~12:42 am,  January 1, 2020 ~

Present Day

Sitting on the edge of Sigyn’s bed, Loki stared at her closed bathroom door on the opposite side of her small living room.  Only minutes ago, she’d been moaning underneath him.  The button-fly of his jeans had been too tight back then , but now?

Now I’m not even HALF-hard while waiting for her to finish retching on the other side of that stupid door.

The sound was muffled, so it could be worse, but that sliver of a silver lining couldn’t stop his mind from running wild with the questions of why her stomach had turned over within the blink of an eye.  She wasn’t acting remotely drunk, but maybe during the last three months, she’d become more adept at speaking clearly (with actual words) while under the influence.  Maybe she’d coped with alcohol as much as he had since October, and was becoming a touch too skilled at handling her liquor.

So… just how many drinks did she have at Strange?

Or was it a sudden surge of anxiety-induced nausea?  Anxiety that stemmed from a misplaced belief that he was trying to stake his claim on her with his mouth?  Perhaps it wasn’t his lips so much as it was his hips that had been the problem.  Admittedly, he had ground them rather aggressively between her legs, but surely he’d earned a bit of credit for having enough self-control to keep his trousers on, right?  He hadn’t even touched his belt, much less unbuckled it.

“Excuses excuses,” he sighed, pushing loose strands of annoying-as-fuck hair behind his ear.

Merriam Webster should add “male privilege” to their website and put his picture next to it.  Yes, he’d really earned high praise for keeping her safe from his dick with a layer of denim while putting his hands down her dress.  No harm, no foul.  

Tapping his heels nervously on her bedroom rug, he chewed his lip.  Thing was, she’d pulled him on top of her after he’d told her that he wouldn’t be angry with her if she’d changed her mind.  She’d sworn that she was okay; that she wouldn’t break .  And she’d been more than a little aggressive with her hands too.  Clearly, her second thoughts from when he’d paused to take that chair into her living room had turned into third thoughts.  Perhaps hugging the commode would inspire fourth thoughts- something like “let me ride you like it’s the end of the world, Loki.”

Don’t count on it, LO.

“Bloody hell,” he mumbled, setting his elbows on his knees and bowing his back as he bent forward and put his head in his hands.  Talk about taking a turn for the worse.  Honestly, with all this back and forth, he felt like he might be sick too.

He heard the squeak of her bathroom faucet then, followed by running water and her electric toothbrush.  Blowing out a heavy breath through his mouth, he lifted his head again when the toothbrush stopped.  She would open that door any second now, and he had no clue what he should say to her.

Feel better?

Thanks for brushing your teeth?

Why did you throw up at all?

Are you drunk?

Are you real or did I just hallucinate this entire experience?

May I put my face between your thighs?

Do you think I only came here to get my helluva-drug-forever-dream-girl-fuck-fix?

Do you know how WRONG you are for thinking that?

Do you realize what you did to me in September?

And October? And November? And DECEMBER?

Did you EVER love me?

WHY DIDN’T YOU SAY I WAS WORTH DROWNING FOR??

“I think she only missed the idea of me, not the real me, so…” he went quiet, trying to gain control of his shaky voice. “I should leave, shouldn’t I,” he whispered to the empty room, waiting for the walls to answer him, to tell him what to do.

TELL ME!

Naturally, the walls remained silent, though he would have sworn he saw writing appear on them.  Brow creasing, he frowned, feeling as though gravity had singled out the corners of his mouth to pull them to the ground faster than the rest of his face.  No, the “writing” was just shadows created by fireworks.  He shook his head, his eyes slamming shut to stop his brain from seeing things that weren’t there.

A minute or so later, when she still hadn’t come out of the bathroom, he opened his eyes and squinted at the door.  Okay, what, was she bloody hiding from him?  Pushing off the bed, feeling like someone had set a two-hundred pound bar across his shoulders, he walked across the living room toward her bathroom.  He reached up to knock on the door, but he hesitated, his hand hovering mid-air an inch from the hard surface.  Nostrils flaring, he sucked in a breath as a shiver shot down his spine.  Jesus- the hairs on the back of his neck (the ones that were too fine and short to stay in his hair tie) were legitimately standing up.

For god’s sake, LO.  What, are you scared the damn door will burn you?

He looked sideways, thinking how utterly perfect that word choice was.  Would it burn him?  Well, sunlight did have a tendency to turn his nose and cheeks pink if he forgot to put sunscreen on during summer, and if one considered what (or who) was on the other side of this door, then, in a metaphorical sense, it was possible that he would get burned.  However, since it was now December… wait… no… January… maybe that winter sun wouldn’t do the same damage.

Oh, but… are STAR boys subject to the seasonal shifts of life on Earth?  Your head is in outer space, is it not?

“Oh my god, I hate you,” he hissed through his teeth at that too-poignant voice in his head.  Taking a deep breath, he set the knuckle of his first finger on the door and knocked gently. “Sig?”

Please answer me, sweetheart.  I don’t care if you burn me.

His heart shot straight up through the roof when she responded.

“Yeah, sorry, just… I’ll be out in a second.  I’m so SO sorry, Loki.”

His lungs released the breath they’d been holding to the point of nearly passing out like a goddamn corset-wearing princess.  She’d said his name with such contrition, her tone suggesting that he hadn’t done anything wrong, and he was grateful for it.

“Just cleaning myself up a bit,” she continued, forcing a firm tone as she washed her hands.  It was a confident tone, a “totally fine in here” tone to hide how scared and shaken up and broken apart she felt.

Oh hell, if only he knew how in love she was with him, how much she needed him, not only in this crushing-yet-beloved city, but needed him everywhere .  Her universe was crumbling further, bit by bit, square inch by square inch, every second that he wasn’t with her.  Not “with her” as in physically in her presence, but “with her” as her boyfriend.

As in, “he is in my life and loves me as much as I love him.”

In these last three months, she’d been forced to take a good hard look in the mirror, and her reflection had not been forgiving.  Her behavior in the month before she’d literally slammed her door in his face had been inexcusable.  Oh but she’d made plenty of excuses for herself, hadn’t she?  And this went further back than just September.

It wasn’t her fault that Tony had died, right?  It wasn’t her fault that Loki had been “too possessive” of her time, right?  She’d had no control over her work schedule, right?  She couldn’t be expected to examine her priorities… you know… like HE HAD… right?  And and and-

“Spare me the monthly reports, please,” she murmured under her breath as she washed her hands.

She’d ruminated on the painful, shameful details of this entire year to no end.  Enough was enough.  She was burying herself under that shame, which was probably what she deserved.  For a time.  This was penance… or something.  God, she needed professional help, otherwise she would never move forward.  Not that she particularly wanted to move forward.  Not without Loki.  She didn’t want to go anywhere unless it was with him.  The chances of that, however, weren’t great.  How could he believe her now if she told him that she would give him anything that he asked of her?  She’d already quit her old job and found a new one, so at least he didn’t have to go through that mess again.  She only had herself to blame for this shitshow.  No way in hell did he want to get back together- he was just here because New Years had made him extra sad.

You don’t know that, hon.

Okay, well, considering what she’d done to him, it seemed the most likely reason for his presence.  How in all the world could she at least get him to consider… friendship?  It wasn’t the whole package, but beggars can’t be choosers.

Show him the letter, hon.

Oh god… but… what if he hates it?

We’ve been over this, Sigyn. He wrote a NOVEL for you.  He showed it to the entire PLANET.  So, buck up, and show him that letter that you should have sent to him when you wrote it THREE WEEKS AGO.

Licking her lips, she swallowed.  A heartbroken “please come back to me” scream was trying to burst through her not-so-tough shell, and maybe she should just let it happen.  Maybe she should open this door, get on her knees, and beg him to forgive her for being so heartless.  For playing unfair games with him.  For being so ungrateful for the sacrifices he’d made for her after Tony died.  For letting him shell out his love so generously and giving him nothing but crumbs in return.

Dammit.  She was going to self-talk herself straight into that toilet bowl all over again if she didn’t just grow up, and tell him all of those words that may or may not convince him to love her like he used to.  Before she could talk herself out of it, she opened the door and gasped quietly when her face collided with Loki’s chest.  She lifted her eyes to his face, setting every detail of this second to memory.

“God, you are so gorgeous,” she said, voice shaking.

Heart pounding at her words, which he had not expected at all, he bent down to her eye level, unable to suppress a slight smirk.  Despite the aching desire to lean in and kiss her just for calling him “gorgeous” to his face, he held himself back.  After all, he couldn’t be sure if she was on the verge of getting rid of more of her dinner.

“And you are…” he trailed off, his eyes zeroing in on her bottom lip, which she was now biting.

Mouthwatering…

Don’t say that.

Tilting his head, still focused on those lips, he asked, “How’s your gag reflex right now?”

She raised an eyebrow at him.  “That was… direct.”

It took him a second to put two and two together, then he quite literally facepalmed. “Jesus.  I meant how is your stomach .  As in, you aren’t about to get sick again, are you?”

She flashed a toothy smile at him, then put her hand over her mouth . “I didn’t actually get sick.  More of a-” she made a face “-dry heaving situation.”

He squinted at her. “Lovely.  What happened?  Too much to drink?”

Please say no.  My conscience would eat me alive if I tried anything when you’re drunk, gorgeous girl…

“I had all of two drinks, Loki,” she sighed, stepping around him and walking toward her bedroom, her stilettos clicking loudly on the hardwood. “Though I would have had far more if they hadn’t charged forty damn dollars per glass.  Highway robbery.”

Loki followed her, staring at her legs as they criss-crossed slightly in front of her with each step.  God, the way she walked accented her hips perfectly.  He was becoming more stupid by the second.  He had thousands of questions about September (and the first hours of his October hell), but he doubted his tongue would be able to form the necessary words.  No, the only thing his tongue could do right now was just loll out of his mouth because… legs .  She stopped in front of her bed and picked up her copy of Looking for Sunlight from her pillow.  Fingers running over the cover lovingly, she turned around to face him.

“I’ve read this book a hundred times,” she said wistfully, flipping through the pages to find the envelope that she’d addressed to him weeks ago.  She’d even put a stamp on it, but rather than dropping it in the mailbox, she’d been using it as a bookmark.

You are SUCH a coward, Sigyn.

He raised his dazed eyes from her thighs to the book in her hand, which she was now clutching to her chest as though it was the most precious thing in the world.  His chest tightened at the sight.

She might not love me anymore, but at least she still loves my book.

“I meant every word,” he said, struggling to keep his voice from breaking.

Lips pressing together, she gave him a sad little grin, then produced a plain white envelope- one with his name, address, and postage on it -from the space between the book cover and her chest.  He blinked silently at the thing, unsure what to make of it.  She held it out to him.

“I meant every word too,” she whispered, her lip trembling as he slowly reached forward and took it from her hand. “I can’t force you to read it… a-a-and,” she stumbled over the word a bit and pinched the bridge of her nose, “I under-” deep breaths “-stand if you d-d-don’t want to-” oh please don’t cry again “-but I-”

“Of course I’ll read it,” he spoke over her, sliding his thumb under the seal to break it open.  God, she’d used actual sealing wax and everything.  He lifted his eyes to her face again and raised an eyebrow. “May I?”

Blinking several times, she waved a hand and nodded quickly. “Sorry, yes, of course.  Um… I’ll give you some privacy,” she said, setting the book on her nightstand and hurrying toward her bedroom doors.

He grabbed her hand as she slid by him, and she turned slightly to look up at him.  Perhaps it was juvenile, but he feared that if she left his sight, she would disappear completely.  For good.   That was… that was not an option anymore.  He needed this girl.

MY girl.

“Stay,” he whispered, running his thumb over her knuckles.

She shook her head. “I don’t want to watch you read it.” Good god, his hand fit around hers perfectly, as though it was supposed to be there.

His eyes flicked down to the letter, the crease between his eyebrows deepening tenfold. “That bad?  How much will this hurt me?”

Her eyes went wide, and she turned toward him completely. “No no no no, it’s nothing like that.  It’s not some sort of list of supposed transgressions that you committed against me or anything.  No, definitely not.  It’s more of a… um…” she swallowed, “a confession.”

His jaw didn’t exactly drop to the floor, but it was damn near close. “Did you cheat on me?”

“Oh my god, NO,” she practically shrieked . “Never ever ever EVER.  I can’t even…” her voice failed her, and she dropped her forehead to his chest. “Absolutely not.  No other man could come close to…” again her voice gave up on her.

His shirt smelled so good, and it was so soft against her cheek.  To think, this soft fabric was concealing such a firm chest.  And shoulders.  And arms.  Not to mention those stomach muscles.  Suddenly, she seriously regretted asking him to read a 10-page (front and back) letter just now.  She should have waited until the post-game.  She should be feeling every inch of his skin right now instead.

“Thank god,” he breathed, wrapping one arm around her waist, the other around her shoulders, and leaned down to kiss her hair.  He squeezed the envelope in his hand.  “I would have burned this thing if that’s what you meant.” The soft crunching sound of the paper crinkling in his grip bounced off the exposed brick walls and wood floor as though their little New Years scene were playing out inside of a cathedral rather than a pre-war one-bedroom in Manhattan.

“I’ll just be in the other room,” she said, struggling to keep her hands away from him lest they slip under his shirt and ruin her resolve to be fair to him .  He needed to know.  He needed to see her handwritten words with his own eyes, just as she’d seen his words on the first page of her book.  He deserved at least that much before making a massive decision about his future with her.

What if reading it makes him decide to walk out the door, hon?  Are you willing to accept that?

Clearing her throat, she exaggerated a sniffle. “Need to grab a tissue,” she said, using the excuse to step away. “Don’t want to ruin your pullover with my runny nose.  I know how much that thing cost.”

Could she accept it if he left?  Well, so long as he had the full story, so long as she knew that this was his choice without her manipulating him with puppy-dog eyes and trembling lips (and a leggy dress with plunging neckline and high heels) then, yes, she could learn to accept it if he decided to leave her tonight.  Here’s what she couldn’t accept: letting him think that HE needed to “crawl back” to her, to her apartment- the place where his heart took hit after hit, and his back took stab after stab.  Sure, he bore some responsibility regarding their combined spiral in September; he was by no means an angel.  But she couldn’t stand the undoubted fact that he believed that she thought herself the innocent victim here.  And in believing that lie, he had probably convinced himself that he was the villain here.

Not even CLOSE, Starboy.

“ That’s what laundry soap is for,” he muttered uselessly as she left the bedroom.  He didn’t care about his stupid pullover, but fine… whatever.

Sinking down to the edge of her bed once more, he gingerly pulled the letter out of the envelope.  He stared wide-eyed, his lips parting as he thumbed through multiple full-sized pages of paper.  Some of the inside perforated edges looked as though she’d ripped them a bit too aggressively from a spiral-bound notebook.  Chewing his lip unconsciously, he examined each page, flipping from front to back, then turning them over again.  The tri-fold horizontal creases were perfectly straight and split evenly.  If one hadn’t known she was an architect, they would after one look at her penmanship.  Clean edges, distinct lines, neutral pen pressure, barely slanted, all uppercase, each letter matched the height of the one next to it.

“How many…” he whispered, barely audible as he counted the pages.  In three and a half decades, no one had ever given him more than a few lines of niceties on the inside of a birthday or Christmas card.

Ten pages.  Front and back.  So… twenty.  Sig had put a literal pen to twenty full pages of paper for him.

“My god,” he breathed, lifting his eyes from the short story in his hand to look at the open doors instead.

What kind of confession was this?  A part of him was scared to read it.  Couldn’t he just tell her that it meant the world to him that she’d cared enough to write something for him- something this substantial -without having to read the potentially painful details?  Shit- he couldn’t do this.  Setting the pages down on her nightstand right beside him, he leaned over and put his head in his hands again.  After a few silent moments of shaky breathing, which he hoped wasn’t loud enough for Sig to hear from the other side of the wall, Loki swiveled his head to eye the intimidating papers.

“Don’t be a coward,” he said tightly under his breath, and with his cheek still resting in his palm, he reached over to grab them.

However, when his fingers grazed the papers, he retracted his hand an inch, and then reached underneath them to pick up her Looking for Sunlight hardback instead.  Maybe seeing his own handwriting- his January 2019 “confession” to her -would give him the courage he lacked to read her words to him.  Opening the book carefully for fear of disturbing the words resting inside, he turned to the dedication page.  Eyes boring a hole into the ink, he mouthed his own words.

