Tangerines are Sweet Enough - 4.2k, Loki/Steve Rogers

[felicitygs]

gaslightgallows wrote this in response to my comment on their title meme:

It’s one of the few things Steve still has that no one can touch: the simple taste of citrus fruit, gone from Depression-era rarity to dizzingly common. And it’s one of the things he’s hesitant to share. But for one broken Asgardian prince, back from the dead one too many times to ever be quite whole again, he might consider making an exception.

And frankly, I couldn't resist, so here we are. [crosspost to AO3]:

It's cold, on the roof of the compound, and the forest all around them is dark and towering. Steve shuts the door to the roof behind him quietly, steps further out so he can see a bit better by the moonlight, then pauses.

There's someone else here.

It takes a very long few seconds for him to relax; he's been so keyed up since... everything, and as much as he appreciates the chance to relax out in the middle of nowhere, there's just--

They spent a long time running, once Thanos was dead.

"I know you're there," a rough and low voice says, and finally Steve knows who it is--Loki.

"I didn't know anyone else was up here," Steve says in reply, approaching cautiously. He's still not entirely sure what to make of Loki--Thor had said Thanos strangled him, and Steve believes that, and he believes Thor never thought to see Loki again. He didn't see Thor's face when Loki showed back up, skin tinged with the faintest orange glow; he was too busy staring at Bucky, somehow alive and whole, too busy with his own world. It wasn't until after that Steve... that any of them realized Loki was there.

Sometimes, just barely, Steve's seen the faintest flicker of orange at Loki's joints, a gleam in his eyes.

"Mm," is all Loki says in reply as Steve joins him at the edge of the roof. Steve leans against the thick ledge that Loki's sitting on.

He's seemed... different, from what Steve remembers. What any of them remember. But then, that was years and several disasters ago. In the silvery moonlight, he's all contrasts.

Steve doesn't comment how the light seems a lot warmer than it should where it touches Loki's skin.

"Can't sleep?" Steve asks.

"I am not up here to make conversation," Loki says, only his eyes sliding to view Steve askance, the slightest dip at the corner of his mouth.

"Alright." Steve looks away from Loki, looks out across the forest that swallows up the light, then up at the stars and sky. Steve's glad they aren't up there, that they're finally back on Earth, that things are finally starting to mend. It doesn't change how his stomach twists all the same staring up at the firmament.

They don't talk, and Loki doesn't look at Steve again. He just sits, a shadow in the periphery of Steve's vision. Eventually, Steve can feel the thoughts that propelled him up to the roof settle, the promise of sleep creeping into his bones, the lids of his eyes.

"Good night," Steve tells Loki.

Loki hums, a low and warm sound, but he does not turn from where he stares out across the forest.

If Steve's honest, he didn't expect him to.

***

There's a few of them at the compound, the ones without real homes or people to go back to--Thor, Steve, Wanda, Bucky, Bruce, Loki. Steve doesn't plan on staying here forever, but for now he'd rather be here to look after these people, to be a support. To, if he's honest, enjoy the fact these people are here.

Natasha comes and goes, but she's always been good at keeping herself busy. Thor flits in and out too, gone for days at a time before stopping back; sometimes, Loki goes with him.

Most of the time, he does not.

(No one fought about Loki being here. None of them sure how he came back; he wasn't lost to the snap, he was killed the old fashioned way, but he came back with those same people. Thor's asked. He's had to have, but whatever answer he got, he hasn't shared with the rest of them.)

Loki still has a smile like razors at times, still pokes and prods and so often so many of the little verbal spats over the breakfast table lead back to him. He's still an excellent performer. Steve knows that's what it is, recognizes the echoes of his own childhood performative toughness in the way Loki's smile grows sharp.

But most of the time, he leaves them alone.

Except Wanda--Steve's noticed how Loki seems to keep circling back to her, curious in a disarming way.

"If he bothers you," Steve had started, once, when it was just them, and Wanda gave Steve a look he couldn't quite read, stopping the sentence before he could finish.

"He's just curious," Wanda had said. "It's interesting, comparing notes."

"Alright."

Wanda didn't and doesn't need Steve defending her; Steve knows it, but still. He worries; still, there's the memory of Loki and New York falling to pieces around them both.

"Does he seem--How does he seem?" Steve asked.

Wanda had considered, lips pursed together, eyes focused just past Steve's shoulder, before she answered.

