(no subject)

[leucemic-god.livejournal.com]

Date: May 24, 2000
Setting: Third Floor Corridor
Status: Public (complete)
Summary: Loki is poking around in the third floor laundry cupboard.



Loki knew most of the manor by now. He’d explored the basement in hopes of finding somewhere out of the way to make himself a nice nest where he could sleep unseen, but it had turned out to house a swimming pool, a sauna and even a billiard table. Those were likely to draw in people. He usually liked billiard, but not when he was looking for a quiet spot.

So today his search had led him into the attic where he’d found little more than cardboard boxes and dust. A small storeroom in the back looked like a perfect place to make his nest. Any modern human would probably consider it way too uncomfortable, but to a Viking warrior who was used to the harsh life onboard a crowded sailing ship it would have seemed like pure luxury. Loki was neither. He considered it a potentially cosy hideout that needed some work.

First order of business: Clean out the thick layer of dust and grime. It might be a bonus, if one could actually look through the little window afterwards.

That however required cleaning utensils, since the last thing Loki wanted to do was remind the manor’s cleaning staff of the existence of the attic. So where could he organise cleaning tools without asking anyone?

He climbed back down the stairs to the third floor. Newt, or whoever else cleaned the rooms up here, wouldn’t like to drag his cleaning supplies up and down the stairs all the time, so they should have some stored on every floor. The laundry cupboard was his first guess.

Ah yes, sheets, spare pillows, blankets, towels ... a vacuum cleaner ...

Steps behind him! Loki shot around hoping that whoever it was wasn’t part of the manor staff.

Comments

[dangeroushabits.livejournal.com]

John wasn't looking for the Manor laundry--he just wanted to find the roof access, because, well, he'd found every other good spot in the building to sit and smoke and be alone with his thoughts, and the view from up there must be pretty damn impressive. Just like anything else in the Manor, though, it called for a bit of exploration.

He stopped at the sound of a sudden shuffle from inside a room with an open door, and spotted a rather eccentric-looking character standing in what looked to be the laundry, wearing the expression of studied nonchalance common to cookie-napping children and ne'er-do-wells of every description when they were caught in places they weren't supposed to be. He'd worn that look far too many times himself not to recognize it for what it was.

There was something else about the man (or man-shaped creature, he amended privately) that struck him as oddly familiar, but he couldn't immediately pin it down.

Luckily for the other fellow, it wasn't his business to defend the linens and cleaning supplies from whatever nefarious characters happened to have designs upon them.

"'lo," he greeted the stranger with a pleasant nod. "Sorry if I startled you. Don't mind me, I'm just looking for the roof stairs. You seen 'em, by any chance?"

[leucemic-god.livejournal.com]

"Not lately, but I'll be sure to tell them you were looking for them next time we meet." Loki grinned at the stranger. "Actually, I'm not sure there is a way to get onto the roof. I've been to the attic, but all I found there was dust, junk and rats."

The last thing he wanted was someone else taking a liking to his new hideout.

"Maybe there's a fire ladder outside, though. I never really got to finish exploring the grounds." he suggested.

[dangeroushabits.livejournal.com]

John chuckled. "With the number of winged things running around this place? Trust me, there's roof access."

He leaned in the doorway, automatically taking out and lighting a cigarette as he tried to work out what it was about this guy that struck such a resonant chord in him. That had happened a lot lately, of course, but he had a feeling this wasn't one of those missing memories, just one that was old or bad enough to have got buried the usual way.

He was definitely a nonhuman of some stripe, but that wasn't it. It had more to do with his appearance, the clean-shaven head and too-thin frame, tired circles under the eyes.

Old Matt came suddenly to mind, and the ward full of terminal cancer patients, where all the faces had a gaunt, sickly sameness and nobody had any hair; a place where John, who was too far gone for chemo but had seen all the other marks appear in his mirror before it got sorted out, had once thought he might spend his own last days.

He frowned slightly at the stranger. This guy was still on his feet, and not so painfully thin and pale. Not yet. But melt a little more flesh off his bones and leech the remaining color from his face, cocoon him in sterile white sheets, and yeah, he'd have fit right in. Poor bastard. Hope I'm wrong, he thought, willing to extend his sympathy in a spirit of solidarity, at least until it proved undeserved. He'd never heard of an immortal struck down by cancer, but stranger things had happened.

