Tea and Sympathy
Note: Slashy hijinks herein. If that sort of thing bothers
you, please don't read it. Otherwise, as Freyr himself put it, "Isn't
Mantantei Loki a manga for good children? We have been deceived!
(Mantantei wa yoi-ko no manga dewa nakatta no ka! Uragiraretaaa!)" Like
that. :D
Disclaimer: Mantantei Loki and Mantantei Loki Ragnarok, created by Kinoshita Sakura, published by Blade Comics/Mag Garden. Yuletide New Year's Resolution 2005, written for Amaretto.
Heimdall stared up moodily at the cupboard door, far beyond his reach. If I were in falcon form, he thought, I could fly to the door and open it - but then, how could I take out the tea canister? As he pondered this puzzle, as he had every day of his miserable exile in this city, behind him he could hear the clacking of tools and the droning, tuneless humming of his current roommate, who was tinkering as usual with some daft contraption.
My . . . roommate. He shuddered, glancing back over his shoulder to survey the small apartment they shared. How, he wondered, did this differ from any urban junkyard, with its random piles of scrap electronic and machine parts, draped here and there with his roommate's carelessly discarded laundry? The propped-up door to the building's hall and the burnt wall only added to the overall ambiance of chaos. Imposing order had become Heimdall's hourly struggle.
All because of him. If not for Loki, Heimdall would still have two eyes. If not for Loki, Heimdall would be standing alone on the Bifrost Bridge even now, in that cold silence he'd enjoyed for eons. If not for Loki, Heimdall would be a god - not cast out as a school-child into this world where he needed an adult roommate to maintain the apartment. Although, in Freyr's case, "adult" was a misnomer.
If not for Loki, Heimdall would not be living with Freyr.
How Heimdall would enjoy killing Loki.
Heimdall savagely kicked the kitchen stool into place, trying to ignore how the Doraemon on it always appeared to be laughing at his predicament. Planting his foot firmly in Doraemon's face, he boosted himself onto the kitchen counter.
"Walking on the countertop is unhygienic," his roommate opined, adding, "You may be the size of a pet, but you're not one."
"I didn't hear you offering to help," Heimdall snarled, pawing off one of his heavy leather gloves. He tucked it in his waistband, and hooked the door's handle in a curving claw. As he sorted through the odd assortment of cans and boxes in cupboard, he heard the off-key humming begin once again. He gritted his teeth.
"Oi. Freyr," he said at last. "What have you done with the tea?"
The humming paused. "Tea?"
"Yeah. Tea. For drinking."
"We're out."
Heimdall digested this information. "We're out," he repeated slowly. "We have no tea. You knew that."
"That is what Freyr said, yes." Then, with a mildly interested air, Freyr cocked his head to study him. "Has Heimdall now become hard of hearing as well as half blind?"
A brown cloud of powder puffed gently into the air as the box within Heimdall's grasp collapsed beneath his grip.
"And now there is no cocoa either," Freyr pointed out with asperity. "Really, Heimu. You must learn to be less messy."
But Loki was an old grievance, Heimdall decided, and could wait a little longer. Particularly when current needs were far more pressing.
How Heimdall would enjoy killing Freyr.
After a few moments' worth of pleasant fantasies in which Freyr suffered a succession of grisly deaths, common sense reasserted its mastery: Heimdall still needed Freyr alive. He would simply have to settle for making Freyr as miserable as he was. Heimdall slid down off the counter. "Freyr," he said. "I am going out for more tea. While I am out, you will deal with that." Heimdall pointed at the apartment's door, propped over the entry to the hallway.
"What on earth do you mean, 'deal' with it?" Freyr said, annoyed.
"You will apply your tools to fixing the door," Heimdall said carefully, as he would to a child. "So that the door will no longer be broken. When you are finished, the door will open. The door will shut."
"Freyr did not break it," Freyr said.
"I am . . . aware of that," Heimdall ground out. Thor, who was too dim to figure out the difference between doorbells and home invasion, had kicked it in the day before. "I fail to see why that matters."
