It's been a long time since I've uploaded anything because of a huge writer's block, you know how it is. But finally motivation has struck again, and this is the result. 8k words in a fandom I'm new to and haven't ever written anything for came together in a very short amount of time. This is the result. The title may not be the most creative one (in fact, I'm not even sure if it's proper English), but I had to think of one very last minute.
This story is set on Christmas, though it doesn't have a very Christmas-y vibe to it. You'll see.
Quick TW: Contains implications of domestic abuse and a very short and indirect mention of suicidal thoughts. There's nothing very graphic, but I thought I'd mention it just to be sure.
Anyways, enjoy :)
x
Christmas Eve And The Lies That Come With It
x
Loki hates Christmas.
It's not a fact people can usually relate to once they find out.
But it's such a happy time, they say. They're wrong. December is the most stressful month of the year, and most people don't disagree when he tells them so.
Don't you love the spirit? He doesn't. It's annoying, all of it. This pretense of joy, of unconditional love for everyone and everything. The same decade-old carol playing over low-quality speakers for the hundredth time in a row. The overwhelming smells, the false kindness, they're just a few of the countless things getting on his nerves.
The third statement people make is usually the worst. It's a time for family. Don't you at least enjoy that? No, he most definitely doesn't, and it hurts to think about it.
Truth is, he used to love the holidays. It was, in fact, his favorite time of the year. Up until five years ago on this exact day, it was irreparably ruined for him. But the people in his new life don't know that, so he usually lets it slide.
He pulls his dark wool coat tighter around his body as he walks down the snowy sidewalk, bracing himself against the biting cold of the New York winter. Just a few more blocks and he'll be at the little bakery they get their donuts from, and then he can get back to moping at home, ignoring the fact that tonight, Christmas Eve, everyone will be happy without him. Hopefully, Charlie will be home by then, so they can snuggle up and he can get warm – at least on the outside, if not in his bitter heart.
He's so focused on his self-pity that he flinches when suddenly he hears his name spoken. His eyes shoot upwards, looking for a familiar face in the semidarkness of a late afternoon in December.
And when he finds it, he almost screams in surprise. He wants to run, to hide, to be anywhere but here. This is a nightmare.
Why? Why, on this day, did he have to meet one of the three people he wants to see least?
"Loki?" Again, his name in the all-too-familiar voice. Peculiar, really, that after five years he still knows it so well.
A moment ago, he still could have turned away and pretended he hadn't heard anything. But he has been staring for too long to fool anyone.
So, he just keeps staring at the broad-shouldered form and excited face of his brother. His hair is a lot shorter – a stark contrast to Loki's, much longer now than when they last saw each other – and his face bears the traces of his first wrinkles, but it's unmistakably his brother.
Thor comes closer, eyeing Loki, probably just as surprised as he is. There's a woman following him, clasping his hand.
At the sight of entwined fingers, his mind goes back to his own, or rather the fourth one on his left hand. Quickly, before Thor can see, he shoves his hands into the extensive pockets of his coat, concealing the engagement ring that was placed there just a few weeks ago. He has no right to know anything about Loki's life after what happened last time.
"What are you doing here?" Thor asks once he is close enough.
Of course, the first thing he says to his long-lost brother after five years is a question – a demand, really – not about how he has been, but how he dares to step into the life of their perfect family again.
"I could ask you the same thing," he quickly responds. He's nervous, somehow.
"We picked up a few last presents, now we're on our way to Jane's parents."
Loki gazes at the woman – presumably Jane – and has to keep himself from rolling his eyes. She's exactly Thor's type.
"You?"
I live here, he wants to say mockingly, but he can't. He's gone out of his way to keep the people from his old life from knowing where he is. So, he just says, "Going out for donuts," and hopes Thor accepts it.
He does. "Ah," he laughs. "You always did have a sweet tooth."
"I guess." He can do little to hide how irritated he is at that casual statement. Almost like they are still teenagers, joking and fighting alike, but brothers still.
He watches as Jane leans into Thor, attempting to whisper in his ear. But Loki can clearly hear every word she says as she asks him who the hell they are talking to.
"Oh, right." Thor clears his throat. "Jane, this is Loki, my brother. Loki, my girlfriend, Jane."
Loki nods acknowledgment in her direction, then his eyes widen as she says, "The brother you told me about? You know, the one you haven't seen in years?" How much exactly do they talk about him? Does Thor regularly sit down with Odin, Frigga, and his girlfriend of the month to chat about his naïve little brother who took off five years ago for what they probably call a tendency to exaggerate and a need for drama?
