Abner is experienced and adept at being on the absolute brink of death and calmly insisting that he is fine. It’s just a rash. I just slipped. I was only dead for a little while.. A hospital is no place for someone like him. Even top infectious disease specialists wouldn’t know what to do with him. And the thought of anyone in a lab coat with an examination table trying is enough to make him break out in a cold sweat.
The people who hit him aren’t entirely to blame for moving along. He hadn’t laid down until their car was out of sight.
“Oh. A little, I guess,” he answers, as if temperature hadn’t previously occurred to him and he isn’t really bothered. He’s actually quite cold. He’s still in a sort of teenage experimental stage of dressing himself, having never gotten the chance before. But he does also hang out with Harley Quinn who is an…interesting sartorial influence.
He props himself up on his elbows as he suddenly finds himself cloaked. The chill had been a nice distraction. The cloak is also a nice distraction. It feels expensive.
“I can feel everything,” he reports, “and move everything, I just can’t put weight on it.”
His pain threshold must be unhealthily high. That already occurred to Loki, based on what little he knows about his affliction, his powers. You deal with that sort of illness for the majority of your life, and a motor vehicle accident probably feels like equivalent to a head cold. That doesn't mean he couldn't die from it, though. Mortals do that, even if they're unusual ones.
By Midgard standards, it's an expensive cloak, probably. Loki isn't sure they even have all the materials in it on the planet. It feels like satin, but warms like wool or fleece. Evidently he's not worried about getting blood or grass stains on it, though.
"Probably broken bones or dislocated joints, then. That's a relief; I can't do much for a damaged spinal column, but I can manage bleeding and fractures. I'm going to have to poke at you a little, and it's going to hurt, all right? Try not to lash out; if you hit me you'll only hurt your hands worse."
He doesn't want to know what happens if he fires polka-dots at him.
He tugs his gloves off and tosses them aside, placing one hand just over the injured knee, the other beneath it and pressing gingerly, using both magic and touch to gauge where the worst damage is.
"Oh! And warn me if you're going to pass out." He can do a painkilling spell in a minute, but diagnosis comes first, then easing the symptoms.
That would be ironic: managed to come back from being pancaked by a giant alien starfish, but done in by a Hyundai Elantra. Abner pulls the cloak a little closer. His cardigan does not warm like wool or fleece: it’s from Forever 21. He did not buy it.
“I know,” he says. He doesn’t even sound resigned to it: it’s going to hurt and that is a fact. “I’m definitely not going to hit you.”
He’s not wearing his gauntlets (they don’t go with the sweater), so it doesn’t even occur to him to assure the other man that he isn’t going to meet a multicolored end. Not unless one of them sticks their finger down Abner’s throat, and he isn’t planning on it.
“I probably won’t pass out either.”
That he sounds morose about. He’s never been that lucky.
Ironic, but not unheard of. How many assassins or war heroes have died from falling off a ladder while cleaning their gutters? More than zero, anyway.
The matter-of-fact acknowledgement actually makes Loki feel worse for him than if he'd complained. Generally speaking, he's not much of a bleeding heart, but it's hard not to feel compassion for someone who seems to have perpetually gotten the thin end of the stick for their entire existence.
"Well, just don't forget to breathe, all right?" he says, and there is a solid sixty to ninety seconds where he is pressing and testing the damaged muscle and bone, before he's satisfied that he knows what to do to it.
"The good news is your femur isn't broken. The bad news is just about everything else is." The green glimmer returns as he starts to cast a painkilling spell. It will be a few minutes before it takes full effect, but there should be the start of some relief right away.
"Just for the record, they don't call me the god of healing, and there's a reason for that. But I can handle this for you. You'll owe me a favor, but I rather like you so I won't make it anything too terrible."
He’s silent and still as Loki examines him; stares straight ahead. He’s long past any squirming or complaints or tears. Abner is a quicker learner than his mother ever gave him credit for, and he was quick to learn showing pain and looking for comfort would not get him anywhere. This is not to say that comfort isn’t something he yearns for.