“On January 1, 2017, I was a 32-year old loaded gun, a bottle of oxy…hungover…freezing…dead Christmas trees who had more life left in them than I did…new Nikes from my father in lieu of any affection…rounded the corner…skidded to a stop…you grabbed my arms to keep from falling…where’s the fire, darling…you pulled a pen out of your bag…grabbed my hand…wrote your number on my palm and signed your name…”

Swallowing thickly, he reached up to rub his eyes.  He could barely see the words.

“Another dollar,” he muttered, turning to the next page- the first actual page of the book.  They weren’t handwritten words, but he’d written them for Sig nonetheless.  Another page.  And another.  Again.  Again.  He paused on the first page of the third chapter, not just skimming, but reading each word, giving his full attention to the lines of serif-font print:

“Dreamy as fuck- that’s what she called me… No, not to my face.  I overheard her say it to her friend at the other end of the bar… Yes, I KNOW it’s a compliment.  It’s also a death sentence… Because I’m a guaranteed DISAPPOINTMENT, that’s why.  She already put me on this goddamn pedestal, and I have nowhere to go but down… What do you think I mean?… I mean that she should WAIT a bit before deciding to look at me like I hung the moon…  No no no no, you aren’t listening…  You know what?  Nevermind.  I’m hanging up now.”

I don’t actually have anyone to hang up on.  I’m not on the phone.  It’s just another silent conversation with myself.  I would do well to have a conversation with Suna, considering she’s standing right here.  Probably not wise to let her think I don’t want to be ALL OVER her right now.

She looks up at me, twirling the small black cocktail straw in her drink. “Don’t you just DESPISE all these Wall Street frat boys congratulating themselves for being gods among men?”

Her question is cold water on a hot day.  Refreshing and rare.

“Spoiled pricks,” she continues, “they don’t deserve a dime to their names.”

I don’t filter my response.  I think Suna would prefer to know just how moronic this “dreamy-as-fuck” man gets when he’s three sheets to the wind.

“Seems to go with the territory,” I say, eyeing the crowded room narrowly. “Ridiculous establishment.  You know who’s worse than those spoiled pricks?”

I return my eyes to her when she says “oh do tell” or something like that.  I gesture flippantly to a group of princesses who I doubt are legally allowed to be in this place.  The group next to them are a bit older, thank god, but age is undoubtedly the only distinction between them.

“The overly made up girls trying to get a hold of all those spoiled pricks’ unearned dimes by flashing fake smiles and fake tits and flipping their fake hair and batting their fake eyelashes.  Conniving thieves.  They look like plastic dolls, and those idiots fall for it.  Whatever.  They can have them.  I have no interest in playing with a fucking doll.  That sounds like a term for sex doll, which isn’t what I meant.  But if the shoe fits… or in this case, if the dick fits.” I feel my lips pursing with more gravitas than Derek Zoolander as I look sideways. “That joke came out of nowhere.”

It wasn’t even a GOOD joke.  I’ve had too much alcohol.  It’s making me loose-lipped and simple.  Speaking of lips- I’m so in love with Suna’s mouth right now.  So pretty… so REAL.  No fillers.  Not fake.  Those lips are just like her words actually.  If anyone here is dreamy, it’s HER, not me.  I better not open my mouth and say this shit to her after I’ve had this much liquor.

“I swear I meant plastic dolls,” I add, attempting to clarify. “You know… as in toys… I don’t mean sex toys… I mean…” My voice fades, which is probably for the best, but unfortunately, I don’t close my mouth.  It hangs open stupidly like it did every second of every maths class I suffered through as a boy.  I roll my eyes.  I have no idea what the hell I am saying. “I’ll try this again.  I associate fake plastic types with unthinking, lifeless, perfect looking dolls, and I despise both.”

I assume she will glare at me and walk away, but she surprises me by saying, “I agree.  Playing with dolls as a little girl is exactly why I’m so goddamn unsatisfied with my own reflection.  Here’s Barbie’s next slogan-” she clears her throat and makes air quotes with her fingers “-’Warping every mirror all kinds of wrong since 1989’.  I came up with that on my own while you were rambling about sex toys.”

My god, I want to kiss this woman.  Her mouth isn’t just pretty- it’s clever.  Maybe if my lips touched hers, she could transfer some of that quick wit to me.  I’m usually so much better at this.

“I like the way you talk,” I manage, unable to pull my eyes away from her lips.

“And I think YOU talk like an Ivy League, Gen Xer elitist who just listened to ‘Fake Plastic Trees’ in your fancy car before you walked in here, then you got a bit too tipsy, and you really regret it because you can’t come up with anything more clever than ‘I like the way you talk’, and now you want to bolt.”

She knows 90s Radiohead references, and she was barely five years old at that time, and that makes HER an elitist too.  But I think I’ll save that zinger for another time.

“I’m a Xennial, not an Xer,” I correct her, clucking my tongue while shaking my head, “but you are disturbingly spot on otherwise.”

Suna leans closer.  MUCH closer.  The tip of her nose is touching mine now, and if she angles her head to touch her lips to mine, I’ll be done for.  She doesn’t, and I am both incredibly relieved and beyond disappointed.

“If you’re leaving,” she whispers, looking up at me through eyelashes that must weigh more than she does, “let me come with you.”

Oh what I wouldn’t give to make her come with me… in every sense of the word.

“I am moved that you want to come with me,” I answer, forcing a thick layer of snark into my tone while putting a few inches of distance between our mouths so I don’t use my tongue for something other than talking, “though I’m 99% sure it’s only because you want to ride in my car.”

I try to step back, but she follows me, setting her hand on my chest.  Her thumb runs along the silver zipper of my open black jacket, and it is far more erotic than it should be.  I hope that her hand sliding underneath the leather is meant to be an invitation for my hands to touch her too because I have never wanted a woman this much.

She arches one dark eyebrow and pulls on my collar, forcing me to bend toward her. “Not ONLY your car,” she says, biting into a smile, “but I do want you to hit the gas.”

I can’t help but scrape my teeth over my lip. “I bet you do.”

Her head tilts toward her shoulder, exposing more of her neck to me, while gazing at me through narrow eyes. “I’m not talking about fucking.”

I give her a look, one that any sane person would give her in response to her OBVIOUSLY untrue words.  The sound that escapes my mouth could only be described as an ‘extremely offended’ scoff.

“Yes, you are,” I retort, lifting my thumb to run across her bottom lip just to watch her cheeks and neck flush, thereby PROVING my next words. “You would give anything to fuck me to the stars and back, you pretty little liar.”

Her jaw drops, much like her skirt will later tonight in my apartment. “Oh my god!”

Yes, I am very loose-lipped.  But what I said wasn’t stupid or simple.  Saying that gives her a better idea of who I am.  If she’s going to come to this absurd conclusion that I’m anything special, it won’t only be because she’s convinced I look amazing without my clothes on.

Much like the thing in my trousers, the corner of my mouth twitches.  “Am I wrong?”

Suna grips my shirt more tightly under my jacket, her eyes lowering to stare at my mouth. “What I want is to watch you bite your lip and laugh with the moonroof open,” she says, smiling and closing her eyes and letting her head fall back as though her fantasy is playing out in real time, “and the wind whipping your hair around your face.  I want you to put your hand in my hair-” she lifts her head to lock eyes with me again “-while you PUT YOUR FOOT ON THE GAS.”

“I can do that,” I say without hesitation, grabbing her hand and dragging her toward the door.

And I’ll also do FAR more than that.  My car is not going to be enough.  It’s classy and sexy and fast and…drumroll please…dreamy.  Perfect fit for her perfect, pretend dream boy.  When I open the door for her and offer my hand to help her into the passenger seat, she smirks and calls me a ‘charmer’.

“That’s code for ‘liar’, and I am NOT a liar,” I say through my teeth before closing the door.

She bites her goddamn lip again as I round the front of the car, and I don’t understand how I can possibly see that with these headlights blinding me.  Suna’s teeth must be brighter than the sun itself.  I settle into the driver’s seat, my jaw aching from my attempts to control the natural inclination to clench it every other second for the better part of four hours now.

Her voice pierces an excessively tense silence after a minute or so. “That silver tongue suggests otherwise.”

Now I’m pissed.  I’ve had it with everyone saying ‘silver tongue’ like it’s the worst thing ever.

“Here’s an idea,” I say, my eyes narrowing at the red taillights just beyond the windshield. “How about we use our tongues for something other than talking so I don’t say something to piss you off, and YOU don’t say anything ELSE to piss ME off, otherwise I’ll pull this car over, and you’ll WALK home.”

“Wow, that’s the sexiest thing anyone has ever said to me.”

“Just you wait til I’m sober.”

“You might feel loose in the shoulders, dream boy, but you are nowhere near drunk.  However, I will HAPPILY drive, if you feel compromised by two measly ounces of whiskey over the course of four hours.”

My god, I might just white-knuckle this steering wheel to death.  She’s right.  I’m not drunk.  I’m just an idiot who wishes that he had an easy excuse for his idiocy.

Still staring ahead, I ask, “Didn’t we agree to stop talking?”

Her face falls. “Oh no, but…” she starts, her lips trembling.  If she cries, I WILL pull this car over. “But… but…” she continues, “but I thought you LIKED the way I talk?”

Suppressing an eyeroll, I side-eye her.  She’s grinning, and I have HAD it with that mouth of hers.  Voice, words, tongue, lips- ALL of it is rerouting the blood from my head into my trousers instead, and now I am at the mercy of my own dick.  Which also means I can’t be the smartest in the room for reasons other than trying to cope with beverages that didn’t even taste good!

Good thing we’re now out of my car, and I’m dragging her into the elevator in my building.  I really didn’t want to steam up the windows in the middle of the street like a pair of love drunk idiots.  Did I say LOVE drunk?  Yes, and that’s fair.  I want her to fall in love with me, not just into BED with me, and I need to reach more than her goddamn g-spot to convince her…

Loki closed the book and returned it to Sigyn’s nightstand. “I meant every word,” he whispered, repeating his words (and her words) from earlier as he carefully pinched her letter between his thumb and forefinger and picked it up.

I want her to fall in love with me, not just into BED with me…

Blowing out a breath, he dared to look at the first few lines:

Dear Loki,
Today is December 7, 2019, and I don’t know if I’ll work up the courage to send this letter to you, but I’m trying this new thing called “being honest with myself” and if you don’t mind, I’m going to pour my heart out to your ghost right now…

He swallowed anxiously.  Oh god, one sentence in, and his chest was already tight.  He wanted to run out her door as sure as his alter ego wanted to ‘bolt’ from Suna.  But only because everything about her made him want to drown for her, and the words on these pages might tell him that he shouldn’t.  He just wanted to love her.  He didn’t need to know what she’d written to his ghost .  He didn’t need to know if she would drown for him too.

Yes, you do, LO.

“Goddammit,” he growled under his breath, then returned his eyes to the page:

“I was at the wedding tonight.  I got there really REALLY early (the ushers looked at me like I had two heads) because I was irrationally scared of being late, of disappointing yet another friend, and that earned me a seat right behind the pews reserved for family at the front.  It was the third row on Carol’s side of the aisle, and I don’t think I looked at anything other than the church doors for thirty minutes straight.  I knew you would come through those doors at some point, and I didn’t want to miss seeing you.  Even though I knew you wouldn’t come anywhere near me, I could at least see your face again.

Darce and Bucky came up to sit with me, thank heaven.  I think I would have bolted if they hadn’t.  He was so nice.  I could tell he felt kind of like a traitor to you though.  He was clearly doing it for Darce’s sake.  She was talking to me about this or that, and I just nodded along, trying to look like I was paying attention to her.  I was twisted toward the aisle (on purpose), anxious to see you in my periphery.  It felt like an hour at least went by, and you STILL weren’t there.  The anxiety was unbearable.  I wish I had swiped one of those Xanax from your laptop bag before you left.  It would have been a life-saver.

That Genghis Khan song started playing then(by the way, Carol and Val picked killer songs for the pre-ceremony)... you know the one I mean, right?  God, we danced like a couple of fools to it in your living room last St. Patrick’s Day.  There was no rhyme or reason to it.  You just turned up the speakers and used the remote like a microphone, and dear god, you sang it with a fake Irish accent, and it was HILARIOUS.  Anyway, I’m sitting there in the church, totally spacing on Darce because I’m still looking at those doors, and singing along silently in my head: 

“I don’t have the right 
To ask where you go at night 
But the waves hit my head 
To think someone’s in your bed… 
I get a little bit Genghis Khan 
I don’t want you to get it on 
With nobody else but me 
With nobody else but me…” 

Oh, isn’t the piano FANTASTIC in that one?  It sounds like New York to me.  Does that make sense?  It has so much SOUL.  It’s not vapid or plastic like LA.  (Probably because we’re all too busy crying over our rent checks to even THINK about cosmetic surgery)  That was a joke, and it FAILED.  As though California is any more “affordable”...HA.

Sorry.  I’m going off on tangents.  Tangents is a funny word.  Do you picture gents laying by the pool?  Tan...gents?  Get it?  Oh my god, I should write that down.  Wait… look-y there!  Already did!...

Pressing his lips together, Loki pinched the bridge of his nose, trying not to split his sides.  Sig was just on the other side of that wall, and he didn’t want her to hear him laugh out loud.  She would completely misinterpret it as cruel and insensitive, which was completely off base.  Honestly, so far, her story-telling was adorable and funny as hell.  As was he, apparently, last March while drunkenly attempting an Irish accent during an impromptu living room concert about “getting a little bit Genghis Khan” over his girl’s whereabouts at night.  He remembered that night, and he hadn’t exactly been faking the conviction in the words.  “Possessive” might as well be his middle name.  Blinking several times, he pushed away thousands of images in his head of the times he had put his arm around her when they were out with friends or at bars or wherever, just so every other man in the room would know this girl was his .  He sighed heavily and continued reading her words:

Anyway… I was sitting in one of those first rows, then Thor walked in with Jane hanging on his arm, and I knew you couldn’t be far behind them.  Another ten nauseating, nerve wracking seconds went by, and FINALLY you walked in.  It was such a movie moment with this perfect soundtrack, perfect soft lighting, and you in that perfect dark grey suit that cost like a BILLION dollars and ought to be illegal because...oh my god- just kill me now.

My eyelids felt far too heavy to open them all the way- like how you wrote that Suna’s eyelashes had to weigh more than she did.  Yep.  Exactly.  Darce asked if I was okay.  She said I looked “dazed and confused.”  Yeah, you think?  I was more than a little lost in that barely there upward curve of your mouth when your brother leaned over to you and said something...funny...I guess.  You didn’t look my way, which was probably for the best, because I might have passed out.  I hadn’t seen you in two godawful months, and even though that’s hardly enough time to forget how fucking gorgeous you are, it was like seeing you for the first time.

I wasn’t, but I WAS getting the first glimpse of those shadows under your cheekbones, and those envy-inducing long, dark eyelashes, and those UNREAL jade green eyes, and don’t get me started on your hair.  In other words, everything about you was giving me one of those “someone fetch me my smelling salts!” moments that feels really stupid but really good.  We’ll set aside the fact that the moment was tinged with an unbearable ache in my chest because I’m not ready to go there yet.

My mum calls these moments “reminder butterflies.”  She says she still gets them with Dad.  I don’t remember exactly how she described them, so I’ll just say how they feel to ME.  They remind me of that dreamy floaty feeling that happened NON-STOP when we started dating nearly three years ago now.  It’s that drug-like euphoric “oh my god, Mum, I’m falling so HARD for him” feeling.

They’re AMAZING moments, but they’re fleeting.  I know this love drunk feeling right now won’t intoxicate me for the next six months like the first time.  You can’t possibly give me that CONSTANT high anymore.  I can only fall for you once, and I already did that in 2017.  I can’t actively fall in love with you again.  It’s done…

He squinted at the page, his mouth twisting into a scowl.  Had she written that he couldn’t give her a constant high anymore?

Yeah, no shit, sweetheart.  Forgive me for being a measly Earthling.

Dear god, so much for laughing.  He might need a drink to get through the rest of this letter.  Rolling his eyes, he re-read the previous sentence before continuing down the page:

I’ll never again be overwhelmed with 24/7 star eyes just because you EXIST.  I’ll never again lose my goddamn mind, thinking about you EVERY SECOND like I did after you smiled at me on New Years Day 2017.  I kid you not, Loki- after you said “I’ll see you tomorrow, Sigyn Frey” and turned around to resume your morning run, I remember feeling that if I went blind then, that would be okay because I had the chance to see you that ONE time.  I felt like that for months.  

Reminder butterflies feel like that, but they only last a few days at most.

I.  Will.  Take.  It.

If they’re from YOU, I want them.  I don’t need to feel a rush from you for months.  I don’t need it for weeks.  I don’t need it for days.  I WANT it, sure.  It feels like heaven.  But you are SO MUCH MORE than a cloud nine rush.

