[earlier days, pt. 4]

[forewarned_is]

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.

Comments

[forewarned_is]

She eyes his toes with disfavor.

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

[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."

[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.

[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.)

[forewarned_is]

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

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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."

[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.

[forewarned_is]

Kali snorts in elaborate disbelief.

[changeinasnap]

"What?"

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

[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."

[changeinasnap]

"'Course I do!"

(Liar.)

Sitting up a little straighter, "It's kind of what some of us've gotta do for a living, Kali."

[forewarned_is]

"Name one thing about you that's different since the day we met."

Beat.

Dryly: "Aside from your clothes."

[changeinasnap]

In the middle of opening his mouth, he shuts it again, looking as sheepish as a five year old with cookies in one hand and an empty jar in the other.

[forewarned_is]

Even last winter that could have been amusing.

Now Kali eyes him with contempt, and opens her mouth to say something else -- and lets out an inarticulate noise of frustrated fury as the sitar player strikes a loud, sour chord.

A half turn, and a sharp gesture at the wall, and the sound of the instrument ceases abruptly.

(Just audible, if you're listening for it: a soft slithering rush, as several pounds of dust sift to the floor.)

[changeinasnap]

His mouth drops open again. "Aw, come o -- I was listening to that!"

As the kids say these days: you are seriously harshing his mellow, Kali.

[forewarned_is]

"What for?" she scowls. "It was awful."

[changeinasnap]

Scrambling to regain his footing, and finding solid ground in...well, continuing to be as obnoxious as a mosquito buzzing in one ear, he tells her with great patience, "You have to look beyond the music and into what it expresses about the soul."

Beat.

"I think."

[forewarned_is]

"And what did it express about that soul?" Scornful. "Beyond that he couldn't be bothered to find a teacher who knew how to play the sitar?"

[changeinasnap]

"Independence!" He throws his arms wide. "A willingness to make mistakes! Those are admirable qualities, right?"

They totally are. Don't hate.

[forewarned_is]

"Not if it's a willingness to keep making the same mistakes, over and over and over."

For the first time: something like genuine wrath in her voice, under the annoyance.

[changeinasnap]

Ah-hah, now we're getting somewhere, says the look he shoots her. There's a fair bit more smugness to it than is perhaps appropriate. Stretching out a metaphorical finger, he prods the sore spot a little more.

"It's part of the learning experience."

[forewarned_is]

"Or the failing-to-learn experience."

The wrath is gone; the annoyance is heightened.

"That'd be your specialty."