He Doesn't Cry Anymore
Thor turns the corner, striding down the corridor on his way to his rooms, and pauses.
He stares, bemused and uncertain a long, few moments as he spies his little brother, leaned awkwardly and uncharacteristically graceless against the handles of his bedchambers doors, as though trying to support himself there.
His head is half turned and leaned against the cool metal, body swaying slightly.
The crown Prince is frozen for long seconds, so utterly struck by the sight, uncertain of what, exactly, he is seeing.
And then Loki slips, losing his grip on the handles, and falls in a tangled heap to the floor.
Thor's heart is thudding painfully, sickeningly in his chest then, as he hears the broken, weak giggle, rising into the air from that heap of long, unruly limbs, and the hiccup which follows.
Heart hammering harder as he hears Loki's voice, slurred and barely audible, speak out…
"Thhhooorrr, Thor, Thor, Thooor… I co… co-command you to o… open this door."
And the thunder god knows suddenly what is happening, and it does nothing to alleviate his dread.
Loki… drunk.
Loki has never been drunk.
Loki detests alcohol, detests any notion of the loss of his faculties.
"Thooor…" Loki bangs impatiently against the doors, hand curled to a fist as he slams it down to the engraved metal. "I kn… know you're in there! Allow m-me entry!"
And then Thor realizes Loki thinks he's in his rooms already. That he doesn't know he's there, standing behind him.
Hadn't heard him.
Hadn't sensed him.
And Thor cannot recall a time in their long lives together when that has ever happened.
Thor feels sick.
Again, Loki bangs the doors, supporting himself on one elbow, before his head again falls forward, pressing against the closed entry, and Thor watches, still frozen, as the younger god's head lolls side to side, and he mumbles incoherently to himself, another smattering of giggles broken up between his words.
And then Thor finally moves.
"Loki…" he begins warily as he nears, unsure how to approach, how to handle such an unprecedented circumstance.
Loki spins around, startled, apparently too quickly for his unbalanced equilibrium, losing the support of his elbow, and falling face forward to the ground.
Thor isn't able to react quickly enough to catch him, dropping to a crouch and scurrying forward, hands outreached.
They find his brother's thin shoulders, pushing beneath them and beginning to lift as, once more, Loki laughs weakly.
"Thooor…" he giggles as the thunder god holds him up and leans him against the door. His head thuds back painfully as his eyes lift to look into the crown Prince's face, not even seeming to notice. "Theeerrreee you arrrrreeee!"
More giggling.
Thor frowns.
Even in the dim lighting of the corridor, illuminated by nothing but torches mounted on the walls, he can see the dark bruising around Loki's eyes, and what seem to be scrapes and small cuts along his alabaster skin.
"Loki, are you well?" He asks, knowing the question is redundant. Clearly, he is not.
But Loki only laughs again as he reaches up a seemingly boneless hand, long, thin fingers grazing carelessly, clumsily along Thor's beard, a wide grin spreading across the trickster god's face.
"… You weren't in your room." He pouts, frowning, looking like a child.
His eyes are glazed over, glassy, and the unwanted uneasiness in Thor's chest worsens tenfold.
Loki's brow furrows, looking frustrated, pushing Thor's face halfheartedly to the side, the action weak and ineffective.
"You were s-supposed to be in your rooms, Thor." He says.
Thor ignores him, taking hold of his face in one hand, turning it to the side, trying to get a better look.
"Loki, what has happened to you? You are drunk."
Loki reaches up, grasping Thor's wrist and trying unsuccessfully to push his hands off of him.
"… Nothing." He mutters, giving up a moment later, instead letting his head fall forward, arms hanging loose at his sides.
"Loki…" Thor presses, leaning down closer, lifting his face back up.
"I fell…" The younger god replies softly, trying to turn his face away.
Thor's eyes narrow, finally letting Loki go, leaning back on his haunches.
When Loki begins to slip down along the door, the thunderer reaches quickly back out, steadying him against his shoulder.
"Are you telling me the truth brother?" He asks, tone serious.
A sly smirk pulls up along Loki's lips, head still hanging lazily down, chin nearly against his chest.
"Have you ever known me to lie Thor?" He slurs, half laughing.
Thor frowns.
"Do not jest with me now Loki. I am serious."
"And I am telling the truth. I fell. Now help me up. I cannot make it to my rooms, they are too far. I wish to sleep in your… your chambers tonight."
The younger god tries pushing himself to his feet, hands planted back against the doors, only to slip and fall again.
This time, Thor catches him under his arms, standing and lifting him up.
"Easy brother. You are very drunk."
"… And you…" Loki pitches forward, falling limply against Thor's chest, again laughing. "have a talent for stating the obvious." He manages to finish unsteadily.