I am such a shit writer, but I’ll try to explain what I mean…

Gripping the pages more tightly, Loki chewed his lip, feeling as though his heart was growing three times in size.  Please let there be a part in here that said he was worth drowning for.  It seemed like she might be getting there, but he needed her to get there faster.  He rubbed his eyes- a preemptive strike against the jar-boy enemy.  Her words were all over the place, and his emotional response was trying to keep up:

In my 20s I thought that if that rush started to fade into the background, I must have picked the wrong guy.  The second I realized the rush from some guy was disappearing, it would ruin everything.  I would suddenly be a girl who had lost interest in what used to be the most EXCITING shiny new toy, but now was desperate for December to come around again, so I could unwrap a newer, BETTER present.  The next one would be the RIGHT present, and the right one would never grow old- both figuratively and literally. 

At the time, I wouldn’t have admitted that I was thinking of boyfriends the way I thought of Christmas toys.  I just knew I didn’t want THEM to think of ME that way.  Well, I’m not in my 20s anymore.  It’s 2019, and I am a 31 year old woman, and this year I realized that I am an utter fucking hypocrite.  That realization broke my heart more thoroughly than any man ever did.  

The realization that I’M the villain in my story- in the story I dragged you into -is STILL breaking me.  Learning that I have been the bad guy all along is...well...it’s a process, and it is not a fun one.  I wish it had been a rapid onset epiphany.  I wish I could have just ripped the Band-Aid off.  But it didn’t work that way for me.  It is a slow, painful, peeling away of my skin.

It started after Tony died in April this year.  Bit by bit, I started to understand what that nightmare where I’m trying to run away from the monster but can’t run fast enough REALLY means.  You know the one I’m talking about.  It’s the one where you’d swear your legs are stuck in slow motion because the scenery isn’t changing- because when you look behind your shoulder, the monster is still there. 

In that nightmare, I’m exhausted and crying and terrified, and I know one of these seconds is going to be the one when it catches me and rips my heart out.  Why doesn’t this scenery EVER change?  Why does the monster always stay about ten steps behind me, but never actually catches me?  Why won’t it just get it over with?  I genuinely believe that death would be preferable to this never-ending terror.  Coward that I am, I keep running nevertheless.

Thousands of these syndicated rerun dreams later, it has FINALLY hit me that I was on a treadmill, and that goddamn hypocritical, prideful, selfish monster was ME all along.  All I had to do was stop running, let it do its worst, and the nonstop fear of being eaten alive would be over.  But I was not ready to let it rip my heart out yet.  I was not ready to let it kill my ego.  So I kept running, and the monstrous version of me kept chasing down the better parts of me.  Kept those better parts from taking the starring role in my story.  In OUR story.

I already said I broke my own heart when I realized I was a hypocrite- a monster.  That happened right before you left for Europe in June.  I swore to myself that I would be the BEST, most loving, most giving girlfriend when you got home.  I think I was fairly good at keeping that promise during August.  Wasn’t that an AMAZING month?

So what the hell happened in September?  How did my promise derail so monumentally after only ONE month?  I’ll tell you why.  It’s because I never actually stopped running on that treadmill.  thought it was good enough to simply know WHO was chasing me.  I didn’t want to let it make a martyr out of me.  What if the worthiest version of me didn’t arise out of the ashes, so to speak?

You walked out of my door on October 1st, and that is when I decided to stop running.  I’m telling you- it was so much more painful than the “oh shit, I’m the bad guy” realization.  I hate that I waited so long to give up.  Maybe you would still love me if I’d done it sooner.

Piece of advice to my future self: IT’S OKAY TO BE A QUITTER.

It’s okay to say I’M DONE. TIME TO TURN IN THAT RESIGNATION LETTER.

I mean- yeah I feel like a failure, but is it that bad if the thing I lost was the all-consuming ego race?  No, it wouldn’t be bad if that was ALL I lost.  But I lost EVERYTHING.

I waited too long to lose the worst parts of me, and in the process I lost the most perfectly imperfect love of my life.  I thought YOU broke MY heart.  Oh my GOD- I thought SO wrong.  It was me all along.  I did the breaking.  I broke your heart, and I broke mine.

We went through some shit.  We had dream lover highs and pissed off lows, and I was okay with both.  That sounds idiotic, but here’s why I liked the “lows” too: if we were fighting, that meant our INTENSE passion was still there.  If we were fighting, it was because WE were worth fighting for!  It was just the flip side of calling in “sick” to work because I NEEDED to spend all day tangled in bedsheets with you.  Fighting usually turned into fucking anyway, so all good...right?  Jesus.  Now I’m picturing you naked, and I’m kind of falling apart.  You felt like heaven.  I wish I could write better.  I don’t have good enough adjectives.  I don’t have your beautiful mind.  I know you DESPISE your mind, but...it is so perfect, Loki.  I can’t even-

FOREVER DREAM BOY.

You know I don’t believe in god.  But I’m positive if that entity existed, it would look and feel like you when you’re inside me.  When you’re all around me.  This hurts.  This hurts so much.  Writing this letter hurts so much.

And I am out of tissues.  Dammit.

I’m so goddamn in love with you.  I can’t believe I did this.  I can’t believe I lost you.  You were mine, and I was yours, and it was what everyone on this planet wishes they had, and it’s all my fault that it’s over.  I can’t believe I fucked this up so royally.

We didn’t just have highs and lows, did we.  We had in-betweens, and those were the parts that brought out the worst in me.  My perfect Christmas toy love didn’t thrill me LIKE HE OUGHT TO during the in-betweens.  Nevermind the fact that YOU weren’t thrilled either yet hadn’t disappeared on me like every other guy had before you.  Oh no, that wasn’t good enough for a self-entitled brat like me.  I had the gall to believe you didn’t love me during the in-betweens.  I accused you of it every time those in-betweens rolled back around.  And every time the hurt was written all over your face.  I think I was trying to force a fight.  To force the passion to start revving back up.  You know what that is?  That is emotional abuse, and I had no idea I was capable of being an abuser.  I thought I was only a survivor.  I learned too late that I can be both.

I did that.  I really did that.  I am WRECKED with shame for doing that to you.  I have never felt guilt like this.  It’s burning a hole in my core, and I deserve it.

You know what I don’t deserve?

You.

I don’t deserve you.  I should not be allowed to feel reminder butterflies.  They feel too good, and I don’t deserve to feel good.  But oh god I want to feel them over and over again.  And I only want to feel them from you.

You have no idea what you did to me when I saw you tonight, Starboy.  You really nailed it with that book title.  I know it’s a “dying star” theme, but I’ve never seen anyone live so genuinely as you.  LOVE so genuinely as you.  And allow me to add to the metaphor-

I love you to the fucking stars and back.  A thousand times.  A million times.  INFINITY times.

I saw you walk through those doors at the back of the church, and you sent me floating right back up to that high again.  I flashed back to the beginning- back to when I just KNEW you would change my life.  But tonight was different because you- amazing, beautiful, wonderful you -you already changed my life.  I wasn’t waiting and hoping and praying you would say “I swear I’m not like the others, Sig. I’m not going anywhere unless it’s with you.”  Because you already did that.  You already did SO MUCH MORE than that.

You already wrote an entire damn BOOK for me.

Please listen to me, dreamy ghost of Loki.  No matter the fact that I crashed from our high, no matter the fact that I let the in-betweens get to me and destroyed the most beautiful thing that WILL EVER HAPPEN TO ME, no matter the fact that you aren’t going to crawl into bed with me tonight and make love to me the way you used to- 

I will never ever forget that the most precious, priceless, perfectly imperfect person ever- Loki Love of My Life Odinson -wrote an absolutely gut-wrenching, life-changing, mind-bending, heart-breaking book called Looking for Sunlight, and he wrote it FOR ME.  You ARE worth drowning for, Loki…

Giving up the fight against the water in his eyes, he put a hand over his mouth as it fell open.  There it was.  She’d said it.  She’d written it.  She’d really done that.  Jaw clenched, he pushed to his feet and started toward her living room as he finished the last few lines:

...I would have done it a thousand times over when you were mine, and I still would even now.  I’ll do it forever.  I’ll drown for you.  It doesn’t sound fun, but Jesus… I’ll do it for YOU because I will never stop loving you, Starboy, and I miss you beyond words.  I’ve put thousands of dollars in thousands of jars for you, and I’m not done yet.  I’ll keep breathing, but I’ll never be alive like I was when you were mine.  And even if it’s not with me, I hope with all my shattered heart that you will be happy.

Love forever,

Sigyn 

P.S.- It’s a little too early to say this, and honestly I don’t want to say it at all, but...
Happy 2020.  Even if yours aren’t mine anymore, all my new years are yours.

“Loki?”

He looked up at the sound of her voice, only then realizing that he had left her bedroom.  Seated on her couch with her knees pulled to her chest, she was visibly shaking.

“My god, Sig,” he muttered, letting the pages fall to the floor as he made a beeline for her.

Her eyes blew wide, her heart sobbing at the sight of him haphazardly tossing away all those paper words that she’d fought to pull out of her own goddamn word tornadoes.

Not exactly confetti, is it.

Releasing her tight hold on her legs, she started to scramble off the couch to catch all those little pieces of her before they landed on the unworthy, not-perfectly-clean floor, but he caught her first.  She shrieked, clutching at his shoulders, clumsily trying to regain her balance while falling backward onto what she hoped was a soft couch cushion.

“Loki, what-”

He closed his mouth over hers before she could finish whatever the hell that question would have been as they landed on the too-small couch.  Oh fucking hell, she could not have responded better to it, moaning into the kiss and grabbing him anywhere…no… everywhere she could reach.  His hands were just as scatterbrained as hers, unable to stay in one spot because every part of her felt too good to his palms- how could he possibly choose?  He angled his head to deepen an already deep kiss, then grabbed the back of her knee, his head spinning from the mere sound of her gasping underneath him.  His shirt bunched up as she dragged it up his side, and he groaned, rolling his hips with more vigor.  He’d been waiting a thousand bloody years for this moment with her.

Oh god, get me out of these fucking clothes NOW.

He was only half-aware of her voice saying “I’m so in love with y-…” as he stood up, yanking her with him (apparently he’d wound his arms tightly around her waist at some point), and walked backwards to her bedroom once more.  God, he was absolutely out of his mind for this woman.

Hello, my name is Loki Odinson, and I’ll die if Sigyn Frey doesn’t say yes when I ask her to be my wife.

“Me too,” he barely managed in response to her admission of love.  The back of his knees hit the edge of her bed, and he fell back with her on top of him.

Oh my god, I AM SO HAPPY.

He was floating… flying… soaring… living forever… immortal and in love, and the girl he loved was just as in love with him.  She broke their kiss long enough to smile against his mouth.

Shaking her head while holding his face, she muttered, “Can’t believe you want me still.”

“Never stopped wanting you, sweeth-…” his mouth snapped shut as she scooted over his belt buckle.  Chest rising and falling a bit faster, he chewed his lip, loving the feel of his stomach twisting in excited knots.

“I swear I’ll never pull that September shit again,” she said, watching him carefully for any sign of discomfort or hesitance, “and I swear I’ll always be honest and won’t hide from you because obviously that was a disaster, and I am so so so so sorry.”

She paused, her heart picking up speed as he lifted his gorgeous green eyes to hers again.  After taking a deep breath, she added, “Can we…?”

He watched her blink slowly, her long dark eyelashes casting shadows over her now flushed cheeks, and he slowly lowered his gaze to her neck and chest.

Oh fuck- we’re doing this…this is actually going to happen…less than an hour ago, I was a dead man walking…

He should make sure he understood her correctly.  He doubted he was reading this situation incorrectly, but still.  He took a deep breath.

“Are you asking me if I’ll-” His words failed him, as though his mouth literally lost function, because, god almighty, she was now full on pressing into his crotch.  Well hell.  Anything left to say had flown to the back of his mind.  A gorgeous gift- the only one he’d ever wanted -had written a 20-page love letter to him, then fallen into his lap, and was now rolling her hips over his jeans.  Brow furrowing, he groaned, sliding his hands down her sides.

She curled her fingers around the back of his neck and pulled his open mouth to hers, internally screaming “OH GOD YES” as he reached up to tangle his fingers in her hair.  She leaned away for a moment, eyeing him carefully because she needed to know that he would…

“Stay,” she whispered.

Leaning with her, trying to follow her mouth, he shook his head rapidly. “I’m not going anywhere, I swear.”

His lips barely grazed hers when she pulled further away, and he growled at the loss, once again following her.

Come. Back. Here.

“All night?” she asked, letting him kiss her for a few seconds.

He nodded, running his hand up her spine and into her hair as his mouth moved in tandem with hers.  The incessant undulating slide of her hips back and forth pulled a deep groan from his chest, and he couldn’t help but let his head fall back.

She bit her lip, staring at his pale throat.  She’d never been able to resist his neck, not that she wanted to, since he had the most irresistible neck in the universe.  Tilting her head, she leaned forward to place a slow, open-mouthed kiss just below his adam’s apple.

“You’re not going anywhere?” she whispered as she worked her way up to the hinge of his jaw, feeling light-headed from the heat and smell of his skin.

He smelled like heaven- like a leather jacket had soaked up the smoky scent of bergamot tea leaves tossed into a bonfire, and someone had collected the smell, bottled it up, and started selling it as “LO’s Throat” next to Armani Code and D&G Pour Homme at Bergdorff’s or something.

Loki would have nodded in response to her question- no, he was absolutely not going anywhere -but his neck felt like it had turned to jelly thanks to her lips and tongue sliding all over it.  He managed to form some semblance of English-sounding words.

“Not…go-…any…I…” The oddly strung together train of not-words derailed entirely when he felt her hand slide all the way down his pullover, below his belt buckle, then wrap her fingers around him through his jeans.

Tightening her grip, she began to slowly run her hand up and down.  She bit her lip, rolling her hips more, well, greedily when his jaw dropped.  She loved watching his chest rise and fall faster and that strained sound (was it a growl or a moan?) in the back of his throat was so so so so SO sexy.

“Swear it,” she said, using her other hand to lift his head for him, and looked into his dazed eyes.

Breathing hard through his mouth, he gave her an exasperated look.  “I already did swear it!”  For hell’s sake, why was she making him talk right now?!

“Don’t yell at me,” she frowned, leaning further into him, sliding her lips over his for just a second.

“Can’t you tell the difference between yelling and sobbing?”

Dear god, he was whining.  As in, “didn’t get my way” toddler whining .  But he couldn’t help himself- she really was trying to kill him.  For how long had he been hard now?  Thirty minutes?  Surely not.  It had to have been hours .  When she spoke again, her voice was so soft, so shaky, so…in love.  It squeezed his heart so tight, it was enough to distract him from the hand squeezing him through his trousers.

“I’m just making sure,” she let go of the back of his neck to point back and forth between the few inches separating their chests, “because right now, what I need most is to feel you inside me again, but I also need you to be here when I wake up.”

Eyes wide, he blinked at her, his mouth falling open a little.  How could she not know this?  Of course , he didn’t only want a physical reconnection.  It was so much more profound than that.  Yes, he would be here when she woke up.  He would bring her coffee and breakfast if she wanted, or better yet, walk through the deserted New Years Day streets, stop at Ground Support, and then he would take her home with him.

Breathing deeply through his nose, he then exhaled through his mouth. “I told you I am not going anywh-”

His words were cut off by her tongue darting into his open mouth, and before he realized what was happening, his back was on the mattress.  Sigyn leaned over him, cradling the back of his head in her hands and kissing him like his mouth tasted better than those gin and tonics she loved so much, like she was getting just as drunk off of him.

Jesus, sweetheart.  Go right ahead.  Drink up.   

When she sat up and slipped her hands underneath his pullover, his stomach clenched at the sensation of her hands smoothing over his bare skin, her thumbs dipping inside the waistband of his boxer briefs.  He would have said “I never stopped loving you” right then, but the sentence got lost in the back of his throat because gravity, or maybe it was her incessant rolling hips, was pulling her unzipped dress down over her shoulders at the slowest pace ever.  The tease was maddening.

“Bloody hell,” he murmured, his eyes widening when she tilted her head back, her face toward the ceiling, and that goddamn gorgeous dress fell down completely, pooling around her waist and exposing everything to him.

She brought her head back up and leaned down over him again, her hands sliding up his stomach, forcing his pullover up to his neck.  He raised his arms over his head on instinct, and she dragged the shirt off.  Brow furrowing, she bit her lip, and made a pained sound as her eyes roved over his bare chest and stomach.