"Name's John, by the way," he added, hoping if he could keep the guy talking for a while he could learn enough to confirm or rule out his guess. "The Manor staff's gonna be hacked if they find out you're raiding their laundry, y'know." He smirked knowingly, the conspiratorial gleam of one old scam artist to another. "Want I should run interference?"

[leucemic-god.livejournal.com]

Loki regarded John speculatively. The man seemed nice enough, but this place was full of all sorts of dangerous beings.

"Oh, I'm not actually after their laundry." Yet. "I'm just looking for some cleaning equipment for my attic expedition. You're not an 'angel', are you?" He didn't feel like one, but it was better to make sure.

[dangeroushabits.livejournal.com]

John blinked once, then started to laugh. Quietly, but hard. He had to grab onto the door frame for support after a moment or two, shoulders heaving helplessly. Of all the outlandish things he'd been asked or accused of over the years, this had to be the most absurd, and it was definitely the funniest.

"...no," he said finally, wiping his eyes and still struggling to control what might have been called a giggle fit, if John Constantine had ever in his life been known to giggle, "I'm not an angel. Promise. If I tried on a halo it'd probably burst into flame. Don't quite qualify for the other team either, though I've been known to play one on TV..."

He hiccupped and shook his head, drawing a deep breath and (mostly) composing himself. "Nah, I'm human, believe it or not. And not over fond of most angels, actually. Lemme guess, you've run afoul of Raphael? Or Gabriel the Snob, mebbe?" The nickname was spoken less acidically now, perhaps even with something akin to affection, but old habits died hard.

[leucemic-god.livejournal.com]

"No, the only ones I've talked to so far are Uriel and the one at the front desk who calls himself Ezra. I heard there are a lot more of them around, though." He frowned, but decided he'd already revealed too much to this stranger.

There was one thing he did have to tell him, though. "I'm Loki, by the way. Loki Lyesmith."

[dangeroushabits.livejournal.com]

"Loki, huh?" Well, that fit. And called for a degree of caution. John wasn't that familiar with Norse mythology, but he'd heard the name Loki, all right. "Good to meet you then. I dunno a lot about Uriel, but if he's anything like his brothers he's probably a wanker in the first degree. 'Ezra's' all right, though. Give you the shirt off his back, if you don't mind being seen in tweed or really loud plaid." He grinned. Gossiping about the halos and pitchforks was a favorite hobby, when he found someone else who could play. "The demons are mostly better company though, apart from Ligur. But if you see a big bruiser with a red streak in his hair, trust me, walk the other way." He wasn't sure how long Mictain's exile was supposed to last.

"So how long you been here?" he added conversationally, wondering if this could possibly be the klepto who'd been making off with odds and ends since he'd returned. A couple packs of his Silk Cuts had turned up at Aziraphale's lost and found, and he might have assumed he'd just left them somewhere in a fit of confusion, if there hadn't been an assortment of other small but valuable items there that were unlikely to have been carelessly misplaced. If Aziraphale knew who the culprit was, he wasn't talking.

[leucemic-god.livejournal.com]

"Too long." Loki admitted. "I don't like this place."

He did like this stranger, though. There was somenthing about him that just screamed: Trust me!

Still, Loki would have been a very bad con-man, if he'd trusted just any friendly stranger.

"You're probably right about Ezra, though. He didn't seem all that bad. Uriel on the other hand, is completely crazy. I mean it. He, or better she nowadays, is clinically insane, if you ask me. Not so sure about the demons, but they seem the more predictable bunch of not-gods."

[dangeroushabits.livejournal.com]

"Not-gods?" John echoed with a chuckle. "They're less prone to be brainwashed by the party line, anyway. S'pose getting kicked to the curb by your former boss doesn't make for good team players. Tell you one thing, though, nothing anybody could offer would persuade me to do Uriel's job..."

He eyed the collection of assorted cleaning paraphernilia Loki was gathering and added, "You want a hand carrying anything?"

[leucemic-god.livejournal.com]

"Well, they've got all the powers and most of the functions of normal gods, but they aren't allowed to call themselves that." Loki explained. "Enslaved gods. That's what they really are, but not-god's easier to say."

