"Should be used to it by now," Loki reflected glumly.

Another plan had fallen apart on him. Trying to ride at the crest of chaos only lifted him above the stinging waves briefly, but while it did-

A smile marred the line of his lips. There was nothing like being above nature, above his enemies, above everything he was meant to be.

He regretted nothing.

Not even the inevitable crash back to reality, which was painful, but that, too, could be spun into an enjoyment of sorts:

"Look at what I have become," was the subtext to everything he had done in recent years. Not that there was anyone paying attention, was the morose thought that hovered in his chamber.

Loki had lost his audience when his first, best, most delightful plan had shattered in his hands that time. Lashing himself for his early foolishness was homey by now, so the interloper in the family of Odin, the one with no real blood or country, sat with the servants all spelled to a safe, murmuring distance, and remembered.

"You want to put what where?" a young Loki had asked in a good facsimile of shock. He cast just enough of a sidelong glance over his shoulder. He walked ahead in the rocky landscape where they were alone save for a few raptors and the occasional hare that his brother picked off and added to the ones slung on his shoulder.

"I hear the other lads talking about it. Better than knocking up a wench and creating a lot of pretenders to the throne. Do you want me to sully the family name?" Thor was wheedling his younger brother while they were playing hooky from another of father's ridiculous missions.

"Survey the kingdom and bring me your impressions," Odin ordered his two sons every once in a while. In this statesmanship-building exercise Loki had to make up answers for the both of them, of course. Then they spent the rest of the time in disguise wondering at the muck-ridden world usually denied them. Or fighting. Sometimes stealing things.

"Of course not," Loki said in answer to Thor's question, allowing himself to be evaluated-finally. He'd been aware of his older brother for as long as he could remember, but it had taken so many instances of "accidentally" leaving his door ajar while changing or engineered closeness while fighting their stupid pitched battles that the budding manipulator was beginning to despair.

But that day, Thor's none-too-choosy adolescent need at last landed upon the lithe body that could so easily be his.

"Try it and see. I'll make it worth your while," Thor was saying with that sweetness that was so hard to resist. One big hand took inventory of the form he evidently already thought of as his. "Do one of your spells and no one will ever know," was the last thing Thor's brain was in charge of saying before the much more interesting and substantial anatomy took over.

The rules Loki set himself were absolute. Thor had to initiate every act, or at least think he did. That time, and every time, Loki made his brother beg, and it was a feeling of heady ascendancy to see the family favorite and future heir caressing and flattering him until Loki agreed to lend his lips, first, and then everything else.

Except if Loki's plan worked, Thor would not be the king. This release, seemingly without consequence, was anything but.

"It's a banishable offense, you dolt. Some king you'll be if you don't even know the law," Loki thought that first day, surprised once more by his brother's ignorance. Every royal line tried to perpetuate itself by carefully controlled inbreeding, so it wasn't surprising that Asgard had to draw a definite boundary somewhere against sibling incest.

"It's the taboo that's lending spice to the act," was what Loki told himself that satisfying day and for a long time afterwards. For the young prince in search of his own tastes had had his share of dalliances with either gender—carefully hidden from even his beloved mother, with whom he did not wish to share his affinity for a certain blacksmith's apprentice—and none of those experiences could compare to Thor. But the second in line for the throne had learned quite a bit in those experiences, enough that Thor should have been asking how someone so virginally aghast at his suggestions was so talented at obeying them.

Thor gave off a heat that Loki found truly exciting, but his mind was clear. If he could spin it that his older and larger brother had seduced him into this crime, Loki would be happy to assume the throne after Thor was banished. If they were both held responsible, then neither of them would be king. Either would work. Loki was nothing if not flexible, as Thor would come to discover.

Things were going along swimmingly for a long, golden time. Loki was planning and re-planning the great reveal. Would he arrange for his drunken brother to overtake him in the throne room in the middle of the night, leaving off the enchantment that had hidden them from Heimdall thus far? Or perhaps he should be found in mid-ravish with Thor on one of the long banquet tables? Loki imagined again and again the comic look of surprise his brother would wear when their father interrupted their actions and ultimately kicked his ass out of Asgard.

