Hello everyone! Sorry it's been a long time, but I'm alive!

I don't own Norse mythology or Thor.

I've changed the order of some mythological events and such, but let me know if I've got anything majorly wrong.

"Loki. Loki, we have to stop," Thor whispered, his lips grazing Loki's as he broke the kiss with his voice.

The trickster looked up at the golden boy, green - for now - eyes smouldering. "You're not scared, are you, big brother?" His arms tightened almost imperceptibly around the thunder god's neck.

Don't let someone else leave me. Loki would never, ever admit it, but one of his biggest fears was being abandoned by people he loved.

"Not scared. I just don't want everyone to find out. Sif -"

Loki cut him off, pressing a cool finger to Thor's lips. "Not now. Just give me this once and we'll figure it out. Please?"

Loki never said please.

Thor couldn't help but smile, or at least begin to, before the expression was cut off by Loki's lips grabbing his own with a fierce intensity. He replied in kind, and the two gods' bodies moved as one as they collapsed onto Loki's bed.

The next day, the gods' meeting was delayed by Thor's no-show until an hour later than it had been scheduled to begin. And by another twenty minutes whilst the Norse pantheon awaited Loki's arrival.

"What was that lightning last night? You woke me up at 3 A.M.!" Hel screeched in Thor's direction. "And I was in Helheim!"

The thunder god couldn't help but glance momentarily in the direction of where Loki stood. Today the shape-shifter's hair was a copper-red cropped style, matching swirling dark eyes that hadn't stopped looking in Thor's direction since he'd entered the room. Quickly looking away, Thor replied to his niece. "I'm sorry, Hel. I couldn't sleep. It happens."

He was very much aware as a smirk crossed Loki's face.

Hel rolled her eyes with a huff, but let the matter rest. "Why did you venture out of Helheim, anyway?" Odin asked her.

The goddess frowned, clearly sobered by the question. "I was visited by a dead Jotun. There is a problem." The room was silent as the gods listened to Hel, until her voice pierced the silence to continue. "The Giants have turned on each other. It is the beginning, he says, of Ragnarok. But not as it has been foretold."

"I'm on your side, for one thing," Loki said quietly, after a few seconds of silence.

The Aesir turned to stare at him as he spoke. "I did wrong in the past, and I served my punishment. After Thor took pity," Loki's voice trembled a tiny amount, "I returned to Asgard. I have lived among you. I will not fight against you as the prophecies tell us." Before the hardened resolve of his words could quite register, he turned to look directly at Thor. "I will defend you... Against my own kind, if that's what it takes."

Gasps rang out through the room. "Your own kind?" Sif asked, voice clearly shocked. "What?"

"Tell them, Odin." The trickster stayed where he was, unswayed by the currents of disbelief rushing in a vortex around the room. "They were always going to find out. Now as good a time as any."

Odin turned slowly, so that he was facing all of the gods. His one eye stared at Loki. And then he spoke. "I took Loki in when he was young; raised him as if he was my own-"

"- hardly; as if golden boy could be my brother," Loki muttered under his breath.

"- although clearly with millennia has not come the realisation that I can hear him at close range." Odin gave Loki a shut-up-and-let-me-speak look and continued. "He is a Jotun. But remember this: he is family. He has repented for past wrongs, and lives among us."

The knocking came swiftly after Loki had returned to his room.

Fled to might be more accurate.

He had asked for it - quite literally - but the fear of rejection, despite millennia of pushing it down, still plagued him.

"Loki, let me in, or Mjolnir is going through this door."

"That's really not necessary. Not every little thing has to be a show of power."

"Says the master of unnecessary eloquence and tricks."

"Thor, please, leave me alone." The god's jolly voice dropped into the moping whine that felt appropriate. "Or do you just want to break up with the stupid Jotun?"

That was the last straw for Thor. As promised, he left a hammer-shaped hole in the door before sitting heavily down on Loki's bed. "You are not your origins." He told Loki fiercely, looking into his dark eyes. "It doesn't matter who birthed you, or what DNA you have. You are the person you want to be. And I happen to like that person very much."

"Real- oh damnit, I can't mope around you like that, inspirational speeches are too hot," the trickster god complained, before sliding across the edge of the bed and latching both his arms and lips to Thor.

"What are we going to do? Heimdall is meant to warn us of danger, and the Giants are meant to attack, but since the prophecies have gone to Hel - sorry, dear - we have no information. Why are the Giants fighting, anyway?" Sif exclaimed shortly after Odin had finished talking and both Thor and Loki had disappeared (which she'd sound slightly suspicious at the time, but looking at the big picture now, her husband and brother-in-law were the least of her, or any of the gods', worries).

"I should return to Helheim. Business to attend to. I'll do my best to get more information." Hel informed the others still gathered before disappearing.

"I shall speak with Heimdall. He might've seen something," Odin proclaimed, and too disappeared.

"Then I suppose it's a waiting game," Sif sighed, flicking her golden wig back over her shoulders.

"Really should get Loki to get me a shorter one..." She sighed.

Should happen fairly soon. Just a little giant trouble and nine-world war, then she'd sort out her hair issues.