Eros stood before the townhome on the old side of New Bedlam. The new end of the city, with its office buildings and high-end shops, was paved with concrete so clean it was nearly white. The buildings were glass and stainless steel. On this end, the old end, they were brick and wrought iron, and the cobblestone sidewalks were cracked with an aged charm. It still looked staged like everything in the city, but this side of the city was at least staged to be a bit cozy.
He stared at the door for a long minute, weighing the options, wondering if the Fates knew he was there. If they had led him there. He wondered if Loki was an innocent bystander, a cog in their scheme, or if he was their willing agent. There was no way to tell with that god. He had always been a double agent in his tales and in truth. Sometimes, the myth was greater than the man. In this case, Eros thought, the myth was probably the more palatable of the two, given the company Loki kept, or rather, the people who kept Loki as company.
Eros rolled his eyes at himself for being there in the first place, but also for having stood there for so long in petrified inaction.
He remembered the Catholic tales of the Inferno, of the humans who couldn’t decide if they believed in God one way or the other, and spent eternity going in circles getting stung by hornets.
Eros set his jaw and ascended the steps to the cherry door of the townhome. He knocked and immediately felt his insides shiver. He really must be a glutton for punishment. At this rate, he and his sibling Tartarus would be reunited soon enough.
But, the way Eros saw it, there were two options. The first option being to fight - win or lose. The second, was to do nothing and deal, which meant he must keep his mouth shut… for forever and ever and ever.
A sleepy and hungover Loki opened the door.
“Oh,” was all Loki said when he recognized Eros through the slits of his lids.
Eros cleared his throat and clenched his fists in the pockets of his peacoat. “I thought... perhaps, I should apologize for my rudeness last night at the party…” Eros’s brow furrowed as he recognized Loki was wearing the same slacks and dress shirt as last night, “...which you probably just got home from.”
“Nonsense. The party ended in the wee hours of the morning,” Loki said. “I just got home from the after-party business meeting.” He rested his head against the doorframe.
Eros closed his eyes for a moment and thought of running off the stoop. “My apologies.”
“No need for that.” Loki changed his demeanor, and made a slight hand gesture, “Come in.”
Loki stayed in the entrance to close the door behind the Greek god as he walked in. Eros had to squeeze uncomfortably close to the giant to gain entry.
Loki was towering. Eros was tall and athletic, but his head only reached the man’s shoulders. Loki was undoubtedly sturdy enough to swing around an axe all day long, like it was a mere wiffle-ball bat, and he smelled of expensive cologne and pipe tobacco.
But, Eros didn’t make it very far into the front sitting room. Though it was adorned with ornate Edwardian furniture, it was littered with books and loose notes, knick-knacks and weapons. They covered every surface.
Loki stepped around him. “Ah! The mess.” Loki explained, “I don’t know how it happened. It sort of wandered out of my office, down the stairs, and into the other rooms of the house.” He began bundling the random newspaper clippings and assorted daggers from a sofa into his arms, and set the load down into another armchair by the fireplace. “It has a mind of its own. What can you do?”
Two sofas faced one another, framing the fireplace, with a coffee table between them. Eros took off his coat and folded it in his lap as he sat in the spot Loki had just cleared. Loki collapsed on the only clean spot on the second of the two sofas.
“Your home is…” Eros swallowed, “...lovely.”
Loki tried to hide his smile and failed miserably, and the laugh he restrained came out as a snort. “No need to stand on ceremony and bullshit. I know what my house must look like to you.”
Eros’s attention was on the magick protection symbols, some he recognized, others he didn’t, scrawled in red paint all across the 19th-century wallpaper. “Fine. It looks like a mad man lives here,” he deadpanned.
“We’re all mad here,” Loki quipped back. He waved a hand over the coffee table, and a silver tray and china cups appeared. “Tea?”
Eros took a breath, “Why not?” He added a spot of cream to his tea, as he watched Loki put in lump after lump of sugar, to the point it seemed he’d never stop.
Eros blinked as he raised the china to his lips, and found the trickster god still depositing endless sugar cubes into the dainty cup.
“What are you doing?”
“Illustrating your point.” Loki stirred the no-longer tea, and tapped his spoon on the rim. He took a sip. “...and mine. I am indeed a mad man, which is what spikes my curiosity. I know that you know that I am a mad man, yet you’re the one who showed up at my door impossibly early in the afternoon to apologize for being rude to me, a mad man, last night at the party, supposedly. We both know why you’re here, and apologizing is merely the gateway to what you want, a step towards it.”
“Well, yes-”
“What if I don’t accept your apology?” Loki smiled humorlessly. “Then what would you do?”
Eros let out a tense breath at Loki’s strange jab at social conversational structures, and said, “I’d tell you to get over it, because we have more important things to discuss!”
“Well, I don’t accept your apology.” Loki shrugged and sipped his not-tea.
Eros let out a bitter laugh, “Fine!”
“Because, I didn’t think you were being rude last night. You haven’t a thing to apologize for, and you didn’t even mean the apology.”
Sitting tense and wide-eyed on the sofa, Eros shrugged, “...Okay, then.” The trickster smiled, “You need to lighten up, Cupid. I have to fuck with you a bit. To be honest, I didn’t think you’d wisen up this quickly, if at all. You threw me off guard.”
Eros scowled. “So, you threw me off guard in return?”
“Eh. An eye for an eye. And it was just so much fun. You’re easily worked up.”
