~On the road to Montauk, 11:33 pm, June 7, 2019~

Clenching his jaw, Loki glared at the line of traffic up ahead.  They’d managed to avoid the worst of the typical Friday night highway rubbernecking on 40 miles of I-495, and here they were, nearly to their exit, and suddenly it was bumper to bumper.

“Brilliant,” he sighed, rapidly downshifting as he checked his mirrors and zoomed across multiple lanes of cars to take whatever this closest random exit was.

In the passenger seat next to him, Bucky snorted. “The irony of your impatience to get there faster is that you just put us on a road that will take 20 minutes longer.”

Reaching up to open the moonroof, Loki shrugged. “Time is relative.  20 minutes of wasting gas on not moving will feel like an hour.”

“Hey, Lo man, I get it.  I hate driving sticks in stop and go,” Bucky said, gesturing to the shifter under Loki’s hand, “but we just missed a golden opportunity back there to have a real heart to heart about our mutual hatred of every other driver on the road.”

“We can still do that without subjecting ourselves to their idiocy,” Loki pointed out, grabbing his water bottle from the cup holder, and twisting off the lid.

Bucky set his arm on the open window, letting his hand dangle off the side. “Yeah but see now I’m not able to think of all the things I hate because I’m too busy enjoying the wind in my hair.”

“Does that summer breeze make you feel fine, JB?” 

Putting his face in his hands, Bucky bent forward and laughed into his palms. “So…fine,” he managed between heaving laughs.  After a moment, he gathered himself and sat up straight again. “You should pull over.  I wanna drive.”

“Okay, but just so you know, if you’re looking for a conversation, that won’t happen.  I will pass out in thirty seconds after you take over.”

“Nah, you’ll pass out as soon as your ass hits the seat.  And fine by me.  I only care about gettin’ the chance to take this fuckin’ gorgeous M4 on the ride of its life.”

“It’s been on the ride of its life every second that my hand has been on the stick,” Loki said coolly as he pulled up the parking brake and opened the door.  When he passed Bucky on his way to the other side of the car, he lightly hit the back of his shoulder, then settled into the passenger seat.

Bucky clicked the seat belt into place and released the brake.  There was a fairly lengthy moment of silence before he responded. “I’m havin’ a seriously homophobic mental response to that phrasin’, Lo.”

“How very progressive of you to check yourself before you wreck yourself,” Loki replied, forcing a glib tone despite wanting to laugh as his friend revved the engine and pulled back onto the road.  He reached up to rub his suddenly very tired eyes.

“I’ve known you for two years, and I still can’t tell if you’re bein’ serious or not half the time.  Is it the accent?  The ‘I slept through every lecture at Oxford but still graduated first in my class’ attitude is off-putting as hell, you snot-nosed Brit.”

Loki didn’t miss a beat. “I went to Harvard, you dull as fuck Yank.”

“Harvard, Oxford, tuh-may-tuh, tuh-mAH-tuh.” Bucky waved a hand. “I think they rank first and second on the ‘top schools for arrogant dicks’ list.”

For the love, if Loki weren’t rubbing his eyes, he would roll them hard enough to make his eye sockets hurt.  When it came to highly demanding and extremely exclusive academia, JB was one to talk.

“Says the 2006 First Captain of the corps of cadets from the United States Military Academy at West Point while knocking his shiny gold class ring and clinking glasses with five-star generals.”

Cue over dramatic eye roll in 3…2…1…

“I’ll give you the five-star general thing, but I don’t knock my goddamn ring.  Don’t remember the last time I even wore it.”

Yep.  His eyes were probably stuck up there now.  Tremendous.

“It must be wonderful to lack that much self-awareness,” Loki droned, idly dragging his nails back and forth over his denim-clad knees several times, buffing the already smooth edges.  

“My GOD, you need to rein in those smug mic drops before your high horse bucks you out of that saddle.”

“Alright, we’re done—” he pinched the bridge of his nose “—you clearly prepared these clapbacks prior to this conversation and are reading them from an invisible three-KNOCKING-ring-binder, and I refuse to banter with cheaters.” He couldn’t help the smile spreading across his face as his friend burst out laughing, which shocked Sigyn and Darcy awake in the backseat.

Darcy shrieked as Sigyn’s flailing arm whacked her face. “Son of a bitch, Siggy, OUCH.”

“Blame Chuckles McGee up there, not me!” Sigyn shot back, then groaned as Bucky spoke over them.

“Fuckin’ hell, Lo man,” he laughed, pulling the shifter into sixth gear and zipping down the entrance ramp back onto the highway, “I feel like I’m tryin’ to outtalk a master in word wizardry or some shit.”

Loki shrugged. “Well that’s on you, peasant, for not knowing that the president and fellows of Harvard College, with the consent of the honorable and reverend board of overseers and acting on the recommendation of the faculty of arts and sciences, conferred on Loki Odinson the degree of Master of Arts summa cum laude in word wizardry or some shit on the fifth day of June in the year of our lord two thousand and seven.”  His friend was legitimately wheezing now.  Good god, the man sounded like he was on the verge of passing out.

“Breathe, JB,” he said, laughing quietly as the wheezing continued. 

“Jesus, Bucky—” Darcy grabbed onto Loki’s headrest “—slow down!”

“Shut up, Darce—” Sigyn leaned forward and squeezed Bucky’s right shoulder “—don’t listen to her.  Fast is fun.”  She winked at Loki when he rolled his head sideways to look back at her.

“Feel like I gotta devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other,” he said, merging into the light traffic, “but I don’t know which is which.”

Darcy rolled her eyes. “They don’t call it ‘speed demon’ for nothing.”

Loki turned completely around in his seat to eye her. “Surely, you are not suggesting that you are an angel.”

“Hell yes, I am an angel,” she said, drawing an invisible halo over her head.  Biting into a smile, she inched toward him, and he instinctively inched backward. “Everywhere but the bedroom.”

Narrowing his eyes, he pursed his lips. “Oh, that’s right.  JB mentioned that you kept your devil horns on last Halloween when you two fucked on my bathroom counter at the party I mistakenly invited you to.”

Her eyes blew wide, and she smacked Bucky’s arm. “What the hell?  Why would you tell him that?!”

“Street cred, doll.” He flashed a toothy smile. “Street cred.”

“Ha. Ha.” She flopped back into her seat. “You can forget getting any street cred tonight.”

“Hey, ease up on me, woman,” he said, eyeing her in the rearview mirror. “Coping with jokes is all I have.”

“I imagine that vape pen helps too,” Loki pointed out.

“Course it does.  I could use some MDMA therapy on the side, but nope…can’t legalize somethin’ that might cut into all those pill-pushin’ profits.  Jesus Christ, I took four bullets in one arm for those corrupt, lyin’ shits in Washington goin’ on and on about weapons of mass destruc—”

Loki was listening to him, but he also wasn’t.  He’d heard this before.  His friend was desperately in need of a vent session.  He ought to refer JB to his doctor because whoever was in charge of this man’s treatment was doing a piss poor job.

Focus on your pal’s words, LO.

Loki blinked several times to clear his head, centering his attention on his friend.

“—sick and tired of all these jokers actin’ like Bush and Cheney were better than these clowns we got now.  I mean come ON; can’t we all be equal opportunity haters of these power-hungry monsters?  Shit, Lo man.  I was a high school senior watchin’ from Prospect Park when those damn planes hit, ya know?  I couldn’t getta hold of my Ma ‘cause the cell networks were flooded.  Least you were actually with your mom, not that bein’ at her place like FIVE blocks from it was a good—”

Loki cleared his throat.

I should have stayed in La-La Land.

He was most certainly not anxious to relive that horrendous September day.

I fucking DESPISE September.

His mum had been helping him load up his car with his belongings to take to Harvard with him that day.  Nearly eighteen years later, and he could still smell the smoke if he didn’t shut the memory down immediately.

“—then I risk everything and nearly lose a goddamn arm, but they can’t risk losin’ a donor.  Fuckin’ cowards.  Swear to god, I still feel the lead in my left arm whenever I—”

“I thought the first rule of Delta Force was ‘you do not talk about Delta Force’,” Loki spoke over him, hoping to pull his friend back from the edge with some degree of humor.

…and to pull MYSELF away from the edge.

Bucky smirked, looking sideways at him. “Delta Force sounds like a buncha highly trained flight attendants.”

“Must be why they retired their infamous team name,” Loki laughed.

Coping with jokes, indeed.

“Hard core special forces men couldn’t possibly be associated with such a feminine occupation,” he added, further goading his former special ops friend. “What do they call those Delta boys now anyway?”

Bucky clucked his tongue. “If I tell ya, I have to kill ya.  So… your call.  Also, don’t go insultin’ two professions that require putting their lives on the line every day for you.  What those folks do up in the air all day, surrounded by bitchy passengers complainin’ about that cryin’ baby three rows back sounds like a worse hell than anything I ever did- gettin’ shot four goddamn times included.”

Loki pressed his lips together, watching his friend’s jaw clench angrily while shaking his head.  He opened his mouth to make another joke, but Bucky beat him to it.

“Sartre’s No Exit hell coulda been set on an airplane.  L’enfer c’est les autres.”

“Oh fuck,” Darcy piped up from the backseat.  She leaned toward Sigyn, speaking out of the corner of her mouth. “I get so hot when he speaks in French.  And I’m not just referring to full tongue kissing.”

Sigyn snorted, keeping her eyes on Loki’s face since he was turned toward Bucky.  God, if there was an almighty creator, that creator was the most talented artist of…ever.  Her boyfriend’s side profile was absolutely perfect.

Loki raised an eyebrow.  He didn’t need to be fluent in French to recognize those words that his friend had just quoted.  Hell is other people—the famous line from a play that he could barely get through because it was the ultimate claustrophobic nightmare.

“Hey JB—”

“—problem is,” Bucky continued his thought, speaking over Loki as though lost in a Memory Lane trance, “I’m your perfect disillusioned, shell shocked, postmodern candidate, but all that nihilistic shit gets under my skin.  If you’re gonna burn it to the ground because you see it for the smoke and mirrors bullshit that it was, then at least TRY to create something better from the ashes you leave behind you.”

Okay, now it’s getting too real.  Far too real.

Elbow on his knee, Loki set his forehead in his palm.

I need to end this conversation NOW.

Ever think he might have some goddamn perspective that you would benefit from hearing even if it hurts, LO?

“—flyin’ back from Kuwait, and I’m lookin’ out the window at this HUGE dust storm.  Sorta just hit me that this thing looks absurd and chaotic on the surface, but if you twist it just right, if you really LOOK at it, you start to see that all those muted, dull brown clouds that look like they’re just bleedin’ all over each other are really a full-spectrum, technicolor, kaleidoscope instead.”

Loki lifted his head, and for a few seconds he just stared, wide-eyed and silent as the grave, out the windshield.  James Buchanan Barnes, former US Army Ranger, Aviator, Special Forces Operator, Purple Heart and Medal of Honor Recipient, and…Neo-Romantic Philosopher?

What. Even.

See?  PERSPECTIVE.

JB had a better grasp of mid-century existentialist dread than his own goddamn editor at a literary publishing house, for fuck’s sake.  Blinking away the shock, Loki ran a hand through his hair.  That last sentence—something about bleeding colors and kaleidoscopes—was more beautiful than anything his brain had concocted in a month at least.  Maybe he should just have JB write the rest of book three in his stead.  He let out a sad little laugh.

“I’m guessin’ you’re so quiet ‘cause it seems weird to ponder shit like this when you’re in a warzone,” Bucky said, grinning slightly. “But there’s alotta time for thinkin’ over there.  So I got two sheaths on my belt.  One for a knife.  One for angsty, migraine-inducing books.”

Brow furrowing, Loki blew out a breath. “That’s wise.  One can use both knives and words to cut their enemies.”

“Only thing I know about knives is to stick ‘em with the pointy end,” Bucky said with a shrug.

Alright, Arya Stark.

“Um…” Loki raised an eyebrow, “speaking as one of your level 4 classmates who has been in an actual knife fight with you, you might be underestimating your skills.  I think traces of my blood are still on the mats.”  He shook his head as his friend (of course) laughed.

“I watched you bust twenty guys’ nuts in that session before you and I went one on one with each other.  If you thought I was gonna play nice, you’re outta your goddamn mind.”

Eyes rolling up to the ceiling, Loki clenched his jaw.  Stars above, JB had no idea.

“Consider yourself lucky that you haven’t seen me out of my mind,” he said flatly, suddenly aware that Sig’s eyes were boring into the back of his skull.

He looked at her over his shoulder.  Her iridescent silver star eyes didn’t waiver from his, and oh, what he wouldn’t give to be alone with her in this car—wishing he was driving and could pull this M4 off the main road and take her to cloud nine in the backseat and forget the dull, muted brown clouds hovering over them and turn it into a full-spectrum kaleidoscope of color.

---

~Next day, 3:04pm, Saturday, June 8, 2019~

“It’s you and me against the girls, right?” Bucky held the volleyball net pole steady, squinting at Loki as he bent down to anchor the last rope into the sand.

Tying off the final knot, Loki swiped his hands across his swim trunks to get the excess sand off.  He heard his knees say “THANK YOU”—not literally of course—as he rose from that deep squat.  Grabbing his water from the cooler, he popped the lid off.  He downed nearly half of it while pulling another bottle out of the ice, then shouted “think fast!” at JB and tossed it to him.

Bucky barely caught it in his left hand just in time before it whacked him in the face. “God damn, that woulda hurt.  We teammates or what?”

Loki shrugged, still drinking, and set his other hand on his hip. “Yes, we are.  Unless you’re tired of winning.”

“Oh I would still beat your ass,” Bucky said, waving a flippant hand. “Just thought we’d try somethin’ different for a change.”

“I don’t enjoy hurting your feelings, JB, but…” Loki sighed, returning his water to the cooler, “if we switch partners, you’ll eat sand throughout the game.  Sig and I would crush you and Lewis.”

“Oh so you’re just assumin’ Sigyn wants to be on your side of the net?”

“Of course I am.”

“Why?” Bucky adjusted his sunglasses. “Just ‘cause she’s your girlfriend?”

Loki shrugged one shoulder. “More so that she wants to win, and I am clearly superior to you.”

“Huh.  Alright.  We’ll see.  How about we ask her?  Hey Sigyn!” Bucky shouted through his hands at the two women throwing a frisbee back and forth down the shore.

“Hey Bucky!” Sigyn shouted back at him. “Tell your woman she has to actually run to catch the frisbee!”

