RED SWEATER

Thor/Loki - drabble - Loki sneaks into SHIELD to go through Thor's things and gets caught. Fluff

The security at SHIELD is top quality. Really. Loki actually has to come up with an actual diversion and pull two favors before he can get into the facilities without being picked up by the system. He takes a few tentative first steps into the stronghold, waiting for the blare of an alarm, before a grin blossoms across thin lips.

His brother's room is easy to find. There is a security code to the door. Loki's fingers follow a practiced pattern (his second favor) and is granted access with a beep.

He only has a few minutes here but it is also all he can bring himself to indulge in.

The obvious thing to do is done first; he throws the covers to the bed aside and plants himself face-first into the mattress. Loki pulls in a deep breath and it hurts, how much comfort a thing like smell can bring him. He wrenches himself from the covers before the treacherous things pull him to sleep.

There are few garments on Midgard made for Asgardian bodies but apparently his brother deigns otherwise. There is a set of white shirts and blue jeans, as well as a belt. There are socks and a pair of boots, a jacket made out of some barely passable form of leather, but what Loki lifts from the pile is a garnet sweater. The knit is clumsy and the sleeves surely fall short. Yet Loki knows if he lifts it to his face and smells, it will smell like Thor.

Yes. This will do.

He banishes his armor and peels off his tunic, ignoring where the fabric lands. He focuses instead on drawing the ugly red sweater up on and over his head. It catches a bit around the crown of his head but he tugs insistently. He kicks off his boots and sits with his back against the pillows of Thor's bed.

Loki shuts his eyes and breathes.

It hurts, how much it feels like home.

He evaporates and leaves the other demi-god's room a mess when the seven minutes are up and the sensors go back online.

Next time he stays for half an hour. The sensors go off before Loki can extract himself from the room and he curses as he leaves.

The time after that he stays for three hours.

He sneaks in a grand total of eight more times before he's finally caught. He senses the human (they've met before) but does not flee. Loki keeps up the pretense of sleep, however, and lets them draw their own conclusion, whatever it may be.

He's prepared for them to draw their gun, prepared for them to shout and startle him out of sleep, prepared to run.

He's not really ready for the long silence which actually follows.

"You could take it with you," the man suggests, and Loki's eyes snap open, startled by his audacity.

The man seems unbothered by his sharp glare. It's a little disquieting, actually.

"Why would I want to do that?" Loki hisses.

"Just saying," the man says as he turns to leave, as though a top-priority criminal isn't sitting in one of the Avenger's bedrooms wearing his clothes, "Thor has other sweaters. He won't miss one."

Turns out the ghastly garnet thing is actually Thor's favorite and so he does notice when it goes missing. When Coulson visits Thor's room again by daylight he offers what comfort he can to sooth the demi-god's fretting.

"I'm sure it'll come back."

"But I must have it," Thor bemoans, "I wear it every night."

Coulson raises an eyebrow. "You have other sweaters."

A week later Thor has no more sweaters.

Tony increases security while he rolls his eyes (honestly, Thor, they're sweaters. Sweaters. I can buy you seventy in any color you want, who the hell steals a sweater anyway). They get some interesting footage about three days later after Tony has bought Thor a whole dresser full of sweaters.

"I know for a fact that those fire alarms work," Tony says when the video feed cuts off. "Well, at least we know where your red sweater went."

"I don't understand," Thor says as he watches Tony rewind the video, "What does he mean by this?"

"Your guess is as good as mine, big guy," Tony shrugs. "Have you tried asking him?"

In the middle of a fight downtown, as Hawkeye is taking down some hired help, Thor remembers Tony's suggestion and calls out to his brother across the battlefield.

Loki does a pretty good impression of a landed fish before he up and vanishes.

There is a good three weeks between that and the demi-god's next appearance.

Thor jumps when he walks into his room but does not call Mjölnir to him. The thunderer levels him with a questioning gaze as Loki sits in sullen silence with his feet tucked under the covers of his brother's bed. His hair is wild and wind-swept and he looks tired as he probably feels. The red sweater hangs loose at his shoulders but sits snug at his waist and wrists.

"I have missed that sweater."

Loki snorts.

"I don't sleep well without it," Thor continues, as though the bitter edge to his brother's words doesn't sting. Magick crackles in the air around Loki, prickly like a porqupine, but Thor ignores it with all the grace of a bored lion and slides under the covers next to Loki's feet.

"I would sleep better with my sweater, brother," Thor says quietly, and Loki wonders where he learned such subtlety.

"Would you," he murmurs.

Thor presses his forehead to Loki's ankle.

The sweater stays.

Loki stays, too.