His brother bounds into the chambers, hair spun like gold and muscles hot with blood and energy, settling himself in his usual ungainly manner on the settee that Loki loved the most, currently he did not love many things but the canapé was a notable exception, it was one his mother had acquired for him centuries ago, even then, when the moon had been young, when time had moved slowly but faithfully, like his father’s aging steed, but not slowly enough to bore him to tears in his boyhood, his unfathomable idiot of a brother, that buffoon, that overly genial oaf, still wanted a go on the chesterfield, for reasons he could not conjure or fathom even today.
Thor thrusts a haphazardly-wrapped gift into the younger prince’s pale hands, the shape is odd, like one of his or more of his clumsy, cacophonous friends had assisted him in the preparations, and Loki bites back a rare laugh, for Thor may have everything but he would never possess his brother’s finesse or tact, knowing this fact, still, the firstborn continued to love his enigmatic brother in his open, credent way, guileless in the only way he knew how, something that would continue to drive Loki into fits of insanity and tirades of fury for the next thousand or so moons.
Thor parrots madly about how he has always wanted a brother, a companion, and how overjoyed he’d been when their mother had nudged a tiny bundle, wrapped in light, towards him when he was a toddler. Tells stories of their growing-up years together, vaunts and exalts Loki and his tricks and talent, nothing his brother had not heard before, but everything he loved to hear over and over again, like the flowers in Frigga’s garden that bloomed, without fail, every spring, casual in their verdant arrogance, unapologetic in their splendidity.
Loki smiles bashfully at all the right times, blusters and corrects his brother where necessary, though there wasn’t much correcting to do - to the oaf’s credit, he’d remembered much of their boyhood with an accuracy that would have near-threatened Loki had he not been as cerebral as he is today, no matter that both princes had access to the finest tutelage and governors in the kingdom, the younger prince’s slight frame was always found nestled in couches in the library, nose buried in a tome and poring over pages, studying runes and challenging them, only ever lifting his dark head to spew epithets towards his brother who had come searching, barbs he was sure he didn't truly mean, not then, not ever.
Carefully, methodically, he tears at the paper with a measured ease - not too hasteful to let on his curiosity, not too drudgeful to come off as unimpressed, Thor’s smile grows with barely contained alacrity, his brother is impassive until he sees the first sliver of metal, a sliver which reveals itself to be part of something greater, a dagger, commissioned by Thor and welded by the dwarves over twelve arduous days, melded into shape, its form sharpening with each passing moon and refined only against the finest whetstone.
Long, lean and fluid, like its owner, and reinforced with an emerald hilt, Loki turns it over in his bloodless hands, once, twice, once more over, until the silver swims, blurs, coalescing into the green, the sharpness of its lines gone, the hint of metal no longer a trick of the light but a true, tangible thing, an arms, a talisman, given to him by the most incongruous, impudent buffoon in all the nine realms, the oaf whose absence would invariably alter the quality of his life, the blustering idiot he greeted without partiality every morning and thanklessly bade farewell to every night.
The air seeps out of the chambers as he mindlessly turns the weapon over in his hands, his brother chittering about how he’s never seen Loki like this, he’d rendered him speechless, stolen his silver tongue, Sif would not believe this, Fandral would have a field day with this knowledge, Frigga would be overjoyed to know her firstborn had bested the straightest face in all the Nine Realms.
Loki shoves the wrapping out of the way, chest squeezing in a way that did not particularly ail him but did not enjoy either, strangely it seemed congruous with the melee of choice words swirling in his head, he would deal with the inevitable humiliation later, he’d cast a silencing charm on Thor or turn him into a frog again, before his tactile brother can receive him, for once, Loki closes the chasm between them, unthinking of nothing and feeling of everything, leaning, slowly but definitively, towards the figure before him, tentatively, terribly, fully.