8.
Thor stared at the phone and the phone stared back belligerently. They had been going on like this for the better part of two hours now and Thor was starting to wonder who was going to crack first. The phone just grinned at him, knowing it was going to win. Thor raised his eyebrows at it threateningly. The phone did nothing. It did nothing obnoxiously, mockingly, laughingly. Thor was ready to punch its grinning silver dial, but knew that this way he would still be losing the fight.
Thor cursed softly into the silence.
He was usually extremely uncomfortable with silence. He was, even now, extremely uncomfortable with it, even though it was a silence he had demanded of everyone, raging at everyone to hand and threatening diabolical action of an unspecified kind upon anyone who would be foolish enough to bother him until he announced otherwise.
He stared back down at the phone number in his hand; it mocked him just as meanly as the phone did. He had practically memorised it by now anyway, and the spidery handwriting had been rubbed away to faintness on the crumpled piece of paper.
He reached his hand to the phone for the thousandth time, nearly touched it this time and dropped his hand again with a heavy groan at his own uselessness. He decided to try pacing; pacing and thinking. He had to talk to Loki. He couldn't talk to Loki. What the hell was he going to say? Just blurt out his feelings like an idiot? What the hell were his feelings anyway? Loki was right; it was just a one-time mistake, a stupid, stupid thing he should have left well behind him.
He had to talk to him.
Thinking was bad. Thinking was really bad. He turned on the radio instead, hoping to distract himself enough to pick up the god damn phone whilst his own back were turned as it were, while he would not catch himself doing it to stop himself.
He turned the music down low and bashed out the phone number at the same time. It rang forever. He was going to put it down. He had sweaty hands. To his mingled horror and accelerated heartbeat he heard Loki's voice on the other end, cool as a crystal bloody stream.
"Hello?"
He slammed the phone down in terror.
He was shaking, actively shaking.
"Get it together you fucking reject," he muttered to himself. He took a deep breath and dialled again. His hands were shaking so much it took him half a dozen tries before he got the number right. Loki picked up more quickly this time;
"Hello?" Thor could blatantly hear how quickly he was becoming narked off with his weirdo crank caller. He opened his mouth to speak and promptly put the phone down again. It did not quite sit right and he heard Loki drawling into the phone –
"Look if you want to know what colour underwear I'm wearing –"
Thor slammed the phone back hard in its cradle. It was ten minutes before he dared try again. This time Loki tried a different tack –
"Thor? Is that you? Yes you have my number. Yes, it's to use, not just to masturbate furiously into. God, now I hope that is you. Maybe. Then again maybe not."
Thor really tried to speak this time but to his horror all that came out of his mouth was a broken, high pitched eeeeeeh sound. Mortified, he put the phone down again, hard.
He squirmed in his chair, kicked the table leg, pushed himself back on the back two legs of his chair, hoped to god he might fall back and crack his stupid head. Why was this so difficult anyway? His head swam; it took a long time for him to be able to focus. He reached for the whiskey; the bottle was empty. He did not remember it becoming empty. That was bad. After a long grope in the swirling fog of mental confusion he finally let the gentle rock of the radio come through. Music helped. He had always understood it, better really than people. He knew the song, it was nearly over by the time his brain let him make all the right connections, shitting fucking hell, he knew it and he knew the voice. Fucking Loki. He was everywhere and if Thor knew one thing it was that, whatever it meant, he would never be able to just leave him in the past. He knew this one of course, he knew them all – Bring me the storm and the lightning strike, bring me the thunder again, I want to dance in the flickering light, I want to dance in the rain –
They'd still been Destiny's Illusion back then, Thor remembered, in fact it was less than half a year after they went back to America, listening now he remembered, Loki referenced it in the song - Lost in the new world, safe from the storm, I'll walk in a diffident rain, If there's one thing I know that I want it's just this, bring me the thunder again.
Thor frowned, listening. He wondered if he was being stupid, if he was reading something into this that simply was not there, but he could not completely quell a surge of hope and with it an idea. A ridiculous one, but it would not go away.
