Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

This wasn’t the kind of thing Thor would normally do. Not at all. In fact, he wasn’t even sure what exactly he was doing. And to be honest, he was trying not to think about it. There wasn’t much point in thinking about things, where the boys were concerned. Sometimes you just had to close your eyes and go with the flow.

Which, put like that, didn’t sound so great actually. It kinda made the boys sound like bullies. Which they weren’t. Not at all. No, they definitely weren’t, because no one was in charge. They were just all lads together, daring each other to push things and seeing how far each other would take it. Like lads did. There was friendly rivalry maybe, mocking each other and cutting each other down, but all in fun.

It wasn’t like...well, it wasn’t like home. It wasn’t like Odin. That was who Thor thought of when he thought of bullying. His father, ruling his wife and son like a petty emperor, watching them and judging them and controlling every element of their lives. It was his fault Thor was here, come to think of it. It was him who had made Thor move to this stupid, fancy, la-di-da academy school, with all the richest and most unpleasant children of all the richest and most unpleasant men in the county. It was him who had made Thor leave behind all his old friends, who would never have gotten him into this situation, and thrown him in with people like Tony Stark and the like. Bored, spoilt children of millionaires and billionaires who lived to make trouble, just to fill up their endless, charmed days.

And so, here he was; hovering nervously around a clutch of unused buildings at the edge of the school-grounds, driven there by the nudges and winks and not-exactly subtle provocations of the lads. Well, Stark’s anyway. And Barton’s. And Banner was always with Stark, even if he didn’t seem too comfortable with a lot of his behaviour. But he certainly didn’t argue with him. And Rogers...well, he looked pretty judgemental about the whole thing to be honest. But then he looked pretty judgemental about most things, so it was hard to know how much weight to put on bis disapproval. At any rate Thor wasn’t going to lean on him for support, especially not against the force that was Tony Stark.

Not that Thor was against Tony; not at all. Tony was his friend. Why wouldn’t he be? They had a lot in common; both charismatic only sons of domineering fathers with less-than-spotless reputations. But sometimes that friendship was a little...smothering? Everything was all Tony, Tony, Tony, all the time, him talking a mile a minute, filling in every inch of space, full of energy and momentum, sweeping everyone up and leaving nobody any room to breathe...

And now he had swept Thor here, and it seemed too late to back out. Besides, a part of him was curious. More than curious. Strongly tempted. Another part of him was frightened, and still another felt something akin to sickness. But they were easy to ignore. The part that was tempted, and the part that was too stubbornly prideful to back down in front of the lads, were much stronger.

And so Thor glanced around to ensure that he wasn’t being watched, wiped his sweaty hands on his trousers, took a deep breath, and stepped into the long, dark space behind the tallest building. He had come this far. There was no turning back now.

***

Thor’s eyes adjusted to the dim light. For a moment he thought that there was no one there; that Stark had tricked him. He walked further down the narrow corridor between the brick building and the stone wall of the school, something quite difficult to do for someone of his famously broad, muscular build. And he saw nothing.

And then the shadows shifted, and something moved. A slight figure slipped from its place of concealment and into the light, revealing himself to Thor’s eyes.

He had assumed that it would be a girl. But he was wrong. It was a boy. A thin boy, with a pretty, feminine face and longish black hair that softened his features, but still a boy. He was obviously younger than Thor, as he was still wearing school uniform; probably not much younger, only the year below him, but still...

The boy regarded Thor without expression. A cigarette burned between his fingers. Thor looked back at him, neither of them moving.

A flicker of doubt rose in Thor; Was this the reason that he had come here? Did the boy know what he wanted? Or had there been some type of misunderstanding. Or, again, was this all a joke...

And the boy shifted, his jaw tightening with resolution, his chin raised with a brittle kind of pride. He locked eyes with Thor, boldly and without flinching. And Thor saw a question there. And something dropped suddenly in his stomach, a feeling almost of dizziness, as though the ground beneath him had fallen away and his footing was no longer certain.

He steadied himself against the rough wall with one hand and swallowed, his throat dry. And then he gave the smallest of nods.

And the boy darted forward and moved rapidly toward him, fast as a snake about to strike.

Thor started, and jumped backward against the bricks as the boy reached him, flicked away his cigarette and sank gracefully down into the grass.

And he was kneeling before Thor now, unzipping Thor’s fly with his nimble fingers. And Thor let him, watching as though in a trance as the boy took Thor into his mouth

It was almost like a dream, somehow. Thor’s head fell back, and his eyes closed. And one big hand cupped the boy’s face, a rough thumb stroking the smooth skin. And everything seemed very far away, and very good....

***

And then Thor came back to himself, startled by his own brutish groan as he finished without warning.

His vision cleared, and all at once everything was different; grim and grubby. There he was, slumped against a wall in an alleyway, trousers disarranged, exposed, among the weeds and the discarded crisp packets and chocolate wrappers being stirred up by the chill breeze. An ugly thing.

The boy had turned away, had already moved back against the opposite wall, and was discreetly spitting into a handkerchief in a manner that somehow struck Thor as elegant, despite the circumstances.

Thor felt abjectly miserable, filled with shame.

"Sorry! I’m sorry!”

He found himself babbling in mortification, as he tried as quickly as possible to make himself decent.

The boy looked up, his face filled with confusion. It made him look more normal somehow, more human. It struck Thor suddenly, and quite forcefully, that he was a person. Of course, he was, that was obvious. What else would he be? And yet it felt to Thor like he was only now aware of the fact, that he was only now feeling it, realising what it meant.

"Sorry for what?” he asked.

Thor gestured incoherently at himself, at the handkerchief, and then at the boy, who rolled his eyes.

“It was kinda the expected outcome, wasn’t it?”

“Well, I guess, but…” Thor fumbled sheepishly for words. “...it wasn’t very polite of me not to tell you.”

"Polite?” The boy considered him with new interest. “You’re a strange one. You wouldn’t catch Tony Stark worrying about being polite.”

An unexpected feeling of jealousy rose up within Thor. He frowned.

“What’s Tony Stark got to do with it?”

"He’s the leader of your little gang, isn’t he? He always sends his faithful acolytes here...”

"He’s not my leader.” Thor insisted, with great indignation.

The boy shrugged, indifferent. Thor spoke again, somewhat awkwardly.

“They’ve all…done this then?”

"Why don’t you ask them? They’re your friends, not mine.”

The boy was now brushing down the knees of his school trousers, very matter-of-fact and seemingly totally disinterested in the situation.

"Yeah, they are.” Thor agreed. “But they’re not very good conversationists”

The boy surprised himself by laughing, and his face opened up with merriment at this unexpected taking down of the sacred idols of the school.

“No, I bet they aren’t.” he agreed, his eyes bright with mischievous glee. “Except for Steve Rogers. That’s all he did. Talk. I guess he’s some type of prude? And Clint Barton said he wasn’t interested, ‘cause he isn’t a queer. He was happy to watch me do it to Tony Stark though, for some reason…”

He made a provocatively innocent face. Thor laughed, and he laughed back, the two of them suddenly brought together by the absurdity of the world and the people in it.

"So … have you and Tony got an arrangement then?” Thor ventured, blushing slightly.

The boy’s face tightened again as he straightened his blazer and smoothed back his hair.

"No. Why would we? He’s no one special to me. He’s just taking advantage of an opportunity that presented himself.”

“Oh. Why are you here then?”

“I would have thought I’d already made that clear.” He made a wry face, and glanced downward suggestively. “For exactly what you came here for...”

"Right, but, what’s in it for you?”

Thor puzzled at this with genuine interest, forgetting to be embarrassed. And then something occurred to him, and with an exclamation at his stupidity he fumbled in his pocket and removed a couple of crumpled bank notes.

"Sorry, I forgot.”

The boy stared at them for a moment. Then he reached one thin hand forward quickly and pinched them between his slender fingers, as though he didn’t want to touch them. His hand barely brushed against Thor’s as he snatched the notes away, shoving them unceremoniously into the pocket of his satchel. Then he sank back against the wall, and was silent.

“That’s the amount Tony said.” Thor confirmed cheerfully. “You could ask for more though, you know...”

The boy’s head shot up abruptly, eyes burning as he snapped at Thor.

"Expert, are you? Pay for it a lot? Or are you offering to be my pimp? Think I could turn a better profit under your management?”

His voice was harsh suddenly. The laughter and fun had all fallen from his face.

Thor flushed and held up his hands.

"I didn’t mean…I wasn’t…that’s not what I’m saying…”

The boy merely stared blankly at him, expressionless, his eyes dead and flat. Then he moved back and slid into the alcove that had held him before Thor’s arrival. His body folded itself into its previous position, and then he was still, nothing but an angular shape in the shadows.

Thor felt somehow as though he had been dismissed from the presence of some great potentate, majestic in their imperious silence. And yet simultaneously he was angry at his treatment. Angry and humiliated, and unbalanced by the rapid changes of mood that left him suddenly uncertain, adrift in an unchartered landscape.

He turned and stumbled away, his mind whirling with questions. This had not turned out as he had thought it would. Although of course, he had not really thought at all...

Chapter Text

Loki. The boy’s name was Loki.

Thor had found it out.

His name was Loki.

He was in the year below Thor.

He was on a full scholarship.

He had been at the school since First Year.

Despite having been here so much longer than Thor, he had no friends. It seemed that he had never had any.

He was hard to follow; Thor would have liked to know how often he went to the abandoned buildings at the back of the grounds, and with who. But often he would just disappear, and there was no way of knowing whether he was there or elsewhere. He must have secret routes there, and perhaps to other places.

What else was there...?

He had cold hands. Although he had only touched Thor once, of course. But Thor remembered. They were like ice. Perhaps he had bad circulation, Thor worried. But other than that, there was no sign that he was ill in any way. Except for how pale he was. But that was no reason to worry, was it...?

His coat was not warm enough for him; winter came, and nobody replaced it.

On chilly days he wore a dark green velvet scarf, wrapped tight around his thin neck.

He had a hat too, for a while; a little black beret-cap thing of soft wool with a green band around it. Thor knew it was soft because sometimes, when Loki wasn’t wearing it, he held it loosely in his hands and rubbed his fingers over it gently as though comforting a small animal. Then one day the hat disappeared; later Thor saw it on the railway embankment, lying in the dirt, slowly disintegrating next to the tracks. Whether it had been blown there by the wind or thrown by some unknown party, he couldn’t tell. But there was something sad about it, lying there just out of reach, ruined, while icy sleet sank into Loki’s unprotected hair and made him shiver.

He washed his hair on Sundays, and on Thursdays after school; Mondays and Fridays it was a little fluffy and he wore it loose and let it hang over his face, but on Tuesdays he tended to slick it back behind his ears, and by Thursday it was usually held back with a little green bobble. Thor liked to see the nape of his neck, unguarded and vulnerable.

He had a sweet tooth. He ate chocolate furtively, as though expecting someone to take it away from him at any moment.

He never seemed to eat lunch. What if he was hungry? But then, perhaps he just preferred to eat later, at home? Still, it was a long day without a proper meal...

He took Art; Thor had seen him carrying a folder of frustratingly unseeable works. None of them were displayed in any of the art classrooms. Was that because the teacher didn’t value them, or because Loki wouldn’t share them?

Sometimes, instead of the folder, he carried an instrument case. Thor had no idea what it contained, except that it was of medium size. The sound-proofed rehearsal rooms in the music block frustrated his efforts to find out anything more specific. He would have liked to hear what music Loki played.

When he moved between classrooms, buffeted by the crowds, he turned the collar of his coat up, as though for protection. He normally wore earbuds too. Thor watched for clues as to whether he was listening to music, or podcasts, or just drowning out the noise of the school; Loki’s body language and facial expressions revealed nothing.

Brand research indicated that the earbuds were noise cancelling: maybe Loki was sensitive to loud noises? That must make school difficult for him. Certainly, he did seem to seek out quiet spaces.

His safe place was the library. Sometimes he browsed the shelves, his long fingers running across spines, a dreamy look on his face. Mostly he curled up in one of the private reading cubicles, folded up in his tiny cocoon, a book resting on his knees.

When he was reading, he gnawed often at his lower lip. His teeth were small and sharp and very white.

Nail polish was not allowed at school; but sometimes, as his slender fingers turned the pages, Thor saw traces of it on the edges of Loki’s nails. Always dark colours, although Thor couldn’t tell which ones, since there was so little left for him to see.

His school blazer was too small for him; the cuffs stopped a few inches too soon and exposed his tiny, delicate wrists, the bones pushing through the thin skin. Thor, watching Loki hidden in his cell and lost in his stories, wanted to touch those small bones, run his fingers across them, feel them, fragile as dry twigs but soft as velvet, safe in his strong hands...

Chapter Text

Thor couldn’t even remember the name of the kid who was throwing the party. He was just some show-off whose parents were out of town, and who had invited the whole school around to see his stupidly big house and get drunk in whichever part of it took their fancy. Still, it was something to do on yet another Friday night.

Tony had commandeered the games room pretty early on, and was holding court before an admiring gaggle of the type of random girls he always seemed to manage to pick up from somewhere. And the boys were there too, of course. Well, most of them. Banner had gotten too drunk, as he tended to at social gatherings, and Steve had offered to take him home, partly because he was a chronically nice guy and partly because in all honesty he wasn’t having a particularly good time anyway. Sometimes Thor wondered why Steve hung around with Tony at all; he certainly didn’t seem to like him. He usually acted as though he was there on sufferance, even though as far as Thor knew no one was forcing him and Tony to be friends. Probably school politics, he supposed, established long before his time.

Thor was already beyond bored, and beginning to envy Steve for having managed to find an excuse to leave. Tony had begun laying the groundwork for moving on to the Stark place for an after-party once the action here wound down, and was currently trying to persuade Thor to join him. Thor was much disinclined to do so, but this didn’t seem to hold much weight in the debate.

“Apart from anything else, Odin will expect me back at some point tonight.” He pointed out to an unimpressed looking Tony. “I’m on a shorter lead than you, remember?”

“You shouldn’t be such a little bitch about it.” Stark told him, somewhat hypocritically considering how much he valued his own freedom.

And then to Thor’s further irritation he adopted his ‘poor little rich boy’ voice for the benefit of the attentive girls, and continued on the subject.

“Your old man’s alright. At least he cares about you.”

“He cares too much.” Thor grumbled. “Always watching and checking up on me. Sometimes I feel like I can’t breathe.”

He took a swig of his beer. Tony, already disinterested in him, leant down to whisper something to one of the girls, an arm around her bare shoulder.

“And honestly, Howard’s not as bad as you make out. Sure, he doesn’t trust you, but to be fair he’s right not to.”

"You don’t know shit about my Dad.”

Tony flared up abruptly, squaring up to Thor despite his comparatively diminutive size. Thor stared him down, unconcerned. He was not afraid of Tony Stark.

"And you don’t know shit about mine.” he countered.

They continued to face off against each other for a moment, before Thor lost interest in what seemed to him to be a pointless fight.

“I’ll swap if you wanna.” he offered in a friendly tone.

"Fucking love to.” Tony snarled back, not taking the offer of an olive branch. And he turned away.

Thor shrugged, tipped back his head, and swallowed down the last of his beer. It seemed that he was no longer welcome in the room. Which was fine with him; he was sick of watching Tony doing his louche party-boy act anyway. And so he ambled away in search of more drink, since there was nothing else to do...

**

Thor was making his way through the patio doors that led out of the kitchen, a beer in either hand, when it happened. Suddenly there he was, shining out of the darkness.

Loki.

Loki, right in front of him.

Loki, all alone, perched on a garden table, bound in black, glowing in the moonlight.

Loki.

He was looking away from Thor, out into the night sky. All Thor could really see of him was the curve of his long neck and the sharp line of his jaw.

Something jumped in Thor’s chest at the sight.

He walked slowly toward where Loki sat, the garden seeming suddenly huge. Damp grass brushed at his ankles. There was a faint breeze. Far away, back in the house, someone laughed.

Finally, Loki turned. Thor smiled at him.

“Hey.”

Loki stared at him for a moment. Then he frowned.

“What?”

“Just...hey?” Thor fumbled, taken aback.

He had spoken without thinking, accustomed to being welcome in most social situations without any effort on his part, and thinking only of wanting to see Loki look at him, hear his voice. A sudden cold doubt suggested to him that it was no longer enough. Not here.

He had no idea how to proceed. Loki did not appear to be becoming any more welcoming. In fact, his eyes were narrowed with suspicion.

“Why’re you talking to me? We’re not friends.”

“I know. I just....” Thor cast about for something, saw Loki’s empty hands. “D’you want a drink? I’ve got two.”

He held the undrunk beer out to Loki hopefully. Loki looked at it, considered, and then shook his head with a slight air of regret.

Thor puzzled for a moment as he swigged his own beer. Then something occurred to him; something vague about personal safety and accepting drinks from others, warnings which he had never thought applied to him and had always ignored. But such things might be relevant to Loki. So he offered the bottle he had already drunk from instead. Loki considered again, then took it.

Thor watched the movement of his pale throat as he drank.

Something came to his mind then, apparently unprompted. A memory of a dog he’d had for a little while, when he was a boy. Some fancy, rare, exotic creature, whose breeding and pedigree Odin had praised endlessly from the moment it was delivered to their home. That had not interested Thor, of course. All that mattered to him was that he finally had a pet of his own to play with.

Unfortunately, whether due to birth or previous handling, the dog had proved to be less than affectionate. In fact, it had sequestered itself at every opportunity, regarding everyone who approached it warily, as though it expected mistreatment. It was a good dog, Thor had insisted to his father. Just very sad.......

"Why’re you just standing there?”

Loki’s voice broke in and pulled Thor back to the garden. He was staring at Thor nervously, his face tinted blue by the string of fairy-lights stretched across the lawn.

Thor refocused, and offered him a warm smile.

"Sorry. I’m too drunk. I just got this random weird memory of a dog I had when I was a kid…”

Loki sighed, and a weary resignation spread across his face.

"Is this some pity-me, nice guy play about a dead dog?”

"Oh no. It didn’t die.” Thor clarified immediately. “My Dad gave it away ‘cause it had too many problems and he said it wasn’t worth the trouble to try and fix them. Said it was a waste of time, and I’d only be disappointed.”

He paused, considered his own words, and added apologetically.

“So not a nice guy story at all. I was a bad guy there, if anything.”

"Sounds like it was your dad that was the bad guy?” Loki suggested, swivelling his slender body around so that he could see Thor more clearly.

"Maybe, I guess…?” Thor said, thoughtfully. And then sadness crept back into his voice. “He was a good dog. He wasn’t aggressive, not really. Just scared. I could’ve helped him, if we’d kept him. I really liked him, even if he was difficult.”

Loki was watching him closely, as though trying to read his face, to see if anything was hiding there. After a moment or so he spoke softly.

"What was he called? Your dog?”

"Little Brother.” Thor blushed. “I was kinda lonely as a kid.”

Loki’s face opened in a smile.

"You mean you were lucky. I’d love to be an only child.” And in answer to Thor’s questioning look. “Two brothers, both twats. You can have them if you like.”

"Younger?”

"No. I’m the youngest.”

Thor shook his head.

"Never mind then. An older brother wouldn’t suit me.”

