Rieke's fandom stuff

“Loki—”

Loki jumped as though electrocuted and dropped his phone. In perfect unison, both brothers dove for it. With a resounding crack, their skulls collided. Loki cursed and clutched his head, curling on the deck chair, while Thor scratched his scalp and picked up the phone from Stark’s patio rug. He caught no more than a glance of a Reddit thread before Loki snatched it from his hands.

“What do you want?” he snapped, staring at Thor with wide eyes and clutching the phone to his chest.

“Uh …” Thor looked from the phone to Loki and back. “Tony ordered too much pizza. Do you want leftovers?”

Loki glared for a moment longer, then he collapsed back into the recliner as though the air had gone out of him.

“I do,” Loki said. He was still rubbing his head, looking out over the illuminated New York skyline. It was a stunning view. The most expensive one in all of Manhattan, if Thor had to guess. “That would be lovely.”

Thor sat down on the opposite side of the fire pit on the balcony of STARK Tower. He leaned over to go through the icebox and pulled out a bottle of the craft lager Tony had bought for the occasion, popping it open on the side of the massive wood end table. He offered it to Loki.

Loki took it reluctantly. “I can’t believe you’ve been living like this. While unemployed.”

Thor shrugged and took a drag from his bottle. “It’s not too late. We still have the moving truck, we can pack everything back and put you in the spare room.”

Loki scoffed. “To live in Stark’s basement?”

“I have a whole flat,” Thor said with a grin. “He has too much space, anyway.” If he was being honest, Thor thought that Tony got lonely at the top of his tower. Thor hadn’t been the only border Tony had taken in—he had shared the flat with a scientist friend of Tony’s for a while, and Clint had only moved out last week. Tony always pretended to be annoyed with them all, and got nervous and irritable when people didn’t make use of the common room that separated Tony’s and the guestrooms.

Loki worried the label of his beer bottle, sliding the paper off the wet glass and folding it under his thumb. Thor knew Loki wasn't thrilled with the apartment he could afford on his entrance-level salary—and had Loki been working in anything but real estate, he wouldn’t have been able to afford a flat without roommates at all—but it was better than living back at home by miles. Loki’s phone buzzed, and he jumped to mute it. “I appreciate the offer, but I like my privacy.”

“You always have,” Thor said, drew a breath to speak—and hesitated. Though it had been on his mind since Loki had announced he’d move to New York, he hadn’t come up with a plan to broach the topic.

“What?” Loki asked, mildly annoyed.

Thor burst out, “You didn’t quit because of me, did you?”

Loki looked briefly put out, then made a noise of disdain. “Not everything is about you, Thor.”

Thor laughed, chastised and still unconvinced. He took a long drink from his bottle.

Thor had abandoned Asgard Construction and Real Estate LLC, quitting his master's degree in civil engineering three years prior. It hadn’t been an easy decision. He loved his father, but working with him had been suffocating. No matter how disappointed Odin looked when he went home for the holidays, Thor could not regret turning his back on the family business. Could not regret floundering his way through finding out who he was, what he liked, what he wanted to do with his life.

And he hoped that it hadn’t played a large role in Loki’s choice to pack up and leave after working at Asgard for a single year.

“What did Dad say?” Thor asked, prying while trying not to pry.

“I’m sure you can imagine his reaction perfectly well,” Loki said with put-on levity. “No matter how he complains, he’s fine. Hela will continue his miserable work of putting people out of their homes and livelihoods.”

Thor’s mood soured. “That’s not what he does.”

“Isn’t it?” Loki’s voice was soft and bitter. Then he shook his head, ever so slightly, and he sighed. He looked at Thor with … not kindness. The kind patience with which one corrected a child’s misconceptions. It rankled. “You never saw what precedes the construction. You never watched him drive people away.” Loki leaned his chin on his fist, and wistfully looked out over Manhattan. “When I only ever saw the results, I used to think Asgard was the greatest place in the world.”

