Chapter Text
For fuck’s sake, just let it go.
But naturally his brand new, shiny goddamned stepbrother is already running after the hat as the warm wind bowls it along the beach. Loki wills him to tangle his feet together, to eat sand, but of course nothing like that happens. Thor snatches the hat up from the edge of the waves and ambles back towards him, slow, and loose-hipped like a gunslinger, one hand held up to shield his eyes from the sun, taking his time.
If he thinks I’m going to say thank you he’s even more of a dumb blond than he looks.
“Almost lost it.”
Loki accepts the battered straw hat back with the barest of nods.
There are tiny grains of sand trapped in Thor’s arm hairs. The hairs themselves are pale against the deep tan of his skin. Loki never tans, he burns, hence the stupid hat.
“Windy today. They said there’s gonna be storms tomorrow. Dad’ll be pissed if they can’t take the yacht out.”
Thor’s dad - your new step dad, don’t forget it- seems more interested in pawing Loki’s mother than the much-vaunted fishing expedition, but Loki doesn't voice this thought out loud. Besides the fact that Thor Odinson could probably tear his head off his shoulders without breaking a sweat, Loki is unwilling to yield even the smallest inch of ground in this war of attrition. If his mother thinks he’s going to accept this ready-made brother, she’s mistaken. Even forming an alliance against their respective parents would be letting her win.
“You want to swim?”
“No.”
Thor grins, as though Loki is making a joke. He looks even more like some teen idol when he smiles. It makes Loki hate him more. Loki wishes he’d leave. He wishes he’d been ugly. The fact that he’s so bloody perfect makes the whole mess even worse...Although it must piss Odin off a little. His own mum has gained the perfect son along with her rich new husband. Odin has been lumbered with Loki.
“You sure? Probably won’t be able to tomorrow.”
“You swim if you want to.”
Saying a full sentence to Thor will be worth it if it buys him some peace.
“I could show you how to surf.”
“I’m not the surfing type.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t know how either a few years back, it’s not too hard.”
Loki only rolls his eyes. For you, maybe. Unlike Loki in his new shorts and crisp, shop fresh T-shirt, Thor looks like he belongs on this Californian beach. Like he was born here even, formed from sea foam. You’d never guess he’s some rich trust fund kid to look at him, with his long hair tangled and sticky with salt, and his T-shirt ripped and faded from sun and seawater. You’d never guess at the private overseas education (which is presumably where he picked up the peculiar accent that goes back and forth between Australian and something else). You wouldn’t guess about the huge, modern flat in London, the Brownstone in Manhattan, and the mansion on the Gold Coast. You’d never guess that his dad regularly makes the rich list and the front pages of of the Tabloids and Broadsheets both. That’s how Odin and Loki’s mum had met. She manages his UK PR. Among other things.
Did he make you sign a prenup, mum? That’s what usually happens is you marry The Help, isn’t it? That had been the only time he’d seen Frigga close to losing it with him, so he guesses he was right. So much for True Love. You’ll be eighteen in a year, then you can do whatever you like, she’d told him. But until then you’re part of this family, like it or not.
He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting when he’d met Thor for the first time. Certainly not that he’d look like any other beach bum in this vacation town, with his board shorts and ball cap. Truthfully he looks like the kind of boy who used to beat Loki up in the changing rooms at his school back in London. The kind I can’t help but fancy, even as he knocks my teeth out. He never falls for quiet, intellectual, brooding types like himself. It’s always brutes. Like him. Thor bloody Odinson.
Loki pushes the thought away with a shudder. So, the famous Thor Odinson has turned out to be a juice head trustafarian bro instead of some stuck-up finishing school wimp. What’s the difference? Loki knows that this holiday is supposed to provide neutral ground on which the two of them can get to know each other; It’s painfully obvious what the ploy is. What do their parents think the two of them are doing when they send them out to the beach each morning? Building sandcastles? Swapping stories? Getting with the program, as the Americans say?
Not happening, mum.
Thor had finally gotten the hint yesterday, and gone off surfing alone. He’s graceful considering his size, knifing along the glassy curves of the rolling waves as though he’s a part of them.
No one will ever take us for real brothers. At least there’s that.
Loki had watched him over the top of the book he was pretending to read for nearly an hour, fascinated in spite of himself and his determination to hate everything about both Thor and this stupid holiday.
The sea is flatter today, and Loki’s glad. It scared him a little. The power of it. How small you feel next to it.
One more grain of beach sand.
He thinks again of the hair on the backs of Thor’s arms, glittering with sand. His skin would taste of salt.
