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It wasn't the perfect weather for a picnic, but it was better than other days. And the only time both Chris and Tom can fit in their busy schedules. The whole "picnic on the park" was actually Chris' idea. Chris realized that Tom has been rather melancholic these last few days. And Chris thought maybe spending some time outside would cheer him up. Though they haven’t talked about it yet, Chris knew there was something bothering Tom. He smiles and laughs and he jokes and pranks, but sometimes, when Chris turned around to look at him, Tom's gaze was distant, his eyes suddenly filled with worries and shoulders slump heavy. And Chris saw in him "loneliness". But how can that be? They’re together and they’re happy when they’re together. So why?
Even Tom, who everyone seems to think is always positively bright and happy, wore his mask. His happy face mask. Tom didn't wear that mask often, but when he did, he did such a good job wearing it that not many realize what was hidden under it. But Chris was one of the few people who are able to see through it. He approached him yesterday when flashes were blinding their eyes and shouting of their names were deafening their ears. He placed his hand gently on his waist and his eyes met with Tom’s. There was that smile again. That gentle, sweet, but somewhat bitter smile. It worried Chris. He wanted that smile to be happier.
∞∞∞∞∞
The rain stopped early this morning. With a thick blanket over the still wet grass, they will be able to manage a decent picnic. And that’s how Chris came up with his picnic plan that even he himself wasn’t so sure of. Chris goes back to the bedroom to wake Tom up from his bed—currently theirs—earlier than usual. He looks through Tom's flat and 'huh,' Chris thinks as he sees a picnic basket, the typical one that movies and commercials have, on the kitchen floor next to the fridge. He is pretty sure that that was not there last night when they took out a bottle of wine from the fridge, but no time to think about where the basket came from. He has a picnic to get ready and the picnic basket, though rather strange, was actually helping him carry out his plans.
∞∞∞∞∞
Now that Chris thinks over his plans for picnic and Tom’s reluctance to get up from bed, it was probably better for the both of them to stay in bed. That’s what they usually did when they had their short breaks from work. Meet in Tom's flat or somewhere in LA. Sleep as long as they can until hunger attacks the both of them. Then, they would order some food and watch movies. Sometimes, Tom would even read him a book until he fell asleep. Yes, yes, the typical romantic clichés that couples do when they're alone together. And of course, with their faces well known to the world, going outside wasn't really the best idea.
However, today, Chris wanted to go out. With Tom. In the morning. For a picnic. Tom looks awfully tired and with his face buried in the pillow, he mutters something that Chris can't quite understand. ‘Yeah, maybe it is better for us to go with our regular "dating" routine,’ Chris thinks. But Tom gets up, eventually and gives Chris a warm hug and a rather lousy kiss. He’s obviously not fully awake yet. Tom takes a quick shower as Chris puts in whatever food he can find in Tom's fridge that may make the picnic more enjoyable, but... there really isn't much in the fridge. Let’s see, wine, pudding, pudding, water, pudding, pudding, ah, lemonade. Chris takes out the unopened lemonade and all the puddings with different sweet flavors into the basket. This would do. Pudding always makes Tom happy.
By the time Tom's finished with his shower and dressed up in his comfortable clothes, he finally has a nice smile on his face, the one Chris likes. After they wear their jackets and caps to hide their faces, they head out to the park. And as Chris expected, the park is nearly empty and he secretly smiles at his plan going so far so good.
Chris and Tom find a corner of the park where they know not many people pass by and spread the blanket over the grass to sit on. After they comfortably settle themselves on the blanket, they simply listen. They listen to the sound of nature; the birds chirping and the trees moving from one side to another as the wind passes by. The sun has just risen and Chris sees beautiful butterflies flapping their small delicate wings as they fly from one place to another. Everything was beautiful. And what better way to enjoy this peaceful and beautiful nature with the person you love the most.
Chris turns his eyes from the trees to Tom. His eyes are closed as he concentrates to listen to the sound surrounding them. Chris reaches his hand out to his hair. ‘Always fluffy after a shower’, he smiles to himself. Tom leans into the touch and there it is again, that bittersweet smile of his. And Chris wants to ask why. He wants to ask what's been going on. They've been both so busy and maybe something happened while Chris was away. When Tom opens his eyes, they are glistening with tears.
"I worry. Maybe I worry too much. Maybe I think too much, but I worry," Tom whispers.
"About what?"
"Of how long we can last," Tom answers as he smiles.
"Tom-"
"It's so selfish of me to worry about the loneliness that'll come someday when I'm so happy right now to be here right next to you, lying beside you."
Chris opens his mouth, but Tom covers it with his own. There are tears in his eyes, but he’s smiling as he ends the kiss.
