forewarned_is | [earlier days, pt. 4]

It's been ridiculously, maddeningly hot for the past two weeks, and even Loki's tricks can only do so much to cool down the shabby little apartment where they've been sleeping.

It doesn't help that he intermittently forgets to leave them on when he's not there. As he's not now.

For the seventh time this hour, Kali considers doing something to silence the patient, earnest, utterly incompetent attempts at sitar-playing from the other side of the cardboard-thin wall. She could turn the instrument to dust in the player's hands. Or she could leave the instrument, which after all is blameless, and turn the player's hands themselves to dust, or the entire player; that's a slightly more attractive picture, and she contemplates it as she glowers out the window.

Or she could take another shower and wait for Loki to get back from wherever he's gone.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

changeinasnap

"Man, have you seen the crowds out there?"

The windowsill, empty until a fraction of a second ago, suddenly houses the trickster in question, sprawled inelegantly across the lip of plaster and taking in the sights without a care in the world.

Replacing that care: many, many beads and a round pair of glasses perched on the tip of his nose.

From:

forewarned_is

Kali stares at him.

"You're joking," she says at length, flatly.

(Man. If there's one new usage she genuinely despises, out of all the deliberate reworking of their own language that this generation seems bent on, it's that one; using the word not as an appellation but as an oath.)

From:

changeinasnap

He arches an eyebrow, nudging down the glasses a little further with one finger. "And...you're surprised?"

He's been joking since the day he was born. Haven't they covered this?

From:

forewarned_is

Tartly: "You look like an idiot, Loki."

From:

changeinasnap

"What? Aw, come on. I look," he says with great dignity, "like a perfectly respectable human being."

He shoves the glasses back up his nose in one decisive sweep.

(Clatter, go a couple of the beads around his wrist.)

From:

forewarned_is

She snorts; there's very little humor in it.

"Do you know what all those feeble-minded infants outside would say if they heard you call their costume respectable?"

From:

changeinasnap

With just as little concern: "They'd probably punch me in the face if they believed in violence."

(Which, naturally, is half the fun of saying it at all.)

He tucks his hands behind his head, crossing one ankle over the other. His feet are bare and stained heel to toe with dirt. "Is that what's got you so cranky?"

From:

forewarned_is

That flat look again.

"Do you really want to ask what's got me so cranky? Really, Loki?"

From:

changeinasnap

The smile, this time, is downright beatific.

(In fact, the more annoyed Kali gets, the calmer he seems to become.)

"Wouldn't've asked if I didn't want to know."

From:

forewarned_is

"You've really got no sense of self-preservation at all," she marvels, with brittle lightness.

From:

changeinasnap

"There isn't anything wrong with the spirit of inquiry!"

He wiggles his toes. Pointedly.

From:

forewarned_is

She eyes his toes with disfavor.

"Did you decide this place wasn't squalid enough without another few pounds of dirt?"

From:

changeinasnap

"Hm?" He picks up one foot, studying the sole with practiced innocence. "I wouldn't call it that. There can't be more than half a pound on there."

From:

forewarned_is

"Better get back out there again, then." She folds her arms and leans one shoulder against the wall. "I'm sure you could pick up another half-dozen clods before nightfall."

Is there a barbed innuendo in those last words? Surely not.

From:

changeinasnap

And if it's not, then of course he can't be blamed if he misses it entirely, right?

"Hey, that's not a bad idea," he says, chipper as ever. "Wanna help?"

(...Okay, maybe not entirely.)

From:

forewarned_is

Acidly: "What did you have in what passes for your mind?"

From:

changeinasnap

Weaving an elaborate hand through the air, he says, "I don't know, I was thinking it'd come to me. You know, you still didn't answer my question."

He's like a bloodhound, Kali. You can't throw him off the scent!

He's just as annoying as one on occasion, too.

From:

forewarned_is

"Why don't you take a guess?"

In the next room, the patient amateur sitar player starts up again. Kali clenches one fist and spits out a nearly-silent oath that sizzles the air briefly in front of her face.

From:

changeinasnap

"But I wouldn't want to assume," he counters, wide-eyed, as he untucks his other hand.

And promptly starts tapping it in time with the sitar music screeching through the too-thin walls.

From:

forewarned_is

Which is a neat trick, considering how faulty the player's rhythm is.

"Since when?" The acid's back in her voice. "You assume all the time, Loki."

From:

changeinasnap

Verily, he is a not-man of many a wide-ranging talent.

"Maybe I'm turning over a new leaf!"

He does not say, so there, and stick out his tongue. It's implied.

From:

forewarned_is

Kali snorts in elaborate disbelief.

From:

changeinasnap

"What?"

There, for the first time, and only to a fractional degree: something like genuine annoyance, quickly stifled.

From:

forewarned_is

She catches it, though -- she's known him too long not to -- and feels a tiny surge of petty satisfaction at it.

With a long-suffering air, as though explaining something yet again to a rather dull-witted student: "You may be able to transform yourself into half a million different appearances, Loki, but you never change."