Disclaimer: I don't own Thor, or any of the characters used in this fic. They all belong to Marvel and their respective creators. I only own any original characters that I choose to include, as well as any original plot ideas.
Chapter 5: Show Me The Beast
The instant his eyes had fluttered open, Thor had rolled out of bed and onto the floor, set about gathering his packed belongings in his arms and heading for the door. The task had proven somewhat difficult, trying to move the handle without dropping everything, and he had quickly opted to hopping out the window and landing firmly upon the still wet grass. Thor felt his bones rattle with the impact, took but a second to steady himself before he started running around the palace, a satisfied smile on his face as he went. Only afterward had he realized how silly it had been to challenge his brother, but, with the way he was feeling now, the precautions he'd taken to ensure even a small victory such as this, Thor was certain that Loki's jaw would drop clean off.
He made it to the stables, the smell of kicked up grass hovering in the air with the light fog, and Thor set his things down on the ground and opened the doors, strode quickly inside and removed his horse from its bedding. The animal snorted, stared at him with wide brown eyes and Thor smiled even wider, stroking its muzzle as they stepped out into the now gentle rain. The thunderer reached for his pack and set to fastening it to his steed, as the stable boy had already been about feeding the horses and saddling them for the journey. With the leather straps tied tight, Thor beamed as though the sun had cut through the clouds. He'd never been so proud of himself.
"Oh, don't look so satisfied."
The sound of footsteps sounded in the field behind him, and Thor turned, jaw slack as Loki and their friends sidled up on horseback, Sif putting a hand to her mouth as she laughed. Hogun was stoic as ever, Fandral appeared as though he were drunk and might fall off his mount, and Volstagg sat contentedly with a thick slice of bread in one hand and crumbs upon his beard. The more he stared, looking from one end of the group to the other, it seemed that Loki only smiled wider.
His brother dismounted, a skip in his step as he approached, laughing quietly under his breath as Thor began to shake his head.
"Don't count so well, do you, Thor?" he said, slapping the thunderer on the arm. "Perhaps you should pay more attention."
The thunder god grimaced, released the reins of his horse and took a wild swing at Loki that didn't even come close to connecting. The others just laughed.
"Best get moving," Fandral snickered, suddenly looking perky again. "I suppose you'll want to race the lot of us to the mountainside, yes?"
Biting his tongue, Thor said nothing, quickly mounted his horse and headed off after the others as they laughed, made jokes of him. He scowled. If they were all going to challenge him, he'd do well to put on his best face, focus and refuse to let a one of them get away with all that laughter.
Grass flew up behind them as they raged through the fields, the echoing sound of hooves against stone coming up to pound through Thor's head. He raised a hand to smack away a bit of bread crust that came flying at him, Volstagg's head turning to look back at him with a hearty laugh. It was a fortunate thing that the man hadn't anything in his mouth, as he would have been like to choke on it. Hogun didn't seem particularly interested in the race, and Thor passed him quickly. Fandral, on the other hand, appeared just as determined as the prince himself, and the two rode side by side for a time until the warrior caught sight of a handful of servant girls swimming idly about in the lake, their dressings laid upon the bank. His eyes went wide and he turned, looking very much like a tired old dog as his tongue threatened to loll out of his mouth. The Grim, however had picked up on Sif's irritated expression, and rode past Fandral to deliver a solid smack to the back of his head.
Thor blinked several times, raised a hand to scare away the dust that appeared before his eyes. It didn't seem to go away and began to sparkle, as though he'd spent far too long staring up at the bright morning sun. He heard a laugh, gaze moving to Loki who peered back at him with a mocking look on his face, and Thor knew. His brother was projecting those obnoxious flecks of light to distract him. Cheater.
Leaning forward, Thor held tight to the reins and snapped them, urging the horse onward. Even as he began to steadily speed up, he could hear Loki teasing him, insisting that he'd do well to just call it quits now before someone got hurt. That got Thor to thinking, and once he'd moved up alongside his brother, he grinned, reached over and grabbed Loki by the collar, lifting him right out of the saddle.
"What are you doing?!"
Thor let out that booming laugh of his, and swung Loki behind him, forcing his brother to cling to his shoulders for fear of toppling off the mount. He swept the free reins into a hand to keep the horse running alongside them.
"Now who's winning?" he said, and could feel that icy glare on the back of his neck.
But Loki made no reply, didn't try to shift himself back onto his horse the way Thor had expected him to. He just sighed, as if admitting the thunderer had bested him, and leaned his head against Thor's back. Eventually, the elder prince could hear his brother's breaths slow as he fell asleep, and Thor smiled to himself. So that was how Loki had beat him yet again.
He'd kept himself awake the whole night long.
# - # - # - #
There was a cold, comfortable feeling in his bones, the smell of smoggy air and rain and pines nestled all about him. He shifted, heard the gentle crackling of a fire as twigs were broken in two, tossed into the flame. The voices were quiet, though not with the sort of care that his mother's would have held, the desire to speak low so as not to wake him. No, they were secretive, laced with a hint of amusement. It shouldn't have mattered, but Loki, though he would never tell anyone, did not like being talked about behind his back.
