A/N: In a way, it can be considered my first Thor/Loki story - which is surprising, seeing I have posted a bunch already. The notes to this have been sitting on my comp since the beginning but never got to sit down and fill in the gaps.
Those who follow me on Tumblr know about the mother of all writer's blocks I'm fighting now, so apologies if it reeks of this struggle.

United we fall

Streaks of sunlight. Scent of fallen leaves, damp and withered: the hint of autumn. The breeze carries something with it, the taste of old times, never-been memories, and it plants a feeling in Thor's chest akin to premonition. Bugs rise with the last patches of light, and Loki, young and ethereal, amidst the whirling cloud of insects and the buzz of tiny perfect wings, turns back and looks at him. Thor stares back, transfixed, watches the cape of bugs behind his brother: they look like wings, black wings or a shadow. The sun cannot seem to touch him, it slides off his lithe body, flows around him like a foreign substance but it doesn't illuminate him. Thor stands rooted, awed by the onyx halo of Loki's hair, and the balance of the world shifts. He knows with conviction, with such certainty that it should scare him, that the balance will never be restored, it is forever lost to him.

So this is how it begins.

-o-

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i.
Later, when he attempts to pinpoint the exact moment where everything went off the rails, Loki thinks it might have started with their parents, already in the beginning. It started childishly, innocently.

But he also knows now that innocence is a thing to lose, always.

ii.
They are children, just in the age when the greatest struggle is to find their way through deciphering and scribbling runes. They are young and they are yet to understand many things still furled and tangled in their minds. Some things won't ever be untangled, though, not for them. Other things, though, will be unfurled, skewed and warped.

When their parents kiss, the two brothers watch, ink-stained, shifty-eyed. It's not more than an affectionate peck on the lips but it is intriguing because it is followed by smiles and happiness and an air of comfort soft like a pillow.

"What is so good in this? What mother and father do." Loki is ever the curious, the immensely thirsty for knowledge, while Thor is all bravery – he still leads them into adventures and troubles and Loki would follow but it wouldn't be this way forever.

"Maybe people who love each other dearly do it this way?"

"So I need to give my goodnight kiss on your mouth?"

"I think yes. If you give it to my cheek, it means you don't love me enough."

It's an incomprehensible concept for Loki, in a way it will forever stay like this, though its senselessness doesn't yet frighten him the way it will do later.

"We try it," Thor suggests, and they lean in, and it is a noisy peck and nothing more. Their brows are in questioning arches as they try to figure out if it felt good or bad, but in all honesty, it didn't feel anything.

"Again," Loki goads, and though there is a strange glint in his eyes that Thor knows means trouble, he scoots closer and presses his lips against Loki's. It's a moment of standstill before Loki, with a sputtering noise, squeezes out a mouthful of saliva between his lips, and Thor jumps back with a cry.

"Loki!" And he is spitting and rubbing his face, smudging ink smears all over it while Loki is all laughter and jingling giggle, and Thor tackles him, and they are rolling on the carpet like two playful pups, all dull teeth and sloppy punches.

They don't know yet but this is how innocence starts to fester.

iii.
They are still very young when Frigga takes them to the observatory at the end of the Bifröst bridge to meet the Gatekeeper's unwavering gaze for the first time. She tells them how Heimdall sees everything and beyond, how his guarding eyes keep Asgard safe. Thor finds it fascinating and a great gift to the golden realm but Loki's mind wanders to the dark places he thought only he had knowledge of: if Heimdall sees everything, he then sees where he hides the little trinkets he stole from other children and people, the loathsome wooden warrior Thor cherished so much that he spent more time with it than with Loki. Then he thinks of how Heimdall might see when he is assaulted by nightmares or…

His heart jostles in his chest because not being able to have secrets shakes his small-scaled world.

He looks up bravely, maybe with a hint of resentment so alien on such young a face, and challenges, "If you see everything, what color is my undergarment?"

Heimdall looks bemused, while Frigga scolds him with a barely hidden laugh, "Loki, this is not polite!"

"It is green, my prince."

Horrified, Loki draws closer to his mother's leg, clutching at it as if her nearness would diminish any horror in his life. He still doesn't understand the dread that settles deep inside him but it's a weight he cannot shake off for centuries to come until, at the end of a long road, he finds a cure for it.