Loki continued to smile, and Thor took the risk of adding, in a carefully jokey tone.

"Do you think they’d let me have you?”

Loki’s smile stayed in place. Even better, a little laugh joined it.

"Let you? They’d probably pay you to take me off their hands.” He made a comical face at Thor. “Actually no, they wouldn’t. They love money more than they hate me.”

“Perfect! I’ll just pay for you then!”

Thor’s grin faded almost as soon as it appeared, as it dawned on him how open to interpretation this remark was. But it was too late. Loki had already closed up, his face cold.

“I’m not for sale at the moment.” he said tartly.

"Of course you’re not. I didn’t mean… Sorry…”

Thor was too flustered to think of anything helpful to say.

"It’s fine. I’m not bothered.” Loki told him flatly, turning back toward the shadows. He gave a loose, casual shrug. But the muscles of his jaw were tense as he took another swig from the bottle.

“Sorry.” Thor tried again, flailing for words. “That was a dumb thing to say. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. I wasn’t talking about … why would I? It’s not my business. I don’t know anything about it. I just…I'm the problem, not you. I always say the stupidest possible thing. Especially when it really matters that I don’t...”

Loki had turned back around, and was watching Thor with interest as he visibly struggled to make his way through the morass of his thoughts and feelings, determined to reach Loki somehow.

Eventually Thor tailed off, and looked at Loki hopefully. Loki was considering him with curiosity, as though he found something about Thor puzzling. But he was listening. Emboldened, Thor continued.

"I bet if I didn’t like you, I’d accidentally be really charming. Or at least maybe come off as silent and brooding. But instead I’m just babbling on like an idiot. My Dad says it’s his curse; he had to have a son this stupid, to balance out how smart he is…”

“You’d be better off if you spent less time listening to your dad.” Loki interrupted bluntly. “He sounds like he has his own problems. But they don’t have to be yours.”

There was a pause while Thor processed this.

"Yeah, maybe you’re right.” he conceded. “I don’t think he’s as wise as he thinks he is anyway.”

“Me neither.” Loki agreed.

They regarded each other for a moment or two, Thor open and hopeful, and Loki unreadable. And then Loki seemed to reach a decision; he reached out suddenly, hooked thin fingers through the belt-loop of Thor’s jeans, and casually tugged him across the lawn. Thor, twice Loki’s size and who even knew how much stronger, allowed himself to be towed along in the smaller boy’s wake without protest.

Loki drew them into the long, narrow space between the house and the garden fence. Thor allowed himself to be pushed against the brick wall, docile under Loki’s hands. His head tipped back, his eyes closed, the sounds of the party grew yet more distant. It seemed very easy to forget any complications, to let things happen without taking any responsibility, any active part...

Loki’s hands were fumbling with Thor’s flies. Thor opened his eyes and looked down at the top of Loki’s dark head, bowed, and his narrow shoulders, hunched. There was something furtive about his movements, even slightly panicked. He seemed very distant. Thor felt him begin to slide downward, still further away.

“Wait!”

Thor’s hand touched Loki’s neck lightly, the brush of a thumb gently encouraging him to lift his head. He gazed up at Thor, expression a mixture of confusion and fear, seemingly unable to comprehend what Thor could possibly want at this moment. There was something very vulnerable about him.

Thor raised him gently to his feet so that they were face to face, pulled him close. And then he kissed him.

For a moment Loki did not respond, simply letting it happen. And then suddenly he was kissing back furiously, pushing into Thor, fists gripping the cloth of Thor’s shirt as Thor’s big hand pressed into the small of his back. And the two of them were moving against each other, hands and mouths and flesh and warmth, hungry and lonely and desperate in the dark...

Chapter Text

By cutting across the dog field and through a ratty copse of trees, much to the consternation of a particularly fat squirrel that was not expecting its woodland bower to be disturbed by the passing of such a heavy-footed and lumbering force of nature, Thor was able to catch up with Loki just as he rounded the corner of the duck pond on his usual walk homeward.

His emergence onto the path, leaf-strewn and slightly out of breath, was probably a touch inelegant. But he gave himself a quick brush down before jogging after Loki’s slender form, plodding steadily before him under its heavy burden of school accessories and equipment.

Loki inclined his head only very slightly at the sound of Thor’s thunderous approach, and otherwise gave no indication of being interested in his presence. Undaunted, Thor cheerfully manoeuvred himself into Loki’s field of vision, grinning broadly.

“Hey!”

“Hey.”

Thor jogged backwards in front of Loki, in order to maintain eye-contact despite Loki’s apparent unwillingness to slow his walking pace.

“What’re you doing?”

“I’m walking home, Thor.” Loki pointed out, in a somewhat sarcastic tone.

“Me too!”

Thor spun around to walk in tandem with Loki and began to match his pace. Loki looked sceptical.

“You don’t live this way, Thor.”

“Yeah, well...that’s not exactly...there are lots of ways I can walk...” Thor floundered almost immediately in his attempt to save himself, recognising that he was clearly out of his depth. “Do you know where I live?”

“Yes Thor. Everyone knows where you live. It’s hardly possible to be unaware of the ostentatious monstrosity that is Odin’s house.”

Loki made a judgemental face as he hoisted his bulky satchel around on his shoulder, and then re-balanced himself by adjusting his heavy book-bag.

"Oh yeah, I guess not. It is pretty big.” Thor conceded, looking slightly sheepish as he thought of the giant, gilded building.

"It’s the biggest house in town.” Loki informed him, somewhat sharply. And then, since Thor didn’t seem particularly perturbed by that, he added “And the ugliest.”

“I suppose it’s a bit much.” Thor agreed. “To be honest, I try not to look at it. It’s kinda a lot, on the eyes.”

A smile played on Loki’s face.

"Is it true that he has a statue of himself?”

He sounded disbelieving. Thor’s face filled with amusement.

"More than one!” he confessed, laughing.

And then Loki was laughing too, and his face opened up, and his shoulders were shaking. Thor caught the bags as they slipped from his grasp, face glowing with joy at the sight of Loki’s smile. Then their eyes met, and an infectious bout of giggling had them in its hold.

Once they had calmed down, Thor hung both Loki’s bags casually over one broad shoulder and walked beside him as he continued along the path through the park, ducking as they passed beneath an arch of leaves and into a dim, green tunnel.

A little way along the sheltered path, Thor reached his free hand across and let it touch Loki gently. Loki slowed down, and tipped his head in Thor’s direction expectantly. Thor hesitated for a moment, and then spoke.

“Do you have to get home for anything, or…?”

Loki didn’t answer. Instead he looked around, and then stepped through the green wall that surrounded them and into the hidden ground beyond, beckoning Thor to follow.

***

The clearing beyond was secluded, bounded on all sides by thick undergrowth. Thor stood like an obedient pack-pony as Loki disburdened him of his various bags and hung them carefully from a nearby tree. Then he turned back to Thor and gestured abruptly at the small patch of available open ground.

“Sit down.”

Thor looked uncertain.

"It’s a bit muddy.” he pointed out.

“I know.” Loki told him, as he removed his coat and hooked it carefully to a branch. “That’s why I won’t be sitting.” And then he added. “Not on the ground, anyway.”

Thor sat where he had been instructed, his back against a broad trunk, and watched Loki’s smooth movements as he drew off his school blazer and suspended it fastidiously above the dirty ground. Watched his clever, pale fingers as they loosened his school tie and unfastened the top button of his shirt. Watched the graceful sway of his hips as he approached Thor slowly, his head tipped to one side, eyes running across the body laid out before him.

Once he had reached Thor he paused as though considering him. Thor looked up at Loki, his mouth dry, waiting to see what he would do. An almost irresistible desire spread through him to reach out and seize hold of the body before him, so very close. But somehow Thor felt that such a thing would be wrong, that it would not be wanted. And so he waited.

And then, all at once, Loki was on top of him, straddling him. Thor gripped him around his narrow waist, pushing upward into him as Loki pressed back. They moved together rhythmically, Thor nuzzling Loki’s neck, gripping his arse, groaning at the needy, breathy little gasps he made as he pressed his face into Thor’s strong shoulder and clung and clung and clung to him...

***

Loki hid himself behind a tree as he put himself back together, suddenly modest even though he was putting clothes on rather than taking them off. When he emerged, smoothing his black hair back self-consciously, he looked surprised to see Thor still stood in the clearing, waiting patiently.

“I’ll get them.”

Thor spoke as Loki unhooked the bags, staggering back slightly at their weight. He caught them up in one hand and supported Loki with the other until he had steadied himself again.

Loki blinked up at him. For someone who had so recently been in command, he seemed strangely at a loss.

“I’ll carry your bags.” Thor clarified for him. “The rest of the way, I mean. To your house.”

Loki narrowed his eyes suspiciously.

“Why?”

Thor looked confused at being asked.

“They’re too heavy for you.” he said simply, holding the branches aside for Loki so that he could move easily back to the path.

“I carry them every day.” Loki objected immediately, as Thor followed him out of the clearing.

“I know. But if you don’t have to, that’s better, isn’t it?”

They were walking beside each other again now, toward the park gates. Loki still looked unconvinced.

“Don’t you have something better to do?” he insisted.

Thor shook his head.

“No.” he assured Loki. “I don’t have anything else I’d rather be doing than walking home with you.”

Chapter Text

From then on, if Thor came to meet Loki in the park, Loki allowed Thor to walk him home afterwards; carrying any heavy items for him as though they were nothing, and chatting blithely away about whatever came into his head.

At first Loki seemed wary of this undemanding companionship, but in the face of Thor’s undaunted amiability his frosty demeanour began to thaw somewhat. This was a delight for Thor, as his sharp remarks and clever undercutting of received norms were both refreshing and entertaining. Or, as Thor himself would have phrased it, he just, y’know, really liked talking to Loki.

However, never on these walks home did he get as far as Loki’s actual house. He was allowed to accompany him only up to the corner of his road; a row of nondescript terraces in a block of similar streets. There Loki always insisted on reloading himself with his burdens, before nodding goodbye and struggling off along the pavement, unsteady beneath the weight.

Once Thor had asked Loki what harm there was in him coming closer. Loki had narrowed his eyes in the direction of his house and said grimly “I don’t want them talking about you. You’re not their business.” before trudging away from Thor as fast as he was able.

The only thing that Loki never let Thor carry was the leather case which contained his unknown musical instrument. Apparently, it was too expensive to be trusted to Thor’s clumsy hands. Thor appreciated this assessment; he certainly didn’t want to be responsible for damaging anything of value to Loki. However, he remained curious about it.

***

One day Thor found himself in the unusual position of having temporarily run out of things to say. He looked across at Loki’s slim figure walking beside him, dark and smooth and neat as a new pin; it was hard to believe that they had been writhing together in the undergrowth only a few minutes before. And then he looked at the closed case Loki was carrying with such care, its blank outer appearance offering no clues to its contents.

“What is that?”

Loki looked annoyed, and Thor remembered that he tended to dislike being questioned. But then he shrugged and answered.

"A gay fiddle.” His tone was very bitter. “That’s what By calls it, anyway.”

"By?”

"My older brother. Well, younger older, of the two.”

“Oh.” Thor nodded. “What is it really, though?”

"A hardingfele.” Loki told him. “It’s a “culturally significant historical instrument” from Scandinavia. Norway, specifically. It’s one of my scholarships.”

“One of? “

"Yeah. I’ve got loads.” Loki said dismissively. “And grants too. And bursaries. This school is expensive, you know. And I’m only here as long as my dad doesn’t have to pay a penny.”

Thor’s face filled with open concern at this.

"So, it’s all on you then? The cost…”

"Like I said, the scholarships…”

“Which you’ve gotta maintain?” Thor looked quite indignant at this weight on Loki. “Fulfil the criteria or whatever? And the paperwork?”

"Yeah. And the research. Some of them are hard to find out about.”

"What about other stuff? Uniforms and lunches and that?”

Thor was growing increasingly visibly troubled as he considered the matter of educational expenses, something to which he had never given any previous thought.

“There’s a charity for uniforms.” Loki told him, with a mixture of embarrassment and defiance.

"That’s good.” Thor nodded, and then his gaze returned to the fiddle-case. “Aren’t you worried about it getting broken, or stolen, or whatever though? Like what happened with your hat.”

“My hat? Oh yeah, right…no, they’re just idiots. They take my stuff, ‘cause they don’t think it matters. But they wouldn’t damage school property. That’s worth something. They’d get in trouble…”

“What about at home? Your brother, I mean. Sounds like he’s a bit of a dick about it. He wouldn’t mess with it or whatever?”

Thor began to look quite angry at the thought of Loki being disrespected in such a manner.

"Oh no, he’s all talk.” Loki assured him. “And anyway, he wouldn’t do anything to mess with the scholarships and such. Him and my other brother are both waiting for me to get rich and share the wealth with them. It’s basically their life plan. And Dad’s too, to be honest.”

"Get rich how?”

"From going to a fancy school, and having all the “advantages” they haven’t had, or whatever?” Loki shrugged. “I don’t think they’ve thought it through that much.”

Thor rumbled with discontent at this information. Then his gaze turned again to the case.

"Why does he call it a gay fiddle though?”

"You’d know if you saw it.” Loki told him.

Thor continued to look at him questioningly, and he sighed and explained.

“It’s like a specially fancy violin, with extra decorations.”

"Oh.” Thor nodded understanding. “Can I see?”

Loki looked down at the case in his hands uncertainly. And then he looked back up at Thor’s hopeful face.

"I guess.” he said, somewhat reluctantly.

Carrying the case across to a garden wall, he laid it down gently and unclasped it. Thor approached to a respectful distance and leant over his shoulder.

“It’s beautiful!”

And it was. Smooth lines wrapped with delicate carvings, swooping around an ornamented band of ink-dark lines criss-crossing shining pearly inlay, glowing even in the dusky light.

“Yeah, it is, isn’t it?”

Loki whispered soft agreement, stroking its body tenderly with his slender fingers. His face lit up with warmth as he regarded the fiddle, nestled in its velvet bed.

“Can I...?”

Thor reached out only a little way and looked to Loki for permission. After a moment, it was granted with a nod. Thor traced the fiddle’s mysterious markings with a gentleness that few would have thought him to possess.

“All these beautiful patterns…”

"The rosings.” Loki told him.

“Do they mean something?”

“I’ll tell you one day.”

Loki closed the case gently and re-fastened its silver clasps. Thor watched him thoughtfully.

"It’s a shame.” he said suddenly. “That you have to keep something this lovely hidden.”

Loki tipped his head to the side to look up curiously at Thor, like a little blackbird.

"Well, you’ve seen it at least.” he said after a moment. “I don’t care if no one else does. People are all stupid. Except you.”

He skipped away along the pavement. Thor hurriedly re-shouldered his burdens and trotted after him.

"Funny.” he said as he caught up with the thin black figure. “They always say that I’m stupid.

"Well, they would, wouldn’t they?”

“I suppose that makes sense. Although wouldn’t it be them in the right? Or that’s what people would think, anyway. There’s more of them.”

“The majority are never right.” Loki assured him. “They’re just comfortable being wrong together.”

Thor digested this. Then he nodded back at the case.

“Does anyone ever get to hear you play it? I guess your brothers and your dad?”

“Oh no. They don’t let me touch it within their earshot.” Loki looked disgruntled. “No one’s heard me, really. Except for my scholarship supervisor, I guess. I have to play for him, on certain occasions. For legal reasons. They don’t take your word for it when they’re paying out scholarship monies.”

“Do you think I could hear you?”

Loki’s face flickered with uncertainty. He looked away, discomfited.

“Not now.” Thor assured him. “I wouldn’t expect that. But one day, maybe?”

There was a long silence as Loki considered this. And then eventually, slightly reluctantly, he gave a small nod.

"Maybe.”

He continued to walk on in silence. Beside him, Thor beamed.

Chapter Text

The suggestion that Thor should have someone round to the house to keep him company while his parents were away actually came from Odin himself. Frigga agreed immediately, as she always did when her husband spoke, and then flew off on a nervous tangent about who he might invite, although of course it wasn’t her business, not at his age, but she hoped he wouldn’t invite anyone too rowdy... Maybe some of those nice boys he used to hang around with, before he changed schools? Volstagg and the quiet boy and that charming Fandral…

Odin raised his eyes heavenward as she spoke and made a little talky-talky gesture with his hand for the benefit of his son, which was ignored. It had been very clear what kind of company he had intended that Thor should source for himself; female company. And it was very clear also what purpose he had in mind for whichever female should be chosen; the only purpose Odin ever had in mind for females. Well, one of the only two purposes; he certainly wasn’t expecting Thor to marry her.

Neither of Thor’s parents had in mind anyone or anything like Loki. But he was the first and only person Thor thought of. His heart swelled at the prospect of having so much precious time with him; of the two of them being together for more than a few snatched and fumbling moments under a cold sky. Hasty kisses and desperate hands in the park, looking over their shoulders the while in case of discovery, was not enough. Not nearly enough.

And Loki was the only thing on his mind now, as he waited.

At some moments the whole thing seemed impossible; of course, Loki wasn’t going to come. As Thor went back over the moment of the invitation, trying to convince himself that he hadn’t misunderstood the response or made any foolish mistakes, he recognised for the first time the expression Loki had worn when Thor had asked him; a mixture of disbelief and confusion. He remembered his own eagerness as he babbled about the best time to arrive, and which gate to use to enter the property, not pausing long enough to hear any refusals. Why had he not taken longer to reassure Loki, explain things, offer assurances, instead of blundering heedlessly through like a bull in a china shop?

Yet a few seconds later, Thor was filled with certainty; without a doubt Loki would come, he had to. This was a chance for them, one that Loki must see the importance of seizing. Any minute now he would be here, in Thor’s room, in his arms. Of course he would. He had to be.

Finally, it came: a faint tapping on the back door. Thor leapt up, toppling two chairs at once in his eagerness to answer the summons and be reassured by the sight of Loki’s face. Hastily rearranging them, he thundered down the staircase, nervously smoothed his hair in the hallway mirror, panicked that he had taken too long and lost his chance, and fumbled clumsily with the catch of the door. It sprang open and collided with Thor’s foot, nearly slamming shut again in the face of whoever was outside before Thor caught it in horror.

And there was Loki, looking very small in the shadows outside, his beautiful eyes as wide as an owl’s in the darkness.

Thor stepped back and beckoned him inside.

He slipped past Thor and stood nervously at the foot of the stairs, curled small under his long coat, staring at Thor as though waiting for permission to go further into the huge house. Thor had never seen him look so uncertain of himself; there was something childlike and lost about him now that touched Thor’s heart.

Thor led him up to his own room. Or rather, more accurately, his suite of rooms. Loki silently took in the sitting room, the study, the gym area, the private bathroom, and the bedroom beyond. Somehow, he looked even smaller.

Thor offered to take his coat. He tensed, then nodded and slipped the garment off.

Underneath he was wearing a black smock-dress, dark green tights and pointed lace-up black boots. Black beads were wrapped around his pale throat, and dark fingerless gloves ran up his thin arms.

His narrow body quivering with nerves, shoulders hunched, he looked up at Thor defiantly. Thor made a little noise at the sight of him, and he braced at the sound as though preparing to defend himself.

