Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He’d had it forever—since high school? Long enough, at any rate, that he didn’t even hesitate when someone asked about it it—“oh I just really have a thing for 80s synth pop,” he’d laugh. And they’d laugh right back.

ha ha.

Most of the time you couldn’t see it, anyway. He kept his hair pulled back in a knot at the base of his head and the braid naturally tucked itself under the rest of his hair. Besides, most of the folks at the firm were more interested in the numbers than whatever the fuck he did with his hair. And the numbers were good enough for now. Mostly.

So it was a little bit of a surprise when some hipster from marketing made that comment.

“You’re the second person today I’ve run into with one of those.”

“What?” Thor’s tone was a bit sharp because he had been completely focused on working out the meaning behind some cryptic e-mail about an impending takeover bid.

“The braid,” she tilted her chin at him to indicate his hair; her thick-framed cat-eye glasses glinted in the late afternoon sun that filtered through the window and stabbed him in the eye.

“The braid?” He deadpanned, lips thinning with annoyance at the continued interruption. He did not pay his social media gurus for casual conversation. She had just stopped by to pick up some crap that had been mis-directed to his office. She wasn’t even supposed to be here.

“Yeah. It’s not something you see everyday, right?” She went on. “So I remembered. Some guy at the coffeeshop had a little braid in his hair just like that. You could barely see it, because his hair was so dark—it had to be a dye job, but a really good one, you know? Anyway, I notice things like that. It could be a trend.”

Thor’s face froze in shock, but she never noticed—her voice was already trailing off as she swished out of his office. In fact, he kept staring after her for a good five minutes after she’d shut the door.

Holy hell. Thor’s brain worked to process the information.

It’s couldn’t be him. Could it?

Years. His hand was a little unsteady as he ran it over his hair, unconsciously feeling for the smooth bumps of the braid.

It’s been years.

That asshole—that fucking weasel—had shadow run the firm for at least two years before anyone noticed, Dad still coming in to work in the big suite every day, while somehow Loki squirreled himself away down in some tiny tech services office. No one had even known he was there, no one that mattered, anyway. From that cramped operations base, he monitored everything, intercepting all of Dad’s directives and correspondence, redirecting major projects, reassigning accounts, slowly whittling away Dad’s controlling interest until there was almost nothing left.

At the time of his death, the only thing Odin still owned was his house and car—Loki even charged him rent for his own office and the driver who brought him to it everyday.

And Thor hadn’t had a clue until the lawyers started combing through the files after Dad’s funeral. Of course, how could he possibly have known? He’d been working fire and rescue in the backwoods for the previous four years. Still, it was the principle of the thing. He should have shown at least enough interest to suspect something, shouldn’t he?

When he confronted his brother, the fight had been epic—they always were.

Thor sat at the side of the conference table, still unwilling to take over his father’s seat. “Do you care to explain what, exactly, you’ve been doing?”

Loki sat across from him, affecting an ease that looked a little too practiced. “What do you care, Thor? You left. You got your little job out in the middle of nowhere on the fire line—which is very admirable of you; you get all of the points for altruism. The golden child! You can’t even be rebellious without finding some way to be noble about it. But you clearly had no interest whatsoever in Dad’s little empire. Why start now? Not busy enough saving lives? Time to save the family business from your sociopathic brother?”

Thor felt his face get hot and he squeezed his fists tight in an effort to keep control. “Just because you felt somehow personally wounded when Dad refused to give you a seat on the board right out of school—“

Loki leaned back, nodding his head in mock sagacity. “Right. This is all about my imagined slights. Isn’t that what you called them?”

Thor leaned forward aggressively in his own seat, jabbing a finger toward his brother’s face. “Father loved you. He never treated you as anything other than his real son.”

That pushed the right buttons. Loki mirrored his brother’s body language, moving aggressively into Thor’s personal space. “Did you even live in the same house I did?” He hissed. “Sometimes it feels as though we were actually raised by two different fathers, because the man you remember is completely different than the one who sat across the dining room table from me.”

But Thor’s hackles were up—Odin’s death was too recent for him to cede ground yet. “He just had very high standards for us.”

“That was precisely the problem, Thor—the exact same standards.” Loki’s shifted his voice into an uncanny imitation of Odin, “I don’t understand why you can’t do this, Loki; Thor never had any problems with this when he was your age. Loki, why must you always be so difficult? Why can’t you major in something useful, like your brother. You’ll never be successful if you keep diddling about with that useless theoretical crap. Loki, why are you ALWAYS SUCH A PROBLEM?!?”

“Loki!”

His brother smiled like a velociraptor, rested his forearms on the table, and folded his hands. “I guess all that useless theoretical stuff turned out to be pretty useful after all. It got me controlling interest in the company, anyway.”

Thor narrowed his eyes. Oh! Keep it up, you bastard and I will wipe this table with that smug face! He jabbed his finger at his brother once more. “Either you turn over all of the information about the shell games you’ve been running with Dad’s company, or I will crush you. You have no legal standing here, and you know it. Try me.”

A heartbeat passed. “That’s it?” His face twisted with some unreadable emotion.

For some reason that utterly escaped Thor, Loki had apparently been expecting some completely different response.

“That’s it.”

“You don’t care that this crappy business has hummed along for the past two years turning record profits?”

Thor practically growled in response. “You stole Dad’s business, his whole life’s work! You pulled out of multi-million dollar investments in 8 different countries—how many people lost their jobs?”

“Oh yes, let’s talk about jobs! All those glorious career opportunities that paid pennies a day for hazardous, mind-numbingly repetitive labor. God, you are so naive! You really have no clue how this business worked, do you?”

When Thor didn’t reply, Loki sank back into the chair, clearly working hard to appear detached. “You know what? Forget it. Have it. The golden child always wins. That’s the script, isn’t it? Will you at least grant me a decent severance package?”

The lawyers had already worked this contingency out for him, at least (“Pay him off, Thor,” they advised, “and hopefully he’ll go without causing trouble.”)

Thor tossed a sheaf of papers across the table. “It’s more than you deserve.”

Loki scanned them quickly, eyes narrowed, face vicious when he looked back up at his brother and held out a hand for a pen. “I will clear out my desk by the end of the week.”

“You have until 5:00, and security will watch you do it.”

Loki swore under his breath as he signed both copies of the agreement, then threw the pen across the room.

And then he was gone, and Thor had been fine with that. Mostly. It’s not like they had been close—not since that fight over the adoption papers. And the big row after Mother had died.

The stealth takeover of the business had only been the last straw, really, proof for Thor that he couldn’t redeem someone who didn’t want redemption. And damn, Loki really was not asking for forgiveness.

Certainly not from his brother. Or not-brother. Whatever. Thor didn’t care. At all. Really. The braid was just a habit. Because Loki sure didn’t care. Right?

So who was sitting in a coffeeshop around the corner with dark hair and a love lock? Because it couldn’t be Loki. Because he didn’t care.

Right?

He shook his head to clear his thoughts then forced his eyes back to the e-mail he’d been reading.

Who the hell is Fenris Associates? He pulled out his phone to send a message to the head of tech security: “Sif, got time? I need you to look into something.”

Chapter Text

“Some guy at the coffeeshop had a little braid in his hair just like that. You could barely see it, because his hair was so dark.”

Thor still couldn’t get that comment out of his head.

He sank into the couch—Dad’s couch, because heaven forbid he redecorate his parents’ house, even though they’d both been dead for years—and stared at the ceiling, counting the imperfections in the plaster.

It made no sense, to miss him so much after what they had put each other though. But Loki was always right there, lodged permanently under Thor’s skin. The only thing he could compare it to was an addiction, because they were obviously bad for each other, just waiting to self-destruct. Repeatedly. But they just couldn’t not taste.

All their lives they slammed together like electromagnets and smashed things—furniture, toys, each other—even before it escalated into . . . whatever they had mutated into. And he hated himself for wanting that back.

Even when it started, there seemed no way to avoid that particular collision. It was a weekend of firsts. The first time they were trusted alone for a weekend. The first time Thor made supper. The first time Thor burnt supper. The first time . . .

God! What a mistake.

That memory was etched into his cerebral cortex with perfect clarity.

*****

Thor came tearing through the house like the tank he was with Loki in high speed pursuit. “Give me my phone back you asshole!”

“Not ’til you tell me where you hid the rest of the chips.”

“Jesus, Thor, you are such a child!”

“HA!” Thor stopped only when he smashed into the wall in the den and held the phone over his head, using his 3” height advantage to keep it just out of Loki’s reach.

“Dammit, Thor!”

“Where are they?” He teased, as Loki struggled to reach, hot and flushed with frustration, bumping up against his brother and practically climbing his arms in an effort to wrestle to the phone back.

What prompted Thor’s next move he will never remember, but he suddenly turned toward the wall, lowered his arms, and—

“Jesus Christ, Thor, did you just put it down your pants?”

Thor crowed in triumph, “Ha! Get it now, you thief!” His face shone with sweat and he pushed his hair off face. Loki suddenly got an evil look on his face. Thor should have known by now to take the warning.

“Do you think that’ll stop me, you bastard?”

And goddamn if Thor didn’t feel Loki’s sinewy arms snake around his waist as he reached for his stolen property. He was so shocked that Loki had one hand all the way down one pocket before Thor could grab hold of the other wrist as the hand attached to it went to undo the button of his jeans.

Fuck! They both froze, except for their chests that still heaved with exertion.

He became excruciatingly aware of Loki’s hot breath coming over his shoulder, and of the taut chest muscles pressed up against his own back. Panic overtook him. Thor’s pants suddenly felt painfully tight. When did that happen?

He held his breath. Please, please, please don’t notice.

As if.

Goddmmit if he didn’t feel Loki’s thumb slowly move over the edge of his erection from where his hand remained shoved deep into Thor’s pocket. And as he did so, some soft, unnamable sound slid out of Loki’s throat and crawled right down Thor’s spine, making his stomach muscles clench.

