A/N: Midgard AU with hispters and cafés and all the tropes I like, yay.
Title comes from the movie but nothing else does.
Edit: I'm sorry I haven't realized FFN killed my scene separators...
spring, summer, fall, winter… and spring
i. spring
When Thor was still a child, and after a stormy night the next morning he found a high hat trapped among the thorns of their rosebush, his mother said the Northern winds brought the most unusual things.
Many years later, they carry something unexpected again.
. .
It's foggy outside and the glass panes are trembling under the assault of the wind when there is a knock on his door. Thor mentally checks if he has paid this month's rent or the other bills, but he looks at the kitchen counter where he usually keeps them and finds it empty, and it is mid-month anyway when nothing is due. He only preys it's not the neighbor across the corridor who cannot change a light bulb alone. He is tired, and he has a slice of reheated pizza and a bottle of lager for company, and if he's lucky, he would fall asleep and not wake up till his shift at the café next day. It's been a long day, and the weather is weighing down on his head. It's windy and cold, and he almost hit a dog on his way home in the fog.
So when he pulls the door open, it is not without an edge to his expression. It's peeled off, though, the next moment.
"Aren't you cold?" This is the first thing on Thor's tongue when he sees his brother.
His hair is an inky halo around Loki's pale face as he stands under the meager light of the bulb above Thor's door. He wears a thin long-sleeve that's rolled up to his elbows and a scarf – the least rational combination Thor can imagine but Loki's always been more stylish than practical when it came to clothes.
"It's good to see you, too," Loki smirks.
Thor pulls him into a hug which Loki surprisingly allows, and he inhales the sharp clean smell of fog, and the dust of the wind. There is something intangible in the scent, and his arms tighten around the thinner frame of his brother until Loki starts to wriggle against the restraint, and Thor thinks it is fitting that he would do so. Ever is Loki a slippery, uncatchable creature like a blinking light bulb, flickering in and out of places as he wills.
"You should eat more."
"Yes, mum," Thor can hear the eye roll in his tone, and finally releases him. "You still have that fairly comfortable couch you mentioned?"
Thor looks at the leather bag hanging on Loki's shoulder, and smirks. It's good that he still has almost the whole pizza in the fridge, and another bottle of beer to share.
. .
"Just for a while, a few weeks maybe," Loki says around a mouthful of pizza. He squints at the living room beyond the circle of the light and snorts. "I thought you'd need someone to dig you out of this mess already."
Thor shakes his head with an incredulous laughter. It is Loki's way of rendering a request as if it was actually a favor he was gracious enough to do.
"You stay as long as you wish. I'm happy for company," he says with a grin that tightens around the edges as he notices how the pepperoni paints Loki's lips blaring red. It's in stark contrast with his pale face. "Something's happened at home?"
Loki's expression is pinched as he shrugs. "You live closer to the uni. I don't want to travel so much every day."
Thor can read between the lines, though. With Loki, he learnt how to.
"I know it's hard to get along with father sometimes."
"Especially if you are continuously compared to someone else," Loki gives him a pointed look. At least Thor has the decency to look guilty. "You're not even my brother, for God's sake."
"We are not related but we are brothers."
Loki rolls his eyes and steals his beer. His bottle is already empty. "Semantics."
Thor frowns but lets it slip. Loki is his step-brother and they are alike in almost nothing, yet sometimes it is hard to remember that they haven't grown up together. Six years ago, right after Thor graduated, his parents decided on divorce. His mother moved from their home to her hometown with Thor's little brother, while Thor stayed with his father, mostly because he didn't want to give up everything and everyone he knew and liked. Not a year later his father met Farbauti, and with that Thor suddenly had a new brother in place of Baldur when Loki moved in with his mother. Loki was sixteen at that time, a ghostly, reserved thing, and Thor had a hard time to penetrate the shield Loki would yank up around himself from time to time. There was something in him, though, that made Thor want to call him brother from the first moment Loki swaggered in their home with a cautious glint in his eyes and a face that was perfect and unmoving as a marble sculpture. He intrigued Thor from the very beginning like a wooden box he couldn't find the key to, but just when he was about to give up, Loki let him draw closer. The timing made it feel like every achievement in the case was Loki's doing but Thor didn't mind it.
