#there's a callback to this later in the chapter in a scene where mac needs help washing his hair

[altschmerzes]

🌹any bit of angsty comfort from the torture fic?

oh you know it!! thank you i'm excited to share some of this :)

got uh. got A LOT of that coming up, so here's a section from shortly after they've been allowed to take mac home from medical. it's a long fic so this is gonna be a bit of a long clip sldfkj, enjoy!! gonna put it under a cut bc of, well, It Is From The Torture Fic, though he's home and nothing further bad is like. actively happening to him.

specific content warnings: a Lot of references to murdoc pulling mac's hair and the whole Pliers Situation from part 1. (also a generalized like... sense of shame and having been somehow Ruined by what happened to him.)

--

Jack is sitting there on the couch with him and has been since they got home, paying only nominally more attention to whatever is happening on the screen than Mac is. Most of his attention is on Mac himself, even though his eyes are on the movie. He’s got a hand on Mac’s head moving his fingers through Mac’s hair in slow strokes. The callouses on his fingertips brush Mac’s temple when he reaches the ends and starts over again.

It’s gentle and affectionate, the sort of thing that, on a good day, might make Mac blush and look away while he privately stowed the memory somewhere he’d always be able to retrieve it whenever he got to wondering if anyone had ever really loved him at all. That’s how it makes him feel when Jack touches him like this - loved. Safe, and important, and loved. Like he’s someone’s family. Someone’s son, he might even dare to allow himself to imagine sometimes.

Right now, though, it doesn’t feel like it usually does. Right now, Mac is fighting against a simmering panic that’s threatening to grow too large to tolerate the longer it continues. He knows that it’s Jack sitting beside him, knows who the hand on his head belongs to and even further knows that person is someone who would quite literally die before intentionally harming him.

Even so, the fear is strong and thick, taking over everything else until it’s all that’s left. Nausea stirs in his gut and dread hammers at the inside of his skull until Mac is certain that any moment the gentle stroking is going to turn into a vicious grip, yanking on his hair to twist his head back and around, wherever his captor wants him, because his body doesn’t belong to him and there’s nothing he can do to stop-

“Please don’t pull it,” he manages in a faint, nearly inaudible whisper when the vortex of anxious anticipation grew too strong to fight any longer and the only other option was lashing out in a desperate bid to get the man touching him to stop. The hand on his head goes very still, and Mac’s chest feels like it’s cracking into pieces. He closes his eyes and feels the hot trickle of a few tears coursing down the side of his face.

“What?” The question comes after a long beat of silence, and then Jack pulls away entirely. His hand leaves Mac’s head and Mac grieves acutely for its loss. A few more tears make it out through his squeezed-shut eyelids despite his efforts to stifle them. “Do you- Should I stop? If this is uncomfortable for you- if anything I ever do is uncomfortable for you, if it’s freaking you out, then I don’t have to-”

“No!” Mac doesn’t know where he gets the strength to say it, except that he feels like the alternative would be so much worse. “I mean, no, you don’t… You don’t have to stop, just- Don’t pull on it. Please.” The tone on please is practically begging, so close to the way he’d begged Murdoc to stop hurting him when he’d cracked and been unable to help himself, and Mac feels so ashamed of himself he might drown in it. Murdoc had laughed when he’d broken and started to plead, and it hadn’t even brought him any relief. If anything, the pliers had clamped down tighter, a thought that makes his side pulse in remembered agony.

You're not there, he tells himself, and tries to believe it. You're not there. You're with Jack and you're safe. He wouldn't do that to you.

“Okay,” is the response when it finally comes, delivered in a thick voice after a few moments of heavy silence. “I promise. I swear on my daddy’s grave, kid, I will not- I will never pull your hair.” The last part of the oath wavers, like maybe Jack was somewhere near being about to cry himself, and Mac’s throat throbs in a way that’s unrelated to the deep bruises ringing it.

So long passes with only the sound of the movie for Mac to pick up on, eyes still closed and face still turned nearly into the back of the couch, that he begins to feel strangely alone. He wishes he hadn’t said anything at all because the fear of his hair being suddenly and cruelly yanked is better than this. He would take that over the detached cold of feeling like he’s been split open and ruined so thoroughly that nobody could bear to let their skin come into contact with his when reminded of it. And then, just when he was halfway convinced that it never would, the touch returns. It’s even gentler than before and Mac’s chest hitches with something that might have been a sob of relief if it had the energy to be anything more than a slightly jagged breath. The hand brushes through his hair a few times, then Jack flattens it to the top of Mac’s head, his thumb stroking Mac’s temple.

