Title belongs to Tree63 and the one song they have ever sung that I actually liked.
Warning: BANDFIC, may I be forgiven. Crossover with the Avengers, but not so much that it's important. Asgardians-as-human crack.
Million Lights
Chapter 1: Start the revolution
Everything about Fandral was a joke- his sissy beard, his fancy moustache, his overly florid speech patterns, his deliberately excessive cordiality, his clothes, his hobbies (FENCING, for god's sake) - every single damn thing about Fandral was a joke right up until the part where he started to perform.
Then even Hogun had keep his mouth shut and his opinions to himself, because Fandral was the best performer he had ever seen.
Not the best musician he'd ever seen, certainly not the best musician in the band- that dubious honour fell to Volstagg, their bass guitarist- but the best performer by a thousand miles. Sif didn't engage with the audience at all, too intensely focussed on her song, staring off into some distant point above their heads with this fixed expression that looked great on album covers but scared the hell out of Hogun whenever he happened to see it. And Hogun, he barely ever looked up from his drums. Hated the audience, hated their faces, their noise. Once, a pair of candy-pink underpants that had once landed on his symbols, and he had dispatched them back into the roaring crowd with a flick of his drum stick and without missing a beat.
But Fandral… he walked on stage, glanced up, bit his lip like a schoolboy with his eyes shining so you could tell he was about to enjoy the hell out of this, and they were all in love with him already. Ran his hand through his hair, struck a chord. In ten seconds, half the panties in the room were soaked.
In that indie rag that had given them the rave review three months back, they'd been listed by popularity. Fandral had headed the polls, bolstered by the teenage girl demographic, and the teenage boy demographic, and, once Hogun stopped sulking long enough to admit it, probably also by any demographic with warm blood flowing through its veins. People liked Fandral, liked watching him perform, give interviews, anything. Five seconds in his presence and you could tell you were in good company.
Hogun had been at the bottom of the list. The magazine had attributed it to his bad posture.
Centre stage, Sif gave an imperceptible nod. Time to get going.
He raised his sticks. He dropped his sticks. The lights came on, Sif opened her mouth and the next few hours passed in blur, until…
"...You've been a great audience, and we just want to say…!"
"...Four! Three! Two...!"
"...HAPPY NEW YEAR...!"
It was three minutes after midnight and two minutes after Hogun was privileged to watch their bass guitarist catch someone's lacy brassiere in his teeth when Fandral yanked him aside and asked if he wanted to become blood brothers. Hogun shrugged, and said, honestly enough, he couldn't think of any reason why not.
Dawn broke to find Sif draped over a table, snoring loudly, Volstagg in a puddle on the floor, clutching the stuffed pig that had featured on the front of their two albums (he'd said it was their mascot; their manager, surprisingly, had approved, saying it would be good for the merch), and Fandral with twelve stitches in his arm. The floor was coated in congealed Hungarian beer, and the melted remains of Fandral's attempt to construct an ice sculpture on the bar.
Hogun decided that he hated Budapest. And Hungary. All Hungary. All Hungarian people.
He had nine stiches on his arm.
"Where the fuck are my drumsticks?" he growled.
He found them in a plate of leftover döner kebab.
0
Sif (born Susan, Swedish mother, American father) was a pagan, a real one, and she took all of this stuff very, very seriously. She had wanted them to use authentic Norse names from the Eddas, and had been put out when they'd refused.
"The names you picked all have funny spelling," Fandral had protested. "If people can't pronounce our names properly, it's going to make interviews really awkward, Sue… Sif."
They'd made their names up instead.
There was them, and then there was their manager.
Who arrived to drag them home from the bar just after the sun rose, tsking as they groaned and stumbled along behind him.
Their manager dressed like someone who collected expensive abstract sculptures as a hobby, and then fixed tiny microphones to them and positioned them strategically in government buildings. Hogun did not think he had ever once seen their manager entirely sober. He kept a small silver flask on his person at all times, and took sips from it roughly every five minutes. You wouldn't have thought it to look at him, with his smooth face and combed hair. He never even slurred. The only way you could really tell when he'd been putting it away was in a tendency to lapse into run-on sentences with slightly less than perfect grammar.
His real name was Liobhan, so Fandral had insisted they dub him Loki, 'if the rest of us have to have silly fake names.' It hadn't bothered Liobhan, to whom fake names stuck surprisingly well, so now they had a manager whose name was Loki. They'd picked him up early- he'd been this weird, slightly off guy they all knew from one place or another (Sif knew him from university, Fandral knew him from a bar, Volstagg knew him from the stables where he'd worked part time before becoming a full-time guitar-player; where, apparently, their manager had kept a fine mare. Hogun knew him because they had a drug dealer in common, and one time he'd gotten their particular requests mixed up and they'd met to do the exchange. Awkward to meet the guy a few months later, watching them rehearse. Telling them that they were good, and then offering to manage their band for them.)