"Mother…"

Frigga's hand strokes his hair gently. "Heimdall is only jesting, my dear. Your private chambers are sealed from his sight."

His suspicious glare doesn't go unnoticed.

"It was an easy guess. You seem to prefer this color, Prince Loki," Heimdall concedes but Loki never forgets this day. The all-seeing eyes of the Gatekeeper scare him away, and there is a twitch in Heimdall's smile that will always bother him, like a secret kept away from him.

"If you are a good boy, there is nothing to fear, yes?"

He nods, but what he thinks is: he doesn't always want to be one.

iv.
They are different, Thor and Loki, it becomes apparent very early. What Thor dreams of has no intersection with what Loki values but it doesn't drive them apart as it would do later. It only serves as a source for teasing, and through it, through an event that almost ends up in tragedy, Loki discovers something he would test later, again and again, grate it to an extent when it's worn out almost completely: Thor's unwavering, unsuspecting trust in him. He doesn't yet comprehend the value of it, sees only the different ways he can make use of it and doesn't appreciate it for what it is. This, maybe, would never change.

When Thor tells him he dreams of being strong like Tyr, and stronger even, stronger than Father, so powerful that a puff of his breath would freeze his enemies' hearts and a blow of his arm would level mountains, Loki weaves a joke for their amusement.

"I have once read somewhere if one eats three pints of honey and lies on the sun for three hours, one shall grow threefold stronger over a fortnight."

His lips twitch to turn into a laugh because surely Thor would know better than believe such foolishness but the next day Thor follows through on the instruction. And it is just so much Thor that he wouldn't be satisfied with threefold strength when he could go for sevenfold even.

It's one of the chambermaids who finds him in the corner of the courtyard of the Western wing, lying in the sun, barely breathing. Frigga yells at them for minutes, though she rarely raises her voice. She yells and cries while the healers tend to Thor's dehydrated body, and Loki is silent with dread as he watches his brother's limp form on the bed, lips white and crumpled like the sheets beneath him; he stares motionlessly with the weight of what could have happened, what he could have lost forever, and also with the blossom of a realization that thoughts and words have greater power than mere muscles.

v.

The wooden sword feels like a bluntly carved lie in his hand, and he wields it like he would wield lies later. Thor wields his like it was the extension of his soul and heart, not only his arm. He defeats monsters and unnamable enemies, ghosts and darkness like, Loki is sure, he would do centuries later, and Loki is at his heels, always – but he wonders if he belongs to the other end of Thor's sword instead, rather than behind him, watching his back, following in his trails; if he is an unnamable, strange thing that is out of place in Asgard.

He believes he may be the first to wonder, by looking at themselves, how two brothers can be so different.

vi.
It is decades later, though they are only barely taller or wiser than the first time they tried it, that Loki sees the Lady Freya with a nobleman in the groves behind the lady's palace.

"They were kissing but it was different," he tells Thor that afternoon. He demonstrates it by opening his mouth and tipping his head from left to right then back to left, and it is so funny that Thor starts to laugh.

"You need to show me for real," and Thor, the brave, holds his face and pouts his lips. "But don't spit on me!"

Loki leans in. With his finger he coaxes Thor's jaw open, and they are like two fishes, stuck together through open mouth, blinking in confusion.

"Maybe we have to move our lips," mumbles Thor against Loki's mouth. Loki's tongue ventures in, and they draw back at the same time.

"Eek, what are you doing?"

"What did you eat?!"

But they try again, and it's uncoordinated and sloppy, but they start to get the hang of it.

"Mm, it feels good. You taste nice, like dessert. Again!" sighs Thor in astonishment, and the next hour is spent in frantic search for the right method.

vii.
It's a good mean. It settles their fights, and if one of them is in low mood, this always helps.

Thor meets new friends, and Loki barricades himself in his room more and more often.

"Come on, what can you always do with these silly books?"

"Silly books? Brother, if you were a book, you would have empty pages."

Thor laughs, leans in and presses his lips against Loki's, his tongue slips in and they moan in unison.

"Come on, brother," Thor murmurs, and Loki cannot do anything else but follow.

