Loki and Cal - Halloween Party
Oct. 28th, 2018 07:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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ax_mainThere is talk of opening a mutant school in Asgard, and Shakespeare's level of jerkitude. Who even knows, with them.
It was difficult to snort in wolf form, so it was more of a huff that came out of Cal's impressively-fanged mouth when he spotted Loki among the crowd, in a costume that looked a lot like a modern day rendition of Little Red Riding Hood. Then again, it could also be some pop culture thing that Cal didn't know.
He padded over to his friend, weaving through people, and shifted back into himself (in the unkept suit and tie typical of one former big bad wolf) when he reached him. "Should I be honored?"
“Always.” Loki grinned. “Hello. You’re very fearsome tonight. I love it.”
"Wolf is nice too, it turns out," Cal replied, as if that hadn't been a given, when wolf-dog was his preferred form. Well, that and panther, okay, fine.
"What very big fangs you have." He winked and leaned closer, staying just out of contact range, but sidling as close as Cal would usually allow in a pawless shape. "And wolves are wonderful."
Cal's boundaries were perhaps even a little stricter tonight, when being around so many people was already a bit of a strain, so he edged away a little, trying to make it look natural. "Running like that would be fun, too," he stated, part invitation for another day.
“Tonight or another night?” Loki asked with a wink. He slid his hands into his jacket pockets.
Cal hesitated. It sounded appealing, especially when he was staying cooped up here with so many people. "Wait and see how the evening goes, I guess?"
“Works for me.” He smiled. “You’re where I was at last party. I couldn’t stay in one skin. Duo graciously carried me in their pocket maybe a quarter of the night.”
Cal scoffed incredulously. "I'm nowhere near ready to spend time in anyone's pocket." No matter what form he took. Just the thought of it made his skin crawl, but he covered it up and angled a smile at Loki. "Thanks for the vote of overconfidence, though."
“If you ever reach that point, I’ll make sure that I have very deep pockets with an easy escape path to the floor.” Loki swished his coat. “But no. You don’t look that eager to bolt. It’s just sometimes better in other shapes.”
"Not that eager," Cal agreed. He was briefly tempted to lower his shields just enough for Loki to feel the unease scraping at him with every moment. It came from a place of trust, but Loki didn't deserve to feel that on top of everybody else's bullshit.
“I think I can guess the answer, but you don’t dance, right?” Pushing his luck was what Loki did.
Cal's answer was in his amused smile, and the look he gave Loki. No, he didn't dance. He looked back out at the crowd. "I used to like it well enough. I'll let you know when I'm back to that."
Loki smiled. The answer was still a win in his book. “I look forward.”
"Not much to look forward to," Cal replied honestly, with a small smile. "I'm not much of a dancer." He did all right enough that girls didn't laugh at him? That was about it.
Loki shrugged. “Call me weird, but I like spending time with you. And sometimes I like pretending this is normal.” He gestured at the party.
"You're definitely weird," Cal pointed out with a half smile. He looked around the party. "And this is pretty normal." A soft blink! announced Clarice's arrival at the drinks table, not far from them, and he smirked. "You know. Ish."
"This is nothing like parties at home," Loki said wryly. "I should fix that one day. The professor is extremely helpful when it comes to understanding and learning to manage powers. I do wonder what it might be like to build a school like this in Asgard though."
"Most of the time I forget that you're a prince, and then you go and talk about building a mutant school," Cal remarked. Just the kind of prince Cal liked; it was pretty fucking impossible to ever forget, with Namor. "It's a bit weird if we're actually the only one in the world." But the potential for abuse was high, to say the least.
“Finding the right faculty would be key. Making somewhere safe.” From both the students and the outside world. Loki smiled brightly. “Clearly Europe needs a place to shunt off its wayward children. With so many of us crossing oceans.”
Cal was quiet for a beat, and then said, with a sheepish half-smile, "I'd miss you."
“I think that Abs would really like Asgard,” Loki suggested softly.
"Abs would like it anywhere," Cal retorted. He assumed Loki meant as a new place of residence; seeing him for a visit now and then would not put a stop to the whole missing him thing, just make it a little less acute. So he added, "Not sure Caleb and Clint would."
Loki’s attention sharpened. “We have some astonishing libraries. I don’t know what Clint’s thing is. If that’s a packaged deal, I’ll keep that in mind.”
I don't know what Clint's thing is. Cal's instinctive thought was, being awesome, but that wouldn't help. Going out to help people with what he could do was also out, for different reasons. "Archery," he settled on. "That's probably your best bet." They were definitely a package deal.
