Part 2.

This is set a few days later, I'm sorry it's taken me so long to get back to this!

1.

Quiet in a sea of noise. It has all become background now, so much so until all of these people and their actions have become nothing but a play to which he has long since ceased to pay attention, and he just a character in this drama – a dull player too, that has forgotten his lines or where this plot was meant to go.

Indeed he struggles to see himself, as he once was, even as he is now, sat thus, a stranger at the feast. Time was he was the principal player, the life and soul of the party; he feels now a poor ghost of that former self, that raucous, bellowing creature he cannot see a glimpse of in this, the last in a long line of tedious feasts. He can hear the echo of his old laugh and it sounds like it was ever hollow, always a little too loud, making up for the fact that none of these people really amused him.

So many feasts of late, or does it just seem that way for how they drag? To celebrate the All-father's safe return – though nobody had really known he was gone in the first place, much as they knew something was amiss. Then there was Loki's tentative welcome back to Asgard, this time without the chains, and now some faint, tenacious pretence that things were back to normal, while the question of succession hung more dubiously and imminently than it had done before.

Thor wonders when he began, in all of this, to feel substantial, how he has managed to lose sight of himself s badly. He watches Loki from across the room with eyes like a hawk. In these last few days he has become afraid to even let him out of his sight, so slippery is his grasp upon what they have regained that he cannot trust for a second he will not lose it all again.

And I cannot, he thinks, I cannot lose you again, not now, not ever. This he realises, this is where I lost sight of myself, when all I became able to see was you. I have kept track of you better than I have of myself. You are my serenity, my smile restored to me and yet now, with you possessing neither of these qualities how do I regain them even for myself?

Loki feels Thor's eyes on him and looks up, from where he leans against the wall, gazing down at the floor and Thor sees his shoulders heave as he sighs. They have not talked much and that awkwardly since that first day, upon emerging from the cave they had made for themselves. Without that soft darkness to hide them they had struggled to make eye contact or even speak too deeply. Loki looks up once more and in that cautious glance Thor thinks he sees an invitation to follow as he slips between the pillars and through one of the side doors of the banquet hall unseen. Thor makes his murmurs to those around him and follows.

Loki does not stop in the room he slipped into but waits until he knows Thor is following to go into the next, one of the smaller libraries, dimly lit and deliciously silent. He sinks into the corner of an alcove, curling into himself on the side of one of the benches fitted in here and leaning his face against the cool wood of a bookcase. Even with him curled up so small Thor still finds he can only just fit himself onto the rest of the bench.

"These gatherings never were your thing" he states, flatly, looking at his hands, clasped in front of him. Loki looks at him, pensively.

"They were yours" he counters – "What happened?"

Thor looks back, briefly and gives a short, humourless laugh. Loki looks away at that and his lips part in a tiny bitter, just as humourless chuckle, his fingers curling around the pear he was holding in his hand as though it was a magical artefact. He looks down, unsure what he was really doing with it, possibly making some pretence of eating at some point. Thor follows his eyes and is taken back to another time, another place, another him.

"Do you remember –" he begins. Loki looks up again sharply and shakes his head close to pleadingly –

"Don't" he groans, a soft plea as his insides tremble – "For the god's sake, don't –" his lip trembles and Thor feels a groan low down struggle to come out of him, a need to just kiss it better. It's all he has wanted to do, make it better, but he fears he is too clumsy for anything he says not to make it worse instead.

"What happens n –" he begins, but Loki sighs again –

"No" he says – "Not that either – I –" his eyes prick and he snarls softly at the feeling – "I can't Thor. I can't do what was. I can't do what will be. For gods sake I'm working with is right now."

"Then tell me" Thor almost pleads – "Tell me what it is that's so hard and let me help."