Thor confirms that indeed it is him, then turns back to Loki. "I'm happy to see you. I've missed you," he says, and Loki is stunned once again. He didn't expect anyone to miss him. He expected them to gladly forget his existence as soon as he was gone, as they often liked to do, even when he was still in their lives.
"We really have to go now, we're already late," Thor says when Loki doesn't respond. "But we should meet up sometime. I still have your old number. But maybe just meet me next Thursday at noon at that coffee place we used to go to after the gym."
He really can't do much except nod. And with an affectionate squeeze to his shoulder, Thor is gone as quickly as he came.
Loki, on the other hand, remains frozen in place, not by the cold, but by his own confusion, his inability to process what just happened. He saw the man he called his brother for most of his life for the first time in five years, the first time since that terrible evening when his life was turned upside down and everything he believed about himself turned out to be a lie. And it didn't go terrible… right? There was no fighting, no yelling, no blame. Just some casual small talk about their current headings. And a planned reunion.
Really, that coffee date he just accidentally agreed to is the bigger problem.
He remains in the middle of the sidewalk for a while, busy people pushing past him, cars and cabs rushing by, the disgustingly bright and colorful Christmas lights in the nearest shop window penetrating his retinas. To him, it's all a blur. A blur of stress and undeserved joy. Why do these people get to be happy when he doesn't?
He thought he was past this, finally over the incident – at least partly, at least not missing his old life anymore. And then, when he settled in the new life he built for himself, his past has to catch up to him again, personifying in the form of Thor. And just like that, it was all back. The feeling of being oppressed by the shadows Odin and Thor cast over him. Of Loki never being good enough in his own family's eyes. And how suddenly, painfully, it all made sense in the realization that he and his brother were never equals. Because how could they when Thor is Odin and Frigga's own flesh and blood and Loki is merely an intruder. They're happy he's gone – at least that's what he tells himself.
His hands, still embedded in his pockets, clench into fists, his nails digging painfully into the heels. They could be drawing blood, but Loki doesn't care. The physical pain is a welcome distraction from the emptiness he feels in his heart.
He contemplates his options, quickly concluding that standing around freezing is not a very good one. So, he turns on his heel and walks back to where he came from. Back home.
x
Five years ago, at this exact time, late afternoon of Christmas eve, everything was still okay. Loki sat with his closest family, waiting for dinner to be ready.
Frigga had been standing in the kitchen all day, cooking, baking, chasing out every man who dared to try and distract her – which was what Odin and Thor liked to do, not Loki, to be clear, he only tried to help. It was a shame, really, because being in the kitchen with his mother would have been a much better use of his time than sitting around on the couch, attempting to drown out the irritating voices of his father and older brother as they discussed something to do with the family company's finances.
Loki always hated all the talk about stock prices, and slow production, and supply shortages, and whatever else stood in Odin's way of becoming one of America's top 500 richest people. He just didn't care about business talk, which he had tried to tell his father many times and in many ways with no apparent success. Which was how he found himself, twenty years old, supposedly an independent adult, going to college with a business major in mind. Because his father wanted him to, not because Loki had any interest whatsoever in taking over the company.
Not that he ever would. Odin had spent years claiming that once he retired, the brothers would lead the business together, only to tell them much later that actually Thor was always on his mind when he thought about the future of Asgard Ltd., so he would be groomed to take over. Not because Thor was older or smarter or better suited. Just because. Because Odin felt like it.
That was over a year ago, and still, Loki was not allowed to change his major to something he actually enjoyed. And so he didn't because revolting against his father only ever did more harm than good. No need to become even less likable in the man's eyes. That was worth sacrificing his own happiness for, right?
Right. Or so he told himself.
On the afternoon of the last Christmas Eve Loki ever celebrated, everything was still normal. Not fine – nothing ever was when he was forced to spend a large amount of time in the suffocating presence of his family – but normal.
It was during dinner when everything went very wrong.
They had finished the main course and his mother had just retrieved to the kitchen to finish off dessert. It was only moments later when her voice was heard from the other room.
"I forgot the kitchen torch. Would somebody be so kind and get it from the attic for me so I can finish the crème brûlée?"
Loki hadn't eaten much, he never did, mostly because dessert was undeniably the best part of dinner, and so he was far from too full to move, very unlike the other men of the family. So, the duty fell on him.
"On it," he called back and made his way up the stairs, casting a passing glance at the giant, beautifully decorated Christmas tree in the foyer.
The house was big, had always been too big in his opinion, even when he and Thor had still been living here. But Odin seemed to think he needed a mansion just because he could, and so he had spent seven years living in a place big enough for ten people when they were only four – and then three, when Thor moved out, and finally two, when last year Loki had at last gathered the courage to do the same.