“You look beautiful.” Thor told him. And he smiled as he took in Loki, standing before him.

Loki stared at him as though unprepared to respond. Thor looked him up and down, absorbing the details.

“I like your witch boots.”

“Thanks.” Loki said hesitantly.

And then, once he realised that no mocking follow-up was going to be forthcoming, he smiled too.

For a moment they stood face-to-face with each other, grinning like fond fools. And then Thor realised what a terrible job he was doing of hosting, and ushered Loki over to the couch area. It was set up for the night, seating pointed at the huge screen on the wall, bowls and boxes of various snacks laid out on a low table, a nearby fridge loaded with fizzy drinks and beers. Loki regarded the arrangements with puzzlement.

"I thought we could watch a film.” Thor clarified.

“Why?” Loki asked, in genuine confusion. And then a look of weary disgust spread over his face, and he sighed. “Oh. A porn film?”

“No!” Thor assured him hastily, distressed by the misunderstanding. “I’m not Tony Stark! Just a normal film.”

"Which one?”

Loki still looked sceptical. Thor pressed the remote into his hand.

“I don’t mind. Anything you want, Loki.”

***

They watched something comfortable, that they had both seen before. Thor chatted easily, and Loki listened and commented and was persuaded to sample the snacks. Beers were drunk. At some point Thor put an arm around Loki; it felt quite natural.

Eventually Loki ended up watching the film whilst sprawling across Thor’s chest, one strong arm placed protectively across his body, like a barrier against the rest of the world. There was something very safe about its warmth and weight; despite himself, Loki began to let himself relax, just a little...

Once the film was finished, Loki extracted himself with a touch of reluctance from Thor’s arms and made his way to the somewhat flashy bathroom.

On his way back, padding across the thick carpet, he noticed a bowl sitting out on the side, filled with loose, casually crumpled bank notes. He eyed it with a mixture of covetousness and concern.

Thor, coming back to the couches with two newly opened beers, saw the direction of Loki’s gaze.

“Do you want some?” he asked casually, as he set the bottles down on their coasters and sank down into the piles of cushions.

“What do I have to do for it?”

The mood of the room had abruptly changed. Loki was immediately wary, stepping away from Thor as though to protect himself. Thor’s heart sank at his own lack of tact.

“Nothing. I just thought you might want some money for a taxi home tomorrow. Or for whatever. It’s not my business.” He winced at his clumsiness. “Sorry. That was probably rude of me. I just sorta speak before I think, sometimes. And I forget how delicate an issue money is.”

“I suppose you can afford to.”

"But you can’t, right?”

Loki shrugged and folded himself back against the wall. Thor waded on, trying to undo his missteps.

“Which is nothing to be ashamed of. It’s just how things are. I mean, not that they should be that way, but...well, obviously you have all those scholarships and such...”

Loki regarded Thor expressionlessly, offering him no help as he continued to flounder.

“I mean...you’re not that well off, and... I guess that’s why you let people pay you to…?”

Thor wanted to bite back his words as soon as he saw the look on Loki’s face. A blush spread across his pale skin, and his eyes flashed with anger and hurt.

"That’s not why I do it.” he said bitterly. “Not really, anyway. It’s not how you think. And I haven’t asked you for any money, have I? After that first time, I mean.”

“No. But that’s because you want to do it, right?” Thor was suddenly filled with fear. “That’s it, isn’t it? Because I don’t want you to do anything unless you want to do it, Loki!”

“Oh, right, sure!” Loki scoffed, rolling his eyes. “And if I said that I wasn’t in the mood, after you wasting your whole Saturday night on me, you wouldn’t be pissed off?”

His voice was very hard now, different from how he had sounded when Thor had held him. It had a brittleness to it, as though Loki might crack any moment.

Regret sank down in Thor’s stomach as he saw Loki pulling away from him. He stepped forward, held out a hand pleadingly.

"I haven’t wasted my night. I had a good time. I thought you did too, Loki?”

Loki looked at Thor’s hopeful face and softened somewhat.

“I never said I didn’t.” he admitted, somewhat grudgingly. And then, before Thor looked too pleased, he hastily continued. “But still, if I said I wasn’t in the mood would you really just pop me in a cab and wave me off, and go off to bed happy as Larry?”

“I’d be sad that you left, but yeah.” Thor assured him, looking nevertheless somewhat dejected at the prospect. And then he brightened. “Unless you slept here anyway? You can stay the night either way, whatever happens. Then I could still have your company in the morning.”

Loki stared at him, incredulous.

"Are you serious?”

"Sure I am. It’s up to you. I’m just glad you came.”

Thor smiled broadly at him. Despite Loki’s best efforts, he could detect no sign of falsity in that golden countenance. And so he conceded and returned to the couch, accepting a beer from Thor’s outstretched hand.

He slid back among the plump cushions, watching Thor, his expression guarded. Thor sat quietly and gave him space to find whatever it was he needed to say.

Loki took his time, looking down at his own thin fingers fidgeting with the damp label on the beer bottle. After a while he began to talk.

“I don’t do it for the money.”

He seemed to be struggling to get the words out, still not looking Thor in the eyes.

“I mean, maybe I do, but that’s not why I started doing it, anyway…”

"It’s not?”

"No. It’s…”

Loki took a deep breath, reached for his words, dragged them out from somewhere inside himself and threw them down in front of Thor, a great jumbled mess.

“There was this boy. In an older year. He’s left now, but this was a while back. And I liked him. I hadn’t really been with anyone before, any boys at least, but I liked him and I could tell he liked me. He kept looking at me, you know…Anyway, we started this thing. In secret, obviously. And I used to meet him there sometimes. And then…and then… then this one time...”

He took a swig of beer with an unsteady hand, swallowed, closed his eyes for a moment, continued.

“This one time he brought his friend…”

His voice wobbled. He looked down at the bottle in his hands.

“And…I mean…I wasn’t planning to... I was serious about him, you know? As serious as a kid can be, anyway. But he made it seem like it was normal, like it was expected. And I didn’t wanna seem, like, uncool or childish or whatever. So I…I guess I…I… “

He was squirming now, like he was trying to dredge up the words from somewhere and force them out.

“I did it to him and let his friend watch.”

He finally raised his head and looked at Thor fearfully.

Thor was listening, his face free of judgement. He nodded to show that he had heard what Loki was saying. Emboldened by this, Loki continued.

"Well, later I was upset about it, but he said that I was being a baby and making him feel embarrassed about it, which wasn’t nice of me. So I ended up apologising. And then the next thing was that he said that the friend liked me, and he thought I was really sexy and it looked like I was really good at...it, and the friend wondered if I would do it for him. And I didn’t like that, but he said that it wouldn’t mean anything, like with me and him. It was just a bit of fun. And he went on and on, saying that I was a prude, and uptight, and none of his ex-girlfriends had had a problem with it. And I got scared that he was gonna leave me, and I said okay….”

He blinked, and refocused on Thor’s steady presence.

“Sorry, I’ve been talking for ages…”

“It’s okay. I’m listening. You’re not done…”

"No, well, I pretty much am. Except that afterwards he showed me some money, and said the friend had left it ‘cause I did such a good job.” Loki blushed furiously. “Well, you know what I mean. And that felt weird, but it was too late to do anything about it, so…”

He shrugged, tried to affect nonchalance. But his voice sped up as he continued, betraying his agitation.

“And then the next thing was that the friend had told some other friends about how good I was, and now they wanted to try. And I didn’t like that at all; everyone talking about me like that. But he said that was stupid, because they were complimenting me, and also that he liked to be with someone everyone else wanted. It turned him on, or whatever. Plus they were gonna pay. And I said I wasn’t sure I wanted to be paid, but he said he didn’t like the idea of me giving it away free to anyone, so…”

By now Loki looked profoundly miserable. A note of angry pleading appeared in his voice.

“And it wasn’t like I didn’t need the money. He knew that. I’m not rich like him and you and everyone!”

Thor nodded understanding.

“So I just ended up doing it. And then word got round. And then he left school and went off to Uni somewhere, and he doesn’t even speak to me anymore, and I’m stuck here with everyone knowing what I’ll do, and for how much… “

A catch in his throat choked his words, and he subsided and sank his head down in silence, waiting for Thor to respond.

After a moment Thor spoke slowly.

“I don’t like that.” he said, a disapproving grumble in his voice.

Loki tensed. Thor shook his head.

“I don’t like the way he treated you. He doesn’t sound like a nice guy at all.”

Loki looked up in surprise.

“It doesn’t seem like he was very respectful of you.” Thor continued. “Sorry to be judgey, I know he meant a lot to you, but…”

“It’s fine, Thor. I don’t mind you judging him. He was a dick.”

Loki laughed suddenly, a strained sound.

"Agreed.” Thor nodded. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, it doesn’t matter. It was ages ago.”

Loki tried once again to appear indifferent, with limited success. Thor looked at him worriedly.

"Can I give you a hug again?” he asked hopefully. “It was nice before.”

There was a moment’s pause as Loki tried to decide if there was some hidden motive or meaning behind Thor’s apparent simplicity, or perhaps some type of mockery? To his own surprise, he could detect nothing but sincerity.

"Yeah, sure.” he conceded, returning to the couch and Thor’s arms.

Thor patted him gently as he settled into position. He laid his head against Thor’s chest and sighed.

“I dunno why I just told you all that.”

Thor tapped his beer bottle and Loki laughed, this time more freely.

“It’s not just that.” he objected. “I don’t normally bare my soul after a couple of beers...”

"Well, everyone needs someone to talk to.” Thor suggested. “And I guess if you’ve been without someone for a while, it all comes out at once when you finally find them.”

Loki opened his mouth to make some sarcastic objection, but was forestalled by Thor continuing blithely.

“I know that’s how it is for me, anyway. That’s why I’m so lucky to have found you.”

"You are?” Loki stared up at his beaming face.

“Definitely.” Thor said with absolute sincerity, looking adoringly down at Loki

"It’s because of you.” Loki said then. “I wouldn’t have told anyone else that. But there’s something about you.”

A little wrinkle appeared on his brow as he contemplated Thor, who sat through the examination placidly, apparently happy to have Loki assessing him. Eventually Loki concluded his appraisal and sank back into Thor’s arms.

"Somehow your naïveté is frighteningly disarming.”

A hint of unhappiness came to Thor’s face.

“Does that mean that I’m stupid?”

“Not at all. I don’t talk to stupid people.”

"You don’t talk to anyone.”

"That’s what I just said.”

Thor laughed. Loki’s mean little remarks never failed to please him.

“I just meant that you’re unusually honest.” Loki explained to him. “You might truly, actually, say what you’re thinking. It’s very rare. And quite charming.”

“I don’t see why it would be rare. Why wouldn’t you say what you think?” Thor puzzled, one strong hand stroking Loki gently as he spoke. “What’s the point of lying to everyone, and to yourself? That way no one ends up happy.”

"You might end up unhappy anyway.” Loki suggested.

“But at least if I say what I think, I’ll know I’ve tried. Better that than losing everything because I was a coward.”

Thor spoke in the manner of someone who was only discovering his thoughts as he vocalised them. He looked down at Loki wonderingly, as though the person in his arms was somehow responsible for opening his eyes to the truth of his own feelings.

Loki looked back at him, his face showing cautious hopefulness. After a moment, Thor lowered his head and touched his lips to Loki’s pale forehead. Loki squeezed Thor’s hand with his own smaller one, almost reflexively.

“Shall I put another film on?” Thor suggested gently.

"It’s pretty late.”

“Yeah. But I don’t wanna go to bed right now. Do you?”

"No.” Loki smiled and relaxed into Thor’s arms. “You’re right. Pick something for us.”

***

That night, Thor slept with Loki in his arms. It was the strangest thing, but something about it felt right to him, as though Loki was a piece of him that had been missing all his life and was now finally restored to its proper place; at the core of Thor’s being, as Thor was the protective barrier wrapped around Loki. As Thor held him, curled as closely around his body as if they were one creature, a hand resting protectively on his stomach, face buried in his soft, dark hair, he experienced something that he now realised happened very rarely. For the first time in a long time, he found himself feeling a deep, true happiness.

Did Loki feel the same way? It seemed to Thor that he simply must. He and Loki were so clearly intertwined that it was surely impossible that they didn’t share this knowledge, this understanding? But he didn’t know any words he could use to ask. And so he held Loki tightly, and he hoped.

Chapter Text

It was a bad day. Some apparently important people who apparently ran the school had co-opted the library in order to host the visit of some other apparently important people who apparently ran other schools. And so Loki, displaced, was forced to spend the lunch break hunched over on a bench in the courtyard, trying as best he could to ignore the other students and read.

Despite his efforts to remain aloof and apart, he was unable to ignore the arrival of Thor. That was beyond anyone’s capabilities. Heads turned as he strode into view, towering over the crowd, blonde hair fluttering in the breeze, muscles rippling in a manner so overt as to be frankly ridiculous.

Loki considered Thor as he passed among the people, watching his movements with detached interest. People were pretty stupid, he thought. They followed the usual few, standard patterns in expected ways, and could generally be relied upon to do the most predictable thing in any given circumstance. By and large, they were rather boring. That was partly why Loki liked so few of them. Other reasons included the facts that in his experiences they were generally cruel, and also that none of them ever seemed to like him.

But Thor was different. There was something very odd about him. It had taken Loki a while to identify, but after consideration he decided it was this: Thor did not follow the rules.

Not in an embarrassing, showy, bad-boy way, that is. That wouldn’t have made him stand out at all; any number of people put on that act with varying degrees of success. No, the thing with Thor was that he didn’t seem to realise that there were rules, and that he was breaking them with impunity. And for some reason that wasn’t infuriating, as it should be. Instead it was kind of endearing.

No, more than endearing. Loki should be honest with himself about it; that was the only way to keep himself safe, and stay alert to potential danger. The fact was that there was some part of him that was drawn to some part of Thor. And perhaps the same was true in reverse, unless that was too foolish a hope? Maybe it was born of an arrogance in Loki, or simply a pathetic desire to mean as much to Thor as Thor did to him.

A desire fraught with risk; because Thor was a force of nature. He was like a storm, passing through and stirring up the dry dusts of the arid plain that was Loki. But what happened when the storm had dissipated, and Loki was left alone and ravaged? Would it not be safer to build up defences against it, and by avoiding its touch also avoid any damage? To stay barren, feel nothing? Why would he willingly open himself up to pain?

Loki pulled himself out of the spiral, refocused, and looked again for Thor. And unexpectedly, here he was. Not passing by at an unreachable distance but rather making his way across the flagstones and unhesitatingly sitting down next to Loki as though that was a completely normal thing to do, a broad smile on his face, oblivious to the whispers and nudges. It was as though he was so happy to see Loki that he didn’t hear what was being said around him.

“Hey!” he beamed, already unloading his lunch from his backpack.

“What’re you doing?”

“Sitting next to you for lunch.” Thor told him cheerfully, continuing to lay out a ridiculous amount of food on the table before him.

“Where everyone can see?”

Thor looked around, as though it had just dawned on him that other people were present.

“Yeah, I guess.” And then something occurred to him, and he added hurriedly. “Do you mind?”

“Do I mind?” Loki blinked. “No, Thor. It’s fine with me.”

“Cool.”

Thor opened a lunchbox and extracted a stupidly large mound of sandwiches.

“Do you really need that many?”

“No, it’s ridiculous.” Thor held one of the packets out to Loki. “Do you want some?”

“I’m not taking your lunch, Thor.” Loki said immediately.

“Come on!” Thor wiggled the packet. “Have you seen how much I’ve got? It’s enough for three normal people!”

“But you’re not normal people. You’re some kind of man-mountain"

“That’s the problem.” Thor wiggled the packet harder, until Loki took it from him to end the situation. “I mean, I do eat like a pig, yeah. Amount-wise, not the slop…”

“Swill...”

“Oh, right, yeah. But Mum knows I eat a lot, so she makes me like…tonnes of food. Even I don’t need a stack of sandwiches this big.”

“What’s on them?”

“Cheese and tomato.”

“Oh.”

Loki unwrapped the greaseproof paper carefully. Thor meanwhile ripped his own packet open and began to rapidly consume the first of his sandwiches. Loki watched him eat it, then another, and then tear apart another pack and begin work on its contents, very much in the manner of someone who was not considering that they were being watched.

“Your mum makes your lunch then?” Loki asked as he opened his sandwich up and delicately removed the slices of tomato.

“I know. Dad’s always telling her to let the housekeeper do it, but she likes to do it herself…”

“No one expects you to make your own lunch?”

“Well, yeah, I said I would for a bit ‘cause I felt bad on Mum. But then I got lazy, and I just ended up going out for burgers with Tony and the boys every day. And Mum said it wasn’t good for me, so…” He gestured at his neatly packaged lunch. “And also, I don’t think she likes Tony much. She’d probably rather I ate lunch with someone else. But I am now, so I guess she’ll be happy.”

“Maybe. I’m probably not the type of person she was thinking of.”

“You’re not any type of person. You’re just Loki.” Thor smiled at him. “Hey, can I have your tomatoes if you’re not eating them?”

“Sure.” Loki watched Thor load the slices into his next sandwich. “How come she doesn’t like Tony?”

“I dunno. I don’t think she likes the Starks in general to be honest.” Thor consumed the sandwich in two bites as he considered the matter. “She liked my old friends.”

“What happened with them?”

“Oh, nothing. We’re still friends, I guess. I just don’t see them as much since I moved schools.” Thor looked sheepish. “I suppose I’m a bit lazy, really. I still like them; but I don’t make the effort to keep in touch. I just hang around with Tony and everyone ‘cause it’s easy, and just go along with whatever they’re doing. Let him steer or whatever.”

He shrugged, looking a bit embarrassed at the admission.

"I can see why your Mum isn’t that keen on Tony.” Loki agreed.

Thor did not respond for a while, distracted thinking about what he had just said.

"Loki?” he asked, suddenly worried. “Do you think I’m kinda weak? Y’know, like a weak character?”

"Why would you ask me that?”

“‘Cause you’re really smart, and you know me.” Thor told him, as though it was obvious. “Probably better than most people. And I like hearing what you think.”

“Oh.”

Loki paused, taken aback by the open request to analyse Thor’s character to his face. Thor waited patiently until he answered.

“No, I don’t think you’ve got a weak character.” he said eventually. “I think you’re actually braver than most people in this school. But I also think that the stuff you get praised for isn’t really the stuff that’s good about you. Which I guess must be confusing. I think people see you as a different sort of person than you are.”

"They do?”

Thor was very serious, listening intently to everything Loki said as though great truths were being revealed to him.

"Yeah. All that warrior sportsman super stud stuff, you know. That’s what people think you’re best at. Being a big, strong hero type. But I think that’s stupid. And I think it limits you. You should ignore it, and hold on to the things about you that are really worth something.”

"Like what?” Thor leant forward, staring into Loki’s eyes, intent on giving his advice full attention.

“That you’re kind. And honest. And you think for yourself.”

"I do?” Thor was delighted. “Thanks Loki! Nobody’s ever said that about me before. None of that stuff.”

"I’m not being nice.” Loki told him, taking a prim little bite of his sandwich. “I’m lecturing you if anything. About how you could be less awful.”