“Oh, we have archery covered in spades.” Loki smiled.
"Pretty strong sales pitch, then," Cal replied easily.
“Excellent. I’d be sad to lose you,” Loki admitted. “You’ve only started tolerating my affection. Years from now you might actually agree to posing as a basket of kittens.”
"It's nice that you have something to work towards," Cal offered, as genuine as playful.
“Yeah, well, worth the effort. You’re delightful.” Loki winked.
"I am, or the kittens are?" Cal asked in return.
“You,” Loki said adamantly.
"I'm touched," Cal replied with a smirk. He was taking it all as a joke, because the alternative would have made him much too awkward, again. "So what would you call that school? Loki's School for Gifted Youngsters?"
“Ugh. Do I look like a balding old homebody? People would probably prefer it not to be named after me.”
"Which people?" Cal challenged.
Loki rocked on his heels. “I am not Asgard’s favorite son,” he said simply.
"Well, fuck that," Cal replied, equally simply.
Loki nearly turned into another shape so he could brush closer to Cal. “Why did it take crossing an ocean to find an entourage?” Loki wondered aloud.
"An entourage?" Cal echoed, disapproving skepticism plain in his tone. That sounded less than complimentary to him, and whoever else was included. Fuck, it sounded like something Namor would say.
Loki couldn’t help but smile at Cal’s expression. “You really do not put up with shit.”
Cal shrugged uneasily, gaze cutting away for a moment. "Our friendship's gonna take a nosedive if you start sounding like my roommate, that's all I'm sayin'."
Loki’s hand went to his chest. “Gods no. Please don’t ruin grand sweeping statements for me. And please don’t compare me to the aquatic dildo. I try my best not to think about Namor, or the implication of his entire existence.”
"Don't sound like him, I won't compare you to him." And Cal was going to scrub his brain with bleach to get that descriptor of Namor out of his mind.
“At least I sound ironic when I say these things,” Loki protested. “You’ll tell me to give up Shakespeare next.”
"Was Shakespeare as much of an arrogant jerk?" Cal asked.
“Probably?”
"Pretty big chance it'll happen, then, yeah," he confirmed without missing a beat.
“Calll.” Loki pouted.
"You know that shit doesn't work on anyone who can do actual puppy eyes," Cal pointed out, with a bit of a smirk.
That was it. Loki disappeared—no, transformed. Now there was a tiny kitten looking up from Cal’s feet. He raised both front paws and looked up at Cal with wide eyes.
Cal crouched down to scoop him up, stood up, and deposited him on his shoulder. "Not gonna work." But he was petting him, all the same. That would always work.
Loki snuggled from his new vantage point. “I’m marking your vendetta against Shakespeare.” His fluffy cheek tucked against Cal’s neck.
"Sure, whatever," Cal agreed easily. All the more so because of the cute and fluffy. "You said he was an arrogant jerk."
“Writers and actors. Have to be arrogant... no clue if he was a jerk, history is flexible.”
Cal didn't really give a shit about Shakespeare, to be perfectly honest. He was tempted to ask Loki if they could just get out of here and go snuggle somewhere, because snuggling in any other form but his own, away from all of these people, sounded like a very welcome break from all of the noise and the people. The happy teenager shit he still didn't really feel at ease with. But it wouldn't be fair to Loki, who didn't have Cal's hangups.
"Just don't sound like a jerk," he concluded, quietly.
“How long can I get away with staying here?” Loki asked curiously. He figured Duo was dancing with enough friends, they wouldn’t mind if Loki decided to ride Cal’s shoulder for a while.
"Until you get bored with the conversation?" Cal offered. Not to mention that he would likely shift back soon, and he hated talking as an animal. So unless Loki wanted to talk telepathically...
"So keep you talking, is what you're saying." He batted Cal's shoulder softly with his tail. "You know, you still smell like a wolf."
Cal wrinkled his nose briefly. "Guess that goes well with the costume."
“It does. I can’t really give you the big and bad part.”
"Hey, Bigby's reformed," Cal pointed out with raised eyebrows. A slight frown settled on his brow as he realized how relevant that made his costume, in ways he hadn't planned on.
Loki nuzzled Cal’s cheek as the frown creased his expression. “We should set up a fort soon. I haven’t actually finished that series yet, though I know what you mean from the beginning. Reading party. This needs to be a thing.”
"Is it gonna be a party with just you, me, and Caleb?" Cal asked with an amused little half-smile. He tried to ignore the thrill of unease at the base of his spine, from that nuzzle; he was on edge, from being here, and it took less than it usually did, around Loki. He shored up his shields, wanting to make sure his discomfort wouldn't seep into his friend.