He climbed another two sets of stairs until he found himself in the middle of the extensive attic. It wasn't a mess, not exactly, but big enough and cramped enough that it was hard to keep track of what was being kept where.
His eyes roamed over the dimly lit shelves and boxes until he spotted the section containing kitchen equipment. The torch in question was in his hands just a few minutes later and he was about to turn off the lights when he spotted a binder with his name on the back, next to binders with the other family members' names.
This was a perfect coincidence, actually. He had almost forgotten he'd meant to ask for his birth certificate in preparation for his upcoming application for permanent US citizenship. Truthfully, he'd always planned on applying right when he turned eighteen, but he had always been busy and it was a lengthy process, so two years later he still hadn't come around to actually doing it. But not much longer. He was determined to exit the next year as a citizen of two countries.
Originally, his parents were born and raised in Norway, and that was where their first son had been born. But as Odin's company took off, they never stayed in one place for long, ever moving after money and success. Loki, though he spoke the language fluently, had never actually spent more than a vacation in Norway.
Thor had lived the first three years of his life in Australia, where Loki was born - thus the foreign citizenship. He was just a few months old when they moved again, this time to London, where Loki spent twelve impressionable years until they left for New York.
He'd found his footing here, he had friends and school and an apartment, so he had every intention to stay.
He grabbed the binder, opening it in the hopes of finding his personal documents, and cheered inwardly when he saw a collection of visas in the first transparent envelope - how very like his mother to keep every single one of them for sentimental value.
The second page was his vaccination certificate and he frowned at the fact that for the year that he had lived at his own place, he had never even noticed he didn't have it with him.
Next, he found a bunch of photos. The wrinkles on his forehead deepened when he realized he had never seen these pictures before. Right on top was one of a baby – him, presumably, though he hadn't spent a lot of time looking at photographs of his infant self, so he could be wrong – and a toddler who undeniably looked like Thor, bent over the crib, eyes full of wonder. Underneath that was a picture of the same baby, looking even closer to birth, tightly cradled in a younger Frigga's arms, lower body settled against her flat stomach.
Loki shook his head. He wasn't one to indulge in baby photos, so he put the stack back in the envelope he had taken it from.
He was delighted to find the next page indeed contained his birth certificate. At least that was what the bold letters on the top informed him it was. He'd never actually seen it before, had had no use for it.
He took it out of the clear envelope, closed the binder to put it where he had taken it from, when he cast a second glance at the document.
And that was when he realized something.
It was far too blank.
He didn't have anything to compare it with. But he was pretty sure the entirety of the lines meant for information about the father and mother should not be filled with a simple Unknown.
Confusion settled in the pit of his stomach, more than anything else. What was this supposed to be? He genuinely had no explanation for this… irregularly.
As if in a daze, he reached for the binder that said Thor in big letters, flipping through it until he found Thor's Norwegian equivalent to his own birth certificate. And the confusion intensified even more when their parents' names were listed right where they belonged.
Numbly, he let the document drop to the floor alongside the open binder, not caring to put anything away. He slowly made his way down the stairs, leaving the lights on, his own certificate tightly clenched in his hand.
It didn't make sense. Nothing of this made any sense. No explanation came to mind, even when he tried to think of one so much that his brain started to figuratively hurt.
What sick game was this?
Surely, his parents would have told him if there was something more to his backstory than being born in Australia to Odin and Frigga and shortly after moving across the globe.
He stopped at the bottom of the grand stairs, holding on to the railing to still his shaking hand, taking a deep breath to clear his racing mind. It didn't work.
What was happening here?
His steps were small and insecure when he walked over to the open door of the dining room, the sound too loud on the hardwood floor.
His family turned around when he stood still in the doorway, looking back at their expectant eyes.
"Did you bring the torch?" his mother, who had joined the others at the table, asked at the sight of his almost empty hands.
He didn't answer, simply stared at her.
"What do you have there?"
He took another quick look at the certificate in his trembling hand, the black letters blurring before his eyes.
"Can I, uh…" His voice was embarrassingly shaky. "Can I ask you something?"
"Of course."
Taking a deep breath in a desperate attempt to steady his words, he prepared himself for what was about to come – not that anything in the world could have prepared him for this.
"Who are my parents?"
All of a sudden, an unsettling silence spread over the room, the only sounds his own heartbeat and the rushing of blood in his ears. In another situation, he would have laughed at the expression of utter shock on both Frigga's and Odin's faces. He didn't feel like laughing today. Not anymore.
"What did you say?" His mother's quiet question cut through the silence. She crossed the distance between them, carefully taking the document from his hands. "Oh," was the only thing she said when she realized what he had been holding. The sound was one of surprise, and confusion, and shame.
