Across The Nine

Rules:
+ Warn the other about a plot change while wrapping up the previous one as quickly as possible.

Thor stirs the brandy around the small glass cylinder, once, another time, the ice clinking quietly against the cup. The glasses themselves were laid upside down on the hotel end table, provided by the housekeepers. The bottle of liquor, Thor presumes, is a hospitality of his brother's doing. Perhaps he is foolish for not attempting to locate traces of magic between the bubbles, and if not seidr, at least intentions. He feels... relaxed. The shape of the other male in the corner of his eye does not draw any alarm.

"Loki, come here," he entreats, resting the glass on the armchair. He's looking out from the 13 story window of their room, eyes darting from stoic white lights to streaks of colored flares that travel through the streets. "What do you think?" he asks, motioning towards the life below. "This city. Do you want it?"

From where Loki hid in the shadows the city below was a wash of neon and life, buzzing with the energy of a thousand stars. And yet for the first time in forever he was restless in the dark. With each clink of ice in Thor's glass, "Donated" kindly by the local liquor store, anxiety rippled through his chest. The darkness was slowly wrapping itself across his neck.

“This city,” Loki stepped out of the shadows, the dark red of his shirt gloating hotly against his pale skin, “Can burn.”

But there was a smile set to his lips as the neon bounced off of the walls and into the abyss and he came around Thor, hands fluttering over the the larger’s shoulders in ancient patterns that astounded even the constellations from where they hid. Golden seider trickled like honey down his fingertips to glaze the girth below and he chuckled, cruel and relentless. “What do you think?”

A rumble of recognition comes from Thor's chest; he reaches up a set of thick fingers and wraps them around Loki's slim hand, the golden bands looped below his knuckles made cold by the chill of the hotel thermostat. Thor is lost, for a minute, captured by the pleasurable sting of his brother's syrupy touch. It borders on burning his flesh, seeming to hint at the flames he could throw, should he wish to breathe greater power into his palms.

"From up here?" Thor asks conspiratorially, turning again to gaze through the expansive window pane. "To send a cast of lightening into one of those transformers-" he slurs lightly, pointing a finger at the electrical structure of the streets. "Or for you to pour your fire out the window and onto their heads. And we could watch them run, safe above them, not knowing the source of their suffering."

He leans back and smirks, tilting his head to the right. "Or are you unchanged, brother, and wish to contort their bodies one-by-one, meticulously?" He hisses at the magic doing this to him right now.

"Well, well, well." Loki gasps them on breathy inhales of joy.

His smile is sharp as he circles around to the front side of Thor, praising himself on a spell so finely tuned. He can feel the static vibrate in the room, leaping out and touching everything it possibly can in small spurts of frequency, and he swears he can feel the city shudder with him at its unrefined chaos. Gently he takes the glass away from his brother, deciding that anymore would surely overdo it, to set it back down into its home on the nearby table. How many times had he done this?

How many times had he lured his brother in with promises of peace and prosperity only to ensnare him like a rabbit in a trap? How many times had he tied himself up taught in Thor's presence and writhed with the force of it? Too many. With a frown he brings himself down to make eye contact with the diety before him.

"I don't think I like this side of you after all." Loki's words travel the distance between them to tuck the stray hairs behind Thor's ears. "Let's fix that."

Thor leans up, craning his neck while his body stays seated on the leather chair. He looks at Loki from below, and though he isn't quite kneeling the way he was always asked to, he imagines what Loki must see now: his blurred, red-rimmed eyelids, flashes of white heat that flicker with the possibility of storming over. Is it frightening? he wonders to himself, although no, he resolves, it is not scary to know what he can use his powers for. He will always give Loki a show greater than what he is truly capable of.

"Oh, this?" he queries, amused. "The destruction? Is this my brother, standing before me, asking for me to not destroy for him?"

The sight of Loki framed by the beacons of color in the city comes off as more beautiful than anything he's ever seen the other dressed in, including his wiry frame fluttering within those thin tunics when he used to spread himself through the grass with a pile of books. Thor reaches out and puts his hands on Loki's sides, gazing hesitantly at him.

Thor's hands are warm on his hips and full to their calluses with the spell that Loki had crammed into them. There's something new thas buzzing underneath of his own spell, a hurricane that stands up every hair on the back of his neck in anticipation with its landfall. Suddenly he feels three feet tall and adolescent again before his brother, a flush of hot red usurping his cheeks. By no means had Loki taken Thor as weak, unable to see that he was being manipulated, but indeed he had hoped that he was ignorant to the true intentions that were laced through thinly sewn alibis.