Loki felt Cal go silent and wondered what that about. Well, he could speculate wildly that the idea filled his thoughts with ideas for threesomes and he was hiding his true feelings. Or more likely he was bottling up due to proximity. “Remus could join. I’ve been trading books with him for a while. Half the fun is avoiding seeing him in person, but I suspect he’d appreciate proof that he hasn’t been visited by a book fairy. If Remus and Duo sidle in, is that too many people?”
"If you don't want me to want to crawl outta my own skin," Cal replied, easily, as if it was no big.
“How about just Duo? Who serves as a perfectly harmless chair when bidden. I mean. To me. I’m not suggesting that you use Duo as a chair.”
Cal gave Loki a small smile. "I'll think about it." But not now. Now the thought of adding anyone Cal didn't know to what felt like a somewhat intimate venture (when had reading around others become intimate? or was it about who was involved, rather than what was involved?) only made his discomfort grow at an alarming, disproportionate rate. Probably a by-product of how much of an effort it took to be here in the first place, but it didn't make Cal any happier. He gave a slow, gentle shrug of the shoulder Loki was perched on. "Come on, get off. Time to shift back."
Loki leapt down to the ground. “You or me?” He asked.
"You shift when you wanna," Cal replied, and the next instant, was a massive black wolf again. He nudged his nose gently at the kitten, thought to himself, Better, then pawed at the floor a couple of times.
Loki eyed him at then tackled one of Cal’s massive paws. He rolled and darted off, a clear indication of ‘come chase me’. If they ended up tripping half the party, people would get used to it eventually.
Cal watched the kitten dart away, but remained still, very aware of how likely he was to run into people if he gave chase. He would've warned Loki telepathically, but he didn't trust himself to open a communication channel through his shields and keep his own feelings where they belonged, right then. So he only turned and padded away from the people to sit back on his haunches and just... take a moment. He'd be fine - manner of speaking - in a moment.
Loki skidded to a stop when he realized he wasn’t being followed. He spied back and realized Cal was bunkering down. Respectfully, Loki let him be. Well. First he sent an illusion in Cal’s direction. A sparkle burst of emoji hearts briefly popped up in the air in front of him. Then Loki darted back amongst the crowd. He was tiny enough to avoid trampling. He went to climb up on Duo, or maybe TJ or Jean-Paul. Whoever he bumped into first.
It was difficult to snort in wolf form, so it was more of a huff that came out of Cal's impressively-fanged mouth when he spotted Loki among the crowd, in a costume that looked a lot like a modern day rendition of Little Red Riding Hood. Then again, it could also be some pop culture thing that Cal didn't know.
He padded over to his friend, weaving through people, and shifted back into himself (in the unkept suit and tie typical of one former big bad wolf) when he reached him. "Should I be honored?"
“Always.” Loki grinned. “Hello. You’re very fearsome tonight. I love it.”
"Wolf is nice too, it turns out," Cal replied, as if that hadn't been a given, when wolf-dog was his preferred form. Well, that and panther, okay, fine.
"What very big fangs you have." He winked and leaned closer, staying just out of contact range, but sidling as close as Cal would usually allow in a pawless shape. "And wolves are wonderful."
Cal's boundaries were perhaps even a little stricter tonight, when being around so many people was already a bit of a strain, so he edged away a little, trying to make it look natural. "Running like that would be fun, too," he stated, part invitation for another day.
“Tonight or another night?” Loki asked with a wink. He slid his hands into his jacket pockets.
Cal hesitated. It sounded appealing, especially when he was staying cooped up here with so many people. "Wait and see how the evening goes, I guess?"
“Works for me.” He smiled. “You’re where I was at last party. I couldn’t stay in one skin. Duo graciously carried me in their pocket maybe a quarter of the night.”
Cal scoffed incredulously. "I'm nowhere near ready to spend time in anyone's pocket." No matter what form he took. Just the thought of it made his skin crawl, but he covered it up and angled a smile at Loki. "Thanks for the vote of overconfidence, though."
“If you ever reach that point, I’ll make sure that I have very deep pockets with an easy escape path to the floor.” Loki swished his coat. “But no. You don’t look that eager to bolt. It’s just sometimes better in other shapes.”
"Not that eager," Cal agreed. He was briefly tempted to lower his shields just enough for Loki to feel the unease scraping at him with every moment. It came from a place of trust, but Loki didn't deserve to feel that on top of everybody else's bullshit.
“I think I can guess the answer, but you don’t dance, right?” Pushing his luck was what Loki did.