"You were supposed to visit us." There is a biting tone in Loki's voice Thor knows he didn't intend to slip in, and Thor eyes him in strange quivering excitement. When Loki adds it, it sounds like an afterthought. "Odin's been expecting you."
"Yeah, well, sorry," he rubs his nape, and for the first time since Loki arrived, he cannot meet his eyes.
Ever since he moved to the downtown two years ago, his visits have been irregular but oft. Then something changed during the last holidays at Christmas, and they haven't seen each other ever since.
Thor's hectic schedule at the café let him take only four days off, and this was the first time he found it too much. He spent the first day at his father's home with Farbauti and Loki. Farbauti makes the strongest glögg in the whole country, Thor is sure she adds twice as much vodka as she should, and all those restless nights in the past months he tended to blame the drink for everything.
It was on that pine-scented, glögg-hazed evening that Thor wondered if he would taste the cardamom on Loki's tongue, had they kissed. He isn't proud of it, but next morning he fled to his mother earlier than planned, to spend the rest of the holidays with Frigga and Baldur.
. .
There is something natural in how their routines fit each other's, Loki's filling the gaps of Thor's, like a perfect cogwheel, the teeth clicking into the right slots. After all, they have been living under the same roof for a couple of years, but this is different. They are adrift.
Thor feels closer to Loki than ever before, and it scares him sometimes when he is lying in his bed, trying to make out Loki's breathing in the other room through the closed door. The thrumming of his blood beats away the minutes like a crude reminder that the dark hours of the night he spends craving for something he shouldn't lay his eyes on are barren and ephemeral.
Loki sleeps on the couch as Thor doesn't have a spare bed or a spare room for that matter, but Loki doesn't seem to mind it. He is at school during the day while Thor works at the café, and their evenings and some of their weekends are the welcomed intersection of sets.
. .
"What happened to your girlfriend?" Loki asks. It's Sunday morning and they just finished their breakfast. "The last one… what's her name…"
"Umm, Jane. She, well… it didn't work, that's all." Suddenly Thor has no idea why he feels the need to wiggle in his seat.
They broke up with Jane a few days after New Year's Eve, and as much as it sounds clichéd, it also feels right somehow: the new beginnings. On his bookshelf he still keeps a stack of books on astrophysics and other subjects Thor isn't sure he gets the title of in the first place. Jane left them behind when she moved out and never cared to pick them up. He has always considered their presence smoothing; that the part of his life that already belongs to the past hasn't disappeared without a trace. This is the first time he finds it a burden.
"How do you know it's over anyway?"
"Facebook."
"You're not even on Facebook!"
"You checked?" Loki's smirk is devious, and Thor feels a blush paint his face red. Of course he has. Not once."I have a detective profile there."
"And you were spying on me?"
"Of course." And he doesn't look a bit ashamed by that. He winks playfully, "Very entertaining activity."
Thor doesn't know what to think of it but there is a wriggly little twist in his stomach at the thought of Loki stalking him. Maybe it should anger him, or at least make him uncomfortable, but frankly it doesn't.
"How about you then? Girlfriend?"
Loki scoffs. He stands, all long limbs and feline grace, and moves behind him with a grin. "Let me braid your hair."
"Why?"
Thor realizes belatedly that he didn't get an answer to his question but the recognition whooshes out of his head as Loki's fingers card through his hair. It's an amazing feeling, and he knows it probably should not be.
"So you can be my girlfriend."
Thor can hear the smirk in Loki's voice. He glares at him upside down, feeling the heat creep up his body. He tries to smack his hands away but Loki only laughs at him.
"And we will play house?" he snorts instead, but the images that come unbidden make him regret the remark.
Loki leans forward, his breath brushes against the shell of Thor's ear, and Thor has to fight the shiver erupting along his spine. "We already are, darling."
