And then they were golden

by Yuu-chi

Because they might never have approval, but they'll always have each other. AU

And then they were golden

It's the sharp sound of knocking that jerks Thor from his sleep, rough and uneven against the battered plywood of his front door that has turned near-hollow with age, wear and abuse.

For a moment, he just lays there, staring blankly up at the scratched ceiling above him, thin sheets tangled around his legs and the slow creak of the shabby bedroom fan turning in slow circles that sends the faintest breeze skimming over his sweat-slickened skin.

Just for a second, he thinks he imagined it, but no, it's definitely there again; a soft tap that echoes through Thor's matchbox like apartment with the subtlety of bomb blast.

Hazily, he rolls over onto his side, ignoring the sharp protests of his bed and fumbles blindly for a moment with the alarm clock, jerking it forward to glance at the digital display, the numbers corresponding appropriately with the amount of light filtering through the hastily shut curtains, lacy – left from the previous owner – and dreadful at keeping any measure of brightness out.

The knock comes again, more insistent this time, and finally, Thor admits defeat and rolls out of bed, sleepily adjusting his pants which sat a little too low on his hips from a night of being kept fitfully awake by the penetrating heat that his broken air-conditioning was incapable of removing.

It's nine in the morning, and for the life of him Thor can't figure out who'd be on his doorstep so early, especially knowing that Thor doesn't have class today, that Thor tends to sleep well into noon when given the chance and without calling first to see if he was awake.

Stopping only briefly to lean into the kitchen and flick the kettle on, he ambles to the front door with one large hand scratching idly through his messy blonde hair and the other rubbing at a particularly stubborn kink in his neck that the endless movement and rolling of the previous night had brought about.

The rapping comes one more time before Thor finally reaches the door and slides the safety chain off and clicks the lock back, pulling it open with a barely repressed yawn as the heat slides sluggish and thick over his bare chest and into his apartment through the opening.

"Greetings friend, what brings you here so early?" He asks around his yawn, eyes squinting against the onslaught of mid-summer light.

"Brother," greets Loki, black hair slicked perfectly back and green eyes expressionless as he matches Thor's opened mouth stare, a sizable bag slung over his shoulder with long, slender fingers holding it in place.

Oh.

Suddenly the morning air feels twice as heavy.

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When they were little, perhaps nine and ten respectively, Loki took to running away, and running away often.

The littlest things could set him off; an unintentional slight at the dinner table or a joke pressed to far by his elder brother, the confiscating of his favourite book for the week as punishment or their fathers' hands forcing him to sit down and finish his meal when he proclaimed he wasn't hungry – so prone to doing when he was little.

Sometimes he'd pack a bag and sometimes he'd just dash off into the night when nobody was paying him attention and vanish off the radar for several hours before he either slunk home dirty, sulky and hungry or Thor and Odin went looking for him and dragged him back bodily from whatever park or alley he'd taken refuge in during this particular tantrum.

It got so bad at one point that their parents took to locking all doors and hiding the keys, and, when that proved ineffective against this sudden childhood rebellion, locking the windows too and keeping the keys tucked safely in their pockets where even Loki wasn't brave enough to dip his fingers, quick of touch and almost scarily intelligent for his age though he was.

"Brother," Thor remembers saying mildly one day when Loki had secluded himself in the darkened corner of his closet as a substitute for his scampering out in the night air, "you can't just run away from your problems and expect them to vanish. You must face them, or they'll never be solved."

Loki had put down his book and folded his hands neatly on his lap, looking up into his elder brother's gaze with a near sneer on his young, angular features. "And you know much about this, do you brother?"

"I'd never run from a battle," Thor vowed, because even at ten he's valiant and a little thick-headed.

Loki studied him for a moment with a sharp flash of bright green before he picked up his tome again and cracks open the ancient pages once more.

"Sometimes," he said in a voice that Thor at the time thought soft, but now realises was filled with deeper meaning than a child could truly comprehend, "the only choice is to run."

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"Does father know you're here?"

Loki is sitting on the couch, neat black shirt, dark jeans and obsidian hair incongruous with the easy cheerfulness of Thor's apartment, the horrid blue plaid of the couch which had, admittedly, been one of the few furnishings that had come with the place. He accepts the cup of tea Thor hands him; he doesn't drink coffee, won't, in fact, unless he makes it himself and even then he uses so much cream and sugar Thor hardly dares deign it coffee.

"No."

Thor sighs, not sure why he even asked. Of course he doesn't know; if he knew, Loki wouldn't be here carefully cradling a steaming mug of tea, blowing carefully to cool it down.

His brother shouldn't be here, sitting casually on his couch with a bag by his side looking like for all the world he owned the place with the casual slant to his elegant features and the cool glint in those brilliant green eyes.

Loki had always been more feminine than masculine, all sharp angles, dark hair and pale skin while the rest of his family were golden; tall and slender where both Odin and Thor had been more muscular and rugged. He hadn't changed much, he never did; skinny wrists peeking out from beneath the neatly folded cuffs of his shirt, slim fingers gently nursing his tea as he took cautious sips, frowning in distaste when he discovered Thor had added considerably less milk than he was given to taking his drink with.

If Loki had it his way, there would be a minimum sugar allowance of six or seven teaspoons for all warm beverages with a punishment of death for all those who didn't obey.

As Thor watches, Loki pushes a strand of escaping hair back behind his ear with a flash of pale fingers, perfectly curved nails light against the soft white of his skin. Thor takes a deep breath. He wanted to stop looking, didn't want to stop looking, never wanted to stop looking.

Instead, he averts his eyes to his scuffed and stained carpet and says, "I thought you were studying astrophysics at college."

"I am," Loki replies instantly, giving his brother a small smile with one angular brow arched upwards. "I just fancied a break from the work and father's careful eye."

"So what?" Thor blurts, because he's always been a glutton for punishment and he really, really can't help himself. "You came here?"

"Is that a problem?" Loki asks innocently. Pseudo-innocently, Thor corrects, Loki rarely ever did anything innocently, rarely ever as clueless as he seemed. It was one of the traits that had often made him the less favoured sibling growing up.

"Of course it is," Thor says, the words dragged out of him because it is and he really wishes it wasn't, but wishing alone gets him nowhere. "Father is going to be furious if he finds out."

Loki actually snorted at that, a harsh whistling sound that was nothing like his normal perfectly smooth noises. "Father is always furious with me," he murmurs, sounding both bitter and unbothered, and Thor wasn't even sure how that was possible. "It really doesn't matter what I do anymore."

His words were swept up in the soft humming of the kitchen fridge that hadn't been silent a day since Thor had bought it, Loki twisting his fingers absently together as he leant forward to place his tea on the crowded coffee table, mouth twitching slightly when he couldn't find a coaster to rest the mug on. He'd always been anal and nearly obsessively neat where Thor was reckless and messy, a squabble that they'd still never managed to resolve after all this time, just another one of the multitudes of differences that separated them.

Loki was staring absently out the nearby window, head cocked slightly to the side so the longer strands of his black hair just lightly touched the exposed expanse of his collarbone that was visible from beneath the carelessly tugged back neck of his shirt, his nose wrinkling in distaste as the woman who lived across from Thor leant out her door to puff on a cigarette in her furiously pink robe, greying hair held back in curlers and face caked thickly in a layer of makeup.

Loki used to smoke, Thor doesn't know if he still does, but he made it look many more times elegant than Mrs Sheedy, smoke spilling from his lips and dancing from his fingertips in a way that nearly made Thor dizzy and he couldn't stop the thought, fleeting and accurate thought it was, that his brother looked like a master of magic, all curling white strands that blew in the wind and careless flicks of his fingertips.

Thor swallows deeply and says, "You're studying astrophysics; I hardly think father could be more proud."

"Father hasn't been proud of me for a very long time; if ever."

"That's not true," Thor objects, but it's a token gesture and he knows it, Loki knows it, and he can see in the way that Loki turns slightly to fix him with his unwavering gaze. He'd worn that look often when they were children and Thor had let slip something particularly daft or childish, Loki turning to gaze at him with the same blankness in his features, brows furrowed just that little bit so it looked like he was disappointed and something else entirely that even after twenty years Thor has yet to identify.

He wishes he could pull Loki open and read him the same way Loki reads his books.

"He'll be furious," Thor reiterates.

"I'm old enough to make my own decisions," Loki snaps, real annoyance clear in his voice as he leans back slightly, the aging couch creaking alarmingly beneath him. "And so are you."

Thor blinks, because he'd really never thought of it like that.

Odin was a force to be reckoned with, seemingly always by their side but just out of reach ever since they were children, a constant unwavering presence that he wasn't supposed to question, to fight, not just because he loved his father – and he did, and he was sure Loki did too, somewhere buried deep down beneath his layers of detached resentment and grudges – but because it was as familiar and frequent as the changing of the seasons.

It had been years since he last set foot in the family home and aside from the near annual strained phone call to his parents that was always tense and awkward, they barely spoke anymore. Thor was twenty-three and Loki soon to be twenty-two and maybe his brother had a point. Maybe it was time he took a step back and adjusted, about time he let Odin let him adjust.

Thor allows his eyes to drift closed and for a moment it's just him and the uneven turning of the ceiling fan, the dying of his battered old fridge and the dull roar of New York traffic beneath him, white noise that sits pleasant and familiar at the back of his mind, comforting, almost, in its assuredness.

He likes risks, he likes surprises and noise and suddenness that is unexplainable and beautiful because it's almost like a gift, a present when you least expect it but most need it.

The white noise seems less wonderful all of a sudden.

When he cracks his eyes back open Loki is looking at him, silent and so unmoving Thor might mistake him for a statue on his couch if it wasn't for the slight movement of his chest and the way the steam curdling up from the tea resting on the table paints shapes in his eyes that aren't possible on white tinted marble.

"You can stay here," he says after a moment, "but you're sleeping on the couch."

Loki doesn't miss a beat – expecting Thor to give in, he never had been very good at denying his brother – as he replies, "This ugly thing? I'd sooner burn it."

Thor pushes himself upright, a smile ghosting over his lips as he says in return, "Then you'll be sleeping on the floor."

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High school had been terrible for Loki.

He never said as much, never brought it up, but he came home each day with a new bruise and fresh scrapes, additions to a growing collection. When asked he'd wave his hands flippantly, always with a ready excuse on his lie-soaked lips for why he was late home, for why his bag was missing, for why he needed more money.

If Frigga and Odin suspected something, they didn't let on and Loki kept those lying lips of his sewn tightly shut.

"It's nothing," he scowled one day as Thor caught sight of a brilliant bruise blossoming across his shoulder, pulling his coat tighter still around him to hide the mark from view. "I fell."

"Surely you can fib better than that, brother," Thor snapped, because Loki was just as at fault here for refusing to seek help, for playing the silent victim. "I've never quiet seen a hand shaped bruise resulting from a fall before."

"It's none of your business," Loki snarked as he yanked the wrist Thor was holding free and took several steps back. "I can handle it."

"I'm your brother; it's my job to protect you!"

Loki's eyes darkened as they were so prone to doing and suddenly Thor felt like he'd said something wrong, like he'd somehow spoken out of line and overstepped some pre-established boundary they'd agreed upon eons ago even though, logically, he knew there was nothing wrong with what he'd uttered, that he was being ridiculous.

"If that's so, know that I do not need your protection."

At the time, Thor didn't understand the loaded statement, but he bristled at the ambiguous proclamation all the same, but Loki was already sliding from the room in a flash of green and black and vanishing down the hall before Thor could call him back.

Despite Loki telling him in no uncertain terms to not interfere, Thor began to keep a watch on his brother at school, calling by his locker in between classes to talk, staring down people who walked to close to his brother, dangerously so, with threat of his own in his eyes and if Loki noticed his increased surveillance – he must have, something like that wouldn't escape him – he didn't say anything.

Then one day Loki came home from school free of bruising; bruising that now suspiciously covered a good portion of the school's infamous football team that Thor himself had played in at one time before the disgusting moral behaviour of his teammates drove him off the field.

He didn't utter a word, just sat down heavily next to Thor on the sofa in the lounge room and joined him in mindless television.

