~1:00 am, Thursday, January 5, 2017 ~

Reaching blindly across her pillows to get another tissue from her bedside table, Sigyn turned the page in her newest book purchase. This was it—the last page of Starboy.  In the next twenty seconds, the thrill of the first readthrough would be over. Sitting cross-legged here on her bed at one in the morning when she should be sleeping, she would finish Loki’s first novel, and it would absolutely crush her.

“Ugh, I’m not ready,” she whined, grabbing the whole box because one measly tissue would not suffice. She yanked it angrily through the thin plastic opening, frowning down at the now empty container.

Apparently, after shelling out fifty bucks of hard-earned cash for the gorgeous hardcover copy in the village yesterday, she should have swung by the CVS on Mulberry Street to buy another Kleenex box. Swiping the back of her hand across her wet cheeks, Sigyn tossed the useless empty thing haphazardly over her shoulder, then returned her eyes to the legitimately tear-stained page. Voice shaking, she read the written words aloud.

“I learned to lower my expectations to null quite some time ago, and now I don’t risk disappointment,” she paused, rubbing her watery eyes to clear her blurry vision, then took a deep breath. “It’s the best thing I ever did.  I still do it.  It’s called being present.  And presently, I want to find that girl.” Sniffle, wipe nose, deep breaths, get it together. “She may be right under my nose,” she continued, imagining Loki’s voice speaking the words, “or she might be on the other side of this train. Maybe her stop is Canal Street, just like mine.”  She paused again, her face crumpling.

Could one cry in little hearts instead of tears?  She felt like a damn cartoon character— an animated parody of a girl gone stupid for a boy.  Each word born from this unreal man was another piece of lead blasting through her chest, turning her heart and lungs into a bloody mess for him.

Wiping her eyes again, Sigyn continued reading, “Never doubt the beauty of smoke.  It hides a myriad of ugly flaws…”

She trailed off and put her face in her hands, her voice too hoarse from crying to read aloud anymore. Loki had used this “smoke” metaphor throughout the book. She was convinced this meant that the lead character’s existence was all smoke and mirrors, an apt illustration for this man who, 310 pages later, Loki still hadn’t given a name. He seemed almost like…a specter. A ghost of himself. A nameless starboy. A dying star.

Talk about a haunting theme; she wouldn’t even get the closure of knowing what name would go on the headstone. Lifting her head again, she ran both hands through her hair, tempted to pull it out from the extreme frustration. She just wanted to hear this guy say that his name was Loki, for hell’s sake.

Chest heaving, she sighed heavily.  When she had the pleasure of seeing Loki again eons from now on Saturday night, she would ask him what the guy’s name was.  Otherwise, she would continue literally reading into this starboy fellow, and seeing him as this smoky, vaporous shadow-self of the author. Setting her elbows on her knees, she leaned her weight on them, then picked the book up and flipped it over.

“Fuck, I love the way he writes,” she said, gazing at his picture on the back cover, unaware that she was biting her lip. This book had made her massive crush on him so much more unbearable.

Shaking her head, she flipped it over again, and silently read the last two paragraphs— 

Foot on the gas, sixth gear, 0 to 60, heart rate through that moonroof, I don’t know where the hell we’re going, but… Feel like burning rubber with me, gorgeous girl?  I caught you biting your lip when I pulled up to your building in these blacked out, ultra-expensive, custom-made wheels.  I’m a mess, but I swear you’ll love me.  I’ll take you on the ride of your life.  You’re too smart and far too well-read for me to teach you much of anything, but if you will just get in this goddamn car, I’ll show you how to live fast and die right.

“Oh, my word, Loki Odinson, you did not end it like that!” Sigyn shouted at her bedroom walls, slamming the book shut and bending forward to bury her face in her pillow. She needed moooore. How dare he ask her to get in the car, and just…just…leave the rest to her imagination?! “Oh, fuck no, boy.”

Growling like an extra deranged 28-year-old gremlin, she grabbed her phone and pulled up her previous messages with him.  She furiously tapped out a quick text and sent it without hesitation.

Sigyn:  Listen up, hotshot, this is an emergency situation. Starboy just gave me SERIOUS lady blue balls. Loki Odinson, you are literally the devil.

She doubted he would respond any time soon.  It was absurdly late, and presumably he was smart enough to silence his phone before bed.  However, if he had left the sound on for some highly irrational reason, then he deserved to be woken up from his precious slumber because he’d done this to her.

Angrily switching her lamp off, she flopped back onto the bed and groaned, too amped up to sleep. Certainly, scrolling through Instagram would just stimulate her brain further, but if her thoughts were already running 90 miles an hour to a certain writer’s apartment, then why not just moon over him on his @Lokiswriting account? There were several pics from inside his place, so even though she hadn’t been there in real life, she had a pretty good idea of the floorplan; it thrilled her architect brain to no end. His place was almost as gorgeous as him. Almost. 

After a few minutes of starry-eyed gawking, she checked her text screen again because she couldn’t help herself. She scowled at the screen. The message had been delivered, but unsurprisingly, he hadn’t read it.

Rolling her eyes, she sighed, annoyed with herself for letting even a sliver of hope wiggle its way into her head. She set her thumb on the power button to shut the whole thing down because it had let her down, but then something positively glorious appeared beneath her text.

Read 1:22 AM

Instantly, her lungs forgot how to breathe. Her jaw dropped, gaping at the screen like a dehydrated desert-traveler who’d just spotted running water for the first time in two days. Curling into a ball, she shoved her face into the pillow to stifle a dramatic whine.

So, he’d read her text—not exactly a star-aligning event. He’d only checked his messages because he’d forgotten to silence his phone, and thought someone had a legit emergency, only to discover it was just some crazy girl being weird as hell. Face still in her pillow, she whined again, this time from sheer embarrassment. Guaranteed, she would be left on read for several hours, which was so much worse. Despite herself, Sigyn lifted her head to look at the screen again…just in case.

Loki:  ...

“EEEEK!” she shrieked, her eyes nearly popping out of their sockets.  She shot upright and jumped off her bed, launching into a preemptive victory dance. 

“Calm down, calm down, calm down,” she hissed at herself, bouncing on her toes.

She threw her free hand over her mouth.  Her neighbors probably hated her for being so bloody loud tonight, what with all the whining and extremely vocal book commentary.  Never had a simple ellipsis sent her serotonin through the roof.  They’d gone out twice—Twice! —yet here he was, reading her dumbass text at an ungodly hour and not even making her wait three minutes for a reply?!  How he was able to pull this off without coming across as overeager, she would never know. Guys did not behave like this unless sex was a guaranteed outcome. She looked sideways then.

Wait a second, what if he thought my text was just the longer version of DTF?

Her lips pursing, she raised an eyebrow. She hadn’t meant it that way, but…sure, that too. She checked the screen again.

Loki:  …

Gritting her teeth, she growled under her breath, “For the love of everything, stop teasing me!”

Her patience idled at paper thin levels even at the best of times; this waiting game might genuinely break her brain.  His reply appeared in the conversation window that second, sparing her from a spontaneous accidental lobotomy, and her mouth fell into an open smile as she read through his long response, complete with full sentences, correct spelling, and everything. 

Loki:  Well hell. Look who it is. Sigyn Elena Frey. I was overjoyed to see your name on my phone. Emphasis on the word WAS. Listen, I will not stand for these unjust accusations. I do not recall FORCING you to read my book. Were you unaware of the associated risks? Critics suggested the FDA should’ve slapped a black box warning on the cover due to the overwhelmingly high rate of lethal blows that Starboy… ahem… thrusted…upon readers’ reproductive systems. All things considered, I’m glad you read it, and thank you for the impassioned review. Oh, and one more thing- did you intend to say that I am literally a *handsome* devil? Surely, you simply forgot to type that extremely relevant qualifying adjective? Oh, gorgeous girl, were you too flustered by your emergency situation to express yourself properly?

“If he calls me gorgeous girl one more time, he’s paying for my funeral,” Sigyn sighed, shivers shooting down her spine as her mind rocketed to heights far above a neon-lit concrete jungle.  Hands shaking as though she’d downed five espresso shots in one minute, she barely managed to type a reply.

Sigyn:  I didn’t expect you to be awake.

Loki:  I wasn’t. You woke me up, ma’am.

“Ma’am?” she snorted, oddly hearing his voice say that in an American southern accent.

Sigyn:  You could have put your phone on silent, SIR.

Loki: …

The ellipses disappeared, then reappeared, then disappeared again. She chewed her lip, the back and forth screwing with her head.  Maybe her tone had been too sarcastic.  Maybe she should call him instead.  Or facetime? 

Loki:  Okay, you can’t just throw that word around.

Head tilting, she pursed her lips, slightly confused.

Sigyn:  Which word?

Loki:  Please avoid calling me “sir” outside of extremely specific contexts.

A slow smirk spread across her face. “Ohhhhh, kink plot twist,” she cooed, more than a little interested to get the details concerning his specific contexts.  

Sigyn:  please elaborate

“You have the right to remain silent, sir,” she said, still smirking, “because everything you disclose from this point forward can and will be used against you in a bedroom, sir.”  

Loki:  And give you the upper hand? I think bloody not.

“Dammit,” she sighed, clucking her tongue, “plan foiled.”

Sigyn:  smart boy

Loki:  Obviously.

Sigyn:  With one exception...you don’t silence your phone at night.

Loki:  Of course, I silence my phone, woman. I still get alerts from favorite contacts.