Thor wants to come up with a witty retort but the French toast sits in his stomach like a cold, ugly toad that could start to jump anytime, and Loki's laugh is full of beautiful mirth and a bit of gleeful mischief.
"You should wear Viking braids, Thor. Would suit you."
Thor only huffs, folding his arms. He lets Loki braid his hair, though, fighting the urge to close his eyes in pleasure as deft fingertips massage his scalp in lazy circles. Loki ties the braid with the pink ribbon he pulls from around the bag of muffins Thor took from the café last evening, and Thor asks him whether he plans to paint his nails, too.
. .
On Friday nights they watch grade-Z horror movies from the Bottom 100 list on imdb, and after a few cans of beer they are more than entertaining. They would sit on Thor's famous fairly comfortable couch with Loki lounging across on it, tugging his feet under Thor's thighs. His feet are always cold and Thor calls him his little amphibian which always earns a kick before the foot is wriggling its way back to the warmth of Thor's body.
"I'm a frost giant, just so you know," he claims seriously and Thor believes him.
Loki's laugh at the rubber monsters quickly becomes Thor's favorite sound in the whole world. Leastwise it is, until he finds a new one later.
. .
There is a light wind, and the cherry blossoms float in the air like many pink snowflakes. The square is beautiful at this time of the year, and Thor insisted on going for a walk on the promenade between the straight rows of sakura trees.
There is a distant smile upon Loki's lips as they halt. He squints at the sky through the gaps among the blossoms, and his skin has a flushed color under the pink canopy. The sunshine casts bright spots on his face and the brushstrokes of his ink wash hair. He looks so young that it twists Thor's heart a little, for a reason he cannot fathom.
In the sunlight the faint dots around Loki's lips are more visible, the traces where his piercings had been until he removed them a few months ago, keeping only his many earrings. The dots look, Thor muses, as if at one point he has sewn his mouth shut, and the odd idea makes him shiver.
"Too bad they hardly have any scent," Loki mumbles, the sharp tip of his nose buried between the blossoms, and Thor chuckles at his loud sniffing.
He wishes he had his camera there, just to capture the dance of the light as it's skimming through the branches and painting a pink halo around Loki's head, making his skin somehow transparent and ethereal. The impression jolts his stomach with the sudden sensation of fear.
. .
"I need a tee for the night," Loki says as he opens Thor's closet without asking for permission and rummages through his clothes for an old T-shirt, and the only reason Thor stares at him with a loaded gaze is because Loki has only a towel around his hips. Loki seems to be at ease around him, more and more so, and for the first time ever since they met, Thor cannot decide if it is fortunate from his own point of view.
A part of Thor's muddled mind whispers that Loki is doing it on purpose, it's a wicked challenge: the towel, the wet hair, the water drops running down the hollow of his spine. Loki is lanky and wiry muscled, his skin is fair under the flush from the warm shower. Thor watches the sharp shoulder blades open and close with every move, and he knows he should turn away.
There are two magpies tattooed there, one on each shoulder blade like each other's reflection, wings open as though they were going to fly off any minute. The one on the right side is a playful little creature, but the other is menacing like a shadow, like a forever changing, undefined thing that one sees in a nightmare where there are no constant shapes, only intents and impressions. Thor is afraid to ask what they mean, afraid to ask if any of the two symbolizes Loki himself, though he knows they both do. They suit him, he muses, their freedom and lonesome nature, their intelligence. The prospect that they might fly away anytime if they will so.
They unsettle him, maybe exactly for this reason.
. .
"You're being decent?" Loki cranes his head around the edge of the bedroom door without knocking, of course. Thor could very easily be doing indecent things but it is Saturday morning, and Thor has a free day. It means he casually sleeps in as long as his stomach lets him.
"I'm trying to decently sleep, you know," he groans. Loki is already lifting the blanket and tugging himself under it. "What's with your fairly comfortable couch?"
"Here's better." And his eyes are already closed. Thor watches the wrinkles the pillow made crisscrossing his cheek, and smiles. Loki is warm and flushed in his sleep, and his hand is a casual softness against Thor's over the blanket.
