Work Text:
Bruce reluctantly drew up a chair to the table that had been placed next to Loki’s bed in the hospital tent. “I still think this is a bad idea,” he muttered, his cheeks already flushing.
“Nonsense,” said Thor calmly, pouring out the cider.
"You sure? I mean, your brother is kinda still recovering from being skewered through the chest – again..."
"Somehow, Bruce," Loki said with a grin, "I don't think this concern is for me."
"Loki is of the house of Odin," said Sif dryly, "and he is no stranger to drinking the night away. It would be cruel to leave him alone with nothing but water while we are carousing, if we can bring some small merriment to him. Though he has always had trouble keeping up with the rest of us..."
"Is that a dare, Lady Sif?"
"It would be, if I were not convinced that your children would skin me alive for challenging you to such a contest before you are entirely well again."
Loki lowered his head and grinned like a demon. "Perhaps Brun could be my proxy in such a contest."
Sif looked vaguely alarmed but held her ground. "I will die with honor, in that case."
Brun, who had already downed two cups and was waiting her turn for the jug, only chuckled. "Tonight's not a race, kids."
“Of course not," said Thor heartily. "Sitting around, drinking, telling stories… We’ve done this many times on Midgard, Banner, you and I and our friends.”
“Yeah, I remember. Which is why I think it’s a bad idea. Especially with all this super-strong booze.”
Loki, Sif, and Valkyrie each turned their heads and looked at Bruce with deep curiosity. “It sounds like there’s a story there,” Loki said from his bed.
“Yeah, you could say that. I—” Thor paused in leaning over to hand Loki a cup and glared steadily at Bruce with one glittering blue eye. Bruce gulped. “Story for another time, sorry.”
The other Asgardians all traded glances that did not bode well for either Bruce or Thor.
They toasted their ancestors in Valhalla and then settled down to tale-telling.
At about the fifth or sixth round (only the second for Bruce, since he was only human and physically unable to keep pace with the Asgardians and their mighty liquors), the part of the night that he had been trying to avoid came up.
It always came up, and it wasn't that he was a prude or anything, it was just... Well, if the other Avengers hadn't seemed to know the meaning of TMI, then Asgardians really didn't.
"Where's the strangest place you've ever had sex?"
Bruce groaned. "Nope, pass. Thor knows, I do not play this game. You want embarrassing stories, you can get them from each other."
"Spoilsport," Brun retorted.
"Ugh, fine. Pulled an all-nighter in grad school, ended up getting a blowjob next to a particle accelerator. Happy?"
Brun grinned and toasted him; Thor laughed and thumped him on the back, which almost made up for the heated blush rising on Bruce's cheeks. "Well, where's the weirdest place you've ever had sex?"
She snorted at the question. "Might be better to ask where the most normal place I've ever had sex is. Every place has been weird." She paused with her cup halfway to her lips. "Actually? Back of a horse."
"You're joking," said Loki, looking at his lover with a mixture of astonishment and respect.
"Nope. I don't actually recommend it, by the way. The horse got kinda... uneasy, after awhile."
"I'll bet," Sif grinned.
"How about you three? Kids in the royal house, that must've been interesting."
"I'm afraid I have to disappoint you," said Thor with a sunny, slightly blurry smile. "I've always preferred to entertain lovers in beds. Or at the very least upon comfortable surfaces in private surroundings."
"Hmm," said Loki into his cup.
The smile vanished. "Not a word, brother," Thor warned.
"Either you tell them or I do."
Sif raised her eyebrows at Loki and then turned and looked pointedly at her husband-to-be.
Thor sighed. "Inside a latrine during a siege on Nornheim."
The company burst into laughter.
"If that was the siege I'm thinking of," Sif crowed, "it was some time before you or your lover of the moment would have had any chance of washing."
"Oh, it was," the king said, with a grimace. "About another six days."
"Oh, gross," Brun blurted out, and set everyone giggling again.
"Well, what about you, my love?" Thor asked, determined to turn this embarrassing moment on someone else. "You have never been shy about indulging your pleasures."
Sif fell curiously silent. At the same moment, so did Loki.
Thor blinked, and then dropped his head into his hands. "All right, just tell me."
"We," said Loki, and stopped, biting his lips to keep from laughing.
Sif sighed. "When we were very, very young, we once... fucked on your father's throne."
Thor's jaw dropped so suddenly, Bruce actually heard it click. Valkyrie threw back her head and crowed with laughter.
"You... didn't," said Thor weakly.
"Ohhhh, we did." Loki had his tongue between his teeth and he was grinning fit to kill at the memory. "In full view of the throne-room guards, too. I was just learning invisibility spells around that time and do you know, somehow, they didn't see a thing..."
