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“I love you, brother,” Thor said with an affectionate pat to Loki’s shoulder. Loki couldn’t meet his eyes.
“Do you really mean that?” Loki asked, almost on instinct. His tone was light, but the words were heavy in the still air of the ship. Thor removed his hand from Loki’s shoulder.
“Of course,” Thor replied, an incredulous bite to the words. “You’re my brother.”
“Is that enough?” Loki turned to him then, fidgeting with his hands - the way his mother always did. “After all I’ve done, is that enough? ” Loki swiftly clarified.
Thor looked at his brother with furrowed brows and took note of how, other than the fidgeting, he was deathly still. It was one of, if not the biggest, of Loki’s tells. In the eyes of a loving older brother - which Thor obviously was - it was practically a distress signal.
What Thor didn’t know was Loki had spotted a tell of his own. Just as Thor had memorized all of Loki’s tics, Loki knew Thor’s; And the one he was doing right now meant he was thinking . And Loki couldn’t imagine any thinking he had spurred in Thor after that sentence could be good. Loki pressed his lips together with a nod and stood… but not without giving Thor a light pat on the thigh first to let him know he wasn’t mad.
Thor understood.
. . .
Sharp inhale - sharp exhale.
Everything about Loki seemed to be sharp, no matter how much everyone tried to round his edges. No matter how much he tried. No matter how many people got cut on them; no matter how many people he chose to cut with them. In most cases, overuse would cause wear and tear to a weapon, but in Loki’s it only seemed to sharpen his knives and sand down everything else.
Thor had been sharp once, too - although it felt like a lifetime ago now. He had been sharp when they were kids, and so the two scraped against each other, sharpening each other in turn. With a huff, Loki considered he always should have seen their split coming. With so much strain, the handle on one of their knives would have to snap off at one point. The handle to Loki’s metaphorical knife had always been a bit wiggly, squirmy, like a snake. Of course it would be him that lost it.
Loki paused his pity party when he heard footsteps behind him, footsteps he knew: Thor’s. It was a strange thing, being together again, whole, after being apart for so long, but stranger yet was how easily Loki found himself falling back into place. He turned just as Thor threw the bottle stopper, and quickly found himself catching it. In what little time they'd had back together, it had become a habit.
“Still here,” Loki said with a tilt of his head as he watched Thor walk to stand next to him. Thor leaned against the wall.
“Just checking,” Thor said, and opened his hands to receive the trinket back as Loki readied to throw.
“I’m not sure where I would escape to,” Loki commented, gently tossing the object to Thor, who caught it with ease. “Or how, for that matter.”
“Oh, I’m sure you could find an escape pod somewhere,” Thor said, tossing glass stopper from hand to hand as he glanced around the ship.
“Ah.”
“You’ve always been good at finding escape routes.”
Loki nodded with a quiet “Mhm.”
“Well,” Thor shifted to lean against his shoulder instead, to better face Loki, “there was that one time… Oh, what was it again? I just can’t seem to remember.” Thor said, waiting for Loki to finish his sentence for him. He remembered; he just wanted to hear Loki say it. Loki groaned and pressed his pointer finger and his thumb to his forehead.
“I thought we had agreed to never talk about the cave incident.”
“I agreed never to tell anyone,” Thor eagerly corrected, and Loki shot him a half-hearted glare, to which Thor raised his hands in defense, “and I never have! But I never promised not to talk about it with you. And, as I recall, I agreed not to tell people about the hug-”
“-You can stop talking now.”
“...Not the-”
“ And also the cave, ” Loki cut him off, playfully irritated.
“Weeelllll…” Thor shrugged. They fell into silence then, leaning on opposite ends of the window, each smiling in their own right. It was relatively dark, with the only light being provided by the stars outside, but in that instance, it felt perfect. For a brief moment, everything was. Everything felt clicked into place. It was like finishing a puzzle years after you thought you had lost the last piece.
Loki looked over to Thor; he looked back.
“I love you too."