They lie there for another hour like they would have in their childhood, had they been real brothers.
. .
Loki's arm loops around his waist in the crowd, and his body is an additional heat source against Thor's. His own arm comes up around Loki's shoulders, and he knows he shouldn't feel so elated. His face is ablaze, and Thor has no idea if it's from the billowing bonfire or the arm around his waist.
Loki's face glows in the orange light, the twisting shadows accentuate his high cheekbones and the dip below his eyebrows. Thor can already smell the smoke on his hair, and the sugary smell of the waffle he just ate embedded in his skin. In the tip of the pink tongue, too, he thinks as it darts out and wets the thin lips.
It is Walpurgis Night. The city is a faint silhouette below them, fading in the smoke of the traditional bonfire. The flames rise high, and the flying embers of the fire are like twirling firebugs, like artificial stars on the overcast, darkened sky. They steal into Loki's eyes, and his gaze is almost demonic as he looks at Thor. His touch is singeing as he sweeps a lock behind Thor's ear, a golden strand that seems afire. There is a small smile on his lips as he traps the lock between two fingertips like it was molten gold he wants to paint his fingers with.
"Happy Springtime," he says.
But all Thor's heart can hear is: Happy New Beginnings.
. .
"Loki, I'm pissing!" Thor cries out indignantly as Loki bursts the bathroom door open.
"So? I just come to brush my teeth." He looks at Thor's reflection in the mirror, the way he jerked so he would show his back to him. "You should have then closed the door. You're not shy, are you, brother?"
Thor only snorts as if words wouldn't be convincing enough.
. .
"Your hands are so large," Loki says.
His breath is a sigh against the skin on Thor's arm as he reclines against him on the couch. Loki's right hand reaches over and glides on Thor's, a smooth whisper against his jagged knuckles. He straightens his fingers as if to measure them against Thor's before sliding back slowly. They leave scorching marks over Thor's skin, and he fights the urge to try to keep them from fading.
"They could easily break me anytime," Loki adds, and his tone is almost wistful.
. .
Thor sometimes muses how there is a dangerous side to inhabitation, to the intimacy of it, of the morning routines together, of the domesticated gestures and behaviors. Sometimes, when Loki's head is a numbing weight on his shoulder as he slumbers and his crisp scent is something Thor's mind regards as daily sustenance, an essence he can only vegetate without, he feels the abyss gaping right under the floor.
In a certain way he is not even surprised when eventually they tumble into it.
. .
The first time Loki drops by the café around the end of Thor's shift, he introduces him to his co-workers, Hogun and Sif. There is a perfect synch in their movements as they are closing up for the day, and Thor notices how Loki studies them from the corner of his eyes. To Sif's feeble attempts at conversation he replies with curt comments and silence he stretches out with a certain cruelty.
Thor makes a chai latte for him, with extra spices because Loki likes it that way, and he watches as the reddened fingers wrap around the cup. Outside, it is drizzling. The mixed scent of nutmeg and cardamom reminds Thor of his wretched fantasy of kissing Loki, and he has to draw farther to maintain a semblance of balance.
Loki tastes his drink silently, and Thor frowns at the tight expression that slips into his eyes with each sip. He hasn't seen it for years, the thickening shield pulling up around Loki, and he doesn't understand why it returned now.
Loki doesn't speak to him for the rest of the evening, and retreats to huddle under his blanket much earlier than usual. He doesn't come to the café either, not until later.
. .
When Thor gets home late from his shift one evening, he finds Loki sprawled on the floor outside their apartment. He is like a ragdoll thrown away carelessly, and Thor's heart jolts in his chest when he moves closer to him.
"I couldn't find my keys," Loki mumbles. There is a dried crust of blood in the corner of his mouth, and with a weird twist of his mind Thor is reminded of the cranberry jam Loki ate with a spoon right from the jar the other day, and how Thor felt the pull in his groins just to lick it off his lips.
"What happened to you?" he rasps, words are only injured syllables as they get caught in his throat.