“I’m not a goddamn retriever!” Darcy yelled, grabbing the neon orange frisbee out of the water.

Sigyn threw up her hands. “Neither am I, but it doesn’t stop me from actually moving my legs to chase it down!”

“Stupid fucking game of fetch!” Darcy tossed the disk at her angrily.

“That’s it!” Sigyn jumped and caught the damn thing…barely…before it shot into the sea. “I’m aiming it at your head from now on!”

“You know what,” Darcy growled, stomping across the sand, “I think I might actually prefer playing volleyball with these asshats who always win just by taking turns spiking the ball on us!”

“WRONG,” Sigyn yelled, pointing a finger at her best friend, “they spike it on YOUR side.  You just fucking stand there while I dive for it and eat sand every time!”

“Oh booooooo.” Darcy tapped her finger to her chin. “Here’s an idea.  Stop diving for it!”

Sigyn rolled her eyes, trailing slowly behind Darcy as they walked toward the net.  She glared at her so-called best friend reaching into the cooler to grab a Mike’s Hard Lemonade.  This wasn’t fun.  She wasn’t enjoying this trip.  The four of them had come to Montauk a good five times last year, and it was always a blast, but this time?   Well, this time she only wanted alcohol.  That was the only fun part- the wasted “I don’t care what’s about to happen on Tuesday” part.

When she got to the net, she growled quietly, pushing her sunglasses higher up her nose.  The sunscreen and sweat were making them slide down over and over.

“Sorry, got distracted,” she said, forcing a smile as she looked up at Bucky who was looking back at her like he could read her thoughts.

Such an empathetic guy—he probably IS reading them.

She wouldn’t say no if he offered her some of that good stuff ‘for PTSD’ in his vape pen. “What did you need me for?”

Twirling the ball on the tip of his forefinger, he approached her. “Wanna be on my team this time?”

Eyes popping, Darcy spewed the drink she’d been guzzling. “Excuse you WHAT? Now I’m playing against three people? Nope. I’m done.”

Loki rolled his eyes. “One would think it was obvious that JB is asking to switch partners, but once again you defy expectations, Lewis,” he droned, gathering his hair at the nape of his neck and winding an elastic around it.

“Ugh, the man bun is so god damn distracting,” she said, plopping down onto her beach chair and waving a flippant hand. “I can’t think of snarky comebacks.  You do this shit on purpose, Starboy.”

“He does what shit on purpose?” Sigyn raised an eyebrow behind her sunglasses, fighting the juvenile urge to go over there and yank Darcy’s girl bun hard enough to pull her to the ground and shove her face into the sand.

Cool it, hon. This is your best friend, and you love her, and she loves you, and she is JOKING.

Yeah well…I’m not okay with her calling him STARBOY. She never does that outside of the “damn he really is hot” context.

You BOTH joke about each other’s men like that—it’s non-threatening, non-competitive goofing around.

Today is different. Today it feels like she’s trying to take him away from me.

You could not be more wrong about that, and you know it.

Trapped in her hypersensitive, overprotective, insecure, completely irrational head, she heard an echo of her name.

“Siggy?”

And again.

“Sigyn?”

Once more, and this time, she knew the voice.  She really loved that voice.

“Sig?” Loki pulled his Ray Bans down his nose just enough to look at his girl over them. The look on her face was concerning, like she might get sick or pass out.

No no no, not again, sweetheart.

Ducking under the net, he took two exceptionally long strides to close the space between them—about ten feet—but she got to him first.  She threw her arms around his neck so hard, he nearly fell backwards.  He hugged her back, shooting an apologetic look at JB.  His friend nodded, clearly understanding, and pointed to the house, mouthing “go ahead, we’re fine.”

Loki kept one arm around her as he waved weakly at his friend, then walked back to the house with her still clinging to him.

---

~Dinner that night~

“Okay but seriously, I make the best chicken parm,” Darcy sighed, tossing her napkin on the dining room table, and stretching her arms over her head.

Bucky nodded, humming in agreement, his cheeks full of the entree she had prepared for them.

“I gotta admit it’s even better than my ma’s,” he said, his eyes popping and face reddening when he swallowed the too big bite. “Jesus.  Almost choked on that.”

“That’s what she said!” Darcy and Sigyn shouted in unison, both nearly falling out of their chairs from laughing so hard.

“Yeah slap those knees harder, girls,” he managed to say while coughing into his elbow. “It’s adorable.  Love how you guys are snorting like pigs at my expense.”

Sigyn spit her wine back into her glass to keep from spewing it across the table as Darcy continued giggling uncontrollably.  Not that it wouldn’t have been hilarious to see red wine splattered on her best friend’s face, but everything in this entire beach house was white. She had no idea why Mrs. Frigga Odinson had chosen to go with the one color that showed every piece of dirt and the slightest spills.

Hello?-SAND GALORE.

Loki’s fingers brushed her left cheek then, pushing a few strands of her hair that were basically drowning in her drink—ew—behind her ear.  She turned toward him, her chest tightening when that broad, knee-weakening smile spread across his face.  If she wasn’t sitting down already, she’d crumple to the floor and cry an ocean’s worth of tears.

An Atlantic-sized ocean of Sigyn Frey’s making…

FUCK, I miss him so goddamn much already…I can’t BREATHE.

“Oh noooooo,” Darcy made a face at them, pointing to Loki’s hand in her hair, “please don’t start this love me tender show again.  Like…I get it.  I’d be mooning over this one—” she thrust her thumb toward Bucky “—if he was leaving in a few days, and I wouldn’t be able to touch him at all for two months or whatever, but…”

Jaw clenching, Loki looked at her sharply, and she put a hand over her mouth.  Good.  He hardly needed to be reminded about the inevitable.  Maybe it was the anger in his eyes that shut Lewis up.  Or maybe she saw Sig’s bottom lip trembling.  Whatever it was, he would take it.

Bucky pushed his seat back and stood up, taking Darcy’s hand and his plate. “Come on, doll.  Help me with the dishes and leftovers.” She nodded, wiping her thumbs under her eyes and went with him to the kitchen.

Clearing her throat, Sigyn grabbed the wine bottle and lifted it to her mouth—who needs a stupid crystal stem anyway?—and gulped every bit of it in one go.

Face screwing up at the overly sweet taste, she twisted her entire body toward Loki as he took the empty bottle away and set it on the table again.  She slumped forward to lean her forehead on his shoulder, and his arms came around her.

Her eyebrows pulled together when the next song on her best friend’s aptly named “Ear Candy” playlist streamed through the built-in sound system.  Darce must have turned up the volume since leaving the table with that huge smile on her face.  Sigyn sighed, not thrilled with the lyrics.  Come ON, hearing some girl singing “I got champagne for the pain, black out all the memories, running through my veins, I don’t really wanna feel anything, I’m my only enemy” was a bit too on the nose right now.  Her best friend was probably dancing in the kitchen, happy and free as a bird.

Must be nice.

Twisting her head took up at him, she watched Loki lean toward her mouth, and she met him halfway, closing the barely-there distance between each other at the same time.  Within seconds, he was smoothing his hands up her sides, and one of her legs was between his.  Chest heaving, he unbuttoned her shorts and slid his hand into them.  He groaned, teeth scraping over his bottom lip as she put a hand over her mouth to stifle a moan.  They heard Darcy’s voice from the kitchen then.

“Soooo… after we do these dumbass dishes, you should put on those dog tags and take me to pound town.”

Loki ceased his movements, his eyes slamming shut.  From the other side of the wall, he and Sigyn heard JB set several dishes in the sink with more force than necessary.

“Stop making references to my dick in front of other people, or you’re not gonna see it tonight,” he shouted, and Sigyn pulled back from Loki’s mouth just enough to turn and see Darcy stick her head around the doorway to the kitchen.

“Emptiest threat ever, am I right?” her best friend said, biting into a smile, then she wiggled her eyebrows at her friend. “Oooooh, am I interrupting something?  Niiiiiice.  Get it, Siggy.  Don’t let your massive Manhattan man go to waste.  Only 3 days!”

She disappeared behind the door again, and they heard a muffled slap (presumably on her backside) followed by a squeal and a giggle then fast footsteps going up the stairs.

Sigyn mumbled “for fuck’s sake, Darce, really?” under her breath as Loki glared at the empty doorway.  Pedal to the metal, his ‘on edge but mostly fine’ mood accelerated to ‘destroy everything’ in 3.5 seconds.  Reminding himself to be gentle, he lifted Sigyn’s hands and leg off him, then pushed his chair back forcefully and stood up.

“Think I’ll walk down the shore,” he said tightly, heading out the back door and slamming it behind him.

Apparently, this was his breaking point.  He didn’t deserve this shit.  He was halfway down their long, private boardwalk that led to the water when he heard the door slam again.  He didn’t need to turn around to know it was Sig, since those beyond aggravating lovebirds that he should not have invited wouldn’t leave the guest bedroom for another hour at least.  

“Loki?” Her voice was muffled by the crashing waves and unusually strong offshore winds as his mind traveled to the memory of his girl’s pissed off voice screaming at him three nights ago…all over a job that she did not need but would not quit and come to Europe with him:

“Filing a complaint makes for the dullest plot ever, I KNOW, but he left me alone after I did that!”

“Sig, he left you alone because he saw ME kissing you in your office, and recognized me!  You left to talk to Carol about a draft, then he came in, asking if I was ‘Odinson’s boy’, and I nodded and told him to stay the hell away from you, or he might as well say goodbye to his precious TribecArchiteDeCo.  THAT is why that son of a bitch won’t show his face when I’M with you!”

“Oh my god, you threatened to DESTROY the company I WORK AT?!”

“I threatened to destroy HIM, and this time it won’t just be a measly verbal THREAT.”

“Are you…are you talking about ASSAULTING my boss?”

“If by ‘assaulting’ you mean SHATTERING Tangelier’s face—”

“How does that help me if you get your own ass arrested, Loki?!”

“So now you’re saying that you DO need MY help?  A minute ago I was a shining knight boyfriend who needed to rein in the overprotective testosterone!  Make up your fucking mind, woman!”

Loki shook his head, fighting to push away words of the past as his feet pounded across the wooden boardwalk.  Glowing orange and pink on the western horizon, the setting sun wasn’t bright enough to warrant wearing sunglasses, but he yanked the pair of classic black Wayfarers hanging from the collar of his thin, dark grey t-shirt and put them over his eyes nonetheless.  He continued forward, bounding down the steep stairs two at a time, ignoring the sound of her footsteps on the wooden planks as she ran after him.

The clean, white sand crunched softly under his bare feet as he approached the water.  He pushed his hair behind his ears, though the strong gusts continued to force the too long strands right back into his face.  He would have pulled it back if he hadn’t left his damn hair tie on the bathroom sink.  Eyes rolling, he slid his hands into the side pockets of his shorts.  He heard her voice right behind him then.

“Loki, come on, don’t pull away from me.”

Nostrils flaring, his eyes blew wide.

WHAT?

Ripping the sunglasses off his face, he whirled on her and lowered his head to her level to look directly in her eyes.

“You are the one pulling away from me, Sig.”

She reeled back as though he’d hit her.

“Excuse me?”

He knew she was about to cry, which meant he was about to feel like a dick.  God, he was so tired of this.  He was so tired of walking on eggshells around her, of letting her lead, of being so goddamn submissive when what he really wanted to do was tell her to either pack up her office and quit that completely unnecessary job or pack up her things from his apartment.

He saw her eyes narrow for a split second, then she turned sideways, squinting into the breeze and the setting sun.  Her hair seemed to levitate behind her, exposing the curve of her jaw and neck as her face took on the same warm, orange gold hue as the fading sun.  He stared at her, unable to tear his eyes away because the wind was pressing her loose, thread-bare white tank top into her front, molding it to her body like a second skin.  Oh hell, if she wasn’t wearing that bathing suit underneath it, he would have an absolutely mouth-watering eyeful right now.

She turned to look at him again, her gaze dropping to his mouth, then his neck, his chest, his stomach, and lower, staring at his black knee-length, drawstring jersey shorts like she could see through them.  

Head shaking, he scoffed under his breath, and she shot him a glare at the sound.

“I have not been pulling away at all, Loki.  I have been running back to you as fast as I possibly can!  Every step forward, no matter how seemingly insignificant, has been because I don’t want to keep letting you down!” she shouted, throwing her hands up.

His jaw dropped right to the sand at his feet.

“When have I ever suggested that you were letting me down?”

Putting her palms over her eyes, she blew out an uneven breath.  After a silent moment, she dropped her hands.

“Oh, you mean other than just right now?” she asked through her teeth, pointing to the ground angrily, as though the gesture more accurately emphasized ‘this second’.

He opened his mouth to respond, to defend himself, but she didn’t let him.

“Do you think that I can’t tell when you’re frustrated or angry or annoyed with me?  You don’t have to expressly say it, Loki.  All of April I was a mess, and I’m sorry, alright?”

Running both hands through his hair and leaving them at the back of his neck, he hung his head.  Did she really think he was holding some ridiculous grudge against her for feeling completely lost for that first month after her friend died?  After that cancer came flying out of left field like an EF5 tornado, leaving miles of overturned cars, shards of glass, and jagged steel frames that used to be gorgeous, glittering skyscrapers?

“Sig, I’m not angry at you for being a mess after your friend died.  If anyone can relate to being a mess, it’s me,” he pointed to his chest. “You know that.”

She shook her head. “Loki, you’re—”

“No no no, I’ve said jackshit about this for two months, so hear me out,” he spoke over her, “I didn’t tell you what to do, and I never complained about missing us.  You made that doctor’s appointment a month ago, not me.  No one forced you to do that.  You call all the shots, Sig.”

He paused to take a few deep breaths.  He also needed a second to make sense of his now racing thoughts.

“How can you possibly not see that?” he asked, eyebrows raised. “After a month of misery, you get two weeks of decent sleep, and then you do a 180.  From bone-chilling, winter storms to spring sunshine, all thanks to sleeping.  You only needed one goddamn pill for two weeks!  How wonderfully uncomplicated!”

“Are you saying you wish I had needed more meds, and for longer?” Her eyes started to water, and she held up a hand before he could respond.  “Because that’s what it sounds like.  Sounds like my quick turnaround is in opposition to your personal experience, and isn’t giving your tricky brain the emotional validation it n—”

“Don’t you dare finish that sentence,” he said tightly, counting his breaths to contain the anger trying to rise his chest and spill out of his mouth in the worst way.

