8. The Captor #2
“I trust you, Odin,” I said, “for I do believe you are great. And great does not mean good, or perfect, or right, but if you attempt to be those things and still fail, you can be great to those who watched you try. Or, well, felt in my case.” Given I currently couldn’t watch anything.
“Such sweet words.” Odin chuckled and brought his fingers back to trail down the length of me. All of me, from the bulb of my throat to the bob of my cock. “Is that what you need to believe for yourself too, Oli?”
Was it? That I could fail, and it would be okay, so long as I tried?
Yes.
Yes .
I had to try, and for trying to matter even if I lost.
“Yes,” I said aloud.
“Then you are stronger than me, for it is my continued struggle to believe that. But I want you to show me. I want you to try. And if at any point you cannot, simply say… Norn.”
Of course his word to put an end to our attempts at trust was to name those he had refused to believe, those who had warned him that he couldn’t fight fate.
When Odin’s hand left me this time, it was replaced by the nearness of his breath, both hot and cold on my skin, because it breathed on warm but left me cool where I was bared to the elements.
The feathers, my bindings, had me mostly upright, as if standing.
I couldn’t be too high if Odin could reach me.
He held a feather and used it to follow the trail of his breath across my skin. When it ventured lower down my hips and circled my tip, he also leaned closer to graze his teeth along my neck, blunt but firm in his faint bite.
The sound of animals stirred my attention.
It was like the wind had picked up, carrying distant howls, growls, rustling, and gallops.
The gale blew across my skin like Odin’s breath had, and with it, the sounds grew louder.
It was as if all of Odin’s Wild Hunt of spirits and beasts and restless dead were with him.
A ploy? Was he to have his way with me and feed me to his horde?
More feathers surrounded me, like the flapping of many wings on my skin, while the same blunt teeth grazed my throat, biting firmer, just a little firmer as they went. Then the feather tickling my prick turned end over end, so the sharp point of its quill was on me.
It grazed me like his teeth at first. Circled my prick again. Up its length. And then…
“Ah-ahhh!”
Odin slipped its needle-like point into my slit.
More sounds of beasts erupted, and though the intrusion felt good, almost but not quite stinging, I fought to escape the sensation.
“You sweat. You shiver. But not from pleasure. Do you wish to end this?”
“I… I don’t know.”
“Am I hurting you? Do you fear me?” More feathers fluttered over me, with more howling and galloping heard, which could mean an audience as much as hungry beasts in the dark.
Were they watching? Like Loki had been and might still be watching?
The feather, thinner than most but still palpably felt within me, pushed deeper into my length.
“N-no…” For it did feel good. So good.
“But you do not trust me?”
“I…” Though part of me wanted to say Norn , to end this now, if only to know for certain that he would heed my request and release me, wouldn’t that prove I didn’t trust him? He had put his trust in me, to be what he needed, what he had asked me to be, like all the others.
If I failed to return that boon, would I fail him?
Would I fail Loki?
“Speak.” The feather bindings tilted me backward and bent and spread my legs. It was like I was back on that altar but without the need for support, for the feathers had me.
Then Odin had me too. He climbed atop me, and I felt that he had disrobed. I also felt the brush of feathers and imagined him naked save either his feathered cloak, or that he was somehow made of them, like some raven beast himself.
He was as light as a raven, settling atop me, but his motion caused my bindings to rock like a swing.
“Speak,” he said again. “Do you trust me?”
Odin flicked the feather inside my shaft. I didn’t need to see it to feel it, for the action made it vibrate within me, and my slit tightened around it.
“ Fuck , I… I don’t know!”
Odin was on me, but I barely felt his weight, until he rested his cock between my pecs, and I felt the leak of his prerelease. “If you never allow yourself to trust those you give yourself to freely, how can you ever truly call yourself free?”
I... I didn't know. I didn't know how to trust anyone or anything.
“You can walk hand in hand with where life takes you, Oli, or you can fight every step of the way and end up in the same place you were trying to avoid, without enjoying the journey there. Believe me.” Odin flicked the quill again, and this time, it hurt.
Only a little, but it hurt . “Some things we cannot change, but we can change ourselves, even when we have lost everything. Can’t we? ”
There was his desperation again, a plea for me to ease his sorrow.
For me to agree.
For me to absolve him.
For me to trust, when he wasn’t sure if he trusted himself.
“Yes,” I said, and I thought, I hoped, I meant it. “We can.”
Odin swung us, and I wanted to catch his cock when it bobbed closer to me, sliding up my chest. I couldn’t, still utterly bound and at his mercy, for I was the swing.
He was on my hips, higher than my cock, and reached back to pull the quill halfway free of me— slowly . My prerelease dribbled out with it.
Odin swung us again, grinding his cock with the motion and smearing more fluid across my chest. He pulled more of the quill free, until there was little more than a sharpened nail’s worth of it in me. Like Loki’s nails. Those sharp nails that had scratched along my scalp so sweetly.
Loki… watched me, was maybe watching me now. He had watched me for weeks before claiming me. Without being able to see the hands and body upon me, I could imagine it was Loki with me. Him I could trust.
I relaxed into my bindings, letting myself rock with our momentum without trying to hold myself up.
The howls were not the Wild Hunt to me anymore, but Loki as that wolf or dog form I had seen so many times.
The galloping was Loki as a mare or stallion or both .
The many eyes on me were his too. The hands on me were his. The cock grinding up my chest…
It reached closer enough to my lips on our next rock that I kissed it, licked it, and tried to take its head into my mouth.
The scant weight atop me left, and the loss of it made me wail and almost cry Loki’s name. I was alone, swinging in the dark.
Norn.
