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06:20 a.m.
Finally, the deadline has arrived.
Loki can hardly believe it when he squints at the ancient digital alarm clock on his nightstand, the red digits burning into his sleep-spoiled retinas.
January 13th, his last day as a sixteen-year-old.
Seventeen is not a special age by any means but it is special for Loki because Loki has a plan. He began to forge it exactly a year ago when his sixteenth birthday wasn’t even mentioned by his begetter. Days have bled into weeks since then, weeks into months; one constant swirl of time, sometimes flying by so quickly it made his stomach churn, sometimes inching forward excruciatingly slowly, but steadily carrying him towards this glorious Friday the Thirteenth.
Loki peels himself out of his covers and swings his legs out of bed. Struggles into his clothes. Walks into the bathroom, brushes his teeth, combs his hair. Gazes at himself in the mirror, a pale face with sharp cheekbones and dark bags under its eyes staring back at him with dull green eyes. Dead eyes, their spark entirely extinguished.
Loki hears the key rattle in the front door when he’s pouring the last crumbs of chocolate cereal into a bowl, the noise followed by a string of grumbled curses and irate huffing as his father clamors into the apartment. In the past, Loki’s intestines clenched at the sound of his shuffling and stumbling, his booze-drenched voice. His cheeks used to grow hot and his chest tight, his entire body responding to the threat of a shitfaced Dad with a primeval fear that feasted upon every nerve, every tendon.
Today, however, his plan squishes those anxieties into mush, like a boot squelches a bug.
“The fuck are you doin’ up in the middle of the night?” Laufey slurs and takes another gulp out of the beer can in his hand, leaning against the doorframe to support his weight.
“It’s morning, Dad,” Loki says. “I’m on my way to school.”
“Right.” His father grimaces, empties the can and crushes it into his giant hands before throwing it onto the counter. His fine motor skills disabled by intoxication, he misses, and the can clatters to the ground. Loki fights the memory of how these big, strong hands shoved his mother down the cellar stairs and put her in a coma fourteen months ago. “You better bring back some money today, boy, or else we’re gonna starve for the rest of the fucking month.”
They wouldn’t have to if Laufey didn’t drink away every cent but Loki knows better than to point that out, so he just nods. “I will. Bye, Dad.”
He won’t.
Over the past year, he sold his phone, his TV screen and most of his books. He stole handbags, wallets, liquor, food, prescriptions.
Not today.
Not ever again.
Loki slips into his winter coat, wraps his scarf around his neck and steps out into the frozen air, his breath exploding out of his mouth in crystalline clouds.
The city still lies in utter darkness at this hour and the walk to school is almost fifty minutes, and the last fifteen-minute stretch always puts a particular strain on his lungs when the temperatures are this low. Loki has been forced to walk the steep hill leading up to the old brick building for almost seven months now because Laufey refuses to pay for the bus card. Every morning, he cursed his father along with the person who had the brilliant idea to build a high school so difficult to access by foot.
Not today.
Because Loki won’t ever walk up this hill again.
*
There is a car in the school’s parking lot he never saw before today. It’s a red mustang, polished and entirely unaffected by the snow and the thawing salt, its license plate reading ‘Thunderbolt’, with the ‘o’ replaced by the icon of a strike of lightning. A rich person’s car, no doubt; the kind of car belonging to the type of person who chases him down in the hallway to steal his homework and kick his ribs.
It matters not.
Because Loki won’t ever meet the owner.
*
For the first time, he doesn’t pay any attention to what happens in class because scholarships no longer matter and everyone in this building is playing their part to perfection, ensuring the successful execution of his plan.
If my life doesn’t get any better, Loki wrote into his diary 364 days ago, I will kill myself the day before my seventeenth birthday.
Because he can’t live like this anymore. He won’t live like this anymore. He has no friends, no boyfriend (not that he wants one because the idea of kissing someone outright terrifies him but he’s still sure he prefers boys over girls from a purely aesthetical standpoint), his mother is in a coma and, even before then, she never fought back, never shielded him or herself from his father’s rage. She promised she would, promised Loki they would run away together once she had saved enough money but Laufey always found the money and she always accepted her punishment unresisting. There was a time Loki was convinced a full scholarship for college was going to be his ticket out of this place and he worked his skinny butt off to make it to the top five percent. The thing is, though, while his chances would be high if the approval were dependent on his grades alone, Loki is a loner and none of his teachers like him very much because he used to point out the flaws in their reasoning. He’s smart enough now, to realize when someone looks at him and sees nothing but a stain. He has no allies, nothing to hold on to, nothing to look forward to. Nobody likes him because his clothes reek of cigarette smoke, booze and poverty. He is utterly alone and he really, really doesn’t want to turn seventeen.