"But I'll have none of those sappy thoughts this morning when the person I love actually woke up earlier than me to prepare a picnic for me!" Tom chuckles as he throws himself on top of Chris.
"I love you, you know."
"And you know I love you," Chris answers as he holds Tom's face with his warm hands.
"You want to throw yourself at trees again like last time?"
"What?"
"You forgot already? When Natalie came, you dragged me out to the forest to do some manly workout of yours. I had trouble walking for a whole week in case you forgot."
"Yeah, I remember. The day we chased each other around in the forest."
"Well, this time, I'm going to win."
And Tom throws his cap down at Chris' face as he stands up to sprint towards the small forest in front of them. But it doesn't take long for Chris to catch up to him and both of them are laughing hard.
"I'm going to catch that butterfly!" Tom shouts, his breath running short now.
"Not if I catch you first!"
"Oh, that will never happen!"
And they run and run, chasing that yellow butterfly in front them laughing as they do so.
∞∞∞∞∞
Everything seems to go as Chris planned. They were happy! They were happy outside chasing each other and Tom looked genuinely happy.
That is, until the butterfly got caught in the spider web.
If it wasn't for Chris grabbing a hold of Tom's shoulders just in time, it could've been Tom's face on the web along with the butterfly. For a minute or so, Chris and Tom just stood there not knowing what to do. They just stared at the butterfly struggling to escape from the sticky web. It's surprising how disturbing and strangely heartbreaking it is to watch a beautiful butterfly slowly stop its struggle as the spider from above slowly approaches its prey.
Chris slowly turns to check on Tom and he regrets not leaving sooner. Tom's face is cringed up and his eyes are quite terrified as he looks at the poor butterfly. Chris stands behind Tom and covers his eyes with his hand.
"Come on, there's no need for us to be watching that. It's just the nature working. Now let's go get ourselves something to eat."
Tom doesn't hesitate in leaving and they walk back to their picnic place.
∞∞∞∞∞
Maybe the butterfly caught on the spider web was a sign for Chris to change his plan and go back to Tom's flat. As they sat back on the blanket, the sky was turning grey and began drizzling. Chris cannot help but awkwardly smile at Tom whose face was turning slowly to a frown.
"Let's at least eat some pudding before we leave," Chris says as he opens the basket case to take out the pudding and "what the-" There was nothing in the basket but the lemonade!
"What's wrong?" Tom asks as he sees Chris’ brows furrowing in annoyance.
"Your puddings! They're gone! I swear they were here. They're just gone."
"It's alright, Chris. It's raining anyways. Let's just head back to my place."
"Well, let's at least drink some lemonade?" Chris tries to put on happy face, but he can’t help his mood going down and down as his plans.
Surprisingly, Tom lets out a snort as he sees the lemonade on Chris' hand.
"Chris, I, uh, got that lemonade a while back. You might want to check the expiration date for it."
Chris looks down to find the printed expiration date on the drink and "oh… It was expired a month ago."
Their eyes meet and after a few long seconds of silence, both burst out laughing.
"Oh, I'm so bad, aren't I? I should probably clean out the fridge. I'm pretty sure that lemonade isn't the only thing that's expired."
"No, it's my bad. I should've gotten ready for the picnic earlier. But I swear the puddings were inside the basket."
"Don't be silly! Where could they have gone, Chris?" Tom reaches out to open the basket playfully to tease Chris.
However, what was expected to be an empty basket was not empty. And all of a sudden, two cats suddenly jump out of the basket. And both Tom and Chris scream in surprise. Two cats, one is black with emerald eyes and the other much furrier is unusually gold with blue eyes. Still with wide eyes, Tom and Chris gulp as they see those two cats play-fight each other on top of their blankets. As their beating hearts calm down, Tom narrows his eyes and recognizes both of the cats through their oh-so-obvious color choices.
"Loki!" And as if on cue, at the same time, Chris yells, "Thor!"
The two cats stop to stare at them and suddenly with a big puff of green smoke they are cats no more, but two grown men; a slender one and a bulky one.
"Oh, Thor, look what you've done!" The one in the green armor yells at the other.
"I have done nothing wrong!" And the blonde man yells back.
"You ate their puddings! I told you we're just here to observe! They haven't had any time for themselves in a long time! And you had to go and eat all the pudding that I purposely placed with Tom’s favorite flavors! And the basket-"
"So it was you who placed the basket next to the fridge?" Chris asks.
"Do not cut my words, mortal! And of course, it was me. Who else could it have been? No one around here is smart enough to come up with a plan where the both of you could have some good time together."
"Well, it was me who came up with the picnic idea, not you." Loki glares at Chris with eyes so threatening that Chris has to turn his gaze away from the god to Tom, his eyes asking for help.