White fury floods his mind as he bends to pick him up. Loki can barely stand on his own, and inside, under the stark light of the lamp in the living room, Thor can take in his appearance. There is a cut across one of the sharp cheekbones, a dried oval in the middle of a blossoming dark bruise, like a wicked flower painted on his face. It's been raining all day, and Loki's clothes are wet and muddy where he must have fallen (or tossed, Thor thinks with clenched teeth) to the ground. He has no idea what might hide under his clothes.
"We need to clean your wounds," he says, forcing his mind off a destructive path.
He helps him to the bathroom. Loki is seated on the closed lid of the toilet while Thor removes his shirt to get his wounds rinsed. His abdomen is a mess of colors under the muddy dirt, and Thor wonders whether any of his ribs were broken or fractured.
"Why don't you have a tub?" Loki grumbles with a tired loll of his head as he eyes the shower.
"I will help." Thor takes his pants and socks off, too, leaving only the underwear untouched.
"What, you want me to bath in this?"
There is a glint in Loki's eyes that are alarmingly sober and calculating before they turn mildly amused. Thor reaches to pull his underwear off, and Loki helps by lifting his hips without shame. Thor tries not to look but he does as he thinks of the many times he has imagined his step-brother completely naked – but never in such circumstance. He feels Loki's smirk burn a hole into his forehead.
Thor stands to unclothe himself, laughing a little at Loki's raised eyebrows when he leaves his briefs on, but it doesn't escape his attention how Loki is eying him behind swollen eyelids as he gets his shirt off.
In an honest part of his mind he knows it is not a good idea, any of this.
He hugs Loki from behind as he cleans his wounds, running his fingers along each rib, searching for damage. Loki's skin is smooth, and the curve of his spine against his chest is something he has dreamt of. He opens his mouth and drinks of the water as if wishing to swallow the images he has wrought of the threads of nights when the size of his bed is only a reminder that it has enough space for someone else, too.
Loki finds support with his palms against the tiled wall, head hung, as he lets Thor's ministration unfold on his body. Thor tries to ignore the fact how he is shaking in his arms and buckles under his own weight.
"Who did this?" Thor asks against the curve of a pale shoulder.
"They called me faggot," Loki replies, and it's only he who is aware how it doesn't exactly answer the question. Just as how the answer is not the entirety of the truth.
Thor's large hands halt over his ribcage, and Loki studies them in awe, how they are able to cover almost his whole chest. He bites into his lip, feeling the wound rip open again.
Thor withdraws his hands to slide them over Loki's back. It's at the end of a long silence that he asks, "Are they right?"
"It doesn't matter for me."
Thor hums. It is Loki's typical way of answering a question, and Thor realizes only later how it can mean that it doesn't matter to Loki that he is gay, and also that whether his partner is a man or a woman.
His earlier anger calms into a slow ravine of reverie. There is a dip on either side of Loki's spine at the small of his back, and he watches the water run down them. He thinks of how they would taste if he lapped the sweat of pleasure off them. His fingers run along the knots of Loki's spine, and he rubs his nose against the jutting vertebra at the nape of his neck, and Thor wishes he was brave enough to do it with his lips. Loki bends his head back, the column of his neck is a graceful curve as he rests his head on Thor's shoulder. Thor curls his mouth against his collarbone, and as the water runs across his lips, he imagines every drop is loaded with a promise he is thirsty for.
Loki's hands leave the wall and wrap around Thor's wrist, pulling them forth and around his torso in a sensual hug. The firm curves of his buttocks press against Thor's cock, and he can feel the heat of his skin through the wet briefs. His cock slots perfectly in the crease of Loki's ass, and the moan Thor forces himself to swallow sits in his chest like a brick. They shouldn't do this, and he shouldn't feel that each brush of their skin pulls him apart gradually. If he has ever thought he knew temptation, he was laughably mistaken.
Loki's hands move, and his own hands move with his obediently, down further and further toward Loki's crotch. Loki watches him intently, with head tipped to the side, lips parted, brushing against Thor's jaw, and Thor feels the rush of blood feeding his awakening arousal.
