It's no wonder you've got demons, everything you ever did is coming down

[hehadhertricks]

 It’s been difficult not to take offense, near impossible not to be hurt. To take Thor’s abuse at face value, to see the change in him as the end of an era of friendship and brotherhood. It hurts more, perhaps, because that hadn’t been all that Loki had wanted. As they grew together, leaving their childhood years behind them, he felt drawn to Thor as more than just brothers. He’d yearned for him. Even now with nothing left of how things were, none of the closeness, nothing of Thor’s loyalty for him, he still yearns for him. Thor is cruel for no apparent reason, distant and moody. That’s perhaps the worst of it, that occasionally he can see a glimmer of the boy he’d known in those blue eyes and then it’s gone again in a flash, and it hurts as though the loss is fresh again. 

He’s wondered if it’s something he’d done. He assumed it had to be, but he couldn’t imagine what. He’s spent years wondering, going over conversations, replaying entire days in his mind to search for something he’d done wrong, some way he’d hurt Thor so deeply that it turned him into this dark shadow of himself. And then he too began to change, slowly and subtly, he’d grown harder, honed sharper from the abrasiveness that was Thor now. And yet he’d never stopped trying, never stopped applying that clever mind to this question that he needs to know the answer to, never stopped asking himself what changed. 

Then one day it clicked. One day when distance and conflict turned into an argument, when Thor tried to turn a verbal dispute into blows and Loki tried to outsmart him and keep just out of arms reach. It worked without fail, just as it always did, Thor falling for the illusion and getting ever more furious, which is the entire reason that Loki continues to use that tactic on him. But this time, he noticed something. He saw that when Thor finally found the solidity of his body in the trick of false Lokis and gave a push that there was something else going on, something more than indignant fury. His eyes were bright, not with anger, but with something entirely different, pupils blown, pale skin flushed. He looked somehow more boyish and not boyish at all in that moment, as though he were finally seeing the truth beneath all of these years of anger, seeing the man that Thor was desperate not to become. 

He knew he was right, but then had not been the time to push and get Thor to give himself away any more than he already had. He had to wait until it wasn’t expected, until he had the upper hand and could tip things in the direction that he wanted them to go. So he waited until one evening when Thor’s friends had left and there were moments to be stolen before turning in. Thor thinks he’s alone, perhaps, as he heads towards his chambers, but then there’s a tap at his shoulder and when he turns to look — because he always does — Loki will be in front of him instead, blocking his path, squaring his shoulders to lord the slight advantage of height that he’s got on Thor over him. 

“Something the matter, brother?” he asks innocently, as if he’d just been there in front of him all along, witnessing Thor turning to look at the nothing behind him, accusing him of being jumpy, perhaps paranoid with that tone. 

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[droppedasachild]

Thor knows that this is unfair. He sees it on Loki's face, the hurt, the confusion, and every moment cuts a little deeper. But he has no other answers, no other way to try and push him away that wouldn't come with questions that Thor knows better than to think that he could possibly answer. And so he's mean, bordering on cruel, their brotherly arguments lake on harder edges. He tries to lift himself above his brother in ways he never had before, he becomes arrogant, colder. And sometimes he hates himself for it when Loki gets that look on his face, like he's trying to piece together what he's done wrong and it twists his heart.

Because Loki hasn't done anything wrong. It's Thor who is wrong, but the only answer he knows is pushing Loki away, trying to separate himself from the temptation. Because at some point, that's what his little brother became. He's gorgeous, alluring. Skin paler than Thor's own, his hair like ebony silk and those green eyes that shine like emeralds. Thor can't help the fact that he thinks of him when he touches himself, no matter how he tries to think of something- anything- else, Loki's face always rises just before pleasure overwhelms him.

It's shameful, sickening, and he knows father would cast him away if he knew of Thor's desires. So he does his best, tries to keep them hidden, represses them like the dark, twisted secrets they are. He lets himself believe that Loki wont catch on. That even as Thor's distance sharpens Loki, makes him harder and his edges better for finding the very secrets that Thor seeks to hide, that he wont see through him. It's perhaps foolish, but the honest answer is that there is really no choice but to cling to that belief. That there's a way out of this.

That if he's cruel enough, distant enough, that there's a world where Loki doesn't look at him with disgust.

But Thor has never been the best at hiding how he feels, and Loki has always been too good at reading him. And especially when they fight, when Loki's eyes flash, and his lips set just so, that arrogant pleasure in how he can get Thor all twisted up in image and mirage. He still trusts Loki. However much Thor tries to fight it, he's still bright eyed and adoring and loves him so intensely that it takes his breath away sometimes. He can't push him away entirely because he needs him. Because it's always Loki that soothes his occasional dark moods, bad dreams when he lingers on the balcony of the great hall and stares at the stars.

He doesn't realize that he's given himself away, doesn't think that Loki knows. He's as terse as ever, once that flicker of uncertainty clears. He looks up into those green eyes and he shakes his head, dismissing whatever it was that he'd thought that he felt with a shrug of his shoulders. Loki had hit his growth spurt first and Thor is still catching up, and his younger brother still continues leveraging the difference in height between them.

"It was nothing," Thor says with a dismissive air, a faint flush as he catches the edge to his voice. He's struck all over again by just how beautiful Loki is, but he tries to squash those thoughts before they can show on his face, but he doesn't know that Loki's looking. "And what has you walking the halls at these hours, brother?" He questions, that edge to his voice that seems to imply that Loki is up to something.

But weren't they always? Hardly that long at all from when one didn't have a scheme without the other. Holding hands and slipping through shadows and sharing laughter. He missed his brother so intensely, but he couldn't stop telling himself that it was better this way.