Hi fellas, this story was based on a meme request which I've picked up from LiveJournal and I've now moved to here - basically, Thor, Loki, Pepper Potts and Clint Barton are just awesome people doing awesome things. With feelings! Ooft, all the feelings. Enjoy!

It started when Thor cracked his skull falling from his pony. Frigga fussed, Odin fretted and Loki sat on his brother's legs, staring at his sleeping face, wrapped so tightly in swathes of bandages. The ten year old couldn't believe how small his big brother appeared, how pale his skin looked when the blond hair was hidden away. Frigga tried to take Loki off the bed, but Thor would shift and turn restlessly and Loki would simply become a dead weight. Odin waved his wife away from their children. He saw how it would cause more grief than good to separate them, and it wasn't as though they could cause any mischief right now anyway. Loki heard the door close behind them and grinned as Thor crack open an eye.

"Have they gone?" He asked, a small slur all the evidence of a heavy concussion.

"Yeah, I heard father talk to the guard, apparently he's supposed to wake him as soon as he hears talking, laughing, magic making or anything other than you snoring. I don't think he trusts us for some reason." Loki shuffled to Thor's side, allowing him to sit up slightly, wincing as he did so. "You know you're a pillock, right?" Loki said as he carefully moved a pillow to rest against his brother's head.

"I was only trying to copy what you were doing," Thor said and fell back on the pillow with a sigh. "How did you make your horse do all those jumps anyway?"

"I guess I'm just better than you – not just horse riding, at everything. It's a curse, I sometimes don't think I can live with myself," Loki said and melodramatically held his hand against his forehead, falling daintily into Thor's lap, who had to stifle a giggle for fear of alerting the guard.

"You used magic, didn't you?" Thor asked, though it wasn't really a question.

"Well, yes. Want to see some more?" Loki said with a glint in his eyes. Thor nodded and grimaced at the movement, but was soon distracted by Loki's look of fierce concentration as colours and shapes formed in his hands and spread out across the room. The story Odin had told them of the beginning of the world danced across the walls as Thor drank in the emotions Loki was learning to put into his projections. He sat entranced until he heard Loki's laboured breath and looked to his brother, still in his lap, shining with sweat with the effort of entertaining him. Thor gently touched his arm and the images flickered as Loki glanced at him inquiringly.

"Show me the rest tomorrow night, I'm too groggy to see straight and I don't want to miss anything," he said. Loki saw through his lie immediately, but was grateful nonetheless for his brother's rare display of tact. He banished the images around their heads and curled up next to Thor, yawning sleepily. Thor smiled, drew Loki closer and settled himself more comfortably.

"Goodnight, idiot," Loki said from under his arm.

"Goodnight, freak," Thor said, waving away the lights as he drifted back to sleep.

Loki was allowed to stay the following day and night, as Thor was recovering so much quicker than the Head Healer thought he would with him around. It was only when every table had mysteriously turned into a chicken did Frigga eventually put her foot down and separated the two. They had become as thick as thieves which, despite the warmth in her heart, made her dread what would become of the furniture.

Though they had been friends before, they were inseparable when Thor recovered. The years of their childhood seemed to be spent in an endless summer. When Thor heard his friends tease Loki for his gracelessness at sword fighting, Thor showed him how to handle daggers and throwing knives. When Loki noticed Thor look jealously on at his magical prowess, Loki taught Thor to shoot lightning from his fingertips. When Loki was caught turning the Head of Council's toupee into a live rabbit, Thor charmed him into total forgiveness. When Thor destroyed the statue of Yggdrasil with an ill timed lightning bolt, Loki learned how to magically mend stone.

And whenever Thor or Loki were injured or sick, the other would not leave their side, even if it was for days at a time. This was frowned upon, as boys with magic and thunder in their veins are rarely called upon for their healing powers. After the Head Healer's bed had been turned into a sheep, she stopped trying to part them herself and turned to Odin for help. He tried reasoning with them, but gave up when he saw how they'd given each other the giggles and realised his frank talk about their duties as princes had fallen on deaf ears. He didn't want them to think their disobedience was acceptable, but he could privately admit to Frigga that it did him the world of good to walk past their rooms and hear Thor's laughter, sense Loki's crackle of magic.

Only once, when Thor had an almighty 'flu, Frigga barred Loki from entering Thor's room. He looked up at her as she physically blocked his path, Thor sneezing loudly on the other side of door.

"No means no, young man."

"But what if he shoots himself with lightning? Everyone else would just panic, he needs someone to really laugh at him," he said, his whine kept to an artful minimum, his eyes knowingly wide. Frigga raised an eyebrow and stifled a small smile.

"That look hasn't worked on me for two years Loki and you know it. Look, he's incredibly infectious, you'll just become sick as well and if you think for one moment I'm subjecting this household to that particular fate, you can think again." Astra, a young healer who hadn't learned to fear the sight of Thor and Loki together when one of them was ordered bedrest, appeared at Frigga's elbow.

"If you please Your Highness, I've finished giving the Prince his medicine; he should be able to sleep now." She curtsied to Frigga and hurried away. The Queen turned and, producing a key from the ether, closed Thor's door, locking it tightly.

"I'm not having you sick as well Loki, this is for both your sakes," She said kindly as Loki looked down. At first, Frigga tentatively thought she had won, but the shake of his shoulders from suppressed laughter made her instantly, deeply suspicious. "Loki, what've you done now?"

"I've not done anything mother; in fact, I wasn't even here," he said and, snatching the key from her hand, melted away into nothing. Frigga groaned as she heard Thor and Loki's woops of triumph from the other side of the door.

Later, when Loki was running a massive fever and clutching his head to steady his dizziness, Frigga allowed herself a smug smile.

"Tell me Loki, was defying your mother worth this?" She said as she folded her arms above him. Thor, sat cross legged at the foot of the bed, looked up from his book as Loki lazily shot her a wicked grin.

"Always, mother dearest. Always."