"Funny, that." Bruce slid a cautious side-eye at Thor, who looked genuinely appalled. "Did you two at least, like, wash the chair off afterwards?"
Loki looked at Sif blankly. "We wiped it off," she offered.
Thor reached for the pitcher and took a draught straight from it, without even bothering to fill his cup.
The stories continued on into the night, though many of them blurred together in Bruce's increasingly cider-soaked brain. He learned, however, that Loki had acquired the scar on his lip not through a mighty fight with knife and dagger, but from the one ill-considered time he had tried to fellate a man in full armor.
"Right," Valkyrie said, slamming her cup down on the table after the laughter at Loki's expense had died down a bit, "time for the big question: first time?"
Bruce waved a shaky hand. "Back of my Aunt Susan's station wagon with a girl from the high school band who took pity on me. Took her out for ice cream afterward. She moved away that summer, never saw her again. Next."
"Thrud," said Brun promptly. "Well, Thrud, two other girls in our training cohort, at least one of our fighting instructors, a few boys from the local pub and... Heimdall? Maybe Heimdall was there?" Sif let out a low, impressed whistle, and Brun clinked cups with her. "What about you?"
Sif pointed at Loki, who simply shrugged and pointed back.
"Was that on the throne, or...?"
"No, shockingly, we dealt with matters in a bed at the start of things," Loki said, rather breezily, Bruce thought, for a man talking about past sexual encounters with a woman who was going to be married to his brother. But it wasn't his family, he thought, and as long as Thor was okay with it...
Actually, Thor was looking a little red around the edges. "You okay?" Bruce asked.
"What about you, brother?" Loki said, draining the rest of his drink. "I don't think I ever heard how you crossed this bridge."
"Oh, you wouldn't have... you were away in the north with Mother when I... it... happened."
Loki frowned, with an expression of brotherly concern that Bruce wouldn't have expected. "Were you unwilling?" he asked quietly.
"Oh Norns, no! It was just... I..." Thor hid his head in his hands and muttered something.
"Sorry, didn't catch that."
"I said, it was Fandral!"
The tent fell so silent, Bruce was worried he'd suddenly gone deaf. Sif was sitting back in her chair looking stunned, but Loki looked so deeply shocked that he might have been carved that way.
Then--
"You utter fucking bastard!" Loki exclaimed, and threw his empty cup at Thor with a laugh that was mostly astonishment. "Did everyone get to sleep with Fandral except me? I knew my wife had gone to bed with him a few times, but my own brother? Fuck, it's too much."
And he threw himself back on his bed and laughed hysterically.
Valkyrie rolled her eyes at her lover and sovereign prince. Not knowing what else to do, Bruce patted Thor on the shoulder. Sif only let out a tolerant sigh at both brothers and refilled her cup from the pitcher.
"In all sincerity, brother," said Loki, when he had laughed himself weak, "I did not know you had a taste for men."
"It's not a taste, exactly," Thor hedged, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly, "but if there's a fine form and figure that takes my eye who happens to be a man, well, who am I to turn down a willing and eager partner?"
Bruce spoke up suddenly. "He also made out with Steve at a party once."
"Banner!" Thor hissed.
"Oh, come on." Loki said up and glared at them both. "Now that's just too much!"
"What?!" Thor, apparently giving up on his futile attempts at decorum, suddenly shifted from embarrassed to shameless. "You can't be jealous of me for that, surely!"
"Can't I?"
The king grinned remorselessly. "What, are you sad that you never got a snog off of Captain America?"
"I have eyes, Thor," Loki grumbled, "and I've fought the man. If Fury had sent him instead of the Widow to treat with me, there's little doubt I would have been soft clay in his hand within five minutes. Besides, how do I know you two aren't just concocting this story out of nothing to irritate me?"
"Oh, it happened. Natasha's got pictures," said Bruce placidly, causing Thor to fall abruptly silent once again. "And maybe," he added, gesturing at Loki with his cup and wondering when it had become empty again, "once we get to Earth, if you can convince her that you're a good guy now, she'll even show them to you."
"I think, as Thor's intended bride, that I should have the first right to see these pictures," said Sif, with an impressive display of dignity that fooled no one. "And to know if this Captain America is a good kisser."
"Okay, that's it for me," said Bruce, pushing back from the table and standing carefully. "I'm bowing out. Loki, glad you're feeling better, I'll be in to check on your tomorrow morning. Late tomorrow morning. G'night, all."
He walked out of the tent very slowly and holding his head very high, but he couldn't help hearing a bit more before he was out of earshot.
"I'm with Sif," Brun said, "is he a good kisser?"
"Yes, Thor," Loki added, "is he?"
"Very much so," said Thor, with feeling.