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Thor was feeling pretty good about himself. Sure he was a little banged up, but he’d just rescued those shepherdess maidens from death by daemon-possessed wolves. Loki had helped a bit; his little brother’s spell casting was getting better by the day, it seemed.
“Loki!” he yelled cheerfully, clapping one hand down on his brother’s shoulder, “A good battle, eh? Father will be pleased with us.”
Loki whirled around to face Thor, his cheeks an unusual shade of mortified pink. “Yes!” he exclaimed agitatedly, “A great battle, in which you nearly managed to avoid looking like a complete fool for about ten seconds! Great work, Father will be so pleased you saved a herd of sheep. I cannot wait to hear the songs they will write to commemorate this!”
Thor blinked in confusion. “Brother, are you alright? Your face looks feverish. Was the exertion of battle too great?”
“That’s exactly what it was,” Loki snapped in reply, still struggling to pry Thor’s hand off his shoulder, “Now let go of me before I spell your hair off.”
“Stop struggling, brother! You look ill! Your skin is red, and your eyes,” Thor abruptly grasped both of Loki’s shoulders and pulled his brother so close their noses almost touched, not noticing the distinctly panicky look that appeared on Loki’s face. “Your eyes are – ”
But with a shimmer of air, Loki had vanished.
******
Thor would have worried more, but Loki always turned up sooner or later, so it was best just to be patient. Sure enough, two days passed, and Loki turned up for dinner, looking none the worse for wear. He ignored the chair Thor pushed out for him, and sat down at the furthest end of the table, avoiding eye contact all the while. Then he promptly squawked in indignation when Thor simply left his seat and plonked himself down in the chair next to Loki.
“What are you doing! You sat down over there! That’s your seat, over there!” he protested, waving his arms helplessly.
“I know,” Thor said, shrugging, “I wanted to sit next to you, brother. I haven’t seen you for two days.”
Loki stared at him, his arms frozen mid-flail and Thor blinked.
“Are you still unwell, Loki? Your face is red again,” he observed, and again, Loki vanished.
Frigga sighed. “Thor, what have you done to offend your brother so?”
“Me?” he said, “Mother, I have done nothing! Loki is behaving strangely!”
“Well, leave him alone. Your brother thinks deeply on many things you cannot understand, Thor. He needs time to resolve this matter for himself,” she replied. Odin nodded sagely in agreement, pretending to be listening.
********
Luckily, Loki seemed to have gotten over whatever had been bothering him by the time the next fight came around, and when the screeching Harpies attacked, he was right there at Thor’s side, casting balls of green flame and poison into the beasts’ hideous faces.
Everything was going fine, and then the queen Harpy appeared out of nowhere and knocked Loki to the ground. Flattening two other harpies in his haste and ignoring the glancing blows they landed on his arms and back, Thor leaped between Loki and the queen and wielded Mjolnir to deadly effect.
“Back, vile creature! You shall not harm a hair of my brother’s head!” Thor roared, adrenalin surging through his body. Heart pounding, every nerve alive, he quickly turned away from the hideous corpse to his brother. Loki was sitting up, clutching his staff in a white-knuckled grip, and staring at Thor with an unfathomable expression in his eyes.
“Brother, art thou well? Did the wretched monster injure thee?” He reached out a solicitous hand, which Loki promptly slapped away as he got to his feet.
“I’m fine! Why don’t you go help someone who actually needs it, like your thick-headed friend over there!” Loki snarled. Thor would have pursued the matter (and maybe slapped Loki upside the head for being so ungrateful), but when he followed Loki’s pointing finger, Volstagg actually was looking a bit overwhelmed by three harpies, so Thor left his brother and ran over to help.
By the time the harpies were all dead or fleeing, Loki had disappeared. Again.
******
Then there was the time Thor was battling mighty Harald Hildetand on the edge of a cliff. Not the best place to be having a battle, true, but it certainly added to the epic atmosphere. The man had just dealt him a powerful blow that had possibly dislocated his left shoulder (he would have to check on that later), only to slip and fall off the cliff’s edge.
Without hesitation, Thor had dived after him, and now they were both dangling, hanging by their fingernails at the edge of a 100-foot drop into a rocky gorge.
“Let go of me, Prince Thor, I am your enemy. Why should you sacrifice yourself?” the man called weakly up to him, his wrist twitching painfully in Thor’s iron grasp.
