Chapter Text
(A/N: Loki will have emotional troubles in this story, but as of now I don't think he'll be sent to a dungeon again. However, the story will contain torture scenes. I'll warn for them, as usual.)
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It was possibly the most enjoyable birthday Thor had ever known. He had cleared up all his work in the morning, and then Loki had taken him to swim in a fantastic waterfall (in what realm, he had no idea), and now, back home, a feast to end all feasts was unfolding.
There were many toasts, and he was very drunk. There were many women, and after the more distinguished guests had departed to leave only the young and rowdy, one of them was now pressed up against him murmuring slurred nothings into his ear. He was just about to propose that he take her to his rooms... when he remembered that they were no longer exclusively his.
“Brother.” As if reading his mind, Loki was suddenly there, close to his other ear. “Give me five minutes.”
So Thor pushed her against a column and kissed her throat, and kept her there for a while. When he finally led her upstairs, the place where the bedroom should have been was now a corridor with two doors at the end, which were ornately decorated with red and green stones. He took a moment to admire Loki's work before pushing open the red door and carrying the woman inside.
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Loki sat outside in the snow, hugging his knees, watching the swirling white wind. He was a little drunk, which perhaps explained why had gotten so emotional over redecorating their bedroom a few moments ago. He had erased all traces of himself – vanishing his clothes and pillows, covering over bookcases with weapons racks, replacing sheets that smelled of his nightmare-sweat. He'd disguised the room and then made himself a dummy door that led to nothing, in case Thor's companion thought to wonder where Loki went when he and Thor vanished down the same hallway each night.
He doubted that she would wonder, though. Nobody ever wondered about Loki. Or would miss him.
The sudden tightness in his chest made him laugh aloud. “Idiot,” he said fondly. It was an old childhood fantasy: he would pack up and disappear, leaving the family to weep and rend their clothes and wail about how sorry they were that they had never appreciated little Loki properly when they had him.
An old idea, a silly idea that had no place in his life now, not when he really was valued and appreciated for perhaps the first time ever. He knew that. Still, erasing himself had been a strange experience and he was still feeling a little bit raw, and decided he shouldn't rejoin the party until he was finished calming down.
Time passed, the night was lovely, but eventually over the distant sounds of feasting he heard someone trudging towards him through the snow
Instantly he was on his feet with a ball of power in his hand... but it was only Fandral and he relaxed. He threw up a hand in greeting.
Fandral waved back. “Ho, Loki. There you are.”
“No - Thor's up in our-... up in his room,” Loki said. “With a girl.”
“I know. There you are, I said. I'm not looking for Thor.” He gestured to a nearby tree that would provide some shelter, and even though Loki preferred sitting under the stars, when Fandral asked “Mind?” he shrugged and went to it.
They sat down together and Fandral brushed snow from their hair and shoulders. His fussing was unusually coordinated for this hour, and it seemed that most of the flush on his cheeks was from the cold. “You're not drunk,” Loki observed.
Fandral laughed. “No. I decided to keep my head clear tonight to make sure our king didn't make too big a fool of himself at his first royal birthday party.”
Loki had been doing much the same thing. Pity; if only they'd coordinated their efforts they could perhaps have worked in shifts. “I think he acquitted himself well.”
“Thanks to you. Nice work with that drinking horn.”
Loki acknowledged with a nod and just hoped the subject would pass quickly. Watching people clustered around Thor urging him to drink longer and harder, to drain draft after draft... even though it was all in fun Loki hadn't liked it, and he had begun vanishing liquid out the back end of the horn while Thor gulped away at the front.
“No one else noticed the cheating,” Fandral added. “Only me, as I was the one in charge of monitoring His Majesty's drinking. Soberly.”
He hoped Thor appreciated what good friends he had. “You did a fine job. Now, why did you come looking for me?”
Even in the poor light Loki caught a look of consternation flashing over the handsome face. “Ahh... no reason. We noticed you weren't in the hall, and I started to worry.”
