[Loki and Thor] Take two

[st_ratagem]

Twenty minutes had proved to be more than enough time to raid the café's bar area, taking several (eight? ten? Loki didn't count) bottles of various liquors. The God of Mischief was generally an occasional drinker or social drinker at best, but Thor was another matter. His brother had prodigious tolerance even for an Asgardian.

He wasn't used to a cryptic, secretive Thor, or a Thor with a bizarre tendency to follow him around like a puppy, or a Thor that wept on him for no apparent reason. It was strange, it was worrying, it had to stop. The solution had to be somewhere in what had happened between Loki's 'now' and Thor's, and if Thor needed to be drunk to give him those facts, his brother was more than happy to take that request seriously.

The acquired bottles went into the little nook under the stairs - not to stay there long, almost certainly. After due consideration, Loki also hauled the trash can out of the bathroom and placed it by the large bed on the lower level, for empties. It was the only decent place to sit that wasn't in the upper-level area that was for sleeping or the outdoor balcony.

At that point, all there was to do was wait.

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[st_ormbreaker]

"I still wish it had been," he says, opening another bottle. He'd finally hit buzzed, but he wanted to be more than that. Especially now. "I'd been so obsessed with myself and my feelings then that I wasn't concerned at all for yours."

[st_ratagem]

"You're still not," Loki observed, then finished his second bottle and dropped the empty to join his first. There was some definite padding between feelings and mind, a little relief from the new pain and the old that Thor had so nicely dredged up again. "Because I told you my feelings which were I'm glad you fucked off to wherever you were and let me have some privacy."

[st_ormbreaker]

"Is that what you want now?" Thor asks, gesturing at his brother with the bottle.

[st_ratagem]

"You're already here now. I'll manage." No, he didn't want to be alone. He didn't necessarily want touch or comfort, had no idea what to do with it as previously displayed, but he definitely didn't want to be left with just himself for company.

That was how he ended up with cut feet because he couldn't be bothered to tidy away glass shards, for one thing.

[st_ormbreaker]

Thor drinks for a long moment.

"I'll move out of the way, so come reclaim your place."

Thor shoves off to where he was sitting before and idly taps the mouth of the bottle with a soft, but audible clicking sound.

"Father was always keeping so many things secret from us," he says, looking at the wall. "We never talked about anything. Everything about you, everything about me -- it only came out when it was convenient for him."

He takes a breath, and he's suddenly relieved Loki can't see his face.

"I want us to be able to talk about things," he says, feeling suddenly vulnerable. "I'm trying to talk to you about things, but I have no idea what I'm doing."

Thor shakes his head, but doesn't go on any further.

[st_ratagem]

"I was never convenient for him." Despite how much it hurt that Odin was gone, and everything attendant on that, Loki thought he might never stop being angry about the whole thing. He did, however, move back to his more comfortable place on the bed. "He told me nothing. I figured it out and demanded."

It used to only come out in extreme cold - Jotunheim, the Casket - but Loki was a shapeshifter. He'd figured out how to change from the shape his father had given him as an infant to the blue of a frost giant almost as soon as he'd learned it was there. Loki held up a hand and changed. Blue skin, red eyes, the same black hair... too small and too skinny, but a frost giant's face.

So Thor would see. Had he ever? "On Jotunheim, one of them touched me, and this happened. After Father exiled you, I snuck into his vault and touched the casket. It happened again." He clenched his fist and let the blue go. Back to 'normal'. "He'd never have told me if I hadn't forced him. I'd have just stayed as I was. Ignorant, out of place, a caged monster not even permitted to see the cage. Forever."

[st_ormbreaker]

Thor hadn't ever seen him like this. He knew what frost giants looked like, and on some level, his mind had created what he thought Loki might look like in that form. Somehow, his mental image was divorced from reality, but still Thor wasn't able to pinpoint what was off.

"He told me he told you," he says. "He said that you hadn't taken it well."

By the time Thor found out, they had both thought Loki was dead. It wasn't as if he'd ever be able to confirm the details.

Thor looks down at the bottle and chuckles to himself. "We had a pretty crummy father sometimes."

[st_ratagem]

Regardless of who had told what, he hadn't taken it well. Loki retrieved another bottle from the now-somewhat-smaller pile, opened it, and poured some down his throat. Partly out of a sense of having fallen behind, yes, but also because it seemed that 'bad idea' was coming to be the theme of this very depressing party.

"That's putting it extremely mildly. Crummy!" Where Thor was slurred, Loki just relaxed - as tells went, it meant he was well on his way to legitimately drunk. "D'you know, up until this actual conversation I sort of thought he'd picked me up out of some Father-y need to control his own death. You know? Pick up a monster nobody's using, train it just right, then unleash it when convenient. Sell tickets ahead of time or something. Except he'd already done that long before either of us was even born. So it turns out I'm very pointless." That was the kind of funny thought that probably wouldn't be, later.

[st_ormbreaker]

It's finally starting to hit Thor. At least a little. Between the two of them, they've probably cleared out a significant part of the bar's stores already, and while there was a significant chunk of it still laying on the bed, there was a decent enough amount inside of Thor's stomach for him to stumble right out of the tipsy category and straight into the slightly drunk category.

"No, no, no, no, no," Thor insists. "You're great. Hela's the terrible one. I'd take like --" Thor pauses for a second, trying to conjure up a number. "-- six dozen of you over one Hela."