Yet Thor knew.

And for how many years?

He sits, timid and hasty, straddling Thor's lap and attempting to maintain his own composure and he can feel city laugh at him from behind as he desperately tries to remember the incantations for control and dominance as they bleed through his cracks onto Thor's broad lap.

"Is it not what you desire after all this time?" Loki mumbles as he traces the stubble that lines Thor's jaw with a siedr unsteady enough it could cause the realms to converge. "How would you rule me?"

For a moment, Thor arches his neck and allows himself to simply fall into the warmth of his brother. The fingertip that Loki draws along his jawline sends him shivering, heat flaring down his neck and across his ears. He parts his mouth to speak and the sound of his wavering breath is palpable.

"I desire you," he thunders, wrapping his arms about the younger's waist. "All this time, I have been watching you create yourself. Desperate to help. And been helpless to the struggling it caused you."

Without warning, he quickly grasps his brother and twists him around so that Loki's back is pressed to his chest, made to be strewn on his lap and looking down at the sleepless city. "But I would topple these buildings for you, brother," he promises, "Not then, when you needed me to, but now that you don't."

“You’re a fool, I can only destroy.” Loki murmurs and lets himself melt into his brother, an icing dropping down the curves of a cake.

He hasn’t sat on Thor’s lap in what have to be actual ages and it speaks of his muscle memory to run his hands down the larger’s thighs. Thor has always been a natural wonder to him: his size, his attitude, his electricity, and greedily Loki opens his palms to leech off of the powerhouse below him. Of course he could make his own power, his own that was in it’s way was a thousand times more powerful than his borther’s, but it was so much easier to lap it up from the puddle below him.

Squirming against Thor impatience is brewing within him with mad tendrils threatening to burst from his hands. His brother’s power is nearly incompatible with Loki’s heartbeat, small electric shocks leap forward and send it into wild arrhymias that catch his breath. He quivers with the uncertain power, unwilling to admit his fear of it, and shoves his hands behind him and into the safety of Thor’s hair. He leans even deeper into his brother to try and just accept what was below him, to force the pieces together. It was possible, he’d done it before, but the anxiety of the neon lights was wrecking havoc with him. What had happened to the control he’d just hand within his hands? The city was a succubus and stole from him what he had— it always did. He should have known better than to do this here if he wanted to succeed without struggle.

“I’m a monster. Haven’t I always been?” Loki’s words are almost inaudible and quiver against Thor’s cheek with the reverence of a thousand years of living his his brother’s shadow, “There is no creating myself, there is only the struggle before it. Let me be your weapon.”

Your weapon.

Thor steels himself from an oncoming laugh, but even if it were to slip through him, there would be no maliciousness in it. This is simply what he's always wanted, and Loki could not have demonstrated anything more profound. For Loki to offer himself to Thor and stop twisting out of his damn grasp for once. And now he's offering to mold into the very thing Thor should have been for him, back in the days when his older friends mocked the odd, quiet, feline boy who Thor coveted entirely for himself.

There is nothing of the child against his body now. Loki has grown sinewy and lean, wearing his body like a robe to be shed, leaving pure beams of enchantment in his place. Thor looks at him as though he were witchlight, afraid that Loki must only see an oblivious barbarian gaping after his aesthetic rather than his essence.

He breathes out through his nose and passes a hand down the side of Loki's face, fingers tangling through black hair until they come to rest in the curve of his shoulder blade. His other hand snakes beneath Loki's left leg, squeezing his plantaris from below.

"A monster," Thor muses aloud, pressing his lips in the space between his spread fingers on the younger's neck. He is weakened instantly, the contact ripping the energy from his body. With a delicate growl, he bites down to try to subdue the obvious thievery.

"How shall I slay you then?" he demands playfully, shifting his hips so that the other falls deeper into his center. "Tell me about the topography of your edges. Are you scaled? Edged like a longsword? What use have I for a weapon with which I cannot bludgeon?"

Loki gasps at Thor’s advance, enjoying the assault that is being waged through his hair and against his skin. His anxieties begin to subside again with his brother’s familiar touch washing over him in waves of thick indulgence: this is where he’s always belonged, as Thor’s second skin.

He pauses in a second so slim that it almost doesn’t exist, I’m shattered glass on an old linoleum floor.

“You know what I am.” Loki hisses through his teeth with a cruel snort as punctuation.

Another pause, I’m unworthy.

