Thor: Stormbreak

Prologue

"You will have your war, Asgardian. If you fail, if the Tesseract is kept from us, there will be no realm, no barren moon, no crevice, where he cannot find you. You think you know pain? He will make you long for something sweet as pain."

Loki awoke crying out, the guise of Odin abandoning him, even the paleness of Asgard slipping away, leaving a wretched blue whelp of a Frost Giant behind. In Odin’s bedchamber, in the royal palace, in Asgard. 

He tried to summon up his magic—even now, he had his wits, and they warned him direly of what would happen if the guards came in to discover the God of Mischief where they thought to find their king—but nothing gave itself over to him and he slipped under his panic like it was a sea, lashed into a motion by a cruel storm.

Thanos. Thanos and his Black Order, who had strength to match Thor and magic to match his own and more besides—much, much more. An army. Infinity Stones. And madness. That was the most dangerous thing of all. For all Loki’s arsenal, he was sane. Horribly sane, to see what was coming and know there was no stopping it. Thor could take comfort in nobility, but what balm was there for Loki, clever enough to know a hopeless fight and wise enough to see no glory in it?

Loki threw himself from the bed, soaked in enough sweat that he could’ve been a bedwetting child—weak, always so weak—and, panting, was finally able to wrest up enough magic to call up his... natural… form. The form of Thor’s brother. It comforted him like a warm blanket on a cold night. 

He had failed Thanos… Thanos and his torments, Thanos and his heat, Thanos and his need for loyalty and success that made the All-Father look lenient. 

Thanos who was willing to burn him half to death just so Loki would be forewarned of what would await him if he failed.

Loki paced the royal suite, alone but not unaccompanied. No, everywhere he went there were signs of Odin’s presence, yes, and Frigga as well. He was surrounded by them. Their memory pressed in on all sides. He had inherited the throne—why shouldn’t he? Loki Odinson—but when had Odin told him it would be so lonely? Perhaps that was why he had so favored Thor, Thor who had the strength to stand alone, and yet that isolation brought him friends, family, a team. All his wits and Loki couldn’t figure out the irrational. 

He passed a chessboard, its game yet in progress. He did not know who Odin had been playing when it was left unattended. Loki had never moved to put it away, at first for fear someone would want to continue the game, and then because it felt too much like he was playing the old man (old fool, Thor had called him, just like Loki). Now he noted that black had white in check.

Loki clenched his hand into a fist and the gameboard removed itself from his sight, its pieces scattering across the room. He certainly wasn’t playing white, but he was in check all the same. Surrounded by white pawns on all sides, while they too were unknowingly surrounded by black—neither side willing to take him in except by his subterfuge. False loyalty to Thanos, who now knew better. False face to Asgard, who would learn better in time. Thor could not be put off eternally, placated with the false affection he craved as much as… well, as much as Loki had. Before…

A knight rolled against Loki’s bare foot. White. Loki stooped and picked it up. Imagine if he’d stepped on it. An annoyance, but a piquant one. Much like Laufey or Malekith, in the grand scheme of things.

Or Thor.

Played correctly, though, a knight could change the game.

Loki stood, tossing the gamepiece up into the air and catching it once more. Chess wasn’t his game. The pretense of battle, the pristinely sanitized artifice of combat—it was all very much Thor’s thing. He preferred cards, naturally enough. Playing men was more challenging than playing intellects. If you figured out an opponent carefully enough, you could make them play for you—in chess as well. Make the enemy move the way you wanted him to move, and his attack became an opening left for your counterattack. 

That was what he needed. To turn his enemies against each other. To twist attack into defense, foe into friend—catastrophe into victory.

His breathing was under control. The hot sweat that had bedeviled him now was a cool breeze on drying skin. Loki took a deep breath and summoned up Odin’s flesh. It came to him as the old man never had and once more, he was Asgard’s ruler. Only now he had something better than weak, thin-blooded Asgard to defend himself from Thanos and his Infinity Gauntlet.

He had a plan.