"He's died too often, I think," Wanda said, then stood with a stretch. "But I didn't know him before, so maybe he was always like this."

Steve didn't get a chance to ask her what she meant--Sam had shown up to get Steve and Bucky, to drag them away from the compound, and Steve ended up dragging Wanda and Bruce with.

Bruce had been the one to invite Loki, had shook his head when he came back with a quick, "He's not interested," and they'd gone out.

Another time, maybe they wouldn't have left him alone. Since everything else, the death and the vanishing and rebirths... well, it didn't seem worth it. They'd dealt with Thanos; Loki had helped.

It was enough.

***

Steve keeps going to the rooftop; he keeps finding Loki, the trees, stars, silence, and an ever deepening winter.

They don't talk; Loki greets Steve, and Steve Loki, and then that's it.

The roof is big--Steve could easily avoid where Loki sits on the edge, staring out, but once Loki's pointed out he's noticed Steve, Steve doesn't see the point in trying to hide.

If Steve's honest, it's nice to have someone to share the winter chill with, even if they don't talk.

***

After that conversation with Wanda, Steve finds he can't stop thinking about what she'd said.

He's died too often, I think.

Most people only get to die the once--Steve knows he himself is an odd case, having died the once and then come back, preserved in the ice like a mammoth and carefully retrieved to be plopped back into a world he never thought he'd see again.

(Sometimes, he wonders about Wanda's choice of words; how often has she known people who die and come back? But then, Wanda is more familiar with the fears and dreams inside people's heads than Steve will ever be.)

He finds Thor and Loki at the bar dividing the kitchen and more open main room, talking in low voices that carry with their depths.

"Welcome back," Steve says, announcing himself well in advanced, pretending not to have heard discussions of refugees and Valkyries.

"Steve," Thor says, face immediately turning to a wide and friendly smile; he is, Steve thinks, just as skilled a performer as Loki. Maybe more so--Thor exudes an honesty that mean most wouldn't think to look beneath the surface. "I've not been back long, else I'd have said hello sooner."

Loki doesn't greet Steve, just sips at his mug. The setting sun is streaming through the windows, and there's a long slither of orange down his throat as he swallows that vanishes when the movement ceases.

"Bruce gave us these," Thor says, reaching into a box Steve notices only because of the movement, and he pulls out a beautiful, perfectly ripe tangerine. "They're very good, take one."

(Steve is seven, cold and hungry and it's Christmas morning; he's seven, sitting on the floor, pulling perfect miniature suns out of the foot of his stocking. Tangerines; he's seven, and he can feel the flesh tear under his thumbnail, can taste the burst of flavour on his tongue, the juice slide down his throat; he's seven, and he's sitting with his mother and everything has been cold and hunger, but there is this--tangerines, like eating the sun with his mother, and the warmth of her laughter--

Steve hasn't eaten a tangerine since she died, since Bucky vanished off to war; too many memories, too much intimacy.

He laughs, instead, and shakes his head; Steve can perform, too, used to make a life of it selling war bonds.

"No thanks," he says. "You guys enjoy them."

Loki is looking at Steve, his pupils gleaming the same sweet sun orange of the fruit in Thor's hand. Steve feels his soul shiver, twist away from the look in some attempt to hide itself, then Loki blinks and the sensation is gone and the god's eyes are only the dark depths of a forest that swallows the light.

Thor is talking; it takes Steve a second to find his place in the comforting stream of words before he can join in the conversation.

***

Steve wakes in a cold sweat--he can't remember the dream, just remembers his mother's voice and cold and a blur of violence, his subconsciousness mashing together a thousand scars into a new personal hell. He sits up, rubbing his forehead, and for a while just leans against his knees, sweat cooling on his skin, eyes closed.

He gets up, pulls a sweatshirt over his head, and heads for the roof.

Loki is there, like he's been every night that Steve has ended up on the rooftop.

Steve is quiet as ever, and yet he hasn't even shut the door when Loki is speaking.

"You lied to Thor, earlier," Loki says, and his head turns ever so slightly, putting his face in silhouette.

Steve shuts the door, forces himself to move towards Loki. It's more noticeable, now that the air is frosty at night, that it's warmer around Loki. Just enough for Steve to notice when he's in thin pajama bottoms and a sweatshirt.

