FIC: Regardless of Warnings ~ Tom Hiddleston/Loki ~ Teen ~ Part Two

[batsutousai]

Title: Regardless of Warnings
Series: Tales of the Fairy Men
Fandom: Marvel (movie 'verse) & Real Person Fiction
Author: Batsutousai
Beta: Bri
Rating: M/R
Pairings: Tom Hiddleston/Loki
Warnings: minor character death (pre-story), robbery, mention of murder, minor mention of religion, angry first kiss, enough self-hatred to overflow a small ocean
Challenge: 2013 Fairy Tale Writing Prompt Challenge
Summary: A large, haunted manor near the small village where the Hiddlestons are forced to settle turns out to be too much of a mystery for Tom to ignore.
Sometimes, love is found in the most impossible places.

Part One

-0-

When his father demanded to know where he'd been the past four days – four?! But he'd only been awake for two! Well, and the first night of the storm, but that still left one day unaccounted for – Tom admitted that he'd been caught out in the initial downpour and had fallen ill from the chill. His father accepted it, but Sarah frowned at the book he'd brought back with him, as well as the change of clothing; no one in the village would have been able to outfit him in something so nice.

She didn't ask, though, and must not have made mention to James, for Tom's disappearance wasn't brought up again.

The following months were slow, an ache in Tom's chest keeping him from showing anything more than false cheer at his continued carpentry work. He read the book he'd brought from the manor three times and kept it under his pillow as he slept.

One morning, having delivered Emma to the village, Tom found his feet leading him to the wizened old woman's home, where she sat on the stoop with some knitting. "Grandmother, will you tell me about the third son?" he requested.

She glanced up at him, considered his tired expression, then motioned for him to sit with her. "He was born with the feeding cord from his mother wrapped twice around this throat, bright blue and still. His parents thought he was dead, but he wasn't. He was sickly, yes, and far smaller than his brothers, but he clung to life with a determination that surprised everyone.

"Ah, but he never lost the colour he'd been born with, a colour that shamed his father into hiding him away, never allowing him from the manor to be seen. Only very few servants knew of him, sworn to secrecy of his existence." She glanced down at Tom, who was watching her, the ache in his chest intensifying at the knowledge of what the current master of Jötunheimr Manor had gone through as a child. "He is called Loki."

"Loki," Tom repeated, tasting the name on his tongue.

"You've made his acquaintance," she guessed.

Tom nodded. "Grandmother, why does he lock himself up in there?"

She sighed and shook her head. "I cannot say," she admitted. "Perhaps it is because that is the life he knows, perhaps he is afraid for the fearful reactions his appearance will garner."

"But he's beautiful," Tom insisted.

She smiled at him, heartbreak bleeding through her eyes, and gently ruffled his hair. "Not everyone is so willing to look past skin, Young Tom."

Tom knew that was true and he hunched around his knees, letting his chest ache for a moment longer before he pushed himself to his feet. "Thank you, Grandmother."

"You're a good boy, Tom," she told him, "but that's a fragile creature you have your eyes trained on. Fragile creatures always lash out before anyone can get too close, unwilling to chance that final crack that will shatter them forever."

Tom remembered disbelief in red eyes, a flight of terror, locked gates. "I think it's a little late for that warning, Grandmother," he admitted.

"Once you've found the way through his net, the opening is there for you forever. You just have to find it again."

Tom frowned and let those words follow him back towards where he'd tied Sleipnir, considering the meaning. Considering the people who had gone before, who had found other ways past the gate; a hole in the hedge, just large enough for three terrified children to duck through.

A horse that could find his way home.

Tom untied Sleipnir, something like hope combating the ache in his chest. He was supposed to be collecting logs for his next big project today, but there was space on his rough time table for him to take a day off. "Let's go see Loki," he said to Sleipnir, hoping the horse knew who that meant.

Sleipnir's ears perked forward at the name. He only stayed still long enough for Tom to climb onto his back, then he was racing through the village, aiming for the manor, and Tom smiled as he clung to Sleipnir's neck.

Sleipnir led them to the gate, over which hung two bandits, flies buzzing about their heads. Tom grimaced in distaste and was about to warn the horse about the gate not opening, when Sleipnir touched his nose to the iron and they creaked open.

"You're secretly some sort of magical key, aren't you?" Tom muttered, ducking the bandits' feet as Sleipnir stepped through the open gate.

Sleipnir didn't race down the path, but walked along it with a sort of caution that sent chills along Tom's spine. He glanced up at the manor and an overbearing sense of unwelcome washed over him, making him want to turn and run back for the gates.