“Oh. Great,” he replies flatly. That’s worse than he was expecting, but it makes sense. His gaze does flick down to the glimmer, which he watches with interest. A little of the tension starts to go out of his shoulders.
“That feels…” he murmurs, before glancing up at Loki, looking slightly startled. “You, um, rather like me?”
Abner has so little experience being liked at all, that he isn’t sure how to take that.
Loki is, as mentioned before, not a bleeding heart. He's someone who's experienced cruelty and torture, though, and even if he hadn't heard some of Abner's story already, he'd recognize the look. Understand what he's doing, and why. He's relieved when he's able to get on with the painkilling magic, and the tension in the man's back starts to ease.
"Better?" he asks. "It'll take a minute or two. I could just numb you completely with cold, but that's not good for human tissues. Don't move that leg until I've worked on the bones a bit more, though. I'll let you know when they're stable."
Everything else might have been a slight exaggeration, but there's some patellar damage that would take an orthopedic surgeon a long time to repair. Magic is a helpful shortcut.
Loki blinks at the question and looks amused. "I wouldn't be here at all if I didn't. You didn't even ask for help, technically."
Which would be a clever way to get around owing something to a trickster god, but Loki suspects in this case he didn't ask because he either didn't know how or didn't want to be refused.
"I have a soft spot for people who don't fit in the world. Especially the ones who've gotten themselves into trouble because of that. Con artists, criminals, misfits. You know, people like me." The magic glimmers brighter, strands wrapping around the injured leg. It might feel chilly or tingly or odd, but there should be no additional pain.
"I'll let you decide which of those you are. You don't seem to have much malice in you. Rage, maybe, but that's not the same thing. Where were you headed when you got hit by the car?"
“Better,” Abner agrees. He just barely nods his head, as if afraid any movement might ruin all of Loki’s efforts. Abner is very used to being told he has ruined everything, no matter how hard he has tried.
“A criminal,” he murmurs with a grimace. Misfit isn’t a strong enough word for what Abner is. Freak fits better. Failure. Abomination too. He watches the magic do its…well, magic.
“It’s…pretty,” Abner admits. He hopes that isn’t the wrong word, but he can’t think of another. Hopefully it won’t somehow insult the other man.
“You think I have…rage in me?” He asks, curiously. It’s not something Abner has ever considered. He has a black hole inside him; empty and gnawing and hopeless. And the virus, of course. That may be angry, being trapped in this dimension in such a useless creature.
“I was just going home,” he explains. “I don’t drive.”
"I can't judge," he says with a little shrug. "Whatever you've done, I promise you I've done worse."
He smiles a little at being told his magic is pretty. He's biased, and also a little vain in some areas, but he tends to agree. "We call it seidr," he says. "Mine always comes out that greenish-gold color. I suppose it's some sort of expression of my personality; couldn't tell you what, offhand."
Green for the presence of the otherworldly, perhaps, but the gold could be anything.
"I think you have rage in you," he confirms. "Though perhaps you're not even aware of it. You told me you can kill people if you see them as your mother. Maybe that's partly defensive, but I'd be shocked if there was no anger there at all."
There's a subtle grinding and clicking sensation as some of the bones resettle, but the pain is nearly gone by now. "...well." Loki frowns a little. "It's going to take a few hours for the inflammation to go down, but I think you'll be able to walk on it by morning."
"Do you want me to take you home, or would you rather I brought you to one of my safe-houses to rest? If you live alone, the latter might be the better option."
Abner’s eyes widen. He stares down at his own chest.
“Oh. I…understand what you mean. The virus does the same thing. In theory.”
And Abner vomits rainbows twice a day. His mother never questioned him or accused him of anything directly, but she certainly expressed distaste for flamboyance; for gentleness and softness, which she equated with stupidity. For anything that wasn’t stereotypically masculine, because that is what a superhero should be. Suffice it to say Abner did not measure up in several ways.
“I’ve never really thought about it like that,” he mutters. The truth is that Abner has never really allowed himself to be angry; has always been too busy hating himself to think about how he feels about anyone else.
He doesn’t love his mother, that much is true. But he feels guilty about that, and about what he did to her. Without that guilt and self loathing he doesn’t know who he is. He doesn’t deserve to be angry.
