(no subject)

[rie]

"What are you doing?" Loki demands.

His hands are on his hips. His mouth is red and swollen, and his thin grey t-shirt is torn at the neck.

"Thinking," says Thor. He is sitting with his back to the wall, his legs crossed before him. His hands curl into fists where they rest against his thighs, a full-stop punctuation mark for his one-word answer. He doesn't want to talk, not now.

Outside, the wind drags shadows over the cityscape. Leaving them here, alone in the silence, staring at the strangers they've painted over one another's faces.

"Don't," says Loki, impatient as only a sixteen-year-old can be. The flush pinking his cheeks hasn't quite faded. "You're terrible at it." He's rubbing idly at a bruise at the edge of his bared collarbone; his breath hitches when he accidentally catches the edge of a fingernail against it.

Or maybe it isn't such an accident, given the look Loki levels at him through his lashes afterward.

Thor turns away.

—

Loki stands at the edge of the ocean, his ankles white and slender; the wind has undone all prior attempts at taming his hair. It spills over his cheekbones, brushes across the high arch of his forehead, rises in rippling waves around his face.

Earlier this afternoon, Loki had pressed Thor down against the sun-warmed upholstery of his car and fed him kiss after kiss after kiss, until Thor knew nothing but the mindless yearning that set flame to all thought and reason. Loki's mouth had been stained purple by a grape-flavored ice pop; his breath had stuttered in his chest when he'd finally pulled back.

And Loki had thrown back his head and laughed, sweetly and softly, like he'd found the answer he'd been seeking in the middle of a parking lot on a Saturday afternoon. His shoulders peeling red, his skin streaked with salt and silt. Thor had been unable to do anything but press the heels of his hands to Loki's spine and keep him close. Close enough to breathe, close enough to taste, close enough to fit his own bones into the hollows of Loki's body.

"Stop thinking," Loki says, half-turning to face him. Like this, he rises in silhouette against the sky, the clever green of his eyes washed blue by the ocean's reflection.

"You should come home," Thor says, stupidly, and he can feel the shards of the broken peace cut into his spread hands.

Loki laughs again, but the sound of it is lost in the roaring pull of the tides.

—

When they'd been children, they'd hidden down by the tidepools and watched Sif dive from the cliffs, her dark hair streaming like a banner behind her.

Then, only then, Thor had thought her the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.

—

Loki peels oranges at the kitchen counter, two, three, four of them. He leaves the peels scattered over the countertop, orange scraps clashing loudly with the china-blue tiles.

Thor draws in a long breath, filling his lungs with the overripe air. "I thought you were going to cook for me," he says.

"You like oranges," says Loki, tossing a naked orange over. He perches himself on the counter, sweeping aside the peels. Thor sits at a stool before him, his hips bracketed by Loki's legs; he catches the orange one-handed.

Loki has that look on his face: the one that speaks of distance, of worlds beyond reality that Thor has never known. Thor is reaching out before he knows himself, his hands closing about Loki's hips, dragging him forth—

And yet Loki resists the pull, bracing himself with a foot to Thor's abdomen. Instead, he takes one languid bite from an orange, not bothering to separate it into slices; the juice runs in rivulets down the curve of his face, down into the hollow of his throat. "And you like watching me eat them even better."

Thor's mouth waters. His own orange falls unheeded as he uncurls his hands and tears apart the distance with them, suddenly angry, suddenly terrified. There is no other reality but this one, now, where Loki's mouth is sickly-sweet, where his skin is white and cool and paper-thin, where the silence has a melody of its own.

"See?" Loki says, breathless. Wicked.

"We can't survive on oranges," says Thor, but he's distracted: by Loki's fingers in his hair, by the teeth in Loki's smile.

"No," says Loki. Something has crept into his tone, something dark and bitter. Something that Thor planted there, years and years ago, before he knew how easily he could jerk about Loki's puppet-strings in turn.

Thor plucks the orange from Loki's hands, and shoves him back against the counter.

"Shut up," he says.

—

Once, there was a tree in a wood. A venerable oak, clad in the golden leaves of autumn, its boughs thick enough to hide the scrambling antics of two children.

Today, they've brought sandwiches in paper bags. Turkey-and-swiss, with cherry tomatoes rolling loose at the bottom, half of them already squished. They chase the birds from the tree with poorly-aimed tomatoes; they chase the incumbent winter from the air with the cadence of words passed between them.

One day, one of them will fall. One day, the other will not know how to follow.

But now, this is all they are: two brothers in a wood, sunlight dappling their cheeks, the world open and free and ripe for the taking.

—

"Come home," Thor roars, his hands shaking. The sky flashes bone-white behind him.

Silence. A fermata of silence.

"We can't survive on oranges," Loki says, suddenly. Nonsensically.

"Please, Loki," Thor pleads. He's threading his fingers into Loki's ribcage, craning to catch sight of the heart that beats beneath. Tears sting at his eyes.

—

One day, just like every day before it, the tide goes out.

Thor takes Loki's hand in his own. Together, they watch the crown of the sun disappear past the horizon.