Who: Thor and Loki What: Decompression When: After the arena opening Where: Loki's apartment Warnings: Alocholism
It had been a bad night. Extraordinarily bad, in fact, and Loki wasn't generally the type to be self-pitying. He'd been expecting difficulty, certainly -- Stane wouldn't have invited all the Victors if he hadn't wanted to directly punish all of them at once -- but what he'd come up with this time was a masterpiece of wickedness. As if it weren't bad enough to drag all the Victors to such a violent and awful place, he'd turned the whole place even more sinister with the drugged food and drink. That was a step even Loki, whose mind had always worked a little crookedly, by surprise.
Perhaps the only good thing about the night was that Thor apparently hadn't needed the little cheat sheet Loki had made for him after he'd observed the effects of the majority of the food. He'd slipped it to Thor during one of the brief moments they were in the same vicinity that night, but even as he did, it was pretty clear that Thor hadn't needed it. He'd never quite approved of his brother's habit of secreting a flask somewhere on his person during Capitol events, but, especially at this party, Loki couldn't blame him. And besides, whatever he had in there (that awful miner's moonshine, probably) was strong enough that evidently he hadn't needed anything else from the table.
That was at least something of a blessing, even if it was small. Of course, the downside was that Loki had no idea how much alcohol was in his brother's system. Any other time, this wouldn't have been too much of a problem; usually Loki made a point to monitor Thor throughout the night, usually from a safe distance. But he'd been distracted by Wanda and he hadn't kept as good of a tally as he usually did. Worse, though, was the distant memory of the bottle of whiskey he'd found stashed in Thor's room, once. He'd never quite been able to figure out whether the bottle had been put there by Thor himself, or whether it was some leftover from the time he'd (reluctantly) let other guests stay there, but as soon as he'd remembered the possibility, Loki didn't want to take any chances.
So he slid from his sheets and padded down the hall, his silk pajamas rustling softly as he moved. He knocked hard on the door, listening for any signs of movement within. "Brother," he called, his tone carefully neutral. "Let me in."