Thor drank and watched Loki. He looked miserable and tired in the low light. “I’ve seen it.”

Loki looked at Thor with just a hint of hope. “I doubt it.”

“No matter how you insist on it, I’m not stupid,” Thor said. “But I don’t think he knows … he doesn’t know what harm he does.” Odin saw the profit and the marketability of marble and concrete, of cleanliness and luxury. Odin gladly lived in the world he created and never looked back.

Loki laughed at that, softly. “If he doesn’t, then he must be blind in both eyes.”

**

They sent Loki off with a stack of pizza cartons, courtesy of Tony Stark throwing Loki’s moving party. Loki even let Thor hug him, though reluctantly.

Loki wrinkled his nose. “Thor, you’re not nineteen anymore. You have to stop using Axe body spray.”

“Make me.” Thor tousled his hair, just to see Loki’s annoyed face. “Get out of here before I put you up in the guestroom.”

Loki stuck out his tongue, picked up the stack of boxes, and made his way to the car. Arms akimbo, Thor watched the Uber pull away and vanish into Manhattan traffic.

“Feeling protective, are we?” Tony asked flatly. He was leaning in the exit to the stairwell, hands in his pockets, encased by golden light. Thor could never tell whether Tony was joking or genuine.

“I don’t like the neighborhood he’s in.”

Loki had never lived alone before. Over the course of a few months, Loki had upended his life, moved back in with their parents, and then found a new job in New York. Thor would have liked to be there for Loki while he was going through … whatever crisis he was currently experiencing. He’d been hopeful when Loki had asked for Thor’s help with moving. It felt like Loki was trying to get back in touch.

“Yeah, me neither,” Tony sniffed and scratched his nose. “Which is why we—you and me—have to talk, since your baby brother just did something enormously stupid, and I’m not CPS. Meaning, I’m not going to save him from his own decisions, but someone probably should.” He stopped and watched Thor’s mouth fall open in confusion. “Jesus. I can’t believe I’m doing this. If Pep wasn’t blindly in love with you—seriously, I think she’s going to leave me for you—I wouldn’t be doing this. So you can thank her for—”

“Tony!”

“—making both of us incredibly uncomfortable. Actually—”

“What has Loki done?”

“—thank your brother, this is his fault.” Tony turned on his heel, and Thor ran to catch the door before it fell shut. “The point is, I’m not going to talk to him.”

“Tony,” Thor's voice deepened with warning as he followed him into the elevator. It was the private one, the only one leading all the way up to the penthouse, zipping smoothly past the administration and R&D of STARK Industries.

“Okay, so,” Tony said, not looking at Thor, and shoved his hands into his pockets. “Yeah. Wow.” His eyes darted from one corner of the elevator to the other. “How old is your brother?”

“Twenty-four,” Thor said without thinking. “Why?”

Tony deflated. “Okay. That’s slightly better. Young twenties, you know? Once you hit forty, they all look the same.” Tony cleared his throat. The elevator doors pinged open. Tony made a beeline for his bar, with Thor on his heels. “He just made a post in a Reddit forum, asking to be raped.”

Thor took one step out of the elevator and froze. He replayed that sentence in his head. “Wha—” He shook his head, trying to understand what Tony meant. “Did he … what did he … say?”

“Oh, you know how those go.” Tony grinned and poured two glasses of something amber and highly alcoholic. “‘Hi, I’m new in town, I’m looking for someone to break into my apartment, tie me up, and have their merry way with me.’”

Thor managed to be both increasingly horrified and confused. “No, I mean, what did he … what did he say? What exactly—”

“Yeah, drink this first.” Tony pushed the glass at Thor and slammed back his own drink. “J, if you could pull up the post, please.”

Thor picked up the glass with some hesitation. The TV screen in the seating area switched on to show a Reddit post. Thor had been on Reddit—mostly for questions on plumbing and roofing—but he had never heard of that subreddit before. Then again, he wasn’t … into …

What the hell?

