Archive of Our Own

All gods have history, some more infamous than others. Loki spends a lot of time in the library, researching his own notoriety: It's no wonder, then, that everyone hates him.

All except the one that has the most reason to.

*

The summer he turns fourteen by the Midgardian calender, someone spits in his face.

Two things:

1) This happens less often than it used to, but more often because of his own exploits rather than his predecessor's. It's fine, he would rather get spit on for something he did than something he didn't do. It's just that sometimes people are so dire.

2) Fourteen is an approximate age, marked by Thor to fall on the day that he found Loki.

Thor, who comes into his chambers with a cupcake in his hand, lit up by a solitary candle. "It's a Midgardian tradition," he explains, at Loki's frown.

"I know what it is," Loki snaps. Thor's smile fades slightly, and something in his belly clenches enough that he puts his hand on Thor's arm, adds, "I appreciate the sentiment."

Perhaps this awful, desperate urge to please will fade in time. But not yet, and not soon anyway.

Thor brings something from behind his back. Loki snatches it from him, forgetting for an instant his half-formed intentions to stop cleaving. "This isn't even on the market," he says, turning the almost impossibly thin phone over in his hands.

"Stark enjoys making toys and giving them away. I keep telling him I have no use for most of them."

"Will he approve?" The few times they met Loki had been given brief and pointed speeches about second chances and destroying them, while being pinned under sharply observant and mistrustful eyes. Nothing new, yet again.

Thor shrugs, easily enough. He doesn't care. "Come," he says, putting his arm around Loki's shoulders. "Let's celebrate. After you eat your cake."

Loki picks delicately at the cupcake, considers telling Thor that he detests vanilla cream. Instead he gamely takes a bite, before putting it to Thor's lips. Thor hesitates, until Loki breaks a piece off and feeds it to him with his fingers. "It's yours," Thor says, when Loki breaks off another piece.

"Yes. But I'm told I need to learn how to share."

*

He's not so small that Thor can carry him on the one shoulder anymore, but he can gather Loki up in his arms and back to his chambers, while Loki protests half-heartedly.

He might just be a little bit drunk.

"You are in no condition to walk."

"Yes, but I'm not your blushing bride to be - ow." He glares balefully up at Thor, from being dumped unceremoniously onto his mat.

"I didn't know you couldn't hold your mead."

Loki turns his face into a pillow, presses one heated cheek against the cool material. "There are a lot of things you don't know about me," he declares huffily. Thor knows everything that matters, and at the same time nothing at all. "You are painfully obtuse."

Thor sits heavily down next to him, and when he brushes his hand over Loki's hair Loki has to fight the urge to push him away.

*

They head out to slay a monster that Loki had inevitably released through some back room deal or other. "No, really. It was for a good cause," he tells Thor, who merely grunts in response. Loki's almost entirely sure it was, except it was so very long ago. Lies upon lies upon lies: Ikol caws, and somehow it manages to sound smug and judgmental at the same time. "Shush, or I'll feed you to Thori," Loki tells him, but from his black lidded stare Ikol's unperturbed.

More often than not, Ikol seems pleased with him.

This disturbs Loki far more than it probably should. He won't go down the same path. He refuses. He will not end up as a bird, bitter and alone.

Thor goes out armed with Mjolnir, Loki with a spell he traded for at some point. He casts it and fades back as Thor throws Mjolnir at the beast: it exits through its heart and spins round in an arc, returning back to its rightful owner.

"Yuck," Loki says, as warm blood splatters on his face.

"This was easier than it should have been," Thor says. He sound disappointed, but then his gaze sharpens, turns to Loki. "Did you have anything to do with this?"

"You might have expected me to pick up a sword otherwise," Loki says idly. Thor hums, but then he laughs, and draws Loki into a sweaty embrace. His hair tickles Loki's forehead.

"I would never expect that of you," he says.

"You reek," Loki replies, but can't bring himself to shove out of Thor's arms.

*

Loki has a list of things he's determined Thor never finds out about:

1) That he still dreams of Thor's shade, of being chased down, hunted like an animal. Sometimes, Loki allows himself to be caught. These aren't the worst of his dreams.

2) The number of spells Loki can cast now: from the mundane to the divine to the divinely dangerous to the ones capable of ripping entire universes apart. Not that he would, not him.

3) That Leah isn't just the name of a girl that once lived in a cave. That he couldn't bring her back, as much as he wanted to.

4) But gods are immortal: You can always being them back. Just like stories never truly die.

5) What opinion Loki has on Thor's lips, his giant hands, his cock.

Thor's cock.

"That's pathetic," Ikol says, the one time Thor's name escapes Loki's lips as he's jerking off.

