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Thor doesn't understand this baking class of Loki's. Loki is too proud to ever be a servant.
But he understands the look on Loki's face as he reads his textbook. Just so he trained himself in magic, with this frowning blankness that can sit for hours without changing. "Brother," Thor says, and Loki tells him to hush as if brushing away a gnat. He copies words from the book in small, precise letters. When Thor looks at them later, they are full of words he doesn't know:
The factors that control the development of gluten in baked products are: 1) type of flour. Strong means hard wheat, i.e., high protein (gluten) content...
"Give me those," Loki says, snatching away the pages.
Tony is allowed to speak to Loki while he studies. Loki upbraids him as well; Thor takes comfort from that. "I know you know it, but can you explain it?" Loki demands with furious contempt. "You humans and your mad mathematics!" After a painful hour of this, Bruce comes in with a small--Jane called it a white board, Thor remembers--and writes some numbers down, talking quietly. Loki watches with glittering eyes. Bruce also teaches him about flashcards. Loki makes hundreds of them, and won't let Thor see.
###
"Don't you have anything else to do?" Loki is irritated with him. As always.
Don't you? Thor thinks, but does not say it. Loki has been sitting for half an hour rubbing flour between his fingers.
Loki rolls his eyes. "Come here, I'll show you."
Thor moves forward gladly.
"There are three main kinds of wheat flour," Loki explains. "This is bread flour, this is cake flour, and this is pastry flour. Here, I'll turn my back, and you pour a handful of each onto this plate in a different pattern than the bowls."
Thor does as commanded. They all look the same.
Loki smiles proudly. Thor's heart contracts. "This one is bread flour," he says, pointing to one. "It has a creamy color, and see, it falls apart when I try to press it together. This is the same color, but it lumps together when squeezed. Hence, it is pastry flour. And this fine white one is cake flour." He points to the bowls. "Now you try."
Thor does. It's not so difficult after all. But his heart sinks when Loki brings out jars of spices and begins to smell them.
###
Loki takes Thor with him to buy his tools, but he is distracted and barely speaks.
"Can you see a difference?" He holds up two strange bundles of wire. Thor shakes his head. "Oaf," Loki mutters, and tosses one in the cart.
###
The upper floors of the Tower are filled with the smell of baking bread. Pepper, Bruce, Tony, and Thor gather in the kitchen as Loki draws his first batch of biscuits from the oven. Tony reaches out, and Loki slaps his hand away. "Let them cool." A quarter of an hour later, he bites into one and makes a face. "Doughy in the middle." He shoves them across the counter with an ill grace. "Enjoy."
Thor reaches for one. "Don't eat them," Loki says.
Thor draws back. "Brother--"
"I said don't." He stalks out.
###
In the days that follow, Loki makes dozens upon dozens of biscuits. Sweet currant biscuits and cheese biscuits, biscuits with rosemary and buttermilk, corn biscuits and biscuits with sweet potatos and brown sugar. He forbids Thor the kitchen. Tony Stark is allowed to watch him work. Thor can hear them talking softly. He can hear Loki laugh. "Stop eating my dough!" Loki says, but there is no malice in his voice.
Everyone eats biscuits morning, noon, and night. Loki sends leftovers to Steve and Clint and Natasha. He even has Happy bring some to Agent Coulson at S.H.I.E.L.D. He won't give Thor even one.
###
Thor awakes. The house is dark. He rises from his bed and makes his way silently past Loki's sleeping form and out the door. He pads down the hall to the kitchen and pulls the rubber lid off the Tupperware container--
The electric light snaps on, white and blinding. Thor misses firelight.
"What are you doing?" Loki demands, his face contorted with rage.
"Brother--"
"Look at you," Loki says. The vitriol in his voice curdles Thor's stomach. "You're hardly starving to death." He snatches away the container. "I told you not to eat them."
"Why should I not?" Thor roars.
"Because I asked it!" Loki screams. His face is inches away and Thor's fist goes back without thinking, Thor almost--
All at once, as pitiless as hard white light, every time he has ever smashed his fist into Loki's face is there behind his eyes. He remembers kicking Loki in the stomach because Father had shamed Thor before his friends and he was angry. Loki was so small. Thor was small too then, of course, but...
He never thought it was wrong. Why should it be? Boys fight. Loki healed quickly. Loki hurt him in so many ways. But Nicole says violence between brothers is wrong. And now Thor sees something in Loki's face--he does not know what. He only knows that it is a face Loki wears in battle, and that Loki has looked at him so a thousand times, thousands upon thousands. Thor's stomach hurts as if he has eaten poison.
"Afraid without your hammer?" Loki taunts. "I could beat you now, and you know it--"
Thor trembles with fury. His skin burns. He grits his teeth and doesn't move. "Brother--"
Loki takes the remaining two biscuits out of their container and crumbles them into the sink. Then he turns on the water and flips on the disposal.
Thor imagines shoving Loki's hand into it. He doesn't wish for such thoughts. He feels as if he will vomit blood. The colors in the kitchen are bright with his anger and with electric light. "Brother, please--"
Loki turns off the water, the disposal, and the light, and leaves Thor in the dark.
###
"He won't let me have anything of my own!" Loki says.
Nicole glances between them. "Loki, remember to talk about yourself. How do you feel?"