“Thank you,” he says, pushing himself carefully into a sitting position. “I owe you. And I do live alone, but I don’t want to put you out. My apartment is…really small. I mean: there are no stairs…”
Not wanting to put anyone out is basically the story of Abner’s life, but he’s also aware that the dots are beginning to form for the night. And the idea of slowly swelling into something hideous in front of a man who both is and looks like a god is deeply depressing.
"Is that how it works?" Loki looks curious, not repelled. "I wonder how similar the energy is. Generally speaking, the human body isn't the best conduit for magical powers, though I've known sorcerers, witches and mages to come from Midgard."
The parallels are intriguing, anyway, and when Loki gets intrigued by something, he's disinclined to let the matter go.
When he pushes himself to sit up, Loki reaches to put a hand on his back, steadying him. "You do, but we can worry about those details another time." Some decent chocolate might be all he demands in return.
He shakes his head. "Mnn. I don't much like the idea of you either stuck lying in bed all night or trying to get up for glass of water and falling over and re-breaking your tibia. Decision made. Congratulations, you're being abducted by an alien."
The green threads of energy unfurl again, but this time they seem to simply part the veil of the world around them and pull them through empty space, depositing them lightly on a pile of furs beside a fireplace large enough to hold an entire roasting bull.
The room around them is a long hall, mostly carved and polished granite, with a few ornamental columns and lamps here and there. There are storage chests and some large bookshelves, and a long, oversized dining table with matching chairs, but aside from that it's fairly sparsely furnished, high-ceilinged and airy.
Loki pats his shoulder gently and stands. "I want tea. I'll make extra in case you want some, as well."
Abner’s response to being abducted by an alien is something like:
“Huwha?”
And then they’re moving through…Abner doesn’t know, but it’s strangely familiar in a way that he isn’t sure he wants to think about. It would mean remembering who knows how many tons of intergalactic starfish slamming down on him and then…not being. Or being, in a place that isn’t. And he doesn’t. He doesn’t remember. Not even a little.
Abner also does not know what decent chocolate is, but that’s unrelated.
He takes a moment to take in the room around him. It certainly puts the small one bedroom ARGUS has parked him in to shame. He runs his fingers through the furs.
“Thank you,” he replies. For the tea. For the leg. For putting up with him. “You have a lovely home.”
Truly, the politest of all supervillains.
“You, uh, asked how it works,” he says, after a moment. “I don’t really know. No one does, not even… But it’s a virus, not energy. The…symptoms were different for all of us.”
Startled confusion is not the way to dissuade Loki from teasing, Abner. That may be part of the reason he continues to check up on you!
The hall doesn't look much like a place meant for day-to-day living, more like the sort of set-up a wealthy person might have to impress their business associates. What that says about Loki, Abner will have to decide on his own. He's certainly not a business associate. But, there are some books by the furs, and Loki is quick to locate and hang a teakettle on a hook near the fire to heat up. He must spend some time here alone, himself.
"You're welcome," he says, and looks very pleased. All compliments are good compliments.
He sits on the furs across from him, folding his legs under him in a half-lotus position, which looks a little ungainly just because they're so damn long. "It's a virus, but the...discs or balls or whatever it is you shoot, those aren't just bits of virus themselves, are they?"
Abner doesn’t know what day-to-day living spaces look like, really. Nor does he know how wealthy people impress their business partners. He has never been either.
Abner’s own long legs remain stretched out in front of him. He’s still not sure if he’s allowed to move them or not, so he hasn’t. He’d like to. He’d like to take his socks off and bury his feet in the furs that his fingers are still lightly stroking. The sensation is calming, not that he’s particularly nervous at the moment. Just his normal, baseline distress at existing in general and not being good enough at it.
“Dots,” he corrects, gently. “And no, but: they never really figured out what they were. At the lab. They called it a plasma, but it can’t be officially classified. Sorry, I’m not a scientist.”