Her eyes widened for a split second before becoming unbelievably heavy.  She blinked slowly, glowing from the inside out, floating above her body in a drug-like haze.

Sigyn:  You added me to your favorites list? I feel so special.

Loki:  Maybe I lied. Maybe I’m not even awake. Maybe I’m just sleep-texting. 

Squinting at the words, she raised an eyebrow. “Do what?” She read it again, then laughed out loud.

Sigyn:  My dyslexic brain read that as leep sexting.

Loki:  Sexting? After only two dates? That would indeed be quite a leap.

“For the love, stop being so cute,” she whispered, smiling at her phone.

Sigyn:  Nice pun. Perhaps “leep” sexting is an actual thing.

Loki:  I believe that’s called Tinder, gorgeous girl.

“There he goes again,” she sighed, the warm glow in her stomach getting warmer, turning her insides to liquid sunshine. “Shit, I am literally getting high off of this man.” 

Sigyn:  Okay I REALLY need you to stop calling me that 

Loki:  Hell no, woman. This is clearly a winning strategy.

Closing her eyes, she grinned, unsure which type of high best described her present reality. Drunk? Doped up? Rolling? Tripping? Post-climax oxytocin rush? All five at once? No matter what, the FDA should slap a black box warning on Loki himself— 

WARNING: ADDICTION.

Sigyn:  you can stop because you already won. Congratulations

Loki:  Is that so? Does it then follow that I’ll receive an award?

She bit into a smile, practically feeling the horns sprouting from the top of her head.

Sigyn:  Depends. What do you want? A hug?

Loki:  You must be joking. Call me greedy, but I would prefer that you offer more than the ONLY thing we’ve already done, Sig.

Seeing him shorten her name like that, she let out a quiet little whine, imagining his voice saying it right now. No one else had ever called her Sig. It had slipped from his mouth at Fanelli’s, and it sounded so…right. Given that he had not switched back to her full name since then, he must have sensed that she really liked it. Climbing back onto her bed, she sat on her ankles, and stared out her window, thinking of the way Sig rolled off his tongue.

Unsurprisingly, she couldn’t help but fixate on that “rolled off his tongue” phrase. It was downright criminal that his tongue still hadn’t rolled against hers. Her ego was trapped in cope mode, pointing out that he grabbed her hand at each turn, and that his hugs were basically foreplay, for god’s sake, forcing her to arch her spine and mold herself against him for at least ten seconds. He’d even slid his hand up into her hair when he hugged her last night after their dinner date, and if that move wasn’t erotic, she didn’t know what was.  Her phone buzzed in her palm, and she dropped her eyes to the new message in their conversation.

Loki:  Fair warning- what I want necessarily requires extremely close physical contact.

Mouth falling open, Sigyn’s heart took off faster than a formula-one car. She stared at the screen, waiting for the details. However, ten seconds passed and still nothing, not even an ellipsis. Making a face, she flung up her hands. That was it? Really? She bent forward, banging her forehead softly into the bedcover.

“Evil man,” she growled through her teeth, then sat up and gathered her hair in one hand to pull it up off her neck. Someone must have cranked the radiator to the eternal-lake-of-fire setting.  She should expect nothing less while texting with a self-proclaimed handsome devil.

Sigyn:  Well what is it?

“Guess this is what it means to sweat like a sinner in church,” she complained, hurrying to her window to crack it. When she set her chin on the sill, reveling in the heaven-sent cold air, his answer appeared.

Loki:  I’ll tell you on Saturday, gorgeous girl.

“WHAT?!” she scoffed at the screen, angrily typing a reply as the excited butterflies in her stomach turned into a swarm of unbearably thirsty, buzzing bees.

Sigyn:  WRITERS AND THEIR GODDAMN CLIFFHANGERS

Dragging both hands down her face, she groaned.

Loki:  Sweet dreams, Sig. x

Rolling her eyes, she turned her phone off and threw it on her bed.  She would not dignify his devious little teasing game with a response.

---

~ 9:27 am, Saturday, January 7, 2017 ~

One hand on the strap of his gym bag that he’d slung over his shoulder, Loki breezed through the glass doors of Falcon Fitness on the corner of Grand and Thompson.  The young woman behind the post-workout juice bar on his right looked up from her phone and flashed a bright smile as he walked past her.

“Killin it with the wayfarers as always, Prince Lo,” she half-mumbled, teeth still biting the straw in her green drink. “Sam and Bucky started without you ten minutes ago, just so you know.”

Spinning on his heel, Loki pulled his sunglasses down just enough to look at her over the bridge and walked backwards toward the weight racks where his friends—more like one friend and one trainer—were alternating bench presses.

“For the thousandth time, Chloe,” he sighed, shooting a playful glare at her, “I have a first name.” He pushed his glasses back up, then turned around and called to her over his shoulder, “Use it.”

“My bad, LO,” she said, waving a flippant hand at him before slurping loudly through the straw and focusing on her phone once more.

Loki rolled his eyes, walking toward the locker room door just beyond his gym mates.

“Nice work, JB,” he said, giving a thumbs up to Bucky who appeared to be dying on the bench while attempting to press an extremely heavy bar up off his chest.

“Hey…Lo…” Bucky grunted in response, barely managing to get the bar back onto the rack. He sat up, red-faced and breathing hard. “Sam’s ready to murder you.”

“Twenty. Seven. Damn. Minutes. Late.” Sam pointed out, grabbing a towel to wipe the sweat off the bench. He gestured for Bucky to get up so he could take his place. “This starboy right here-” he pointed to Loki “-is my only client who gets to pull this shit with me. Everyone else gets the boot.”

Pausing by the locker room entrance, Loki pushed his sunglasses up on top of his head. “I wonder if your generosity of spirit has anything to do with my uniquely generous financial support.” He shrugged one shoulder. “Probably unrelated. Be out in two.”

Laughing quietly, he disappeared into the locker room to put away his bag and jacket. He set his sunglasses on the top shelf in his locker, peeled his hooded sweatshirt over his head, and sank down on the teak bench between the rows of lockers, his back bowing as he set his elbows on his knees. His heels couldn’t stop bouncing for two bloody seconds, but sitting still was an impossible pipe dream this morning.  He was just far too amped up about seeing Sig tonight, every muscle and nerve ending twitching like he’d OD’ed on RedBull.

He could not get the specific image of his head between her legs out of his mind. If he closed his eyes, he could practically feel her fingers threading through his hair.

“Fuck,” he said through his teeth, putting his face in his hands.

His joggers were in no shape to handle those highly graphic images in public right now, and yet here he was, stupidly putting them in this unnecessary situation.  He’d almost called the gym to say that he wouldn’t make it today, and he highly regretted vetoing that decision just to appease the voice in his head telling him that missing a gym session “because anxiety” was objectively weak.

He hadn’t seen Sig since Tuesday because his sister Hela had come down from Boston for a few days. Fine fine fine. Four days between dates wasn’t anything to cry about.  Except of course for the near-nauseating building tension in his texts and short phone calls with this incredible new woman. To say that he ached to get his hands on her again, would literally be accurate.

He had not been mentally prepared to handle the days-long break from Sig. Hela had given him a 3-week heads up that she would be in town and staying with their folks down in Tribeca. Great! No problem! Sig would be at work anyway, so he could simply go to his parents’ place to hang out with his sister during the day, maybe grab lunch, or visit MOMA or something. Then he could still go out with gorgeous girl in the evening. Or if Hela wanted to get dinner, then he could possibly see Sig during her lunch break. It would have worked out just fine. However, his sister called him Tuesday night and begged to camp out at his place instead.

Serious family drama starring dad, as usual.  

He’d been at The Dutch up on Sullivan, jokingly arguing with Sig about paying for dinner again when suddenly Hela had just sprung this on him—calling him from the entrance of his building, crying over the phone and asking to come up to his apartment. Of course, he’d said a quick goodnight to his stunning date and hurried back to his place because that’s what any good brother would do.

Not that he didn’t love his sister, but she’d swept in to occupy his space when he’d planned to ask Sigyn to come back to his place. He wouldn’t have slept with Sig because that would have been a massive leap from point A to point Z, but good god, he wanted to kiss the hell out of her, and he couldn’t exactly do that inside the restaurant. The most he could have done was a peck on the lips.  Maintain decorum, closed mouths, three seconds max, absolutely no hip-touching.

“Not my style,” Loki mumbled to himself, lifting his head from his hands.

The locker room door swung open behind him then, its squeaky hinges pulling him from the edgy confines of his mind, and he turned to see Bucky walking in.

“Sam had to take a call,” Bucky said, gesturing at the door behind him, “and you passed your ‘be out in two’ time limit.  Everythin’ okay, man?”

Sucking in his cheeks, Loki looked away. “You know how you felt back in November when you first hooked up with Lewis?”

“Hooked up?” Bucky repeated, walking over to sit down on the opposite bench. “Darcy’s my girlfriend, not some fuck buddy.”

Loki gave him a withering look. “Thus, my use of the qualifying adverb first,” he droned.

Rolling his eyes, Bucky yanked his backwards ball cap off his head and whacked Loki’s knee with it. “Your qualifyin’ adverbs can go to hell,” he laughed, then put his hat on again. “You seein’ someone?”

Loki grinned slightly. “It’s still really early, but the connection is unreal.”

“You must be hallucinatin’ again.”

“If I am, then this is the best psychotic break of my life,” Loki answered, smiling when his friend snorted. “Honest to god dream girl.”