They sat like that for a moment, silent and near with only the jumbled noise of the speakers echoing in the room before Thor felt a slight shift beside him and the soft gentle press of Loki's fingers wrapping around his own, their entwined hands sitting loosely between them.

From the corner of his eye, Thor saw the faintest twitch at the corner of Loki's lips and a gentle flutter of warmth expanded in his stomach at the sight.

It was as close to a 'thank you' as he'd ever get.

.

.

.

"Your brother's staying with you?"

Jane's tone was appropriately surprised, Thor nodding absently as he rolled his glass in his hands, the condensation catching on his palms and making them glitter dimly in the buttery yellow spilt light of the bar.

It should have been cool, should have been free of the soul crushing heat that flooded the rest of the city, but the inside of the building was as cramped and suffocating as outside, the fierce rattle of the air-conditioning gusting out stale breezes that dried the sweat of the crowd as it appeared, bringing about a feeling of unpleasant stickiness.

The bar itself was normally not so full, but the heat outside had driven all the regular patrons that convened on separate days in together, leading to a cramped unenjoyable feel.

Thor took a swig of his beer, closing his eyes against the overwhelming room.

"He says he wants a break from college."

Jane arches her eyebrow, turning slightly on her stool with her arm resting lightly on the chipped surface of the bar bench. "I thought you didn't speak with your family."

"I don't."

"I mean, I barely even knew you had a brother."

"He's my little brother," Thor repeats, because, for some reason, he feels it's an important point to establish, staring down at the beer in his hand.

Jane gives him an odd look. "I know."

Thor licks his chapped lips and takes another drink, less out of desire and more out of the sudden wish to do something with his hands.

"Did you guys have a falling out or something? You and your family, I mean."

"Not really," Thor murmurs, stroking his thumb along the slippery surface of his glass.

It was cramped and uncomfortable, and Thor felt very alien, all of a sudden, sitting at the bar with a drink he didn't want and have a discussion he didn't like.

"Do you and your brother get along?" Jane inquires, leaning slightly on her palm and watching Thor with sharp eyes.

Jane had a way about her, a certain piercing look that seemed to search right down into every secret, every intimate moment you'd ever had without bias between what was private and what was not. It was something Thor both admired and feared about her.

"He's my brother."

"Yeah, you've said."

"It's my job to protect him." Thor was looking at the bar.

"That's one way to look at it, I suppose. Are you alright? You're acting kind of strange, Thor…"

"I'm fine."

That was the end of the discussion.

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It must have been somewhere between being young and not that Thor begun to notice Loki; really notice him. Notice him in a way that bypassed the wondering eyes of siblings.

Sometimes, Thor would find himself staring at his brother without even realizing it, watching the way his hair caught in the sunlight or the way he rolled his eyes and polished his nails with a bored expression when others approached him and tried to initiate conversation, tried to get to know him, the strange kid who sat in the dimmest corners of the library with books that far exceeded their own knowledge or ambition.

Thor would notice how in moments like that a deep thrill would shoot through and he'd find himself thinking, fiercely with a kind of innate protectiveness, he's mine. Get away from my brother; get your hands off him. He's mine.

Which was ridiculous because Loki wasn't anybody's especially not Thor's.

Thor had always been slightly possessive of his brother, even when they were younger, always seeking to look out for him, to protect him from those who would do unto him harm, those who wished him ill. As they'd grown elder, the tight bonds they'd had as children became slightly more strained, less easy, less innocent than they'd once been.

Once upon a time they might have tussled in the grass or on Loki's bed when he refused to rise – he was a terrible morning person – but as the years stretched on and they become older and older, that ease and indifference that went hand in hand with childhood evolved into something more and Thor sometimes realized his gaze hovered for a moment longer than strictly necessary, that he was looking perhaps when he should have averted his eyes.

It wasn't just him either, sometimes he could swear that when Loki passed him something, his fingers brushed along Thor's skin slowly, lingering, and his eyes would lock with Thor's own, all dark and unreadable, and then he'd pull away and smirk, cocking one eyebrow as he did and act as if nothing happened with only the faint tingle on Thor's wrist to remind him his brothers' fingers has been there only a moment before.

It was all terribly confusing and made Thor a little dizzy to think about, a little breathless and a little heated in ways that he was unfamiliar with.

All the same, with every backward glance and stolen touch, Thor felt this new burgeoning want that didn't actually feel that new at all grow; expand until it filled him with warmth that was both uncomfortable and so very welcome, glowing like an ember in the very depths of his stomach whenever his baby blue eyes met his brother's burnished emerald.

He didn't understand it, not really, the way Loki brought something deeply primal and all-consuming to the surface and made him all confused in a way he'd been taught only girls could.

It was foreign, something that Thor could only describe as being there waiting, lurking, since he was young, waiting for a time to pounce and ensnare him in this vicious circle of want and desire which he knew nothing about, didn't know that to do.

He didn't understand, no, but he still wanted more.

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The lights were out and the apartment dark when Thor returned and he couldn't stop the smile that pulled at his lips. That was something he remembered about Loki, his obsession and preoccupation with darkness, always preferring dark blinds and no lights, staying locked inside while Thor sought out the far reaching rays of the sun.

The smile turns into more of a pained grimace as Thor stubs his toe coming into the kitchen.

The room was far tidier than Thor remembered leaving it, the dishes that had been piled in the sink washed and put away and the mess of papers and books that has been sprawled over the kitchen table in a disorganized array stacked neatly in a pile on the edge. Thor gave a short chuckle; Loki never was able to let a mess sit.

"Welcome home."

Thor turns to see Loki leaning against the door to the hallway, arms folded across his chest and a small smirk on his lips, face vaguely alighted by the silver moonlight that poured in through the large window behind him.

"Why must you always have it so dark?" Thor laughs by way of greeting and makes to walk past his brother, intending to flick the light switch only to have Loki grab his wrist lightly as he went to lean past.

"Don't. I like it like this."

"I know," Thor chuckles, "I'm asking why."

Loki's lips only turn up further at the corner, looking positively ethereal in the dim glow of the moon, dark hair streaked with lines of white and his pale skin glittering almost marble-like in the cast.

Instead of answering, Loki turns the captured wrist over in his palm until the soft flesh just below the heel of Thor's palm was showing, faint lines of blue thrumming with blood displayed clearly. Almost gently, Loki places two fingers against the veins, trailing them along his skin ever so softly, a faint humming coming from the very back of his throat.

Thor's breath catches and blood rushes from his head at a dizzying pace.

"Brother," he warns.

Loki doesn't even look at him as his fingers move in a soft circle until he finds the dim thump of Thor's pulse, resting gently over it for a second. Even to his own ears, Thor finds his heartbeat sounds too loud, too fast and this thought is only intensified as he watches Loki' s lips quirk in a deep smirk.

Bright green flickers up to meet Thor's gaze and, staring unwaveringly the entire time, Loki lifts up Thor's hand and slowly brought it to his face, lips brushing against the tender flesh.

Electricity shot from the point of contact and Thor was wrenching his hand back before he was even really aware of it, taking a step away from his brother. Breathe, he reminds himself vaguely when he realizes he hasn't inhaled since Loki first touched him.

"Loki," Thor grinds out from between his teeth, "We… No."

Eyes completely unreadable, Loki met Thor's gaze evenly, straightening up slightly to his full height, just a half inch or so shorter than Thor himself, the perfect height to rest his forehead against Thor's shoulder, had, in fact, in the past.

"You know what I think?" He asks quietly, the shift in posture causing the white light that streaked him to ripple and spill in a slant over his left side, emerald green eye glinting and his red lips turning a strange white from the shade.

"Brother," Thor tries again, clearing his throat gruffly when his voice came out lower, huskier, than he'd anticipated, displaying just how clearly he was effected by this despite his best attempts to remain impassive.

"I think you're still letting father make your decisions for you."

"Brother, stop it."

"Stop what? Speaking the truth? Does it disturb you? Do I disturb you?"

"No," Thor says, stricken, rubbing his forehead. "Don't say things like that. You don't disturb me; you'll never disturb me."

Loki was standing so close to Thor that his breath gusts nonchalantly across his cheek. Slowly, Loki raises a hand and placed it gently just so his thumb can lightly run over Thor's lower lip, the cool press of his skin close and familiar but reckless and brazen all at once and Thor knew he should pull away, step back and stand strong, but all he could do was swallow deeply, looking into his brother's eyes.

"You know what else I think?" Loki breaths, leaning in slightly so his lips brushed against Thor's cheek as he spoke, trailing casually backwards as the hand on his cheek crept gradually to entangle in locks of blonde hair, mouth drifting closer to Thor's ear.

"What?" He rasps, eyes fluttering closed, because he couldn't do this. Couldn't pretend he wanted the space and the distance and the not talking for months on ends, the briefest glimpses caught only when Odin was near and supervising them both with his keen eye.

"I think," Loki breathes, and his voice sounded low and sultry in Thor's ear, fingers tight in his hair, "that I won't be sleeping on that horrible couch tonight," his fingertips brushed Thor's scalp. "I think I won't be sleeping at all."

Thor shivers, heat spiralling unbidden down his spine to pool hot and furious in his stomach and it took his limited willpower to refrain from turning around and pushing his brother up against the wall and touching him everywhere he could reach and a dozen and one places he couldn't, because Loki never ceased having this effect on him and Thor both loved it dearly and hated it from the pits of his soul.

"Brother…"

Loki chuckles, a low and drawn out throaty sound that vibrates through Thor from where his brother is leaning against him, flesh against flesh, skin against skin, all vibrant heat and closeness, the scent of his brother like an ice forest in the dead of winter; fresh and powerful, chilling him despite the heat and the sweat rolling down the back of his neck.

The room is silent aside from the distant noises that make up Thor's apartment – fridge, fan, traffic – and the levelled breaths that brush across Thor's skin and he thinks suddenly with a fierceness that nearly rips a moan from his lips, I've missed this.

And he has, for so long, since the first passion driven touches of youth and the lingering glances that smoulder unseen and hidden from the eyes of those who would prevent it and Thor wants, has wanted, always wanted, this for a very long time. He wants Loki; he wants his touches and his kisses, the soft feel of his skin and the fragrance so unsettling beatific and natural that his stomach lurches with desire. He wants it all, everything, the good and the bad, the beautiful and the horrible, everything that makes his brother who he is, every last breath and every last smile.

Slowly, Thor raises his own hand to rest trembling against his brother's skin, quivering fingers tracing along the small barely noticeable beads of pink scar tissue that rest along the outer edges of Loki's mouth, so familiar to him even after all this time.

He wants it so much it hurts.

There's no more holding on, no more resisting and it's not so much of snapping as it is relenting.

This was going to happen, there was no denying it, it was simply a matter of when and where, no how or why or what, because this is who they are, who they'll always be and all the resistance in the world couldn't stop it from crashing into existence, a force of nature just as devastatingly powerful as a tsunami or tornado that thrashes through life, destroying everything in its way.

They'll probably destroy each other too, at some point, and Thor is strangely okay with that.

There's the loud thud of flesh on plaster and Loki laughs against Thor's lips, low and inviting and so utterly wonderful, and then they're kissing, unfathomably deep, all clashing teeth and entwined tongues. There's no gentleness now, like there never was, and Loki bites Thor's lip, spills blood, and in response Thor entangles his hands in Loki's hair and tugs his head back in one harsh pull so his chin jerks up, a gasp flying free from his lips, mouthing at his long exposed throat, biting the perfectly white unmarred skin with fevered intent.

Loki is cursing and panting, pulling at Thor's shirt and hissing through his teeth, shaking beneath the hands that wander searching and hungry up his sides, creeping beneath his clothes to glide along his sides sleek with sweat. Thor bites hard on Loki's collarbone and beneath him his brother moans and buckles, writhing and swearing as he tries to pull away long enough to get the pair of them unclothed.

Somehow, they manage and in the dim spill of the moon Loki tugging his shirt over his head, spine flexing and chest heaving, amulet around his throat swinging from the momentum, is the most erotic thing Thor has ever seen and then they're joined again, tripping over each other in their haste as Thor tries to back Loki up against the wall again only to have him twist free of his grip, wrapping lanky arms around Thor's shoulders and grinning a grin that was positively feral, white teeth and eyes that are feverishly bright in the darkness, and then they're falling backwards in a tangle of limbs and Thor has enough time to vaguely think, the floor's good, but it's the couch they hit, Loki rolling their positions in one swift move as soon as they land, straddling his brother and pushing him down until Thor more or less melds with the cushions.