"What is this?" he asked the question burning his mind. "What is happening?"
She placed a warm hand on his shoulder, and while the touch was meant to calm him, it had the exact opposite effect. Something inside of him exploded, and suddenly he wasn't puzzled anymore. All that was left was a hot, burning rage.
"Tell me!"
All three of them jumped at his outburst, the hand leaving his shoulder.
Odin seemed to be the first to recompose himself. "Calm yourself, son!" he boomed, but it did nothing to intimidate Loki into submission like it normally would. If anything, it set him off more.
"Son, really? Son?! What the actual hell is going on?!"
"Loki." It was Frigga again, calm on the outside, but he knew her well enough to sense her underlying unease. "Listen. Just… sit down and we'll talk about this."
"Talk?" he retorted, incredulous, his volume near screaming. "You know when we should have talked about this? The minute I was old enough to talk!"
"Loki, please."
"No! Just say it! Are you my parents?"
"We are your family."
He released a frustrated groan, gritting his teeth. "Did you give birth to me?"
"No."
After that, all hell broke loose.
They spent minutes in a screaming match. Frigga trying to explain while keeping the tears at bay. Odin trying to discipline him. Thor, a puzzled idiot as always, trying to get him to calm down. And Loki simply trying to wrap his head around what kind of twisted mess he was stuck in.
Many things were said, some deliberate, some less so. He flung insults at them, wielding words like weapons – he'd always been good at that – and he could see which ones stuck better than others by the way his family's faces displayed the pain he had inflicted. He didn't mean what he was saying, not all of it, anyway. But he was angry and hurt, and the feeling of betrayal settling in his heart threatened to drown him.
He had to get it out. He needed it to stop.
The screaming barely left him any smarter than he was before. He had been found in a dumpster behind their apartment building in Sydney, that much he knew, by Frigga, late at night. It had been cold and wet, and he had been too exhausted and too dehydrated to even cry to alert someone to his presence. It had been pure chance that Frigga had spotted the newborn between the garbage and had brought him to their apartment to warm him up. The police had taken their sweet time to arrive, and when they had finally come in the morning, the entire family had already fallen in love with the infant. When months of investigation, months of searching for his birth parents, were unsuccessful, they'd finally been allowed to adopt him.
And they never even felt the need to tell him. To even lose a word that they didn't share any genes, that his birthday wasn't the day he was born, but the day he, an unknown amount of days old, had been pulled out from in between old newspapers, ripped letters and used paper towels. Found in the trash - what an ironic metaphor for his life.
"How could you do this to me?!" he accused them, his eyes dry as ever. He wasn't going to cry, wasn't going to allow them to see the way his feelings were being ripped in two as everything he ever believed he knew about himself turned out to be shameless lies. "You could have told me from the beginning! Why didn't you?!"
"You are our son, Loki. All we wanted was to protect you from the truth."
"What, that no one wanted me? That I was thrown in the garbage like some… some used possession no one needs anymore?
Frigga's eyes were sad as she looked at him, and he almost felt bad for his accusations.
Almost.
Because Odin, still comfortably seated at the dinner table, didn't even look guilty as he uttered a cliché "We didn't want you to feel different", but simply from the way he didn't meet Loki's eyes it was clear that he didn't mean it – just some pathetic excuse.
Thor seemed to have completely given up on trying to de-escalate the situation, because he had been quiet for a while now, his expression somehow growing impossibly more confused by the minute.
And Frigga, sad and guilty as she might have been, didn't deserve an apology, either. His entire life, he thought she was on his side, even as no one else seemed to be. She was always his comforting anchor in this dysfunctional, mentally exhausting household.
But she had lied, they all had lied, and he couldn't have held back his anger, even if he had tried.
He didn't try. He needed to let it out. They had betrayed him, so they deserved this, he told himself. Finally, he wasn't the involuntary scapegoat, the one person they could go off on to vent after a particularly hard day.
It was his turn now.
"It all makes sense now!" he exclaimed. "Why you favored Thor all those years." He turned to Odin in particular, who had wasted no opportunity over the last years to point out how much better Thor seemed to be at everything he did. "Because no matter how much you claimed to love me-" not that he ever truly had, "-you could never put the company in the hands of some… thrash baby! I guess blood really is thicker than water."
There was an edge of bitterness to his voice that he couldn't quite get rid of, and he desperately hoped his emotional pain wasn't written all over his face for all of them to see.
"What am I to you?" he asked, quietly. And, to be honest, he wasn't sure if he even wanted to hear the answer. But he had to. He needed to know why they had kept up this charade for two decades. "No more than a way to feel better about yourself because you finally did something good, raising a stranger's abandoned child?"