“So fucking gorgeous,” she said under her breath, pressing her body down against his, the skin to skin contact with him (finally!) making her head spin like she’d finished off a bottle of wine all by herself.

Once again, he couldn’t make words.  At all.  Just… sounds.  Groans.  Soft gasps.  Croaks.  The sensation of her breasts flush against him was, no joke (and no hyperbole), intoxicating .  Eyes sliding closed, he flattened his hand against the small of her back and cupped her face with his other hand, pulling her open mouth to his.

BOOM.

BOOM.

BOOM.

Fireworks- how ridiculously poetic.

Crying softly against his lips, Sigyn reached down between them, nimbly unbuckling his belt with one hand and tugging his button fly open.  He responded with a sharp hiss, and rocked his hips up into her with more force, sliding both hands down to her ass.  Oh god, she loved his hands on her.  She wanted to spend the rest of her life right here.

Hello, my name is Sigyn, and I think I’ll die if Loki Odinson never asks me to be his wife.

She helped him push the waistband of his jeans and boxer briefs over hips, biting her lip at the sight of what she hadn’t seen in so goddamn long.

Oh fuck me…

Literally.

PLEASE.

Wrapping her hand around him, she leaned over and slowly kissed the hollow of his throat, and once more, he rocked up into her, his grip on her hips tightening tenfold.

“Sig, oh my god,” he breathed, lifting his head again and catching her lips with his.  Opening his mouth wider, he rolled his tongue over hers, and slid one hand up her spine and into her hair.

Fucking hell, you gorgeous girl…

He’d never been this high in his life.  And that was saying something.  Her lips might as well have been candy- sweet as hell and worth indulging to the point of a stomach ache.  He wasn’t diabetic, but this girl could probably put him in a coma.  He was two seconds from begging her to ride him, but he should have known he didn’t need to ask.  Hovering over him and biting her lip, she slid down onto him as though it was the most natural thing in the universe.  Eyes rolling back into his head, he groaned as she dropped her mouth to his again.

Grinding her hips over his, Sigyn cupped his face with both hands.  This was heaven.  This was Valhalla.  This was LIFE.  Dear god, she’d never been so confident that THIS was the man she wanted to make a baby with.  Honestly.  Seriously.  Desperately.  Stupidly.  Her IUD would make sure that didn’t happen (THANK YOU) but a huge part of her just knew that it would happen… at some point.  Loki would be the father of her children.  Whenever the universe said “ NOW we’re ready” , it would happen.  She wasn’t complete without him, and she didn’t care if that sounded archaic or antiquated or whatever.  Yes, he was a man , and yes, she was desperate to be anything he wanted, anything he needed.  But that was FINE because this was her choice .  This was okay.  It was better than okay.  It was WONDERFUL.  He would give her anything, and she would give him anything.

I WOULD DROWN FOR HIM.

Oh, that she had said that to him in October.  She gave an internal eye roll as soon as she thought it.  Never mind.  That didn’t matter now.  It was January .  The start of a new year.  It was 2020.  Who knew what was in store for them?  Maybe it would be a NIGHTMARE , but at least they would be traversing it together.  She adored New York, but honestly, it had a tendency to highlight the worst of people, and she knew that she was no exception.

“Oh god,” she groaned, her thighs aching from supporting her weight as she straddled him.

Up…

Down…

Up…

Down…

Up…

Down…

He felt AMAZING.  Her body was drowning in Loki, dreaming of him, chasing him through Wonderland…

She heard him say “ Let me help, sweetheart” and suddenly, she was on her back, and he was sliding in and out of her like a… god… for lack of a better word.

With one hand in her hair, he reached down to gently grab the hem of that gorgeous dress- bless Saint Laurent for such a work of art -and pulled it up over her hips.

“Careful, love,” he hissed, slipping it over her head. “So beautiful.”  That was one expensive dress.

And the girl in it is PRICELESS.

He rolled his hips forward and back, over and over…

Again…

And again…

And again…

And again…

And again…

“Oh fuck,” she panted against his mouth, crossing her ankles behind his back. “Oh my god… oh my god… oh my god…Loki…”

Behind a closed-lip smile, he grit his teeth.  “ Oh god” was right.  He felt like a god.  A god who could make her come.  A god who could give her an F-type for Christmas.  A god who could buy her this dress that she’d probably gone into debt just to “wow” him tonight.  A god who could pay for their grandchildren’s college tuition.

Push… pull… push… pull… push… pull…

She was close- he could feel it.  Heaven help him, this was not easy.  He was three months sex-sober, and impressive or not, his dick had its limits.

“Come on, sweetheart,” he said through his teeth, moving his mouth to the pulsepoint in her neck.  Tongue on her skin, he ground his hips into her with more force.  “Sig…” oh shit, he was done for… “please, please, I can’t…”

He heard her say “ it’s FINE” with all the conviction in the world, her fingers curling into his hair, and his mouth fell open, his mind and body sky-rocketing up to cloud nine to live amongst the stars for a beautiful ten seconds of his lifeline.  Ten seconds of beauty and perfection that the stars themselves, in all their stunning magnitude, couldn’t replicate.

If I die right now, I’ll be okay. It won’t be death.  It will only be moving through space and time to another dimension where Sigyn Frey smiles at me and welcomes me home.

He blew out a heavy breath through his mouth.  Shit… she hadn’t finished.

“It’s not the end of the world, Loki,” she said, kissing underneath his ear. “I’m in heaven because you’re here.”

He gave her a withering look.

Talk about a low bar…

Eyes roving over her face, he allowed more of his weight (within reason) to settle onto her.

“And you deserve better than that,” he said, pushing her hair behind her ears.  Bloody hell- he felt like a king and a peasant at once.  It was disconcerting.  

“Oh my god,” she groaned, rolling her eyes, then rubbing his nose with hers, “stop feeling guilty over nothing .  This-” she ran her hands from his ribs down to his hips and back up to wrap her arms around his waist “-was phenomenal, and I mean otherworldly phenomenal.”

He grinned crookedly. “Otherworldly?  If that’s how you feel just because I’m here-”

“Here inside me,” she spoke over him, clarifying her earlier point.

“If that’s how you feel,” he repeated himself, his smirk growing into a full-blown smile, “then I truly did level up to a god.”

“Niiiiice,” she laughed out loud, her head falling back.

“It wasn’t that funny,” he chuckled for a moment, but the humor ended quickly because every muscle in her body had tightened from her excessive laughing- EVERY muscle -one of which was particularly…

Gripping.

Didn’t you say you “can’t level up to ‘god’ until book 3” to one of those nurses at Sig’s doctor’s appointment in May?

Did I?

Think so.

Well then… mission accomplished.

Sliding his hand under her neck and into her hair, he lowered his mouth to the dip between her collarbone, which she’d so generously exposed to him by throwing her head back like that.

The tip of his tongue barely touched her skin before he closed his lips over it, and her laugh turned into a strained, quiet whine.  She arched her neck further, her toes already curling as his mouth moved closer to her jaw, teasing her with a bit more of his tongue in each kiss.  Oh hell, she could feel him hardening again.

And you thought he was “done” with you…

“Oh fuck…” she whispered through her teeth, then he pulled away from her throat and lowered his face to hers.

Eyes closing as their parted lips met, he gripped her hair more tightly, determined to avoid an anticlimactic night for her.  Sure, she’d said that she was thrilled or he was otherworldly or what not, and he knew she wasn’t pretending, but… no.  Just… no.  His girl was going to get off, and he could make that happen in thirty more seconds.  Guaranteed.  Keeping his hand in her hair and his mouth on hers, he stretched his arm down to hook his elbow under her thigh, then leaned forward again, lifting her higher and draping her knee over his shoulder as more and more blasts of fireworks lit up the room faster and faster.  Oh the timing .  The finale was coming shortly.

NICE .

Sigyn would have cried out, but his mouth was stifling her.  His entire body was stifling her, and it was hot as hell.  Literally.  She was breaking into a sweat around her temples and neck and chest.  Clinging to his shoulder with one hand, she grabbed his face with the other, her thumb running along his jaw as he moved over her.  The higher angle didn’t only let him push deeper.  It let him slide his lower stomach perfectly over the oh-so-good ache between her thighs.

God. Almighty.

Her leg over his shoulder started shaking, and she stopped kissing him, no doubt looking slack-jawed and drugged.  More blasts… again… again.  Good lord, her room looked like someone had set up a goddamn strobe light across the street.  The coil inside her was so tight, and it was getting tighter by the millisecond.

“Oh god… oh god…” she bit into her lip, letting go of him to stretch her arms back behind her head and slam her palms against the wall, forcing him as far into her as possible as the first little random electric spasms hit her.

Feeling her start to twitch around him, Loki slipped his elbow out from under her leg, and reached over her to curl his fingers around hers.  Gasping and pushing with everything he had, he watched her, ecstatic and overly proud of his accomplishment , as her mouth fell open, her head fell back, and those random spasms turned into impossibly tight, evenly-spaced pulses that he hoped felt more explosive to her than that last round of absurdly loud blasts and pops and crackles and booms and flashes of light in every shade of the rainbow happening outside.

He bit into a smile, slowing his pace to a standstill as his girl floated back to the ground- or bed, in this case -from her own cloud nine Wonderland.  A good -trip Wonderland.  A trip that did not include the red queen ordering her deck of guards to decapitate you.  Her arms went completely limp and would have fallen- possibly directly onto her face -if not for his hands holding hers against the wall still.  Relaxing his grip, he gingerly brought her dead weight arms back down and set them around his neck.  However, they slid right off, landing on the bedcover with a thud, and without opening her eyes, she sighed heavily, a grin spreading across her face.

Raising an eyebrow, he smirked. “That good, hm?”

Still smiling, her tongue poked through her teeth, responding with something between a giggle and a drawn-out whistle. “Apparently.”

~ Several hours later, 8:52 am, January 1, 2020 ~

Eyes fluttering open slowly, Sigyn squinted and put a hand over her eyes.  She turned over, scowling a bit at the clock on her wall.  She would have slept longer if not for the sunlight streaming through her window.

DIRECTLY ON MY FACE.

She wasn’t really upset, though.  No, she was so goddamn happy.  If anyone had asked her yesterday if she would wake up next to Starboy this morning, she would’ve called them crazy.  Her hips and thighs were unbelievably sore, and god, she loved it.  Was he this sore, too?  Doubtful.  He was in too good of shape to be sore after a couple rounds of sex.  Really good sex.  Otherworldly sex.  She bit her lip at the thought and turned over again, smiling wide, to get a look at the guy who’d taken her to the stars and back last night.  Her smile fell immediately.

His spot was empty.  He wasn’t there.  Eyebrows pulling together, she sat upright and rubbed her eyes.  Damn blurry morning vision.  Surely, she was imagining that empty space next to her.  When she pulled her hands away from her eyes, he still wasn’t there.  The sheets were wrinkled, and if she squinted, she could make out the shape of his body.  Eyes blowing wide and lip trembling, she pushed up off the bed.

The rug felt abnormally cold under her bare feet as she tip-toed around the bed, anxiously playing with the hem of her long, oversized, off-the-shoulder, grey sweatshirt that proudly proclaimed in pink block letters that she was “born in the 80s”.  She chewed her lip, turning in a slow circle, eyeing every square inch of her room looking for any evidence of his presence.  Up, down, left, right, shadows, highlights, dim corners, under, above.  Keys?  No.  Phone?  No.  Wallet?  No.  Shirt?  No.  Boots?  Socks?  Pullover?  Trousers?  Definitely not.

Nothing.

“Oh my god,” she whispered, switching from chewing her lip to chewing her thumbnail as she went into her living room, stepping around the space with less confidence than a kid playing “the floor is lava!”

Blinking at the burning in her eyes, she put both hands over her mouth. “No no no no no no no no no no no…”

He left.  He left me again.

“This isn’t happening,” she whispered behind her palms as several tears in quick succession tumbled down her cheeks.

She moved quickly then, scouring the place for a note or something.  Where the bloody hell was it?  Goddammit- there had to be one!  Coffee table?  Key table?  Kitchen counter?  On the fridge door?  Couch?  Under the cushion?  Behind the wall painting over her TV?!  No no no no no!!

“How can he do this to me?” she croaked, sinking down into her kitchen table chair.  Oh god, she was just getting what she deserved, wasn’t she?

Call him.  Text him.  Run to his building.  DO SOMETHING.

Sniffling loudly, she pushed to her feet and walked back into her bedroom.  She’d dropped her phone on her bed last night when Loki had picked her up and carried her to it.

Then he fucked me twice.

Then left me before the sun came up.

Or after I fell asleep.

Whenever that was.

Either way, dear god, I would rather be dead right now.

Heartbreak was a terrible thing, wasn’t it- something that could make an otherwise healthy person think that no longer existing on this planet, but perhaps just… darkness… and the beauty of no longer thinking or feeling… was preferable to breathing.  Oh god, maybe she was overreacting.  Maybe she’d misinterpreted this, and was now seeing everything through the lens of a girl who had been-

Her phone chirped at her then, cutting off her despondent thoughts.  Furrowing her brow, she scrambled to yank the sheets back.  Where was it?

Under your pillow, hon.

Oh right.

Eyes rolling, she shook her head and grabbed her pillow, then tossed it behind her shoulder.  Her little rectangular digital savior laid there, waiting for her to accept the hand that it had reached toward her after falling overboard for the thousandth time.  Swiping it up from the mattress, she opened her texts, and let out a massive breath.  A  breath that left her light-headed and dopey because the “contact” who had texted her was “Loki Forever Dream Starboy Odinson”, and his picture had her reliving last night and aching to get lost with him all over again in those sheets that she’d just all but destroyed to find her phone.

As though you didn’t already want that…

“Fuck, he’s perfect,” she breathed, swiping right to see his words.

Loki: Hey sweetheart.  Did you get my note?  I left it on my pillow.  Well, technically it is YOUR pillow, but that’s neither here nor there.  Maybe it fell off the bed or something.  I won’t lie- I was trying to be romantic.  Trying TOO HARD.  Forgive this lovesick fool of a man, please.  It said “meet me at Ground Support”.  Will you please text me to let me know if/when you are headed this way?

Feeling as though a thousand pounds had been lifted from her shoulders, she blew out a breath and responded instantly.

Sigyn: Just woke up.  I did not see your note, and… I’ll be honest… I have been freaking out ON A LEVEL.  I am on my way right now.  Love you to the stars and back.

Turning in a dizzying circle, her eyes roved over the floor of her bedroom, searching for a pair of trousers.  She growled and hurried to her chest of drawers, yanking the second drawer from the top open and yanking it open to grab the first pair she saw.  They happened to be black yoga pants with a rainbow stripe up the sides, and they were a little too tight, but at least the ankles fit easily into her boots.  She dashed to her door, grabbing her crossbody purse from her key table as she ran out.  Clumsily, she struggled to lock it, then ran down the stairs two at a time, which was surprisingly difficult.  She nearly fell four times.

Out the building door, turn left, run to the first intersection, turn right on to West Broadway, hurry hurry hurry… dear god, run FASTER.

Breathing hard, her eyes widened a bit, and she slowed her steps as she crossed Spring Street and approached the best coffee shop on planet Earth.  A sleek, glacier white F-type (eeeee-lectric white, as she called it) was parked on the street right next to Ground Support, and a stunner of a man was leaning against the hood, his hands in his pockets and his ankles crossed.  His black hair was pulled into a small bun at the base of his neck, and a pair of classic black Ray Ban Wayfarers sat on his nose.  He flashed her a perfect smile as she approached him.

“Foot on the gas, sixth gear, 0 to 60, heart rate through that moonroof, I don’t know where the hell we’re going, but…” he pulled his sunglasses down and raised an eyebrow, “Feel like burning rubber with me, gorgeous girl?”

She pressed her lips together, heart rate shooting straight up through the invisible moonroof over her head.

Loki quoting his own goddamn words to me shouldn’t be THIS hot.

He pushed off the hood of the car and took a step toward her. “I caught you biting your lip when I pulled up to your building in these blacked out, ultra expensive, custom-made wheels.  I’m a mess, but I swear you’ll love me.  I’ll take you on the ride of your life.  You’re too smart and far too well-read for me to teach you much of anything, but if you will just get in this goddamn car, I’ll show you how to live fast and die right.”

Dear god, she actually burst into tears.

“Hell yes, Starboy,” she said, biting into a smile as she ran to him and threw her arms around his neck. “Where are we going?”

He lowered his face to hers and kissed her, then pulled away and opened the door. “Get in.”

Clicking her seatbelt into place, she looked at him sideways as he pulled away from the curb and sped off down the deserted New Years Day 2020 street in New York City.

“Seriously, Loki,” she said, grinning ear to ear, “where are we going?”

