It's too early in the morning for dawn to have even broken yet, but they've been up all night. Twisted up in the sheets, a tangle of limbs, just enjoying the night together.

Valkyrie sits up, the silken sheets slipping off her body. Thor follows the path of newly uncovered warm brown skin with his lips, kissing up her arm, to her shoulder, wrapping an arm around her waist as his lips travelled to her collar. She closes her eyes, sighing, cradling his head as his lips continue to express his devotion.

It was nice and peaceful, an intimate and languid moment of relaxation just past the middle of the night.

"Marry me," Thor murmurs, lips brushing her clavicle.

Her eyes flash open, tensing suddenly, convinced she must have heard him wrong.

"What?" Valkyrie chuckles nervously, convinced she must be going crazy.

He looks up at her then, face serene, his expression soft, and repeats it clear as day. "Marry me."

"But you're king, " she states rather dumbly.

Thor raises his eyebrow as if to say and?

"Whoever marries you will be queen."

"Yes, that is how things tend to go," he quips, his smile light and welcoming in a way that still surprises her sometimes.

"But I- I can't be queen," Valkyrie stutters, her eyes wide in alarm as her whole body locks up in his arms.

"And why not?"

She laughs, thinking he must be joking. This is all some big joke, a trick he's playing on her, so she forces a laugh, because he has to be joking.

Apparently, he's not.

"So-so many reasons," she says when he keeps waiting for an answer to his not joke. "Too many reasons to name."

"I don't think there are," Thor tells her, threading his fingers through her long dark hair. It always was so soothing when he did that. He sweeps it into cascading waves down her left shoulder, clearing up the path for his lips to continue taking, resuming his soft and sweet kisses on her now bare throat. It's enough to make her shiver. She can't help but lean into his warmth.

Thor's arm tightens around her waist, not to keep her there, but to pull her closer to him.

"But what would I even do?" She asks, sounding marginally less panicked, but still a little frazzled. She still wants to laugh at just how crazy of an idea it was.

Thor shrugs. "Same as you do everyday, except we'd be married, instead of, you know, dating. Like now."

"Yes, but when we are dating, I am just the valkyrie. Training recruits, head of the army, going off into battle. I can't do that if I'm… if I'm… that is a valkyrie's position, not a queen's. A queen can't do those things."

"I don't see why not," he murmurs against her skin. "Why couldn't you be a valkyrie and a queen who trained recruits, was leader of the army, and headed off into battle?"

She practically gapes at him. How did he not get this?

"I don't know! They just don't! Queens don't get to fight, they're supposed to be all- all regal and stuff. They don't lead armies. I served for centuries under Odin, and never once did your mother ride off into battle."

"Ah, but my mother was not a warrior. You are," he says with a smile, lifting her hand to his lips and kissing it. Sometimes she wonders what happened to the man who fell over and broke things in her presence. Because that right there was suave. "You are a warrior first, the woman I love second," he tilts his head to the side. "Queen would come third."

She laughs then, some of the tension leaving her. Not all of it, but some of it. It's a step.

"It's not that simple. They don't let important people do fun stuff. Whatever's too dangerous. Queens have things like diplomatic duties, not training fighters. All Royals do. It's all throne this, throne that, that's beneath you, let someone else do this, let someone else do that. Not fighting and leading armies. Not training new recruits. They'd call that a security risk.

"They still let me head off into battle, don't they?" He asks. Clearly, it's a rhetorical question. "You would just be another in a long line of asgardian warrior royals."

"But I'm not a royal!"

"You could be, though," he says gently.

This quiets her. This gentle softness about him, the quiet warmth he surrounds her with.

Valkyrie chews on her lip, looking down. "I'm not a leader, Thor."

She supposed that might be her main worry. Her main opposition to it. Other than just about everything else. The idea of her being a queen is absurd. Who in their right mind who want her as their queen?

"You're head of an army," he reminds her. Though, technically, the asgardian army has never been so small- their population has never been so small. They were still rebuilding. They would be rebuilding for a long time to come.

And the guard now was built by Valkyrie herself.

Before ragnarok- every trained asgardian soldier had been killed the day that Hela came. He lost so many friends, people he grew up with, who died at Hela's hand fighting her in the square that day. While he was stuck falling through a portal.

