#lokane

I'm on a roll! ;)

I had already written something inspired by this song, years ago. And now, for something completely different.

The monitors hum, the room already warm and claustrophobic. But he's agreed to see this through, the little choice he has.

The coordinates are there, her journals coffee-ringed, her fingers anxious as she scribbles down equations on a printout from sometime this morning. He used to feel the matter shift. He used to--

He rolls his own chair closer. The cheap polyester of his button down is sticking to his skin, the fabric an uncomfortable reminder. He thinks there are new lines around his eyes. But this is what his exile feels like: the constant, tacky sweat. The dusty heat, and his own, mortal, limitations.

She hums around the pencil in her mouth. She's redrawn three trajectories already. This close, he thinks that he can catch the scent of her shampoo, familiar in the cramped, converted trailer that she still uses as her office. He hasn't slept in here in weeks.

There's still something missing, some variable or other that doesn't entirely fit. He's not sure what they're looking for exactly, but the constant, low beeping from the direction of the radar that she's rigged feels like a sign they're close. To what, he doesn't want to dwell on.

He understands it, mostly, the numbers and the antiseptic way that she's reduced the glory of the stars to paper. He'd sat with her, holding the flashlight when the generator broke, the starlight pale against her hair through the window. He'd learned all of her substitutes for spells. The books were dense, and rather dull, but he'd had little else but time.

And time, it seems, has caught up to him now. It's been...he isn't sure, how many years. Perhaps a couple? Three? The agents haven't come for several months. It's better that they haven't found out yet.

He leans a little more into her space. The eraser marks are frustrated, angry. And maybe that's why she does it, why she will take him to bed. He won't delude himself that her sole motivation is fondness.

But there is something hungry, curled up and hurt and resentful when she reaches for him. When her mouth leaves bruises on his skin. When his fingers are cold against her thighs. She doesn't seek him out, in the quiet that blankets them after. But she doesn't ask him to leave.

And it is in those moments, while both of their breathing is strained, when he's already had her, claimed her in the same way that her nails have claimed his back, that he feels the envy still choking him, like nausea in his gut, old and familiar and angry.

Had she been like this for him? Had she cried out so prettily, had she moaned his name?

Her half-distracted smile is thoughtful as she pauses to look at the numbers again, tapping her lip with the pencil. The heat is just as suffocating. The storm is just as tangible, as close.

He contemplates, for a moment, the soft curve of her neck. His penance has been far kinder than he deserved, too comfortable. Familiar.

She swallows a deep breath and meets his eyes.

loki s2 scene of loki listing off the people who have called him a problem, and out of the nine names he lists jane: exists

Happy New Year. ;)

She'd used to wonder what was up there, in the stars, and dreamt of him, a boy, his smile a constellation she had charted.

But that had been before the nightmares came. Before the waiting rooms, before the headlights always racing closer.

Except, sometimes, she could have sworn he'd joined her there. An older face, his smile a little forced. But in her dreams, he might have held her hand. And then she'd scream herself awake, and spend the night with scribbled calculations.

***

She's certain that the readings aren't right. They've been a little too convenient since-- she isn't sure, but she first noticed several days before New York.

And something's pulling at the corners of her dreams. It's not the chemo or the car crash anymore. It's angry, but a little bit familiar.

It feels like someone's there, like someone's almost mirroring her breathing.