But he can feel them beginning to bloom (although bloom is far too pretty a word). They’re small at the moment: one on his shoulder, one on his back, and one behind his ear. They pulse under his skin with the promise of becoming horrible. The one behind his ear may suck in particular, but he can never tell which ones will stop swelling at a reasonable few inches and which ones won’t.
"So then, potentially, your dots are some byproduct of the virus' processes. Like carbon dioxide being exhaled from human lungs. Plasma is...a kind of matter, by Midgardian definitions, I believe." He's not a scientist, either, and while he has extensive knowledge of physics--enough to bend the laws thereof in his favor when the occasion calls for it--the was Asgard describes these things and the way humans describe these things do not always meet in the middle.
"Forgive me. I am curious, but I'm certainly not going to harm you or do anything against your will; you have my word on that." He imagines after extensive captivity on multiple fronts, being studied and hurt and used, anyone asking too many questions might be alarming.
"Are you allergic to anything? I was just going to make chamomile tea." It won't be long before he notices the growths, if he hasn't already, but he's trying to keep him calm and relaxed to give him a chance to heal.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dancing_serpent
(no subject)
Date: 2021-11-21 07:28 pm (UTC)The people who hit him aren’t entirely to blame for moving along. He hadn’t laid down until their car was out of sight.
“Oh. A little, I guess,” he answers, as if temperature hadn’t previously occurred to him and he isn’t really bothered. He’s actually quite cold. He’s still in a sort of teenage experimental stage of dressing himself, having never gotten the chance before. But he does also hang out with Harley Quinn who is an…interesting sartorial influence.
He props himself up on his elbows as he suddenly finds himself cloaked. The chill had been a nice distraction. The cloak is also a nice distraction. It feels expensive.
“I can feel everything,” he reports, “and move everything, I just can’t put weight on it.”
He gestures to the leg with the torn knee.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-11-21 08:04 pm (UTC)By Midgard standards, it's an expensive cloak, probably. Loki isn't sure they even have all the materials in it on the planet. It feels like satin, but warms like wool or fleece. Evidently he's not worried about getting blood or grass stains on it, though.
"Probably broken bones or dislocated joints, then. That's a relief; I can't do much for a damaged spinal column, but I can manage bleeding and fractures. I'm going to have to poke at you a little, and it's going to hurt, all right? Try not to lash out; if you hit me you'll only hurt your hands worse."
He doesn't want to know what happens if he fires polka-dots at him.
He tugs his gloves off and tosses them aside, placing one hand just over the injured knee, the other beneath it and pressing gingerly, using both magic and touch to gauge where the worst damage is.
"Oh! And warn me if you're going to pass out." He can do a painkilling spell in a minute, but diagnosis comes first, then easing the symptoms.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-11-21 08:57 pm (UTC)“I know,” he says. He doesn’t even sound resigned to it: it’s going to hurt and that is a fact. “I’m definitely not going to hit you.”
He’s not wearing his gauntlets (they don’t go with the sweater), so it doesn’t even occur to him to assure the other man that he isn’t going to meet a multicolored end. Not unless one of them sticks their finger down Abner’s throat, and he isn’t planning on it.
“I probably won’t pass out either.”
That he sounds morose about. He’s never been that lucky.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-11-22 07:21 pm (UTC)The matter-of-fact acknowledgement actually makes Loki feel worse for him than if he'd complained. Generally speaking, he's not much of a bleeding heart, but it's hard not to feel compassion for someone who seems to have perpetually gotten the thin end of the stick for their entire existence.
"Well, just don't forget to breathe, all right?" he says, and there is a solid sixty to ninety seconds where he is pressing and testing the damaged muscle and bone, before he's satisfied that he knows what to do to it.
"The good news is your femur isn't broken. The bad news is just about everything else is." The green glimmer returns as he starts to cast a painkilling spell. It will be a few minutes before it takes full effect, but there should be the start of some relief right away.
"Just for the record, they don't call me the god of healing, and there's a reason for that. But I can handle this for you. You'll owe me a favor, but I rather like you so I won't make it anything too terrible."
(no subject)
Date: 2021-11-24 04:03 am (UTC)“Oh. Great,” he replies flatly. That’s worse than he was expecting, but it makes sense. His gaze does flick down to the glimmer, which he watches with interest. A little of the tension starts to go out of his shoulders.