Above him Loki is a dim shadow cast only in relief by the faint light that trickles in through the window behind him, hands spread out on Thor's chest to keep him flat against the couch and legs folded either side of Thor's own, hips pressing down just below his waist. Thor wants to touch him, to trail his fingers along that perfect skin, to ruin it, to wreck it, to do anything and everything that will show that Loki is his and his alone.

His hands flutter briefly up from the cushions but he barely manages to rest them on Loki's waist before his brother grinds against him, sweet friction and tantalizing presses and Thor's ridiculously hard by now and it's a sweet agony, vision going white for a split second from sheer pleasure. His fingers, he feels, dig sharply into Loki's flesh with enough force to leave bruises the exact shape of his fingertips on the pristine skin and that thought thrills him more than it should.

"You want this?" Loki rasps out as he moves again, groaning himself – a long lingering sound that does things to Thor – and while there's a playful lilt to his voice, he sounds half serious.

"How could I not?" Thor asks in response, more of gasp than anything else, and his fingers slip on Loki's skin as he tries to fumble for his belt in the near darkness, nails scrapping against thick leather and clacking against metal as he struggles against the fastening.

Loki's breathing is ragged and he scrapes his own nails along Thor's chest, gathering skin as he goes and distantly Thor thinks that it should probably hurt but it doesn't and he's so high off adrenaline and lust that it barely registers at all, far more interested in tugging Loki's belt free, pressing one hand harshly against his denim clad groin and twisting it.

He's rewarded with a choked intake of breath and Thor's own jeans are much too tight and all he wants is Loki, Loki, Loki. Their position isn't really working for what he wants anymore and it's his turn to roll Loki beneath him as he rips open his jeans and works on shucking them from his body, Loki giving an impatient moan and kicks them off himself when Thor's shaking hands prove inadequate.

And just like that, Loki is bare beneath him and Thor pauses for a moment – has to pause, can't not – just to stare, because it's been too long since his had this, Loki below him with nothing covering him, nothing to hide behind.

White light slants over his skin in thin lines that ripple over his dripping frame as he breathes, hair no longer neat but stringy from sweat and messy from where Thor's fingers have been tugging, stark blackness that halos against the couch, as dark as his skin is pale, eyes burning feverishly as he stares up, flickering faintly with lust and something else that might be nostalgia, might be tenderness or maybe, Thor dares hope, something more, something that has meaning more than even the way that they fit together physically so perfectly, two different puzzle pieces slotting together to create a whole.

He's the most beautiful thing Thor's ever seen and some days he wonders how he's even allowed to look at him without being blinded.

"What?" Loki hisses, attempting to raise one hand to wrap around the base of Thor's neck only to have thick fingers circle around his wrist and slam it back against the couch and he huffs agitatedly. "What?"

Loki doesn't like being stared at. Never has. It's almost as sad as it is endearing.

There's a lot of words Thor could choose from, many things he could say, but none of them feel right, feel powerful enough – words were always more Loki's things, physicality was his.

You're beautiful, he wants to say, gorgeous. I don't know what I did to deserve this.

Instead, he captures Loki's lips with own with bruising force and slips one hand between his legs, Loki gasping against his lips, bucking into his grip and fighting one pinned hand free to drape his arm around Thor's shoulders and drag him down, burying his face in the crook of Thor's neck as he pants hot and desperate against sweaty skin.

Things blur a little after that, and Thor is dimly aware of hands sliding everywhere – his hands, Loki's hands – touching burning flesh and heat pools fast and rapid in his stomach, and he just can't seem to get enough friction between the two of them and Loki's cursing; long drawn out breathy sounds that echo hauntingly in the still air of the apartment.

It's really too hot for this, should be too hot for this, and the pair of them are slipping and sliding against one another, rocking on the couch so that it creaks loudly and if Thor's neighbours hadn't figured out the relationship between himself and Loki by now, they probably have after tonight.

"Thor," Loki gasps against his neck, teeth grinding together as he presses Thor against the couch, legs wrapped around his waist as he moves against him, riding him on that horrible blue plaid couch with moonlight bright on his skin and Thor's fingers tight on his waist, covered in bruises and marks and somewhere far off Thor dimly realizes that Loki looks wrecked, skin marred and eyes bright against the dark circles surrounding them, gleaning with sweat and hair a complete mess.

Thor probably doesn't look much better.

Loki, Loki, Loki, he thinks feverishly as Loki's hands press firmly against his chest and his brother throws his head back with a wanton moan and comes, dark beauty positively otherworldly and eyes wild with pleasure as his climax thrums through him, pushing down into Thor's lap as bliss explodes white behind his own eyes and all he can feel is hot flesh and glorious closeness.

"Brother," he pants against dripping skin and loses it entirely.

.

.

.

Thor was about fifteen when he found out Loki was adopted.

He could remember the moment with such ludic clearness that it's almost frightening, Odin and Frigga sitting him down one afternoon when Loki hadn't come home from school and Thor was confused and a little terrified because that morning his father and his brother had one of their infamous fights and Thor might be a little slow but he's not stupid and he knows with certainty that the yelling voices locked in the kitchen while he was preparing to leave for school are connected to the sudden absence of his brother and the concerned expressions his parents are aiming at him as he takes a seat in the lounge against the deep red couch.

He probably always knew, deep down, in ways that manifested in lingering touches and looks that one doesn't, shouldn't, aim at their brother.

"Thor, you know we love both of you – you and your brother – very much, right?"

Frigga is gentle, setting one dainty hand upon her eldest son's leg and locking her golden brown eyes with deep, worried blue. She was a woman born to be a mother; all gentle touches and soft kisses to take away the pain of scabbed knee in childhood or the sting of rejection during adolescents. Loki had always adored her, a mother's boy right to the heart, running to her whenever he felt upset or offended in a way that he'd never rely on Odin.

"Yes mother," Thor replied, hesitant and uncertain. "Where's Loki?"

She and Odin exchanged a glance and Thor suddenly felt very small and unimportant. Leaning forward he hedged uncertainly, "Is he alright?"

"Loki's… he's fine. There's something we need to talk to you about."

And Thor listened attentively with minimal fussing as realization dawned in his eyes because now that it was out in the open, he wasn't sure how he'd missed it before. Maybe he hadn't wanted to look, hadn't tried. Loki was his brother, always, except now he apparently wasn't. Apparently never was, apparently never will be.

Skinny little Loki who looked like a breeze gusting in the wrong direction may knock him flat off his feet, all dark hair and gleaming eyes of a schemer. Loki who, in all his life, had never seemed to belong entirely within the household, a misplaced painting in a museum, a misinterpreted artefact awaiting discovery.

Dark where the family was golden, reserved whereas Thor was boisterous, intelligent where his brother was… slightly less so. So many glimpses to see the inherent truth and Thor had missed them all with the practice of a blind man who had no chance to see what was spread out in front of him, to know what it was that everybody else was whispering about and aiming pointed glances at.

"You're my brother; it's my job to protect you."

"If that's so, know I do not need your protection."

And Loki – well, Loki had probably known all along.

He'd probably known and kept it bottled up inside him all this time, perhaps feeling a flash of resentment when Thor leaned in close to muss his hair and declare him his brother with all that pride drenched emphasis only he could manage.

Suddenly, Thor felt much older than he actually was.

He retired to his room shortly thereafter for the night and although he sees Odin and Frigga exchanging glances out of the corner of his eye, he's really much too tired and mentally weary to call them on it, to exasperatedly declare that Loki is his brother and blood runs thinner than water in that respect. He wants to say that Loki will always be Thor's sibling, his other half, and all the signed adoption papers locked away in damp cabinets in the world couldn't change that.

Except he can't because he honestly doesn't know how he feels about this.

Thor spends the next few hours well into dark mulling things over in his head, recalling a chuckle that was fine as a glass and as strong as steel, curious eyes and an upturned smirk, dainty fingers that dance along the aged spine of books with careful precision, like it's something precious, sacred, with a devotion in his eyes that spurs something deep in Thor's stomach. Something angry and animalistic, alive with fury and jealousy, a green eyed monster of envy.

Why can't you look at me like that, brother?

And Loki does; tears his eyes up from fanned open pages and tilts his head just so to the side, hair – already a little longer than normal, like Thor's own, but so much smoother – cascading lightly to the left and smiles openly up at him. It's not innocent and it's not kind, instead it can only be described as predatory.

Slowly, his puts the book aside and crawls forward towards him, bed creaking lightly under his small frame as his face hovers an inch from Thor's own. Fingers press gently against his cheek, firmer when Thor can only breathe unsteadily in response, and Loki smiles deeply, a flash of brilliant white teeth and a tongue that darts out to lick his lips, Thor watching its slow path as if hypnotised.

Would you like me to?

His voice is a soft purr that sends a skittish thrill arching down Thor's spine.

Would you like me to touch you, brother?

And just like that, Thor woke with a gasp, lying flat on his back against his covers, staring uncomprehendingly up at his ceiling as blood continued to flow hot and thick through his veins, nearly making him dizzy, unable to recall falling asleep, at which point his thoughts carried him off into the realm of dreams and fantasy.

It takes another moment longer for Thor to realize he's not alone in his room.

Loki is there, sitting silently on the edge of Thor's bed and watching with eyes that can barely be seen in the dark.

Thor's dream comes rushing back to him and it's all he can do to stare open mouthed without the faintest trace of dignity in his gapping gaze and – irrationally – a brief flare of panic sparks in his chest because Loki knows, has to know, must be aware that only seconds ago in the ideal landscape of sleep, Thor was staring at him with the hungry eyes of a beast and thinking, 'just a little bit closer.'

"I'm sorry if I woke you," Loki muttered, shifting lightly, uncertainly, on the bed and it creaks beneath him and Thor tries so very hard not to think of all the other ways they can make the bed creak. "I was just…"

"Just?" Thor prompts, frowning, because Loki looks deeply disturbed right now, but not at Thor, which is good – more than good, brilliant – but Loki is still his brother – isn't he? – and Thor's already half reaching forward to pull him towards him, as he does when his brother looks upset as it's so rare, not even thinking for a second that the proximity might be a bad idea.

Loki allowed Thor to tug him closer without any fuss so that they're sitting with Loki resting lightly in Thor's lap, back pressed flat against his stomach in a way they hadn't done for years, certainly not since they started high school, and Thor feels a little awkward; somewhat because Loki isn't snipping at him like he normally does when Thor acts on impulse and treats him like he's five years younger than he actually is, and partially because fuck it all; he can't help comparing the Loki sitting so close to him to the soft press of his fingertips against his skin.

"Mother and father spoke to you?"

And that right there is the root of all this, why Loki is sitting with Thor in the near pitch blackness of his room, probably at some ungodly hour of the morning with the soft fingertips of his left hand absently tracing Thor's wrist that hangs over his shoulder.

Thor remains silent and Loki seems to read his answer in the way Thor's loose grip on him tightens ever so slightly so that Loki is now pulled flush against him; skin on skin, flesh on flesh.

He thinks with an almost detached pondering that his brother slots in perfectly against him, like their bodies were made for this, so vastly different but so very compatible.

Loki is very still suddenly, fingers stopped against Thor's wrist and with only the faintest line of white light spilling in from where the blinds stop slightly above the windowsill, Thor is unable to read his brother's expression, barely able to see him in this strange twilight of black and purple shadows.

"Is it… You know now. That you're not my brother. That we're not related."

"Loki, no," Thor cuts in, startled at the distance in his voice. He gives Loki a squeeze with the arm draped around his shoulders and tries not to think too hard about how close they are, because it doesn't mean anything, it's just the dream spinning around in his head causing havoc and making his heart beat out an uneven tattoo. "You're my brother. Always. It doesn't matter if you don't share my blood, I love you."

"Brother." Loki's voice is flat with an undercurrent of something that Thor can't even identify. "Right."