Thor carefully maneuvers his brother around, securing a strong arm about his thin waist, pulling one of Loki's arms over his broad shoulders.
The mischief god can barely stand, it seems, sagging weakly against the crown Prince, still giggling like this whole thing is very funny.
Thor finds nothing funny about it at all.
Loki feels like a doll, pressed against him, fragile and insubstantial, and not for the first time, Thor wishes idly that his younger brother had been born stronger.
He suspects Loki is lying about falling, but he cannot be sure. Even inebriated as he is, Loki is a powerful liar, and one can never tell with certainty whether he speaks truth or not.
As the thunderer reaches out and pushes the door open, Loki begins talking again, and Thor hates the way his voice sounds. Always so eloquent and articulate, his words are slurring and coming slow now, sloppy. There is nothing sloppy about his brother. And suddenly Thor wishes he had never encouraged a drink in him. He realizes Loki was right, and that alcohol suits him ill.
It feels wrong, and Thor wonders grimly what might have caused the younger Prince to indulge to such extremity.
"… It'll be j… just like when we were children Thor." Loki is laughing. "Is it not exciting? I can s… scarcely recall when last I shared a b… bed with you."
"Calm yourself brother." Thor answers, face lined in worry.
He walks slowly and deliberately towards a daybed in the center of the room, making sure to keep his stride short so Loki may keep pace with it. Even still, the trickster's feet keep slipping and dragging, and Thor is practically carrying him.
He thinks it would have been easier to do just that, but Loki likely would have protested viciously.
"Here we are brother, just lye down here a moment." Thor says as they reach the daybed, carefully lowering Loki away from him, down onto it.
Loki slumps forward, lying against his face and belly, his long, long legs hanging off, on the floor.
It's an awkward position, but it's only for a few moments, Thor reasons as he turns, striding back across the room to shut the doors. He'll get him cleaned up after this and then put him properly to bed.
It's just as he's closing the doors, he hears the crash behind him, and he whirls around, seeing Loki laid out on the floor against his back, giggling almost madly.
"Loki!" Thor calls his name, laced with concern, moving fast back towards him.
The mischief god is making patterns in the air, tiny flickers of green light playing about his fingers.
Gods, Thor thinks, the last thing his brother needs to be doing now is playing with his magic.
"Loki, stop that." Thor demands gently as he reaches him, crouching down and lifting him up under his shoulders.
"Stop what?" Loki asks, brow furrowing in apparent confusion as he's brought up, falling half forward before Thor wraps an arm about his flat chest and straightens him.
Again he laughs.
"I know not how… how you manage your drink so w-well Thor." He starts. "I c… can't seem to make the room stop s-spinning."
"You just are unused to it Loki." Thor answers. "Come, we will…"
His voice trails off as Loki reaches suddenly into his sure coat and pulls out a waterskin, beginning with shaking fingers to remove the cork and lift it to his lips.
Thor's eyes go wide as he smells the wine, and he quickly snatches the thing out of his little brother's hands.
"No Loki." He says. "You have had enough."
"Oh, but Thooooorrrr…" Loki whines, trying to grab for the waterskin back, failing miserably as he only manages to lose his balance again.
"You have had enough." Thor repeats, discarding the wine onto the daybed and picking Loki back up. "Come, we will get you cleaned up and put to bed."
"You're no fun Thor." Loki pouts. "Ev… everyone says I'm the one who isn't any fun, but I think… I think it's you Thor." He hiccups.
And Thor isn't sure why he feels a sudden tightness in his chest at Loki's words.
Right now, all he wants to do is get Loki out of these cloths, get his face cleaned up and get him to bed. He knows the younger Prince is going to regret this immensely in the morning, and maybe then he'll be able to glean better what happened this night to cause Loki to drink.
Though he isn't quite sure he wants to know.
Making it slowly to his chambers washroom, they're at last in a more well lit area, and as Thor sits Loki down along a bench, he gets a good look at his face and the state of the rest of him for the first time.
He's barely able to suppress the quiet gasp trying to escape his throat, and he knows he's failed at keeping the shock from his features.
Loki's entire face is a mottled mess of contusions and bruises. Both eyes severely blackened, an incredibly ugly looking abrasion across the entirety of his left cheek, both lips split, and countless other, smaller cuts litter the rest of his visage.
His hair is disheveled and muddy, as are his cloths, covered in mud and dirt.
Glancing down at his hands, Thor sees Loki's knuckles are cut and bleeding and swollen red. There is dirt and, likely blood, caked under his fingernails.
The thunderer looks back up at his face, taking hold of him by the chin and lifting it to look back.
"Loki, who did this to you?" He demands sternly. "What has happened?"
