Distorted and Disordered
Chapter 11
*Trigger Warning* Eating disorder details mentioned in this chapter.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Loki awoke suddenly, bolting upright in his bed, his mattress dipping beneath him making him feel subconsciously too large. Tears appeared in the side of his vision, his green eyes sparkling in the darkness, the moonlight shifting behind his dark curtains and wavering into the windowed glass.
His heart thudded in his chest, shaking his ribcage, uncomfortably.
His gaze glanced to his alarm clock, the numbers angrily glaring back at him.
4:23AM.
The young adolescent wiped his brow with the back of his sleeve, a yawn stretching out of his maw and encircling the air around him. Like a ghost, the teenager's pale skin glistened with sweat as he tried to identify the source of the noise.
"Loki!" The adolescent heard a distinct hiss seemingly coming from outside his window. His eyes narrowed in suspicion.
"Loki," the hushed whisper came once more, a slight tapping noise once again accompanying the disembodied voice.
The teen's green eyes tilted to the right.
Loki sat comfortably in the pause between the moment the tapping ceased and the next whisper that collided into his bedroom window.
"Loki," the voice began, and before they could utter yet another syllable-Loki cut them off.
"Thor." Loki deadpanned, elbows coming to rest upon his chest.
Loki heard a shuffle and a groan from the oak tree outside his window that the mighty Thor was resting upon.
"You're going to break the tree," Loki murmured impatiently, eyes rolling sideways to see the top of Thor's blonde head peak up from the leafless branches.
"Am not," Thor mumbled, tongue licking the corner of his mouth as he looked petulantly over at Loki.
"Is there a particular reason you're outside my window at four AM, Thor?" Loki's serious gaze fell again upon his brother.
Thor grinned, cheekily.
Loki's eyes narrowed considerably.
"Ohohoho no, I know that look," Loki shook his raven haired head back and forth. "You are not putting me back in that situation again."
Thor's smile grew by the yards.
"Oh, why, whatever do you mean, brother dearest?" Thor feigned a damsel in distress expression. Loki would never tell him to his face but Thor was disturbingly great at doing that.
Instead, the younger sibling merely humphed his displeasure and shifted his weight to the bedroom's door, mouth falling open to holler for their mother.
"Wait, wait, wait!" Thor exclaimed all of a sudden, hands coming up in a placating fashion. His balance on the thick tree branch shook as his right sneaker temporarily lost its grip on the nestled crooks and edges of the bark.
As Thor's eyes widened in surprise, Loki had the briefest of moments to turn his head back to his older brother before he leapt to his feet and ran to his window.
"Thor!" Loki had enough time to exclaim in fear before his brother's blonde head disappeared in a disgruntled heap.
As if it were occurring in slow motion, the sound of Thor's eventual descent ending with a groan and flurry of swears met the hollows of Loki's ears.
Shit, Loki thought as time whirled by him slowly.
Deciding the stairs would take too long in his desperate attempt to reach Thor sooner; the younger teen instead jostled his two story window open and expertly climbed down the old branches. Unlike Thor, Loki was pretty good at both concentrating and climbing trees, a talent Thor considerably lacked. Especially since this wasn't his older brother's first time falling out of this same exact tree, no less. When they were younger, they had made a bet on who could climb the tree and make it into Loki's bedroom the fastest and just like now, Thor had overexerted his balance and had dislocated his ankle-thoroughly putting him out of his football career and instead opening the door to his wrestling debut.
Since then the boys had been under a more level-headed watch by both Odin and Frigga-but, boys will be boys, and Thor and Loki were no exception to that rule.
Sure, Loki was more likely of the two to quietly sneak off and into the sticky comfort of a pine tree's embrace or snooze happily along a maple tree's arms with a thick book in his hands-it didn't mean Thor was immune to foolish ideas and attempts to "live on the edge."