He turned to look at her and shifted into fourth gear, anxious to get to sixth in the Lincoln Tunnel. “Does the destination really matter?  Or is the ride itself what makes us who we are?  That tells who we wish to spend the rest of our lives with?  The rest of this ride with?”

Reaching up to open the moonroof, even though it was absolutely freezing, he flashed her his iconic smile, and she smiled back.

You’re brighter than the sun, sweetheart.

“I don’t care where we go,” she replied, reaching over to take his hand. “As long as it’s with you, I’m good.”

Still smiling, he returned his eyes to the road. “To the stars, it is.”

Sigyn leaned her head back, shivering from the New Years Day cold coming through the moonroof, and smiled, even happier than she’d been on January 1st three years ago when she first fell into Loki Odinson’s arms.

---

GOODBYE STARBOY AND SUNLIGHT GIRL. ALL MY NEW YEARS ARE YOURS.

-Jen Eowynir

From the bottom of our hearts here at FrigidImmortals.com, thank you for reading New Year. We ask that you would please do us a favor by leaving comments/reviews because those truly are the greatest sources of help and humble joy for Jen and the Eowynir Admin Team.

The New Year Fever Dreams Sage continues in Part Two:

NEON DAYDREAMS

“SAFE WITH YOU” BY DELANEY JANE, THE LAST SONG FOR SIGYN ELENA FREY

“BABY, I’LL BE RIGHT THERE BY YOUR SIDE. I’LL LOVE YOU THROUGH THE HIGHS AND THROUGH THE LOWS. SO YOU CAN CALL ME WHENEVER, ABOUT WHATEVER. I’M HERE FOR YOU FOR THE REST OF FOREVER.”

– “LOVESICK” BY TREVOR DANIEL, THE FINAL THEME SONG FOR LOKI STARBOY ODINSON

What Readers Have Said

About CH 12 “Happy New Year, Love”

“I love it. It was beautiful and heartbreaking and beautiful all over again. 2020 may be an absolute nightmare but Loki and Sig will get through it alright as long as they have each other. Thank you for writing this wonderful story. (Btw, I am crazy about Fearless Immortals and I’m super excited to find out what happens next)”

-Ferbette, on CH 12 “Happy New Year, Love” (AO3)

“Your writing is absolutely beautiful and you are damn right this story helped me through the year! I stretched this last chapter out over a couple of days just to make it last longer. I like to think that their adventure through their 2020 would inspire Loki to write another book about the next stage in their lives.”

-Mischief76, on CH 12 “Happy New Year, Love” (AO3)

“This story was beautiful, captivating, magical, sad, lovely, nerve-wrecking, enchanting and overall amazing. It’s sad to see this end. Lovely story, lovely chapters, lovely characters and wonderful author. Enough said.”

-Maïté, on CH 12 “Happy New Year, Love” (AO3)

“AAAAH I absolutely loved this story ”

-PennySparker, on CH 12 “Happy New Year, Love” (AO3)

“So I reread this because of Neon and ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh”

-Burningarbitterheart (commenting on New Year Same Habit while waiting for the next Neon Daydreams update)

---

New Year Chapter links: ¹ We’re Just Strangers ² Hello, My Name is Loki ³ A Helluva Drug ⁴ Written in the Dying Stars ⁵ This Helen of Troy (Worth Drowning For) ⁶ STARBOY INTERLUDE ⁷ Live Fast, Die Right (Crashing Hard) ⁸ It’s Called “Being Present” (Hit the Gas) ⁹ Burn it to the Ground, Sig. (Just Don’t Burn Me) ¹⁰ Hotel Hell, Closing Bell ¹¹ Do Not Go Gently (Run West, Boy) ¹² Happy New Year, Love. **Visit the Saga main page here.

**Saga extra features: NYC The New Year Dreamscape Digital Daydreams A Thousand Words

*CHAPTER TWELVE FEATURED MUSIC: “Genghis Khan“ by Miike Snow

*Notes from the author, upon original posting in January 2020:
I have a few last thoughts. "Is it January?"—Apparently it IS January, and I was terribly naughty and did not publish this on time. *bangs head on desk*  Apologies for the delay. I did publish this final chapter on AO3 by my New Year's Eve/Day deadline, thank god, but a terribly-timed kitchen emergency (strictly "need to know") came up that night, and it screwed up my not-exactly-well-laid plans for THIS site. Listen, procrastination has been the name of my game for three decades. I damn well better improve that habit in 2021. (New year, same habit...what do ya know?!) Now, even though this update is a week late, I'll share my thoughts as they were on December 31, 2020, when I first shared Loki and Sig's ending with the AO3 readers.

Saying goodbye to New Year, Same Habit ON our real-world New Year’s Eve at MIDNIGHT (New York City standard Eastern time) is one of the most bittersweet moments of my adult life.  Perhaps that sounds dramatic (it is, I know), but this story has been my lifeline in 2020.  I think most of us would agree that this year has been an absolute DISASTER of a year, and amidst all the pain and suffering, amidst lockdowns and the loss of physical touch, the loss of loved ones, the layoffs… oh my god, sometimes the only relief (psychologically) I found was in the favorite songs, films, and most of all, BOOKS.  My god, the STORIES.  I often wonder if I am the only one who felt this way.

This year shed a new light on all art forms for me.  Oh, how poetic, in a painful yet cathartic manner, that in a year where the entire planet ground to a standstill, in a year where my mid-town streets in my 6-million-strong city felt and looked empty and DEAD, it was the stories, the previously made films, the local art gallery next door that I can only observe from behind their windows since it had to shut its doors, and hundreds of songs that were more ALIVE than ever for me.  I’ve seen them, listened to them, or read them a hundred times, so, one would assume that they would affect me no differently than the previous hundred times.  Not so.  Somehow, those works of art MOVED and CHANGED and, oddly, BREATHED, as though they’d taken the place of the hundreds of people stuck indoors who I used to pass on the sidewalk while walking or biking to work, to lunch, to grab a coffee, to the park, or dinner dates.  Much like that art, writing THIS story inspired me in NEW ways, shined a light on NEW ideas, and gave me NEW insights, as though this imaginary world was the only sunlight in the dark reality of this 2020 orbit around our sun.  It helped me (and maybe you, dear reader- most likely from multiple stories from multiple authors) KEEP GOING when just getting out of bed was a monumental task.

As I write this final note for you all (and myself), I’ve already written the end of this story; for Loki and Sig, 2020 has only just begun.  I won’t write their 2020 for them, but I envision them in real world New York, pushing through this past year, trying to support each other and be lights for each other when their "city that never sleeps" feels dark and empty.  Loki said "don't let me down, 2020" and even though I WANT to continue his story, to show exactly how this past year would have treated him, I also don't want to force his future to go one way or another.  I'll leave it in my head, and I'll let everyone who read New Year, Same Habit envision the rest of Loki and Sig’s lives however they want to.  I do not want to say goodbye to Starboy or his Sunlight Girl, but I take solace in knowing that this story will live in someone else's mind as well as mine, affecting them in different ways than it has affected me, at different TIMES than it has affected me; that makes it NEW every day. 

Farewell, 2020.  You've been goddamn awful to a tragic amount of the world, but I'll give you credit for this- the pain reminded me not to take the people I love for granted.  I think Loki and Sig would say the same.  They would also say this: Here's to 2021 and the yet-to-be-written stories that it will bring us.  Happy New Year, everyone.

Take care, stay safe, stay alive, and stay wonderful,

Jen

~2:00 am, Oct 1, 2019~

Loki looked across the Mercer Kitchen downstairs bar, staring at Sigyn as she chatted with Carol.  Idly swirling the black cocktail mixing straw in his whiskey and coke, he pursed his lips, one eyebrow raising a touch when his girl laughed at the apparently hilarious words coming out of her colleague’s mouth.  Months ago, when he hadn’t been a lonely waste of space, he would have contained the knee-jerk jealous scoff that was presently escaping his lips.  No, that wasn’t true, because it was an altogether false premise.  Containment was hardly necessary when he’d felt secure in his relationship, when he wasn’t jealous and bitter about the whole damn thing.

Tonight was supposed to be fun.  Well, according to Val- the one responsible for this “congrats on the go-ahead and two enthusiastic thumbs up from your editor on Satellite Tides!” shindig -it would be fun, to which he’d deadpanned “what is this word ‘fun’ of which you speak? Don’t know what that is.” 

He’d earned a shoulder jab for that one.  Fair enough.  Sulking during his own party was, in her words, the ultimate “Prince Petty” response, and that might have been the first time he’d ever thought Prince Lo was a preferable moniker to anything.  But he hadn’t given her, or anyone else, even the slightest indication that Sig had everything to do with his princely behavior, so how should Val know to be less offended at his rather pronounced permanent scowl?

This September had broken its already shitty record of being the absolute worst month of every year for two decades.  Sure, he’d finished the book right on time, and more than that, his editor fawned over this one even more than her previous fawnings over Starboy and Looking for Sunlight, but at what cost?  For the life of him, he didn’t know why the hell Sig had been so angry at him for focusing on his damn job when a deadline loomed ahead.  She, of all people, knew that career-related “my income, and my editor’s income for that matter, hinge on MY ability to do this job as well, if not BETTER than, the predecessors” level of stress.  Here was a woman who’d refused to quit her job despite the sexual-harasser-in-chief lording over her, despite the sometimes seventy hour workweeks, despite the lack of paid bereavement leave, despite the fact that her loving boyfriend could float her through a new job search and had offered to countless times.

As though that one architecture firm was the only one in New York. As though it was the highest paying one (newsflash: it wasn’t!). As though every other boss would leer at her when she wore formfitting- though still professional -skirts, trousers, jackets… all of it. As though his father didn’t have the powerful connections within the New York real estate industry to ensure Ms. Sigyn Frey received the best opportunities and clients. Good lord, even he could set aside his monumental daddy issues if it meant Sig was chosen to redesign one of the exhibits in MOMA’s permanent collection, which did happen by the way… in July.

Yes, despite wishing she would have crossed the Atlantic with him, despite feeling deep in his bones that she’d had other reasons for staying in New York that had nothing to do with work, he’d set aside time every day of that tour to help accelerate his girl’s career goals, and she didn’t even know it. He knew better than to say he’d helped her, to suggest that she might owe him something. Oh but he wanted to tell her, in great detail, that while he’d been sleeping in different hotels every damn night in Europe, between the exhausting hours of book-signing and chatting and racking his brain for new charming quips for each and every fan to make them feel special, he’d also been working behind the scenes with his father (via Facetime, heaven help him) to arrange that top-notch, career opportunity of a lifetime for her! So… you know… maybe she could cut him some slack for spending an excessive amount of time playing catch-up in his own career during September.

It would feel good to throw it in her face, though. To, rather dramatically, prove just how absurd her “are you trying to make me abandon my career for you?” accusation was. She’d tossed that nonsense at him back in bloody January when he’d shown up at her office after hours intent on helping her shut it down for the day. That had been the extent of it. She’d been working nonstop, and he’d missed her. He’d been a boyfriend who wanted to see his girlfriend for a bit more than one hour a day.

THE HORROR.

And that had been only two weeks after he’d given her the literal FIRST hardback copy of Looking for Sunlight, no less. Oh but then he abandoned HER for an eight week book tour that he definitely wanted to go on, didn’t he. How very inconsiderate of him. And even more inconsiderate- he gave her every waking hour when he came back, only to then punish her by taking back a few of those hours to be able to have Satellite Tides on his editor’s desk by the September 28th agreed upon due date.

Still swirling his drink, he saw her glance at him once, twice, three times. Her cheeks were pink, perhaps from the unnecessary heat coming through the ceiling vents, or maybe it was his obvious staring. Did she like him staring? Was that an aroused blush or an embarrassed one? Did she think he was looking at her like this because he wanted to drag her into a restroom stall and pull her hair just right? Or did she know in her heart of cold hearts that he was more likely fuming that she never gave him an explanation for her hypocrisy, and that he was looking for that explanation somewhere on her face? He’d lost the will to verbally ask anymore, to wriggle the answer out of her skull after half-a-dozen attempts to meet her clearly impossible standard of “forever dream boy” by listening to her nonsensical ramblings-on about how he had changed.  He’d also lost the will to sit there in silent reverence as though she’d just given him some enlightened gospel truth that ought to change him back to August Loki.

Whatever the hell that meant.

Good god, it made him think that she must have written “August Loki” in a hidden diary somewhere, probably surrounded by hearts.  And by contrast, she had no doubt turned a page and drawn a quick sketch of him with horns and scribbled “September Loki” all over the face.  Bloody hell, 2019 had been more bipolar than the untreated version of himself.  Eyes lifting to gaze sadly at the ceiling, he inhaled and exhaled slowly until he got that distinct dizzy feeling that always accompanied properly-executed anxiety breathing.  He could not be more ready to bid farewell to this disaster of a year.  He needed the relative stability of 2017 and 2018 to come back.

Don’t let me down, 2020.  BE KIND. PLEASE REWIND.

Please give my girl and me a second chance.

His brother’s voice appeared next to his ear then, pulling his eyes away from the ceiling to focus on the blond gym rat standing next to him.

“Oh my god, brother, stop swirling that cocktail stick, or I’ll knock that drink out of your hand.”

Eyebrows pulling together, Loki blinked at him silently for a few moments before responding. “Cocktail stick?”

“Think he means the mixing straw.” It was JB’s voice on his other side, clearly amused, if the quiet snort from behind his palm over his mouth was any indication. “But you once told me that Thor Odinson was the most stick-obsessed person on the planet, so I guess it makes sense that he would call it a cocktail stick.”

Eyes on his brother, Loki smirked and leaned sideways toward JB, who leaned toward him in turn. “I feel like there are a thousand dick jokes to be made in response to this situation.”

Thor pointed at him. “Do NOT mock the way I say-”

“Cocktail?” Loki raised his eyebrows. “Hard emphasis on the ‘cock’ syllable?”

“The irony here is that the biggest goddamn prick in the room is you, Prince Lo,” his brother retorted, tossing back a shot of tequila.

“Jesus,” Bucky laughed, pulling a hand down his face, then eyed Loki, “totally thought he said you had the biggest prick in the room, man.”

Coughing into his elbow, Thor’s nose scrunched up. “Ugh VOMIT.”

“Vomit, indeed,” Loki agreed, resuming the swirling of his “cocktail stick” (wow) with more force just to annoy the hell out of his brother. “Calling the trouser snake a ‘prick’ is even worse than… I don’t know…” he squinted down at the glass in his hand, looking for the non-existent punchline of this impromptu joke somewhere in the amber liquid.  “Ummmm… calling it a… uh… vvvvv-” he lingered on the ‘v’, slightly distracted by the buzzing sensation that the sound created behind his teeth as they scraped over his bottom lip.

Thor leaned closer. “Vvvvvvv… what?  Loki, are you having a stroke?”

Yes.  A joke stroke, to be specific.

Ignoring his brother, he continued buzzing the v too long. “Vvvvvv-elll…”

Oh the ‘L’ is equally as fun, making my tongue trill like this, like when I kiss Sig, like when she says my name slowly against my mouth… “LLLLLLo-”

Rolling his eyes, he licked his teeth and cleared his throat.  He was not going to get caught up in the better times of the past.  He was going to be present.  Right here and now, he was going to finish this stupid joke.

“Worse than calling it the vvvvelll-vet… shaft of love,” he said, straight-faced for approximately two seconds before his aloof façade cracked, and he burst into a fit of hysterical laughing.

Thor grinned slightly, then raised an eyebrow at Bucky. “Fifty bucks says he stole that from a Buzzfeed ‘writing smut 101’ article after taking some stupid quiz for under-sexxed thirsty millenials.”

Lifting his hand up in front of Thor, Bucky opened his palm. “Might as well pay up, bro.  Not to get overly graphic, but this one here-” he gestured to Loki with his thumb behind his shoulder “-is probably the least ‘under-sexxed’ of everyone in this room.”

Jaw clenching, Loki’s laughing mood flew out the door faster than his girl coming out of Ground Support on New Year’s Day a thousand bloody years ago.  His friend wasn’t wrong about his excessively active sex life, and in another time, a comment like that would have put a smug smirk on his face.  However, at present, it only reminded him of the sad reality of a dwindling should-have-been-his-endgame relationship.  They fought and fucked, sometimes literally both at once.  If she wasn’t forcing his back against metaphorical walls with hurtful nonsense accusations of irrelevant this-and-thats, he was bruising her back against their bedroom walls, trying to force a love that he knew was sinking in the western sky to please, please, please just stay above that imminent-death horizon for a bit longer.

I would have done anything for her.