The shipping forecast has sunk Odin’s plan for the family fishing trip- Thank Christ- but that had meant watching him paw Loki’s mother all morning instead, until he’d given both Thor and Loki $50 and told them to treat themselves to lunch. Loki has left his banknote lying on the kitchen counter where Odin will hopefully see it and get the message. He shoves carelessly through the crowds of hurrying holiday makers who are out in force, trying to pack a whole day’s fun into the few remaining hours before the storm makes land. He half hopes one of the sunburned meatheads he collides with will take a swing at him. He’s in the kind of mood where he wants to be hurt himself almost as much as he wanted to hurt those around him. To self destruct. He doesn’t even notice Thor is trailing after him until he reaches the relative solitude of the beach.
Why does he have to follow me everywhere I go?
“We could go to the boardwalk. There’s an arcade.”
“An arcade? I’m not twelve.”
Thor shrugs. “Well, I guess it’s the beach hut, then. Unless, you want to sit here in the rain.” Thor squints back towards the town, veiled now in the first of the rain. “I still can’t believe they chucked us out in this.”
“I can,” says Loki with a shudder. As furious as he is, it’s better out here than it would be in there. He has a pretty good idea why Odin and Frigga want their sons out of the house. Revolting .
Black clouds have begun to pile on the horizon and the surface of the water has turned a bilious, metallic green. Yesterday the water had been filled with people swimming or surfing, but no one’s out there today, and the beach itself is empty but for one stalwart dog walker in the far distance- and the two of them. Gulls flee inland, and already the wind whips up the sand, so that he has to close his eyes against it. The rain isn’t like London rain. It’s warm and smells freshly created, not like the weary London rain freighted with soot and age and stone.
Thor whistles as the first bolt of lightning licks the waves far offshore. “It’s coming. Seriously, mate, we should get inside.”
“Why don’t you go and get lunch, like your dad said?”
“I’m not hungry.” Besides, Thor rubs the flatness of his belly. “They don’t sell anything here that’s not fried. I’m eating clean.”
“How Californian of you.”
“Don’t have to be Californian to take care of yourself,” says Thor.
Loki shakes his head. “If you say so.”
“I do. Don’t get a figure like this stuffing your face with chips.”
Loki tries and fails not to look as Thor flexes his muscles.
“Are you trying to impress me or something?”
“I’m just kidding,” Thor says, raising his hands. “But I’m not hungry. And it’ll be crowded as hell in all those places. At least out here it’s peaceful.”
“It could be.”
If you’d leave.
“Did dad tell you about the beach hut?”
“I don’t know,” Loki says. “I try to tune him out as much as possible.”
His goad fails to find its mark.
“It’s actually pretty cool. We used to stay in it some years when it was just dad and me. It’s a little rustic, but better than getting fried by lightning.” He holds up a small shiny object. “I have the key. It’s just down the beach a way.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Well,” says Thor. “It’s that or go back to the house.”
Loki screws up his nose. “This beach hut...Why aren’t we staying in it now?”
Thor looks momentarily sheepish. “I think he’s trying to impress your mum, with that big place in the town.”
“It’s working,” says Loki flatly.
“Yeah.”
It’s the first time Thor has sounded anything but docilely accepting of their parent’s scheme and Loki gives him a long sideways look. He certainly looks like a dumb blond. Maybe he’s less stupid than he appears? It doesn’t make Loki like him any more, but it is something to think about. Something other than the physicality of him. The way his seventeen-year-old body is muscled like that of a man. The loose, easy way the soft grey cotton shorts he wears around the house hang off his hip bones. Even the smell of him- too much aftershave, and the bloody gum he never stops chewing seems to follow Loki from room to room.
“So. are we going or not?” asks Thor. “I guess we could walk back into town, hang out with the tourists.”
“No.”
“You can’t stay out here. It’s going to be a big one, I reckon. Perhaps we’ll get stuck in the beach hut? Make them feel really guilty.”
Loki would like to argue, but the sea quells him. It looks angry, like a great, heaving beast, the foam lunging up the shore towards them with a roar. Staying outdoors suddenly seems like a bad idea.
Coward. If you really wanted to show her how you felt about this, you’d walk into it.
The momentary image of his mother weeping over his waterlogged corpse is a satisfying one, but soon eclipsed by the thought of how it would be to have your lungs scoured by saltwater and sand. The violence of it.
Knowing my luck Thor would save me. Pull me to shore. Bend over me, and press his mouth against mine. He’d taste of peppermint, and sea salt.