“That feels…” he murmurs, before glancing up at Loki, looking slightly startled. “You, um, rather like me?”
Abner has so little experience being liked at all, that he isn’t sure how to take that.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-11-24 09:09 pm (UTC)"Better?" he asks. "It'll take a minute or two. I could just numb you completely with cold, but that's not good for human tissues. Don't move that leg until I've worked on the bones a bit more, though. I'll let you know when they're stable."
Everything else might have been a slight exaggeration, but there's some patellar damage that would take an orthopedic surgeon a long time to repair. Magic is a helpful shortcut.
Loki blinks at the question and looks amused. "I wouldn't be here at all if I didn't. You didn't even ask for help, technically."
Which would be a clever way to get around owing something to a trickster god, but Loki suspects in this case he didn't ask because he either didn't know how or didn't want to be refused.
"I have a soft spot for people who don't fit in the world. Especially the ones who've gotten themselves into trouble because of that. Con artists, criminals, misfits. You know, people like me." The magic glimmers brighter, strands wrapping around the injured leg. It might feel chilly or tingly or odd, but there should be no additional pain.
"I'll let you decide which of those you are. You don't seem to have much malice in you. Rage, maybe, but that's not the same thing. Where were you headed when you got hit by the car?"
(no subject)
Date: 2021-11-27 04:51 am (UTC)“A criminal,” he murmurs with a grimace. Misfit isn’t a strong enough word for what Abner is. Freak fits better. Failure. Abomination too. He watches the magic do its…well, magic.
“It’s…pretty,” Abner admits. He hopes that isn’t the wrong word, but he can’t think of another. Hopefully it won’t somehow insult the other man.
“You think I have…rage in me?” He asks, curiously. It’s not something Abner has ever considered. He has a black hole inside him; empty and gnawing and hopeless. And the virus, of course. That may be angry, being trapped in this dimension in such a useless creature.
“I was just going home,” he explains. “I don’t drive.”
(no subject)
Date: 2021-11-29 04:08 am (UTC)He smiles a little at being told his magic is pretty. He's biased, and also a little vain in some areas, but he tends to agree. "We call it seidr," he says. "Mine always comes out that greenish-gold color. I suppose it's some sort of expression of my personality; couldn't tell you what, offhand."
Green for the presence of the otherworldly, perhaps, but the gold could be anything.
"I think you have rage in you," he confirms. "Though perhaps you're not even aware of it. You told me you can kill people if you see them as your mother. Maybe that's partly defensive, but I'd be shocked if there was no anger there at all."
There's a subtle grinding and clicking sensation as some of the bones resettle, but the pain is nearly gone by now. "...well." Loki frowns a little. "It's going to take a few hours for the inflammation to go down, but I think you'll be able to walk on it by morning."
"Do you want me to take you home, or would you rather I brought you to one of my safe-houses to rest? If you live alone, the latter might be the better option."
(no subject)
Date: 2021-11-29 06:49 am (UTC)“Oh. I…understand what you mean. The virus does the same thing. In theory.”
And Abner vomits rainbows twice a day. His mother never questioned him or accused him of anything directly, but she certainly expressed distaste for flamboyance; for gentleness and softness, which she equated with stupidity. For anything that wasn’t stereotypically masculine, because that is what a superhero should be. Suffice it to say Abner did not measure up in several ways.
“I’ve never really thought about it like that,” he mutters. The truth is that Abner has never really allowed himself to be angry; has always been too busy hating himself to think about how he feels about anyone else.
He doesn’t love his mother, that much is true. But he feels guilty about that, and about what he did to her. Without that guilt and self loathing he doesn’t know who he is. He doesn’t deserve to be angry.
“Thank you,” he says, pushing himself carefully into a sitting position. “I owe you. And I do live alone, but I don’t want to put you out. My apartment is…really small. I mean: there are no stairs…”
Not wanting to put anyone out is basically the story of Abner’s life, but he’s also aware that the dots are beginning to form for the night. And the idea of slowly swelling into something hideous in front of a man who both is and looks like a god is deeply depressing.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-11-29 05:13 pm (UTC)The parallels are intriguing, anyway, and when Loki gets intrigued by something, he's disinclined to let the matter go.