It bothers Thor – of course it does, how can it not? – the way Loki seems to be ready to cast off and drift away from him, afloat in a sea of his own knowledge made up of all those impossible thoughts and emotions that were so uniquely Loki, a secret code or pattern that only he was able to read, that was impervious to Thor's every attempt to gain insight.

He doesn't know how to stop it; not really, his brother had always done exactly what he wanted to do – no more, no less. All these years, all these moments, and Thor was still completely unable to follow him when Loki choose to pull away and tread in his distant mindscape – and Thor knows he can't intrude, he's not welcome, but all the same he can't just sit back and watch as his brother pulls away from him because he simply can't.

So many words, so many looks and so many touches that pass between them uncommented on but thrumming vibrantly with something that feels dangerous and uncertain and so very, very grey; like it should be wrong but somehow isn't.

All this and the only thing Thor can think of to stop his fourteen year old brother from shaking him off in so many ways – all the ways that count – is to tighten his hold and throw the both of them back on his bed, arms wrapped firmly and unyieldingly around his bony frame and face buried in a mess of black hair.

Loki doesn't struggle, like he hasn't all night, and if anything, Thor thinks he feels his brother pressing closer to him, like he too can't seem to bare an inch of space separating them, but that might just be wishful thinking on Thor's part.

They fall to sleep that night wrapped up in one another's embrace and Thor dreams again.

.

.

.

The morning finds Thor awakening to a sore back and a dull throbbing at the rear of his temple that might be an unseemly combination of the alcohol he'd consumed the night before and the uncomfortable press of the threadbare arm of the couch beneath his head.

He sits up with a groan as he blinks himself awake; registering the close brush of ratty cushions against his skin that reminds him he might possibly be sort of naked.

There's enough natural light spilling into the room from the crooked blinds to judge that it must be somewhere in the neighbourhood of late morning, the noises from outside too loud and too prominent to be any earlier than ten or eleven. The people that live in Thor's apartment have never been the quietest of building fellows, but even they couldn't create the study thrum of the traffic below and the yammering of distant conversations that Thor isn't privy to.

So normal and unchanging, just as it was the morning before, and the morning before that, like it would be tomorrow and the day after that, and the day after that. Rigid and unmoving, and to a certain extent Thor likes it. Likes what all those little routines out there symbolise, the safety and contentment of outside life, that, if only for as long as he wakes to those familiar sounds, New York is alive and well, the people are happy.

Part of him though – and Thor isn't exactly how large this part is – hates it. Hates awakening to the sound of the same monotonous existence rattling away just out of his sight, never varying never changing; so safe and secure in a way that Thor's life has never been. In the little world Thor lives in, there are days when he awakes feeling like the whole world is his playpen and the very meaning of his existence is to experience it all, to feel everything there is to feel. There are days when he awakes feeling like the whole world is against him, his life laid out in stone for him to follow to its inevitable end. There are days when he doesn't awake at all because he doesn't want to – because no matter how positive Thor is, no matter how quick he is to bounce back from anything, sometimes getting out of bed simply isn't worth it.

And there are days when he awakes with the knowledge that only the night before he was inside his brother, all hot flesh and more one body than two.

Thor finds his jeans crumpled on the floor and wiggles into them with fumbling fingers that stutter on the buttons and seem clumsy and feeble. He's not sure why his body feels so sluggish, like it won't listen to him, because inside he's positively shaking with the electric energy that burns through his veins like wild fire, all excitement that is both from tension and relief because on one hand, Loki and on the other hand, Loki.

Thor feels he might be caught in a paradox that he can't escape.

He finds Loki curled up in the large picturesque bay window dressed only in Thor's discarded shirt from the night before which is, in all honesty and Loki most certainly knows this, far too big from him and gliding absent and unchecked off one skinny shoulder that shimmers a strange white in the heat streaming through the glass in warbling lines.

There's a cigarette perched loosely in between his fingers, the end glowing amber as Loki raises it absently to his lips and takes in a deep breath, the smouldering ashes alighting briefly as smoke rattles deep in his lungs.

It's just like Thor remembers, Loki looks like he stepped right out of an endorsement commercial or a movie from the twenties where smoking had been the height of sophistication, reserved only for the strictly upper-class with long fingers and an air of mystery that swirled around them almost as thickly as the smoke itself; all elegance and beauty.

Stands of curling white blow out from beneath Loki's kiss-swollen lips, bellowing around him in a thin veil as he carelessly flicks his cigarette into what Thor suspects might be his favourite coffee mug that is resting on the window seat beside Loki's legs that are half crossed and half sprawled, all sharp angles in the limited space of the faded grey cushion that slots neatly against the cheap wood.

His skin was littered with an assortment of bruises and hickies, and while Thor is aware he should probably feel some measure of guilt about the state of Loki's body, it's all he can do not to feel smug and congratulate himself on a job well done on claiming what is his.

Because staring at his brother all curled up and thoughtful with remnants of the previous night marking his skin, it's all too easy to push aside the overwhelming fear and realisation that is lurking just at the corner of his mind and waiting until he turns to stare at it before it grabs at him and pulls him away from this brief moment of peace he's been allowed.

Something must have changed in Thor's posture during his thoughts, the shadow he was casting from where he hovered near the door wobbled slightly and Loki glances up quickly, his sharp gaze softening slightly when he sees Thor leaning unsteadily against the wall. He offers him a sharp tooth smirk, and wrapped his long fingers around a packet of cigarettes that was lying discarded by his side and holds it out to Thor.

"Care to join me? Or are you still obsessed with your health?"

Thor gives him a small grin and sits down next his brother, Loki pulling his legs in a little closer on the small bay window seat to make room. "You know I don't smoke."

Loki shrugs, the shirt scampering down further along his shoulder at the smooth movement and waves his hand idly as if to bat away the smoke curling in long strands around him. "It's been a while since I last saw you. You might have started."

"… It has been a while," Thor allows and suddenly the light heartedness of the morning after felt heavy and thick in the air.

Loki plays it off well, tapping his smoke comfortably into the mug, Thor's eyes flickering down to watch as the ash crumbles away to drift out of sight behind the curved slogan of his college. He's watching Thor with eyes that are as guarded against insight as ever, face casual and the only hint that Thor had said anything at all the slight tightening in his brow line that had been his sole tell since childhood.

"About a year and a half, isn't it now?" He hums softly and Thor's stomach sinks a little further down and he briefly wonders where Loki is planning on taking this – nowhere good, nowhere Thor wants to go at eleven in the morning when all he wants to do is bask in the afterglow of the renewed contact between the two of them.

"About that. Not since Christmas last year." Thor aims for nonchalance and winds up with tension, fingers tangled together in his lap and eyes fixed downwards because staring at the faint creases of his jeans is a lot easier than looking at Loki right now. Isn't everything though? When has Loki – anything related to him, even in the sparest manner – ever been easy? Not being his brother, not being his lover and nothing in between. Thor wishes, if only a little, that the complicated aura that swarmed around the pair of them, thick and sluggish, would ease, just that tiny bit, so that their every meeting didn't feel like just another battle in a long war.

A soft touch presses against Thor's bare shoulder and when he raises his head to look, Loki is leaning in towards him, soft yellow light spilling in lines across his face from the blinds and cigarette held loosely in one hand, shirt still dangling off his prominent collarbone and, with movements that are slow and cautious, as if he's worried Thor's going to bolt at any sudden moves, he scoots forward and carefully drapes his arms around Thor's shoulders, leaning his pointed chin in that familiar spot between Thor's neck and shoulder where it fits just right, folded up between Thor's legs and leaning on him completely.

In this moment, Thor could easily throw him off but he's never wanted something so little in his life. With equally carful moves, he leans in to the touch and wraps his arms tightly around Loki's middle; pulling him closer still and they remain like that, melded together in the slanting light. One of Thor's hands sneaks up to Loki's hair and he buries his fingers into soft, black stands, stroking gently along his scalp. Vaguely, the thinks he feels Loki shudder against him as he raises his hand to prop his cigarette in his mouth and Thor can feel him taking it in a deep breath.

It should be awkward and uncomfortable jammed into a cavity fit for one, but they manage and as the tension and apprehension drain from Thor's body, he realizes that he can't recall the last time he'd felt as at ease as he feels now with Loki wrapped tightly around him, safe and secure and everything Thor has ever wanted – will ever want.

They stay like that, trapped in their own little world, well into noon.

.

.

.

Thor was about nineteen when he got his first girlfriend.

Well, not his first, there had been others before her, but they'd been brief and he flitted from girl to girl with a kind of restlessness that almost boarded on obnoxious, as if searching for something nobody was able to fulfil.

He'd known Sif as a friend for a few months before they tried striding into deeper territory, and Thor was as surprised as anyone when six months passed and they were still going steady, a feat that he'd never accomplished before and – just like that – they went from friends to dating to maybe-kind-of-just-a-little-serious.

They'd met at a coffee shop that Sif was working at part-time to pay her way through college when Thor had seen her nametag and instead of saying 'Sif? Is that short for anything?' had joyously commented: 'Sif? As in the legendary Norse goddess?' and from there they'd struck up an easy friendship that had started as bonding over their shared namesakes.

Sif was easy to be around, strong willed and stubborn but caring and a little bit of a softie behind the tough exterior. She'd grown up with three male childhood friends who were as close to brothers as one could get without blood, and, as such, knew exactly how to handle any mucho stunts Thor pulled and was more than willing to slap him around the head when he starting acting arrogant or all-mighty as he was prone to doing from time to time when he got carried away or caught up in a challenge.

And, on top of her already winning personality, she liked Loki. Not merely tolerated him like previous girls Thor has brought home, but genuinely liked him. Sif was more than a little impressed at the variety of books in his collection ranging from ancient Scandinavian to more modern titles that Thor himself was familiar with, she was positively enthralled by Loki's wide scientific knowledge and a little jealous of his fluency in languages.

That being said, this friendship was not mutual.

Loki despised Sif and made no bones about it. He sneered at her when she approached and tossed out insult after insult when she made an effort to involve herself in the things he studied. It made no difference how Sif acted or what she tried, Loki was simply having none of it and no matter how many sidelong glares Thor aimed at him or how many times he admonished him for being rude, Loki simply refused to be civil.

His brother had never been the friendliest of personalities, but as a general rule, he knew how to be polite and courteous; even to those he despised. His distance and dismissive nature hadn't made him liked by any means, but at the very least he'd never been rude enough to cause trouble.

Sif, to her credit, tried not to let his evident hatred get to her. Loki was barely eighteen, she pointed out, and this was the first time Thor had been emotionally invested in someone long-term; it wasn't surprising he was lashing out like a child with his favourite plaything taken away.

For some reason, the way she explained it made Thor vaguely uncomfortable with words like 'emotionally invested' and 'long-term'. Thor very much liked Sif, loved her, really, and he was more than happy to spend time with her and enjoyed her rough but comforting touches, but all the same it all felt so wrong – which was absurd because everyone Thor knew – aside from his sullen brother – had been clapping him on the back and telling him how very right it was.

Sif was attractive, even by the highest of standards, with large blue eyes, smooth skin and long hair, which, when Thor first met her, had been a deep gold much like Thor's own. However, one day – not all that long after he'd introduced her to Loki for the first time – she'd dyed it pitch black for reasons Thor didn't entirely understand, because her hair had been beautiful as it was. When asked, she gave an awkward shrug and pulled her thin fingers through the dark locks and commented that she 'fancied a change' looking at Thor with deeply unreadable eyes like she was testing him, only Thor was never quite sure whether he passed or failed, or even what the test was.

Women were very strange creatures.

So, Thor continued his courtship of her and his friends became Sif's, and Sif's friends became Thor's, and soon she was a well-established part of his life and even though he should feel content, should feel happy, Thor found himself growing more and more restless by the day.

Surely this was what was fated for him; a storybook future with a woman who was his match in every aspect, whose personality sat neatly by his side with no tension, no friction? Whose touches were fleeting and soft, feminine despite the obvious attempts to be seen as someone worth any man's battle?

But at night when Thor slept, he continued to dream of hands that were rougher and thinner, familiar to him in the intimate knowledge of an entire life spent curled up next to one another and each morning when he awoke Thor felt it growing harder and harder to return Sif's loving smile and harder and harder to meet Loki's hooded and dark gaze.