“Dream girl? Man, keep your crazy head on your shoulders,” Bucky said, then held his hands up. “Sorry. No offense about the crazy thing,” he added when Loki gave him an unimpressed look.

“I don’t recall asking for advice,” Loki said, the crease between his eyebrows reaching Mariana Trench depths.

“Not givin’ advice,” Bucky replied, shaking his head. “Wanna hear my personal dating philosophy?”

“No.”

“Great! I’m tellin’ it to you anyway,” Bucky said, not missing a beat. “I remind myself that everyone is only human. It’s the only thing that grounds me when I start to put someone on a pedestal ‘cause they’re doin’ all the right things to make me feel good about myself.  Eventually they’ll do or say something that makes me feel like shit, and it all starts to go to hell real quick.”

Sucking in his cheeks, Loki squinted at the man, slightly distracted by that ridiculous backwards ball cap. “You expect the worst to avoid disappointment.”

“Yup.”

“Hmm.” Loki scratched the back of his neck, eyeing Bucky from under his brow. “Really need to put on my thinking cap for that deeply profound take right there,” he said, tapping his head, “otherwise, I might mistake your personal philosophy for what the kids these days refer to as basic pessimism.”

Bucky lifted his chin, responding in a mock British accent. “Oh, go ahead, and call me a pessimist, not to be confused with NIHILIST-” he made air quotes “-if you want.  That’s fine.  I learned to lower my expectations to null quite some time ago, and now I don’t risk disappointment.  It’s the best-”

“-best thing I ever did,” Loki finished the sentence for him, his eyes rolling. “You are literally just repeating a paragraph from my book now, and I don’t know if I should feel insulted or proud. Shit impression of my voice by the way.”

“I still do it,” Bucky continued the quote, smiling broadly. “It’s called being present, and presently, I want to-”

“-to find that girl,” Loki said the last few words in unison with him. “Yes, yes, I know. Piss off, JB.”

The conversation with his friend calmed Loki’s nerves just enough to deal with the next two hours of anaerobic metabolic hell that Sam had planned for them.  Admittedly, there was that one set of shoulder presses when Loki almost thrust the 90-pound barbell at his trainer, but aside from that near-fatal burst of testosterone-fueled anger, it had been a decent gym session.  Sliding his sunglasses on, Loki waved goodbye to Chloe at the front desk around 11:30, anxious to get home and get out of his sweat-soaked clothes.  His tired muscles had earned a long hot shower.  Especially since he intended to put them through another workout tonight.

---

~ 7:32 PM, Sigyn’s apartment, 159 Prince Street #8 ~

Phone in hand, Sigyn pulled her bedroom curtain aside to look out her window, her teeth digging into her bottom lip as she focused on the intersection of Prince and Thompson Street, one block west of her building. The knots in her stomach could not get any tighter. Loki lived on Thompson, and he would round that corner any second now. She’d gotten a text from him ten minutes ago asking if he could just come to her place and order in rather than go out for dinner, and she’d damn near lost her mind on the spot. 

She could have texted “Be my guest, Loki. No, seriously, be my overnight guest. I’ll even give you my bed” but she went with a less horny “sure, just text me when you get here” response instead, forgetting that he didn’t even know her address. Whoops—forgive her for thinking he knew everything about her, including her constant GPS location, since he now lived rent free in her brain.

Squinting her eyes, she looked from person to person walking on the surprisingly crowded, wet pavement three stories below.  She pushed up onto her toes, annoyed with the umbrellas obstructing her view. She didn’t appreciate having to strain her neck to see the street corner better. Sighing, she dropped her heels to the floor again and checked her phone.

7:36 PM. No new texts or missed calls.

She returned her eyes to the pavement below. “Where are you, Loki?”

Chest pounding, she chewed her bottom lip as the umbrellas finally moved aside at the exact second a tall, black-haired figure in a leather jacket, slim dark trousers, and boots came around the corner of Thomspon and Prince. She blinked slowly, admiring his gait, which could only be described as a god-like strut, as he neared her building. She saw him pull his phone from his pocket, presumably texting her, and she took off toward her front door.

“Cool it!” she whisper-shouted to herself, slowing her pace down the stairs.  She eyed the new text on her phone.

Loki: I’m standing outside your building, and oh god, please come down here NOW to let me in, Sig. I left my place sans umbrella (because I am a highly intelligent man), and this rain is causing GREAT harm to my defenseless leather jacket. x

Chuckling at the image of a poor defenseless leather jacket, she grabbed the door handle and yanked hard, the door swinging open and accidentally banging into the wall behind it.

Startled by the sudden clang of metal on brick, Loki jumped, his eyes blowing wide.

“Son of a…” he gasped, blinking rapidly, “I wasn’t ready for a jump scare.”

“Welcome to my haunted house of horrors,” Sigyn joked, sweeping her arm out dramatically, smiling wide and trying not to laugh at his mouth hanging open like a fish out of water.

She stepped back, holding the door open for him. “Let’s get you out of those wet clothes,” she said, her cheeks flushing deep red. Talk about a Freudian slip. “Wet jacket. I meant to say jacket. Sorry.”

“I know what you meant, Sig,” Loki replied, giving her a dark look, the dim light from the juice store window next door casting shadows on the tightening muscles in his jaw.

He stepped into her building, spinning around to face her as she let the door close behind her. She met his gaze again, struggling to keep it together because if looks could kill, she would drop dead at his feet when her vital organs spontaneously combusted from the heat in those intense emerald eyes. If that didn’t do the trick, then the carbon dioxide poisoning from excessive heavy breathing would—he’d stolen all the available oxygen in the hall away from her.

A decent man would share some of that air in his lungs by giving her mouth to mouth.  An exceptionally decent man would do so with his tongue.  Paramedics of course referred to this as French CPR.  Speaking of mouths, he was looking at hers, his teeth digging into his bottom lip, though not in a lascivious manner.  No, if someone asked her to name the expression on his face, she would go with…fiercely pensive.

And I am fiercely into it.

Stunned speechless by the head rush she was experiencing from just looking at him, Sigyn moved away from the door and leaned back against the wall for support. She needed a moment before attempting to climb three flights of stairs. Actually, now would be a great time for Loki to prove that he could carry her up there. She bit her lip, her gaze traveling down his body, unconsciously gauging just how much power those long, lean legs could generate.

Good lord, woman, stop ogling his crotch!

Cheeks burning, her eyes shot back up to his face. He still had that same lethal look in his eyes, and oh god, it was just too much. Sure, a clock might claim only fifteen seconds had passed since the no doubt expensive designer soles of Loki’s boots first met the tile floor under their feet, but time was relative when having an hours-long staring contest with him. Desperate to break the tense silence before that silence broke her brain, she cleared her throat. The harsh, guttural sound reverberated all around them, violently bouncing back and forth off the brick walls, tile floors, wood steps, and doors.  Perhaps she was imagining things, but she would have sworn that the wall behind her back was shaking.

Pushing off the wall, she threw up her hands helplessly. “Where are my manners? Up to number eight on floor three, we go,” she chimed, forcing an airy tone while setting her foot on the first stair and gesturing for him to follow.

Looking up at her from under his brow, Loki watched her start up the steps. The seconds moved forward, keeping time with the heels of Sigyn’s ballet flats ascending the stairs, along with the blood rushing through his ears, and the hiss of his own breaths in and out of his parted lips. 

Tick… TAP… whirr… SWISH…

Tick… TAP… whirr… SWISH…

Tick… TAP… whirr… SWISH… 

Nostrils flaring, he exhaled long and slow through his mouth, pissed that he couldn’t bloody move. Sig was up there, and he was down here, frozen to the tile floor like an ice statue all because the driving staccato beats from spontaneous percussive echos in the stairwell-turned-concert-hall were pressing in on him from all sides and triggering a disastrous claustrophobic brain malfunction. The building door swung open behind him then, and he nearly jumped out of skin.

“Jesus,” he muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose as the person who had just entered the building walked around him. Would there also be a third jump scare coming soon?

“Sorry, dude,” the person said, nodding to Loki then hurrying up the stairs past Sigyn, shouting at her over their shoulder, “Looking good, Sigyn.”

“Thanks, Sterling, you too,” she responded, twisting to look at Loki, her eyebrows raising in question. “Why so jumpy? I promise the house of haunted horrors thing was just a joke.” She beamed at his responding raspy laugh.

“I’m just a bit on edge for reasons unrelated to ghosts,” he admitted, looking her up and down, suddenly highly aware of her marvelously revealing outfit—a short, out of season black, off the shoulder t-shirt sporting a large purple lipstick print across her chest, and possibly illegal short red cutoffs.

Jaw clenching, he lifted his eyes to hers again as an adult content bomb detonated in his head, blasting every conscious thought with explicit scenes starring himself and that legs-for-days woman standing above him. Now the walls weren’t pressing in on him— just the dark denim below his belt. Running both hands through his hair, he walked to the base of the stairs, and crooked his forefinger at her, motioning for her to come back down to him.

 “You texted me several nights ago,” he said, darkly watching her descend the steps achingly slowly, “and I promised to tell you what I want tonight. I want to tell you now, if that’s alright with you.” 

Sigyn nodded, white knuckling the railing like a steering wheel in the hands of a driver getting pulled over by a traffic cop. That “I’ll tell you Saturday” text had occupied far too much space in her head this week. He was probably a sorcerer, and those four words were a sex spell. If not, then she was just weak as hell for him, which was fine, so long as he was just as weak for her. She finally came face to face with him, her stomach somersaulting itself into a dizzy mess, but rather than join him on the floor, she stopped on the bottom step to give herself a bit of height.

