Chapter - 48

Thor had a quick sip of wine and looked away. There was a knot of confused emotions inside him. On the one hand, it was good to see Loki again. Very, very good, even, he had been looking forwards to it. On the other hand, he had no idea where they stood, and that was disquieting. Last but not least, he had no doubt in his mind that his baby brother was playing them all up. He had planned this. He was making a fucking point. And Thor was sure he was not finished making it. Thor was tense, on his guard, ready to pounce. Not the best state of mind to mend bridges with anyone, let alone with Loki, ever the mind-reader.

"Can I help," said Thor, opting for civility out of all the options available to him, ready to play happy, not-at-all-dysfunctional families for the evening. Do not fall into his trap, he was telling himself. This was just Loki being Loki, and the way to beat him at his game was to not let him get to you.

"If you could keep an eye on this," Loki signalled with his head to the pancetta browning in the pan, and he kept shaving parmigian for the salad.

Tony and Jane were by the bay window at the front of the house. He was showing her something on his phone. Could be a swanky new app or footage from his last flick.

Thor and Loki were standing side by side by the kitchen worktop, not talking.

"She's lovely," said Loki, after some time, eyes focused on what he was doing.

"I know," snapped Thor. Jesus, Odinson, could you sound any more hostile without actually biting? "Tony is not lovely," he said after a while, aiming for humour, and failing.

"Tony is fun," said Loki. "Uncomplicated. A good fuck. Adventurous."

"Too much information," cut Thor, abrupt.

Loki tossed the salad quietly.

"I know what you mean by uncomplicated," said Thor then.

"… Oh," answered Loki.

"What," snapped Thor.

"Just, oh," said Loki.

Another crackling pause —crackling with the food in the pan and their own strained lack of conversation.

"So, you're staying the whole weekend in the city?" said Loki.

"Yes."

"See the sights?"

"I guess."

Thor fucking hated this, the fucking small talk. It was not like his Loki at all. But then again, what the fuck had he expected? Fuck. He shook the pan a bit too vigorously and a few pieces of pancetta flew off.

"How is… the desert?" asked Loki, as if he had not noticed.

"Hot and dry," grunted Thor, sarcastic.

"Fuck off," said Loki, quite softly, smiling out of the corner of his mouth. "I'm only trying to make conversation."

Thor almost smiled then.

"It's peaceful," he said after a moment.

"You mean boring," said Loki, sounding a bit more like himself, at least.

"No, that's not what I mean. I mean peaceful," said Thor. He tried to keep his tone convivial.

Another silence.

"Peace is good," said Loki then, sounding distracted. "Peace is nice."

"But isn't Madame Butterfly an opera?" said Jane, browsing the leaflet, a forkful of tagliatelle waiting uneaten on her plate. Thor had never understood how she did it -if it was on the fork, it went in his mouth, no fucking about. She ate like a bird.

"Not Madame Butterfly, M.Butterfly," said Loki. "It's a different story. It plays with audience preconceptions and assumptions exactly as you just did," he said.

"Have I? In what way?" said Jane, squinting, probably not taking very kindly to being condescended on.

"By letting pre-formed opinions distort the truth before one's very eyes." Loki seemed to be going for didactic, but he was coming across as prissy. With Loki, Thor would bet his right arm it was intended. He was deliberately aiming for unlikeable.

"So what's it about?" said Thor, thinking perhaps he should be cutting in, to help Jane share the role of the unenlightened peasant.

"A French diplomat falls in love with a Beijing Opera singer," started Loki, "ignoring, wilfully or not, the fact that all Beijing Opera performers are male, even the dan, the ones who play females. They have a very long affair, in which he never discovers his lover's true sex, happy to live the lie of the submissive Oriental woman willing to be dominated by the powerful Western male. After twenty years, in which his lover has been spying for China all along, the diplomat betrays his country, is discovered and judged, and when confronted with his mistress' naked body, he kills himself in the Japanese ritual manner in front of his lover's cool, unfeeling eyes. Based on a true story." Loki grinned and raised his glass in a quiet toast for one.

"And you're going to play an Asian woman?" said Thor, disbelieving. It explained the very, very long hair (bloody luscious, he could almost feel his fingers running through it.)