He shakes his head, as though to clear phantom water from his ears.
Perhaps I’m losing what’s left of my mind?
“Is it far?” he asks.
The beach hut stands alone in the dry sea grass at the edge of the shore. Thor swears as he fiddles with the lock, but eventually it yields. The keening of the wind has risen to a howl, and it takes both of them to wrestle the door closed again. The small windows are coated in salt and the little light that filters through is weak and watery. The sun-bleached timbers of the small building creak like those of a ship, and Loki wonders if it will come down around their ears. A better way to go than drowning, but less poetic. Nevertheless, the space feels quiet and calm after the madness of the stormy sea.
Intimate.
Loki realises he’s standing so close to Thor that they’re almost touching, and takes a step away.
“I think there’s a lantern,” Thor says, striding away to rummage in a cupboard. “Looks like there’s still some fuel.”
The lantern light reveals a large, square room. A battered sofa crowds a listing coffee table at the center of it, and a couple of low bunks are set against the back wall. The air is stale and hot, like no one’s been in here in years. The tangle of fishing rods by the door supports a hammock of cobwebs, and the photographs on the wall are furred with dust. Someone’s sandals lie by the mat curled up like cast-off skins. There’s that word again; Intimate . Loki feels as though he’s an unwilling burglar here, creeping into the memories of this family that he doesn’t, and never will belong to.
“It’s bigger than I thought it would be,” he says, just to break the silence. “More than a hut.”
“I guess,” Thor shrugs. “Dad likes to imagine we’re roughing it sometimes.”
Loki has to laugh. “Nice for ‘roughing it’ to be optional. Must be great being rich.”
Thor shakes his head. “Well. You’re rich too now, aren’t you?” There’s an edge to his voice now. Something hard beneath the humour, that pleases Loki. He’s been spoiling for a fight for days.
“You think I want your dad’s money?”
Thor shrugs.
“You think I want to be here at all?”
Thor simply flops down into one of the sofas, raising a cloud of dust.
“You want to relax, mate. Give the whinging pom thing a rest for five minutes.” He fishes in his pocket and pulls out a glass pipe.
“You smoke?”
Loki gapes, momentarily distracted, and Thor chuckles.
“That a no?”
“It’s...I’m just surprised you do.”
“Why?”
“Well...” Loki says weakly. “You’re the golden boy.”
“That what you think?”
“Well, of course.”
“Why of course?”
Loki throws up his hands. “Look at you. You’re perfect”
“Perfect?” Thor asks, smiling.
Loki hopes the light in the cabin is dim enough to hide the blush he feels creeping across his face. He sits down on the dusty rag rug.
“All I hear from mum is how fucking perfect you are. You go to that big deal International school. You’re this star athlete. You’re...”
Gorgeous.
“You seem fine with this whole marriage.”
Thor shrugs, packing the bowl as though he’s done it a thousand times.
“What would I say to stop it? Dad’s never listened to me. Barely sees me. These summer breaks are the only time he bothers, so what am I going to do? Make him not be a selfish bastard? And as for school, I got expelled. Last year. Did your mum not tell you?”
Loki’s glad he chose to sit down. The world seems to reel beneath him. Two images of Thor dance before his eyes, the perfect golden boy he’s lived with for the past two weeks, and this new Thor who smokes pot and got chucked out of school and doesn’t seem much fonder of Odin than Loki is himself.
“You. Got expelled,” he says, as if speaking the words aloud will reconcile the two Thors.
Thor frowns as he sets the pipe between his lips and flicks the lighter to the bowl. Loki wrinkles his nose up at the piney scent of the weed. I guess he can afford the good stuff. And I guess that explains all the bloody chewing gum.
Thor blows out a lungful of smoke. “Yup. I got expelled.”
“For what?”
Thor flops back into the cushions, grinning.
“Yeah, nah, that’s not how it works. I told you something, so now you’ve got to tell me something.” He offers the pipe to Loki, who takes it as though it was a snake that might twist in his hands and bite.
“What do I do?”
“You never smoked before?”
“Of course I have,” says Loki, annoyed. “But not a pipe. We roll joints where I come from.”
Thor leans forward. “I’ll show you.”
The hands that cup Loki’s are larger than his, the skin surprisingly soft. He finds he’s not concentrating much on what Thor is telling him, but it’s not exactly tricky to figure out, even with the distraction of Thor’s breath on his knuckles and those blue eyes so close to his own.
“There. Unwind, little brother.” His tone is teasing.
“Fuck you, I’m not your little brother.”
They both flinch as the first thunder booms outside.
