Heavy in Your Arms

It sounds almost like a whim, when Loki finally asks Harley to teach him how to dance in the air. It’s not. It’s something he’s spent a long time contemplating, unwilling to intrude on something she holds so dear.

He’s starting to realize he’s not an intrusion.

I was a heavy heart to carry
My beloved was weighed down
My arms around his neck
My fingers laced to crown
I was a heavy heart to carry
My feet dragged across the ground
And he took me to the river
Where he slowly let me drown

He finds he can’t bear performing with the aerial silks, as beautiful as they are. Harley demonstrates, patiently, over and over and he imitates the basic moves well enough, but when it comes to motion, putting them together, the way the fabric tightens around his limbs, the way he has to permit his body a split second of free-fall, the way some poses make blood rush to his head--it’s too much. There are too many dark memories attached to these bodily sensations, and he cannot hide the flickers of panic.

Harley deserves better than to see him like that. After the fourth or fifth time he has to stop to sit on the floor, forehead on his knees as he catches his breath and calms the trembling, he knows he can’t keep on with this activity. Not now. Maybe in a few years, decades, centuries. Everything now is too raw.

My love has concrete feet
My love’s an iron ball
Wrapped around your ankles
Over the waterfall

I’m so heavy, heavy in your arms...

She holds his hand in hers and feels him shiver without judgment. Murmurs, “I’ll always catch you if you fall, Princess,” and he knows she means it. It makes his heart warm, and the lesson dissolves easily into cuddling and kisses and then something that involves silk sheets on a mattress rather than in the air.

I’m so heavy, heavy in your arms...

He hates that he’s vulnerable at all, but he’s beginning to accept that she doesn’t.

This will be my last confession,
‘I love you’ never felt like any blessing
Whispering like it’s a secret
Uttered to condemn the one who hears it
With a heavy heart

It’s probably foolish of him to try the lyra ring when she’s not around. He may fall and hurt himself, and he may panic, but Loki still struggles to overcome his pride, and he thinks he’d rather face either without Harley as his audience, at least this once.

It’s easier. Without the silk binding him, he feels safer. Without it obscuring his vision he can see there are only a few feet to fall, not a pitch-black abyss awaiting him. When he swings upside-down, the lurch of blood rushing to his head is uncomfortable, but he is free to change position easily, or to let go and drop.

He thinks he understands how it might feel for her, after he’s experimented some. The preternatural strength and grace she possesses is something he, too, can muster, though he has nothing close to her skill and comfort level with the equipment. He can see how this is a kind of magic. How it might feel almost like flight.

He likes the way the ring spins in the air.

He finds he can weave little strands of seidr around it, leaving it gleaming as it turns, setting motes of light dancing on the walls.

There’s music playing when she comes looking for him. He’s curled perfectly within the curve of the ring, spinning slowly amidst the dancing green aurora. It’s hard to tell in the eerie light whether he’s been crying or whether he’s just gleaming with in the magical light, but he crooks his knees around the edge of the ring and swings down lightly, comfortable on the equipment for the first time, comfortable in his own skin.

When he reaches out and she takes his hand, they are weightless.

I was a heavy heart to carry
My beloved was weighed down
My arms around her neck
My fingers laced to crown
I was a heavy heart to carry
But she never let me down
When she held me in her arms, my feet never touched the ground.