AN: I wrote this a while ago and had already posted it on AO3. I just remembered that I had it and thought that I should post it here as well, so here you are.
Please note that there is pseudo-incest (since Loki and Thor are not related by blood) in this fic. Heed the warning because there's wanking and thoughts that definitely do not have to do with brotherly affection.
Time-wise, this fic describes things happening before and during the movie Thor. There's jealousy and angst and unrequited love. So, this is not a happy fic. You've been warned.
And oh yea, SPOILERS!
There's nothing in this world so sweet as love. And next to love the sweetest thing is hate.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
There is a border between Love and Hate. Although, border might not be the right word. It is too strong, too big. A border is something you would see and feel upon crossing it. Even if it is not built of something material, the insight of over-stepping it would still hit you like a metaphorical club.
No, what separates Love from Hate is a mere line, thinner than the finest hair, so weak and so very not noticeable, that you would find yourself on the other side of it before you even know you took the last step.
But what happens to someone who is constantly balancing on this line, swaying from side to side, always on the verge of falling? Who would be able to bear such feelings without having their heart shattered by it, their mind twisted?
And when they finally fall, on which side has one to land to recover?
"We should kiss," Thor announces abruptly and looks at his brother with wide-eyed anticipation. The two are in their hideout, an old weeping willow near the low wall of their mother's garden. The tree is so old, even Frigga can not remember since when it has been there, and the thin branches hang low and are so many that they hide the two boys sitting on the fork of the trunk thoroughly from prying eyes.
Loki considers what his brother has suggested for a moment, eyes turned up towards the sky behind the green curtain of leafs. "Why?"
"Because when you love someone, you kiss them," the golden haired sibling explains with childlike certainty. "That's why we have to."
It makes sense and Loki nods. "Fine," he says and turns his head towards his brother. For a moment they simply stare at each other, not sure what they are supposed to do, too young and innocent to understand the gravity of the gesture. Thor purses his lips, it's easy to see he is thinking about how to go on. He is an open book to his brother, every gesture and facial expression so clear to him as if they had been written down in ink.
"You have to close your eyes. No, not like this," he corrects Loki when he squeezes his eyes shut. "Like this." Thor closes his eyes and his face is relaxed, at peace, as if he were sleeping. The younger brother follows suit, because Thor is the older one, he has to now how things work.
"Yes."
Loki can feel his breath tickle the sensible skin of his lips, warm and soothing. It's no real kiss, only the brush of lips against each other, and it's over too quickly. Loki keeps his eyes closed a moment longer, lingers on the feeling and the way Thor tastes of sunshine and summer.
"How was it?" Thor asks after a dozen heartbeats.
"Good."
"Good." Loki opens his eyes and Thor smiles, more sunshine in his eyes.
"Sing something."
Loki looks down at his brother's head resting in his lap and rolls his eyes in what he hopes looks like annoyance. The truth is – although he would deny it vehemently – that his heart has made a leap of joy just now. Thor looks back at him with a pout forming slowly around his lips. "Come on little brother, sing something for me," he demands again when Loki does nothing more than sigh.
"Why do you always want me to sing something?" He leans back against his bedchamber's wall, his voice carefully coloured with a tinge of childish petulance. "Get one of the servants to sing for you. Or ask mother. I am no girl." The young god crosses his arms in front of his chest and blocks out Thor's face to hide the sadness that got a hold of it. His older brother is always so free with his feelings, so easy to read. They might still be nothing more than children in the eyes of the other Æsir, but Loki has learned that being able to not give your feelings away, or better, invoke mocked feelings on your face, is essential when being king.
Like now. He loves singing for his brother, there is nearly nothing he prefers more than these moments when they are left alone by their parents or Thor's numberless friends. Just thinking about them bolting in and disturbing the precious peace Loki has found in their togetherness lets his lips become a thin line. These little moments in which he has his brother for himself have become far too few. With every friend Thor gains, it feels like he is taking a step away from Loki, stretching the bond between them further and further, until it snaps with a pang, and he is left behind. Doomed to look at the back of his brother turned towards him.
