[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]

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

[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.)

[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?"

[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?"

[forewarned_is]

That flat look again.

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

[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."

[forewarned_is]

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

[changeinasnap]

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

He wiggles his toes. Pointedly.

[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.)