[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

[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."

[changeinasnap]

"Must be why we get along so well."

It's so sweet and flippant that anyone who didn't know better might not notice the choice of words.

He knows that Kali knows better.

[forewarned_is]

Her lips thin, and then widen in a dangerous smile.

"Must be," she says. "There's got to be some reason I keep letting you back into my life."

[changeinasnap]

"You mean aside from my good looks and charm?"

You can practically see the halo dancing overhead.

[forewarned_is]

She sneers.

"What gave you the idea you have good looks and charm?"

[changeinasnap]

Eyebrow. "Hey, it's just the truth, honey."

Or do you want him to point out that when he can look like anything, that includes the hottest guy on the planet?

[forewarned_is]

"Charm doesn't really go along with an ego the size of the planet, sweetheart."

[changeinasnap]

That gets a loud pffft! as he swings his legs down from off the sill, feet planted firmly on the floor.

And perhaps grinding some of that dirt into the threadbare carpet. Maybe.

"Seriously? Ego? I'm just flaunting what I've got!"

[forewarned_is]

"And what you've got," she counters, "is mostly ego."

She ignores the dirt. Let it stay there. Who the hell cares.

[changeinasnap]

"You want me to point out who actually made this place?"

The flicker of true annoyance is back. He shoves himself to standing, folds his arms over the fringed leather vest he picked up from who the hell knows where, and tips his head down to direct a borderline glare over the top of his glasses.

[forewarned_is]

"Sure."

That dangerous smile is back, and she takes a pace toward him.

"Go right ahead."

[changeinasnap]

He lifts both hands, wiggles his fingers sarcastically, then curves one closed into a loud snap!

The sputtering cooling tricks cut out entirely.

So does anything even remotely resembling good taste in the window curtains, as they turn into long strings of clattering beads as gaudy as the ones he's wearing.