Who: Loki and Thor What: Aftermath Where: Loki's loft When: Just after the Victor's Ball Warnings: Alcoholism. Cursing. Some light vomit.
The night had not gone precisely as planned, but could have been much worse, Loki decided as he shouldered the door to his apartment open. He hated to admit that he was aching under Thor's muscular weight; his brother had been leaning heavily on him as they'd approached his building. He was sure that at least a couple of cameras had captured that image. It worried Loki a little, although it helped to know that there had a least been a party that night that could account for the intoxication, not to mention the situation with Stark.
Still, Loki couldn't help but be a little concerned. Survivor's guilt was a well-worn part of Thor's post-Games narrative, but now, so many years later, he suspected that Stane would have a little less patience for it. Particularly given how the climate was so... subtly strange, in the wake of the most current Games. There was a lurking shadow of discontent lingering in the air now. Faint but, to a keen observer, present. It unsettled him. Stane did not tolerate discontent well. Loki didn't need to be in the Districts to know that. He'd seen that lesson up close in his very own workplace. He knew what had happened to the former Head, after the avalanche fiasco that had spared Rogers' life. Strucker's Folly, they'd called it. The mistake that had spared the child had cost a Gamemaker's life.
"That's it," Loki murmured, maneuvering Thor toward the bathroom. "Almost there, brother. You'll feel better in a minute." Once satisfied that Thor was pointed in the right direction, Loki slipped a hand in his pocket and pulled out a vial of the very same liquid that was displayed so prominently at the feast they'd just left. Loki himself had never used it for the purpose for which it was intended, but it had been designed to make the process of vomiting up one's dinner as pleasant as possible, so Loki had long since learned it could be repurposed as a sort of preemptive treatment against alcohol poisoning. He took a deep breath and knelt beside his brother, slipping the vial into his hand. "All right," he said softly, sweeping up the gold strands that had loosed themselves from their well-kept ponytail. "You know what to do."