The next day, Eros again found himself before the steps leading up to the townhome of Loki Laufey. He had a song stuck in his head by The Clash. If he left and never returned there would be trouble, but if he stayed there would be double-double, toil and trouble.
He gritted his teeth and forced his way up the steps to knock, the punk music in his head giving him an unjustified amount of courage.
Loki opened the door, looking refreshed and pressed. His tailored gray suit was crisp and fitted, and his facial scruff had been cleaned up. He leaned on the doorframe at an angle that blocked the whole entrance, and the stem of a pipe was fixed in his teeth. “You really are a glutton for punishment, aren’t you?” A cloud of smoke tumbled over his lips.
Eros rolled his eyes and nimbly navigated around the giant. “Your collection can help us win this fight. Not in the state that it’s in, but if it were operating efficiently, there would be enough power here to run the Cosmos... Not that that’s what I want.”
Eros had taken off his peacoat and thrown it on the sofa, only to find that the sitting room had been tidied up a bit. Much of the clutter was now piled into the front corner of the sitting room. He turned back to face Loki, who had closed the door and was now leaning against the stair rail, tamping his pipe.
“But,” Eros continued, “I have to shake this feeling that everything I do is being watched, all my impulses and thoughts being downloaded and used by the Fates, and… They’re impossible to escape! They’re everywhere! Around every street corner and in every empty room.”
Loki smirked, “Who do you think is worse? Zuckerberg or the Fates?”
“Very funny.” Eros heaved a weighted breath. “I can’t - and won’t - be their puppet. I won’t! So, we are going to get your shit together and start connecting dots until we have something nuclear to use. I’m in this, even if it means I have to tolerate your existence for the rest of mine.”
Loki raised his eyebrows, “If I had known you were going to propose I would have worn a better suit.”
“Must you joke about everything?”
“Why so serious?” His chest vibrated with silent laughter as he encircled himself with a halo of smoke.
Eros grunted and walked past him to ascend the stairs. “You’re obnoxious.”
Loki looked off after him with a raised eyebrow, and then followed behind, taking the steps two at a time. Immediately after entering the office, Eros began his work with a permanent pretentious scowl on his face, same as yesterday. Loki only shrugged to himself and collapsed on the sofa to enjoy his pipe, as had been his plan before Eros knocked. He wasn’t about to change his plans and waste a perfectly packed pipe, not even for Eros and his permanent scowl, which Loki knew would soon turn in his direction to utter something condescending.
“I figured you’d actually help today,” Eros shot from across the room. The god was undoubtedly beautiful, but that attitude… “but leave it to you to do the unexpected…” His tone was flippant and sarcastic.
Loki just laughed in pure enjoyment and puffed on his pipe. He could make out Eros’s incredulous expression from the corner of his eye, which only made him laugh harder, and by the time he was done with his rolling hysterics, his pipe had gone cold and the ember had gone out. He puffed on it to no avail.
“Damn.” Loki wiped a tear from the corner of his eye, his breast still tingling from his laughing fit. He stood and walked towards the desk where Eros sat. He dumped the cold ash and remaining bits of tobacco in the bin, and set his pipe on the rack with the others on the desk.
“What was that?” Eros blinked, arms folded on the desk.
Loki sighed and shook his head, “I thought you knew well and good that I was a nutter?”
Eros turned out his hands and blinked, stunned at his behavior.
“Yes. Alright.” Loki said, “I was planning on helping today, but can a man not enjoy his pipe for a moment - innuendo intended - before getting started?” He couldn’t tell if the adorable and disgusted face Eros made was holding back laughter or a pure rage.
Eros put up his hands in surrender to the giant’s chaos. “That’s all you need to have said.”
Loki noticed that Eros gestured when his mind was having trouble finding words. Loki, on the contrary, gestured with his hands at all times, even without the accompaniment of words. “Eh.” Loki shrugged, “I have a quota on pestering you I must fulfill daily now. Plus, you actually work better when you’re aggravated.”
Eros’s head tilted, “I do?”
“You do.” Loki sat on the edge of the desk, “When you’re angry or annoyed, you focus. When you’re happy, you daydream.” He picked up the fancy paperweight that might have been the Orb of Thesulah. He tossed it and caught it in the air like it was a baseball. “See, I did something yesterday. I paid attention.”
He only managed to catch the orb twice, when on the third toss, Eros’s olive hand plucked it from the air. “Are we paying attention now?”