Loki wrenched his other hand free of Thor’s death grip to run it down the front of Thor’s pants.

“Jesus!” It was barely a whisper, and seemed to come out of Thor’s mouth of its own volition.

That was enough encouragement for Loki, who pulled his hand out of Thor’s pocket to run his palm up under Thor’s t-shirt and over his abs, while his other hand remained occupied down lower. He felt Loki press himself closer and bury his face against Thor’s neck.

Thor braced his arm against the wall as his knees threatened to buckle under him.

He squeezed his eyes tight. “Loki.”

The only answer he got was a warm, wet mouth at the crook of his neck.

Thor tried again. “Loki, we . . .” before his words devolved into a little whimper.

“Don’t say ‘no,’ Thor. You can’t . . .” a choked sound came out of Loki’s mouth. “Don’t you dare say you haven’t thought about it. You can’t possibly tell me I’ve been imagining it.”

Thor twisted around and leaned against the wall, only to have his brother crowd into him, molding his heat into Thor’s body, pushing his hips forward to chase that aching pleasure between them. Thor held Loki’s face still with both his hands, drinking in every desperate detail. Thumbs tracing over his eyebrows, over his cheekbones, and finally brushing over his lips. Jesus, he was so gorgeous, face flushed hot, his expression open and vulnerable and needy.

“No. No, you haven’t,” and he leaned forward to kiss those lips he’d been staring at for god only knows how many months with guilt and longing.

Somehow they steered each other over to the couch, Thor backing into it and crashing down, Loki climbing into his lap and straddling his thighs.

They sat just like that for a long moment, eyes darting over each others’ faces, judging one last time whether they were really going to cross that line, though, honestly, it really was too late.

Thor reached up and brushed him thumb over Loki’s cheek like he had just discovered some lost holy relic, and Loki closed his eyes, leaning into the touch. “God, Loki, you are so beautiful.”

Thor’s other hand reached up to bracket Loki’s face. He wanted to drink in every curve and every angle, memorize the sweep of his lashes and the tiny crease between his brows as he scrunched them together, the precise color of the cascading black hair, each fleck of color in those startling green eyes.

It didn’t last long—Loki just couldn’t bear that kind of scrutiny, and curved forward to brush their lips together before urging Thor into something much deeper, trading breaths, tasting what had seemed utterly unattainable just a few short minutes ago. They rocked their hips together, and every molecule of Loki’s breath rushed out with the shock of pleasure.

They didn’t last long after that—a couple of horny teenagers; what would you expect? But they recovered quickly, and their parents wouldn’t be back until late Sunday evening.

It was a long night.

On Sunday morning, Thor lazed in bed while Loki played with his hair, combing with his fingers through the tangles they had created the night before. After a few minutes, he gave up and hunted down a brush.

“Here.” Loki made Thor sit on the floor with his back to the bed. “Let’s do this properly.” And he brushed the knots out of Thor’s hair until it gleamed. Thor wished he could purr, as he melted into the attention.

Before too long, though, he felt an odd tug on one side of his head.

“What are you doing?”

“Giving you a braid.”

“A what?”

“Just a little one, underneath. No one will even see it. It’ll be our secret.”

Thor bent his head back to look at his brother quizzically.

“See?” Loki lifted up his gleaming black locks. “I already did mine.”

Thor smiled and closed his eyes. Our secret. He liked that.

For weeks afterward, all of their time was spent looking for ways to be together, to sneak little touches, steal time in the dark.

Of course it couldn’t last.

Six months later, they were crashing through a plate glass window after Loki accidentally found his adoption papers—Loki shit-faced drunk and practically psychotic, Thor trying to keep his brother away from Odin, Mom finally calling the cops while they rolled around on the front lawn, Loki bleeding everywhere and screeching like a banshee.

Loki spent a month in the hospital, and then Odin signed papers to keep Loki in the psych ward for another month after that when he threatened suicide. Asgard’s PR department went into overdrive, of course, which only alienated Loki further, since just because you were in a psych ward didn’t mean you didn’t see the news.

“Don’t touch me,” he spat at Thor when he finally came home. “Don’t touch me. Don’t talk to me. Don’t even look in my direction.”

Of course the silent treatment didn’t last forever, but they never got back what they’d had. Instead, their relationship mutated into some unfathomable game of push-pull in which Thor was always trying to guess at the rules, and Loki was always pulling Thor closer even while he was throwing up obstacles in their path.

And Thor was a gambler—Loki always held out a reward to keep Thor coming back after the pain faded. It was always enough to keep his need alive.

Until it wasn’t.

Chapter Text

Two weeks after Odin’s funeral, and a week after Thor had told his brother to “get the fucking hell out of his office before I call the cops and press charges,” Thor sat across a sturdy mission-style conference table to hear the bad news from his father’s lawyer, Heimdall.

“How bad is the damage?” Thor sighed, braced for bleeding ledgers and impending bankruptcy hearings.

Heimdall pulled up some documents on an interactive screen and walked him through the details. “Well, one of the first things Loki apparently did was to completely overhaul the corporate direction. He closed a monstrosity of a factory in China, sold the buildings and stock, then used all of the money to hire Tony Stark and give him carte blanche to overhaul Asgard’s R&D facilities.”

“So he systematically bled Asgard dry.”

“Oh no. He revitalized it.” Heimdall switched to another slide. “Stark’s a genius and collects geniuses who want to work with him . . . He hired this one kid right out of high school, Peter Something-or-other, and let him work there while he got his degree at Carnegie Mellon. They’ve developed some incredibly innovative products — that phone you’ve got in your pocket is one of their first. All of the other tech companies are playing catch up with you at this point.”

“You mean to tell me . . .”

“Yep, Asgard is doing better than it has been for years. Let’s face it, this place was on its way to a long, slow, painful, IBM sort of death. It’s products were overpriced and antiquated, and they were marketed to a slowly disappearing clientele. One particular rival had already started slavering over our impending corpse—Surtur Industries has a long history of encroaching on our territory. Loki saved us.”

“As he simultaneously stole everything out from under Father’s rear end.”

“That, too.” He pulled up a third slide that detailed the slow draining away of Odin’s assets as they shifted to shadow accounts—all of them under Loki’s control.

Thor took a few moments to process that. Nothing was ever simple when it came to his brother, it seems.

“How did Father never catch on to all of this?”

“He wasn’t paying much attention anymore, honestly—just going through the motions. He never really recovered from your mother’s death, and there were other disappointments that wore him down, as well. It all took a pretty heavy toll. Odin was tired, Thor.”

Thor winced at the mention of other disappointments but tried to steer away from those thoughts. Thor’s decision to stay out on the fire line after his mother’s death had been the subject of countless painful, guilt-ridden discussions. He hadn’t exactly been available to offer his father any emotional support. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

“And the board? They never noticed, either?”

“The board doesn’t give a rat’s ass as long as the quarterly profits are good. And they were pretty damn good after those initial reinvestments.”

Thor sat for a minute with a growing pit in the bottom of his stomach. “So it’s probably too late to call Loki up to see if he’ll come back.”

“Would you really want him to?” Thor grimaced and Heimdall continued, “I didn’t think so. At any rate, I tried to contact him three days ago to help me sort all of this out. He’s gone—off the map in a way only a tech magician like him could be. You’ll have to sort this out without him.”

Thor scrubbed his face to clear his head and get to work. “Where should I begin?”

“Well, Loki hired some extremely competent people, so I would start by relying on their expertise to learn your way about.” Heimdall slid a roster of names over to Thor and started ticking off their strengths.

Thor looked at the list and tried to absorb as much information as he could, even as he berated himself, God! When am I ever going to learn to keep my fucking mouth shut?

But just as loud was the thought that followed, Heimdall’s right. How could I possibly trust Loki after what he did to Father?

Later that night, Thor slumped on his dad’s couch nursing a beer, wondering where exactly things had completely gone into the shitter. He had been really pissed off when Loki pranked Fandral in the gay bar, but they had beaten the shit out of one another and gotten it out of their systems. I guess. Thor and Loki—as a unit—had recovered from all of that, hadn’t they? At least they still spoke often enough to piss each other off.

Ok, sure, things had gone downhill pretty fast after college. There had been the knock-down fight when Dad kicked Loki out of the house and cut him out of the will—that was bad. And then a year later, Loki learned about Frigga’s death from the obituary—that was pretty harsh.

But Loki just couldn’t leave well enough alone. He picked at old scabs, always dredging up things that Thor had long ago forgotten, and he always had the gods-own-worst timing in the universe. Phoning in the middle of the night. Or just when Thor was in the middle of a shift. Then the time he called right after Thor had been reamed a good one by Odin for deserting the family legacy, and Loki turned on the sarcasm spigot a little too gleefully.

But where had they finally broken?

Then he remembered.

It was a little thing. Not much. But it was the last thing. The thing that stopped everything else.

Thor had been exhausted. It was the height of fire season. They were short-handed, and were getting no breaks from the weather at all—it had been scorchingly hot and dry for weeks, and the forecast predicted more of the same. And wouldn’t you know it, Thor’s phone rang exactly as he came off a 16-hour shift just long enough to grab some food and maybe a short nap before he went back out.

“Loki why are you calling me here?” Thor sank into the bench of his dusty truck, wiping the dirt and ash off his face.

“I thought you’d be happy to hear from me, brother.”

It had been months since Odin had kicked his brother out of the house, but Thor really couldn’t muster anything more than a grimace of frustration—they had been through this conversation dozens of times, and Thor just couldn’t. He was hungry, and tired, and just could not summon the energy to care. At least not right now.

His response came short and clipped. “Look. What’s this all about? I’ve only got a two-hour break to find some food and get back to the fire line. I am absolutely exhausted and in no mood for games.”

