THOR'S MAGIC

The party was noisy, long and boozy, in short, a true Asgardian party. In the warm light of ten of braziers, guests were sitting around long tables laid with roasted meat, fruit and desserts and were cracking jokes telling more and more incredible stories. Laugh roars sometimes were covering the music; a mild and gentle breeze was blowing stirring slightly the banners hanging down the walls.
Thor looked like one of the most amused, his loud laughs could be heard from an end to the other of the hall while he was talking with his dearest friends.

Unlike him, his brother Loki was sitting by himself and was differing from the others by his less than Asgardian attitude. He didn't like the noisy parties thrown in the Valhalla, he did not eat the mutton haunches like a wild beast, did not laugh coarsely, he did use cutlery gracefully, spoke daintily and smiled very little.

For those reasons he wasn't deemed the height of company during the parties.
He couldn't help it if he felt different from all them and considered them a bunch of nitwit barbarians, he actually had always wondered how it could be possible that those were the Asis, the supreme gods of the Nine Worlds, an assembly of big boys addicted to booze who were boasting incredible adventures. After all, after the first moment of choc, he had been glad to find out that he wasn't like them, that he was not of their same brutish nature. He nibbled the food in his plate and rose one eyebrow; being a Frost Giant wasn't that much better, they were an elemental race who was hiding in Jotunheim wasteland and who rejected him only because he was tiny. Gross mistake! He might have been small by their standards but for sure, his brain was bigger than all of them together. Maybe it had been good they got rid of him or he would have ended up by deposing his father Laufey… if he could command over Jotunheim, he could have got his way with that bunch of Asgardian boozers.

- "Brother! Aren't you having fun?" Thor sat next to him and planed his big hand on Loki's shoulder who nearly coughed his bite in the plate.

- "Brother… please… I am trying to have my dinner…" He answered sourly while coughing.

- "I see… but eating alone and speaking to nobody isn't good! C'mon, tell us a funny story!"

- "I am not known for being a bard…" Loki muttered.

Thor sighed: - "You're always the same! You could stop thinking of the conquest of the Nine Worlds for awhile and have some fun! When you wake up from the booze, they will be still there waiting for you…"

Loki raised one eyebrow, then swallowed the bite: - "Maybe… later…" He answered only to get rid of Thor.

The party went on still for long time and as anticipated, Loki didn't even try to bone up on chats or to look for his brother to tell him about his stories. On the other hand, what could he talk about? He wasn't a warrior, hadn't killed enemies only by sword and when it had happened he had to enter a battle, he had always used his magic to win over the opponent. The Asgardians didn't appreciate him also because of that, because he was constantly using the magic to win a battle. He didn't care of what was happening around him and before the end of the party, he stood up and walked away sure that nobody would have missed him.

Going back in his rooms was like being born again; the silence, the night chill, the dim, that was enough to make him smile again. He took off the cloak and lit a lamp, grabbed one of his heavy and carefully bound books and sat on his bed, reading it line after line. He didn't know how long he was sitting there but that moment of quietness was broken by the sharp knocks on his door. He raised his eyes and sighed: - "C'mon…"

Thor opened the door and walked in, slamming it behind his shoulders: - "Why did you go away so out of blue?" He asked without ceremony.

- "Did someone notice that except you?" Loki asked quietly, closing his book and putting it aside.

- "Uhm… I don't know…" Thor answered while scratching his beard.

- "So I did not wrong anyone if not my books by not coming here sooner."

- "You're pedantic!" The God of Thunder dropped on a stool.

- "Childish!" Loki muttered while getting up from the bed and walking towards the window. The weak light cast his slender shadow onto the opposite wall. – "Do you need to tell me something? Otherwise, I have more interesting things to do than speaking to you!"

- "If you were less interested in your books and magic and more in the world around you, you would have maybe noticed how Lady Sigyn was looking at you…" Thor exclaimed almost shrilly.

- "Glad to know." Loki answered coldly.

- "Aren't you interested?" Thor looked puzzled.

- "Not even a bit!" His brother answered carelessly grabbing the book and putting it back onto the shelf.

- "No… Not even a bit! But brother… are you crazy? You always complain with nobody considering you, that you feel an outcast, that nobody wants your company and when someone is looking for it, you ignore her! You're weird… so much weird!" Thor stood up in disbelief.

- "I thought it was obvious I am weird… indeed! I am not weird, I am different…"

- "No!" Thor stopped his issue immediately. – "Stop it… Don't begin the subject you're a Jotunn and at Asgard you're hated because of this…"
Loki looked at him as if he hadn't understood the point: - "No! In truth I was not meaning that!"

