Summary: Three times Thor aggravates Loki with calling him brother, and one time he denies him. Thor/Loki (somewhat?)

Disown me, brother

1.

They are young, with only a dozen summers behind their backs. Time has started to reshape many things: where Loki is lanky, Thor is sturdy, where Loki is pensive, Thor is loud and reckless. Along with their built, other differences sprang forth, too, but they are still good brothers and they don't question what they have.

Sometimes they sneak out and visit the marketplace or venture in the fragrant forest behind the palace, sometimes they climb a hill and swim in the fresh water of a lively stream. Loki doesn't always like to leave the territory of the palace because sometimes they meet other children. And when they do, an invisible wedge tries to drill its way between them.

The children invite them to play, all of them loud and unruly, faces smudged and words untamed. They would play Knattleikr on the market-place after the traders disperse, tackling each other mindlessly, or wrestle in the dust like angry dogs. Loki doesn't like their games because they are all about strength he doesn't possess. He tags along, though, because Thor seems to enjoy them, and he is good, so very good in all these plays (and Loki's main purpose at this time is to see his brother happy).

It is a difference that has never bothered Loki before because he has never seen where it can harm, where it can matter that he is lacking in prowess. Nobody has ever pointed it out among the noblemen or the consultants of their father, the stablemen or servants, but the children do.

"You should maybe play with the girls instead," they tell him, and he doesn't know yet that the insult would be a recurring one throughout his life.

But Thor is quick in his words, always quicker when it's about Loki. "Have care how you speak."

Thor each and every time jumps in, always ready to defend, ready to pay with blows for the disrespect. Loki knows he means well, he knows Thor only follows his own heart but he cannot help but resent his interference because it is a one-sided, humiliating treat. Because Thor doesn't need his defense, and Loki cannot pay it back.

And then, to dig Loki's hurt deeper, in his inconsiderateness Thor always adds with unreasonable pride, with bloodthirsty vehemence over something that he deems his as if it would explain anything, "He is my brother."

He never suspects that he makes everything all the worse for Loki. Being declared as Thor's brother means being constantly compared to him, and Loki can see it in the children's eyes, in the stealthy way their gazes skim from Loki to Thor and back again, measuring, comparing, wondering. They, Loki and Thor, are nothing alike. Loki doesn't understand how Thor cannot see it, and Thor doesn't understand why Loki cares.

There is only one thing Loki finds fortunate in these events: afterwards, for some time, Thor doesn't nag him to sneak out, and they stay in their secluded world, just the two of them. And it is perfect.

When they play in the groves, running around and hiding and seeking, always, always seeking each other, it feels like nothing has changed, no wrong is waiting for them outside the walls, no insults, no hurtful words. No wedge to separate them.

"You are my best friend," Thor would say when he catches Loki, and wouldn't, wouldn't release.

And Loki smiles, and wouldn't, wouldn't ever let go.

He smiles but his heart whispers, and there is fear gripping and twisting it: I am your best friend because there is no one else for you to call a friend. And it is true. It is only the two of them, two little princes among the secure golden walls.

When later -grown, mature and bitter to every fiber of his being- Loki thinks back to this time, he defines it as the best decade of his life: a whole miniscule world with nobody to steal Thor from him.

2.

It is a swimming competition that holds nothing but brutality in Loki's eyes. Thor and his friends (yes, now Thor has friends, and Loki sometimes hates them to wicked tears), the Warriors Three are entertaining themselves with trying to push each other underwater. Loki is watching them from the shore and is immensely grateful that Sif is not attending because he knows he would be appointed to compete with her. Always and forever deemed unmanly.

There is something wrong with him, he knows. Wrong in the way he feels jealousy and envy gnawing at his guts as he stares at his brother, at the carefree way he carries himself. He is astonished that the fact of being a firstborn does not weigh down on Thor, and he is like an untamed beast, free and beautiful. Loki knows there is something utterly wrong in the way he hates with the core of his being everyone who takes part in Thor's life, he loathes these childish, boastful warriors, the noblemen at the court, the healers, the traders, the stablemen and the Einherjar. He hates Mjölnir for choosing Thor and for Thor choosing her in equal measure. He hates the sunshine, the never ceasing light radiating from Thor's skin, warm, bronze, spotless; a statue of sunlight, of valor, of everything that is Asgard. Everything that Loki is not.

He hates Thor for reaching out for him and pulling him to the light, always reaching out, always pulling, always seeking – that has not changed. He hates how Thor loves him, and how Thor hurts him, and it's the highest and deepest waves of bliss and agony, and Loki cannot feel anything in between: always and only the extremities.

"I cannot stand seeing you sitting there alone any longer," and Thor scoops him up, dripping and panting and brash in every movement, and there is no power in the whole universe that could stop him when Thor sets his mind on a goal. So he drags him along to join their circle, and laughs as Loki spits and coughs water, and Loki would anytime willingly drown himself if the smile Thor wears when he looks at him would never shine on anybody else but him. "Come on, brother. Your place is here."