She pressed her lips together, wishing she could turn back time.  Ten minutes ago, they’d been well on their way to sex, but here they were instead.  Fighting.  Maybe this would end in sex too.  Maybe this was what it meant to be a “fight and fuck” couple.  She was not a fan.  At all.

I only have three days left with him, and THIS shit is what we’re doing with our time.

“Loki, this isn’t how I want to say goodbye,” she said, voice shaking.

“You wouldn’t have to say goodbye to me if you could just say goodbye to that job—” he held up a hand “—and do NOT go off on me for ‘throwing my bank account in your face’ which I have heard some version of many times, and every time you say it, it’s infuriating because that is not what I’m doing!”

Calm. Down.  

He inhaled sharply through his nose, the brisk wind burning his sinuses and making his eyes water.  Hands flexing, he exhaled, and started again.  He had every intention of checking his tone at the door.  He really did.

“SO WHAT if I want to help or take care of you or just give you nice things that you don’t need because I want you to have everything you want whether it’s essential or not?!”

Off to a GREAT start—

“Dammit, Sig, I offer to take care of rent for a bit so you can quit working at that specific job with that boss who you should press charges against and find a new better job like you say you want to, and you fly off on me!  I am not trying to take away your independence!  I do not think of you as my property!  I’m not trying to buy your love or trick you into depending on me like some 1950s housewife!  And I sure as hell am not one of those ‘shut up and make me a sandwich’ twats, so stop acting like I am!  I swear to everything, you act like I have some evil plan to make you quit your job, then knock you up, then lock you up in some picket fence prison in suburbia!”

He couldn’t contain it.  This awful energy had been brewing under his skin for too long.  This was what he got for trying to control every single pathetically flawed, head in the clouds, worthless, traumatized cell in the clusterfuck inside his skull.  He was blowing up at his girl for no reason.  She did not deserve this.  At all.  He knew that.  But he was doing it anyway.

“You keep flipping switches, and I can’t keep up!” Gritting his teeth, he pointed to his head. “And I am the God of Flipping Switches!”

YEAH, CLEARLY.

He pushed his hair behind his ears over and over and over because the damn wind just would not let up, and as his hand made a pass in front of his eyes for the tenth time, he saw his hair tie  wrapped around his wrist.  So…it wasn’t on the bathroom counter.  It was with him this whole time.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!

Ripping the thing off his wrist, he gathered every last strand into a haphazard bun at the nape of his neck and wound the elastic around it as more words continued to fly out of his mouth.

“I’m glad you seem to be in the best mood of your life, Sig, because it sure as hell beats feeling like our world has gone up in flames, but bloody hell if I have to…” he stopped, growling as his train of thought derailed.

He wanted to hear a crash, an explosion, a boom of deafening thunder- anything loud enough to drown out the pack of wolves snarling at him.  God the sound was horrendous.  It was terrifying.  And it was his own voice.

Oh my god, I sound like my FATHER.

He ought to have his not-so-silver tongue cut out as punishment for it.  Without giving it a second thought, he yanked his sunglasses off the top of his head, reeled back on one leg and hurled them at the neighbor’s house because it was closer than his.  They shot through the air like a bullet and, EXTREMELY unexpectedly, crashed right through a glass table on their deck as though his iconic shades had the force of a World Series MVP arm behind them.  Sigyn’s shriek was as loud as the crash itself.

“Jesus, Loki!  You’re scaring the hell out of me right n—”

“Goddamn right, you SHOULD be scared of me!” 

THE FUCK ARE YOU SAYING, LO?!

Her responding flinch was violent as her hands flew up to cover her mouth, and he knew that was the exact moment he should drop to his knees and apologize until he was blue in the face.  Had he just told her that she should be SCARED of him?!  What was this, his own damn villain origin story?!  Eyes blowing wide, he held his hands up as if in surrender.

“I did not mean that…” he swallowed, shaking from the adrenaline, from the norepinephrine, from the testosterone, from a cocktail of hellish over-stimulating chemicals that seemed to think some hungry lion was ten feet from him instead of a picturesque beach and a gorgeous girl who loved him infinitely more than he deserved.

“Sig, oh my god, sweetheart, I am so unbelievably sorry.  That was an absolutely unforgivable thing to say to you.  I don’t even…” he trailed off, hanging his head so he wouldn’t have to see the damage.

He rubbed his temples for twenty seconds or so before looking up at her again.  Her lips were trembling, and the pained look in her eyes made him want to throw up.  It made him want to turn on his heel and run away like an absolute coward.  It also made him want to run straight to her, wrap his arms around her, pick her up, and carry her with him everywhere.  He opened his mouth to say more, but she spoke first.

“Thank you for apologizing,” she blew out a breath. “I would be out of here otherwise.”

“And you would be right to go,” he swallowed again, even more nervous now.

But, oh dear god, please DON’T.

She went up onto her toes, trying to see over the tall grass on the dunes. “For heaven’s sake, how hard does one have to throw a pair of glasses that weigh maybe a tenth of a pound for them to go through a table?  I’d be in critical condition if you’d thrown them at me.”

His jaw nearly unhinged at the suggestion. “I would never ever ever ever-”

“I wasn’t saying you would.  I know you wouldn’t do that,” she waved her hand then pulled it down her face. “If you managed to not knock out Amora’s lights, I have nothing to worry about.”

What do kids these days say?  FACTS.

“Can we not yell, and also please set aside the whole money thing because that is a side issue that I do not want to get into.”  She ran both hands through her hair.

He nodded several times and licked his lips. “Yes.  And just so you know, sweetheart, that’s not a sideissue.  It’s a NON-issue.”

Must be nice to not have any money worries, LO.

Shut. Up.

She sighed slowly. “You are being so unfair to me.  Telling me that I ought to go to this huge length, to uproot my career and fly to Europe to make those eight weeks easier to bear?  You didn’t have to sign that damn contract!  Why won’t you just fucking quit?  You don’t need HC if you would just self-publish!”

His instinct was to lunge ten steps forward, leaving no space between them, then grab her chin, and force her to look up at him while he explained why that was unfair to him actually.  But after that atrocious blow up, charging at her and grabbing her would be positively idiotic, so he approached her carefully instead, giving her every opportunity to move away if she so chose.  To his unfathomable relief, she didn’t move an inch.  She stayed right where she was, even allowing him to come toe to toe with her.  He took a deep breath, then released it slowly.

“Do you know the ends and outs of publishing?  Of how book deals work?  You do.  I know you do.  I agreed to three books in my contract, each of which requires promotional work.” He paused to take another deep breath lest he allow his unpleasant emotions erupt again. “I wish I hadn’t signed that dotted line, but I did.  You are correct that I don’t need HarperCollins to publish my work.  However, I also don’t need a lawsuit on my hands for breach of contract.”

She stared up at him silently, the crease between her eyebrows deepening a little.  He waited a few beats, surprised she had nothing to say in response, but she only continued looking at him.  Shaking his head, he dropped his arms, and slid his hands in his pockets. 

Waves crashed behind him, filling the silence between them.  The water rushed up the beach, soaking his feet and pulling the ground out from underneath him as the wind blew wisps of hair across her beautiful face.  He kept his eyes on hers as she inched toward him, and he couldn’t help but slide his hand up into her hair.  She just responded too well to the hair thing for him to not do it.  Her fingers curved over the crook of his elbow, moving up his forearm to graze his fingers as he threaded them through her hair.  She stroked the veins along the sensitive inside of his wrist with her thumb, her gaze moving down to his mouth.  Wrapping her other arm around his waist, she pressed into him.

Doubtless this wouldn’t lead to anything but another cold shower, but apparently his body needed a hit of whatever he could get his hands on.  Lower potency is better than nothing if it saves you from the hell of withdrawals.  She opened her mouth as he leaned down to her face, the tip of her tongue grazing the underside of his as his grip on the back of her neck tightened to keep her in place.  She hissed softly, perhaps because his grip was a bit too tight, but if he didn’t hold her still, she might take her lips away, and that was all he had.

Hello, my name is Loki…

They separated, just enough to get a proper breath.  He moved to kiss her again, but just as his lips touched hers, she released a shaky, all too vulnerable breath.  Eyebrows knitting together, he opened his eyes.  The absurd fear of not feeling her mouth on his was overtaken by what was indeed his need to be the smartest in the room.  He needed to know why she was pulling away over and over and over.  He needed to know.  Needed to know.  No option.  He leaned back just enough to see her face and blew out a breath.

“Would you please come with me?  I’m not asking you to quit your career.  Just that job.”

She frowned up at him, dropping her hands from his waist and wrist.  He let go of her neck, considering very carefully the next words out of his mouth.

“Ignoring the glasses through table debacle—” he cleared his throat “—I’m not juvenile, nor am I entitled.  I am just so confused right now, and that is pissing me off as much as having to leave.  Do you think you deserve to be overworked, underpaid, and sexually harassed?  Is that why you won’t resign?”

She gave him a look.  Was he serious?  Did he think that little of her?  That she was choosing to self-flagellate because she thought she didn’t deserve anything better?

My boyfriend is NOT this idiotic.

“Is that a real question?”

“Yes, actually!” He threw his hands up. “That’s how goddamn screwed up your decision is- so screwed up that I can’t find the method in your madness!  Of all people, I ought to understand and read emotions like an open book.  I’m not some mouth-breathing caveman incapable of relating to the woman in his life, yet here I am, feeling exactly like one.”

Shaking her head, she put a hand over her mouth, blinking back tears.  After a good ten seconds, she moved her hand up to her eyes, letting out several small gut-wrenching gasps that made him want to pick her up and just hold her, but he couldn’t because she was backing away from him again, and what if that meant she needed space?  What if his arms felt like a cage to her?

“Loki, I don’t even…shit…you are looking at this the wrong way.  Just flip it around.  Don’t look at me kissing you until I can’t breathe but not following you to the ends of the earth without a thought as me—” she held up her fingers to make air quotes “—pulling away from you. Look at it compared to where I was two months ago.”

Jaw tightening, he looked sideways.

You are not serious, Sig.

He already had ‘flipped it around’a thousand times!  Trying to view things from her angle was exactly what he had been doing incessantly for a month, and it did not make sense!  Was she honestly telling him ‘look at the glass as half full, not half empty’?  Thanks, but no.  Certainly neither Starboy nor Sunlight were written by a goddamn optimist.  Eyes closing, he sighed.

“Let me try that again,” she said, sniffing a little then rubbing her nose and under her eyes, “because that sounded like some bullshit ‘be content with what you have’ answer, and I would be so pissed if our situations were reversed, and you said that to me.”

He raised an eyebrow.  Alright then, Sigyn Frey, Architect Extraordinaire and Powerful Reader of Loki Odinson’s Mind.  His girl knew him almost too well.  That, or they were the same person in different bodies.

She took a deep breath. “I went to a doctor that I didn’t know, which was so scary for me, because I wanted to get better for you, Loki.  I took that medication for you.  I knew how brutal it was for you to see me like that, so I pushed myself to get it together as fast as possible…for you.  It wasn’t some misplaced sense of obligation to someone who’s taking care of me.  It’s not reciprocity.  It’s just because, even during this sleepless walking dead phase, I always was and still am so goddamn mad for you.”

Her words, that last sentence in particular, were a broken record—I am so goddamn mad for you. I am so goddamn mad for you. I am so goddamn mad for you—in his head.  A beautiful, broken record that he hoped never righted itself.  God, things were getting real now, weren’t they.  This wasn’t supposed to be a gut-wrenching conversation.  He wasn’t supposed to need another dollar for the jar.  

She rubbed her eyes again. “Maybe my version of ‘fast as possible’ looks like slow motion to you.  My best sprint is nothing compared to what your phenomenal never-miss-leg-day body can do when you lace up those Nikes, but I swear I’m giving everything I’ve got.  I’m running on fumes, but I am still running, and it’s for one reason.  I’m willing to push through the pain, to keep lifting my exhausted, heavy as lead legs, for one reason.”

Oh god, he was going to make his lip bleed from chewing it this hard.  Surely his ribs were shrinking and squeezing his lungs because he couldn’t seem to get a breath.  One reason, she’d said.  He would ask what it was if his voice wasn’t completely useless right now.

Don’t make me ask. Just tell me.

She answered his unspoken question. “It’s because I see you at the finish line,” she gave him a half-hearted smile, and shrugged her shoulders.

Fucking. Hell.

His gaze had been locked with hers for several minutes already, but now?  Now he actually could not see anything but her.  Tunnel vision in its most literal sense, everything in his periphery faded to black because nothing else in the universe mattered.  This thing beating in his chest was out of control, pumping blood faster than new Nikes pounding the cold pavement up Greene Street, hooking a left at Spring and again on West Broad and skidding to a halt when the only thing that mattered slammed right into him.

“Then don’t you dare stop running, fast girl,” he said, trudging through miles of wet sand to get back to her, and pulling her into him the second she was within reach.

“I wish I were you,” she whispered into his neck as she tugged him down by his shoulders.

“What?” he frowned, squeezing her waist just shy of boa constrictor levels. “Jesus Christ, no you don’t, Sig.”

“Don’t tell me what I do or don’t want, Loki!” she growled, struggling in his hold until he begrudgingly released her. 

This conversation was supposed to be over.  This was the hugging part.  The ‘go back to the house and sleep it off’ part.  Apparently not.  She was looking at him as though she couldn’t decide whether she wanted to throw something at him or throw her body on him.  Well, if there were options, he’d prefer the latter please.  Of course she didn’t give him that pleasure, only flinging her hands up in frustration, then she narrowed her eyes at him and tapped her temple.

“You’ve dealt with all this head crap over and over for almost three damn decades but you keep going!  Give me some pointers here!  You were hungover and freezing your ass off.  It was drizzling and dreadfully dreary, and the streets were disturbingly empty save for leftover confetti and discarded, dead christmas trees that had more life left in them than you did, but you kept running!”

She’s quoting my book—my girl is quoting my book VERBATIM to my face.

Annoyance?—GONE—Replaced with ridiculous meme hearts circling around his head.  Every infinitely insane cell in his body was going to explode into a million glittery gold pieces of new year confetti, and if he ever floated back to the ground, his Sig would be there to sweep him up and put all his parts back together.  What had he been upset about a few minutes ago?  He’d yelled at her and thrown his glasses, but he truly couldn’t even remember why now.  He breathed faster, his fingers digging into his palms at his sides.

“You turned that corner and slammed into me at the exact second I needed you,” she continued.

Stop reading my thoughts, perfect girl.  It’s a dangerous game.

The rising river in her eyes looked like it would break the dam any second as her words flowed over him like perfect Montauk summer waves.