"It's me" Loki sighs, shrugging feebly, and he wants to stop there, to make it all just him, but like it or not Thor has helped already and he cannot blame or hate himself quite as desperately as he would like – "It's you" he adds – "It's everyone. Thor, they behave like they're giving me a chance but I can see it in everyone's eyes – they're just waiting for me to go wrong again. I'm just waiting for me to go wrong again. You don't trust me, I know that, but I trust me even less – I'm scared –" he says this very quietly, not wanting to hear his own confession – "I'm scared of what I'll do next, and I'm scared –" he actively bites his tongue and looks down again, a faraway look in his eyes and Thor can feel him tremble beside him, looking so small he could take him entirely into his arms like a child.

"Come here" he growls, warmly but allowing for no argument, and Loki puts up none, which suggests at least to Thor that he has come further than he thinks, even though he knows it feels worse to Loki than when he would not allow himself to be comforted. But he shuffles over in the seat to put his head on Thor's shoulder, allowing Thor to hold him gently, almost rocking him until the shaking first gets worse and then subsides.

"I'm scared" he continues, when it is possible to do so – "That you'll forgive me again. That you'll keep on forgiving me until there's nothing left –"

"Nothing of you, you mean?"

"No" Loki groans in grinding exasperation and dread of the truth that he might be actually putting Thor before himself in his own priorities. It does not seem likely, but he fears he is all the same – "Nothing of you" he explains – "I'm – afraid – afraid you'll waste yourself in keeping an eye on me and lose sight of yourself in the process. I'm afraid you'll break from tiredness for watching over me while I sleep – oh I know you do. I'm afraid you'll tell me something sentimental and I'll believe it. I – I don't want to be the one to break your heart."

Thor shakes his head –

"But you're the only one who ever could –" Loki looks up at him, face scrunched, eyes full – "Because you are the only one who has ever had it."

Loki leans his head back as far as it will go and sticks out his tongue making a gagging sound of disgust, but when he speaks again it is with a genuine smile playing about his lips –

"Brother please, that's disgusting."

"Well I love you"

"Yeeash!" Loki grins now and rolls his eyes and just for a moment it is as it is in Thor's best imaginings and they are as they always were before anything came to complicate them. He smiles though, truly and feels a lightening of the heart that only Loki can grant him –

"Well I do!" he grins, partly because it is true, but mostly to annoy Loki further – "I love you more than anything in all of the realms –" he continues in this vein whilst Loki scowls and flounces and stuffs his fingers in his ears and starts singing. And they both know that while he is making it sound like a lie Thor means it and while he is making it sound like true distaste Loki is accepting it, and really, Thor thinks, they are so much less different in this than he ever imagined they could be.

"Are you done?" Loki grins, taking his fingers out of his ears with mocking tentativeness. Thor smiles and strokes the side of his brother's face tenderly –

"Never"

Loki rolls his eyes and turns his face, nuzzling into Thor's palm at the same time, Thor exhales slowly, closing his eyes at the softness of Loki's skin, the intense pleasure of touching him again after too many days spent dancing around each other.

"Focussing on the present then –" he begins and Loki nods a hushed affirmative, Thor grins faintly, that ghost of his old self settling back into his skin – "Why not make the present as good as it can be?"

Loki shakes his head in mock despair –

"Really brother? Is that the best line you've got?"

"I don't need lines for you, I never have"

"Thor?" Loki whispers, leaning in and pressing his forehead against Thor's, the arch of his body towards him needy and almost shy.

"Hmm?"

"Love me?"

"Always."

Thor strokes Loki's hair, and standing, pulls him with him, swinging him up into his arms as though he weighed nothing, indeed the weight is next to nothing to Thor, less than he ever remembers, and it frightens him a little, as though Loki really has been slipping away. Loki laughs softly at being carried like a bride and beats at Thor's arm feebly with no real intent –

"Put me down!"

"Never. Loki you're tiny, you should eat more."

"I don't think now is the time –"

"Later then"

Loki groans, almost happily and curls into Thor's chest as he is carried carefully out.

_x_

Next chapter won't take me as long as this one to get done I promise….also it will be all full of the sex. :-)