[AO3 Crosspost] And we must keep playing

[terresdebrume]

✗ TECHNICAL DETAILS

FANDOM: Marvel’s MCU
RATING: General audience
WORDCOUNT: 364
PAIRING(S): -
CHARACTER(S): Thor, Steve Rogers
GENRE: Angst
TRIGGER WARNING(S): -
SUMMARY: After all, the game goes on even when some of the players lose, and no one knows it better than Steve and Thor.

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“Look, you have to do it like this–-No wait turn the other way ar–-oh Gosh here you go… We gotta start again.“

“This is the most needlessly complicated game I’ve ever played,” Steve snorts as he falls back on the mattress of Thor’s gigantic bed—imported from Asgard two month after Thor came to live in Stark’s tower—and folds the device back in his hands.

“You’re simply not accustomed to it,” Thor shrugs with a smile, making Steve bounce when he all but dives on the bed next to him, “Jane caught up quite quickly, but she had an advantage in knowledge… look, I’ll show you again,” Thor offers—Steve rolls his eyes, but pays attention nonetheless.

The toy may have been conceived for the Asgardian equivalent of twelve-years-old, it’s no less complicated for it: there's a sphere of glowing amber with a pale white tree inside, the ensemble surrounded by three layers of thin-as-silk networks destined to isolate it from the world.

A seed-shaped green blob floats at the edge of it all, glowing when Thor puts his hands around the toy—not touching though: the whole thing just hovers there, patiently awaiting instruction, until Thor starts moving it left and right, the seed swaying through the three nets for a good half hour until, finally, it touches the tree and makes its foliage grow.

“I could never get past that level,” Thor sighs with a rueful smile while a blue cloud of smoke forms at the edge of the sphere, “Seeds are easier to get a grasp on—I think Loki beat the whole thing in less than five of your years… I resented him for it.”

There’s a wetness in his throat Steve still hasn’t gotten used to—seven years since Loki died, and everything points to the mourning process having only just begun—one that makes him scoot closer to Thor and bring their foreheads together, Thor leaning into him with a sigh.

Both of them, after all, know what it’s like to watch someone fall and find them a completely different person afterward—and Steve doesn’t think he’d do any better if Bucky should die, too.