"Smothered," Loki snaps.
Thor seethes with frustration. What has he done?
Nicole nods. "How about if you stop being angry for a moment? How do you feel then?"
It is a common question. Thor has tried it once or twice outside of sessions and seen Loki's face ice over, but when Nicole says it--
Loki trusts everyone but Thor.
Loki shuts his eyes and takes shallow breaths, his chest fluttering in and out like a bird's. "I'm no good," he says. "I'm no good at it. But I will be."
"Can you explain to Thor why you don't want him to eat what you bake?"
"He knows why," Loki says.
"I do not! I do not understand at all. What have I done to offend you?"
Loki stares at him. Incredulous at Thor's stupidity. Thor's head pounds. "The biscuits are rubbish," Loki says. "When I've made something good, you can eat it. Why is that so hard to understand?"
"Loki, did you tell Thor that's what was going on?"
"Yes!"
"No," Thor says. He still doesn't understand. Perhaps he should be flattered. He isn't. He feels, if anything, angrier than before.
"Thor, how did you feel when Loki was giving everyone biscuits but you?"
Thor cannot answer.
"Did you try to talk to him about it?"
"He tried to sneak biscuits behind my back," Loki says. He was always a rat and a tale-teller. "I set a simple boundary and he..."
This therapy talk comes easily to Loki. Everything comes easily to Loki. He was made to navigate this labyrinthine unreliable world made of words. The Avengers are Thor's friends, Thor's allies. How quickly Loki won them over. They talk comfortably with him while Thor watches silently.
He knows what Loki would say. How the tables have turned, brother.
###
Steve steals a biscuit and gives it to Thor when Loki is at class. He cannot bring himself to eat it. He goes up on the roof and feeds it to the pigeons. He remembers holding Loki here, pleading with him, trying to reach him. He remembers tossing him to the ground with all his strength and hoping that it hurt. He remembers Loki's dagger in his side.
"Did someone feed pigeons on the roof?" Tony asks later. "Because they won't go away and they're shitting all over Bruce's tomato plants." Bruce sighs and cleans his glasses. Nothing Thor does is right.
###
Loki and Tony are in the kitchen again. Thor tries to watch football. He should go out. He could do something. Make friends. He had plenty of friends in Australia.
He should call Jane. He wants to see her.
He knows now that it is only that Loki cares more for his opinion than he does for Tony's. But--he also knows that Loki is sure of Tony's good opinion, and not Thor's.
"Brother," Thor says that night, in the safe darkness of their room. "I wish to apologize."
"For what?" It is a stranger's voice. A frost giant's voice. Thor is growing accustomed to it, but it still doesn't sound like his brother.
"For all the times I struck you. When we were children."
There is silence.
"I have been arrogant." Thor's heart clamors, fearful. He wills it to still. "I have been cruel. But I have always--I have always wondered at you. I have always thought you perfect."
"What?" Thor can't tell if Loki sounds disgusted or if it is only his strange Jotun voice. "Do not mock me," Loki says, the echo in his voice high and wild.
"I do not! I..." He doesn't know what else to say. He cannot explain. He only knows that Loki has been an incomprehensible gift, more powerful and terrible and beloved than Mjolnir. The lines of Loki's face are as splendid a mystery as finely wrought steel humming with magic.
Loki would hate to be compared to a hammer.
He has despised Loki, too. They both know it. He waits for Loki to say so.
"I used to provoke you to hit me," Loki says at last. "To put you in the wrong."
Eventually, Loki sleeps. Thor lies awake. He hears it when Loki starts awake. He hears Loki's breath race and heave.
"Brother?"
Loki's Jotun whisper echoes in the room. "I dreamed I put the spear to your heart. I dreamed--"
"It was but a dream," Thor says stoutly.
"I thought of it," Loki says, ragged exultation in his voice. Thor doesn't understand why he is always so glad to speak of terrible things. "I thought of commanding you to kill me. By inches. Now peel back the skin. Now pluck out--"
"Stop!" Thor squeezes his eyes shut against the words. Loki's breaths fill his ears.
"I killed you," Loki says.
Thor knows. He knows, too, that when they and their friends played Asgardians and Frost Giants as children, the Frost Giants always died bloody, ignoble deaths.
He would never, ever, have killed Loki. It is a great pain in his chest, a tree blasted hollow by lightning, that Loki could have believed he would.
The thought comes: When Loki tried to kill you, you did not turn on him. He was eager--
"Do not trouble yourself, brother," Thor says.
Loki laughs. "I cannot forgive you. I cannot forgive myself."
I forgive you. But Thor cannot speak the words. He goes to Loki's bed and climbs in, pulling Loki tight against him. Loki's body is not the one he knows. It is cool and strange-smelling. Thor buries his face in Loki's neck anyway. Loki laughs his eerie laugh and brushes Thor's hair away from his face. "Brother," Loki murmurs. It echoes in Thor's flesh.
###
Thor is alone when he awakes. He pulls on his clothes. The hallway, when he opens the door, is full of the smell of baking things. Cinnamon, he thinks: he's learning the Earth spices too.
Today, he will not ask for a bite.
He nears the kitchen. His mouth is watering.
"Don't touch!" he hears Loki say, and Tony's small sound of pain. "Those are for Thor."