He left it open what the difficulty with saying enslaved gods was. If asked he'd probably have pointed out that it was too long for casual use, though he usually didn't have a problem with it. Had somebody pointed that out to him he would have been unable to explain why the word still felt so uncomfortable. Loki was a good judge of the gullibility of people, but no psychologist.

He eyed John cautiously once more. Should he risk it? The man was clearly determined to go up to the attic to look for that roof access either way.

He nodded.

"Alright, but you have to understand that I picked the attic, because it was clearly deserted and I'd like it to remain so." he explained. "I'm trying to make myself a little private space to relax and read in peace, you see. So I expect you to stay in your corner and be quiet when I'm up there and you have to promise not to bring any guests and make sure you aren't followed. It can be a nice quiet place for both of us as long as nobody else knows there's anything up there. Agreed?"

[dangeroushabits.livejournal.com]

John raised an eyebrow as the conversation abruptly turned into a one-sided turf negotiation.

"Hey, it's all yours," he started to say, but stopped suddenly. As a general rule, he could find all the solitude he needed in his own room; but everybody who had reason to look for him knew he could be found there, and there had been a few instances since returning to the Manor when things had got bad enough that even a friendly intrusion would have been well-nigh unbearable.

He hoped he would never need a secret retreat, but it might not be a bad idea to have one, all the same. And if Loki wanted the place for the reasons John thought he might, it was probably wise to stay on his good side and have an excuse to go up there from time to time anyway.

"Sure, mum's the word," he agreed, picking up a bucket and loading it with cleaning necessities, rearranging the remaining stuff on the shelves so it looked as though they hadn't been disturbed. "You mind smoking? Just so I'll know." He asked the question casually, but watched Loki out of the corner of his eye to gauge his response.

[leucemic-god.livejournal.com]

Loki flashed a smile at John that he knew had been more charming when he'd still had hair, but then he wasn't trying to con John.

"Smoking's fine." he assured the human. "I'm used to it. Don't smoke myself anymore, though."

That was another thing the doctor had warned him against, but he didn't have lung cancer, after all and couldn't be bothered to see the dangers of second hand smoke. Odin certainly would not be as accepting of such complaints as of his decision to stop drinking.

"Come on then." he said shouldering a broom and picking up another bucket that contained mostly brushes. A cleaning rag probably wouldn't get him very far in the kind of dust he'd seen up there. The stairs are right though that innocent looking door."

He hoped John wouldn't be too bothered by spiders. He didn't feel like killing or kicking the previous residents out of their home.

[dangeroushabits.livejournal.com]

John followed Loki through the innocent-looking door into the Manor's attic, which looked exactly like any attic in any other large old building in England. The spiders didn't bother him; he'd dealt with much, much more unpleasant things, of earthly origin and otherwise. He found himself steering well clear of the cardboard boxes, though, for reasons he couldn't quite explain. (http://community.livejournal.com/neutral_omens/39961.html#cutid1) Hopefully it would come back to him one of these days.

The place was stiflingly hot, so he set down the stuff he'd brought, went to the one small window and, after a brief struggle with the aged, stiff latch, shoved it open. The place suddenly got a lot brighter. "There, that's better. Gonna be kicking up some dust, I expect," he said.

[leucemic-god.livejournal.com]

Loki blinked in surprise at the sudden light. This window was obviously dirtier than he'd thought.

"Well, this here is the part I claim for myself so that's where I'd like to start." He thought for a moment. "Maybe we'd best move the boxes away first, then brush off the walls. If we start with the floor it'll only get dirty again once we do the walls."

[dangeroushabits.livejournal.com]

John hid a smile. The situation had gone from "I" to "we", which was encouraging.

In point of fact, he hadn't volunteered to help with the cleanup per se, but what the hell. It was a more interesting and productive way to spend the afternoon than loitering around chain-smoking and not remembering stuff. He was sod all good at housekeeping, but he thought he could manage to wield a brush or a broom without anybody getting hurt.

Besides, from what he did recall, it was all too easy when you were sick to start in on something feeling perfectly fine and suddenly hit a wall of exhaustion. Loki could probably use the help, and it wouldn't hurt to keep observing and see how the exertion affected him.

He shrugged out of his trench and laid it on top of a stack of boxes (after lifting up the lid on one to make sure it contained nothing of questionable safety; just tatty old linens, looked like) and rolled up his shirt sleeves. "Right then. You work on that side and I'll start over here, yeah?"

