( i would swim but the river is so wide )

[silfr]

If all the realms were made in Ymir's image, then it would follow the the great mountains of Jotunheim were his shoulders. The rivers and streams, that of Aegir, that of Frigg and her Norn sisters, made up vein and artery. And the brightest of the realm's creatures, Thor of Odin's beget and Balder of Frigg's, would stand proud as his shining eyes.

These are the stories that the Vanir skalds sing at their great dining halls, voices rising in perfect sweet cacophany. Loki sits at his place of honor, his ears aching at the sound, but his hands clench tight where they rest in his lap. Balder, a son of prophecy not yet born, is afforded greater honor in Vanir greensight than Loki himself. Loki, secondborn son of Odin, he of silver tongue and golden wit! It has been made clear to him that the Vanir do not mean to offend: Freyja herself has gifted him with a dragonscale tunic of unfathomable value, and her daughters have each given him three dances, but still Loki feels the sting. He has negotiated well, upholding the ancient treaties that must be re-approved each half-millennium for posterity's sake, and he knows that the Allfather will be pleased, if not proud. That should be enough.

And yet few things are enough for Loki, nowadays, for each step Thor takes opens further the chasm between them. One, meant to rule, the other, meant to support. He would do it, gladly. He would rend the blackness of the sky asunder, gladly, if it would bring Asgard glory. Yet a second heart beats within him, as ripe and decaying as a corpse-flower, and Loki knows not how to quiet its rhythm.

When he flies through the stars past the Vanir star system into the familiar warmth of Asgard's shores, he wears his cloak with shoulders squared, with the dragonscales glittering in counterpoint yellow to the green of his eyes. He arrives in Gladsheim's throne room with a sweep of his finery, ready for accolades that he will fight to receive, if need be.

"—you will spend six weeks in Freyr-king's court, under his tutelage," comes the booming echo of Odin-Allfather's voice. Loki cannot help the instinctual desire to draw back at the sound of it, knowing from long experience that quiet composure is meant for the court alone; beneath it, a storm billows. Thor stands before the throne, his head bowed in uncharacteristic humility. Mjolnir's song, usually a drumbeat of white noise to Loki's seid-sensitive ear, can hardly be heard. "For mine has indeed served you ill. Return to your quarters, son of Asgard, and curb your anger in favor of self-reflection."

Loki stands agape in the shadows of the throne room, his aborted attempt at a grand entrance now far beyond his care. Thor — Thor, the eye of Ymir! — being sent to master-negotiator Freyr-king for tutelage, as if he is but an dull apprentice to be bartered. Not only that, but to be treated such in front of the court (a limited court, admittedly — only the council and a skeletal gathering of Einherjar populate the throne room now), is beyond imagining. Who is this, who has taken Odin's place? Who is this, who has taken the pride from Thor's strong shoulders?

And who is this, who stands in Loki's place, a war of cruel joy and crueler sympathy rising within him?

He reports his success under Odin's eye, caring little now for the recognition he had craved. Moments later, not yet divested of his dragonscales, he stands before Thor's quarters, a flick of his fingers unlatching the door for his entrance.

Comments

[beworthy]

The opened door comes rather too late. Thor's temper has already done its work upon the room: a priceless urn smashed, a table cracked in two, debris littered about the floor. The young god stands amid the wreckage, fingers clenched, shoulders rising and falling with the heaving of his breath; he has put Mjolnir aside, and his cloak and the ceremonial armor worn for the formal audience, for he had known well that to appear before Odin without the proper show of respect would have boded all the more ill for his reprimand. Yet to him it could scarcely have seemed to be worse than a public scolding, humiliation before the eyes of the court, banishment to some lesser king's realm as though he were a child sent away from the table for ill manners. Curb your anger, Odin had ordered him, yet anger is as a dragon writhing in his breast, and to calm it at once absurd and impossible.