And Loki hates him for not seeing that it is not.

3.

"Tomorrow I take you home, brother."

And the greatest foolishness rolls just this easily from Thor's mouth. Loki glares at him before his eyes fall on the ruins just beyond the landing of the Stark Tower. He can still smell the smoke, the odor of demolition lingering in the air. The earsplitting shrieks of the sirens filtering from the street level are no more than dull whistles up so high but they can still hear them. Loki's alien fist has just punctured a hole in Thor's beloved Midgard, leaving loss and death and smithereens behind, and Thor still calls him brother, he still calls Asgard their home.

What should he do to make Thor stop associating himself with someone who has done everything in his power to dislodge himself from a past full of lies?

It irks him that Thor can still consider such a vile creature his brother. It irks him because Thor is blind, because Thor is seeing someone else in his place, someone who doesn't exist anymore. Maybe never really existed. It irks him because Thor's stubbornness, his foolishness attempt to put a burden on him, the instinctual, millennium-old urge to prove his brother right and meet the expectations, but even if he wanted to, he knows he would never manage for Loki is a wrong thing. For Loki has always been so. No more than an illusion and even at that is a failure. Even the body he carries around is a lie. The Loki Thor once loved was no more than a hollow shell of lies and interplanetary strategies.

It irks Loki because on a point he has decided that had Thor finally managed to disown him as brother, Loki too would be able to tear those bonds that are still pulling at his wretched heart no matter what he does.

+1

They keep him in an enchanted room. Not his old one, no. Odin is cautious that much. His old chambers are full of secrets, full of weapons, of magic, of tricks. He has a new room now, and he perfectly fits in the dangerous collection of stolen bric-a-brac Odin has always been inclined to surround himself with. At least, he spoiled it for Odin, this great stolen relic he once called his son, he broke it, chipped it so there would be no beauty, no value left to it. Slight victory, but victory nonetheless.

Only his mother visits him here, now and then, but every time breaks their hearts a little. His mother is a precious thing. She would always be.

And then, there is Thor.

Thor, never giving up seeking him.

They hardly speak, yet Thor comes every day. Sometimes twice or three times a day, staying from a couple of minutes up to long hours, depending how effective Loki is in chasing him away. Thor is less and less fazed by his silence and he talks instead. He sits next to Loki and words spill from his lips, sometimes so dull that Loki wants to scream.

Sometimes Loki wants to rage and break something in a helpless fit because he has no power to send Thor away, not when he has nowhere to go, not when his magic is locked up behind Odin's cruel dam.

Sometimes he simply closes his eyes and tries everything to block Thor out.

Sometimes he answers.

Sometimes it is almost like many years ago, talking and teasing each other but it's no more than a mockery of the past that would never return.

Sometimes Thor is simply watching him with unwavering attention and Loki is watching him back while minutes turn into hours and the servant who brings Loki's meals enters the room. They are watching each other and neither knows why, but it sets the universe to immobility.

Thor is sentimental, affectionate and more prone to feeling hurt than ever before, and Loki tells him he became soft. Thor only laughs at him and blames it on him, and he is full of touches, of wandering fingers, of lingering smiles Loki has a hard time to translate the way it would be the easiest.

"Don't you have any better things to do than being here?" Loki asks one day, and it doesn't come out as biting as he intends to.

"What would be better than being with you?" Thor asks with the tiny smile that is foolish and endearing, and he looks so genuinely earnest that Loki almost believes him. Always a breath away from believing him.

It angers Loki that Thor would best him even in this: even in his struggle to put distance between them. It angers him that Thor's acts are drenched in hypocrisy so much that he finds no qualm in coming and staying here like he was invited, like they were still children in detention for wrongdoing, locked up in their chamber and dreaming of freedom.

It is but Loki now who can dream of freedom. He is, like in everything else, alone in this.

So he sets to cut the last thread because the illusion of having someone beside him hurts more than having no one at all.

It is easy. There is unbearable amount of pent-up tension in both of them in the waiting for Odin's verdict. And they are yelling and they are fighting again because this seems to be the only way they know how to be around each other, and the universe rolls forward again.

"Tell me, Thor, does it ease the guilt?" Loki sneers, and Thor is close like he always is, always the physical, overwhelming and intrusive, his fingers are an angry knot in Loki's hair, twisting and pulling it. And suddenly Loki doesn't remember how it escalated to this so quickly, to him being pushed against the wall and Thor against him. Pain always comes easier than words of reconciliation. "You think you are only being generous, yes? But how do you justify this then? Justify your weak helplessness, your selfish satisfaction in keeping your own brother captive because this is the only way you can have your little pet back?"

"You are not my pet!" Thor glares at him, equally puzzled and sliced, and instead of all those things Loki expects him to say, the croak grating against Thor's throat is this: "And we are not brothers."