Because if sixteen was hell and fifteen was hell and fourteen was hell, what are the chances that seventeen won’t be? It’s a prediction as solid and strong and irrefutable as an interplanetary force field.
His father won’t let him leave and he’s too much of a coward to run away because where would he sleep? On a park bench? Under a bridge? He could get by stealing scraps of food, he supposes, but it’s way too cold to sleep rough. He’d probably freeze to death within a week at this time of the year. In a homeless shelter? He’s technically not homeless and even if he were, other homeless people probably wouldn’t like him either.
Nobody ever made him feel wanted or loved. Nobody ever looked at him as though he was worth anything because Loki just isn’t likable.
And he is done with existing like this.
If no miracle happens, Loki rephrased it later, in a foolishly hopeful mood, leaving the door open for all sorts of far-fetched interpretations of kindness, I will kill myself the day before my seventeenth birthday.
But that didn’t sound right either because miracles do not happen, do they? Not to people like him anyway.
If no one shows me that they care whether I’ll stay on this planet or not until the day before my seventeenth birthday, Loki scribbled onto a new page on New Year’s Day, I won’t celebrate another birthday.
Which was a bit of a stretch, really, because his father’s idea of a celebration is to have enough liquor at his disposal to knock himself out before eight p.m.
Loki pinched a pack of razor blades in a drugstore on the edge of town shortly after. To prove to himself that, this time, he will pull through with it. He tried before, several times in fact, but he was too much of a coward to slit his wrists or hang himself before and, every time he walked out into a busy street, the cars miraculously found a way not to hit him.
Today, he won’t be a coward.
Because the blades are waiting for Loki to come home right now, tucked away beneath his shabby mattress. He pictures them, their gleaming surface, their sharp edges, how it will feel when they cut into his skin and, then, deeper into his arteries. He imagines the rush and the smell of blood. If they were infused with magic, they would sing to him and he’d be able to hear their alluring chanting all the way across town.
3:23 p.m.
Loki managed to suffer through an entire school day without anyone harassing him. There was a time he would’ve interpreted that as a miracle but these times of foolishness and childish naivety are a relic of the past. Besides, he hasn’t made it across the schoolyard yet, hasn’t passed the cycle racks and the parking lot where all the jocks sometimes hang for a little while longer after the bell announced the end of curricular activities.
Loki sucks in a deep breath, hugs his winter clothes tighter around himself and breaks into a sprint.
“Not so fast, Laufeyson,” snarls someone behind him and forces him to an abrupt stop by tugging at the grab handle of his backpack. “You were unusually quiet today.”
“You planning something?” snaps another.
To Loki, they all look the same and he’s long given up on trying to converse with them because violence is the only language they understand. In a way, violence is the only language he understands too, so they might as well communicate without words.
So he says nothing.
“I asked you something, weirdo,” the guy growls and shoves him hard.
Loki shrugs because what could he possibly be planning that involved the likes of them? A question this ridiculous doesn’t deserve an answer, he decides; if only to spite them. They close in on him then, moving like a wolf pack; a formation acting on a shared basic instinct, none of them possessing enough intelligence to question what they are doing.
Loki lets it happen. They punch him in the shoulders, the chest, the face. One blow lands right under his left eye, another on his mouth, and a sharp pain knifes through him. His vision blurs. The metallic taste of blood hooks into his throat. He doesn’t fight back, doesn’t suppress the gag.
It’s the last time, after all.
He won’t ever have to deal with them again, he thinks as he sinks to his knees. The tarmac is cold and wet, soaking his pants.
It no longer matters.
Nothing matters.
Loki could die right here and he’d be grateful.
Suddenly, the walk back home seems impossible and all kinds of not worth it.
Loki closes his eyes.
Someone kicks him in the side, snarls his name.
He wills the world to vanish or implode, or get hit by a plummeting asteroid as powerful as the one that wiped out the dinosaurs.