I need to keep SOME semblance of power in this…sort of…relationship…thing.

Loki glanced at their feet, then he returned his eyes to her face, giving her a knowing look when she lifted her chin. Such a smart girl—literally not giving him an inch. 

“So,” Sigyn said, clearing her throat, “what do you want?”

“I want to carry you up three flights of stairs to your apartment right now,” he responded firmly and without hesitation, keeping his eyes on hers.

Jaw dropping, her eyes shot wide open.

OH MY GOD, ARE YOU KIDDING ME??

Barely managing to reel her jaw up off the floor, she stammered, “You mean…like the thing I said when we were at-”

“Fanelli, yes,” he cut her off, setting his hands on her hips just below her shirt and slipping his thumbs underneath the fabric, “and I’m not talking about that over-the-threshold nonsense.”

Sigyn blinked lazily, feeling that gravelly timbre rumbling deep in her bones as surely as she felt the scorch marks from his thumbs dragging across her lower stomach. How could a man know her for only one week and have the audacity to already brand his name into her skin? Her mind supplied the answer.

Because you’re letting him, hon.

She opened her mouth to give him a classy “fuck yes” response to his request, but Loki shook his head and put a finger to his lips. 

“If we do this, we’re doing it my way,” he rasped, tightening his grip, “with your legs around my waist and your arms around my shoulders.”  

She nodded, wrapping her arms around his shoulders. “Understood.”

Gritting his teeth behind closed lips, Loki exhaled sharply, and got straight to it. He ran his hands down her hips and around to her backside, watching her carefully, his heart racing out the gate when her eyebrows knitted together. If he didn’t know better, he might think she was in pain, but the little gasp escaping from her parted lips spoke louder. That wasn’t a look of pain. It was a look of impatience.

Me too, Sig.

Growling softly under his breath, he gripped her ass and hoisted her up against his stomach, smirking at the sight of her teeth scraping over her bottom lip. He started up the stairs, one foot after the other, climbing higher and higher with her in his arms. This was the no holds barred physical contact that he’d been aching for—his splayed fingers sliding underneath the back of her shorts that had ridden up when he’d lifted her, dragging the denim aside to expose more of that stunning curve. His hands were so happy, clinging to her as she clung to his neck, her fingers tangling in his hair. He groaned as her grip tightened.

Consider my hair kink triggered.

He was tempted to stop here on the second-floor landing and just make out against the wall, but that wouldn’t be fun with his ego incessantly screaming “ABSOLUTELY not!” at him. Hefting her higher up his body, the front of her shorts pressed directly against the fly of his jeans, and he hissed sharply.

Oh god, oh god, oh god, oh god.

Twelve stairs later, he set his boot on the third floor. “Which one is yours?” he asked, gripping her thighs more tightly when she started to relax them.

“Number 8,” she answered shakily, pointing behind him, and he swiveled toward the door with a gold number 8 on it. “You don’t need to take me all the way into-”

“Key?” He spoke over her, completely breathless.

Dropping one hand from his shoulders, she pulled her key from her back pocket, shoved it in the lock, and twisted the doorknob. Putting her arm around his shoulders again, she clung to him as he walked in and kicked the door closed behind him. Her mouth fell open when it slammed behind her. Was she in a goddamn movie right now? This was officially the hottest moment of her life thus far.

Loki walked straight to her studio couch, then carefully set her down on the back of it.  She relaxed her legs, unlocking her ankles from behind his back and dropping her feet to the floor. Arms still around his shoulders, she pulled him closer, and he grinned down at her.

“Told you I could do it,” he said, angling his face to avoid bumping her nose.

“You said you could do it easily, but you’re panting like you just finished a marathon,” Sigyn teased him, pushing his poor defenseless wet leather jacket over his shoulders and helping him shrug out of the sleeves, “which means you only passed half the test of manhood.”

Eyeing her narrowly, he draped his jacket over the back of the couch next to her. “I’m breathing hard because your legs took advantage of my crotch on those stairs.”

“Oh, you literally asked me to!” she scoffed.

“Sure, just blame the victim.”

“Did I force you to grab my ass?”

“No, gravity forced me. You see, Sig, there’s this technique called leverage-”

“Shut up,” she said on an exhale, trying to get her own heart rate back down from the tachycardic cloud nine high that Loki had given her.

He grinned crookedly. “So…what now? Netflix?”

Biting into a smile, she shrugged and reached for her PS4 controller behind her on the cushions below. “Genre preference?”

Before she got a hold of it, Loki grabbed her hips and flipped her backwards onto the cushions.

“Jesus!” she gasped, landing with a thud, her eyes popping as he literally hurled his body over the back of the couch after her.

Landing on his knees at her feet, he smirked and crawled up her body, his hips settling between her thighs. She reached up to hold his face, her thumbs running along his jaw as her mouth fell open in wonder. He moved fast then, closing his eyes and swooping down to catch her parted lips with his. Sliding her tongue under his on impact, Sigyn moaned into his mouth. Fireworks shot off a dozen at a time inside his chest, the explosions rippling out in all directions up and down his body as she arched up into him. Beneath his chest, he felt her heart pounding faster, catching up to his at breakneck speed.

Heart rate through that moonroof, I don’t know where the hell we’re going, Sig…

Then, Sigyn slid her hands up into his hair, and moved her mouth to his ear. “This is me getting in the goddamn car.”

Eyes slamming shut, Loki pulled her mouth to his for another kiss, even more heated than before.

And this is me putting my foot on the gas, gorgeous girl…

~Sunday, January 1, 2017, 7:52AM, Manhattan, NYC~

“Almost…home,” Loki muttered between heavy breaths as he slowed his pace from a run to a jog and finally came to a stop at the corner of Church and Canal Street.

Slamming his left palm into the crosswalk button, he whipped his phone out of his right jacket pocket, and switched hands, yanking his right glove off with his teeth to use the touchscreen.  He was on the latter half of his daily lap around the lower west side, and despite listening to his supposedly motivational running playlist, he felt like sinking to the ground, putting his head between his knees, and staying there until someone called 911 out of concern for the absurdly sexy, though apparently catatonic human icicle on the sidewalk.  He bent down, trying to shield his phone from the drizzle as he scrolled through his playlist, hoping one of the tracks would stand out as a decent candidate.  Scroll, scroll, scroll—dull, blah, meh, ugh, eh, no, no, pass, oh HARD pass.  

“Dammit,” Loki hissed, glancing up at the cross-traffic light.  He scowled at the thing.

Evil, purposefully inconvenient machine, how are you STILL green??

Annoyed to no end, he returned his gaze to his phone, clouds of breath escaping his mouth and fogging up the cold screen.  Naturally, this turned the words into indecipherable blurry-lettered blobs.

Eyes rolling, he unzipped his jacket just enough to slide his phone inside, then rubbed it in circles on his shirt to dry off the screen.  He removed it once more, careful to not breathe directly on it this time, and resumed scrolling.  He frowned at the song titles.

Love is a Suicide?  Something to Die For?  Leave a Trace?  Love Without Tragedy?  Point of No Return?  Burn the Witch?  Wasted Youth?

Sucking in his cheeks, he looked sideways.

I’m sensing a pattern here, he mused, his lips pursing.

Usually, he interpreted the sounds blasting through his Air Pods as “the love, the hate, two sides, same coin, so…what the hell…might as well just put it in drive and see where I end up because it’s better than staying in one spot for fear of doing something wrong when it’s all a neutral coin toss.”  But today? —not so much.  No, the thumping bass in his ears only magnified a dreadful sense of urgency more along the lines of “my life is a ticking time bomb, my body has an expiration date, and dear god, not knowing the date scares the hell out of me.”  Would it be next year?  A few decades from now?  What was the average life expectancy?  75?  80?  If he made it that far, he’d be 80-years old in…um…wait…

Eyebrows pulling together, he scratched the back of his neck.

How old am I again? 33? I think? I lost count…goddammit, what year is this now? 2017?

Shoulders slumping at his ineptitude with numbers, he groaned softly.  Once again, he was allowing New Year’s Day to screw with his head.  This hyper self-critical analysis of the previous year was a beloved annual tradition that brought with it as much joy as the forced familial civility at his parents’ holiday dinner.   Happy Christmas, and god bless us all for not giving in to that hour-long desire to stab each other with our fancy forks.  Now get out of here because someone’s unaddressed daddy issues are two seconds from turning this place into a bloodbath.  Loki closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose as his 2016 mental scrapbook flipped through the pages of its own accord.

That near-fatal split with his ex from the inside of a NYPD precinct jail cell in March had been such fun.  Sheer joy.  All treats, no tricks.  The best. 

Also in March, he’d survived that slightly less anxiety-laden moment in his editor’s office while awaiting her response to Starboy, his first and hopefully not last novel.  He’d been in a panic, positively terrified that the oft-terrifying Ms. Sharon Seder would rip the red pen out of the pen holder on her desk, draw one huge X across the front page, and throw the whole thing back in his face.  However, she’d looked him in the eye and said what every man in the world wanted to hear —

“My verdict? STUNNING.”

Even now, nearly a year later while waiting for this streetlight to change, Loki still felt a bit of weight lifting from his shoulders at the memory of those words.  He smirked a little, recalling what he’d said to her after she’d offered her verdict.

“I get that a lot, Sharon, though you’re the first to say it in an office setting.”