With an almost violent attempt he grabs at what he can reach of the hem of Thor’s shirt behind him, ripping and tugging at it in a desperate search of the buttons. When he finally finds them he snaps them off one by one from the bottom up in a swift rip and then falls back onto Thor’s bare chest, basking in the welcomed heat and sweat that lingers. He shifts his hips up a small bit between his brother’s thighs and smiles deamonically at the ceiling, his chin sharp enough to sever tendons, as he begins work on the stubborn fashion of the deity’s pants.

Never prude, never dismissive of his own impulses, Thor is nothing if not a monster of his own feeding, and his true skin would be nothing of the shimmery silver-blue that Loki takes on when he's becoming himself. He lacks the refined grace of Loki's vengeance; there is nothing enchanting about him when he is beastly. He is beastly now, as he whips his brother around to face him.

And though he isn't one to deny himself, or even reflect on his own monstrosity, he grabs at both Loki's wrists and pulls them away from his waistband, binding them together so that the younger's palms are flared upward, cupping nothing.

Then he lowers his head guardedly, pressing his face into the flat of Loki's palms.

"I know what you are," he agrees, running his features across Loki's fingers and then rolling out of them, so that his chin his held by Loki's hands while his eyes flicker vulnerably, silently begging Loki to look him in the face.

Loki whines, squirming in protest as Thor tears him away from his mission until he meets the storms that brew in his irises. Instantly he's lost, mesmerized by the simple magic that Thor doesn't even realize he wields. The confinement of his brothers lap is a welcomed enclosure and 1Thor, as much as he would love to, has always been impossible to deny. So instead of looking for meaning he looks to get lost in the depth of the cyclones that churn in the elder's eyes, gazing out into a thick trance while his fingers idly spindle around in the taught grasp: if he focuses he can feel his heart beat pounding at the their tips. Safety shouldnt be being pigeon held to his brother's lap, but it is.

"What do you want me to be?" His reply is monotone and having nothing to grab at Thor with he clenches his thighs instead.

"Still," he answers, gaping. "I want you to be still, Loki."

Because as he holds the other's wrists to his cheeks, he can feel the incessant rapidity of a dove-like heartbeat. It flutters against him but instead of warming him with the notion of arousal, it makes him crazy with the concern that Loki is afraid of him.

"Can I kiss you?" he dares, unwilling to raise his voice higher than a rumble.

Thor was a mountain below him, an outcropping of rock on a rough sea, and Loki's trying his damndest to not cling to him like one. He can feel himself drawing away in place of clinging and he's careful not to. Really, he hates the manic punches that limbo brings. But since when did Thor become this lucid-- this all knowing? He's grown Loki thinks, maybe more than he has, and it's a whole new arena of intimidation that surrounds him. Or did Loki let down his own spell rather than Thor fight through it? He can't be sure as he desperately tries to bring himself back down.

Quietly he contemplates Thor's question with his fingers trembling down the sides of the thunderer's face, indulging in the sharp pricks that bring him into and out of reality. He should run at this point. He should dissipate in golden smoke and assemble in some dark apartment across the city where Thor wouldn't find him. But where would the fun be in that, the self destruction?

"I dare you." The threat leaves Loki's tongue as he draws in close to his brother, their noses nearly together.

One arm instantly spills around Loki's waist, drawing him closer. Another invigorated spread of fingers comes to clasp the back of the man's neck. He wants to press his mouth into the crook of Loki's neck and breathe into the cup his collar bones until the the younger can't stand the prompting and teasing and submits all on his own, but...

Thor knows this is easier, to not make Loki ask for it. And easier for him, to not have to wait any longer.

As his lips meet Loki's, parting to take in the soft heat of his brother's mouth, Thor's hand snakes underneath the other's crimson clothing and slides his palm to the small of his brother's back, pressing their chests together in an arch.

Thor remembers other dares, weighted with words such as "double" and "triple" to denote where on the spectrum of dogs the challenges fell. He remembers lapping water out of a shallow stream in mud to prove his boldness and climbing a turret of their fortress to demonstrate his masculinity. This one is ten-fold, yet somehow, has proven nothing new.

"What else do you dare me?" he asks goadingly, his words brushing the male's lips.

Merciful. Loki thinks as Thor’s mouth crashes into his, the cavern welcome for Loki to explore and hide in. Gently he drags his fingertips from the stray tendrils of golden hair all the way down the mountain’s chest to rest trembling on his pectorals. This was exhilarating, it was thrilling. It was everything he’d wanted for the past few years. To be back in his brother’s arms, content and unafraid.