Thor knew he was running and after ten years, even he couldn't feign innocence.

Sif had to know of Thor's doubts, because try as he may, there was no way he could ever hope to fully conceal them from her wise eyes. He knew there were times when he appeared too distant to be fully invested in her presence, that there were times when he was right in the middle of a picture perfect moment, friends laughing easily around him, beer in hand and Sif curled up at his side, and a frown would flit over his features before he could stop it.

Because the easy, jovial future he was headed towards made him sick, and he wished it didn't, wished it gave him the same flutter of anticipation and excitement that thrummed through him when Loki came to sit next to him in the evenings, leaning against his side and reading a book, but it didn't. It didn't even compare.

But Thor didn't know what to do about it, what he was meant to do. Fuck, maybe he did and he just chose to ignore it because it meant taking risks, and not the kind of risks he liked because yeah, Thor liked risks, but there was the kind of risks that meant he might break a limb or two, possibly have the girl at the bar throw him out the backdoor to vomit in the trash, and then there were the kind of risks that meant he was putting his future on the line. Not his body, not his mind, not even his life, but his future and it could go one way or another and at this point, Thor wasn't sure which way was what or even which way he'd like to go.

So, maybe Thor found it easier not to think about it even if it meant his skin crawled and his mind rattled at the possibility of a life he wasn't so sure he wanted.

Thor keeps up this strange balance between two halves of his life for some time. Spending the days with Sif in the warm glow of the sun, joking and affectionately whacking one another on the arm as men – and Sif – are prone to doing, and spending the nights with Loki, watching television while his brother reads or bickering old argument that have yet to die.

It works for a while, but as six months with Sif becomes seven and seven slowly becomes eight, Loki begins to pull away. Not just from Sif whom he treated with disdain, but from Thor.

The first night Thor goes to sit beside Loki only to have his brother get up and stiffly declare he had to go to work – he didn't, he had no shifts that night, Thor had long since memorized his brother's schedule – is one of the worst of his life. Panic blossoms high in his chest and he'd never felt so terrified than he felt then watching Loki's slender back disappear from his sight.

It's the start of a trend after that and for the life of him, Thor can't figure out what he's done wrong. They've always been close, closer than even is normal for brothers, perhaps even a little too close, Thor knows, considering the brief touches and dreams that have followed him well into adulthood.

Sif doesn't understand Thor's blind fear. She huffs and tells him that Loki's just getting his own life now, that he's growing up, that they can't stay children forever. Thor isn't comforted, and, if anything, the prospect of Loki slowly slipping away to begin a life separate from Thor terrified him more than anything else.

Thor doesn't understand it either, not really, how horrified he is, clutching at straws. It's not like Loki's ignoring him, but it feels like he's moved just out of Thor's reach and that is even more terrifying.

It's not until Thor sees Loki one day, standing outside the library with someone by his side, somebody who is not Thor, somebody he doesn't even recognize – is that really how distant they've become? – all close contact and smiles that he'd previously only shown him that he comes to a realization.

He breaks it off with Sif the next day. The wonderful woman she is, she pretends to understand why.

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.

.

It's been just over a week since Loki had shown up on Thor's doorstep with a loaded bag and flippant words, and Thor is still waking in the morning to the soft press of another body sharing his bed, to the sharp whistle of the battered old kettle, to the welcoming scent of warm buttered toast.

The pair of them had reached some kind of unspoken truce not to look beyond the surface of what they're doing, to avoid dredging up unpleasant memories or bring reality crashing back down on them with the same force of a truck. Right now, it's just them and that's alright.

It's easily the best nine days of Thor's life in a very long time and he'd never realized just how empty he'd been feeling for so long until he starts to fell warm and content and full. Being with Loki, even just sharing space, is a kind of solace Thor had thought he'd lost long ago.

That's not to say they just share space. Thor acknowledges he can barely keep his hands off his brother, always resting a hand on the small of his back, pulling him over to lean in close when they're just absently sitting together, and, of course there's the sex.

For his part, Loki is almost as bad as Thor with his craving for contact. More subtle, maybe, but just as desperate. He sleeps close to him at night, curled up tight against Thor's chest, legs tangled together, Thor's arms tight around his shoulders and they probably couldn't get much closer if they tried. When they walk, he strides close enough that his hand skims Thor's own and, sometimes, Thor can't help but entangle their fingers together as they go and out of the corner of his eye he sees Loki's mouth twitch up into what is most definitely a smile, even though his brother tries to hide it behind a furrowed brow and an exasperated sigh that, even to Thor's tone deaf ears, he recognizes as a flimsy excuse.

They can't stay like this forever, he knows deep down, but it's nice while it lasts.

Thor isn't sure what Loki does when he goes to class or to work his part-time job, but he's always there without fail when Thor returns home. Sometimes reading a book about things Thor could never hope to understand, sprawled out on the lounge, glasses propped loosely on the tip of his nose – Loki hated his glasses; Thor thought they made him look gorgeous – sometimes sorting through plastic bags full of random things that Thor is certain wasn't on his kitchen table when he left. When Thor walks in the door with an armful of books or splattered in grease, Loki always, without fail, greets him with a tiny twitch at the corner of his mouth which is his brother's equivalent of a smile and says in a light, teasing voice, "welcome home."

And it is, home, that is, for the first time since Thor moved into the apartment – all rattling fridges, nosey neighbours and ugly couches – it's finally home.

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.

Thor's a week shy of his twentieth birthday when it happens.

At the time, he can remember the terror spiralling down his spine, phone slipping from his grasp to clatter noisily to the floor of his monster of a truck, chipped red and mud splattered, the blind panic as he turned the keys in the ignition and roared down the street with barely a thought spared for the traffic, breaking several laws and dozens of moral codes as he blasted through two stop signs, a red light and cut in front of an old lady pulling out in front of him.

He's not really coherent enough to have thoughts, just emotions all dark and ominous flittering around his skull, blood pounding in his head and breath whistling out from between clenched teeth, fingers white against the steering wheel as he pulls into the hospital's parking lot – he might have taken two disabled parking spaces as he skidded to a stop, but he's not really sure.

Frigga and Odin are in the waiting room when Thor blows his way into the building like a storm, quietly talking with a doctor. Thor storms his way over, and barely opens his mouth to demand answers before Frigga lays a gentle hand on his shoulder and firmly steers him over to the sleek leather couches that stand starkly out from the white painted walls.

"Calm down, he's alright," she murmurs as she pushes him down, stroking one hand through his lengthy blonde hair and trying to squeeze the tension out of his muscle taunt shoulder. She looks older than Thor ever remembers seeing her, hair swinging freely behind her back and face free of makeup, showing every line of age that the years of stress and worry that motherhood had wrought on her features.

"Is he –," Thor begins sharply but Frigga tightens her grip on his shoulder again and Thor shuts his mouth and shifts restlessly, helpless in his seat.

"Your brother's going to be fine. It wasn't serious – thank god – but he's resting now."

"Who did it?" Thor demands, fast and furious with his hands balled into fists at his side and anger blossoming through the blind panic that roars in his chest. "Who did this to him?"

"Thor –."

"I'll kill them." He means it too.

"Thor. You'll do no such thing. I don't want to ever hear you talk about anyone, no matter the reason, like that. Loki was lucky, and while I'm certainly not pleased, he probably did bring this upon himself. You know his mouth always moved faster than his mind at times."

"I don't care," Thor ground out. "I'll kill them. Nobody hurts my brother."

"The only thing you'll be doing is shutting up." Odin is there suddenly, in that way he has of appearing out of nowhere and he's glowering down at his eldest son with his one visible eye and, as is always the way with his father, Thor feels stripped naked, bare beneath that all-knowing gaze.

"Loki said the wrong thing to the wrong person as he is prone to doing. The only surprising thing about this situation is that it didn't happen sooner."

Don't, Thor thinks with venom that surprised even him, don't you talk about him like that.

"He's going to be fine, there will barely be scarring. It's more a blow to his pride than anything else. They're keeping him overnight to be sure, but he should be released tomorrow morning."

"I'm going to see him," Thor snaps, cutting over the tail end of Odin's sentence because he can't – he won't – sit here and listen to his father badmouth Loki like that, talking about him with disappointment and expectation thick in his voice like his son isn't tucked away in a hospital bed bruised and bloodied.

Something flickers in Odin's gaze, something akin to confirmation of the worst, but Thor is already down the hall, pushing past patients and orderlies.

Loki was a shuttered shape against the whiteness of the room, thin and bony beneath the scratchy fabric of the sheets and black hair greasy and thick with dirt and mud. He looks as mad as Thor feels; dark eyes positively malicious and blood flecked face bright against the pillows. He blinks when Thor steps in and closes the door behind him but doesn't speak; can't without reopening the wound.

A nasty gash runs from just below his left eye to a stop on the right of his chin, slashing right across his lips with gruesome edges, dried blood crusted between the multitudes of stiches, tight and blue, that were laced through the injury. It was horrific, and despite being assured it was mostly superficial, Thor felt sickened by the sight of it.

Something must have shown through in his expression for Loki jerked his face away, glaring angrily at the wall opposite him, sheets bunched in his white-knuckled fists. A discarded notepad lay at Thor's feet, the topmost page crumpled and torn like fingernails had ripped through it before tossing it violently away – the remnants of a temper tantrum, Thor summarized.

"Brother," Thor greets softly, taking a deep breath and bending down to collect the notepad from his feet. Loki doesn't acknowledge him.

"You can't speak, can you?"

A small noise of fury made at the very back of his throat. He's still not looking at Thor.

Gently, Thor places the notebook down on the bed beside his immobile brother. Loki doesn't even look up as he whacks it furiously away with one hand, sending it clattering back down to the cool linoleum floor.

It's silent, in that way only hospitals have, dim humming from out in the hall, white noise that's all blurred like Thor is hearing it from underwater. The sky is dark and grey outside, casting shadows in the room and looking up at the clouds overhead, Thor decided he wouldn't be all that surprised if it rained.

"Brother," he repeats, as he bends down once more to scoop the pad from the floor. "Don't do that."

Loki's face is visible only faintly from the side, but Thor can definitely see the tightening in his jaw, the wince of pain that follows and the unintentional whimper that slips out of his mutilated lips, tears of anger and humiliation prickling at the very corners of his eyes.

He's such a pitiful sight that Thor's heart breaks for him. He feels helpless. Loki's his younger brother, its Thor's job to protect him, but here he is pained and hurt, refusing to even look at him.

All he wants is to gather Loki up in his arms like he did when they were younger, like he did the night he found out Loki was adopted, like he did the day he broke up with Sif because it was a convenient excuse for touching him, for wanting him close.

He pulls up a chair beside Loki's bed instead, the legs dragging loudly on the floor.

Once again, he puts the notepad beside his brother and waits patiently as Loki shuffles away from it like its poison, like one touch would end him.

The air in the room is so heavy it hurts.

"Please pick up the notepad, brother," Thor asks softly. "I want to talk with you."

Loki scoffs a strange sound that is oddly high-pitched without opening his mouth.

Even as a child, Loki had never been good with handling injuries; whether they be physical or not. While he liked everyone to believe he was untouchable, that nothing could hurt him, beneath the reservation and sneering disposition was a real vulnerability that when exposed brought out every shred of malicious energy in him, made him vicious and cruel and capable of anything, so very unpredictable. And every time he lashed out in anger, through every hurtful work he spoke, Thor would pull him close against his chest, even when he struggled and fought, punching and shouting and crying.

Thor sat through it all because he owed Loki that.

A clock on the wall by the bed ticked loudly into the silence, time whispering by while Loki lay sprawled in the sheets, refusing to look at Thor, refusing to talk with him.

"I want to know what happened."

No response.

"Brother, please look at me."

Loki only curled up further into a ball.

Sighing, Thor leant forward slightly, the chair creaking loudly beneath him and touched his fingers lightly to Loki's cheek, feeling him freeze beneath him. "You don't have you hide, brother. Please, don't."

Slowly, Loki turned over, Thor's fingers gusting lightly along his skin, feeling the rough press of dirt and blood that the nurses has not yet had time to clean glide along his flesh. Emerald eyes darted up briefly to meet Thor's gaze.

He looked angry still, but he also looked scared, terrified.

