Boats Against The Current
"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then but that's no matter – tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther….and one fine morning –
And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
F Scott Fitzgerald "The Great Gatsby".
1.
1917
There were so many different noises swirling up out of the lively night that the boy's head chattered with it. He was trying to sleep; though neither very intently or effectively, and all of the muted outside and downstairs sounds were intriguing and annoying him beyond what his young mind could handle.
In the dark, lying awake in bed, his own breathing loud in the stifling heat of summer, it was hard to pull apart each sound and pinpoint where they came from around the house and grounds. The window open just a crack let in the faint sound of the sea. He had pulled the curtains back to silence their rustling and – more – to be able to see the stars from where he lay in bed. Loki said the stars kept him awake, that on clear nights he could hear them twinkling. Thor had told him how silly that was but it did not stop him lying in the dark and listening for them.
Not that he could have heard beyond the cry of the gulls across the bay and the chatter from below, plastic laughter sliding up from the side gardens, a tangy accompaniment to the clink of glasses and the bittersweet slink of background violins. These gatherings never sounded really real to him, rather like stories being played out while he tried to sleep; but he wanted to be a part of that glitter and glass all the same.
Sometimes he would try and pick out his parents voices from the general murmuring hubbub. His mother's never came – too low and sweet to carry; sometimes his father's would swell up through the floors, on a rise of manly debate or booming artificial laughter. Some of the guest's voices he recognised as ones he heard before, some of them often, and he had come to nurture shoots of fondness or dislike for these faceless people based on nothing more than cadence.
The boy floated so weightlessly upon this clattering stream of sound that it was a splash in the dark to startle to hear the rustling so close outside his window, and to see the glass illuminated by a dull green light from outside. He sat up straight in bed, peering out in curiosity and alarm and nearly yelling for fear of ghosts when a pale face appeared outside the window with a torch clenched between its teeth, and a small insistent fist came rapping at the glass.
Thor got out of bed, not knowing whether to yell, groan or laugh and ultimately coming out with a sound that combined all three.
"Loki!" he hissed, throwing up the window – "What are you doing out there?"
His brother muttered something petulant and unintelligible around the torch in his teeth, swaying precariously on whatever foothold he had as the window was moved.
"What?" Thor took the torch out of Loki's teeth and frowned at it – "Give me that!"
"I said let me in you fool – I'm hanging in the ivy!"
"Yes but –" Thor stood aside to give Loki room to scramble in – "Why are you hanging in the ivy?"
Loki hauled his small self up and tumbled onto the floor of Thor's room, where he shook his head rapidly in relief at finding himself grounded, like a dog shaking water from its fur.
"It's fun!"
"It's dangerous!" Thor protested.
"You're just saying that because you're too big and scared to do it yourself!"
"I am not too big -"
"Ha!"
"Or scared! I could too!"
"Way too big. You'd fall and die like an elephant in the ivy."
"I would not!"
"Would too!" Loki stuck his tongue out and Thor ignored him, putting his head out the window to look at the now crushed ivy that crept up this wall of the house.
"Oh don't try it now!" Loki whined – "Not when I've gone to the trouble –" Thor looked at him sharply as he broke off in a mumble and Loki looked down sulkily, picking ivy leaves out of his hair and clothes and dropping them on Thor's previously immaculate floor.
"Hey!" he objected – "Stop that!" but the objection was half hearted in the pungent aroma of leaf and outdoors that now pervaded the bedroom and Loki's eyes lit up in pleasure at his own naughtiness in a way even Thor found it hard to stay angry at for long. Loki's face, changeable in its expression as the shimmer of light on the water, broke into a grin and he suddenly dived like a fish for Thor's bed, burrowing himself under the sheets and chuckling.
"Loki –" Thor groaned, wearily used to his brother's pranks by now – "What are you doing?"
"Hiding!" came the muffled chirp – "In case mother and father come up and send me back to bed!"
"Is that why –" Thor broke off – it was too strange, holding a conversation with a lump in the bed sheets. He sighed and burrowed his way into the little cotton cave along with Loki – "Is that why you came through the ivy – so they didn't see you?"
Loki nodded; Thor could feel it in the dark.
"There are people outside you know. They'd have thought you were a burglar!"
"They were only out the front!"
"- or a monkey! Loki, get out of my bed!"
"You won't always say that."
"Huh?"
