[ Loki stiffens in the embrace, every new tenderness awakening in him yearnings that he has learned to thrust deep beyond the encasement of ice that his heart has become. Yet Thor's arms are the foundation upon which he had once stood to drag his fingertips through the sky. If the winter had given Loki life, then it had been Thor who had made life more than an endless search for victuals and firelit warmth. ]

Can the sun and the moon hide away? Do the stars know to sit upon their thrones?

[ Still, his hands slide down the smooth grain of wood, until they drop away entirely to rest over Thor's own. After a moment of silence — not hesitation, but a gathering of will, a steeling of a mind accustomed instead to icy gyre and black rime — he presses his fingers between, twining the hands of winter and summer with true meaning for the first time in a millennium. ]

No. [ says Loki, before Thor can offer an answer. He is twisting in Thor's arms, suddenly, his hands a white flash of motion before they settle upon Thor's bearded cheeks.

Oh, the difference between them — the ruddy golden flesh against the paper-thin white. Even the cruelty of winter's frost is a meager defiance. ] You are a king. Even at the perilous summit of my anger, I have never wished it any other way.