[aurorawest]

⭐ If you could, write about the part where Loki and Thor are desguised as women as they escape that army camp.

Oooh, sure!

Context: this is from chapter 14 of The Real Asgardians of the Galaxy. Loki is in a massive army encampment and manages to locate Thor by astral projecting. In order to pass through the camp to actually get to Thor, Loki takes female form and barges into Thor’s tent. Thor doesn’t recognize her at first so Loki transforms into a man again. Here’s their escape:

Looking at Loki like he’d just grown a second head, Thor said, “Great plan. I only see one problem with it. We’re here and there’s no way to get out of this camp without being seen. There are guards all around the perimeter, and—” But he stopped, noticing, finally, the way Loki was smiling at him. “Wait. You’re not going to—”

“Why not? It worked for me.”

“It worked for you because when you look like a woman, you are a woman!” Thor said. “I can’t—how am I supposed to pretend?”

“My magic is easily up to the task of glamoring away your hulking masculinity,” Loki said with a flick of his fingers. When Thor still looked doubtful, Loki added innocently, “You’ll be lovely, I’m sure. Did you have a preference on hair color?”

“I’m not concerned about being pretty,” Thor said. “I’m concerned about getting stopped and questioned.”

I knew I wanted Thor to object to this plan because, quite honestly, it’s funny for Thor to object to this plan. What I did not want to do was have Thor objecting to the plan because the idea of looking like a woman was distasteful to him. I also didn’t want him to come across as disparaging the fact that Loki can be both male and female. But Loki is almost kind of pushing to object to it on both of those levels, because Loki likes to push, and he wants people to admit to ugly things so 1) he can feel superior, and 2) he can feel like a victim.

[...] “We won’t be stopped,” Loki said. “And if we are, it will be because someone wants to buy our services. That’s easy enough to make them forget. No one here has any idea I can do magic. We stick to the main paths until we get to the airfield.”

“And then what?” Thor asked. “Have you seen the wall around it?”

“No,” Loki admitted.

“It’s a pretty serious wall.”

Loki raised an eyebrow. “I’m a pretty serious sorcerer.”

Loki has already assumed Thor is going to dismiss his ability to get them out of the situation. He’s totally geared up for an argument here.

Thor looked at him. Loki stared back, wondering if Thor would discount the fact that magic could get them out of this. There was a long history between them of Thor dismissing Loki’s sorcery. It was a talent he couldn’t understand, didn’t share, and which he saw as suspect. At least, he always had in the past. 

Hm, but is this really true? This is Unreliable Narrator Loki at his finest. He’s telling us that Thor was always this way. Loki has been really hurt by what he perceives as Thor’s dismissal of his magic. If you asked Thor, though, he’d probably tell you the opposite story. The actual truth is somewhere in between. This is an example of the two of them not understanding how to communicate with each other.

Things had changed between them after Sakaar. Maybe this had, too.

Thor nodded. “Alright.”

Loki’s mouth opened to argue, but then he realized what Thor had said and he snapped it shut. A smile flashed across Thor’s face, as though he knew exactly what had just gone through Loki’s mind. 

All set to argue, and then nothing to argue with! Thor is definitely trying harder to be what Loki needs him to be, and you can see that here.

I trust you, brother, Thor had said to him before he’d manually calculated the jump that had brought their ship to Asgard. Maybe he’d meant it.

Callback to chapter 1 of the fic, where their navigation system is down and Loki manually calculates a jump on the back of a Big Mac wrapper.

With a nod in return, Loki lifted a hand and twisted his wrist. This was unnecessary, but he’d begun doing it as a courtesy to the people around him in Asgard who hadn’t liked his magic. 

I really love this particular head canon, where Loki’s magic doesn’t require any kind of gesture, spoken spell, etc. It’s a fun thing to play with, because it means he can be as showy as he wants to—but he doesn’t have to be.

[...] A green line of magic ran from Thor’s head to his feet, leaving a woman standing there in his place. Loki completed his own transformation and then said quietly, “Let’s go.”

I purposefully didn’t describe Thor here because Loki hardly thinks about Thor’s physical appearance at all. Loki’s descriptions of people’s physical descriptions tend to be very cursory. Hair color, skin color, height. He’s simply not all that interested.