“Hey, stop it,” rumbles a deep, male voice from somewhere close. “Leave the kid alone, you fuckers!”
The pack turns away from him then and a part of Loki rages at the rash idiot foolish enough to interrupt because how dare he foil Loki’s plan?
“What do you want?” spits one of the jocks.
Well, to be fair, the guy who stepped in is a jock as well, Loki notices when his vision returns, or at least sports the looks of one. Blond hair twisted into a lazy man’s bun, a light bronze tan in the midst of winter, a broad chest, an enormous biceps bulging beneath the sleeves of his burgundy parka and a voice so soothing and so sexy that every word he speaks liquefies the bones in Loki’s knees anew.
“Oh me? I guess I just wanna swoop in, save the day, be the hero; that kind of thing,” the handsome stranger says with a smirk that makes the crowd of girls that has formed around them in the meantime swoon. “I’m good at that.”
“Oh yeah? You think you can take on all three of us, new guy?”
The student shrugs, oozing the kind of privileged arrogance that Loki usually detests. “I’m not sure but I do love a challenge,” he says and winks.
He vanquishes two of them easily, like an ancient warrior straight out of a videogame, and the third one flees.
The mystery savior crouches down beside Loki and holds out his hand. “Hi. I’m Thor.”
For a moment, Loki is too stunned to remember his plan and when he does, a part of his brain is utterly convinced that he must have been imagining the past ten minutes.
“L-loki,” he croaks and blushes as he takes the new student’s hand, who pulls him to his feet with gentle ease. “Thank you. I ...”
Wait.
Why is he thanking him?
New guy’s intervention is as miraculous as it gets and it meddles with the equation. Because if the hypothesis turns out to be false, how could he possibly go through with the conclusion? He’d violate the simple rules of a contrapositive, trample on mathematical logic.
“You’re welcome.” Thor’s one-thousand megawatt toothpaste ad smile makes Loki’s scalp tingle. “Do you have any plans?”
His hearing must have been affected by the most recent schoolyard altercation.
Plans?
Loki?
Ha.
If the entire situation weren’t so surreal, he would laugh.
“Not really,” Loki forces out.
Thor beams at him, almost making him faint. “Wanna show me around?”
“What do y-you mean?” Loki swallows. His heart has crawled up all the way into his throat and got stuck there. “A-around where?”
“I was thinking we could start with the place that serves the best hot choc in town?” Thor asks even if it does not come out as a question. This guy knows exactly what he’s doing and he’s fully aware of the effects his charisma has on the people around him.
“That’d be Jørgensen’s,” Loki replies. He has no idea what to do with his hands or where to look; or even what is happening to him. It feels like a million caterpillars are spinning themselves sticky cocoons in the pit of his belly only to emerge with fluttering wings a millisecond later. “It’s, uh, just off Main Street, really. You can’t miss it. If you take a turn right after—”
Thor laughs. “You do know what ‘showing someone around’ means, right?”
“It usually means that you accompany the other person, yes,” Loki replies; which, in his case, is utterly impossible because he doesn’t have a single coin on him, let alone enough money to pay for a hot beverage in a fancy coffee shop. And what does Thor want with Loki’s reeking, poor, greasy-haired company anyway if he could easily ask any of the girls who just gazed at him with hearts in their eyes out for a drink? This entire conversation is ridiculous. “But I, uh, can’t. I need to go, I’m sorry. It was nice to meet you and thank you again.”
He turns around, body poised to flee.
“But you just said you didn’t have any plans,” Thor objects, sounding a bit dumbfounded.
Right.
Ugh.
“I mean, if you don’t wanna hang out, that’s cool.” Thor shrugs, probably aiming for casual but it’s quite obvious that he isn’t used to being rejected like this. “Just be honest about it, okay?”
Loki feels sorry for him and for himself because if he had any money on him, he could enjoy a hot chocolate with this person who just magically appeared out of nowhere and made him feel something other than pain, emptiness and bleak misery for the first time in years. “Sorry. I gotta help my Dad,” he lies. “That’s not really the same as ‘having plans’, right? But I promised, so.”
Loki swallows but the saliva in his mouth multiplies nonetheless. “Maybe tomorrow,” he tacks on, with Herculean effort.
Thor’s smile should come with a black box warning. “Can I give you my number?”