"I dunno.” Thor smiled at him, his eyes shining. “I think you were being a little bit nice. Secretly. But don’t worry, I won’t tell.”

“Who would you tell?”

“Exactly.” Thor nodded. “There isn’t anyone else who matters anyway. Only me and you.”

And he smiled at Loki as though there was nobody else there. As though it was just the two of them, alone together in the crowd.

Chapter Text

They were seen together often in school now. Thor sometimes walked Loki between classrooms, carrying his books and carving a path for him through the crowded corridors. They regularly met at the school gates at home time and left the grounds together in full view of everyone. If Loki wished to visit the library at the end of the day Thor waited for him until he was ready to leave, sitting patiently in one of the reading chairs and watching as Loki browsed the shelves at his leisure and made his selections.

They even ate lunch together when Loki wasn’t busy with his books, sitting on the leafy, shaded side of the courtyard where the popular students usually gathered, too wrapped up in each other to pay much attention to the whispers and stares and nudges.

Now and again Stark and his group would pass by and make some remark or other. And Thor would look up and smile vaguely at them, and nod politely, only half-listening, before returning to his conversation with Loki as though nothing that anyone else said mattered to him. And the boys had no choice but to pass on, pretending indifference, as though they had not been publicly slighted in favour of a nobody. Less than a nobody. Someone with a reputation.

***

Thor left the changing rooms in a hurry, still clammy from the shower, damp hair tucked behind his ears. He was anxious not to keep Loki waiting. Granted he was probably tucked up safely in a reading cubicle and unaware of the time, but still, Thor would rather be with him as soon as possible.

He was charging along the normally empty corridor, head down as he shoved his crumpled rugby gear unceremoniously into his kit bag, looking neither left nor right, when Tony Stark hove into view.

Thor pulled up short, since his path out of the PE block was obstructed. Tony, leaning against the wall in a manner so showily casual as to come back around to looking extremely deliberate and studied, lowered his unnecessary sunglasses and gave Thor a nod.

"Hey, Goldilocks! Where’ve you been?”

"Around.”

"Yeah, I heard.” Tony said in a meaningful tone, raising an eyebrow.

He paused then as if expecting some kind of excuse, or even apology, to be offered. Thor looked over him impatiently, at the green exit sign which was so frustratingly close.

Seeing that Thor was not going to offer anything in response, Stark prompted further.

"So, you’re with Pretty Woman now?”

Thor’s eyes returned to Tony.

“Loki?” he said, in a pleasant and unthreatened voice. “Yeah, I am.”

And he continued to meet Tony’s eyes, face blank.

"Seems like he’s keeping you pretty busy?”

The suggestive tone in which this was spoken, and the accompanying mocking leer, made the meaning behind this remark very clear. Thor nonetheless ignored such insinuations entirely.

"He’s good company.” he said mildly, eyeing the door again.

"Is that right?” Stark adjusted his position and lowered his dark glasses again so that he could look Thor in the eye. “And is he still keeping people company out back behind the old science block?”

Thor’s jaw tightened.

"Why don’t you ask him? That’s his business?” he suggested coldly.

"Maybe I’ll do that, yeah.” Tony patted down his pockets. “Hang on though, better make sure I’ve got some cash on me.”

Thor’s hands tightened into fists. Tony smiled at him in a friendly manner.

“I suppose you don’t have to worry about that though.” he said. “You’re probably getting freebies. Not sure it’s worth the social embarrassment myself, but it’s your call. And hey, maybe he even does extras, if you agree to be seen with him? To make it worth your while...?”

The last word was cut off somewhat by Thor slamming Tony against the wall, and thereby forcing most of the air out of his lungs. Thor held him there, a few inches off the ground, his head jammed against a corkboard and out-of-date notices fluttering around him.

“Easy, big guy.” Stark put a hand to Thor’s chest in warning. “Best put me down, if you don’t wanna be on report. Your daddy wouldn't be too pleased about that, right?”

For a moment Thor only stared at him, breathing heavily. Then, slowly, he lowered Tony and stood back.

“There you go.”

Tony straightened his jacket, with a flashy little flick of the collar.

“Might be a good plan to learn to keep your temper, hey Odinson?”

“Might be a good plan to mind your fucking business, Stark!”

Thor pushed Tony out of his way against the noticeboard, stormed down the corridor, wrenched open the door. And then, on the threshold, he paused and yelled back over his shoulder.

“And update your fucking references! Pretty Woman!? You sound like fucking Howard!”

***

It was raining today and so Thor took Loki to lunch in the Quad, a courtyard lined with open, rooved corridors running along all four sides. They sat together on a stone bench tucked in between two pillars and overlooking the central area and its great tree, watching the rain fall onto the cobblestones.

After a while Loki set down his plain cheese sandwich carefully on the sheet of greaseproof paper that was protecting his lap.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

Thor nodded, then shrugged, then sighed.

“I want to ask you something, but I think it’s gonna upset you and I don’t want that.”

“Okay.” Loki turned, arranged himself in expectation. “You can either leave it or ask. And now you’ve mentioned it, I’m not gonna let you leave it. So go on. I’ll prepare myself for an emotional blow.”

He made a very serious face.

“It’s not a joke, Loki.” Thor objected.

“So you say, but you’re the one laughing.”

“Which was your fault!”

Thor was indeed laughing. But then his face changed as he remembered the question, and he hurried to get it over with.

“I wanted to ask...about...if you’re still doing it. Y’know, going back there, with … whoever...”

“With whoever?” Loki repeated.

Thor flinched.

“I didn’t mean anything bad. I just didn’t know how to say it.”

A lot of things passed rapidly over Loki’s face; a mix of anger and sadness and fear and disgust. But they faded almost as soon as they appeared and resolved themselves into something more like resignation. As he reined in these emotions and steadied himself, he was looking all the while at Thor’s open, honest face.

He took a deep breath, fingers folding and unfolding the corner of the paper spread across his knees.

“No.” he told Thor. “I stopped.”

"Why?”

"I thought you wouldn’t like it.” Loki said. And then, after a moment. “Why’re you mad? You don’t want me doing that, do you?”

A note of fear crept back into his voice.

"I’m not mad, just…”

Thor took a deep breath, closed his eyes to think. Loki waited.

“No. I don’t want you doing it.” Thor said finally. “But I don’t want you stopping just because you’re scared of me.”

He looked crushed at the thought. Loki frowned in confusion.

"I’m not scared of you. Why would I be scared of you?”

"Are you sure?” Thor took one of Loki’s hands in his own, held it tight. “If I ever scared you, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you? I wouldn’t be mad.”

The frown lines on Loki’s forehead deepened.

“Where’s this coming from?”

Thor lowered his head. His voice was filled with shame.

"I got violent with Tony Stark before.” he confessed, mortified.

"Really? Did you mess him up?”

Loki sat forward eagerly.

"No, it was only a shove…”

"Who cares then?” Loki made a little moue of dismissal, but then after consideration continued. “In fact, well done. Who hasn’t wanted to strangle Tony Stark?”

He laughed. But Thor did not join in, continued to hang his head.

"What’s up?”

"I’m worried about my temper.” Thor said quietly. “I don’t wanna be like Odin.”

Loki considered Thor for a moment. Then he squeezed Thor’s fingers comfortingly.

“You’re not like him.”

“Why not?” Thor looked up hopefully into Loki’s eyes.

“Because you’re worried about it.” Loki told him. “Because you don't want to be. Because you try to be good. And because you know what doing the wrong thing looks like.”

And Thor smiled, because he believed Loki. And seeing his trust, Loki smiled too.

“Just ignore Stark.” he told Thor. “He’s got his own problems. Plus, he’s been in a terrible mood all week. He’s just taking whatever’s pissed him off out on you.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” Thor agreed. “He’s just upset because of that whole thing he had going on with that sexy Russian gymnast, you know, Natalya or whoever, that he’s been going on about...”

“Natasha.” Loki nodded eagerly. “Yeah, the whole school’s sick of him going on about it. Has it gone tits up? God, I hope so!”

“Even worse.” Thor said, with some satisfaction. “It turned out that he never had anything going with her at all. It was this big scam. It all came out at Clint’s party. Did you not hear?”

Loki shook his head.

“Oh. Well, I guess he’s tryna keep it quiet, amongst friends only.”

Thor returned to his sandwich. Loki sank back disappointed.

Thor swallowed his mouthful of bread and cheese and tomato.

“Don’t worry though, I saw it all. If you’re interested in hearing about it, that is?”

“Oh yes!” Loki grinned and sat forward again, all eagerness. “I’m very interested indeed. Especially if it makes Tony Stark look ridiculous.”

“Oh, it definitely does.”

“Perfect.” Loki’s grin grew. “But just so as you know, if you tell me this now, the whole school is going to know by the end of the day. I’ll make sure of it.”

“I hope you do.” Thor told him.

And they smiled at each other. It was good to be on the same side.

Chapter Text

There was a chill growing; the leaves of their little bower in the park rustled and whispered in the evening breeze.

Thor was lying on his back, spread out on one of the blankets they had brought. One arm held Loki, sprawled half next to and half on top of him, his face hidden in Thor’s chest. Thor’s fingers moved gently through his hair, stroking him as they both recovered their breath and moved slowly back to reality, and nearer to their moment of parting.

“Loki?”

“Mmm?”

He tipped his head back at the sound of his name, his eyes shining, pupils wide. Thor smiled down, kissed his forehead.

“You like me, right?”

A little shudder ran through Loki, as Thor’s fingers brushed his neck. For a moment he closed his eyes. Then, hearing Thor’s question, he opened them again and focused on the earnest face regarding him.

"What?”

Thor’s face was reddening in embarrassment.

"I said, you like me, right?” he repeated.

Loki considered him; his expression of worry, his eyes nevertheless wide and hopeful. His question was one which usually led to unpleasant places, in Loki’s experience. It was tempting not to answer at all, to get up and leave before things had a chance to go wrong. An answer in the affirmative would only open the door for Loki to be asked for something; some action with which to prove his affection, some favour he was unwilling to give, but which he would be judged for withholding.

But there was nothing on Thor’s face to support this; no sign of deception or ulterior motives. All Loki saw there was pure honesty.

And so he sighed and replied with some reluctance, and a note of irritation.

"Of course I like you, Thor. Why wouldn’t I? Look at you! You’re perfect.”

He gestured to indicate Thor’s sculpted body, his flaxen hair, his glorious, golden face that so clearly displayed his open personality, so easy for everyone to love.

And Thor glowed back as he looked at Loki’s skinny limbs, his inky hair, his pinched little face with its sour, jealous, disagreeable expression.

“No, that’s what you are. Perfect.”

"You really mean that, don’t you?” Loki said in wonder.

“Of course I do. Why would I say it if I didn’t mean it?”

Two little vertical frown lines creased Loki’s brow as he stared at Thor, trying in vain to puzzle out his secret purposes, the truth behind his words, the trick he was playing. But this was an old habit, which did not apply to Thor. With Thor, there was no trick.

He reached out, traced Thor’s skin softly with cold fingers.

"Has anyone ever told you that they can’t believe you’re real?”

Thor blushed again.

"I guess a couple of girls have said something like that. But I’m not even that good looking, not really. I mean, no more than loads of other guys. They were just flattering me…”

"See, that’s what I mean.” Loki laughed. “Not that you’re good looking, although obviously you are. You’re magnificent.”

He patted Thor on the neck affectionately. Thor shone with unabashed pride at Loki’s praise.

"What I’m talking about is how you just answered, honestly, without thinking about it. You didn’t worry about how it would make you look, or prevaricate ‘cause it might be embarrassing or make you seem arrogant. You just … answered me. That’s all.”

Thor was listening carefully to this.

"Is that so unusual?” he asked.

"Not once or twice, perhaps.” Lok admitted. “But it’s not just an occasional thing with you. It’s your natural choice. To be honest with me.”

"But why wouldn’t I, Loki?” Thor said, quite simply “I don’t want to lie to you. It wouldn’t feel right.”

Loki shook his head, and laughed a bit, and held on to Thor a little more tightly. And then he sighed.

“We’d better go. It’s getting late.”

He looked up through the web of branches to the grey sky.

Thor looked too. And then he looked instead at Loki.

“Wait a minute. I got you something...”

He sat up, began to search his trouser pockets.

“Here.”

Thor passed the small box over awkwardly, already making excuses.

“It’s nothing big. I just saw it, and thought...”

Inside the box, all curled up, was a silver chain holding a pendant in the shape of the moon, white and milky and opalescent, glowing through the dusk.

Loki held the box in his hand, stared down at the contents, said nothing.

“You’re always drawing moons on things, when you’re doodling or whatever.” Thor explained, trying worriedly to read Loki’s profile. “So I thought you might, y’know, like it…?”

Loki’s head stayed down. After a moment he spoke, quietly.

“Was it a test?”

“What?

“Was it a test?” Loki asked again. “Earlier? When you asked if I like you? Would you not have given it to me, if I’d said no? Or not been convincing enough?”

“What?” Thor said again, befuddled. “No. It’s not like that, Loki. It’s for you. It’s yours. I just wanted to give you it, ‘cause I though it seemed like you should have it…”

He tailed off, worried.

“Do you not like it?”

Loki touched the stone very lightly with one finger.

"Yes. I like it.”

For a second he seemed to be struggling to speak. And then he managed one halting word.

"S…sorry.”

“For what?”

Thor put a hand to the back of Loki’s neck, the stroke of one finger telling him that he was safe.

"For not being grateful enough, or whatever.” Loki hung his head lower. “I’m not…I’m not used to getting gifts.”

“What, never?” Thor laughed. “Christmas must be shit at your house!”

“Yeah, it is.” Loki said flatly.

"Oh. Really? Sorry.”

Loki shrugged, lifted the necklace, unclasped it.

“Do you actually not get presents?” Thor asked him.

“No.” Loki confirmed, as he fastened the chain around his neck. “Dad doesn’t believe in it. He says it’s decadent.”

His mouth tightened, and his eyes were damp. He touched the moon pendant as though for comfort.

“He thinks everything’s decadent. Fun, beauty, love…it’s like living with a puritan. Except without the stupid outfit…”

He began to laugh through his tears, his face strained. Thor put an arm around him.

“I’m sorry, Lo. It sounds shit.”

"It is.” Loki said, the words muffled by the comforing bulk of Thor’s chest. “And I’m not crying.”

“Yes you are. It’s fine.” Thor placed a kiss on top of the dark head pressed against him. “I cry all the time.”

"No you don’t.”

"Yeah I do. Just not at school, in front of the guys.”

Thor stroked along Loki’s side. Loki sank into him, letting Thor envelop him in warmth and safety.

“One time last year” Thor began. “I started crying ’cause I couldn’t finish a mission in this shit game I was playing, just a crappy basic shooter I wasn’t even arsed about, and I was so loud Mum heard me. It was mortifying.”

"What did she do?”

"She said that it was nothing to be ashamed of, and everyone gets emotional sometimes. And that hormones are a bitch. And then she made hot chocolate, and we watched the soaps together.”

He smiled down at Loki. Loki smiled back.

"She sounds nice.”

"She is.”

"Like a mum on TV.”

Thor considered this, still touching his lips to Loki’s hair.

"What’s your mum like?” he asked carefully.

"I haven’t got one.”

"Oh.”

Thor’s lips moved to Loki’s temple, arms still wrapped comfortingly around his body.

“Do you wanna meet mine?”

Loki pulled away, twisted around to look at him properly.

"What?”

"I was gonna ask anyway.” Thor explained.

“Ask what? Loki sounded wary.

"Ask if you wanted to come to dinner at my place.”

"Why would I come to dinner at your place?”

Loki seemed to be struggling to comprehend the idea. But it clearly made absolute sense to Thor.

"Because I like you. And you like me. And we’re kinda…going out or whatever.”

"We’re what?”

“You know.” Thor hunched his shoulders sheepishly. “We’re going out together. Like, we’re boyfriends or whatever…”

"We’re what?”

"Unless you wanna call it something else?” Thor reassured him hurriedly. “It’s up to you. I don’t mind what it’s called, as long as I get you…”

Loki was staring at him now.

“Are you serious? This isn’t some kind of a joke?”

"Why would it be a joke, Loki?” Thor was bemused. “I don’t understand. I like you, you like me. It makes sense. It’s easy to understand. The easiest thing in the world.”

And he bowed his head down to Loki, and kissed him. And Loki kissed him back. And Thor was right, it was easy.

“So,” said Thor eventually, when he was able to speak again. “Are you coming then?”

Loki wriggled in his arms.

"What’ll Tony Stark and the others say when they find out?”

"How long have you cared what Tony Stark thinks?” Thor hooked a stray piece of hair behind Loki’s ear. “Fuck him. And the rest of them too. They’re idiots. They don’t see what you’re worth.”

Loki’s eyes were shining, his face bright with mischief.

"Okay. I’ll come then. For dinner.” He nodded. “Why shouldn’t I?”

"I can’t see a single reason why not.”

Thor smiled too, his face filled with innocence and positivity and confidence in the world, faith that everything would tun out for the best. After all, why shouldn’t it?

Chapter Text

The heavy atmosphere at dinner really didn’t trouble Loki overmuch. It was both no more than he had expected and no more than he was used to. He tended to be a figure of contention in any given social circumstance, and nothing he had heard about Odin had suggested that this gathering would be the exception. And after all, an atmosphere of silent disapproval whilst eating a good dinner in the presence of Thor and his nervous but kind mother was not so bad. Better than greasy leftovers, open expressions of distaste for his person, threats and raised fists ... Overall, it hadn’t been such an unpleasant evening by Loki’s standards. Definitely better than average.

Thor, however, did not feel the same way. He had attempted to balance out his father’s rude dismissal of the guest at their table with constant solicitousness to Loki’s needs; passing him sides and sauces, topping up his glass, questioning him regarding his enjoyment of the food with a view to ensuring that it was even more to his tastes the next time he was invited to dine. Throughout he repeatedly cast a judgmental eye upon his father, who maintained his aloof and disinterested attitude.

Eventually Thor’s resentment, steadily fed by Odin’s refusal to make eye contact, his slamming of condiments and cutlery, his neglect of Loki to the extent of not addressing a single word to the newcomer, boiled over. He lay his heavy silver knife and fork down upon his plate purposefully, sat back, and turned to his father with a stern face. His mother braced in anticipation of the inevitable conflict. Loki watched with interest, lifting another forkful of the really quite delicious mashed potatoes to his mouth.

“Is there a problem, Dad?”

Thor asked the question in what was quite a reasonable tone, given the circumstances. Odin, halfway through swallowing another mouthful of wine, sputtered in an undignified manner and banged his glass down on the tablecloth.

Frigga looked from her husband to her son. Then her eyes turned to Loki, filled with apology for the situation. Loki pressed his lips together and made a shape with his mouth that told her not to be sorry, that he was alright and besides, this was not her fault.

He liked Frigga. She was a lot like Thor. He hoped she liked him too.

“A problem?” Odin was repeating now, in a not terribly pleasant tone. “You’re asking me if I have a problem?”

“I am, yeah.” Thor confirmed.

Odin stared at him for a moment. Then he waved his knife in a manner that indicated the whole table but leant noticeably toward Loki.