“Send a missive to the Grandmaster,” he said into the communicator, giving the attendant no time to respond after the channel had been opened. “Tell him I agree to his contest. My Aether against his own prize. Winner takes all.”

***

Between her best friend dating Thor and going to a party college, there was no way Darcy wasn’t going to cultivate some pretty fucked up drinking habits. By the time she and Jane got back from the pub—and count on the Irish to go shot for shot with them—she was floating on Cloud 9, Jane right beside her, finally simpatico with her. If butchering the lyrics to the drinking song she was still trying to get down. Quantum physics might’ve been clear as day to Jane, but Gaelic was beyond her.

And Darcy didn’t mind, not when Jane was holding onto her, taking advantage of Darcy’s superior height to almost be dragged along as Darcy tried to get them home safe. That was another thing Darcy’d picked up from the big guy. She’d gone all Drunken Master inside. She’d plaster anyone who tried to take advantage of Jane. If the world stopped spinning.

“There we are!” Darcy cheered, spotting the glass storefront that they lived under. Their reflections grew in it as Darcy pulled Jane along. And there was the staircase that led down to the door in the side of the building’s foundation that would let them into the basement where they slept. 

It was hard to look away from Jane’s reflection. Usually, Jane was as buttoned up as, well, a quantum physicist, but Darcy had begged and pleaded and wheedled until Jane had given into her puppy dog eyes and agreed to a night on the town with her. She’d thought that if she’d played her cards right, she could get the total package of Jane Time—maybe Foster didn’t have anything to wear and Darcy could drag her along on a proper shopping expedition too. 

But it turned out Jane had some sick outfits… maybe to look the part of Thor’s fair maiden… and when she wanted to, she put them on and looked so damn good. A gossamer dress over a semi-translucent slip, ending up giving a vague impression of her body underneath, like she was naked under deep water. Sure, she had cute underwear on, but with its tan coloring, the bra and panties blended together with her lithe figure—so much less evident than her small, firm breasts and pert little ass. Then there was the pageboy haircut that made her pixie-sweet face look younger and more innocent than Jane could possibly be. With the light makeup she wore, she was as adorable as a Japanese schoolgirl.

Darcy ended up looking at her so hardcore that she walked them right into their glass reflections. They both let out a simultaneous sound of pain, while mutually disgusted with their own stupid clumsiness.

“Jinx!” Darcy cried as soon as she’d recovered. “You owe me a Coke!”

Jane kept rubbing her head. “Buy your own Coke. That was your fault. It doesn’t count…. We have to go down the stairs,” she said, staring down the vertiginous descent to the basement door. 

Darcy couldn’t even look—she’d vomit. “Uh-uh,” she said. “I’m just staying up here. That is… too low. Way too low.”

“You can’t stay up here,” Jane pouted, “you’re drunk! You’ll get raped and murdered and stuff… you’re too pretty.”

“No one’s going to stuff me!” Darcy insisted. “Not when you’re around. You’re… cute.”

“You’re sexy.”

“Guys are over sexy. Guys like cute. I like cute… everybody likes cute.”

Lightning flared overhead, brightening the storm clouds that darkened the perpetually overcast British skies. The roar followed close on its heels, earsplitting, physical, pounding down on the world like a hammer blow. A moment later, raindrops the size of knives were slashing into the cobblestone pavement, almost sounding like glass breaking. Jane pulled Darcy to safety under an awning overlooking the staircase, and they huddled together for safety as the rain poured down. Not violent or scary—neither of them could fear the weather after getting to know Thor—but with a roughness, a brute strength that seemed overbearing. Visibility was almost nil, a curtain of water cutting off Jane and Darcy in their own private world.

“My boyfriend’s back,” Jane giggled, then launched into song. “My boyfriend’s back and you’re gonna be in trouble…”

She had a good singing voice when she wasn’t trying to wrap her tongue around Highlander talk. Lightning cracked as she slurred the lyrics, bathing Jane’s face in acrid blue light, but even that electric harshness couldn’t denigrate her face. Her features were all sloping lines, gentle softness, curving youth—Darcy thought of some guy with a feather pen practicing calligraphy. That was Jane’s face, all smooth and supple, elegant in its fineness, with those piercing eyes finishing and exceeding the picture. All the delicacy in her features went out the window when her eyes got a hold of you. Then you saw how she was intense enough to be dating a war god.