"About?" Steve says.

"The tangerines," Loki says. As Steve joins him at the ledge, he sees there is one in Loki's hands and that Loki is turning it, over and over. "Why?"

Steve shrugs. "I don't want to talk about it."

That seems to satisfy Loki; he looks away, and the silence Steve has grown to appreciate settles between them. Loki stops turning the tangerine in his hands, simply holding it, and Steve can't tell if the orange of the skin is simply reflecting onto Loki's hands, or if the thin veins beneath pale skin and paler moonlight are gleaming with their own warmth.

Eventually, Steve looks away, embarrassed.

"They remind me of my mother," he says, quietly.

"Ah."

"Do you like them?"

He expects Loki to rebuke him again; a reminder that Loki does not sit on the roof to talk, that this space is for contemplation and silence and moonlight.

"They are warm," is what Loki says instead. "And easier than souls."

Steve's neck twinges as his head snaps sharply to look at Loki, but Loki does not look away from the sliver of moon in the sky. The tangerine in his hands is glowing, Steve realizes, ever so faintly, and the glow is like a thousand half seen glimpses under Loki's skin, in his eyes, that have been adding up ever since the god started to stay with them and Steve could notice.

"What do you mean?"

"I am not here to talk," Loki says, shaking his head slightly, and his eyes slide to meet Steve's.

Steve half wants to shake him; it seems unfair, that for a tantalizing moment Loki did seem to want to talk, but then, as soon as the urge comes, it passes. Steve realizes--he shared something secret, and so has Loki.

The scales are even again.

"Alright," Steve says, and looks away.

***

Later, Steve finds Thor, alone. Thor is reading, the little paperback in his hands almost swallowed whole, sprawled out so he takes up all the floor in front of couch and then some; a lion, at rest.

"How did Loki come back?" Steve asks.

Thor looks up from his book, one eyebrow dipping down. With his eye missing, there seems something ancient in him; like Thor has traded away for a secret that makes the air thick as storms around him when he's serious. Or maybe Steve is only imagining that; they've all seemed older since Thanos.

Thor does not frown; he gestures, so Steve sits in one of the arm chairs while Thor carefully dog-ears the page he's on and closes the book, laying it next to him on the couch. He considers Steve, leaning his head against one hand. Steve waits patiently, and then, with a soft sigh, Thor finally answers:

"I don't know."

Steve blinks, opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again. Closes it again. It is not the answer he expected, and he's not sure what to do with it.

"Didn't you two discuss it?"

"We did."

Thor doesn't say anything else, and Steve feels more lost than ever.

"But you don't--"

"I do not understand it," Thor interrupts patiently, rolling through Steve's words with all the inevitably of a melting glacier. "Not for lack of trying, mind you, but--he is different, now. He was different before Thanos killed him, but that was just someone changing. This is." Thor pauses, collects his thoughts, begins again. "This is different again, and not in the same way. He has told me, and I do not understand it. I know he is yet my brother; I know that he forged his own way back when he should have died for good." Thor smiles, sad and soft and small. "He's good at that."

Steve nods.

"What did he say?" Steve asks cautiously.

Thor heaves out a sigh, and he looks away from Steve. He doesn't answer right away.

"It's not mine to tell," Thor finally says; Steve knows there will be nothing more he'll get out of Thor.

"Okay," Steve says, then, "Thank you."

Thor's laugh is rough and melancholy, his smile bittersweet.

"I'll leave you to your book," Steve says and leaves.

***

It seems as if there is always a tangerine in Loki's hands when Steve sees him now--never peeled, always whole and gleaming and full of sun-orange glow. On the roof, at breakfast, at the rare dinner he joins the rest of them. Always being rolled between his hands, always absently touched.

And easier than souls.

Thor said if Steve wants to know--and he does, desperately, with an edge unsheathed by Thor's lack of answers--that he must ask Loki; but the night is not for talking, and Steve feels the daylight all wrong for that. There's so many more people during the day; at night, there is the moonlight and forest and cold, and no one else but them.

It's Bruce who suggests the menorah and Hanukkah celebrations for Wanda; it is Loki, most surprisingly, who voices agreement. There is a gleam to his eyes, and he rolls the tangerine--the same one, it must be, somehow whole, somehow unaging--back and forth between his hands with a manic energy.

It's the last night when Vision appears.