But he kept putting it off. Why deny himself this pleasure, with the deal already almost done? It was quite ridiculous how Thor talked about his "hammer" during their games, but it did have the power to tear down and build up and there was nothing like it once you'd had it.

Sometimes Thor would carry the only slightly resisting Loki to the mirror room and force his brother to watch his own face as he succumbed. In truth, Loki didn't recognize the person he saw in the reflection. It was a greedy, simple joy they found together. For a brief time, Loki's roiling brain fell silent. He watched the transformation Thor was somehow intelligent enough to wreak upon the person plotting his downfall, and Loki kept the revelation until another day.

Thor's usual pursuits were limited to drinking, fighting and women, so of course Loki hadn't hoped to change any of that with his stratagem. One day, however, there was one of those tedious war games among the men of the genteel class. Usually, he put in a good showing because, well, he didn't like any members of the noble class anyway, so causing them pain was a kind of sport. But that day, Loki feigned an injury and sat so he could watch in action the body that would be his that night.

Thor stepped out into the ring and received the expected adulation from the crowd, especially the young ladies. That was when Loki noticed the yellow ribbon tied on his brother's armor. The girls vied to get some token of their affection affixed to the young man they fancied—for good luck, they said, but the practice had more to do with getting lucky after the fight.

Loki traced the yellow to the adornments on the yellow dress of a blonde thing waving and smiling two seats down from him. The fight ensued, but Loki could only feel the rage coursing through him. When Thor won, as he nearly always did, he lifted up his sword, red with an adversary's blood and made a reverence in the direction of the yellow slut who'd veered Thor's attentions two degrees off from where they should have landed.

"Maybe he'll take you flying with his hammer, Etta," the hatchet-faced noblewoman next to Loki said with a naughty laugh to the yellow thing.

"Oh, is it true what they say, Loki?" Etta leaned over to whisper, evidently not referring to Mjolnir. "Is it really, I mean—?"

Loki shrugged. "I've grown up around his manhood but I suppose, yes, it is very considerable." The women tittered. "Then again, I'm not one that has to be wary of it. Do you know he's been banned from a certain whorehouse for making the girls unsuitable for other customers?" There were titillated gasps. "And then there was a young girl of noble stock, no, don't ask me to say her name. Suffice it to say that what she thought would be an easy matter for a canny old crone with her needle and thread turned out to be something no artifice could hide from her new husband."

That last lie did the trick. The girl fled in her fussy gown before the feast, and his brother spent a few minutes in doltish surprise at this unique experience of being jilted. He soon turned his eyes to some other blue-blooded bitch, but Loki was gratified to see that from that day forward, girls from the noble set were much more reserved with his brother.

Thor took this annoyingly in stride, and with his eternal good humor turned exclusively to women of the lower class. Watching Thor come back from these trysts all dirty and sated did Loki no favors either. He wasn't sure how it happened, but now he was eaten alive imagining his brother pounding away at some milkmaid, looking at her with the same oafish happiness that Loki always saw gazing back at him. "You like that?" Thor would say to the milkmaid, who was doubtless having the time of her life if she had any red blood in her at all. "Right there, like that?" Thor would pursue eagerly, and she would whimper and cry her assent.

Of course. Thor was so good, naturally he would be an attentive lover, Loki thought bitterly. That was why from the very beginning, Loki had been surprised that his partner in crime had no qualms about lending a helping hand. He liked the proof of Loki's enjoyment, the straightforwardness between men, his sibling had come to think.

He became obsessed with what his brother gave these lowly girls that was different than what Thor gave his brother. He began taking aimless walks at night to get away from the sickly close air of the castle, to stop keeping tabs on when Thor came in. Sometimes, he was ashamed to say, he followed at a distance. The clever words on his lips dried up and the prince began avoiding the awareness that he had little to say to anyone. Only, on certain nights, Loki did have a trick for stealing some of Thor's attentions for himself.

Everyone in the castle knew very well that Loki was an advanced student in the obscure arts his mother, Frigga, was versed in. For years the boy Loki had been turning people's breakfast into snapping turtles and sending a shade of himself into wrestling matches with Thor so that the real Loki could jump out and win at the last. The common people were both wary of the young adept and likely to ask him for boons in a dark alley. The Son of Frigga (that's what they called him, supposedly to differentiate from Thor-Son-of-Odin) carried out his own low errands in the sorcerers' huts and amulet hawkers' streets. So Thor was unsurprised when his brother started showing up at banquets in a female form.