Trouble. Being in trouble. Like the dame walking into a gumshoe’s office in a noir movie. Like a teenager who’d gotten knocked up running with the wrong crowd. Like being in love with your best friend, who’s straight and dating someone else and still looks so beautiful that it should be a crime. People shouldn’t be allowed to be that beautiful. Gods and Jackie Kennedy and Audrey Hepburn, they can be, but not Jane.

Thunder rumbled, loud as the blood pounding in Darcy’s ears. Lightning burned again and she was kissing Jane, lips striking hers, Jane’s lips striking back, lightning shooting between two clouds instead of passing from the sky to the ground. There was a coolness to Jane’s lips, her hands cupping Darcy’s face, like rainwater, but it boiled into heat in Darcy’s stomach, her cunt. 

She felt a pitter of regret—rain dripping through a leaky roof—was she hurting Jane? Ruining their friendship? Taking advantage of her? But with the rain pouring down in a stampede on the streets, nothing could keep from being washed away. She kept getting warmer the longer the kiss went on and she went, moth-like, into the flame.

***

Darcy wore a Vivienne Westward dress, a blue frock that hung off her shoulders and hung curtly down her thigh, keeping a peripheral hold on her cleavage but mostly leaving it exposed. The make and model of Darcy’s dress was the kind of sharp-tacked knowledge, sharp-tacked thinking that came easily to Jane. Give her a blackboard filled with equations and she could work her way through it like a lawnmower through a newspaper. Kiss her, though…

Jane’d had a lot of time to learn the value of spontaneity, dating Thor (who this isn’t, it wasn’t Thor she was kissing, it was Darcy, girl Darcy, Darcy-her-best-friend-who-she-wasn’t-dating). She’d gotten more impulsive, gotten in touch with her emotions, even become more physical. But she still didn’t know how to react when Darcy kissed her (Darcy Lewis, Darcy was kissing her) and she didn’t know how Darcy felt about her and she didn’t know how she felt about Darcy… but it felt good and she went along with it. As Darcy kissed her, she kissed back. And it felt better to make up for how wrong it was getting.

“You look so good,” Darcy groaned, drunk girl friendliness lit with an undercurrent of lust. She crushed her lips against Jane’s. “Good enough to eat.”

She reached down to Jane’s groin, bunching her hand in Jane’s skirt and driving it against the sopping heat of her sex.

Jane knew she shouldn’t be standing out in the rain, dressed the way she was, being fondled the way Darcy was fondled her. But she couldn’t deny Darcy her pleasure, not when she was enjoying it so much. The neighbors would just have to risk getting at an eyeful if they stepped outside at the wrong moment.

Urges were erupting in Jane, strong and undeniable. Her confusion paled in importance next to the sheer fact of her lust. Something in her, something desperately intent, brought Darcy to a stop. The sable-haired woman simply stood there, body pressed to Jane’s, breathing her in, and Jane regarded her—feeling a sharp pang of dominance. Darcy was waiting for her to do or say anything. She wanted to please Jane. 

Jane looked down at the expanse of flesh in Darcy’s low-cut, tightly packed cleavage. Up close, Darcy’s full breasts were almost burgeoning out of her dress, calling to Jane in their size and heft. Jane was painfully aware now of how guys felt about those things. She lowered her face to Darcy’s bosom and licked between the heaving breasts. 

For what felt like years she had been mixed up in lusting after and envying and being annoyed by Darcy’s tits, even if she was almost as confident in her own desirability as Darcy was. Now she kissed and nipped all over Darcy’s chest, onto her shoulders, into the hollow of her throat, even kissing her apple cheeks before going back down to suck at the warm flesh of Darcy’s cleavage. Darcy ran her hands through Jane’s brown hair, crooning as if no one had ever touched her there before.

