Chapter Text
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i. for reasons unknown | throne + ice crown (steve/bucky) | for @steebadore
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His fingers trace the curves along the top rail, blue against gold, skin the color of the winter sky and the warm glint of metal, spiked along the edges like a starburst caught in molten gold. It is only him and this—a symbol of something he had learned to hate—a world and a bridge away from home. There is heat where there should be cold, red velvet where he has always seen ice.
He takes a breath and feels eyes bore into the back of his head.
“You know,” Bucky says. “It’s not polite to stare.”
A surprised pause, as though Bucky could not possibly have guessed there was someone at his back; as though Bucky could ever be so careless, or this person so quiet, shrouded like a question.
As though anything about the Aesir could ever be half so mysterious.
“Well,” the person says. “It’s also not polite to touch someone else’s things. So you know.”
Bucky snorts.
“No,” he says and turns from the throne. “Why don’t you explain it to me?”
It’s just as Bucky had expected it to be. Not because he has come to know the way he breathes or the way he steps—the feel of his presence in the air, the sound of his movements—but because whenever he turns, there he seems to be.
“I don’t think that would go very well,” Steve Rogers says. He has the wherewithal to offer a self-effacing smile, not that that will help him. Bucky raises an eyebrow. “Whenever I open my mouth, you leave.”
Curse this insufferable brute. Bucky struggles to suppress a smile.
“You’re right,” he says. “That doesn’t seem very fair to me. Maybe the next time you open your mouth, you should leave instead.”
Apparently this was not the right thing to say if what he wanted was to relieve himself of his golden-haired burden. What little caution Steve had to begin with breaks, a terribly smug expression lighting up his face.
“You like me,” Steve says.
“Ugh,” Bucky says and turns away.
This is also the wrong thing to do, evidently, just one bad decision in a string of bad decisions, beginning with coming to Asgard and going to that tavern that one time and letting this stubborn Aesir fool sit next to him and ending with not being quick enough to retreat down the throne steps before he ends up next to him again, all six foot-whatever inches of him, with his gleaming hair in a neat braid over his shoulder and armor sculpted to his broad chest and bulging arms and thick calves, blue velvet draped down his back, and a row of silver earrings glinting against both shells of his ears.
“You are too close,” Bucky informs him. “I can smell the stink of the Aesir on you.”
“I just bathed,” Steve says, with a crooked smile. “In soaps and fragrant oils.”
“Ugh,” Bucky says again, wrinkling his nose. “Repugnant.”
It’s terrible enough to see Steve from far away—or seated next to him at a feast or standing across from him during a ceremony—and worse to see him up close. The gem in his eyebrow winks in the light and the crooked smile eases from his face until something more eager replaces it, a sincerity Bucky doesn’t want to see.
“Tell me something,” Steve says.
“I’d rather not,” Bucky mutters.
That only makes Steve smile.
“They say your prince is a witch,” he says.
Bucky stills and Steve watches him, his expression soft, his gaze unrelenting.
“What is it you would like me to say, Aesir?” Bucky says. A careful eyebrow raised, a warning in his voice.
If it is meant as a careful threat, Steve does not take it as one. Instead, the Aesir leans forward and Bucky takes another step back, one step below.
“Is he?” Steve asks. And then, the real question—“Are you?”
“Am I a witch?” Bucky repeats, suddenly laughing.
The smile doesn’t leave Steve’s face.
“I don’t know,” he says. “That was my question.”
Bucky doesn’t answer. He could. It would be easy enough to dispel the rumors or to encourage them otherwise. The Aesir brute would believe him either way, he can tell. It’s written in the curve of his brows, in the honest, open expression across his face. He’s asking because he wants to know, and it doesn’t occur to him that Bucky would lie.
This, too, doesn’t appear to be a deterrent.
Maybe silence is all the answer he needed. Or, perhaps, he always made the truth he sought to find.
The Aesir watches him.
“Show me something, Jotun,” Steve says quietly. “Show me magic.”
Bucky should say no. He should smile sweetly and turn on his blue heels.
He inclines his head instead.
“I don’t have the same talents as his majesty,” he says.
That doesn’t seem to bother Steve. He shifts slightly, the faint hum of metal armor against the gold molding of the throne. Bucky’s distracted by the noise and his eyes flicker up, Steve’s silver-limned vambraces glinting under floating candles, the steel armor across his barrel chest, a sharp and cautious smile on his mouth. Is this a test?
Bucky has never failed a test against an Aesir before. And he does not plan to here either, not in front of one who watches him as though starving.
“But you have some,” Steve says. His voice is low, but they are alone in the chamber, so it echoes anyway, soft against the two of them and measured against everything else.
“You cannot be companions with Loki and not learn some things,” Bucky says, mildly.
“Is he that generous with knowledge?” Steve asks. “...the Jotun prince?”
There’s a slight look of surprise indented into his features, a faint arch between strong brows. It makes Bucky both angry and confused. He wants to press a thumb between them, trace the golden shape under his blue skin.
It’s a fair question, anyway. They call Loki Silvertongue and not always for gracious reasons.
“No,” Bucky says and this time it’s with a grin. “But he doesn’t like being bored. And I don’t like being boring.”