“I’ve finally found an occupation. You’re not the least bit curious about how I’m surviving now that your father cut me out?”

“Frankly, no. Every time we talk you needle me about some imagined slight or other, and I’m tired of being your proxy punching bag for Father. You made it clear that Mother was the last thing tying us together, so why do you keep this up?”

“Oh that’s rich. The golden child is the one who’s wounded. I don’t think so.”

Thor sighed. How many times have I bailed your ass out of trouble? Do you give me any credit for that at all?

“No. I’m not taking the bait this time. I used to think the world of you, Loki, and I really thought we would be inseparable, but if all you’re going to do is call me up to whale on me, well I just don’t want to listen anymore.”

A long silence followed on the other end of the line, and maybe now, when Thor thought back on it, he might have heard a little cough or something like it before a much quieter voice replied, “so that’s it?”

“These phone calls have become pretty damn predictable.” A heartbeat passed in silence. “Look, I’ve got to go find some something to eat,” Thor started.

“Right,” Loki practically interrupted him. “I’ll let you get to it, then.”

And the line went dead.

Well, Thor thought, there’s that.

And that was that. Three years passed and he hadn’t heard a thing. No e-mails threatening to dox Sif for whatever she had said at that New Year’s party when they were 17 (granted, that was only once, and Loki had backed off after Thor trounced him over Christmas break). No midnight calls reminding Thor of his crappy dating choices (which Loki delivered with vicious regularity throughout college). Not even any packages on his doorstep full of sex toys (and now that he thought about it, that was probably the final blow to his relationship with Jane two years after graduation—and why had he kept those, anyway?)

Thor stared morosely at the photo on the mantlepiece of that skinny, brilliant, vindictive, beautiful, inscrutable, irreplaceable shithead.

God, how I hate him.

Thor took another swig of warm beer.

Damn, how I miss him.

****************************

And now, three years after Odin’s death, Thor still missed his fucking shithead of a not-brother as he sat across the table from Sif and she explained why she could not trace the source of the e-mail he’d been sent. “You know who it’s probably from, though. I don’t know anyone else who’s that skilled at covering their tracks who would also care to send a warning like this.”

“But why wouldn’t he just tell me himself? Why go through the trouble of an encrypted message like this.”

She sighed. “Who knows why Loki does anything the way he does. Maybe he works for Fenris and doesn’t want to get fired. Maybe he’s got inside information and doesn’t want to get charged with insider trading. Maybe it’s just a new way to make you anxious by convincing you he’s in trouble. Honestly? That last one’s at the top of my list—I’m sure he can’t stand it that he hasn’t been able to call you up just to poke at you. That was always his favorite hobby.”

Thor sighed. “Yeah. Unfortunately.”

Sif offered Thor a long, pitying stare that made him want to squirm like a little kid. “You know he can take care of himself, Thor. He doesn’t need you to rush to his rescue anymore.”

And he wasn’t sure which part of that statement hurt worse—the “he doesn’t need you” part, or the “you’re so transparent I can read that look from a mile away” part.

“He’s my little brother, ok? I can’t help it.”

Sif patted his forearm sympathetically, and somehow managed to not make it patronizing.

It made Thor grumpy, anyway.

Sif stood up and gave his shoulder one last squeeze. “I think the folks you really need to be talking to are over in legal. Take this to Heimdall and see what he makes of it—not about who it’s from, but who this Fenris Associates is and whether they represent a credible threat.”

“Right.” He stared at the message on his screen.

Because that’s really the important thing, isn’t it? Making sure Asgard is safe along with its hundreds of employees. Not worrying about what sort of trouble my stupid genius of a brother has gotten himself into.

He made a face. “I’ll send this to Heimdall and see if he’ll be in his office this afternoon.”

When he walked into Heimdall’s office a few hours later, the usually stoic lawyer had a sour look on his face. He nodded for Thor to take a seat before he got started. “Fenris is a private equity firm that’s owned primarily by a woman named Hela Borson.”

“Borson?”

“Yeah. I had never expected to run across that name ever again.”

“And Hela Borson is . . .”

“Hela Borson is your half sister by Odin’s first wife, who divorced him six years before he married your mother.”

“My half sister? Jesus Christ. Why did I not know any of this?”

“It was not an amicable break up. There was a restraining order. The court compelled your father to pay child support and college tuition. Beyond that, there was no contact.”

“But you knew.”

“Well, I was your father’s lawyer. I knew everything.”

“But you never said.”

“There were confidentiality clauses.”

“Right.” Thor felt like his whole world had just been tilted on its axis. A sister. A restraining order. Confidentiality causes.

“What the hell happened?”

“I’m not allowed to say, Thor—I’m still bound by the court order—but I can say that it wasn’t pretty, and that there is a lot of blame to go around.”

Thor shook his head, dumbfounded. “And this Fenris . . .?”

“Fenris Associates specializes is buying up and gutting struggling companies. Your sister is a kind of queen of pink slips. Her firm is where companies go to die.”

“Fuck. And now she wants to swallow up Asgard?”

Heimdall nodded, waiting the long minutes while Thor digested all of this.

A sister. Bitter. Ruthless. An apparent financial genius who make her money snapping up struggling companies and liquidating them for the highest profit. This is like a bad 80s movie on the evils of greedy financiers. Except for, you know, the part about the secret family.

“Jesus, Heimdall, I feel like I’ve shown up on the set of a telenovela.”

Heimdall cracked only the tiniest of smiles in sympathy. It wasn’t really all that funny.

“What would Loki have to do with any of this?”

“I can’t say anything for sure—just speculate. It’s possible he uncovered something while he was working here and decided to ally with her for a bit of revenge. He has an excellent skill set, Thor; lots of companies would be thrilled to have him, and it appears that someone has helped her snap up a bunch of our stock already. He’s very clever.”

“Thanks for that reminder.”

“I’m here to help, Thor.”

Thor scowled. Who knew Heimdall was capable of sarcasm?

Thor sank back into his chair. “If he’s helping her, why would he send me a warning?”

“Who knows. He might not actually be working for her. It’s completely possible he just stumbled across her plans in whatever other line of work he’s been doing, and honestly wanted to give us a forewarning. It’s also possible he was working for her and then had a change of heart.”

“You say that with about as much assurance as someone blindfolded and standing on a diving board—well there could be water down there, or there might not. We’ll just have to guess!”

Heimdall cracked another smile. “I can only say that if Loki really wanted to ruin you, Thor, I can’t imagine he would be this subtle about it.”

“Well, there is that, I suppose.” And Thor couldn’t help but fiddle with the little braid tucked into his hair, almost like rubbing a talisman for good luck. He sighed for what seemed like the thousandth time in the past two days.

“So how credible a threat is she to us? Can she really swallow us up like this?”

“Well, our market share has slipped fairly steeply in the past 12 months, so it’s possible she has a strong hand. Stark’s patents are hung up in court with the FDA—they still want to treat his wearable tech like it’s a medical device and expect us to put it through full-on double-blind safety studies. So none of that is going to see production for years. Then he had another dust up with the head of his security detail . . .”

“Who? Rogers? I thought they were inseparable.”

“Were. Rogers broke it off when his high school sweetheart showed back up, and now Stark’s an unholy mess—R&D is starting to bleed us dry.”

“I thought he was handling it— I just met with him a few weeks ago.”

“Yeah, not so much. Sorry.”

“So we’re a beached whale, is what you’re telling me.”

“More or less.”

Thor rolled all that around for a bit. “What about that other company, Surtur? Do you think we could create a bidding war—buy ourselves some time?”

“That might not be a bad idea; though you really should try to find yourself a few more allies before your start pretending to be a mouse caught between a couple of cats.”

Thor’s smile was less than care free.

********************

“Thor, I found him.”

Thor barely looked up from the spreadsheet he was staring at while he took a deep drink of coffee, “hmm?”

“Your brother. I found him.”

Sif then sat down and calmly folded her arms to wait while Thor choked on the coffee he had inhaled.

Five minutes later she broke her silence, “do you want a drink of water?”

“No,” Thor managed around the hacking cough that finally started to slow down. “No, I’m fine,” he wheezed. “Could you warn me next time? Or wait at least until I’m looking at you? Or maybe just don’t ambush me at 7:35 on a Monday morning?”

She cracked a smile. “No way. That was much too much fun. Shall I start over?”

He glared at her, “Yes, please. Care to add some details?”

“Right. So I went to this tech conference over the weekend, and there was an open bar right before the keynote presentation, and guess who was there?”

“Just right there? Plain as day, not you know, in disguise, or hiding or anything?”

“Nope. Right there. All dressed up in a fancy suit—black, or course, though with a neon blue tie, which I thought was pretty odd. Anyway, there he was practically glued to the side of some flamboyant design king. I think I surfed past a TED talk by him a few weeks ago—I could try and look it up for you.”

“Did you talk to him?”

She pursed her lips in annoyance. “I did not. He spotted me, gave me one of those snooty eyebrow looks, and very pointedly left the room.”

“Didn’t you follow him?”

“Of course I did. He did what he’s best at, the little shit; he disappeared. I have no idea where he ran off to. I didn’t see him the rest of the conference—and I looked, trust me.”

“Did he look well?”

“Like a spoiled cat.”

Something twisted deep inside Thor’s gut. “Can you get me the name of that designer? Do you think he works for him?”

She sighed. “He might, but they definitely seemed to have a, erm, close working relationship?”

Thor visibly deflated and Sif relented, “Of course I can get the name for you.”

It didn’t take long. That afternoon Sif walked up to Thor’s desk and stuck her tablet under his nose.

“I found him.”

It took a minute to process what he was looking at—the website of some entertainment magazine, apparently. The first thing that caught his eye: a big splashy pap photo of Loki, looking better than any human had a right to—black suit cut to emphasize perfectly proportioned shoulders and lean torso—and he was whispering into the ear of . . . well, how do you describe THAT. Some guy with silver hair wearing an iridescent, duster-length jacket, sporting blue eyeliner? Seriously?

