There is something about New Orleans that Tony can't quite put his finger on.
The city is famous for it's parties and seedy underworld and jazz. For fresh sea food and hot weather and French influence and voodoo and a real laid back attitude that you can't find anywhere else.
In New Orleans you can roll into a café hung over at the age of fifteen, sit next to a cop, and have a beer with him. At ten in the morning. Tony knows this from experience.
Tony literally can't put his finger on it because he's been to New Orleans twice. The first time was when he was one or two years old, so for all he knows it might as well have happened to someone else. The second time was when he was fifteen, and he got so drunk he ended up waking up with an African transvestite named Chrysanta in the back of a broken down hippie van with hanging beads instead of a windshield somewhere off Bourbon Street. To this day, he couldn't tell you how he got there.
He then walked shoeless, in the rain, until he found a little café, where he ended up having a few beers, at ten in the morning, with a nearly retired cop named…ahhh
Tony can't really remember.
He has a feeling he's not really going to remember tonight either.
Before the show he and Loki had taken some more of his candy, and Tony's skin feels like it's going to crawl off of his body if he doesn't keep moving.
Loki is on stage, bellowing and dressed in something that looks like a gymnast would wear it if it didn't have lime green pinstripes and giant studded shoulders. He's got his tongue wrapped around the microphone and sounds like he's gagging out notes and the crowd is going positively insane.
Tony is going insane with them.
"I'm a space invader! I'll be a rockinn-rollin bitch for you!" Loki and the crowd bellow together and it seems that while Loki wanted reverence and silence in LA in New Orleans he wants a full out cataclysm.
"NOW SCRRREEEEAAAMMM FOR ME!" Howls Loki mid song and there is violence in his eyes. Tony can feel it in the crowd. Loki struts like a manic street preacher in a lime green pinstripe waist cinching corset and knife-like stillettos as the crowd bays for him like a pack of hungry dogs.
While Loki flowed like water in LA here he jerks and twists and breaks things with a seductive intensity that leaves Tony breathless and almost horrified.
Loki barks into the microphone and suddenly a guitar solo begins out of absolutely nowhere. Loki appears to wrap himself within it as he strikes a number of strange poses, contorting his impossibly long body into improbable shapes.
Then the sound peters out into nothing and Loki falls on his knees, physically shaking.
"Chime child, chime child I can be your time, child. I'll wreathe you in smoke, when the bell tolls wild." Loki whispers into the microphone. His eyes are closed and the black points which extend into the hollows of his bones and usually make his eyes burn green just make his glistening skin look white. From everywhere bells are tolling, and Tony feels like his spirit has travelled to Notre Dame on the sound and left his hollow body in New Orleans.
"Chime child, chime child I can be your time, child. I'll wreathe you in smoke when I hear Gabriel's Hounds…"
Loki trails off and Tony knows that a storm is coming. The drummer, who Tony has learned is called Peters and sprinkles coke in everything he drinks, begins to pound away at his kit like he's trying to beat the absolute shit out of it.
"HOOOOOOOWWWL!" And the next thing Tony knows his spirit is back in his lungs and people are thrashing madly and he's thrashing too.
The next, next thing Tony knows the crowd is clamoring for an encore. He knows it won't come. He's extricating himself from the fray, going where Loki had told him to go. He follows a series of blurry hallways, to a door with a line of people, mostly women, standing outside of it. He passes all of them.
They aren't happy with him. He slams the door on their protests.
Back stage is chaos. Everyone's moving something, getting something, taking something off, putting something on, or smoking something. Jonce, the keyboardist, is in the corner with a half naked girl.
He's a short, slight man in a sequined vest and he takes the time to shout:
"Oi, Tony! Loki's out back having a fag." Before returning to the girl's breasts.
Tony doesn't know how to take this. He's too fucked up to remember that Brits call cigs fags. He stumbles forward anyway, mostly numb and somewhat horrified.
He's confused when he finds Loki standing by himself out back of the venue, the name of which Tony isn't all that clear on, smoking a cigarette. He's still got about half of his make up on, but he's dressed in the kimono Tony thinks he remembers from LA.
It's unusual in that it's almost entirely silver and green and instead of flowers its covered in beautiful delicate spiders.
"I've been waiting for you." Loki's talking fast.
"Yeeeaah?" Tony feels like his bones have been replaced with frozen slowly melting marmalade.
"I'm taking you out tonight." The words hit Tony's placid marmaladey body like pebbles in a lake.
Tony's answering groan could possibly be a phrase.
"Gonna tart you up and paint the town red with you. Yes." The yes is hissed.
Tony sways on his feet.
"Not like this, though. You're a bit low. Here, I've got just the thing.
The next thing Tony knows there's a pale white thigh sticking out of green silk and white powder being pushed around with a finger on top of it into a neat little line. And his nose is buried in it.
"Breathe in, darling." Says Loki and Tony does. He feels like the inside of his nostrils and throat are being cut with ground glass. He coughs and spits onto the thigh he's bent over.
"What was that?" Asks Tony when he can finally stand up again. He almost expects to see his own blood splattered on Loki's thigh.
Loki laughs low and rich and deep and Tony shivers.
"You know, usually when they're as beautiful as you they don't have a personality. Such jokes!"
Tony's being led by the hand somewhere.
And he's fine with that.
Pinyaaple: YES. ALL OF THE STUFF FROM HERE ON OUT TILL FORVER WILL BE TOTALLY NEW.
cunning linguist: lol. yeah. I quote shit all the time. I'm like a human quote box. By the end there's some shakespeare, goethe and renaissance artists just in there because yolo! Also, I'm glad you caught that. I don't want people to forget that Tony's playing a game too.
LJ: Hyde is boss. I'm kind of him. I got curly hair and I wear Led Zeppelin T-shirts. I have a Led Zeppelin Tattoo and I'm kind of a sarcastic prick. And hallo nyan lady!
yezho: Good luck with school! Space Monkey is a banging song. I listen to Nancy Boy when I write this sometimes. :) Also Post Blue. I've got this spotifiy frostiron playlist brimming with placebo.
Stormy: My ass is fat and sassy, thank you very much. Do you sew as well? I've always wanted to, but I don't have the patience. You're kind of breaking my heart lady. :( But, I'll find a way to go on. Somehow.
Nancy: What you have to do is have no friends, and hide in your house for five years writing and only emerging only when you run out of weed. Then you will know true writing genius.
Loki4ever: My proposal has actually been rejected, just saying. If you would like to sew some oats I have both quaker and whole grain.
Thank you all for your kind reviews!