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Thor starts. Someone is pounding on his door. He cusses as a wet spot spreads across his sweatpants.
“Alright, alright,” he yells. “I’m coming.”
He sets the now-empty bottle down on the coffee table, and wrinkles his nose. The stain has spread all the way down the inside of this thigh. Thor stumbles over to the door, a little unsteady on his feet by this point in the night. He yanks it open, and stops, blinking, then shakes his head.
"Hey, big brother.”
Thor blinks again. If this is a hallucination, it is a remarkably good one.
“Loki?” he asks.
“Are you going to let me in?” Loki asks in return.
Thor steps back, letting Loki brush past him.
“You stink of beer,” Loki says, tossing down a ratty rucksack just inside Thor’s hall.
“What are you doing here?” Thor asks. Loki ignores him, wandering over to the couch and tossing himself down on it. His sweater rides up, showing a strip of pale skin and sharp hip bones that stand out against Loki’s sunken belly. Thor shakes his head again, and stomps back to the couch as well, throwing Loki’s booted feet off the cushions. Loki snorts.
“Dirt worse than beer stains?” he asks.
“It’s not like I know where it came from,” Thor says. “Could be shit for all I know.”
“It’s not,” Loki says.
“What are you doing here?” Thor repeats, setting a heavy hand down on Loki’s thigh to stop him from running away from the question once again.
“Do I need a reason to visit my big brother?” Loki asks.
Thor snorts, pushing himself up from the couch, using Loki’s leg as a prop.
“You look like a starving field mouse,” he tells Loki.
Loki snickers, his pale face screwing up.
“You’re one to talk,” he says, rolling to his feet and slouching behind Thor towards the kitchen. “You look like you swallowed a fridge.”
Thor chuckles, turning to face Loki and interlacing his fingers behind his head.
“Nice, isn’t it?”
Loki hops up onto one of Thor’s clean countertops, running his eyes over Thor. Thor finds himself flushing under Loki’s gaze, especially as Loki licks his lips slowly. He jerks his arms down and buries himself in the fridge.
“Eggs and bacon alright with you?” he asks.
“Do you have-”
“Ketchup,” Thor cuts him off. “Yeah of course.”
Loki grins. He pushes himself off the countertop, bouncing to his feet and leaving the laminate streaked with dirt. Thor turns away and slaps a pan down on the range. He winces as Loki pokes him hard in the side.
“Is the back door unlocked?” he asks.
“Key’s beside it,” Thor says.
“Matches?”
“Also beside it.”
“Some things never change.”
Thor doesn’t turn, even when he hears Loki pad out of the kitchen and down the hall. Instead, he cuts a knob of butter into the pan, and watches it melt. It oozes across the iron of the pan, white scum forming on top of clear golden oil. Thor stares at the butter, holding onto the sides of range, refusing to turn around. When the pan is covered, he tosses in the bacon. It spits and hisses when it hits the pan, and a drop of oil dances out, hitting Thor’s hand. He swears under his breath, shaking out his hand, then grabs a spatula, swearing again when the skin pulls across his hand and twinges.
The bacon cooks quickly. Thor leaves it a little soft, just the way Loki likes it. When it’s done, he tips it out onto a few paper towels to dry, and cracks the eggs directly into the skillet. They sizzle, and the edges curl up, trying to climb in on themselves and escape the warm embrace of the pan. When the yolks are just set, Thor dishes two of them out onto a plate, then grabs a few strips of bacon.
Loki is right behind him when he turns around.
Thor sees the plate fall from his hands as though all else in the room has vanished. It slides through air thick as water, and then crashes against his stained tile, breaking right down the center. Yellow yolk flies out onto Thor’s bare feet.
Sound comes rushing back with the flash of heat against his arch and toes.
“What the hell, Loki?” Thor shouts.
Loki giggles. “Hope that wasn’t a favorite plate.”
“Who cares about the plate!” Thor yells. His whole body is trembling. It feels as though sparks are coursing down his arms and gathering at his fingertips, urging him to reach out and grab Loki by the scruff of his neck.
“I could have sworn you did, since you’re screaming about it,” Loki drawls, picking his way around shattered ceramic to hop back up on the counter. Thor follows right behind him and bulls his way to stand between Loki’s spread legs, his hands planted on the counter on either side of Loki’s narrow hips.