He stared dead-eyed at the crosswalk sign across the street. “Brilliant, expertly-timed innuendo,” he chuckled—a gravelly, unamused sound—under his breath. “My one superpower.”

Dropping his unseeing gaze once more to his playlist, he rolled his thumb up and down the screen, staring pointlessly at the song titles.  He shrugged his shoulders, preoccupied with analyzing the snapshots popping up on the inside wall of his skull as he clicked through the “LO in 2016” slides housed safely in a closely-guarded imaginary projector.

Starboy was a memoir that no one on the planet should have given two shits about.  New Yorkers might have known the name Loki Odinson, but certainly not the entire country, much less the world at large.  Even though his real-estate savvy father (dubbed “King Odin” by some insipid Bloomberg writer) had given the Manhattan elite 80 million reasons to know anyone with the Odinson name—reasons that were dispersed across multiple banks and accounts and capital assets—that hardly meant any of them would want to read a fictional novel about the youngest Odinson’s bad boy antics.  Loki had assumed that it would be written off immediately as 300 pages of narcissistic waxing poetic about the “struggles” faced by yet another angsty white male living in New York. He’d been wrong.  So wrong.

Somehow, in spite of his almost entirely unrelatable lifestyle, he’d successfully highlighted the relatable human struggles amidst the absurdity of fast cars, rock stars, rooftop bars, and sex-laden boudoirs—namely, a lifetime of hiding his ugliest scars. He’d started writing it two summers ago in a…near…final…moment of desperation, and he’d been transparent about that humbling moment during his press tour before his novel hit the bookstore shelves last July.

“Starboy saved my life, and I mean that in every sense of the word, because if I hadn’t started writing it…um…” Loki had paused, carefully considering his next words during that GMA interview last June, “God, I don’t want to trigger anyone here, especially not on a morning show, so, let’s just say that summer 2015 was the lowest point of my life.”

Loki’s novel was released with near-unanimous praise from every lit-crit on the planet, and come September 2016, it had scored the coveted #1 newcomer spot on the NYT-bestseller list.  His 2016 success compounded rapidly from there.  Blue-check verified @LokisWriting on Twitter and Instagram earned 100K new followers.  GQ magazine made “Star Boy Novel Style: Loki Odinson” the cover article in their November issue.

Also in November, he’d purchased that gorgeous 8th floor Soho apartment with sweeping floor to ceiling views of the city that he’d been salivating over for three years.  Ultimately, he’d earned just under a million USD, putting his net worth somewhere around nine and a half million, and thank goodness for it—he’d been running low on disposable income to buy shit he didn’t need. 

“So grateful, aren’t we,” he scoffed to himself.

Demonic ex-girlfriend situation notwithstanding, he should feel liberated and justified by his massive achievements of the last year. But no.  He still needed to do more.  He needed to be more.  More, more, more.  What “more” he needed to do or be, Loki didn’t know.  He only knew that writing a bestseller didn’t cut it.  More money in the bank didn’t cut it either.  The new apartment didn’t cut it.  The fame status leveling up didn’t cut it.  Sweet as most of them were, stans blowing up his mentions didn’t cut it.  Increasing numbers of “hot” socialites and influencers crowding him any time he took part in the lower west side nightlife absolutely did not cut it.

God, please no—I already had enough trendsetting, plastic dolls trying to get in my trousers BEFORE Starboy.

He rolled his eyes, knowing the thoughts running 90 miles an hour through his head right now would earn him zero victim points and possibly get him thrown in Twitter jail for calling women “plastic dolls” —hashtag NOT ALL! Listen up, Tweeps, many of those plastics were of the male persuasion, so, perhaps the internet cancel party attendees should check themselves for making heteronormative assumptions concerning his overly-privileged, insane takes.

But honestly, setting aside the pinpoint accuracy of any accusation of “insanity” aimed at him, he doubted that he would ever get over his “never satisfied with ANYTHING” attitude.  Apparently, no amount of “success” would ever give him the permission to take a break from his constant pursuit of identity.  

Quietly groaning under his breath, Loki stared daggers at the passing cars. The light was still green, and he still hadn’t landed on the right song.  There were too many choices!  It was for this reason that he always stared stupidly at waiters after listening to them list twenty different salad dressings.  Just…just forget it.  Bring out a plate of plain greens or whatever.  He should probably appreciate the fact that he could quite literally afford to overthink his first-world problems.

Oh look.  I am ruminating again.  Shocking.

As though his head wasn’t already in a vice thanks to this post-New-Year’s hangover, he also just had to continue this months-long spiral into the darker side of madness.  He made a face then.

Did I just say…the darker side of madness?  

Jaw tightening, he scoffed, “Stars above, I need help.” More help than even his shrink could provide.  The good doctor no doubt questioned her ability to help Loki at every appointment, especially that first one four years ago.  He’d seen it all over her face—wide-eyed, one eyebrow comically raised—while reading over his intake form.

Last Name: Odinson.  First Name: Loki.  Middle (optional): Oh, this one is optional?  Then, it won’t matter if I just make up an answer.  My middle name is Mischief.
DOB: 17 Feb 1983.  Age: Uh, 30? I wrote my birthdate, so YOU do the math.
Today’s date: Give me a moment to check my phone.  It claims that today is 22 Feb 2013. Thrilling information.
Street Address: 118 Spring Street #3 *this will not be my address for long because I MUST move somewhere with a view. I’m looking at 55 Thompson, and I WILL have it by the end of the Obama era, mark my words.  City: New York. State: NY. Zip: 10012.  Phone: (212) 864-3387. Consider yourself lucky to get my digits.
Height: 6’2. That’s code for “perfect” by the way.  Weight: Not sure why this matters, unless you’re trying to gather how difficult it would be to drag me to a padded room.  Last I checked, I was 180. So...fairly difficult.
Marital Status: I’ve received dozens of marriage proposals, four of which were deadly serious, and I am proud to say that I refused all of them.
Sex: GOD-LIKE MALE. (capitalized for extreme emphasis). *If this question was code for “sex or Nah?” my answer is “you wish, peasant”.
Sexual orientation (optional): Maybe I should say “straight” because I’m a man who is not attracted to men(at least those who my brain interprets as “men” upon a quick glance), but I don't really know, and I don’t even care. Is orientation based on attraction to sex or gender or both? Whatever. My answer to this one: N/A.
Gender Identity (optional): I sort of answered this in the previous section, didn’t I?  Well, to clarify, I’m a man, and I sometimes paint my nails black when I can’t sleep.  The monotony of the action quiets my mind. That, and the fumes make my head spin like I just popped four Xans.  NOW you can properly psychoanalyze me.
Occupation: Day job(eh): Contributing Editor/writer for 12 literary journals/magazines (Harpers and The New Yorker are probably the only ones you know) I’d prefer to be an author of a legitimate full-length published standalone novel, but that would require actually finishing one of the dozens of half-completed stories on my hard drive. *TLDR: FAILSON.
Highest education level: Oh, see this is where my need to be the smartest in the room propels me to list every academic achievement of my life, of which there are many.  For your sake, however, I’ll follow the instructions and only provide the highest level, which is a Masters degree. *summa cum laude from Harvard, by the way. See what I did there?  I subverted the system and got a bit...smart...with you.
Known chronic mood/mental disorders (provide the name of the prescribing MD and the date/s of diagnosis): Type 1 Bipolar Disorder (I know you’re shocked by that one) and Attention Deficit Disorder (I think it should be renamed “painfully creative disorder”...but that’s just me).  Both were diagnosed by the wonderful Dr. Louise Schneider, attending MD at Mount Sinai.  BPD in May 2011 and ADD in October 2012.
Reason for your visit today: I was scheduled for an insanity-check...sorry… “quarterly check-up” with my previous psychiatrist, the aforementioned Dr. Schneider, but she died in a car accident two weeks ago at only 48 years old.  I feel blindsided.  I know it’s possible to die “before one’s time” (what time is that? how is it determined?) but… Schneider?—My mind had me convinced that she was immortal. It’s disconcerting on another level.  As you can see, I have a talent for taking someone else’s tragedy and turning it into something about me. I imagine her children are beside themselves with grief, but the only real victim is me because it inconveniences me to search for a new doctor. Well, lucky for you, I’m here to interview you for the job.  Hope you’re cut out for it; as you can see, I’m quite the headcase.  But don’t let that scare you off.  I pay handsomely.  As in, I hand over my credit card every time we meet, and I’m incredibly good-looking while doing so.  You’re welcome.

((Admin only: Asked Loki if his answers on this intake form were meant to be satirical; his response was “those answers are more genuine than your hair color, doctor.” I am ashamed to admit that I laughed out loud at that.))

He might have snuck a peek at her open screen to look at the “admin only” notes on the way out of her office after that initial visit.  That had been the moment he’d decided to hire her for the job.  Perhaps at the next visit she could add “client explains his ‘darker side of madness’, exhibiting symptoms of POE-ESQUE TORTURED SOUL LARPING DISORDER” to her notes.

Well, perhaps he should complete the goth aesthetic and throw a black-market legit absinthe party at some point this year.  Perhaps the Green Fairy was calling his name.  Perhaps he would paint everything in shades of green and black, barely visible under flickering gaslights diffused by pain-numbing opium pipe smoke.

Sucking in his cheeks, Loki raised an eyebrow—huh, he genuinely might do that this October 31st.  Forget dancing to fun creepy classics like Thriller and I Put a Spell on You.  No, instead, his friends would be subjected to moody bass, dark guitars, excessively angsty lyrics, likely written on tear-stained papers, and sung by a person who started wearing black eyeliner at age 3—that kind of thing.  The Marilyn Manson cover of Sweet Dreams would fit perfectly in that scene.

