To us the world is different

"But what I do know is to us the world is different –

As we are to the world, but I guess you would know that –"

VNV nation – Illusion

1.

She is not what he has been wanting, none of them have ever really been what he has been wanting; though there is something different about this one. Not just that she is beautiful – though she is, of course she is – but because, hateful though it is to admit it, she looks so curiously like him. Not just the dark hair, androgynous frame and bewitching smile but her eyes are uncanny – a sparkling silver – green that made Thor squint in wonder. They could almost really have been Loki's eyes.

Do not think it, he tells himself – but you always do think I don't you? He catches her looking at him askance and realises that he must be visibly scowling. He tries to clear his face and shrug away the unbidden, un- stoppable thoughts –

"Thoughts" he grunts, monosyllabically, in answer to her unspoken question.

"Care to share?" she tilts an eyebrow, her voice lilting, musical, ever so slightly teasing.

"No" he replies, shortly.

"Well -" she smiles, taking his hand in hers – her hand looking impossible small by comparison, tender and soft, slender pale fingers surprisingly electric on the skin – "Aren't you the conversationalist?"

Dear gods, he thinks – she even sounds like him. The thought is uncomfortable but does not get in the way of leading her through his chamber door.

"It is not conversation that I seek" he growls.

She smiles again and her smile is curiously patronising – I'm not really fine with that but I'll take it for now – says the look on her face – and she turns down her eyes, her smile too knowing for Thor's liking. Even so he cannot tear his eyes away from her delicate fingers working at the fastenings of her gown. Female attire has always been something of a mystery to him and so he barely wonders at how easily the gown falls from her, like a flurry of green leaves from a tree, eyes only for the pale skin she exposes, the body lithe as a new sapling but soft to the touch –

- and the touch is desperate, urgent; he divests himself of all clothing quickly, the better to feel that cool pale silver against the warm gold of his own skin. He tries to kiss her more quickly than she will allow, making him feel that she is laughing a little at his desperation, kissing her all the fiercer for her pretence of reticence. The need, the heat is barely even for her, so much as it is the need to mask, to quell what he really wants. Would that I could he thinks – but everything that led him to her only reminds him of all that he would choose to forget; her eyes, her slender fingers playing him like a harp, the crooked smile that brings him right back to square one again.

I would do anything – he thinks – anything to her that could cure me, anything that could put out the fires you have lit in me brother –

Pretend you didn't even think that. Pretend that she is the beginning and the end. Pretend that somebody that anybody else ever could be, pretend, pretend, pretend – and they call him the trickster.

She looks up at him from where he has pushed her down amongst the sheets, mounting her like a lion – and her bedroom eyes take on a hint of exasperation –

"You're thinking again -" she says, a tad accusingly, irritation playful in her voice – "It does not become you."

He glares at her, one hand on her breast, another tangled in her silk – like hair.

"I think –" he says, slowly and just as slightly annoyed – "That this would go much better with a lot less talk from you." he pulls her head back rather harder than intended, to kiss – bite at her pale throat. She gasps and laughs her rippling laugh at the same time –

"So you always say –" she murmurs so quietly he can pretend not to have heard her. Still, it occurs to him to wonder, even as he parts her legs, that he has no idea of who she is – that he has never seen her about Asgard before tonight ; that in truth he does not even know her name.

Suddenly, though, it all seems remarkably unimportant, every other concern blasted apart by the feel of sliding inside her. It is curiously, deliciously like sliding into a river beneath a painfully burning sun – even at this moment she is cool to the touch – a blissful relief to his scorching skin. Tight and yielding all at once she provides a kind of mindless perfection. Mindless is good. Mindless is better than cool – so cool and sweet to my warmth, fire and ice – are we not always thus brother? Two halves of one perfect whole?

