a/n:
i'm going to hell who wants to join me

liii. small comforts

The weather doesn't let up for the rest of the week, and subsequently, Thor finds himself with an armful of his brother each night. Eventually Loki stops asking, just slips inside quietly; Thor listens for the soft creak of his door opening as a signal to move over and offer a space in his bed. Sometimes, he would catch a glimpse of Loki's knuckles, white from clutching the sheets so tightly. Thor would smooth his hands over the top of Loki's and tell him, "It's okay, the thunder can't get us."

Sometimes Loki would whisper, "Thank you, brother."

Thor, squandering guilt and shame now a week old, would merely shake his head, hold him closer, and that would say more than what he ever could.

. . .

liv. the computer

Thor's fourteenth birthday rounds the corner. Their father happens to buy a new computer and passes down his old one to Thor. It's placed in Thor's room, situated on a desk meant for studying but rarely used for that purpose, anyway.

Loki accompanies him on his first trek across the great world wide web (not that he hasn't used it before in school, but it's new for Loki). His little brother makes a noise of delight whenever their search of cows or milkshakes or birds return with over a hundred thousand image results.

There's only a single chair, and so Loki takes to clambering onto Thor's lap to look at the screen. Thor perseveres through these instances, wondering what's so interesting about looking things up on Google, all the while trying very hard to ignore the entity in his lap. Even though they are too old for such a position, Loki seems to be uncaring.

Then there are times when he deigns to just lie on his bed, because he doesn't like the warmth that floods his chest whenever Loki is that close to him.

. . .

lv. a correction

He doesn't like that he likes it.

. . .

lvi. summer

The air is arid and unbearable, and Thor is lying across the couch with an arm thrown over his forehead, internally cursing the air conditioner for sucking at being an air conditioner. Their parents are out working. Loki is somewhere, maybe in his room again, still marveling over the computer, even though they've had it for a year now.

"Loki!" Thor shouts, running a hand through his sweat dampened hair. "Get out of my room!"

He hears feet running down the stairs, and then Loki appears before him, looking even worse in the weather conditions and vaguely stern. Also, shirtless. "Don't yell at me," he says, and then scurries off.

Thor hears clanging from the kitchen. He groans and puts an arm over his face again. It's too hot for this. "Put a shirt on!"

A few minutes later, something cold nudges his hand. Loki is holding out a glass of water to him, filled to the brim with multiple floating ice cubes and looking absolutely delicious.

Thor slurs something like, "You're the best brother ever," before accepting it.

"Do you feel like you're going to die?" Loki sits on his leg (Thor is already tall enough to take up the whole length of the couch) without managing to spill his own glass. "I feel like I'm going to die."

"You look like you're going to die," Thor says, observing Loki's flaming red cheeks and matted down hair. "Jeez, Loki, you look awful."

Loki nods listlessly. "Is the AC on?" he asks, and at Thor's affirmation, releases distressed whine. "We're going to die."

Thor is usually the one who can put up with warmer conditions while Loki seems resistant to the cold. But today is just a little too warm, and Thor feels like he's melting. With a grunt, he tries to pull his legs out from under Loki. "Get off, fatass."

"I'm going to drown you with my water," Loki tells him, unmoving. Not that Thor isn't already doing that to himself, trying to drink while lying down and spilling water everywhere.

"You couldn't even pin me down long enough to try that."

"Yeah?" Loki retorts. "I'm doing pretty okay right now, I think." But he does move, and Thor sighs with relief, thinking his legs will finally be freed. Instead, Loki drapes himself over Thor, holding his glass over their heads. "Drowning you," he says at Thor's indignant squawk, "remember?"

Thor pushes him away and forgets that he has a glass of water in his hand, too.

It ends up like this: he and Loki sprawled on the couch with two glasses on the floor and water everywhere (or maybe some of it is sweat. Thor doesn't want to think about it).

"Look what you did," Loki says, like it's Thor's fault. Like Thor is the one cuddling up to his brother like a leech- No, not cuddle, that's not the right word - oh, but who would want to cuddle when it's this hot, anyway?

"I'm telling Mother that you wet the couch," Thor says, muffled against Loki's collarbone.

"I'm telling her that you made me wet the couch."

"Get off." Thor grunts. "And put on a shirt, for Chrissakes."

Loki rolls off the couch ungracefully and ambles back to wherever he came from, mumbling, "I do what I want" over his shoulder.