“I hate admitting it because I have disappointed the feminist in me to no end by being such a needy girl, such a helpless princess, but…” she let out a shaky breath, “Loki…god…do you seriously think you’re the only one who needed someone to swoop in and take away the too heavy chain you think you linked together and hung around your own damn neck because you’re fucked up enough to think you deserve to be crushed by the weight of it?”

Lips trembling, she took several steps back and shook her head, then she grit her teeth and answered her own question.  Loudly.

“NO!  I needed that too!  I needed to collide with you!” She pointed to her chest. “I needed my heel to catch on the crack in that uneven pavement.  I needed to almost fall backwards onto those café steps so I would have an excuse to grab your stupid perfect arms and fall into you instead!  I know I don’t have a diagnosable debilitating mood disorder, but that didn’t mean I had my shit together!  I swear to god I was just a one woman act faking my way through a 9 to 5 with a smile plastered on my face because big girls aren’t allowed to cry either!!  Know why?  Because all these jokers in this rat race to that top corner office rigged everything in their favor!”

He watched her take in a ragged breath, putting both hands over her eyes and keeping them there as her chest heaved.  He needed to wrap his arms around her.  Now.  Please.  Please.  Why did she have to pull away again?  Did she think that he wanted to get his hands on her so she would stop yelling?  Stop venting?  Did she think he would shush her?  Not at all!  She said she’d needed to fall into him on New Years 2017.  Obviously that hadn’t changed.

So come back and fall into my STUPID PERFECT ARMS and KEEP YELLING, love!

He took a step toward her, but stopped abruptly when she started shouting again.

“They’ll spew all this motivational crap about how all it takes is staying in school and hard work and you too can achieve anything you put your mind to and oh sure you can have it all!  Yeah, but only if you’re a fucking psychopath who doesn’t care who they have to step on to get there!  And since I wasn’t one of those monsters, it didn’t matter how hard I worked!  I was still a nobody that nobody except my mum and dad gave two fucks about with nothing but memories of ex-boyfriends who tossed me aside the second something with bigger tits and fewer loud opinions came along and stacks of unpaid bills on dirty piles of laundry in my shoebox apartment!”

Bring on those LOUD opinions, smart girl.  I can take it.

“And it didn’t matter that I actually had so much more than that in reality- I had a best friend who would die for me, I was healthy and wasn’t drowning in medical debt over something I had no control over, I actually could pay all my bills despite my whining about not having more in my account at the end of the month, I loved my shoebox, and oh my god I loved this city that I wasn’t from but I changed that on my own and then it was my home and I never wanted to leave!  Like, this is it-” she looked up at the clouds, her arms wide as she spun in a somewhat clumsy circle- “I found my place!  I might as well tattoo ‘I heart NY’ on my forehead at this point because that’s how much I love this absurd place!”

She dropped her hands, but continued staring at the clouds. “But none of that good stuff mattered.  It just kept hiding behind all these angry dark clouds that wouldn’t stop building and building and building.”

Fuck, he knew exactly what she meant.  He took another step toward her, but she stepped back again, and he grit his teeth.  Was this magnetic girl repelled by him because they were too alike?  She wasn’t supposed to be moving away from him!

Christ, sweetheart, let me HOLD YOU.

He tried another step, and this time she walked several paces toward him, and everything was right for a few seconds because, thank god, he was going to get what he wanted—she was going to let him hold her.  But she stopped a few feet before she reached him, and that was not acceptable.

“Sig,” he huffed out a breath, jaw clenching, “come here.”

She didn’t. “Loki, don’t you get it?  I only looked sunny and bright and smiley that day because I was looking at YOU!”

She flung her hand out toward him, then leaned her head back and shouted at the clouds through cupped hands.

“Hello, Forever Dream Boy! I don’t know this guy from Adam, but I AM GONNA, OR I’LL DIE TRYING.  Grey skies, be gone!  Winter? What’s that? Never heard of it!  Just look at him, Sigyn!  Fit as hell and smart and clever and tall with amazing hair and—” her wild eyes left the clouds and found his “—for the love, maybe best of all, you looked at me like I was worth looking at!”

He gaped, looking her up and down. “Worth looking at?” he repeated, starting toward her again. “Good lord, woman, have you seen yourself?!”

“Don’t interrupt me!” she shot back, pointing in the general direction of the neighbors’ house. “You had your little blow up back there, now I’m getting mine!”

Loki swallowed, eyebrows pulling together from the ache in his chest.  He was just trying to tell her she was gorgeous for pity’s sake.

“I felt like shit that day!” she shouted, pointing to her chest and moving forward a bit, “I was just as hungover as you!  Maybe even worse!  Stars above, I drank myself practically into a coma the night before because 2016 felt like a disaster of epic proportions!”

He blinked mutely, watching her abruptly bend down to pick up shells and seaweed then shriek like an extremely pissed off Sharapova while flinging them at the waves.

Is she stamping her foot?  She is.  She is 31 and screaming and stamping her foot and kicking up sand.  OF COURSE this is the woman of my dreams.

“My disgusting boss wouldn’t stop harassing me at work all year—” more grunts, more flying seaweed “—and I didn’t know who to tell or if I was just overreacting, and what if he fired me for telling, or what if no one believed me, or or or…god it never stopped!  I hadn’t dated anyone for two years.  Two. Years. Two—” she held up two fingers high over her head “—years!  My god, the only sex I had in one 24-month period was a string of inconsistent, unsatisfying, better-make-em-wear-two-condoms hookups that would make Tinder itself grab a bell and ring it at me while droning SHAME SHAME SHAME!”

Game of Thrones reference for the win.

Oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god, marry me, you insane unicorn of a girl.

“And why didn’t a decent chap want me?  The hell if I know!  I just know it made me feel like a dog.  And not a cute one!  But that doesn’t even work because all dogs are the cutest.  So no, I didn’t feel like a dog.  What’s an ugly animal…” She snapped several times, squinting at the sky, then threw her hands up when it came to her.

“Oh!  An armadillo!  Disgusting roadkill that even some cousin-kissing Appalachian hillbilly wouldn’t want!”

She screamed, dropping a clump of seaweed then jumped away as a crab skittered away from the clump.  Then she swiped her hair out of her face, growling at the creature as it disappeared into a hole in the sand, and kicked the same bunch of seaweed, checking for more creepy crawlers.  Finding none, she swiped them up again and resumed throwing the stuff as far offshore as possible.

“And ugh, oh my god, poor poor poor Carol had to listen to me bitch and moan about wishing that after dirty dancing and drinks and dinner I wouldn’t dig a divinely delectable deep dicking for dessert—”

Loki’s eyebrows shot to his hairline as his supposedly “grade A talented” brain attempted to process what the fuck those words were that had just dropped from his girl’s mouth harder than a Travis Scott hook.  Dig a divinely delectable…deep… dicking…for dessert?  That was…uh…seriously hardcore…

…alliteration.  

Teeth digging into his bottom lip, he groaned quietly, refocusing his attention on her as she continued shouting and throwing seaweed.  It was extremely hard to focus on listening to her rather than just stare at her mouth like some slack-jawed heathen now that a highly graphic image of dessert was spinning around in his head.  Difficult as it was though, he managed to get beyond Neanderthal mode quickly, and every new word from her mouth only confirmed what he already knew-

This girl is my endgame.  No option.

“—and I asked her why couldn’t I be bi like her, and was there such a thing as reverse conversion therapy, and she said ‘that’s not funny’ and I cried and cried and CRIED because every man on the planet was the worst, but for some god-awful reason I still wanted one of them to put me on some pedestal and tell me I was gorgeous—”

Oh my GOD, I have told her she is gorgeous THOUSANDS OF TIMES!  How many times do I have to say it before she’ll believe me?!  Does she think I’m lying through my teeth?!

“—and then one of my old school friends gets married over Christmas, and I was stuck being a bridesmaid for the third time just that year, and I had to do it in a hideous mauve dress that’s still in my stupid tiny closet because it cost a thousand pounds that I had to pay for, despite the fact that rent was coming up, and all that was coiling in my gut while knowing that I didn’t have someone to kiss at midnight!” She shrieked again, looking all around her feet for more things to throw, and stomping her foot when she realized she’d chucked the last available piece of seaweed in the immediate area.

“Where did it all go?!  Ahhh there’s some!” She stomped toward another clump of scraggly stuff about ten yards away.

He sighed.  He’d heard the dreaded New Years Eve 2016 story many times, and it hurt every time because it was just as shitty as his.  Maybe one day neither of them would give a fuck about it.  Maybe it wouldn’t keep popping up to kick them in their guts for years and years. 

Maybe.

Shaking his head, he looked up, keeping his eyes on the clouds while he followed the sounds of her soft footsteps and little annoyed grunts.  He was practically on her heels, but with his eyes up, he didn’t realize how close they were until she stopped to bend over, and his crotch collided with her backside at the worst angle possible.  She didn’t seem to give a damn, since she just mumbled “my bad” and moved out of his way while his eyes popped out of his skull, his jaw unhinging as he doubled over, setting his hands on his knees and trying to breathe through the pain.

She threw her next plant victim into the sea and looked back at him. “You know what this makes me think of?”

Exhaling slowly through his mouth, he carefully stood up to his full height again.  He managed to produce sounds with his mouth in response, though they were probably so raspy that she wouldn’t hear them.

“What does what make you think of?”

She pointed to his crotch. “That!”

Squinting at her, he tilted his head. “What?”

She flung her hands up. “Your balls, genius!”

GENIUS?? Oh, the DISRESPECT.

Jaw clenching, he looked down at himself, then back up at her. “What, that they just took a good walloping from your ass slamming into them?!”

“Um first, you knocked into me!  And second—” she snapped several times and pointed in all directions “—follow the connection!  Balls equal MEN!”

“Okay…” he looked sideways.  Balls.  Men.  Got it.  Point being?

“Every single problem I had was because of men!”

He shot her a look, stepping carefully toward her because the problematic things in his oh so offensive male body were not ready to just skip right up to her.  

“For god’s sake, Loki,” she rolled her eyes, leaning down to grab yet another huge chunk of seaweed, “I mean just ‘men’ generally speaking, not you, so don’t get your goddamn knickers which you clearly are not wearing in a twist.  No, all that year I was constantly thinking ‘holy shit, am I irrelevant because I’m only two years from thirty and no MEN want someone older than 25 and oh my god WHY DOES MY ENTIRE WORTH DEPEND ON WHETHER OR NOT SOME DISNEY PRINCE IS WILLING TO SLAY A DRAGON FOR ME?!’ and—”

“No no no no hold up,” he cut in, reaching out to yank the seaweed from her hand before she could throw it at him for interrupting, “I know this isn’t about me.  I know you need to get some things off your chest.  Fine.  Good.  You should be doing this—” he gestured to the scraggly stuff in his hand “—but I might forget this part about princes and dragons by the end of your rant, and this is important for me to say.  I have heard Prince Lo hundreds of times—”

“And you hate it!” She shouted over the increasingly loud wind roaring around them, trying to yank her stolen seaweed back from his hands. “I know that, and I don’t call you that!”

“THAT’S NOT THE POINT!” he yelled even louder, his chest heaving.  For the love—he couldn’t believe he was having a tug of war with her over this scratchy piece of ugly brown algae!

“Then what is the point?!”

She huffed loudly when he finally won, yanking his hands away with a snarl and throwing the seaweed as hard as his sunglasses, sending it so far across the waves they couldn’t see where it landed.  He whirled on her, bending down to get in her face, and answered her question, keeping his voice low and deep since they were nearly nose to nose now.

“I actually am your goddamn prince, that’s my point.”

Eyes blowing wide, she leaned back to see him better.  “Wha…?”

He caught her with one arm before she tripped backward from leaning back so far.  Maybe she was going to slap him there for a second, he wasn’t sure what that look in her eyes was.  It was a dark look for sure, though after another second he was fairly sure ‘dark’ wasn’t anger.  It had a bit more of a ‘take me to bed NOW’ energy about it.  He took a breath—fuck, that look is hot—trying to gather himself since apparently his balls were miraculously healed now.  Ridiculous.

“But—” he held up the forefinger of his free hand “—I am not a hero.  I am not here to slay any dragons for you.”

Her eyes lost that dark quality in an instant, switching to a shade he’d only seen on puppies, for hell’s sake.  Did she- did she look…hurt?  This fiery tough as nails fighter was sad that he wasn’t here to rescue her?  No no no no, that wasn’t right.  That look wasn’t sadness.  It was exhaustion.  She was tired.  Tired of slaying dragons on her own.

Good thing that is precisely why I AM here, sweetheart.

“Sig, I can’t do that for you.  What I can do—what I am trying to do—is give you a lift.  I bend down a bit, you stand on my shoulders, then you climb up on top of one of those dragons, and enjoy the ride of your life because you only get one.  Fly sky high, burn through every enemy, every jagoff who wants to use you and abuse you, every demon in your head lying to you, telling you that you aren’t good enough, that you don’t deserve good things, that you are hopelessly flawed, that you aren’t the most gorgeous creature in the universe, that you are weak and done.  Burn all of it, Sig.”

Her mouth fell open, and her chest stopped moving.  Her eyes seemed stuck in their wide open, watery position.  The only sign of life was the pulse in her neck, and her fingers gripping his arms with more force.

“And when the liars send their friends in to hunt you down, you burn them too.  You asked for pointers, sweetheart.  Well, there you go.  Burn them.  That’s what I do.”

Words slithered through his mind then, pushing through the chaos, through the disaster movie that was his own life…the life of an over-privileged Starboy and his gorgeous, forever Sunlight Girl…

We down four cocktails, then trash Bloomingdales.

Dancing across the easily shattered lead glass chain-mail, we mock the blaring siren’s wailー

“Sinners! Sinners! They stole our holy grail! Find those conniving thieves and give ’em hell!”

Fixing your halo in the back of a cop car, you scream at me, beyond the pale.

“You promised me a fun trip, not a trip WIRE, you devil!”

“Told you I would take you on the ride of your life, angel.”

“You KNEW that shit was too upscale!”

“They’re just shiny things to distract you from the philanthropic oppressors behind the veil!”

“Says the loaded dying star as he drags me with him into a precinct jail cell.”

“I’d say it was worth it, save for the airー not a fan of the smell.”

God, I must get us out of this No Exit hell before closing bell.

Snapping my fingers, the lights flicker and bid farewell, a hundred LED stars collapsing under a devil’s spell.

I grab you by your soft, iridescent feather wings, keeping you with me. “ Come on, angel!”