Fury spikes at the quiet sound of a latch unlocked as smoothly as oil, and the sight of the door swinging inwards upon him and the mess he has made. He is almost unsurprised to see Loki there. A baleful glare meets his brother's return: returned at last, it seems, from the very court which Thor is now to be sent, and returned just in time to see his elder brother's dishonor. That his heart leaps almost painfully in his breast at this first glimpse is the only thing which curbs the impulse to speak sharply against Loki's intrusion. Under any other circumstances he would have closed the distance between them in two great strides, seized his brother in his arms, laughed and kissed him, pulled him inside and called for mead and demanded that he stay and drink and tell him all the tales of the court of the Vanir. Under any other circumstances, to see him hear would have brought him joy.

He hunches under Loki's knowing eye, half-turning from the door. "So you are back." It is an almost listless greeting. The bitter circumstances recall him all-too-easily to his anger and loneliness at his brother's long absence when a more celebrated reunion would have put that quiet hurt from his mind completely. "You have been some time about it. Now we are only to be parted again, as you will have heard."

For nothing passes in Asgard that Loki does not know of it, even if he is only just returned. Thor would not be surprised if he had been at the audience, lurking and watching from some shadow.

He bends down to right a knocked-about chair, pretending at composure though his hands yet tremble with anger and hurt. Loki looks very fine, shining in a new cloak of dragonscale; he has obviously been honored, and his triumph makes all the more bitter Thor's failure. He knows it petty of him to begrudge his brother. He longs to go to him and pull him into an embrace, yet his heart grieves in the midst of a cold distance; even Mjolnir is put aside from his hand just now.

[silfr]

Loki navigates easily through the maze of shattered porcelain and mangled steel, his step light as a shadow. The magelight set into the sconces of the wall flickers behind him, failing entirely to illuminate the set of his features. Best that it remain so, for Loki himself does not know which whisper of emotion his heart will next seize upon.

In the throne room, hidden behind pillar and broad Einherjar screen, he had felt indeed triumph in his brother's failings. Here, when he alone bears witness to the petulant slump of a god-prince's shoulders, a peculiar sort of affection lingers in its place. Thor, his foolish brother, wise in the ways of the sword and nothing - nothing at all! - else. If only Loki could whittle away at flesh and beloved bone until he could fit himself into the cage of Thor's ribs, forever an anchor against the great tides that bear Thor forth. They are brothers, after all, even if Loki would match failure and failure and ever yet find his own the lesser.

Because — indeed, Thor-king will be magnificent, one day, with Loki aglitter in courtly manner at his side. But that reality is yet an eternity hence. The Allfather needed to see that, too.

He shrugs free from Freyja's dragonscale; his ceremonial armor follows. A click of his tongue and both disappear in a shimmer, sent to his own quarters with but a thought. For Loki knows how Thor's mind works — now is not the time to boast of his own success. He must act as sympathetic confidant to a brother brought low, as loyal instinct and calculating mind both demand.

"Freyr is very fond of you," says Loki, and though he speaks quietly, his hand flexes firm upon Thor's shoulder. He presses him, gently insistent, into the chair. "You know that I was fostered for a time under Njordr's care when I sought to further my knowledge about the mysteries of seid. It is no different."

[beworthy]

He thinks he does not want Loki near, and that he must lash out at him to keep himself away; yet Loki comes near and he does not lash, he accepts his presence with the same resignation that lets him lower himself into the chair his brother presses him upon. He thought he had more temper than this, yet it is draining out of him like water from a sieve, and as ever Loki seems to know the turns of his mood better than he does: anger turning to a low and bitter sadness, which no soft words can easily banish from his heart.

"Don't be a fool, of course it is different," he says mechanically, looking down at his hands clenched upon his thighs, as the cool weight of Loki's touch yet remains upon his shoulder. "You wanted to go; you were not dishonored and sent there and far because you must be punished." Indignation swells in his throat. "You are always going where you like, when you ought to be at my side, as a true brother would be; you must care little for me to be forever spending months apart."

But of course their latest parting is by his own foolish orchestration, and has nothing to do with the quiet grievance he has nursed against Loki during his absence; it is only that he cannot shake his sorrow, feeling the weight of their father's disapproval, the disappointment he has surely caused his mother, the spectacle he has made of himself. And now at last Loki is home, yet Thor must go forth, not to see him again for any length of time.