Rather, it was always a surprise, but Thor naturally accepted that the cleverer brother could do such things. The woman who was hanging all over Thor during a feast would suddenly lean over and divulge some secret only Loki could know: "I remember when you cried for days over your puppy that got run over by a cart. What was its name? Alfie? You weren't in short pants any longer, I don't think." Then the fetching damsel would lean back and take in Thor's shock, whether at the idea that his brother was currently female, or the forbidden circumstance of them being physical in public, he couldn't tell.

By this point, Loki was only sure of one thing. He was drowning in his own schemes. Seeing Thor agog with his female charms was amusing, but he more properly wished to keep that trusting gaze away from any female pretenders to the throne. (The aristocratic young men had no idea how lucky they were that Thor never tried it on with any of them. Their sparring sessions would have gotten very nasty, Loki reflected several times in his desperation. That was only for them, besides, said the brain that exclusively produced sentiment these days.)

Being the curious boy he was, Loki's own explorations had extended to the female gender—both being and having. Any inconvenient repercussions from those experiments could be dispatched by a brew any third-rate spell-caster could make. So as a maiden, he'd enjoyed himself without fear of creating any bastards.

Loki was toying with the idea of letting his brother experience the totality of what he had to offer by taking Thor into his womanly lap, but the prospect of being tossed aside like all the other girls wooed by Thor was absolutely intolerable.

"Old sir, I hope you have been well," Loki said, stooping into the low eaves. "I have come to—"

"I know what you have come for, Loki," the small form said with glittering eyes just visible under the big hood within the gloom of the hovel. "And I also can tell you I do not have it."

"But," Loki faltered, and sat on the cleanest-looking bench. "Have I ruined everything? I want to know," he said more desperately than he planned.

The famed sorcerer was unperturbed. "You want to know what, specifically?"

"How to be king," Loki said much less automatically than he would have before the advent of his plan.

"You wish to rule Asgard," the little man croaked.

"Yes, yes, that's what I said," Loki said impatiently. "Mother always used to say you were the one who knew everything that should be known and most things that shouldn't. Out with it or I'll turn your shanty into a shithouse."

A gnarled hand emerged to make a calming gesture. "Then you need do nothing. So it is ordained. That is all I have to give." The hand beckoned for Loki to repay it with some coins.

"What? I don't believe you. It can't be that simple to take Thor's place in father's affections." The would-be sovereign was aware that he was airing his own unlikelihood of ascending the throne before a wily old dwarf. "How is it going to happen? I have a right to know!"

"No one has a right to the future, my son. Far better to enjoy your youth, which in your station cannot be devoid of pleasure."

"Yes, well, I've never stood much on ceremony, so the endless speeches about the honor of our line got old some time back," Loki said drily. He rather liked talking with the amoral conjurers who knew everything in life could be had for enough money and no scruples. And it's not like it was any secret that there was only one throne in the offing. "If all that rot has to go on, I want to be at the top of the stinking heap."

"Everything is as it should be, young man, why bother yourself so?" The hand grasped a long ladle and took a portion of a steaming drink from the cauldron simmering on the fire.

The cup extended out into thin air and crashed to the ground. Loki was already at the creature's throat with his dagger. "Quit shilly-shallying about or we'll put this supposed immortality of yours to the test," he said through gritted teeth.

"I don't have what you are looking for." A drop of blood gleamed on the knife. "But your father does."

"My father?"

Loki had scarcely been able to stand still while the old gnome trotted out his long, convoluted tale of the Poetic Mead, now lost —another drop of blood had been elicited at that point—and finally, the Rhymester's Share. Then Loki dashed out into the night, leaving a rain of coins in his wake.

Too bad the actual Mead had been lost. Only a great fool would actually "suffocate on their newfound intelligence" as had supposedly happened to those who drank of it. Leave it to his righteous father to take it away for the common good, leaving it only to the gods, who occasionally gave a drop to a troubadour or some other total waste of the true knowledge Loki could make such good use of.