“Why,” Thor says, breathing hard into Loki’s face, “do you always break everything?”
His voice cracks on the words, and he feels tears gather at the corner of his eyes. For a moment, Loki smirks at him, but then his eyes catch and hold on the tear that’s making it way down the curve of one of Thor’s cheeks.
“I never mean to,” he says.
“I know,” Thor whispers. Tears are streaming down his face now, and he swallows hard, blinking against them. “I know. But Loki, you left. You- I thought we had something.”
“I’m back now,” Loki says. He sets his hands on Thor’s shoulders, and squeezes.
“For how long?” Thor chokes out. “How long am I going to build a life with you until you tear it all down and I’m left picking up the pieces.”
“I’m not a witch,” Loki says, reaching out and brushing tears away from beneath Thor’s eyes. “I can’t predict the future.”
Thor lets Loki’s fingers roam across the edge of his cheekbone for a moment longer and then pulls away. When he turns from Loki, he can still feel the ghost of Loki’s fingers against his cheek as though turning away has done nothing at all. Thor shakes his head, trying to rid himself of Loki’s touch, but that’s never worked before, and now, with Loki so close, there’s no chance at all.
“I have to clean this up,” he says over his shoulder.
Loki’s feet thump as he jumps off the counter. Thor doesn’t turn around. Instead, he goes to the kitchen closet and gets a broom to clean up the mess he and his brother have made once again.
***
Thor cradles his new bottle of beer at his side, staring blankly at the TV. Loki has the remote, and he’s been flicking through channels for the last half hour, apparently trying to decide between “Ancient Aliens” and “Wildebeest: a spy in the herd.” He’s curled up at the far end of the couch, his ratty jeans tight across his thighs. He licks salt off his fingers, and Thor brings the beer to his lips as he watches him out of the corner of his eye. Loki grabs another chip out a bag that had been almost full when he started but is now closing in on completely empty.
Loki has a blanket wrapped around his narrow shoulders. He pulls it close, and a shiver runs through him. His cheekbones stand out even more sharply than they did the last time Thor saw him. He’s got dark shadows under his eyes, and his hair shines with grease.
“Where did you go?” Thor asks, as Loki flicks away from the History channel yet again.
“I’m right here,” Loki answers.
“I meant before.”
Loki clicks the remote again, and they’re back watching some talking head discuss gods from ancient Sumer. For a moment he just stares at the TV, as though he has never seen anything more fascinating. Thor clears his throat.
“Damnit,” Loki says. “I was just not here. Nowhere special.”
Thor gulps his beer, but it doesn’t stop his mouth from spitting out words that he probably shouldn’t say.
“Then why not be nowhere special here? With me.”
“Have you ever considered that being here is being somewhere?”
“What does that even mean?” Thor asks.
“Never mind. I just spent some time hitching around.”
Thor presses his lips together. He can see it, his brother standing on the side of the road, Thor’s old leather jacket hanging off Loki’s narrow shoulders, his heavy boots scuffed and mud-caked. His face is pretty enough that someone might pick him up, but it wouldn’t be a nice soccer mom, feeling sad for a guy trying to make his way in the world. No, definitely not. Loki must have had to trade on that pretty face and on the way he can smirk and draw you in with just one laugh, as cracked and broken as that laugh is.
“Did you work?”
“Some odd jobs. Served a few beers in a roadhouse out west.”
That’s even worse. His brother, making a life that far away, even a mean life with nothing to recommend it. Thor clenches his fists, forgetting about the beer bottle he’s holding. He manages to squeeze it so tightly that it cracks, and a little beer seeps through the cheap glass.
“Now who’s breaking things?” Loki asks.
Thor says nothing. Once upon a time he would have accused Loki of causing this too, of upsetting him and making him break the glass. Now he knows better. He can’t control Loki, no more than he can order the sun to stop shining or the rain to stop falling. He can control himself, and accept when he makes a mess of things.
There’s more beer on his sweatpants, but he doesn’t care now. He sets the leaking bottle down on the stained coffee table.
“You still haven’t told me why,” he insists to Loki.
“I needed some time for myself,” Loki says.
