Chapter Text
“I’m starting to regret this whole idea.”
“We can’t stop now,” Stephen objected. “I was just getting to the fun part.”
“If I knew this was your idea of fun, I’d have stayed in the hospital.”
“Have you seen the food they serve to inpatients?”
“There you go again, mentioning food. You’re doing this on purpose.”
The significance of Loki’s accusatory statement was lost on Stephen, who proceeded to wave the papers in the air with an obscene amount of glee.
“Not me,” he said cheerily. “Doctor’s orders. I’m just following them.”
Loki lifted the cold compress from his black eye to give Stephen the most effective glare he could; the man had no business looking so damn happy. “You’re not actually going through the whole concussion-for-dummies checklist, are you?”
“Why not? You wrote it.”
That made Loki pause, but only for a second. “Yeah, but for other people.”
Stephen had to laugh. “Nice try, Laufeyson. One thing you should know about me is that I don’t do half-assed things. When you start something, you have to follow it through.”
A groan. “You’re one of those.”
Stephen raised a quizzical eyebrow, clearly asking Loki to clarify his statement. “One of those -?”
A careless shrug. “You know. By the book. Someone who relies heavily on scores and guidelines to make even the simplest clinical decision.”
“I know you meant that as an insult but as a very good friend of mine once said, we live in the era of defensive medicine,” Stephen said. “You can do the right thing by saving someone’s life and still get your ass hauled to court for not letting them die in peace.”
Before Loki could stop himself, “Because it’s not always the right thing.”
Stephen went quiet. “What isn’t?” he queried.
It was the concussion talking; it must be, there was no stopping the words -
“Living,” it spoke, his voice a hollow echo, a shell of his former self. “It’s not everyone’s choice by default.”
“Are you…talking about your patient?” It took Stephen a good second to remember her name, “Sharon?”
Clearing his throat did little good.
“Yes,” Loki replied thickly. “Yes.”
Now that he had successfully diverted Stephen’s attention away from him and onto someone else, he was going to keep it there. “How do you know about her?”
“Your friend Oliver filled me in.”
“He shouldn’t have,” Loki muttered. “Sharon’s…a private person.”
“Don’t get mad at him,” Stephen said. “I made him tell me. I needed context as to why her ex was hell-bent on beating you to a pulp.”
“Call me crazy but I’m glad things happened the way they did.”
Stephen stared at him for a long time, before nodding. “Yeah, you are crazy. What if he had caught you on your own? Jumped you in a back alley somewhere?”
“Better me than her.”
A sudden chill ran down Stephen's spine.
“Unbelievable,” he muttered, hiding his unease behind a wall of irritation. “Call it a calling or whatever, but at the end of the day, it’s just a job, Loki. It’s not worth your life.”
“It was worth it,” Loki said softly. “Someone who doesn’t trust easily…once trusted someone too much.”
There it was again, that same chill, this time coiling in the pit of Stephen’s stomach: Something was coming.
“It took me a long time, but I did get there in the end." A half-smile. "She chose herself.”
The heavy silence stretched across time, over furtive glances averted just as they met, colliding just as one thought the other was not looking.
It was Loki who broke the stillness in the end. “Where are we now on that stupid proforma?”
“I think for this part you have to fill it in yourself.”
Loki grabbed the papers out of Stephen’s hand. “This is so pointless. I know all these questions by heart.”
“All the easier for you to answer them then,” Stephen encouraged.
With a heavy sigh, Loki groped around the side of his duffel bag and fished out something very familiar. Ignoring the table, he turned his bent knee into one, and proceeded to circle his answers.
Stephen’s indiscreet staring at the pen Loki was holding (and definitely, definitely not at Loki’s bare ankle) meant he caught Loki’s pace dwindling the further he went down the list, before coming to a complete stop somewhere near the bottom of the page.
“Don’t think too hard,” Stephen said finally. “Just rate your symptoms as objectively as you can.”
Loki’s vacant gaze remained fixated on the form, the helpful advice having fallen on deaf ears.
The unnamed, fuzzy feeling in the pit of Stephen’s stomach transformed into something resembling concern. He had had a hunch the last few questions would be the most difficult for Loki.
“How do you like it?”
Suddenly jolted out of his reverie, it took Loki a while to reorientate himself. “What?”
“How are you liking it?”
The note of desperation in the man’s random question was anxiety-inducing, and Loki found himself hurrying to locate the source of Stephen’s distress. “How am I liking the…pen?”
Stephen nodded eagerly.
Grateful for the momentary distraction, Loki decided to give it serious thought, since it clearly meant a lot to Stephen.
After a moment of thinking, he gave his verdict. “I like it well enough.”
Well…enough?
“But…?” Stephen ventured.
“Personal feelings aside, I think it lacks certain safety features.”