He hurried through the streets. This Rhymster's Share was basically the backwash of truth, supposedly safe for anyone to drink. "Your father keeps it in a hidden place, so perhaps it is not without its own potency," the dwarf had told him. "If there is anything that will help you see the future, that's the stuff. But first, have some grog. How's your mother?"

Loki had no time for pleasantries. He calmed his face and settled his clothes so that no one would note his urgency when he returned to the castle. And using his many years of hide-and-seek with Thor, as well as all the time he'd spent at this mother's knee listening to the lore of the castle, Loki searched steadily until he found the container.

All of his senses told him it was guarded by more than the usual number of enchantments, so Loki spent some time figuring out how to open it without bringing some unknown magic down upon his head.

At last, the silver tap swung back and Thor let one cautious drop into the glass he'd brought. He sniffed and then gagged. It smelled like something many times regurgitated, which, truth or no, was revolting. Nervous about getting caught and never having another chance to try it, Loki swallowed just a little, enough to have a preliminary effect but not sufficient to kill him, he hoped.

Then he painstakingly replaced the braids of magic roped around the cask and waited to feel different. Nothing at all seemed out of the ordinary, and finally, a disappointed Loki went to sleep.

The dream was only technically that because it happened while he was asleep. It had a different texture and urgency, however. Loki was seeing the future. Or part of it, until he managed to tear himself away from his bloody fate. He woke up with a parched throat, wishing to tear out what he had seen from behind his eyes.

"What is the matter, brother?" Thor padded up to him when Loki was returning from the kitchens with several bottles of wine to dull his senses. "You shouldn't be drinking at this hour that is neither night nor dawn, but you certainly shouldn't drink alone."

Loki let the bottles be taken from him and followed his brother to Thor's rooms, accepted the glass poured for him, and the next and the next in quick succession. He looked at Thor, who, he was forced to admit, was sometimes the best person to be around when you felt absolutely wretched. He said nothing—what did Thor ever say, really?-and merely hulked there with his animal warmth.

"Do you want to tell me about it? It must have been a bad dream," was all the older son of Odin said. The look of horror he got in response was taken in stride, and eventually, Loki was taken under the great arm. He shivered and gave into the hand petting his hair. "I would give anything for you to be well." Loki ground his forehead into the capacious armpit, not even caring that he looked terrible. "You have been far away from me recently, and I await the day when you will have me again."

Then Thor's gentle voice became a steady murmur, and Loki allowed himself to drift upon it. He drank more wine so as to keep the syllables flowing steadily, carrying him far away from a life he no longer understood, to a place where only he and his brother existed.

Loki fell asleep. He woke up not knowing where he was, and then when he placed himself in Thor's chamber, he went into a panic. Didn't the great oaf know that they shouldn't be caught sleeping together?

He bathed and turned up at the dining hall for what turned out to be dinner, his gut queasy and his heart full of dread. Odin scowled at him with his eye. "Melancholy does not mix well with mead, my son," he intoned. "Those of our stripe must be able to stomach their drink or it sets a bad example for those with less judgment."

The second son gave in gratefully to the familiar lecture about keeping up appearances in the ruling class, barely daring to acknowledge his brother's smile. He ate the plain broth that had been ordered by his mother. Frigga said, "You haven't been well, my son, but I didn't realize you were drinking to excess. At least last night you had the sense to indulge at home while your brother watched over you, but I shudder to think where you have been these many nights. Your father and I think you need more fresh air and less time by yourself."

"Yes, mother," he mumbled.

"Your brother will be accompanying you as you discover the simple pleasures, such as you may never have noted them before." Loki sent the portion of broth welling into his nose back down his gullet. "Hunting, dueling, shooting. You never had as much time for these pastimes because you were a good scholar. Perhaps we have encouraged you to think too much. Promise me you'll try to have patience with your brother as he cares for you?"

"Of course, mother, father." Loki ate with an appetite he wouldn't have expected after that much alcohol consumed so quickly the night before. Pushing the dream into the back of his mind, he gazed at Thor, once, as he accepted some fruit from the big paw.