Loki stares back at him a long, silent moment, eyes glazed and uncomprehending.
And then he reaches up, fingers grasping loosely around Thor's wrist and pushing weakly.
He turns his head away.
"I told you, nothing." He mumbles, almost too quietly to hear. "Let me be Thor."
"This is not nothing Loki." Thor replies, pulling his face back forward, refusing to let it drop. "Someone hurt you."
"… No." Loki continues to lie, eyes now refusing to meet his older brother's.
"Loki, stop lying and tell me the truth." Thor commands. "What happened tonight?"
"It's NOTHING Thor." Loki snaps abruptly, voice rising uncharacteristically.
And as quickly as the anger flared, it went, draining out of the younger Prince and leaving him again limp.
"… I'm so tired." He mutters helplessly, head lolling forward. "I just want to sleep now."
Thor sighs in exasperation, watching him a moment.
He knows Loki isn't telling the truth, but trying to force it out of him very clearly isn't going to work, as it never does.
If he can get him to relax more maybe…
"How about a bath brother?" The thunderer asks gently, the idea suddenly occurring to him. "I am certain a bath would improve your condition."
Slowly, a wide, happy grin spreads across Loki's features, and he nods lazily.
"Oh, a bath would be fun." He slurs.
It frightens Thor, how young Loki seems to him. How very much he is still like a child.
He supposes, in many ways, he still is a child.
Only just nine hundred and eleven. Barely considered fully matured.
Thor nods, relieved that Loki seems to like the idea.
"Alright." He says. "Let me just run the water and I will help you out of these clothes."
A few moments later, the bath is filling, and Thor has Loki on the ground, supporting him as he sits, legs outstretched before him, hands cupped loosely between them and head hanging forward.
The crown Prince has just managed to remove his sure coat, and is now working on the layers beneath. First a finely tailored, green vest, now ruined with mud and torn, and underneath that, a simple tunic of the same color, also soiled and torn.
With each layer removed, Loki's size grows smaller and smaller, naught but a wisp of a man, and sometimes Thor finds himself wondering how Loki could have turned out this way, when he himself is so sturdily built, so muscular.
"Lift your arms brother." Thor instructs softly, undoing the tunic's laces, then helping Loki to bring his arms up above his head.
Loki complies easily, and as the elder Prince takes hold the tunic's hem and brings it up, he's unable to keep down the curse which springs forth from his lips at what he sees.
Loki's entire torso is a mass of black and blue contusions, deep bruising along both ends of his ribcage, all across his chest and abdomen, and Thor can see from here, it stretches around to his back, the damage indicative of heavy boots to flesh.
Someone, or some ones had kicked him, and repeatedly.
"Odin's stones, Loki…" Thor murmurs, eyes staring and wide.
Loki stares back at him, confusion lining his features a moment, before he realizes where Thor is looking, and he looks down at himself.
"Oh…" he says.
And Thor brings his eyes back up to his face.
"You fell Loki?" Thor asks, the demand for truth behind the question.
"Well, perhaps…" Loki begins, and then he's falling back, lying flat on the ground. "not strictly speaking." He finishes, staring up at the ceiling.
Everything is spinning in nauseating circles, and he brings his hands to his face, trying to block it out.
"Loki, please, tell me what happened." Thor pushes, unable to take it anymore.
He swears, whoever did this to his brother is going to have Hel to pay.
For a long, few seconds, Loki simply lays there, hands over his face, not answering.
And then he mutters out…
"Can I go in the water first, and then I'll tell you?"
Thor sighs, both in frustration and relief, and he nods.
"Very well." He says.
It takes a few minutes longer, but finally, the thunder god is able to get Loki out of the rest of his clothes, muddied boots and breaches and underwear removed.
His lower half is in no better condition than his upper, legs similarly covered in deep bruising, and his lower back…
Thor had momentarily to turn away from the sight, the base of Loki's spine so hideously discolored, made worse in contrast to the few areas of his skin left unmarred, nearly white as fresh fallen snow.
Thor doesn't bother trying to help Loki get himself into the tub, simply lifting him up and placing him gently down into the water.
And Loki seems to sink into it, thin shoulders slumping, the rest of him slipping down until the water is more than halfway up his chest.
His eyes close and he just sits there, still and quiet.
Thor wants to cry at the sight of him.
His little brother, beat all to Hel, and he knows someone, some bastard did this to him, and he wasn't there to protect him. He wasn't…
"… They called me argr." Loki's soft voice disrupts his thoughts.
Thor stills. He says nothing.
And slowly, Loki's lids come back open, and he's staring at his older brother with suddenly clear eyes.
"And they said I was a coward."
"Who Loki?" Thor asks.