Wanda's face is stunned, all of them, but it's hers that sticks in Steve's memory, a complicated mess of emotions he feels claw deep into his heart. The yellow Mind Stone is missing, and Steve does not know how that can possibly work--didn't Shuri not finish in time--but, and yet--

They swarm him, Wanda first, quick to wrap her arms around him, quick to be wrapped by him, and there is a manic energy to the air--babbled questions, tears, motion, and--

Steve looks back; Loki is gone from he had been sat at the counter, just at the edge of the last night of lighting the menorah.

On the counter, a tangerine skin, empty.

***

Steve steps out onto a roof darker without the moon, resolved to demand some sort of explanation, sure to his core that Loki somehow was involved, and... it evaporates in the chill, staring at the empty space on the ledge where Loki should be.

He pauses, then searches the rest of the roof, but no. He's alone up here, and there is only the quiet and cold.

It is... selfish, rude, but Steve only stays up on the roof a few more minutes before creeping back downstairs, startled to find Thor in the kitchen--startling Thor, in turn, who nearly chokes on his water, the plastic in his hand bending as he instinctively grips it.

"Sorry," they both say, near in unison.

Thor smiles ruefully.

"Can't sleep?" Steve asks.

"Only thirsty. And you?"

"Bad dreams."

Thor nods; a quiet settles between them, Thor emptying out and throwing away the cup before getting a new glass. It's not the same as the quiet on the roof, but it's...

It's not what Steve is looking for, and the realization surprises him.

"Have you seen Loki?" he asks before he can stop himself.

"He's asleep," Thor says. "Really, I'm glad; I think it might be the first rest he's had."

"Oh," Steve says. "That's good."

"Indeed."

There's a tangerine still, in the box; the last one.

"Are you going to eat that?" Steve asks Thor.

"I thought you said you don't like them?"

"Maybe I'll change my mind if I try it again."

Thor smiles a little, and shakes his head. "Then have it."

"Thanks," Steve says, and, "Good night," and then he feels, almost, like he's fleeing, as if he's stolen the sun from under Thor's nose and is trying to sneak to bed before Thor realizes what he's lost.

Alone, in his bed, he closes his eyes and holds it near his nose, and breathes in deep. The smell is... what he remembers, more, and for a little while, he soaks in the warmth of the memories it stirs.

(Makes up for a different sort of warmth he missed tonight.)

***

Loki sleeps three days. Thor notices, and Steve notices, but the rest of them seem to--well, if anyone else does, they don't comment.

Everyone is focused on Vision.

Loki stumbles to breakfast on the fourth day, slides into his usual bar stool; Steve gives him a plate of bacon and eggs and toast, and Loki mutters a thanks, and there is no warmth in the air around him.

"We're out of tangerines," Bruce says.

Loki grunts and starts to eat, not taking his eyes off his plate; soon enough, the conversation picks back up again. Wanda and Vision will be going... somewhere, Steve hasn't paid attention, and maybe he should, but he's.... preoccupied.

Loki leaves as soon as he's eaten; Steve tries not to focus on it, or on the way Loki's shoulders are curled in, the particular squint of warding off a light-induced migraine.

He can't help but notice when Wanda slips off to go after him while the rest of them set up a board game.

***

Loki is not on the roof again that night, either; he does not appear any night after, and Steve stops looking. Loki rarely comes out of his room, when he does, he squints and scowls and his temper flares at the slightest prod.

Wanda's expression casts sympathy and... gratitude, more often than not.

They set up a Christmas tree, stockings; Steve doesn't expect to, but he feels... nice about it. There's a comfort in the warm glow of the Christmas tree's light that reminds him why people have been lighting candles in midwinter for centuries now.

Thor leaves again; Loki does not go with him.

***

Maybe it's because it's Christmas Eve; whatever it is, Steve finds he can't sleep, tossing and turning. He keeps thinking of Christmases long past, of his mother and Bucky, how this is--it horrifies him to realize--the first proper Christmas he's had since the serum, before the serum. They'll be traveling tomorrow, going to visit the others and their families and friends and people; it will be--

good, he thinks firmly. He rolls again, and he sees the last tangerine, the one he took, sitting on his bed stand.

Steve pushes himself up, gets dressed, and grabs the tangerine before he leaves his room.