He is pulled out of the dark pit his mind had thrown him into by Thor. His right hand is wrapped around Loki's wrist, warm and comforting against his own cold skin. He can feel the warmth that is his brother seep into him through his skin, filling his body thoroughly until there is no darkness any more, no loneliness, no retreating back he is staring at. It is then that he realizes everything he will ever need is his brother.
Loki lets his arms fall back to his sides and allows himself a smile, bright and genuine. He sees it mirrored on his brother's face, directed at him, and only for him.
"Will you sing now, Brother?" Thor asks, and Loki cannot say no.
He sings, a long ballad Frigga taught him, and of which he knows is one of his brother's favourites. With his voice he weaves the picture of forgotten worlds and their beauty, a hero and his fights with monstrosities to save the one he loves, and finally of their death, when they are old and their time has ended. When the last tone is sung, Thor is fast asleep, his face a mask of peace and Loki traces the blond hairline softly with his fingertips. The smile has not yet vanished from his face.
But there comes a time it will.
Thor's hand is always warm against his own, and he would like to close his eyes to dwell on the feeling a moment longer, but his brother drags him along, throws him a glance and a smile over his already broad shoulder. They are running through the halls, their stolen goods from the kitchen – a bottle of mead and deliciously filled pastries – held securely in their other hands. Loki can hear fast footfalls behind them and the angry voices of the servants yelling after them in exasperation. He can't help the chuckle of glee upon their recent mischief escape his throat, and Thor joins in. They laugh along each other breathlessly, still running through halls and corridors, nearly knocking one of the guards over, a cluster of upset servants in their wake.
Thor drags his brother around a corner, and in a heartbeat they are outside in Mother's garden, jumping over carefully cut bushes and rare flowers, trampling some of them down in their stampede. Finally they are over the low wall and far enough away to take a short pause. The servants have given up for now, there are none around when Loki risks a glance around the wide tree they are hiding behind.
"You know I could have made this more easy, Brother," he states as soon as he's gained enough breath and wipes the sweat from his forehead and brows with the sleeve of his tunic. He is not as well trained as his brother, and not nearly as strong as the soon to be warrior. The run through the palace makes it's presence felt in the burning of his muscles already. Thor barks a loud laugh, and Loki is again reminded of the differences between them; he is lithe and small compared to his brother's broad and bulky form, and there is already a trace of change in his voice, downy stubble on his jawline whereas Loki's skin is still soft and bare. He wants to reach out and touch the fine hairs.
"I know, little brother. But it would not be this much fun if they hadn't seen us, don't you think?" Thor asks with a mischievous smile and a glint in his eyes. The younger brother nods lost in thought, he hasn't really listened and crouches down beside the blond god, his eyes still on the irregular growing little brother of a beard.
"Don't worry," Thor says with a fond smile as soon as he realizes what his brother his looking at and ruffles his dark hair. "You will get one soon enough."
Loki huffs and straightens his hair, an all too childish pout tugging at his lower lip. "I am certain I will grow a full beard before you leave that poor excuse of one behind," he teases and receives an elbow to his rips.
"Maidens don't grow beards," Thor counters, but Loki's remark about his brother's thick wits is interrupted by Frigga's stern voice calling their names from the direction of the garden.
"I guess we've trampled her precious roses again," the blond god murmurs and jumps to his feet, extending a hand for his little brother. Loki takes it and their fingers entwine before they start to run again.
"You are not planning to bring him with you, are you?"
Loki stops right before he can round the corner, as soon as he hears the disbelief in Sif's voice. He knows she means him because there is also seriousness in her tone, and she is always serious when it comes to him. Sif dislikes him and Loki dislikes her. One could consider them even, and weren't it for Thor, they would avoid each other as they should. But Thor, his good and naïve and dear brother Thor, always complicated things.