“Just in time,” Thor says.
What’s packed into the bowl is the good stuff, and it hits Loki right away, fuzzing the sharp edges of his anxiety. The storm rages louder outside, but it seems less important now. When Thor’s fingers brush his own again as he hands the pipe back he doesn’t recoil. In fact the knot of tension in him has unwound enough that he heaves himself off the sandy floor to sit gingerly on the sofa. It might smell like dust and mice now, but once upon a time it must have filled out a room much bigger than this one and it’s plenty long enough to keep some room between them.
“So,” Thor says “What were you expelled for?”
Loki shakes his head, disgusted. “So mum told you all about me. Typical.”
“No one told me. I just listen,” Thor says. “Some people think I’m kind of a dumb blond, you know? Say all sorts of things they don’t think I hear.”
Loki frowns. “What’s that meant to mean?”
“Nothing.” Thor gives his thigh a push with his foot. He’s kicked off his shoes and his bare toes leave sand on Loki’s shorts. “Answer the question.”
His Australian accent is thicker now. The weed working on him, the way it’s working on Loki, no doubt. Ten minutes ago he’d have been stalking out of here to take his chances with the lightning, but he can’t quite summon the rage for it now.
“I got in a fight,” he says.
“That’s it?”
“Well...” Loki pauses. “It was pretty serious. The police got involved.”
“Why?”
Loki pauses. “There was a knife.”
“Shit. Someone stabbed you?” asks Thor,.
“I stabbed someone else. They said.”
Thor whistles. “You? No way.”
He feels almost proud at Thor’s astonishment, and then annoyed at himself for caring.
“Yeah. I could’ve gotten arrested, but the other lad’s parents decided not to press charges.” He laughs. “If they’d come after me they’d have had to have told everyone what their precious boy did. All the months and months of shit. How he and his mates jumped me . Not the first time, either. How they stole my stuff and followed me home, and made my life a living fucking nightmare for years. So I got expelled, and he’s probably roaming the streets kicking in faces he doesn’t like the look of to this day.”
Thor is silent a moment, then he says. “Sorry.”
“Well. Pass me the pipe, yeah?”
Thor hands it off to him.
“I wouldn’t have made you tell me, mate...”
“It’s fine,” Loki interrupts sharply. I’m not your mate. “So, what about you? Don’t tell me anyone dared bully you.”
Thor shakes his head. “Not that, no. It was a bunch of small stuff. I just didn’t fit into the box they wanted me to fit into, I guess. They had all these big plans for me. Dad thinks his business is some sort of Kingdom, and one day I’m going to rule it all. But I’ve never wanted to.”
“What a terrible burden.”
“Fuck you,” Thor says with a grin. “It is a burden if you don’t want to bloody do it.”
Loki’s surprised at the twinge of guilt he feels. “I guess.”
“Yeah, well I know people have worse problems, but I never wanted to be this big, high-achiever.” He takes another drag on the pipe and squirms deeper into the cushions.
“So what do you want?” Loki asks.
“I like to surf. I want to go back home, to Australia. I fucking hated Switzerland, and here’s not much better.”
“And what would you do there?”
“Maybe I could open a surf shop or something?”
“Maybe.”
Thor sighs. “Yeah, right. He’d never give me the money for that.”
“So? Earn it yourself. That’s what everyone else has to do.”
Thor shakes his head. “You really are a dick, you know that?”
Perhaps it’s the weed, but Loki surprises both of them with a burst of laughter.
“I work so hard at it, and you think I might not have noticed?”
Thor laughs too. “Fair enough.Trust me to get a fucking lunatic for a brother.”
“We’re not brothers,” Loki says quickly.
Thor is silent a beat, then says “OK. I’ll drink to that. Speaking of which I reckon there’s still some vodka stashed in here.”
“Stoned is one thing,” says Loki, “But even they might notice if we come back drunk and stoned.”
“Like you care? I thought you wanted them to see how fucked up all this is making you? That’s what your big emo act is all about, right?”
Loki shakes his head. “Now who’s being a dick?”
“Right though, aren’t I? It won’t work anyway. They’re both the same type. Get what they want, fuck everyone else.”
Loki struggles to haul himself into a more upright position as Thor rummages through cupboards.
“Like you know what ‘type’ everyone is all of a sudden.”
“Fair. I don’t know what type you are,” Thor says, clambering up a creaking bookshelf. He gives Loki a wink. “Maybe I’ll find out if you keep bogarting my weed?”
Loki snorts and tosses the lighter onto the table. There’s an undercurrent to what Thor’s saying, but his dazed mind can’t make sense of it.