Break bail, hightail, inhale, exhaleー legs burning, we jump the guardrail and leave no trail.

Sharp black nails hooking into my shirttails, you choke on a confession. “I’m not an angel. I’m a criminal.”

“Oh my god, love, it was just overpriced RETAIL! Unlike that overpriced shit we broke, you and I aren’t for sale.”

That halo is slipping from your black cherry waves, the feathers on your back floating away on a breeze, replaced by something less frail.

Wind in our sails, we’ll laugh through endless fails, saying “fuck your fairytales!”

And even if it all derails, we’ll survive the fiery crash because this mad love is hard as dragon scales.

Gritting his teeth behind closed lips, he groaned quietly in frustration.  Once again, he inconveniently did not have anything with him to write that down on.

Christ…PLEASE don’t forget those words!

Sigyn blinked lazily, as though she’d just destroyed a bottle of wine.

You did destroy a bottle of wine, hon.

She swallowed, damn near ready to slide her hand down the front of his jersey shorts and make him pant and moan until the moment he realized he was about to come and instead would shove her to the ground and fuck her blind.  Damn right, he was her prince.  He was her everything, and he was ready to help her destroy everything that tried to hurt her.

Oh GOD, I need him inside me NOW.

She chose to finish her previous strand of thoughts instead.

“Then a few hours after stupid 12:00 am 2017, this man nearly runs me over.  He’s cooler and hotter than James Dean himself, and turns out he is that author that everyone kept going on and on about but I’d never bothered to look at a picture of him, and oh my god I get to touch this guy, and he lets me do it for longer than is socially acceptable, and he talks to me, and actually listens to me, and I have this intense moment of ‘bloody hell I think this STUNNER might be into me!’ and ‘WHEN CAN I SEE HIM AGAIN?!’ and all that other shit…” her voice broke, and she wheezed quietly, dropping to the ground and pulling her knees to her chest.

“It all just…” she tried again, sniffing as she dragged the back of her hand over her eyes, “all that other shit just faded to black.  I swear you have no idea how bright your own goddamn smile is.  Best. Teeth. Ever.”

His stomach hurt, aching from taking a thousand emotional punches from her pained voice, and he sat down in front of her.

“You know,” he started, reaching up to lift her chin with the tip of his finger, “I wrote Sunlight for you, but honestly, sweetheart…” he paused, lips pursing as he nodded to himself, “I think Starboy is about you.”

Her cheeks flushed such a pretty dark red, and she lowered her eyes.

“That is…that is an epic compliment…my god I can’t even,” she dropped her forehead to her knees, then released a heavy breath and lifted her head again. “He’s flawed as hell.”

Loki nodded.  “That he is.  Perhaps tragically so.”

“Yet everyone is absolutely mad for him.”

He tilted his head, giving her a pointed look. “Imagine that.”

“I don’t know how to answer the original ‘then what is your problem’ question that you asked before I burdened you with my crappy 2016 story for the thousandth time—”

“Which I will listen to a thousand more times if you need me to,” he cut in, flashing her a crooked smile.

Head shaking, she let out a small laugh. “You are unreal.  Sometimes I question if you are the same species as all these other idiot men.”

Smartest in the room again, thank god.

He shrugged one shoulder. “Well, there are no men like me, so I understand the confusion.”

She beamed, showing off those perfect pearly whites.

Look at this sunlight girl.

How the hell am I supposed to get through two months without her?

Her smile faded, and his eyes followed the downward curve of her lips.  Maybe she was wondering the same thing.  She looked sideways for a moment then returned her somewhat hazy gaze to him.

“I think…I think I just feel so guilty when we…make…love…” she cringed “…ugh I hate that flowery term, but in this case it’s kind of accurate, isn’t it.”

Very much so.

“Thing is, you feel so good and…dammit…I sound insane,” she said, covering her face.

Eyes widening, his mouth fell open.  The last two months were piecing themselves together now.  Feeling like dying.  Wanting to die, but wanting to live because you can’t come back if you pull that trigger, and what if it was going to get better?  What if you pulled the plug too soon?  You must live.  You have this one shot at it.   But what is living?  Does just breathing count?  Just breathing isn’t good enough, is it.  Feeling good—feeling amazing—even if only for a little while, that’s what keeps those lungs going.  Right?  Lungs want to breathe good, healthy, clean air, not smoke.  Otherwise those lungs stop working.  

Oh…oh no.

Thoughts, words, emotions, stories, experiences, good, bad, ugly—all broken glass shards that picked themselves up and went back into the forge, reminding the glassblower to not drop them after they came out of the fire and cooled off this time around.  They could only handle getting burned so many times before they just gave up and stayed broken.  He leaned forward and slid his arms under hers, and she let him pull her against him.

Dying stars, this hurts.

“Because when we do that,” he said, “you’re really moving on.  You’re alive and in love and your fully functioning, young, healthy body is physically experiencing that love.  You’re too happy with me.  You’re not devastated for Tony, and you feel like he deserves more than a couple months of mourning.  Is that what you mean?”

Looking at him through her fingers as though she knew the jump scare in the movie was coming, she nodded, then hesitantly set her hands on his arms.

“He’s still dead,” she croaked, unconsciously twisting the cotton fabric covering his shoulders as he leaned his forehead against hers

“And I’ll still be here when you’re not sad to be happy again, sweetheart.”  He meant it.  He wasn’t going anywhere.

Her eyes popped suddenly.  It was as though she had only just realized it.

“Except you won’t be.  You’ll be in Europe.  For two months.  I only have three days with you,” she said, choking on the words. “Three days.  Three.  Days.  Oh my god.”

He chewed his lip quietly for a moment as she gaped at him.

“I know,” he mumbled, nodding resolutely, “but Sig, we’ll—”

He stopped short of saying ‘be okay’ because it was one of those phrases that he despised.  People only said it to try to short circuit fear or pain or any other number of deeply unpleasant emotions.  Rarely did they mean it, or believe it, and he was a stickler when it came to words.  If he lied, it was calculated and convincing, and he wasn’t prepared to lie right now.

“FaceTime,” he said finally, clearing his throat, “we’ll Facetime.”

“A lot,” she agreed, pushing his hair behind his ears, “and text and call.”

They silently stared at each other for a minute, maybe two.  He couldn’t precisely say how long, since time tended to move at strange intervals with her.  She threaded her fingers into his tied back hair as one of those tears in her eyes fell.  He wiped it away with his thumb, and she just…sort of…fell into him…as though she was collapsing under her own weight.

He dragged her closer, pulling her into his lap and whispering “I’ve got you” into her hair as she wrapped her legs around his waist and cried into his neck.  She could collapse into him all she needed, but he wouldn’t let this star girl collapse into herself.

~12:29am, January 1, 2020~

Present day.

“I’ll rephrase,” Loki said, coming to the edge of the bed and leaning down to Sigyn’s eye level, “I do not want to keep living if I have to do so without you.”

Her watery eyes, only visible from the fireworks flashing, blew wide open, and her hold on the underside of her shaking legs that she’d pulled to her chest a few moments earlier loosened.  She placed her hands flat on the bed behind her instead, her painted dark red nails digging into the blanket.  The movement pulled his attention away from her eyes and mouth down to her inner thighs.  Jaw clenching, he breathed harder.  If only she would turn directly toward the window, then that short skirt wouldn’t be casting a shadow over the place he ached to be.  His eyes traveled up and down her legs again.

            Wait…Sig hadn’t removed those Louis V’s?  Oh, he could see it perfectly.  Getting on his knees, yanking her backside to the edge of the bed, pushing her thighs apart, those fucking gorgeous stilettos digging into the mattress as he leaned forward and slowly slid his tongue up and down…

           God almighty—truly, there was no blood left in his head.  

            She said something impossibly quiet then. He thought he heard “oh fuck me, Loki.”

            Think you imagined that, LO.

            No, I was watching her lips.  She definitely said that.

            How very convenient for you, eh?

            He set his hands on her knees, and she looked down at them momentarily, watching his thumbs make circles on her skin.  Stars above, she needed to feel those hands slide down between her legs.  Lifting her eyes to his again, she let him push her knees further apart, and he did exactly what she wanted, smoothing his hands up her inner thighs.  He stopped about an inch short of the place that should have been his final destination, and she bit her lip, fighting the urge to scream “oh my god, Loki, KEEP GOING” right in his perfect face.  

            He leaned in to kiss her, sparing her from having to fight any longer, and she sat up a bit to get closer to him as he pressed his lips too lightly against hers.  She angled her head to the right, opening her mouth, hoping he would do the same and add some damn heat to this kiss, but he only barely parted his lips, and his tongue was completely MIA.  This was…this was not enough.  For the love, she wanted him to kiss her harder than he had in front of her door.  He was being far too careful with her, which to be fair, made perfect sense considering her hesitant behavior five minutes ago.  Still—could he not see that she was absolute putty in his hands now?  Not literal putty, but close enough.  Come now, she took gymnastics for a decade, and muscle memory was no joke. Her flexibility was a point of pride, and she was more than a little desperate for him to twist her like a damn pretzel.  Maybe he just needed to hear her say it.

            “Loki, I’m okay,” she whispered against his (unfortunately) closed mouth, running her thumbs along his cheekbones.

            Bend me however you want.

           His lips stayed so…static…when she moved to kiss him again, and if she didn’t know better, she might think his entire purpose in showing up here tonight was to dangle himself in front of her like a goddamn carrot.

            “I swear I won’t break,” she whined softly, grasping at his shoulders, then his neck, his arms, his belt…all of which felt more like grasping at straws.

            Please, please, please, please, please…

           She wasn’t above saying it—above begging him to drive his hips into hers like a fucking god (pun intended!) just like he used to.  Arching up into him, she whined his name, and as though this “god” was answering her silent prayer, he groaned and finally kissed her back properly.  There was nothing static about him now.  Potential energy turned kinetic.

            Way to remember SOMETHING from science class, girlie.

            Twenty blissful seconds later, he downright stole his mouth away from her and gave her a dark look that could be considered somewhat…scary…in another context.  

            “I’m not afraid of breaking you, sweetheart,” Loki said, his fingers digging into her hip and curling into her hair.

            God, if the thrilled knots in her stomach tightened any further, she might throw up, which would make her vastly more appealing to him.  His hands felt like heaven, and he was hardly doing anything.  The simple fact that these were his hands, and they were on her was all the effort required to make her thighs shake.  The heat in his eyes probably had something to do with that.  That, and his voice was filled with more smoke than the ongoing fireworks show in midtown.

            A firework show that will be over any moment now…right, hon?

            Everything other than her heart froze in time as the thought flitted across her mind.  Suddenly she was spinning, and it wasn’t a giddy, fun, excited spin.  It was like being stuck in a giant tornado with the words from Loki’s soon to be published third book, which she’d read at her office the day his editor handed the manuscript off to Val to return to him last September.

            Rather than give it to him in person, Val had given it to Carol so that she could just drop it off with Sigyn at work.  That would save Val a trip to Loki’s place or some other meeting point during already overpacked schedules.  He hadn’t explicitly said “do not read this yet” to her, so she’d delved right into the pages during lunch that day.

            She hadn’t known what to expect, other than knowing it would be a hard-hitting bestseller no matter what.  After all, his editor had already given it a five star review in an email the day before, and she’d caught snippets of it on his laptop screen over his shoulder periodically throughout the year, which though out of context, were pretty as hell from the looks of it.

            Thinking back on it now, something in her gut had already been gnawing at her when she turned that first page, telling her to pull her hopes for some swoon worthy Sunlight repeat back down to the ground.  He’d been so secretive about his third novel, and that should have been an indicator.  2019 hadn’t exactly been kind to them.  Stress levels had been climbing consistently from the start of it.  Nonstop work, endless grind, Tony dying, sleepless nights, depressed moods, car crashes, fighting and fucking and fighting again, excessive alcohol, Atlantic-sized barriers between them, sexual harassment and assault…

            For BOTH of us.

            From the first paragraph, even if the author’s name had been removed from the title page, she would have known it was his writing.  Just like his first two books, the third had that same moody stream of consciousness, overly-self-aware-and-knows-it energy about it.  It was Loki-typical dreamy, and the lit crits would eat it up…again.  One of them once called him a “raw, unaffected writer” in a review, and they wouldn’t take it back after reading his new work.  If only he’d been a little less raw, maybe she would have read it through to the end.  She’d shut it down at page 27 because…

            That’s when the firework show ended.

            Oh god, she didn’t want to think about it—the words on that page or the day itself.  She wanted to snap her fingers and watch September 30th, 2019 disappear in a puff of smoke from her memories.  She slammed her eyes shut, wishing that day into oblivion.  If only the back of her eyelids weren’t absolutely covered with Loki’s page 27-word graffiti:

One pill, two weeks.  That’s all it takes to save her life, not that she knows this consciously.  The lack of deadened circles under her eyes are proof enough as they lift to look at mine, staring at me over the lucky paper coffee cup kissing her mouth.

“You’re staring,” she says, hiding a smile behind that cup.  Happiness radiates from her sun kissed cheeks.

“And YOU’RE assuming,” I counter, pointing to the aviators hiding my eyes.

My mouth is a thin line, an unwavering mask of stoicism, unaffected by the fireworks in my chest.  The glass windows reflect the sun onto the concrete beneath us, heating the city air around us.  I squint behind those obscenely expensive plastic mirrors.

She leans over the cafe table, pulling my glasses down. “I’m right.”

I feel the skin around my eyes crinkle, the mask fading. “I said you were assuming.  I didn’t say the assumption was wrong.”

Her face splits, white teeth baring themselves easily, bold and unafraid.  I wish the skin hiding behind her shirt and beneath her skirt would be so daring.  My face falls, the crinkles disappearing, my chest deflating as she sets her cup down and rises from her chair.  She walks away, and I am lost in that short green skirt.  Daylight drowns under the shadows between the pleats as she moves.  I hear her speaking over the clinking of sidewalk silverware and broken English and footsteps and car horns and squealing brakes.  Her rasping voice is louder than the lower west side during lunch hour.

“You coming with me?”

The inside of my skull screams “oh don’t I wish” as I approach her and take her hand.  We live in the dog days of summer, yet her fingers are ice as she drags me down the pavement, suggesting we change our clothes and go for a run.  She’s out of her goddamn mind, and she knows it.  Running at high noon?  In 90-degree heat?  I agree to it anyway because the suffering will be over as soon as it starts.  She’s not a runner.  Not by a long shot.  She won’t last more than five minutes.

