Marvel Oneshots And Crack

⚠️Untitled

Sequel to Little Space, where Loki is the one being there for Thor when he's having a hard time.
⚠️ A character is struggling with alcoholism and experiences dissociation⚠️

Loki POV

A terrifying scream wakes me up in the middle of the night, on our second week on the Statesman on a Tuesday. A cargo ship full of Asgardian refugees is never going to be perfectly quiet, what with our tradition of being, well, loud and musical and jovial. Having celebratory feasts and dances is practically how we breathe.

With a knife and a gun, I patrol the darkened, flickering hallways, checking in on all the refugees, making sure everyone is safe. Brunnhilde joins me at once, silvery celestial armour catching sparkles of the unsteady light.

Another scream, sounding very masculine...and way too familiar. Brunnhilde and I lock eyes at the same time. I whisper, "Thor."

Brunnhilde barely beats me to Thor's quarters, staying back as I turn my hand, magically unlocking the steel-reinforced door by force.

"Be careful, your Majesty. There's no telling in what mood he's in."

I stop what I'm doing when I hear her address me royally. "'Your majesty?' I'm hardly a prince anymore."

"Just go check on your brother, Lackey."

Hmph! "I take that back, I prefer 'your Majesty'."

I keep the door cracked open, hand on my dagger, my gun being dropped on the floor in the hallway. "Thor? We heard screaming."

The room is darkened, devoid of any light. There's almost no sound.... except for a small, snuffling noise, an almost imperceptible indication of concealed weeping.

Raising my hand, I conjure a ball of light to light the space. Suddenly it is illuminated, and I see what looks like a metal storage room being repurposed as a makeshift bedroom.

In typical Thor fashion, the area is teeming with a slight tinge of ozone, occasional bits of food, clothes strewn about. In not so typical Thor fashion, the place looks like someone unwisely let loose a blowtorch-wielding monkey on methamphetamines.

A pile of blankets in the corner is sufficing as his bed. With a stab of shame, I wonder why I never offered to conjure him up a bed sooner. Surely I can make something stronger than a bunch of matchsticks, right?

In the corner of the mound of blankets is a large, shadowy boulder. No, that's not a boulder. It's a man, albeit an unusually quiet one.

A memory surfaces, an old one with faded sepia and water rings. We were younger, seven centuries younger to be exact. I was walking down the corridor to our quarters when I heard silent sobbing. I was regularly used to seeing my brother lose his temper, but crying? It was beyond rare. I was spotted crying more often than he was.

As far as I knew, a comrade of Thor's had recently been put in the healing wing because of multiple serious injuries. I had assumed Thor was handling it very well, as he usually did.

I could not have been more wrong.

What scared me more than the silence was how organized his bedroom was. And what is still burned into my memory... how quiet he was, burrowed into his blankets in the middle of the day. He was an early riser; he hated sleeping in past 8am, even when ill.

I didn't notice the tinge of alcohol until I knelt by his bed. Empty bottles of mead and wine littered the floor underneath his bed. And sitting on his mattress in just his bedclothes, holding a shaking pair of shears to a shorn head, was my brother.

He noticed me approaching, yet didn't lower the blades. For an Asgardian to cut their hair out of grief is no small matter. Especially for a royal Asgardian, particularly someone like Thor who literally hisses if you so much as look at his. (I mean, he's more tame than I am. I once killed a man because he dared ask how my hair was so curly).

I knew at that moment that being snide and teasing wouldn't help. "Thor.... you're stupidly full. I don't think you'll like looking in the mirror after the hangover wears off. Plus, you idiot, you might hurt yourself."

He only gripped the blades more tightly, as close to his scalp as he could get. "Leave me be, Loki."

I planted my feet on the ground, literally actually, with an illusion of ivy vines. My arms were crossed. "I am planting myself here, Thor. Cut your hair, I don't care. But if I leave, so does any sharp object and any alcohol."

He threw himself flat on his bed, shears carelessly clattering on the floor. I conjured a chair, a clipboard, and a quill, sitting down next to his bed. "What ails you today, Herr. Odinson?"

When he didn't even laugh, I felt a sinking feeling. Thor was not okay, not even in the slightest. I looked around his bedroom, seeing his closed curtains and surfaces collecting dust.

We both sat in silence, and it was then that I realized, perhaps that's what Thor needed.

But that memory was in a much better time. At least then, Thor still had his hair and two eyes. Here my brother sat on a musty pile of blankets, staring at nothing. It rather unnerved me.

"Loki....did you really punch down the door?"

Dammit. He's gotten smarter. "To be fair, you screamed, loudly, so I came to be of aid."

He throws something; it hits the wall behind me. "Just what I thought. An illusion. You're not even here."

I scoff. "No, brother, that was just a very bad throw. You did just lose an eye. That will affect your calibration."

I hear a shuffling noise. Thor slowly stands up from his nest, moving towards me with the gait of the walking dead. Disturbed, I back away an inch, only to be trapped by his hands clasping my arms. "You're real... you're alive..."

I slowly nod. "Yes. Your name is Thor Odinson. I'm your brother, Loki. You're the God of Thunder, son of Odin and Frigga. We're on a spaceship, the Statesman."

The calloused hands on my shoulders begin to shake. His eye unfocuses, and he sways on his feet. "What's happening...maybe I'm more worn out than I thought.."

From the slight slur of his voice, I know he is thinking out loud. "I think you may be... dissociating? Has it happened to you before?"

"What the...what is that..."

I sit him back down on his 'bed', not wanting to put him back on the dirty blankets but knowing changing his environment is unwise. "You're disconnecting from reality in some way, whether it he yourself, the environment including me, or both."

"'at explains it..."

Opening my hands, I magically make some ice cubes appear in my hands. The cold stings, but doesn't burn my skin. They don't even melt. "I've dealt with what you're feeling. Hold these, it's ice. It'll help you feel something, distract you from the numbness."

He slowly closes his fingers around the ice cubes, blinking in slow motion. "It helps..."

We sit in silence, breathing in sync, Thor's free hand resting on my wrist. I see him shiver, and I turn my hand, magically wrapping one of his blankets around his shoulders. A faint smile appears on his face. "Nice one."