"Of course I want to bring him with me. Why not?" Loki can hear Thor asking her and imagines how he must furrow his brows right now. He wants to smile, even a bit, but he doesn't. Centuries of training and observation have taught him when it's time to smile and when not, and now certainly is the time for the latter, because there is nobody there to see him smile. An expression he can not gain anything from is not worth the effort.
"Why not?" Sif repeats incredulously, as if everybody could see why she didn't want Loki to come with them. And she is right, everybody knows it, even Loki – except for Thor. His dear older brother, always so oblivious, so blind to the net of lies spun between all of them. His brother, who always sees the good in his friends and his kin, and the bad in his enemies. His brother, the warrior, the strong one, the naïve one, who could not see half as far as a sword is long. Who possesses more muscles than intellect. Loki clenches his hands into fists, feels the nails digging into his palms hard enough to leave crescent marks behind.
"Your brother or not, Thor – wherever he goes there is mischief and mayhem, and he has always to do with it. I am not able to hunt if I have to keep an eye on him all the time," Sif says, and he knows that she is poking her finger repeatedly into his brother's breastplate to underline her point.
"Then don't keep an eye on him, Sif." Thor says, a grin audible in his voice. "I am sure he can look after himself."
"That is not what I meant, and you know it!" She cries in exasperation and Loki can hear the distant clang when her bracers hit her armour. She must have thrown her arms up in the air. Loki is always able to read them, every smallest movement, every tiniest flinch is like they are pouring their hearts out for him.
"Now, calm down Sif. Please," Fandral says, always at the ready to play the voice of reason. Pathetic. "Isn't there a compromise?" A compromise? Loki wants to twist his ridiculous moustache until the hairs rip from his skin.
"Can't he just stay here?" Volstagg asks, his voice slightly muffled by the food in his mouth, and the dark haired god feels his fingers itch with the sudden but not unexpected urge to shove an apple down his throat to hinder the fool from releasing more nonsense onto the world. "I mean, he was not of much use the last time." Thor is silent for a moment, and Loki feels like he can hear his brother thinking, considering the possibility, rolling it around in his head to see all sides of it.
"Thank you, Volstagg," Sif says smugly. "At least one of you might be considered sane."
Loki can't bear Thor's silence any longer, whirls around and walks silently away.
He doesn't hear him say that Loki will accompany them, if they liked it or not, and when Thor searches his younger brother, he can't find him anywhere.
There is something in his chest. It's cold, so cold, icy tendrils that twine around his heart, drawing tighter and tighter with every gasp, every moan of the girl.
The girl that is pressed against the wall by his brother.
The girl that has her legs wrapped around his brothers hips and her skirt shoved up to her own.
The girl.
He wants to run away, run and run, until his legs can't move any more, but they would not move in the first place, he was sentenced to see, to watch his brother covering her neck with hungry, devouring kisses, full of lust and fire. Loki can't do so much as blink and his eyes sting, but they would not close, his whole body has renounced its duty. He isn't even breathing.
The icy tendrils in his chest squeeze the organ until it seems to stop fully, and the fleeting moment is drawn into eternity to be burned into his mind with all its twisted and disgusting sickness, to be never forgotten.
The girl gasps, but not of pleasure. Her eyes widen in horror when she sees him standing at the corner of the stables they had intended to hide behind. Thor does not notice until she stiffens and shoves him away, her cheeks burning so hot with embarrassment that Loki has the illusion to feel it even where he stands. His brother stumbles backwards, his eyes so wide with surprise and horror and shame that it looks ridiculous , and Loki feels cruel, delicious, relieving, insane laughter claw its way up his throat, but it is never released.
The tendrils close around his heart. Something snaps with a pang inside him. For a moment he feels as if he's falling into a bottomless pit, black and demanding, the darkness closes around him, to be then taken over by fire, fire, and it burns so much.
Loki turns and strides away, an impenetrable mask of indifference covering his face.