Five minutes turns into a week’s worth of completely unintentional sweat-soaked 5Ks.  I fear this will become routine.  I prefer running alone.  I am in love, but the firework show ended two days ago, leaving nothing but smoke and ringing ears in its wake.  Without the space between us, she becomes me, and I become her.  I’ve never been particularly fond of the person in this body, but I think I’m the best man for the job.  I am behind bones, not bars.  Millions at my disposal, yet I’ll never make bail.  She has no place here with me.  Angels don’t belong in hell.

            Still underneath him, tears burned Sigyn’s eyes.  Of all the complicated insane metaphors spinning around in his head, why had he chosen fireworks?  In doing so, he’d put into words for the entire bloody world to read, something personal—something private and deeply significant to her.  Fireworks were supposed to belong to them.  To Loki Odinson and Sigyn Frey…to Starboy and Sunlight.  No one knew that January 1st was their day.  Not Darcy, not her mum, not his mum, or Hela, or Val, or Bucky, or Thor or anyone else.  To everyone else, “early 2017” was close enough.  The idea of him obsessing over the perfect, most poetic (and tragic!) imagery to describe the loss of “that loving feeling” and deciding to go with “firework show’s over kids- go home” had left her feeling gutted.

            “Sig?”

           Even though he was right there, inches from her face, Loki’s voice was a distant echo.

            “Sweetheart?”

           The affectionate, loving pet name pulled her out of September 2019 (technically the earliest hours of October) and brought her back to the earliest hours of January 2020.  She met his eyes, blinking away tears.

            He sighed, dropping his forehead to hers. “Should I be scared of breaking you?”

            You swore you wouldn’t break, sweetheart…tell me that wasn’t a lie.

           God damn, he was hard as hell and between her perfect legs on New Year’s Day, and he needed her to be okay.  No, being “okay” wasn’t good enough.  He needed her to shamelessly beg him for it, because she hesitated after he took that chair into her living room as well as just now, both of which were setting off warning sirens in his head.

           Eyebrows pulling together, he inhaled and exhaled slowly as though taking a relaxing drag of the air itself.  Three months alone, doing stupid shit to numb the pain of having to do life without her, wishing he could take back whatever the hell he did wrong, or whatever he didn’t do that he should have done, then finally losing what was left of his bruised ego and coming to her (with hopes of coming in her), and now he was actually considering keeping it in his trousers for her sake.

            My god, I love this girl to the stars and back.

            Sigyn looked all over his face. “Loki, I—” her mouth snapped shut abruptly as the anxiety turned her stomach almost violently.  Along with the aftereffects of maybe too much alcohol, it was enough to send the few contents of her stomach up into her throat.

            Loki frowned. “Sig, what—”

Slapping a hand to her mouth, Sigyn shoved his shoulders, and he sat up and back instantly.  She scrambled off her bed and dashed for her bathroom, slamming the door behind her to spare him from the sight, though she wouldn’t be able to do anything about the wretched sound.

            Happy Fucking New Year.

---

~9:30pm, June 7, 2019~

Seven months prior

(Two hours after the car crash before leaving for Montauk)

            Elbow on the driver’s side window, Loki leaned his head into his palm, stopping to give plenty of room to the car pulling out of a street parking spot a few blocks from JB’s building on 150 Joralemon Street in Brooklyn.   Flipping on his right turn signal, he tapped the steering wheel repeatedly, his patience wearing thin as he waited for this wannabe-DMV-sloth driver to hurry along.  He would just drive on if this hadn’t been the first damn parking space that he’d seen within a five-block radius.  This was always a busy area, what with being only one block from five trains, most of which were a one stop shop straight to Manhattan, but the traffic tonight was absurd.  

            Sigyn groaned in the passenger seat, banging her head softly on the dash above the glove box.  “This is madness.  It’s supposed to be Brooklyn Heights, not bloody Times Square!”

            “There’s a reason we avoid that place like the plague,” he muttered, checking his mirrors.  No one was immediately behind him, gratefully.

            “Why won’t Darce bloody respond to me?” she growled, gritting her teeth so hard it hurt. “She has left me on read all damn day!”

            Truly, it hurt so much that her forever best friend (the person she would need most to get through the next two months!) hadn’t called her back after she left that panicky voicemail while Loki was helping Ana next to her crashed car earlier—“Hey Darce, I really need to talk to you. Just, you know, I need to hear your voice. You’re my best friend on the planet. Please call me. I’m in a bad place right now. Okay, love you. Bye.” Thoroughly lost in the image of crunched cars and broken bleeding people, she jumped at the sound of Loki’s voice.

            “Sweetheart, my ears need you to take it down a notch.” Yes, he was pissed off too, but his girl was yelling right next to him, and in a small, enclosed car, no less.

            “Sorry,” she lowered her voice, and leaned her head on his shoulder. “Does Bucky leave you hanging like this?  Of course, he doesn’t.  He loves you.  Everyone loves you.”

            Everyone wants you to STAY.

            “That is a patently false statement,” he objected, kissing the top of her head as he opened his last texts with JB. “You know Lewis loves you to death, but she’s as flaky as clinical strength dandruff.  You’re just too used to my rapid response time.”

            Curling her hand around his elbow, she swallowed the lump in her throat.  He was right.  He’d raised the bar, made everyone else look sloppy and inconsiderate, and now she had to adjust back to normal humdrum life without him.  Now was probably a good time to practice counting calming breaths just like he’d taught her to (and taught again and again) every time work stress started getting out of hand.  She would need it at the airport on Tuesday.  Otherwise she would hyperventilate in the checked baggage line while giving him that one final hug before two months of nothing.

            That, or I’ll get arrested for breaking through the JFK security lines to chase down my boyfriend in the Virgin Atlantic international terminal.

            She sniffled a bit and reached up to rub her suddenly wet eyes, forcing a these-aren’t-tears-they’re-just-dry-tired-eyes yawn, then sat upright to get away from the unpleasant twitchy sensation of his right forearm as he texted back and forth.  Clearly, his friend loved him, and why wouldn’t he?  Loki was so…he was…so…oh…what was the best adjective?  Chewing her bottom lip, she frowned, trying to pull some fancy, fifty-cent word out of her brain.  Okay, writing was clearly not her strong suit, nor was she a walking thesaurus.

            Simply (and accurately) put, Loki is the most amazing man in the universe.

            Correction: most amazing human being.

            Goodness knew she was mad for him.  Though in her current heartbreaking situation, she wished she’d never fallen for him.  Tuesday would be a nightmare.  She wouldn’t be able to let go of him.  Maybe she should quit her job.  He’d told her that he could cover the costs of her bills and rent for however long she needed him to.  All she needed was an internet connection to search for a new job, which meant that she could do it from anywhere.  Namely, every city on Loki’s book tour.  His sudden voice made her jump a little in her seat.

            “Oh, what marvelous timing,” he said, rolling his eyes. “JB said that the prep school across from his building had a graduation event tonight, and oh apparently the entire tri-state area attended it.”

            Releasing a heavy breath, he leaned his head back so he wouldn’t bang it against the steering wheel.  Normally the extra traffic wouldn’t bother him to this extent, but that crash earlier had shaken his nerves, and he felt like a sitting duck on this street.  He pinched the bridge of his nose, then turned up the music to drown out the rumbling engines of car after car driving by right next to him.  A century later, he was still waiting for this goddamn parking spot, and he finally broke his calm exterior.

            Hitting the steering wheel with his palm- whack! -he shouted at the unmoving car, each word punctuated with another hit.

            “OH—” whack “—MY—” whack “—GOD!!”

            WHACK.

            He dragged his hand down his face. “What did I ever do to this person??”

            His mini outburst probably should have unnerved Sigyn.  However, the deep, gritty tone of his voice was making her shaky for an entirely different reason.  If she had it her way, she would climb over the middle console and straddle him right now.  Rolling her head to the side to look at him, her eyebrows pulled together as she bit her lip.

            Good god, his profile…that tight, angry jaw… why do I like his nose THIS much…I have problems.

            CLEARLY.

            “Seriously, come on,” he growled, white knuckling the wheel with his left hand while moving the gear shift side to side with his right hand as was his habit any time the car was in neutral.  He was on the verge of giving up on this spot, but then JB texted him, and he looked down at the final text on the screen—

            Eyes blowing wide, his head snapped up to see the driver pulling away.

            “FINALLY,” Loki growled, jamming the clutch to the floor with his left foot while yanking the gearshift hard left and straight back into first.  He released the clutch while giving it some gas, and so the tricky dance of rapid gear switching began.

            Eyes dancing fluidly between mirrors, parked cars, moving ones, pedestrians, and the car’s parking cam dash display, he sped forward one car’s length beyond the space, then braked hard and fast.  Clutch to the floor again, he shoved the stick all the way forward, shifting into reverse.

            “Head down, sweetheart,” Loki said, setting his right hand on the back of the passenger side headrest and twisting his entire torso to watch behind him.

            “Oh right, sorry!”

            Sigyn ducked forward but kept her eyes on Loki because—oh hell—seeing him dominate…or ehm…drive stick shifts like a damn pro turned her body to jelly every time.  It was second only to her hair kink. 

           Heart kicking into high gear (oh the unintentional puns), she watched Loki’s tongue poke out to wet his lips as he turned the wheel with his left hand.  Right hand still on the headrest, he stepped on the gas and whipped the car back into the parking space with perfect aim.  Lord, the man made it look effortless.  Sigyn sighed, sitting upright again as Loki shifted back into neutral and yanked up the parking brake.

            “Loki Odinson, you sold your soul to be able to drive like that,” she said, shaking her head. “It is the only explanation.”

            Killing the engine, he grinned crookedly as he unbuckled his seat belt. “Yet another reason to think I’m the villain in this story.”

            He then carefully leaned over the parking brake, slid one hand up her inner thigh and the other behind her neck.  Just as his lips touched hers, the cars that had been stuck behind the red light a block behind them drove by, several of which honked, then they heard several shouts and whistles.

            “Look at this slick motherf—” 

            He then carefully leaned over the parking brake, slid one hand up her inner thigh and the other behind her neck.  Just as his lips touched hers, the cars that had been stuck behind the red light a block behind them drove by, several of which honked, then they heard several shouts and whistles.

            “Boy. What. Even.”

            “He said SWERVE.”

            “God. DAMN. That job was clean as HELL.”

            “Boy told Vin Diesel HOLD MY BEER.”

            “YOU HAVE LEVELED UP, SON.”

            Other words and phrases were spoken, but he had no clue how the hell to translate what he assumed was Gen Z slang.  Her shoulders started shaking, and he laughed out loud when she snorted against his mouth.  The rapid fire back and forth conversation on the sidewalk outside was absolutely bonkers.

            She eyed the group from behind the safety of tinted windows. “Please explain what ‘swerve’ means in this context,” she asked, trying to gain control of her snickering.

            “Sure, I can answer that, no problem,” he replied, grabbing his phone to text JB that he was right across the street from his building. “I just need to search through the ‘shit kids will say in 2019’ section of Encarta first.”

            She opened her door at the same time he did, and as he walked around to her side, she arched one eyebrow at him.

            “What’s Encarta?” she asked, head tilted in confusion.

            Just before he reached her, he halted mid-step, eyeing her from under his brow. “Oh my god, please be joking.”

            Eyes rolling hard enough to get stuck behind their sockets, she reached forward, curled her fingers into the fabric of his perfectly fitted, plain black V-neck tee and dragged him to her.

            “Um…of course I’m joking,” she said, wrapping one arm around his neck and pulling him with her as she leaned back against the car window.  For pity’s sake, she was born in ‘88, not ‘98.

            Going up onto her toes to reach his ear, she whispered, “I even used card catalogues back in the day.”

            “I love it when you talk dirty to me,” he deadpanned, looking at the text that just popped up on his phone as she laughed against the hollow of his throat.

            JB: be out in 5 or so. Darce is still packing 

            Jaw clenching, Loki tapped the convenient “thumbs down” icon over the text.  It occurred to him then, as he slid his phone into his back pocket, that Sig was no longer laughing into his neck, but gliding her lips and tongue over it.  His eyes rolled back, and he suppressed a loud groan.

            “Easy, woman,” he hissed, pressing the heel of his hand against the top edge of the door frame, his short-trimmed nails digging into his palm as she closed her mouth over the skin below the hinge of his jaw.  Sure, since it was dark out here, their excessively close contact wasn’t entirely visible, but still. “There are children present.”

            “Then we should get back in the car,” she suggested quietly.

            Stars above, she wanted him to control her just like he’d controlled this mint condition, freshly waxed, gunmetal grey 6-speed.  She wanted to hear him say “head down, sweetheart” for reasons other than being able to see out the window.  She was also breaking apart inside over what would happen on Tuesday, and the combined emotions made it damn near impossible for her to keep her hands off him.  All signs pointed toward getting back in the car and driving somewhere without prying eyes.

            Since he was approximately three seconds from saying “screw it” and grinding against her in a decidedly not family friendly fashion on a crowded street, he gritted his teeth and forced a few inches between their hips.  As she blinked wide-eyed up at him, tugging on his neck a little, he watched her perfect teeth scrape over her bottom lip, and for just a moment, he forgot they were surrounded by people.  During those seven seconds of heat-induced blind delirium, he shoved his knee between her thighs to push them apart, but he snapped out of it quickly and stepped back, his eyes blowing when he heard his name spoken by several unfamiliar voices over the sound of the loud traffic.

            “Is that Loki Odinson?”

            “Oh my god, it is him.”

            As though it might offer him some reprieve from the gravity holding him down on this street where he was too goddamn visible to the world around him, he looked up at the night sky with pleading eyes.  He might just push Sig back into this car and take off toward his place.  He could text JB to take the R train to Canal once Lewis finished packing up her entire house for a two-day trip. 

            A different voice asked, “Who’s L—…uh…what was the name?”

            “How do you NOT know who Loki Odinson is?”

            He exhaled slowly, resisting the temptation to pull a dick move and walk right up to them and say “he doesn’t know who I am the same way that YOU don’t know that I’m not a fucking A-list, household name” to that person’s face.  To be fair though, he was about to jet-set around Europe for eight weeks as though he was an A-lister.  How had he allowed HC to sucker him into this nightmare?  Was the tour sold out?  Yes.  Would he meet thousands of people who adored him?  Yes.  Would all those happy, excited faces and possible squealing and heart-warming personal stories of how his books helped them get through something in their own lives make up for a forced existence outside of New York and everything he loved for two months straight?

            I’m not counting on it.

              “Why would he know who Lo is?  You know Jayden can’t read.”

            I don’t know these people, but I’m inclined to be offended on “Jayden’s” behalf.