Thor snorts and curls over on his other side. He'd like to move from the growing spot of dampness on the cushion, but he'll wait for his problem to go away first.

. . .

lvii. drifting, slowly

Thor enters high school, and it is nothing like the movies make it out to be. Everyone is actually rather nice, and most of the teachers are decent. The cliques in the cafeteria aren't blaringly obvious or anything, it's just kind of a free-for-all, grabbing whatever table is empty so that you aren't the poor sucker who doesn't have a place to sit. No one gets stuffed in lockers (at least, none that Thor has seen). Every month, a "classroom meeting" is held, apparently to encourage students to stand out against bullying. Thor doesn't know why it's necessary. He doesn't see it happen.

("Maybe because everyone likes you," Loki says under his breath, because he has heard his fair share of jeers, threats, insults; Thor turns down his music and asks obliviously, "Did you say something?" to which Loki shakes his head. Nowadays, Thor is deaf to a lot of things.)

He tries out for soccer because Sif is, but it turns out that he isn't very nimble on his feet. So instead, he tries out for football, because next to tripping people, he also liked tackling people. Then he reads in some brochure that colleges like kids who do extracurricular-whatevers; he joins swimming, too. He keeps it, because he's actually pretty good at that, too.

As if those two activities aren't enough to keep him busy, his friends are always there like pets who have been starved of attention. They are over far too much for Loki's liking, and their parents are foolish enough to believe that they're working on something school related.

Thor sometimes offers to go to the playground with him, as if he believes Loki still hasn't outgrown it, but Loki remembers That Night and does not wish to ever set a foot upon that place again. When Thor only looks confused and a little hurt, Loki wonders if he is the only one who recalls.

Sometimes they eat dinner without Thor, because he's at swim practice or he has a game or he's with his friends. In these times, Loki tries very hard to ignore the empty chair beside him.

Sometimes Thor snaps at him for no reason, whether by interrupting Loki's sentence with an aggravated "Shut up" or by slamming his door in Loki's face.

Sometimes Loki hates Thor for doing these things, to the point where he considers revealing what really happened on That Night. But doubt stops him: would his parents care for something that happened that long ago? And after the doubt, fear would start edging in: he has not forgotten how strong Thor can be, the pretty bruises that his brother can decorate his skin with.

Sometimes there are thunderstorms and lightning strikes a hello through the wide window in his room, and Loki runs for Thor's room like he used to. Except now Thor's room is almost always locked. Loki, not wanting to go back to his room, sometimes shuffles down to the living room and sleeps on the couch, or sometimes curls up against the wall next to Thor's door.

One time, he wakes up in his brother's bed instead of the floor. Thor himself is already awake and half dressed for school, and when Loki asks what happened, Thor tells him, "I don't know, you were curled up like a cat outside my door. So I carried you in."

Loki thinks he should feel happy, but instead, mortification and guilt settle in. Thor sounded tired, maybe borderline annoyed.

He mumbles a thank you and leaves. Since then, he makes sure to slink back to his room before he's discovered in the morning. He doesn't ever want Thor to sound like that again, at least, not when he's speaking to Loki.

Because Loki knows: they aren't as close as they used to be. He feels Thor drifting (or maybe it's him, Loki himself, who's drifting).

And it is an awful feeling.

. . .

lviii. stars

But there are moments - rare ones that Loki likes the most. They're the ones where Thor's door is unlocked and Loki's presence is a welcomed one, and the conversation between them is easy; when Loki feels like a brother again.

Thor's first girlfriend is, admittedly, no one special. Her name is Stephanie-something and she's the one who asks him out because she's dared to. They last about a week, when Thor catches her making out with someone else in some alcove.

"Well," Loki says when Thor tells him, nose crinkling, "you shouldn't have said yes in the first place. But your relationship was doomed from the start, so."

"What makes you such an expert?" drawls Thor. He sighs and stares up at the ceiling. He misses the stupid glow-in-the-dark stars that Loki put up in their old room. "Hey, do you still have those stars?"

"What stars? Oh, those." Loki leans back in the office chair. He's eleven and has traded in his baby fat for lanky, awkward limbs. His hair is dark and scraggly as ever, and the strands brush against his shoulders. "They stopped glowing, so I took them down."

Thor hums in acknowledgement, losing interest in the subject. His brother needed a haircut. "Hey, c'mere." He pats the bed.

Loki spares him a questioning glance, but there have only been rare instances in which he did not trust his brother. Obediently, he abandons his chair and crawls over next to Thor.