Loki took his torch back out of Thor's fingers and Thor saw him blink as though spooked as the strange green glow illumined their den.
"I dunno," Loki shrugged – "Sometimes I say stuff and I don't know where it comes from but – but it always turns out to be right – I dunno –" Loki's forehead knitted in perplexity and the contemplation of his own strange brain and Thor could not help but laugh at him;
"You're weird."
"You're an oaf."
"You're such a little pest, Loki"
"Well – you smell!"
Thor pushed Loki and they tussled in the sheets so ineffectually that they both laughed.
"Go away then!" Thor repeated benignly.
"Don't wanna. Thor is it true the whole world is at war?"
Oh, Thor thought, knowing from the very sudden extreme lightness of Loki's tone and the carefully off – handed way he said it that this has been bothering him a great deal more than he would let on.
"Where'd you hear that?"
"Father was talking with some men downstairs the other day. I was spying. Is it true?"
"I think so."
"Will we be okay?"
"Of course," Thor said, with more conviction than he felt, flashing Loki a reassuring smile, the existence of which is actually enough to smooth out the worry lines in that earnest little face, green in the torch light like some kind of goblin.
"What did you even do to that?" he indicated the torch Loki was holding under his chin to make faces with. He could not help but giggle even though it was silly – but Loki always did manage to make him laugh like an idiot.
"Good isn't it?" Loki grinned – "I thought – I need a torch to go climbing in the ivy but it was too bright and people might see me – I so I coloured over it and I like green and also this way you'll see my light and know that it's me and not something creepy."
"Pah!" Thor snorts – "You're the creepiest something of all – hey wait – you're gonna do this again? Who says?"
"Well I do. I don't like it when there's all these people in the house. This way any time I can't sleep I can come and sleep with you and –" and our parents won't care. He does not say this but Thor hears it all the same, and cannot help but understand. And then there is the way Loki is smiling at him so winningly, that smile that knows it will get what it wants. Thor takes hold of Loki's arm in what he means as manly solidarity but ends up in more of a stroke.
"Don't worry Loki, when I'm grown up we'll have much better parties than they do."
"Just for us?"
"Just for us if you like – but maybe – maybe we can make it look like there's other people there."
"Like magic?" Loki's eyes sparkled.
"Yeah," Thor yawned and stretched, coming back up out from under the covers and lying curled facing Loki who turned off his torch and yawned back, also resurfacing from the river of sheets like a diver into the light that was really darkness, but after all seemed lighter to Thor now that he was no longer lying alone listening to the sounds that made him feel so strange and unreal.
"Sleepy," Loki announced, yawning again like a cat.
"Oh, you're sleepy now?"
"Yeah – cause I'm with you."
"Oh thanks."
Loki chuckled and rolled over, able to say – when it is into the dark and Thor cannot see his face –
"I'm safe when I'm with you."
It came out as more of a question than exactly a statement, but it surprised Thor to hear it all the same;
"Yeah" he said softly – "You're safe with me little brother, I'll never let anything hurt you."
Loki smiled widely into the night and Thor, tingling in a perplexity of tender protectiveness, threw a small bear – like arm around over to hug him close.
"Urgh Thor – get off me – too hefty!" Loki whined, struggling – desperate for it to be ineffectual. It was, and Thor kissed his soft tangled head into the bargain.
"Eww, gross!" Loki grumbled, but he giggled as he grumbled and was very soon asleep.
Thor lay awake only a little longer, not caring about the noises downstairs now that he could hear Loki's snuffly animal breathing so close in the soft dark, less warm and itchy with Loki's curiously cool softness beside him. He laughed to himself silently at Loki's silliness while secretly more glad to have him here than he would ever have liked to say. The chatter from below that had so filled his head gave way to the warm breath of this curious small creature, the steady rhythmic heave and sigh of him. Outside the gulls cry too gave way to the steady in and out, draw and crash of the waves. He fell asleep with the idea of Loki's funny green light glowing behind his eyelids, imprinting itself into the current of his mind.
_x_
I will never be able to write like Fitzgerald, but that's okay I think – I figure I can still be inspired by his genius – hence on the back of "Shadow in the Sun I was seeking an exciting new AU and 1920's Gatsby style hit me as a plan. I know this chapter is set in 1917 but in the next chapter I promise 1920's it will be! Please let me know your thoughts on this – I'm always nervous about new AUs!