11.
"Sometimes, Loki," Thor said thoughtfully – "I don't know if I know you. Sometimes I wonder if one day I'll look up and you'll have become someone else."
"Maybe I will," Loki twisted in a sunbeam, smiling enigmatically through his own coils – "But then again I always was."
Thor frowned and let it go, not sure if Loki was being deep or just trying to sound clever; but something in the words stuck in his brain like a bright jagged piece of rainbow glass that would jab him again later someday.
-x-
The combined package of Thor and Loki together exploded onto the glam rock scene of the late seventies in a colourful burst of sequins, sparkle and witty repartee. The wrapping was Fandral's; the Romance was real, however much the magazines and excited reporters decided to fictionalise it.
The fiction, however, was dazzling, hiding the truth as it did in a spectrum of pretty words nobody ever could have imagined were true, least of all the principal players in everybody's new favourite Romance. Thor was gently bemused at their sudden smashing success, their popularity; the hordes of fans who wanted to revel in a fairy tale he was not sure quite existed. Loki told him constantly that his view on reality was severely limited; that he was being dense and dull in limiting himself to what he thought to be true and suggested that he should instead revel in their Romance like the rest of the world.
"You're saying we're in love, Loki, is that what you're saying?" Thor teased him on an afternoon that was a morning to them, recently awake and still not out of bed. Thor was propped up against yet another headboard in yet another hotel yawning while he watched and argued with Loki who was sprawled across the top of the covers naked as the sunlight that streamed in through the window, skimming tabloids and magazines for more reflections of himself.
Thor grinned, thinking he had Loki cornered for once; Loki never said the L word, never admitted it and sneered when Thor did.
"I'm saying the papers say so." Loki yawned lazily, stretching and turning to Thor, to tap the page – "Music resonates from the devoted duo like a love song for the electric guitar, a symphony of sound and passion that sings out the greatest love song of the glam rock age," Loki read aloud with drawling melodrama. "That's us, that is." He ruined it by adding.
"Is it now."
"Oh it must be. They wouldn't write it so….agonizingly if it wasn't."
"You are not being serious."
"Well fuck me, you're fast."
Loki loved the media attention, whether he thought it was true or not; he always had. It seemed to Thor that he completely craved it, fed on it – and sometimes he could not help but feel – ridiculous though he supposed it was – bizarrely jealous – as though he had to share Loki with the rest of the world. He supposed he had always known, really, that he would have to, but what he had not expected was that it would be so difficult.
The newspapers fed on them in return; eating up the highly contrived photoshoot in which Loki had announced their joint plan to take over the world and Thor had raised a toast to him as the most beautiful man in it. Then there was that kiss – the one that had hit all of the papers like a thunderstorm, blown up across posters and magazine stands across the world; they went up in bedrooms from London to Sydney, New York to Tokyo, on billboards and advertising campaigns, their faces tricked out in black and white, sepia and every shade of colour, swirling in heady lights and glitter, all the music of the age and a romantic sentiment glam rock tried to deny caught up in one perfect image of love.
And it was a staged image, saturated love. It haunted Thor until he wondered if Loki ever kissed him without the hope – even if it was subconscious - that someone would see and delight in it. He had tried expressing this – it was natural to him to try and express his every feeling now that he had someone worth feeling for. Loki had told him he was being silly; he was dismissive and affected and it had only solidified the worry in Thor.
And they argued. About that and about everything. Because Loki was always dismissive and affected. Because Loki could not do an interview without flirting at the camera. Because Thor would not understand that it was all an act. Because everything Loki did was an act and Thor could not begin to judge if anything he said or did was real. Because the spotlight blinded them both to their own relationship, turning it into a story that neither could quite believe in however close to true it was. Because Loki, as Thor so often said, would not know what truth meant if it bit him on the ass. Because Thor so often said it. There were a thousand reasons to fight and only a handful to get back together again each time they broke up. And yet.
The papers loved that too. They were there every time one or the other stormed out of a recording studio or a hotel screaming that they never wanted to see the other one again. They were there the next morning breaking the public's heart with this horrible news; the disillusion of the newfound harmony between metal and glam rock.
"They do realise we're just people right?" Thor asked one time, looking over coverage of their latest break-up.
"Thor, you are sweet -" Loki shook his head, smiling ruefully – "Of course they don't."
Sweet. Thor thought – sweet was getting back together again, the collision of need and desire that threw them back together after the fury of separation. Sweet was Loki in his sleep when his face stilled to the innocence of a child. Sweet was the music they made together in more ways than one. Sweet was what they could be if the world stopped peeking in.
"Besides –" Loki said – "I'm not people".
"What are you then?" Thor laughed.
"Read a bio Thor – I'm a space age rock persona, and that's just for starters."
Thor was never quite sure what to say to this kind of statement, always faintly nervous that Loki believed this more completely than he would say, never wanting to ask for fear of argument and that his fears might be justified.
"Are you going to read that rubbish all day?" he asked that same afternoon.
"It is not rubbish!" Loki objected in his most faux hurt tone – "It's all about me. There's so many photos in this one it's like looking in a mirror."
"Well then you're inordinately vain."
"Well of course," Loki pouted, twizzling round and kneeling in the bed, looking over at Thor and casually preening – "Just look at me."
Thor did.
"Yes Loki," he smiled, sighed. Loki was like a living sculpture, pale and silver and dark picked out in tones of sunlight and shadow, so beautiful it was hard for him to think. So much shivered on his tongue that he wanted to say to express this and in the end all he managed was "I see".
Perhaps it was enough, though – I See became the title of the song they wrote that day, a song that went to number one by the end of the week. And, words being poor things, Thor had risen up out of the bed sheets, catching Loki around the waist. The softness and the hardness of him made his fingers tingle, then his cock, and lust spiralled inside him like a coil of molten gold. Loki was a shockwave to the senses, a relentless stroking of the brain and a tongue of sunlight licking at the skin. He was the only drug Thor would ever be on. His one fear was that he would never be able to hold on to all of this writhing, shimmering perfection.
Loki's one fear was that with all this sweet sensation he could actually become accustomed to himself. He might stop running and hiding, dipping beneath the waters of the age so the gods would not catch him. He was afraid he could become dull through being happy. He could become someone he liked. It seemed so ill at ease with the picture he had drawn of himself – sketchy and prismatic, dancing with shining rainbows and ugly black spikes – he could hardly face it. He was afraid he could become drawn down from the heavens he inhabited and become content with being mortal.
Luckily he was beginning to formulate a plan. One that would make everything more interesting.
_x_
I'll be interested to see if anyone guesses what Loki's plan is! Once again, thank you for waiting so patiently for this chapter, I'm having a hard time writing seriously of late which is a shame because when I get started I love writing this so much! Don't anyone think I'm planning to give up on this though – I know where it's going and it will get finished – however long I am about it! :-)