"I wonder –" she whispers, close to his ear, fingers running fiendishly up the back of his neck, hooking a slender leg around him to pull him deeper in, drawing him perilously close to the edge – "I wonder who you're really thinking of –"

It makes him so angry he could slap her – when he would not want to admit that to himself – let alone to anybody else. He growls a soft warning she does not heed, her breath like flakes of snow against his face –

"Who is it you really want me to be? Say it –"

He digs his fingers into her shoulders, grinding into her punishingly hard, trying to transfer the anger into mere pleasant sensation –

"Shut up" he growls – there is only one other person he has wanted to shut up this much and it does not help him now to think of this; she simply laughs, arching her back in a pain she seems to relish –

"No I don't think so –" she hisses – "Not this time – not when –" she gasps as he thrusts into her savagely, not wanting to hear, not wanting to acknowledge what a part of him already knows – "Not when I know –" she spits – "I have always known –" she fires the last inevitable shot just as he comes uncontrollably inside her – "- brother."

She shimmers beneath him – not in a metaphorical orgasmic shimmer, but in a glimmering wave of golden sparkle and light until he opens his eyes to look down, breathing heavily into Loki's smirking face.

"What's more –" Loki continues, in the merry chatting tone of someone on a picnic – "You knew too didn't you?" he continues to gently stroke the back of Thor's neck in the brief moments as his orgasm subsides to be quickly replaced by a surge of slightly forced righteous anger and a powerful attempt at disgust. His instant reaction – to yell and punch Loki in the face just makes the trickster laugh at him and continue to laugh at him as he quickly, awkwardly and very roughly gets off him and hurls him out of the bed.

Loki looks up from the floor, wiping blood from a split smirking lip in a way Thor wishes was less damned sexy.

"Was that it?" he mocks – "Because I was all prepared for several more crashing great waves of righteous denial –"

Thor cuts him off with a noise he wishes was not a rather oafish "Aaaargh!", but it is nevertheless –

"Why?" he bellows – "Dear gods why would you do this?"

The smile swerves from Loki's face as quickly as a dark cloud wiping the sun from the sky and far more frightening –

"Because you wanted it!" he snaps – "I have never done anything than entirely as you want it or been anything you did not want me to be!"

"You lie!" Thor yells back, jumping out of bed to swing a punch, that misses Loki completely as he dodges, nimble, dressed again in the blink of an eye – albeit back into the green dress – that still looks strangely good on him.

"Wow" Loki states flatly, neatly avoiding all further blows – "No I mean really wow, brother – I knew you were obvious but really – yes, Loki tells lies – whoever would have thought –"

"LOKI!"

Loki's eyes are a violently swirling fire pit of emotions, changing rapidly from mocking laughter now to steely seriousness –

"And yet of course you still manage to be wrong –" he sneers – "Because that was the truth."

"You would not know –" Thor tries to sound more certain – "How would you presume to know what I want?"

"Yes because you're so subtle dear one – how many girls has it been just this week brother? Six, seven? You don't do that unless you're really trying hard to avoid that special someone –"

Thor snorts –

"And why the devil do you think that would be you?"

"I notice you don't deny it. Denial starting to hurt your knuckles? I mean – did you even ask one of them their name?"

"How would you even know that?"

Loki grins widely and Thor feels like he has been caught in a trap laid by a very cunning shark.

"Oh I was so hoping you'd ask me that! "

Thor closes his eyes –

"No" he attempts. It fails.

"Oh yes" Loki nods, playing like a cat with a mouse – "I was every one of them. That was me every time. I am every girl you've ever had brother and you know I'm not lying this time."

Thor grasps for more denial but it feels faint and far away. He does know, damn him. Damn them both. Too great a part of him has always known.

_x_

So this is my first attempt at Thorki – don't flame me too hard I know I have work to do on the voices and things, but this is just sort of a practice fic before I start anything that tackles anything more deeply so I'm sure it's not hugely original. I'd love feedback on how it seems to be going….there are maybe two to three chapters more of this if people are interested?

….and just cause there does not need to be another fic in the world called "Illusion" this title is from the song "Illusion" by VNV Nation. It's an amazing song, quite Thorki to my ears – if you can listen to it do. :-)