[silfr]

"Were you aware that Freyr has decided to spend Vanaheim's summer years in Álfheim, under Driflar's golden boughs?" says Loki, seemingly deaf and dumb to Thor's show of peevishness. He slides a hand up the column of Thor's throat, over his jaw, past the curve of his ear, until he can sift his fingers gently through the spill of Thor's yellow-flame hair. "To Freyja's great displeasure, he took his leave in the midst of our trade negotiations, taking with him the loveliest maidens of the court. He will be enjoying the spectacle of Driflar's blossoms giving birth to mage-stars by now, I'd imagine."

Loki speaks with a melody in the sweep of his tongue, sweet and soft for all that Thor's grumbles are nothing but. Idly, he tucks a lock of hair behind Thor's ear. They are men, grown into the breadth of their shoulders if not yet the weight of their royal burden. Still, Loki knows to nudge the soft underside of Thor's jaw, to smooth his palm across the rough curve of cheek, as if his brother were yet a child. Even Loki can gentle the sharpness of his knife-hands, if he knows that he alone holds dominion.

"Freyr is a better teacher than Father," he murmurs, tilting Thor's face upwards so that the weight of Loki's sympathetic gaze will not be lost. "As am I, as you may soon know. If you promise to stop sulking and destroying your belongings, I will travel with you. Father has already allowed it."

[beworthy]

Loki's hand, gentle upon his cheek and smoothing through his hair, gives Thor cause to sigh, leaning rather helplessly into the touch. He is in no mood to be petted and cossetted back into an agreeable temper, yet somehow he takes comfort from the easy stroking nonetheless, even before he begins to listen to the words; Loki's murmuring paints a vivid picture, so that in spite of himself he can imagine that it might not be so bad, after all, to lie beneath those drifting boughs, perhaps with the happy warmth of a maiden on either side of him. And Freyr is a kindly, fatherly sort, often of a better temperament, Thor must guiltily admit to himself, than Odin.

He wants to turn from the sympathy in his brother's gaze, but Loki's touch coaxes and soothes and Thor meets his eyes with a yearning he is not quite able to hide away. There remains a piece of that picture incomplete, so that when Loki proposes to accompany him his eyes widen, and his expression changes swiftly: hope dawning like the sun across his golden features, and his hand coming up to grasp over Loki's where it rests against his prickly cheek.

"Will you?" Of course he will stop destroying his belongings, if it might only be true. He had not realized until now how much of the bitter hurt within him came at the prospect of being parted from family, friends, those who admire and love him and surround his days in a honey-warm glow of satisfaction: and how steadily he has missed and hungered for his brother's cool silvery presence at his side. That Loki belonged there was no question to Thor.

[silfr]

In the years before the tumultuous love affair sprouted and grew between them (a tenuous metaphor, perhaps, for Loki has felt half-formed even before he knew word or guile), they had not oft reached for each other. To offer comfort with an open palm is to name oneself benefactor and your intended as thus the weaker. The lesser. Men gentled their hands for their womenfolk, for their children, but never for one another.

"I have wanted to see the seid-bairn of the famed Driflar since I first read of it," says Loki. He steps away, his hand slipping away from Thor. The warmth of that rough golden skin still tingles in his fingertips. Loki curls them into his palm, holding the sensation close.

Thor will not understand the subtleties of the moment, but Loki does, Loki has been forced to understand such things — for whilst Thor has risen from his childhood, wild and dangerous in the clasp of affection and succor from all about them, Loki has yet only shrunk into his own jealous realization that the bond between brother and brother has been soldered into passion only until Thor's attention fades.

So Loki names himself the benefactor. He names Thor the recipient of his benefaction, making the hope yet blooming into beautiful saturation in Thor's eyes a weakness rather than a hallmark of love.

—because, though Loki has felt half-formed since he has known himself, he is well aware that Thor has never understood. And Thor never will understand, even though the All-father's command has now torn down the battalion of Thor's confidence. It will be rebuilt before the dawn touches Aegir's sea.

"So you shall pave my path to the Álf sanctuary, for Freyr Bright-Ire would never otherwise grant me entrance." He stands now before the window, the spare lines of his body made translucent by the richness of sunfall that pours forth. The sympathy has vanished from him; now mischief lights the green of his eyes. "Thank me graciously, brother."