Underneath, the headline read “Who Is The Grand Master’s Newest Beau? Mystery man seen on design genius’s arm at tech conference.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Yeah.” Sif snorted—she actually snorted. “I guess ‘Loki Friggason’” she made big sarcastic scare quotes with her hands, “isn’t hiding anymore.”

Chapter Text

Thor concentrated on the ticking of the clock. An enormous, chrome monstrosity with radials shooting out in all directions and covering at least one fourth of the whiter-than-white wall opposite Thor’s seat.

It was either listen to the clock, or the stupid ’80s playlist filtering into the room.

Who the hell has clocks that actually tick, anymore? And who voluntarily listens to Ah Ha? God! I’m going to be hearing that song in my head for weeks!

The receptionist smiled at him as he fidgeted again from where he sat on the garish, fiendishly uncomfortable couch.

“It’s vintage,” she offered, as she caught him glaring at the timepiece.

“Nice,” he nodded, suppressing a frown.

Waiting. He was not used to waiting. He made other people wait. They waited for him. In comfortable chairs, mind you. Not in stiff, cubist, neon, 1980s retro couches meant for tiny humans. This couch was not built for 6’4” Vikings dressed in standard-issue grey suits.

Don’t get me wrong, it was a nice suit—tailor made. It’s just, well, it’s pretty clear that not many people walked through this office wearing regular business attire, exhibit A being the administrative assistant currently guarding the door to Thor’s 1:30 appointment. She armored herself in some architecturally-inspired, asymmetrical, jewel-toned dress that she might have pulled right out of a 1985 Vogue spread. It even had shoulder pads. Who the hell wore shoulder pads these days? It was like he had entered some alternative universe.

He had not been quite sure what to expect when Sif told him that she set up an appointment for him at Grand Master Designs, and he was not entirely sure what he was going to say to the proprietor himself, though he suspected the straight-forward approach might not be all that effective, “Hello, I’m Thor Borson, I suspect you’re fucking my little brother, do you think you could arrange for me to talk to him?”

Probably not the best strategy.

And now he had been here for about 30 minutes, painfully out of place. It’s not like Mr. Geoff Masters, whoever the hell he was, was not there. He could plainly hear voices from inside. This was deliberate. Thor was not happy about it.

For lack of other targets, he began to glare at the administrative assistant, while she continued working, blithely unaffected by his staring, though after a few minutes she looked up once more, “I am sorry, Mr. Borson,” in a voice that was clearly Not Sorry, “Mr. Masters is very busy. I’m sure he won’t be much longer.”

Another ten minutes ticked by.

His pouting was interrupted by the soft strains of some otherworldly new age melody—the assistant’s phone.

She tapped the screen and chirped, “Break time! See you in 15.” And she retrieved a cute little fashion-forward clutch from a chrome drawer beneath the immaculate glass desk, and clicked her way out the door and down the hall.

“What the fuck?”

The third time “Take on Me” came around in the playlist Thor was done.

Right, etiquette be damned. I’m getting this over with. I am Thor Borson, CEO of Asgard Tech, dammit, and I will not be toyed with.

Thor stalked over to the office door.

He knocked twice, opened the door and walked in to see . . .

“Loki!”

Because there he was, large as life, leaning over another (enormous) glass desk pointing at something on the (gigantic) computer monitor, while That Guy from the photo, dressed in a shiny Nehru jacket, shifted.

Is his hand on Loki’s ass?

Thor flushed.

Loki straightened up, looking very much like a cat who’d been caught on the kitchen counter and was thinking, I know I’m on the kitchen counter, but why the hell are you in my kitchen?

Thor cleared his throat and quickly shifted into recovery mode. “Good afternoon, Mr. Masters. I’m Thor Borson with Asgard Technologies, we had a appointment at 1:30.” He moved forward and held out his hand in greeting.

Mr. Masters did not take the offered handshake.

“Did we? Oh my, and look at the time. Loki, how could we have let the time just . . . slip away like that?” He unfolded from his enormous white leather chair and sidled up close to Loki, smiling at the eentsiest bit of color that began to creep up Loki’s neck. “Do you know this man, Lo?”

Loki casually slid his hands into his pockets, looked Thor right in the face, raised an eyebrow, and replied, “I’ve never seen him before in my life.”

Thor stared in disbelief. You fucking shit.

“We’re brothers,” he declared. “Loki, tell him.”

Loki shrugged. “Adopted.”

Masters smiled, slid his gaze over to Thor and looked him down and then up again, slid his hand beneath Loki’s jacket to rest somewhere in back— “oooh, adopted.”—and wasn’t that the most infuriating thing Thor had encountered in recent memory—then Mr. Slick oozed his eyes back to Loki and . . . did he wink? Goddammit, if he hadn’t winked.

Loki looked at Thor. Thor looked at Loki then looked at Masters. Loki looked at Masters then back at Thor. Masters just looked at Loki, and narrowed his eyes as he noticed something in his hair, then turned his face back over to Thor and cocked his head slightly to look at Thor’s profile, before turning back to Loki with a sly quirk to his lips. He then proceeded to address Thor while still pointedly looking at Loki and smirking, for god’s sake—

“Well, Thor from assberg or asstown, or wherever,” he ran his unoccupied hand down Loki’s sleeve before he returned his gaze to Thor, “what exactly did you want to talk to me about? I have a, uh, very, mmm, busy schedule, and ahm, don’t really have much time,” he insisted as the hand under Loki’s jacket shifted from his waist to the seat of his pants, all while Masters pointedly kept his eyes on Thor.

The Thor who was currently clenching his jaw tightly enough to break his own teeth.

“You know, Geoff,” Loki interjected, turning away from his brother perhaps a little quickly, “maybe you should let me handle this one for you. I’m sure you’ve got more important things to do.”

“Ah, Lo,” Masters ran his fingers feather light over Loki’s cheek and tapped him on the lips, “I can always count on you, can’t I? Mmm . . .why don’t you step into that little conference room over here. It’s always been one of my favorites . . . very, ah, cozy.” He smiled again and stroked his own neck with immaculate fingers, while Thor fumed.

Loki’s gaze lingered on Goeff’s face for just a minute, speechless—mortified really—before he answered in a resigned sort of way, “Yes.” He cleared his throat. “Yes, I think that would be perfect.”

*************

Loki took Thor into a room that couldn’t look less like a conference room if it tried.

This place looks like a brothel!

Bar, oversized sofa, some piece of furniture whose purpose Thor did not care to speculate about, a fainting couch, and dear lord what was that thing?

Before he’d even caught his breath, though, Loki rounded on him, practically hissing, “What the hell are you doing here? Don’t I distinctly remember you telling me some shit about ‘paths diverging’ and ‘going our separate ways’?”

“Jesus, Loki, what the hell are you doing in this place? What have you been doing for the past three years? Have you got no pride?”

“I beg your pardon?”

Thor waved his arms around to vaguely indicate the rest of the room, the building, That Man in the other room.

“What are you doing with your life?” Thor found his breath coming in short, fast bursts that he really needed to get under control before he started to hyperventilate.

Loki’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “What exactly are you asking?”

Thor took a step closer. “I think you know exactly what I’m asking.”

Loki took a step closer. “Go ahead and spell it out, Thor. No need to be subtle.”

Thor stepped once more until they were nose to nose. “What is your job title here, anyway?”

Loki didn’t even blink. “IT security consultant, and I am both very good at what I do and extremely well compensated for it, thank you very much.”

“Sure. And I see you’re particularly concentrating on ensuring that you have back door access to the systems.”

Loki’s voice got very quiet and very dangerous. “Is that why you’ve come here, Thor? Because you’re jealous? Am I to conclude, then, that had I only bent over that hideous mahogany table in father’s office that you would have asked me to stay?”

Somehow Thor’s face got an even deeper shade of red and he raised a meaty fist. “Loki!”

Loki folded his arms across his chest and stepped back in triumph. “Oh good! Here come the threats. I was wondering how long that would take. Glad to hear some things will always be consistent.”

Thor sputtered in frustration and walked back toward the door to get his mental bearings back.

Breathe, Thor—deep breaths.

Thor closed his eyes and counted to ten before he turned back around and started over.

“That is NOT why I came here.”

Loki smirked and turned to find a seat on the garish retro fainting couch created out of mind-bending shapes in grey and aqua. He draped himself over it as though he were more familiar with it than Thor wanted to imagine. Too late, of course. He was already imagining it.

“Do tell, brother. Why did you come?”

Thor looked desperately around the room for a seat that did NOT look as though it were made for fucking, finally settling uncomfortably on a stool at the end of the bar, almost knocking over a glass bowl of mixed nuts in the process.

Thor took yet another deep breath before plunging ahead. “I came here, because I received a mysterious note about a potential threat from a private equity firm that might be gathering itself for a hostile takeover of Asgard. Might you know anything about that?” He waited for some sort of confirmation, but Loki remained silent, letting Thor swing. Thor gritted his teeth and continued.

“Have you, by any chance, heard of a firm called Fenris Associates . . .?” Still no response. “Right.” Thor started feeling downright salty now, as Loki was clearly going to make this as difficult as possible. “Well, then, I’ll back up just a bit. Once upon a time, there was a young businessman who has a wife and daughter. Unfortunately, things didn’t work out so well for them, and they got a divorce. Later, the man met the woman of his dreams, had a family with her and lived happily ever after, never telling his new family about his super secret other child. However, it turns out that this other child—named Hela Borson—grew up to be an evil fairy godmother, whose greatest joy in life was buying up struggling businesses and selling them off for spare parts.”

Loki could not entirely suppress the smile that quirked up at one corner of his mouth. Thor glared at him from his perch at the bar.

