Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/12847893.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Thor_(Movies)
  Relationship:
      Loki/Thor_(Marvel)
  Additional Tags:
      Sibling_Incest, Possessive_Behavior, Growing_Up_Together
  Stats:
      Published: 2017-11-28 Chapters: 1/2 Words: 4605
****** The Dagger and The Hammer ******
by BewareTheIdes15
Summary
     The truth is, Loki is the only secret Thor has ever managed to keep.
Notes
     For stuffimgoingtohellfor, ark, and reserve who are very good friends
     and very bad influences. Thank you for joining me in Thorki hell and
     enabling my tendency to spend way too much time talking about Loki's
     outfits.
     A note on the underage: there is a kiss that takes place when Thor
     and Loki are whatever passes for Asgardian "child-age" but everything
     from there on is played kind of hand-wavy on the age front
     (immortals, how do you even?) so feel free to view them as suits your
     tastes and squicks. All of this chapter is pre- the first Thor film,
     expect more canon in part 2!
Thor doesn't remember when Loki became his brother. He would have been barely
more than an infant himself, crawling around courtiers' feet and teething at
the arms of his father's throne.
He doesn't recall a squalling, dark-haired little thing being placed in his
cradle, or teaching Loki to walk almost as soon as he learned the trick
himself.
He doesn't remember crying when he and Loki were first moved to separate bed
chambers, or Loki finding his way into Thor's bed in the middle of the night
anyway, to the bafflement of all of the nursemaids.
What he does remember - although he can't be certain if it's his own proper
memory or some conjuring of his mind from the dozens of times his mother told
him the story when he and Loki were quarrelsome - is that from the very start,
and for years after he was clever enough to form the word "brother," he
referred to Loki only as, "mine."
                                      ***
“It’s like Ymir,” Loki grunts as he hoists himself up onto the branch at Thor’s
side. They’re almost of a height now, even though Loki is younger, but Thor has
always been a superior climber. “There’s power in the first of things.”
“Father slew Ymir,” Thor points out, snagging his fingers around Loki’s chubby
wrist, just to be safe. Mother says that Loki’s strength is of a different kind
than Thor’s. She doesn’t say that that makes it Thor’s duty to look after him,
but Thor understands anyway.
“And made Midgard of his body.” Loki lifts his chin in victory, grin showing
the two missing teeth that slur the edges of his words. Thor’s never lost any
teeth, but the Allfather says that they will grow back again; that it is the
normal way of some children. He’s never actually known anyone else who lost
teeth either, but there must surely be others like Loki. His father wouldn’t
lie.
“No one is going to-“ The words halt in his throat at the giggling rustle of
Freyja and Gefjun running up to the base of the tree below. The two of them
circle around it, peering around the sides like sniffing hounds before making
off again. He starts again in a low whisper. “No one is going to make Midgard
of a kiss.”
The foliage blocks most of the breeze, and without it the air around them feels
humid and close, the sticky-sweet scent of apples and grass like a film on the
roof of Thor’s mouth. Beneath his fingers, Loki’s skin is cool, damp with the
sweat from Thor’s palm and gritty from tree bark.
Loki rolls his eyes, a swirl of blue-green-black in the patchwork shade. “It
leaves a mark, a seidr And seidr is a force of its own. It might change the
whole path of your life! You could be choosing who you’ll belong to forever
with one touch of your lips.”
Thor’s stomach clenches like a fist. His knowledge of magic is meager, but
Mother teaches Loki about such things, and he is all the time holed away in the
library reading on them. The scholars say that he is fiendishly talented with
all sorts of sorcery, destined to be one of the finest in all of the nine
realms. If anyone would know the truth of it, it’s Loki.
“I don’t want to belong to anybody.”
One broad leaf comes free between Loki’s fingers, dancing on the air above his
outstretched hand, tiny whispers of green magic skating along its edges.
“Father belongs to Mother, Mother belongs to Father. You are a prince, you have
to marry. There is no choice in the matter.”
“Except in who I kiss.”