Sleipnir let out a sharp whinny and reared just enough to make Tom scramble for purchase on the horse's back, eyes torn away from the manor. The sense of unwelcome vanished and Tom hid his face against Sleipnir's mane, whispering, "I'm sorry. Please, please, I'm sorry."

Sleipnir finally stopped directly in front of the manor, unmoved when Tom said, "I need to stable you before I can go in."

When neither jerking at the reins nor pressing his thighs against Sleipnir's side had the horse moving, Tom finally gave it up as a bad job and made to slide off the horse's back.

Only for Sleipnir to dance to one side and let out an angry whinny.

Tom took the hint and stayed on Sleipnir's back, but he wasn't happy about it. "We can't just stand here all day, you know. I came here to talk to him, not pretend I'm at a bloody horse sho–"

The front door slammed open and Loki stalked out, blue skin even more beautiful under the light of the sun. "If you ever take Sleipnir to a horse show, not even he will save you from my wrath," he snarled.

Tom blinked. "You have fangs," he realised, somewhat inanely.

Loki stared at him, mouth open just enough for the sun to catch on the wickedly sharp edges of his teeth.

Tom shook himself and lowered his eyes. "Whatever I did last time to offend you, Loki, I apologise," he offered.

Loki's mouth snapped shut with an audible click. "Did you tell him?" he demanded of Sleipnir.

The horse gave a whinny, one which sounded almost amused to Tom's ears.

Loki blinked, then he let out an irritated noise and waved one hand. A sense like oppression lifting washed over Tom and he took a deep breath of relief. "Come in. Sleipnir will see to himself."

Tom looked down at Sleipnir, Sleipnir tilted his head to look back at him, and Tom took that as permission to finally slide off the horse's back. Sleipnir didn't stop him, held still long enough for Tom to work the bridle off, then left him to chew at the overgrown field.

Tom considered the bridle for a moment before turning and following Loki inside. He hung the bridle up next to his jacket and hat, then stopped in the foyer, because he had no clue where the manor's master had got to. "Uhm, where is he? Loki," he asked the nearest oil lamp.

The lamps lit a path to the dining room. It was empty, but a door Tom had never noticed before at the far end stood open, so he went through it.

The room he entered was a kitchen. It was well lit, between the fire in the fireplace and the sun coming through the large windows taking up most of one wall. Through the latter, Tom saw what appeared to be a prospering vegetable garden. "Emma's been trying for months to get anything to grow in Father's garden," he commented to Loki, who was seated at the small table between the doorway Tom had come through and the fireplace.

Loki flicked his eyes up at him – God, they really were red, weren't they? – then back down at the teapot he was stirring with a small spoon. "Most soil around here doesn't take well to the common vegetables."

"Did you... Can you import soil?" Tom wondered.

Loki huffed and drew out the spoon, a delicate tea ball following. "Of course you can. I don't."

"Then how do you–?"

"You're not that obtuse."

Tom took a moment to wonder if that was meant as a compliment or insult, then turned his mind back to the certainty that had been lurking just out of reach since his second visit, when the gate had taken a moment to give and the lights had lit to follow his requests and a flame had leapt too high, too suddenly–

"Magic."

Loki bared his teeth in a parody of a smile and made a motion with one hand. One of the teacups he'd just filled floated off the table and over to Tom, who took it a bit numbly. "One of my many curses."

Tom wanted to say he didn't think Loki was cursed, that he was beautiful and exotic and impossibly infuriating, that his magic seemed as much a blessing as a curse, living all alone in such a big house. But then he remembered what Grandmother had said about fragile creatures, so he instead took a sip of his tea, then asked, "Why didn't you just kill us?" Because that question would nag at him until he got an answer.

Loki considered him, expression blank over his own tea cup. Finally, when Tom was just starting to admit – to himself, if no one else – that he wouldn’t be getting an answer, Loki said, "Intention," and sipped at his tea.

Tom blinked. "What?"

Loki sighed and dropped gracefully into one of the stools scattered around the table. "The magic that keeps people out, it's intention-based. Should your intentions be pure, should they not involve an interest in robbery or damage to my property, it will let you through the hedge or – as you have discovered – the gate, alive. There is a similar spell on the front doors.

"You three were not the first to make it to a bedroom," Loki continued with a careless shrug, "but you were the first who took a look at everything offered, then turned it down." He narrowed his eyes at Tom, calculating and perhaps with a hint of confusion. "Even with my permission, you three kept, largely, to the simplest of the clothing. You didn't raid the silver or attempt to take the furniture."