            “Can’t read? Woman, did I ask you to spell something?”

            “Books!  Books!  Books!”

            Eyebrows pulling together, Loki pursed his lips.  Uh…what was that person even saying?  Well, he wasn’t exactly surprised by that impossible to follow response, because given the decibel of their slightly slurred voices, unsteady steps, raucous laughing and wildly flinging gestures, he was 99.9% certain that this group was utterly wasted.  He didn’t judge people for such things, of course, but the extra alcohol had taken what would otherwise be “talking” and turned it into accidental shouting.

            If only they weren’t shouting about ME, it would be like watching decent stand-up.

            The one who had asked the question- poor “illiterate” Jayden -looked rightly confused.

           “Now you’re just yellin’ random shit like you got Tourette’s.  Or a toddler who learned a new word.  Or had one too many edibles.”

            Okay, I like this Jayden kid.

            “No, you gotta actually read books to know who Lo is ‘cause he’s an author.”

            Actually, darling, I’ve no doubt that most people who read books have no idea who I am.

            “Did you say ‘Hulu is’ or ‘who Lo is’?  Nah, you know what?  I don’t care.”

            Neither should I, yet here I am questioning my writing capabilities simply because not everyone “cares” to open my books.

            “She’s talkin’ about the guy who wrote Starboy and Sunlight.  He’s standing right over there.”

           Oh for—why does everyone drop “Looking for” from the title? Is it some catchy “S” theme to them?

            The title of his third novel, which he was planning to announce in September, was Satellite Tides, and he should probably prepare for that to turn into just Satellite instead.  He rolled his eyes, annoyed that he was speculating over inconsequential nonsense.  Scratching the back of his neck, he scowled at the ground, still listening to their conversation.

            Someone else said, “Starboy was hot as hell, but ugh… Sunlight?  Um, MARRY ME.”

            Pressing his lips together, his chest deflated.  They’d likely beg him for a divorce after the new one.  He glanced at Sig in his periphery then, his mouth falling open a bit as his heart rate started to climb a little too quickly.  This was the first time he’d realized that his new novel would feel like a breakup, like a relationship falling apart…until the last two chapters.  What a horribly timed revelation, here on a packed street in Brooklyn.  Maybe he should put a disclaimer on the first page.

TO AVOID BURNING EVERYTHING TO THE GROUND, READ ALL 311 PAGES OF THIS BOOK!

            No, that would violate his “no spoilers” policy.  The only thing he could say was “finish the book, and then we’ll talk about it” and hope that no one served him papers for breaking their hearts in the first bloody chapter.  Swallowing nervously, he dropped his forehead to his girl’s shoulder.

            Sliding one hand up to the back of his head, she leaned her cheek against his temple, unsure what was making him this upset.  No doubt he was aware of the conversation between those most likely university-aged students, and overhearing people discuss him often made him a little uncomfortable, which might be a contributing factor.  However, his current demeanor seemed legitimately pained.  They were still talking about him, and it was probably best to get the hell away from them before something uncouth was said.

            “Want to go to the other sidewalk?” she asked, lacing her fingers with his.  

            Without hesitation, he said, “Yes please.”

           Once the traffic cleared, he hurried across the street, dragging her with him.  Maybe it was the car crash or the inevitable book tour or the fear of taking a nose dive off of that pedestal the critics had put him on after the last one, but he did not want to hear people talk about his books.  Unhealthy as it was, he needed to prove that everything he created was worthy, and compared to the others, his new novel would probably be a letdown.  Fantastic- now he was so keyed up about it that, for the first time, he would prefer to hear vapid, overly sexual commentary about his body right now.  Trying to shake off the negativity in his head, he blew out a breath and tightened his grip on her hand as they stepped up onto the curb.  Whatever- looks or books -at least they hadn’t said a word about Sig.

           Hearing people talk about his girl tended to send him flying over the edge with more gravitas than Thelma and Louise.  Most people were nice and respectful, but even so, a small population of obsessive, predacious “fans” just would not stop fixating on her.  They came up with the most lunatic reasons to justify hating her, and they weren’t afraid to voice it through their goddamn internet megaphones.  The most recent instance had happened during Sig’s unintentional weight loss while grieving for her dead friend.  Those absolute monsters came after her for perpetuating “ultra-thin beauty standards” and thereby promoting eating disorders.  Talk about making one’s blood boil-he’d punched an actual hole in his drywall.  That was the first time he’d responded with an overtly candid (and long) Instagram post about the hate directed at her—

***To my KIND fans:  THANK YOU for always being lovely, supportive, and respectful, especially during this emotionally trying month. I hope to be able to thank you in person one day, and if that happens, I’ll dole out massive hugs for it.  Now please feel free to ignore the rest of this post, because my next words are exceedingly harsh, and spattered with explicit angry language, and I assure you that they are not meant for you darlings. -LO x 

(Also, won’t it be hilarious if one of the people from the group below actually flags this post as “abusive”?—Oh my god, the IRONY)

To the self-entitled brats claiming to “care” for me while simultaneously harassing my girlfriend:

I wish I could brush this off as gag-inducing drama driven by fickle “fans” who will likely move on to obsessing over the private life of some other unfortunate “celebrity” (I don’t believe I fit into that category but whatever) in a month or two.  However, you twats have been tagging my girl in hateful posts and/or leaving abusive comments, be it on her page or mine, for two and a half goddamn years, and the frequency with which you do so has not declined but rather INCREASED, therefore, I have (unsurprisingly) reached my breaking point.  The gloves are off.

According to my social media team’s estimates, out of my nearly 300K followers, you lot make up less than 1%.  That sounds like nothing, but it isn’t nothing if one accounts for how fucking LOUD you are.  This is the first and last time I’ll address your absurd, grossly inappropriate, openly obsessive behavior in one of my posts.  I get it.  Your hormones have run amuck.  You have NEEDS.  I’m not stopping you from being as loud as you want amongst yourselves, but for the love of god, you continually tag me (and my girlfriend!) in your beyond vulgar posts and in MY comments on MY posts.  What the hell is WRONG with you?

Until now, I’ve been “gracious” with you wretched creatures, because apparently, most of you are at least fifteen years my junior, and I’d rather not waste my time arguing with people who can’t even rent a fucking car.  HOWEVER, we are nearly halfway through 2019, and I have now been tagged in 3,521 rude, harassing, or downright abusive posts and/or comments.  I’ve seen “EDUCATE URSELF LO” (or some equally insipid version thereof) in response to bullshit articles, disgusting rumors, and deliberate misinterpretations of goings on in my personal life, which supposedly “prove” that the person I love is “problematic.”  If you all genuinely thought you could continue to “OMG DRAG HER!” without losing “access” to ME, you should consider having your heads checked. (For obvious reasons, I know several psychiatrists who might be able to help you all combat your seemingly insurmountable Misery-esque neurosis.  Oh dear, did I just say ANOTHER problematic thing?  THE HORROR.)

Barely legal “adults” telling a 36-year old ACTUAL adult to “educate” himself is not only peak Karen, but peak c**t.  If you had even a shred of class, you wouldn’t throw mind-numbingly pathetic toddler-style tantrums on public social media platforms due to, for instance, some random picture of me kissing my girlfriend.  Newsflash: I’m in love with her, and I don’t want anyone BUT her, so…tough shit.  I swear to everything, you are not only an embarrassment to me, but to my respectful, caring, intelligent, thoughtful, big-hearted, NOT creepy readers/fans for whom I have great affection.  They deserve the world, and it is only for their sakes that I remain active at ALL on this account.

I’ve instructed my social media team to “take out the trash” starting tomorrow, but before they drop Les Enfant Terribles into internet nothingness on my behalf, since I think #Starboy said it best, I’ll give him the last words: “[...] here you are, hell-bent on tying me down, both figuratively and literally.  I know these velvet ropes really do it for you, but I’m not your fucking submissive.  I’m not your mountain to climb.  I’m not your challenge.  I’ll never be your greatest conquest. [...] you’ll never actually drive this car.  You don’t know how to drive a stick anyway, and I sure as hell won’t be your training vehicle.  Go practice stalling out on some old cash-for-clunkers reject.” ***

            His team still sifted through his mentions once a week to get rid of the haters, but even so, some of the nastiness still made its way to him, and ever since the first bitchy comment showed up in his notifications two years ago, he’d been extremely wary any time people said a word about her.  So… again…even though he was currently amid a mini freak out about Satellite Tides and didn’t want to hear his books discussed, at least this group on JB’s street wasn’t going on about Sig.

            Of course, just as that tiny silver lining crossed his mind, one of them ruined it by mentioning her.  

            “Who’s that girl with him?”

            Loki turned his head sharply in their direction, staring daggers even though there was no way that they could possibly see it.  Dammit—he’d crossed the street so he wouldn’t have to hear them anymore!  So much for that.

           One of the others replied, “That is definitely his girlfriend. I follow her on Insta.”

            You mean you STALK my girlfriend on Insta.

            Calm. Down.

            “The one from Sunlight, right?”

            “She’s not in it. He just dedicated it to her.”

            “How dare she steal my husband from me.”

            No one STOLE me.  I chased Sigyn Frey like a madman from day ONE.

            “Zane, he’s like twenty years older than you!”

            Oh no no no.  I’m going to be sick. That kid is only 16.

            “Uh no. He’s 36, not 46.”

            Oh, thank god—26 is an ACCEPTABLE age.

            Wait…did that mean these people thought he looked 46?  As though he wasn’t already paranoid about his slowly (sadly) receding hairline…

            “Sig…N… Frey… weird name.”

            Weird? Alright, BECKY. 

            “Don’t leave comments like that.  Sometimes Lo goes OFF on people for talkin’ about her.  And sometimes even for benign shit.”

            “Like…he’ll reply directly to them?”

            Absolutely I will, and my publicist despises me for it.

            “Yup.  He even wrote a whole post warning people to leave her alone back in May.  Granted, his reason for that post was legit.  But still.  He’s kinda volatile.”

            I prefer the term “certifiably moody” but whatever.

            “I want him to be volatile on top of me. HAHAHAHAHAHA.”

            Jesus. Christ.

            “How old is this Sigyn girl?”

            Old enough to remember card catalogues at least.

            “Probably like 22 cuz Lo can literally get it.”

            Raising an eyebrow, he pursed his lips.  22?  Uh…no thank you.  No hate, but that age couldn’t remember a time before the internet, which would make him feel positively geriatric. It would be just sex, and that no longer interested him, though he doubted anyone would believe him if he said as much.  He’d had his fill of purely physical encounters.  The only thing that interested him—would ever interest him—was currently holding his hand, which come to think of it, wasn’t close enough for his liking.  Running his free hand through his hair, he let go of Sigyn’s hand and wrapped his arm around her waist, tucking her into his side.  Those people weren’t saying anything cruel or rude, but—shit—he really was too protective for his own good.

            Too “volatile” for my own good… and that’s WITH treatment.

            Gratefully, JB and Lewis rounded the corner then, sparing him from giving further attention to a group of strangers who weren’t saying anything harmful but had nonetheless set him on an excessively self-conscious mental path.  Right now, he ought to simply be with his friends, since it would be his last chance to do so for a while.

            Arms wide open, Darcy hurried to Sigyn. “Dude-” she glared at Loki’s arm around Sigyn’s waist “-I want to hug my bestie, so move your clingy ass over.  I’m so sorry for not getting back to you, Siggy.  Shitty insane day at work, and all that…”

            Sigyn hugged her like her life depended on it. “It’s fine.”

            It’s NOT AT ALL fine, Darce, but whatever. I LOVE YOU.

            Darcy kissed her cheek and threw her arms around her neck. “Seriously, Loki.  Come on, useless boy.  Help Bucky with my bags,” she said, hugging her friend even closer.

            She pointed to the bag she’d dropped on the ground when she’d first come waltzing out of the building, and Loki blinked mutely at her for a moment before eyeing the yellow polka dot bag next to him on the ground.  He made a face. Dear god—were his eyes bleeding?  The thing was hideous.  No no no no no, surely even weak-armed Lewis could handle that measly little bag.  It couldn’t be more than half full.  Admittedly, the woman already had one bag slung over her shoulder, and it looked like it was the heavier of the two, but that was on her for packing a thousand bags.  He was feeling less than generous in a myriad of ways, and that was before anyone ordered him to go anywhere near that yellow atrocity.

            He touched it with the toe of his sneaker. “Tell me you don’t mean this one.”

            “Uh, yeah, genius,” she called out to him over her shoulder as she dragged his girl away from him toward the car, “Do you see any others?”

            Did Lewis just, at an offensive decibel, sarcastically call him a genius right here on a packed street in Brooklyn?  

            Cool it, LO.

           I don’t have to COOL a goddamn thing!

            Sig’s friend let go of her just as they reached the edge of the pavement and turned around to face him, looking back and forth from him to the thing on the ground.  Why couldn’t he think of any clever retort?  His quick wit was bailing on him, and oh it was pissing him off.  Dammit—his suddenly useless brain was giving him a highly annoying eye twitch.

            Bucky walked up behind him then. “Doll, it’s not even heavy,” he said loud enough for her to hear him from twenty feet away on a crowded sidewalk.

            Darcy smiled brightly at him. “Therefore, Starboy over there has no reason to not grab it so we can get on the road.”

            “Oh, I have my reasons,” Loki said, giving her a pointed look, which was apparently hilarious because she snorted loudly and slapped a hand over her mouth.

            Eyes rolling, he glanced sideways at his friend who was adjusting his grip on one of the two bags he’d slung over one shoulder.  Looking in all directions, Bucky exhaled heavily through his mouth.

            “Dammit,” he mumbled through his teeth, “this crowd is turning me ten espresso shots level jittery.”

            “I’ll get the damn bag,” Loki said, noting the man’s twitching fingers and clenched jaw.

            As much as he felt like being a dick to Lewis for putting him in a situation where people would see him with that should-be-burned rockabilly Betsy Johnson throwaway on his shoulder, clearly his friend was in no shape to deal with the back and forth arguing in the middle of this street.  God, he hated it for JB.  The aftereffects of Iraq would haunt the man for life.

            Mmhm, and if your friend can go overseas and fight in an ACTUAL WARZONE, you can pick up that crime against GOOD fashion.

            Pressing his lips together, he bent down into a low squat to grab the yellow polka dot (ugh) shoulder strap, which was inconveniently stuck underneath the bag.  He cringed when his hand grazed it.

            Oh my god, I am two seconds from blessing this Brooklyn pavement with my vomit.