“Well, yes, that.” Loki shrugs. The leaf flitters away, catching on the wind as
it falls. Loki’s eyes follow it until it disappears. "But you’ve seen how they
are. Mad for it. Someone will kiss you eventually, it cannot be helped.”
“But if I kissed someone first, then I could choose who,” insists Thor.
“That is true,” Loki muses, "Who would trust with such a matter, though? Who
would have the strength to control this sort of power?”
With a small curving motion of Loki’s fingers, the leaf reappears, hovering
once more over the flat of his palm.
“Loki!”
Lit with the faint glow of power pulsing through the leaf’s veins, Loki’s eyes
are emerald limned. “Yes, brother?”
Thor’s pulse kicks too, thrumming with his own brilliance.
“I could kiss  you ! Your magic could keep the power safe, and then I’d have
your kiss as well to protect!”
The smile that slinks across Loki’s mouth catches eerily in the light, shadows
twisting into the edges of it before Loki snaps his fist closed around the leaf
and all of the glow drains away.
“That is a cunning plan, Thor.”
Mead-heady, a warm, tingling rush floods under Thor’s skin; their tutors are
always going on about Loki’s wit, but Loki, at least, can appreciate Thor’s
cleverness.
“It is,” he preens.
The space between them is already short, Loki’s bony knees pressed right up
against Thor’s, so he hardly has to lean in at all to press how mouth up
against the pale bow of Loki’s. In truth, Thor had expected it to feel… more
somehow. More potent, perhaps, considering how much power Loki said it had. The
reality of it is hardly any different from kissing Loki’s cheek before bed,
soft and pleasantly cool in the way Loki’s body forever seems to be.
“Was that it?” he asks, pulling back. At a stretch he might say Loki’s face has
a little more color, but besides that he can’t tell any difference at all.
Loki presses his lips together, the dull pink line of them disappearing briefly
between his teeth before he frees them again.
“You should…” Loki’s fingers knead against the bark of the branch, the tiny
piece coming free under his fingers leaving a smooth, bald spot between them.
“With your tongue.”
“My tongue?”
Like Thor summoned it, Loki’s own makes an appearance, rosy and slick, darting
across Loki’s bottom lip to leave it gleaming.
“Put it in my mouth. When you kiss me.”
Thor can feel his face scrunching up in that way that his tutor always says
isn’t princely . His knuckles ache with the phantom memory of a crane-rap.
“Why?”
“Because that’s the way it’s done!” Loki huffs, arms crossing firmly over his
chest. “You want it to count, don’t you?”
At which point Thor feels compelled to point out, “How would you know how it’s
done?”
“I’ve seen it,” Loki retorts, lifting his nose in a way that apparently  is
princely because Loki never gets rapped across the knuckles, no matter how much
that look makes Thor want to shove him down a hill. “The servants sneak off and
do all sorts of things, if you know where to look.”
An unexpected revelation. Lots of interesting things happen at court, but
Mother always seems to send Thor and Loki to bed before the really exciting
ones like duels and bawdy songs. What could the servants be doing that’s so
good they can’t even do it at court? Surely kissing can’t be as special as all
that.
“What sorts of things?” he asks, suddenly intrigued.
Loki is still perched with his nose in the air, but his eyes slink in Thor’s
direction. “Do it properly and I’ll take you with me next time.”
And really, how can Thor respond to that other than to lean back into Loki’s
space and press his mouth up against him again? For a moment it’s just as
before, their skin dragging just a bit more with both of their lips slightly
damp. Then Loki’s mouth slips open just a sliver, and Thor’s pressing his
tongue in before he can think too much about it, and then he is possessed of
the truly strange knowledge of what the inside of Loki’s mouth tastes like.
It’s… clean, he supposes; a bit like cool water and a bit like metal; it makes
him think about people calling Loki silver-tongued, which in turn makes him
want to laugh. Only Loki’s tongue - silver or otherwise - is moving against
Thor’s and it’s very wet, and very silky, and it makes Thor’s stomach sort of
wriggle and his ribs feel hot underneath his skin.