“It now appears that the evil, super-secret child has her sights on her father’s legacy, and there’s a good chance that she’s poised to scoop it up and gut it. It also seems that a certain younger child may not be as entirely ignorant of all this as he would have the world believe.”

Loki made some odd noise between snorting and choking.

Thor rolled his eyes. “Do we really have to proceed with this charade? Look, after talking with my advisors, we’ve figured out that she might actually be in a position to carry through with this threat, since our market performance has been a little slow these past few quarters. She’s already managed to buy up quite a bit of stock without our realizing it—which, you know, seems a little suspicious. It doesn’t quite make sense that she was able to accomplish that without anyone catching on for a couple of months—you would almost think she’d had some help from someone who had an intimate knowledge of our business structure and incredibly advanced technical skills. All of which I’m sure you would know nothing about.”

Loki’s face returned to its infuriatingly studious neutrality, and Thor worked really hard at not throwing the bowl of nuts at him.

“Then a week or so after I get this mystery note, Sif nearly runs into you at some tech conference, where you dodge her completely, which also strikes me as odd because it seems like the whole point of your being at the conference was To Be Seen, despite that fact that you have spent the past several years working overtime trying not to be seen.”

Loki let out an exasperated sigh. “What’s your point, Thor?”

Thor grimaced. “I want to know what you’re up to, and what you know about this.”

“Because knowing something is synonymous with being up to something.”

“You must admit that over the course of our lives, you have given me ample reason to equate the two.”

“Just because you were unable to sustain the thriving business that I handed over to you does not mean that I have been actively working for your demise.”

“You’re awfully quick to defend yourself against a charge I haven’t made yet.”

Loki rolled his eyes and let the silence stew for a bit, then he leaned forward. “You must be truly desperate to come to me for help.” Thor winced. “If you’re in that poor of a position, I’m not sure there’s anything I could do, even if I wanted to. The sharks will have already started smelling blood. She won’t be the last, though she might be the most vicious.”

“Precisely.” Thor jumped in with his proposal. “What we need is to create a bidding war. It could buy us enough time to return to profitability, especially if we could get something big out onto the market while they’re still arguing, it might be possible . . .”

Loki sat up straight. “That’s all fascinating, Thor, but what was it you said to me the last time I saw you? Oh yeah, ‘get the fucking hell out of this office before I call the cops and press charges,’ yes, those were the words. And then you gave me a severance package that barely covered my rent for a couple of months. So tell me exactly why I should help you now.”

Oh, don’t you start with me, you little prick.

“I fired you because you basically stole the fucking company out from under Father’s chair, and then rented his own chair back to him. How did you expect me to react?”

“Oh I don’t know, maybe actually find out what was going on before you started in on the physical threats? Not your modus operandus, granted, but it would have been refreshing.”

“Are you really surprised that I might be a tad mistrustful?”

“I suppose you’ve got to cast someone as the villain in your little fairy tale. Why not your snake of a little brother.”

“Why did you send that note? And” Thor slammed his fist on the bar. “ . . . why are you here?”

Loki made some incoherent, strangled noise as he threw himself back into the sofa and glared at the ceiling.

Children! We’re a fucking pair toddlers.

The silence was only broken by the infuriating sounds of David Bowie’s “Putting Out Fire” drifting in through hidden speakers.

God, I am so fucking tired of fighting all the time.

Thor slumped and ran his hands through his hair, causing several locks to fall loose from the bun he had pulled it into that morning. Thor stared up at the shelves of booze instead of looking at his brother. “This was a stupid idea.”

“Probably.”

“Dammit, Loki, it feels as though I’ve never offered you a rope up that you haven’t beaten me with afterwards. But we weren’t always like this. You weren’t always so . . . spiteful. What the hell happened? You know, when we work as team, we really are unstoppable.”

He ran out of words, and frankly couldn’t even muster the energy to storm out of the office with dignity at that point. Lord knows, he didn’t want to have walk past Loki’s smarmy-ass, glittery boyfriend. So he just sat and tossed salted cashews at the glasses stacked behind the bar.

After an eternity, he heard Loki move around, and then a shot glass plunked down on the bar in front of him. He watched as Loki filled it with some lovely brown liquid and a second glass appeared next to it.

“It really does annoy me that all of my work over there could be wasted.” Loki tapped his glass to the one in front of Thor and drained it in one go. “Perhaps we can come to an arrangement.”

Thor looked at him without entirely believing what he had heard. “Really?”

“Geoff can be a bit capricious. Realistically, I can’t depend on his goodwill indefinitely. Perhaps we can work out a decent monetary package for my consulting work—something to give me a little security.”

It’s not precisely what Thor had hoped for—a merely contractual relationship—but he clearly needed the sort of expertise Loki could offer. Reluctantly, he picked up his own glass and drained it, then looked away again to cover his disappointment. “I’m sure we can probably come to an agreement of some sort.”

While his head was turned, Thor could feel Loki’s eyes on him, staring a little too long as he tucked a loose strand of hair behind his ear. Just as Thor’s fingers felt his braid, Loki cleared his throat and moved quickly to grab the bottle of liquor and put it back on the shelf. When he faced the bar once more, Loki’s face has closed up. Oh, but Thor knew that look—it’s one of Loki’s tells, and suddenly Thor—against all rational evidence—felt as though the world wasn’t quite so bleak.

All business now, though, Loki took the glasses and dumped them in the sink. “I can come up to your office tomorrow afternoon. Will that work?”

Thor tried hard to swallow down that awful, horrible, warm feeling of blossoming hope that had betrayed him so many times in the past, and wiped his face to make sure there was no smile there.

“Yeah. I’ll make sure my calendar is cleared.”

Chapter Text

“Are you going to explain any of this?”

Thor and Loki faced off now across a low mission-style coffee table that was covered with papers—a photograph of a statuesque woman in a power suit right in the middle of it all. The brothers sat in comfortable leather love seats that squeaked in a vaguely amusing way every time they shifted their weight. The first hour of their meeting had been spent negotiating the minutiae of Loki’s compensation, Heimdall presiding in order to draw up the contract. Afterwards he discreetly removed himself to file everything and double check the records, leaving the brothers alone to work out a precise strategy to deal with Hela.

“I just . . . how did we not know about her? Nothing. It seems impossible.”

Loki let out a short, mirthless laugh. “I’ll admit that when I first found out it was a bit amusing. I ran across the court documents related to Odin’s divorce only about six months before he died. Oh how I wanted to crow. You can’t imagine how hard it was for me to keep from storming in to his office to confront him about it.”

“What did they say.”

“Not as much as I would have liked, I can tell you that much. There was a marriage—it lasted 11 years.”

“11—?”

“I know—how the hell did he keep it a secret? But apparently they were married very young, had a child right away—rather too quickly, if you know what I mean—and then there was a divorce. I dug around and discovered a few police blotter items in the paper about neighbors calling in complaints about noise, and then a call about a domestic dispute. Finally a year before the divorce there was a restraining order.”

“Holy shit.”

“Yeah—it looks like it was pretty ugly. The divorce was all wrapped up in non-disclosure agreements—I couldn’t find anything interesting after that. Asgard’s PR somehow managed to keep it from getting dragged into the papers, unlike some later events.”

Thor winced.

“After that, there were just regular monthly payments to the ex-wife’s bank account. All of it handled electronically—no other paper trails. And then payments for college—he didn’t skimp on that, let me tell you. That girl went to Harvard and he paid full price for it. Someone had the goods on that old man and took full advantage of it.”

“Jesus.”

“So of course after I was ushered out of here I tracked her down. It wasn’t that hard to trace her trajectory after college, and after you fired me, I thought I should at least check her out, right? It’s only smart to know all of my options—good and bad.”

He paused there, chewing on his bottom lip, seemingly hesitating over how much he wanted to say. “She’s the bad option. Hela is a very scary person. She is Ayn Rand’s perfect vulture—her knack is for finding firms just on the verge of trouble, swooping in, and stripping them bare. She’s absolutely ruthless. After a while I learned all I wanted to know—frankly she frightens me—and so I quit and got the job at Grand Master Designs.”

“You were working for her.”

“Not exactly.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It’s complicated, Thor. Let’s just say that we did not part on amicable terms.”

“But you’ve met her?”

“I thought that was obvious.”

“You see, this is why I have trust issues.”

“Look, it’s not something I really care to talk about. She is her father’s daughter, though, in all of the worst ways. And you should hear some of the things she said about Mother. I almost strangled her on the spot. No, Thor, I will have no compunction whatsoever about thwarting her plans. In fact, I would be more than happy to bury her.”

Thor picked up the photograph and studied it for a few moments. “Well, she certainly looks intimidating,” and tossed it back to the table.

“The picture does not do her justice, Thor. She is terrifying.”

Loki paused to take a drink of coffee and switch gears. “Unfortunately, I did a bit of research on you last night, and Asgard is in a worse position than I initially thought. There might be very little that we can salvage. What the hell has Tony been up to, anyway? Didn’t you keep an eye on him at all?”

“He seemed to know what he was doing.”

“As smart as Tony is, his greatest skill is actually in bluster—which is saying a lot, because he really is brilliant. You have to watch him very closely. He’s got some serious trauma issues that he refuses to deal with in productive ways, and when things go off the rails, he self-medicates.”

“Why did you put him in charge of R&D?”

“Because he’s a genius, Thor; he just requires . . . handling.”

“You might have said something.”

“Right. Would I have done that while you were threatening me, or while the security guard was hovering over my shoulder?”

Oh, that tone of voice pushed all of Thor’s buttons and the volume went up. “How about when you were siphoning off stock to sell to our evil sibling?”

And now Loki was shouting, “Do you want my help or not?”

“Yes!” Thor scrubbed his face in frustration then swore under his breath, Fuck.”

They sat in silence for a few moments.

“Jesus, Loki, we can’t even be in the same room for ten minutes without shouting at one another. What would mother say?”