Thor chuckled. “You are no enemy of mine, sir. You have fought valiantly and honestly, and do not deserve to die so ignobly. Besides,” he paused, then grinned at the flash of green light spotted out of the corner of his eye, “Help is on the way.”
Even as the words left his mouth, thick tree roots erupted out of the cliff face around them, curling and twisting into shape and hardening to form as fine a natural ladder as any man could imagine.
When they had clambered up over the cliff face, Thor wasted no time in flinging his arms around Loki and crushing his brother’s smaller, slighter frame against him.
“Well met, brother! What would I do without your spells and magicks to break my fall!” he laughed, ignoring Loki’s fists beating on his back.
“I have two things to say to you, you great oaf,” snarled Loki in his ear, “One: you are an idiot who deserves to fall off a cliff, and two: let go of me this instant!”
With a last squeeze, Thor released Loki, who stumbled back, inexplicably red-faced, and scowled at Harald, who was looking nervously back and forth between them.
“And the next time you think about challenging this moron,” Loki gestured at Thor, “To a duel on the edge of a cliff just to get into Valhalla honourably – ” his tone darkened immeasurably, and the man shivered with fear, “ - don’t.”
Then he vanished. Thor frowned. This was getting to be a habit.
************
On the plus side, they had just vanquished a giant water slug that had been dragging maidens into the muddy depths of its lake habitat. On the negative side, the slug had had a mate, who was currently about to ingest Lady Sif.
Thor flung himself into the fray, paying no attention to the blood running down his side from the wounds the first slug had inflicted on him.
“Thor, get back!” Fandral shouted, “Your brother – ”
He was interrupted by a burst of magic that Thor could feel rattling through his very bones, and in the next instant, the slug exploded in a burst of foul-smelling entrails. He fell face first into cool black mud with a loud splat!
Then there were familiar thin, clever hands tugging feverishly at him, pulling him to roll over onto his back and come face to face with his younger brother.
“You complete and utter block-headed fool,” Loki raged at him, even as he ran his hands over Thor’s sides, searching for wounds, “You couldn’t have waited ten seconds for me to take out the slug, could you? Oh no, Thor the Thundering Idiot has to leap in unprepared and just – ”
Thor chuckled, which only seemed to infuriate Loki further. Even as he opened his mouth to continue his tirade, Thor reached up and dragged him down, rolling them over so that Loki was pinned beneath him in the mud.
“Get off me this instant,” Loki hissed, his face turning bright red. “Are you trying to squash me with your ridiculous muscles, you great – ” Thor shifted and slid against him, trying to gain better purchase on the slippery mud, and his words trailed off in a choked gasp.
The two brothers stared at each other, Loki’s face turning paler and paler at the stunning realization dawning ever so slowly on Thor’s face.
“Brother, you are, are you – ” Thor opened and closed his mouth helplessly, already seeing the lies about to tumble from Loki’s lips, not one of them more convincing than the unmistakeable hard-on pressing against his thigh.
Loki gulped and turned his head, unable to look his brother in the eye. His magnificent, golden, mud-covered, sweaty, big-hearted, intoxicating brother, whose brainless, idiotic macho acts of heroism never failed to leave him dizzy with a hunger that could not be quenched. Not by women, nor men, nor magic, nor potions. Only this. Only Thor.
Thor Odinson, future king of Asgard, who could have any in his bed that he desired, and who would never, ever think of his brother Loki in such a –
Warm lips and bristly stubble brushed his jawline, and Loki’s thoughts froze.
He slowly, carefully turned his head. Thor was right there, hovering above him, much closer now, and the look in his stormy blue eyes was like a gift, an impossible, wondrous gift.
“Is it only the fight that affects you, brother? Is it only men and battle?” Thor asked tentatively, his expression cautiously hopeful, “Or is it –”
“It’s you, you complete moron,” Loki snapped, in a desperate attempt to avoid blurting out all the ludicrous words of love that were on the tip of his tongue, the joyous laughter that bubbled in his throat, utterances that he would never live down once they escaped his lips. But as Thor grinned like the sun after a thunderstorm (oh gods, the metaphors would kill him) and bent to kiss him again, Loki had the resigned feeling that somehow, his oafish brother had already heard them all.