When he's close enough, Thor reaches out and tugs on a strand of his hair. Loki slaps his hand away, of course, but Thor just shakes his head. "Grow it out any longer and you'll look like a girl."

Loki puts his hands on his head, affronted.

"I'm going to cut it," Thor declares and rises to find a pair of scissors.

"No!" Loki howls madly, and Thor hopes that didn't wake their parents up. He clutches his head protectively. "Keep your giant, boorish hands away from my hair!"

"Just a trim," Thor says, reaching to hook an arm around Loki's midsection and bring him closer. He uses his legs to keep Loki in place. "No girls are going to like you if you look like one of them, Loki."

His brother finally stops struggling, going limp between his thighs and just sitting there. "You're going to cut it crooked," he mumbles sulkily.

"Trust me," Thor says, and makes the first cut.

. . .

lix. the verdict

"Too short," Loki complains.

Thor stands in the doorway, arms crossed and studying his brother through the mirror as Loki runs his fingers experimentally through his hair. "Suits you," Thor comments.

It didn't work, says a small voice in the back of his mind. You still find him just as desirable as before.

. . .

lx. the others

After Stephanie, there are others, of course. Maybe there have been eight or nine by the end of his freshman year, but Thor isn't sure. None last for more than a month.

You know why, sing-songs that same small voice in his head, it's because they're aren't L-

. . .

lxi. the very, very, very first time

Earlier, there was a party. Thor doesn't remember whose house it was at, nor does he care, but he does remember that it was a senior, and the only reason he got to come was because Sif was pretty good friends with them.

There might have been something in the punch.

As he gets dropped off and barely makes it to the front door without falling flat on his face, he thinks there might have been something in the punch.

He trudges up the stairs, and his vision swims. The nearest door is ajar, to Thor's gratefulness, so he sort of stumbles through and barely remembers to shut the door quietly behind him. He crawls into the bed and there realizes that he isn't alone.

"Thor?" he hears, and the voice is soft and sluggish.

Thor puts out an arm to push the offender away, but his hand lands on the soft, warm skin of a neck. He inhales sharply, mind clearly suddenly but not enough to realize who the body belonged to.

He just remembers dreams, the ones that plagued him for the past year and half. He recalls dreaming of pinning a smaller body against his, but doing so gently, for it felt like they were fragile.

Except now he isn't dreaming; this is reality. His fingers trail downwards, tracing the outlines of a collarbone, then down a flat chest (ah, so it isn't a girl), to a slender waist.

Thor rolls them over so he is on top. Legs open to accomodate him, or maybe he pushed them apart - he's not sure. In the next moment, his hips are grinding against another's and the friction is delicious.

"Thor," he hears again, and it's more of a restrained whimper. Hands clutch at the collar of his shirt, but they do not do anything to push him away or draw him nearer.

He runs his hands appreciatively down long legs, then back up again. He rocks his hips forward, arousal straining in his jeans. Driven by the want for more, he begins rutting in earnest, each thrust eliciting a sweet cry from the body beneath him.

Pleasure mounts quickly, and it isn't long before he gives one last snap of his hips, the coil in his belly finally coming undone, and he finds sweet, sweet release-

. . .

lxii. inner demons

(It's your brother you sick sick sick bastard you should be ashamed of yourself Loki is your brother-)

. . .

lxiii. back to sobriety

Thor wakes with a damp spot in the front of his jeans and a pounding headache.

Vaguely, he hears his door opening, and he scrambles to cover himself with a sheet.

It's Loki, half-hiding from behind the door. "Are you okay, Thor?" he inquires so softly, Thor almost doesn't hear him.

"Huh? Yeah, I'm awake- Ow." Thor collapses back down to the pillows. "Where's- Where's Mother and Father?"

"Out."

At least he can take comfort in that. "Do you know where we keep the painkillers?" he asks with a wince. He is never, ever going to trust a punch bowl again.

"Yeah, um... I'll be right back. I'll get you some."

"Wait, Loki." Thor stops him before he can leave, turning to his younger brother. "What - ow, goddammit - happened last night?" Aside from the dream being the reason why his jeans are ruined, of course.

Loki is silent for a few seconds. "You came home drunk," he finally replies.

And his little brother has never lied to him before, so Thor nods and believes him. But what's that on his ne- His head throbs again. Thor groans, rolling over and burying his face into a pillow.

At least he had a pleasant dream.