( Loki can't say he isn't glad for it when Thor finally lets him go. Holding him, being held by him, it stirs up too much of their past, and he can already feel the warring sides of his feelings for Thor beginning to stir into action. There's the side that desperately wants to be able to go back to how things were when they were young, but it's been centuries since it hasn't been swiftly overshadowed by dark clouds of jealousy. Thor is vulnerable, Loki thinks, and he could use that to advantage—but then he hates himself all the more for letting such pettiness into the back of his mind in the first place.

It's exhausting.

When he feels Thor's arms begin to slacken around him Loki has to make a real effort not to sag in relief. The stress is much easier to deal with when he isn't in direct contact with Thor—who seems unable to truly let him go, at the moment, because all of a sudden there's a hand clasping at his shoulder to keep them steadily united. Loki raises an eyebrow, looking long and hard at his brother before shrugging him off with an irritable sigh. It hurts, but it has to be done. )

I am well, no thanks to you.

( And you know? He's just going to work around the part when he claims to have missed him, as well as the part where he lists all the ways in which Thor looks the very opposite of well. His brown eye? His roughly cropped hair? The heaviness in his expression—in his very bones? Loki presses the coin back into the Thor's hand and makes a gesture towards Death's bowl: )

Make the offering. It might seem trivial now, but you may come to regret it if you don't.

( It'll give them both something to focus on outside of the fact that Thor seems on the edge of some kind of emotional collapse. Loki turns from him to look towards the shrine and clasps his hands before himself; a pensive stance, the sentiment of which is reflected in the glassiness that settles over his eyes. He's going to have to do the thinking for the both of them, isn't he?

Some things will never change. )

... Asgard?