This unseemly gasping sound bursts out of his mouth when Loki pulls back from
him, lips all red and eyes all black, and Thor feels like he’s sprinted all the
way from the throne room, heart hammering and breath coming in ragged.
He doesn’t even realize he’s lifted his hand until he sees his fingers hovering
right at the edge of Loki’s mouth, a tiny white jag of electricity jumping from
the tips of them to gleaming curve of Loki’s lips. It must hurt, at least a
little - Thor doesn’t know what lightning feels like from the other side, but
he’s shocked enough people on accident to know that no one likes it. Loki just
grins against it, the angles of his face brilliant in the flash of star-blue
light.
                                      ***
The last of the day’s light glances off of the long, sleek surface of the
mirror on Loki’s wall; catches like a fly in the spider’s web on the smooth
gold skein of hair trailing down Loki’s back. It’s longer than Thor’s, and has
more curl, the shade faintly cooler than in Thor’s own reflection; white gold
to Thor’s yellow, moonlight to his sun.
The feel of it between his fingers is the same silk that Loki’s hair always is;
soft and lovely enough to snare any maiden’s envy.
Thor watches his own hand tuck a lock of spun gold behind Loki’s ear. They look
more of a pair like this, though there’s still little enough about their faces
that match. Loki has never favored either of their parents as obviously as Thor
does; even less so as they age. His cheekbones have gone sharp as growth has
stripped his body, honed it to a fine steel edge. Where Thor has broadened,
Loki’s remained slender, lithe muscle lashed fast to bone. Woe betide anyone
who mistakes that leanness for weakness
A slice of porcelain skin is carved out down the center of his tunic, nearly to
the navel; the faint promise of strength made obscene by the onyx-green velvet
covering every spare inch of him. Thor’s fingers itch to run across it, thick
cloth and fragile skin, the jump of Loki’s pulse under his touch, but Loki’s
mind is elsewhere at the moment and Thor doubts he would welcome the
interruption.
“The black suits you,” he says anyway, because it’s true and because Thor’s
strength has never been his restraint.
To the best of his knowledge Loki is incapable of looking anything but lovely
and forbidding, no matter what form he tries on, but there are bits that feel
more true to him. Lately he’s been toying with lighter hair, thicker muscles.
Barely a week past Thor had walked into his chamber to find Loki wearing a
perfect copy of Thor’s own skin, flawless in all outward appearances and still
inexplicably wrong. He’s almost certain that means something, but trying to
work out Loki’s motivations has rarely ever ended well for him.
Loki hums distractedly, pulling the mass of hair over his shoulder to spill
across his chest like a pearl waterfall.
His lips pull into a disconsolate mew, and then with a wave of his hand he’s
back to raven-haired.
“I am no child of the light." His voice is barely a breath, the sort of low
tone he tends toward when speaking for his own benefit. What comes after is
meant for Thor, animated by the fox grin Loki shoots him in the mirror. “Asgard
can only endure one golden prince.”
He runs his fingers lightly across the top of the vanity, baubles and scrolls
and glittering gems shuffled under his touch. Carefully he extracts a short
necklace of gold, wrought like the finest lace, securing it around his throat
with deft fingers.
“This seems like great deal of effort for a walk in the gardens,” Thors says,
picking at a fold in Loki’s gnarled sheets. There’s a tome wedged between the
foot and the mattress, something to do with Alfheim, but the dialect is too
obscure for Thor to make out the proper title.
“In the presence of poets, one must always strive to serve the muse,” Loki says
loftily, eyes all for the gilt wire he’s busy magicking around the shell of his
ear in the shape of twisting vines.
Thor tosses the book into the center of the bed, leaning back against the foot
of it to watch.
“The only inspiration that letch is likely to find will occur below the waist.”
Loki waves a dismissive hand. “Go on then, disparage my choice of company.
Though I’ll have you note that I never speak ill of your friends, questionable
as they may be.”
“You and Kvasir are no friends.”