“So fucking big,” Jane sighed in defeat between Darcy’s breasts, nearly prompting an echo to return to her ears. Darcy grinned a little, relishing the minor win. Smart as her bestie was, Darcy had her beat at B-cups.

A pulse of lust went through Darcy’s cunt as Jane kept biting and sucking at her tits, reminding her of how turned on she was. Her sex felt like an engine revving. “I wanna… eat your pussy… ahh!” Darcy babbled, only her moans putting a stop to the avalanche of words Jane dislodged. “I’ll be such a good pussy licker… nhh… I’ll try really hard… I’ll… I’ll learn… ggn… everything there is to know… ooh… about pussies… I’ll fuck you… God, Jane… I’ll fuck!”

She lost herself so deeply in her own verbiage that she barely even realized that Jane was slipping to her knees, kissing her way down Darcy’s body through the scant material of her dress. Then she knelt before Darcy, pushing her dress up to her belly button. Darcy squealed, but she didn’t fight it. Jane shoved her face into Darcy’s crotch and her friend gave a happy cry as she felt Jane’s tongue slide over her aroused little clit, the two meeting experimentally. Darcy shuddered and nearly screamed.

“Ohhhh, yes, Jane!” she cried. “Eat me!”

Her hands and all of her weight resting on Jane’s head, she totally surrendered herself to the feeling of being licked and sucked by another woman. Jane was wonderful, a natural, the best cunnilingus she’d ever had. Darcy whooped with laughter, sheer joy, but also chuckling at the thought of how she’d worried if Jane was any good at giving head. Darcy must’ve just missed her being queen stud of the college lesbian set.

Jane’s tongue snaked with scalding heat into Darcy’s wet cunt and Darcy cried out, as if screaming could relieve some of the pressure she felt with Jane’s tongue expertly writhing inside of her. It wouldn’t take long for her to come, but Darcy didn’t know if she would survive that long.

“Yes, yes!” she keened. “Eat my cunt, Jane! Oh—fuck—Jane—yes!”

She came, her hips pumping, everything in her pistoning and whirlpooling around the action of Jane’s tongue. She lost her footing. Stumbling back in a daze, she lurched out into the rain, tripped, went down on her well-padded ass. Darcy gave an oof of pain, then laughed—the rain feeling warm as a steamy shower, but maybe it was just her overheated body.

Jane knelt across from her, face wet from Darcy’s juices, and she laughed too, even as her eyes traipsed over the sight of Darcy’s gleaming wet flesh, most especially the dress that was still high on her thick thighs, showing off the twisted panties Jane had pulled aside to get at her sex. 

Jane was so dizzy she could’ve just gotten off a Tilt-A-Whirl—and with the liquor having its say, she felt like she was still on one—but a sticky heat of arousal lingered in her body. Her laughter started dying away. She leaned forward, falling onto one hand, then the other, then crawling out to Darcy, licking her lips before the rain could wash away what she’d tasted.

“Jane? Darcy?” Thor’s voice, deep and burly and as rich as scotch, with that dulcet British accent that made no sense to Darcy—wasn’t he from Space Norway? 

The rain stopped, like Thor had opened up a giant umbrella over only that block. The clouds were still filling the sky, the rain was still coming down in the background, but they were in the eye of the storm. And like that, Darcy knew it was over. Whatever’d happened between her and Jane, whatever had connected them—snap. A clean break. Like when a bone fractured but you couldn’t see it through the skin.

“What are you doing out of the rain?” he asked, coming to them dressed in a hoodie and jeans like the world’s biggest soccer hooligan. “You’re getting all wet.”

Jane came up to her feet, wiping her mouth, coming down from the cracked high of a night on the town to speak with the exaggerated poise of someone drunk enough to pretend not to be drunk. “No… nobody’s wet… we just can’t get down the stairs… Thor…”

She couldn’t manage his name either. Darcy laughed. In the rain, it was hard to tell if she was crying.