milliways_bar | (after work)

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(after work)

You've got to know your idiom inside and out before you can play with it; otherwise it doesn't bend, it just breaks, and it's embarrassing for everybody. If you're not in on the joke, they're not laughing with you.

Sometimes friends ask for favors and you can't really say no; so long story short, here comes the one who doesn't have red hair, the Roman-Syrian, still in costume from a bit of artist's modeling upstairs. He's a god posing as a mortal posing as the high priest and living embodiment of a different god posing as a saint. It's an easy costume, a few of Skaði's arrows and a bit of fabric held up by pure thoughts and clean living, and he makes it look casual. That takes talent. Talent, and having been in the costume for so long he's forgotten he's still got arrows sticking out of him...

Anyway, after all that staying still he's earned himself dinner and a few drinks, so here he is on his way to the bar to order. Totally botherable; heck, you can even ask him for protection from plague. He's got family connections.

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There's a cowgirl leaning on the Bar when he approaches, blue eyes decidedly wide and fixed on those arrows sticking out of him.

She knows it's rude to stare, she just — forgets. Sometimes.

He wouldn't do it if he minded being stared at.

So she gets a grin. "You can see why Weyland married me--I'm the cheapest date ever. Would you like an arrow? Only slightly used, I promise."

They are in fact stuck in, and not just stuck on, but it doesn't seem to bother him any.

"What—?"

Blink blink.

She notices the telltale marks around his mouth, and eventually connects the dots.

"Loki."

"In the flesh," he says. "In quite a lot of flesh, actually--I don't normally dress like this, I just got done working. Doing a little artist's-modeling to pay my tab. You would not believe my alcohol and flower bills."

He likes what he likes.

Kate's eyes stay heavenward. There's a rose flush creeping into her cheeks.

"You're not hurt?"

"Not at all," he says. "I'm probably the best shapeshifter you'll ever meet--most can change their entire shape, become an animal for instance, but I'm more malleable. I've got such control over it that I can stick things into my flesh and close up around it. Which makes me probably the best shoplifter you'll ever meet, too. Cops can search me, but they'll never find it."

It's a handy trick to have, but unsettling to watch, that's for sure.

She presses the back of her hand to her mouth. Good heavens, how vulgar!

She'll just be conducting an examination of the rafters for the next while, then.

"Oh. Oh my. Well, that sounds, ah — sounds complicated. Why, ah — why would y'purposely stick arrows in your body?"

As for the rest of it, she'll be sticking with a good old burlap sack when she steals, thank you.

"It's better than pockets," he says, by way of demonstration producing a flask from--well, from somewhere in his chest, but thankfully his hand covers the actual opening and pulling out. "I mean, I like pockets, I invented pockets, but I don't exactly have any in this."

And how about women's clothing and the lack of pockets there? Shameful!

"I'm supposed to be Saint Sebastian. A friend of mine's doing a painting, and he's paying me to model for him, and I wanted it to be realistic. Sometimes arrows get stopped or deflected by bones; they're not just stuck in like a pincushion, like some artists do."

She glances down long enough to catch the show, features blanching. She covers her mouth, muffling a 'good gracious!' and a horrified laugh.

The bar at large is terribly interesting right now. The crowd, the people, the food — anything but Loki.

"Y'have some feelin's on pockets. An' pincushions, it'd seem."

This would be why Weyland married him. Not the mostly-nakedness, although that didn't hurt, but rather the unpredictability. Keeps life interesting.

"I got feelings on a lot of things," he grins, as he returns his flask to wherever it came from and sets about removing the arrows--as discreetly as he can, pulling them out between his fingers to keep the opening covered. He can do horrifying things with his shapeshifting, and while he finds a certain beauty in it, he knows other people don't.

"You don't get to be my age without forming a few opinions along the way. Would you like it if I put more clothes on?"

Sure, that's true.

Mostly Kate's just looking to focus on anything other than what's actually going on. Tell her all your feelings on pockets, Loki. Please.

"If it wouldn't be an inconvenience. Please, though, concentrate on gettin' them arrows out first. They look horrible; even if y'ain't uncomfortable I can't imagine they feel right."

"It's no worse than wearing earrings in holes that have already healed up," he says. "If somebody shot me, it would hurt; I wouldn't have the time to move out of the way, and it would cause some damage. But if I put things in myself, it's like nothing."

He extracts an arrow from his thigh, and changes his bit of cloth into proper striped pajama pants. Still not quite dressed, but a little closer to normal, at least.

"A lot of the time, my clothes aren't exactly clothes. It's pretty handy too."

