I had a weird idea for a Thorki ficlet and I wrote it. Instead of all the other things I’ve been trying to write. My brain has not been very cooperative lately… As should become apparent, this takes place in the canon universe, after Thor: Ragnarok (but before the mid-credits tag scene). The assumption is that Thor and Loki had an established relationship sometime pre-canon; as ever, this fits into my Thorki series (but does not depend on it for comprehensibility).

For mobile readers, there’s a “Keep Reading” link after the 10th paragraph.

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Thor and Loki were sitting in the bed they shared in the captain’s stateroom (nothing suspicious to Thor’s subjects, of course; just doing their bit as brothers to conserve space), reading before they turned out the light: Loki was reading one of the books he always had stashed in a pocket dimension (some of the last remnants, alas, of Asgard’s great library); Thor was looking over the latest supply records to determine how soon they needed to stop and take on food and fuel. Or rather, he had meant to, but something had been preoccupying him for the last few days and he couldn’t hold it back any longer. “Loki, can I ask you something?” he finally blurted out. “And please don’t blow up at me.”

“Always a promising start to a conversation,” Loki said dryly, lowering his book.

“Well, just giving you fair warning.”

“Ask, and then we’ll see.”

“So… you were born Jötunn, right?”

“You really need me to answer that question?” Loki replied, his voice scathing, as he began to raise the book again and turn away from Thor.

“No, that’s not the question,” Thor assured him hurriedly, “that was just… preliminary. You were born Jötunn, but you look like an Ás

most of the time.”

“You look like an ass most of the time, too, but do I comment on it?”

Thor sighed and ignored the jape. “How? Is it a glamour, or…?”

“No, obviously not. It doesn’t fade on contact, as you know intimately.”

“Well, I thought it might have been a very… sophisticated glamour,” Thor said in his own defense, feeling his face heat. “Perhaps one that Father or Mother cast when you were a baby…”

“No,” Loki said shortly. “I’m a shapeshifter. My body changes when it needs to. It changed from Jötunn to Aesir when an adult

Ás

appeared who might save it from starvation; it changed back to Jötunn when threatened with frostbite.”

“But then it changed back to Aesir on its own, not because it needed to.”

“I assume it was because I have worn the Aesir form most of my life. I suppose my body has come to feel that as natural, regardless of how it was born.” The testiness gradually drained from Loki’s voice as he spoke; Thor suspected these were questions he had asked and attempted to answer himself, and he did not truly mind hearing Thor express curiosity about them as well. Perhaps he even welcomed it, secretly.

“Can you… can you choose to shift? Even when you don’t need to?”

Loki looked down at the page of his book, clearly not seeing it. “Yes.”

Eventually Thor would ask how Loki knew; he sensed that there was a story there, but a difficult one, and he would get nothing else from Loki if he asked. Instead he went in a different direction: “Do you think you could shift into other kinds of beings, if you wanted to? A human, for instance, or an Elf?”

“Why the Hel would I want to become a human?” Loki asked, his testiness returning.

“No reason. I just wondered because… well, Aesir and Jötnar are different species, right?”

“Very closely related species,” Loki snapped, sounding defensive. “Really more subspecies, since they can have fertile offspring… well ‘species’ is an imprecise concept anyway.”

“Yes, of course,” Thor said, trying to be soothing. “But their bodies have somewhat different structures, right?”

“Well, yes. Jötnar are adapted to live in a very cold climate. They have thicker skin, layers of fat around their internal organs, more saline blood…”  Loki trailed off. It seemed that he had been seeking safe ground in the recitation of facts from their boyhood biology lessons… but then he had run up against facts that he didn’t want to mention. More intimate facts. His reticence itself was invaluable information.

Thor cleared his throat; he was nearing his quarry, and would have to approach carefully. “Would you say that members of the opposite sex but the same species—or subspecies—are more closely related than members of different species, but the same sex?”

Loki gave him a look that expertly mingled puzzlement, annoyance, and disdain. “What in the Nine are you on about?”

So much for indirect approaches. “Do you think you could shapeshift into a female Ás?”

“I believe the word you’re looking for is ‘jenny.’“

“Oh, will you stop it with the ass jokes? I’m trying to ask a serious question.”

“No. And why are you asking, anyway?” Loki’s gaze turned suspicious, his voice bitter and cold. “Are you having a yen for pussy? I’m afraid cats aren’t in my repertoire; not closely enough related to Frost Giants.”

“No, Loki, that’s not why I’m asking.” Thor put a gentle hand on Loki’s wrist as he moved to raise his book again. “I’m asking because I’m the king of a homeless people and I need to secure the succession. But I don’t want to marry a woman I don’t love just to produce an heir.”

Loki’s mouth fell open. After a few moments of staring in shock, he recovered enough to ask, “What, are you asking me to—to marry you?”

“I… yes, I suppose I am. At least, I’m asking if that’s a possibility.”

Loki shook his head like a dog shaking off water. “Are you mad? Of course it isn’t ‘a possibility’! We were raised as brothers. And yes, everyone now knows we’re not related by blood, but… but everyone still thinks of us as brothers.”

“That’s because we are brothers.”

“You’re making my point for me! So what am I supposed to do? Fake my death again, reappear as some long-lost Asgardian noblewoman? Who coincidentally bears a striking resemblance to your late lamented brother, at least in his Aesir form?”

“No. I want you to marry me as yourself, and wear whatever form you prefer most of the time—male or female, Ás or Jötunn. You’d only need to take on certain—bodily structures when it came time to make an heir.”

Loki shook his head again, slowly. “Clearly you lost your mind along with your eye. Hela took out some crucial part of your brain.”

“On the contrary—I think I see more clearly with one eye than I ever did with two. I can see that love matters more than tradition, more than propriety.”

“Propriety? Thor, we’ve been over this. Your subjects wouldn’t just look askance; they’d overthrow you. Possibly literally. As in, out an airlock. And me with you.”

Thor smiled. “You know, I think the people of Asgard have learned to be much more accepting of novelty in recent months. And I believe many of them have also learned that love matters more than tradition.”

Loki opened his mouth again as if he wanted to say something, then closed it again, looking thoughtful. When he spoke again, it was to say, “I don’t even know if I can turn female. Or bear children in that form.”

“Only one way to find out, no? And if not… well, cousin Balder managed to escape Asgard. He was always Father’s backup heir, in case we fucked up too badly.”

Loki snorted. “Long live King Balder, then, because we are deeply, deeply fucked up.”

Thor chuckled and put his palm on Loki’s cheek, tucked a stray hair behind his ear, then let his hand come to rest behind his neck. “Perhaps… but I think we are becoming less so every day.”