
Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/1090767.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Thor_(Movies), Thor_-_All_Media_Types
  Relationship:
      Loki/Thor
  Character:
      Thor_(Marvel), Loki_(Marvel)
  Additional Tags:
      Alternate_Universe_-_Human, Serial_Killer_in_Training, Body_Horror,
      Incest
  Stats:
      Published: 2013-12-20 Words: 1666
****** red, green, gold ******
by cm_(mumblemutter)
Summary
     Loki draws: severed heads, mutilated torsos, a mouth wide open in a
     scream. Bodies strewn about, arms and legs akimbo, drenched liberally
     in blood. All the victims look like Thor.
                                     "But if not you, someone else," Loki says.
                         "No," Thor says. " I won't allow it. I won't let you."
 
                                       -
 
The first time Loki tried to kill him, Thor was sixteen. He woke up near dawn
and there was a knife pressed to his throat, and Loki smiled as he straddled
him, said, "You're so beautiful, Thor. Your blood is as well, I'll bet."
"Get off me, Loki," Thor said then. He shoved Loki off him, but grabbed his
wrist first so he wouldn't hurt himself with the knife.
Loki landed with a huff on the floor, and opened his hand. The knife hit Thor's
bare chest, nicked him with a razor sharp edge. Thor let Loki's wrist go and
picked up the knife, tucked it under his pillow. "Go back to sleep, Loki, I
have practice tomorrow."
He closed his eyes on Loki's small, scrunched up face, scowling at Thor through
his mess of hair.
The cut didn't leave a scar, just a scab that healed soon enough to reveal new,
pink flesh. As if Loki had never even been there.
+
Loki watched him, all the time. "Your brother's weird, Thor," all his friends
said.
"No - he's just different," Thor replied, and after enough glaring they just
shut up and let Thor be. It was none of their business anyway: he was Thor's
brother, Thor's responsibility. No-one else's.
When they were young Loki used to follow him around like a spider monkey,
skittering across the floors on all fours, only to turn tail and run away if
Thor glanced back. Mom said, "He's just going through a phase."
A creepy, skulking phase that Thor didn't think he'd ever grow out of, but he
wasn't the adult so he just kept quiet.
+
The second time Loki tried to kill him they were in college. Loki had
miraculously graduated two years early, got a perfect SAT score. His IQ was off
the scale, everyone knew that.
But they chose the school because of football, because Loki needed Thor around
to function, to keep him from spiraling off the edge.
Thor dreamt he was drowning, and when he woke up Loki had tied a rope around
his neck, and was squeezing, the edges of the rope wrapped around both his
wrists. Thor couldn't breathe, couldn't move, and after a while his vision went
black. The pressure lessened abruptly, and he heaved in great gulps of air,
choking back tears.
"Your tears are beautiful as well," Loki said, and he sounded awed.
Thor knew he was considered handsome, knew he was loved, if mostly for his
skill on the field. It was what it was, and he couldn't change it, just like
Loki probably couldn't change who he was either.
Every single one of Thor's girlfriends, from the time they started to date,
remarked about how different they both were. "Like night and day, or the moon
and the sun."
"The darkness only has meaning because there's light," Loki said once, because
he was always spying on Thor.
Thor didn't understand what he meant, not back then.
+
He met a girl in college. Astrophysics, genius, dark haired and so tiny Thor
could probably pick her up single-handed.
Loki hated her.
He told Thor, "She's beneath you."
"How?" Loki shrugged, because with Loki if he said it he believed it, and it
was not up to him to prove that he was right, it was up to Thor to realize it
as well. "She's the one," Thor said, and watched as Loki's eyes darkened.
There was an accident in the lab, an explosion caused by some faulty valves.
Jane managed to escape with a few cuts and bruises, but they kept her overnight
in the hospital for observation. She looked so tiny in that bed, surrounded by
machines. So fragile and easy to kill.
Thor thought of Loki, skittering around like a little spider monkey.
She cried when he broke up with her, kept asking him why. "It's not you, Jane.
It's me," Thor said, and meant it.
He probably did love her. She probably was the one.
Thor went on a week long bender, woke up in a jail cell with a broken rib and a
busted nose. The university covered it up because he was willing to play
through the pain, and because Dad donated enough money for them to build an
entire new astronomy lab. Thor didn't remember most of it, but apparently he'd
caused thousands of dollars of property damage and punched the dean in the
face.
"He deserved it," Loki said. He took Thor's hand in between both of his, kissed
