There are times when Thor genuinely has something of a hard time switching off. When his emotions run high and he has energy reserves that feel overflowing to bursting and Asgard is proving damnably stubborn about providing something to occupy his attention. Most everyone assumes that it’s just a bout of particularly high spirits in the normally boisterous prince. It’s the healers who are usually concerned. It’s Frigga who tries to heed their words over than her husband’s. Indeed, these episodes usually end with Thor sleeping like the dead for a couple of days at a time.
But for now, he hasn’t slept in three days. Why would he? The moon is high, the stars are bright, and the smell of late autumn is in the air. Soon, winter will come to Asgard, for what little time it can ever manage. Thor hates the winter all the same – hates the grey skies, the weakened sunlight, the slurries of snow, the way the wind becomes as good as a knife to the bones. Just the thought makes him shiver with distaste.
So. All the more reason to enjoy the weather while he can.
Which clearly means he should go to Vanaheim. Right now. Maybe they’ve finished the harvest by now, and so maybe they’ve started making the wine. It’s certainly worth a look.
And while he suddenly finds that he has absolutely no patience even to take the minor detour it would take to find his friends, Thor finds that he’s still capable of steering his steps just enough out of the way to look for Loki. Maybe his brother is closeted once more in the library, or not yet surrendered to sleep in his rooms.
Wherever he is, he’ll doubtless be able to hear his brother coming, in the otherwise quiet halls of the darkened castle.
◣♛◢ —- –
Loki has been in many a discussion with Frigga about Thor’s excitably happy humors; the younger prince of Asgard is comparably a calm, cool, reserved being, an eye of every storm that the Thunder God conjures, and it often falls to him to soothe Thor’s raging humors, be they affable or …otherwise.
It’s late and the God of Mischief has yielded to the chill of his favorite season, when the world is afire in beautiful decay, a paradox that suits his sometimes perverse sense of humor, and his incurable undertone of melancholy. He is currently curled in a feline ball at his window, which is cracked open. A fat book reposes next to his outstretched, black-nailed hand, and his expression is beatifically calm, seraphic.
He has no idea of the attack of radiant exuberance about to grace him.
But he’s hardly unused to it.
Thor tries the handle of the door to Loki’s room without any expectation at all of finding it locked or otherwise barred to him, heedless of how it might sound to his brother to have someone trying to get into his room late at night.
Indeed, the door opens to him as easily as an invitation in its own right, sparing him the need to deal with any further unnecessary complications or delays from knocking and calling out. Not that he doesn’t trust Loki, of course, but Thor doesn’t have the time or the patience for guards in his current mood.
“It’s only me,” he says to Loki, already stepping into the room and closing the door behind him. Only then does he think to look up and see if his brother is even conscious. Seeing that he is, even if he misses the fact that Loki is obviously close to drowsing, Thor smiles in a way that’s probably quite familiar.
“Ah, wonderful. You’re awake.” Without any further preamble, Thor strides into the room and sits down on what available space of windowsill isn’t taken up by Loki or his book. He doesn’t need much space. Even sitting down has him obviously straining to be back in motion.
“I wondered if you might accompany me, on such a fine night as this.”
◣♛◢ —- –
Loki jerks alert, or relatively so, still bleary-eyed and confused; the misfortune here is that for nearly an hour after rousing, if he’s in trusted company, Thor’s baby brother is a drowsy, dazed, affectionate, impressionable mess.
Through squinting jade eyes, the God of Mischief regards his boisterous elder sibling.
“Brother, I am … awake by sheer will alone, it is practically the middle of the night,” he slurs.
He awakens just slightly further when Thor springily bounces to a seat beside him.
“Ehm, oh.”
And just like that, Loki’s capacity to be the flawless companion to a restless soul attunes perfectly.
“An unquiet night, then?”
He stretches; the option to sleep is now beyond him. If Thor goes out galivating alone, Loki will fret too much to let slumber claim him.
icyxmischief 