He started shoving a couple of boxes toward the center of the room. "If I'd known I was gonna be doing this, I'd have brought a radio..."

[leucemic-god.livejournal.com]

"Sounds like a plan." Loki agreed happily. "You might not want to push any of the rattier old cardboard boxes like that, though." The floor was rough and would probably cause too much friction.

"If you find a place to plug one in, tell me. I'll need a reading lamp up here."

He followed John's example at first, but made sure to never push more than one box at a time. That way he hoped his strength would last.

[dangeroushabits.livejournal.com]

With that they got to work in earnest, and the next hour or so was filled with the shuffling of boxes, sweat, sneezes from the dust clouds that were raised, and the occasional oath as a bottom gave way and dumped musty linens onto the floor. A couple of electric sockets were found, and many a cobweb met its untimely end.

"I bet if we poked around the rest of the Manor we could find shit nobody's using. Furniture and suchlike," John remarked at one point, pausing to take a breather near the window. Coupled with the exertion, the heat was becoming oppressive. He shoved sweat-limp hair out of his eyes, only to have it fall right back into them again. "Old place like this, you gotta figure they've got stuff stowed someplace. Mebbe the cellar*..."

---

*Had John remembered his and Newt's harrowing encounter with the cellophane monster, of course, he would never have made such a suggestion. Alas, that memory had gone for Fiend Chow. Nor was he aware of Sugarplum's occupancy, or else he would have made a note to take along a bag of marshmallows.

[leucemic-god.livejournal.com]

"There's an old hammock in there." Loki nodded towards one of the boxes he'd examined more closely once the exhaustion had begun to set in and he'd needed to make up excuses for John to do most of the box-dragging. "And one of the larger boxes can serve as a table, with the smaller wooden ones as chairs. All I really need is a lamp. What else were you thinking of getting?"

Dragging furniture up here would be difficult, but if he could postpone the actual carrying to sometime when he wasn't so exhausted, it should be possible.

[dangeroushabits.livejournal.com]

"Dunno, end tables and shit, I guess. 's not important," John said offhandedly, belatedly realizing the difficulties such an expedition might pose for Loki. Even now, after an hour of relatively light work, the god was starting to look a bit bedraggled.

Tactfully, he found an excuse to call a halt. "Christ, I've had about all I can take of this heat. What say we leave it for now, go have a drink or something? The dust isn't going anywhere." They'd made substantial progress; really all that was left was a few more feet of wall and the floor, and then to arrange the makeshift furnishings as Loki saw fit.

[leucemic-god.livejournal.com]

"That sounds like a good idea." Loki agreed. "We need something to wash down all the dust we've swallowed. Why don't we call it a day and finish up tomorrow? I never expected to get everything cleaned in one go."

In fact he'd never intended to get the place this clean at all, or to add furniture. He would have been perfectly happy with a few old blankets and a lamp in a halfway clean corner. Now he'd practically have a second room.

"Thanks for the help." he smiled at the human. "I'd never have got this far without you."

[dangeroushabits.livejournal.com]

"Heh, not a problem. Breaks up the monotony a bit. This place gets bloody boring between catastrophes." John grinned and headed for the cooler spaces downstairs.

[leucemic-god.livejournal.com]

"Catastrophes?" What kind of ... Oh right: Adam, Uriel, Crowley ... And Newt was a walking danger zone as well, albeit of a different kind. "Do I even want to know?"

He followed John a little more slowly. The stairs were not completely safe when you wee exhausted and dizzy. He would have to keep that in mind in the future as well.

Cooler air and something to drink would help, though, so getting down was still a good idea, he decided. He just had to be careful.

[dangeroushabits.livejournal.com]

John sighed. "Beatings, blastings, property damage, the odd discorporation...Adam keeps a lid on the worst of it, stops people offing each other or doing permanent damage, but he doesn't stop them roughing each other up and I don't think he can foresee pure accidents." He smiled wistfully. "And he can't remedy stupidity. If we get into shit too far from the Manor we're on our own. Things've been quieter lately, though, 'specially since Mictain got kicked to the curb."

[leucemic-god.livejournal.com]

"I don't trust Adam." said Loki. "He's dangerous. And Mictain? Never heard of him."