Even though there was no way he could be right, the stupid idea that had taken hold of him would not leave him. In fact it energised him. He got up and dragged a suitcase out from under his bed. He took a copy of every record he had ever made with him, everywhere he went, and they were all in here, in a battered brown suitcase. He turned off the radio and dragged the whole lot over to the middle of the room, put the phone down on the floor and dragged the record player over as well. Now, suddenly in the grip of the Idea, he knew exactly what he was doing and his fingers flew to the right record, never shaking as he set it up, hovered his finger over the needle and dialled Loki's number again. This time he replied to Loki's weary –
"Hello," by pressing the needle down.
It was an old song now, written too soon after Loki's leaving to make any denial of the connection possible. But he had denied it anyway. It had been back in the days before he had realised how corny dramatic spoken openings to a song were and this one began, Whatever I have said, whatever I have done to lead you to this I am truly sorry. I take it back. Thor played the song right through, right through the dramatic guitar that followed and the clambering drums that joined in, right to the final – I got my lines so wrong that night, it was a part I should never have played, If there was anything I could have changed, I would have stayed, I would have stayed.
Thor put the phone down. His heart was beating a rapid red hammer beat. He wondered what would happen next. Would Loki even reply? How did you reply to that? Was it the right song, the right words? Maybe Loki would just laugh at him for the song being shit.
The phone rang. Thor nearly died. He stared at it for a moment before finally picking it up. He had hardly finished saying hello before he heard the gentle scratch and crackle of needle on vinyl and the first verse of Liar sifted across to him over the phone;
I never said much, but to lie, I was born to be untrue, I lied my way from birth to stage, I lied in leaving you.
By the end of the song Thor was rummaging through his own records with the phone held between his shoulder and ear. When Loki hung up on him at the end of the song he was ready with a copy of Silver tongue. Loki countered with Salmon Rum, the song he had started explaining to Thor so long ago; the song of how the trickster finally got caught by the god of thunder. Thor played Green Eyes, Loki played Shadow in the Shade, Thor played Live in your Lie, Loki played Welcome the Summer. Thor sat through their songs as though in a dream; Loki, on the other end of the phone, alternately, lounged and paced, tried not to laugh, tried not to cry and ultimately flew on the notes as though they were wings.
Halfway through Welcome the Summer Thor stared to wonder if he should do it. He was holding the vinyl of Red Snow, Green Fire in his hand, staring at it, wondering what was scarier, admitting the truth behind the lyrics to himself or to Loki. At the end of the song (But I couldn't say, though I reached so high, that I didn't deserve to fly. But your blue was the blue of a secret sky and I welcome the summer that lives in your eyes) – Thor put the disc quickly in place and played it back before he could think about it twice.
It was one of his newer songs, and frighteningly true. Thor found himself listening to it himself; so intent, so afraid that when the last verse began he never heard the hotel room door open and something as silent as a shadow slip in. Didn't notice a thing until a voice behind him purred –
"Well. Shall we talk?" He whipped around, the phone falling from his fingers. Loki stood, arms folded across his chest, looking more different than Thor had ever seen him – "I mean," Loki went on quickly – "If I'm not interrupting your call, that is."
_x_
It was getting awkward to put all the lyrics I wanted into this chapter so eh, here as a bonus are three verses of Red Snow, Green Fire. Enjoy.
We were caught inside a moment/ In a moment in between/ You left behind a scrap of red/ I left behind the green/ Sometime before the morning/ Sometime after the start/ Sometime between the first and last/ You took away my heart/ I didn't want to feel/ But I know that this is true/ Sometime between the first and last/I fell in love with you.
I mean, ok, I think we've fairly well established that I suck at lyrics, I can use like one rhythm and that's Emily Dickinson all the way, but I liked the idea better of using their own songs than ripping off existing ones or something, so meh, deal with my sucky lyrics! Also, I stole this idea from "Virgin Suicides" :-)
If It makes anyone feel better about this sucky chapter the next one is not, how do I put this….gonna have as much talking in it as Loki thinks. ;-)
