Sorry it's been such a while. I have spent the whole week it seems doing exciting and busy things for my birthday – but here I am, back with your next instalment! :-)

Note as before, the first song that Loki does not quite sing is "Poison" the second "I am made of you", both Alice Cooper.

9.

"Fuck – Loki," Thor groans, not for the first time that evening, sweat beading his forehead as he rolls bonelessly onto his back, his eyes leaving that crookedly smiling face only to rake the pale form he has spent the last few days in claiming for his own. The amber trailer light, dull on the green faux silk sheets, stains Loki's pale skin in bars of green and gold, painting him like some strange sea creature in a wash of colour that looks more artistic than it could be real. Thor stares at him in near despair of that otherworldly beauty, and rolls onto his side to gently trace the patterns of light on Loki's skin, rough fingertips skimming him like a sweet breeze and Loki sighs in intense happiness, turning his head on the pillow to smile back at him blissfully. Thor's fingers make their way to Loki's shoulder and his heart fairly sinks to feel his cock rise again so soon. Loki smirks and wriggles at the feel of that hardness against his hip, he groans happily –

"You are not human".

"I'll take that as a compliment."

"You should. Can't stand humans."

Loki wriggles in close and nuzzles his face into the place at Thor's neck that is rapidly becoming so familiar and comforting, he feels like he has lived there all his life. Or that if he has not, then he should have done. He shivers, arching like a cat as Thor's fingers run down his spine, his hands curving over his hips, large enough to enfold him almost completely before almost mischievous fingers snake their insinuating route round to Loki's inner thighs – it is a mischief Loki has taught him himself and it brings what he thought was his spent cock to twitch in return.

"Tho-oor –" he whines at the persistent erection nudging against him with fully renewed vigour – "I have to be at wo-rk – Heimdall –" he flails wildly for a control he has never been good at grasping, wanting but not wanting to express a sense of something strange and positively alien to him – a sense of – he shudders in disgust at the though – duty. Of obligation to Heimdall for not only letting him stay after everything, but for letting him back on the stage after the stunt he pulled nine days ago. Indeed, for not only letting him back on the stage but for entirely changing the nature of his act.

_x_

"I suppose I should be impressed that you are at least getting your own mess cleaned up even if it not by your own hands," Heimdall said on their return, as Loki perched, almost nervously, on a bar stool whilst Thor meekly set about sweeping broken glass from what seemed like every corner of the club. Loki had already observed the barman's classic eye roll at the sight of them, creeping back into the club later that afternoon, hand in hand, both shy and awkward and in a state of near perfect peace. Acting far more certain of Heimdall's welcome back than he really was, he had sauntered over to the bar, handing Thor a dustpan and brush with a winning grin and the peck of a kiss on the nose before looking to Heimdall for a drink. Heimdall had impassively handed him a coke.

"So – when do I get a real drink again?" he chanced.

"You don't." Heimdall lies, knowing it will only be a matter of days that he can keep this up – "Neither of you," he adds in a louder voice – "Until you have proven yourselves worthy."

"Well how do we do that without my being allowed back on your stage?"

"How you do twist my words, Lie smith. I am sure I never said anything of the kind."

Loki mumbles something about implied but nonetheless sips his coke like the good boy he suspects he ought to be for this to go well.

"Tell me," Heimdall continues – "Do you think you can do Alice Cooper in tune when you're not full of absinthe and rage?"

"You're doubting my singing? After all this time – really?"

"After what I heard last night – you bet your ass I am."

Loki sighs, opens his mouth and starts to sing, getting only as far as Your blood like ice –before Heimdall groans loudly and bellows –

"NO! Anything but that!"

Loki rolls his eyes but has to concede a point, gently kicking himself for his temporary lack of imagination.