By the time Loki made it to his brother-likely only a minute or two after what he silently judged to himself as "the plunge"-mother's bedroom light flicked on and Thor lay in a leafy bundle grasping his painful limb.
"You fool!" Loki admonished, placing a lighthearted hand on Thor's nearest shoulder. "How bad is it?" His green eyes filled with concern as they flitted over every inch of Thor's body.
Thor, smile forced and nearly broken, laughed beneath his breath, although it came across like a groan.
"I-I'm okay," he lied through his teeth.
Loki rolled his eyes.
"Neither your teammates nor the rest of the high school are here, Thor," Loki uttered quietly, already hearing one of their parents upon the stairs. "You can be honest…" With me was not mentioned by Loki's lips but they were heavily implied.
Thor's smile flickered at that. He looked down at his ankle, thankful it wasn't as bad as the dislocation had been years ago, but uncertain as to whether this new injury would put him out for the season.
"I-I can't miss out on the match," Thor muttered, a defeated look appearing on his features. Loki knew it was the match that could get Thor one step closer to winning a scholarship for college. It was something important to him, something father had been drilling into Thor practically for years now. Thor couldn't-absolutely could not-miss out on what could possibly be his only ticket to getting into the university of his dreams.
"I think it's j-just a sprain," Thor murmured, gaze holding steadily onto his hurt limb as though it had somehow betrayed him. In a way, it kind of had.
Loki frowned in what he felt was an accompanying "that sucks" expression of solidarity for Thor's situation.
"Maybe if you weren't such a big oaf," Loki's tone was lighthearted, meant to jest at his brother, but Thor didn't take up the bait. Instead he just stared brokenly at the ground.
Loki had no doubt Thor was watching his dreams shatter and fall apart around him.
He also knew the situation was about to get that much worse as he heard the familiar heavy footfalls of his father stomping on the frosted grass that led to the two brothers.
Loki patted Thor's shoulder one more time before wrapping his arms around his waist in wait for the cold, hard stare that would emit from Odin's scales.
"Thor!" Odin's words landed wet and heavy into the air, so much so that Loki could practically see the weight of each syllable as they collided around him and Thor.
"My son." Odin had the gall to sound wounded as he reached the boys and took in the situation. Right away his gaze snapped to Loki, as if he were the more honest of the two which Loki took into consideration to be useful later. "What has happened?"
"For reasons I know not, Thor has fallen from this tree," Loki said, an unspoken "again" filtering into his voice as he waved hastily towards Thor.
Odin's stare bore into Loki for a second longer than necessary before, like a serpent, his rage clouded eyes fell on Thor.
"What is the meaning of this, my boy?" Odin accused lowly.
"I-" Before Thor could mutter another word, Odin cut him off.
"Silence! I care not to hear your pitiful excuses, Thor. Get inside at once, before your mother finds you in this compromising situation," Odin swung an arm wide open in the air, creating a small gust of wind that fanned out over Loki's face.
Loki moved to help Thor up, but a low growl from Odin's parted lips caused him to straighten up almost reflexively.
Thor, nearly drowning in his shame, hopped up to his feet and lightly limped through the grass and back up to the house.
Now alone, Odin settled his attention back onto Loki, whom wanted nothing, but to run away and hide forever.
"Was any of this your doing?" Odin said darkly, a shadow passing over his face.
Loki's expression turned to hurt before he had time to conceal it.
"No, father," Loki heard himself saying, shaking his head in disbelief as he was surprised Odin had taken to the notion that somehow this situation had been his fault entirely.
Maybe it was? The thought creeped into the front of Loki's mind like a blackbird flying across the sky; he frowned in consideration as Odin's words floated by him.
"Your brother has an upcoming match that could very well provide us a financial relief for where he wishes to attend university. I know that may not matter much to you, Loki, but we wish for Thor to do well and excel in his schooling. He doesn't need any…distractions from attaining that goal, do you understand me?" Odin's expression seemed to soften, although this revelation was lost on Loki.