“My, my.” At this, at least, Loki turns to face Thor, a smile that would be
more at home on a serpent curving his lips. “The mighty Thor, envious of a
scholar. What will the Aesir think?”
“I am not envious.”
“No?” The way the word brushes against his skin raises the hairs on his arms,
every teasing note in Loki’s voice like a predator in the underbrush.  
His fingers move with a thief’s ease along the catches of his tunic, fabric
going slack around his waist, falling open over the hips. In the space between
Thor’s throaty exhale and the moment he remembers how to breathe in again, the
soft leather breeches Loki had on disappear entirely, along with whatever he
was wearing underneath them.  If  he was wearing anything underneath them.
“Then you wouldn’t want to leave some mark on me,” Loki says darkly.
Thor was right, the black suits him; all the better when Loki shrugs first one
shoulder then the other out of his soft velvet sleeves and leaves nothing but
loose, inky waves to cover all of that creamy flesh.
“Some sign for anyone who might warm my bed to know they aren’t the first to
touch my skin.” He’s stiflingly close now, and Thor can’t swear to which of
them moved, only that they’re near enough for it to feel like Loki is sucking
the very air from his lungs, sipping it from him like a fine wine. Thor’s skin
itches with the urge to touch, words like a fever, roasting him in his skin.
“That I could never belong to them.”
Thor hears the sound that trickles from between his own teeth like it belongs
to something else; some cornered beast, wild and desperate. His hands are a
vice on Loki’s hips; a matched set to Loki’s twisting in Thor’s hair.
“Down.” Loki’s voice is heavy and hot as hearthstone, weighing him until his
knees kiss the floor.
Heat pulses in his face, in his belly, coalescing between his legs until it
nearly aches; a bastard mix of shame and need that means  Loki  to him as
surely as the echo of the great hall and the swirl of his mother’s skirts means
home . Blind, and deaf, and dumb and he would still know Loki just by this
feeling rising in his bones, like magnet to lodestone, like the crackle of
energy before a lightning strike.
“My savage, greedy brother.” Loki’s voice is molten silk pouring down the back
of his neck as he buries his face against fine, soft skin of Loki’s hip, just
where it meets his thigh. “What shall we do with you?”
Fingertips like ice chips brush the hair back from Thor’s face just as Thor
sinks his teeth into the smooth stretch of muscle, demanding Thor’s gaze with
nothing more than a suggestion and trapping it there wriggling on the hook of
Loki’s blistering green eyes.
He looks like he’s dying, or maybe just like death; like a fall from grace that
Thor has been plunging down since the day he was born; like the only thing
worth living for in the first place. Like love - vicious, and relentless, and
all of the things that poets never bother to put in their flowery ballads
because if their audience knew it could be like this it would set every warrior
groping for their swords, every young lover running for their lives.
“Oh, it is a pity they want to make you king,” Loki hisses as the blood blooms
hot, one thin-skinned layer from Thor’s tongue. “You look so perfect kneeling.”
                                      ***
Thor has always liked weddings. Asgard has never lacked for excuses to feast,
but there is a particularly joyousness that comes with a marriage; unmarred by
toasts to the fallen, no ragged edge from near misses or seizing the day
because it could have been your last.
Of course, there are also unique irritants to weddings, like the way it
inspires every mother in the realm to send their daughters Thor’s direction as
if they’ve only just realized he’s unwed.
After four, or six, or Odin alone knows how many turns around the floor with
this girl and that, Thor seizes a break in the music to make his escape to the
balcony. Where the air in the hall is perfumed with roasted meats and scented
oils, outside the breeze is sultry with the sweet musk of fig leaves, just
enough light oozing past the press of bodies to turn the marble tiles into a
faded battlefield of buttery firelight and the soft blue of the nearly-full
moon.
The tree branches creeping around the edges of the mezzanine are laden with
glossy leaves, the silvery sounds of insects whispering from the shadows. Near
the railing, the dark bulk of a horned owl swivels its gaze his direction,
mirrored eyes and unnaturally black plumage.