Loki finally let out a genuine smile. “She wouldn’t exactly be shocked.”

Thor held his gaze for a good deal longer than necessary before shaking his head and looking down at the table. “I wish I could trust you.”

Loki produced a pocket knife from somewhere and stabbed the photo that sat in between them. “Trust my rage.”

The plan was well in motion now.

Thor sold his father’s house at fire sale prices and moved into an apartment downtown—they had decided it would increase the appearance of Asgard’s vulnerability. Meanwhile Heimdall and Thor set up independent contracts with a small core of loyal employees so at least some would escape with their pensions and health care in the ensuing blood bath. Loki had made several other arrangements to which Thor had not been privy.

Thor takes deep, cleansing breaths whenever he thinks about that, but he is the one who asked for help.

The whole operation was neither an easy nor a painless process—in fact, they eventually agreed that, for the good of the enterprise, the brothers would spend as little time together as possible. It seemed the best way to prevent their delicate truce from imploding on itself before the final contracts were signed. Too much crap had piled up in that stable, and this was not the time to shovel it out.

There was just one more thing to do, and it MUST NOT BE FUCKED UP.

So there they were, in Thor’s new living room, trying to act as though they were normal. They were, for once, mostly succeeding. Thor could now do a good deal more in the kitchen than burn macaroni and cheese, and the two of them had lain waste not only to a pair of high-end steaks, but a bottle of wine, and a couple of whiskeys as well.

An entire dinner and no broken glassware—who knew?

For the first time in a long while, Thor allowed himself to let down his guard a tiny bit and enjoy himself—even, temporarily at least, allowed himself to admire the man Loki had grown into—so clever, so full of bits of information he’s collected from everywhere, so . . . beautiful.

Anyway, Thor felt warm enough inside risk prodding a little—he should have known it was an awful idea.

“So you did actually begin as just as employee.”

“Of course I did, asshole, I needed a job. Do you think I just walked into The Grand Master’s office, wiggled my ass, and got myself a sugar daddy?”

Thor blushed mightily.

“Oh you did.” Loki’s smile lost some of its ease. “That’s always where it goes with you. I couldn’t possibly have gotten somewhere on merit, could I? No, it has to have through some nefarious back door.”

Thor’s silence was enough of a reply. He clearly remembered the reference—of course Loki wouldn’t have forgotten that insult. Loki narrowed his eyes.

“I had to start in the middle, since a good deal of my resume is, shall we say, off the books, but it didn’t take long for me to work my way up.”

And bless his heart, but Thor still hadn’t learned to keep his mouth shut. “I’ll bet.”

Thor winced as soon as it came out of his mouth, and Loki’s face hardened before he struck, smacking his glass down onto the table. “Don’t you get started with me. You whored yourself all over the university.”

“That’s not—“

“And then there was Jane.”

“What about Jane?”

“Did she not pay your bills when you were getting your EMT certification?”

“That was entirely different.”

“Oh really? Do enlighten me.”

“He’s at least 25 years older than you.”

“He does not pay my bills.”

“He’s your boss!”

“And . . .”

“And he’s . . .”

And he’s not me is what Thor wanted to say, but he’d be goddamned before he said that out loud.

“He’s what, Thor? What point are you trying to make?”

Thor let out a frustrated breath. “I don’t know.”

Loki sneered, but then just as quickly deflated, no more fight left. “And therein lies the problem, doesn’t it?”

And didn’t that silence sit like a gaping fish between them. Finally Loki got up. “I should go. I think we’ve covered everything by now, haven’t we?”

“Yeah.” Though Thor’s response was as much to himself as to Loki.

Thor followed him to the door, unwilling to let things go on that note, half afraid that this was his last chance to say anything, that after tomorrow’s showdown, Loki would disappear once more.

He put a hand on his Loki’s shoulder before he reached for the handle.

“Thank you, Loki, for everything. I couldn’t forgive myself if I hadn’t really tried to fight her off. There are so many really good people who could lose everything if she swallows us up—pensions, health care . . . some of them have been with the company for a long time and just won’t be able to find work like this— no one in tech hires people over 40, regardless of how good they are or what the law says about age discrimination. I couldn’t have done this without your help.”

Loki half turned to face him, but deflected, of course with a sarcastic smile. “Well, I won’t get my compensation package if it doesn’t work. So I do have some incentive.”

Thor stared hard at his brother, his hand still resting on Loki’s arm as he tried to get a read on his thoughts. “Loki.”

He stopped himself—mouth full of words that needed to be said but that always seemed to come out wrong. He so very much needed to get this right.

He squeezed his brother’s arm before starting once more. “Loki, once I thought I knew you better than I knew myself. I couldn’t imagine a universe where you weren’t my other half.”

Thor trailed off, unsure of what exactly he dared to say. He was close enough that he could smell the whiskey on Loki’s breath, the faint trace of his aftershave. He could almost hear Loki’s heartbeat—though to be fair it could just have been his own, thundering in his ears.

Loki fiddled with his keys, unable to meet Thor’s gaze, his breathing labored. Finally, Thor reached up and touched the little braid just behind Loki’s ear, practically invisible in the rest of that glossy black mane. He took it between his forefinger and thumb to caress it like a talisman.

Loki’s brows scrunched together as though he were in pain. “Thor, I’ve got to go.”

And then he was out the door.

Chapter Text

As Thor waited for his guest of honor, he sat at the head of the big conference table in what they had always jokingly called Odin’s throne—an imposing, Scandinavian feat of engineering and design, custom built for his father’s bulk.

Thor rarely used it—it just didn’t suit him. It seemed too imperious, extravagant. It felt right today, though. In fact, it felt as though he could draw a little bit of his father’s strength from it, and let’s face it, he could use all of the help he could get right now.

This was not supposed to be his life. Thor preferred things to be simple—not simplistic, mind you. Simple. A life where yes meant yes, and no meant no. Where you turned the spigot to the right and water came out. Then when you were done you turned the spigot the other way and the water shut off. Was that really too much to ask?

That’s one of the things that had been so satisfying about fighting fires. There’s the fire. Here’s what you do to contain it without getting killed. Here’s what to do to get people out safely. Sure, there was strategy and skill involved, but dammit, you always knew when you had saved someone, and you always knew when the fire was out.

But this.

This was not simple.

This was 3D chess with half the pieces hidden under a black cloth. And in this particular game, he knew he’d gotten his part right, knew that the plan he and Loki had worked out was the only way to salvage something.

But then there was Loki.

Loki always had his own agenda. A plan within a plan within a plan. He never did anything without working out the repercussions 8 steps ahead.

And he always found some way to make it hurt.

Thor was pretty sure Loki had a knife waiting for him somewhere, he just didn’t know where exactly the entry point would be. Thor just hoped he would wait long enough so only Thor got hurt and no one else.

This meant so much for so many people.

Surely it meant something to Loki, too. Didn’t it?

Thor had stared at his ceiling for hours last night, parsing out every syllable and gesture from their conversation earlier that evening, and he still didn’t really feel as though he knew what was under the surface.

He hoped.

But that had bitten him in the ass so many times before.

Well, it was too late now. As he saw the door swing open, he smiled a big Thor smile.

Hela Borson strode into the room and sneered at her brother in a cold contralto, “You’re still here.”

“Did you think I would roll over and present my neck?”

“It would save time.”

Well, that’s a hell of an opening line.

Thor put on his best game face as he stared down his father’s darkest secret, and while he looked her over, he couldn’t help but think that she looked an awful lot more like Loki than her biological brother. They certainly shared a sense of style—that suit, a heavy black silk sheath with a dark emerald jacket. It worked as well as any armor he could have conjured up, and probably cost as much as Thor’s prize truck. Her nails were lacquered to a high gloss in dark maroon, and around her neck was a gold torque that could have fed a small village for a couple of years.

Internally shaking off his doubts, he reminded himself, Thor Borson does not submit to any knife.

Thor gripped the arms of his chair a little tighter and willed his father’s strength into himself. He had his script.

Loki was in the adjoining suite, taking care of his half of the problem. Hopefully.

I guess that’s a leap of faith I have to take, because if he’s not over there, frankly, I’m screwed.

Of course, he might be screwed anyway. Hela radiated a near sociopathic self confidence. He had no doubt whatsoever that in another life she had gleefully painted herself in woad and slaughtered Roman legions as she screeched like a banshee. There was no mercy in those eyes. This was an endurance test, make no mistake.

“Hela, at last. Isn’t it a shame we couldn’t have met under better circumstances.”

“No better time than the present. It’s particularly appropriate that Odin’s golden son be present to witness the empire passing into the hands of its rightful heir.” Thor’s gut clenched at her use of Loki’s favorite jibe. That hurt.

Thor sighed deeply, so glad that this would finally be over soon, regardless of the turnout. But damn, they really needed this go right. He tried to center himself one more time. “You know, I would love to hand over this empire to someone else, but it can’t be you. You’re just . . . the worst.”

She returned his smile with a crocodilian grin of her own and stalked her way over to his side.

“Ok, get up. You’re in my seat.” Then she slammed her briefcase on the table. Thor raised an eyebrow, but stood his ground.

“You think,” Hela spat, “that just because you were raised as the golden child that you knew him? Well I was here first, and I can tell you that The-Wise-And-Benevolent-Dictator you grew up with was a fairly recent incarnation for Mr. Borson. The man listed as “Father” on my birth certificate was a good deal less nurturing. You know what he taught me? That this life is a competition. That no one helps you unless they get something out of it. That any allies you have will shred you just as soon as it’s to their advantage. And that the best way to protect yourself is to make sure they pay for it when they do. It sends the right message.” She poked Thor’s chair with just enough force to swing it around so he faced her directly.

“Well, now it’s Odin’s turn, and as far as I’m concerned, this company is Odin. I will gut his stupid empire and scatter its assets as far and wide as I can possibly manage. You simply do not have the leverage to stop me.”

