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The fluted arias echo through the skating rink when Thor edges in.
“Quad-combination,” the speaker is announcing.
He should be relieved; this is the first of his brother’s many leaps and so he has not missed much running here. Instead his stomach kneads itself. He trusts Loki, true, but Loki has fallen before in the practice rink. Not often, but…
The slender figure, little more than a splash of dark legs and white torso from where he stands, leaps impossibly high, twisting through the air, then lands on one leg only to leap again, and again, until he must slide smoothly on once more, building speed. His arms move, rising with the music and falling. No, not just his arms. His whole body, though Thor does not quite know how. It is, he thinks, not unlike watching ballet performed on ice. He finds that he is gripping the railing, and his hands are white. Loki has spent too many hours on this, has spent so many years on the training and rigorous practice that allows him to move now as though without thought, effortlessly following the music as though none of this has been planned, and Thor does not wish to see him fail. He knows how much Loki wants this. Needs this.
And yet, for all this, he knows that each and every other skater here has done what Loki has and wants the same.
Has family or friends who feel the same as he.
He wishes them no ill. And yet…
“Please,” he finds himself whispering over and over, “be enough.”