Boltedfruit Archive

It’s not five minutes after Loki sees him in his rooms after returning that Thor is being pulled into a fight.

Loki lands the first hit and it’s more a surprise to Loki than anything else, Thor thinks.

His brother stumbles back as if shocked, fist unclenching where it hangs in the air. His mouth drops open and Thor sees him try for words several times before he realizes he’s stuttering and promptly shuts up.

“Thor—” he finally manages before being thrown back onto the ground.

Thor’s tackle sends him sprawling.

“I’ve been away with the Vanir not three weeks and this is the welcome I come home to?” Thor asks, incredulous as his brother squirms beneath him.

Loki glares, his anger hampered somewhat by his red cheeks.

“You know what this is about,” Loki spits, all vitriol.

Thor lays a palm flat over Loki’s racing heart and his brother goes still. Too still. Thor’s own heart matches the pace and he feels Loki’s hips shift where he has them pinned. A spike of something terrifying wrings a pleased sigh from his traitorous mouth and Loki looks surprised to hear it. As if he’d not known. Maybe he hadn’t.

Thor risks trailing his hand up to Loki’s throat, then to his jaw. It’s only when his thumb traces over Loki’s lower lip that he sees some reaction—a fast exhale, jaw tilting up as his mouth parts and Thor hopes.

Loki’s lip wavers as if for more words that won’t come, and finally, finally—

Loki grabs his wrists tight and throws Thor off him, head nearly catching the edge of the intricate wardrobe in the corner. Thor stays where he lands, a quiet dread settling hard at the catch of his throat. A stone he cannot clear away.

He watches his brother leave his own rooms, the memory of the morning he left playing over and over again. Just as it had done the entire time he’d been away in Vanir, seducing political affiliations for their father.

Thor leaves Loki’s rooms shortly after.

Loki is fiddling with a length of rope when he finds him. He’s due off in a few hours’ time and his pauldrons need tying off before he goes. He can’t leave half armored, it would be ridiculous. 

Loki spies him not long after he enters, quickly shoving the rope among the rest of the items strewn over his desk. 

“You look ridiculous,” his brother mutters, already heading over to tie them on. 

Thor smiles at the floor. “It’s tradition.” 

“Perhaps when we were young. You are nearly ready to take the throne. You truly think father will allow you this indulgence all the rest of your longawaited reign?” 

He laughs at that, because the image of Loki dressing him through war and peace alike sets his blood alight in a way he’s often thought on. “Longawaited?” 

“Aye.” 

The way Loki murmurs the word gives Thor pause. There is something unsaid between them and he is unsure what. Loki has been brooding for some time and Thor wonders if Loki will tell him now, on the morn of his departure. 

“Not four days ago you were cursing at me,” Thor begins, hesitant. “All vile things. But you were tearful. I still know not what I did.” 

All that had happened was Thor had hugged him. Had taken the advice of his warring thoughts, too often shouted over with rage when Loki and he argued and fought. It had worked to quiet his brother but something else had seemed to occur to Loki before he’d started anew, pushing Thor away and fleeing. 

Loki huffs. “Of course you don’t. And you shouldn’t,” he adds quickly. He finishes tying the pauldrons and pats Thor on the shoulder once before leaning back against the rich wood of his desk. 

“Brother,” Thor says. “Tell me. Please. I’d know what plagues you about my presence alone.” 

“And what about me exactly lets you know that you plague me?” 

“Well for one, you stopped what you were doing when I came in.” He points at the rope and Loki sets his jaw at the gesture. “It was not so long ago I could hardly get you to acknowledge I’d entered the room you were so entrenched in your work. You’d never stop for me, or anyone.” 

“Perhaps the work is unimportant,” Loki says, frowning. 

“I’ve never known you to waste your time on things that are unimportant.” 

Loki hums. “Unimportant, no, perhaps only on the impossible.” 

He sneers and turns his gaze away from Thor as soon as the words leave his mouth and Thor knows something is wrong. 

“What is it?” 

Loki doesn’t answer him so Thor pushes into his space, suddenly impatient. He feels anger flare within him but bites it back, for he is more worried than angry. And so rare were the moments when Thor was not admonished for his anger by his brother. 

But Loki refuses to meet his eyes and so Thor wonders if some anger is not warranted. 