“Loki wrote that?” Thor asked numbly. He had moved closer to the screen. He felt like he was going to be sick.

“So, yeah. As I said,” Tony muttered, well into his second glass of liquor. “TD;LR, ‘Please rape me, I’m into that. Text me for my address. Men preferred.’”

Thor hadn’t even known that Loki liked men. (He refused to think about the rest of that post.) “How do you even know that’s Loki?”

“So,” Tony said. “Do you know how the internet works?”

“Yes?” Thor suddenly wasn’t sure that he did.

“Okay, you can think of JARVIS as a very fancy router. If you type in a URL, JARVIS redirects you. Meaning, by necessity he has to read the URL.” Tony shrugged, as though that was something Thor should have expected.

Thor did a quick mental review of the pages he’d visited since moving in with Tony Stark. “You’re watching what I do on the internet?”

“No. No, no, no.” Tony held up a finger. “I just asked J to keep an eye on suspicious activity for the whole building. And aren’t you glad that I did?” He gestured to the screen, eyebrows raised.

“No!” Thor snapped, “I’m not glad, Tony!”

“Hey, if he’d been smart enough to use an app or a messaging service, I’d never have known. I’m not trying to read your text messages. Okay?” Tony held up both hands. “Jarvis just checked the post when Loki made it, then reported when the algorithm detected likely harm. Self-harm, in this case. You can one-hundred percent believe me that I have no interest in knowing what you look at in the privacy of your rooms. Okay?”

“Right.” Thor made the informed decision to never again connect to Tony’s Wi-Fi.

Tony cleared his throat. “Look. This is a thing between consenting adults, I don’t care about any of that. Okay? Just maybe impress on him that he shouldn’t hand his address to strangers on the internet. New York isn’t exactly Pleasantville, Bumfuck Nowhere. Or wherever you guys are from.”

Thor didn’t bother to correct him. He collapsed onto the couch and put his face in his hands. He peeked through his fingers at the screen. There was a single reply to Loki’s post so far:

Way to flood your inbox. If you want to pay for this stuff, try the links in the faqs.

Thor felt like he was going to be sick. He couldn’t look at the stupid, dangerous message that Loki had thought to put out onto the internet. “Turn off the TV.”

The screen went dark, and Thor finally took a sip of his drink. Bourbon. Really good bourbon, too. He drank it in a few quick gulps, not caring that it probably cost as much money as Thor used to make in a month.

“Can you take it down? The post?” Thor asked. Tony, tech CEO and probably the richest man on the planet, had been involved in building large parts of the internet. Thor didn’t know where his power ended, and he wasn’t sure that he wanted to know, either.

Tony laughed softly and sat down on the other end of the couch, arm flung over the back. “I can. But he’s just going to post the same thing again.”

Tony was right, of course. If this was something that Loki was determined to seek out, then he’d find a way. Hell, he was already getting upvotes.

Thor imagined Loki, alone, handing someone the keys to the first flat he’d ever owned. Imagined someone pushing him down and forcefully having sex with him between the empty boxes that Thor had helped him unpack this afternoon. Imagined them beating him, imagined Loki crying, imagined none of his neighbors caring if Loki called for help—

“Please, take it down,” Thor begged around the lump in his throat.

Tony was quiet for a moment longer, then shrugged. “Sure. J, can you look into contacting … who do we contact for this stuff?”

“I’m on it, sir,” JARVIS’s disembodied voice replied dutifully.

“Thanks,” Tony said. He refilled Thor’s glass without asking. “Anyway. He’s a smart kid, right? He’s going to figure it out. He’ll be fine.”

“Yes,” Thor said at length, staring at Tony’s pristine, white shag carpet. The kind that didn’t leave burns on your knees.

There really was no way around it. Thor had to talk to Loki before he got harmed in ways he didn’t want to be harmed.