never been able to convince Heimdall of anything before. It was one of the reasons he'd finally decided to get rid of him (along with his incessant amusement at those earlier council meetings, and the knowledge that he had most certainly known whom Loki was and was not). So it was all he could do not to appear utterly astonished when Heimdall turned from his view of the blackness beyond, and came to bed.
"You'll wake me an hour," he said, settling in.
"I absolutely won't," Loki said, because truth-telling was far more amusing than fictions at such moments, when there was something he had decided to do, and whoever he meant to do it to hadn't the slightest chance of stopping him. Heimdall was close and weary enough already that all Loki had to do was reach out and give him one small nudge to send him over.
The next moment, Heimdall was snoring. He'd also passed out on top of the covers, and was too heavy to be moved without being woken. Loki lay there for a few minutes, considering whether it was more important to win or to be warm. In the end, he decided as he nearly always had. His next few hours' sleep were as a result very poor.
He woke up for good hours a few hours before the shift change was due. Imagining ways he might pay Heimdall back for the poorness of his sleep, he got up and went to the window, the one Heimdall had spent the last few nights looking out on. There was little enough to see, especially for one who didn't have Heimdall's sight.
He'd meant to stand there for a few minutes, if he'd meant anything by it at all. But there was something almost hypnotic in this, finding a way to channel his magic in such a way that he could see, if not that much more than he could with the naked eye, at least something more. A little farther in each direction, seeking out not so much movement nor light as intent. Who knew they were coming? Who was friendly, and who not? Who even now considered following them, ending the last remnants of a people who had been untouchable even a week ago? He couldn't see anything as clearly as he might have liked to, or near as clearly as Heimdall would have; but he saw clearly enough to have an idea, and an idea was at least something.
He hadn't intended to be standing there when Heimdall woke--but once he'd thought of it, there was no better idea imaginable than for Heimdall to open his eyes and see Loki had claimed his post. No better way to rub it in, no better way to--
Heimdall, who had been stirring for a few minutes, eventually stirred even more, and sat up, and said, not, 'What are you doing?' or 'That's mine,' but, "How does it look?"
"No different from yesterday," Loki said, as he'd seen nothing that hadn't been in Heimdall's most recent report at the most recent council meeting.
Now Heimdall would get up and come to the window, attempting to displace him.
Except he didn't. Instead, he merely nodded, and said, "Good."
There came a certain shuffling from outside in the corridor. No one quite dared pound on their door, as they would have on nearly anyone else's when one sleeping shift had ended and the next was to begin. Still, there was always that shuffling, which seemed a little louder with each passing day.
"Time to go," Loki said, another strange reversal, as it had previously been he who lounged in bed and Heimdall who suggested they ought to make haste.
"Yes," Heimdall said.
*
After that, though Loki was not entirely certain how, they ended up splitting each night's watch. Some nights, one of them would take the first half while the other slept, and then switch. Other nights, one of them would take the entire watch, which seemed to happen almost entirely on the whim of whoever had taken the first half. (Or at least, it did when the whim in question belonged to him.)
At first, it was strange and not entirely welcome--but soon became nearly as routine as the rest of his days. Listening to whatever Thor's new crisis was, and trying to work up a magical solution via castings that certainly had not been meant for that. Going down with the rest of the landing party to barter for (and, occasionally, steal) supplies. Attending council meetings in no guise but his own, and being asked for his opinion in nearly every one. Going to bed, knowing he'd be up half the night for at least three nights out of four, and that before they vacated the room, he and Heimdall would discuss the things they had or hadn't seen.
And yet, of all the regards he seemed to have picked up along their journey, Heimdall's was the one that left him the most off-center, even after months had passed. It was not so much his apparent trust as it was how it remained steady from day to day. Loki had ever been uncertain whether he appreciated people thinking they knew what he would do next. Usually, this took the form of resentment: either that someone had decided to rely upon him, or had decided not to. Either way, his response had always been to stab the person he was spiteful toward, or transform them into something else, or betray them via one elaborate scheme or another. It might have taken years, decades, a century back in the Realm Eternal, where time was a placid, unsuspecting thing. Here, aboard the Statesman, where time was fleet and slippery, it must also be of the essence.