"Shut up." Loki squeezes his eyes shut.

"Kill you both," Thori says, and puts his head on Loki's chest.

"Ah, go away." He shoves at Thori and curls onto his side, working his hand furiously until he comes.

Idly, he wonders what Thor would think if he recorded this, sent this out over the Internet. It could be a new thing: Godlings Gone Wild.

Although Loki suspects he'd have to film far more than just his own hand on his cock, face flushed and lip drawn between his teeth, as he pleasures himself while thinking of his brother. His thoughts are his own, after all. No one would know of his deviance.

*

It's some sort of celebration or another, honoring, yet again, the mighty Thor. Loki can't blame them, Asgardia has so very little to celebrate in recent times, and Thor is so very mighty, but surely there must be someone else worthy of being a half-baked excuse to drink too much and behave inappropriately.

The devious Loki, for one.

But that doesn't have quite the same ring to is as Thor the Mighty, Thor the Thundering Hero, Thor the Golden Child Forever More.

Loki used to go for acting humble at these things, but that only garners more suspicion. So now he goes for the haughty, above-it-all look, and that mostly means he gets left alone. If that's mainly because Thor's around to keep a watchful eye, well.

Speaking of: One hand around Loki's wrist as he passes by, headed for the exit. Loki sighs, allows himself to be dragged down next to Thor. Everyone notices, and almost immediately turns away, as Thor shoves a mug in his hand. "You know I can't hold my drink," Loki says churlishly. He can, he just doesn't want to. Up close, Thor is far less drunk than he appears, and there's a hint of boredom in his eyes that he can't quite hide. Loki leans up, whispers in his ear, "Let us go."

"I can't leave a celebration that's thrown in my name."

"Do you care?"

"No, but even so." Loki pulls away, but Thor puts his hand on his neck, stills him. His thumb brushes across Loki's bottom lip, and Loki suppresses a shiver.

Sif comes up, wraps her arms around Thor from behind.

"I believe it might be past the poor boy's bedtime, Thor." Loki wants nothing more than to leave, but still he bristles. They are not enemies. Sif loves Thor and by extension, cannot truly plot against what Thor holds dear.

But love, he's come to realize, doesn't equal trust.

"I am rather tired, after you fed me that mead." He allows his head to droop down slightly, into Thor's sleeve.

"To bed then." Thor nods his head, and as Loki makes to leave, more unsteady on his feet than entirely necessary, he can feel Thor's gaze, unwavering against his back.

*

What were they, besides brothers and friends and enemies.

Ikol won't say.

"You are a wretched bird," Loki says, and Ikol tilts his head: What did you expect?

*

Thor sits on the throne rarely:

When it's necessary. When he wants to brood.

The All-Mothers are somewhere else, gone for weeks and Thor will not say where. Loki will find out some other way: he has his own means, and Thor is aware of that. And yet he keeps from him what he deems none of Loki's business. Worried perhaps of what Loki might do.

Oh, what Loki might do.

Thor has very little idea still.

Loki leans in the far doorway until Thor says, "What do you want?"

"Sulking is unbecoming of a king of Asgardia, or so I'm lead to believe." He darts forward - as expected, Thor waits until Loki reaches out towards him to grab his wrist and halt him.

"I am not sulking."

Thor has yet to let him go. Loki's wrist is the size of a twig in Thor's massive hand. He tugs, experimentally, and Thor releases him immediately. Loki puts his hand to his chest, cradles it with the other.

"What do you want," Thor repeats.

What he always wants.

Thor's company. Thor's adoration and love and admiration. Thor's trust, which he's entirely sure he doesn't have.

Thor's hands on him. Thor's skin against his. And the rest of it:

Loki sees himself vividly for a moment, on his knees, as Thor cradles his head and Loki buries his face in his crotch.

"In general or just today? Peace in the Nine Realms would be nice. Failing that, a pony." He clasps his hands together at his chest, "Oh please Thor, could I have a pony."

"I have goats," Thor says, and there's a glint of amusement in his narrowed eyes, a small smile hidden in his tightened lips. "You can have those."

Loki dares to venture closer. When Thor says nothing else he lifts his arms out. "A hug, brother. That is what I want."

Thor hesitates only briefly, before gathering Loki up into his arms. Loki lifts his legs, and ends up curled in Thor's lap, cheek warming his armor. Thor's hand holds him trapped, its width almost spanning the entirety of Loki's back.

"Are you all right, Loki?" His breath tickles Loki's scalp, and he shivers. "Did anyone hurt you?"

"No more than usual. I'm fine." He isn't. Every part of him is burning, every sense overwhelmed by Thor's scent Thor's strength Thor's heat. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Ikol, perched on top of the throne. He looks deeply disapproving.