At this point, Kate will take underwear as a blessed reprieve. She relaxes a little, daring to draw her attention closer to Loki's proximity.

"Aren't exactly — ? Y'aren't gonna tell me they're jus' illusions, are you?"

"Sometimes," he grins. "If I'm wearing something that makes you wonder how I got into it, or how I keep it on, there's probably magic involved. Sometimes it's the equivalent of a Ken doll with molded plastic briefs, and sometimes it's shifting the clothing itself. Cheaper than a tailor, and means I can't get too inconvenienced if I'm out swimming and somebody steals my clothes."

That's one way to get a perfect fit.

"Good heavens."

She is scandalized. Scandalized, I tell you! Her eyes won't be leaving his face for the entirety of this conversation. As real as the pajama pants looked at first glance, she doesn't want to risk it.

"What're the odds of the illusion, ah — havin' a hiccup?"

Talk about a wardrobe malfunction.

"...well, if you were to kill me, it might end the magic. And then I'd be lying there naked, if this isn't actually fabric, but I'd also be lying there dead so I wouldn't care so much about the nudity. I doubt Teja would arrest me for being naked and dead in the bar. That's something else altogether."

He's under very strict orders to be at least technically-not-naked in here. Fabric, shapeshifting... it all works out the same.

It's grim, but there is a laugh issuing from Kate's lips. What a horrible thought! And yet, at the same time, the humor is impossible to ignore.

"All right, I catch your meanin'. It'd be unusual for a hiccup, then."

That's a relief.

"Y'must think I'm a prude by now."

"Not at all," he says. "It's like... it's like a spectrum, you know? A continuum of modesty to shamelessness. And maybe you're a little to one side of center, but I'm all the way down the other end. Had my shame removed a long time ago, and now I just don't care. I'm the abnormal one."

He's perfectly happy that way, though.

She looks patiently amused, though there's something else lurking behind those blue eyes.

Suspicion? Or, perhaps, indignation?

She gestures to her mouth, indicating the scars that litter his.

"Was it taken from you the same time that happened?"

"Long before," he says. "These, they're just a... a good outward sign of it. I do what I have to do, because it's necessary for the world--have you ever heard that story? The scars, I mean. I don't think you'd like the shame story much. We might have to build up to that one."

Especially if his clothing situation makes her that uncomfortable.

She presses her lips together.

As suspicious as she is of him, she knows there are certain horrors he's been put through. God or not, nobody deserves to be mistreated.

"Not sure I know the whole story. Jus' that you were outspoken, an' they was tryin' t'silence you. Or punish you — well, both I reckon."

"I get beheaded," he says. "At the end of the world, that's my fate. Everybody knows it."

A little awkward, going to dinner parties with people you know are going to imprison and kill you. That may be why he didn't get invited to much, as time went by.

"Weyland and his brothers were loyal servants of the gods. They made them gifts, fabulous things, because they wanted to show their love and loyalty. But it was my job--I went to these other crafters, my brother's cousins actually, and bet them that they couldn't make something better. 'Always causing trouble,' they said. 'If the gods say our work's better, you forfeit your head.' Fine with me; you know the work Weyland does. How could they possibly compare?

"They didn't, but my brother knew about the bet, and he said their work was better. Even though it wasn't. Even though Weyland and his brothers hadn't been competing at all, they'd just made gifts out of love for the gods. It was all a big lie, but they wanted my head."

It's a horrific fate.

Such is the way with gods.

Kate nods, silent for a long time. What can you say to something like that? It isn't fair, of course. It doesn't compare to mortal problems. It's beyond her realm of empathizing.

"I'm sorry. S'awful."

She doesn't press him. There's obviously more to the story, so she lets him get to it at his own pace.

"I'm a clever one though," he says. "That's what they always say--'that Loki, he's clever, he's tricky.' I still had a war to fight, so I couldn't go getting beheaded that early, and while they're there sharpening their axes I tell them: look, fine, you won the bet, you get my head. But you don't get my neck. That wasn't part of the deal."

He shakes his head. "They couldn't really argue with that, though they spent a long time measuring and trying to see whether there was anywhere they could cut that wouldn't involve my neck. They couldn't just smash my head in; that's not my fate, and they knew it. So in the end they gave up and sewed my mouth shut instead."

Her lips flatten into a mirthless smile.

"That is rather wily."

That much she knew about him. Clever Loki, god and trickster.

"An' in the end y'were saved because of a prophecy. They wouldn't hurt you any other way. How queer.

"How did you get rid of the stitches?"

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