Tom looked away and shrugged. "What would we do with such finery? We weren't even sure we would have places to sleep in Father's cottage, let alone space to store such things."

"Pretty things can be sold and the money can be used to buy a bigger cottage. Take enough, you could probably buy your own manor."

"And what, exactly, would an inventor and his three estranged children do with a manor?" Tom deadpanned.

Loki's mouth twitched with what Tom was nearly certain was a smile. "If I had not said those things were a gift, if I had simply left the suitcases, would you have filled them?"

Tom considered that, staring down into his tea. At last, he admitted, "I don't know." He glanced up at Loki, blue eyes catching on red and stilling for a moment, entranced. When Loki blinked, Tom forced himself to look into the fireplace behind the man. "Without knowing about Sleipnir and the cart, though... We might have taken a small case each, filled them with the necessities, so Father wouldn't have to struggle to clothe us immediately upon arrival."

"You didn't come back," Loki commented, and Tom made the mistake of meeting his eyes again. "After you left the first time. It took you a while to come back."

Tom swallowed and tore his gaze away with effort. "Uhm, yeah. Well, the villagers – Father especially – are quite unnerved by your, ah... Warning sign, I suppose? The bodies over the gate. Sarah, Emma, and I were made to promise we wouldn't come back here."

Loki tilted his head. "You did. Eventually."

Tom shrugged and tried to pretend he wasn't blushing as he admitted, "I never meant that promise."

Loki laughed, low and quiet and absolutely gorgeous.

And, God, Tom was so ruined, wasn't he? Either Loki was weaving a spell over him, or Tom's months of curiosity, followed by more of heart-break, had morphed into a level of attachment that didn't bode well.

Loki was silent for a long few minutes, giving Tom's mind the time necessary to have a minor panic attack at the thought of attraction to a male – a male that his father would never approve of, no less, even were he willing to overlook the gender difficulty.

But, well, Diana had never insisted her children follow the words of the Bible to the letter, and Tom had stopped caring what his father thought two weeks after he'd walked out the front door and not looked back. Half a year living under his roof again did not heal ten years without him, and Tom wasn't about to let it heal just so he could feel guilty for caring for someone who had hidden away from the world because he was different.

"Why did you come back?" Loki asked, finally breaking the silence.

Tom blinked, his mind struggling to return to the present. "What?"

"Now, here," Loki clarified. "Why did you return? You weren't supposed to."

Tom swallowed, considered the complicated tangle of emotions that had found him riding Sleipnir through the gate in a last-ditch chance to speak with the beautiful blue man seated across from him. Instead of answering Loki's question, though, he asked, "Why did you scare me away?" Because if he was going to answer Loki's question, he needed to know what he'd done wrong. Maybe he could avoid it this time.

Loki narrowed his eyes, searching Tom's face for something that Tom wasn't certain he could provide, so he just kept his expression open and curious. "That," Loki finally snarled, jabbing a finger at Tom, shoulders scrunching up in a movement that was quite akin to a turtle ducking into its shell.

"I don't– I have no idea what I'm doing wrong!" Tom complained.

Loki shoved away from the table, their cups clattering against their saucers, and he accused, "You don't think I'm repulsive!"

And, oh, Tom's heart felt like it had just shattered into a million pieces in his chest. "No," he whispered, voice dragging with so much sorrow for the man, "I don't."

Loki drew his arms tight against his chest and his whole body shuddered. "I think it's time you–"

"You're not kicking me out again!" Tom shouted, standing up from the table so abruptly that tea spilled from his cup. "I refuse to leave just because you can't accept that one person thinks you're beautiful!"

And then Tom realised what he'd said and red spread across his cheeks and down his neck.

Loki, for his part, just sort of stared at Tom in disbelief. "You don't– You can't– I am repulsive! I am wrong and disgusting and unnatural and–"

"No," Tom interrupted, determined and aching. "No. Wrong is the bandits lying in wait along the highways, just looking for easy prey to rob and murder. Disgusting is the way people spend the weekend in church to confess the sins that they're just going to go right back out and commit again. Unnatural is the back alleys of London, where the dying lie down to be forgotten.

"But you– You're different. Exotic."

"A murderer," Loki deadpanned, his expression flat, but his eyes flicked all over the room, unable to focus on any one thing for longer than four seconds, and completely incapable of looking at Tom at all.

Tom swallowed and returned, "Threatened."