Now that got Stephen feeling defensive, as irrational as it was.
“What do you mean?” he demanded.
“The cap. It is not perforated,” Loki said matter-of-factly.
“Come again?”
“It doesn’t have a hole.”
Stephen blinked. “Does it need one?”
“You wouldn’t be asking me that, if you knew how many deaths it prevents,” Loki said. “I fished three of these little nasties out of children’s throats this year alone.”
“Did they all make it?” Stephen asked, fearing the answer but wanting to know all the same.
Loki would have rolled his eyes, had the concussion headache been less of a bother. He wished he had brought some painkillers home from work; the thought of asking for some from Stephen was too distressing to even contemplate.
“Of course,” Loki said. “The ones that didn’t, they wouldn’t have come to me, would they?”
Stephen suppressed a shudder at the realisation that he now needed to replace all his imperforate pens with holey ones.
He rose to his feet. “Come on. Up.”
“Where are we going?” Loki asked in alarm.
“Nowhere. I just want to assess your gait.”
Loki gave him an incredulous look. “I can walk just fine.”
“I’m sure you can, but show me anyway,” Stephen cajoled.
“If I do this, will you promise to let me sleep?” Loki asked irritably.
“Sure.” Stephen shrugged. “I’ve seen you walk from the car, so maybe just do heel-to-toe and we’re done.”
Loki began to walk, his confidence faltering when the first few steps did not go as smoothly as he intended.
“There.” Loki dropped into the nearest stool at the kitchen island. “Happy?”
“Tandem gait was a bit wobbly,” Stephen observed critically.
“No, it wasn't.”
Stephen was unconvinced. “Let’s do Romberg’s.”
“This is ridiculous,” Loki complained. “There is nothing wrong with my balance.”
“One of the consistent findings in concussion is postural instability,” Stephen stated flatly. “And I don’t like skipping steps in physical examination. That’s when you miss things.”
“Why are you so thorough all of a sudden?” Loki grumbled
“I am always thorough,” Stephen said.
“Right,” Loki snorted. He pushed himself to a standing position once more.
“Stand with your feet together,” Stephen ordered. “And close your eyes.”
“I know how to do the Romberg’s Test, Strange,” Loki growled.
“Clearly you don’t, coz your eyes are still open,” replied Stephen coolly.
Loki still looked uncertain, so Stephen walked over and positioned himself an arm’s length away.
“It’s okay,” he said awkwardly. “I’m right here.”
“Yeah, I can see that,” Loki said sarcastically. In the end, the desire to prove the man wrong outweighed his need for self-preservation so he closed his eyes.
One second he was standing still, as steady as a rock, the next his knees were buckling underneath him.
He opened his eyes in panic, but it was too late.
I’m falling, Loki realised.
In a flash, Stephen lunged for him and made a grab for his flailing arms, but the momentum pulled them both backward. Loki’s spine collided into the kitchen counter, and in the struggle for balance, he fisted the front of Stephen’s shirt, which finally stopped the fall.
They began to breathe heavily; Loki from having the wind knocked out of him, Stephen from the realisation that he had one arm propped on the counter, and the other tightly wrapped around Loki’s waist.
It was a blessing in disguise that one of Loki’s eyes was swollen shut; Stephen was having enough trouble thinking straight. This up close, he could see the gold flecks in Loki’s iris.
“This isn’t in the guidelines,” Loki breathed out.
“Going against them is permissible sometimes,” Stephen murmured, his heart pounding in his chest. “You said.”
“What are we doing?” Loki asked dimly.
“I don’t know,” Stephen replied, his voice sounding just as faint.
Loki tried to get his fingers to loosen their death grip but they remained clenched; he could feel the heat of Stephen’s chest against his knuckles.
When the arm around his waist tightened, “What are you doing?”
“I don’t know,” came Stephen’s helpless answer again, but the plea in his seaglass eyes was less ambivalent.
Anything you want, they seemed to say.
His eyes dropped to the alluring line of Loki’s mouth.
Kiss me.
They jolted against each other when a sudden buzzing noise blared through the house.
A long, excruciating second later, their hold around each other simultaneously eased.
“You okay?” Stephen asked quietly.
Loki remembered to breathe again.
“Yeah.” He licked his suddenly dry lips. “You?”
Stephen nodded, not trusting himself to speak. His foot slipped through the gap between Loki’s ankles to hook around a stool leg, pulling it forward at the same time he physically sat Loki down.
When the doorbell rang again, Stephen swore under his breath, at the same time Loki suggested, “You should get that.”
“Yeah,” Stephen agreed, eyes much clearer than they were a moment ago. He drew himself up. “Wait here.”
Loki watched as Stephen walked away, looking mighty unsteady himself.
What…was that?