It was Odin who broke the uncomfortable silence first, though his answer was immensely less satisfying than Loki had hoped. "It was the right thing to do."
No, that couldn't be it. Frigga may be a genuinely good human being, but not her husband. No, he was the kind of person who would stab people in the back if it meant more money and more success.
So, Loki did what he was good at. He lashed out, again, throwing even more accusations in his face. "You'd never do such a thing out of the goodness of your heart!"
"Why do you think so little of me?"
He would have laughed, had this been any other situation. It was absurd, really, how his supposed father could ask him that question with a straight face. Almost as if he hadn't even noticed that as long as Loki had been with them, Odin had focused all his time and energy on his favorite son and completely disregarded the adopted runt whenever it suited him.
"Because," he said, his tone dripping with venom, "for twenty years, you haven't shown me a single time that you even have a heart."
The next moments happened as if in a time-lapse. Odin rising from his chair, so forcefully that it fell back onto the floor with a loud crash. Loki flinching back as the man crossed the few steps separating them. The impossibly loud sound of skin on skin, a hand colliding with a cheek. And the pain spreading from where his own father - no, his alleged savior - had slapped him with all the strength he possessed.
The entire room was frozen after that, no one daring to make a move. The air was seemingly static with anger, and hurt, and betrayal, and fear.
It was too much. Loki couldn't take it anymore. It wasn't the first time something like this had happened. But the slaps he had received when he was a naïve child stealing his father's important work documents or when he was a teenager who felt like he was on top of the world when he came home, drunk, high, and ready for confrontation – they had never felt quite like this one. Never so emotionally charged, never so intense. And in contrast to those good old days, this time Odin hadn't bothered to hold back his strength.
His cheek would blossom with a bruise tomorrow, Loki knew that, especially where the golden wedding band had streaked his skin.
But that wasn't the worst part. The physical pain he could live with.
No, the worst part was that Odin seemed to think that this was what Loki deserved. That after uncovering their biggest, darkest family secret, after finding out he had been lied to his entire life, he wasn't even allowed to get angry. That he wasn't allowed to hurt the people he thought were his family back with a fraction of the intensity of hurt he was feeling.
His words had been mean, he knew that. Maybe they had been undeserved. But couldn't any of them understand how betrayed he felt?
So, he did the only logical thing he could think of. He turned around, and he walked out.
Nausea rose from somewhere deep inside, and tears stung in his eyes. Suddenly, the giant tree wasn't beautiful anymore, and the feeling of warmth whenever he glanced at his own decorating skills was replaced by an overwhelming desire to rip the whole thing apart.
Instead, he simply strode past it, putting all his energy into putting one foot in front of the other while simultaneously drowning out the voices calling after him. He didn't know if any of them had bothered to follow him, and he didn't grant them the satisfaction of turning around to find out.
He just opened the door, walked through, and slammed it shut after him.
It was cold, very cold, and he immediately regretted leaving his coat in the foyer. But no, he wouldn't turn back. He simply couldn't.
He'd rather freeze to death than look at those faces ever again.
So, he made his way through the front gate and walked away.
No, he ran. Ran from his problems like he always did. He ran until his lungs ached from the cold winter air, and he couldn't feel his hands anymore, and he had no idea where he was.
When he stopped, he was in some park – not one he was familiar with. He didn't even try to regain some orientation.
Instead, he dropped onto some bench and broke down.
Loki had never been one to show emotions in public. In the privacy of his own home, sure, he was only human.
But here he was, a hand on his mouth in a desperate attempt to physically restrain his sobs.
It didn't work. Nothing did.
It was simply too much. It hurt, everything hurt, both from the cold and the betrayal.
How could they? How could his own family – though he was not sure they even deserved to be called his family anymore – truly believe keeping a secret of that magnitude from him was the right thing to do? Did they even think about what would happen if he knew? Did they ever plan to tell him or would they just have taken it to the grave, had he not unfortunately stumbled upon it himself?
His body hurt, and his heart ached, and in that very moment, he was honestly, if only briefly, ready to give up on himself just to make it stop.
It was only a few minutes later, when he jumped at a sudden hand on his shoulder. He was ready to run again, thinking one of them had come after him. But the voice belonging to the hand was definitely not familiar.
"Hey, are you okay?"
He looked up through wet eyes, his vision so blurry he could see nothing more than the contours of a face, framed by fiery red hair.
