Final steps

[st_ratagem]

Loki had spent the last hour or two before sunset preparing, and the first hour afterward. He’d taken ruthless advantage of the fact that the Inn staff was desperate to give people towels and had carefully interwoven the. On the floor such that there was no chance of getting at the actual carpet below without effort. He’d selected a dagger from his collection - a very old one that he hadn’t actively used since childhood, one of a pair given to him by his mother - and sharpened it to an almost perfect edge. He’d opened up the balcony door to let the early-winter night chill in. He’d even out together a little aid kit (disinfectant, pads, bandages, needle and thread) for afterward.

In many ways, the hardest part was settling on the towels with the in-etched staff resting in front of him and forcing Odin’s enchantment away, knowing that he wouldn’t be allowing himself to go back to normal possibly for hours. And that, as soon as Thor arrived with a bowl and his hands, it would all have a witness.

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[st_ormbreaker]

Thor feels something catch in his throat at his brother's words, but he swallows it down.

"If I didn't know any better, I'd think you had faith in me," he says lightly, joking. He hooks his fingers around Loki's to stop them from moving.

[st_ratagem]

“Heavens no. Perish the thought.” Loki’s tone was equally light; this sort of joking was a good way to say things without actually saying them. A must, for the two of them, especially because Loki did, in fact, have faith in his brother. “It’s good to hear you know me better than that.”

[st_ormbreaker]

"That's good," he says, relinquishing his hold on Loki's hands. "Because I'd have to tell you that faith was probably misplaced."

[st_ratagem]

Loki shrugged and snagged another towel to start drying his own hair. Being a completely drowned rat palled quickly, especially when Thor was more or less unfrozen. “You do tend to win eventually. To someone who’s lost nearly every fight to you, faith might not feel like a stretch.”

[st_ormbreaker]

"You're not Thanos," Thor reminds him. His tone is still light as always, and he pulls himself up and onto his knees and pulls the towel out of Loki's hands before he can stop him. He's always been the physically stronger of the two, so Loki has to rely heavily on his other talents.

"Here." He towels Loki's hair off as Loki toweled off him. "We could just get a hair dryer, you know."

[st_ratagem]

“I prefer towels.” Loki closed his eyes to enjoy the feeling, and also to ensure he didn’t get towel in his eyes. He loved hands in his hair, and toweling wasn’t that, but it was... close. “I deal with less, you know,” vague gesture at his head, “poof this way.”

[st_ormbreaker]

"We don't need a hair dryer to make your hair poof," he says. As children, Thor had done it unintentionally all the time.

And sometimes intentionally.

[st_ratagem]

“I didn’t say there weren’t other ways, but don’t you dare.” Loki didn’t twitch, though. If Thor decided to zap, he’d just have to deal with it. “You know how long it takes to fix after that.”

[st_ormbreaker]

"I promise, I won't."

Thor pulls the ends of the towel down on either side of Loki's head and leaves it there, hanging over each shoulder. Thor reaches out and smooths Loki's hair with his hand and true to his word, he does not shock it.

"There," he says as he withdraws his hand. "You look less like a drowned rat."

[st_ratagem]

“I’ll take less like. Thank you.” It took a little effort not to reach up and reorder what Thor had done, but Loki spent that effort gladly. It felt easy to avoid the tiny digs, at the moment, and not immediately fixing what Thor had just fixed was tiny. “How are your feet?”

[st_ormbreaker]

Thor gives his toes a little wiggle. "Warming up," he says. Thor has always been a living, breathing furnace. Heat practically radiated off of him. He's still a little cool to the touch, but his body is indeed, warming up from the inside.

[st_ratagem]

“Good. I wasn’t going to rub your feet.” His hands had been worse off, anyway. After a moment, Loki moved to retrieve his knife from the towels and start cleaning it off. You didn’t leave weapons uncleaned, after all.

[st_ormbreaker]

It's the bloodied knife that reminds Thor.

"Is your hand all right?"

[st_ratagem]

“Yes, I think so.” Loki squeezed his hand into a fist again: very little sting or burn. They hadn’t been completely superficial cuts, given the amount of blood he’d needed, but they were already healing nicely. Thor had been thorough in his care. Probably he’d need to address the blood loss sooner rather than later and eat or drink something, but not yet. “Admittedly I’m judging by the fact that there’s virtually no pain when I poke at it, but it wasn’t hurt badly enough to worry about nerve damage.”

[st_ormbreaker]

"You could try healing it yourself," Thor suggests. Loki's already had one win tonight; why not another?

[st_ratagem]

“Negating or lessening a sacrifice isn’t a good idea, brother.” He might have tried, within it that little fact. ”It’s possible that the bloodletting was enough, but it’s... if I cut a corner and run into a wall later, I won’t know whether or not it’s because of the shortcut.” Magic’s rules were finicky at odd times.

[st_ormbreaker]

"It's too bad mother isn't here," he says. "She would kiss it and make it better. Literally."

[st_ratagem]

"Mother would understand about magical rules," Loki countered. "Who do you think taught them to me in the first place?"

[st_ormbreaker]

"I don't recall you being the rule-abiding type," Thor points out. "You don't find it limiting?"

[st_ratagem]

“Know the rules to break them well.” It sounded like a quote because it was; part of the reason Loki and Frigga had been so close was that she’d understood mischief. “But magic is different. The rules aren’t a matter of choice. The can be bent sometimes but never broken without consequence.”

[st_ormbreaker]

"What happens if you don't follow the rules, then?" Thor wonders aloud.

[st_ratagem]

“Sometimes it’s as simple as the spell not working. Other times it’s complicated.” Sorcery had always fascinated Loki, whe he was a child he pushed learn as much as he could as fast as he could, and even centuries later it was a subject that never bored him. “Magic is significantly about belief and will, not necessarily in equal parts.” He gestured gesturing, trying to explain with his hands. “Spells are structure, an aid to belief: put something in, get something out. Breaking the rules breaks the structure, taking more out of you as the spellcaster or twisting around you to create the unexpected.” Like when he’d tried to heal Thor and accidentally rotted him briefly. “At worst, trying to beat reality like that can be lethal.”

[st_ormbreaker]

Thor hums at that explanation.

"You know, I'm learning magic." A beat. "Sort-of." He hadn't really done much of anything but listen to Corbie explain the way things worked; he hadn't yet done any magic of his own.

[st_ratagem]

“Oh? What sort?” And how did one ‘sort of’ learn magic? If it was just sleight of hand, that would be disappointing.

[st_ormbreaker]

"It's just this dream magic thing," Thor says ineloquently with a wave of a hand. "Nothing big."

Or flashy. That might have been why -- as far as he knew -- Corbie was the only one who knew he was studying it.