His brother looked at him in surprise: - "No?"

Loki shook his head and turned to look at the landscape out of the window. He stood silently for long time as if he was thinking over the answer: - "At Asgard they say I am a cultivated man, I know many things indeed but I don't know all of them…"

Thor frowned without understanding but he stood silently hoping that his brother would have made himself understood. Loki clasped his hands behind his back and kept speaking, quietly and in a low voice: - "I spent long time on my books, more than due probably so I didn't have that for new experiences…"

Thor thought over it for a moment, then suddenly something clicked: - "You mean that you…"
Even if Loki thought of himself as deeply different from Thor, there was a supernatural understanding between them, almost bordering on telepathy. He turned to his brother and nodded.
Thor would have normally welcome the news with a loud laugh but unexpectedly, he smiled almost sweetly: - "I understand…"

Loki sat on the edge of his bed and Thor sat next to him. After a moment, the lips of the youngest arched in a mischievous smile: - "You say I never notice anything, I never look around me but the truth is that at the party there was someone else who was looking at me with interest apart Lady Sigyn."

Thor thought about it, Loki let him do it but after a few seconds, he pointed his finger right against his brother's chest: - "You, brother!"

Thor widened his eyes and then burst into a sincere laugh:- "Oh no… you're going wrong! Not me!"

Loki nodded without stopping smiling self-confidently: - "You can tell many things about me, brother, but not that I don't know how to evaluate people or that I cannot grasp their intentions immediately. It's certainly not only for some easy trick that you Asgardians consider me dangerous!"

All the cheerfulness washed away from Thor's face: - "You're joking, aren't you?"

- "Do I look in the gaming mood?" Loki arched his finely shaped eyebrows in a puzzled expression.

- "Honestly, brother… I never know when you're serious and when you're not… But now you look dangerously serious."

- "Glad you sometimes discerns things…"

- "I am afraid to ask you what you are thinking of…." Thor muttered.

Loki smiled again with an half mischievous and half nasty look, he stretched out a hand and caressed his brother's bristly cheek: - "Don't ask me… it's better…" He then suddenly drew Thor to him and kissed him lightly but for a long time. He released him after awhile, biting his lips satisfied, basking in his brother's dazed expression.

- "Wh… What are you doing?" Thor didn't find anything better to ask.

- "I kissed you!" Loki answered stating the obvious.

- "No… I understood that… But, why?" Thor felt absolutely stupid in asking that but his tongue spoke before his brain could think.

Loki shrugged: - "I wanted to taste the lips of the greatest liar of Asgard… after me, of course…"
Thor roared: - "Are you making fun of me?"
His brother looked at him with a harmless look, blinked and smiled: - "Oh no brother, if I wanted to make fun of you, I would do it in front of an audience…"

- "Don't dare doing it again!" Thor said trying to walk away.

Loki rested lightly a hand on his brother's shoulder and that simple gesture was enough to make him desisting from going away: - "You've overreacted… this means simply that I found my mark and after all that was what you also wanted but you're the mighty Thor, the prince of Asgard, the symbol of the Asis' manhood and you cannot fall in the pit of desiring another man, even less your own brother…"

- "How much have you drunk this evening?" Thor tried to reply.

- "You know that one of the things that is cast up at me is that I drink icy mead?" He smiled and graciously waved a hand: - "A Jotunn's quirk… But it also means that I never drink enough to get drunk."

- "I am afraid you've overdrunk this evening…" Thor frowned.

- "Never been more sober." Loki answered promptly.

His brother looked at him unsure and Loki smiled in his unmistakable way, his incredible green eyes sparkled. – "There's nothing bad in what you're feeling…" He began to speak again in a velvety and provocative tone: - "Indeed… you are even more clearly showing your manhood if you cannot hold it even in front of me. And after all… don't you want to help your little brother to understand? To progress on the path of knowledge? Do you maybe wish to leave me in the darkness of ignorance?

- "I think, brother, that you've misinterpreted the issue… it's not me you must address to, but to a woman…" He tried to walk away but again Loki stopped him with a simple, gracious gesture of his hand.

- "I acknowledge the fact that in your world things are univocal… either white or black but in my world they are not so… Mine is the world of magic where everything can be all or its contrary, I could transform you into a woman and solve my issue in this way but I don't hate you so much to deprive you of the joy of knowledge…"

- "You wouldn't dare so much…" Thor stared at him alarmed.

