[Thor and Loki] catching up

[st_ratagem]

The agreed-upon drinking together 'next week' had turned into more than two weeks of very little of Thor. It had been relaxing, more or less, but Loki had gotten used to his brother being underfoot on a regular basis. That he all but disappeared was... odd, for him, enough that the reminder of his promise to drink with Thor in hopes that 'maybe you'll be less cranky' had come as a relief. (Also a relief: the reminder had been about drinking, not about his promise to talk about the frog thing. Not that he wouldn't! Just that it wasn't something he looked forward to.)

As he had the last time, Loki just settled to wait for Thor to show up. Also like last time, he waited to see if Thor would actually knock or if he'd just appear; whether he translated an invitation as 'I don't have to knock'.

Comments

[st_ratagem]

“You probably don’t have to wait on me if you want snow,” Loki pointed out, then took another drink. A certain radius of cold air and that burning-cold touch, those clearly were entirely innate, they tended to just happen whenever he forced Odin’s enchantment away and assumed frost giant form. The rest involved training and knowledge that he didn’t have and had little resource to correctly guess.

Frustrating. “It’s likely to take me a while.”

[st_ormbreaker]

"Thor leans over and pats his brother on the back. The pat is less tough, less energized than it normally is.

"We have plenty of time," he says. Or at least he hopes. He settle back in his chair and goes back to looking out at the rain. "Just keep at it."

Thor goes back to nursing his drink.

"I'm trying to figure out father's powers," he says. "My powers now, I suppose."

[st_ratagem]

“Well outside your wheelhouse.” Odin’s main stock in trade had been knowledge of all kinds, including foreknowledge. A hard road. “Better you than me, and I wish you luck.”

[st_ormbreaker]

Thor lets out a laugh at that.

"I thought you wanted to be king of Asgard," he says.

[st_ratagem]

“I never wanted to be king. I wanted to be equal. I wanted to be good enough.” As opposed to what he actually was, which had felt like ‘nothing to anyone’. He’d pursued it badly, letting anger and grief at betrayal run the show, but on that one point Loki was clear: he was more than fine with not being king. “Later, I wanted to spoil Odin’s work.”

[st_ormbreaker]

On some level, Thor understands it; when he was younger, he wanted his father's approval. He only grew out of it when he began to feel like he knew better than his father.

And unfortunately, that eventually caused an entirely different problem that resulted in him being stripped of his power and cast down to Earth.

On the other hand...

"I don't understand why anyone else's opinion matters to you," Thor says. "You wouldn't believe it if someone told you you were good enough, anyway."

Thor finishes his drink and sets it down on the table.

[st_ratagem]

Loki shrugged, pulled another bottle out of over there, and passed it to Thor. “Believe me or don’t, brother. I didn’t say I still want that.” Certainly it all hurt less, or he’d adapted well enough to make no difference.

[st_ormbreaker]

"Then what do you want now?"

Thor opens the bottle and takes another swig, watching his brother carefully.

[st_ratagem]

“Nothing.” In the larger sense, anyway. There were littler motivations like the ice magic or the daily and weekly tasks he set himself that still existed. “Why, are you worried what I’m up to?”

[st_ormbreaker]

"Should I be?"

[st_ratagem]

"It's not a bad idea in general. At present I'm not up to anything." Loki paused, mock-considering as he downed more vodka, then amended his statement to, "I'm not up to anything unusual."

[st_ormbreaker]

Thor tilts the mouth of his bottle towards Loki.

"If you're up to something usual, then you're up to no good." Thor gestures to his eyes, then gestures at Loki. "I've got my eye on you."

He cracks a smile at his usage of the word eye. If you're going to spend the rest of your days with one eye and one synthetic one, you might as well be good-humored about it.

[st_ratagem]

"Oh, you think that worries me? You wouldn't even know what I'm not up to if I hadn't said anything." Yes, it was nonsense, but that was how conversations with Thor went sometimes. It was pleasant enough, especially as a method of shifting subjects a little to the side. "My plots guard themselves."

[st_ormbreaker]

"Plots," Thor repeats. "I'd rather you be into scheming. Your plots get me in trouble. Schemes at least seem like they'd be harmless."

Or mostly-harmless. Thor's pretty sure Loki would find a way to make a scheme harmful.

[st_ratagem]

"You'd be bored without trouble. This is me being helpful, brother." It usually wasn't, and there actually weren't any plots. At the moment. But it was never a bad idea to keep options open, in case something happened that he could claim was on purpose.

[st_ormbreaker]

"I'm still plenty bored with you here," he points out. Not all the time, but there were definitely moments where Thor was restless and had nothing to do and was desperate for any sort of distraction.

[st_ratagem]

"It's entirely possible that's all part of the plot." Who knew? It might be.

[st_ormbreaker]

"Now you're just trying to annoy me."

And it's working.

[st_ratagem]

He was. And it was working. "That doesn't sound like me. Are you sure?"

[st_ormbreaker]

"I've been good tonight," Thor points out. "You should be nice to me."

[st_ratagem]

“How am I not? Change the subject if you don’t like this one.” You should be nice really ought to have been answered with have you met me? But that was a boring argument.

[st_ormbreaker]

"You're intentionally annoying me, for one." Maybe Loki wasn't, but he couldn't be sure. "But if we're going to change the subject, we really should talk about father."

And what better time than when they're drinking?

[st_ratagem]

Oh good. Loki drained his bottle, set it on the table, then pulled out a second. "If we have to."

[st_ormbreaker]

"I told you this already, but at the end of it all, he told us that he loved us," he says. Their father had never been one for sentiment, never been the sort of person to say things like I love you.

He'd said it before, but those occasions had been few and far between.

"I loved him too, but I'm still angry. Angry about him keeping all those secrets. About throwing Hela in hell. I think about how he cast me out, banished me and I wonder if he just gave up too easily."

Thor takes a long drink, then sets the bottle down.

"Or maybe not. She was wild, angry. Killed all the Valkyrie back when she was free. There might have legitimately been no way to stop her."

[st_ratagem]

Thor had said it before, yes, and some sad little part of Loki still wanted to believe it. But most of him, the icy practical part still murmured he was talking to Thor and made things plural just for convenience. It wasn't out of character, the old man was as much a manipulator as Loki was. "Seeing as how you yourself told me you... we had to blow up Asgard to stop her in your past, I expect banishment was the light sentence for all concerned."