He's going to find these men and when he does he's going to…
"It doesn't matter." Loki replies, eyes sliding away from his.
"It matters brother. They must pay for attacking their Prince."
Loki chuckles softly, and Thor doesn't know why.
"Well, I told them, I am no coward at all. That their accusations were entirely false, and that their impudence would surely be paid for."
He falls silent then, a long, few moments, and Thor waits, not wanting to interrupt, to frighten his little brother away from telling him.
Suddenly, Loki's eyes seem to light up and he looks back to the crown Prince, smiling brightly.
"Oh, there was the mmo… most lovely maiden Thor." He begins. "I tell you, she was a match for Freyja herself. I thought to woo her…"
Thor is frowning, the sinking feeling in his gut worsening by the second, already able to follow where this is heading.
"You were in the city again Loki?" He asks warily.
Loki nods tiredly.
"At a tavern?"
Another nod, and Thor feels ill.
"Loki, I have told you it is unwise to travel to such places on your ow…"
"Yes, yes." Loki waves him off. "But the maiden Thor, oh, she was most beautiful. Most fair, and I thought to woo her."
The excited expression across the younger brother's features very abruptly fades, and suddenly he is frowning, brow furrowed in some unsaid hurt.
"Alas, she did not return the sentiment," he goes on, voice wavering and weak. "and apparently, she was already claimed."
"Brother…" Thor begins, reaching out and placing a gentle hand along his shoulder.
"Well, you may hazard to glean the rest. Words were exchanged, three of them, one of me." Loki laughs, but there is no real amusement in the sound. "Apparently, they found no appreciation for my silver tongue. Such a novel response in Asgard, I know."
"Loki…"
"But I'm not a coward Thor." Loki cuts him off, looking suddenly at the thunder god, eyes at once sharp, cutting. "I told… I told them, I am no coward."
He looks away then, eyes slipping down to the water he sits in.
"And they told me to prove such."
"Oh, Loki…" Thor can't keep the pain from his voice now, feeling his throat tighten. His hand squeezes along his brother's shoulder, trying vainly to offer some sort of comfort.
"I didn't use… I didn't use seidr. I didn't, and so they cannot call me a coward. They cannot…"
Loki looks back up at him, and for the first time that night, Thor sees desperation in his eyes.
"They cannot, can they Thor? I'm not a coward, am I?"
And Thor shakes his head.
"No Loki, you are not." He answers. "It is they who are cowards."
Loki looks away again, silent.
And for a short while, the air between them falls heavy and silent.
Thor takes the time to wash Loki's face and hair, retrieving a pitcher and filling it with water, dumping it slow and carefully over the younger god's head. He repeats this three turns, and cleans Loki's face with a wet rag, deliberate and cautious not to aggravate his injuries.
Until Loki at last speaks again, voice thick with exhaustion.
"I'm tired Thor." He says. "I wish to sleep."
Thor nods.
"Alright Loki." He says.
He helps his little brother out of the water then, keeping him steady.
Loki is boneless in his arms, the warmth of the water having made him even more unsteady on his feet, and Thor sits him down on the floor to dry him off, not wanting him to fall.
He dresses Loki quickly thereafter, getting him into one of his own nightgowns. It is far too large for Loki's frame, slipping off of his shoulders, but it will do.
The younger prince is half asleep already, and Thor risks picking him up bodily and carrying him back out into his chambers, towards his bed.
Loki gives no protest, simply curling in to Thor, face pressing against his broad chest, hands finding and burying in the material of the thunderer's tunic.
Reaching the bed, Thor holds Loki to him while throwing the covers back. And then diligently he lays the smaller god along the sheets, resting his head carefully along the pillows before pulling the blankets back up, over his shoulder.
He regards him for a long moment, making sure he's comfortable.
Loki's eyes are closed, and he hasn't stirred, his breaths steady and even, and Thor thinks he's fallen asleep already.
He turns to leave, to change out of his own clothes and take up on the daybed.
But as he does so, he feels a weak grip take him, and he turns, looking down, seeing Loki staring up at him with half lidded eyes, thin, thin fingers curled round his wrist.
"… Stay." Thor hears him say.
And Thor nods, getting into the bed beside his little brother, under the covers.
Loki turns over to face him, moving closer, curling into him.
Thor drapes an arm across him, pulling him against his chest
It isn't long before he hears the deep, even breathing of the younger prince, and he knows he's fallen asleep.
For a long time, Thor isn't able.
He just keeps thinking, terrible thoughts.
Loki doesn't cry.
Not anymore.
And Thor wonders at it.
Wonders at the anguish he sometimes sees in his brother's eyes.
And wonders why it is he doesn't cry.
/