"Okay," he mutters, looking down at the floor, watching his foot move to a beat that only he can hear, and begins singing very quietly at first but with such a sadness on the first line that Thor stops what he is doing and turns to look at him in concern, Loki's voice could have convinced him that he truly felt as cold and alone as the words would have you believe, but by the time he reaches the end of the first verse his voice rings out loud and clear across the deserted club, so that each I am made of you seems to reverberate like bells from the columns, sweeping the room like glorious searchlights. Even Heimdall pauses in his previous attempt to cut Loki off after a few lines, to listen and for Thor it is as though he is singing the last few lines straight into his heart like a directed beam of sunlight, chasing away every shadow he previously held onto. At the end there is silence as the last note echoes out around the room and Loki can all but feel the touched approval of his two listeners. He allows himself to bask in that approval until the silence and respect begin to feel awkward and he looks up, smiling, nodding to himself –

"Nice acoustics," he mutters. Thor shakes his head affectionately and carries on sweeping; Heimdall simply nods and slides a shot of absinthe over the bar. Loki raises the glass in a silent cheer to the silence that he knows signifies having his job back, albeit in a less sequinned capacity.

"But no pulling the plug on me this time okay?"

"I never pulled it on you the first time."

"What?" Loki squints – "You cut my sound! You know you did!"

Heimdall shakes his head –

"I didn't cut anything" he admits – "You think I work the sound in here, Loki? You think I just know what you're going to sing every night?"

"Well – yes!"

"I don't. Even I cannot see into that head. You make the music Loki, this club plays the songs that your heart sings. Because mine is silent. This club and your trailer – all those times you thought there was a radio you just never found? There was. It just wasn't in the trailer. You get me?"

"So I – I short circuited my own fuse?"

"In a word."

"That should not make the sense it does. So – before I was here this place was –"

"I told you, we'd been waiting for you a long time."

It's not just Loki, The Lokasenna whispers, it's all of you. You all dance to the song in your own heart. You write the words to the song, the steps to the dance. You change your own channels and make your own music, nobody else is going to do it for you. You write the story of your own life and let others in to contribute not to control. You will weave your own footsteps and we will watch you weave.

_x_

And now.

"Heimdall can wait," Thor growls, his hands stroking mercilessly at Loki's cock, starting to rut against him needily with his own – "But I cannot".

Loki groans, unable and unwilling to really argue.

"How many times today already?" he smiles.

"Not enough –" Thor's voice feels thick, caught in his throat on a tugging crest of lust, a wave he has been riding constantly these last few days, any distance away from Loki; even just not fucking him feels like too far away.

"I suppose I am quite irresistible," Loki teases, rolling languidly over and onto his hands and knees.

"You are mine," Thor agrees and insists, using Loki's waist as a grip to pull himself up onto his knees, pushing the head of his throbbing cock against his entrance, still slick and ready from the last, so-recent, time – "Mine – I could fuck you forever and not have had enough –"

It is ridiculous, he supposes how much his hands still shake with want after so many times, and to still them he drags his fingers, almost but not quite scratching down Loki's back as he thrusts into him brutally, with savage relentless need, burying himself to the hilt inside him and only then feeling anywhere near to close enough to him. He holds onto Loki's hip to slam into him over and over, roaring his pleasure as he does so and curling the other hand around Loki's cock in grateful pleasure at feeling that hard length back in his hand. Incredible to think that barely weeks ago this would have seemed strange to him. Now he rams into Loki like he has been doing it forever, Loki's cries music to his ringing ears; giving all he has into ravaging that tight perfect body, crushing them both so close together they could be the one person he suspects deep down they might be and helpless though he feels it is too good, Loki's heat and tightness too perfect to hold out against any longer and he comes before he can help himself, screaming Loki's name in offering to any god that might be listening, his one perfect prayer. As he shakes, first furiously and then gradually slowing he squeezes and caresses Loki's cock while Loki trembles on weak knees, unsure this should even be possible. He has already come more times than he could count and as he feels himself so close he wonders if it could actually kill him – it is his last thought before he shakes and aches and spills into that large loving hand and Thor strokes his hair calming him as he screams and shudders, eyes leaking, throat rough, curling in to let Thor hold him tight against his chest.

When the world stops spinning and Loki can even halfway hear beyond the pounding in his ears he groans softly and pulls away, weakly moaning –

"Time? What time?" It is a pitiful attempt to form words but luckily Thor knows what he means and glances at his watch on the window ledge.