The truth is that Loki crafts magic out of thin air and there is not a lot on Jotunheim that is magical. The truth is that Bucky loves Loki and he would never have lasted at the prince’s side if he had not learned some of that magic for himself. If he had not taken it for himself.
“Bucky,” Steve says, his voice low again, and Bucky laughs again.
Steve shifts again and this time he’s standing straight, moved closer, Bucky two steps below him and Steve towering over him next to a throne of gilded jewels.
Bucky has always been in the heart of power and never craved it for himself. Loki is his prince, Laufey his king. Still, Steve glitters under the light, the gold thread of his hair glinting and the deep blue of his eyes lit brightly in firelight. It makes Bucky suck in a shaky breath, a simmering heat crawling up his cold, frost giant spine.
He reaches for Steve’s hands then, slowly turns them palms up. Steve says nothing, but Bucky hears him inhale quickly, the warmth of his hands burning against Bucky’s cold fingers.
For a moment, Bucky does nothing. It’s a strange, foreign image—the Aesir’s pale skin against his own deep blue—incongruous, but not disconcerting. Then he slides his fingertips across Steve’s large, calloused palms.
“Bucky,” Steve whispers again and Bucky hushes him with a soft, whispered hiss.
Around them the air grows colder, the close space around them dropping in degrees, the floating candles flickering with frost. Steve lets out a shaky breath and it fogs before him—his breath, the air, his sky blue eyes.
Bucky smiles.
The seidr sparks under his fingertips, not sharp and bright like Loki’s own, but something quieter, a slow and steady churn of magic, like the tide licking against the shore.
It starts with a swirl of soft, translucent blue. Then it circles around itself, again and again, seidr swirling in blues and whites, a crystalline structure building layer by layer. First, a round base and then small spires, arcing up, the slopes studded with jewels of crystal ice.
It’s cool to touch, not frozen, like ice, but as though chilled metal, with corners and peaks sharpened to draw blood. The crown glimmers, sitting on Steve’s palms, and Bucky’s eyes flicker up toward the Aesir’s face, his own mouth curving up in something a little smug, something a little pleased.
“It’s—” Steve starts.
“Ice,” Bucky interrupts, only for Steve to finish with, “Beautiful.”
Bucky pauses. Steve’s not looking at the crown of ice.
Something ticks against Bucky’s ribs, a hum in his chest. His cheeks heat.
“What?” he says, dumbly.
Steve’s palms shift, his long, strong fingers circling the ice crown from its sides.
Bucky has fought in countless Jotun wars. He has clashed blades with Aesir warriors and slayed more than his fair share of Vanir and of dark elves. Once, he had helped Loki wrap a body in his bedchamber and shove it into the Ifil river.
Steve’s eyes don’t leave his. He takes a step closer and Bucky, taking a shallow breath, stays where he is.
This, he can tell, has been his biggest mistake.
He feels fingertips brush the curve of his horns and he inhales, a sharp and hungry tug sparking in his stomach, a jolt somewhere further below.
Steve’s breath is held and Bucky mirrors this, his thoughts a tangled mess, his mind a dense fog. How did this happen? he wonders. How did he let an Aesir brute come so close as to touch him?
Bucky feels ice on his brow, the cool press of chilled metal in his dark, curling hair.
Steve doesn’t move back.
Bucky can feel the heat of his skin against his own, the air warming between the two of them.
This is a mistake, he thinks again. His heart thuds near his throat. This has been his biggest mistake.
Steve’s palm presses against Bucky’s cool blue skin and he guides his face up, Bucky’s stubborn refusal to look into those eyes again crumbling with the firm press of fingers to his jaw.
“I’m no prince,” Bucky says, quietly.
The ice crown glints on his head, candlelight caught on the tips.
Steve says nothing for a moment. Then his mouth curves up into a smile.
“Neither am I,” the Aesir—the Asgardian prince’s best man, the Asgardian king’s golden warrior—says.
“You are my enemy,” Bucky insists. His throat sticks. He does not sound convincing. “I despise you. I would rather shove a shard in between your ribs than—”
“Than?” Steve’s mouth is infuriatingly stubborn, turned up at the corners as it is.
Bucky glares, but the effect is lost, his fingertips suddenly on Steve’s golden braid. He’s distracted immediately, his gaze shifting as he slides his fingers over the bumps, the softs twists of fine hair. He’s used to braiding Loki’s hair, but the black of his prince’s braid doesn’t gleam as brightly as the gold, nor feel as soft against his palm.
Steve tilts his head.
“Well,” he says. “Stranger things have happened.”
Bucky curses, internally.
“Like a Jotun prince wedding an Aesir one?” Bucky says softly and then laughs. Perhaps he’s lost his mind.
“Yes,” Steve replies. The corner of his mouth turns up. “Something like that.”
For the second time, Bucky feels his face being turned up. Usually he would protest to being handled forcefully like this, but that is an objection for another time. For now, he frowns at the soft smirk on the Aesir warrior’s face and when Steve leans down toward him, Bucky stretches up on his toes to accept his offering.
Steve’s mouth is warm against his own and when Steve’s fingers tangle in Bucky’s curls, they brush against the crown of ice.
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