“I’m supposed to just be okay with all this, am I?”

"All what?”

"Bringing a boy here!” Odin managed, with some difficulty. “My son. Bringing a boy here. No warning. You never said you were…”

"I never said I was straight either. You just assumed…”

Thor was speaking in a deliberately reasonable tone. Odin interrupted him with a wave of his hand.

“Oh, so this is on me, is it? It’s my fault for just assuming that I have a normal son?”

“You do have a normal son.” Thor said, carefully calm and non-confrontational.

"You know good and well what I meant.”

"Sure I do.”

Thor’s steady tone and clear gaze was now so determinedly balanced as to present a clear challenge to his father’s aggression. He even smiled in a condescending manner as he continued.

“I’m just saying that maybe it’s about time you updated your vocabulary?”

Odin reared up in fury, jabbing the knife now at Thor, his contorted face pointed toward his wife.

"Do you hear this? Do you hear your son? Lecturing me in my own house?”

Panic spread across Frigga. She began to make placatory movements and noises toward her husband, words seemingly beyond her. Loki saw the fear in her face.

And he spoke then. And the focus of the conflict in the room moved at once toward him.

“I’m not actually a boy, if it helps. Not particularly, anyway…”

Odin spun around to look in Loki’s direction for the first time that day, face red, eye burning.

"What the hell does that even…wait, you’re not one of those trans-es, are you? I mean, those trans whatsits?”

"Trans people?” Loki suggested, as he primly sliced another sliver of meat from the bone. “I could maybe fall under that umbrella, depending on your definitions…”

"Don’t start him on definitions. You heard how out-of-date his vocab is!”

Thor and Loki laughed together.

Odin blazed with rage. He leant forward, both elbows on the table, jabbing the knife now at Loki.

"So, you’re saying you’re a girl now, are you?”

“No, I’m not saying that. Not in particular. Not at this moment?”

"Oh for…!”

Odin raised both his arms to the ceiling, in the manner of a great king calling on the judgement of the gods. It was, quite frankly, somewhat over-dramatic.

“What are you then, a fucking shape-shifter? Summat different every day?”

"Odin!”

Frigga gasped at this open attack on a child who had been invited to their home. Her eyes filled with tears as they turned to Loki. But he appeared unperturbed. In fact, he was laughing.

"I like that. A shape-shifter?” He smiled at the phrase. “I might start saying that.”

“Are you just making this up as you go along?”

Odin was insistent on being answered. Loki shrugged.

“I’m just not that committed to current mainstream gender concepts.”

Odin managed to look blank, but simultaneously enraged. Loki continued, undaunted.

"I don’t really see the point of picking two categories and putting everyone into one or the other without even asking them, and then saying, ‘I’m that one, and I’ll only ever be attracted to that one’. It just doesn’t make sense.”

"So, what does that make you then?”

"I guess, non-binary and pan?” Loki suggested. “I mean, I’m not wedded to the terminology, but if it makes you feel better to have a name for things… “

He was quite collected, as though answering a genuine question from an adult peer. His cool maturity served to make Odin appear all the more foolish. Thor gazed proudly at him.

Odin, unable to construct a response to this informative remark, turned instead on his son.

“Why’re you mooning over him like that?”

Thor, thick-skinned by both nature and nurture, took this question at face value and answered honestly

"I just love hearing him talk. He’s so smart. And he already knows so much about himself. I wish I knew so much about who I was.”

A pink blush tinted Loki’s cheeks at this heartfelt praise, even in the midst of conflict. Odin, however, was not similarly impressed.

“There’s nothing to know. You’re just a normal boy.”

This statement was not well received by the present company. Thor in particular looked both annoyed and singularly dismissive. He also continued to focus on Loki, as though that creature’s opinion was somehow of more importance than that of his own father.

Odin tried a different tack.

“And what exactly do all your friends say about ... this?” The knife made a circling motion which encompassed Loki’s person. “What does Tony Stark say?”

Thor finally broke away from gazing into Loki’s eyes and turned to his father with a frown creasing his brow.

"Why are you always asking me what Tony Stark thinks about shit?” He pronounced the name with audible displeasure. “You’ve been obsessed with him since we became friends. Before that even; half the reason I ended up hanging around with him when I went to the Academy was ‘cause you kept going on about him...”

“Because he’s the kind of boy you should be associating with.” Odin instructed. “He’s a genius. An actual genius. He’s been tested. He’s another Howard Stark in the making. And Howard Stark is a true entrepreneur. A visionary, even. The Starks are people worth knowing.”

Thor rolled his eyes at what was clearly a common bone of contention in this household.

"Well, I’m sorry Howard got the boy wonder and you got stuck with a thickie for a son, but you could make it less obvious that you’d rather have Tony...”

"Thor!” Frigga interrupted hastily. “Of course your father wouldn’t rather have Tony Stark for a son. He loves you!”

She looked to her husband for reassurance. It was not forthcoming.

“I wouldn’t mind having a son who did something I could be proud of.” He suggested. “Instead of …”

He made a vague gesture which could conceivably have meant Loki. Thor slammed a hand down on the table, began to rise. Frigga gave a little gasp of panic.

"I’m actually smarter that Tony Stark.” Loki said, so casually that it was almost an aside.

Thor sat back down. Frigga turned her head. Odin looked, for the first time, directly at Loki.

"Is that so?” he said. “I would very much like to know how you could possibly justify that remark.”

His tone was scathing, somehow covering his disbelief that someone like Loki could be even close to intelligent, his absolute disgust that such a person was arguing with him at his own table, and his opinion that claiming intelligence before him was tantamount to a challenge to his own authority and superiority.

Thor’s shoulders tensed, and he reached a protective hand out. Loki however was undaunted.

"I’ve won pretty much all the school prizes.” he told Odin. “And a full scholarship. Tony Stark hasn’t done that.”

"Tony Stark doesn’t need to do that.” Odin said, with withering contempt. “His father is a success. He can pay his own way.”

“Yes, how lucky for Tony that you never considered his father competition...”

There was something sharp in Loki’s voice now. But Odin wasn’t listening, still ranting on about Loki’s temerity in boasting of his academic abilities. Like many people unused to being crossed in even the smallest thing, he could be spectacularly petty.

“Tell me, did you win any of the science prizes?” he insisted now.

"No.” Loki conceded. “But I won the writing prize, and the poetry prize, and the art prize…”

Odin made a sweeping gesture in the air, to dismiss such academic branches outright.

“Namby-pamby toy subjects! What value is there in art? In pictures and stories? Nonsense, fit for children. The sciences are the true test of intelligence. And Tony Stark wins every prize and takes every laurel in that field.”

“But Tony Stark has his own lab at home and everything. It’s hardly a fair fight.” Loki argued. “You can’t compare...”

“It Isn’t Fair!!”

Odin’s voice broke in, a cruel emulation of a whining child. Loki jumped at the loud interjection. Thor stared at his father in disbelief. Frigga looked pained.

“The complaints of a loser.” Odin continued, leaning into Loki’s face now, jabbing a finger in his direction. “Nothing is fair. You win or you lose, that’s it.”

"Yeah, that’s what you told my Dad when you ruined him.”

Loki’s mouth was twisted in bitterness. The room looked blankly at him, bemused by this statement.

“He used to own a chain of corner shops.” Loki told them. “Frozen foods, mainly. Until you decided that your empire of department stores didn’t need the competition.”

He gestured at Odin, whose face now showed grim understanding.

"Laufey was your father.”

"He still is. He’s not dead. Just bankrupt.”

"He used to be quite big around here, years back.” Odin addressed himself to Thor. “But he mismanaged his affairs, over-stretched his finances. It happens. Nothing to do with me. Just how it goes, in business.”

"This particular business had been thriving for generations, before you turned up.” Loki countered. “Ever since my great-grandad and his people immigrated here.”

"Well, maybe it had had its day, son.” Odin suggested, in a condescending tone. “These things happen. All things must pass, nothing lasts forever, and so on...”

Loki’s mouth made a thin line. He shook his head.

“I think we could probably have struggled on just a little bit longer if you hadn’t opened a branch of your megamarket next door to every single outlet my family owned.”

“Not exactly next door...”

"If not that, then around the corner. It’s the same thing. You were as near as you could get. And then you undercut all their prices.”

Odin looked to be in disbelief at the extent to which he was being questioned by a naïve child.

"So you expect poor, innocent customers to pay inflated prices just because your family had been there for a few years? You expect the local populace to subsidise the lifestyles to which they had become accustomed? You think it right for your people to move here, open up a shop or two, and monopolise a free market? You...”

“They weren't inflated prices.”

Loki’s voice, quiet but firm, cut through the flow of words. Odin frowned.

"Well, we could afford to charge less, so that would suggest...”

"No, you couldn't. You put your prices straight back up, the moment we were out of business and you had no competition. And half those shops you threw up to ruin us closed down soon enough anyway, so now the customers haven't got any choice at all but to walk miles to be overcharged at one of your super-hyper-mega-global-product outlets.”

“I don't appreciate your tone, nor your accusations. My emporia are without parallel and give the customer a shopping experience of unmatched quality.” Odin said stubbornly. “We're accessible and affordable and we offer a range that can't be beat. 'There's no choice but Asgard!'”

Frigga flinched at this. Thor squirmed in embarrassment.

"Don't quote the adverts, Dad.” he pleaded. And then. “Is that true? What Loki said?”

Odin sighed.

“It was nothing out of the ordinary. Just normal, healthy business competition. And Laufey lost. That’s all there is to it. He simply didn’t have the skills required to thrive in a competitive market.”

"Did you close the shops afterwards though?”

Thor persisted with his questions. Odin sighed again, more heavily.

"Businesses come and go. It’s a complicated dance. Laufey just wasn't bloodthirsty enough.”

He lifted his wineglass, took a swig of the red liquid within. The conversation was clearly over, as far as he was concerned. Thor turned to Loki.

"Was your family badly hit?”

"Yeah. It ruined us in a lot of ways.” Loki’s mouth turned down. “It’s all Dad talks about, and my brothers too; what we lost because of Odin. I don’t remember what it was like before, but they do.”

He cast his eyes toward Odin, radiating accusation and resentment. And Thor looked his father’s way too, his gaze filled with disillusionment.

At this point Odin entirely lost his temper. He sprang from his chair, knocking into the table hard enough to shake the collected crockery and tip over his own empty glass.

“Well, I hope you’re happy now Thor!” He bellowed, face puce, body shaking with rage. “I hope you’re bloody pleased with yourself! Bringing our enemies into our very home!”

His bloodshot eye roamed across the table, glaring at Loki with disgust.

Thor looked up now at his father, swollen with drink, wavering unsteadily, brandishing a butter knife as though it was some fearsome spear. And he reached across the table and took Loki’s hand in his own and spoke calmly.

“I don't have any enemies, Dad.”

Chapter Text

The skies had been grey all day, and just before lunchtime they broke open and the rain began to fall.

The Quad was almost deserted. This meant Loki could be alone on the Northern Colonnade, tucked behind a wall of water, watching in peace as the rain pooled between the cobbles. That was one good thing about the day, at least. Loki loved storms.

He was curled into the bench alcove, hands on the cool stone, eyes half closed, lulled by the susurration of the shower, when he sensed a movement.

A great looming figure was coming toward him through the sheets of water that beat down on the courtyard. It stepped beneath the arched roof, moving as though unaware of the change, as though there was no difference between the shelter of the mossy corridor and the drenching heart of the deluge.

It was Thor, of course. He saw Loki at once, and came toward him just as thunder began to roll across the sky.

Resigned to his fate, Loki braced himself. There was no point in trying to hide. He might as well face the inevitable. Might as well listen to Thor call him a troublemaker and a liar and a two-faced, shit-stirring little pig. Face his anger and his disappointment. Watch him change as his eyes finally filled with the hatred that was Loki’s due, that he was always going to get sooner or later, from Thor as from everyone else.

Thor was beside him now, towering over him, rainwater pouring from his huge body. Loki steeled himself as he began to speak.

And then the words came.

“Are you okay?”

Loki looked up, bemused. Unexpectedly, it seemed Thor was gazing down at him with an expression of … concern? Concern for Loki? Why? How could that be?

“What?” he said, not particularly eloquently.

“Are you okay?”

Loki frowned at him.

"Am I okay after disrespecting your father at his own table?”

Thor was frowning too now.

“Yeah, I guess...”

Loki interrupted him impatiently.

"Why should you care how I am? After the way I spoke to him, everything that happened? Don’t tell me you were fine with it.”

“No.” Thor said slowly. “I wasn’t fine with it.”

Loki was already nodding. It was as he expected.

“Look.” he began hastily. “I know you think I should’ve said something before about what your dad did to mine. But I wasn’t exactly keeping it a secret, it just didn’t come up. And yeah, I know, your dad was pissed off. But be fair, that’s kinda what you wanted. You’re mad at him, and you wanted to annoy him. You probably only invited me in the first place to piss him off. So we’re even…

Thor blinked at the rush of words. Loki was already watching him, waiting for a response. His body language was strikingly defensive, even to someone as unsubtle and lacking in perception as Thor.

"I guess....” Thor began, trying to find the right words. “I mean... yeah, I would rather you had told me about it beforehand.”

Loki’s shoulders hunched as though he was expecting a blow.

“Fine, yeah, I get it, but what difference would that have made, really?”

He was speaking so fast now as to be almost gabbling, his hands flickering about in the air between them. His voice was high and thin with panic. It was horrible to see.

Thor stepped back a little, to show that he was no threat. Then he began to speak, slowly, trying to explain the situation to himself as much as to Loki.

"I get that there weren’t many chances to bring it up.” he began. “And it’s not your business to educate me on where my family’s money comes from. And maybe you thought I already knew. Which isn’t nice to think about, you believing that I knew this whole time what my family did to yours and never choose to mention it. It would be the right thing to do to discuss it with you, wouldn’t it?”

He stopped to wait for confirmation. Loki took a moment to consider the facts of the new reality Thor was laying out before him.

“Yes. I think so.” he agreed.

Thor smiled at finding he had been right about what Loki would want. Then the smile fell away.

“I wouldn’t ignore something like that. I would have spoken to you about it, if I’d known. But you have no reason to think any better of me, I guess. Not considering who my father is.”

He lowered his head, the picture of contrition.

Loki was confused. The resentment he had been working hard to build up against Thor, the arrogant rich boy too bull-headed to consider the implications of bringing Loki to his house, or perhaps even deliberately parading him there just to upset his father with his inappropriate sexual choices, began to fade away.

In fact, Loki began to suspect that it was just possible that Thor had held no ulterior motives in bringing him to Odin’s house.

He looked now at that huge form waiting patiently beside him. And instead of words, a weak, uncertain little whimper escaped him.

Thor raised his great head, his soft blue eyes full of concern.

“Are you okay?” His hand touched Loki’s shoulder comfortingly. “I’m sorry about what happened. He said some really unacceptable stuff to you, about who you are and that. I mean, you handled it well, obviously, but you shouldn’t have to. And it must’ve been horrible for you anyway, with all that family stuff.”

Loki’s throat was too tight to speak. He was mortified by this weakness.

“And then you didn’t message me back, so I guess you were really upset.” Thor continued. “Are you alright now though?”

"I … yeah. I’m fine, I guess?” Loki managed.

Thor smiled, and took Loki’s hand in his own, all hopeful and golden and earnest. Somewhere someone let out a silly little laugh, but he didn’t appear to notice.

“I’m really, really, sorry Loki. You shouldn’t have had to put up with that. Especially when you were a guest.”

He gave the hand a squeeze, looked hopefully at Loki for a response. Loki managed to beat the threatening tears and replace them with a weak smile.

"And then there’s that stuff about your dad’s business.” Thor continued. “That’s a really shitty thing he did. I had no idea. I was arguing about it with him all night. Well, until he stormed off instead of answering my questions. Just like he always does.”

Thor’s expression briefly turned to an angry glower as he recollected his most recent interactions with his father, as well as others long past. Then it was soft again, lightly tinted with remorse.

“Sorry. I dunno why I’m going on about shit like that. I know this isn’t about me…”

"It’s about you, Thor.” Loki assured him. “We’re talking about your Dad.”

"I guess.” Thor conceded. And then, emboldened by Loki’s encouraging face, he managed to say. “I just…It makes me feel like shit, to have such a total arsehole for a father.”

"Don’t worry about it. My Dad’s a complete prick too.”

Thor laughed. Loki smiled back at him. And for a moment the mood was lightened, and it seemed as though things would be as they were before.

And then Thor’s frown returned.

“I just wish…I wish you’d told me.”

This was it, Loki thought. This was the point when the blame shifted to Loki, and the mood turned to anger.

And he looked at Thor, preparing for the onslaught. But unexpectedly Thor did not look angry. He looked sad.

"Because you must’ve felt terrible about it.” he was saying. “Being invited, and coming despite everything, and having to sit there with him and eat dinner. And it was so awful, too. If I’d have known, I wouldn’t have expected you to go. Not if you didn’t want to. And I’d have been prepared and stood up for you more when all the stuff was said and...”

The words ran down, and he turned to Loki, his gaze clear and open. And then he spoke again, more simply.

"I’m really sorry. I guess I let you down pretty bad.”

Loki was too taken aback to respond immediately. And when he did, it was only to repeat Thor’s words in disbelief.

"You let me down?”

Thor nodded, squeezed Loki’s hand again.

"Yeah.” He made sure that Loki’s eyes met his own before continuing. “And I’m not blaming you, it’s not your fault, I get it, but…I just thought maybe in the future if you told me things like that, I could do better at being on your side?”

Loki considered this statement, assessed it for flaws.

"How do you know you’ll be on my side in the future?”

"Why wouldn’t I be?” Thor said immediately. And then, after a pause. “Sorry, I guess that’s stupid. I s’pose I might not be. I can’t promise that, can I? Not without knowing what might happen. It doesn’t mean anything, does it, as a promise? But I usually am. On your side, I mean. And I want to be with you, and know how you’re feeling. If I can...?”

There was a long silence then. Thor watched a mess of emotions playing across Loki’s face as he went through some kind of internal struggle. Finally, he began to speak.

"I don’t usually…I’ve never… I don’t share stuff like that with people. I don’t have people on my side.”

He was looking at Thor with a kind of pleading panic, as though he was hardly able to believe that he had said so much out loud.

Thor nodded understanding, moved closer to Loki, stroked his hand.

“I know. That’s okay. Just maybe you could try to tell me stuff?”

Loki leant into the protective wall of Thor’s body, pressed his face into his broad chest.

“No promises.” he said. “But I could try, maybe?”

"Cool.” Thor wrapped an arm around Loki, held him close. “And I’ll try to work out what you might be thinking. No promises there either though. I’m nowhere near clever enough to keep up with you.”

And he kissed Loki’s temple softly. And Loki kept his face hidden, to mask his tears, and smiled.

Chapter Text

It was a Saturday. Despite that, Thor was discontent.

Saturdays had a lot to recommend them, of course. They meant no getting up early, no lessons, no tedious homework for Thor to frown and struggle over.

But they also meant no seeing Loki at lunch time, no walking him between classes, no escorting him to the library, no dallying with him in the park.

They meant no Loki at all, unless Loki agreed to meet. And this weekend Loki had not agreed to meet. And Thor was discontent.