The hallways are quiet, dark; he approaches the soft glow of the main room, twinkling with the tree's lights, and pauses as he realizes there's someone else there. It takes a moment, and then--

"You're awake," Steve says.

Loki does not startle from where he stands. He's by the stockings, and there is one in his hands. On the mantel, there is a basket full of chocolates and decks of cards and trinkets.

Stocking stuffers, Steve realizes; already, half of them are full.

"What are you doing?" he asks.

"I read," Loki says, slow and even, "that they are meant to be filled."

"I mean...." Steve trails off, then, "Why?"

Loki shrugs.

"It's something to do, I suppose," he says.

Steve comes around, sits down on the couch. Loki doesn't seem to care that Steve is watching him work; with a start, Steve realizes Loki is adding a few tangerines to the foot of every stocking.

"Do they--did they do this on Asgard?" Steve asks.

"No," Loki says.

"Then how do you know about the fruit?"

Loki doesn't answer, just fills the last stocking--his own--full of chocolates and caramels and no fruit at all, then moves with an even pace to sit on the opposite side of the couch Steve is on, eyeing his handiwork.

Steve looks down at the tangerine in his hands; it feels small, the peel a little loose around the fruit inside. When he looks up again, Loki is watching him, his pupils ringed ever so faintly with that gleam of orange again.

Steve hadn't realized it was missing.

"What was it like?" Steve asks.

Loki's head tilts, just a little, like a raven's, then he shrugs.

"Difficult," is what he says. "Are you going to eat that?"

Steve stops turning the tangerine over in his hands and looks down at it.

"Yes," he says, looking up just in time to catch the tiniest flash of disappointment in Loki's eyes. "But--"

"But?"

Loki's eyes are green, pupils ringed in tangerine orange, and there is a warmth that seeps into the air around him, that shimmers sometimes beneath his skin. Steve edges closer, so they are sitting nearly folded knee to folded knee, and lets a little of that warmth seep into his skin.

(Tangerines are meant to be shared; it's what his mother always said.)

Loki does not move away, does not blink; only lets that oh-so-familiar silence (the one Steve has missed so much) rest between them. In the glow of the Christmas lights, he seems like someone half-dreamed up, unreal; maybe, Steve thinks, he is.

Maybe Steve's dreaming.

"My mother," Steve says, letting muscle memory tear into the skin of the fruit in his hands while he keeps eye contact with Loki, "always said they should be shared."

"Oh?" Loki says, and he's close--so close his breath warms Steve's skin.

"Yeah," Steve says, and peels off one segment. His skin feels flush as he holds it up, deepens red hot as Loki bites it without breaking eye contact. The edges of Loki's eyes tilt in a smile that Steve can't see, because he's sure if he looks away from Loki's eyes, he'll wake up.

"How delightful," Loki says after he swallows, and his smirk is sharp and warm and full of promises; his fingertips slide across Steve's palms to grab another segment.

Steve chews what Loki offers slowly, lets the golden sun citrus burst on his tongue, savors it.

"Thanks," Steve says after he swallows; Loki laughs, and then he closes what little space is left.

He tastes like the sun, Steve thinks as his eyes close, and he smiles, some long lost joy reigniting in his chest; against his lips, he feels Loki smile too.

***

Thor touches down on the roof of the compound, Valkyrie and Sif both in tow. It is, he's sure, the right down, but the sun is still below the horizon, no more than the faintest wash against the sky promising it will soon rise.

They head in quietly; soon, Thor knows, Steve will be up and making breakfast, and the scent will draw the others up from their beds.

"Well, would you like at that," Valkyrie says, stopping and grinning; Sif gives a quiet laugh, and Thor turns to see what--

Loki and... Steve? They're both on the couch, asleep under a throw, a tangerine peel forgotten on the coffee table. Thor can't help feeling the faintest bit of a smile start to creep across his features--and here, he had thought Loki only barely tolerating the others here, minus the obvious soft spot for Wanda's young talents.

"Leave them," Thor whispers to them both before either woman gets it into their head to bother the two of them, adding with a cheeky grin, "It's Christmas."

Later, Thor knows, Loki will be all venom and ill-temper that anyone saw him vulnerable; later, Steve will be a crimson glow that might well be a Christmas. Later, maybe Thor will regret his choice, a little.

For now, though, he'd rather leave them both to their peace, fragile and warm and surrounded in the warm tangerine orange glow of sunrise.