“Don't try lying to the liesmith,” Loki snapped, but then felt bad, and conjured a warm breeze as reparations. “Why?”
“Mmmm.” Fandral relaxed in the heat.
“Tell me why.” The reluctance meant that it must be unpleasant.
Fandral sighed. Ran a hand through his hair. “Listen, Loki, it was all in fun,” he began.
“An auspicious beginning to any explanation.”
But the warrior was not so easily bullied. “Ah, quiet down,” he laughed. “Listen. Sif was drunk and lusty. We'd all started teasing her about laying with this man or that man, or this army or that army, and eventually with all the men of the realm at once.”
“... And then with all the beasts of the realm, and then, scandal of scandals, even with a frost-giant,” Loki guessed. He knew there was no malice in it and he did his best to shrug it off.
“In substance, yes. Which reminded us that we had not seen you for a little while, so I, as the most sober, came looking.”
“Thanks for your concern, but as you see, I am fine.” He looked back out at the snow. “Thor's up there with a girl, as I said, so I've come out here to sulk. That's all.”
There was a long silence, and eventually he glanced over to see Fandral looking at him with a very odd expression on his face. “What?”
“Loki... You don't mean...? Forgive me, but there's no delicate way to ask. You and Thor?”
“Me and Thor...?” It actually took Loki a moment to realize what he must be talking about. When he did understand, his silver tongue deserted him completely and he began to sputter almost without words. “I, I- you- What?” he managed at last. “He's my brother!”
Fandral's hands rose in apology. “All right all right, I thought not of course, I'm sorry, it's just, you know, there was all that Thor's queenbusiness, and you said you're out here sulking because...”
“Because I've been evicted from my bedroom so that Thor can fuck!”
“All right, all right.” Fandral was still making soothing gestures. “I'm sorry. Look, you did move in to his room the moment you learned you weren't his blood relation. And since then he won't come wenching with us, because he has to get home to Loki. So when you said...” He waved it off. “Never mind. All right?”
Loki buried his hands in his hair and tugged. The headache helped. Thor was an idiot – and so was he. This was what came of being too secretive. “I have nightmares,” he explained shortly, staring at his lap. “That's why I don't sleep alone.”
“Oh.”
He had to laugh. “You people didn't really think...?”
Fandral winced. “Sorry. I mean for all we know it's normal... you know... where you come from.”
Loki couldn't remember the last time he was simultaneously this exasperated and this amused. “No, I'm afraid that is not normal anywhere that I know of. And for your information Jotunheim doesn't practice monogamous pair-bonding at all. Much less with a close family member. Ugh.”
“Who said it had to be monogamous?”
Loki rolled his eyes, by now much more amused than exasperated.
It was quiet for a moment, and then Fandral said: “This is going to sound all sorts of wrong now, but: do you want to come up to my room?”
“Fandral!”
“To sleep! To sleep,” he assured fast, laughing. “In separate beds. I just meant that if you can't be alone....”
Now that he thought a little harder about it, sitting up all night in the snow was not really a very good plan. “I appreciate the offer.” He made a face. “Unless it will start more rumours?”
Fandral climbed to his feet and offered Loki a hand up. “I think there are rumours about me and half the people of Asgard.”
Loki let himself be pulled to standing before answering: “It's well more than half.”
“And I'm sure you step in to defend my honor every time you hear one.”
“Certainly – when I'm not too busy fucking Thor.”
Fandral apologized almost all the way to his bedroom.
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Thor woke up to the worst headache he could remember since crashing to the unforgiving rock of Midgard from the sky. There was a foul taste in his mouth and his stomach was roiling.
He recognized it all as the aftereffects of drinking, but couldn't yet remember the drinking itself. He groped blindly in the darkness for his curtains.
Before he could find them the darkness lifted all by itself, and there was Loki, sitting on the edge of the bed reading. “You have rejoined the land of the living, brother,” Loki laughed softly.