Thor is lucky he set down the beer a few moments ago, because his clenches his fists once again, and feels the bite of his nails meeting his palms. They dig sharply into his skin.
“Have you ever considered,” he says, all his thoughts of acceptance vanishing in a rush. “Just once, have you considered taking some time for other people? Some time for me?”
***
Thor wakes up in the middle of the night. At first, he’s not sure what’s woken him up. He’s flat on his back, boxers low on his hips, one hand splayed on his lower belly, his legs akimbo. The moon shines through the windows that are set in the ceiling above his bed, the swaying branches of a tree high above him sending rippling shadows across his face. He rolls to one side, thinking that he should get up. There, lying facing him, is Loki.
Loki is in nothing but the old undershirt that Thor had insisted he wear when he bedded down on the couch in the living room. He’d looked so pitiful, in his threadbare t-shirt and his boxers with holes in the crotch. Thor had gone and dug in his closet, fishing out an ancient pair of sweats and an undershirt that had shrunken in the wash. They fit Loki perfectly.
He knows that if he’d looked for a little longer, he would have found a few of Loki’s old shirts, buried deep under Thor’s winter coat and scarves. He’d have the tanks that Loki had carefully stitched to fit himself perfectly, the patched sweater that Loki had worn every day for a whole winter, until the elbows had gotten baggy.
Thor didn’t keep everything of Loki’s. Not this time. The first time Loki disappeared from him, Thor had kept it all, hoping desperately that Loki would just appear one day, as though he had never left. It had taken five months that time for Loki to come back, and by the time he had, Thor had been half convinced he had died.
This time, Thor kept his favorites. He kept that sweater, thinking of sitting on the couch, curled up with Loki, one hand buried in his brother’s long hair, Loki’s face pillowed on his chest. He kept those shirts, remembering how Loki had cursed when he was sewing them, swearing that he’d rather work at a bar than build up prototypes for the clothing line he was always talking about. He hadn’t stopped sewing though, however much he complained, and Thor had just watched, grinning when Loki stabbed himself with a pin.
He didn’t go find them for Loki. He won’t, not until he knows Loki is going to stay. He can’t bear it, he thinks. He can’t bear seeing Loki cozied up like nothing has happened between them, like Loki hasn’t left him once again. So he's dressed Loki in his old clothes, as though they were children again and their mother had given Loki all Thor’s hand-me-downs.
They look good on Loki. Everything looks good on Loki. Thor has known that since they were teenagers, has believed that Loki was the most beautiful man in the world since they left home at eighteen to make a life for themselves, together, together.
“Thor,” Loki whispers. “You’re awake.”
“I am now,” Thor murmurs back.
“I lied,” Loki says.
Thor lets his head rest a little more heavily on his pillow. Loki lies, Loki always lies. He lies about his plans, he lies about his needs, he lies about everything.
“About what?” he asks.
"About when I was gone.” Loki swallows hard enough that Thor can see his throat bob, even in the moonlight. “I couldn’t take time for myself. Not really. I couldn’t even be myself.”
“Does that mean you’re going to leave again?” Thor asks.
“No. Yes. No. I mean, I couldn’t take the time because all I could think about was you. Where you were, what you were doing, what it would be like to be back with you.”
“Is that different?” Thor says.
Loki bites his lip, his fingers clawing in the bedsheets and his eyes narrowing. In the moonlight, here, he seems some creature from another world, appearing to Thor and driving straight to the heart of what Thor wants more than anything.
“I've never felt that before,” Loki says.
“Never thought about me?” Thor asks, old anger welling up in him. Loki shrinks away, teeth digging into his lip until it goes white.
“That's not what I meant. That's not what I meant, and you know it,” he protests.
“How, Loki? How do I know? I've given up everything just to be here with you when you want to be with me. How do I know what you mean?”
“Thor, I-” Loki starts, then reaches out, cupping the side of Thor’s cheek. “You have no idea. I found out-” he draws even closer, worming his way across Thor’s bed – their bed – until he’s pressed up close beside Thor. “I found out that I didn’t have to find myself. I’ve always… I’ve never been lost with you.”
“No,” Thor agrees. “You’re right here with me. You’re here with me for as long as you want, and you know I’ll always be here for you.”
“Always?”