Boltedfruit Archive

   Gold could be forged. Into cities, into prisons. To Thor, the gold of Asgard made a home. But to Loki, who sat in tatters endless miles beneath this home, Asgard was a prison. A twisting, beautiful, vile prison.

Thor knew somewhere in the back of his mind that Loki equated him with

Asgard, with his disgust in Odin and careful evasiveness of Frigga. Thor was Loki’s prison. For years he didn’t know what to do with this revelation. The fear of it. The hopelessness. For he was Thor, the ever golden, the brave, the inspiring, the undefeated. Thor was the gold to Loki’s darkness and in this, in his imprisonment, he sought his brother.

In this, he first heard Loki breathe his name.

   The days were immeasurable when caged beneath stone and river and sun, hidden away from the sky and it’s watchers like an insect meant to be crushed. Here, it was all fabricated pleasantness. The books, the candles, the open space with its plush furs. At least here, they did not force him to wear the facade of clean clothes and clean-cut appearances. His one rebellion. His one mischief achieved without the aid of magic. Not even Odin could force him into a costume more physical than the one of pale skin and green eyes.

He sought to annoy the guards at first. To rouse them from their impenetrable watch. Surely they were not so immoveable as loyal Heimdall?

But all Loki did was manage to twist his fingers raw from weaving magic that was barred from him by Odin’s learned hand and ever clever tongue ages more ancient than even Loki’s. Than chaos itself. Loki yelled his voice hoarse next.

He grew bored for many long nights, what he thought were nights. There was no time here. He received a constant stream of meals throughout the day, small feasts even Volstagg would be willing to eye. Thor did not come.

Thor never came. It was curious.

So he suspected the prison was proofed in every manner. So clever, he thought of Odin, to render his fallen Jotun bastard invisible, though so near to others.

His mind soon turned to other needs, and it was in this thin cognitive thread of safe, lied to, invisible that he first bared himself to his hand. That he did not bother hiding the sounds he made. He was tired of being denied them besides. Let his voice be heard by all, and yet hidden.

And the guards were none the wiser. It was perverse, he knew. But this was not a recent thing. This was carefully made. Loki had become himself, and in this, small mischief, he was perverse indeed.

It was on the third, the twentieth, the unfathomably measured day that he first breathed Thor’s name.

Loki could no longer tell for it felt like he was rending thunder itself silent.

   Thor visits Loki every morning and every night. Twice a day does he suffer the curse of that prison’s threshold, into Loki’s line of sight, but all he can bring himself to step to is the very edge. In the dark, behind the cell. The guards have taken vows of silence after Loki’s fall and will only speak when they shout their cries of battle. Or unless something very dire indeed has occurred. They are ghosts in a golden hall and Thor is thankful for this, for they do not speak of his visits. His endless hours spent fighting within himself on whether to cross that line or not.

Thor cannot bring himself to speak to Loki. He fears if he hears his voice he will either weep or bring Mjolnir down upon the cage of Loki’s ribs. Silence rendered from the shame of the love he still holds for Loki, or silence rendered by Loki’s death. Either or, it is not a good place to be caught.

It is on the ninth month he hears Loki speak anything other than failed attempts at charms and curses and cruel, vicious insults and threats. Nine months and Thor hears his name on his brother’s lips and oh, it is a dangerous thing there coiling in his chest.

And when Loki cries out in a way that tells Thor exactly what it is he is not seeing, something dark and languid and wrong snaps apart in the deepest part of himself.

   Loki goes on believing he is unheard, unseen, even when it is Thor himself who spies on his cries as he spends on his hand, again and again, night after night. Eventually something breaks and he knows there is a part of him that wants, that desires. Something so twisted inside him that somehow it makes sense. Loki is alright with that. Some nights are so long, tears slip by unnoticed, and he is shamed by them. But who can see them?

Thor stands in the corner, shadowed and invisible to Loki only.

   Thor manages his way before Loki’s cell one year after he first heard Loki breathe his name on a sigh of pleasure. Loki’s eyes are wide, honest shock playing bright across his face.

Thor commands the guards leave them that night, and Thor knows in Loki’s growing smirk that it is a secret they will share for many long centuries yet.