Probably more than six dozen, but that's the first number that came to mind.

"She's the worst," Thor proclaims, finishing the bottle.

And she the worst because their father shaped her that way.

[st_ratagem]

"Seventy-two of me? No! I barely want one of me some days and I'm me." Loki would also have to be a lot drunker to screw up basic arithmetic, thankfully.

Though they were probably heading there. "Also I definitely don't want the competition."

Number three was on its way to being killed, but someone other than Loki being the worst caught his attention. "Look. Brother. You paper-yelled that she had the same," vague gesture, "thing as me. Do you think he was trying to replace her? That's weird. I'm not a fan."

[st_ormbreaker]

Thor shakes his head, and directs his gaze away from his brother and to the wall. He drains the bottle, throws it back onto the bed and reaches for another. He can't remember the last time he drank this much. He probably would have at his coronation, had he not bungled everything up and was cast out to Midgard.

"I got the feeling he was probably afraid of us turning out like her," he says. "It would explain a great deal."

He cracks open that next bottle.

[st_ratagem]

"It would, wouldn't it." Loki honestly hadn't expected Thor to get banished to Midgard, then. He'd taken it the opportunity with both hands, despite his I have apparently been literally blue this whole time concerns, but it hadn't been his plan. "I really didn't think he'd exile you, brother. For a little stupid defiance regarding a war that was really just on pause? It made no sense." But it did now, maybe, if Odin had been worried that Thor's desire to kill frost giants would become more general.

[st_ormbreaker]

Thor doesn't say anything to that, but he doesn't down half the drink in one go, either. Instead, he takes a swig, mulls over the revelation that his banishment wasn't actually some elaborate part of Loki's machinations like he always thought it was, then brushes the back of his hand over his lips to dry them.

"He took over the Nine Realms with Hela," he says. "Conquered them. Then covered it up when it was done and over and Hela was dealt with."

He takes another swig of the bottle.

"I don't want to ever pretend I haven't made mistakes," Thor says. "I want to acknowledge them."

And as he says that, Thor realizes his earlier comment about Frigga and what he wish he had done differently was part of that.

[st_ratagem]

"You'll be acknowledging for a very long time." They both would, if Loki didn't prefer his own style of simply owning whatever he did. "But I grow less sad over Father by the minute, so that's something." A lie, but having less to really regret was making it easier to carry.

[st_ormbreaker]

Another silence, and then:

"I do think he loved us," he says. "I just don't know if he knew how."

Thor looks back over at Loki, still gripping the bottle in his hand. For a second, it looks like he might say something, but in the end, he just ends up drinking instead.

[st_ratagem]

"He certainly loved you." Loki finished number three, then dropped it. Probably it joined the others. If not, it could be dealt with later. "Me, that's more complicated." And not just for the last decade. "I know I'm... difficult." Verging on impossible, he meant but didn't say.

[st_ormbreaker]

"He loved you, Loki," Thor says. He's certain of that, even if Loki isn't. "Yes, you can be difficult sometimes, but you're not unlovable."

[st_ratagem]

"I don't think I have to take your opinion." There was certainly something wrong with someone's reasoning, anyway. "You've put up with me for fifteen hundred years. You're... what is it... you're Stockholmed."

[st_ormbreaker]

"I think you overestimate your hold on me," Thor says. He downs more of the bottle. "You can believe what you want, but mother loved you and father loved you too. And I still love you now."

[st_ratagem]

And the only one who'd had anything like a real choice about that had been Odin, hadn't it? He could have just left the discarded blue thing to die. And, honestly, probably should have. "Why?"

[st_ormbreaker]

Thor looks over at Loki, puzzled.

"We've been friends for 1500 years, and you ask why I love you?"

[st_ratagem]

Loki frowned, thinking. "So, inertia?" After a couple of seconds, he shook his head. "I do love you, brother, but I don't understand you."

[st_ormbreaker]

Thor knew that Loki loved him, even if love wasn't exactly a word either one of them used that often. Somehow, it was different hearing Loki say it aloud.

"It's not inertia," he clarifies, because it seems important to say. But how exactly do you explain why you love someone? Even now, Thor can't possibly begin to put any of it into words.

He swishes the bottle a little, trying to make out how much alcohol is still inside. Some.

"There are times," he says, "when I don't understand you, or when you do something I can't possibly justify in my own head." Taking over Midgard being one of them; saving him being another. "I don't think understanding someone is necessary to love them."

Loki already knows this, though, if he's being truthful about loving him.

"We've been together many, many years," he says, "But there were many times where I could have chosen to stop loving you, and I didn't. Because you're a person with meaning in my life, someone I don't want to give up. Someone I wouldn't want to give up."

For a brief second, his mind imagines Loki's body aboard The Statesman and he has to push it away with all his force. He gives his brother a tight-lipped smile, then downs the rest of his drink.

[st_ratagem]

Loki watched his brother, and even drunk he couldn't miss the shadow right before that tight smile. Another secret... but to be pursued later. They'd probably had enough truth for one binge. It hadn't even been all terrible, for once.

Instead, the air needed to be let out, a little. He shoved Thor in the shoulder. "Sentimental ass."

[st_ormbreaker]

"Guilty as charged," he replies. This time, when Thor smiles at his brother, it's brighter than it was before.