Loki refuses to compete with a bird for Thor's affection.

He has a form that doesn't come with beady eyes and a penchant for worms.

He wins, by default.

Thor rubs small circles into his back, and Loki fidgets, and hyperventilates, and, abruptly, is released. Such that he falls awkwardly between Thor's feet. "I'm sorry," Thor says.

"It's okay, I'm fine." He is, he's fine. Other than the sudden urge to crawl away and die or crawl back into Thor's lap and possibly die as well. He settles for brushing his gloved fingers over the top of Thor's boot. "I do not want a pony."

"Loki," Thor says, and the glint in his eyes turns to understanding.

Loki places his hands on the inside of Thor's thighs, slides them up slow.

"Don't."

"Why."

"Because you are not -" Loki stops, his fingers reflexively curling inwards as he stares up. Thor says, "Enough."

This is his brother, the God-King.

Enough.

Loki flees.

*

The summer he turns fifteen by the Midgardian calendar, they are at war. Thor returns from battle one morning and sleeps for twenty-seven days and twenty-seven nights.

The first few days, Loki sits vigilantly by his side.

The next few, he sits and surfs the internet with increasing boredom.

Thor had given specific instructions, before he left: Loki is to stay out of this war. "But I can help," Loki had snapped, a little too churlishly for his own liking.

"You are a child and for once I would rather you behaved as such. Go, I don't know. Find a girl, romance her."

"I would rather romance someone else, quite frankly. But apparently I'm too young for him. Too young to do anything but sit around uselessly wringing my hands. I am a God. I am Loki."

Thor had refused to listen, because he is Thor. Which means he is stubborn and stupid and listens to no-one but himself.

And so now he sleeps, battered to exhaustion.

Loki throws the phone aside in despair. "Well, then," he says out loud, in case Thor cares to hear while he slumbers. "I suppose it's up to me."

*

The list of things Loki has done that Thor should never find out about grows longer, and yet he has to keep amending it because Thor also keeps finding out. He should at some point make a color-coded chart of all of the deals he has struck for the Greater Good, just to keep track. There is possibly an app for that.

"Loki," Thor says, as disapproval radiates off of him.

"I had my reasons," Loki replies. "And look, it all worked out. Yay, let's celebrate once again. We can drink to your heroism and bravery."

Thor shakes his head, but he reaches out to draw Loki close. He's more careful with his touches nowadays, more reserved. But sometimes, he forgets. His fingers graze Loki's cheek or he lifts him up into a one armed hug, or allows Loki to tend to his wounds when he is inevitably injured.

Loki wraps his arms around Thor's waist and looks up, rests his chin on Thor's breastbone.

Thor goes very still.

Please please please.

It's hopeless. If this were a romance movie he would have closed the file by now, deleted it in disgust due to too much subtext and lack of adequate payoff. He's pushed away, very carefully, held at arm's length. "I will see you for dinner," Thor says steadily, before he turns and walks away.

*

If he's fit to fight demons and win wars and make deals with the worst the Nine have to offer, surely he's fit to be held down and taken: for Thor to spread him open and commit the sorts of filthy, dirty acts that the Midgardians love to record for posterity and also money.

It makes sense in his head. His logic is faultless.

What, then, of Thor's refusal to listen?

*

"If you continue like this, you'll end up like me."

Loki squeezes his eyes shut, moves his hand faster. "What, evil?" he thinks to ask, when he's done coming, hot onto his own belly.

"No. Alone."

"I'm not alone," Loki says, as his head clears. "I will always have Thor."

Thor's love is unconditional, regardless of whether Loki is good or not. Eat your vegetables or don't, destroy the worlds or help save them, seduce your brother or leave him be.

Loki is faced with an infinite number of choices.

It's exhilarating.

*

The summer Loki turns sixteen by the Midgardian calendar he brings a cupcake to Thor's chambers. Chocolate cream, not vanilla, infused with bits of cherry. Thor is sitting on the side of his bed, naked from the waist up. His elbows are on his knees and he has his face in his hands, and he doesn't look up when Loki ventures in.

"This is not the time," he growls, as Loki curls up near, tucking his feet neatly under himself.

"It is never the time," Loki replies. Fresh from battle, nothing new once again. Loki can smell the blood on him. He allows his head to fall onto Thor's shoulder, watches carefully as Thor lowers his arms, only to clench his fists between his legs. Loki takes a wrist, holds on to it until Thor's palm opens so he can place the cupcake on it. "Look, it's my birthday," he says, soft and unwavering. "You should ask me what I want."

"That is always a dangerous question when it comes to you."

"But you should ask me anyway."

Thor does.

*

All gods have history.

The best ones make their own.