Atlanta is hot and busy and a few pieces of the picturesque old south blend seamlessly with the very heights of modern technology.
It makes Tony miss the old world charm and ancient oak trees which have the city of New Orleans wrapped in a mossy wooden web that feels more like a warm blanket.
Considering he didn't leave the hotel room once in Orlando, Tony thinks he's going to give Atlanta a spin anyway.
This is very convenient as the second they get to their hotel room Loki more or less pushes Tony out of it.
"I'm writing." Loki says. "I need to be alone. Go find Jonce or Lee or Peters."
Tony wonders who those people are before remembering that he's technically crashing Loki Lauff and the Age of Frost's band tour, which means that, logically, Loki Lauff must have a band. And that, logically, these people must have names.
Tony is about to complain when suddenly a leather jacket, a pack of cigarettes, a pack of matches, and a hundred dollars is chucked out of the crack in the door at his head.
"I'll see you at the show Friday." Says Loki before slamming the door shut. Tony can live with this. He's sliding the leather jacket on over his kimono and his newly acquired treasures into the pockets when he realizes that he doesn't even know which hotel he's in.
"Excuse me, ma'am?" He asks an elderly woman who just happens to be passing by. She stops and looks at him with wide eyes. "Can you tell me which hotel this is?"
"The Meridian." She says and stalks away as if offended by his very presence.
"Thanks dollface." Says Tony to the empty hallway before lighting a cig and going out in search of Jonce or Lee or Peters.
They find him first. He's wandering aimlessly around the Meridian, soaking in the awful plastic turquoise wall paper when suddenly he feels a hand on his shoulder.
"Didn't know he lets you out alone."
Tony looks up and sees Peters standing in front of him. Without the insane outfits and stage make up Tony almost always sees him in he looks so normal that it's eerie. He's a somewhat pasty white guy of a middling size with dishwater eyes and the same color brown hair that almost everyone seems to have.
"Broke the leash." Says Tony and Peters hands twitch. Without drum sticks in his hands he always looks slightly dazed and confused.
"It's strange. I feel like you've been with us forever and I've never said a word to you."
"I'm a shy one, Darling." Says Tony and Peters shakes his head. It hits Tony that Peters' accent is slightly English but also slightly ten or fifteen other things.
"I feel like a walk, you got anything a little less...far out to put on?"
Tony hadn't even realized that he'd been living exclusively in Loki's clothes for weeks. He doesn't know how he feels about this.
"Define far out?"
"Gotcha. Don't worry about it. Jonce is about your size, slight little man. I'll see if he'll lend us some trousers at least."
It turns out Jonce isn't in, but Peters manages to break into his room in a millisecond by jimmying the lock with some folded up paper.
"Spend so much on wall paper in these places that they haven't got the bread left for a security deposit, if you know what I mean."
Tony laughs easily and freely. After the full-time wildly spiraling walking smoking emotional apocalypse that Loki manages to be, Peters is like putting cool water on a burn.
Peters is quick to smile and quick to laugh and quick to joke. Tony gets the feeling that some comets skate by the atmosphere more often than Peters gets angry.
"Yeah man." Says Tony as Peters pulls a pair of long white denim bell-bottoms out of a drawer.
"Here, I'm just gonna leave Joncey a note telling him where his pants walked off to. He owes me some hard quid in Mary Jane and I'm not collecting on it so I don't think he'll be too cross about things. Change up, love."
With that there's a pair of pants in his arms. He looks over to see Peters scribbling something on a receipt on one of the rooms dressers.
As he shimmies out of Loki's kimono and puts on the pants he feels absurdly naked. Wrapping himself in his leather jacket makes him feel a bit better.
"Oh, you've got it bad, huh?"
Tony realizes he's smelling the jacket a second too late.
"Oh don't be ashamed. I mean, your taste is kind of shit but my last girl, back in London, tried to rob me bind while I was sleeping so I can't really say much about any of that."
The pants are so tight that Tony is momentarily distracted by the need to breathe and not vomit. "What do you mean, 'shit'?" He finally gasps out.