“Loki.” 

Loki’s nostrils flare, his ears as red as the color splotchy and high on his cheeks. He blinks and Thor spies the telltale shine in them and something hot and unneeded twirls to life inside his breast. It makes him near ill with the force of it, the need to know. He’s felt it before. 

Thor grips Loki’s arm and moves forward just as Loki turns to face him, all fury.

“Nothing—” 

Loki’s mouth is warm beneath his own for all of one instant before they both wrench away from the other. 

It was an accident. 

Thor did not mean to kiss him. 

Loki had simply turned too quickly for him to realize— 

Thor must clench his fist at his side when he feels the familiar pulse of electricity run through the crease of his palm. He swallows thick, throat dry in a way it hasn’t been in a very long time. A wild part of him wants to do it again. If just to see what Loki does. 

But Loki’s eyes are wide and he looks horrified. The horror is the worst part. Far worse than the heavy drag of his blood racing through his veins, skin prickling in sweat. 

Loki wipes his mouth and quietly, slowly moves around Thor and out to the hall. 

Thor does not see him again before he leaves. 

He does not see Loki for the rest of the day. Not during the meeting with father. Not during that night’s feast. His lack of presence is noticed and one look from their father has Thor excusing himself from the festivities meant for him and the newfound allies in the Vanaheim mountains he secured. No one stops him from leaving.

Loki is not in either of their rooms. He is not in the baths or the gardens or even the library. He is not on the grounds that Thor can see.

Thor takes up Mjolnir and spins her round until he is taken into the skies. He will scour the kingdom if it means they can bury Thor’s mistake. His slip up. His moment of weakness.

Gods before him, how he wishes Loki is not lost somewhere in his anger, the desperate need to escape from Thor’s uncovered secret.

He will hide his secret.

He will.

He must.

Thor will not lose his brother.

Thor sees his brother a ways off the main path out of the city, hands clenched at his sides where he stands looking down at the large stones in the nearest river.

Thor lands lightly some yards behind, not wanting to startle him. Loki turns his head only enough that Thor knows Loki’s heard him arrive.

“We used to come here as children,” Loki tells him. His voice is a rasp and Thor wonders if he’s been crying. “I remember when Sif would parade around in the nude to draw all your eye.”

“Ours, but never yours, was it?” He sets Mjolnir where he landed and goes to join Loki at his side. He tugs on Loki’s cuffed wrist and when his brother turns, he realizes his usually intricately buckled belts are loose. They look hasty, uneven. Loki shakes his head.

“I couldn’t breathe. I needed the air.”

Loki allows himself to be pulled to the ground. They sit like they used to, legs crossed, arms over knees tense with words that need loosening. Thor has no idea where to start.

“Loki I—”

“How did you know?” Loki asks, voice desperate in the quiet.

“What?”

“How did you know I—I wanted?” Loki hums, sounding pained, and Thor feels as if his heart has stopped. “You played me for a fool. I had hoped, truly, you’d not known all these years. Not caught on. And if there was ever a moment of suspicion that it had been a passing thought—an idea not real. Something you thought silly and ignored when really it was always there. You always knew—”

“I didn’t!” Thor rushes out, one hand tight in the dirt and grass between them. Loki laughs once, hollow. “I’d never suspected. But I wanted—I did.” “You did?”

“I do.”

Loki turns cautious eyes on him, the color gone dark in the light of the moon.

“Oh. I see.”

Thor can’t help but smile at what he sees in Loki’s eyes. He feels absurd. He feels light.

“They’re going to miss you at the celebration.”

“I missed you.”

“I’m not much to miss. They are surely missing you much more than they’ll ever miss me.”

“Loki.”

“You’re the better son anyway. Doing your diplomatic duties. How many Vanir did you bed while you were away? Surely enough to secure relations.”

“Loki…”

“Thor,” Loki says, turning to meet his eyes. “You kissed me.”

“I did. I did not mean to. But it happened.”

“And you wanted to kiss me again,” he breathes.

Thor leans forward and Loki nods, a question in the exhale he lets free between them. Thor presses his lips gentle to Loki’s and revels in the way his brother moans almost silently at the touch, all tension leaving him. It’s sweet. He never imagined Loki could be sweet.

