neutral_omens | (no subject)

Time: September 27, 2000
Place: The Attic
Status: Private (Loki, John) (complete)
Summary: John confronts Loki.

That Hugo-kid was poking around in his room with a vacuum cleaner, Loki had found when he'd returned from a short and very cautious visit with Binky. The black doggie hadn't been around, nor had he seen Horus so he'd come back early to read in peace.

Peace and vacuum cleaners didn't go together too well, though, so he'd gone up to the attic to put the finishing touches on his picture of Frigga. She might have been an annoying bitch most of the time, but she'd helped him a lot during some of the worst times in his life. He'd never forget the picture of her holding tiny newborn Sleipnir under his nostrils for inspection.

Anyway, Frigga deserved her place on the wall with the rest of the family, he'd decided once he'd run out of children, wives, blood-brothers and blood brothers' companions to draw.

He'd only just picked up his paints and paint brush when the door opened again, though.

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Huh? What had he ... Oh that!

Loki tilted his head to give John a measuring look. "You're not going to tell Crowley?"

John was for some weird reason friends with the wolf-murderer, after all and the whole project would die, if Crowley found out the truth. Loki had been looking forward to messing with Crowley's head a little more until he really started to believe his story.

"That depends," John said, eyes narrowing and his voice coolling noticeably, even as his heart sank, "on what your answer is. Don't fuck me around, Loki, I'm not in a mood. Yes or no?"

"Now look, he provoked me," Loki explained. "And it's safer for Uriel and the baby, if everybody knows it's a purely angelic baby. Uriel's worried about that. Says the other not-gods might come after her and the little one. You wouldn't want a sweet little baby to die, would you?"

He was pretty sure that John wouldn't want any harm to come to the baby, but decided not to mention Crowley's threats to the animals. Most humans he'd learned didn't give a damn about animals.

John shut his eyes and silently counted to ten. He still hadn't got a straight answer, but he no longer needed one; Loki's evasions were answer enough.

"Anyone who might go after that kid isn't going to stop just because they think the other parent's an angel," he said, fighting to keep his voice level. "And that's not why you did it, is it, Loki? You've had a grudge against Crowley from day one. Well let me tell you about the bloke whose life you've just ruined.

"Crowley's the kind of guy who'll take a gift he was given and use it to buy back a soul and return it to the owner, no strings attached, and save another demon from damnation into the bargain, even though it might bring all Hell down on his head," he went on doggedly, starting to pace the attic floor. "The kind who'll fly all over bloody Ireland looking for someone he has every reason to throw to the dogs, just because he knows the stupid git is in trouble. He likes to talk tough, but he got kicked upstairs because he couldn't handle watching what they do to people in Hell. And on a personal note, he's saved my life, my sanity and my chance at salvation. And your little prank has just destroyed the one thing that's made his life bearable for the past six thousand years.

"And while we're on the subject," he added, breaking suddenly into a shout, "what the bleeding fuck did Aziraphale ever do to you? Or Uriel? Did you stop to think what it'll do to her when she finds out you used her and her baby that way?" He paused to get his voice under control and concluded in a low rasp, literally shaking with the effort of self-control, "For fuck's sake, Loki, there's millions of people in this world who richly deserve to get screwed over by a god of chaos. Why the hell did you have to pick on those three?"

"Well, at the very least the other angels might leave them in peace, if they thought the baby a fellow angel!" Loki yelled back. "And I know Crowley may have been kind to you for some inexplicable fucking reason, but he's still a worse monster than I could ever be. Do you have any fucking idea what your dear sweet friend threatened to do to every innocent animal at this manor? No, you probably don't. Your kind don't fucking care about animals, but I do. I care about them, because they are my friends and family and they've been a lot better friends to me than any god or human ever could be!"

He should have remembered never to get close to a human, but it was too late now. Odd how those weak little mortals always managed to hurt him.

"What I did to Uriel? I kept my word to her that's what. I'm keeping her secret and helping to protect the baby. She's been practising lying herself in order to protect the baby and you think she'd blame me for lying for her?"

"And I suppose you've personally seen him disembowel an otter or some fucking shit like that?" John snapped, completely out of patience with the god's thick-headed refusal to let go of the point. "No, you haven't. Because he wouldn't. You think you're the only one around here who says shit just to get under peoples' skin? But forget that. Forget that you've given Crowley the best possible reason to hate Uriel and her kid. How that makes them any safer is beyond me, but leave it be. You knew he was my friend, Loki. Did you honestly think it wasn't gonna get back to me?" He spread his hands, genuinely baffled. "Or that I'd just stand there and watch him fall to pieces and not give a damn? If you thought that, you're not just paranoid, you're stupid to boot.

"Fuck this," he said, dropping his cigarette and grinding it out with a savage motion, "I didn't want to have to choose, but you've made it a hell of a lot easier. You're damn right I'm gonna tell him, and the others too. You're lucky there's a truce and you're sick or I'd do more than that.

"Stay away from me and my friends, Loki." And he walked out, yanking the door open and slamming it shut behind him.

"He doesn't need to disembowel anything!" Loki yelled at the closed door. "He can think them dead! He told me so himself! And why the fuck does he tell you these things? Hasn't it occurred to either of you that he could just fucking ask Ezra? And ... and ..." And what? What else was there to say? Way would the fucking door care?

"And I don't want anything to do with any friends of yours anyway!"

He threw the oil paints and paintbrush into his hammock, grabbed his favourite book of the moment and decided to spend the rest of the day in bed. He wasn't going to cry, though and if he was, it wouldn't have anything to do with John. Loki didn't cry over humans. He was going to cry, because Odin had left him. That was what he was going to do.