He had spent the morning distracting himself with gruelling activities in his personal gym, and his afternoon slumped on the couch, games controller in hand. But now he was tired, and hungry, and had reached a point of critical boredom, and therefore chosen to remove himself to the main wing of the house. There he had extracted the majority of the contents of the fridge, laid them before him on the kitchen table, added to them a substantial portion of the contents of the pantry, and begun to steadily work his way through said supplies.

At some point between Thor raising a full bottle of some fizzy drink to his mouth and lowering the same bottle in an empty state, Odin appeared at the kitchen door. This was unusual. Odin was almost never around the house during the day. Even on the rare occasions when he was technically home, he was sequestered in his offices unless he emerged for some particular scheduled social event with his family. Thor could not remember the last time he had casually run across his father.

Nonetheless, he showed no interest. He would not give Odin the satisfaction. If Odin had some business here, he could broach it himself.

He turned away, belched, and burst open a bag of crisps with one hand.

“I need to talk to you.”

Odin already sounded impatient.

“I’m going back upstairs any minute.”

Thor forced a handful of ridge-cut potato snacks into his mouth, chewed them furiously, grabbed another from the foil bag. Odin watched him with thinly veiled disgust.

“What’s the rush?”

“I’m in the middle of a mission. I only paused it to get a snack.”

“A snack?” Odin looked pointedly at the mountain of food spread before his son. “And a mission? That’s computer games, is it?”

Thor rolled his eyes heavenward, exhaled impatiently.

“Yeah Dad, it’s computer games.” he said with withering contempt.

“Mind your cheek.” Odin warned.

Thor, his mouth full once more, made vague gestures of polite, disinterested contrition as he opened another bottle.

Odin seemed to be struggling to find anything to say to his son besides words of censure, particularly in the face of Thor’s newly dismissive attitude to his authority. Eventually he spoke, somewhat awkwardly.

"So about…”

"About what?”

"You know who.”

"Who?”

Odin huffed

"The … the boy, whatever you call him. Your…”

He floundered again, flapped his hands.

"I call him Loki.” Thor said.

"Right.” Odin was visibly struggling to maintain a civil tone. “And he’s…you and he are…he’s your…”

"Why can’t you say boyfriend?” Thor asked him. “You had no trouble calling Sif my girlfriend constantly, and we weren’t even dating.”

"Well, I don’t know that you’re taking this boy to the movies or to dinner or whatever you kids do these days either…”

Odin was flustered. Thor rolled his eyes again.

"That’s not what I meant by dating. I was trying to be polite. I meant…”

His father stopped him hurriedly, holding up his hands with a look of revulsion.

"Alright, alright. Enough! I don’t need all the filthy details.”

"Don’t worry. I wasn’t gonna give you any details.” Thor said indignantly, as he tore up a loaf in his hands. “And there’s nothing filthy about Loki.”

He turned away, his jaws working furiously, reaching for his drink. But Odin was not done.

“I didn't come here to talk about that sort of thing. I came here to talk about you. And about all the time you’re wasting with Laufey’s boy.”

“Wasting?!” Thor’s eyes burned. “You don’t have a single idea what you’re talking about. And anyway, I’m hardly seeing him at the moment.”

“Good.” Odin nodded, apparently taking only what he wanted to hear from Thor’s words. “It’s about time you forgot about all this nonsense. I’m glad to hear you’re seeing sense and moving on.”

“I’m not moving on. He’s busy. He’s revising for his GCSEs. If he wasn’t, if there weren’t more important things for him to be doing right now, I’d be spending every minute with him!”

Thor glared at his father defiantly. He was almost tearful with emotion.

Odin looked disgusted. Characteristically he elected to address the aspect of Thor’s latest outburst with which he was most comfortable.

"And why exactly haven't you been studying, young man? I haven't seen you open a book in weeks. I suppose you think you can just idle your way through school, and then live off my money for the rest of your life? Well, I'll tell you now that I didn't get you a place in that academy for you to waste your time click-clacking on your computer pad playing at war...”

“Wow.”

Thor interrupted his father’s diatribe with this flat exclamation. Odin frowned, taken aback at such a lack of respect, and also wrong-footed by not knowing what the issue might be.

"Well!” Thor continued. “Thanks so much Dad, for paying your only son so little attention that you don't even realise he did his GCSEs last year.”

Odin swept this issue aside with a wave of his hand.

"I can't keep track of these newfangled exams.” he said dismissively. And then, as further questions occurred to him. “Why is Laufey’s boy doing them late? Is there something wrong with him? Or is he just naturally difficult, like the rest of his family?”

"There's nothing wrong with him!” insisted Thor, whose temper was growing increasingly short. “And he's not doing them late, he's in the year below me. Which you would know if you ever asked a single frigging question about my life!”

Odin held up a hand for silence.

"What month was he born?”

"What?”

Thor stared blankly at his father.

“Loki? Why?” And since there was no response, he ran on. “November, I think. Or December. So he's one of the older ones in the year...isn’t he? Is that how it works? Who cares, anyway. There's only a few months in it. Sif's younger than me, and you were delighted with just the idea of me going out with her. You never laid off about how perfect she was, how gorgeous and appealing and just right next to me.”

His face contorted with distaste as he emulated the admiring tone in which Odin spoke of Sif.

“And then you take it into your head to make me move schools, and we end up splitting up 'cause of it. So that's your fault, by the way...”

Thor was just hitting his stride in beginning to list all of his grievances against his father when suddenly, quite without warning, Odin turned and walked away.

Thor stood up in rage, a package of chocolate cake bars clutched in his hand.

“Oh, we’re done, are we?” he called after the rapidly disappearing figure of his father. “You’re bored of speaking to me, are you? Okay, bye then!”

And he swept a nearby set of glasses to the floor in a blind rage.

They exploded on the tiles in a shower of crystalline shards. Thor stared dumbly down at the mess, already regretting his abrupt and mindless flash of violence.

Despite the yelling and the crashing and the sound of his son’s voice calling out, Odin did not return.

Chapter Text

Break-time was nearly over. Thor was sitting on the sweeping stone stairs of the neo-classical Performing Arts building, in the shadow of its ostentatious pillars. Loki was a step below him, sat between Thor’s spread knees, back resting against Thor’s chest whilst Thor played with his hair as they talked.

Many passing students glanced their way, few of them kindly. Thor met their gaze as he had always met every gaze that fell upon him; with the open smile of one who expects acceptance and offers it in turn. And Loki paid them no mind whatsoever, occupied as he was with the company, with Thor’s open words and gentle touch. And also, being entirely truthful, with the bag of chocolate buttons from which he was eating. Occasionally he reached languidly back, and Thor lifted the proffered chocolate scraps from his fingers with careful lips.

Thor’s own fingers stroked gently at the nape of Loki’s neck, slid down under the collar of his shirt, touched the thin chain that lay beneath.

“Are you wearing the moon necklace?” he asked

“Uh-huh.” Loki cracked a chocolate button between his teeth. “I always wear it. I just have to hide it at school, because of their stupid rules.”

“I thought necklaces were allowed.”

Thor frowned, taking note of several passing students who were clearly wearing examples of the aforementioned jewellery, prominently displayed. Loki sighed.

“They are. For girls.”

“What sense does that make? Necks are the same.”

Loki huffed in amusement.

“They are.” he agreed in fond tones, feeding Thor another button.

Thor chewed and thought.

“I’m sorry there are so many stupid rules.” he told Loki.

“Me too.”

Thor shuffled on the step.

“You know, you can always wear whatever you want with me. Like, more feminine clothes. If you want.”

Loki didn’t need to turn around to know that Thor was blushing. His voice betrayed him.

"Mmm.” he responded vaguely, looking down at his own hands and crunching the bag of chocolate pieces nervously. “Yeah, but...I mean... I know I did it before. And it’s not that I don’t wanna do it again. But I don’t want it to seem like it’s just, like, a fetish thing. ‘Cause it isn’t.”

His voice was firm on the last words.

"I know.” Thor assured him. “I didn’t mean it that way, like a pervy way or anything. I meant…well, you seemed comfortable. Once you knew I wasn’t gonna be a dick, anyway. And I don’t know if there are many places you can go and be comfortable and yourself, and not have someone be a dick. So ... I just wanted you to know that it could be a safe space for you, or however you think of it.”

"Your house?” Loki sounded somewhat sceptical. “I’m not sure anywhere your dad lives could really be called a safe space.”

Thor grimaced at the mention of his father.

"But if you’re with me, if it’s just you and me, it’s a safe space. And you would be. He never comes into my bit of the house. Honestly, I don’t think he ever actually has, that I can remember. Plus he’s at work or whatever he does 90% of the time anyway.”

Loki made a noncommittal sound.

“It’s up to you, anyway.” Thor continued through the awkwardness. “But, y’know, if you wanted to come round, like maybe on Friday, you could. But you don't have to. But I’d rather you did.”

“And you’d rather I wore something girly?”

Loki still hung his head, face shielded behind his hair. Thor’s own face burned all the redder.

"I didn’t say that. I know it’s not a sex thing.” he told Loki. “And anyway, I think you look sexy whatever you wear, so…”

Loki looked up at Thor then and raised an eyebrow.

"Really?”

And Thor looked back down at him and replied earnestly.

“Absolutely.”

***

Thor waited nervously on his bed, eyes fixed on the firmly closed door of the bathroom.

Whatever position he arranged himself in seemed somehow awkward and unattractive. He tried leaning back on the pillows, but that felt ridiculous, as though he was arrogantly presenting his body for inspection, or worse, disinterested in what was to come. But perching on the edge of the bed seemed as though he was overly alert, like a schoolboy obediently sitting up straight at his desk, or worse, a hungry dog twitching in anticipation of a meal.

He had convinced himself that his hair had fallen into a stupid position and was craning forward to rearrange it with the help of a mirror on the other side of the room, when the bathroom door finally opened.

Loki stood on the threshold, backlit by the glow from the room behind him. He was dressed in black; a matching set of small shorts and a long slip, both trimmed with lace. Next to the dark fabric his skin shone white.

As Thor looked at him, he twisted one bare foot on the bathroom tiles and looked down shyly, wrapping an arm protectively around his body.

“Do you like them?” he asked quietly, gesturing at the outfit.

Thor nodded, unable to form any appropriate words.

“Come closer.” he said, after a moment.

Loki took a few steps across the bedroom carpet and stopped again, slim and coltish, long legs and narrow waist and slender arms and soft waves of hair. His lips were darkened, Thor saw now, as were his eyes. Resting on his collarbone was the silver chain, from which hung an opalescent moonstone wearing silver horns.

“Do you think I should've got stockings, or hold-ups, or something?” he asked nervously. “I feel like there’s too much bare skin, but I dunno whether you’re meant to wear them with French knickers, so...”

He shrugged. Thor regarded him.

“Your skin is beautiful.” he told Loki. “You’re beautiful.”

A little pinkish hue touched Loki’s cheeks and throat. He smiled.

“Take your jeans off.”

Thor sprang up, flung his trousers aside, and dropped back onto the bed clad only in underpants and t-shirt.

Loki came forward and stood before him. Thor’s hand twitched. Loki nodded, and he lifted in and placed it carefully on Loki’s hip.

“I like this vest thing. Or is it a dress?”

“It’s a chemise.” Loki informed him.

“Oh.” Thor moved his fingers over the thin material, feeling Loki’s body beneath, and repeated the word softly. “Chemise.”

His eyes were darkening now, starting to lose focus.

Loki rested a hand on Thor’s neck, sighed, his eyelashes beginning to flutter.

And then he gave a sudden twitch and angled away from Thor to look back over his shoulder at the bedroom door.

“You’re sure no one’s going to come in? Not your dad or anyone?”

“No. I promise.”

One of Loki’s straps had slipped down as he turned; Thor lifted it carefully back into place, rested his hand on Loki’s shoulder-blade.

“He’s definitely not gonna come into my rooms right now.” he assured Loki. “I’m not even speaking to him.”

"Why not?”

“Because of you, Loki.” Thor was surprised that Loki needed to ask. “I didn’t like the way he spoke to you. Or a lot of other stuff, to be honest.”

Loki squirmed under Thor’s hands, turned his face away in embarrassment.

“Not really because of me though?”

Thor sighed.

“I wish it wasn’t difficult for you to accept that you matter to me. And that you deserve to be treated well.”

He lifted Loki’s chin so that they could see each other clearly, looked into his eyes.

“But I guess you haven’t known me that long yet. Just because it feels to me that I’ve always known you, doesn’t mean it’s the same for you.”

And he leant forward and kissed Loki softly on the lips.

Loki’s fingers twitched, and his hand rose to touch Thor’s face uncertainty. Then slowly his hold on Thor tightened, and he softened and sank into Thor’s safe arms.

When they drew away from the kiss to catch their breath, Loki was blushing.

"You’re so weird, Thor.” he said tenderly.

“You too.” Thor told him happily.

And he kissed Loki again for a long time until eventually, with some reluctance, Loki pulled away.

“Lift me up.” he said.

Thor obeyed, placing both hands on Loki’s waist and raising him carefully onto the high bed. Loki straddled him immediately, pressing close, wrapping around the supporting pillar of Thor’s body like ropes of ivy wound about a tree. And he began to kiss Thor again.

And now they were moving together, Loki silky beneath Thor’s hands, flowing against him, head back, Thor’s mouth on his throat, Thor’s hands sliding beneath his satin, moaning as he pushed against Thor and Thor pushed back, both of them hungry and clinging and wild and desperate for each other. And the world was just them, their two bodies and how good everything felt, how good they both felt to each other, with each other...

And then suddenly, from nowhere, Loki was screaming.

A hand gripped his hair, wrenched him cruelly away from Thor, threw him aside.

And Odin was there. And he was screaming too. Bellowing like a bull, his face swollen and contorted with rage and loathing as he towered over his son, beating him in the chest as he yelled unintelligible curses. And behind him on the hard floor Loki was wailing like a terrified child, scrambling to snatch up scraps of satin to cover his nakedness.

Thor rammed his father aside with one shoulder, tried to reach for Loki as Odin pulled him back. But it was too late; Loki slid from the room, fast as a snake, curving around Frigga as she entered the bedroom. She reached out to him too, aware of his distress even if she had no idea of its cause.

And then she saw Odin rearing up and lashing out at Thor as he tried to fight past his father to chase after Loki. She saw Thor’s tears, and Odin’s raised fist. And she ran forward between them, crying out. And Odin’s hand struck her cheek, and she tumbled backwards into the wall.

And then a lot of things seemed to happen all at once, in a big jumble; Yelling. Crying. Thor squaring up to his furious, red-faced father. Frigga begging him not to get hurt. Odin saying that if Thor got hurt, it would be his own fault. Thor laughing at the threat. Odin lunging at Thor whilst Frigga screamed. Thor crying and asking his father why he was behaving like this. Odin breaking a whiskey glass on the floor of Thor’s room, stumbling and lashing out as he shouted disgusting, filthy things about Loki. Thor guarding the door of his parents’ room whilst Frigga hastily packed a bag and Odin stalked to-and-fro outside. Odin stood in the driveway, cursing his wife and son as the taxi carried them away.

Chapter Text

Unsure where else to go after the incident, Frigga and Thor found themselves at one of the better hotels in town. They had used it quite a few times over the years as a venue for family events, including several of Thor’s more extravagant birthday parties, so there was something if not homely then at least comfortingly familiar about its rooms.

Thor checked them in, taking pains to convey to the staff how important it was to maintain the privacy and security of both his mother and himself. The coldly polite staff were reminded that this applied even if questions were asked or access was requested by family members, such as for example fathers or husbands. Polite assurances were given. Thor escorted his mother upstairs. Calls were made to solicitors and accountants and such-like functionaries. Messages from certain persons were received and ignored. Tears were shed. People were held and comforted. It was a long night.

Throughout it all, despite the upheaval and the panic and the fuss and the need to be there for Frigga, Thor thought of Loki all night and called or messaged him at every opportunity. The calls and messages went unanswered.

The next morning, he kept trying. There was no response. Finally, Frigga, seeing his mournful face across the breakfast table, assured him that she was fine, safe, doing as well as could be expected. That she would not be offended or upset if he briefly left her side. That Odin, doubtless nursing quite a hangover, was unlikely to be much of a threat to them for the next few hours. That he should go and find Loki. And so, thanking her, Thor went.

***

Technically Loki had never actually been any more specific about his address than letting Thor accompany him to the end of the road. But he had not exactly been secretive about it either. There was no point; it was the sort of thing Thor could have found out at any time, had he chosen to do so.

Up until now he had chosen to keep his distance out of respect for Loki’s wishes. But now things were different. Now there was no other way to reach Loki.

Thor made his way along the road in question, examining each of the houses. After brief consideration, he identified the Laufeyson home with reasonable confidence. It was the kinda grubby looking one third from the end, with the peeling paint and the concrete patch at the front that had perhaps once been a garden.

Several clues pointed to this. For example, Loki had once told Thor that his brother Hel drove “the most hideous car in the entire world”, and when asked for details had professed himself ignorant of all car makes and models, and instead described it as being “one of those things that total wankers drive, with those fins on the back and an extra-loud exhaust so all the neighbours know that you’re a total cunt when you come home at 4am.” A vehicle fitting that description was parked arrogantly in front of the house, giving the impression that an over-confident and not very safety conscious driver had swung it casually into place, half-blocking the pavement and leaving dirty tire marks on the road surface behind it.

On another occasion Loki, complaining that the house was too cold and Laufey was too stingy to turn up the heat, had mentioned that the damage to the front window didn’t help matters. Apparently one of his brothers had thrown a dumbbell at Loki during a fight some years ago, and Loki’s swift dodging of the missile had caused it to pass through the upper portion of the window, taking a pane of glass along with it. This had resulted in a punishment for Loki, who was apparently judged responsible, and the clumsy boarding up of the window in question. And indeed, there the board still remained, even from Thor’s external viewpoint clearly allowing a draught into the building.

And then of course there was the recycling bin, leaning against the front wall, piled high with crushed beer cans (from the brothers) and empty vodka bottles (Laufey’s drink of choice).

And finally, quelling any remaining doubts, there was the huge tattooed man who opened the door, can of beer in one hand and dumbbell in the other, yelling something about how ‘he had already said that he wasn’t gonna move the fucking car, so somebody’s fat fuck of a missus was just gonna have to push the buggy around it, and too bad if that meant that her and the bairn would be in the fucking road.’

Seeing that the person who had rung the doorbell was not in fact the neighbour with whom he was currently fighting, the man stopped dead and frowned at Thor in a less than welcoming manner. Although his head was shaved bald, the blue shadow on his jaw gave away and his black eyebrows confirmed that his hair was as dark as Loki’s. Other than that, they had very little in common physically; this man was clumsy and lumpen, heavy of brow and thick of build. Nevertheless, they were somehow clearly brothers.

He made no attempt to begin communication, merely staring at the newcomer in a confrontational manner whilst swigging from the can in his hand. His unfriendly attitude did not encourage Thor to be anything less than blunt.

“I want Loki.”

"Then you're the only fucker who does.”

He was already moving to close the door. Thor blocked it, and he looked up and grunted.