Then again Loki hadn't heard of a lot of people around here. That Belial not-god for example.

"Is he another Judeo-Christian not-got?" he asked wearily. He'd seen much more than he wanted of those lately.

[dangeroushabits.livejournal.com]

"Dangerous?" John snorted. "Hate to tell you, mate but everybody around here's dangerous. Including you and me. Course I could be biased where Adam's concerned," he admitted, unobtrusively slowing his pace as they reached the second floor landing and he realized how tired Loki was. "Kid stopped Michael literally rearranging my face a while back. I don't completely get what he's trying to do with this place, but I can't help thinking he's on the up and up.

"Anyway, Mictain equals Michael equals the big sodding mentally-challenged musclehead who used to be Captain of Heaven's Host. Same guy with the red streak I mentioned. He got himself Felled for, well, being a blockhead, basically. Another archangel was involved, it was just one big cock-up all around." John shook his head. "He's exiled from the Manor at the moment, but I dunno if it's permanent. Trust me, if you see him, steer clear of him. Even when he was theoretically one of the good guys he had no compunction about tearing somebody limb from limb if they annoyed him too badly."

[leucemic-god.livejournal.com]

"Me?" Loki looked at John with wide eyed innocence. "I'm as harmless as a little puppy."

He'd consider himself warned about John, though. He'd been beginning to trust this human and trusting people was never a good idea. He reminded himself sternly to be more cautious.

"How do you know he isn't controlling your mind? He practically admitted to being able to do so when I met him."

He wasn't glad to have guessed right about Mictain. The place had too many not-gods and too few humans. It didn't worry him that there were only three other gods around. He was used to being a minority, but a minority among humans, not mad godlike beings.

[dangeroushabits.livejournal.com]

"I don't, I s'pose. But the way I hear it, he's already had a chance to take over the world once, or blow it up, and he turned it down." They reached the bottom of the stairs, and John puhed open the unobtrusive side door leading into the bar. "Anyway, if he planned to pull anything funny, I think he would've by now, and not advertised the fact that he could.

"I could be wrong, mind. It wouldn't be the first time." He slouched into a chair at his usual table, kicking the opposite chair out for Loki. "Remind me to tell you some time about Newcastle. Preferably when I'm drunk off my arse."

[leucemic-god.livejournal.com]

Loki glanced around cautiously before letting himself drop into the chair. No Adam. Good. He rarely came in here without at least one wolf for protection anymore and considering that his current companion was quite obviously only human ...

"I don't trust him." he insisted crossing his feet on the table and leaning back in his chair. "Or all those fucking not-gods around. I've been trying to warn my friends to be cautious, you know, but they seem so taken by Adam. It's not natural."

[dangeroushabits.livejournal.com]

John nodded. He understood Loki's reservations; hell, he even shared them, to an extent, but he'd reached the point by now where he'd rather take his chances with Adam than not, and he had a feeling Loki would be well advised to do the same. He knew that wasn't a conclusion a person could reach based on what somebody else said, though, so he didn't press the issue. "Nah, it's isn't. I'm curious, though. Why d'you keep calling them 'not-gods'? I mean, it's accurate, but you say it like you've got a point you're trying to make."

[leucemic-god.livejournal.com]

"Well, in any normal pantheon, they'd be gods, of course." Loki thought that would have been obvious. "But that egocentric head god of theirs won't let them be. So what does that make them? I'd call them gods, if they let me."

And probably feel more comfortable about them, he thought. Gods wee something he was used to. Yes, even the most powerful and mean gods were preferable to those weird not-gods.

[dangeroushabits.livejournal.com]

John raised his eyebrows slightly. "Isn't worship a prerequisite for godhood, though?" he asked, a little uncertainly. Pantheism was a little outside his area of expertise, though of course the subject cropped up from time to time in his profession, and he'd learned more about it hanging around the Manor than he'd picked up in the prior forty-odd years. "And, I mean, wouldn't they have to have power of their own? As opposed to coming from somewhere else..."

As he said that, though, it occurred to him that neither Ellie nor Belial seemed to have lost their supernatural abilities after being cut off from Hell. Not entirely, at least. So if their power wasn't Infernal in origin, what did it stem from? And if it was innate, not dependent on any external source, then what did that make them? Interesting...

[leucemic-god.livejournal.com]

Loki thought about that.

