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bifrosting2022-08-29 09:24 pm
odinsson) wrote in bifrosting2022-08-29 09:24 pm
Entry tags:
loki & thor » happy birthday 🥳
As is so often the case with Thor Odinson, the best-laid plans usually go awry.
He embarks on his latest scheme with the best of intentions, and the usual boundless enthusiasm he brings to everything: he fights in battles with gusto, he drinks with gusto, he parties with gusto. And so when the eldest son of King Odin, the favoured prince, decides that he wants another excuse for a banquet, and that he wants to honour his oft-neglected brother Loki, he heaves himself into it without hesitation.
He reserves the banquet hall. He consults with Frigga, asking her to enchant the decorations (although her questioning is gentle and doubtful: “are you sure, Thor, that he’ll enjoy this?” “yes, mother, of course!”). He barges into the kitchens and convinces the servants to cook up a feast, including some of Loki’s favourite desserts. He orders a mountain of mead. And when the day comes, he hauls Loki into the banquet hall, his arm slung around the other god’s narrow shoulders, and the doors slam open to a giant cheering crowd.
“Surprise! Happy birthday, brother! Even after thousands of years, we can still celebrate, no?”
Which Thor does, and merrily.
It starts off well, ish. But then — inevitably — the prince’s focus and attention slides. Most of the guest list is composed of Thor’s social circle, since Loki isn’t tremendously popular at court. Thor mixes and mingles with his own friends, and starts spending more time indulging in a drinking competition with the Warriors Three, turning ever more raucous by the hour. After a while, he turns thoughtless and distracted and doesn’t even notice that Loki has slipped away and vanished—
but somewhere between eating from a giant haunch of boar and enjoying another glass of mead, Thor finally spots his brother lurking on the fringes of the party, and he swoops in. He drapes a sprig of tinsel over the horn of Loki’s helmet, and hands his brother a plate with a slice of cake.
“How are you liking the party?” Thor asks, too loud and cheerful for anyone’s good.
He embarks on his latest scheme with the best of intentions, and the usual boundless enthusiasm he brings to everything: he fights in battles with gusto, he drinks with gusto, he parties with gusto. And so when the eldest son of King Odin, the favoured prince, decides that he wants another excuse for a banquet, and that he wants to honour his oft-neglected brother Loki, he heaves himself into it without hesitation.
He reserves the banquet hall. He consults with Frigga, asking her to enchant the decorations (although her questioning is gentle and doubtful: “are you sure, Thor, that he’ll enjoy this?” “yes, mother, of course!”). He barges into the kitchens and convinces the servants to cook up a feast, including some of Loki’s favourite desserts. He orders a mountain of mead. And when the day comes, he hauls Loki into the banquet hall, his arm slung around the other god’s narrow shoulders, and the doors slam open to a giant cheering crowd.
“Surprise! Happy birthday, brother! Even after thousands of years, we can still celebrate, no?”
Which Thor does, and merrily.
It starts off well, ish. But then — inevitably — the prince’s focus and attention slides. Most of the guest list is composed of Thor’s social circle, since Loki isn’t tremendously popular at court. Thor mixes and mingles with his own friends, and starts spending more time indulging in a drinking competition with the Warriors Three, turning ever more raucous by the hour. After a while, he turns thoughtless and distracted and doesn’t even notice that Loki has slipped away and vanished—
but somewhere between eating from a giant haunch of boar and enjoying another glass of mead, Thor finally spots his brother lurking on the fringes of the party, and he swoops in. He drapes a sprig of tinsel over the horn of Loki’s helmet, and hands his brother a plate with a slice of cake.
“How are you liking the party?” Thor asks, too loud and cheerful for anyone’s good.
i feel like i should have younger!loki icons for this but i'm lazy
The same as ever, he'd explained dismissively, which he thought Thor understood to mean that Loki would be up to magic that is not for the eyes and knowledge of others, so please leave me alone, but, well. Clearly? Not the case at all.
So he hadn't expected to be unceremoniously dragged away from his research, but he figured he could have a few drinks, pretend to talk to people, and then leave. It would be fine. Thor would definitely be too into his cups by that point to notice, he could scratch this itch of his brother's to 'celebrate' and then get on with the real business of the hour.
It would be fine.
The thing that Loki did not really consider, in that plan, was how he was going to feel about it. A party, in his honor, but Thor is the center of attention. Well, that wasn't terribly different from any other normal sort of time, he supposed, but then said golden child's focus remained pivoted on his friends, and Loki is forgotten.
It's easy to slip away. It's much more difficult to actually leave, which leaves Loki stuck at the fringe of the party, watching his brother boisterously exist in the center of the universe while Loki feels like an errant comet coming to visit that everyone insists is actually a planet, too, see, you're included!
He's worked up a sore mood by the time Thor drapes tinsel (in silver, ugh) across the horns of his helm. Loki is scowling and has his hands crossed over his chest, his expression somewhere between disdain and indifference, neither of which are a true representation of his feelings. At least, not in their entirety.
He wants to stab Thor in the side for this. The frustration of it all. The good-hearted mockery of everything Loki doesn't stand for in the eyes of the court, of his brother. He doesn't, if only because Frigga had more foresight than either of her children and made him promise he wouldn't stab Thor on his birthday.
On his birthday he had to promise his mother this. She knew, he decides, and didn't see fit to warn him properly.
"It is very loud brother, but I see you find the mead enjoyable." He says it just quietly enough that Thor will likely strain to hear the details in the syllables, but his annoyance is clear. "My ears are ringing from all the merriment."
no subject
“I hope you managed to have some of the mead. And the cake. It’s your favourite flavour, you know,” and in anyone else this might have sounded bitter, passive-aggressive, but that particular type of blade belongs to Loki. Thor wouldn’t really know how to be passive-aggressive even if he tried. His voice is cheerful, guileless. “I know we’re old enough that we stopped marking the passage of the years, but I wanted to do something. It’s been a while since last we even noted a birthday.”
After millennia and being close to immortal, it simply mattered less — there wasn’t that scarcity driving them, the knowledge that there was a limited flimsy number of these years to celebrate — and yet, he found himself here regardless. Any excuse for a party, no?