When he pushes himself to sit up, Loki reaches to put a hand on his back, steadying him. "You do, but we can worry about those details another time." Some decent chocolate might be all he demands in return.
He shakes his head. "Mnn. I don't much like the idea of you either stuck lying in bed all night or trying to get up for glass of water and falling over and re-breaking your tibia. Decision made. Congratulations, you're being abducted by an alien."
The green threads of energy unfurl again, but this time they seem to simply part the veil of the world around them and pull them through empty space, depositing them lightly on a pile of furs beside a fireplace large enough to hold an entire roasting bull.
The room around them is a long hall, mostly carved and polished granite, with a few ornamental columns and lamps here and there. There are storage chests and some large bookshelves, and a long, oversized dining table with matching chairs, but aside from that it's fairly sparsely furnished, high-ceilinged and airy.
Loki pats his shoulder gently and stands. "I want tea. I'll make extra in case you want some, as well."
(no subject)
Date: 2021-11-30 03:23 am (UTC)“Huwha?”
And then they’re moving through…Abner doesn’t know, but it’s strangely familiar in a way that he isn’t sure he wants to think about. It would mean remembering who knows how many tons of intergalactic starfish slamming down on him and then…not being. Or being, in a place that isn’t. And he doesn’t. He doesn’t remember. Not even a little.
Abner also does not know what decent chocolate is, but that’s unrelated.
He takes a moment to take in the room around him. It certainly puts the small one bedroom ARGUS has parked him in to shame. He runs his fingers through the furs.
“Thank you,” he replies. For the tea. For the leg. For putting up with him. “You have a lovely home.”
Truly, the politest of all supervillains.
“You, uh, asked how it works,” he says, after a moment. “I don’t really know. No one does, not even… But it’s a virus, not energy. The…symptoms were different for all of us.”
(no subject)
Date: 2021-11-30 09:26 pm (UTC)The hall doesn't look much like a place meant for day-to-day living, more like the sort of set-up a wealthy person might have to impress their business associates. What that says about Loki, Abner will have to decide on his own. He's certainly not a business associate. But, there are some books by the furs, and Loki is quick to locate and hang a teakettle on a hook near the fire to heat up. He must spend some time here alone, himself.
"You're welcome," he says, and looks very pleased. All compliments are good compliments.
He sits on the furs across from him, folding his legs under him in a half-lotus position, which looks a little ungainly just because they're so damn long. "It's a virus, but the...discs or balls or whatever it is you shoot, those aren't just bits of virus themselves, are they?"
(no subject)
Date: 2021-12-01 03:42 am (UTC)Abner’s own long legs remain stretched out in front of him. He’s still not sure if he’s allowed to move them or not, so he hasn’t. He’d like to. He’d like to take his socks off and bury his feet in the furs that his fingers are still lightly stroking. The sensation is calming, not that he’s particularly nervous at the moment. Just his normal, baseline distress at existing in general and not being good enough at it.
“Dots,” he corrects, gently. “And no, but: they never really figured out what they were. At the lab. They called it a plasma, but it can’t be officially classified. Sorry, I’m not a scientist.”
But he can feel them beginning to bloom (although bloom is far too pretty a word). They’re small at the moment: one on his shoulder, one on his back, and one behind his ear. They pulse under his skin with the promise of becoming horrible. The one behind his ear may suck in particular, but he can never tell which ones will stop swelling at a reasonable few inches and which ones won’t.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-12-03 02:10 pm (UTC)"Forgive me. I am curious, but I'm certainly not going to harm you or do anything against your will; you have my word on that." He imagines after extensive captivity on multiple fronts, being studied and hurt and used, anyone asking too many questions might be alarming.
"Are you allergic to anything? I was just going to make chamomile tea." It won't be long before he notices the growths, if he hasn't already, but he's trying to keep him calm and relaxed to give him a chance to heal.