Thor pressed the notepad into his thin fingers.

"Talk to me."

Loki looked at the paper like he'd never seen it before in his life and, for a moment, Thor thought Loki might throw it again. Instead, slender fingers snuck along the bedside cabinet to pick up the lone pen laying in solitude.

His writing was forceful and inelegant. Nothing like the scratched out curves of his normal script, everything so much blunter. Even the way he held the pen was different, firmer and more childish like he wanted to be messy.

I don't want you here.

And that hurts more than it should, but Thor doesn't let it show on his expression, ignores the way Loki glowers up at him – no more hiding his gaze, at the brink of another fit that Thor will, if he has to, see him through.

"I don't care. I'm not leaving you when you're like this." He's patient, calmer than he actually feels.

The sound of the pen ripping against the damaged paper is deafening.

Go away.

"No." Thor licks his lips, and keeps his eyes firmly on Loki's which are slowly becoming more and more angry, annoyed, desperate.

Leave me alone.

"No," Thor repeats, firmer, this time, and rests one hand lightly on the bed just beside Loki's leg, not quite touching him, but close. He wants to touch him – god knows he does – but can't, because he doesn't want to upset him, not when he's so volatile already.

There are tears pricking at the edges of his brother's eyes and this time and Thor can't decide what they're from. Loki tries to open his mouth – and Thor's stomach does a little flip and he makes an aborted movement to lurch forward – but the stiches won't let him, and blood is seeping out from where the nylon is pulled taunt through the flesh and it has to hurt – can't not – but Loki doesn't let the pain stop him and manages to rasp out, in a voice gravely from agony, "I don't want you to see me like this."

And it's there, out in the open, the reason why Loki is so insistent on twisting away to hide his face, as if shamed, from Thor. Why he's trying so desperately to make his brother leave, leave Loki alone in the room of shadows with only the ticking of the clock and faint trickle of blood down his chin to keep him company.

Loki's not looking at him again, gazing at a point past Thor with a completely unreadable expression that seems so disturbed with the stiches laced through his flesh, spotting red now from the jaw movement that had nearly torn them free.

Slowly, with cautious movements lest Loki be startled into another fit, Thor switches his position from the chair to the edge of the bed, hearing the uncomfortable metallic rattling of hospital issue equipment. Loki cringes away from him, facing down and trying to shuffle aside in the limited space propped up on the headboard.

Thor doesn't let him, won't let him run away. Not this time, because Thor may not be the smartest person in the world, but he thinks that in this moment, with his heart swelling with intense affection and hurt for Loki – his brother and not his brother – that there is nothing more important than honesty.

Lightly, he cups Loki's cheek and cradles it in his rough palm, careful to keep himself from touching the stiches. Softly, he skates his thumb over Loki's lower lip where the damage was slight, feeling his brother's breath hitch against his skin.

"You don't want me to see you like this?" Thor repeats and Loki's fingers tighten around the crunched paper with the words written on it in a splatter black ink. He's looking in Thor's eyes now, doesn't really have much choice with the way his head is being tilted. The anger is gone, and he's a tight ball of apprehension and pain which finally, with help of painkillers and sedatives, is clear in his eyes in a way that it's never been before, in all this time.

"It doesn't matter to me what you look like, brother," he murmured, fingers brushing against the matted hair at the nape of his neck. "You always look perfect. How could you not know that?"

And it might just be Thor getting caught up the moment, because the day has been emotionally draining and he'd nearly crashed his car trying to get here, and Loki's just had a throwdown in a filthy park somewhere and been rewarded with twenty-one stiches for his trouble, but something finally seems to click into place at the very back of Thor's mind and he thinks – after all these years – he might know what he's supposed to do, which way is his.

He leans in and brushes a feather light kiss against a pair of chapped, torn lips.

And, for once, everything is perfect.

Somewhere far off, the rain begins.

.

.

.

"Pop tarts? Really, brother?"

"They're good!"

"They were good when we were twelve; surely you should have grown out of them by now!"

Arguing went hand in hand with grocery shopping, and nobody did it better than Loki.

It was a Sunday, and Thor had neither class nor work, and Loki had taken advantage of this to drag him out in the vague direction of a supermarket because even Loki with his puny appetite and picky tastes couldn't survive on stale milk, tea bags and a container that might have, at some point, housed curry – possibly, neither of them were sure and hadn't been brave enough to sample the mysterious concoction that may have already been in the fridge when Thor moved in.

It was an oddly domestic scene, Thor supposes, with Loki leaning on the cart stockpiled high with cans and other instant foods that college students thrived on, dressed in a pair of battered jeans and a thick cable-knit jumper that Thor thought he recognized as his own while Thor held a box of pop tarts loosely in one hand, trying to argue their nutritional value to his younger brother who didn't look decidedly impressed. It sent another flutter of warmth through his chest, one of those pathetically girly thrills that Loki was so good at bringing out.

"We can buy them," Loki relents, "on the proviso of a decent meal tonight."

"Only if you cook," Thor challenges in return.

"God only knows what you'd make if I let you anywhere the near stove." Loki doesn't miss a beat, already turning to steer the cart off down another aisle, plucking the bright packet from Thor's hand and placing it between a sizable quantity of baked beans and a loaf of bread. "You can make yourself useful and go get some milk."

Thor smiles a positively giddy smile and strides off – maybe copping a feel as he went and earning himself a sharp elbow in the ribs – with his orders, possibly a little more gleeful than dairy products really warranted.

Eleven days and Loki was still here.

He couldn't stay forever, Thor wasn't an idiot, he knew that. He had his own college to attend, his own job and his own life somewhere far off from Thor's own, but it was so easy now to imagine that they might be able to coincide. Maybe it didn't have to be on or off with them, that they could work for something else.

Thor's phone rings as he's pulling open the refrigerator to fish out a bottle of full cream milk – Loki point blank refused to taste skim, said it put him off his tea – and he was so caught up in his thoughts that he flips it open without even glancing at the caller id.

"Hello?"

"Thor."

And just like that everything comes to a screeching halt and it was just Thor, his phone and the bottle of milk hanging from his hand as he stood frozen with cool breezes blasting over his skin in a way that should have been pleasant in the heat but instead was chilling. Dangerous.

"Father," he greets as calmly as he could.

"Where is he?"

A quick glance around shows the only people in the immediate vicinity was an old woman gazing at cottage cheese and a harried mother of two fighting a losing battle with a particularly disobedient trolley.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Don't play daft. His work called to inform me that he'd quit. He wasn't answering his phone so I called the university and they told me he'd filed for a semester's break and moved out of the campus dorm."

Thor was a little bit stunned because he hadn't known. Hadn't thought to ask; and god wasn't that just stupid in hindsight? Surely he should have realized that nobody could just take off for weeks on end with no repercussion, that nobody could just up and vanish without uprooting their whole life. Is that what Loki had done? Is he why he'd done it?

Thor takes a deep breath and replies as evenly as he can, "I wasn't aware."

"Thor, don't lie to me."

"I'm not. I didn't know, honestly."

Odin was silent a minute and Thor licks his lips nervously, shifting slightly.

"Is he there?"

They never could keep a secret from Odin, even when they were children. Thor wasn't' sure why he'd thought it'd be any different now. Odin was almost omniscient. He'd known when Thor kissed his first girl when he was twelve, he'd always looked at him with knowing eyes the morning after he'd snuck back into the house after being out all night. There wasn't secrets with Odin, they wouldn't hold, they wouldn't keep.

"No," Thor chokes out because he never stopped trying even when he knew the outcome.

Odin doesn't reply for a moment and Thor thinks – vainly – that maybe his bluff wasn't called, maybe Odin will leave them alone, will let them be, won't interfere like he was so prone to doing. Because Thor really didn't know if he could stand a repeat of last time, the both of them coming so close to being disowned, Thor storming out of the house and moving three states away because surely, when Odin had said 'You get behind the wheel, boy, and you put some distance between here and there' three states was enough?

The line crackles with the distant static of many miles between the caller and the receiver, the shoddy phone connection that had plagued Thor's childhood home ever since he was young.

"Put your brother on."

Thor's hands are sleek with sweat and he's beginning to garner odd looks from people passing him by in the aisle, standing so still with the fridge open and rattling in protest before him, milk warming in his hand

"No."

"I said put your brother on, Thor. I wasn't asking."

Thor can't remember the last time he defied Odin – if he's ever defied Odin. When his father demanded he leave the house, that he put the family stead in his rear-view mirror and not turn back, he'd done just that, swallowing all protests and ignoring the complete utter panic on Loki's face as he hovered in the background of the scene, hair in disarray and what might have been a tear track – his brother, so strong and independent and dangerous crying – glinting lightly on his cheek.

"And I said no."

Odin is stunned – Thor can tell by the whistling gasp that echoes in the static – and Thor thinks he might be able to take this chance to hang up before he crumbles and the conversation is dredged up and returned to life.

But, for once, Thor finds that he's not done disobeying, that he has more words left to speak.

"Loki's staying with me right now, and whether he chooses to return to his college is up to him. What we choose to do is none of your concern. You're an old man now father; and Loki and I are grown up. We're free to make our own decisions."

"Don't speak to me like I'm some kind of daemon, Thor. All I want now is what I've always wanted and that's what's best."

"Best for whom?" Tho counters and he doesn't recognize the harsh scrape in his voice. "Best for the world? Best for the family? It's certainly not what's best for Loki and me."

"What you did was wrong." His words were as biting and self-assured as they had been years ago when he glared down at his sons with a cold eye. "It's unnatural. It's still wrong. I don't see what you hope to get from this."

There's the sharp rattle of badly oiled wheels and Thor looks up to see Loki standing aside to him, hands curled so tightly around the handle of the cart that his knuckles have bleached themselves white from the tension. He looks at Thor with a pale face and a mouth pressed so thin that even his lips have lost colour, eyes so bright in comparison.

And Thor doesn't have to be a genius to tell he knows exactly who's rung him at such inopportune time.

Thor meets Loki's gaze evenly, sees the anger and fear sparking in the brilliant green depths, and says softly but firmly into his phone, "We do not require your approval for anything, father. Do not call again."

He hangs up abruptly, swiftly snapping his phone shut and tucking it back in the rear pocked of his jeans and stepping away from the fridge in front of which he'd been standing still for long and places the milk gently into the cart.

"So," he says in a cheerful voice, "What's left to pick up?"

They finish the rest of the shopping trip in silence – although Thor does not fail to notice the way Loki is careful to keep his thin fingers twisted with Thor's own for the rest of the afternoon.

.

.

.

It's been nearly six months since the hospital and Thor can't keep his hands off Loki, can't stop feeling every little indent in his skin, can't stop hearing every little noise that escapes his lips.

Every touch sends a little jolt of electricity roiling through him and Thor really can't, for the life of him, understand why they hadn't done this before. It had taken so long, years of tension filled gazes and guilty looking that always bordered on – but never quite touched – this thing between them.

Loki is perfect beneath his hands, all smooth skin and pale beauty, and the way he responds to Thor is so different from everything he's used to with all the women he's been with before.

It's rough between them, sharp nails and teeth against bare skin, and the devilish glint in his brother's eyes when he pushes Thor against the bed or scrapes his fingers down his back is brilliant and in those moments, Thor finds it hard to breath, to focus on anything but Loki and the pleasure burning through him.

He's not Loki's first, he's aware of that, and he tries not to think about it.

It's wrong, probably, Thor knows, but he can't stop, even if he wanted which he really, really doesn't.

He's waited too long for this, to feels what Loki is like beneath his clothes, to see him bite his lips – so little scarring, just like the doctor promised – in ecstasy that Thor – Thor – brought him to, to see the glimmer of his flesh in the dimly lit room they retired to in the evenings when their parents were out or occupied downstairs by the echoing sound of the television which had become near deafening in their aging state.

And Thor is happy, for the first time it what feels like forever, he is happy.

It's not like it was with the girls he tried dating, and it's so vastly different from how he felt with Sif, and he seems to have traded the restless discontent for a wary kind of distant appreciation. Because Loki is too beautiful to be his, his brother too spectacular to truly belong to someone like Thor – all sharp elfin features against Thor's boorish build.

But Loki doesn't seem to mind.