How ironic, that on the worst day of his entire life, he would also meet the love of his life.
x
Sinking deeper into the cushions of the insanely comfortable couch, Loki takes another sip of Tequila straight from the bottle, grimacing at the taste. He never liked the liquor much, but it gets him drunk fast – also, Charlie apparently likes it, so it was the first bottle his blindly groping hand found in the cabinet.
Maybe he should stop drinking. Maybe he never should have started at all. But he's drowning in his feelings and he needs to just be numb, just stop the emotions at all, ironically by drowning himself in a bottle of alcohol.
This would not happen if Charlie were here right now. Loki could find another way to deal with his pain. But surgical interns are the scapegoats of a hospital, so Charlie was assigned a shift on Christmas Eve. Not that it matters. They don't celebrate Christmas anyway. But all Loki needs right now is a friendly face, some kind of comfortable hug, and maybe even a kiss.
But he's alone, so all he can do is gulp down another mouthful of the vile drink and try to forget.
It's less effective than he hoped. He still can't block out the memories of Frigga's sad face and Odin's hand on his cheek, and the betrayal he felt five years ago now hurts like a wound reopened after it barely healed.
He wonders sometimes if his life would be better if they told him the truth from the beginning. Or perhaps if he never found out at all. Any of those options sound much easier and far less painful than the reality he is stuck in.
He has come to terms with it by now. He hasn't accepted it, not really, but he at least recognizes that this is his life now, so he has to deal with it.
Whenever it threatened to overwhelm him, after those first few months when alcohol seemed like the only plausible answer, he tried to focus on the good things the incident has brought him. Independence. Courage to do what he wants, not what his family wants him to believe is right. Love, even, because had he not broken down on that park bench, he never would have met Charlie. Clarity, because suddenly so many things about his life made sense – why Thor was always everyone's favorite, why Odin wouldn't give him the company, and why he never seemed to fit in, not even physically.
As an insecure adolescent, he spent hours in front of a mirror with pictures of his family, trying to find similarities – something, anything to make him feel like he belonged. As a child, Thor always looked like a clone of Odin's childhood photos, and when he grew older, he looked even more like his father's older self. Loki – scrawny, pale, dark-haired, and sharp-edged – never even came close.
It was always an insecurity of his, looking so different from the rest of his family. Though it was never a reason to suspect he was not of the same blood. He never even had that thought until he held the evidence in his shaking hand.
And suddenly, it all made so much sense.
So that's a definite positive. Finally, he can understand a vital part about himself.
But today, he is beyond the point where indulging in the positives is any help. Today, alcohol really is the only answer. Because being reminded of that dreadful Christmas by some inconsiderate comment or the plot of a TV show hitting far too close to home is on an entirely different level than physically facing a part of his past in the form of Thor – and having to do it again next week.
But Thor is not the worst part. Thor is only an idiot who gets far too much praise for his accomplishments. Thor adores Odin, and Loki is certain that by tomorrow the man will know every single detail of their meeting. Thor will tell him, possibly on purpose, maybe not, because while he may be good at a lot of things, lying is not one of them – that's always been Loki's specialty.
Loki flinches as he hears the sound of a key turning in the lock of the front door. He can't see into the hallway from the couch, but there's only one person who would come home at this time of day.
And sure enough, a moment later he can spot a blur of bright clothes and red hair through the half-open door as Charlie sheds layers of winter clothes, no doubt throwing them into some corner for Loki to pick up later. Order has never been one of Charlie's strengths.
On a normal day, Loki would immediately get up and put the coat and shoes where they belong. But this is not a normal day. Today, all he can do is take another sip of tequila.
"Hey, I'm back!"
Loki looks up as the cheerful exclamation to see the exact moment when his boyfriend's – it's fiancé now, he still hasn't gotten used to that – expression shifts from genuine happiness into a deep frown of worry.
"What are you doing?"
There's no use in hiding the bottle now, so Loki's gaze drops back to the floor, and he takes the path of least resistance: the truth – wow, his parents could learn so much from him. "I needed a drink."
Charlie takes a step towards the couch, gently taking the tequila from Loki's hands. "You haven't had a drink in four years," he says, and Loki flinches.
There's another truth. Loki hasn't had a drop of alcohol during their entire relationship. Ever since his tendency to drink away the pain and sorrow spiraled dangerously close to alcoholism, he's avoided alcohol altogether. The coping mechanisms he was taught by his new friends mostly helped, and when they didn't, he always sought someone's company as a distraction.
There was no one to distract him this afternoon. It is Christmas, after all, so even his closest friends had better things to do than entertain him until they felt he could be let near a liquor cabinet with a clear conscience.
But Charlie is here now. So why doesn't Loki feel any better?
He watches as his fiancé places the bottle on the side table and turns back to Loki, placing a hand on his shoulder.
