16.
For the rest of that evening, Thor was careful not to push it. He knew how precarious his position was; talking to Loki right now was like a careful trapeze act; one false move and he would lose his grip and Loki would fall into a place from which, this time, there would be no coming back. Thor tried hard to forget, even in his mind, that he was the injured party, but was so certain that he was (self -righteously certain, he knew Loki would have said) that all he really succeeded in doing was behaving as though he did not feel the injury. He had finally realized that to do otherwise awoke Loki to feelings of actual guilt; guilt that he took angrily and hammered into weapons – anger, bitterness, outrage and injured innocence – anything, in short, that he could use to attack Thor rather than letting those wicked knives curve in on his own fledgling heart.
And so that night they spoke nonsense and ordered pizza. When they argued over toppings it began to feel like all could really come out well in the end. In the end, they got individual pizzas, even though Thor said Loki would never manage sixteen inches on his own and Loki, just to prove him wrong, made himself almost sick eating every bit of it. Later on Loki magnanimously offered to help him clean up the "fetid pigsty" of a room, and Thor, just as graciously, shrugged it off and said he'd do it later.
It was a strange, dream-like night after that, trying to make light of where they were and all that had happened whilst still feeling the weight hang heavy and fresh in the air of all that they still needed to talk about.
The knowledge and awareness of the idea of moving on hung on one side of a gulf with their unfinished conversation crouching on the other side with its teeth bared.
When Loki announced, after what he considered to have been an excessively generous level of time, that he could not cope with the filth of the living room any longer, they transferred to the bedroom. The hundred unsayable complications that this threw up led Thor to light a dozen candles around the room before coming to lie with Loki on top of the sheets. They lay face to face, watching each other in the mischievous light that put sparks in Loki's eyes and lent shadows to Thor's face. They were Loki's candles, the wax trickling from cupboards and shelves, forming pools on the carpet at times that had long ago convinced Thor they would never get their deposit back. Unsurprisingly, Loki had never even begun to imagine how or why to care.
Loki's fingers moved lightly on Thor's face as though re-exploring him blind, Thor's hand light on Loki's arm. They were both aware that they were looking face on to all of the answers to all of those still wriggling questions, but could not quite make the final push towards the inevitable conclusion.
"Everything stopped," Thor finally said, aloud and apropos of nothing and everything, his words trickling straight into the half dark from the workings of his unsteady heart "You were dead and now – it feels like I've come back to life and now everything, people places, names, it's all –"
"Speeding up," Loki nodded – "Now we just have to cope with this evolutionary paranoia." It sounded, as so often, like he was quoting something.
"I just –" Thor frowned – "It's like everything's going in fast forward to make up for the pause when you were gone and I can't keep up."
"Fairly sure that's what I said."
"Maybe. But the way I said it made sense."
"I didn't want to hurt you," Loki blurted suddenly – "I mean, maybe I did. I wanted you to miss me but I – I suppose I didn't think you would."
"You didn't –" Thor shook his head in disbelief – "Loki I don't even know if that's profoundly selfish or a complete lack of self-worth."
"I can't have both?"
"Either way Loki, you should have known better."
"I can't – I mean –" Loki rolled onto his back, exhaling aggressively at the shadows on the ceiling – "Thor – you're saying I should have faith in myself?" He inclined his head to smile at Thor tightly, a flicker in his eyes and to that smile that almost broke Thor's heart;
"You really are the biggest, sweetest idiot, you know that?"
"Loki, I love you," Thor all but shrugged.
"And that's easy for you isn't it?" Loki did not sound angry, merely interested, intrigued even.
"It is what it is."
"It is what it is," Loki echoed – "But I'm not. I'm never what I am. I thought I could reinvent myself and then I might know. If I died – I'd be able to see the space I left in the world."
"And did you? What's it like – being dead?"
"I saw the whole world go on without me. I saw my fans and the media, the whole music industry just churning on without me. And I saw you – barely going on. Being dead – you see more really – it was like I could see the whole of creation spilling out of the stars, the whole stinking world."
"And?"
"And it was just terrible without me. I had to come back."
Thor smiled, chuckled.
"Seriously though –" Loki looked at him, still smiling, but with a narrowing of fear in his eyes – "It was you. You were why I left and then – you were why I came back. I was so afraid of settling down, of what we were becoming and then –" Loki sighed – "Then I could not live without it. I couldn't even be dead happily without it."
"Loki." Thor frowned, and then he was kissing him, and Loki was soft and yielding and sweet as a child, kissing him with an honesty he had never felt before and with the pleasant lack of necessity to move on from there to sex.
"Where were you though?" Thor asked when they broke off.
"Dead," Loki shrugged – "Alone in my own head for a while. It was – awe inspiring and – strange. I suppose I took the time to explore myself, realise how little I knew of what there was, you know, in here."
"No I mean – where actually were you?"
"Oh, I was staying with the band"
"The band?"
"Yes."
"My band?"
"No you great pillock, my band. Like I would have trusted Sif not to tell you."
"Oh. Good. I'm so glad I only got betrayed by half the people I know."
"And Fandral. I told Fandral."
Thor sighed.
"Half plus one moron."
"I had to Thor," Loki explained patiently as though to a child – "It's not easy to fake a death and you just can't do it alone. I mean you all saw the shooter in the stands didn't you?"
"Yes – yes what was that?"
"Staging," Loki grinned proudly – "Actually I really was pleased with that. Your eyes were drawn there weren't they? That was the lighting. I made sure everyone's eyes were drawn there. Just so they only just registered at the time and totally registered afterwards. Good wasn't it?"
"No Loki, I can't say it was good."
"Hmm, well I suppose you wouldn't. So of course I needed help for that. I had the fake blood to work in my costume and then I had to train Slepnir for weeks on delivering the Loki Laufeyson is dead line – you have no idea how tough that was. The lengths I went to."
"Yes," Thor glared at Loki, but it was becoming half hearted – "That was rather the problem."
"Does it still matter?" Loki's voice was careless but his eyes as he watched Thor carefully for an answer were wide and scared as though his whole future depended on Thor's answer. It did.
"No Loki," Thor said, and just as he said it he knew it to be true – "No, it doesn't matter."
_x_
One more chapter! :-)