Loki’s hands find their way quick to Thor’s hair, his neck, pulling him forward until Thor is tumbling over his brother on the grass. Their teeth clash and Loki breaks the kiss, breathless, laughing up at him.

Something changes when Thor meets Loki’s gaze. A new, frantic heat spiraling through him.

Loki seems to feel the same, for he’s pulling Thor back to him in a nearpanic, welcoming the knee Thor shoves between his thighs. Loki grinds on it, bringing their hips together and it’s like letting loose a held breath. He pulls at the loose belts littering Loki’s flushed skin, peeling back one after another until he can kiss what’s bare in heated slips of tongue and teeth, biting a path down to the bulge in Loki’s breeches. He mouths over the hard line of him and Loki gasps, bucking against his mouth.

Thor pulls and twists at the ties that lace them until he can get a grip around the hard length, flushed the sweetest shade he’s seen. He tastes salt as soon as he’s got his tongue on Loki and his brother—his brother is saying his name over and over again, hands tight in his long hair but not shoving or pushing. Letting him be. Thor groans around the cock in his mouth and sinks down to the coarse hair tickling his nose as Loki’s voice cuts off on a moan.

“Your—” Loki tries. Thor glances up at him. Flushed face, lips red and swollen. Lids low and gaze hazy. His fingers twitch against his scalp where he holds Thor. “Your eyes. I didn’t know you could—”

Thor blinks and wonders what his brother means. He pulls off, hearing Loki hiss. When he catches sight of his hands, it’s the arcing tendrils he’s so used to seeing cascading over Mjolnir when he summons her in a fight. But this is Loki’s skin. And his own hands. He blinks and he realizes his own eyes must be alight.

Curious, he drags a hand over Loki’s bare torso, the lightning tickling over his skin if the staccato twitch of his hips is any sign, singing the leather it dances over on the way.

“Lords above, that feels good, brother,” Loki whispers, head falling back on the grass.

Thor crawls up Loki’s body, and Loki’s hands make quick work on his own trousers. Loki grabs him in a firm hand and strokes him with slow, long drags that have him leaking. He buries his face in Loki’s neck, the simple action already bringing him close.

“I want you inside me,” Loki tells him, sounding wrecked. Thor pulls back, surprised. “I’ve dreamt of it. Imagined how big you’d be, how wide you’d stretch me. How full you’d make me—”

He cannot help how he tears the leather of Loki’s breeches and his brother laughs for it. Loki shoves his fingers past Thor’s mouth and he sucks obediently, the lightning playing quick and fast over Loki’s wrist. When he pulls them free, they’re dripping and Loki smiles, clever and wicked as he works himself open with one hand, stroking Thor with the other. He’s not going to last.

“Enough,” Thor rumbles, sitting back to line himself up after swatting Loki’s hands away.

“On my stomach,” Loki tries.

“Then how could I kiss you,” Thor wonders, smiling. He leans forward and sucks on Loki’s neck as he pushes in, his brother’s hands pulling hard on the cloth of his tunic. It’s slow, and from the sound his brother is making not unpainful—and he wishes it would be faster, wishes it would be slower.

Soon enough Loki has his hands under his tunic, pulling at his skin, forcing him closer. “More,” he demands, again and again. “More, Thor.”

The lightning dances all around them, burning the grass underneath their moving bodies, the clothes on their backs. And still Loki demands more even as he wraps his leg about Thor’s waist.

Thor wills for yet more to come and come it does. A powerful shot of energy from the black of the sky overhead, piercing the air with a sound that shakes the trees and still Loki demands more. Begs for it, even as he feels Loki tighten around him. Neither of them is going to last.

“More, damn you!” Loki cries.

Thor rears back and drives hard into his shaking brother beneath him, feeling the pulse of his release hot against his stomach as the next shot of lightning swallows them whole.

“Gods, brother.”

“Aye,” Thor agrees from where he lies beside his brother, shoulder to shoulder.

He is more sated than he can ever remember being. When he looks over, he laughs, joyful.

“Shut up.”

Though they were unhurt from the lightning—impossible given their nature—Loki’s hair has gone from its delicately crafted sweep to a mess of fuzz and curls.

Thor rolls into him, burying his face against Loki’s clammy skin. He nips and sucks and bites hard only when Loki’s hands find his hair once more.

“I said,” Loki breathes. “Shut up.”