"Are you okay?"
The expression on Charlie's face makes him want to spill it all right now, but the problem is the one he's always had - he doesn't know how to put feelings into words. He has his emotionally incompetent family to thank for that one.
So, he plasters on a faux smile and tries to answer in a natural pitch. "Of course. Everything's great."
He's not very convincing, he can see it in the other's face. Loki is pretty good at lying. But from the very beginning, his lover has been able to look right through the façade.
Charlie shakes his head, his frown deepening. "We talked about this, Loki. You talk either to me or to a therapist. And I know which option you prefer."
Loki grits his teeth. He knows Charlie is right, at least his rational side does. But he's drunk, and he's in pain, and he doesn't want to be rational right now.
As if to make a point, Charlie grabs the tequila and takes it back to the cabinet it came from.
"Go take a shower," he says over his shoulder. "Meet me in the kitchen in fifteen."
x
Twenty minutes and a very refreshing shower later, Loki knocks on the doorframe to announce his presence.
Charlie, who has apparently started cooking dinner, looks up from his cutting board. Placing down the carrot he's currently working on, he smiles and crosses the distance between them, softly pressing his lips against Loki's.
"You ready to talk now?"
Loki just shrugs, nervously chewing his lower lip.
His fiancé sighs. "Do you want to help me cut the vegetables?"
"Sure," he answers quietly. He's not certain giving a half-drunk, self-pitying idiot a knife is the best idea, but Charlie seems to trust him, so he doesn't question it.
They stand side by side for a while, dicing vegetables, their arms touching every once in a while, until Charlie breaks the comfortable silence.
"I thought you wanted to get donuts."
The knife slips from Loki's hand, clattering onto the plastic cutting board in surprise. That's right. The donuts.
"Oh," is all he can say.
"What?"
"I went to get them, but then I just…" He pauses, not sure what to say. In the end, he settles on, "forgot what I was doing and went back home."
The concern reappears on Charlie's face, now stronger than ever. "What happened exactly that threw you off like that?"
Loki doesn't want to answer. At least he doesn't plan to. But he's tired and lightheaded, and his fiancé is nothing if not supporting, so the words just fall from his lips. "I met Thor today,"
"Oh, Loki."
He feels strong arms loop around his waist, pulling him close. He returns the gesture, his own arms closing around the other man's shoulders. He buries his face in Charlie's hair, and while this is not the most comfortable or conventional hug one could receive, it's what works for them, with Loki towering an awkward few inches over his partner.
Size is not their only difference. In fact, they are polar opposites in almost every arena, and Loki likes to think it's why they work so well as a couple. Where Loki is lanky, shy, and awkward, Charlie is compactly built, confident, and extroverted. And where Charlie is bubbly, overexcited, and colorful, Loki is calm, calculating, and prefers more neutral colors. Charlie motivates and Loki grounds. They cancel each other out perfectly.
After a moment, Charlie pushes back so he can look his fiancé in the eyes. Gently, he brushes back a stray curl that has fallen into Loki's face. His hair is still dripping wet, but he didn't have the patience and mental capacity to blow dry it today. Also, he's in desperate need of a haircut, his dark locks reaching past his shoulders, but he's too busy lately, too stressed out, to go to the hairdresser.
"Do you want to tell me about it?" he finally asks.
"I don't know what to say, I just… didn't expect it." And it's true. But also, it's not all of it. He wasn't merely surprised. He was shocked, and he fell right back into the mindset he thought he left behind long ago.
"What did he say?"
Loki takes a deep breath. He doesn't want to say it. It was just a few words exchanged, almost like between estranged friends from high school, but it broke him as if it was an open confrontation. It's humiliating, even before the person he trusts most.
"Not much," he finally does say. And it doesn't feel as bad as he thought it would, so he continues. "He introduced me to his girlfriend?" The statement turns into a question halfway through because that really was a peculiar thing of Thor to do at their first encounter in five years. "And he asked me to meet him for coffee next week."
"You hate coffee."
"I don't think he remembers that." And then, as an afterthought, he adds a quietly mumbled, "He didn't even remember that when we used to go to that coffee shop every week."
Charlie gives him a sad smile. They didn't know each other when Loki was still in contact with his family, so he didn't experience the fragile relationship firsthand. But he was the one who dealt with the aftermath of that Christmas Eve, and he has been on the receiving end of many of Loki's family-related emotional breakdowns. They talk a lot. So, it feels like he did experience it with his fiancé. He knows how Loki feels without him having to say it.