In the darkness of the bedroom he sometimes trades passionate tearing for gentle touches, pressing his fingertips lightly to Thor's cheek with a look of wonder on his face like he feels the same way Thor feels for him, even though it's so silly that it's kind of endearing, because if either of them are too good for the other, it would be Loki who deserves so much more than intimate touches that must be kept a secret behind locked doors.

It doesn't last for long of course – nothing ever does.

The house of Odin doesn't permit secrets.

.

.

.

Sif picks up on the third ring, which is kind of her unofficial trademark for all days but Sunday which is sacred and nobody is allowed to call on unless it's some kind of emergency and even then it's not highly recommended because nobody wants to see Sif in her ratty pyjamas with swollen eyes that are the result of too many reruns of Titanic and the buttery smell of popcorn fresh on her breath.

"Hello?"

"Sif," Thor greets and he can hear the surprised shifting on the other end of the line.

"Thor? Well, hey, it's been a few weeks since I last heard from you, I was beginning to worry you'd gone out and done something stupid."

Sif is perhaps the only ex of Thor's that he's remained in contact with and that's more so because she's still one of his best friends and the days of romance are completely behind them, neither feeling the need to dredge it up uncomfortably.

"I may have done," Thor admits, staring unseeingly up at the star littered sky, leaning heavily against the unsecure railing outside the small balcony of his apartment and taking in crisp breaths of sweet summer air. It's silent outside – as silent as New York gets – and Loki is in the apartment although Thor isn't exactly sure where because the whole place is cast in darkness.

Sif is quite on the other end of the line for a moment before replying. "Is everything alright?"

Thor allows his eyes to drift close. "Yes, no, I don't know. Not really."

"What happened, Thor?"

Thor felt exposed with Jane, couldn't keep a secret from Odin, didn't want to from Loki – Sif had none of these compelling factors. He could tell her and not tell her things in equal balance, it was one of the reasons he so enjoyed talking to her. She was a measured presence and even though it'd been neigh on three years since they'd dated, he still, at times, felt vaguely guilty for how he'd all but used her as an escape, the amazing person that she was.

"Loki's here."

"As in with you? Seriously? I thought he was studying astrophysics at some hotshot school? Is Odin there? Does he know?"

"Yeah," Thor sighs, fingers tight against the smooth metal behind him. "Odin knows. Well, he knows now. He called me earlier."

"Earlier? How long has Loki been there?"

"Week and a half."

"Week and a half and you didn't call me earlier?" Reproach is thick in Sif's voice but it's the kind of sick tone of a person who has greater things to worry about – something Thor knows very well, as intimately as one knows their best friend.

"Mhm. I was busy."

Sif doesn't reply to that.

Thor had never outright told her about what was between him and Loki, but he'd never deluded himself into thinking that she probably didn't know. Sif was an intelligent person and had been perhaps the closest to Thor outside his own family when he still lived at home. She likely had her own theory and it probably wasn't a longshot from the truth.

"What did Odin have to say?"

He doesn't tell her about how Loki's uprooted his whole life – hasn't even talked to Loki about that yet – and he doesn't tell her about Odin's harsh statements that had left him feeling rather like he'd met the unfriendly end of a whip. "Nothing good."

"Oh, Thor…"

"I just… Fuck, I don't know."

Thor runs jittery fingers through his thick blonde hair and casts a worried look back at the apartment door, but Loki is nowhere in sight and it's just Thor standing out in the stubborn summer heat with anxiety tight in his stomach. He's not really hiding from Loki, could never bring himself to avoid him of his own will, but he has no idea what to say to him right now. The perfect illusion that they'd been living under only hours before has finally been shattered and reality is seeping in and, realistically, Thor knows that this is probably the part where they both should turn away, place completely platonic brotherly kisses on one another's cheeks and part ways until the next time there's a family gathering and Odin has them sitting on opposite side of the room under his careful jurisdiction.

That's the way it should be.

"Do you remember when I dyed my hair black when we were dating?"

Thor blinks at the randomness of the statement. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"Just shut up and listen." Even after all this time, Sif hadn't lost her edge. "Do you remember?"

"Yes, I do."

"Do you remember when it was?"

Thor strains his brain. "I don't know, mustn't have been too long after I introduced you to Loki for the first time?"

"Exactly." Sif sounds part exasperated and part wistful. "It was after I met Loki. I'm sure you remember that he didn't like me very much." Thor made to speak again but she shushed him. "Nearly every time I tried to talk to him, Loki had something as a comeback and, I suppose I can be honest now, it's been three years or so, it did manage to get to me."

"You shouldn't have let it," Thor sighs. "He doesn't mean half the things that come out of his mouth."

"I know." There's a little fondness there, because Sif did always have a certain soft spot for Loki. "I don't hold it against him; he was jealous."

Thor feels his face heat up a little and he hastened to say, "He wasn't jealous."

"That's was exactly what he was. Not that he really had any need to be; you and me, we were never going to last. You were always so fixated on Loki, even when we were alone all you did was talk of him. But all he could see was you dating someone else."

The way Sif said 'someone else' with ease did nothing to ease Thor's suspicions about her knowledge of the two of them. The rail creaked louder behind him. "Weren't you talking about your hair?" He asks to change the topic to something he felt was safer.

"And didn't I tell you to shut up, smart ass? I'm getting there. Anyway, Loki always had that talent of knowing exactly what to say to get to a person. I remember how happy you were when you finally got around to introducing us, you kept smiling like an idiot and went off to get drinks and left us to 'get acquainted.' So the first thing I say is, 'Oh, so you're Thor's brother; he's talked about you a lot.' And then Loki just looked me right in the eye and said, 'Thor doesn't like blondes,' without even missing a beat."

"He didn't…"

"He did," Sif sounds amused at the disbelief in Thor's voice. "And I probably shouldn't have taken it as deeply as I did. And then you came back in and Loki was all smiles and pleasant laughs again and for the rest of the evening, I couldn't get what he said out of my head."

"So you dyed your hair black," Thor says, stunned. "Because of a passing statement my brother made?"

"No," Sif is smiling through the line, "I dyed my hair black because I wanted you to look at me the same way you looked at Loki. I know that's not much better; worse, probably. You'll never look at anyone else that way, will you?"

"I'm sorry," he says without even really knowing what he's apologizing for.

"Don't be. I'm not. Anyway, my point here is I'd always known I wasn't going to win against Loki; and not to brag, but if I didn't win nobody else stood a chance. It was always going to be you and him."

There's so many stars visible from where Thor stands, gravel unsteady beneath the soles of his shoes and the weary whispering of the metal rail beneath his hands. Even in its more youthful days it hadn't been designed to hold Thor's weight and the rust that's gathered over time has done it no favours. It feels rather like it could give at any moment and send him falling backwards.

"So, what you're saying is…?"

"Don't let go of that," Sif replies without a pause. "Something that precious, you'd be a fool to let it go. Sometimes, you have to fight for things. Fight for this in the way you wouldn't fight for us."

Thor smiles into the heat and out of the corner of his eyes, he thinks he sees a light flicker on in the apartment. "You know, if things had worked out differently, we might have had a chance."

"Now I know you're bullshitting," Sif laughs, "you and me cowboy? We were never going to make it. I think you had your partner long ago."

"Yeah…" Thor says as the door of the apartment creaks up and Loki's head pops out, staring at him with curious eyes and an upraised eyebrow. "I think I always did.

.

.

.

Odin found out.

Of course he did, Odin always found out. There were no secrets in his domain and Thor wasn't certain why he'd thought this would be different.

It wasn't something as awkward as walking in on them – at least Thor really hoped that hadn't been the case and Odin had just chosen to remain silent for a time about what he'd seen because that made him cringe to even consider – no, Odin figured it out because he was clever.

There was a lot of shouting involved, and Thor couldn't remember the details of what was said. It was nasty, though, on both sides and words that Thor didn't even realize he'd known came pouring out viciously and without restraint.

Frigga and Loki stood in the background of the explosion, pale and distant from the violence.

It wasn't planned and it wasn't pretty. Thor had returned home from his part-time job to find Odin standing stormily in the hallway, Loki hovering behind him so small and terrified – and holy fucking fuck, was that a bruise on his cheek? – and before Thor was even really aware of it, he was shouting back against his father.

It was disgusting, it was heathen – an odd choice of words considering the only religious loyalty within the house was a vague nod towards Norse mythology – and it was barbaric. The worst part was that despite the bellowing voices that rang so clearly in the house, it wasn't Thor that was copping the brunt of the abuse.

Early in the conversation when their voices were only just starting to gain in pitch, Odin had plead with Thor to see the error in what he'd done, claimed he didn't blame him, that he understood Loki had tainted him, that this could all be forgotten and brushed aside and Loki would repent.

If anything, that had only made the righteous anger boiling in Thor reach critical and he couldn't – even to this day – recall what it was he roared at his father, but that was the turning point of the argument.

And there was the bruise glowing so bright against Loki's pale skin, split, slightly, in the middle as if the clunky ancestral ring Odin wore on his thick index finger had collided painfully with his younger brother.

Thor couldn't think beyond the roaring in his head.

At some point, the neighbours called the police and Frigga sent her husband and son a begging look before meeting the officers at the door and pleading a small family disputed, and oh no, you don't need to come in officer, it's been resolved, just boys being boys.

And as the patrol car crawled off down the street, Odin had tossed a suitcase at Thor's feet and offered him an ultimatum: he could go, leave the house and make sure he never came back, or he could stay and admit to Loki's seduction and his brother would be disowned and booted from the family home.

It was either Thor or Loki.

Loki had met Thor's fiery blue gaze desperately, eyes bright against the imprint of purple on his cheek and the damp tear tracks on his face. Don't go, he'd seemed to say, don't leave me like this.

There had never really been much choice. They'd never stood a chance beneath Odin's wrath. It was good while it lasted and Thor couldn't bring himself to regret it – even if it was disgusting, heathen and barbaric – and all he wished for more than anything was that he'd thought about what this would mean for Loki rather than himself.

He took his suitcase, his battered truck and was in New York by dawn the next day with Loki's broken look burning at the back of his mind.

.

.

.

Thor hadn't been back to the family home in about two years, not since the fateful days when Odin had kicked him out. Even though several months following The Incident – as it became known in the family – he'd rescinded his original demand to never return, Thor had never felt comfortable returning to that house, thought he'd never have to.

So this was kind of sudden.

The drive should have been a lengthy one, but with Loki tucked away in the passenger seat beside him and the promise of imminent confrontation looming on the darkening horizon, Thor's truck just seemed to eat up the miles like a hungry beast.

It didn't escape his notice that the last time he'd made this trip, Loki had been miles away with only Thor's broad back disappearing out the door to remember him by.

They played bad music the whole trip – because Thor still had a cassette player and nothing else and, really, there was nothing good on those battered things – and Loki's hand rested in what would be a casual manner over where Thor's hand sat on the gearstick if it wasn't for the sharp bones of his knuckles peering white and ghastly from the beneath his skin.

Thor hadn't wanted him to come and Loki hadn't wanted to stay behind so – because Thor never could refuse his brother – they'd compromised somewhere in the middle. Loki could come on the sole proviso that he let Thor do exactly what he'd planned without interfering. He hadn't been happy, but he'd agreed none-the-less.

He wasn't scared, not even putting on a brave face. When it came down to it, Thor knew he wouldn't cave. It was more than determination which he'd come to learn was fleeting and brief, and it surprised him how at ease he was with the whole thing. He wasn't even apprehensive about seeing Odin again with Loki at his side – even though, realistically, he knew he should be – but maybe it was simply the fact that he was tired of all the fighting and the secrecy and guilt.

It wasn't fair on Loki to expect him to wait for Thor like this, to have only the odd week in a year where they could touch and indulge and simply be near. Loki deserved better, and if Thor couldn't give it to him, he needed to let him go – and he couldn't let him go, which meant that there was only one option left.

Thor reached over and flicked the air conditioning up a notch and offered Loki a confident smile.

The sun was setting low in the purple tinted sky when Thor pulls into the driveway, battered wheels crunching loudly on the gravel underfoot. Odin's own aged ute sitting lonely by the low sweeping branches of a willow tree which had been cut considerably since the last time Thor had seen it, a mark of the passage of time.