So what that means is: if Loki is taking more interest in someone’s physical appearance, it might be because he’s interested in them.

The two of them peeked out of the tent. A few of Thor’s cohorts were still around the campfire. [...] Loki jerked her head and they slipped out, walked past the fire, and headed for the camp’s main thoroughfare.

“I should have said good-bye,” Thor said quietly.

Loki shrugged. “Send them a postcard.”

Definitely a little projection (?) here on Loki’s part. He too feels guilty about abandoning his unit, but it takes him ages to come to terms with it. He hasn’t even started to confront the fact that Kalmsh will likely get in trouble, maybe even serious trouble. A little sneak peek of what’s to come: this is something that Loki begins to really grapple with, that despite his penchant for casting himself in the victim role, there have been people in his life who have been willing to put themselves on the line for him, often in very serious ways. He’s way too self-absorbed at this point to recognize that.

She knew it was ridiculous, but it bothered her that Thor had given even this slightest of indications that he had formed attachments to these people. Of course he had. He was Thor. Even Loki felt some affection for her unit. It wasn’t as though Thor wanted to stay here fighting with them.

At least, she didn’t think he did.

A brief comment her on the way I write Loki in female form: I usually write these scenes using male pronouns to make sure I’m not writing female Loki any different than I would write male Loki. Then I go back through and switch them. 

But then again, Thor had preferred to stay imprisoned as a gladiator on Sakaar rather than joining Loki at the Grandmaster’s side. As much as she wished these wounds would heal, they were slow to. It had been almost seven years ago for Thor, 

Hey, I’m glad I got the timespan right here! In chapter 32, I had it wrong and didn’t catch it until right before I posted, haha.

but even if it hadn’t, Thor had always had a tendency to underestimate how his actions and words wounded Loki. He let things go so easily and Loki was the opposite. [...]

This is one of the things that’s at the heart of the House of Odin dynamic. I see both Thor and Odin being this way. They’re passionate people who speak before they think, so they’ll say these deeply hurtful, horrible things...which they don’t actually believe. And Thor and Odin can’t understand why Loki takes things so personally, why he can’t just let them go, while Loki can’t understand how they can be so cruel, and why they pretend to care about him when clearly they don’t, because one time they said this one thing and that obviously is more indicative of how they feel about him then the way they treat him on a daily basis. Full disclosure, I’m very much like Loki, lol. Neither one is right or good, but it’s the way they are, and they’re two very different ways of functioning.

This obviously wasn’t the time to bring it up, though.

“You do want to leave this place, don’t you?” Loki asked.

*rimshot*

Thor looked at her. Gods, even as a woman, that dumbfounded look was unmistakable. “You’re joking.”

“Well, you seem so broken up about the fact that you left without saying good-bye,” Loki said, sneering despite her best efforts.

There is always time for Loki to get bent out of shape for people not giving him the affection he wants. This is wildly inappropriate of Loki to do at this moment, but he just can’t stop himself. He’s so needy that he’ll jeopardize their escape to take his potshot at Thor. I remember when I wrote this, I nearly took it out, because I thought Loki was being such an ass—but Loki is an ass, and I really want to show that. I want to show how warped his perception of reality can be, and how he’ll make really bad decisions because of it.

Two Preccat men walked by them, leering, but Loki ignored them and so did Thor. The men looked disgruntled but let them pass. When they were gone, Thor turned to her and hissed, “Of course I want to leave here, don’t be stupid. Why are you bringing this up now? We’re supposed to be concentrating on getting out of here.”

Thor, the voice of...reason? A major part of Thor’s arc in this fic is actually that he’s kind of a doormat because he’s so grateful to have Loki back, and that obviously can’t hold forever. He’s kind of fighting with himself here, wanting to make Loki have a conversation that Loki’s definitely not ready to have, and which frankly Thor isn’t ready to either. Thor wants to be better for Loki because he knows he’s hurt him, but Loki also is pretty much as impossible as ever.

She scowled but didn’t say anything. Thor grabbed her arm and stopped her. Loki yanked her arm out of her brother’s hold. They glared at each other, but then a group of men came stumbling down the road towards them, obviously drunk. It snapped both of them out of it. “Let’s go,” Loki muttered.

Aaaand of course they don’t have a real conversation. Huh sure hope all this stonewalling and sweeping things under the rug doesn’t result in an explosive, hurtful, horrible argument later!

Thank you so much for asking!

Fanfic Writers: Director’s Cut