"Nine fifty."

"What!" Loki sits bolt upright, suddenly finding the strength to make his limbs function – "Shit – Thor I'm on in ten minutes! Look at me – oh fuck!" He leaps out of the bed, every muscle in his body protesting, babbling a constant stream of fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck as he scrambles for a dressing gown, throws one on and hurtles out the door and across the parking lot, Thor following in still somewhat befuddled pursuit. By the time he reaches Loki's dressing room Loki has already poured his aching, objecting limbs into some clothes and is scrabbling madly around the mirror for make-up. He grabs an eyeliner, shakes it and then hurls it across the room in frustration –

"Thor, help! I need an eyeliner – this one's dead!"

"Help – how?" Thor frowns, still struggling with the world.

"I think there's a spare in my backpack, under the bed in the trailer – would you?"

Loki fixes him an attempt at a dazzling smile that comes out just looking hassled and Thor only moans softly in reply, heading back out of the dressing room –

"Quickly!" Loki yells as he retreats.

Back in the trailer Thor digs under the bed for the bag that at one time Loki took with him everywhere like a snail with its shell and drags it out. It is of course half full and Loki didn't tell him even faintly where eyeliner would be. He has no huge wish to disappoint Heimdall with Loki's lateness either and so takes the bag and shakes it upside down. A ragged assortment of crap falls out – but emphatically no eyeliner, of course. He is just scooping everything back into the bag when his eye catches on the piece of paper in his hand. He looks at it again and the bottom falls out of his world for the second time that month.

It's a photo, creased to the consistency of near tissue, folded and tattered around the edges, but he still recognises it as though it was yesterday and it falls from his shaking hand as a memory hits him clear as crystal –

Late evening, their mother was out. He sits on the edge of the bed in pyjamas about to go in to sleep when their father comes in. He goes to the other bed where his little brother is already sleeping. This is wrong! His mind cries it to him instantly – father never acknowledges the other child, never! He is instantly on edge, alert. Father gives him half a glance as he picks the child up, wrapped in its blanket so as not to wake him – only half a glance for he will not fully meet his eye –

"Say goodbye to your brother, Thor."

And nothing more. Nothing but his own screamed denials, a thunderous stream of NONONO and a cuff around the head for making a scene. He is still sobbing when he writes the note on the back of the only photo he ever had of them both and slips it in the blanket with his one – time brother, who sleeps through it all as though nobody's life is being broken here -

Thor gingerly picks the photo back up as his brain torments him by making all the connections he could never have wanted to make. He does not need to turn the photo over to read the message on the back but he does it anyway, both with a feeling of sinking slow motion and in the space of a missed heartbeat. The words are faded but still true, a clumsy childish hand, the clunky pen strokes smudged with fallen tears –

The door to the trailer slams open and Loki whirls in for barely a second –

"It's okay! I found it!" he yells, jarring into Thor's overworking heart, he kisses him brief as a raindrop on the top of the head and is gone again, whirling out the door like a small black cyclone.

Thor does not react. Cannot react, a numb weird silence in his ears and in his head as he looks down again at that faded blue legend in his own twelve year old hand –

Know that you were loved.

_x_

I'm a horrible person, I just am.

.not that you hadn't seen this coming of course but I just had to end it there for now! Just one or two chapter more until our happy ending folks!...at least until the sequel anyway! Sequel is happening. Very happening.

Random fyi of the day – I know really that "I am made of you" is a great big god metaphor but seriously – here's the lyrics – tell me it's not sooo very Thorki. I just can't hear it now without hearing Loki sing it.

"In the beginning I was just a shadow/ In the beginning I was alone
In the beginning I was blind, living in a world devoid of light
In the beginning there was only night

I was shattered, left in pieces/ And I felt so cold inside
Then I called you from the darkness/Where I hide

I am made of you

In the beginning you were revelation/A river of salvation and now I believe

All I wanted, all I needed/ Was someone to rescue me
I was drowning, I was dying/ Now I'm free

I am made of you

Here I am now, I can stand now/ Cause your love has made me strong
And forever you're the singer/ I'm the song

I am made of you"