"You fail to see," Freyr repeated. "You fail to see? How could you even suggest this?" His chair tipped backward into the parts pile with a clatter, as Freyr leapt to his feet and assumed a dramatic pose, arms flung wide. "Do you not realize what this means? You would have devastatingly handsome Deity of Romance Freyr, supremely artistic Phantom Thief Freyr, Technological Prodigy Freyr stoop to the level of mere handyman?
"I am filled with woe!" he cried, cradling his eyes in his palm, as the petals of cherry blossoms drifted down mysteriously from the ceiling. "Witness Freyr's misunderstood genius! If only Mayura-chan, my Yamato Nadeshiko, were here to comfort me in this, my time of need!"
And witness Heimdall's hell. Heimdall cupped his own hand over his empty eye socket as his ever-present, lurking headache threatened to rage out of control. "Yes," he persisted, "I would have you do this, if only because I'm tired of the neighbors watching our every move. Aren't you?"
"I hadn't noticed," Freyr said, peering out into the hall, where even now the elderly woman from two doors down was bowing politely to them around her armload of shopping bags. Freyr awarded her with a stunning smile and gracious wave. She swooned on cue.
"Of course you haven't," Heimdall said wearily. Having a vain, maniac fertility god in residence meant he'd grown accustomed to Freyr parading about in the all-together after his baths, but Heimdall didn't think their neighbors would take that in stride. "Just fix the door, dammit. I'm going out for more tea."
Heimdall chose to not hear the croon of "Ahhh, the nasty one is gone - alone at last, my Gullinbursti LX Special Edition!" that followed him into the hall.
As Heimdall shuffled down the block to the shop, he fingered open the fish-mouth of his change-purse and considered its contents gloomily. His allowance from Asgard never stretched to any extravagances. Perhaps he could persuade Freyr to take his damned guitar and go busking in the subway again? Freyr generally did quite well with that, Heimdall had noticed; people were downright generous if it meant Freyr might stop playing and go home.
Still, Heimdall mused, there were worse fates. He could be living with Thor, for instance. Seeking information to use against Loki, he'd once tried breaking into that one-room cesspit of Narugami's when he wasn't home. But the 'breaking in' part hadn't been necessary - the door had fallen in the moment he'd tried knocking, leading to the conclusion that Narugami considered kicking in doors the ideal solution to lost keys as well. Idiot.
And 'wasn't home' might not have been accurate either. Amid the hanging sheaves of wrinkled laundry, and towering heaps of empty, moldy ramen cups, okonomiyaki boxes, and cat food tins, Heimdall found it impossible to discern whether Narugami was present or not. For all he knew, he might have overslept and been snoring away somewhere beneath the garbage. Slovenly idiot.
In the end, discretion had been the better part of valor - nothing could be gained from ransacking Thor's dump except exotic diseases and a fur allergy. Yes, Heimdall decided, rooming with Thor would be worse. Why Loki allowed that freeloading dolt to dog his heels was beyond him. Didn't Loki ever get tired of being reduced to this? To being surrounded by fools?
With every plodding step to the convenience store, another grievance sprang to Heimdall's mind to be brooded over. The stolen eye. The child body. The betrayal by Odin. His living arrangements. His tight money situation. His unfinished homework. His molting falcon. Those interfering Norns. Those bastards Thor and Loki. That lunatic Freyr.
And now this. As Heimdall stared at the shelf of tea, he realized that his change purse was short the amount he'd need. He'd have to go back to the apartment and ask him for the money. That idiot who was too self-absorbed to even consider buying more tea himself after he'd drunk the last of it. That idiot who he knew would still be sitting there cuddling his damn pig and wouldn't even have glanced at that broken door after Heimdall left.
Heimdall found himself shaking in anger. He couldn't take this any longer. His existence was doomed to be 40 yen short.
"Hey! Isn't it Higashiyama Kazumi-kun?" Heimdall started in alarm. "I haven't seen you in a while!"
