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"What's this?" Loki's face twisted in distaste, his hands feeling over the smooth green and silver fabric in unmasked confusion at Thor's gift. The elder of the two Odinsons smiled, leaning in conspiratorially as though he was about to impart a great boon of knowledge upon his young brother. "It is a blanket."
The look of confusion and distaste did not slip from Loki's face, though Thor thought he saw the ghost of a smile chase across his brother's angular features. "A blanket," he repeated the words, somehow imbuing the three syllables with acid disregard.
Thor was not deterred. "To keep you warm," he offered.
Loki slid his eyes from the blanket to his brother, finally allowing the twist of his lips to move from downward to upward; a scowl to a smirk. "It's not very soft."
Thor laughed. "I suppose not," he took the blanket from his brother, holding it open in front of them both. "But it is waterproof, and flame-proof, and," he nudged his brother a little too roughly with his elbow, jostling the slighter man to the side, "knife-proof."
"Knife-proof," Loki responded, one eyebrow raised.
"So the dwarves promised." Thor's eyes sparked with triumph at the source of his gift, knowing Loki would now, at least, be pleased.
Loki kept any joy at the revelation to himself. "Are you planning to stab me in my sleep, brother?"
Thor only laughed and shook his Loki's resistant shoulder, resigned but not deterred. "Accept the gift, please, brother. I had only thought to please you."
---
Loki was not used to this. And so when he summoned something to comfort Sylvie here at the end of all things, he reached with instinct into his mind, groping blindly for something to give the magic in his veins form.
He had not thought of the blanket in hundreds of years, a gift from his brother that at the time perhaps he had not recognised in full. One of many - often Loki had been confused by them, found them wearisome or trite. He was always so ready to mistrust Thor, so ready to look for barbs or deceit. But now... now, as he used magic to transfer the blanket from his own shoulders to wrap around them both, he thought he finally, after all these years, understood.
At the end of all things. He wondered where Thor was; it seemed impossible to think that he was now beyond the years of his brother's life, maybe even beyond the time that the Odinforce that could sustain a King of Asgard might endure. He pulled the blanket a little closer around himself and found that while it indeed was far from snuggly or soft, neither had his brother's affections ever been. Its warmth around his shoulders was a comfort. An embrace.