PERSUASION is loki's most infuriating selling point, but he knows things that bend billy's bones like sinew architecture. he hates that a lot. but sometimes his heart says ' loki's right ' and he can't smother that away with as many sparred thoughts as he'd like to. he is right, sometimes, this time, maybe. billy doesn't have much chance to change his mind on helping him any, when he's his star-addled puppet for the evening. it took a lot of prodding. loki knows too much about the cracks in his body, even billy doesn't notice them so. where the threadbare of REALITY pokes through his skin cells, and all it takes ( he's reassured once, twice, again, and another time ) is a good rough PULL.
and then he forgets the rest.
tapping into flare-light that sits sleepy in his body is all kinds DISRUPTIVE. like when the tempo of a song winds down, and it's the electronic scratch of the tape being caught and crushed, and the teeth snatch on the lining so the data gets chewed and turned into a foreign language with how little sense it starts making. but that just turns billy bi-lingual. he UNDERSTANDS, he takes mental note, he finds syllables in the wreckage and listens to everything the universe wants to share with him. whispers, several trillions or more words per heartbeat. the footnotes he tries to make for them all scribble out of their margins and start imprinting on every other part of his thought and all senses.
he tries breathing, and his lungs inflate and grow tighter than he remembers them being before. he's not sure, maybe a god has tricked him into a lock-box, and billy can't find the cracks in the corners to let him breath just a little more. he couldn't tell, he's too busy keeping no track at all of the KALEIDOSCOPE behind his eyes. EVERY galaxy, surely, winks at him and pines for his attention right there in front of his face. he could touch them, but he doesn't have bones. or nerve endings. —————— for a little while, he plays hop-scotch with time-lines for chalk guides, and trips, and trips, and trips up again. until he's set down on his knees and can't really move anymore. he's never been athletic. he's never been a deity. he wished he could understand HALF of the world that he's fumbling in ( or looking at, or whatever ), and process the rest of it. but it's foreboding and sparse, for being the crossroads to every reality and existence there might have ever been before. he takes an inhale.
—— it's fine. you got this.
there's an astonishingly long wait, between the time billy finds the right reality boarder in the glass shard reflections under him, and plucks and shines and reshapes it. he's built lego models that didn't take this long. it's only the fate and future of EVERYTHING, anyway. he's tired. his fingers get stuck in the glitter bite. somehow, he's never seen anything so perfect. he's careful, slotting space and reality and realism back into it's correct spaces. one big tile game that he's pretty sure he's winning this time. yeah, that looks...okay.
he exhales, and he can somehow see ONE life again. just the seam line to loki's ankles, and that's about all he recognizes, before he hears himself gasping. he's going to throw-up all over loki's shoes, he's going to, he can feel it, but nothing happens in his throat except the rag of tiny breaths, so maybe his insides are all made of void space. ————— was this what ABUSIVE POWER felt like? he'll trade it. in the mistimed rhythm of his own heartbeat, absolutely. he's almost CERTAIN this is what dying feels like. somehow he can't cry over it. he doesn't recall...ending up on the floor down here, with his palms used as support. he doesn't recall most things of the past second.