It is a good mean. It stays so for long decades.

viii.
Everyone knows Agmundr for he loves quarrels, and he more occasions than not ends up among the four posts just off the main marketplace. Holmgangs go until first blood; after the war against Jötunheim Odin forbade any duel ending on death.

Agmundr is a huge man, and it scarcely matters what weapon is picked, he would finish off the opponent in a fine but uneven duel.

"Why are they fighting this time? What is the offence?" Thor asks. They are surrounded by a crowd, just off the square marked by the huge stone posts standing in each corner. Thor's new friends are with them, and Fandral smirks at them, his lips twisting around a word that comes out like a whisper.

"Ergi. Agmundr drank too much again and called Fálki sorðinn."

Thor looks at him then at Loki as he always does when he is in the need of explanation, but Loki shakes his head.

"It means he is lying with other men. It means he is no different from a woman," Fandral hisses, and the crowd cheers as the fight unfolds before them.

They are children still. They laugh with the other people as Fálki hits the ground, and the offence rolls off their tongue like it doesn't weigh a thing.

Later, it would weigh the world.

ix.
The hammer sits on a pedestal in the Great Hall of Hliðskjálf, a gift from the Dwarven blacksmiths that seems to mock everyone. They call it Mjölnir, the Grinder. Men, great in physical strength, try to move it to no avail. It's an intriguing object, and for several days Odin's sons are hanging off its handle in hopes of toppling it but it is said to answer to only those worthy of lifting it. The concept only drives Thor to try it harder, while it chases Loki away and he never touches its handle again.

There is an idea forming in the back of his mind, and idea he doesn't know the origin of: that worthiness is a trait he would only ever see just out of his reach.

x.
Later, Thor would say it was all Loki's fault but in the long run he doesn't mind the consequences. He also cannot blame his brother for his own thoughts, only for goading them out at the wrong place, wrong time.

Thor's strength is physical, and anything restraining it feels like punishment. Every lesson with their tutor is torture, but so it is for the old man too for Thor is unlike Loki, he lacks the patience for words and the unfolding of the intricate designs of politics.

His complaints and boastful oaths meet only Loki's encouragement to be honest with the old scholar and write in his essay how he imagines picking up the threads of their father's heritage to weave their own parts to it later when the time comes, how the learning of the past would shape the future days – a task that sends Thor to despair.

Frankly, it is not Loki's fault that he puts down words -when I'm king, there will be no need for old scholars and old stories of old history- and lets others, akin, to follow.

One would think a man at such high age would have more patience for the wrongdoings of young ones but the essay upsets their scholar so much that the case ends up before Odin. The All-father calls his firstborn arrogant, and the doors are sealed until lunchtime, until Thor fixes his essay. Odin tells them to pray their tutor could be persuaded to come back and continue their lessons, but Thor finds he doesn't have the heart in such hopes.

The doors are shut and it's only the two of them among rolls of parchment and blots of ink seeping slowly in the wood while it's sunshine outside and freedom, and Thor feels like a caged animal. He glares at Loki as to why he suggested him to write the essay but Loki only smirks, and his eyes are green like the scales of a snake, and poisonous, biting.

"Tell me now, Thor, aren't we left alone, with free time on our hands?"

"So this was your plan?" Thor stares, only now starting to understand how sometimes straight way is not the only way.

"Of course."

"And could you not plan something where I wasn't punished?"

Loki laughs at him. It's a child's laughter yet there is a hint of shrewdness in it, something everyone would consider him too young for. "Where would be the fun in that?"

Thor's laughter, on the other hand, is loud and frank. "Oh you little evil fiend."

And he pounces on Loki, pulling him to the floor, and as every fight they would ever start these days, this one as well ends up in something entirely different.

xi.
It goes on with stealing each other's taste like it was their rightful possession. It is so heated that Thor trails further down, and neither has the courage to stop because if they stop, they think, and if they think, they will retreat, but it all feels too good to let it go to waste.

They don't get there fast enough to undress each other when they come, messily, unexpectedly, in their own breeches.

xii.
It's Loki's idea to steal the ale from the kitchen but if anyone asked, Thor wouldn't even be able to tell it really was so. Loki is young still but old enough to realize the power of stealthy and well-placed words.