Correction: I did EVERYTHING for her.

He heard Thor say, “Ooooh, has my baby brother been triggered?  Did my joke strike a sex nerve with Star-” He stopped talking abruptly and cringed.  “Ick, oh I seriously regret having putting the word ‘sex’ in front of nerve.”

“We all regret that you did that, pal,” Bucky said, leaning over the bar a bit to flag down the bartender.  When he caught her eye, he held up his drink and mouthed “one more” while tapping the glass.  He turned back to face the Odinson brothers who were caught in a frowning contest with each other. “You two should go back to the dumb stick jokes.  They seemed-” he raised an eyebrow at Loki “-safer, somehow.”

Snapping his fingers twice, Thor pointed at his brother’s face so closely, he nearly poked the tip of his nose. “What was that one about sticks and stealing cars or something?”

Eyes narrowing, Loki slapped the hand away from his face. “Are you referring to the ‘stick shifts are millennial anti-theft devices’ quip I made when I borrowed your car this summer?”

“Ooh nice one,” Bucky said, taking a sip of the fresh old-fashioned that he’d just grabbed from the bar as Loki shrugged.

Not exactly my original material but whatever.

Head shaking, Thor whistled under his breath. “By the way, that joke would sting if us early 80s babies weren’t now called Xennials inst-”

“We early 80s babies,” Loki cut him off, clucking his tongue. “Us is an object pronoun, but you used it as the subject of a clause.  Pesky personal pronouns can be such a bitch to master for the simple-minded.”

His big brother didn’t miss a beat. “Simple-minded is preferable to whatever the hell is going on in that space between your ears.  You have always been a bit of a disillusioned, Prozac Nation poster boy, but you were less moody before Harvard.  I told Mum your excessive schooling would give you RBF.”

“Wow,” Loki snorted softly, setting his elbow on the counter and leaning on it. “All this time I thought she must have dropped you on your head as a baby, when in actuality you chose to be a paint-chip-eating-moron.” He brought the whiskey and coke (mostly whiskey) to his lips and took a small sip. “This explains why you are so blithely optimistic that people outside of Xennial Twitter have validated the existence of our special little microgeneration.” Another sip. “You might be pushing 40, Thor, but you will be lumped in with current 25-year olds for at least another decade.” He reached up to pull the black Wayfarer sunglasses from their place on the top of his head down onto his nose and flashed a smile. “Deal with it.”

“You fucking deal with it, you walking meme of a man,” Thor scoffed, straightening the zippered collar of his acid-wash blue denim jacket.

Eyes following his brother’s movements, Loki made a face.  How had he only just now noticed it?  Acid-wash? GOD.  All “designer” parties responsible for that trend, both past and present, should receive life sentences for their crimes against humanity.  Thor interrupted his homicidal musings, his voice as loud and unappealing as that jacket.

“I won’t be lumped in with 20-somethings.  I’ll just add Gen Xer to my Twitter biography.  Problem solved,” he said, smirking as he pulled his phone out of the inside pocket of the highly offensive jacket and opened the app.

Sliding his sunglasses down a touch, Loki looked sideways at him. “You might as well add stable genius while you’re at it, you clown.  One cannot be a golden retriever in human form and be an Xer.”

“True story,” Bucky agreed, patting Loki on the back twice.

Scratching his chin, Thor gazed up at the pendant lights hanging over the bar. “So that’s why every woman wants to pet me.”

“Oh look, JB, he made a joke,” Loki droned, eyes rolling as his brother laughed.  He pushed his sunglasses back up on top of his head and took another sip, shifting his stance, so he could see Sigyn more easily.  He missed her.  He was pissed with her too, of course.  But he still missed her.  He couldn’t help it.

This helluva drug girl.

“I’m closer to being an Xer than you,” Thor said, smiling when his brother’s gaze slid back to him.

Fighting to keep his jaw from flat out unhinging at that ludicrous statement, Loki inclined his chin slightly. “Says the happy puppy, his tongue lolling out and tail wagging excitedly, directly after calling me a disillusioned, Prozac Nation poster boy.”

“So I never had a manic Monday like some people-” his brother waved a hand at him “-doesn’t mean I didn’t listen to Nirvana just as much as you did, Loki.”

“Name one Nirvana song other than ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’.”

Looking sideways, Thor squinted. “There was…ah…started with an L, I think…Liddy something?  Liddy Yum?”

Loki stared blankly at him.

Dear. God.

“Either you do not know them well enough to remember the song title,” he said, swiping his drink off the counter and finishing the last of it in one go, “or more likely, you just can’t pronounce the word Lithium.”

“I don’t know how you deal with the side effects,” Thor muttered, giving him a pitying look.

“I don’t know how I’m dealing with this conversation with only one drink.” Loki set the glass down with more force than necessary.  A second later, a server behind the counter hurried over and took the empty tumbler, then produced a new one for him from behind her back.  He blinked, somewhat dumbfounded by this woman’s attentiveness, which seemed to be reserved exclusively for him.

She leaned toward him and answered his unspoken question. “Just looking after the star of the show,” she explained, tossing him a wink over her shoulder as she walked away to attend to other customers.

“The dying star of the show, maybe,” he grumbled to himself, feeling a bit guilty for staring at her backside in those extremely flattering jeans.  Shaking it off, he turned toward his brother again. “Not that it’s your business, but I take an anticonvulsant, not lithium.”

“Well that’s proof enough that you are not a proper Xer.”

“Oh we’re back on that now,” Loki said flatly. “I’m overjoyed.”

“You should be,” Thor said, pointing his bottle of microbrew (Loki knew that one tasted like absolute piss) at his brother. “And my real proof that I am an Xer-”

This should be good.

“-is that I had Doc Martens and a Pearl Jam CD.”

Loki gave him a look. “You mean the one you stole from Hela’s discman to impress one of her flannel-obsessed friends from uni?”

“Noooo, that can’t be right.” Thor shook his head. “CDs were barely a thing then.  Hela had a cassette Walkman.”

“CDs were barely a thing?”  Loki repeated, blinking several times at the man.

Okay, just how drunk is my dimwit brother?

He shook his head, eyes rolling yet again. “Hela graduated in ‘93, not ‘83.  Good god, Thor, your memory loss leads me to think you are more boomer than anything else.”

“You are such a goddamn brat,” Thor laughed out loud, slapping Loki’s shoulder just this side of too-painful. “It would feel so good to punch you, but our big sis would gut me for it.  She adores you for some reason.”

“No, she adores me for thousands of reasons,” Loki corrected him, “and she wouldn’t gut you.  She’d just give you a lobotomy and throw you in a padded cell infested with rats.”

“I think I’d rather be gutted.” Thor shivered. “Rats are terrifying.  I swear I can hear them squeaking my name.  Thor…Thooooor…”

How drunk is this dimwit, you ask?  Hmm… hundred bucks says this moron throws up in five minutes.  In the women’s restroom.  In a sink.  Then cries because he can’t figure out how to flush it.

“That’s because someone is yelling your name, genius.” Loki pointed to the girl trying to get his brother’s attention on the other side of the bar “Namely, your pint-sized girlfriend.” She was waving at him, probably while standing on a box so she could see over the counter. 

His brother turned to look. “Ohhhhh,” he drew out the word, then laughed hard enough to throw his balance off.  Still laughing, he grabbed the counter to catch himself.  “I’m relieved it’s not rats.”

“Yes, you dodged quite a bullet,” he droned, watching the man’s back for a moment as he walked away, swaying and unsteady on his feet, but not so unsteady as to fall.

Talk about a missed opportunity.  That would have been beyond entertaining, and he needed something to genuinely laugh about.  Still leaning on his elbow, he sighed and set his chin in his palm.  JB spoke suddenly, making Loki jump since he’d forgotten his friend was next to him.

“I got ‘a great image in my head now of that guy jumping up on a chair and screaming at his teeny tiny girl to kill the rat on the ground,” he said, eyes closing as he laughed and pulled a hand down his face.

“You joke, JB, but that has actually happened.  Not with little Janey over there, though,” Loki clarified, flicking his fingers in her general direction. “No, it was his ex who swatted at one with a broom while he did exactly that,” he said, stopping mid-sentence to taste-test his second drink of the night.

Oh that was a mistake.

Before he could swallow that stupidly huge gulp of FIRE, which was all parts whiskey and zero parts coke apparently, the absurd memory started playing like a comedy-gold film reel, causing him to choke on a laugh bubbling up in his chest.  Slapping a hand over his mouth, he pressed his lips together, trying to collect himself so he could tell the story without spewing a lovely cocktail of hard liquor and saliva in his friend’s face.  After a good twenty seconds, he successfully drained it, and exhaled long and slowly through his mouth.

Rubbing his watering eyes, he finally said, “That overgrown blond baby jumped on a chair when that rat scurried out from behind his refrigerator.”

“OH MY GOD.”

“Oh, it gets better,” Loki croaked, still rubbing his eyes. “He exploded up onto that chair and landed so heavily that the legs actually splintered and broke, and I kid you not, he landed on his ass like something straight out of a goddamn ‘hold my beer’ compilation.”

“That did not happen.” Bucky shook his head resolutely.

Loki held his hands up. “Saw it with my own eyes.  I swear.  You remember that time he came to our gym, coincidentally during one of our training sessions last year?”

“Yeah, he was filming that grass-fed whey protein promotional thing with Sam.  Why?”

“Do you remember Sam asking what the hell was wrong with Thor’s box jumps?  That he looked like he thought the box would, quote, drop him harder than a Travis Scott hook?”

“Holy fuck- the chair traumatized him.  Should we get some PTSD therapy going for him?”

“I would love to be a fly on the wall in his therapist’s office when that story comes up.  No doubt he would defend his absurd overreaction by explaining a truly horrifying event from earlier that day.  You see, his car had stalled out on him, and as we all know, it is impossible that he simply fucked up and stalled the engine with overzealous clutch work and heavy-handed shifting… no no no.  Therefore, the unfortunate rat chair debacle must have occurred only because he was extra… jumpy… now that his baby was at the car hospital, and don’t you understand that the rat was an omen representing the car doctor’s inability to properly lubricate her gearbox.”

“You are making this shit up.  He did not say ‘baby’ or ‘car hospital’ or ‘car doctor’ and he definitely did not say ‘properly lubricate her gearbox’ in any context ever.”

“Believe it or not, JB, my brother is even more stick-obsessed than you and me.”

“I’m havin’ major deja vu right now, Lo.”

Loki tilted his head, squinting at his friend. “Have we had this conversation before?”

JB took a long swig of his drink, then nodded and licked his lips. “Yup. June. M3. On the way to montauk.  Ended with you sayin’ you graduated summa cum laude from Harvard in ‘word wizardry or some shit’ …I think.”

Both men chuckled at the memory as Loki’s phone dinged at him.  Reaching into his pocket, he grabbed it and opened the phone with his thumbprint.  Focusing on the text that had popped up, he pursed his lips.

Hela: You just keep them on their boringly stable toes, love.

The words blurred in his vision, and he blinked several times, squinting at the screen.  Just as he started to think he might need to schedule an appointment with an optometrist, he realized the phone was moving… or vibrating, more like.  He frowned, confused by the damn thing, which he’d set to “never vibrate” for a reason.  He hated that buzzing sound.  It sounded like the inside of his skull, and he hardly needed some wireless electronic gadget to add to the noise.

“You ok, Lo man?”

Still frowning, Loki looked up at JB whose eyebrows were raised in concern.

“Phone’s acting up,” he mumbled, setting it down into his friend’s waiting hand. “Is it vibrating or something?”

JB shrugged, playing around with it. “I’m no iPhone expert because I am an Android man through and through, but…it’s definitely not vibrating.  The apps all work.  Sounds on. Is the software updated?”

Loki nodded. “Just did. This morning.  September 30th, 2019 at 2:07am.  I remember the time  because the bright screen lit up my bedroom and woke me up from a sex dream.”

“Two things.” JB held up one finger. “One: if that’s the first thing that the newest software did with its time in the simulation-“

“Don’t start with the simulation crap again-“

“-then you should burn it for being a minion of Satan who is obviously controlling the architect.”

I don’t want to hear the word “architect” ever again…

“And two-“ JB held up a second finger “-technically that was yesterday.  Today is October 1st.  Also-“ another swig “-I think your hand is shaking pretty bad.  That’s why it seems like it’s vibratin’ or whatever.”

Loki looked at his hand and scowled at his fingers.  Wrist too.  And arm.  And shoulder.  Neck.  Everything was shaking.  Hela’s text was a response to his last message- the one he’d sent after slamming the doors of Sig’s building on his way here tonight.

“Aren’t Harvard alums supposed to be smart?” JB snorted.

Loki couldn’t think of anything clever, so a gruff “fuck you” was all the comeback (not so much) JB heard. “Um, speaking of Harvard alums,” Loki said, “I don’t mean to be rude, but my sister is texting me, and I need to respond.”

“Sure, Lo man,” Bucky said, swallowing the last bit of the old-fashioned from his tumbler then squinted at the empty bottom. “I need a refill anyway.”

As his friend walked to the bar, Loki weaved through a sea of bodies to get to the exit.  He was shaking for a reason.  He wanted a smoke.  Scratch that- he needed one.  He hadn’t had one since Paris, and he hadn’t craved another until now.  The unbearable weight of his manuscript was finally no longer crushing him, and in the email that his editor sent this morning- Re: LO Novel 3 Satellite Tides-she’d been more than a little complimentary.

“Both Starboy and Looking for Sunlight focus heavily on unmoving lights in the sky that we can’t help but run circles around, and I assumed your third effort would be an even more focused progression- a maturation, if you will -of that theme, but instead, you crashed on Earth’s surface and focused on the lights in the sky that are running circles around YOU.  My jaw is on the floor, Loki.  Verdict?- Stunning.  Can’t wait to see Satellite Tides on the shelf.” 

Holding his phone in one hand and his lighter in the other, he pushed through the doors and walked to the other side of the street before removing the yellow pack of American Spirits from his jacket pocket.  He flipped the top open, pulled out the last one, and put it to his lips.  After lighting it, he leaned back against whatever building was behind him- restaurant or retailer or something…he didn’t know, nor did he care.  The brick was nice and warm though, so that was good.  He stared blankly ahead, watching people move in and out of the restaurant across the street where his friends were, presumably, enjoying themselves.  He should feel light as a feather after that raving review from his editor, but he didn’t.  Eyes closing, he leaned his head back against the brick and focused on the smell of smoke.

Oh Starboy- don’t you know those are bad for you?

Another drag.  Another exhale.

Yep. I know. Very bad.

Drag.  Exhale.  Drag.  Exhale.  He frowned then at the sound of his name, and lifted his head to look around.  It wasn’t a familiar voice, which meant it was someone who recognized him but he didn’t know them, and he refused to sign anything or take pictures when he felt like this.  Goddammit- why wasn’t this cigarette doing its job?  No one should be able to see him behind a cloud of smoke, and the smell was supposed to deter them!  

He looked down at his phone and texted his sister with one thumb.

Loki: Oh absolutely.  I’ve no doubt they LOVE the spontaneous whiplash I provide.  Also, “boringly stable” sounds magnificent.

Hela: That helluva drug girl didn’t fall for a “boringly stable” man, so, maybe stop wishing it away.

His eyes nearly popped out his skull. “What the fu…” he trailed off to growl under his breath instead as he tapped his response.

Loki: What even...I can’t...what kind of bullshit take is THAT?  I need head meds to not OFF myself after the delusional rush of tripping on my own goddamn chemicals for two straight months wears off- when all that’s left of me isn’t even ME, but just carbon moving through empty space in the shape of something resembling someone who answers to the name Loki Odinson.

Loki: But sure- I’ll stop wishing that this suffocating, stifling, Sartre-esque hell would stop knocking on my mental front door every few months for DECADES because MAYBE my girl wouldn’t have given me a second glance if I wasn’t a bit...moody.

Her response was immediate.  It was as though she’d written it prior to his text because she’d known what he would say.

Hela: Could you just, for once, not DEFINE yourself by that thing you ‘need head meds’ for, LO?  Is that ALL you are?  Do you think that is all SHE sees?

Head shaking, he scoffed. “Try looking at the bright side, huh?  Piss off, sis.”

Loki: Not interested in looking for silver linings right now, thanks.

He sent the text and started typing a new one.  Talking about Sig made him want to punch something.  Burn something.  Break something.  Yes, he wanted to break anything and everything because his girl was breaking HIM.

Hela: Loki-

Loki: Listen, I’ve had too much to drink, and it’s making me anything but excited to talk about Sig, so I think we should just talk later.

Hela: Okay, Loki love.  Please drink lots of water.