Eros’s eyes narrowed.
Loki continued, “You need to let go of all that rage, or at least put it to good use... which is why you’re here?”
“Again, yes.” Eros blinked furiously, “Unless, this is a complete waste of time? Given that you’re obviously mad.”
“You’re mad too. You’re angry too. It’s good- anger, the fever. But how long can you stay angry?” Loki squinted at him with a devilish grin.
“What?”
“This is a long-run game, to conspire against Fate, and often you don’t win, and you might lose more than you know you have. Is it worth it? Can you stay angry through all of that?”
Eros quipped. “Sounds like the very nature of it would make anyone angry.”
“It also makes one tired, sad, defeated, resigned, which you have already been for the greater part of existence.” Loki leaned back on the sofa, arms outstretched, “Why should I think this rebellious streak of yours won’t waver?”
Eros set down his tea, and he too leaned back on the sofa, folding his arms. “You tell me?”
Loki gave him a small head shake, as if to tell him the question was a cop-out.
“No.” Eros corrected, “You came to me. You initiated this conversation with me for a reason. I’m a Primordial. With something so nefarious, you wouldn’t go blurting it out so carelessly to just anybody.”
Loki quirked his eyebrow.
Even as Eros said it, he realized he misjudged. “Okay,” Eros tightened his jaw, “maybe you would.”
Eros remembered hearing about the last trick Loki had played on the Norsemen- the secret devising of the death of Baldr.
The Norsemen were told by the Norns, aka the Fates, Baldr would die. Baldr’s mother, Frigg, made every living thing vow to never hurt him in an attempt to evade this fate; however, the Mistletoe vine refused. Despite this, the gods threw a party celebrating his immortality- a throwing party. They threw dangerous things at Baldr to prove his invincibility.
From the tales Eros was told, the Norns had prophesied that Loki’s monstrous children would cause Ragnarok, the end of the world. The Norse gods then banished his children and made him their scapegoat, and Loki wanted to get even.
He dressed an arrow tip in the juice of the mistletoe. In disguise, he gave the arrow to Hoder, Baldr’s blind brother. Hoder, not realizing he had been tricked, fired the lethal arrow at Baldr, the invincible and beloved god, who was not so invincible after all.
Baldr died as a result, and Loki, who otherwise might have gotten away with it, bragged drunkenly at a party of his nefarious deed. He also blabbed out all of the gods’ and goddess’s secrets… very loudly. It was this outburst that caused Odin, Baldr’s father and Loki’s blood brother, to condemn him to a cave, where Loki was chained down by his own son’s intestines, so that a viper would drip acidic venom on his bare body day and night.
Eros realized Loki indeed had no issue blurting out sensitive and nefarious information to anybody.
“I cannot escape my nature,” Loki smiled.
Eros reconsidered Loki’s concern. How long could he stay angry? He still knew his own point was valid. There was a reason Loki had come to him the night before, even if Eros didn’t know the exact reasoning himself yet, but he still had to convince Loki that his sudden change of heart was not capricious.
Unsure of himself, Eros began, “Once a desire is lit, you can’t blow it out like a match. It lives. Forever in your soul, that seed, however small, grows roots like Hydras grow heads, and the more you try to weed it out, the deeper the roots penetrate. They will ensnare your heart and your brain, and those roots of desire feel no empathy for the host. They aren’t afraid to kill you.”
“Hm…,” Loki smirked. “Like Mistletoe.”
Eros gave a small nod. “Like invasive, strangling Mistletoe... This nagging, hollow ache in my soul won’t go away, won’t get blown out. It’s too late. It’s rooted.”
Loki’s eyes were burning, alight with thought, as he took in the Greek god. He studied him for so long that Eros had to pull his own eyes away and sip his tea, but the trickster still gazed on.
“Well,” Loki finally said, standing, “set down your coat. Anywhere is fine. Make yourself at home. I wasn’t really prepared for this sort of thing. Honestly, last night I was just trying to ruffle your feathers a bit. My mouth likes to run, and oftentimes I have no idea where the devil it’s running off to. It will be there one minute and gone the next.”
“Ruffle my… Wait, this isn’t all a practical joke, is it?”
“A joke? No, don’t be daft. Of course it’s not a joke. Any god with half a brain knows the Fates are fucking us all, twisting and turning us like spindled yarn. And mind you, I don’t plan on anyone turning me into an afghan.” There was a darkness in Loki’s eyes for a second.
Eros smiled, reaffirmed, and the tension let up. He had questions and concerns, but knowing for certain that he and Loki were on the same side, he knew his anxieties would be eased in time. There was only one he felt needed to be addressed right away.
Eros said, “Okay, good, but… aren’t you worried? The Fates, well, they know everything. They’ve mapped out every twist and turn to existence. The fact that you spoke to me at the bar could be fate. The fact that I got up the gumption to knock on your door could be fate. This whole conversation could have been devised by them.”
“And, so what?”
Eros blinked, “Well, then, we’ve played right into their hands, and we think we are plotting against them, but really, they are just looking at us as children playing make believe, like it’s cute!”
“Trust me when I say plenty of morons might look at you as if you’re a child, but no one has ever looked at me that way, and would sorely regret it if they did. If we’re playing right into their hands, so be it! There will come a day when fate is in our hands.”
Eros took his coat off his lap and set it on the wooden box on the sofa next to him. “Well, that’s a relief,” he said, not quite convinced.
“Come on upstairs. I want to show you something.”