Thor ground his teeth in an effort to maintain control.

We have a plan. Don’t lose your temper. Don’t be an idiot.

But, damn if her words didn’t scrape the scabs off some very tender insecurities. It was too late to dwell of that now, anyway, right? If Loki chose to desert him now, there really wasn’t anything he could do about it. Best to just push onward.

Thor smiled and rose out of his seat. “The CEO of Asgard Technologies might not have the leverage, but we had a bit of a fire sale today, and—as it turns out—you are not the only buyer on the market.”

Thor walked over to open the door with the adjoining suite.

“Good afternoon, gentlemen, I trust everything is going smoothly?”

Finally, the knot in his chest began to loosen when he saw the large group surrounding the table. Loki and Heimdall hunched over a pile of contracts, while across from them sat a phalanx of lawyers, and an enormous hulk of a man in a black suit with a flaming red pocket handkerchief.

Thor strolled in and gestured grandly at he sister.

“Ah, Mr. Surtur, how are you this morning? I’d like to introduce you to my sister, Hela Borson of Fenris Associates. I believe you have a few issues to work out between you.”

Surtur rose from the table and bared his teeth, while Hela’s gaze reached temperatures found only on some very lonely rocks at the edge of the solar system.

**********

By 3:00, the conference rooms had both cleared out. Heimdall has gone to speak to a few of the employees. Loki had gone back to Grand Master Designs. And Thor . . .

Thor has gone back to his office—well, Odin’s office. He never entirely felt as though it was his own space. He’s got a couple of hours to clear out what little memorabilia he wants, which wasn’t much, really.

A gavel Sif bought him as a joke to take to board meetings.

A dangerous-looking letter opener that Loki had left behind when Thor fired him.

A stress ball.

A stupid pair of stuffed ravens of Odin’s that he’d never had the heart to toss—yeah, why not?

A large, framed photo of mother.

A smaller one of himself.

An unframed picture of Loki from college that Thor found stashed in the top left desk drawer after Dad died.

So much unfinished business. So many things that would never be said, or could never be unsaid. Thor tried very hard to not imagine what Loki was doing right now, to not think about how long it would probably be before he saw him again.

Goddamit, I need a drink.

**********

Four hours later and Thor has polished off a pile of take out, opened his third beer, and just really gotten a good start on the business of feeling maudlin when his phone rings—Loki. He braces himself—things went much too well today. He’s surprised, actually, that it’s taken this long for his brother to start poking him. It’s just a matter of what form it’ll take this time, isn’t it? Gross incompetence. Destroying Odin’s legacy. Some unhealable wound that he’s unknowingly inflicted on his brother that he must now pay for in blood-drenched guilt.

I suppose I’ll have to face it some time.

And so he punches his phone to answer it.

“Loki!”

“Hey, Thor. Did you make it out of the building with all your limbs?”

“I did.”

“That’s good. I was sure Hela was about to use her jewelry for something felonious. I think we’re all lucky we didn’t end up as little piles of ash on the floor.”

Thor huffed, though he didn’t quite relax. “Yeah, she absolutely has the death glare perfected.”

Thor could almost hear the soft smile in his brother’s voice over the phone. “I suppose it could be a lot worse. You’ve avoided personal bankruptcy. You’ll bounce back.”

Thor sighed. “I suppose so. I just can’t believe we lost all of that infrastructure. What would Dad say—Asgard Technologies reduced to renting space in a suburban office park.”

“You’ll be fine. The buildings were never what the company was all about, anyway. You’ll rebuild. You managed to salvage a fistful of impressive patents, and you still have a core group of employees who are more than competent and extremely loyal. You kept the rights to the name and brand. That’s not insignificant. Plus, you seem to have a knack for managing tricky resources and untrustworthy personnel.”

Thor snorted. Paused. And though he knew Loki would find some way to hold it over his head, he plunged ahead.

“I really appreciate everything you’ve done; I don’t know what I would have done without you.”

There’s no answer from the other end of the line and Thor’s brow scrunches with worry. There’s still so much he wants to say—needs to say.

Then he grimaced as the doorbell rang.

Dammit. What are the odds? Right now?

And just like that, his momentum is gone. “Maybe you can help me scope out some rental space for the new office.”

“Well, I would probably have to draw up a new contract for that.”

“You asshole. I suppose I should be grateful you didn’t stab me with that letter opener.” Thor paused a second as he unlocked the bolt on the front door.

“You know, if you were actually here, I might even give you a hug.”

Thor swung his apartment door open to reveal his brother’s long form leaning up against the wall opposite the apartment.

Loki waggled his phone in the air and smiled sheepishly. “I’m here.”

He stood dumbfounded for a moment, and the longer he stood there, the more nervous Loki appeared, fiddling with his phone, a flustered blush beginning to crawl up his neck.

Afterwards,Thor didn’t remember actually moving. All he remembers is the soft “oomph” Loki let out when Thor practically tackled him, wrapping him in an embrace so tight they could feel each other’s hearts beat through their chests. Oh Thor didn’t want to let go, didn’t want to see That Look on Loki’s face that said “that’s enough, now, let me go.”

But then Loki shifted a little, buried his face into Thor’s neck and inhaled like his life depended on it.

“Stay,” Thor whispered. “Please stay.”

Loki pulled away just far enough to look Thor in the eyes, to scan his face as if testing him, looking for a trap. Then he reached up to comb his fingers through Thor’s hair, searching for, then tugging on, that tiny braid—their secret.

“I hoped you would ask.”

Chapter Text

It was, without a doubt, the sweetest, sexiest kiss he had ever experienced. So very different than . . . well, everything—an advance and quick withdrawal then another slow approach as their noses brushed and they breathed each other in and their lips skated together, parted, met—each move a silent question and response, May I? Yes. Are you sure? Yes. I love you. I know. I’ve needed this so long. Dear lord, me too.

As the kiss deepened, Thor’s eyes closed and his brows scrunched together, staggered both by the intensity of his body’s reaction, but also the flood of emotions that washed over him—pent up grief, anger, fear, loss, guilt, need, jealousy, love. It overwhelmed him, and tears that he had been holding back for a decade or more spilled down his cheeks and his shoulders shuddered with sobs.

Suddenly Loki was pulling back, and as Thor fought to keep him close his fuzzy head was penetrated by soothing noises, “Shhh, Thor, it’s ok.” And Loki was combing his fingers through Thor’s hair, “It’s alright. It’s ok, Thor. Come on, let’s go inside.”

Thor laughed at himself and hiccuped through another sob as he nodded before grabbing Loki’s hand to lead him inside and over to the couch. Even after they sat, Thor refused to release him, clumsily grabbing a wad of kleenexes to wipe his face before he buried his face in Loki’s neck and everything he had locked away and compartmentalized—all of those things he had told himself, I’ll deal with that later, rushed out of him all at once.

As the tears fells, Loki wrapped him in warm arms and rubbed his arms and back, chanting as they rocked back and forth, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. God, you ass, I’ve missed you so much.”

And Thor clung to him like a drowning man in a storm, I’ve missed you, don’t leave me, how did I manage without this.

After an eternity, Thor’s sobs finally slowed enough that he could take deeper breaths, and Loki’s words faded into a comfortable silence before Thor could pull away long enough to grab another fistful of kleenex.

“I’m sorry.” Thor managed a self-deprecating smile, wrung out and exhausted. “I don’t know where this came from.”

“I do.” And Loki leaned forward to kiss the salt first under one eye, then the other, “You let everyone beat on you,” Thor snorted and Loki kissed him again, “yes, I am particularly skilled in that area, I realize, but I’m not even close to the only culprit—coaches, partners, Odin,” another feather light kiss right between his brows, “—but mostly you. You are your own worst enemy, you ass, you realize this?” Another kiss. “But I am sorry. I’ve missed you so much.”

Loki leaned in to rest their foreheads together for a few long heat beats before pulling back to ask, “Do you want me to get you anything?”

Thor felt almost giddy after his emotional release, and laughed at himself, “maybe I should get a glass of water.”

Loki started to stand. “I can get it.”

Thor stood with him. “No, no, I can get it.” But when he walked to the kitchen, he pulled his brother with him, unwilling to let go of his hand, grounding himself through the contact. He opened the cupboard one handed, filled the glass from the refrigerator dispenser and drank, all while remaining connected to his brother.

Loki lifted their entwined fingers and kissed the back of his brother’s hand. “You know, Thor, you can let go. I’m not going to sneak out the window while you back is turned.

Thor laughed. “I just . . . don't want to.”

He set the empty glass down and turned so that he could crowd Loki up against the counter, shifting his grip so their fingers twined more comfortably together with the new angle.

“I just want to touch you,” and he raised his eyes to really look into Loki’s, to take in the shifting shades of green, a little fleck of gold in one, the impossibly long fringe of eyelashes.

He leaned in for another kiss, and Loki met him halfway, lips parted and welcoming, their hands shifting into a full embrace, Thor anchoring one hand in Loki’s hair, Loki roaming over Thor’s shoulders and broad back before settling in his back pockets and urging him closer and pushing against him with his hips.

Abruptly Thor pulled back. “Shit, Loki, what about . . .”

Loki frowned and rocked his hips against Thor’s again. “What about what, Thor? I assume no one’s going to walk in on us.”

“No, I mean . . . what about, you know,” he got flustered as he balked at saying the name. “Your guy.”

“My guy—you mean Geoff?” Loki was full on smirking at Thor’s discomfort now.

He cleared his throat. “Yeah, him.”

Loki hummed and looked as though he wanted to draw this out as long as he possibly could, but after a short moment he gave way, lowering his gaze. He blushed, a little reluctant to speak. When he did, his voice was nearly inaudible when he spoke. “I resigned my position two weeks ago.”