Thor tried to get out of bed, but felt so sick he went to his knees on the carpet instead.
The carpet was unfamiliar.
He looked around more carefully and realized that the room was all wrong - the bookshelves were gone, the decorations different. “Where am I?”
“You're at home. I'll take the illusion off now - I worried the magic would wake you.” Loki stood and waved his arms in a big complicated pattern, and the room sparkled and melted away into its usual form. Loki's clothes everywhere, his books, his armor. When he was done he turned back and smiled with unusual gentleness. “Do you remember anything about last night? Your birthday party?”
“Oh.” The birthday party had been wonderful. He'd left with a woman... and Loki had dashed on ahead to remake the room for him. “I remember. I had not planned to drink as much as I did.” There had been a reason he'd planned to be careful. His head pounded. “Oh-! I have an audience. Ambassadors from Alfheim. At eleven. I cannot...”
“It's already two in the afternoon. Calm down – I took care of it for you.”
“Gods.” Thor covered his face, pressing hard against his eyes to try and control the spearing pains in his skull. “What did you tell them?”
“In a minute. First, look at me.” Loki sat back down on the bed, laid hands on the sides of his head, and murmured some spell.
It felt like the brains were being scooped out of his skull and shaken. Thor grit his teeth so as not to scream, and didn't, and afterwards the pounding faded to a dull faraway throb. “Thank you, brother.”
Loki scowled. “It's not perfect. Sorry. Drink is a singularly difficult malady to cure. How's your stomach?”
In response his stomach clenched up and began to heave. Frantic swallowing prevented anything from coming up, but he shook his head. “Ill.”
Loki did something for that too, and although Thor didn't feel entirely well afterwards, he was able to get up out of bed and dress. “What happened this morning? And how on earth did I sleep so long – what did I drink?”
“I don't know – you weren't nearly this bad when we left you. The woman who accompanied you swears you sent her away without explanation and reached for a bottle, and that is all anyone knows until we found you this morning.”
Ah, yes. He remembered now. The room had felt wrong without Loki in it, and it had occurred to him that Loki had given up his own sleeping-place for the sake of his brother's amusements. He had felt so guilty and drunkenly overwrought that he'd bid the woman goodnight and consumed the better part of a bottle of hard Elvish liquor instead, weeping into his pillows about brotherly love. “I was feeling introspective,” he said, in a tone meant to discourage questions.
Oddly, Loki didn't pry. All he said was: “I see,” and then rose to begin pacing. “So: about the audience. Please don't be angry.”
His stomach knotted. “What did you tell them?”
“I didn't tell them anything.” Loki passed a hand over his face and suddenly Thor was looking into a mirror. “I appeared as you and handled all the business myself.” Another swipe of his hand and he was Loki again. “You know I would never impersonate you without your permission, Thor, but you were completely unconscious and they would have been gravely insulted if you didn't come. I swear to you I didn't do anything,anything that-”
“Loki.” Thor held his hand up. “It's fine. I trust you.” A great deal of tension went out of Loki's body at that, which Thor hated, because it meant that after all these months of calm and restraint and not a single explosion, Loki still worried that he might lose his temper at a moment's notice. Did he not deserve better by now? How long until he had proved himself matured?
Still, he knew that Loki had been given much reason to distrust in his life, and so he only clapped him on the shoulder. “And I thank you as well, brother, for I do not think I would have negotiated wisely in my condition this morning.” He smiled. “So. Tell me about the audience. What matters were discussed?”
Loki looked, if anything, even more uncomfortable. “Well. There was one matter I did not resolve – I said I needed time for reflection. We have to talk about it. I didn't know what to do.”
“Of course.” Loki had never sought advice in this way before. Thor tried to draw himself up and look more like a king and less like a sick vagabond. “What matter?”
“An Elvish princess was kidnapped,” Loki recounted shortly. “With the help of an Asgardian. He was captured, but he would not tell where the girl has been taken. It was proposed that we have him interrogated. Hard.”
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TBC.