Eh.  October was light years away.  He just needed to focus on right now.  January 1.  Cold, wet, sad, alone.

Great idea—focusing on my CURRENT feelings will truly improve my quality of life.

Still scrolling, he frowned at the Antigravity playlist tracks, increasingly annoyed with the options until, thankfully, he reached the last song on the list—Starboy by the incomparable artist The Weeknd.  

“Oh, that one’s perfect,” he muttered, tapping the title.

Was there a better way to reaffirm the vapid, meaningless status of his existence than hearing another man sing “we don’t pray for love, we just pray for cars”?  Considering most of this phenomenal artist’s work was pretty goddamn dark, it was a perfect match for the day at hand.  Though, this new album didn’t crush Loki’s soul as thoroughly as the previous one had, which was probably a good thing.  It would help cure the Poe-Esque Tortured Soul Larping Disorder currently infecting his brain.

The cross traffic finally stopped behind the newly turned red light, and he ran through the crosswalk at a pace just this side of sprinting.  He wanted to go home.  Now.

He was freezing his tail off, and the mostly empty streets were a little too reminiscent of The Walking Dead for his liking.  New Year’s Day or not, New York was not supposed to sleep.  Goddamn, a hot shower would be phenomenal.  So much for these gloves—useless things—his fingers were probably getting frostbite.

He pushed harder, his legs protesting the extra effort in the cold by increasing the burning sensation in his quads.  Runner’s high should have kicked in by now, but apparently, his body wasn’t in the mood to pump a few endorphins into his system.  2017 was off to a great start.

Should’ve stayed in bed…or at least bothered to chase ten goddamn aspirin with two litres of water before this moronic run.

God, he despised the forced revelry of December 31st.  Why should he celebrate “moving on” into the next arbitrary year that would follow the same pattern as every one prior to it?  He was still Loki Odinson.  He was still wrecked by the same slightly volatile “might roll/might crash” problem in the space between his ears.  Still traumatized by that…thing…that happened when he was 17.  Still had a restraining order against his ex-girlfriend because that woman was still the Antichrist (and he wasn’t even religious!).  Still a disappointment to his father.  Still trying to prove that he could do something of value.

Running a hand through his hair, angry at the mere thought of his father, Loki picked up his pace.  He pushed more aggravating hair off his face, ignoring any further self-deprecating words in favor of simply listening to the song playing in his AirPods.  Trapped inside his sluggish, self-obsessed post-liquor brain, he made a wrong turn onto Canal Street.

Of course, he did not realize this for several minutes.  He groaned, beyond pissed with his legs for dragging him up Greene Street instead of Thompson several blocks west.  Though, perhaps he should cut himself a bit of slack—he’d only run this route a thousand times, so this directional confusion was long overdue.

Nostrils flaring, he ground his teeth together.  Right now, he ought to feel the sweet warm relief of his building lobby’s central heating system, but no no no, that would have been too merciful for 2017.  Imagine his shock that the first day of a new year had literally taken a turn for the worse, forcing him to spend another ten minutes brooding in this cold, wet weather.

Par for the course, at this point—fuck, I hate January.

Once again, the new year was entirely dead on arrival.  No turning new leaves over for him…for 30 consecutive years.  The only silver lines in sight were those awful things trying to sneak in between the far superior black hair on his head, which he’d plucked out angrily with a pair of tweezers this morning. 

“It is 38 degrees and raining, and I took a goddamn detour,” he growled under his breath, shooting a look at the clouds above.

He could hear the forecast now—“Well, folks, looks like Mother Nature won’t be wishing New Yorkers a happy new year today (ha ha ha laugh laugh *slaps knee*) because it’s going to be nothing but grey skies for the foreseeable future.  We’ll be looking for that sunlight and let you know as soon as it’s on the way!”—Ugh, what absolute vomit.

Losing interest in the silent, sad attempts at humor in his mind, he focused on the Spring Street sign up ahead, squinting into the misty rain that had started up again.  Phenomenal.  He wasn’t just feeling “down” anymore.  No no no, that wasn’t good enough.  The universe needed to add another layer of flavor—something bitter, perhaps—to the negativity cocktail shaker in his skull.  And the winner was (drumroll, please) sheer anger aimed at those low hanging, flat clouds that couldn’t decide if they wanted to be rain clouds or not.

He wanted to scream at the clouds—Enough with the back-and-forth freezing drizzle!  

They weren’t giving his body a chance to adjust to one or the other.  Every moment he’d caught up to the stinging of cold-water droplets hitting his face, those goddamn clouds would pull back, thereby confusing the hell out of his senses with five minutes of dry air.  Then BOOM —more rain.  Why hadn’t he put on a ball cap to at least shield his face from the heavier raindrops?  He’d only worn a measly hooded pullover, and it was useless in this weather.

Not as useless as my should-be “smartest in the room” head, which apparently, needs a forecast to tell me that it is WINTER.

“If only Spring street was actual spring,” he muttered, rounding the corner so quickly he nearly slipped on the wet concrete, barely avoiding skinning his calf on one of the dead Christmas trees on the pavement waiting to be picked up by the city.   

Cursing under his breath, he bobbed his head with each word coming through his Air Pods—”girls get loose when they hear this song, 100 on the dash get me close to God, We don’t pray for love, we just pray for cars”—then hooked a left onto West Broadway.

He ran maybe twenty feet before skidding to a stop abruptly, his Nikes squeaking on the soaked pavement just in time to hear a woman shriek “JESUS!” while grabbing his arms.  Eyes blowing wide at the “oh no” sensation of tilting too far forward to keep his balance, he instinctively caught her by the waist and shifted his weight onto his heels to correct the unfortunate gravity situation.  He blinked rapidly, his retinas struggling to adjust their focus from a wide-frame image of a full lower west side block to this sudden new face close-up about two inches from his nose.

Loki did a quick scan of her features.  She had silvery eyes with legitimately iridescent sunbursts around the pupils, which were looking up at him through long dark eyelashes blinking as quickly as his own.  Her cheeks were somewhat pink, probably partly from the cold, but mostly from embarrassment.  Deep purple shadows filled the hollows beneath her high cheekbones and under her jaw.  Silver eyes, pink cheeks, purple shadows, and last, but definitely not least, were a pair of dark red lips, slightly parted with little puffs of breath escaping between them in time with the rapid rising and falling of her chest.

Dear gods…who IS this gorgeous girl?

LO, pick your jaw up from the ground, and say something, you idiot.

Reluctantly letting go of her waist, he slowly reached up to remove his earbuds and produced a small grin.

“Where’s the fire, darling?” he asked, one eyebrow raising a bit.

There was a tense second wherein everything just…sort of…stopped.  Time itself froze, the clock gears grinding to a halt as this stunner of a girl pressed her pretty lips together while participating in this unintentional staring contest with him.  Fuck, he hoped she didn’t hate him for calling her “darling” like some entitled pick-up artist coming on to her at a bar.  It had been an honest slip.  Her hands were still on his arms, and it made him feel warm and stupid and a bit whoozy actually, so of course he’d unironically said some lame line.  Just as he opened his mouth to apologize all over himself, a laugh burst through her tightly sealed lips, her head falling back from the force of it.

“I’m…s-s-sorry,” she sputtered, clearly trying to regain her composure. Looking up at him again, she sighed, still chuckling quietly. “That was amazing.”

Head tilting, his grin grew into a full blown smile. “What was amazing?”

Surely, she didn’t mean that stupid “darling” line was amazing.  No no no, that was a mathematical impossibility.  This gorgeous creature must have been using the word “amazing” in a purely mocking manner.  No way in hell was she laughing because he’d managed to charm her with those words.

“This whole situation is amazing,” she croaked, starting to lose it again. “Nearly fell on my backside, and I damn near took you with me!  I mean, come on, imagine seeing that from across the street or something.  My god, I am such a fail meme.”

Loki snorted quietly under his breath as the visual flashed across his mind.  Hopefully, she hadn’t heard it.  Not that it really mattered, since her smile hadn’t faded from her face.  He stared at her pretty teeth for a few seconds, the words “radiant” and “warmth” and “sunlight” flitting through his mind.

Sunlight, indeed—the dreary, bone-aching cold had completely disappeared from his body in the last two minutes, replaced by a warm, glowy feeling deep in his stomach.  He’d collided with summer incarnate, apparently, and it made him feel giddy as a teenage boy with a crush.  Her voice, her face, the sensation of her hands through his sleeves—all of it excited him far more than it should have.

Wow, bad day to go commando.

He would do well to take about ten steps back from her because someone with this overly magnetic effect on him could shatter him, but his track record of future-minded self-preservation wasn’t exactly…great.  His headspace was already in shambles, so why bother trying to preserve it?  He wanted to stay with this girl, if she allowed him to do so, and he hadn’t truly wanted anyone or anything for quite awhile.  For years now, he’d only wanted to escape, to run away, not toward anyone or anything.  Now, in the course of five minutes, he wanted to hit the gas, pedal to the metal, and speed through every goddamn yellow light to get to her as fast as possible.

“Well,” he paused, trying to come up with a witty response to her self-deprecating fail meme remark, “nothing is more beloved across all demographics than fail videos.  Perhaps you should just go with it.”

