(no subject)

[beworthy]

All his muscles ache, the reverberation of tension and shock unwinding only slowly from his body as he commandeers a bottle of hard-won liquor and sequesters it away in a quiet corner of the bay, muffled by the frazzled post-battle atmosphere by the bulk of his own Jaeger. Their own Jaeger, Thor thinks, a hand curved firm and gentle over the nape of Loki's neck as he guides him to his favorite overlook in the web of steel and scaffolding. He has yet to be intruded upon in this hiding space. From here, they are level with a corner of the face plate, Mjolnir's shining golden eye seeming to look upon them benevolently; he draws Loki down to sit beside him, an arm slung now about his shoulders, and drinks first and deeply of the bottle before passing it on, leaning his head back against a steel beam.

Under the current of his thoughts the drift of Loki's memories plays like an old picture reel, grayed and vague yet persistent, revealing. He feels the twinning of loneliness and madness within his brother, the way rage wraps itself around the cold sweet fire of Loki's heart and threatens to choke it with its own consuming blackness, and he holds Loki close, even closer than he had the night before when they had at last brought Loki before him, wet from the rain and panting, fury sparking in his eyes which looked upon Thor, belaying the resignation painted across his face. Loki was no Aesir, yet Thor was the greatest among them, and he would not—could not—pilot Mjolnir without the man he called brother at his side. That had been the price of his service, the price which Loki must now pay alongside him. Thor, and the Aesir, had not given him a choice.

Yet it was by their hands that another pair of Kaiju were repelled that day.

He is glad of it, fiercely joyful, for their victory and for the circumstances that have brought Loki back to him, and even his awareness of the pain his brother has suffered cannot dampen that; it can only make him more resolute that they should not be parted again. Bloodied now, with sweat staining his skin, armor stripped away so that only the skin-tight pilot's suit covers now covers him, he pulls Loki against his chest, a hand cupping over his brother's sharp shoulder, and Thor nuzzles the fine arch of his cheek with tender lips.

"It was well done between us today, brother. The victory is yours as much as mine." Smiling, he passes his hand over the long curve of Loki's spine, from nape of the neck to the small of his back, stroking, soothing, praising.

Comments

for this au jotnar = child born of an aesir union who doesn't have aesir supernatural powers! c:

[silfr]

Mjolnir. Beautiful as she is, the sight of her sends a shiver down Loki's spine. He had spent seven years running from her, after all, immersing himself amongst the sharks and slavers of the underworld as if he had been born there. He remains a bramble of conflicted desires, but still he curls into the embrace his brother has always held open for him. Seven years running from that embrace, too, though dream after dream cascaded through mind and body alike until Loki had become a livewire, thrumming with a force unable to escape the narrow confines of hollow bird-bones. He takes a long swallow from the bottle passed to him, dark lashes falling to shadow his cheek. It traces a line of fire down his throat, curling into a fire-breathing beast in the pit of his stomach.

Thor smells of ozone, as if he has spent the last several hours in flight, soaring through cloud and blue sky rather than wading knee-deep through the muddy swamp of Loki's mind. He looks sweet and young and newfragile even in his appalling strength; his joy crowns him in gold, makes a god of a mere man. Loki breathes in the copper scent of his blood, open-mouthed; he hesitates but a moment before chasing the taste of it with his lips. Just a taste.

Perhaps Loki has always seen him so: even before he learned that they were half-brothers instead of true. Perhaps that's why he learned to be a coward.

Loki has a knife for a tongue, and he knows how to wound with only the lightest brush of it. Yet they have been of one mind, of one heart, standing in the pulse of machine and muscle alike, bringing Mjolnir's sweet fury down upon not one but two Kaiju. How can he lie, when Thor already knows to peel the words back like skin from ripe fruit, leaving Loki naked and rent crimson? Leaving Loki glad to bleed, for all that he has yearned and yearned for freedom from his brother's arms?

(They did not hate him, in the underworld. He filled his lungs with the dream-smoke of Hong Kong peddlers, losing himself in the chemical haze, and no one knew him as Marshal Odin's Jotnar bastard son. That he had neither the strength nor the stamina of an Aesir meant nothing, for mortal men were not meant to boast such. He was Loki, only Loki. They had prized his quick fingers and his quicker mind; he'd burrowed so deeply into that world of shadow and corruption that diving once again into the clear ocean of Thor's mind had been like a revelation. He cannot leave again, that much is certain.)

"There's hardly time to celebrate," Loki says, softly. The thieves and monsters of his former acquaintance taught him to speak like a commoner; he has lost the careful vowels and well-enunciated consonants that marks the elegance of Aesir upbringing. He could assimilate into what he once was, of course, but he finds the roughness of his own language, the definitive difference between golden Aesir Thor and his quicksilver shadow of a brother, to be a comfort. "A class five duality was considered to be a ludicrous impossibility before today. And that fool you've hired to run R&D would sooner fuck a Kaiju than search out a way to kill it; you need to reinstate me as head of the department."

Loki's tone speaks of urgency, yet he licks Thor's blood from the arch of his own lips with something blacker than hunger in his eyes.