Without Thor, Loki had admitted to himself several rancid nights alone, he was nothing. He wasn’t even fog that lay ethereal upon the ground. He was empty, an abyss of molecules that vibrated senselessly. But here he had a purpose. Here he had a mission, a task, a goal. Thor had always been his goal. Through the countless years of ridicule of his hair, his words, his preferred studies. “Loki’s so scrawny”, “Loki’s such a coward”, “Loki looks nothing like an Asgardian”. And yet on the horizon sat his brother: perfection in a sunset, the purple and gold rays that danced across the sky in a flurry of strength and inspiration. He would be the darkness that came after, then. He would be the reign of shadows across the land.

But even that he so often failed at.

With a gentile sigh Loki smiles into Thor’s mouth. Failure’s sickly sweet when it’s laced with the kind of approval that bleeds from a God’s skin. He brings a hand under Thor’s chin to pinch him slightly and pull him back. If he isn’t the darkness after Thor, he supposes that the next best thing is to be the thorn in his back.

“What else?” Loki muses diabolical in tone, “I dare you to take me, but not yourself.”

Trying to stifle a cackle he sinks into Thor’s groin and pokes his nose with a finger as he has so many nights prior, wine drunk and giddy with adolescence. It was different now, though, with the passing of time. It was much more fun when they might get caught by their peers or family, now, only the city watches unjudging and numb to their actions. With a free hand he pulls back on Thor’s hair, exposing the curves of his neck without a hint of apology. He draws in close here, at home in his positioning, and grazes his lips across the God’s neck eager to partake in his spirit.

The riddle clunks through Thor's head, tumbling into a bothersome place. He wonders after Loki, those particular words bringing to light the times that Thor has only taken himself. Sometimes back to Asgard alone, with a brother stranded on Midgardian rocks. It troubles him for a minute, until Loki's lips find his neck, and the words melt down the cracks of his mind like warm butter.

Then Thor does take him.

He hinges his arms under Loki's thighs to support him and gets up from the chair, clinging his brother close. He stumbles with the weight of a God for a few feet to the gloss-coated table and plants Loki onto its surface, the man's legs hanging of its edge.

He makes as though pulling into an embrace, leaning forward into the table, but then his hand comes back with the glass of brandy, permitting himself a sip before sinking between the other's knees.

"Take you how, this time?" he invites, putting the cup down. Each hand runs up Loki's calves where they inevitably linger on the convex of his kneecaps. "Like when we were boys, fumbling into our own bodies, let alone each other's? That was hardly pleasure, don't you agree?"

It never mattered the situation, being lifted by Thor was always one of Loki's favorite things. In the few seconds that he's airborne he plasters himself to Thor, around his neck, and tries in desperation to find a suiting spot for his lips. But by the time he's on the table he hasn't hit a good mark. He leans back onto his hands as he sits idly, swinging his feet while Thor makes himself comfortable.

Once he's put the spell back down Loki pushes the vessel closer to Thor and cups his brother's face in his hands with soft certainty, "Surely," Loki feels his face twitch just momentarily, trying to breathe in his new found niche after so long, "You've gotten better at it than that, haven't you?"

Loki dips a hand back down to the waistband of his brother's pants and makes quick work of the button now, being more confident in actually facing the quandary, and glides the zipper down to where he believes it actually belongs to palm Thor through his boxers. His other hand snakes upwards, tangling itself into the golden locks that all but radiate off of his brother for a foothold to pull himself forward.

"I know I have." He whispers into Thor's ear close enough that he's positive his brother can feel his tongue speak.

The hotel room is still dark apart from the thrust-open curtains, permitting red and white flashes to rise up the city. It should be getting darker, but his brother's body seems to absorb the lights and refract them back out again, shards of colored prism that strike Thor where he's most sensitive.

He releases an accidental moan, the suddenness of the touch flashing through him.

He doesn't fail to notice to slenderness of Loki's fingers; that if he were to close his eyes and quiet his mind, he could make himself believe that this body was feminine. Perhaps even spiritless, if he continued to shield his eyes for long enough. He's better at that, that's for certain.

It doesn't work.

With steady hands, he slips under the hem of Loki's shirt, gliding up his abdominal muscles. His head follows, nudging the rest of the fabric out of the way so he can drag his lips from his brother's sternum to his ribs, becoming tongue halfway through.

"Fuck," he soughs again, wringing his bottom lip against the nub of Loki's nipple, the tip of his tongue rolling around the shape. He rotates his hips forward, seeking more touch. The masculine features of Loki's body are undeniable and they make his head more clouded with genuine lust than when he tries to impose the image of a woman upon himself.