She scoffed, though the grin on her face betrayed her obviously feigned offense.  Well, if nothing else came of this interaction, at least he could say that she appreciated well-executed banter.  That said, considering she hadn’t broken their eye contact yet, nor let go of his arms, he had a feeling something else would arise from this lucky chance meeting.  Her thumbs rubbed circles on his sleeves, and he glanced down at her hands.  The glossy black polish on her neatly-trimmed nails had a mirror-like effect, reflecting the diffused daylight behind the clouds.  

He smirked a little, surprisingly pleased that they weren’t some demure pinkish color.  It was of no consequence, but god, he truly loved black nails—it was after all, such a sexy color, second only to genuinely emerald green because he had yet to move beyond the goth-god persona of his youth.  They weren’t long, barely past her fingertips, and hell, at that perfect length, she could drag those nails down his back without drawing blood.  

Would she be upset if he grabbed her waist and pulled her flush against him?  Because come on, she still hadn’t let go of him.  Licking his lips, he swallowed, anxious to get her name, her number, and her signature on the “please let me love you” contract he was currently drawing up in his head.

LOVE??  You’re insane, LO.

Can’t argue with that, but it’s less offensive than a “please let me fuck you” contract.

Fair enough, but nonetheless, take it down a notch, LO.

I would take it down, but I swear I’m getting drunk off this girl.

“Good thing I wasn’t holding hot coffee,” she said, her eyes flicking down to his mouth when he unconsciously licked his lips again.

Fucking hell, if she didn’t let go of his arms in the next five seconds, his brain cells would abandon their collective purpose to avoid getting slapped and/or kicked in the crotch by a female and resort to prehistoric displays of “mating suitability” such as, but not limited to, picking fights and showing his teeth to the first unfortunate additional male-presenting character in this scene or “unintentionally” mentioning his height—“Even if you HAD been holding hot coffee, darling, at least it wouldn’t have scalded my face since I’m all the way up here in the stratosphere, and you barely reach my shoulders.  That would have been funnier if I were unusually tall, but I’m only 6 foot 2.”

He bit the insides of his cheeks so he wouldn’t say that shit out loud.  Oh, he was growing stupid.  Gravity was dragging his IQ to the pavement to balance out the absurd rising situation in his joggers.  All this from five minutes with this (so far) nameless woman.

“Sorry,” she said, dropping her eyes and laughing nervously as she removed her hands from him and stepped back to put a socially acceptable distance between them.

As she pushed loose strands of gorgeous dark hair behind her ears, he watched her carefully for any signs of discomfort in addition to what he hoped was just nervous excitement.  His eyebrows pulled together of their own accord, forcing his facial muscles into a deep frown because the distance between them physically hurt him.

Good god, his reaction to her was completely irrational.  He didn’t even know her name.  He knew that she was absolutely gorgeous, that her voice was sexy as hell, and considering the accent, that she was from the UK.  A Londoner, maybe?  Maybe she was from Oxford like him?  Fuck, he hoped she wasn’t just visiting an American friend or something and would go back home in a few days.

Please be an expat like me.  Please be an expat like me.

It occurred to him then that he hadn’t responded to her apology.  What was she apologizing for?  Putting her hands on him?  Ha.  She ought to apologize for letting go.  Shaking his head, a barely there movement of his neck muscles, he produced another crooked grin.

“No need to apologize, gor-…” he stopped himself before saying “gorgeous girl” like the desperate fool he was.  He turned his head away and faked a cough into the crook of his arm, giving his brain a few seconds to recover from almost overselling himself.  

Clearing his throat, he gestured to the dreadful, low-hanging, never ending blah clouds. “Gorgeous…day…would have been the end of that thought.  Obviously.”

She eyed the sky, then lowered her gaze to meet his eyes once more and smiled. “Obviously, you are completely mental if you call this a gorgeous day.”

“Obviously, I was aiming for humor.”

“Hmm,” she hummed, pursing her lips, “I gathered.  It wasn’t a bullseye, but you landed on the board at least.”

He raised an eyebrow, genuinely impressed. “Did you write a script prior to this conversation?  You’re too quick-thinking.  You must have practiced ahead of time.”

“Or,” she held up a finger, “now try to keep up with this, slow boy… I simply have a quick wit.”

“Slow boy?” He repeated, unable to control the laugh bubbling up in his chest.

If anyone else had called him that, he would have immediately and smoothly produced a snarky comeback.  Coming from her, though?  Pfft—he might actually compliment her for being so damn brilliant on the fly.  Oh, what he wouldn’t give to shove this girl’s back up against that brick wall behind her, hook his elbow under her knee, and get a proper taste of her sharp tongue for at least an hour straight.  

Covering her mouth, she laughed into her palm. “Yes.  I did call you a slow boy, and I feel a bit bad for it.  Did I go too far?  I’m genuinely sorry.  I swear I was just kidding.” Giving him a sheepish look, she tilted her head to one shoulder. “You know…just wordplay.”

He tilted his head, mirroring her stance, and smirked. “I assure you, I can handle wordplay.”

And foreplay.

“I’m a writer,” he added, “so, you know…kind of my specialty.”

Her eyes widened a touch, and she looked him up and down a couple times, clearly trying to recall if she recognized him.

“A writer?” she asked, squinting at him as he nodded. “As in, novels or editorials or…?”

“Novels.  Well,” he paused, holding up a finger, “one novel, that is.  But it’s done well enough.  It was released last summer.”

“Have I heard of it?”

“Possibly,” he replied, shrugging one shoulder.

Raising her eyebrows, she stared at him, likely waiting for him to give more details.  When he only continued smirking at her silently, she chuckled and threw her hands up.

“Well, what’s the title?”

He pocketed his hands, somewhat anxious now.  If she hadn’t heard of it, he would be pathetically disappointed.  Or maybe she had heard of it, and had been so unimpressed with the reviews that she hadn’t bothered to read it.  Millions of possibilities, none of which were good.  

“It’s called Starboy,” he said, forcing a casual tone despite the sinking feeling in his stomach.

It took her a moment, but when the name registered, her eyes blew wide. “Holy…oh my god, you wrote that?  Loki Odinson, right?  My best friend is going to die when I tell her I met you.  She’s read it like seven times now.  Admittedly, I haven’t read it, but…wow.  Maybe I should.  Jesus.  I mean,” she paused, giving him another once over and nodding, “wow.”

Well, that was a much better response than he’d expected.  He couldn’t help but smile at the look on her face, her jaw nearly unhinging.  The tension in his shoulders relaxed, his previous anxiety flying straight out the proverbial window to make room for a clever confidence that had become synonymous with his newly-minted “Loki STARBOY Odinson” persona.

“I realize that I’m not as handsome as my picture on the back cover of the book,” he said, trying to keep a straight face when she rolled her eyes, “but in my defense, you caught me on the last few minutes of an hour-long run, which isn’t my best look.  Also, I’m a bit hungover, and this damn rain and cold has added a lovely clammy quality to the sweat, you know?” He gestured to himself. “I no doubt resemble a drowned rat right now.”

She scoffed. “If you’re a drowned rat, then I am half-eaten roadkill.”

Pursing his lips, he raised an eyebrow. “Was that a compliment?”

“For you, it was.” She laughed. “Jesus Christ.  When Darce said not to google the Starboy author because he was-” she made air quotes “-annoyingly attractive, she wasn’t lying.”

His eyes widened for a split-second before the smile spreading across his face crinkled them.

Bloody hell, she shouldn’t say that to me.

“Oh god, don’t encourage my vanity,” he groaned, reaching up to rub his temples. “My head will explode.”

“That would be a shame.  You have a lovely head.  Specifically, your hair.  She did not mention your hair, and for the life of me, I do not know why she would keep such important information from me.”

“Who is this ‘she’ person?” Loki asked, smiling as he scratched the back of his neck. “And do you mean the color or the length?”

“Uh…both.  Every boy I crushed on at school had that same thing going on,” she said, pointing to the strands hanging in his face, “though to be fair, I think most of them dyed their hair that color to make the goth girls weak, you know?  Granted, I can’t actually see how long yours is, but if it’s long enough to pull back in a hair tie like you’ve done, that’s good enough for me.”

Grinning so widely it hurt his cheeks, his teeth digging into his bottom lip, he inched closer. “As in, good enough to make you weak?”

She snickered, dragging a hand down her face. “Well, I did nearly fall over when I first saw you, soooo…I guess so.”

“Wow, I’d just assumed you were unfathomably clumsy.”

“Thank you for that,” she said, straight-faced.

“You’re welcome,” he replied without hesitation, smiling wider than the goddamn Cheshire Cat.

“I can’t believe I ran into… you know,” she said, gesturing up and down his torso, “a sort of… famous person.”

He leaned down, bending his head toward her while locking eyes with her from under his brow. “And I can’t believe that you still haven’t told me your name.”

“Oh, my apologies,” she cleared her throat, offering her hand to him as a bright smile split her face. “Sigyn Frey, architect and stand up comedian.”

One eyebrow shooting to his hairline, he reached out to shake her hand. “You do stand up?”

“Well, I try to,” she sighed, pushing her free hand through her hair, “but I’m much better at falling down.”

“OH MY GOD,” he burst out loud, releasing her hand to instead pull his hands down his face and laugh loudly behind them.  Son of a bitch, this girl was legitimately hilarious.

“Okay, I lied,” she chuckled, her shoulders shaking, “I’m only an architect, not a comedian.”

“Oh, I beg to differ, Sigyn Frey,” he croaked, rubbing his eyes. “Look at me.  I’ve been reduced to tears.” Seriously, this woman was amazing.  Every second with her was increasing his quality of life.