“Phone him then. I'm not his fucking secretary.”

"Is he here?” Thor insisted.

“He might be.”

"Well, can I see him then?”

The man made a big deal of looking all around himself and the hallway behind him, as though to check if Loki was somehow present.

"Doesn't look like it.” he said. “I definitely can't.”

Thor tried his best to suppress a rumble of frustration.

"I meant can I come in?”

He asked this in the politest and least threatening tone he could manage. Clearly this attempt at cordiality did not impress the man at the door, as he merely looked Thor up and down in an unwelcoming manner.

"Why exactly would I let some random lunatic into my dad's house because he says he knows Loki? That's hardly a recommendation.”

"I do know him. I'm Thor...”

"Okay.” He shrugged. “You seem to think that means something?”

"I thought he might've mentioned me...?”

"I don't talk to him about his boyfriends, Thor.”

The tone used was not a pleasant one. In fact, it bordered on combative. Thor tried to correct the mood by being as pointedly reasonable as possible.

"Look. I do know him, or I wouldn't be here. I’m a … friend of his, okay?”

"Loki doesn't have any friends. And if he did, they wouldn’t look like you.”

He narrowed his eyes as he swigged from his beer can. And then something seemed to occur to him.

"Are you the reason he bust in here yesterday crying his eyes out, and decided to have some kind of breakdown in his room? If so, cheers for that.”

At this description Thor made another involuntary sally toward the door and was casually blocked by its keeper.

“Is he alright?” he asked, beginning to panic.

"Well, it dunt sound like it, does it?” The man pointed out in infuriatingly casual tones.

"Have you spoken to him?” Thor insisted.

"Why the fuck would I do that?” He started to close the door again. “Look, why don't you message the hysterical little prick or whatever, instead of bothering me about it?”

"Because he won't answer my messages!”

Thor’s patience reached its limit, and he pushed forward again, trying to reach the staircase which presumably led to Loki’s room.

A second version of the doorkeeper appeared behind him at this point, and the two men joined together to block Thor and force him back onto the concrete patch outside.

“If he won’t answer you, then I’d drop it.” The first man suggested. “If he don't wanna talk to you, he won't. No one gives a better cold shoulder than Loki. Now move along.”

"This is a Loki thing?” The second man asked his brother. “What's the little twat done now?”

“No clue. Pissed this lad off, anyway.”

"Stupid little fucker.” The second brother said, in a tone not entirely lacking in affection. “It's like he can't help but cause shit...”

"That's Loki.” The first brother said casually. “He was born a fucking problem...”

And he closed the door in Thor’s face without a backward glance.

Chapter Text

Thor found himself spending his precious school holidays, which he had looked forward to so eagerly, mostly lying in bed watching TV and eating junk food, or hovering around Frigga fearfully until she assured him that she was fine and managed to persuade him that she would be in no danger if he went to the hotel gym for an hour.

He was sprawled across the bed, a share-bag of crisps positioned on his stomach, staring disconsolately at whatever meaningless nonsense was happening on the TV screen, when he heard his mother’s footsteps crossing the sitting room that divided their two bedrooms.

She knocked politely, waited for permission to enter his space, then came across to sit beside him on the bed. Thor made a noise of greeting and felt the familiar comfort of her hand stroking his hair.

“Are you okay, prince?” she asked after a while.

“Yeah. Are you?”

“I am, sweetheart. I promise.”

Thor heard the unhappiness in her voice, and twisted his head around to look at her.

“Has he tried to contact you? Because the restraining order says he can’t…”

He gripped her hand, insistent upon the truth. Frigga patted him reassuringly.

“I know that, baby boy. He hasn’t tried. And if he did, I’d tell you. You can trust me.”

"I know, Mum.” Thor said apologetically. “I do trust you. You just seemed really serious when you came in. I thought you were worried about something.”

"I am. I’m worried about you. I know it’s been hard for you, stuck in this place. I just feel like it’s my fault that you have to live like this…”

“Like what? It’s a luxury hotel suite, Mum. We’re not exactly wallowing in squalor.”

“I know but… it’s not a proper home, is it? You need to be settled…”

“We both do.” Thor told her. “And we will be as soon as Odin stops playing silly buggers and lets the lawyers get the finances sorted out properly…”

Frigga hesitated, and then said carefully.

“Have you talked to him?”

“No!” Thor declared immediately. “I wouldn’t do that Mum!”

“I’m not mad at you, sweet. And I wouldn't be mad at you if you spoke to him, either. He’s your father. It wouldn't be...betraying me if you talked with him. Maybe gave him the chance to explain his behaviour?”

“There’s no excuse.” Thor said adamantly.

“I didn’t say excuse. I said explanation. To help you make sense of things. It wasn’t normal behaviour, was it? I’m sure he wouldn't have done it if he hadn’t been drinking...”

“I don’t care why he decided to skip work to hole up in his study and drink himself into oblivion before assaulting my boyfriend. It doesn’t make any difference.”

Frigga rested her head on top of Thor’s, put an arm around him.

“I know, baby. He did a horrible thing. But I’m not only talking about that. I mean what he’s done since. I just want you to know that everything he’s doing right now, with the money and whatnot...it’s about he and I. He’s not trying to make your life difficult.”

“No. He’s trying to force me to speak to him by withholding his financial support. Like the dick he is. But I don’t care. He knows he’ll have to pay soon enough. The law’s on our side…”

Thor folded his arms on his chest. His face was hard.

“Yes, but in the meantime, you’ve lost so much.” Frigga sighed. “Your lovely room, and all your things...”

Thor shrugged in dismissal of this.

"...and your place at that school…”

Thor looked down at his lap. Frigga saw that this topic was more upsetting for him.

“I know it’s a shake-up, and I’m furious with him for saying he won’t pay for the academy anymore. He’s just being so...difficult.”

“He’s being a total fucking prick, Mum. You can say it.”

"Well…I’m not going to argue with you on that.”

Frigga lent down to kiss him on the forehead.

"Maybe it won't be so bad having to go back to your old school though?” She suggested.

Thor shrugged, but she continued to try and encourage him.

“I know it’s a faff, but you always did like the other school better, didn’t you? And you’ll be back with your old friends. So that’ll be nice at least…”

“I know.” Thor agreed, without much enthusiasm. “I hated that stupid academy anyway. It’s just…Loki‘s there.”

"I know. But you can still see him outside of school...”

"No.” said Thor flatly. “I can’t.”

"Is he still not speaking to you?”

“No.” Thor said again.

Frigga could hear the lump in Thor’s throat, see how close he was to tears. His body pulled away from her, unconsciously trying to turn away from the subject.

“Well…I’m sorry sweetheart.”

She sighed and sat back, hand still resting on the crown of her son’s head.

"Thor.” she said after a moment. “I don’t want you to suffer because of this situation between me and your father. You know he said he’d keep paying for the academy if you went back to live with him. I’d understand if you…”

“No!” Thor interrupted indignantly. “No way Mum! He hit you! I’m not choosing his side because he has the money!”

“It wouldn’t be choosing sides, Thor. I would understand if…”

Thor turned around to hug her tightly.

“Not in a million years, Mum! I’m staying with you.”

Frigga hid her head on his broad shoulder so that he didn't see her tears.

"I’m lucky to have you as a son.”

"You’re not lucky. Anything good about me is because of how you raised me.”

Frigga laughed through her tears.

"Thank you, Thor. That’s a lovely thing to say.”

"Well, I’m not gonna give him any credit, am I?”

Thor’s face darkened as he thought of his father.

“I hate him, Mum.” he told her. “What’s the matter with him? Why did he do it? Why does he hate Loki so much? Because of his family? It should be Loki that hates him!”

Frigga looked at her son, begging her for answers, and tried to think what to say.

“I don’t think he hates Loki.” she began. “I think…” A pause as she gathered her thoughts. “I think perhaps he was uncomfortable with the idea that you might be gay. It wasn’t something he was expecting…”

“I never even said I was gay. Just because I brought Loki home, doesn't mean...”

"That’s how he read it, Thor. He’s…old-fashioned.”

"Homophobic, yeah.”

Thor nodded understanding. Frigga patted his arm.

“You should’ve seen his face Mum, when he burst in and…did what he did. He looked sick. Like it was disgusting. Like Loki was disgusting. And Loki saw it too.”

He let out a sob. Frigga squeezed his arm supportively.

"I hate him.” Thor told her. “He put his hands on Loki, Mum. It was horrible. Loki was screaming …” His face was grim at the memory of the harrowing sound. “He’ll never forgive me. He’s probably fucking traumatised. Because of me!”

“It wasn’t because of you, Thor.” Frigga said gently.

“Yes, it was. I invited Loki there. I told him it was safe. I persuaded him to … ”

His voice caught, and he turned to his mother pleadingly.

"Why was he there, Mum? He should’ve been at work, not hiding at home getting pissed. Was it just because of Loki? Is it really so upsetting that I love Loki that he had to skip work and drink himself stupid and then start attacking people?”

And he flung himself around on the bed in frustration, away from Frigga, and began to punch at a mound of pillows, his eyes red.

“There’s nothing wrong with crying, prince. If you want to.”

At his mum’s words, Thor began at once to cry.

Frigga went to him, lifted his head to her chest, held it there whilst he wept, and thought about what he had said.

***

Frigga carried the two cups of cocoa across to the table of their shared sitting room. Thor took his own mug gratefully, blowing to cool it.

“So.” she began carefully. “You haven’t spoken to Loki at all since...”

“No.” Thor hung his head. “He wouldn’t answer messages, never mind calls.”

“And when did you last try contacting him...”

Thor shrugged.

“I haven't for a bit. I don't wanna panic him, seeing my number come up, if he’s still upset about what happened.”

“That’s good sweetheart. But it’s been a little while now. Why don't you try again? He’s probably calmed down by now.”

“I just...” Thor’s shoulders hunched. “I feel like I have no right. Why would he want to speak to me? Or see me? Or think of me? He was assaulted. By my father. In i> my home. He won't want anything to do with me after that. Why would he?”

Frigga tried to speak then, to say something to soften the situation. But Thor couldn't stop the flow of his words.

“You didn't see it, Mum. What Dad did to him. The way he was screaming …” He stared into the distance. “I hate Dad. He ruins everything. He ruined it for Sif and me by sending me to that school, and now he's ruined it for Loki and me by...”

His face was grim at the thought of what had happened, what Odin had done. He turned to his mother again.

“Y’know, I'm actually glad that I don't have to go back to that stupid fucking academy. It’ll be better for Loki. I don't want him to have to see me. It would only be more trauma...”

“Are you thinking of trying again with Sif, now that you’ll be together again at your old school?”

Thor shook his head.

“No Mum. Sif and me were always better as friends. I'm just saying I hate Dad for dragging us apart. And for dragging me away from Volstagg and Fandral and Hogun too. It's not about romance or whatever. It’s about my friends, and my life and ...whatever.

He shrugged, unable to vocalise his feelings.

Frigga nodded, gave him time. And then he spoke again, quietly.

"Anyway, Loki was different.”

“From Sif?”

“From everyone.” Thor told her. “I mean...I really loved him, Mum. It was different. It...it meant something, do you know what I mean?”

Tears welled in his eyes again.

"And now it's ruined. I just hope he's okay, Mum. He doesn't have anyone to talk to, if he feels bad or...”

Frigga told hold of his hand.

"Thor, I really think you should try and call him again.”

"You don't think I'll hurt him more?”

"No, sweetheart. I don't.”

***

When Frigga returned to the room, she found Thor sitting at the table, hot chocolate in his hand, staring at his mobile in confusion.

“Is he not answering?”

“It’s not even ringing." Thor told her, puzzled. “He must’ve turned his phone off or something. I guess he really doesn’t want to talk to me.”

“It might not have anything to do with you, Thor.”

"Why else would he turn his phone off?”

"Lots of reasons. Maybe he’s in the library?”

"You don’t turn your phone off ‘cause you’re in a library, Mum. You just put it on silent.”

“Well, you know I don’t understand all this new-fangled tech stuff.”

Thor rolled his eyes affectionately. Frigga continued to hypothesise.

“Maybe he forgot to charge it, and its batteries ran down? That happens to me all the time…”

"That’s ’cause you’re old. Loki wouldn’t just forget to … “

Suddenly Thor’s eyes widened and he dropped the mug of hot chocolate clumsily onto its coaster.

"Fuck!”

“What is it?” Frigga asked, taken aback.

Thor stared at her.

"He was charging his phone, Mum. That day…when everything happened. He was charging it in my room. Over on the other side, by the telly. And when Dad…came in he ran out straight away. He didn’t even have time to pick up his clothes… ”

There was an increasing horror in his voice. For a moment Frigga didn't understand. And then it dawned on her.

"So his phone’s…?”

Thor closed his eyes.

"Still there. In my room.” he said. “Loki couldn’t get it. It’s been there the whole time. So he wasn’t ignoring me. He didn’t even know I was calling him … “

“Oh sweetheart!”

“Dad must’ve got sick of me ringing it and gone into my bedroom and turned it off. Or smashed it, even.”

“I’m sure your father wouldn’t smash...”

"He probably thinks I’ve been ignoring him!” Thor wailed. “This whole time, he’s probably thought that.”

“But you went to his house…”

"So what? That was days and days ago. And his brothers probably never even told him, anyway. Those pricks.”

He laid his head on the table.

"Oh fuck, oh fuck.”

"It’s alright, baby.” Frigga put a hand on his shoulder.

"No it’s not, Mum. He doesn’t even know where I am. He’s been all on his own after what happened, thinking I’m ignoring him…”

“I’m sure he’s alright." Frigga said, rather uncertainly.

But Thor was shaking his head.

"But what if he isn’t? I don’t know, Mum. I don’t have any idea. Anything could have happened to him. I don’t even know where he is or how he is or… ”

Frigga tried to comfort him again, and he shook her hand off, repeating himself in a panic.

“He doesn’t have anyone to look after him, Mum. He’s alone. Anything could’ve happened...”

Chapter Text

Helblindi was slumped in front of the sports channel, beer in hand, working his way through the remnants of last night’s takeaway pizzas in their various greasy cardboard boxes, when someone started hammering on the front door. He looked around immediately for Loki, but since there was no sign of the kid he was forced to go to the door himself.

He had barely halfway opened it when Loki himself burst into the house, a blur of bare skin and lace, clutching shreds of some kind of lingerie around his half- naked body and wailing at a really quite unpleasant pitch as he pounded up the staircase and around the corner toward his room.

“Loki, you little psycho!” Hel called after the retreating figure. “What’re you playing at? Are you on fucking drugs or summat?”

There was no response. Hel craned back in time to see Loki’s bedroom door slamming shut.

“You're fucking lucky Dad didn't see that.” He yelled at the door. “He'd have a lot of fucking questions for you, you dirty little poof.”

There was no response.

Tutting in annoyance Hel returned to the settee, kicking the front door shut behind him as he went.

***

In his dark bedroom Loki trembled as he dragged what remained of the spoiled outfit from his body. He still had enough presence of mind left to bundle the scraps of satin and lace up and conceal them inside an envelope and then a plastic bag, before pushing the bundle to the very bottom of the bin in the corner of his room. The last thing he needed was Laufey finding them, and asking questions which Loki did not want to answer.

The once prized items summarily disposed of as contaminated rubbish, Loki darted about the tiny room in a directionless panic. There was a horrible keening sound coming from somewhere; it took a moment for him to realise that it was rising, unbidden, from somewhere inside his own body.

It was impossible to think. Everything was too much, bearing down on him, crushing him, surrounding him all at once.

Winding himself up in his duvet, Loki threw himself down into the narrow gap between his bed and the wall and lay there, cocooned and entombed, breathing in the darkness. Counting his breaths, eyes closed, hidden. Waiting until he could think.

Slowly, an idea came to him. Or at least a word. Clean. He wanted to be clean.

He listened. Hel was still downstairs, the TV blasting out the oppressive sound of sport, a thousand voices screaming in unison for the defeat of their enemy. By was in his room; the steady thumping of one of his exercise devices echoed through the floorboards. And Laufey...Laufey was in the bathroom, the pipes creaking as the last of today’s hot water flowed down the drain.

Loki’s skin prickled with longing; it was as though he could feel a layer of filth coating his flesh, crawling over him. He had to be clean. He had to.

But...not yet. He had to wait first.

He could do that. He could wait. At least it was something to focus on, as he lay in his padded pit like a corpse in a coffin, buried and safe.

Safe? Yes, safe.

Finally the sequence of sounds which Loki was waiting for began: the squeal of the tap as it was tightened, the change of the water from a pattering stream to a long, slow, heavy drip; the hollow thumping of steps on the shower floor; the rubbery slide of its glass door; the sticky tread on the bathroom tiles; the rattle of the loose towel rail; the click of the bathroom door; the heavy tread along the hallway and past Loki’s room. And, eventually, the slam of Laufey’s bedroom door.

Loki kneeled up, heaved himself onto the bed still bound in his duvet, and wriggled across it like a snake. Opening his own bedroom door a crack, he peeped out onto the landing. All was quiet. Well, excepting the scream of the sports mob and the constant, repetitive banging of the exercise machine. In fact, the house was actually pretty loud, in all accuracy. But no sounds indicated the likely approach of any of the other bodies who occupied its rooms. And so Loki crossed hurriedly to the airing cupboard, grabbed the least worn and tatty of the thin old towels piled inside, and hopped back into his room.

Exchanging the enveloping mass of the duvet for the much more uncomfortably exposing towel, he scuttled across to the bathroom, only breathing once he had pushed the heavy door closed behind him. The room itself was damp and clammy, tiny mirror steamed up, all the surfaces vaguely grubby. But there was nowhere else. So Loki unrolled himself from the thin towel, exposing his body to the moist air, and hung it carefully on the predictably empty towel rail. Tiptoeing across the slimy floor, he stepped inside the little cubicle and sealed it behind him.

In relative safety, having exchanged his bedding coffin for a vertical glass casket, Loki let lukewarm water fall all about him, and closed his eyes. Wreathed in the steady, soothing downpour he began to relax, just a little. His mind was smooth and blank, and his body began to reassert itself; bruises and scrapes made themselves known with aches and stinging. His feet in particular began to throb; Loki realised only now that he had run home barefoot, across concrete and tarmac and gravel. He shifted his feet experimentally to ascertain their state and could identify no specific injuries, nothing serious anyway. Just a general swollen, tender feeling to them combined with a soreness in his calves which promised to deepen.

Time and place didn’t seem to matter in this liminal space; Loki was safe and separate under the water, nowhere but in his own body, everything drowned out by the steady sound of the water, the comforting pressure all around him, the dim light and the close walls and the coolness on his skin...

And then, trespassing on the space, came a sound. The sound of the bathroom door opening.

Loki’s eyes shot open as he shrank back into the corner, hands covering his body even though no eyes were upon it at this moment.

It was Laufey. Laufey was in the room.

Loki jumped at the bang of the toilet seat as it was thrown up. And then came the sound of Laufey’s sovereign ring clicking against the porcelain rim of the sink as he held it to support himself while he pissed.

Loki held his breath. The water was ice cold now, pouring over the frozen sheet of his hair, pooling in the hollows of his clavicles, slipping down his body like frosted fingers tracing their way across his flesh. His chest hurt, although whether from the chill or the fear of the lack of air it was hard to say.

