Apparently serious

[st_ratagem]

The beach hadn't been in Loki's original plans for the day, to the extent that he planned days ahead in the Inn. They were all similar enough that there seemed little point. But after a message from Thor arrived while he was spending his few hours in the clinic (no more than a few, as he was still primarily trying to stuff information into his head and it turned out there actually was a limit to how effective that was on a daily basis) his not-plans had shifted.

The message had been simple, almost innocuous. Anyone else would have read it as a simple 'hey, we should talk!' More of Thor's sporadic clinging. But Loki had a longer baseline, and a few things had put him on edge.

It wasn't going to be a conversation that should have an audience. There was a chance it wouldn't actually be a conversation, per se - he'd have thought 'lecture' if he'd actually done anything worth lecturing about. (Surely putting a small child on a very low to the ground tightrope didn't qualify.)

But that was how he'd come to be seated on the beach (easy enough to reach within the border timeline if he shapeshifted to a wolf) with a neat coil of twine beside him, tying it into the right series of knots for a decent fishing net and waiting for Thor to turn up.

If nothing else, he'd know if he still remembered how to make nets properly.

Comments

[st_ratagem]

“Of course.” Don’t try to put the blindfold back on now, brother. He didn’t say that out loud, of course. This had never been intended to be a blindfold. Or, if it was, it had been Thor wishingvhe had one for himself. “If there’s more to know, I need to know it.” For sure he didn’t want to.

It was impossible to make decent plans or decisions without good information.

[st_ormbreaker]

Thor turns and looks out at the ocean, his hands still sitting in his lap.

"Heimdall sent the Hulk to Earth with the Bifrost. Thanos killed him," he says. "Thanos got the Tesseract back. You offered to work for him, pledged your undying fidelity." To him or to Thanos? Even now, Thor wasn't sure. It somehow felt like Loki was talking to him, even as he addressed Thanos.

"But then you attacked him with your dagger. And then --" Thor feels something catch in his throat, and he turns his gaze away from the ocean and down to his hands in his lap. "-- he killed you."

Thor takes a breath and forces himself to look at Loki. He doesn't know what else to say or what to do, but he hopes that once he sees some shift in his expression, the right words, the right actions will come to him.

[st_ratagem]

Loki stayed still, almost frozen, as he had since Thanos’s name had come up. Apart from talking, he hadn’t moved even to an expression.

There was no way he could have thought that a dagger would work where a Thor and a Hulk had both failed. It was suicide, or a trick, or both.

He’d done it before. “You’re sure.”

[st_ormbreaker]

Thor tries not to think of it. The sounds of Loki gasping for air; his brother struggling against Thanos' grip; the sharp crack that followed it; Loki's thrown out in front of him; No resurrections this time; clutching his brother's body and it feeling different than the last time he held his brother when he thought him dead.

He utterly fails at it.

"I'm sure."

Thor brushes away the start of tears with the side of his hand and for not the first time tonight, gazes out at the ocean so he doesn't have to look at Loki.

[st_ratagem]

Any trick good enough to fool Thanos would certainly fool Thor as well. The thought occurred in a flash and disappeared just as quickly. Not dismissed, exactly, but marked ‘not worth hanging anything on at the moment’.

Loki couldn’t weep or even be that upset by a future death; not only was he currently alive, but a couple of cold places inside sad no great loss. He’d wanted to die when he’d let go of the Bifrost, back when, and even if he wasn’t there anymore part of him still thought it would have been better on the whole if Odin had just left his infant self to die.

No great loss.

What started to occupy him more was that Thor had told him. Before it had become pressing. He wasn’t the first to know, no, but he wasn’t being sent to that final battle with no real weapons. He’d decided to try a degree of trust, and it had worked out.

When he moved, it was all at once, to rest on his knees directly in front of Thor and watch him for a few seconds. Without pausing longer than that for a chance to talk himself out of it, he leaned to press a kiss to his brother’s forehead, then pull him into a hug and murmur an unusually sincere “Thank you.”

[st_ormbreaker]

For a few moments, Thor doesn't react to the press of his brother's lips to his forehead, nor Loki's arms when they fold around him. They should; his brother has never been especially affectionate to anyone but their mother, even when the two of them were boys. This uncharacteristic physical display of kindness should be enough to rip Thor from where he is, but it doesn't.

Not immediately.

But when it does, he wraps his arms around his brother and pulls him him close. He rests the top of his face against the top of Loki's shoulder and for once, doesn't say anything.

[st_ratagem]

Once again, Thor was dampening Loki's shoulder with tears, but this time it wasn't a confusing reaction at all. Still distressing, on the whole, if for different reasons. The weeping both made sense and didn't, but for the parts that made sense Loki forced himself to go on holding Thor instead of complaining about the damp shoulder or trying to separate.

It was easier than he might have expected it to be, though he wasn't crying himself. (Loki wasn't actually sure anymore what would wring tears out of him. Nothing, maybe. Or nothing he wanted to think about.) It wasn't a habit he wanted to get into, of course - it was never a good idea to get used to these things.

