thotki:

3. Modern AU and
85. Innocent physical contact

No, you’re the best!

The Borson brothers as we must call them because human au Odin can’t be Odin Odinson yaknow have always been close. The Borson
brothers have always been… let’s euphemistically say “unusual.” As kids, you
couldn’t pry them apart. They horsed around a lot, sure, but they also just
kind of clung to one another, like octopi.

Loki’s a year younger than Thor, but when their parents
enrolled him in pre-k the teacher and the principal met and suggested he be
moved up a grade because he was too advanced for the lessons, and his boredom was
turning him into a troublemaker. Not that it had much work to do to get him
there. And not that that’s cured by the reassignment lol. The first day he joined
Thor’s kindergarten class, he and Thor were able to glue themselves together at
school just like they did at home, and they became a pair of holy, inseparable
terrors.

They were also quite taken with playing house, and sneaking
out of bed at night to visit the each other’s rooms. It was very cute, until it
wasn’t: time didn’t extinguish it naturally, and Odin and Frigga had to gently tell
them that they were getting too old to sleep in bed together, and play
husbands, and things like that.

The correction doesn’t stick: they grow out of playing
house, but they find other ways to be inappropriate.

They enter puberty. Neither of them discovers girls, or boys;
they’re too preoccupied with one another to go looking. They spend afternoons
sitting in the backyard, Loki leaning against the big, oak tree, Thor’s head in
his lap, reading aloud to him. They barge into one another’s rooms without knocking.
They fight a lot, and a strange tension develops between them, and even then, they
can’t stay away from one another, and when they make up it’s very tender, and
there’s more touching: caresses, overlong hugs, that sort of thing.

Odin and Frigga give up on making them stop or even
encouraging them to be more discreet. Everyone round town becomes used to it. There’s
nothing untoward happening, as far as they can tell. That’s just how the Borson
brothers are.

They go to the same college, and room together, of course,
and they don’t break any old habits. They nod off together on couches in the
study lounge, exhausted from staying up all night writing essays; when they go
out with a big group of friends to do stupid, ill-advised college kid shit and
everyone has to pile into one car to drive to the weedman’s house or whatever
and there’s not enough room, Loki doesn’t hesitate to sit on Thor’s lap; the
top bunk in their room goes unused: they’re thrilled that they have a private
space and can sleep in the same bed without their parents getting on their
case.

When they go out and meet new people, they’re frequently
mistaken for a couple; they’re so casually intimate. They laugh off the
mistake. It’s kind of funny, isn’t it? and that no one understands their
relationship is a testament to how strong and special it is.

They’re still fighting a lot, but things are good until
someone ruins it for them. At a party one night, alcohol loosens a classmate’s
tongue and she tells them there are rumors circulating around their friend group
that they’re fucking and. Well. It’s one thing for strangers who don’t know
they’re related to assume they’re dating, that they can joke around about,
because it simply isn’t and can’t be true and so whatever. But for their friends
and other people they know to suspect funny business? It occurs for the first time,
to both of them, that they could be doing such a thing, actually, as brothers.

And they both realize, privately and separately, that that’s
what they want. And it frightens them, and they both subconsciously pull back
from one another, each of them thinking he’s doing the other a favor, thinking
they need to spend some time apart to stomp down on this shocking new sentiment.
For the first time, Loki sleeps on the top bunk (neither of them gets much rest).

They spend a week like that: avoiding not just one another’s
touch but one another’s presence, when possible, even when inconvenient, staying
apart all day and arriving back to their room separately, late at night, and
going to bed separately.

And they’re both miserable. Really really really sad. Some absolute
Morrissey shit.

Thor is the first one to crack. He spends Friday night
getting tipsy thanks to Tony’s generosity and fake ID, and while he starts drinking
to distract himself, it turns into more of a confrontation. He realizes he can’t
go on like this, and pretty much bolts up and sprints back to his room.

Loki’s there, alone, and he seems to have had the same idea.
There’s a nearly-empty bottle of nasty gas station wine on his desk.

“Thor,” he says, rising to his feet, and Thor never wants to
hear Loki sound so guilty when he says his name ever again. “I need to study
for bio—” as if he fucking could, in this state “—I’ll just go to the library—”

“No, please,” Thor says, reaching out and cradling his
brother’s face in his hand. “Don’t leave me.”

Loki leans into the touch and the dam breaks. They just
kinda… paw at one another lol. They invade one another’s personal space, and
the invasion is welcomed and quickly surrendered to. They stroke each other’s
faces, necks, arms, chests. They build up to a kiss, and it’s just pretty
innocent, actually, a brush of Thor’s lips against the corner of Loki’s mouth.

When they fall in bed, they just cuddle and go to sleep. In
the morning they have their “first time.”

Send me two (2) tropes from this list + a ship and I’ll describe how I’d combine them in the same story.