Loki smiled nastily: - "Are you so sure?"
No, Thor couldn't be sure at all. Loki was the god of lies, of mischief, of dissension, the author of the most atrocious jokes ever seen at Asgard and for sure it wouldn't have taken him one second to transform him into a woman.
His brother was looking at him again with his so sweet and dangerous look in his eyes: - "I won't force you". He turned his head to the door. – "You're free to go if you really don't want to hear about it but this would leave the issue unsolved. Don't underestimate my skill, I am a sorcerer and over my long apprenticeship I learnt how to read the people's soul as easily as my books and I tell you, Thor Odinsson, that you are longing to possess me, that you've spent night tossing and rolling in your bed, wondering if it was legit even to think of it, that you've stopped too many times at only one step away from talking about it with me, that the shame and the awareness have dug you from within, have eaten your armour away so much that now your desire is completely exposed to the eyes of those who know how to see… first of all those of your own brother."
- "Don't freeze your mead any longer, brother… it goes to your head…" Thor answered bluntly.

Loki shook his head with an outclassy and posh expression: - "Ok, I take note of it…" He untied his shiny black hair until then tied in a ponytail by a gilded band and took off his heavy tunic carelessly laying it down on the back of a chair.

- "If it is so…" He begun to unbutton his shirt. – "You can go, I wish to go to bed."

Thor sat still on the bed, looking at him as frozen on the spot and Loki raised his eyebrows: - "Have you heard me? You can go…"

His brother came back to life and suddenly stood up: - "You cannot treat me as one of your servants..."
Loki stopped unbuttoning the many small buttons of his shirt and shook his head: - "Then, what do you want? If you stay, you will have to do what I want but you don't and you don't even want to go away. My books are better company than you, stupid blonde giant!"
The god of mischief couldn't even end his sentence as he found himself hurled against the wall and saw two flashing blue eyes glaring at him. He smiled pleased by his brother's reaction: - "Ouch… Couldn't you simply say you were disagreeing?"

Thor gripped his jaw: - "Shut up!"

Loki smiled again and tried to speak: - "Only because you're…" He could not even end that sentence because Thor locked his lips in a pressing kiss, biting them almost to the bleeding.

When they parted, Loki smiled pleased, scrubbing the blood with the sleeve of his shirt: - "You're still alive! I am not poisonous, you see?" He smiled mockingly. Still not completely satisfied, he stretched out one hand to his brother's suit of armour: - "Nevertheless, I think that you're definitely not at your ease with this scrap on…"

- "Scrap?" Thor roared again. –"My suit of armour, scrap?"

- "Under this circumstance I find it definitely useless…" A swift movement of his wrist and Thor's suit of armour disappeared from him to appear again at the feet of the chair where Loki had laid his tunic. – "Now it' much better!" He smiled pleased.

- "Brother, I warn you… Stop with your tricks…" Thor sounded cross.

- "Or what will you do? Will you beat me like when we were children or will you run to your mother and weep because Loki made your favourite toy disappear?" He chuckled fiercely.

Thor fidgeted and Loki read a mixed range of feelings in his eyes: anger, frustration but also something new that could have been classified as excitement. He insisted stubbornly trying to bring his brother to his breaking point: - "So… what will you do? Walk out this room as you are? If someone saw you, what would one thing? Or will you do exactly what you're thinking to do, hush me up?" He smiled sly.

- "Don't provoke me…" Thor's voice sounded very low.

- "Am I not already doing it?" Loki stretched out his hand to caress Thor's collarbone but he seized his fine wrist: - "Don't touch me!"

- "Are you scared?" Loki looked at him amusingly.

- "No!" Thor answered almost annoyed.

- "Then you're ashamed…"

- "Are you joking, aren't you?"

- "Maybe, but you look in a very bad situation!" In spite of everything Loki seemed completely in control of the game.

- "Why are you playing with fire, brother?" Thor stared at him seriously.

- "Because ice bores me!" Loki's answer was almost careless.

- "You might regret the consequences!"

- "… it's bad to come aware you have always wanted something and you have always denied it to yourself, don't you think?" Loki looked at him as if he could read his brother's soul. – "Do you really think that I have never realized how many times you looked at him when you were thinking I wasn't aware of that? Or that nobody ever came to me to tell me you were looking for me when I was not coming with you and your friends on your excursions? Or when we overnighted together, are you sure I have never peered at you from behind my eyelashes, pretending to sleep? Or I have never seen you staring at me intent as if you had wanted to tell me something but then you gave up to? Or whe…"

Thor released his wrist suddenly and grabbed nimbly his nape: - "Shut up…" He muttered and hushed him up with an aggressive kiss, slamming him onto the mattress. In the heat of that kiss, Thor couldn't see the pleased sparkle in his brother's eyes.

