@circecore stop having ideas
The window reflects Loki’s face and reveals his serene expression to Thor’s eye before it can be hidden. Nothing but light years of vacuum and stars in the distance, their glimmering lights flickering with their distant deaths and promises of rebirths that won’t happen until Thor is long dead. Loki could be there to see them, though. Death has an odd way of skipping Loki over and over, leaving him laughing as he dances through the shadows.
Thor prefers him in the light.
He prefers seeing his brother just like this, glorious and valorous. Proud. Thor wants Loki to be proud. All of the things he’s done can’t be erased and Thor won’t pretend otherwise, but he thinks maybe the scales have tipped back toward balance now.
Loki’s eyes find his reflection and he watches the peace on his brother’s face melt to something else. So much softness in those eyes, in that smile. How has he been so blind? How have they?
Thor walks with slow steps, studies the way Loki’s body moves. His brother angles toward him, bids him closer, welcomes him. This is home.
“How was the council meeting?” Loki asks.
Thor gives a thoughtful frown and nods. “We discussed law, mostly. What to change, if anything.”
Loki perks up at that, an eyebrow raised. “Any interesting suggestions?”
Thor sucks his lips into his mouth and lets them roll back out slowly, considers his words, the way to explain it... how to confess.
He turns and faces Loki, sees his brother’s attention zero in on him. Loki can pick him apart with glances so he’s been careful not to let him have any more than that. Until now, at least. An old, lingering fear still lives inside him, making him itch on the inside as Loki turns him over and over in that flytrap mind.
But the world is dead and the survivors are only a few hundred left so where is the harm in being seen now?
Thor reaches up and rests his hand at the base of Loki’s neck, a thousand thousand touches from childhood into the curse of their adulthood relived. Loki’s brows furrow and he squints, his lips twitch.
He’s warm. Thor forgot how warm his brother is. He strokes Loki’s hairline with his thumb and sets his free hand on Loki’s hip. This he’s never done.
Loki’s eyes widen and his body goes rigid. Thor holds on tighter and sees a reflection of his own fear in Loki’s eyes. They’ve both been hiding too long.
“It was Kelda who made the suggestion,” Thor says, tone hushed like the stars might hear them.
Loki swallows hard but doesn’t pull away. “Which was?”
“To abolish the laws criminalizing incest,” he answers.
Loki’s shock is clear first, his eyebrows rising and eyes widening, mouth dropping open. But then he tilts his head, frowns, his hands twitch at his sides.
“Why would she suggest that?” Loki likes to push him. No, Loki loves to push him.
Thor has never seen a test he didn’t want to pass. He brings them closer until their bellies meet and their exhaled breaths mingle as one together.
“Because the populace seems to be under the impression that we’re fucking,” Thor tells him.
Loki clicks his tongue, his hands slide up Thor’s sides, skin brushing against armor until the tips of his fingers are tickling Thor’s arms.
“Actually, brother,” Loki’s eyes flick to his lips, then back up, “I think the populace is under the impression that you’d like to marry me. The incest laws are actually rather specific and I—”
Thor cuts him off with a kiss, messy with Loki in the middle of talking, with neither of them familiar with this kind of embrace, with the pent up energy of denial they’re both too tired to carry anymore. Let it burn with the rest of those gilded lies they were both fed.
Loki grabs either side of his head and drags him close, shakes and whimpers and bites his lip. Thor growls and bites him back. Fear makes Loki sharp. Knives, teeth, nails, words. Anything that can cut. But Thor was raised with him; he’s had Loki’s venom in his veins for so long he isn’t sure if he can live without it now.
The room is so quiet that Thor can hear the kiss break. He nudges Loki’s nose with his own and pulls back, allows himself to be open, to show how ruined and saved he is in this moment.
Thor takes a deep breath and wraps his arms around his brother, his life. “We were both born to be kings.”
Loki frowns and looks away from him, off to the side, toward the floor. “He said that because he meant me to be puppet king of Jotunheimr.”
“I know. But I don’t,” Thor promises, “I will never ask you to be anything you aren’t, Loki. And I will never keep you anywhere you don’t want to be.”
“Are you offering me my freedom, brother? All crimes forgiven in this new Asgard we’re building?” Loki looks him in the eye again, a challenge held in them.
Thor smiles, meets Loki’s need for a fight with the gentle love and patience he knows their mother always hoped he could learn.
“Technically you were pardoned on death, so all I can do now is ask you to stay.”
Loki licks his lips and for a long, long minute he’s silent and still in Thor’s arms.
Then he sighs and melts into Thor’s body, leans in until their foreheads touch and he’s so close that Thor’s one eye only sees the blur of him.
“I’m still here,” Loki breathes.
Thor closes his eye and thinks that this is enough. If Loki is all he has, that’s enough.