Their relationship started rather unusual. And it was pure chance that they ever met at all. If Loki hadn't sat down on that bench to catch his breath and cry, if Charlie hadn't walked his sister's dog because she was down with the flu, if he hadn't decided to check in on that miserable-looking stranger, their paths never would have crossed at all. And if Charlie hadn't been so eager to make new friends at every step of the way, if he hadn't invited that sad stranger to his home to celebrate the holiday with his closest friends and Loki hadn't felt so completely and utterly alone, they probably never would have met again. If they hadn't been so different and yet so complementary to each other, their relationship could never have blossomed into what it is now.
But all of that did happen. It's the most prominent thing that comes to mind whenever he tries to think about the positives that terrible day five years ago brought him. And maybe, just maybe, that makes it worth it.
"I don't want to meet him again. I just…" Loki's voice breaks, and he clears his throat in order to try again. "I just want to forget it ever happened."
Charlie tilts his head and places a hand on Loki's upper arm, the warmth comforting through the thin fabric of his shirt. "Is that why you got drunk?" His voice is impossibly soft. Understanding, even though Loki's impulsive response when coming home was undeniably stupid. It set all his progress back to where he was four years ago, before he realized how self-destructive his behavior was, how irresponsible his excessive alcohol consumption.
Finally giving in to his romantic feelings towards Charlie was not the catalyst to his decision to stop drinking – no, that was of his own accord. But acting on his attraction towards a man felt like the final move to fully distance himself from his family – the family who didn't even know he was bisexual, who surely would despise him even more if they did. It was freeing, and even though it wasn't what made him abandon the alcohol, it certainly had a big part in keeping him from starting to drink again.
Now, all that progress is gone, and while the effects of the alcohol slowly wear off, they are replaced by shame. He wasn't strong enough. He met his brother and, pathetic as he is, all he could think to do was to hit the bottle.
"Yeah," he finally answers, his voice barely audible.
But Charlie heard him and reaches for Loki's chin as his eyes drop to the floor, encouraging his fiancé to look at him. "Did it help?"
"No." No, it didn't. All it did was make things worse.
Once again, Loki feels himself being pulled into a hug, and this time he grips his lover's shirt as support, holding it so tightly that he can feel his own fingernails through the fabric, digging into his palms like they did this afternoon.
For a while, they stay like that, entangled, Loki slowly gaining back mental strength.
"I think it's a good thing you walked into Thor," Charlie finally says.
"Why?" Loki mumbles into ginger hair.
"You never would have reached out to any of them on your own. But I think confrontation is an important step towards acceptance."
Loki pulls back a little, forcing his fingers to loosen around Charlie's shirt so he can look at the man. He doesn't say anything, wouldn't know what. He doesn't want to see Thor again. But rationally, he knows that Charlie is right. He's not a psychiatrist, but he did go to med school for four years – that's worth something, isn't it?
"You should meet him for coffee – or tea, whatever, you're adorably British," Charlie says with a smile, realizing Loki isn't going to respond to his previous statement. "Look at it as a first step. A level one confrontation, if you will. He's not the one who lied to you, is he? So, he's the easiest to face."
"Yeah, but… seeing him just brought back so many memories. I don't know if I can do it again."
"But I know." His fiancé places a hand on Loki's cheek, intently looking into his eyes with an encouraging smile. "You are stronger than you think, Loki. And I've never met your brother, but from the things you have told me about him, it sounds like you really love him. And he loves you."
Loki nods, and Charlie pulls him back into the hug, just holding him for a moment.
"You feel better now," he asks, still not releasing Loki.
Loki smiles softly, holding his fiancé impossibly closer. "Always when I'm with you," he admits.
He can physically feel the happy grin radiating off Charlie. "See, that's why we're getting married! And because I love you."
Loki's smile grows wider, and he glances down at his fourth finger, bearing the simple yet tasteful golden ring. It's beautiful, both the ring and the promise tied to it – that even after all they've been through, the love of his life is willing to face whatever the future may bring together.
At this moment, being held in his lover's arms, he can forget what happened today, and maybe he even has a little bit more hope for the upcoming meeting.
So, he exhales contently, and echoes a serious, "I love you, too."
x
So, that's it. I had to cut it here because I wanted to get the story up before Christmas. And because it's already the 23rd of December and most of the very lengthy conversation between Loki and Thor only consists of scraps of dialogue, I'll have to upload that at a later point. It's set after Christmas anyway.
Also, I paired Loki with an OC even though I don't ususally like stories majorly featuring OCs. But my problem is that I don't really ship Loki with anyone, but I needed a lover to make this story work. So Charlie is mostly a plot device. Whoops.
I hope you enjoyed the story so far. If so, I'd be happy to hear from you through a review.
Thanks for reading and Merry Christmas.