Hogun's relationship with Loki was a little strained, because Loki's mind worked the same way his did.
But he could forgive any and all of that, because Loki had one great redeeming quality; he got shit done.
Like their bus. Hogun did not know how he had got them a bus; maybe he'd had to break a guy's legs with a baseball bat. Hogun didn't care. They had their own bus. Volstagg had wanted to call it 'Priscilla'. Sif had wanted to call it the 'Ship of Toenails.' Eventually, they'd settled on 'Valkyrie.' Valkyrie was an absolute pig and had died on them three times in the last twelve miles. She was bright yellow, and Fandral painted 'Sif + W3' on her side in curly lettering, his calligraphy so delicate that it made them look less like a rock band and more like a travelling bridge club.
If it hadn't been for Loki's unique, frightening skills of negotiation, they would have been touring in a three-wheeled van with Hogun's drums strapped to the roof. So Hogun gave credit where it was due.
Inside their bus, in the section that doubled as Volstagg's lyric-writing studio and their mess hall, Sif had pinned up a poster of a gorgeous, muscular blond, every luscious inch of him from the neck down wrapped in leather. Lip curled arrogantly, the most vicious pair of blue eyes. When she had a headache, Sif liked nothing better than to spend an hour peppering it with darts. Most of the tiny pinpricks in the poster were now localised in the region of the blond's crotch.
Thor Odinson. The distinguished competition.
At least, Loki said he was their competition. Hogun, personally, didn't think they were anywhere near his league. Thor Odinson and the 'Avengers'. He'd seen them play, paying special attention to his opposite number; Wanda Maximoff. She played drums like she wanted to PULP them, slender hands blurring into invisibility.
Vicious. Like Thor, Hogun thought. The other three didn't have that; Steve was, by all accounts, a great guy and an amazing singer, but he was too clean-cut to fit in beside Thor's snarling intonations and Wanda's murderous beats. Tony was better, smoother, a charismatic performer, but he spent too much time trying to copy Steve's sound. Hogun didn't think the Avengers were going to last. Thor, however, was going places. Bigger and better places than any of this sorry crew were going.
Hogun passed by the poster and winced as a sharp, shrill shriek pierced the veil of his hangover like a nail to the forehead.
"Balder!"
It was as though Loki had two voices. There was the one he used on them, the common scum he managed and marketed, the soft, moderate voice that never so much as jumped an octave. Then there was the voice he used when he was talking to Balder. Balder, who was now poking his head out from the back of their battery-powered minifridge. He had a screwdriver between his (perfect) teeth, grease over his (perfect) face and his (perfect, fucking perfect) hair was a mess.
He was wearing pants slung low, weighed down by a dozen and one wrenches, spanners, and fiddly tools sticking out of deep pockets. His shirt was unbuttoned, revealing a long triangle of brown curls and deeply tanned skin that Hogun took a moment to appreciate.
"Yes?" Balder said, politely, tucking a lock of white hair behind his ear, only to have it flop messily back under Loki's scowl.
"Aren't you finished yet?" Loki snapped, as though he'd caught Balder masturbating or picking grit from between his toes.
Balder looked pointedly at the splayed innards of the fridge, and back to Loki. "Not quite, no. It's taking a bit longer than I thought it would."
Balder was Loki's… boyfriend? Fucktoy? Support system? Restraining bolt? Parole officer? They had never asked, because Balder was too sweet to ask a question like that and Loki was too scary. Not that they couldn't handle scary. But Loki was their accountant, and their budget manager, and at the end of the day he was the guy who decided how much beer money they were allowed.
"You may as well not bother now," Loki said, coldly. "Everything's defrosted. We'll need to buy supplies again tomorrow. If I'd known this would happen I'd have made you buy a new one."
Whatever Balder was in his personal capacity, he was also their driver, and the guy who fixes their bus, their instruments and their equipment. Good with his hands.
If they were to put Balder up on stage with them, he wouldn't even have to play a note to make them the richest people on earth. People would kill to get tickets to see him again, and again, and again. They wouldn't even cheer, they'd stand there, staring, while Balder shifted on the balls of his feet and smiled awkwardly. When Loki had first introduced him, there had been a moment of slack-jawed silence from all three of them. He was one of those people that you wanted to touch just to make sure they were real.
How to put it? Balder was so good looking- and so fucking good- that he was intimidating. Fandral hadn't even tried to flirt with him yet. He should have been on magazines. Or in an airtight glass case. He should not have been on their lousy bus fixing their lousy fridge.