“Ugh. All work and no play makes… How are you Eros, god of eroticism? Eros, god of fertility cults? Eros, god of orgies?”
Desire’s nostrils flared, “Dionysus was the god of orgies, actually.”
Loki tossed this factoid away with his hand, “Oh, bollocks. You’re at the root of it all. You’re a Primordial!”
The truth of his former glory, constantly being rubbed in his face by Loki, stung. He had fallen so far from what he had once been. He had been debased, and it hurt.
“And you’re an Angel!” Eros stood furiously, slamming his hands on the desk. The Orb of Thesulah, still clutched in his hand, immediately shattered and turned to dust under his palm as his chair rolled back and crashed into a box. “Not really a giant, or a trickster, not even a god, are you? You’re a bleeding Angel!” He pointed a finger at Loki’s chest. “Don’t think that I have forgotten what you really are, and what I really am! The reason I haven’t mentioned your wings is because it doesn’t really matter, now does it? It was a long time ago. Just drop it already.”
Loki was frozen, transfixed by the furnace illuminating Eros’s eyes. Desire could stay mad alright, for a very, very long time. All of the doubts Loki held for the lofty, youthful god of love were incinerated in the inferno of the god’s gaze.
Eros composed himself with a shallow breath and said, “It’s been countless aeons since I basked in the ecstasy of my temples, and it’s been roughly the same amount of time since you were banished in an exodus of fire from the celestial kingdom. So long ago, in fact, that mentioning either is fruitless.”
Loki never tore his gaze from Eros’s wild eyes, a fact which startled Eros.
“Not fruitless.” Loki gave a gentle shake of his head. “Out of all these relics and magickal artifacts, my favorites aren’t even here. Well, nevermind, two are here.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about us, about gods and people, about our brains, and all that they’re capable of. Our histories aren’t lost to the sea of time. They are part of us, and we must remember that. We are the greatest weapons in this collection, you see?”
“You collect people?” Eros went to move his hand and felt the crunch of powdered glass beneath it.
“Gods collect people,” Loki said, “for reasons many of us don’t remember or care to admit- power. Minds and souls are like fucking solar-powered batteries. Keep them fed, happy, and healthy, and they have the energy to transcend. Humans are not the only ones with this ability.”
Eros began to brush the broken glass into the bin. “Then why do you keep your Angelic origin a secret?”
“Frankly, it’s no one’s business besides my own. Let them think what they will. I hid it from the Norsemen for so long, because, well, I don’t know. I was embarrassed, ashamed, afraid?” Loki said, trying to remember. “There were a lot of Angels, abandoned by heaven and unclaimed by hell, and we all had to make do in the Mortalworld somehow. Odin, he, uh… took me in. At the time, I think, he was protecting me when he adopted me as his blood brother. He knew what I was from the start. But now, I see this puts me in a fantastic position to be on no one’s side but my own, and I will leave no reserve untapped. Now… I showed you mine. You show me yours.”
Eros gave him a laborious look.
“Do they have something over you? The Fates?” asked Loki.
“No. I don’t know.” Eros sighed. “I just grew used to hiding, repressing what I am. I accepted my new lot in life, especially after seeing the fate which befell others who didn’t take the Fates seriously. Tartarus. Extinction. Exile. This was certainly the lesser of the evils.”
“A gilded cage?”
“Yes. Better than the alternatives, or at least… it used to be better than the alternatives.”
“What changed?” Loki asked.
Eros shrugged. “An overwhelming sense of discontent? Timing? And now it’s too late. No amount of rationale will persuade me to continue hiding away.”
“Because of the other not-yet-mentioned alternative?”
Eros’s eyes narrowed in interest.
Loki continued, “The other alternative being... we could win and save ourselves and be free.”
“Yes. That.” Eros disappeared into himself and sat back down at the desk.
Loki watched Eros’s inferno dissipate, and wondered why he extinguished himself. He wasn’t sure what it was he had said, but he shelved the thought for later in a mind as cluttered as his house.
“Right.” Loki got up from the corner of the desk he had been occupying, and crouched next to Eros’s chair. “Show me what I can do to help.”
Eros never made eye contact with him, but a thousand and one micro-expressions crossed his face before he said, “Okay, well…”
Eros explained the ins and outs of the index system he had created, which the trickster tried to take seriously and understand thoroughly so that he might actually be of some use.