I don’t have a phone, Loki can’t say.
“My Dad confiscated my phone,” he replies instead, another lie rolling off his tongue with ease after a lifetime of keeping up the pretense. “I’ll get it back after I helped him. He promised.”
Thor doesn’t look convinced. “Alright.”
“I’ll see you here, same time, same place tomorrow,” Loki promises. “But I, uh, I’ve got to run now, so. Thanks, again. Bye.”
“Bye,” Thor mumbles and Loki takes off, fighting the urge to break into a run.
*
Laufey lies passed out on the living floor drooling and snoring when Loki lets himself into the apartment.
It no longer matters.
Or does it?
Same time, same place.
If only he could.
11:23 p.m.
His self-imposed deadline is swiftly approaching and Loki is sitting cross-legged on his bed, turning the unwrapped razor blade in his hand over and over and over again.
Loki fantasized about it a million times, how Laufey would find him and realize (or not because his addiction and denial run very deep but still) how much he wronged him. How Farbauti would wake from her coma and instantly receive the news that the boy she claimed to love so much but failed to protect was gone; that he’d chosen death by his own hand. The mere thought filled him with glee in the past, no matter how wrong and petty and vindictive it might have been.
It doesn’t anymore.
Well, it does, and he’d still like to make someone pay by inflicting grief upon them, but right now, these scenarios aren’t at the front of Loki’s mind.
Thor is.
His handsome face, his impossibly blue eyes, his deep, soft voice.
Loki can’t help it.
He fantasizes about how it’d be, to actually go out for a hot chocolate with that new student, to hear his laugh and his life story, to learn about his family, his hobbies, his dreams, his passions. He fantasizes about having Thor’s attention zeroed in on him as though Loki was the only person in the entire universe that mattered to Thor. He fantasizes about how it’d feel to have another person—a good-looking, friendly, comforting person—like him for who he is.
He fantasizes about Thor’s fingers on his lips as he brushes away a bit of milk foam too, and his cheeks flush at the mere thought.
This is new.
Loki never thought about any other boy like that but, then again, no other boy was ever this kind to him.
Is this ... Is this what it feels like to crush on someone?
Or is he just drunk on the unexpected attention a literal stranger lavished onto him?
Thor had no reason to intervene but he did anyway. Thor didn’t want him to get hurt or maybe Thor was flirting; Loki couldn’t tell the difference between that and basic human decency if someone put a gun to his head.
The far more important question is whether Thor truly cares though, for that is the condition of the hypothesis.
If no one shows me that they care whether I’ll stay on this planet or not, Loki decided a fortnight ago and he will stick with it.
Thor most definitely intervened out of pity.
His act of kindness doesn’t count.
If Loki allows himself to believe that it meant something other than that, he’ll only set himself up for disappointment and rejection.
No more of that.
Loki breathes out and slices into the skin around his radial artery, softly, almost tenderly, and loses track of time as he watches the little bubbles of blood form on the surface of his forearm.
12:08 a.m.
When Loki flicks a glance at the clock on his nightstand again, it is after midnight.
He reached seventeen after all.
A part of him revolts against the realization, calls him a pathetic coward and a chicken, the boy who cried wolf one too many times.
Another part, however, is still thinking about Thor.
Which is all sorts of pathetic and ridiculous because guys like Thor aren’t into guys like Loki and his life isn’t a romantic comedy of the local-outsider-falls-in-love-with-mysterious-new-student-and-lives-happily-ever-after variety.
What is his brain doing?
Why is it conspiring against him?
He can’t be truly falling in love, right?
He was never in love before, was sure he wouldn’t ever understand its intricate workings or its overwhelming power.
Why would he fall for someone now?
That doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.
Or does it?
Loki gets up then, to fetch a wet towel from the bathroom. He wraps it tightly around the bleeding cuts, tiptoes back into his room and curls up beneath the covers.
He can’t die, insists that foolish part.
Not before meeting Thor one more time after his graceless departure and having that hot chocolate with him.
Loki’ll have some explaining to do why he dared to return home without money but that’s okay. He’ll make up for it. He’ll steal from a person rich enough that their wallet ensures their nutrition for the rest of the month and still allows him to keep enough change to pay for two mugs of steaming hot chocolate.
*
Loki sinks into an uneasy sleep soon after, and on his lips appears a soft, hopeful smile.