“No vodka” says Thor, finally. “But I found something way better.” He holds aloft a dusty box.
“Monopoly!”
“Let the sea take me,” Loki mutters.
“You’re cheating.”
“No I’m not,” says Loki, primly. “You’re just shit at playing.”
“Yeah you are, you never had a hotel there last turn.”
“You can borrow from the bank,” Loki says. “My rates are very reasonable.”
“And why are you in charge of the bank, anyway?” Thor asks.
“Because you can’t count past three.”
“I told you ten times! It’s too dark in here to see the dice properly!” Thor exclaims.
Loki laughs. “If you say so.”
The lantern is flickering, and it’s getting warmer in the hut despite the wind that creeps in through the knotted wood. The surf crashes on the sand outside and the wind rattles the roof and the boards of the walls, but Loki finds he doesn’t much care.
Thor throws down the last of his money, disgusted. “Alright, you win. So much for Monopoly.”
They’re back on the floor again, sitting cross legged over the board. Now Thor leans back, leaning against the sofa.
“Christ it’s hot in here.”
“Go outside, then.”
“Hilarious.”
Thor wipes his brow on the back of his arm, then pulls his shirt off over his head in one careless movement. Loki looks quickly away.
“Now I get to ask you something else.”
“What?” Loki asks.
“I told you about me getting thrown out of school, so now I get to ask you something else.”
“Nope. You never told me the reason.”
“Yeah I did,” says Thor.
“A bunch of little things isn’t an answer.”
Thor’s phone buzzes, but they both ignore it.
“Fine,” he says. “I snuck out after hours a bunch of times to go drinking. I got caught with alcohol hidden in my study. I got pulled over in a...borrowed car with a bunch of kids from the town.” He ticks them off on his fingers. “They found weed in my coat, but that wasn’t mine, and I got caught in someone else’s bed after lights out. They wouldn’t normally care about that, but by then they wanted rid of me, no matter how much money Dad was bribing them with. That enough for you, Loki? It was enough for them.”
Loki chews a nail. “Someone else’s bed? A student?”
“Well it wasn’t a teacher. I’m not that fucked up.”
“Your school was co-ed?”
Thor looks at him levelly. “Nope.” He laughs. “You look surprised.”
“I’m not,” Loki says, weakly. But he is. Of course he is. He looks just like them. All those tough, athletic boys who call you poof and shove you down.
“Who was he?”
“A mate. Fandral. We were just mucking about, really. Perhaps you’ll meet him one day?”
I’d rather throw myself in the sea. Is it jealousy he’s feeling? It can’t be.
“At my school they’d kick your head in for that, never mind the teachers.”
Thor nods. “That why they went after you?”
“No!”
“I mean, I don’t care if it is.”
“Did mum tell your dad?” Loki demands. His heart is pounding and his head is a jumble of confused images. His own blood spattering onto the porcelain of a sink, staining his white school shirt with droplets like roses unfurling their petals. Himself circling round the Tube station, jittery with adrenaline because the whole lot of them are there, waiting for him like sharks. Thor slipping into bed with his friend, after the lights were turned out, in a room as close and hot as this one.
Thor holds up his hands. “No one told me. I just...”
“Used your magic powers?”
Thor shrugs. “Should we talk about something else?”
“I don’t want to talk to you at all.” Loki says, shoving the Monopoly board away with his foot. “They think they can make us be brothers. Or friends, or something.”
“And you don’t want to be?” Thor says.
“Why should I? Why should I make this easy for them?”
“Fair,” says Thor. “I felt the same way. But then...”
“Then what?”
Thor takes a drag on the pipe. “Sounds like it’s really coming down out there.”
Then what?”
Thor looks up at him. “I kind of like you anyway. Despite the fact you’re a dickhead.”
“Cheers.”
Something else seems called for.
“You’re less of a twat than I thought you were,” Loki says, stiffly.
Thor winks at him. “So sentimental, you Brits.” He stretches and Loki tries not to look at the shift of his muscles.
“It’s a shame we didn’t meet somewhere else,” Thor says. “Maybe we’d be mates?”
“”I wouldn’t go that far.”
Thor lobs a dice at him.
“Alright. Maybe I wouldn’t completely hate you.” He sighs. “But the way things stand I kind of have to.”
“Because the two of us getting along will make them happy?” Thor asks.
“Yeah. I know it sounds petty...”
Thor shrugs. “What if there was a way for us to get along that they’d hate?”
Thunder rumbles overhead.
“Like what?” asks Loki.