Cal's answer was in his amused smile, and the look he gave Loki. No, he didn't dance. He looked back out at the crowd. "I used to like it well enough. I'll let you know when I'm back to that."
Loki smiled. The answer was still a win in his book. “I look forward.”
"Not much to look forward to," Cal replied honestly, with a small smile. "I'm not much of a dancer." He did all right enough that girls didn't laugh at him? That was about it.
Loki shrugged. “Call me weird, but I like spending time with you. And sometimes I like pretending this is normal.” He gestured at the party.
"You're definitely weird," Cal pointed out with a half smile. He looked around the party. "And this is pretty normal." A soft blink! announced Clarice's arrival at the drinks table, not far from them, and he smirked. "You know. Ish."
"This is nothing like parties at home," Loki said wryly. "I should fix that one day. The professor is extremely helpful when it comes to understanding and learning to manage powers. I do wonder what it might be like to build a school like this in Asgard though."
"Most of the time I forget that you're a prince, and then you go and talk about building a mutant school," Cal remarked. Just the kind of prince Cal liked; it was pretty fucking impossible to ever forget, with Namor. "It's a bit weird if we're actually the only one in the world." But the potential for abuse was high, to say the least.
“Finding the right faculty would be key. Making somewhere safe.” From both the students and the outside world. Loki smiled brightly. “Clearly Europe needs a place to shunt off its wayward children. With so many of us crossing oceans.”
Cal was quiet for a beat, and then said, with a sheepish half-smile, "I'd miss you."
“I think that Abs would really like Asgard,” Loki suggested softly.
"Abs would like it anywhere," Cal retorted. He assumed Loki meant as a new place of residence; seeing him for a visit now and then would not put a stop to the whole missing him thing, just make it a little less acute. So he added, "Not sure Caleb and Clint would."
Loki’s attention sharpened. “We have some astonishing libraries. I don’t know what Clint’s thing is. If that’s a packaged deal, I’ll keep that in mind.”
I don't know what Clint's thing is. Cal's instinctive thought was, being awesome, but that wouldn't help. Going out to help people with what he could do was also out, for different reasons. "Archery," he settled on. "That's probably your best bet." They were definitely a package deal.
“Oh, we have archery covered in spades.” Loki smiled.
"Pretty strong sales pitch, then," Cal replied easily.
“Excellent. I’d be sad to lose you,” Loki admitted. “You’ve only started tolerating my affection. Years from now you might actually agree to posing as a basket of kittens.”
"It's nice that you have something to work towards," Cal offered, as genuine as playful.
“Yeah, well, worth the effort. You’re delightful.” Loki winked.
"I am, or the kittens are?" Cal asked in return.
“You,” Loki said adamantly.
"I'm touched," Cal replied with a smirk. He was taking it all as a joke, because the alternative would have made him much too awkward, again. "So what would you call that school? Loki's School for Gifted Youngsters?"
“Ugh. Do I look like a balding old homebody? People would probably prefer it not to be named after me.”
"Which people?" Cal challenged.
Loki rocked on his heels. “I am not Asgard’s favorite son,” he said simply.
"Well, fuck that," Cal replied, equally simply.
Loki nearly turned into another shape so he could brush closer to Cal. “Why did it take crossing an ocean to find an entourage?” Loki wondered aloud.
"An entourage?" Cal echoed, disapproving skepticism plain in his tone. That sounded less than complimentary to him, and whoever else was included. Fuck, it sounded like something Namor would say.
Loki couldn’t help but smile at Cal’s expression. “You really do not put up with shit.”
Cal shrugged uneasily, gaze cutting away for a moment. "Our friendship's gonna take a nosedive if you start sounding like my roommate, that's all I'm sayin'."
Loki’s hand went to his chest. “Gods no. Please don’t ruin grand sweeping statements for me. And please don’t compare me to the aquatic dildo. I try my best not to think about Namor, or the implication of his entire existence.”
"Don't sound like him, I won't compare you to him." And Cal was going to scrub his brain with bleach to get that descriptor of Namor out of his mind.
“At least I sound ironic when I say these things,” Loki protested. “You’ll tell me to give up Shakespeare next.”
"Was Shakespeare as much of an arrogant jerk?" Cal asked.
“Probably?”
"Pretty big chance it'll happen, then, yeah," he confirmed without missing a beat.
“Calll.” Loki pouted.
"You know that shit doesn't work on anyone who can do actual puppy eyes," Cal pointed out, with a bit of a smirk.
That was it. Loki disappeared—no, transformed. Now there was a tiny kitten looking up from Cal’s feet. He raised both front paws and looked up at Cal with wide eyes.