They drink everything behind the stables with the greed of beginners and haste of those who know they are trespassing, as though the only aim was to make the content of the barrel disappear. It's an unannounced contest that Thor wins eventually, clinging to Loki and panting into the crook of his shoulder with an instinctive urge that drives him to his brother, always reaching out for an anchor and always finding him there – he doesn't know yet that it would change: not his reaching out, no, that he would never part with.

His lips slip across the pale skin of Loki's neck, and they tumble down.

This time they undress.

There is no coordination in their touches, in the clash of their tongues, no questions, no second-thoughts – they would leave it for other days, for sobriety, for dark hours when they would have nothing but. The ale dulls their inhibitions, and Loki tastes Thor's juice, and Thor, slack-jawed, stares at the slender finger between his lips, pulls the pale hand to his mouth and tastes it, too. The hay pricks at their skin, sticks to them and steals into their mouths as they roll against each other, dazed by the savor of ale, sweet and bitter, and of their own taste – this will forever stay with them, in every moment they share, in every kiss and sin, the sweetness and bitterness of it. The saltiness that dries everything in their throats.

When they come, it shakes them deeper than the ale should let it. There is no place for consideration when they lick off the mess they created, the mixture of the liquid on each other's abdomen. Even through the vertigo in their heads they realize how they crossed a line for good.

It is then that Thor jolts up and empties out the content of his stomach, as though a last attempt to get rid of the bitter, the sweet and the taste of his brother too, but it's too late. It's always been too late since an old ink-stained day they ventured into the adults' realm they knew nothing about.

xiii.
His songs are sharp and witty, flow seamlessly and ring clearly among the walls, and it lifts Loki's heart whenever he sees the people of the great dining hall listen to him with ale-addled eyes. Their laughter reverberates through his bones, unloosing something warm there, something that he recognizes as acceptance, maybe acknowledgment. Maybe this is how it feels for Thor, in every miniscule detail of his life. They ask him for new anecdotes or old sagas to repeat in every feast, his voice flies high and theirs join in drunken unison. In the streets, around the palace his ears catch sometimes the tunes of his songs, hummed unconsciously: a piece of his own doing. It swells his pride. He revels in the discovery of the art of threading clever words for the enjoyment of others.

It is only much later that he would thread them solely for his own amusement.

xiv.
It's not that they have never tried it, never tried to go against their own selves, never attempted to untangle the threads of their fates and follow it back to the roots to weave something different out of them.

The world opens up for them and they are no more the golden princes living among gilded walls and hanging gardens, served and protected and cherished. They meet new people and make friends, some of them bound by tighter, some by looser threads, and it overwrites many things in them.

Human mistakes and defects of character, his own or others', teach Thor how to love. They teach Loki only to hate.

The stories their friends tell them of the world outside, of adventures they might or might not have fabricated for themselves for sheer entertainment, warped as they may be, unwrap something in the princes' minds. There is a sort of understanding dawning on them, of what is expected of them, of normalcy, of traditions. They never talk about it because there is no moment to pinpoint when they finally see the deviant ways of their youth, the wrongness of the affection they have shared with each other. It drives them farther apart, the realization, the shame of it. As if by putting distance between them would make everything undone.

Thor builds a reputation among the maidens of Asgard, and in all honesty, Loki sometimes cannot tell how much of it can be true and what part is only legend. For decades, in the rest of his adolescence Thor collects thongs of broken hearts and sagas of his prowess and insatiety that could fill a tome.

Loki is subtle in his progress, in his hunger, in how he covers his tracks the way Thor would never do. Thor sees value in honesty, no matter what the subject is about. Loki deems it foolish.

His curiosity isn't narrowed only to women, and that alone is a detail to hide. It takes decades to realize the tang of staleness on his tongue.

xv.
Loki wonders if Thor knows the feeling, too. If he knows how it tastes, how it feels, how it sounds. If he recognizes it in every coupling, if it spreads like decay and oozes into the depth of things: the feeling of failure, of everything coming out wanting, lacking. That whoever he lies with, however satisfactory it is, feels wrong. Nobody is right enough – or maybe everyone is the wrong person because there is one they cannot have without knowing now that it's despicable and sinful.

And then, after centuries of tasting and feeling and consuming the wrong, it all comes to a full stop one day.