6.
It is dark beneath the cloak, dark and warm and more comfortable than it probably should be. They lie for an age in the dark and the quiet, listening to the beating of their hearts, trying and failing to keep track of whose is whose. Like it always was, this dark and quiet; so close to what it always was. It is almost, but not quite, possible to forget – but there is too much to forget. Thor blinks repeatedly, trying to see better in the dark, to make out Loki's face at all, but he can't. It troubles him that he has no idea of the expression on his face and be begins to speak just to hear the tone of Loki's voice.
"No –" Loki cuts in emphatically, before Thor has even finished saying his name, and his tone answers all that Thor had been wondering – "Don't. Please don't. I don't want – let's just stay like this –"
Thor feels Loki's hands begin to twist and rub in consternation and his body tense a little in his arms, hears his voice take on a note of weary sadness. He strokes the soft back of Loki's neck very gently with just two fingers until he feels him relax a little again, softening back into his arms.
"But there is so much to say" he sighs, not wanting it to be true either, just feeling that someone ought to say it – "So much that has happened –"
"No!" Loki repeats, stubbornly – "There is nothing to say, and nothing has occurred. Please Thor – can't we just pretend that, just for now? Please?"
This time Thor does not need to be able to see to know that Loki is looking up at him with big pleading eyes, eyes that he would not be able to resist if it was not so dark.
"But we need to – that is –" he realises he does not even know really where to start – "I need to be able to talk to father – tell him –" he frowns, realising – "That was you – I never really told him all you did. If I do –"
"And I told you I didn't do it for him. Anyway you can't, he's safe in his wretched sleep and I have watched this realm well enough in the absence of you both."
"We can tell him that too!" Thor cannot help but feel eager hope at the prospect – "Once he hears all you have done you can be – well, you know I do not desire the throne –"
"Would you give it to me only to leave me again?" Loki scowls, bitterly – "Would you run straight back to her? Gods! - I told you I didn't want to – there is no way this talk or any plan can go well."
"And I told you I was not going back, I shall visit Midgard yes, but not to stay – Loki – all I want is to be here, to rule beside you if you will have it – all I ever wanted was to be your equal."
Loki makes a small unintelligible sound and when he rubs his face into Thor's shoulder Thor can feel the wetness of his eyes. Loki mumbles something he does not catch and Thor gently asks him to repeat it. Loki looks up and his brother feels his chest heave in a deep deep sigh –
"I said I should be me saying that to you."
"And so it was. But that does not make my sentiment any truer."
"Feh –" sneers Loki, almost affectionately – "Sentiment. Please Thor, for the love of all the realms shut up."
He stops Thor's attempts at reply with a firm kiss that turns swiftly more intense than he initially meant it to. His hands clasp, indeed almost cling about Thor's shoulders and they both realise quite suddenly that there is a depth of need here still to be satisfied. Thor kisses back needily for a while, never ceasing to be amazed at how electric those twisted lips feel against his own, half frightened at the strength of his hunger for his little brother's touch. He only breaks away, panting for breath when tired of desperately tracing the contours of Loki's face with his fingers –
"Please Loki –" he groans – "My beautiful brother – I need to see you, make your magic."
Loki rolls his eyes into the darkness –
"What are you still twelve? You do know how I can use that magic now and that it's no longer just put to the employ of lighting our caves in the bed sheets don't you?" but Thor hears the amusement in Loki's voice and growls his name softly as Loki sighs, shaking his head tolerantly and paints the sides of their cloak in a starry sky of tiny coloured lights, the same that intrigued Thor since he was a child, filling him with wonderment and Loki smiles to see those lights reflected in his eyes sparkling in deep reflections of blue, gold, green and red. Thor in turn watches the light play across Loki's skin like scattered fragments of dark rainbow and he traces the dance of lights with his fingers. For him Loki will always shine this way. Loki gazes back at the lights caught in Thor's hair as though watching them from far away, window lights from across a darkened bay. He runs his fingers through that hair, scattering the lights and wondering that there is still a part of himself left that can use this magic so innocently. He wonders if there is hope for him yet and it scares him so much he has to rut against Thor furiously to lose the idea in pure sweet not – thinking.
Each touch becomes so rapidly, so unexpectedly frenzied, soon neither is aware of his own limbs, of what those limbs were doing, before there is time to even think of what they were doing and of whose were whose they twisted so tightly together. There is so much to mend, so much to make up for and in the absence of words they fight to fix those rendered selves together in flesh.
"There is so much still to say" Thor groans, hours later, rolling away from Loki, too hot and sweat–drenched to still touch. Loki's hand seeks his feverishly against the cool stone floor, clasping onto it as though Thor has moved too far away to bear.
"There is so much still to do." He returns.
It is a strange day for the silver tongue to turn to silence but Thor respects it for now and clasps Loki's warm, urgently seeking hand, drawing his brother to him once more in spite of the sticky heat of their skin. It is not enough, it feels now like no amount of re-joining will ever be enough. But it is a start.
_x_
End of Part 1!
Part 2 is still gonna be published here though since it's all the same story, so I guess that's not the most relevant announcement ever, but still, this feels like an end of part 1!