And with that, the universe stops again. It's a feeling before falling: the tight knot of tension while balancing over the edge. Loki's smile is a taut line of blood-red, of ragged curves, of shredded crevasses where he has bit on his lips.

"Look who just changed his mind," he whispers, voice more like a rasp, a dry winter cough, lacking its usual smoothness, its honey glaze. His tone, for once, doesn't deliver irony, isn't laced with mock. Not even with grudge. If anything, it is the echo of a fateful wind blowing on a night when everything would change. This is such night, and he trembles in anticipation and something else that he has always deemed a mirage he craved to follow. Thor's eyes are the blue, his skin is the fragrant Loki didn't forget even in the void. They make him fall even now, with solid ground beneath his feet. Thor. The idea, the example, the perfection Loki got used to chase all his life. Always seeking, always reaching out for it. Always getting burnt.

Thor sees the irony of it, he realizes how it always has been him repeating they would forever stay brothers, over and over again up to this point where it isn't comfortable anymore, when he wants it to be not true because it doesn't serve him. His brother… his non-brother… his once-brother… how exactly he should call Loki? If he cannot call him brother anymore, it crushes his whole world underneath. Then again, brother doesn't feel right, doesn't feel enough anymore. Thor realizes only now that ever since he learnt they weren't brothers, he wants to bind Loki to himself, but bind him not as brother… keep him as something he hesitates to name even in his own head. He thinks of their father, their mother, thinks of what they would say. Thinks when exactly it turned around and headed in this direction.

Loki sees him, he sees into him. It is clear for him how desperate Thor is trying to convince himself that it doesn't matter: the hundreds of years spent with each other as brothers, friends, comrades, foes, centuries of plays and fights and verbal and not so verbal assaults – they don't matter, they can wither away like long-fallen leaves then be crushed and stolen by a storm into million directions.

The smirk is sardonic on the thin lips. The taunt is sewn in his voice as Loki says, "The Mighty Thor doesn't even know what he wants."

And Thor realizes he is right. He buries his face in the curve of the ivory shoulders, breathes in the scent he has known ever since a child: it comforts him and he wants to commit it into memory, the faint fragrance of moss and herbs and moist soil and something that's purely Loki and it's like bitters and mead in a poisonous concoction that he cannot stop swallowing. His nose brushes against the skin of Loki's neck, so smooth and soft, but with his lips he hesitates.

Loki's arms find their way around his waist, and they stay there like two tempting snakes, ready to pull down and make him perish or ready to gift the sweetest of sins.

It surprises Loki. The struggle Thor goes through. The breaths, deep, rumbling, ragged. He is heaving against his neck, and Loki knows it's his battle now, and for once he is unable to guess the winner because this is the first time Thor is fighting someone with equal power: himself. And Loki's fingers twitch and ache to touch the golden locks, to twist them, tear at them, sooth them, but he holds them back and waits. For Loki is a wrong thing, and if he falls, all should fall with him.

Their bodies brush up against each other, and it finally dawns on Thor that there is no turning back if he crosses the line now. And maybe, there is no going on for them afterwards either. He knows deep within his guts that every touch shared, every word thrown and the wound they cut would chisel them off, pulverize them, shrink them. He fears it would cost him his sanity. Their sanity. And no, there is no turning back.

"Loki."

And it's a plea, it's a tone Loki has never heard before. He doesn't need to ask: Thor cannot go on alone. Or doesn't dare to step on a road that has a one-way direction. His foolish, foolish Thor, so blind to the fact that they cannot turn around and go back to their old lives even now; even without making that step forward.

And for this once, Loki is the braver. Maybe because it is as close to annihilation as it can ever get. He has always been driving himself to a point when everything within is disintegrated. The only difference now is that he would pull Thor with him into this because this is how it has always worked: there is only this short tether binding them together, so if he jumps, Thor jumps, too.

He pulls back, and it takes but one fluid motion to set the whole millennium of their lives to a new level. Loki leans in and they are kissing as if there was no tomorrow. The despair and hatred and longing and impotence to draw apart sing in the battle of their lips just as it does in the battle of their words. And it's perfect and it's beautiful. Twisted and wrong and noxious but the best they could ever create because beyond all reasons it is somehow natural.

Thousand years were enough to take the whole spectrum of love stage by stage. It is in a way obvious that after the extremities and everything in between, they end up here. It is not even necessary to name whatever they share, the forever changing, forever growing and shrinking emotions: in Thor's life, Loki is essential and he doesn't question it, doesn't label it. Loki is air. He is the pulsation of his veins. Something he never bothers to acknowledge because it's just there, and if it wasn't, he wouldn't be what he is now. There has never been Thor without Loki, and vice versa. They define each other, in the brotherly fondness, in feud. In love, and forever in hate. Complementary colors that tell so little on their own but when they are lined up side by side, the picture is vivid, is of depth.

So they do what they are the best in.

They seek, they catch, they don't release.

They battle.

A/N: Have a merry X-mas! See ya next year;) Thanks for sticking around!