Eyes rolling, he typed his last text.

Loki: Thanks for the advice, Dr. Odinson.  Bye now.

After one final drag from the poison between his fingers, he tossed the cigarette butt on the ground, and squashed the cherry with the toe of his boot.  Looking both ways, he crossed the street again, downright ignoring the person (or group of persons…whatever) who had said his name.  And speaking of his name, as soon as he pushed through the doors again, he heard Val say it, and when he looked up, she was waving him over to the corner of the bar where his closest friends were gathered.  As he approached them, he forced a smile for Val’s sake.  She raised her glass and cleared her throat when he came to a stop at the outer edge of the group.

“A toast to this man right here,” she said, absolutely beaming as she pointed to him, “a man for whom I would take thousands of bullets.”

He felt his jaw tighten reflexively, the muscles behaving as though on auto-pilot, and he swallowed, trying to relax his face.  Dammit- Another dollar, boy.

“When most people see you, Loki, I think they see nothing but excessive privilege.  I mean, look at you, boy!” She gestured up and down the length of his body. “You check all those obvious ‘success’ boxes.  That said, those people don’t know you like I do.  I know the odds of survival weren’t in your favor, hon.  The mental deck was stacked against you in ways that none of these lovable morons will ever know, but I know because I have been with you by choice every step of the way for three decades.”

Oh god.  He might need to fake a sneeze to cover up the growing lake in his eyes, and for all he knew, Val might talk for another ten minutes.

“I’m showing my age here, but-” she waved a hand and chuckled “-whatever.  Listen, I don’t remember much from the 80s, but everything I do remember from then centers around Loki.  I was five years old in 1988 when I met a boy who would become my forever best friend.”

Maybe the floor would be thoughtful enough to open up right under his feet.

“Awwwww,” Thor patted his head, and Loki swatted him away as Val continued speaking of him as though he deserved the world just for being him.

If only Sig felt the same…

“I was too little to know ‘I’m going to hang out with this boy every chance I get for decades’, but I did know that you were so fun, and you were definitely on a different level.  I couldn’t put it into words obviously.  I still can’t.  I’m not a critically-acclaimed writer like some people.  I just knew I liked being around you so much.  For instance-”

“Ohhhhhh we gettin’ stories ‘bout Starboy now,” Sam said, wiggling one eyebrow at him.

Before he had the chance to say “I WILL CUT YOU” in his most venomous tone, Val spoke over him.

“For instance,” she repeated herself, shooting a glare at Sam, “when when my nan threw a little birthday shindig for me at her house, complete with presents and pudding and my mates from school and family that I actually liked, I cried during the entire hour long drive to the party and continued to mope when we got there because I just wanted to go to Loki’s house and play on the tire swing and climb trees and watch Princess Bride and have pretend sword fights with him.  He was Westley, and I was Inigo Montoya because he looked better with a little ponytail, and I wanted to be able to say ‘I want my father back, you son of a bitch’ in a well-executed Spanish accent.”

Loki dragged both hands down his face. “Oh my god, Val, please stop.”

“It’s true!  Five year old Val Keri Brunna only wanted to be around this new tricky Loki kid.  No matter the cost.  And that never changed.  I felt like I was dying when he moved to the states with his family.  He is the reason I moved to New York.  I wish it hadn’t taken thirteen years for me to make it happen-”

I wish Sig loved me as much as you do, Val.

“-but I did get here eventually.  And you know what, Lo?  If I wasn’t here now, if I was still in England, you better believe I’d still be doing everything in my power to get across the goddamn pond.  To get back to my best friend for life.  To get back to the guy who all those twats insisted that I was in love with but just didn’t know it.  Jesus, how many times does a girl have to say ‘I’m ONLY attracted to girls’ before it hits them that I’m not lying?”

Despite feeling like a pathetic, undeserving thing, he chuckled, then gestured to Carol with his chin. “They might believe you are into girls when you get married to one on December 8.”

Once again, his best friend beamed at him, radiating warmth and happiness, and he hated himself for wishing that smile was coming from someone else.  Someone who wouldn’t stick by his side for three decades like Val had.  Someone who couldn’t even give him three years.

“Jealous, are we?  Don’t worry, hon,” she said, smile still in place, “you’ll get married to one soon enough.  I’m sure of it.”

Oh shit. Oh no.

His eyes flicked toward Sigyn, and for a split-second, he thought he saw the corners of her mouth curve upward.  As soon as he saw it though, it disappeared.  As did she.  As in, turned her back on him, zig-zagged through the crowd, and bolted up the stairs leading to the Prince Street exit.  Mouth falling open, he stared after her.  He was vaguely aware of Val’s voice coming closer to him, but it was hard to hear over the sudden ringing in his ears. Oh god, he was going to be sick.

“Lo?  Hon?  You okay?  What happened?  Is Sigyn okay?  That was…that was supposed to be a joke, hon.  I’m so sorry.” A pause, a different voice- this one sounded tinny, like a voice over the phone – another pause, then Val spoke again, though not to him.  “No, I don’t know what happened to him.  He just…froze.”  Her hand was on his arm, shaking him a bit. “I’m trying to, Hela!  Lo, hon, please.  Did you take something?  Xans?”

For hell’s sake, NO, I didn’t take a Xan.  But I SHOULD HAVE.

“Smoke something?”

Yeah, a LEGAL cig, and it did NOTHING.

“Loki??  ANSWER ME.  Are you starting to OD on me?  Oh my god.  Shit.  Hey, Bucky?  Did you see him take anything?  Did he use your pen or something??”

“What?  Hell no, I didn’t let him use my pen, and he wouldn’t take it if I offered.  He won’t go near anythin’ with THC in it.  All I saw him have was two drinks… maybe?  Hey, come on, Lo man, talk to me.  Darcy, hey where’d Sigyn go?”

Away from ME, that’s where.

“She said she felt sick, then she left to go home.”

My girl is gone.  I’ve lost my girl.  Oh my god, this isn’t happening…

“You let her go alone??  Jesus, doll, it’s two in the goddamn mornin’!”

“Woah, calm the hell down, Buck-O.  She didn’t give me more than five seconds notice, alright?  And her building’s only three blocks from here.  Four-minute walk tops!”

“Yeah well, lot can go wrong in four minutes.”

“Come on, Bucky, it’s Soho, not a damn war zone.”

Prince Street IS my war zone.

“Complacency like that will turn any place into a war zone, doll.  Trust me.”

Does he mean American foreign policy? Or when falling in love with Sigyn Frey blows up in my face three months shy of three years later? – the latter being the more destructive of the two, of course.

“I can vouch for him on that.” Was that Sam?

This was… this was awful.  There were too many voices, each one muddling horribly with the next and worsening his own cacophonous internal screaming for Sig to PLEASE COME BACK! God, could everyone stop talking?!

“Ugh. Shut. Up. Sam.” Lewis? Chatty Kathy herself?  Annoyed with someone for not shutting it?

THANK YOU, LEWIS.

“Lady, I got shot over there too.  Scars to prove it.  My wingman was killed in a supposed ‘safe zone’, so sit your princess-ass down.”

Not all scars are visible, Sam.

“Oh my god, one soldier I can handle.  I’m not listening to this shit from two of you.” Heels clicked loudly on the stairs.  Probably Lewis.

“Wait… where’re you goin’?!”

“Anywhere but here!”

Don’t let her leave, JB.  Don’t watch her walk away.  You’ll regret it forever.

“Is that my sister on the phone?” It was Thor’s voice.

Loki’s skull was going to explode any moment now. Two versions of Loki Odinson stood in Mercer Kitchen.  The visible and invisible.  The façade and the truth.  Illusion and reality.  The former, surrounded by a group of humans who loved him for no bloody reason, was frozen in place, still as a statue, save for the barely-there rising and falling of his chest, wide gaze stuck on the red exit sign over the doors at the top of those stairs.  They couldn’t see the real Loki, and that was for the best.  Real Loki had a vice-like grip on his head, his fingers splaying as they dug into his scalp.  Leaky, red eyes were pinched shut, and his jaw was on the floor, allowing the wretched sound of a shattered heart screaming in agony to escape from the prison made of bones, not bars, surrounding his chest.

On October 1st, 2019, I was a 36-year-old loaded gun, a bottle of Oxy, a noose around the neck, a razor to the wrist…

And Sig won’t save me this time.

“Here, hand it to me.” Thor again.

Goddamn LOUDMOUTH.

“Hela?  Yeah, it’s Thor.  I know you know.  Yes… no… what do they look like?  Blue, oval-shaped… does he keep them in… okay… she said to check for a pack of spearmint gum… sorry… an empty pack.  Are they in his pocket?  Wait, front or back?  Oh… jacket… uh he’s not wearing a jacket.”

Loki felt someone shoving their hands in his trouser pockets.  They had to be Val’s hands, right?

“Phone.  Keys.  Wallet.” Val scoffed, then lowered her voice.  “Flip-knife.  Hate that thing.  Shouldn’t even have it in here.”

Yes, they were Val’s hands, and her pointy little fingers were digging into Loki’s skin under the fabric.

“Nope, no gum.  Loki, hon, do I need to take you to a hospital?  Answer me, or I swear I will.”

He finally found his voice. “I’m not fucking OD’ing.”

Still feels like dying though.

How fitting for a dying star boy.  Had Sig said “I swear I won’t let you die, Starboy” or was that just something he’d written in a stupid book?  Either way, he couldn’t breathe in this place that was technically a basement, where everyone was crowding him and touching him, and their concerned voices had his blood boiling under his skin.  Real Loki was trying to break free, and he couldn’t let them see the truth.  Shrugging out of Val’s hold, he pushed through the crowd, ran up the stairs, and out the door.

“Oh my god, Loki!” She was on his heels, grabbing his elbow as he burst out onto Prince Street a few blocks east of the building that he needed to get to now.  War zone or not, bloodied and bruised and beaten half to death or not, he wasn’t laying down his arms without one last fight.

Ignoring his best friend, he turned right and started walking… fast.

“Lo?  LO!  Tell me what the hell is wrong!” She tugged harder on his elbow.  If not for the adrenaline, he’d realize how tight her grip was, maybe even feel the finger-shaped bruises forming under his skin.

How poetic that Sig’s apartment was west of here.  Sunrise was five hours from now, but even if that star were showing its brilliant face over that horizon this second, he was walking away from it.  He was going in the wrong direction, trying to be kind and rewind the tape to the beginning of 2017, or at least to the halfway mark- back to 2018, when he’d written a 350-page novel for someone he couldn’t live without.  For his sunlight. He halted mid-step, eyes moving from their intense focus on the pavement up to the light-polluted October night sky over New York City instead.  So many clouds… only clouds.  No stars, no moon.  Just artificial lights from the concrete jungle below.

“Thank god,” Val breathed, loosening her grip as he stopped. “Where are you going, and will you let me help you get there?  I need to know you’re somewhere safe, Lo.”

His gaze lowered from the dull, thick layer of flat, lifeless, stagnant, grey clouds, and he turned to frown at her.

Safe?  What place is SAFE?  

“Maybe east is safe,” he said, barely loud enough for her to hear it.  He looked at the pavement again. “Safer, that is.”

Her eyebrows pulled together. “What?  I don’t understand.  You’re freaking me out, hon.  Did something happen with her?  Oh my god… did she hurt you?”

Lifting his eyes to hers once more, he shook his head.

Not the way you mean, Val.

Her shoulders relaxed, looking more than a little relieved, but after several silent seconds, she faltered. “Are you going to hurt her?”

Keeping his unblinking eyes on hers, he didn’t respond- verbally, that is.  Could one feel their eyes turn dark?  As in, was it possible for him to see a shadow where it shouldn’t be, appear right in front of his face?  He swallowed, his jaw hurting from clenching it too hard.

“Lo,” Val’s voice turned a shade darker than the shade he imagined his eyes to be, “are you planning to hurt Sigyn?”

His fingers twitched.

I think I will, yes.

“Of course not,” he said, pocketing his hands lest they give away his true answer by curling into fists.

Welcome to Prince Street.  Here we make love and make war on repeat until we collapse in on ourselves like the dying stars we romanticized in our “live fast, die right” love-turned-horror story.

“Are you lying to me?” she pressed.

Bending to her eye level, Loki pressed back. “Depends on your definition of ‘hurt’, Val.”

If not for the headlights of a taxi reflecting on the shop windows across the street as it turned the corner from Mercer onto Prince just then, he wouldn’t have seen the tears shining in her eyes.  The hazy beams glowed behind her back, creating a befitting and timely halo for this absolute angel, and swallowing the lump in his throat, he yanked his hands out of his pockets and threw his arms around her neck.  She hugged him back without hesitation, squeezing his ribs so tightly, he could barely breathe.

“I mean physically,” she croaked into his neck. “The man I know wouldn’t do that, right?”

“Absolutely not,” he said firmly against her temple, keeping his mouth there for another minute or so until she loosened her hold on him.  He started to step away, but she grabbed the back of his neck with both hands, and he instinctively dropped his forehead to hers.

“You’re worth drowning for, hon,” she said shakily, “anyone who doesn’t feel that deep in her bones doesn’t deserve you, okay?  Don’t ever forget that.”

Before he could protest, before he could say how he couldn’t agree to those terms because what if the one girl he wanted would not drown for him?- before he could say how fucking terrified he was of that all-too-real possibility, Val pressed her lips to his cheek, just outside the corner of his mouth.  Oh god… he knew it was a harmless kiss, certainly meant to be platonic, but she lingered just a touch too long, and his body was responding a touch too well to the combination of her soft lips and that genuine love in her voice.

This is my best friend.  Best FRIEND.

Mirroring Val’s stance, Loki put a hand on her neck, then turned his head slightly toward her face so he could kiss the opposite corner of her mouth.

Oh my god, this feels good.

Technically, they were kissing each other’s cheeks, but if either of them moved one centimeter to the left… god DAMN.  It would be everything he wanted.  Nothing but warmth and love.  No fighting.  No frustration.  No fear that he was just a really good fuck, and that was all he was good for anymore.

Oh my god, I need to step back.

No, if Val felt uncomfortable, then she could step back.  This wasn’t cheating.  Loki wasn’t cheating.  He was not cheating on his girlfriend with his best friend, and Val sure as hell wasn’t cheating on her soon-to-be wife with her best friend.  He was only returning a friend’s affection.

Step BACK, you vulnerable fool.

Loki stepped closer instead, allowing himself this one moment to pretend Val were his girl.  To imagine that Val didn’t just love him, but was in love with him.  To imagine that she wanted him- that she could want any man at all, and that she would have chosen him out of all the three-and-a-half billion other available options.  To imagine that he wanted her.  To imagine that this glorified peck on the cheek was about to turn into a toe-curling liplock, complete with open mouths, and tongues, and her hands in his hair, and down his trousers like they damn well should be.  To imagine that this was Sigyn Elena Frey, and that she thought Loki Odinson was worth drowning for.

If you are THIS desperate for Sig, then let Val go, turn WEST, and don’t stop until you unlock the door of that third floor apartment with the gold number eight on it.

Dropping his hand from her neck, Loki clenched his jaw and finally stepped back. “Sorry.  I crossed a line there,” he said, reaching up to rub his temples.

Val opened and closed her mouth several times, squinting at him, clearly confused. “What?  A kiss on the cheek?  I mean, people who don’t know us and saw that could interpret it as something else, I guess, but Carol wouldn’t be-”

“I crossed my line, Val,” he spoke over her, giving her a withering look.

Her mouth fell open. “Lo, I’m so sorry.  God, I didn’t mean it like that at all.”

“I know,” Loki said, taking another step back and turning around again.

Turning west.

He was walking the wrong way.  Pushing against the natural turning of this planet.  The turning of time itself. Trying to force that second hand to tick counterclockwise.  Giving the universe a middle finger, telling it to fuck right off with it’s forced linear timeline in this awful 3-dimensional cage.  If the “right” way was constantly spinning east to west, 24 hours, 7 days, 52 weeks, each subsequent “new” year forcing more silver in his hair and more lines around his eyes, but didn’t do so while allowing Sig to walk beside him in the process, then bloody hell, Loki refused to go the right way.

He didn’t need to go back to 2017 if the typical “backward” was his “forward”, yes?  One foot in front of the other could be all kinds of wrong for him.  He was so well-skilled at driving in reverse gear, after all.  Whipping back into a street spot was as natural to him as going 90 on the highway while whipping around all those speed-limit-sticklers.  Shifting up into 6th required pulling the stick back, did it not?  Perhaps he’d been born with a propensity toward chaos that wouldn’t allow him to live by the proper laws of physics.