"Wha?" Heimdall looked up, to meet a delighted smile. "Mayura-chan?" he stuttered.
"Oh no. What's wrong, Kazumi-kun?" Mayura knelt down to his level, and regarded him with grave concern. In a stage whisper that carried down every aisle, she asked, "Don't you have enough money with you?"
Too much. I'm a god, Heimdall despaired, and an object of schoolgirl pity. He wanted to be long gone from this city, from these people, from all of it. He wanted to be back guarding the gate with the only ones who had ever truly appreciated him.
"The falcons," he sniffled, "an,and the eagles, and the hawks!"
"What?" Mayura-chan was blinking up at the shelf beside them, confused. "Birds?"
"I, I -" He swallowed hard on the lump in this throat, and to his utter mortification, Heimdall burst into tears. "I want to go home!" he wailed.
So where he was going wasn't truly home, but for now it would have to do, Heimdall reflected dourly. Her bag with soda and his own bag with the tea canister swung off Mayura's other arm, and he allowed her to tow him down the street, his leather-clad fist tucked into her slim hand.
Heimdall sucked moodily on the lollipop that she'd bought him, and let the flow of chatter wash around him. He really had no idea what she was going on about. Something about turnips? But it didn't matter. He had no dignity left to salvage, and Mayura-chan always chose good candy.
"So that's why I think it's a such horrifying mystery!" she was saying excitedly. "Don't you think so, too, Kazumi-kun?"
"Uh." Heimdall pulled the sucker from his mouth. "Uh, sure."
"I knew it!" she said, beaming down at him. "Loki-kun doesn't appreciate these things at all, not like you and I do."
Heimdall smiled, for the first time that afternoon. He didn't even care what he was supposed to be appreciating - to beat Loki at anything was worthwhile.
"Ah, good, you're feeling better, aren't you?" Mayura asked. "Are you sure you don't want me to walk you the rest of the way?"
Heimdall considered, at ponderous length, the historic consequences of one Mayura Daidouji appearing anywhere in the vicinity of a certain stupidly besotted Vanir. It took him all of a half-second. "No," he said, "I'm fine. Thanks for helping me."
"No, it was my pleasure, Kazumi-kun," she said, "it's so good to talk to someone sympathetic, who appreciates real mysteries for a change." And then she leaned down to loop his bag over his arm - and in a flurry of hair and skirts, she whirled off, frantically waving back at him, calling, "Enjoy the tea! See you later!"
Much, much later, Heimdall waved back, embarrassed, and then glanced up. He hoped that Freyr hadn't been looking out a window during any of that conversation.
As it turned out, he needn't have worried. The apartment was empty of all life except his falcon and Gullinbursti, wallowing in mechanical bliss among the cables in the corner. And the front door, he was astonished to note, had not been fixed - it had been replaced entirely. And this new door had been standing wide open.
"What kind of a pathetic excuse for a Phantom Thief doesn't even lock his own apartment door?" he fumed to Gullinbursti, who emitted a few beeps and flashed a few colored lights in response. "Ungh, his insanity is contagious," Heimdall muttered. "I'm asking the opinion of a stupid toy pig." He ignored the squeal of angry protest.
But perhaps Heimdall was being unfair; he'd just been opening the window to let out his falcon for the afternoon, when his eye was caught by the white box sitting in a cleared space on the table. "Patisserie d'Amor," the name of the local bakery, was printed on the side in sloping script.
"Nice gestures from Freyr? Very suspicious," he stated aloud, but this time Gullinbursti, still insulted, ignored him. In looking at the contents, Heimdall thought they looked normal enough: six frosted teacakes with slim sticks of chocolate as garnish.
He picked one up and tentatively sniffed it, half expecting pepper, horseradish, curry, or worse, which was what he himself would have used, but it only smelled of perfectly ordinary cake.
So an apology after all, then? Weirder things had been known to happen in his life lately; Heimdall shrugged. "Itadakimasu."
(chap. 1 of 3)