[beworthy]

Yet Thor cannot conceive of the weakness, for Loki is brother, Loki is friend and companion and shadow, one who has always accompanied him, one whose place is by his side. Loki is one whose hands have gentled even the most tumultuous swells of passion within him. Thor has lain in his arms and known only the utter blindness of joy, which chases away all ugliness and shadow, and in the light of which even the most terrible hungers might be sated: he loves Loki, and takes love in return as his due, as what only befits the generous gift of his own great heart.

So too he loves the comfort of Loki's hands.

"Now I see it: you wish my company only that it might grant you to the sanctuary; you have not missed your brother at all." He speaks mournfully, but he teases now; he does not really believe it so at all. "I do not see that this is so much to thank you for." He has risen from the chair, followed Loki to the window. Thor presses near to him, great arms wrapping up his narrow waist; his cheek rests against his brother's, the cool, pale skin against his own warmth, the prickle of his beard. Those green eyes glinting mischief at him is a pang of happy anticipation. How clever, how wicked his brother.

"You have missed me, have you not?" His mouth is at Loki's ear, his voice low, warm, murmuring. "I have til morning that I must be ready to depart; and I would have time with you, hours enough that I might be sure to thank you properly."

[silfr]

And yet, for all the mind games that Loki plays against himself, oft this is all his jealous heart needs: a moment of time, cleaved to his brother's warmth, tucked safely away from the riot of the outside world. He might scheme and seethe even now, but the walls Loki has constructed between them have lost heft and height both. Paper and silk, little more.

"Hours?" says Loki, purposefully skipping over Thor's question. The answer is self-evident in every shift of bone under skin: Loki was shaped in these halls, under the tutelage of the Allfather's staff, but none other would claim him as brother nor friend nor even shadow. He will continue to hate his own treacherous heart, but a thousand years have not been sufficient to sever it from sentiment entirely.

(One day, years hence, he will think back to this moment. Wearing the shreds remnant of his princehood, he will laugh, and he will laugh.)

So too does Loki laugh now, a huff of breath clipped at the edges. He turns his face to Thor's, reveling in the rasp of beard against his own cheeks. Thor smells of wet earth, of cool quiet secret places that none other than Loki would associate with him.

He fills his lungs with the sweetness of it. "If you are as impotent in — other areas — as you are in your rage, a handful of minutes ought to suffice."

[beworthy]

"Hush." Thor's hands wind into Loki's hair and grip at the strands, a gentle reprimand. Their faces are so near that he might lean an inch or so to let their mouths brush, and he does, licking briefly at the taste of his brother's lips. "You are far too lacking in respect for your elder brother and your future king. Odin ought to lesson you for such things, but I suppose I will have to instead."

But it is true how his rage has fallen away. There lingers some bitter taste in the mention of their father, yet he does not need pay it mind, ensconced here with Loki in the circle of his arm, with his readiness, his soft barbs, the temptation of mouth and body. And Loki will be with him tonight, all tonight, and Loki will be with him when he goes forth with the dawn: in the place where he belongs, at Thor's side, and Thor's heart gladdened to have him there. He steals another kiss, then pulls his brother from the window, towards the bed.

"Come." The vast furs and linens have been lonely these past weeks. Thor presses Loki down and climbs atop to straddle him before he might have the chance to wriggle away. His fingers work to strip his brother's garments from him. "You are right, though, that I am impatient, and I will be swift with you; but if you think that will be the end of it you are mistaken." Pale skin meets his hands and Thor glows visibly with delight. Emboldened by Loki's willingness, he manhandles him with affectionate roughness, pressing the entire length of his body down upon Loki's as he claims him in a kiss, a proper kiss, tongue thrusting within the cool depths of his brother's mouth. Since the very first time they shared a bed he has never feared to take of Loki all that he desires. Nothing is to be denied him, he who will one day be his brother's king.