"No," he croaks out, and his hands stop short from their destination. Loki's spine tenses against him, and Thor adds with poorly concealed regret, "You've been just hurt."
"Oh, how noble," Loki grits, but Thor is already closing the tap.
He helps Loki out of the shower, and wraps a towel around his hips, tugging the end behind the waistline. Loki is still watching him as Thor hastily covers his bulge with a towel in a futile attempt to conceal it, but he is as good as naked in the wet, see-through briefs. Loki's sharp gaze is unwavering, unnerving, and there is a small smile tugged in the corner of his lips. With a second towel Thor starts to dry his hair as if he were a child, and Loki lets him.
Thor is a tense knot of muscles as he forces his gaze off him, shying away from the piercing obtrusiveness of Loki's glance. His breath comes in rapid huffs, and he thinks he is too weak for this. That this evening would embed itself in his mind like an eternal fantasy he can pleasure himself to. His hands slide to Loki's shoulder and he cannot help the smile stretching his lips. Loki is endearing with his tousled wet hair, and he makes the mistake of meeting his eyes, sultry and heavy and dark green with an undertone that stirs something ugly, wrong and powerful in Thor's groins.
"Loki—" he grumbles but it's so meek and breathy that it betrays him immediately. Loki leans against him like a log, and it is only convenient that his lips land on Thor's.
It's frightening how quickly it unfurls into a clash of teeth and tongues, in groping hands, and moans that die halfway in the other's mouth. Loki's body is a solid weight in his arms as Thor moves them out of the bathroom, shedding their towels. They end up in the bedroom, and Loki tugs at him, and they tumble on the bed entangled and breathless.
Loki rolls the wet briefs off Thor's hips, groaning as his cock finally brushes against Thor's. He is aware of the urgency he cannot expel from his movements like he is afraid that any interruption would let reality seep in their thoughts, and he doesn't want to turn back. He doesn't want Thor to turn back, ever.
Thor kisses every wound, every rib one by one, trying to exchange the damage with caress. His forehead drills into Loki's armpit as his tongue follows the outline of the pale ribcage.
"Thor," Loki sighs, and this is his breathy confession as Thor's tongue rubs over the ridges of his hipbone. The warmth of the mouth around his shaft shakes him apart.
When Thor moves up again and wraps his large hand around their cocks, through the whiteout of the immense pleasure Loki realizes it would be over embarrassingly fast. He drives his heels into the mattress, arching his hips just an inch closer against Thor's, and he doubts with a sudden pang of pain that anything ever could be this perfect again.
Thor runs his thumb over the head of his cock, smearing his pre-come over Loki's shaft and his brother gasps into his ear. Loki is a beautiful mess. He throws his arm above his head and grips the headboard as Thor's hand slides rhythmically up and down their cocks, and he looks like suffocating with his mouth open and throat rippling under the taught skin of his neck. The image in unbearable, it short-circuits every nerve in Thor's body, and he thinks he would have never been whole without this. Never been whole without Loki's nails leaving marks on his back only the two of them understand.
Loki comes all over his hand, and the pulsation against his cock wrenches Thor's completion from him, and he follows Loki suit, making a mess on their chests. Afterwards, it is bliss.
"Now we need to take a shower again," Loki mumbles but there is no trace of complaint in his voice. Thor retrieves his wet briefs from the bundle of sheets and wipes them off before pulling the comforter over them.
They lie there for endless silent minutes.
Thor feels the lazy flow of pleasure retreat from his limbs, and in its place the enormity of everything they have just done seeps in from the sheets, from the sweat cooling on his skin, and the feel of Loki's nose pressed against his shoulder. It is everything he has ever wanted and maybe because of this, it is as wrong as surreal.
"Shit," he rubs his face.
"Don't you dare have second thoughts!" Loki bits out sharply. "It's a bit too late for that."
A door slams shut loudly somewhere in the building and there is something definitive in the sound that makes Thor wonder if there is a closure for them, too, now.