Loki gave a laugh full of nothing but sharp edges.

Tom took a deep breath and focussed on those red eyes, for all that they refused to look back at him. "Scared. Unforgiving. Lonely."

Loki met his eyes at the last, something almost desperate in them, which was entirely at odds with the way he snarled, "I have no need for companionship beyond Sleip–"

"You gave us Sleipnir. Said he needed the exercise," Tom reminded him, gentling his tone. "You put a gate between yourself and the villagers, you've put hours between yourself and Sleipnir. When I try to get close to you, you push me away. Scare me out the front gate and lock it shut behind me. But I'm not going to let you scare me any more. Sleipnir and me, we're not going to let you lock that gate against us too. Not again."

Almost too quick for Tom to track, Loki darted forward and wrapped a hand around Tom's throat, tight enough that it couldn't be missed, but not so tight as to restrict his breathing. The boy froze, heart in his throat, but forced himself to meet the red eyes as calmly as he could. "I'll break your neck," Loki hissed, leaning in so their noses were nearly touching. "Leave you hanging between those bandits, and your father will be able to say 'I told you so'. Your sisters will be sobbing messes, mourning for a brother–"

"Do it, then," Tom said, interrupting the monologue before he could lose his nerve. God, the man knew exactly which buttons to push, didn't he? "Kill me. Prove them right. You're an absolute monster, so wrong that you murdered someone who was willing to look past everything–"

Lips crushed against Tom's, too hard and edging on painful. He reached up to find purchase against Loki's arms and chest, a recently split nail catching against skin and making Loki hiss against his mouth. Loki clamped his teeth down hard on Tom's lower lip and he purposefully scratched the split nail against the man's chest, catching on the raised line and surely drawing blood.

Loki's hand left Tom's throat, twisted around into his hair and used a grip painful enough to bring tears to Tom's eyes to tilt his head at just the right angle for the man to lick into his mouth, fucking devour him from the inside out. The hand not in Tom's curls made quick work of getting under Tom's shirt, scratching nails against the small of Tom's back hard enough to raise red lines.

And then, like a gust of air blowing out a candle's flame, Loki pulled away, eyes wild and pupils blown to twice their size. Dark blue lines crisscrossed over his chest from where Tom's nails had passed, an occasional dot of red welling up where the dark blue lines met with the lighter blue markings. The man shook his head once, then said, "Le– You need to go–"

"Don't you dare," Tom spat, stepping forward and reaching for the elder.

Loki caught his wrists and drew Tom forward until his elbows knocked against the blue chest. "If you stay, you stay," he warned, voice low.

Tom took barely a breath to decide; it wasn't hard, he'd been as good as a dead thing these past few months. "You never lock a door against me again. Not to keep me in, not to keep me out." Because as much as he didn't think he could live without Loki now that he'd got this close, he refused to live in a gilded cage.

"You stay," Loki insisted.

"Here, with you, in Jötunheimr Manor," Tom agreed, "but I refuse to hide from my family. You let them in or you learn to trust that I will always come back when you let me out."

Decisions flashed in red eyes, words and threats and plans and actions. And Tom saw the moment Loki remembered Tom coming back. And coming back again. Despite everything. "No locked doors," he finally agreed, and it clearly hurt him to allow that, something so deeply buried that Tom wasn't sure he'd ever be able to patch it back up.

But he leaned in, pressed his lips gently against Loki's, tried to show him that this didn't have to be a fight, that there could be surrender between them. Surrender and trust and maybe, in time, love.

Because even broken men with blue skin and magic bending to their will and so much blood on their hands deserved a happy ending.

The Tales of the Fairy Men Series:
Part One: Before He Drowns ~ The Little Mermaid (Turquoise)
Part Two: Crackle of Flames ~ The Steadfast Tin Soldier (Orange)
Part Three: The Curse Stops Here ~ The Frog Prince (Black)
Part Four: Occluded Front ~ The Ugly Duckling (Pink)
Part Five: Let Me Be Your Wings ~ Thumbelina (Purple)
Part Six: Chime of a Bell ~ The Red Shoes (White)
Part Seven: Regardless of Warnings ~ Beauty & the Beast (Blue)
Part Eight: Little Green Riding Hood ~ Red Riding Hood (Green)
Part Nine: Für Loki ~ The Crane Wife (Yellow)
Part Ten: One Day I'll Fly Away ~ Cinderella (Grey)
Part Eleven: Don't Count the Miles ~ Bearskin (Silver)
Part Twelve: The Snow King ~ The Snow Queen (Red)

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