[silfr]

Thor, like an instrument, made to fit perfectly into the hand of his younger brother. He will never know that the trial he faced during Loki's absence was an idle machination, one never truly meant to bear fruit: a whisper in a counselor's ear, a passing suggestion to their father to give Thor tasks beyond offering the esteem of his presence in the halls of counsel. Loki had known Thor would falter, and he'd known too that Odin would see it as a failing in his own parenthood. Thor, no matter how great, no matter how beautiful, no matter how strong of arm and gentle of eye, is not yet ready for the throne. If no one will heed Loki's word, then only careful scheming will show them all what he already knows.

Still, it causes him little pleasure to see his brother caught in the storm of his own distemper. Has it not always been true that all have loved Thor best? All, including Loki himself?

He had not, after all, expected Odin to cast Thor out of Asgard, nor had he expected the reprimand to be delivered publicly.

Still, now all is past: Loki is a sparrow upon a bough, now, readied for the winter. Thor's arms raise him from the shadows, and the rise of his mood warms them both. Loki welcomes the kiss, open-mouthed, taking Thor's breath into his own lungs. When Thor moves to shift above him, Loki holds him fast, arms looped tightly about those great shoulders. "Oh! The stories that have been written of your famed impatience, my would-be king," he is smiling, feeding the murmured words into Thor's mouth. "And so I must ask — how many have you claimed since my departure?" says Loki, coquettish in his manner, his mouth a loose red curl. He is indulgence itself: his body splayed without modesty, his eyes dark and hooded. Jealousy is a faraway dream, mattering little in scant space between them. What need has Loki for such things, when he can feel the beat of Thor's heart matching its rhythm with his own? "Tell me — tell me how they all fell short of whom you truly craved."

[beworthy]

Because Loki holds him, anchors him down, Thor lets himself sink again so that the weight of him is upon his brother: a body which could crush him if Loki too were not immortal, and which threatens yet to smother him entirely beneath warmth and affectionate desire. His turgid cock, thickly swelled against the laces of his breeches, presses into Loki's bared stomach, and Thor's hips work slowly, gently against him, his thighs spreading and straddling over his brother's hips. His fingers anchor themselves within his brother's dark hair. Thor licks and cuddles and kisses, no fearsome would-be king or relentless warrior now but a bedmate eagerly seeking his lover's attentions.

"None," he answers, between presses of their mouths as sweet as bites of fruit, "none; who would I desire in your absence enough, brother?" He adds more candidly, "Sif and I were engaged, of a few evenings, but it was kisses only, and stroking: she has skilled hands." Perhaps he wants to provoke a bout of envy, hissing and displeased: to know that Loki longed for him too in lonely nights and crafted angry plots against those who might have dared shared Thor's bed in his absence. Yet Loki is splayed too warm, too smiling, it seems, to be roused to such displeasure; Thor sighs and kisses him again, again, his body full of a low simmering warmth of pleasure as he presses himself against the spread of Loki's body. "I will say, rather, how I worked myself to pleasure in this bed, imagining it was your hands and your mouth upon me: but that I fell asleep with craving still in me, and my dreams would be full of you, bringing little rest."

[treachery]

"Ah," says the Silvertongue, smiling still.

If he is envious, it is but an echo of its usual bellow. There are parts of his brother that none other may touch; even Sif, for all of her carefully-wrought similarities to Thor, has never seen him as Loki has, stripped of bravado and arrogance, shamed by his own faults. They are brothers, in the end. Here, in Loki's arms, Thor can put away his golden mantle, set duty aside, and, for a time, dress himself in desire alone.

(The thought of Thor lying in this very bed, only the swollen crown of his visible past his curled fist, stroking himself again and again to completion, Loki's name sweet upon his parted lips — the arch of his body when release snatches him up, the artless flush of his cheeks. His mouth, open and red, the blue-glass sheen of his eyes, unfocused, veiled by his lashes.

Or, perhaps, though Thor is loathe to admit enjoyment of an act into which Loki has coaxed him but sparingly—perhaps he had worked his fingers into himself, stuffed himself full to aching, and yearned even at his peak for a lighter touch.)

Loki's hand slides to the groove of Thor's hip; the other slides further, undoing the laces with quick-fingered skill. His own cock has risen and thickened, spurred on by the full-bodied press of Thor's body against his own. "Then you missed my hands and my mouth, and not the entirety of my person. Shall I take offense?"