“Yeah?” Oh, Thor’s chest filled with an achingly warm feeling. He thought his face might crack open, he grin was so wide. “Is that so?” He moved back in for another kiss then slid his mouth across Loki’s jaw to leave sloppy kisses just under his ear and trail his lips down Loki’s throat. “Why didn’t you say something?”

“I didn’t want to jinx it?” His eyes not quite meeting Thor’s when he answered, but his breath hitched as Thor’s mouth drifted down his neck. And oh lord the noises that followed rumbled all the way down Thor’s spine and into his toes. His hands moved over Loki’s lean muscles.

It occurred to him then what was a crime it was that they were covered by so many clothes.

As he started to tug Loki’s shirt from his jeans, he was interrupted. “Is there a bed in this apartment, by any chance?”

Thor sucked another long kiss from Loki’s mouth before he replied with a smile. “As it so happens, you’re in luck.” And Loki squawked as he hoisted him up on his hips to carry him into the other room.

“Thor! I can walk!”

“Yes, but that means I would have to let you go,” he giggled—actually giggled—as they collided with a wall while Thor stole more kisses and they careened down the hall.

“Ooof! Thor!”

They both laughed uncontrollably as Thor finally found the door and tossed Loki onto the bed.

“Jesus, Thor, you are such an idiot,” but his tone was anything but mocking and he grinned.

“Yes.” Thor threw himself onto the bed bouncing the two of them like kids. “I am a complete idiot,” moving immediately for Loki’s buttons, looking up at him hopefully. “May I?”

He snorted and lay flat on the bed with his hands behind his head as though he expected to be waited on. “Be my guest.”

Thor did not need a second invitation and got a wicked gleam in his eye. “Stay there—no touching.” Loki rolled his eyes as Thor sat up to straddle Loki’s hips flicking open buttons one at time, kissing and licking his way down each new inch of flesh as it was revealed, Loki’s eyes following him hungrily, moaning sinfully as Thor paused to pay particular attention to Loki’s nipples, flicking his tongue over one while his calloused fingers caressed then tugged on the other.

Loki’s hands moved without thinking to twine into Thor’s hair, but were stopped short by Thor’s admonition, “Ah ah! No touching.”

He growled, but raised his arms once more to put his hands behind his head, and Thor purred his approval with another grin as Loki watched in growing frustration.

By the time he pulled Loki’s shirt free from his trousers, his brother’s face was flushed and his breath short.

“Oh my god, Thor, I never would have let you do this if I thought you would go this slow!” His head fell back on the bed in frustration.

Thor just chuckled and started an agonizingly slow removal of Loki’s slacks, maximizing “accidental” contact between his hands and Loki’s achingly hard arousal—brushing across is crotch as he worked the buckle free, again as he fumbled deliberately with the button, and again as he slowly worked the zipper open, glorying in each flex of Loki’s stomach muscles that accompanied every touch. Once the trousers and briefs were finally dispensed with, Thor crawled his way back up Loki’s endless legs, hands smoothing soft skin, until he reached that glorious cock, twitching and leaking with his desperation.

Loki raised his head once more looking absolutely wrecked, hands still locked behind his head, and whimpered when they locked eyes. Thor rubbed his face over Loki’s thighs then upward, inhaling deeply as he caressed his cock like a cat marking his territory. He smiled, “See? I know a few tricks, too.”

“Oh fuck, Thor, please?!”

He took a long, broad stripe up Loki’s cock with his tongue.

“Jesusfuck!” Loki threw his head back again and knotted his fists in his own hair in desperation. Thor’s face ached from smiling.

“More?”

“Yes! Dammit more!”

Thor shifted slightly so he could use his hands and mouth both, wrapping his lips around the tip then slowly moving down the shaft and working his tongue just under the head, using his fist in time with his mouth. He bobbed his head and savored the salty taste of sweat and pre-come, moaning as he held Loki’s hips down with his forearm.

“Hnnnngh! Stop!” Loki’s hands were on his shoulders pulling him upward. “You’re going to make me come and you’re not even fucking undressed yet.” He attacked Thor’s mouth as if he could suck his soul out through his lips. “Dammit, Thor, when did you learn how to do that?”

“Well, I would hope that I’ve learned something since we were in high school.”

Loki started pulling at Thor’s shirt. “Goddammmit! Off! Take these damn clothes off. I want to see what I’ve been missing.”

Thor stripped, acutely aware of Loki’s hungry eyes as he did so.

“Oh my god, Thor. You should be illegal. Are those muscles even real?” Loki sat up to run his dextrous fingers over every inch of Thor’s skin, mapping his shoulders, trailing down his biceps, over his clavicle and across his chest, ending once more tangled in Thor’s hair as he pulled him into hungry, wet kisses.

Thor pushed Loki back down onto the bed, caging him in with his arms while they ground their pelvises together. I could stay like this forever, he thought, so close. He snaked his hips to chase that glorious friction and memorize what each shift did to Loki’s face, brow scrunched together and mouth open.

“Lube.” Loki gasped. “Have you got any lube?”

“Shit, yeah, somewhere.” Thor smashed his weight onto Loki as he felt under the bed for the bottle.

“Unf! Very romantic, Thor.”

He squirmed back up onto the bed and kissed Loki again, stopping to just look, cupping his face with a hand. “God, I missed you so much.”

Loki leaned into his touch and closed his eyes for a moment, then reached down between them to tease Thor’s erection with the back of his hand. Thor’s eyes closed as he whined in response. Loki grabbed the bottle of lube to coat his hand and their cocks, hips bucking up. “Time for other things later. I just need to feel you right now, I want to watch you,” Loki breathed out as he took them both in hand and started working their cocks together.

Thor could only respond by smiling like an idiot again—all he could think as he moaned into Loki’s neck was, Later. There will be a later.

He rolled them onto their sides and covered his brother’s hand with his own while they rocked their hips together, finding a rhythm that brought out the sweetest moans and gasps as they caught each others mouths then broke apart when pleasure took control of their breathing again. Every touch felt electric. New. Just on the verge of unbearable.

“Oh god, Loki, it’s been so long.” His breath got ragged as he got pushed closer to the edge, urged on by the heady aphrodisiac of knowing his brother was just as close.

Loki made That Face as his moans climbed the register, “Thor, I’m . . . Ahhhh! Oh my God!”

Warm come splashed over their hands. Thor moved more frantically as Loki whimpered out his aftershocks, until—

“God! Ohmygod! Oh my god. . . . shit.” And then he laughed, “oh god, Loki, I missed you,” pulling him close for kisses once more, their hips twitching with the aftershocks while their hands lingered below with slow movements.

They lay there just like that for a long while, savoring the closeness and the taste of each other. Thor closed his eyes and actually started to drift off, exhausted from the evening’s emotional storms.

After a while, he startled awake as Loki moved a little apart. “We should clean up.”

“Yeah,” though it was a grudging admission. Thor rolled out of bed and threw a towel at his brother that he had left on the floor that morning.

“Hey!”

Thor made kissy noises at him as he walked down the hall, flush with endorphins, relaxed for the first time since, well, since forever.

When he returned he handed Loki a glass of water before crawling back into bed, and propped himself on his side to watch Loki tip his head back to swallow, eyes taking in every detail—long neck, smooth skin, lean muscles—just because he could. He drank in everything that he had only been able to catch in furtive glances before.

Loki set the glass on the floor before turning back and making a face, “Thor, if you’re going to get all sappy, I’ll have to leave.”

“No. Just let me look. Any moment that nagging feeling will be back in the back of my head that says you’re not really here, or that if I turn my head you’ll be gone when I look back.”

Loki reached out to trace over Thor’s face, repeating the assurance that began the evening’s maelstrom, “I’m here.”

That warm glow he spent so much of his adult life fighting against filled his chest once more to bursting, and he crushed Loki against him, and he repeated the prayer he had responded with hours before, “Stay. Please stay.”

Loki wrapped his body around Thor’s just as tight, arms and legs like an octopus, as he whispered, “yes.”

*************

Hours later, as they spooned together in the dark, Thor wrapped around Loki like an oversized blanket, Thor laughed.

“What’s so funny?”

Thor burrowed his face further into Loki’s hair. “Do you remember like seven years ago when I was dating Jane?” The muscles across his brother’s shoulders tensed up as he bristled.

“Yes.”

“Do you remember that package you sent me for my birthday?”

Loki relaxed and snorted. “Why, what package could that have been?” His voice as innocent as all the cherubs in heaven.

Thor sniggered again and nipped at Loki’s shoulder. “The box full of sex toys, you ass. Do you know she broke up with me two weeks after that arrived?”

“Ha! No. Seriously? They were meant for couples. Her loss that she didn’t stick around to take advantage.”

“Jerk.” They both devolved into giggles before he continued, “Do you know I still have them?”

“You’re joking!”

Thor grinned into the back of Loki’s neck. “I was too embarrassed to toss them in the garbage—afraid someone would see, and then they just sort of got shoved around every time I moved. I’ve got them stuck in a closet somewhere. I never even took them out of the boxes.”

“Well that’s very interesting news.”

“Honestly, there were some of them I wasn’t even sure what they were for.” Loki sniggered with glee. “And as it happens,” Thor continued, “I have told everyone that I was going to take a week or two off before I started hunting down new office space. Soooooo . . .” He ran his tongue up Loki’s neck until his mouth found a soft earlobe and nibbled at it. “I suddenly find myself with a bunch of free time, and this package of stuff that I’m rather interested in unboxing.”

“Ohhhh,” and there was Loki’s very best I-am-totally-interested-in-this-conversation voice, “I wonder what we should do about that?”

“Maybe you would like to spend tomorrow helping me figure that out.”

“Mmmmmm,” Loki wiggled his butt up against Thor’s perfect abs. “I think I just might be able to arrange that. Maybe the day after, too.”

Thor pulled Loki closer and kissed down his shoulder. “Perfect.”