He sits on his bed, leaned against the wall like he had sat often with his beloved brother, his dear brother, back then, when he hadn't been swallowed by his shadow. He sings the ballad silently, and every word tastes of bile.
Thor storms into the room, his hair wild, a red mark on his neck, left there as a memento of the girl. He can smell her on his clothes, can see the traces of her petty existence all over his body.
His brother looks around the room hastily, as if he is looking for something, and Loki knows exactly who he seeks. Thor's eyes are still widened, because he fears what his younger brother might do with with this delicate little secret of his. He doesn't see him, although the dark haired god is sitting right in front of him, his lips twisted into the most genuine sneer he had ever showed and he is savouring every heartbeat's time of it. For once it doesn't matter that his expression isn't seen. Oh, how he loves to see his brother like this, frightened, dancing like a puppet on its strings, and he is the hand that holds them. The release was yet not to come for Thor, no no. He should dance a little longer.
His older brother leaves the room without having discovered what had been right under his nose, simply because Loki did not want him to, and he knows that even ever-seeing Heimdall is blind to him.
The silver tongue has a magic of its own. He does not need his hands to weave another net around the Asgardians, capture them with the sweet lies he whispers into their ears, planting a seed in their mind to root and grow. They are at his disposal and it is entertaining at best, dull at worst. He does it nonetheless.
When Thor returns from battle, the hammer Mjölnir clutched in his hand, the Æsir cheer. They call him Thunderer, and when the name is spoken, the rumbling of a thunderstorm rolls through the sky and lightning illuminates his face, painting eerie shadows onto it at the same time, and they all can see the mighty God he's become. Loki can taste the fear their enemies must have felt upon seeing his brother on the field of battle, his cloak red as the blood he was about to shed, billowing in the storm that is a part of him now as is the hammer in his hand, his face more a feral snarl than a smirk.
They expect him to congratulate his brother on his honourable victory. Loki congratulates him on being a brutal barbarian that still is covered with the stench of blood. He does not say it out loud, but there is a silent whisper in his mind, hissing like a snake. He drapes himself with the veil of brotherly love for them, wears it like a second skin. Even a smile can be seen on his lips when he steps to the side of his brother, the lies being formed by his swift tongue so easily, dripping from there right into Thor's ears and into his mind, spreading and dulling his senses like the thickest mist. He would think that everything was in perfect order between them.
And then Thor touches him. It is not much, but it threatens to rip Loki apart all the same. His mask crumbles at the edges when his brother lays his warm hand on his shoulder and he feels electricity run through his body, along his skin, prickling, tickling, titillating. It's unbearable; the fondness in Thor's smile, the things the contact is doing to his body. He doesn't dare to imagine how it would feel when there was no cloth to muffle the effect, only skin on skin and the reverberation of the storm crawling over it. It makes his hair stand on end. And he falls again into a bottomless pit, like on that one day behind the stables, but this time there is no darkness and no fire, only warmth and bliss and-
Pain.
The hand on his shoulder has vanished, Thor has turned and there is a bewildering feeling of loss. It's incomprehensible and Loki doesn't like it, because there is nothing the Silvertongue doesn't understand, no bonds he can not disentangle, nothing his swift and nimble mind can not reveal, no puzzle he can not solve.
After the celebration Loki can't find the peace of sleep. He repeats every spell he knows in his mind, concentrates on every noble Asgardian he knows and the things – the exceptional lies – he has told them, recites every title of the tomes in the library like a mantra, but the warmth in his groin does not go away. The memory of the touch is lingering at the edge of his mind, infiltrating his trains of thought again and again. And it doesn't help one bit that the air is filled with the humming energy of a summer storm.