Loki grinned some more for an answer.

"Oh, he does," said Tony. "I've seen the costume tests. You don't act, pet, you transform."

"No, I act," cut Loki. But Thor saw that glance Loki threw Tony, and it wasn't half as pissy as his tone.

"And what about the Beijing Opera training you're undergoing?" said Tony.

"What about it," said Loki, pushing his plate away.

"Loki has been doing this intensive tutoring about how to perform…"

"…passably mimic in a way that could fool a Western audience, more like…" amended Loki.

"…in the Beijing Opera manner. It's a class act. It involves every part of the body, from feet to head to eyelids and eyebrows, and every finger. It's amazing."

"Fucking exhausting." Loki was worrying at the tablecloth with his fingers, with a very slight grin responding to his lover's admiration. Thor wanted to growl.

"Does the… does the singer love his diplomat?" asked Thor, god knows why.

Loki looked up.

"Song, his name is Song," says Loki. "It's not clear. The way we're angling this is that he does, in spite of it all, but that he knows Gallimard, the diplomat, doesn't love him, but the lie, and he resents it. It explains his cruelty, his delight in hurting Gallimard at the end. And indeed, when the truth is revealed, it becomes obvious that Song was right, that it's not him that Gallimard loves or wants, and that he hasn't understood or learned one thing about the East in all the time they've been together. It was the fantasy Gallimard wanted, and he can't bear to lose it, even though his lover is still there. That's got to hurt. I mean, Song is Chinese but Gallimard kills himself in the Japanese manner… While dressed and made up as the fantasy Oriental woman Gallimard thought he had loved. I thought it was a lot more poignant that Song did love Gallimard. The ultimate unrequited love story."

"Wow," said Thor, putting his serviette down. "It's going to hurt."

"If we do it right." Loki gave him a sweet, baby-crocodile grin, all big, fixed eyes and lots of teeth. "I heard you're going to be doing a James Ellroy" he said.

"Hm, yes." said Thor, with a sip of wine.

"The cold six thousand" said Loki.

Thor smiled, in spite of himself. He nodded. He couldn't wait to sink his teeth into that one.

"It's going to be a mini-series, the thing is massive. Have you read them?"

"I think I've read them all, yes. You must be… I forget the names. Junior something."

"Wayne Tedrow Junior, yes."

"You will be great," said Loki, eyes on his brother's. "I can't wait to see it."

"Thank you," said Thor, struggling to hold his gaze. It bore into his soul. It saw everything. It always had.

"Have you been learning to smoke yet?" said Loki, still staring.

"Smoke?"

"It's the Sixties, they're not cutting out the smoking, are they?"

Thor arched an eyebrow.

"No I haven't been learning how to smoke," said Thor. "I can always trouble you for some classes." It was a joke. He had not calibrated where Loki would take it.

"Sure," said Loki, eyes fixed on his. "You treat your fag like it's your lover. You make love to it, quickly or slowly, furiously or gently, seductively or distractedly. The you toss it away without a second thought when you're finished with it, and crush it under your heel, like it's nothing, and go for the next."

Tony shook his head, rolling his eyes. Thor swallowed, breaking eye contact, and then swallowed again. He saw Jane frown out of the corner of his eye. She didn't like Loki, it was blatantly written all over her scrunched forehead. And she probably didn't like that Thor had forgotten for the last ten minutes that she even existed. He would be hearing of it later. Oh, great.

"I have to have you two together in something," said Tony suddenly. "The electricity between you is insane. If the right script came along, what do you think?"

Thor and Loki looked at each other, then away. Nobody answered.

"Seriously. Loki, what do you think, pet?"

"I don't know," said Loki, biting one of his nails. He didn't wear polish, probably for the play.

"Thor?" Tony turned to him, genial.

Thor shrugged.

"Oh, come on, guys."

Thor sighed. He threw a quick look at his baby brother, whose eyes were low, his shoulders slumped. He knew that expression. He had seen it a hundred thousand times when they were little.

"If the right script came along," said Thor then, "I would love to, sure." Big brother to the rescue, taking the first step, risking rejection, so that Loki did not have to.

Loki looked up at him. And grunted something that sounded a little bit like "why not."