Instead, the words just reverberated around and around in his young mind. To imply, by his own father, that Loki did not care about Thor sent his stomach into an awful clenching and flip flopping. For Loki to be explicitly told that Thor's schooling mattered more than Loki's, that Thor was the better, the more loved child than Loki, sent a rage boiling through his veins.
This rage was soon eclipsed by the company of shame, as Loki fought internally with himself that Thor was better than him, that Thor was more loved than Loki, and that Thor was worth more than Loki. It was as if Loki's worst fears had been confirmed by his father's own twisted truths that fell from his old, chapped lips.
Everything his brain had been telling him was not of a lie but of a truth. It was as though the leaves had parted from Loki's vision and the monochrome view of his world through his green eyes had finally been realized.
Loki didn't matter: not to Thor, not to Frigga, and most certainly not to Odin.
Loki was nothing; he was a mere burden, a meager sibling, a tossed aside child and there was little he could do about that. It wouldn't matter to Odin what Loki were to ever achieve because he, inherently, did not matter.
It was this sudden realization that cracked the world around him in that very moment. When he went to utter a choked back cry to his father, he found him gone, almost as though he had never even existed in the first place.
But he had, Loki knew he had because now all of his thoughts echoed the words of his father. His brain echoed and echoed words that father hadn't even spoken, words that twisted and attacked him as though he were a frightened child lost in the mini mall.
Worthless. Burden. Nothing. No one. Tossed aside.
Loki's shaking hands came up to hang in the cool temperature surrounding him. He didn't know what he was doing with his hands, didn't recognize the release of water from his eyes or the taste of coppery blood from his chewed upon lips, let alone the feeling of skin touching skin as he pulled his hands down from the sides of his fatty cheeks.
So. Much. Fat.
He had to restrict. He had to. This wasn't about just losing weight anymore. This was about becoming desirable, this was about becoming loved, becoming MORE than what he was now-which was nothing.
He wasn't loved now. He just, plainly, wasn't.
But with thinness, he could be loved. With thinness came concern and compliments and attention. With thinness came being better.
And he had to become better than Thor.
Thor would understand, he always would understand Loki even better than mother and certainly better than Odin ever could.
Thor would want Loki to do this. Thor would want his little brother to be happy and being thin was going to make Loki happy. Loki was going to become a better version of himself-a thinner, better, happier version of himself.
He just had to start restricting.
And through his restrictions his freedoms would come. And what better freedom could he ask for?
A/N: Hello everybody! Welcome back to this fic with a LONG, updated chapter! I worked on this fic on the following dates: 10.14, 10.18, 10.28 and 10.29.2017. I have a couple of things to say in this author's note so bear with me!
First: I apologize for the length of time it's been since I last updated. I was actually in the hospital for a month from Sept. 18th to the 20th of October. I know, LONG.
Second: This fic is going to keep on getting darker, sad to say it! I wanted there to be a specific reason for the side plot of Thor's previous ankle injury and in my haste to research it, it just doesn't pan out the way I wanted it to. I would have taken it out but it became somewhat embedded in the story this chapter so I've left it in, sorry about that! I would absolutely LOVE to hear what you guys are thinking about this story.
Particularly, how would you guys feel about Jane being involved in this story? I have a good idea of how I'll be using her and Thor could use the extra social support for when he finds out (later) about what Loki is getting…involved with.
I would also like to add that if you have any ideas on OC's such as names, personalities, quirks and mental health conditions, do leave them in the reviews or in private message to me! When we do rear closer to the 20's chapter I'm going to need a lot of other characters to work with. Of course, that is when the "Avengers" characters will come into play and I've got a timeline working out in my mind.
I will be withdrawing from school this semester and obtaining a part-time job and I want to say that I will be working more on this fic as well as other fics during this break from school. Anywho, I've said enough!
R&R please! I look forward to your messages.
Take care and stay safe!