Loki hugged him exulting, he didn't need his magic nor wouldn't have he used it to get what happened afterwards. One moment before Thor was still growling rebellious to the inevitable, one moment after he was pinning him steadily under him, towering with his bulk. The extreme difference of their temperature made Thor shivering and inflamed Loki.

Loki didn't even try to release himself, indeed, he brazenly moved beneath him highlighting his slender and fragile figure as much as he could, he looked at Thor with an icy light in his green eyes immensely enhanced by the mass of his shiny black hair ruffled around his pale face.

- "Don't look at me that way!" Thor commanded.

- "Is it disturbing you?" Loki seemed completely at ease in that strange subordinate position.

- "It's annoying me!" His brother grumbled.

- "Then, make me pay for it!" Loki smiled boldly.

Thor didn't make him repeat the invitation nor Loki showed the pain he felt. For nothing in the world would have he proved himself weak under that circumstance. All his boldness, his self-confidence, his conviction of predicting everything hadn't prepared him for what he was feeling.

He scratched Thor's back preventing himself from uttering even only one moan but imposing to himself to feign how much pleasure and fun he could. After all he was still the God of Lies and he would have lied, lied that it had been a trifle. He went for his brother's lips but in that infinitesimal moment their eyes locked, Thor seemed to become aware of what was happening, of Loki's pain and without asking anything, he slowed down his movement becoming sweet and attentive. Time vanished, it might have been hours or minutes, Loki couldn't tell that; what he suddenly became aware of was that for the very first time in his life something alive and warm was flowing through him, it wasn't that obvious physical condition but it was something even more intimate that was reaching his soul. Instead of the satisfaction for making mighty Thor surrender, he felt something even more alive, the certainty to be loved, in that moment, not only desired but also loved for who he was. Thor didn't care he was a Jotunn, he was living a never ending lie pretending to be an Asgardian but that in reality his skin was blue, his eyes were red and cold blood was flowing in his veins. He didn't care he was a foster child, he wasn't well-set, that by Asgard's standards he was a poor swordsman. The only important thing was that they were together, that eventually they found themselves as they had always wanted to be and nothing of what was happening sounded wrong. They wouldn't have whispered each other sweet words or promises, there was no need of that, everything had been already told in their caresses and kisses.

Everything became blurred even more: Asgard, Midgard, Jotunheim… all the Nine Worlds merged together and reassembled in new shapes where there were no more divisions, nor Loki and his mischief, nor Thor and his vehemence but only one creature who lived for a few seconds fed by their very intimate emotions.

To Loki it looked like surfacing from a long apnea, only in that moment he realized Thor's weight on him, panting, his head buried between his neck and shoulder. He was almost afraid of moving so he didn't do it. He laid still until his brother slipped heavily on the bed.

Thor looked at the ceiling, silent and pensive. Loki looked at him curiously but for the very first time, he didn't say anything sarcastic.

- "Why are you looking at me?" Thor broke the silence without stopping staring at the ceiling.

- "I was wondering… How do you feel?" Loki answered very simply.

- "Confused." The answer came equally short.

- "You are going to hate me…" Loki's voice sounded neutral, as if he had simply stated the obvious.

- "Maybe…"

- "I understand… We always hate those people who put unmentionable truths in front of our eyes…"

Thor got up from the bed and got dressed again: - "Spare me your philosophy, brother…"

Loki rested his head on one hand and followed him with his eyes smiling sympathetic: - "I will never be more merciless than your soul when, very soon, you realize that you still crave for me and no woman will hold more power on you than me. Oh, I didn't put a spell on you, don't worry…"

He smiled in front of his brother's worried look: - "Even me, with all my magic skill, I couldn't have conjured what you created a few minutes ago. You made a magic you've been the victim of, brother… And you will desire to repeat it over, over and over again and you already know that it will never work but with me. Good night brother… have a peaceful sleep…"

Thor listened to him silently, already victim of his own confusion:- "I don't know whether to hate you or love you… I think I will decide it after a night's sleep… Good night brother…"

He walked out the room and closed the door slowly behind is shoulders

Loki blew the lamp out and smiled in the darkness of the room. He laid down on the mattress, his incredible pale skin almost glowed in the moonlight. He smiled; he didn't need his magic to know the future.