"Belief is necessary to keep us strong." he allowed. "But not every god that is believed in is also worshiped. The Judeo-Chritian not-gods currently still have more believers than I do, so I don't see a problem. It's their god's ego that's in their way."

[dangeroushabits.livejournal.com]

"Ain't that the truth," John sighed. "I'm gonna get a beer. What's your poison?"

[leucemic-god.livejournal.com]

Mmmh beer. Loki hadn't had a nice cold beer in ... forever.

He remembered the mead-incident just in time.

"Apple juice." he decided feeling very virtuous. "At least half a litre of it. I'm parched."

[dangeroushabits.livejournal.com]

"Right," John said, unsurprised. Doesn't smoke, doesn't drink... If he'd suspected before, this definitely clinched it. There had to be something desperately wrong with a personification of mischief who eschewed the most basic of vices.

He wandered up to the bar to get their drinks, smirking at the odd look Belial gave him when he ordered the apple juice. "Not mine, trust me."

Returning to their table, he plunked the drinks down and took his seat again. "Bottoms up...so what brought you to the Manor, anyway?" He knew most of the inhabitants had been called by Adam in some fashion, but most also had their own reasons for answering the summons or for staying around.

[leucemic-god.livejournal.com]

"Cheers." Loki gulped down half of the apple juice in one go. That was a lot better, yes.

"Isn't that obvious?" he asked a little surprised at the question. "Odin's here. We might go on separate adventures from time to time, but never for long. I came to find him."

"At least that's what I think I did." he added after a moment and another sip of juice. "Adam claims differently."

[dangeroushabits.livejournal.com]

"Mm. Could be both. --Cheers," John observed, cracking open his beer and taking an appreciative swig. "I can't quite see Adam forcing anybody to do anything they normally wouldn't. But again, I could be wrong.

"Have you spent much time around London?" he added. "If the Manor gets to you, there's plenty of places not too far off to get away to." And I can even remember where most of them are, he thought ruefully.

[leucemic-god.livejournal.com]

"I don't like the idea." Loki admitted. "And I like the idea of someone summoning Odin halfway around the world without him even noticing even less. Isn't that forcing him? Forcing a god."

Loki took another swig of apple juice wishing for something stronger again. It's hard to drown your sorrows in fruit juice.

"I hardly know the city." he told John. "All I've really seen of it are the ho ... hotel room I stayed in, the subway and a few bus stops. I've never been out of America before. Well, not in this incarnation, that is. I could probably use a guided tour. Would get lost on my own."

The last was a lie. He was pretty good at orienting himself in new places, be they small villages, or huge cities. If you lived on the road as much as he and Odin did it was a basic survival skill.

[dangeroushabits.livejournal.com]

"I'll show you around sometime. America's got some bloody brilliant cities," John said, being quite fond of some of them himself, "but there's just no place like London. I need to get back into the swing of things there anyway, I've got kind of sidetracked here." He hadn't been as active in the London underworld in recent years as he once had, but since the possession he'd completely lost track of what was going on, and that made him uneasy.

[leucemic-god.livejournal.com]

Loki nodded. "London's old. There are no really old cities in America. Big ones, loud ones, yes, but not old."

Or maybe it was just that he was so much older than the cities. He thought he'd like London once he got to know it.

[dangeroushabits.livejournal.com]

"'s true. They call New York old, but it's not really. No sense of history, Americans. Not that that's always a bad thing." Sometimes the past informed you, and sometimes all it did was weigh you down. That, John reckoned, was probably just as true for immortals as humans, if not more so. "Lemme know when you want the grand tour, then. I'll come 'round tomorrow afternoon and we can finish up that other thing if...that's good."

He had nearly said if you're feeling up to it. Sloppy. Loki seemed like a pretty decent bloke, irrespective of whether he was really the one swiping shit around the Manor, but he also seemed a bit paranoid and John didn't want to put him off.

[leucemic-god.livejournal.com]

"That'd be great." Loki smiled at John. "I'd probably have a hard time dragging things up on my own."

He liked John, which was quite a surprise. Oh, Loki often found humans he liked, but usually that was because they were particularly gullible and fun to play with. John however was different. He actually liked him in a way he usually just liked other gods, as an equal. He wondered whether one could make friends with a human and what the repercussions might be.