His eyes opened and the fabric of the pitched tent stared down at him, the furs laid out beneath his body as Loki rolled his shoulders and sat up. Thor had done a decent job with unpacking his things for him, though the younger brother didn't like the thought that his victory had gone to waste with the loss of the horse race. He would have stormed out of the tent and berated Thor for his antics were he not equally as guilty of cheating, of staying up through the night, hovering bent over a wrinkled scroll. Of course, there hadn't been any set rules about such things, but he knew that Thor would play that card against him anyway. The "you cheated first, so I cheated back" bit that they had played with as boys.
The flap of the tent was pushed aside, all heads turning the instant he straightened up and kicked a stone their way through the leaves. Loki smirked.
"Having fun without me?"
Fandral was obviously absent, and sounds could be heard from the nearby stream as he chattered on to himself and started to sing. Looking at the man was one thing, particularly for women, but were he to find himself a suitable wife and take to serenading her, Loki was damn certain that the poor girl would slam her bedroom window in the warrior's face and bury her head beneath her pillows. The thought sent that crooked smile across his face until Thor tossed the stone back at him, nearly smacking him in the head.
The thunderer grinned, took to gnawing on a bit of beef and laughed loudly at a remark made by Volstagg, which insisted that, when he was drunk or half-asleep, Loki couldn't even see a horse, much less a flying stone.
"Oh, come now!" Thor bellowed, ushering his brother towards the fire. "It's only a bit of fun, as you say. Don't tell me that the God of Mischief can't handle being the back end of a few good jokes."
Loki said nothing, shrugged and let the whole thing roll off his back as he sat on one of the logs, ignoring Sif as she snickered and nudged him with an elbow. Volstagg smacked his lips, licked the ale from them, even as much of it trailed down his beard and into the dirt, insisting with much fervor that he'd seen a troll on the long ride over. That it had been sitting in the water beneath the bridge that had taken them through a tiny village that lay at the foot of the mountain. The meat was passed around then, passing Loki by as he refused it. Even without having eaten the whole of the day, he wasn't particularly hungry.
With a rather plain look, he stared across the fire at Volstagg.
"That wasn't a troll." They all turned to glance at him, brows raised as if to ask just how he could have known, what with having fallen asleep on the back of his brother's horse. Thor tossed him a waterskin. He took a drink. "Just a reflection of your own ugly mug."
Thor roared with laughter, loud enough that it seemed to shake the pine needles out of the trees as they floated downward and into the fire. The sky rumbled in sync with him, and Loki looked up at the dark mass of clouds that hovered right above their heads. Walking through a brisk rain was one thing, as was watching it from the comforts of the indoors. But sitting out in the wilderness and getting rained on was not Loki's idea of a good time.
There came a sharp yelp from the direction of the stream that caused all heads to turn in time to see Fandral, dripping wet with a towel around his waist, stumbling through the brush and into the dirt. His eyes were wide, panicked, and Loki pushed off the log to move towards the part in the trees to the north, stare across the gloomy landscape to spy the tall spires of the palace in the distance. Better that than running the risk of seeing Fandral's naked ass.
"What is it now?" Sif said, clearly uninterested.
No surprise that she wouldn't care, as Fandral, who very much enjoyed making himself a bit of a spectacle, had a horrid tendency to overreact. Why, once, he had found a silver hair in his comb and had bemoaned his bad fortune for nearly three days. Of course, it had only happened to belong to his frail grandmother who had taken to using the thing often.
"Didn't find another silver hair, did you?" Loki quipped with a grin. He heard Fandral shift from behind and sidestepped when the man chucked a large pine cone at him.
"No!" came the indignant reply. "I was taking a bath, minding my own business when–"
The trickster prince turned, smiling all the wider. "When what? You realized that you had mistakenly left your sweet-smelling bath product in the bathhouse?"
The others laughed. Fandral swore at him.
"There's something in those damned bushes!" he howled, pointing back from whence he'd came. "I saw it! Big, nasty old thing with huge eyes, and–"
Thor slapped his hands together, rubbed them eagerly as that cocky smile appeared on his face. "Big, you say." Dread pooled in Loki's gut as his brother stepped towards his horse, took hold of his blade and held it in the firelight. He was going to do something stupid again. "Well, let's see it! Show me this beast!"
Loki said nothing, leaned back against the bark of a tree, watched as Fandral, still wet and shaking, gave Thor a shove towards the stream like a frightened woman. Of course, he wouldn't say anything, lest Sif should chase him down for a fight. Volstagg and Hogun had remained silent, exchanging glances with each other until they heard Thor laugh again, tromp through the brush with a red faced Fandral trailing behind in embarrassment. This time, he came carrying his clothes.
"It's not funny!" Fandral shouted, quickly retreating to his tent.
"What was it?"
Thor looked between them and smiled at Sif. He raised a hand, a gesture for them to wait a moment, and hurried back through the foliage, returning not even a minute later with a large rabbit, no longer breathing, held by the ears.
"A rabbit," Loki said deadpan. "Well, now we know which of us is a waste of the word 'warrior.'"
The prince could have sworn that Fandral, amid hiding and dressing in his tent, muttered some manner of vulgarity at him. But Loki paid it no mind.
"Did you kill it?" Sif asked.
Thor shook his head. "Scared it to death, I think," he replied, looking morose, "when I charged into the brush."
Loki rolled his eyes. "Well, if you're not going to eat the damn thing, then bury it. I'd rather not waste the night away guarding against bears and bilge snipe."
The thunderer gave him a sad look, stared blankly at the frail little rabbit in his hand, and turned away towards the stream again.
Funny as the whole ordeal was, the meal ended immediately after.