But he could... tolerate it. Until Thor was done.

[st_ormbreaker]

Eventually, Thor finally manages to pull his face away from his brother's shoulder. "You know," he begins, trying to make it sound more like a joke than it actually is, "I'm really tired of the people I love dying."

[st_ratagem]

"Well, you keep loving people, that's the problem." Similarly, it both was and wasn't a joke. "I hardly love anyone, so I don't mind death at all."

[st_ormbreaker]

Thor lets out a hoarse laugh at that, then finally relinquishes his hold on his brother.

"I'm not going to stop loving people just to make it easier," Thor says."I'm too hard-headed."

[st_ratagem]

Loki took his net back while shifting back to his original place next to Thor, where he began tying knots again. Measure with fingers, twist, pull. Not for the sake of the net itself, but to have something to do with his hands. "It's an acquired skill, I admit."

[st_ormbreaker]

Thor wishes his brother didn't feel the need to acquire it. He watches as his brother busies himself with his knots and wishes he had something to do with his hands, too. His hands were never as deft as Loki's were, though; his brother always had the finesse he lacked.

"I really do love you," he says after a moment. He's sure that his brother knows that much from what he said before, but he might as well clear up any doubts.

"I wish I had told you that. I thought I'd have all the time in the worlds to do so, but..."

Thor trails off.

[st_ratagem]

"There had to be one exception to prove the rule." Two, technically, three possibly... but still just one, as the two were dead. "I know. I love you, too. It's annoying."

[st_ormbreaker]

"I know," Thor says, and then he corrects himself. "I knew. I guess the two of us were sometimes bad at showing it."

[st_ratagem]

"I'm sure I'll go on that way more often than not." It was only the truth, which was unusual. Really, Loki thought, he ought to be talking up their various new understandings. There didn't seem to be a point, at the moment, so he didn't bother. Unpleasant though it might be to hear, he thought he'd gain more with the truth anyway. "I'm bad in general at these things."

[st_ormbreaker]

"I haven't known you to be bad at anything you truly tried at," Thor says.

[st_ratagem]

“And now you know one such thing. See, we’re both learning today.”

[st_ormbreaker]

Thor turns to look at Loki, his expression perplexed.

"So you try at it?"

[st_ratagem]

“I did, for a while, when we were young.” Loki shrugged, hands still moving on the net. “Eventually I realized that it only works if one is basically liked, so I stopped. No great loss to anyone.”

[st_ormbreaker]

"I liked you then," Thor insists, watching Loki carefully. "And I like you now, too. Don't act like nobody likes you."

[st_ratagem]

"No offense intended, brother, but you don't count. The exception, remember?" Loki half-smiled, aware of being watched but not looking up from his knots. "Don't act like it's so upsetting. It was hard to swallow at the time, but there are advantages."

[st_ormbreaker]

Thor huffs lightly at being told he doesn't count because he's the exception. It's silly and Thor knows it, but that doesn't stop him from feeling that way.

He still doesn't get how there could be advantages to being disliked, but as Thor has been disliked by very few people in his life and those who did dislike him he generally didn't care much for, either, it's no surprise that he has a hard time imagining those any benefits.

Still, he looks down at Loki's hands, busily knotting. Thor finds it strangely relaxing, and for a minute or two, he doesn't say anything. Thor just watches his brother work. The air starts to feel a little less oppressive than when their conversation first started.

Just a little.

Thor takes a breath and looks over at Loki.

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you earlier," he says, finally. "I'm sorry I couldn't do more."

[st_ratagem]

The advantages of being disliked were almost certainly not as great as the advantages of being liked (not that Loki had any experience of that), but they weren’t nonexistent. The biggest was surely that you never had to worry about losing any good opinions: whatever you did, there was nothing to lose.

“No apology necessary. I didn’t expect you to tell me at all.” Measure, twist, pull tight. It should have gotten boring but somehow never did. “I thought I’d find an exit and pull it out of your mind on my way out. Or I’d get it out of Stark.” Regardless, he’d expected to be on his own, as he generally was.

[st_ormbreaker]

"I did tell you, though," Thor says, though he does not mention that it was Tony that pushed him in this direction. True, he probably would have told Loki eventually, but he definitely wouldn't have told him as soon as he had. Thor knew himself well enough that without the appropriate force, he would have delayed it for as long as possible.

"And I don't recommend you looking into Tony's head," Thor says. "There are plenty of things there now that you probably don't want to see."

[st_ratagem]

“Yes, brother, I know. I was here.” Thor apparently didn’t understand the significance of not being left to shift for himself, for once. Of being told the dire secret instead Of finding out. Of not being alone just for a second.

But then Thor was never really alone. It was a good thing. Loki opted out of poking at it. “I don’t need to look in his mind. I could have gotten what I wanted by talking to him, sooner or later. I told you, he doesn’t quite have the hang of talking to me yet.”