Peters looks as unimpressed as it's possible to be while still being completely polite.
"Loki picked you up in L.A, right?"
Tony nods.
"Since then we've been to New Orleans, Orlando, and now Atlanta. It's been just over two weeks and I'm pretty sure you've spent every woken moment with the bloke. You can't tell me that you haven't noticed that he's a bit...spare?"
Tony can think that all he wants but hearing this Peters lay it all on the table makes his hands ball into fists.
"Now don't get cross with me, mate. I love Loki. I really do. We started this band together, him and me. We've been the thickest of thieves for, well, four years, now."
There's something about Peters that makes you feel like if you're not calm you're wrong. Tony hates being wrong.
"Well, up until a couple of months ago, leastways."
"What happened?" Tony asks and suddenly he realizes that the air feels different and when he looks around he realizes that they're walking around a busy street in the sunshine, and cars are flying by.
Tony wonders if he's going absolutely crazy.
"Well, Loki's way into magic. Like really deep, the deepest I think you can get. I've seen him do some things, and half the time I go on pretending I didn't just to keep my realities straight, if you can feel that?"
"Yeah, man." Says Tony and suddenly he's incredibly grateful that Loki kicked him out for a day or so. He'd almost forgotten that there was a world outside of the man, and being immersed in it suddenly is like being lifted from the center of a fog.
"Nick a fag?" Asks peters and Tony looks at him blankly.
"You've got a pack in your pocket."
Tony reaches down to the box of cigs in his pocket and remembers that whole American English vs English English thing. He hands Peters one and takes one for himself.
"Thanks. You're a star." Says Peters and lights a match for them both. "But leastways, about six months ago, while we were recording the album, Loki went wrong. Straight sixes and sevens. Seriously."
"Sixes and Sevens?" Asks Tony.
"Oh come on, no one's that public school. It's plain english."
Tony has no idea what's happening.
"Are you an Englishman or aren't you?"
"Peters, I'm American."
"No."
"Born in L.A."
"Well then you've nicked Loki's accent along with his clothes because you talk posher than him, and he's the prince of posh gits."
"Darling, I do not..."
Tony suddenly feels like he's in a horror film. His voice doesn't even sound like the one he's had for nineteen years anymore, and according to Peters its only been two weeks.
Jesus christ.
"But, anyway, Loki always does this thing where he meditates. Sometimes he's gone in his head or whatever he goes for days. Once he dehydrated himself doing it. Had to get him to hopsital."
Jesus Christ.
"It's like his body can't handle his soul man. Like it just shouldn't be there."
Tony has always thought of Loki more as like a collective embodiment of impulses than an actual human being. He'd never really thought of him as a thing with a soul.
"He was always a strange bloke. Really quiet with almost everybody unless he wanted something from them, but he could probably cheat the devil if he wanted. And he has. Walked into the White Clay's record office in London and talked us into a deal. We didn't even have four songs done yet. The guy really is magic. Seemed to like me but not really anybody else. Like I said, knew him all that time, and never saw him smoke a fag or have a glass of wine. Really on the straight, if you see what I mean."
The Loki Tony knows keeps Quaaludes on his private bar, in a Batman pez dispenser.
He wonders if Peters is high.
"He'd never seem to have anyone either, if you follow. No birds, no blokes, no nothing. Always on his own just watching. And looking like he wanted in but didn't know how to get there."
The Loki Tony knows finds someone to fuck every time he gets a bit hard so he doesn't have to take care of it himself.
"So, that was up until six months ago. He phoned me, told me he was going on one of his little personal vacations, you know, like into his head-land or whatever. Back then we were in the middle of recording the album, so it really wasn't a good time for that. He ended up not showing up to recording for two days, and on the third we went to his flat to get him but didn't answer, so we ended up doing some housebreaking."
Peters takes an agitated puff of his cigarette and Tony almost doesn't want to know what follows.
"We found him lying on the floor. It didn't even look like anything had happened to him. It was like he'd just stopped. At the A&E they couldn't tell us either and Loki never explained. Still hasn't. He was in a coma for three days."