Norn .
But no. I was so tired of expecting the worst. So tired of resentment. I wanted to be able to trust that I could be treated as I deserved. No one should have to be a slave to fate or to another person.
Was that where I was wrong? Was I demanding servitude of Loki? For him to yield? To relent? To be mine, whether he voiced that was what he wanted or not?
I was failing him. Because I didn’t trust him. I didn’t. I was terrified I was wrong, and so, instead of letting him say the truth for himself, I kept pushing and pushing —
Odin pushed into me like a bird of prey having swept in for the kill. The swing flung further back as he entered me, swinging again with me, but in my mind’s eyes, in my deepest desires, I saw and felt Loki there still.
And if, after this, Loki denied me again, I would have to be content with what I’d had.
I could feel the tautness of the bindings as Odin clung to them to control the swing, using them and our momentum to pull out and push back into me with each upward and then downward arch.
My hole was too used to the presence of gods to protest, especially after Yggdrasil had been counted among those that entered me. It wasn’t the penetration that mattered but the motion. I was dizzy, floating, subjugated.
But no. No. I didn’t have to trust. I wanted to. I had wanted to trust Thorsten and been so, so wrong, but if I never let myself trust again, I was making myself a slave.
“You have not said the word,” Odin rumbled.
“I will not,” I said. “Take me, Odin. I trust you won’t lead me astray.”
The feathers engulfed me. I felt another’s quill point in my slit.
I felt nails like claws graze over my nipples.
A brush of fur ran along my cheek and side.
It was like I was caught by the Wild Hunt, ripe to be sacrificed to it.
But I had meant what I said. I trusted Odin to lead me through the chaos, like he had found his way out of it too.
I need only surrender to the darkness to believe it, for wasn’t covering my eyes to begin with a blessing?
To witness the Wild Hunt foretold of one's demise, but my story did not end here.
Odin released, and just as the new quill point left my slit, I did too. A great arch spurted from me, and in our downswing, it splattered upon my chest, mixing with the wetness from Odin’s earlier grinding.
Odin’s . Not Loki’s. Much as it had been nice to pretend. The real Loki awaited.
The chaos waned, and I no longer felt wildness in the hunt, if it remained around us. I was cocooned, safe, in the softness of the gentlest of beasts that roamed the wood.
When our swinging stilled, Odin removed the blindfold, and through my blurry vision, I thought I saw him shift from beast to man as my eyes refocused.
I remained limp as he freed me, sitting us in his throne with me in his lap, swaddled in the bindings that had once again become his feathered cloak.
“Um… did I convince you of what you needed to believe?” I asked, feeling it too strange to look at him other than at the hairs on his chest, since what we had shared had been in darkness, with my thoughts straying to another, just like they had with Mimir.
“You did,” Odin said.
“Did I convince me ?” I chuckled.
“You did, young Oli. You are the herald of a new age. I saw it when I drank from Mimir’s well so long ago.”
That sprang up my attention to look at him. “You did?”
“Not you specifically, but what you represent. I saw that I would fail to fight fate, that Ragnarok was inevitable, for now is the time of mortals. I could not fight my destiny, much as I tried, but I was shown that if I could accept that some things are beyond my control, I might discover a greater happiness from that mortal mindset. Your mindset.”
“You make me sound wiser than I am. I fumbled my way to that lesson too.”
“But you reached it, just as you helped others to do so.”
“I don’t feel like I did much of anything for you. The last few gods have been the ones teaching me.”
“I will admit, I had already come to terms with my greatest lesson before you arrived, but it was in helping you learn yours that I am absolved of my final sin.”
“What sin is that?”
Odin swept the cloak from our bodies, and we were each clean and dressed. I hadn’t noticed Yggdrasil’s stitching before now, but it was there, along with Odin’s rune.
He hefted me onto my feet, and I wobbled slightly, not feeling his release in me anymore, though I did feel the ache from that swing.
“That as much as Loki wronged us, we wronged him too by casting him in the role of villain. We didn’t trust him, so he never trusted us.
He didn't trust me. But I was not worthy of anyone's trust then, for I focused too much on escaping fate and forgot to lead.
If even you, the least likely to trust me, can manage it, I believe my people can too.
“Now, Oli, only you, after learning your final lesson, can help Loki learn his. Go, carry my gratitude and forgiveness to him and tell him I seek forgiveness too.”
“You won’t come with me to tell him yourself?” I asked.
“He is not yet ready to hear it. But he will be.”
There was no Wild Hunt, not visibly, just the same peaceful expanse as when I took in the scenery earlier. And Odin, dressed kingly again, sitting upon his throne.
Some part of me felt like I should kneel or bow or something worshipful, but that wasn’t what he wanted from me.
“I’m not sure I know or understand Loki as much as I should,” I said.
“I think you do,” Odin corrected, “and you deserve to have your desires met with the real god of mischief.”
Then he did know where my thoughts had wandered.
He just didn’t mind. “Maybe. If he desires me too.” Because that was the question I still needed to answer.
I had felt so certain after drinking from Mimir’s well, but to truly know, I needed to hear it from Loki.
I wanted him to want me. I wanted to be wanted.
I always had. It had made thralldom bearable.
But if I was to be free soon, I had to be enough for me even if no one ever wanted me again.
Odin stood, head held high and presence reinvigorated.
“Thank you, Oli, for all you did for my people. Now, they need the All-Father to be the leader I failed to be before. I will never again let their trust be misplaced. And yours should not be either.” He smiled, gripped me by my forearms, and urged me to face the view.
Loki.
I was back in the field where Loki had banished me. The god himself stood within reach, unknowing of my presence.
All I had to do was seize him.