Loki’s legs were taking him closer to Sig’s building, and he didn’t care if that was right or wrong, forward or backward.  What did that matter anyhow?  Who decided what any of these polar opposites meant in the first place?  Up was down.  Down was up.  Or maybe up and down didn’t exist at all.  Maybe they did, but he only existed in the space between.  Maybe Sig did too.  Maybe everything else other than that in between was a distraction for their combined consciousness to have a feeling of going places, to keep them from feeling lost in a fog leading nowhere.  Maybe those ups and downs- those highs and lows, the rapid shifting of gears, the rolls and the crashes -were invented by their own minds to help them cope with the fear of normalcy.

Maybe that was Sig’s problem with him.  Maybe January 1st 2017 hadn’t been the beginning for her.  Maybe it had simply been the start of her ending, and she’d only just now realized it, and was now running for her life.  He’d drawn her into him like a charismatic villain.  The good girl was charmed into a fast car with the archetypal bad boy.  

He’d been exciting as hell, and she hadn’t understood why, but now she knew.  Now she’d seen the mania sending him to the stars to live like a god- to live like a star boy -only to then blast him with a heavy dose of reality that kicked him right back to the pull of Earth’s relatively weak, but still lethal, gravity.

Oh my GOD, get out of your head, or you’ll turn east like a goddamn coward.

“Your body is right here next to me, but your mind is in outer space, Starboy,” Loki whispered to himself, repeating the words his girl had said to him in her doctor’s office in May.

Shit- the tears filling his eyes had to be saltier than the Dead Sea.

DEAD Sea?!

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he breathed, rubbing his burning, dead eyes as his legs continued moving of their own volition.  His head really was out there with those dying stars, wasn’t it?

All he had to do was keep walking west.  Just focus on the sound of his boots on the pavement rather than any of these angsty postmodern metaphors bouncing around inside his skull.  Just don’t get lost in the word tornadoes.

Step.  Step.  Step.  Step.  Step.  West.  West.  West.  West.  West.  He wouldn’t let the sun dip below that horizon.  He would chase it west until his legs gave out on him.

But…it’s been dark for hours, LO.  The sun already set… yesterday… in September.

Yeah well, it’s been October for two hours now, and MY sun is in that building ten feet away, and I’m not letting her go.

Not without a fight.

“Do not go gently into the night…” Loki said, pushing through Sigyn’s doors, completely unaware that he was making sounds with his mouth, that he was speaking words from the most heartbreaking poem of all time.  Hand on the railing, he climbed the stairs two at a time, saying each word on beat with his steps.

“Do.” Step. “Not.” Step. “Go.” Step. “Gent-” step “-ly.” Step. “In-” step “-to.” Step. “The.” Step. “Night.” Step. “Rage.” Step. “Rage.” Step. “A-” step “-gainst.” Step. “The.” Step. “Dy-” step “-ing.” Step. “Of.” Step. “The.” Step. “Light.”

Third floor.  Last step.  Round the corner. 

There’s the gold number eight on my girl’s door.

Oh, stars above, he’d loved that gold number since the first time he’d seen it in January 2017. If this turned out to be the last time he ever laid eyes on that door…

Dear god, BREATHE, boy.

Pulling his keys out of his pocket with one hand, Loki reached up to rub his eyes with the other.

Another dollar in the jar, boy.

He found the right one and shoved it in the lock. 

Twist. 

Breathe. 

Click. 

Breathe. 

Turn. 

Breathe. 

Open.

BREATHE!

Chest heaving, Loki bolted into Sigyn’s living room as though she might be waiting on the other side of the door and would slam it in his face if he didn’t move fast enough.  His eyes swept over the room, starting with her little kitchen on his left, table directly ahead, couch to the right of that, and finally her open bedroom doors.  Directly behind those doors, she stood there staring at him with wide eyes, her phone in her hands.  Just then his phone chirped at him from inside his pocket.

Gritting his teeth, Loki swallowed nervously. “That was from you, correct?”

Slowly, Sigyn nodded once.

Afraid to hear his own voice shaking like some pathetic little lovesick weakling, Loki said nothing, but rather held Sigyn’s gaze for at least twenty seconds, the silence sucking up what little available oxygen existed in the space between them. How could such a deep chasm separate him from her in this cramped, claustrophobic shoebox New York apartment?

Sig really had taken her career-obsession several thousand steps too far, becoming an architect of impossible distance, building another wall right here in front of his face. God help him, why did he have to be in love with this ghost of a woman who didn’t even have the courage to use her voice to tell him it was over? Was she actually ending this via a fucking text? The nearly three years of his life that he’d devoted to Sigyn Elena Frey were about to be erased with one swipe of a thumb across a phone screen.

Sig is treating me the way I treat my shittiest, most unsalvageable chapters.

Right click. Select all. Delete.

Lip trembling, Loki finally asked, “What does it say?”

He refused to read it.  He didn’t want to see digital representations of letters strung together into words and spaces that said anything other than “I love you to the stars and back, forever dream boy”…or something along those lines.  Hearing her break up with him would be painful enough.  He hardly needed to add a visual layer to this almost-certain last gasp before the dying of the light by having to read it.

The shadow under her jawline moved, evidence that she was swallowing what he hoped was a gigantic lump in her throat.  Oh hell, he hoped it was hurting her trachea.  He hoped her heart was burning worse than his.  She finally let him hear her voice.  It was shaky as hell.

Good.

“What’s the point of texting if the recipient won’t read it?”

His already clenched jaw tightened further.

Oh, so that’s how we’re going to play this.  FINE.

Nostrils flaring, Loki grabbed the edge of the front door, which he’d been too distracted to close behind him when he first walked in a few minutes ago, and with the force of a tennis player’s backhand at Wimbledon, he slammed it shut.  Sigyn visibly winced, reminding him of that time he’d thrown his Ray Bans through the neighbor’s patio table in Montauk.

Right before I told her she SHOULD BE SCARED of me.

He regretted having said that, though it was probably true.  God, he hated reality.  He saw her scoff before the sound reached his ears.  It was perhaps a strange thing to ponder in that moment, but he couldn’t help but marvel at the speed of light kicking its speed of sound rival in its noisy ass right before his eyes.

The speed of DYING light.

Don’t go gently…

He heard her say “that strong arm is SUCH a turn-on” then suddenly she was in his face, and her hands were on the back of his neck.  His eyes blew wide.  Christ. How had she moved that fast?  Her grip was tight, but not painful.  No, it was just right- such a convincing grip, one that suggested he was her lifesaver in open water after being tossed overboard.

“And you are such a good actress, Sig,” he snapped, shoving his hands in his pockets because they wanted to be all over her, and they deserved better than to touch someone who didn’t think he was worth drowning for.

“It’s not acting,” she snapped back, yanking her hands away, possibly leaving scorch marks behind, “it’s sarcasm.”

Eyes locked on his, she walked backwards, which if his earlier philosophizing had been accurate, might have technically been forward.  Not that it mattered, since she was moving in one direction or another away from him.

Don’t go gently, boy.

He followed her, and she took more backward steps until her back was against the wall.  Coming toe to toe with her, he sucked in his cheeks, annoyed that they were doing the same song and dance routine- the “back me into a wall, then pick me up, and do me against it” routine.  Naturally, this meant that she was turned on by his strong arms, which made her a goddamn liar.  Not that he didn’t also fall into that category, but he was allowed to be a hypocrite because she was a hypocrite too.

“I can’t do this anymore, Loki,” she mumbled, lowering her eyes when he leaned his weight into her.

“Can’t do what?” Seriously.  He needed clarification.  He wasn’t interested in continuing this demeaning and ,for all intents and purposes, masochistic game wherein he subjected himself to the figurative equivalent of getting slapped in the face for loving this woman to the stars and back.

Lips trembling, she put her hands over her eyes, then dropped them to hang uselessly at her sides. “I can’t keep letting you in.”

His heart- what was left of it -stuttered to a stop, and he took a step back.  This was it.  The last gasp.

NO.  Don’t go gently.

Head shaking angrily, he stepped forward again and set both hands on the wall behind her, caging her between them.  Trapping her in the space between.

“Letting me in… where?” he asked, his eyes roving over her wet cheeks. “In… your apartment?”

She didn’t respond, so he inched closer. “In…” his gaze moved to her lips “…your mouth?”

Her eyes snapped up to his, and perhaps it was unintentional, but her tongue poked out to wet her lips.  God, those long lashes looked so thick… so heavy.  He wanted to feel them fluttering against his navel.  She seemed to realize her mistake a second later- probably because his hips were flush with hers, and denim couldn’t hide his reaction beneath it -and her tongue disappeared behind her lips again.

“No,” she whispered, shaking her head. “I don’t mean in my body.”

He closed his eyes, trying to will away the another-dollar-boy tears.  Shit.  Was that answer code for “I would allow you to fuck me, if only I could allow it without getting emotionally attached to you”…?  But… weren’t they nearly three years too late for that?

Blinking several times, he removed one hand from the wall and slid it into her hair.  Such an obvious and pathetic, last-ditch effort to keep her in his life. “Does ‘your body’ include your heart?”

He’d assumed she would slap his hand away, but she kissed him instead.  Holy f- the pounding in his chest shot straight down his torso and below his belt.  Heaven help him, he was such a lovesick fool of a man for this girl.  Her arms wound around his neck, and she moaned, doing exactly what she’d said she “couldn’t do” only seconds ago.  She was letting him in… or so he hoped.

“Am I worth drowning for?” he asked without thinking against her lips, only realizing he’d done it when she put a few inches between their mouths.

Sigyn gave him a narrow-eyed response. “Am I?”

Loki’s breath hitched in his chest.

Oh…

that…

was…

IT.

Letting go of her, Loki turned on his heel and walked to the door. “I’m done.”

“WHAT?” Sigyn ran after him, grabbing his shoulder.

Val’s earlier words echoed in the air around him-

“You’re worth drowning for, hon, and anyone who doesn’t feel that deep in her bones doesn’t deserve you…”

Gritting his teeth, Loki grabbed Sigyn’s wrist and yanked her hand off of him, then he reached for the doorknob.

“Please don’t leave!” Sigyn shrieked, crying into the back of her hand. “Oh my god, Loki, all I did was question if you feel that strongly about me!”

“It wasn’t your question to ask at all!” He shot back, twisting the doorknob. “It was my question, and you threw it back in my face, Sigyn.”

He’d “full-named” her, as Sig would say, and it made him sick to his stomach that he’d done so while walking away from her.  The creaking of the door as it opened was ominous, sounding exactly like a dying breath.

I swear I won’t let you die, Starboy.

He was halfway to the stairs when those words- words he’d handwritten in Troy’s book, and also added to the final chapter of Satellite Tides, which no one had read yet -slithered across his mind like a snake in the grass, tempting him to turn back around, to sail back to his forever dream girl siren, his little white rabbit that he would follow through a bad trip Wonderland even if it ended with him losing his head.  Honestly though, it wasn’t that silent sentence, but the silence itself- the lack of her footsteps behind him -that made him turn around.

Sigyn was standing in her open doorway, chewing her lip and staring at him with crying eyes.  Stomach in his throat, he walked straight back to her, but she held up a hand.

“Absolutely not,” she said, visibly shaking. “That right there-” she pointed to the stairs “-that was the last call.  I will not ever watch you do that again.”

She stepped back and started to close the door, but against his better judgment, Loki put his shoulder against the wood and pushed it open before she could shut it all the way.

“You’re not doing that to me,” he ground out, tossing his keys on her kitchen table. He wouldn’t let her slam the door on him. He was staying here goddammit, whether she liked it or not.

Sigyn gaped at him. “This is my apartment.”

Her hands were on his chest, pushing against him.  Pushing him backward.  Toward the door.  She wasn’t strong enough to do that. 

I must be LETTING her do it.

“Last I checked,” Sigyn said through her teeth while grabbing his keys and shoving them in his front pocket, “I’m the one who pays thirty-nine hundred goddamn dollars every thirty days to live here, not you.  Go back to your fifteen-THOUSAND-dollar per month, top-floor, PERFECT room-with-a-view that you made your king-size bed in, and get the hell out of my apartment!”

With one final growl, Sigyn pushed him into the hall and slammed the door in Loki’s face.  Feeling like he’d been kicked in the chest, punched in the gut, stabbed in the back, he stared at the gold number eight, fresh tears pooling in his eyes.  He almost knocked on it.

Almost.

Struggling to breathe, wondering momentarily if he would hyperventilate in this pathetic third floor hall with its flickering horror-film-worthy lights, Loki turned away from the door instead.  His legs were heavier than lead, but he walked to the stairs nonetheless, pausing to look back at that gold eight before setting the heel of his boot down on that first of many steps back to the concrete below.  Lost in his own head, he couldn’t hear Sigyn sobbing on the other side of her door.

NEW YEAR SAME HABIT CONTINUES IN CHAPTER TWELVE: HAPPY NEW YEAR, LOVE.

Visit the New Year Same Habit main page HERE.

Chapter links: ¹ We’re Just Strangers ² Hello, My Name is Loki ³ A Helluva Drug ⁴ Written in the Dying Stars ⁵ This Helen of Troy (Worth Drowning For) ⁶ STARBOY INTERLUDE ⁷ Live Fast, Die Right (Crashing Hard) ⁸ It’s Called “Being Present” (Hit the Gas) ⁹ Burn it to the Ground, Sig. (Just Don’t Burn Me) ¹⁰ Hotel Hell, Closing Bell ¹¹ Do Not Go Gently (Run West, Boy) ¹² Happy New Year, Love.

CHAPTER TEN FEATURED MUSIC:

“Take What You Want“ by Post Malone ft. Ozzie Osbourne and Travis Scott

CHAPTER TEN THEME SONGS:

“Bleeding Love“ by ASTR (for Sig)

“Good Things Fall Apart vs. Sad Songs“ by Illenium ft. Annika Wells (for Loki)

What Readers Have Said

About CH 11 “Do Not Go Gently (Run West, Boy)”

“I think they do need time apart to work on themselves but MAN that was rough! It’s a really good ending before a new beginning.”

-Mischief76, on CH 11 “Do Not Go Gently (Run West, Boy)” (AO3)

((AO3)

“We know they get back together, but they Have to find a way to move past fight and fuck. It’s not sustainable for either of them.”

-Ferbette, on CH 11 “Do Not Go Gently (Run West, Boy)” (AO3)

“Alright so I know nothing about this pairing (aside from the Marvel movie characters) and I don’t even remember how I got here because that was 6 hours ago and I read the whole thing. What the fuck I am in awe. I feel like I just had a fever dream. Who are you???? This is the first fanfic I’ve read that I believe is a legit work of art (and I’ve read a lot, trust me.) I can only assume you’re some bigshot writer doing this for shits and giggles. Fingers crossed that Sigyn and Loki get their shit together and Loki doesn’t end up like DFW. Mental illness sucks donkey balls.”

-BR, on CH 11 “Do Not Go Gently (Run West, Boy)” (AO3)

“BR, If you like this fic so much, then you should definitely check out Jen’s other stories as well. Her Fearless Immortals trilogy is amazingly beautiful and worth reading. Just saying…”

-Maïté (in response to the above reader’s comment about chapter 11 of New Year Same Habit) (AO3)

---

*Notes from the author, which contain chapter 11 spoilers, upon original posting in December 2020: Ouch. Ouch. OUCH. *hangs head* I know, I know. You want to kill me, and I can’t fault you for that. But you HAD to know this one was coming. Especially since I started with a Dylan Thomas poem and the “setting/scene date and time” said it was October 1, 2019 at 2:00 am. I assume that if you read this far, that is a memorable date because it is the date (well… the month, at least) that Sig mentioned in the first chapter as “their awful breakup in October” and again later on as “the earliest hours of October.” I swear, ugh, I don’t know why I do this to myself. October is my favorite month, yet I decided to go with that date as their break-up. *flings up hands* I don’t mean “horror movie” scary. I mean that feeling of dread within the context of a relationship that’s running on fumes. “The last gasp” if you will. I’ll leave it up to you all to imagine what that text might have said, not because I’m trying to make you freak out on Loki’s behalf by forcing his anxiety/fear on you, but because… doesn’t the angst of their October 2019 breakup make the relief of their New Year’s Eve 2019 make-up that much sweeter? You know, when we FINALLY get back to the original December 2019/January 2020 setting… 12 chapters later. You might disagree with my constant “tease” method, but I can’t help it. I prefer the slow build up to the GOOD stuff. Or maybe I had a subconscious intent to finish this story in my real world December. *shrugs* As I write these notes, it IS December, and the bittersweet cherry on top is that the final chapter will “go live” on December 31, 2020. Only 1 week from today. Oh my god… I can’t even. I will be a mess.