Inside Loki’s townhome, Eros was rifling through his index system and more of the unpacked boxes. He continued to organize while he searched for a Fountain of Youth, A Holy Grail, or a Philosopher’s Stone that would help the Vampire King with his granddaughter’s affliction. He hadn’t been able to establish a timeframe or the necessary requirements since Loki had sped out of the situation so quickly.
Eros was sifting through his own notes and cross referencing them with Loki’s scattered journaling. Loki had many artifacts that might have healed Josanna. The issue was that each item he found that seemed hopeful had specific wording attached about reviving the dying, or anything living, or immortality to the mortal; however, the girl in need was already a vampire, already dead, not living, and already, in a loose sense of the word- immortal. Given, he wasn’t sure how much time was at his disposal, Eros wasn’t going to waste time on things that might not work.
Loki’s hand appeared before him, spinning a small blue flower resembling a violet between his fingers. Violets were Venus’s flower, and her temples were adorned with them. It was the official flower of Athens, and its smell represented sex.
“I prefer roses,” Eros quipped and continued to flip through notes.
“I’ll keep that in mind, but this isn’t for you. This is for Josanna.”
Eros looked up into Loki’s proud face. “What is it?”
Loki straightened his shoulders, “So interesting you would ask! This is the Moon Violet of Mount Meru. Quite a task getting it. The locals were very helpful, though. It grows in a cave on the mountain side, and one can only escape the cave after having battled Mara, the demon who, by way of his seductive daughters, tempted Siddhartha.”
“Oh,” Eros smiled, restraining his snickering as best he could as Loki continued.
“Yes,” Loki continued, “and this flower only blooms on a full moon, but if obtained, it lasts forever. And it is said to cure any ailment and to be an antidote to any poison. It’s meant to mean poison to the soul, but still, sort of what deadman’s blood means symbolically to vampires anyway. It’s what we need. We steep it in tea, or maybe virginal blood, and have her drink it.”
“Will it cure her Vampirism as well?”
“I don’t know. I’m sure after what she’s been through, though, that wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing for her.”
“No, but I think Devereaux might be devastated. He really cares for this girl. I could feel it, but it was also tied directly into the loathing disappointment he has in his son. What was his name?”
“Alec VanGarrett,” Loki rolled his eyes. “His heir, sad to say, unless something is done about him. The man’s a nightmare.”
“I’ve read about him in the papers, actually. He’s opened up a rather... popular chain of clubs.”
“Blood bars,” Loki corrected, gently. “He is everything wrong with the vampire community.”
“No,” Eros corrected, less gently. “It’s not everything wrong with the vampire community. It’s just everything that is wrong with people everywhere. Greed, bloodlust, power-obsession. He just so happens to be a vampire.”
“Fair point. I stand corrected. My apologies. But, the flower?”
“Right. I think it will work. Where was it hiding?” Eros asked.
“The windowsill in the kitchen. I figured she might like to see the moonlight, and given we have two moons, I thought it would help to keep her preserved.”
“Well, she looks great, and if you’re right, she’ll do the trick.”
“You think so?” Loki lingered, awkward and squinting.
Eros sighed and leaned against the desk, “Are you pandering for a compliment?”
“Yes. I believe I am.” He grinned.
Eros tried to hide his humored expression by looking back at his notes. “Good job, Loki.”
He feigned modesty, “No really, I can’t take all the credit. I owe all of my success to the God of Luck and Cleverness.”
Eros laughed silently and said, “Loki… that’s you. You’re the God of Luck and Cleverness.”
“How you flatter and tease me! Stop it. I’m blushing! But, please, go on...”
Eros was actually laughing now.
Loki noticed Eros’s gracefully parted lips and his closed eyes, covered by soft, thick black lashes. His etched jawline was raised, and his Adam’s apple was defined. His laugh was milk and honey, and his sun-tanned skin beamed like morning rays.
Eros opened his amber eyes to Loki, to say, “Your hubris knows no bounds.”
Loki tried to blink the spell away, but the stupid dopey look on his face was still there, and he said, distracted, “No. I suppose it doesn’t. Uh…” he again extended the flower to Eros, and said, “We should probably deliver this post haste.”
Loki watched every effulgent beam radiating from Eros extinguish, blown out quickly like a candle flame.
Eros went to take the flower. “Yes. Of course.”
Loki should have walked away towards the door, to dial Devereaux, to grab their coats, to make their way to Rose Noire, but he never could let his curiosity down. He pulled the flower away. “Why do you do that?”
Eros blinked and pulled his brows together. “Do what?”
“Don’t play coy.”
Eros scoffed, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Please! The moment you’ve realized you opened a door, you slam it back shut. Why?”
“Wha- I… Oh come on, you really want to have this conversation now?”
“Yes. I do.”
“You and I don’t need to have this conversation at all.” Eros sidestepped past boxes so he could take his leave, as Loki should have done.
Loki let him get half-way to the door before he said, as deliberately as he could, “Well you have to have it with someone.”
Eros stopped and let out the breath he was holding. He closed his eyes to consider the thought, and Loki waited.
“Now’s not the time. Let’s,” he turned his head, and said over his shoulder, “get this to Devereaux, and- if you must know, we’ll discuss it after.”
Loki pressed his upturned lips together and gave a small nod before hopping up to Eros. “Deal.”
Loki held out his hand. Shaking a god’s hand meant a magickally binding agreement had been struck, and there was no getting out of it. Eros squinted at the outstretched hand in uncertainty, but met it and shook. A zap of freezing cold shocked his system as the magickal contract was set.
“Your hand is ice,” he complained as their hands fell apart.