each knuckle in turn. Thor lifted his other hand, brushed Loki's bangs out of
his face.
His brother was handsome. Pale and sharp featured, with the biggest green eyes.
Why had Thor never noticed before? Was it because no-one else did? Because Loki
hid behind baggy clothes and a mop of hair and this air of oddness that he wore
like camouflage.
"Are you crazy," Thor asked, and it was a rhetorical question, but it also
wasn't.
"Less than you might think, but more than most." Loki's pretty mouth twisted up
into a small smile. "Now you're getting it, big bro."
"Am I?"
"Yup."
+
They started fucking when Dad told Thor over spring break to leave the country,
go explore somewhere, and Thor decided against everyone's advice that Loki
would come along with him.
Everyone except for Mom: she worried for Thor, but she worried for Loki more.
It was just the way it was, and he knew she loved him as well, just not as
deeply, not quite the same.
Loki decided they'd take a roadtrip around Europe, but they somehow ended up in
Iceland, driving around endlessly with no purpose that Thor could discern. Loki
had a map, and he drew on it in red marker pen, told Thor to go here, and here
next, and after that there. Glaciers, black sand, waterfalls and fishing
villages. Thor allowed Loki to choose the music, but he mostly just left it at
a low volume so that he could listen to Loki talk.
"Do you remember being born," Loki asked. It was late, and Thor was barely
paying attention to the road, hoping that Loki hadn't gotten them lost and they
would reach the inn they were expected at soon.
"Of course not," Thor said, and squinted. The snow made the world too bright,
and with the absolute silence outside it was as if they were the only two
people left alive in the world.
"I do. I remember floating peacefully, and then one day my solitude was
shattered by the world, and it was the worst experience of my life. But then we
came home, and they let you hold me for a moment, and I felt safe."
"Don't be stupid - you can't remember that."
"I remember," Loki replied, with quiet conviction. "I think of your insides
sometimes, you know. How warm and slippery they must be, how safe."
The car hit an ice patch as Thor turned to Loki to tell him to shut up, and he
couldn't control the wheel. They spun off the road and onto the ice, came to a
juddering stop right next to a heavy metal post. Thor stared at the pole for a
while, unseeing, and then he started to laugh.
Loki laughed too, said, "That was close. Shit, that was close."
"Yeah," Thor replied, and put his shaking hands to his face. "Fuck."
"Thor," Loki said, and there was a shift in his voice, the one that always
spelt trouble.
"What," Thor asked, wary.
"We're alone," Loki replied. "Truly alone."
Thor lowered his hands. It struck him then, that Loki could kill him here and
no one would ever know, no one would be able to prove anything. Loki was a
consummate liar when he wasn't busy being a freak, he would get away with it,
easy.
But all Loki did, as Thor was calculating his odds, was rise from the seat and
climb into Thor's lap in one smooth motion, grind his hips against Thor's.
"You're so cold," Loki cooed, his hands on Thor's cheeks. "We should keep each
other warm."
That was how it started, but sometimes Thor thought it started much earlier
than that.
Sometimes Thor thought it started the night he woke up with Loki's weight on
top of him and a knife to his throat. Sometimes Thor thought it started even
earlier than that. The night Mom came home from the hospital maybe, told a two
year old Thor, "This is your brother."
And possibly Thor, used to being given things, had assumed that this was
another gift. That Loki was his.
But mostly Thor didn't think about how it started, just that it was.
+
The third time Loki tried to kill him it was poison. Coffee, given in a cup
that read "World's Best Dad" in red, raised ceramic.
Thor woke up vomiting, feverish, with Loki sitting on the floor, an expression
of clinical interest on his face. "What did you do," Thor asked, and heaved yet
again. "Call an ambulance. Loki, for fuck's sake I don't want to die."
It wasn't fatal, the dose, as Loki calmly explained to him when the worst had
passed. "It was a delicate process, measuring out the exact amount that would
still keep you alive but have an effect on you."
He clapped his hands together in glee, and Thor almost punched him then, almost
lost it because it hurt so much, but he managed to control himself.
Punched the wall next to the bed instead, broke three fingers.
"You have to understand," Loki continued, and his eyes were wide, earnest.
"You're my brother. I would never harm you - not really."
"Okay," Thor said, and believed him.
 
                                       -
 
         "Are you going to stop me, then," Loki asks, and he raises an eyebrow.
            "Yes," Thor says, even though he knows he doesn't mean it. "Maybe."
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