There is a pregnant moment where the night itself seems to pulse faintly and
then Loki is unfolding himself from a dainty posture where the bird was sitting
just an instant ago, a single ebony feather turning to hair between his fingers
as he tucks it back.
“Shirking your duties, brother?” he smirks, leaning his elbows back against the
railing. “What will the eligible toes of Asgard do without their prince to trod
upon them?”
Thor meanders over to where the overlook gives way to a view of the city and
the waters beyond; a shimmering, liquid twin to the stars above.
“To my recollection, they have two princes, and yet you have been conspicuous
only in your absence.”
He regrets not stealing a tankard of ale before he slipped away, but the
slither of the breeze across his sweat-stained neck is almost as good.
“The fact that you’ve failed to notice me hardly means I have not been
present.”
Loki’s hair shines like satin in the light as he tosses the length of it again,
falling in a glossy wave past his shoulders. Most of his hangs freely, but the
left side up to the crown has been worked into small, elaborate braids, shot
through with tiny golden cuffs and glittering green gems.
“No one in the nine realms has ever overlooked you unless you wished it so,”
Thor points out as Loki steps in close enough that Thor can smell the faint
scent of woodsmoke and fresh flowers on his skin. Still not as close as he
might like, given the stretch of Loki’s throat above the high, stiff collar of
his tunic, the very front of it cut into a sinuous heart-shape that frames the
soft divot between his collarbones. His ring-bedecked hands are the only other
bit of exposed flesh, every last pale inch hidden away.
“S á ga is under the impression that I have relieved her of some transcripts
from the negotiations on Niflheim,” Loki shrugs as if he expects Thor to follow
a single thing he’s saying with Loki’s pulse fluttering there at the base of
his throat like a barely-contained secret, and those kohl-rimmed eyes daring
him to do something about it.
Or, that might simply be wishful thinking. Loki is nothing if not circumspect
about… matters.
“Why would you want notes on the treaties of Niflheim?” Thor coaxes himself
into asking after, perhaps, a bit too long. He can’t immediately think of
anything more mindnumbing to peruse than the border-crossing bylaws, but Loki
has always had an impressive tolerance for tedium.
“Precisely the argument I have raised, and yet.”
“And yet you are hiding from an old woman.”
“Well, you seemed to be hiding from all of the young ones.”
Just the faintest tone of bitterness flavors the words, but Thor knows him well
enough to catch it. It isn’t that he doesn’t understand, in a way, why no one
else seems to lay eyes on Loki and see what’s before them. Loki has guarded his
secrets since before he had secrets to guard; cautious where Thor has always
charged ahead, double-edged where Thor has always been blunt.
In all honesty, Thor has never tried overmuch to correct the situation.
Fandaral and Hogun and Volstagg are his friends, and because Loki is his
brother they are often together, but if it weren’t for him, he doubts that the
four would have anything to do with one another. In that way, Loki has always
been more like Sif, though if anything the two of them are more contentious
amongst themselves than either are with the others.
A proper brother likely wouldn’t revel in the idea of being his little
brother’s only true friend, but on the list of ways that Thor is not a proper
brother, he rather doubts this ranks the highest.
The truth is, Loki is the only secret Thor has ever managed to keep. It’s more
than this matter between him that he has no language for – the closeness, he
supposes, though that’s not quite right, not quite enough to encompass it all.
The people, the court, his friends; they all see Loki, but only ever a version
of him, a mask that Loki wears as effortlessly as his blades. Perhaps it’s that
Loki can change himself, bend the light around his body, the very shape of
himself to suit his needs, but Loki is never the same person with anyone else
that he is with Thor. For Thor, perhaps.
Loki must catch something in his expression, but gratefully misinterprets it.
“I shouldn’t worry just yet,” he tosses a glance in the direction of the party.
A small group has broken away, huddled off to the other side of the balcony, a
bottle passing between them as readily as the laughter. Inside there is raucous
conversation and the stamp of shod feet straining to keep pace with the
tittering of pipes. “No one will make demands for your marriage until there is
a crown on your head. And there have certainly been no worthy candidates
presented thus far.”