Cal crouched down to scoop him up, stood up, and deposited him on his shoulder. "Not gonna work." But he was petting him, all the same. That would always work.
Loki snuggled from his new vantage point. “I’m marking your vendetta against Shakespeare.” His fluffy cheek tucked against Cal’s neck.
"Sure, whatever," Cal agreed easily. All the more so because of the cute and fluffy. "You said he was an arrogant jerk."
“Writers and actors. Have to be arrogant... no clue if he was a jerk, history is flexible.”
Cal didn't really give a shit about Shakespeare, to be perfectly honest. He was tempted to ask Loki if they could just get out of here and go snuggle somewhere, because snuggling in any other form but his own, away from all of these people, sounded like a very welcome break from all of the noise and the people. The happy teenager shit he still didn't really feel at ease with. But it wouldn't be fair to Loki, who didn't have Cal's hangups.
"Just don't sound like a jerk," he concluded, quietly.
“How long can I get away with staying here?” Loki asked curiously. He figured Duo was dancing with enough friends, they wouldn’t mind if Loki decided to ride Cal’s shoulder for a while.
"Until you get bored with the conversation?" Cal offered. Not to mention that he would likely shift back soon, and he hated talking as an animal. So unless Loki wanted to talk telepathically...
"So keep you talking, is what you're saying." He batted Cal's shoulder softly with his tail. "You know, you still smell like a wolf."
Cal wrinkled his nose briefly. "Guess that goes well with the costume."
“It does. I can’t really give you the big and bad part.”
"Hey, Bigby's reformed," Cal pointed out with raised eyebrows. A slight frown settled on his brow as he realized how relevant that made his costume, in ways he hadn't planned on.
Loki nuzzled Cal’s cheek as the frown creased his expression. “We should set up a fort soon. I haven’t actually finished that series yet, though I know what you mean from the beginning. Reading party. This needs to be a thing.”
"Is it gonna be a party with just you, me, and Caleb?" Cal asked with an amused little half-smile. He tried to ignore the thrill of unease at the base of his spine, from that nuzzle; he was on edge, from being here, and it took less than it usually did, around Loki. He shored up his shields, wanting to make sure his discomfort wouldn't seep into his friend.
Loki felt Cal go silent and wondered what that about. Well, he could speculate wildly that the idea filled his thoughts with ideas for threesomes and he was hiding his true feelings. Or more likely he was bottling up due to proximity. “Remus could join. I’ve been trading books with him for a while. Half the fun is avoiding seeing him in person, but I suspect he’d appreciate proof that he hasn’t been visited by a book fairy. If Remus and Duo sidle in, is that too many people?”
"If you don't want me to want to crawl outta my own skin," Cal replied, easily, as if it was no big.
“How about just Duo? Who serves as a perfectly harmless chair when bidden. I mean. To me. I’m not suggesting that you use Duo as a chair.”
Cal gave Loki a small smile. "I'll think about it." But not now. Now the thought of adding anyone Cal didn't know to what felt like a somewhat intimate venture (when had reading around others become intimate? or was it about who was involved, rather than what was involved?) only made his discomfort grow at an alarming, disproportionate rate. Probably a by-product of how much of an effort it took to be here in the first place, but it didn't make Cal any happier. He gave a slow, gentle shrug of the shoulder Loki was perched on. "Come on, get off. Time to shift back."
Loki leapt down to the ground. “You or me?” He asked.
"You shift when you wanna," Cal replied, and the next instant, was a massive black wolf again. He nudged his nose gently at the kitten, thought to himself, Better, then pawed at the floor a couple of times.
Loki eyed him at then tackled one of Cal’s massive paws. He rolled and darted off, a clear indication of ‘come chase me’. If they ended up tripping half the party, people would get used to it eventually.
Cal watched the kitten dart away, but remained still, very aware of how likely he was to run into people if he gave chase. He would've warned Loki telepathically, but he didn't trust himself to open a communication channel through his shields and keep his own feelings where they belonged, right then. So he only turned and padded away from the people to sit back on his haunches and just... take a moment. He'd be fine - manner of speaking - in a moment.
Loki skidded to a stop when he realized he wasn’t being followed. He spied back and realized Cal was bunkering down. Respectfully, Loki let him be. Well. First he sent an illusion in Cal’s direction. A sparkle burst of emoji hearts briefly popped up in the air in front of him. Then Loki darted back amongst the crowd. He was tiny enough to avoid trampling. He went to climb up on Duo, or maybe TJ or Jean-Paul. Whoever he bumped into first.