And they saved their people, but at the end of the day, much was lost. So many were gone.

But asgardians were strong. So was the woman before him now.

Every member of the proud again asgardian army was trained by Valkyrie herself. Taught discipline, trained how to fight, learned how to protect.

They were lucky to have her to show them the way. As their leader. She didn't seem to think so, though.

"Of troops, fine. I'm not…" Valkyrie sighs, shaking her head. "I'm not a leader of people. Not like you are."

Thor doesn't reply to that. She knows he's disappointed.

"I love you," she tells him, cupping his cheek.

"And you as well," he says with a small smile, laying his hand over hers. He kisses her, then, and she just melts into him.

"Just, don't say yes or no right now," he asks of her, tracing his thumb along the back of her hand. "I would never want you to do anything you didn't want to, but my mind won't change. I don't want an answer right now. Just… promise me you'll think about it?"

She purses her lips, but she really can't say no to him, not when he's looking at her so cute and sweet like that with that undoubtedly puppy-ish look in his eye.

Valkyrie sighs. "Fine. I'll think about it."

Months go by.

Everything's fine between them in the meantime, he doesn't get weird about it or try to convince her, just completely drops the subject and things go back to normal. He doesn't try to push the idea.

Thor asked her to think about it, but he also accepted her answer, and left it up to her to let him know if that answer ever changed.

What really seals the deal for her happens months after that conversation took place.

Thor had managed to get himself captured because of course he had, and she came to rescue him because of course she did.

She doesn't make a particularly delicate entrance.

Valkyrie busts through the wall of the compound, sword drawn, and with a strong and raised voice demands, "Where's my… boyfriend? Where's Thor?!"

It's at that moment she realizes she would've felt much more badass busting through a wall and shouting 'where's my husband'.

That would've sounded much cooler than demanding to know where her boyfriend was being held captive.

She made a quick decision to go with boyfriend, because she couldn't say lover or something weird like that.

It didn't look like the people in the room were going to be much help anyway. They had already drawn their swords, but she had picked the right room to literally break into- the soldiers manning the control station also had a nice little video feed that had a stream of a certain asgardian that she knew and loved in the top left corner.

She can see his lips moving-obviously talking to someone off screen, and she has to sigh. This method of extracting information by getting himself captured was really something he needed to stop pulling.

Anyways, back to her revelation. It's not like the guards would have cared or given her information regardless of what she had referred to Thor as.

It didn't really matter what she called him, especially not in rescue situations when talking to hostile opponents.

It was just- that was the moment she realized.

That was when she knew.

When Valkyrie realized she would have felt much more badass breaking down that wall and shouting "Where's my husband"-

That's when she knew she wanted to marry him.

"You know, your method of getting captured just to get information is really quite troublesome," Valkyrie tells him with a pointed look on the way home.

"Aw, but it worked so well the first time!" Thor whines, but he's smiling too. "This time too. I love it when they monologue. Bad guys always want to gloat. Now I know where the thing is! Let's go get the thing!"

She shakes her head at his bright eyed and genuinely excited look. "Dare I ask when the first time was? What did you do before you had me to break you out of prison cells? Who came to save you then? I can't imagine Loki would come when you called."

"Before you," he starts as if about to regale a story of untold wonders, "I had a hammer."

She shoves him in the shoulder, and he falls away laughing. "Come on then, hammer boy. We've got a thing to get."

"Okay, let's do it," Valkyrie tells him the next day, after they've gotten the thing that he got himself captured for in the first place. She got up early, and was returning to their bedroom from her morning workout routine to see that his sleepy face had finally woken up that morning. He was still in bed, looking unfairly cute and bleary-eyed.

Thor yawns. "Do what?" He asks, popping his jaw as he stretched back.

"That marriage thing you were talking about. I wanna do it. I wanna marry you."

Surprised is hardly an adequate word to describe his expression. Shock and disbelief come closer. "Wait, what? Are you joking?"

"Have you rescinded your offer?" Valkyrie raises her eyebrow, trying not to smile because she knows he hasn't, but she also wants to tease him.

"What? Of course not!" He practically shouts, incredibly panicked. He was too fun to mess with sometimes.

"Good, then," she smiles. "It's settled. We're getting married."

AN: Just a quick little one shot, because I needed more thorkyrie in my life. RIP Mjolnir.