[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]

"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.

[forewarned_is]

"There." She settles her hands on her hips. "Feel better?"

[changeinasnap]

...Crazy goddess says what?

"You're the one asking me that?"

Where has she been for the last twenty minutes?

[forewarned_is]

"Now that you've had a chance to flaunt what you've got?"

She's been in a foul mood for the last twenty minutes, and she's still there.

[changeinasnap]

"I've been feeling just peachy, what's with you still looking like you wanna rip the whole world a new one?"

[forewarned_is]

"Might do the world some good if I did."

She turns and stalks away from him, making for the apartment's refrigerator.

[changeinasnap]

And of everything, really, it shouldn't be that that gets his hackles all the way up. But you know what? Sue him. He likes this rock, and he's kind of got a thing against people who want to send it up in flames.

"Is that all you think about?" he yells after her, following close on her heels. "You know, why are you even sticking around here, go out to Vietnam, I hear that's a lot more your style right now!"

[forewarned_is]

"Oh, absolutely. Blood, fire and death. Just like the old days."

Acidly, as she tugs open the fridge door with far more force than it needs.

"And you can stay here and watch all those witless children out there lie to themselves about how they're going to change everything."