But he stayed still. There was no other way. If he stayed still, perhaps Laufey would not notice him.

But Laufey noticed him.

“What’re you freaking out for, Loki?”

His voice was flat, as always. He had a dead manner to him, like someone who had never felt warmth.

Loki didn’t make a sound. Laufey snorted, rattled the phlegm in the back of his throat, hocked it into the toilet bowl.

“You're such a little prude. No one else in this house is like that. This is a family; we don't need to hide from each other. And you don't have anything I haven't seen before.”

A whimper slipped out of Loki. Laufey was opening the shower door.

There was no escape. Loki cringed further into the corner as his father’s pale eyes ran over him.

“What are you being weird about? You've got nothing to hide. Nobody wants what you've got. It's not like you're a real girl.”

He seized Loki’s thin wrist, fingers locked as tight as an iron manacle. Loki stumbled as his father pulled him out of the cubicle, tried to twist his naked body away. Laufey pulled him close against his own bare chest, ignoring the patch of damp as Loki’s wet body was pushed against his grey boxer shorts.

“You think anyone wants this? You think anyone's interested?”

He was slapping at Loki’s flesh now as he patted him about, pinching and grabbing at his flanks and legs and buttocks.

“You think anyone's interested in this?”

Tears began to pour unbidden from Loki’s eyes. Laufey’s lip curled in disgust.

“You arrogant little shit! You’re not special! Nobody here is watching after you!”

And he threw the boy away from him.

Loki’s hip collided with the sink, and he fell heavily against the side of the shower cubicle. Almost as soon as he landed, he caught hold of the bathmat, scrambling to roll it around himself so that it hid his nudity. Then he lay, face pressed against the tiles, listening to Laufey’s breathing, waiting.

He couldn't bring himself to look up, so all that he saw of Laufey as he left was his gnarled, grey feet as he walked away.

***

"What the fuck are you doing, Loki?”

Býleistr was looking down at him, a rolled-up car magazine in one hand, his heavy face crumpled up with confusion at the sight of his little brother half-naked and curled up on the bathroom floor.

“Look at the state of you. You sick?”

After a moment Loki shook his head.

“Okay, well, I've come in here to take a shit, so if you wouldn't mind vacating the area?”

He dragged the towel from the rail and handed it to Loki, crumpled clumsily in his big hand. Loki took it, and he turned his head away to allow Loki to stand and wrap the fabric around himself without being seen.

"You’ve finished your exams, right?”

Loki made a noise in response. By nodded, as though this explained everything.

“Yeah, I get it. Our last day at school, me and Hel went fucking mental. It was a proper mad one. We were off our heads. All the lads were. Some kid got taken to hospital and everything.”

He smiled fondly at the memory.

"That what you've been up to? Partying with your mates from school?”

There was a long silence as By waited for an answer and Loki simply stared back at him, empty-faced, his arms wrapped around his towel-clad torso. Eventually he responded tonelessly.

“Yes. That's right. Me and all my friends had a big party because it was our last day at school. And we were all drinking and dancing and doing all the stuff friends do. All together. All my friends and me.”

There was another long pause. Eventually By broke it somewhat awkwardly.

“Okay, nice one. But maybe go and put some kecks on before Dad sees you, yeah? He's ... around right now. And he's not in a great mood. Kay?”

He waited until Loki, after blinking slowly once or twice, answered him by repeating his last word.

"'Kay.”

And then he turned away, and Loki went down the hallway to his own room, closed the door firmly, got into bed, and pulled the covers over his head.

***

It was Monday morning. Outside were all the usual sounds; dogs barking, the man over the road swearing at his car, the bin-men bellowing down the street to each other as they swung bags of rubbish into the great metal maw of their stinking lorry, the clattering and jangling of countless bottles and cans being poured into the wire cage at the back of the recycling van.

Loki swung himself out of bed automatically and proceeded through his routine without conscious thought; past the closed bedroom doors of his family to the bathroom for a wash at the sink, back to his room to put on his school uniform, downstairs to collect his coat from the newel post at the end of the bannisters, and out of the house after closing the door carefully to avoid waking anyone. He would suffer later for waking anyone.

One foot in front of the other, stepping along the grey pavement. Walking and walking and walking, with no need to look up. Walking and walking until he was brought up short.

The gates were closed.

Loki stood blinking stupidly at them. The school gate, closed. The school grounds, empty. The school buildings, silent. Deep within the grounds his safe space, the library, unreachable.

And slowly understanding came to him, and he was filled with shame at his own stupidity. Of course everything was locked up. It was the school holidays.

Mortified at the thought of how many people had seen him trudging to school in his uniform, unobserved by him in his zombie trance as he plodded dully along, Loki stripped off his blazer and tie and shoved them into his backpack. His shirt and trousers were suspiciously formal, but not quite as undeniably pieces of a uniform as the tie striped in school colours and the blazer with its gaudy crest.

This done, Loki hurried away as quickly as possible, before he was observed loitering around the school gates. He chose a direction at random, concerned only with getting away from the school environs as quickly as possible. His being seen there in the holidays, hovering outside in his uniform like some sad little scholarly ghost waiting to be let in, would be a gift to anyone wanting to mock him.

A few streets distant, Loki finally slowed. There was no hurry; it wasn't as though he wanted to go home. And there was nowhere else for him except that house, the last place he wanted to be.

The barrier was down at the level crossing. There was already somebody waiting there, and Loki was in no mood to be anywhere near other people, so he made his way up the steps of the footbridge instead.

At the top of the bridge he stopped, leaning back against one of the high metal walls so that, looking across the walkway, all he could see were the tops of the trees waving gently to and fro in the slate grey sky.

It was peaceful up there, this early in the day at least. Loki began to feel a little calmer. He had nowhere to be, but that could be a freedom as much as a cruelty. At least he was here, in this nowhere place between other places, alone,

And then his eyes moved down to the roughly painted bridge wall. And he saw the writing on it, in large and confident red letters. Someone had taken the time to write there, bigger than all the other graffiti, the phrase ”Loki will suck your dick for pocket money”.

Loki stared at the words for a while. And then, almost casually, he stepped forward and clambered up the side of the bridge. There were no toeholds other than the rivets which held the structure together, but Loki was small and nimble.

At some point there had been a series of panels along the tops of the bridge walls, forming a protective barrier. But many of these metal grilles had disappeared over the years, long before Loki was even born. There were plenty of spaces between them. Loki slipped into one, legs dangling over the side.

Beneath him the bridge rumbled; a train would soon pass by below. Probably sooner than he expected. Trains had a tendency to do that; you thought you had time and suddenly they were upon you, before you had time to think.

But Loki thought he had a moment or two yet. Just long enough to slip off the bridge and tumble down onto the tracks below, hopefully knocking himself out as he landed out so that he would already be mercifully absent when the train beat its inexorable way beneath the bridge.

Chapter Text

Thor sat at the table in the sitting room shared by him and his mother, tapping his fingers on its polished surface as he waited for someone to answer the landline at Loki’s house.

It felt like it had been ringing for a very long time.

And then, finally, a click as the receiver was lifted.

“Hello?”

“What?”

It was a rough, unfriendly voice. Thor guessed that it belonged to the brother who had answered the door. Although if it came to it, he wasn't certain if he could tell the difference between him and the second brother. And he had yet to see or hear anything of the father; perhaps he was the mould that had formed them? They could be three identical giants, for all he knew.

“Is Loki there?” he tried.

“Loki?” the voice repeated in disbelief. Its owner was very drunk, Thor noted.

“Yeah, Loki.”

There was a pause, some fumbling. And then the voice, mercifully a little way away from the receiver, yelled back into the room.

“Someone wants to talk to Loki!”

The person speaking sounded incredulous at this turn of events.

Thor heard the rumble of voices somewhere in Loki’s house. And then some thumping and banging, and the sudden crack as the receiver was dropped and hit some hard surface.

Thor pulled his own phone away from his ear just too late to avoid the sharp sound echoing through him. Nobody seemed to be picking it up again, nor for that matter indicating that there was a reason for him to wait. For all Thor knew, whoever had answered had simply dropped the phone and walked away.

He tried saying hello once or twice, to no response. And then, frustrated, he moved his thumb toward the ‘cancel’ button on his own screen.

And just then a small voice spoke through the device.

"Hello?”

"Loki?” asked Thor eagerly.

There was a sharp intake of breath at the other end of the line. And then the voice spoke again.

"Th...” it began, sharp and high with excitement.

And then, halfway through saying Thor’s name, it hesitated. And when it spoke again it was cold and impersonal.

"Yes, hello?”

Thor was confused. Then, in the silence as he tried to understand, he heard sounds in the background: the television, blasting out some sports event; the snap and hiss of a beer can being opened, the clink of a bottle against a glass. And he remembered what he had seen of the house, the phone table in the hallway only feet away from the front room, the thin walls. And a picture formed in his mind.

“Are you not alone.”

"No.” Flat and neutral.

“Can you not talk then?”

“No.”

“Do you want me to come there?”

“No.” Slightly more emphasis this time.

Thor considered.

"Okay. Will you meet me somewhere then? If I give you a time and place.?”

There was a long pause. And then an answer, if not an especially keen one.

“Alright.”

And so Thor did as he had said. And Loki agreed politely and hung up.

Thor set his phone down on the table and laid his hands flat beside it as he thought. He supposed he should be happy. He was going to see Loki, after all. And if the tone of their conversation was odd, that could be explained by the situation with the family listening in. So surely things had gone as well as could be expected? And yet Thor felt uncertain.

***

Loki hadn’t spoken since Thor had opened the door to him. He had been polite enough, allowing himself to be escorted to the table and sitting in the chair Thor had indicated. He had accepted the items Thor had handed to him: his clothes, cleaned and pressed by the hotel and sealed into an envelope tied around with a crisp, branded ribbon; his shoes, polished by unseen hotel staff and folded into their own paper bag; his phone and charger, the cord wound up and the two items place by Thor’s own hand in a travel case which he had purchased specifically to keep them safe.

He had taken the parcels graciously enough, and placed them in a tidy pile at his elbow. But he had not said a word. And now he was sat opposite Thor, head bowed and fingers linked nervously together in his lap, as though he was waiting for some inevitable blow to fall upon his shoulders.

Thor didn’t know what to do, how to speak to him. It was like how it had been when they first met. Well, not that first time, not exactly. That was … a special circumstance. What Thor was really reminded of was later, when he had first tried to speak to Loki and had been met with a blank face and stone walls. Not that Loki had seemed as nervous then as he did now, necessarily. But he had been this closed off and remote and unknowable. And slowly, gently, little by little, Thor had begun to earn just a little bit of his trust, to move a little bit closer to him. And gradually Loki had begun to open up, to thaw, to let Thor see him.

And now it was as though none of it had ever happened. As though Thor was a stranger to him. As though there was nothing between them.

Embarrassingly, Thor felt tears prickling his eyes. He blinked them away hurriedly. This was too important a moment to spend crying. He had to at least try to find words.

“Sorry it took so long to get them back to you.” He gestured at the stack of belongings. “I thought I’d send the clothes to the laundry, but maybe that was stupid?”

He paused to see if Loki had any comment, but none was forthcoming. And so, driven to explain himself and not leave a gap in the conversation, Thor ploughed on.

“And with your phone, I only realised yesterday that it was still at the house. And then I had to wait until Dad was definitely at work before I went in to get it. I'm not risking bumping into him. The lawyers say it's better not to see him, while he's behaving like this. And I don't want to anyway, so...”

Loki looked up, a gleam of interest in his eyes.

"What lawyers?”

"The divorce lawyers.”

“Your parents have split up? Because of what happened?”

Loki’s eyes widened, and he twisted his fingers together viciously. Thor nodded.

“Uh-huh. That's why me and Mum are staying here...”

"You're staying here?”

"Why else would we meet here?”

Thor was puzzled. He kept his eyes on Loki, waiting for an answer.

"I just thought...” Loki began hesitantly. “I just thought you didn't want me at your house.”

“What?”

Thor stared blankly at him, unable to make sense of this.

"After what happened with your dad.” Loki said in a small voice, shoulders hunched higher.

And then he drew himself up, and his face hardened.

“Look, can we just get this over with?”

He seemed to be bracing himself for something horrible and unavoidable. Thor frowned, his brow furrowing.

"Get what over with?”

Loki’s nervous hands flew up in frustration, and his voice rose too.

"Just say whatever you have to say, and I'll go!”

He looked expectantly at Thor. And when no words were forthcoming, he tutted and gestured at the pile.

“Or did you make me come all the way here just to give me the clothes? You could've just posted them.”

His mouth was twisted now, with irritation or anger or fear, Thor really wasn’t sure. He looked very fierce, something like a trapped animal. But also indignant, as though he was being attacked and wouldn’t simply take it without fighting back.

If Thor was honest with himself, he had absolutely no idea what was happening. And so he did the only thing he could think of to do, and asked.

"What do you think is happening here, Loki?”

Loki’s hands were dancing wildly in the air now, his sharp teeth showing.

"I know you're mad with me.” he told Thor. “I know you don't ever wanna see me again. I get it. I've ruined everything. Obviously you hate me. You don't have to tell me. And there's no point in having a go at me about it, 'cause I can't fix it and I can't explain it. It's just what happens. I fuck stuff up. I'm bad luck. That's how it is. I'm sorry...”

He was already out of his seat, moving toward the door. Thor caught hold of his wrist, pulled him back, saw his tearful face and trembling lip.

“Loki!” he said in horror. “You don't think that I blame you for this?”

For a moment they just looked at each other, both on the edge of crying. Loki seemed to be struggling with something, a mess of emotions flickering across his face at lightning speed. He moved toward Thor for an instant, seemingly involuntarily, and then pulled away again with a horrible little moan as though the action hurt him.

“Of course you blame me!” he insisted. “Look what I’ve done! You've only known me a few months, and I've broken your whole family apart.”

"It wasn't your fault...”

Thor’s hand slid from Loki’s wrist to his hold his hand instead.

Loki let him, stopped trying to leave the table. But he turned his face away and his body was stiff.

"Yes, it was.” he said hollowly. “You don't know. Bad things just happen around me. I was born to trouble, it's who I am.”

And then his voice cracked.

“You know I killed my mother on my way out of her...?”

Thor was shocked. He slipped to his knees so that he could be closer to Loki, still holding his hand tightly.

"That's not your fault either, Loki!” he said gently, trying not to show the anger he felt. “Who told you it was? Your father?”

Loki nodded; face hidden by a fall of black hair. Thor put his arms around the hunched figure.

“That's not right, to say things like that to you.”

And he cradled Loki’s head in his broad hand, wrapping the thin body up safely in his arms and moving so that Loki’s face was tucked against his neck.

“It’s not right to say that to you.” he repeated, stroking Loki’s hair in clumsy emulation of how Frigga had so often soothed him. “You know that, don't you?”

And after a long moment, Loki nodded. And then his body softened suddenly under Thor’s hands, and he began to sob. And Thor began to sob too.

***

Frigga knocked on the door of their shared room, and at Thor’s rumble of welcome she let herself in.

The two boys were curled up together on the bigger of the two couches. They were red-eyed and sniffling, and it was obvious that a lot of tears had been shed. But they were also beaming with happiness, their fingers laced together.

"Hello babies.” she said cheerfully. “Is it okay if I come in now?”

“Yeah Mum, you can come in.”

Thor laughed, squeezing Loki close. And Loki smiled at her and tried to smooth down his tousled hair.

"How are we doing?”

She maintained a light tone as she sat down on the second couch, making sure not to look at them with too much scrutiny, in case it made them uncomfortable.

“We’re good?” Thor looked to Loki. who nodded. Thor turned back to his mother. “We’re good.”

“Good.” Frigga said.

Everyone laughed at the repetition. Not that it was much of a joke really, but the mood seemed suddenly very silly.

Frigga turned then to Loki, his face a little pink, Thor’s arm around him.

"Do you have to be home at a certain time, sweet pea?” she asked “We can get you a taxi. You did have to come right across town because of us.”

Loki sprang immediately from Thor’s arms and began scrabbling around for his shoes and coat.

“No. You don’t have to go.” Thor said, reaching for him. “Mum doesn't want rid of you. She was just checking if you needed a lift, and if you had a time you had to get back for.”

Loki looked cautiously at Frigga, who nodded.

“That’s right, honey. You don't have to go because of me. As far as I'm concerned, you’re welcome to stay here all night.”

She gave him a rich, golden smile, the same open and welcoming expression that Thor had inherited. And Loki’s own face opened in response, and he sat back down. At once Thor hooked an arm around his waist and tucked him back against his own body.

"No, no one expects me back.” Loki told them, somewhat bitterly. “They never even notice if I’m there or not, unless someone needs a wash done or something. And they’re not bothered. We’re not a real family.”

"Well, I don't suppose we are either anymore.” Frigga said sadly. “Now that it’s just the two of us, living like this.”

She gestured around the luxurious hotel suite. Thor rolled his eyes good-naturedly, as he always did when she spoke in this vein.

"Oh no!” Loki insisted. “You are a family. You and Thor are a great family!”

He was uncharacteristically earnest. Frigga blushed and beamed.

“Well, thank you angel. That’s very kind.”

Loki blushed in turn at her gratitude. Thor smoothed his dark hair aside and kissed his brow.

“Can he really stay the night?” he asked.

“If he wants to.” Frigga turned to Loki. “You’re very welcome. And Thor has twin beds in his room, so there’s plenty of space.”

“They’re the hotel kind.” Thor told him, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively. “Y’know, the ones you can push together to make a double.”

Loki blushed harder. Frigga smacked Thor’s shoulder playfully.

"Don’t push it, young man!”

"My luck, or the beds?” Thor asked her.

Frigga rolled her eyes. Thor made further mock lascivious expressions and nudged her. Loki watched their easy, playful manner with each other, and saw how much open love there was between them, and smiled.

“You can stay as long as you like.” Frigga said now. “I’d be happy to have you. And I’m sure Thor would too.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Odinson.” Loki said politely.

“You can call me Frigga, pumpkin.” she told him. “After all, you are a part of the family now.”

“I am?”

Loki was wide eyed and hopeful. Thor nodded, and kissed his forehead again.

“Definitely.” he said.

And Frigga nodded too.

“If you want to join the two of us.” Loki nodded, and she smiled. “And then there were three! That’s a lovely number for a family.”

And she stood and straightened her long skirt.

"Are you two boys hungry?”

“Starving.” Thor confirmed. Loki nodded agreement.

“Well, then it seems like a good time for dinner.”

“Cool.” Thor sat up. “Are we eating here?”

“No, let’s go out. This is a special occasion.”

Thor nodded.

“You should choose.” he told Loki. “What type of thing do you like? We could get anything you want.”

Loki looked a bit overwhelmed at the possibilities laid before him. Frigga laid a calming hand on Thor, who was bouncing around trying to find his shoes.

“We don't need to decide now.” she told him. “Let’s all just go out and have an adventure together.”

“What kind of adventure?” Loki asked curiously.

“I don’t know yet, moonbeam.” Frigga smiled at him. “We’ll just go out there, and walk around together, and see what happens.”