He had to admit, he had missed it. Even though it wasn't the same as it used to be it still felt like home to him. Riding perched on the back of a big, hulking, black motorcycle with the wind whipping hard against his face and the roar of the engine in his ears; it was like that old chariot and those two goats, bleating and huffing as their hooves caused the thunder. It was quite a lot like that, really. As he looked down at the black asphalt blurring beneath them, he could almost imagine that it was the sky.
"What are you doing?" Thor turned his head.
"Standing up." Loki got his footing and stretched his arms, standing on the back of the bike and squinting out at the horizon. He had excellent balance. Thor simply shook his head and admonished a warning that if someone else drove up near them he would have to sit back down. Loki put his long white fingers in the thunder god's hair and ruffled it, pleased with the elbow that came back in an attempt to knock him off and the way the bike swerved sideways for an instant.
They didn't see another car or motorcycle until late in the evening as they found a small little city hidden in a valley between two rocky hills. Obediently, Loki dropped back into his seat and stayed there. There was a strange smell in the air... something he didn't like, because it was vaguely familiar. It was sort of earthy and hot, not the kind of smell that was native to a small desert town. It grew stronger and then fainter again as they drove through, and by the time they reached a motel it was gone completely. It left him feeling mildly wary all the way to the front desk, back out to the bike and up the metal stairs to their room, then his apprehension vanished completely as he spotted the bed.
"Yipe!" The world jerked sideways as Thor caught him by the nape of the neck in midleap toward that wonderful, inviting mattress. Opening his mouth to complain he blinked as the world shifted again and he skidded across the carpet and hit the wall after being cast aside. "You bastard." He got up, knocking long red hair from his eyes and balling his fists. Thor had already flopped down on the bed, which sagged almost all the way to the floor under his weight. Loki made another dive at it and got smacked down again, half because there wasn't any room for him and of course because Thor had swept out lazily and knocked him away. Lying on his stomach on the carpet he tucked his slim arms beneath him and growled, eyes narrowing as his quick mind devised different ways to steal that bed. None of them seemed very convincing, so in the end he sighed and got up to his knees, planting his elbows squarely upon the thunder god's chest and staring down at him through long eyelashes. "Isn't it customary for a motel room to have at least two beds?" He asked casually.
"S'pose." The thunder god murmured, already close to being asleep. "This was a pretty cheap motel room, though."
"Hm." Loki began carefully edging up until he had his feet on the ground but was bent at the waist and lying on his chest across Thor's stomach. He rested his cheek against the man's shirt and narrowed his eyes again, calculating his movements. If he went too fast he'd get hit off again. "Why don't you share?" He asked quietly.
"It didn't work then, it's not going to work now." Thor cracked a bloodshot eye at the smaller man. "Get off of me."
"Do you still have a thing for cats?"
"Eh?" Thor stopped trying to dislodge him and frowned. "Why?"
But only a soft, bright little feline mew answered him. As a cat, Loki did not have to smirk in order to look victorious. In a jump and a leap he was curled up on one of the pillows, delicately cleaning a black little paw. And though Thor raised a hand, he didn't seem able to strike off a cat. Maybe not so many things had changed after all.

When he slept, which was never often, he slept very lightly. Whiskers twitching, he opened one green eye and looked around the room. A cat's sight offered day-like brightness to the place. Deciding that nothing was wrong and noting that it was early morning already, he sneezed and dropped his chin back down upon his chest. He had all four feet underneath him and his long black plume of a tail wrapped up tightly around his body. The room was cold and airless and he could hear cars passing on the street below. For an instant something strange had sounded, something out of place. It had reminded him of the smell from earlier. Standing reluctantly and stretching his legs and then his back, he jumped from his comfortable perch on Thor's chest down to the ground and was human shaped again, and went out through the door which they hadn't bothered to lock. The hallway smelled stale and distinctly like bleach and vacuum cleaners. He wrinkled his nose as he passed through the rooms in the two-hundreds, then through the one-hundreds and saw that every single door looked exactly the same. In his long lifetime, if it could really be called a lifetime, he had seen more than enough of that bland similarity between things. For hundreds of years he had made his home in a place where everyone had been proudly, perfectly, just exactly alike. Like the doors, he could remember hundreds on hundreds of them lined together, facing out-- no, facing him... each looking no different from the other. He stopped, coming to the final door in the line which brandished only an empty space where its gold number should have been. Except... for one, maybe. It seemed to him, though his memory had grown torn and confused over time, that one door, and that one person, had been a little different.
"Feh." He dug a slim hand into his pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes, lighting one and taking a drag. Just then something clanked behind him, something small and soft. He turned and scanned the dark hallway, his quick human eyes every bit as perceptive and as his cat eyes were. Some thing, small and bulky, rolled away with a hiss, bowling behind a cart of towels and then the rest of the way across the hall, around a corner and the stairs. Loki moved after it, getting to the top of the stairs in time to see the thing roll of out the building and into a clump of bushes outside. The bushes shook and rustled for a moment then held still. Frowning, Loki realized what the familiar smell had been. "Dwarves... She's got her fucking dwarves following him around."
It wouldn't have mattered to him, except that she was the one person he desperately didn't want to know he had returned. If that vermin knew who he was, and if she found out, he was in deep shit.