Loki had truly been ill, he came to realize. All that prowling about in the middle of the night had been the sign of an unquiet mind. He gratefully gave in to the kindness of both his parents as he had not noticed it before. His plan was forgotten as the recuperating young man thought of nothing except taking advantage of all this sanctioned time alone with Thor.

They went riding for hours, far away from the castle. With the help of Loki's tricks, they kept his steed riding next to them powered by a shade, while the real Loki rode in front of Thor on his horse. This perversion was truly all the older brother's idea, and it was the best one yet. They coupled with the stallion jouncing underneath their bodies and it was exquisite.

But that's not all the two brothers did. They talked and tracked game, they had picnics in the mountains and joined friends—who Loki now realized were not just Thor's friends—for sport in the town, Thor always keeping a watchful eye for signs of melancholy in his brother.

If Loki had thought about it, there were no girls during this time, no one coming between them. But he was too well-cared-for to notice.

One afternoon they'd flown with the help of Mjolnir to a plateau covered with windblown shrubs.

"Loki," Thor said after their enjoyment.

"Mmm?" Loki rubbed his head against the broad chest like a cat.

"Let's go somewhere that they don't know us. I'd be a farm-hand in any realm if I could come home to you."

"You've never done an honest day's work in your life unless you count what we just did." Loki reached in the side-pocket to his boot and drew out a coin. "Here." He went back to not thinking.

"I mean it. There are—things—we can't let people know because they wouldn't understand." They never talked about what they were doing, and this made Loki sit up. "But we could do what we like somewhere that they don't know us. Do you think I would make a good vintner?" He stretched out his enormous feet and made a stamping motion as if to crush grapes.

"And where would I be in this little fantasy of yours?" Loki asked.

The idea took a moment to hatch. "You're the one everyone at court looks to for the latest in vestments, you could be a dressmaker."

Loki made a noise of disgust.

"Or perhaps a merchant. You're good with sums and you're wily enough to drive a hard bargain," he said, thought it was Thor who was driving his own hardening for emphasis.

"I'd rather be a thief," Loki said, warming to the game. "That would be nice, me as a sort of robber-baron and you as my brute." He stroked a sensitive spot and Thor made that purring noise that drove him mad. "Would you tear apart my enemies upon command?"

"I'd do anything to defend your honor," Thor replied in a serious tone.

"What?" Loki snorted. "If I ever had any, which is doubtful, we must have left my honor behind in one of the stables you like fornicating in so much."

"No, Loki, you've never given me your true virtue, your maidenhood," his eyes traveled down to a theoretical womanly lap and then up. Thor mistook the horror on Loki's face for modesty, "As is proper. We can follow the custom of whatever land we end up in and you will be my bride. My witch, I know you can."

Then a thought traveled so quickly through the big man that he shook off the smaller one without meaning to. "Actually, there's no reason to leave! With you disguised as a lady we can stay right here. You can be a woman come from afar and settle with me to have a family." He surrounded the narrow shoulders in excitement. "We'll be ruling together, you and me."

"Don't you think mother and father will notice my absence when this mysterious woman appears?" Loki inquired, the images of his dream rushing into his head.

Thor knit his brow. "I'll say you died, and soon they'll forget because a new generation will be starting—"

Once started, Thor wouldn't shut up about his idea. Loki grimaced at his brother's estimation of how easily he would be forgotten. He was probably right. As plans go, it wasn't a bad one. Except for being fatal.

"Don't you want to give me your quim?" the whisper came in his ear. It was an unusual impropriety, coming from Thor, and unlocked some new level of acknowledged lust between them as he was claimed in the usual way that was already quite complete.

Loki gave in, wanting to see the progress of this poisonous idea as it began to ruin everything between them. To his surprise, it was a sweet sickness that overtook his limbs that day with the clouds scudding by so close. He never imagined the draught of death would be so—nice. Thor kissed him and he let himself be kissed, not to urge their enjoyment on, like their occasional kisses, but so that nothing was left out.

Loki was cut in two during that coupling. He felt truly sorry for his brother, who was giving all of himself to the task, not knowing that he was pushing Loki away with every stroke.

"I wont. I can't." Loki cried without language into the corded neck.

He would not become the monster of his dreams.