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."