Loki grinned, “I’m an ice giant. Sue me.” He strode out ahead into the hall.
Eros rolled his eyes, “That’s absurd. Sue you? For being wicked cold?”
They headed down the stairs.
“It’s a joke,” Loki said.
“Well, it’s not a very good one, is it? Jokes have a point.”
“My point was to be absurd.”
Eros merely sighed.
They grabbed their coats off the coat rack that now stood inside the entry. Loki had found it in a closet and laughed at the redundancy when he had, because he could imagine what Eros would have said if he had seen the coat rack in the coat closet.
They stepped outside into the gray, and when they were halfway down the street, Eros snapped to attention and asked, “Where did the coat rack come from?”
Loki began to laugh hysterically.
Eros waited, but the laughter didn’t stop. “Is this another joke because. I know it wasn’t there before. Loki?... Loki? Okay, Nevermind, then.” In spite of himself, Eros was laughing at Loki for laughing so hard about a damn coat rack.
Laughing felt good, even if it was over a ridiculous coat rack. As a matter of fact, being around Loki Laufey just felt good. There was no pressure to behave any particular way or no admonishing that the way he was behaving was incorrect. He could be snarky, and off-putting, and bitter, and he could be himself without Loki taking any offense or taking it personally.
Loki allowed free will to flourish in his presence. It was the way he challenged societal protocols by turning them all into a joke. It was the way he disrupted habitual patterns by questioning them directly, which is what had Eros in his current predicament.
He didn’t really know why he kept himself locked away, held himself back, and now he was magickally obligated to speak about this after delivering the flower to Devereaux. Loki was likely to obliterate all the superficial excuses within the first five seconds of this conversation, leaving only the demotion, the divorce, and all the other real reasons. But the real reasons were a sticky, unstructured mess of emotions Eros didn’t know how to articulate. And the fact he couldn’t articulate them might have been another reason for keeping it all shut in.
But, trying to come up with a battle plan for this conversation was making his stomach churn, so he desperately searched for something to turn his mind over to.
“So… Um… What’s Death’s deal? In all of this? At my trial he and the Fates looked pretty cozy.”
“Mmm…” Loki took a breath to soothe away the last of his giggling. “That is probably a conversation best saved for behind closed doors.”
“Right.”
“But, what I can tell you is… He’s Captain. Our fearless leader. His greatest strength is his greatest weakness. He’s a wonderful actor, and he plays the system like it’s his own personal fiddle. I mean, well, fuck, he helped to invent the damn fiddle.”
Eros shook his head. “Why then is he fighting the Fates?”
“He saw that this was going to happen. No matter what. And, so, if something is going to happen that you don’t like, you put yourself on the ground floor of its implementation, so when the time comes you’re in the best position possible to destroy it.”
Eros thought about this. “In medieval art, the Wheel of Fortune is depicted as a wooden wheel people cling to as it goes ’round. Sometimes you’re on the upside, but as the wheel turns you’ll eventually be on the down-turn, but if you’re in the center, the hub of the wheel, you’re always in the same place. You’re the one in control of fate.”
Loki glanced down at him. “Exactly. Beautiful imagery. Very poetic. I’m a fan of proto-surrealism.”
“Not surprising.”
“You know,” Loki made a series of hand gestures, “I take it back.”
Eros stopped, and Loki then followed suit.
“Take what back?” Eros asked in earnest.
Loki put one hand in his pocket while the other continued to orchestrate his words, “Our deal.”
Eros was silent, waiting for further explanation.
“I put you in a corner, because it was easy. I saw an opportunity. I bullied you. Forgive me. You owe me no explanation. I still want to know, but I should never have forced your hand… in a sense. You’re no longer contractually obligated to tell me anything. I’ll take the harder road- this time.”
Eros blurted out a laugh and cleared his throat. “You think you manipulated me into this?”
Loki blinked, “I think I made you formally agree to divulge your very personal information. I-”
“You didn’t make me shake your hand. I did that… on my own free will, without the influence of your inescapable,” Eros was exaggeratedly breathy, “manipulation techniques.”
Loki’s expression was blank under the weighted scorn of Eros’s contemptuous stare-down.
“You are such a pompous, arrogant arse! To think that you’re that clever and that guileful, that the weak and unsuspecting little-me fell helplessly into your snare!”
Eros made a face of such disgust and revulsion that Loki became mortified with himself. His mouth went dry with the desire to take it all back, but it was too late. His ego, which hadn’t known it had been inflated by his good-guy attempt, shrank and hid in his spine.
He couldn’t apologize and say that wasn’t what he meant, because on some level, that was exactly what he had meant. So, he stood there at a loss for words, which rarely ever happened.
Eros shook his head in disdain. With a snarl on his once beautiful and graceful lips, he pointed at Loki with a patronizing finger, which, each time Eros shook it, cut the giant down inch by inch like the sharpest axe. “You know- I agreed, magickally, contractually, so that I couldn’t talk myself out of it. You think I had no understanding of what I was agreeing to? I- I wouldn’t have agreed if I didn’t trust you with that information- if I didn’t bloody-well want to trust you with that information. So, screw you for taking all the credit. Screw you for thinking I’m that malleable! But fuck it- take away the obligation. Then, when I satisfy your vapid curiosity on my own free will, without the strings of your influence, maybe it will give your ego a reality check and remind you that you aren’t the Fates, puppeteering people along. But you know- I appreciate your permission to do this on my own, because, well, I was cluelessly under your spell. But now, I’m weak in the knees. You’ve released me, and now you’re taking the hard road... for me. What a hero you are! Bravo.”
Eros gave him one last nauseated glance and turned to walk away, leaving Loki standing there dumbstruck on the cobblestone.