Finally he gives in to the demands of his body and wraps his long and delicate fingers around the pulsing shaft of his cock. He tightens the grip, because in his mind the fingers are not his own, but firm and strong and warm. The hands he sees caressing the silky skin are big, rough and calloused by the use of weapons and wherever they touch they leave a hint of electricity behind. He gasps and groans and the noises stumble over the shattered remains of his self-esteem. The hand speeds up, until it nearly reaches the rhythm of his pulse, and he is getting closer to the verge of orgasm with every stroke. A thick thumb teases the sensible head of his cock, slicking it with the bead of precome that has formed there, and this is nearly enough; Loki shudders uncontrollably, hips thrusting irregularly into the hand with the wish of sweet, sweet release. And when it comes, it's bliss, pure and untouched and overwhelming and wonderful, and his chocked cry is swallowed by the rumbling of thunder.
But it is over too quickly, and when he emerges from the numbing pool of the afterglow, there is only disgust waiting for him.
Thor is visibly enjoying himself as he walks down the throne room towards the Allfather to speak his vows. He bathes in cheers, mouth spread into a foolish and toothy grin, Mjölnir thrusting into the air. His eyes seek out those of his friends, witnesses to his coronation and the triumph over his younger brother. They smile at him proudly and Loki has no doubt that they think he earned it – the first son, the warrior, loved by his people, despite of his lack of talent for diplomacy and modesty. Thor is destined to throw Asgard into war before their father might fall into the Odinsleep.
When he sinks to his knees in front of the steps, the future king glances at his brother for reassurance. Loki's smile tastes bitter.
The siblings had never been alike. Where Thor was broad and muscular, Loki was lithe and delicate; Thor preferred weapons over wit, but Loki wielded his tongue like his own Mjölnir. The first-born was always open with expressions and feelings, whereas the second used his with cold calculation. Warrior and sorcerer, the always honest one and the trickster. They could have never been similar, but they should have been seen as equals.
Loki always wondered why they could never have been seen equals. Together they could have completed each other!
But upon seeing his skin stained blue, all pieces fell into place and the last puzzle had been solved. He was a monster, an abomination mothers told their children about; a Jötunn, a Frost Giant. He had never been a candidate for the throne, contrary to Odin's words. He had been ripped from the cold embrace of his world to be a motivation for the true prince to fight, to not see the crown as granted.
Loki's life had been a lie and he hadn't seen it. Odin's masterpiece, and the trickster had not seen it.
The Thunderer is history, banned from Asgard to live the rest of his now short life as an Midgardian. But his shadow is still there and Loki is doomed to suffer in it. He can not compete with someone who is not there, and in the simple minds of the Asgardians it doesn't matter that their beloved prince has risked war with Jötunheimr.
Sitting on the throne he has longed for since he can think means nothing now. It doesn't satisfy him, feels like he has gained it not by the power of his wit, but through the stupidity of the Odinson.
But he is the Liesmith, the Silvertongue, the trickster; if there is a way he can find it. And he will.
Everything went as planned until he returned. Loki has climbed a mountain to leave the ever-present shadow of his brother behind, has finally seen the light again, has felt it on his skin. They had been looking at him, at Loki, and if Thor hadn't interfered, he could have been king. He had been so close to the mountain's peak; Laufey is dead, killed by the Jötun prince who had become an Odinson, and Loki has earned it, earned it with his deeds. Jötunheimr could have been destroyed, he would have turned it into nothing more than stardust, the thread of the Frost Giants could have ended then and there.
But Thor, thick-witted and blind Thor, must interfere.
Something is boiling inside Loki, rolling through his veins like burning acid, filling his body with blinding rage, and he knows it's name. Hate. It's pure and corrosive and it feels so good . So right .
And there is fire licking its way through him, cleansing like a catharsis, wonderful, oh so wonderful, hot like a sun and cold like the embrace of Jötunheimr.
They fight, and every blow Thor manages against Loki makes the fire burn brighter, consuming more and more of the weakness called love until there are only ashes, cold and dead.
But the golden haired god outshines him again, and Loki is defeated.
He clutches Gungnir, and he knows without any doubt what he has to do to turn the tide. Thor's eyes tell him what he has to do to destroy.
Loki lets go, and Thor's scream is everything he needs to know that he's won at last.