Loki, too, needs little instruction in the art of drinking, but his slight frame has done him no favors in tonight's revelry. The firewine is true to its name, setting even the perpetually-cold tips of Loki's fingers into unbearable heat. He doesn't quite know when lucidity gives way to the dream-haze that follows, but by the time Thor lifts him into the cradle of his arms, Loki is far away, in lands shaped by his own mind, thinking of Mjolnir's storm crowding out the moon, of rain on his skin. Of the sky torn apart by a single bolt of lightning, focused sharp and sweet on a lone figure of red and gold. He can taste the rain on his tongue, even, and he tilts his head back to wet his parched throat —

But Thor is clumsy in his drunkeness, and soon Loki is knocked back into himself. He murmurs a protest — to be spoiled and petted like a creature owned is terrible enough in the privacy of their rooms, but to be swept from his chair like a maiden ready for an undignified tumble?

He is prince, not princess, for all that the various simpletons of Thor's acquaintance may taunt.

That thought tightens the loose curl of his limbs quickly enough. His fingers scrabble at Thor's arms, nails pressing into the swell of muscle beneath. It takes him a moment to fit words to the lash of his tongue, but the annoyance on his face serves well enough to fill the space between. "A pity that it is you, Thor-prince," says Loki, his nails dragging a path up Thor's arms, until he can press his palms flat against the shoulders above, bracing him away. "Had it been any other wine-sodden fool, I might have set their hands aflame for daring to touch me so."