They sat idling in the driveway, the engine rattling away beneath the seats and the radio playing hard-core rock that neither of them were too fond of in actuality, Loki's hand twitching forward to turn it off only to have Thor gently grasp his shaking fingers. "Don't," He says softly. "This will only take a second."

Loki frowns deeply, smooth brow wrinkling beneath a sheen of sweat. "Only take a second? We drove for ten hours just so you could do something that 'will only take a second'?"

Thor gives him a wide smile in return, giving the fingers he holds a slight squeeze, enjoying in the touch of skin on skin before getting out of the truck and slamming the door behind him. Loki watches apprehensively from the passenger seat.

"Stay in the car," Thor instructs and, for once, Loki doesn't object.

It was even hotter in Detroit than New York and by the time Thor stands rocking on the doorstep of his family home, he is well aware that the ratty t-shirt and faded jeans he was wearing clung rather uncomfortably like a second skin.

He glances over his shoulder to see Loki sitting silently in his truck, leaning an arm on the open window and watching him with tight expressionless eyes.

He'd stayed in the car.

Turning back to face the door, he takes in the chipped but homely white wood of the fairy-tail arch and the glittering mosaicked windows that had made up his childhood. Suddenly, he feels very nostalgic and, in a rush, all the times he'd arrived home to this very same door cast either in the buttery glow of the outside light or in the sharp gleam of fresh sunlight came back to him.

He presses the doorbell.

It takes a moment, but Thor can hear the creaky sounds of somebody moving inside – Odin never did get that loose floorboard near the front of the house fixed, claimed it gave the residence character – and there is the blurred shape of a person through the heavily tinted blue-red-green glass of the door.

Around about now Thor would normally be thinking of turning around, getting back in his car with Loki at his side and driving; driving far, far away where they wouldn't have to do this, wouldn't have to face Odin. They could go somewhere safe, just the two of them.

To his surprise, none of these thoughts even flickered through his mind.

Because there's no such thing as safety and the only way he and Loki are ever going to have any kind of peace – closure, that's the word Jane would have used – was to confront Odin. To tell him exactly what was on his mind.

And, again to his surprise, Thor found he could do this; that'd he'd do it a thousand times over and more if it meant Loki was happy.

He presses the doorbell again, smooth plastic beneath his fingertips.

"I'm coming," Odin voice rumbles through the door, all gravely age and long-assumed authority.

Thor rocks back on the heels of his feet, digging his thumbs into the pockets of his jeans, the denim pliant against his heat-dampened thighs.

The door swings open and suddenly there's Odin, standing right in front of him with no barriers, no shields, just son and father, father and son, standing silently on the aged porch. Odin looks understandably affronted and shocked, snowy eyebrows disappearing up into knitted grey hair that is less pepper and salt than varying shades of grey and white.

Odin had aged ten years in two and the evidence of it is clear on his face, the deep wrinkles that ran like rivers through his weathered skin and the barely noticeable shake in his massive leather-like hands. He's still handsome, in a distant way, and the family resemblance to Thor remains clear, but he's faded now, less, somehow, than the man who had seen Thor through his fair share of heart breaks and skinned knees, eventually seeing him out the door of the house with barely a word goodbye.

Thor finds it hard to remember why he was so scared of this man.

"Thor." Odin blinks, eye that's not hidden behind the dull gleam of his eyepatch darting out to the left, looking over Thor's shoulder and spotting Loki in the car. Instantly, his demeanour darkens and he looks back up into Thor's face and darkens even further.

Thor's not entirely sure how he looks, but he imagines – hopes, almost – that his face is set in defiance and determination and the dozen other things that he's feels right now.

"Father," He greets in return, tone even, pleasant, almost.

Odin shifts, licks his lips, straightens up and there's a ripple of authority in his eyes. "What do you want?"

"I just want to tell you something." Thor's still calm, all reason and patience.

Odin takes in a deep breath, brow furrowing and there's judgement in that gleaming blue eye, intelligence and wisdom looking back at Thor with all the intensity of his childhood.

"You drove all the way here to tell me something? It must be something very important." Odin's speaking in the same calm farce as Thor, but there's tension in his frame. He glances back over at Loki and Thor, not liking the expression on his face, shifts slightly to block him from view. Odin doesn't look surprised by this act; if anything, he looks disappointed.

For some reason, this makes Thor feel better.

"It is," Thor asserts. "It is very important."

"Do you –."

"No," Thor cut over Odin and there is the same flicker of stunned surprise that had been visible, if for only a moment, when he opened the door to see Thor standing on the doorstep; because Thor never cut over Odin, not even when they were arguing. There was always deference in his tone, submission of a child to father.

And now he was talking to him like he was an equal.

"Just listen. That's all I came here for. I just want you to listen to what I have to say."

Odin purses his lips, looks dark and irritated and much like a brewing storm, but remains silent.

Thor doesn't even have to fish for the words.

"Loki and I are going to do what we want from now on, and I – we – don't care what you have to say about it. Disown us, write us out of your will, do whatever pleases you. I told you before, father, you are old now and Loki and I can make our own chooses. And I choose Loki."

It's not beautiful and it's far from poetic, lacking almost entirely the finesse Loki could have brought to it with his silver-tongue and powers of persuasion, but Thor thinks it's probably the best he can do, and, strangely, that's alright.

This thing between him and Loki? It had never been precise and tinted rose; it was always scrabbling to just hold onto something, all sharp edges and blurred lines because they were something more than brothers and less than lovers – if only because they couldn't be; weren't allowed.

Things are changing now, and it's a little frightening but Thor can't find it in himself to be wary of this. Things are okay, now, beginning to be. And that might just be the start.

Odin opens his mouth, furrows his brow and Thor stands calm and stolid, reading to weather the storm. Instead, after a moment of mindless gapping – quite unbefitting of someone as regal and power worthy as Odin – he closes his mouth.

And then he closes the door.

Thor stands there with beads of sweat rolling down his neck staring at the chipped paint of bronze doorknocker shaped in the magnificent likeness of a griffin – dusty with disuse, hadn't been touched since Frigga insisted on installing the more modern doorbell – and thinks that the dust that brushes his lips in the burgeoning darkness of the night might just be the taste of victory.

Loki doesn't speak to him as Thor climbs back into the driver's side of the truck and as they pull out of their childhood home Thor feels lighter, like a burden had been lifted from his shoulders. The overwhelming negative push that had attached itself to every one of his memories – good and bad, every single one of them that has led him to this moment – left behind at the doorstep.

His fingers are loose on the wheel and Loki's fingers – still quite, unasking – sneak into his hair, massaging gently.

It's alright now, and they pull over as soon as houses and buildings and civilizations disappear into dusty roads and nothing. Loki still doesn't ask Thor what he said to Odin, and Thor doesn't tell him. But he thinks Loki can see it in him, in that mysterious, glorious way of his because Loki is smiling up at him from where Thor has pushed him back into his reclined seat, shirt laying abandoned in the backseat.

It's only when Loki's fingertips flutter lightly along his lips that Thor realizes he too is smiling, probably has been since he turned away from that door. Gently, he catches Loki's hand and presses a feather light kiss against his wrist, so much like Loki had done to him what feels like a million years ago and, in reality, is only a week and a bit. It's full circle now, and it seems that from here on out, they're going to be taking a different way, making a new circle, but that's fine, more than fine, alright and okay and brilliant.

Likely, it's not going to be easy and they'll probably fight about it a lot – Thor has yet to bring up Loki all but ripping up his whole life – but Thor thinks he can take that.

"We're okay," he murmurs against Loki's wrist, "We're going to be okay."

They might, this time round; Thor thinks the universe owes him that.

Loki smiles wider and it's completely guileless and a little unfair, and uses his fingers buried deeply in Thor's hair to drag him into a kiss. It's both sweet and harsh – because they're never going to be completely gentle – and Thor hopes that his brother can taste the victory that Thor has won for them.

"I love you," Loki whispers against Thor's lips. He says it without inflection, like it's a given, a statement and not a question Thor's been asking himself for twenty-odd years.

It's hot and it's sticky and they're on the side of a road in god-knows-where, and it couldn't be more perfect, Thor thinks.

"I love you," Thor says in return, voice cracking a little.

Loki's hands tighten in his hair and his breath hitches a little and somewhere at the very back of Thor's mind, something seems to slot into place.

.

.

.

Every day without Loki was terrible but Thor manages to adjust.

He transfers over to a popular but unimpressive college, gets what might be an apprenticeship or a part-time job as a mechanic – he's admittedly a little unsure which, the old man running the autoshop forgets who Thor is most of the time – and even manages to make some new friends. He goes out drinking when he does badly on tests or in exams or when Jane's broken up with her new beau of the month. He even sees the way Jane looks at him out of the corner of her eye and – once or twice – nearly asks her out for a dinner much less platonic than a few drinks at the bar.

But he doesn't because she's not Loki and when he looks at her he sometimes thinks of him, and that's not fair on either of them; Thor won't have a relationship built on lies.

He doesn't talk to his parents much anymore and Loki not at all unless Odin is nearby.

It takes a long time for him to realize the gaping hole inside of him isn't going away.

And then Loki's there on his doorstep – and it's hot, and Thor is half naked and his fridge is rattling and his kettle boiling loudly in the background – with his bag and his absolutely malicious smile and Thor can't help but think, I've missed you so much and Don't make me do this again and You're just in time, I think I was a day off breaking entirely.

The hole inside him takes one look at the slender man standing with dignified grace on the doorstep and instantly feels filled.

And suddenly, it's home.

.

.

.

It's not easy.

They argue – a lot – because Thor has a tendency to be a little daft at times and Loki can match his stubbornness on any day, bad or good, and they fight because Thor always leaves his things spread all over the apartment and never makes the bed and Loki claims he's about one pair of socks off having an aneurysm (Thor used to think he was just exaggerating but after seeing the veins in Loki's forehead turn an amazing blue when he opens the fridge one day when Thor was supposed to have cleaned it out, he starts picking up after himself a bit).

Mrs Sheedy who smokes a lot and has an alarming inclination towards the coloured pink starts to wink at Thor when he leaves in the morning for college or his part-time job and he has a sneaking suspicion that she's been telling the other old women that congregate for games of bridge at her apartment on Thursdays about himself and Loki – who she actually gets along amazingly well with. Sometimes, Thor comes home to find the two of them sitting in deck chairs out by the rickety railing of their apartment smoking in what Thor thinks must be an uncomfortable silence but the pair of them seem to enjoy.

They get a few complaints for noise by the people leaving on the opposite sides of the walls to them, But Loki just smirks and calls them prudes and the pair of them unintentionally make a game out of how many complaints they can get in one night.

Thor introduces Loki to Jane – and Darcy, the young girl who Jane has recently coerced into assisting her with her 'research' – and even though he neglects to mention that Loki was maybe kind of his brother before he became his live-in lover, something in Jane's eyes make Thor feels like she knows.

Loki seems to agree if the nervous frown he gets around her is any inclination but the two of them don't bring it up.

After a few epic arguments on the subject, Loki re-enrols at a nearby college – not Thor's, smaller but more prestigious – to resume his study of astrophysics because, no matter what Loki says, Thor knows that he really does enjoy the subject and Loki's just being stubborn because he's still rebelling against Odin in every way possible even though their father hasn't called them since the unsavoury confrontation on in his doorstep several weeks back.

They have sex, too. A lot.

Thor is happy for once in his life. Something he never thought he would be. Never thought he would ever wakeup next to Loki every morning – Loki snores occasionally, when Thor's tired him out the night before and he's never actually been all that gracious of a sleeper – or come home every day to the smell whatever Loki's decided is dinner for that night boiling on the stove – he has the capacity to been an amazing cook, but his curiosity hinders him and makes some of the food barely edible; Thor still remembers the memorable shrimp-cabbage-orange-curry night and the painful day following it – and helping him with schoolwork when Thor gets stuck – one a show off always a show off – but he is.

It's strange, and brilliant and a little frightening at times, and they're still working things out, but, for now, they're golden, and, as Thor listens absently while Loki rattles off a list of books he's looking into buying, Thor secretly thinks this might be heaven.

And they're golden.

Maybe.