It suddenly occurs to Tony that people like Loki, whose automatic answer to everything is to take something, drink something, or fuck something usually aren't the happiest of people, regardless of what they pretend to be.
It also occurs to him that his immediate reaction to this news, which is to go drown in a vat of whiskey, is nothing like that at all.
"When he woke up first thing he did was have a smoke and a drink. Been at it ever since. I watched him tear through speed and dope and pills like they were flavors of ice cream, man. He puts himself in stupid situations for a laugh. He walks down roads by himself. Goes everywhere in his stage outfits, looking so queer hoping that someone will try to beat it out of him. I once watched him get on his knees and...and...he fucked fifteen guys in a row with his mouth, just taking it. I don't know what the hell his problem is, but he's, well, he was never really happy, but he's something else now."
Tony remembers Loki's bleeding, blissfully curled mouth as he hit him in the face until there was so much blood that Tony just couldn't be hard anymore.
"What do you think happened to him?" Asks Tony as he flicks the very end of his cig and grinds it into the ground under his shoe.
"I was hoping you'd know."
"Why the hell would I know?"
"After his last trip into the ether he kind of stopped being cool with me. Think about it? He's our lead vocalist, right? How much time does he spend hanging out with us? He doesn't. He just keeps finding strangers to fuck and shit to take and bottles to drink. I'm a cool guy, but he takes all of it to suicidal levels. And I'm not cool with that. Once I tried to talk to him about it and things got...kind of physical."
"So, if I'm just another stranger he's fucking what makes you think he's pouring out his heart all over me?"
"Because you aren't."
Tony kind of wants to laugh. He also kind of wants to cry.
"When Loki looks around at the world it's like everything's just a grey blob. Things are things an he knows what they are but nothing means anything to him. He was always sort of like that, but its worse now."
Tony knows exactly what he means.
"Loki looks at you like you're made of gold, man. Like you're the first interesting thing he's ever seen."
Tony thinks that Peters is possibly certifiable. Loki's answer to his near death was to dope him up and go for a drive until he chilled the fuck out about it.
"I need some time to think." Says Tony and he more or less sprints into traffic, nearly getting nailed by a taxi in his mad dash across the street.
"Full blown loons, the both of you are!" Yells Peters at his rapidly retreating back.
Stormy: YES. YESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESY ES. DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY FICS I HAVE BEGUN ONLY TO DISGUSTEDLY GIVE UP IN A RAGE BECAUSE LOKI IS CHARACTERIZED LIKE THIS GOOD-FOR-NOTHING SIMULACRUM OF SOME DUMB PASSY-ASS ROMANCE NOVEL BITCH WITH ALL OF THE AGENCY OF A MOLDY LOAF OF SHIT. FUCKBALLS. WHAT PART OF 'HE IS A GOD' and 'HE THINKS GENOCIDE ON A PLANET THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH HIM WILL SOLVE HIS DADDY ISSUES' FUCKING ESCAPES PEOPLE. IT'S THE WORST IN AU'S. IF I SEE ONE MORE AU WHERE LOKI IS SOME FUCKING HIPSTER GARY STU BITCH AND THOR IS THE ACTUAL DEVIL OR TOO STUPID TO FUNCTION AND EVERYONE RAPES LOKI BECAUSE HE'S SO BEAUTIFUL AND IT TAKES PLACE IS A COFFEE SHOP AND TONY STARK IS A WALKING PENIS WITH NO HIGHER FUCNTIONS I AM GOING TO BURN THIS MOTHERFUCKER DOWN. I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHICH MOTHERFUCKER I'M GOING TO BURN DOWN, BUT IT'S GOING TO BE LIEK A FIREWORKS DISPLY OF HOMICIDE.
FGS: Thanks man. And to be honest, your vacation kind of sounds like it would be like the journey of a quirky side character in a film. Also, hand turned fountain pens *drools*.
Lanka: MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA. And thanks :)
hulky: Well, I mean, it might have come a little bit later than you wanted, but it still came.
comfy: That is very, very accurate. Seriously. This has grown a plot. I don't know how, but it did.