Chapter Text
The phone call that Thor gets at 3am isn’t a good one.
If he’s honest, he’s been expecting it for a while now, but hearing that your father’s died in a nursing home is never a very good phone call to receive.
Especially at 3am.
Odin was never a very good father, but the loss still hits Thor hard. He blinks away a couple of tears and asks his brother, “when’s the funeral?”
“Saturday. In New York.”
It’s barely Wednesday, it’s six days before Christmas, and he’s resoundingly in Los Angeles. “Flights?”
“Booked solid. And believe me, I tried. ”
Loki is an actor, and not a terrible one too. He’s got some money, and even more influence. If he says he’s tried, he’s tried.
“Shit. Do you think mother would mind if we didn’t go?” Thor is right in the middle of writing his PhD dissertation, and he does not have the time, or the money, for this shit.
He can hear his brother rolling his eyes through his phone. “Mother would tear you apart, Thor. Don’t be a moron. Besides, Odin actually liked you.”
“Hardly.”
“Well, he liked you more than he liked me.” Loki huffs. It is not a pleasant sound. “Bring your laptop, do your work on the way there. I hate to say it, but we’re going to have to -”
Road trip.
Across the entirety of the country.
With his brother.
And Thor loves his brother, really, he does, but a lot of that love translates very easily to hate when they’re in confined spaces together for longer than two hours.
But it’s his father.
And it’s his funeral.
Shit.
“Fine. I’ll come. When are you picking me up?”
“In about four hours.”
“Ugh.”
“And Hela texted me and said she’d be there.”
UGH.
-
Thor gets about two more hours of sleep before he wakes up, dry-mouthed, and nauseous like he’s been on a bender all night. His eyes ache.
He may or may not have cried himself to sleep. He’ll never tell.
He scrabbles around his apartment for as many clean clothes as he can muster - and honestly, there’s not that many - and spills an open can of Red Bull onto his best dress shirt.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Today, of all days. WHY.
He’s just going to have to see Odin out in the patterned shirt with the roses on it.
Well, at least the old man can dislike his choices both in life and in death.
His bank account’s not looking amazing - there’ll probably be enough to get his brother there and back without resorting to all-out prostitution for money, but it’ll be tight. He hasn’t exactly planned to take a two-day road trip across the US and all.
He packs his laptop, locks the front door of his apartment, and heads down the creaky stairs to wait for Loki.
When his brother actually turns up, he’s driving a beat-up Honda Odyssey. It’s blue, scratched, and one of the doors is completely pink.
Figures.
“Good morrow, brother.” Thor climbs into the passenger seat and throws his bag into the back, remembering far too late that there’s a laptop in it.
Something crunches, ominously.
“Why are you driving a car that looks like it should have been destroyed at the turn of the century?”
“Lovely to see you too, brother.” Loki says, with a hint of a sneer. “I didn’t see you contributing in the automobile department.”
“I live in an apartment. Where on earth would I keep a car? Whose car is this?”
Loki looks at him, shiftily. “...Jeff’s.”
“Jesus fuck.” Thor says, very eloquently, and tries very hard not to touch anything. “We’re driving in your partner’s car? How many times have you two had sex in this car? Actually, don’t answer that, I don’t want to know.”
“Jeff and I are business partners. He’s my producer. ” Loki replies, and resolutely avoids eye contact. “We’re not actually in a relationship.”
“You and I both know that he’s described as the ‘Grandmaster of sex’ in certain ketamine-laced Hollywood circles.” Thor is very disgusted by the term on a day to day basis, and it tastes worse as he says it. “And you and I also both know that you’re fucking this guy who is nearly 30 years older than you. Gross.”
“Just because you can’t keep a loving and fulfilling relationship doesn’t mean that everyone else has to be unhappy.” Loki replies, smugly, and that stings.
Not because it’s true, because it is resoundingly not, but because the ridiculousness of Loki’s statement surprises him. “Loving and fulfilling? You slept with him so he’d help get you cast in Kinky Boots. It wasn’t even for a good role.”
Loki shrugs. “At least I’ve not been dumped recently.”
“I wasn’t dumped. I dumped Jane! It was a mutual dumping.”
“Yeah…” Loki draws it out, through his teeth, in a way that is very, very irritating. “What does that Darcy girl do, anyway?”
Thor looks wildly at the dashboard clock and realises they’ve only been in a car together for about five minutes.
He’s going to kill himself if this keeps up.
Actually, he’s going to kill Loki if this keeps up.
This was a bad, bad idea.