"I was certain it would last," Balder said sadly. "The man I brought it from seemed very trustworthy. He reassured me that…"
"Then man you brought it from was a junk dealer at a flea market," Loki snapped. "I do not put any degree of trust in the men you choose to buy things from Balder, I trust YOU to make the things you buy functional. That is why you are HERE. That is the sole purpose of your EXISTENCE."
"But it seems such a waste to buy a new fridge," sighed Balder, Loki's caustic tone rolling off him like water of a duck's back as he resumed tinkering. "I did like this one so much. And all its parts are in perfect working order. I just… ah-HAH!"
Looked like he was onto something. Hogun left them to… bicker? Squabble? Flirt? Whatever the hell it was they did, and he moved into the heart of the bus.
Where Sif sat, cross-legged, typing on her laptop. She was in charge of their Youtube channel, and their Myspace account, and their blog, and their official website. In addition, she was the person to whom Loki delegated tasks that he didn't think were worth his notice, like designing flyers and sorting out lists of promoters.
Surrounding her was an array of empty cans, candy wrappers, dirty socks and unopened condoms. They lived like pigs; not one of them had showered in two weeks, not since they were lucky enough to get to stay a night in a bed and breakfast. Most of the time Loki made them sleep in the bus and eat whatever they could pry off the road. He, himself, did not ever eat, just sipped and sipped from that tiny silver flask.
Fandral was sprawled out on a giant beanbag, his iPod plugged into his ears, foot tapping. Listening to his favourite band of the week, a weird, experimental thing called The Inhumans. Not to Hogun's taste, although he liked their pianist; she wore this bizarre red wig that flowed over her feet and dripped over the stage- must be hell to hold her head up through an hour-long performance in it, he thought. Their manager, a shrimpy bald guy with tattoos all over his face, had once sent W3 a voodoo doll, which could have been a threat or a compliment. Hogun couldn't tell; The Inhumans were weird. What could you expect from a group whose lead vocalist never actually sung, but stood there staring dead ahead as his bandmates made odd, alien sounds around him?
Weirder still, in that they actually had a lyricist – a talented, talkative man with curly black hair, whom Sif swore she had once sucked off in a bathroom ('not half bad, when you could get his cock far enough down your throat to make him shut up.'). They published the lyrics on the net, and whenever someone asked them why their vocalist never sung them, they would just look at you blankly until you went away.
Long story short; The Inhumans were really fucking weird.
"Hey," Hogun said, in greeting.
"Hello, love," Fandral said, removing his iPod. "Are they at it again?"
"Yes."
"I love Hungary," Volstagg said, pushing his way in from the back of the bus and dropping down next Fandral's beanbag. "Don't you?"
He had an open can of beer in his hand, and he used it to gesture to the rain-soaked windows. "All this atmosphere. All this gen-o-say-kwa. Couldn't do without it."
"I'm told it's lovely in Summer," said Fandral.
"Where are we going next?" Hogun asked. His arms were wrapped tight about his midsecton, as they did when he was worried, or annoyed.
Consulting the map, Fandral said, "Some pisspot little town, and then… Latveria."
Hogun's eye twitched.
"Just joking," said Fandral. His nose developed a little wrinkle when he was laughing on the inside. Like a baby rabbit.
"I don't like those kind of jokes," Hogun growled.
"Romania is next," said Volstagg, without consulting the map; Volstagg remembered things like that easily. "Then we turn around and hit Croatia. Then we go home. Then, three months from now, we're in Norway again."
"Have you eaten?" Fandral asked, his eyes trailing down Hogun's stomach.
"Not hungry."
"So that's a no. Volstagg, get him some of that leftover cottage pie."
"I'm not hungry," Hogun said again, but he'd eat the pie. He always did. Fandral had had an eye on his waistline ever since that bout of anorexia when he was seventeen. And, fine, Hogun had lost a few pounds in the last few weeks. It always happened when he was on the road, it didn't mean anything.
He wouldn't take this mothering bullshit from anyone but Fandral. One thing Hogun had always believed, very strongly, is that a person should have full rule over himself.
Fandral pulled him down into his lap without preamble, and licked his ear.
"Stop being grumpy," he husked, linking his arms around his stomach.
"Fucking hate cold weather," Hogun muttered, twisting Fandral's ridiculous beard. "Hate this, too."
"The fans love it."
"Fucking hate the fans."
"What if," said Fandral, "we go into the back, and I suck you off? Then, after that, we can share the cottage pie, and you can listen to this new song I've found."
It was an undeniably attractive prospect.