Yet, in the end, Loki found to his despair that he could come up with nothing worthwhile. Neither a stabbing nor a transformation seemed as if it would be enough. To show Heimdall his prize would certainly throw him...and then result in Loki's own immediate flight. He still thought of leaving every morning, but to be forced into the thing was another matter altogether.
Still, it grew within him. The desire to do something. To shake things up. To show Heimdall he did not know what Loki would do, any more than did anyone else aboard the ship. It grew and it grew, and perhaps he might have resorted to a stabbing after all, if it hadn't been for one night when he was meant to wake Heimdall for the night's second watch.
Heimdall lay there in the bed. He slumbered in the same manner in which he stood at his post: still and all but expressionless. If he dreamed, the only things that gave him away were the occasional soft sigh, and the deepening furrow between his brows. It had always been maddening, the extremes it took to drive the Gatekeeper into a response outside the usual.
Of all the ways Loki had prodded him, it occurred to him now, standing there, that there was one way he never had. How would Heimdall react, if he were to wake with Loki's lips against his own? How much greater would the reaction be, if he woke not then but later, with Loki's lips around his cock? Would he throw Loki away from him? Or would he arch beneath him, his hands grabbing Loki's hair or the back of his neck as he moaned with desire?
Now, all the weeks of barely paying attention when Heimdall disrobed in the same small space as he came back in spades, snapshots winking past him. They were tantalizing, both stoking and starving the desire he so abruptly ached with. Loki was not at all surprised to realize he was hard.
He stepped back, then forward, then back again, as undecided as he was aroused. All of this turned out to be a mistake, when Heimdall's eyes snapped open.
"It can't have been four hours yet," Heimdall said, yawning, and for a moment Loki thought perhaps his thoughts and desires of a few minutes might remain concealed. Then Heimdall's gaze sharpened, as did his voice. He sat up quickly, saying, "What's happened?"
Loki was too busy (panicking) thinking that coming too close to Heimdall had always resulted in him seeing too much to realize until later that he might have gotten away with feigning having seen something out there in the emptiness. Something he'd wanted a second opinion about, just in case it endangered the ship.
"Nothing," he said, and because he still wanted to know what Heimdall would do nearly as much as he simply wanted, he leaned forward and kissed Heimdall after all.
Heimdall's greater reactions had always been extremely satisfactory. They had also, when they were related to something Loki had done, been extremely negative. This, perhaps, was why it took him a few seconds after Heimdall had reacted for it to dawn on him what that reaction was. By then, the kiss was heated, and of the two of them it was Loki whose kisses were a degree or two less fervent, Loki who followed when Heimdall all but dragged him onto the bed.
If Loki had ever thought of Heimdall fucking, he would have imagined him as controlled in bed as he was out of it. There was no place for thinking in any of the things that happened in the next few minutes, until they'd both come, explosively and much more quickly than Loki would ever have cared to admit even to either of the people who'd been there. They lay there in the bed, each breathing as harshly as the other, neither fully dressed nor undressed. Loki might have thought then, but found he lacked the facilities for any such thing.
When both their breathing had quieted somewhat, he did manage, "Shouldn't you," and gestured vaguely toward the window, the one that looked out onto all that emptiness.
"Perhaps," Heimdall said. "But there is no ship within four hours of ours. Nor any planet, nor any doorways."
Loki had thought it was quieter and more boring tonight than the usual. Rather than finding himself too tired to perform offense at having stood for his shift anyway, he found himself too relaxed, or too pleased, or too expectant to bother with it. "Whatever shall we do instead?"
They had been one thing before, he and Heimdall. Even before tonight, they had been shifting into something else. Loki would agonize over the matter later, deciding he wanted it and didn't, craving Heimdall's desire one moment and resenting his apparent lack of distrust the next. For now, he simply reached out for Heimdall again, to see what he would do, and if it would be as good the second time as it had been the first. It happened that it was, and that there was the same question to ask of the third time. And so the hours passed, much more pleasantly than they had before.
Behind them, Asgard burned. Before them, emptiness loomed, a future that might hold anything.