Page 31 of Last Thrall of Asgard

Balder moaned with each retraction and slow slide in again. The gentle pressure I kept on his throat was accompanied by my other hand returning to his nipples, flicking them to become pert points.

“Do you believe? Hm? Do you believe you are enough?” I closed my eyes, pathetic in my own way, because the question was not only for him. This was my third god, of how many more, I didn’t know. I could still fail and lose my freedom. I could not falter. I could not believe I was less than enough.

“I-I…”

Balder was close. I had barely touched the arc of his cock, but he was close. I moved my hand down to curl around him with the same pressure as the hand on his throat.

I stroked.

“I—!” Balder turned his head, and a tear streaked down his cheek.

I stroked him as I rocked, in and out of him, as slowly as I could. I didn’t tell him he felt perfect, even though he did, because perfect was not necessary for good, or great, orenough. It never should be.

Not even for gods.

“Oli.” Balder bit his bottom lip, and as his hips began to stutter—

I pulled my hand from his cock and pulled out with my tip barely in him.

“Oli!”

“Enjoy this as you come down from being so close to the precipice.” I dragged my thumb up and down his throat. “Iwilltumble you over it, but only once you believe. Only once you are quaking with such pleasure that to reach the apex makes you weep, and you finally admit… perfection is overrated.”

Balder laughed. He didn’t struggle. He let his breathing calm, and only once he was still, did I begin again, fucking him slowly, while gently squeezing his neck, and alternating my free hand from his nipples to down, down his stomach, wrapping around his cock. I would return to press my nail to his slit, stroke him, fondle his sac, but once he started to pant, close to coming, I’d ask:

“Do you believe it yet? That you are enough?”

If he hesitated, and he always did, I started over, slower than before. “Please.”

“Do you believe?”

Balder could barely move by the fifth time I asked, with so much prerelease coating my hand that a pool was gathering in his navel. “I… want to. I want to believe.”

“Good,” I praised, quickening my thrusts and strokes in reward. “Because youareenough, Balder. You are.”

“Thank you.”

The honesty made me pause, and in that moment, I thought I felt the eyes of Loki from the memory of Balder’s death.

I looked, but the scene was as it had been before.

“Please…please…” Balder was writhing now, fervently trying to fuck up against me where I had stilled, not to chase something he didn’t need, didn’t want, but to revel in feeling.

He was feeling, starting to feel again, to truly feel again…

Because of me.

“Do you believe?” I slid my hand from his throat to rest over his heart and bent to kiss him.

He moaned through the tangle of our tongues, and when I finally pulled up, he answered, “Yes.” His smile grew, and he glanced around the room, prompting me to look again too.

The scenes had all changed. They were still of Balder, but simpler moments, feats that hadn’t required him to be perfect, just… being a good son, a young boy, nestled in his mother’s lap.

Being a good brother, stumbling alongside Hod and Thor, each drunker than him, but his presence between them kept them stable.

Picking a flower and presenting it to a young Aesir child rushing past him up a path, a child who clearly didn’t know who he was, but who skipped away with the flower in hand toward parents who bowed to Balder when they saw him. He looked more pleased by the ignorant wave of the child than any fawning from her parents.

The scene of Balder’s death remained, still on the same wall, but it was different now, a different angle, a different moment, showing that, in his final breaths, his eyes had found Loki, and he had looked to him withforgiveness, making Loki’s eyes water with tears.

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