Thor casts a look to the group across the way but none are near enough to
overhear. Nonetheless, he finds his body turning in toward Loki, giving the
others his back.
“You hold a low opinion of the women of court,” he says lowly, an elbow
knocking Loki’s thin wrist off of the railing. “I know you favor Sigyn.”
There’s been little enough speculation on the prospects of Thor’s marriage,
which generally suits Thor just as well. He’s the heir, of course, and that
comes with expectations. One day he’ll be required to make the right sort of
match, laden her with a few strong, winsome progeny, but the idea of it seems
vague and remote now, with the distant lights of houses and inns painting the
night in slate and gold, the sounds of celebration like incense on the air, and
his brother beside him, smiling that faint, indulgent smile that belongs
entirely to Thor.
Loki punches the meat of Thor’s arm off-handedly, a set of dainty, jeweled
rings biting through the sleeve of his surcoat.
“A fine enough girl,” Loki allows. “Thoughtful. But not built for the crown.”
“And Freyja?” Thor prods, passing a look to where the lady of her name stands,
one arm curled indolently around  Óðr’s neck . Her dress looks to be of spun
from diaphanous silks, fine enough to only just suggest the dark curve of a
nipple and the lush contour of a hip. Ample excuse to steal any man’s breath
and most women’s besides; there’s more than just cause for the gaggle of
admirers gathered around her, and no one of any mind could deny it.
“Obsessed with cats.” Loki sniffs, taking in the entire scene and dismissing it
with a single flick of his lashes. “Honestly, brother, can you imagine any
child she could bear that she would love more than that.”
Even as he speaks, the iron-grey feline draped over Freyja’s shoulder lifts its
head to accept a morsel from her fingers; Freyja’s fine, straight nose nuzzled
adoringly against its cheek as it gobbles the meat down.  Óðr  stands alongside
her, to all appearances entirely forgotten.
Loki is... Not entirely wrong.
Still, it rarely does to allow him his victories without some struggle.
“Shall I prepare the sparring ring for when you inform Sif that she too is
unworthy? ‘Tis a battle I’d care to see.”
Thor means it mostly to get a rise. In general he prefers Loki alive, which
makes any statement to Sif out of the question, however entertaining it would
be to watch the two of them battle to the hilt. Still, Loki hums deep in his
throat, fingers twisting through the air for no apparent cause than his own
pleasure.
“Had we another king, Sif would make an excellent queen, but for you?” Nothing
has changed since the last time Thor looked toward the great hall, but the
intensity of Loki’s stare that direction makes him take another glance just to
check. “You need someone at your side to take an interest in the politics,
someone who can negotiate with more than a sword’s edge.”
His voice fades out to nearly nothing. Thor imagines that he’s made all of the
grand pronouncements about Thor’s nature (or his failings, he supposes) that he
means to, but then, like a ghost in some forgotten ruin, too formless to say
for certain that it ever truly existed at all, “Someone who knows how to play
the long game.”
Like he’s had a brush with a spirit himself, the hairs rise along Thor’s spine,
shivering amongst themselves all the way up to the crown of his skull.
There are moments, bare slivers of time, when its almost hard to believe that
Loki is his brother and not some fairy creature, wild, and ethereal, and barely
caged; a charge of pure power encased in gossamer skin, forever on the verge of
splitting. In those moments, Thor can almost imagine what it would be like to
fear him.
Then again, fear has never been much in his nature. Far better, he’s always
thought, to charge ahead and take on whatever’s bold enough to come running
after.
“You’ve a maid in mind?” he jests, jostling up against Loki’s near shoulder
just to watch the irritable flinch of Loki’s brow.
Gamely, Loki jostles back, slender form only just rocking Thor back on a heel.
Still, there’s something alien lingering around the corners of his dark-limned
eyes when he turns them fully on Thor; something forbidding, and perhaps a
little too hungry for how it makes Thor sway closer.
“I wouldn’t say that.”
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