“Welcome to my perpetually crying world, Loki Odinson.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” he said, rolling his eyes, “I am the king of Perpetual Crying.”

She held up a hand, wiggling her fingers at his face.  “No no no, I remember hearing somewhere that people call you-”

“Prince Lo,” he spoke over her, rolling his eyes at the moniker, “yes, I know.  Believe me, I know.”

She hadn’t yet dropped her hand, which left her fingers about two inches from his mouth, and he deserved a gold medal for not leaning forward to catch those fingers between his teeth.  What a low bar—the lowest gold “standard” ever.

“Oh dear,” she said, making a classic cringe face, “Sounds like you might not be fond of that name.”

“Definitely not.”

“Understood.  I won’t call you that.  What about when people call you Starboy?”

“I at least prefer it over Slow Boy,” he said, giving her a pointed look.

“Fair enough,” she laughed quietly.

He smiled, thrilled by the genuinely happy, light-hearted sound of Sigyn’s laughter.  It was such a departure from his ex’s evil cackles, which had grated on his ears worse than nails on a chalkboard.  Jesus, that woman had always guffawed like a Disney villain.  The slightest hint of thunder rolled in the distance, and he instinctively looked up at the clouds, his eyes slamming shut when an exceptionally heavy raindrop landed right smack between them, bouncing off the bridge of his nose and splattering into both of his eyes.

“Ouch,” he hissed, reaching up to shield his eyes from further raindrop attacks. “Here’s the thing, Sigyn, I’d love to talk more, but would you be amenable to doing so some other time when I’m not sweaty or suffering the aftereffects of excessive alcohol?” He winced as the clouds turned on him, switching from sporadic droplets to sustained rain.

Sigyn pulled her jacket hood up, then pocketed her hands, raising her voice over the increasingly loud rain. “Not to mention the good soaking we’re about to get.  God, your hood is drenched!  Yeah, you definitely need to go home so you don’t catch a cold or anything!  When do you want to meet up again?”

Bouncing on his heels—a weak attempt to warm up—he grinned, then stepped closer. “Tomorrow morning?”

“You want to get together in the morning?”  she asked, her face lighting up like a Christmas tree—like New Years fireworks. “Wow, usually I make them take me to dinner first.”

He forced a laugh to (hopefully) disguise the extra blood rushing to his cheeks at her insinuation. “Well, you see, I’m rather hoping that you won’t mind if I skip over the traditional steps because, despite your name-calling, I’m definitely not a slow boy.”

One corner of her mouth turned down, transforming her blinding sunshine smile into a crooked little grin that should come with an adult content disclaimer.

WARNING: VIXEN.  AVOID PROLONGED EYE CONTACT, AND MAINTAIN A DISTANCE OF AT LEAST 3 FEET, OR DANGEROUSLY EXCESSIVE HORNINESS MAY OCCUR.

Apparently, he would have to turn his shower faucet to cold if he wanted to live after discovering this woman who had been under his nose for god only knew how long.  She’d lowered her head because of the rain, forcing her to look up at him through those long, dark lashes, and the heart-racing effect was maddening.  For the love, what eye color was listed on her driver’s license?—fucking SILVER?  Maybe the rain had distorted his vision, or maybe those starry flecks glittering in her irises only existed in contrast to her jet-black mascara.  Either way, no way in hell would he be the first to look away.  Ten thousand seconds of hard breathing later, she finally responded to his “I’m definitely not a slow boy” comment.

“Let me guess,” she said, taking a step closer, “despite living in a city with thousands of taxis, easy access on every corner to mass transit, where one can walk anywhere… you own a fast car, don’t you?  Probably some hot little, expensive, 2-door, European sports car.”

Why the hell had she moved this close to him?  Was she trying to make him stupid?  Somehow, he produced a quick, clever(ish) answer.

“For practical purposes only,” he said, shrugging his shoulders.

Again, her face lit up. “Nailed it.”

“It’s not an outlandish Maclaren or anything,” he clarified, keeping his tone playful despite feeling a bit defensive. “It’s just an F-type.”

Her mouth fell open. “You mean a Jaguar F-Type?”

Eyebrows knitting crookedly, he held her wide-eyed stare. “Yes?”

She looked downright offended by his words.  Alright, maybe not offended, but certainly shocked by this new information.  Come on, even though he adored F-Types, they weren’t that impressive.  Sure, he turned heads in it, but one needn’t be a multi-millionaire to afford them.  Was that a wildly out of touch take?

Shaking her head, she flung up a hand and chuckled. “Just an F-type, he says unironically.”

He reached up to push annoying loose strands of wet hair behind his ears.  Feeling genuinely defensive now, he blew out a breath.

“I meant ‘just’ only as in comparison to…” he trailed off as the absurdity of his ivory tower defense hit him right between the eyes.  Oh, that he could press the rewind button on this conversation, and dub over his last two more-money-than-sense comments with something a bit less brainless, but alas, life wasn’t a damn cassette tape.  Despising the heat flooding his cheeks, he pushed more hair off his face, and growled softly under his breath.

He sighed heavily. “Bloody hell, please forget everything I just said.  I will now check my privilege at the door lest my body ends up at the bottom of the Hudson, weighed down by gold bricks in my pockets.”

Sigyn tilted her head, her eyes boring a hole into his as she hesitantly set her hand on his shoulder and gave it a little squeeze. “I swear I won’t let your body end up at the bottom of the Hudson,” she said, a slow smile spreading across her face.

He looked down at her hand, then lifted his gaze to meet hers again, replaying her words— I swear I won’t let your body end up at the bottom of the Hudson.  God, that was…that was an intense thing to say to him.  She couldn’t possibly know how much he’d needed to hear that today.  This woman was, for all intents and purposes, a complete stranger, yet here he stood, feeling like he knew her.  Really knew her.

Chest aching, he eyed the Ground Support Cafe glass door. “Will you meet me here tomorrow morning?  Same time?”

Without hesitation, she said, “Absolutely, I will. Now go home, wherever that is, and get warm, alright?” She gave him a small wave and a big smile that warmed him more than the sun in July, then she turned around, and hurried up West Broadway.

Grinning (probably stupidly), he stayed glued to his spot on the pavement, watching her run across the road, the puddles splashing up onto her jeans, as she disappeared behind a corner building on Prince Street.  Was her building on Prince?  Perhaps Prince was just part of the route home, a means to the end, to her real destination.  If she didn’t live on Prince Street, it was replaceable to her.  It was a “just passing through” street somewhere in her neighborhood—not what she really needed; she could take it or leave it.  Or…or…or…

Or…maybe I could stop conflating Prince Street with Prince LO because everything isn’t a goddamn METAPHOR.

Eyes rolling, he turned up his music, then spun on his heel, and ran down West Broadway, grinning all the way to his building.

~2:00 am, Oct 1, 2019~

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE HORROR.

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

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

Whatever the hell that meant.

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

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

Please give my girl and me a second chance.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yes.  A joke stroke, to be specific.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I would have done anything for her.

Correction: I did EVERYTHING for her.

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

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

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

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

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

Not exactly my original material but whatever.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This helluva drug girl.

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

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

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

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

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

Loki stared blankly at him.

Dear. God.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This should be good.

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

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

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

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

Okay, just how drunk is my dimwit brother?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh that was a mistake.

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

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

“OH MY GOD.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You ok, Lo man?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Another drag.  Another exhale.

Yep. I know. Very bad.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hela: Loki-

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

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

Eyes rolling, he typed his last text.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If only Sig felt the same…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh shit. Oh no.

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

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

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

“Smoke something?”

Yeah, a LEGAL cig, and it did NOTHING.

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

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

Away from ME, that’s where.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Prince Street IS my war zone.

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

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

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

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

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

THANK YOU, LEWIS.

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

Not all scars are visible, Sam.

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

“Wait… where’re you goin’?!”

“Anywhere but here!”

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

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

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

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

And Sig won’t save me this time.

“Here, hand it to me.” Thor again.

Goddamn LOUDMOUTH.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Still feels like dying though.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Safe?  What place is SAFE?  

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

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

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

Not the way you mean, Val.

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

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

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

His fingers twitched.

I think I will, yes.

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

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

“Are you lying to me?” she pressed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is my best friend.  Best FRIEND.

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

Oh my god, this feels good.

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

Oh my god, I need to step back.

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

Step BACK, you vulnerable fool.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Turning west.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

DEAD Sea?!

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

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

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

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

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

Not without a fight.

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

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

Third floor.  Last step.  Round the corner. 

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

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

Dear god, BREATHE, boy.

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

Another dollar in the jar, boy.

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

Twist. 

Breathe. 

Click. 

Breathe. 

Turn. 

Breathe. 

Open.

BREATHE!

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

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

Slowly, Sigyn nodded once.

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

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

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

Right click. Select all. Delete.

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

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

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

Good.

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

His already clenched jaw tightened further.

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

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

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

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

The speed of DYING light.

Don’t go gently…

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

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

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

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

Don’t go gently, boy.

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

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

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

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

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

NO.  Don’t go gently.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Loki’s breath hitched in his chest.

Oh…

that…

was…

IT.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I swear I won’t let you die, Starboy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I must be LETTING her do it.

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

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

Almost.

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

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

Visit the New Year Same Habit main page HERE.

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

CHAPTER TEN FEATURED MUSIC:

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

CHAPTER TEN THEME SONGS:

“Bleeding Love“ by ASTR (for Sig)

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

What Readers Have Said

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

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

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

((AO3)

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

~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.