            “Thanks.” Bucky ran a hand through his hair as Loki blew out a breath, still trying to work up the courage to pick the stupid thing up. “I feel like a pack mule.  I told her, word for word, ‘if you’re lookin’ for chivalry, doll, this ain’t it’  That would be me choosin’ to do this shit, not bein’ ordered to’ and all she did make a sad face and walk away.” He frowned down at Loki. “You okay, man?”

            “I think I’m allergic to this fabric pattern,” Loki made a gagging sound, and Bucky doubled over, grabbing his stomach while trying not to laugh too loudly.

            “Oh my god, Lo…man…I shoulda known that would kill you,” he croaked, rubbing tears from his eyes. “It’s not as bad as having to go on an emergency tampon run for her.”

            “Nope, this is far worse,” Loki grumbled, dragging a hand down his face, still unable to bring himself to sling it over his shoulder. “One can easily conceal those in a shopping basket.  Plus, that particular errand pleasantly reminds me that I successfully avoided knocking up my girl that month.”

            “Way to look at the bright side, my man.”

            Both men turned at the sound of Darcy’s too cheery voice, which was much closer now since she had apparently walked back to them during their short conversation.

            “We’d already be in the car if His Royal Highness ‘do they make this in black’ Prince Lo here would get over his aversion to fun vintage style,” she said, then started laughing as Sigyn hurried up behind her and slapped her shoulder, mouthing “STOP” to her.

            Loki knew he was high-key overreacting to a NON-thing.  He knew it was more important to get his friend out from the middle of all these people.  He knew that helping a woman with her bags was the mature thing to do.  He knew those things, but when combined with everything else- the crash and the book and the tour and leaving his girl and haters and stupid bags in stupid Brooklyn—hearing Lewis call him “Prince Lo” was the last straw.  Glaring up at her from under his brow, he set his forearm on his knee, his hand dangling in front of his chest.

            “I’m not your goddamn bellboy, Lewis.”

            Eyes blowing wide, Sigyn looked between her boyfriend and her best friend, then she stepped around Darcy to grab the yellow source of this completely unnecessary argument. “Here, I’ll get it.  I don’t mi—”

            “NOPE,” Darcy grabbed her hand and pulled her back. “Don’t you dare give in.  I know he’s your dream boy and all that, but he’s being an asshole.  We need to stick together.  Chicks before dicks.”

            Bucky rolled his eyes as she dragged Sigyn back toward the curb twenty or so feet away, then he sighed heavily.

            “Here, you take my nice plain black bag,” he said, then imitated Darcy’s voice inflection, “and I’ll get the fun vintage one.”

            As they switched bags, Loki rolled his eyes. “She’s baiting me, and I’m taking that bait like an angry simpleton.”

            Even though they were weighed down by unnecessary luggage, Bucky shrugged his shoulders. “I suppose we could flip it and bait her instead.  I mean, she did just call us dicks, so maybe we should live up to the name and retaliate in a highly classy ‘bros before hoes’ manner.”

            Just as Loki opened his mouth to ask what exactly that would entail, the niche audiophile vinyl store next door cranked the volume of their absolutely phenomenal sound system through the wide open doors and windows, and he heard JB laugh awkwardly.  He looked at his friend, one eyebrow to his hairline.

            “Oh my god, Lo—” he gestured vaguely all around them “—tell me you’re seein’ all these people dancin’, otherwise I’m hallucinatin’ and-”

            “You’re not hallucinating, JB,” Loki spoke over him as he looked up and down the pavement and across the street.

            His mouth formed an ‘o’ when he noticed several large ‘CONGRATULATIONS CLASS OF 2019!’ banners and tables with cakes and plates and what not.  Had those been here the entire time, or did people only just set them up?  Come to think of it, he’d heard the record store playing music all along, but he’d paid no attention because…well…most retail shops play music in the background, but this one had been providing music for a graduation party.  It was a legitimate street party, with a few hundred (at least) attendees. 

            “Oh, you know what—” Bucky pursed his lips, squinting as he turned in a circle “—this is actually a school-sanctioned graduation reception.  They do this every year.  Completely forgot.”

            Eyes moving from stranger to stranger, a crooked grin spread slowly across Loki’s face. “Looks fun actually.”

            His friend responded with a noncommittal hum. “Maybe…possibly, but I still gotta get off this damn street, man.”

            Loki was only half aware that his friend was still speaking.  He was frozen to this spot on the pavement while staring at Sig far away at the other end by the crosswalk, and he wanted nothing more than to dance with her just like all these other perfectly carefree people.

            “What’re you doin’ just standin’ there, man?” Bucky asked tightly, his fingers twitching. “Montauk is callin’ our names, and you’re stallin’ on me.”

            Finally tearing his eyes away from his girl, Loki let his head loll to the side and looked at his friend instead. “I’m tense as hell, and clearly you are too.” He gestured to the crowd. “I feel like dancing with them.”

            Blinking several times, Bucky pushed a hand through his hair and shook his head. “Love ya, man, but you are on your own there.  I don’t dance.”

            Still separated by the crowd, Darcy frowned and leaned toward Sigyn. “Admittedly, this is totally petty, but this has turned into an official game of chicken, and I refuse to be the one to swerve out of the way.”

            “Oh please, you know you’re just offended that he thinks you have terrible fashion sense.”

            “Damn right I’m offended,” Darcy snapped, giving her best friend a look. “I’m offended by that tone you’re taking with me.”

            “Well excuse me for getting a bit defensive of him when you didn’t say ‘hi’ or anything!  You just told him—”

            “Woah woah woah,” Darcy spoke over her, giving her a look, “you have to be on my side here, sister.  I know Loki hung the moon and all—” she waved a flippant hand “—but this is what feminism is all about, my friend.  The patriarchy is right over there, using their really great hair and lean athletic bodies and sharp jawlines and blah blah, to distract us from the fact that they are trying to make me carry my own bag, and I’m sorry, but that is not what our suffragette foremothers fought for.  We’re already stuck carrying the babies, so the least these pretty boys can do is carry the goddamn bags.”

            “Yes, we are truly showing the sexy patriarchy who’s the boss right n—” Sigyn’s eyes blew wide then, and she turned to face her friend directly, gesturing to the guys with her chin. “The damn bag is on your boyfriend’s shoulder!  You don’t have to carry it- problem solved!  Now let’s just-”

            “Which means my man caved to your boy, and that is total bullshit.  Bucky has to carry three just so Loki doesn’t have to put his perfectly manicured hands on some peasant’s belongings?”

            Sigyn squinted, trying to see the guys better in the dark, then groaned and rubbed her temples.  Good lord, she hadn’t had a conversation this level of petty since her first year at NYU when some wasted girl yanked her by her hair and dragged her off a couch in the freshmen dorm because she’d supposedly snogged her boyfriend.  To be fair, that was more of a fight than an argument, complete with scratching and slapping and hair pulling.  It remained one of the most embarrassing moments of her life.  Squinting further, she set her jaw, then put a hand on her hip.

            “Oh my god, Darce, use your eyeballs,” she groaned, pointing at them. “Your boy is only carrying TWO, not three.  They just switched duffels is all.  You’re the one who started this juvenile madness by calling Loki names such as, and I quote—” she counted off on her fingers “—useless boy, and genius, and Starboy, and his royal highness, and prince Lo.  And you know he despises that last one.  That was so un—”

            “Um, Siggy…” Darcy spoke over her friend, swallowing audibly and leaning toward her.  Speaking out of the side of her mouth, she said, “They are dancing.  Those boys dropped the bags altogether and are now dancing in the middle of the sidewalk.” 

            Sigyn stopped picking at the black nail polish on her thumb to look up at the guys just as Darcy threw her hands up and rolled her eyes.

            “I don’t get why they’re doing this,” Darcy groaned. “My flyboy was all LETS GOOOOO, and your Starboy was all FUUUUUCK YOU, and now they’re gonna flip a switch and start dancing at some rando’s high school graduation party?” Her eyes nearly popped out of her head then. “Wow those ladies are getting close to my man.  Oh no no no no.  You are on your own, Siggy.  I have some territory-marking to do.”

            Surrounded by dancing bodies (singing too), Loki focused intently on his girl as she jumped awkwardly out of her friend’s way.  Lewis was coming straight toward JB, and he assumed it had something to do with these newly legal girls moving a bit too close to her boyfriend.  He was surprisingly jealous of his friend when Lewis openly grabbed him by his belt (Jesus- not what he wanted to see) and started inappropriately grinding against him as though this was some sort of trap house beat when in reality it was the classic old school favorite Suspicious Minds by the infamous king of rock and roll himself.  Frowning deeply, he returned his gaze to his girl, who was still standing a thousand years away in front of that crosswalk.  

           Why won’t she come to me like Lewis went up to JB?  Does she not give a damn that I’m LEAVING on Tuesday?

            Mentally brushing that gut-wrenching thought aside, he refocused on the singing and dancing going on all around him—on the fun things going on all around him.

            Frozen to the pavement next to a street sign, Sigyn kept her eyes on Loki as she exhaled through her mouth.  She wasn’t particularly good at the “anxiety-breathing” technique (who knew it was a “skill”?) but she could at least try.  He looked so happy, so carefree, so…A-ok, and maybe it was because he liked the distance between them right now.  Maybe he would like an ocean between them.  At some point he’d put his sunglasses on, probably because people were taking pictures of (and with) certified blue check @lokiswriting.  He was so “on brand” right now, smiling for them and putting his arms around them and ducking into selfies with them, and she’d never felt so insignificant in her life.

            Wearing those cool as hell shades with his hair up and messed up while singing and dancing like he didn’t care who saw him, he was the incarnation of a hot summer night.  She vaguely heard Darcy, who was still a good twenty feet away, shouting at JB—“How is Loki able to hit the high notes? Baritones should not be able to switch into tenors at will like that!” —over the music.  As though her best friend had posed the question to her, Sigyn shrugged one shoulder in response.

            “He can do everything,” she said under her breath, staring at her too-perfect boyfriend.

            Except turn back time and UNSIGN his tour contract.

            Great.  Now she was falling down that miserable rabbit hole too.  She’d already been upset that he was surrounded by strangers, most of whom were really pretty and probably ten years younger than her, therefore more exciting and sprier.  Some were dancing so close to him, and he looked as though he was actually enjoying this situation, when instead he ought to be getting the hell out of there before someone legitimately groped him.  He carried a knife on him for that exact reason, for god’s sake!  Oh well, maybe it was all fine and dandy so long as it was some hot 22-year-old rubbing her ass against the front of his trousers.

            Swallowing nervously, she chewed her lower lip.  Was this how it would be when he was overseas?  Would she see pictures and videos of him loving that classic Starboy “live fast, die right” life without her?  Ugh, she could actually feel the jealousy rising in her chest like excessive cheap liquor at a bad idea party slowly making its way back up into her throat.

            Okay…I need to get the hell away from all these shiny happy people RIGHT NOW.

            Spinning on her heel, she started toward the car, but she only made it halfway across the street before a familiar hand grabbed hers.  When she turned around, Loki was pushing his sunglasses up onto the top of his head and blinking silently at her.  His eyes twinkled like the streetlamps, like brightly lit city windows.

            She caught herself before she scoffed “how DARE you have the gall to look so HAPPY.  How DARE your eyes be brighter than I’ve seen them since JANUARY while I’m over here breaking into pieces?  How DARE you let your stunning irises turn twenty shades of gorgeous green and blue under these streetlights!” right into his face.  The words he wrote on the spot at her doctor’s office and posted on his Insta came screaming back to her, though her mind automatically switched them to fit her point of view instead of his: “He blinks at me with iridescent eyes.  Are they silver?  I think they are stars.  I think infinite light years will soon permanently fill the space between Loki and me.  I think I’ll die before I get the chance to be anywhere near him again.”

            “Where do you think you’re going, gorgeous girl,” he asked, lacing his fingers with hers as he tugged her toward him and pulled her back to the sidewalk.  He let go of her hand to wrap his arms around her waist instead.

            “I was just going to grab my water from the car,” she said without missing a beat, faking a smile.  

            No way in hell would she let him see how damn miserable she was right here in this moment.  If he looked happy, then she could too.  Even if it was the lie of the century.  She waved a hand, attempting to look breezy and carefree about it.

            “It’s so hot out here, and with all the dancing and… you know…”

            He couldn’t look less convinced, and it irked her to no end that she couldn’t fool him at all.  She stopped the instinctive roll of her eyes, trying to keep eye contact with him, though her excessive blinking was ruining her “just fine, thanks” mask.  Alright, lying might not be her strongest suit.

            Looking all over her face, Loki shook his head. “This is the second time today that you have tried to run away from me.”

            Her mouth fell open. “No, that’s not what I’m—”

            “Do you have any idea how painful it is to watch you, literally and figuratively, turn your back on me, Sig?  Especially now, of all times?”

            Feeling like a piece of absolute human garbage, she lowered her eyes.  She shouldn’t be surprised that he would process her actions much like a reader recognizes an overt abandonment metaphor.  And why wouldn’t he?  She’d be lying to herselfif she said that she wasn’tchecking out of this relationship.  If she said that she wasn’t too scared to roll up her sleeves and put in the hard work after the fireworks show of the first two years was over because it might just fall apart anyway, that would be a lie too.

            What a wretched little coward- if you love this man as much as you claim to, Sigyn, then fucking PROVE IT.

            “I need you more than ever,” he said, reaching up to push her hair behind her ears. “Please just be here with me.  Don’t let the past drag you under the surface, and don’t focus on a future that neither of us is guaranteed.  The former is depressing, and the latter produces overwhelming anxiety.  Trust me on that, sweetheart.”

            Knowing he was one thousand percent correct, and wishing to the stars and back that she could follow those easier-said-than-done directions (for both their sakes), she wound her arms around his waist and buried her face into his chest.  However, just as soon as she did that, she felt his fingertip on the underside of her chin, slowly lifting her head to look up at him.

            “Focus right here—” he pointed at his eyes “—nowhere else.”

            She swallowed, wondering how upset he might be if she told him that she didn’t want to look at his eyes unless they were wetter than Niagara Falls.  Unless they were sad.  Unless they screamed “I AM FALLING APART TOO, I SWEAR” at her.

            “It’s called being present,” he said, his fingertips slipping just under the back of her shorts as he started rocking her back and forth, “and presently, I want to dance with the love of my life.”

            Blinking away the instant rush of tears, she slid her arms around his neck as he bent lower and danced like the present was the only thing they had.

            Maybe it is the only thing we have.  Maybe his next New Year won’t be mine after all.