"Their picnic could have been nicer without you interfering, brother. You must apologize to them for your rudeness," Thor insists as he points his finger at Loki.
"Apologize? Me? I'm the one who turned the both of us into cats so we can follow them without causing suspicion! But NO! You had to open up the basket and eat all the puddings! And when I stopped you from eating them, you got upset and now it's raining because of you, you oaf!"
“We’re fine, Loki. Neither you nor your brother ruined anything for us. We were having fun," Tom carefully jumps in before the argument gets worse, but Loki doesn’t seem to care.
"And look at you! You’ve got pudding all over you! You are not fit at all as a royalty. Do you know how pathetic you looked when you tried to open those pudding cups with your paws? And when your face got stuck in one of it?"
Tom secretly smirks as he can tell that Loki isn't actually angry with Thor. He can clearly see that the younger god was holding his laughter as he reached his hands out to wipe away the pudding stains from Thor's face, hair, and hands.
"You could have waited until their picnic was over and I could have gotten you your own puddings, you fool," Loki was gentler and the hands touching Thor's face was as caring as a lover's.
‘Well, that's probably because they are lovers’, Chris thinks to himself.
Suddenly Thor's hand is on Loki's while the other hand pulls his brother's body closer to his. And oh... there it is again! That passionate, fiery, godlike strong deep kiss that always make Chris and Tom feel uneasy.
Yes, "always". This wasn't the first time they appeared in front of time.
It always happens when Tom and Chris tries to spend some together. The first time Loki appeared, they thought they were dreaming, or hallucinating, but there he was, the god of mischief who thought it was a great time to teleport to Tom’s flat while they were watching a comedy movie.
Afterwards, their random appearances happened quite often. Boom here and poof there! Though Tom and Chris can never say they've become close friends with the gods—come on, they're gods—they've become close enough to get used to such random appearances and also, their arguments that never seemed to be so serious. It was always about small things. Chris always saw it as their unique way of expressing love.
Whether Chris and Tom were watching a movie, reading, jogging or even when they were about to “go to bed”, those gods would randomly appear to join the couple in whatever they were doing. And they would always find a way to argue. And whenever they did, it always end up with one of them being stopped through that passionate kiss and they'd just make out then and there. No, it did not matter whether it was Tom's flat or the Avengers' trailers, they would just do it! After a couple times of witnessing that, the couple knew well enough that when the gods start kissing, it was time for them to leave. Quite awful gods if one thinks about it.
This time, Loki managed to transform both Thor and himself into cats and follow them to the park. Thor stole their puddings and got upset when Loki stopped him from eating all of them. They fought and they kissed, and now their hands were everywhere. Oh, and there they go to the ground with a loud thump. Chris and Tom know it's time for them to leave. What a great way to end the picnic as they witness two gods undress each other.
As Chris and Tom hastily turn their backs away from them, Thor calls to them.
"My friends! Do not be ashamed to express your love! Express them freely wherever you are and whatever you're doing! And express it whenever you can! Like us!"
"Alright, Thor, enjoy your time," Tom's face flushes as Thor, whose appearance reminds him so much of Chris', buries his face on Loki's neck.
"He's right, Tom. We have lived long enough and experienced more than you can imagine. Ow, not there, you idiot! We're immortals. We have an eternity to hate each other, but we also have an eternity to forgive each other, and love each other. You two as mortals, however, do not. Take our advice and love to the fullest. Yes, right there, Thor! More!"
A great advice was given by two great norse gods while they were having sex. How interesting, Tom and Chris shake their heads as they try to leave the park trying to ignore the loud moans of Loki’s. Soon they have to run back to the flat as the rain starts pouring down wildly. Yes, that can only mean one thing and they do not want to think about it. It’s just rain, not the god of thunder having an orgasm while having sex with his adopted brother.
∞∞∞∞∞
As soon as Tom opens the door to his flat, Chris pushes him gently to the wall and kisses him deeply. Tom chuckles as Chris continues to lower his lips to his chin and to his neck. He can feel Chris' strong hands already unbuckling his belt.
"Wait, what are you doing?"
"Taking their godly advice and expressing my love to you."
"Oh, Chris-"
"I want you to be happy, Tom. I want you to be happy with me. I don't want you to ever feel lonely. I want you to smile. I want you to laugh that laugh of yours! I want you to read your favorite poems to me. I want to watch the countless movies you’ve recommended with you until the rest of our lives. After all, we only got one short life to live. So why not be happy and live to the fullest, like they said? Love as passionately as we can!"
Tom just smiles at him. Not that bittersweet one, but the genuinely happy smile that Chris loves so much. They kiss and kiss and kiss. They shed their clothes on the way to their bed and the bedroom is soon filled with gasps and moans as the outside roars with deafening thunder and blinding lightning.