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"Lokisdottir," she tells the pharmacist. "Hela Lokisdottir." This is a small village, barely more than a stop sign and four houses; it's rare to see anyone new here. That’s one of the things she likes most about it.
Out of force of long, long habit she angles her head just so, letting the dark curtain of her hair hide the worst of the scars. The man's smile is kind enough, but you never know. "Just the one," she agrees when he holds up the small zippered plastic bag that holds her prescription. "And thank you."
Going- not home, exactly, but back to her father's place without her medication would be nothing short of a recipe for disaster. And Gods know, the two of them don't need any more disaster in their lives.
Back in the car she pulls her hair into a sloppy ponytail. Anything to keep it out of her eyes and mouth while she's driving. It's not like the car is going to comment. Or, worse, flinch away like she's hurting it on purpose just by existing. And it for sure won't coo over her in misplaced pity. "So you got burned," she tells her reflection in the rearview mirror. "It was a long, long time ago. It’s about time you got the fuck over it." She glares at herself for maybe thirty seconds and then laughs. Lokisdottir indeed.
~
The drive is long and tedious, made the more so by what she can only label her deep unease. Hela hasn't been back to what officially counts as her hometown since Bodi's funeral. Not since her father had made it clear he'd wanted to be alone - that her brothers were neither needed nor welcome, and that even she would best serve the cause of making things better by going back to her own life and not intruding further.
A few days after they'd stood helplessly by and watched their mother's casket lowered into the cold, grey dirt, Hela had given up the fight and done exactly as her father'd instructed. "Bye, da," she'd told him at the end, stretching up on her tiptoes to whisper in his ear. "You let me know if you need anything, though, you hear?"
"Will do, sweetie," he'd promised her, pushing her gently back and then reaching out to tuck her hair behind her ears. Like she was a little child again, rather than a woman pushing thirty (while he himself was on the long side of fifty). "Go out into the world and be my shining star. Don't worry about your old da. I'll be fine."
~
That had been more than a year ago. Closing in on a year and a half, even. It's amazing how time flies, Hela thinks as she guides her car back out into traffic after a bathroom break. Sure, the two of them have talked... plenty of emails, phone calls every now and then when her father's messages had dipped too close to ominous and she'd needed to hear for herself that he was really, truly okay. She'd sent flowers on the anniversary of Bodi's death - tiger lilies, Loki's favorite - and homemade brownies, the kind with tons of gratuitous chocolate chunks, on her father's birthday. By turns he'd sent her pictures; his solo vacation amongst the tidal pools, his own smiling face framed with flowers. Animals at the zoo. Her mother's gravesite, headstone gleaming and plot full of wildflowers.
She'd called him the night she’d received that one, expecting tears... or, worse still, the leaden sadness that sometimes consumes him. Instead they'd shared a laugh together. "Your mother did always hate a neatly manicured lawn," he told her.
And he was right. Bodi had always loved things a little wild, a little messy. It was probably what made her so much the perfect mother for a child... a girl with half an angel's face, and half a melted demon's. "Wherever she is, da," Hela had assured him, "you know Bodi's smiling down on us."
Loki'd laughed again, a little less happily. "Oh no," he'd corrected her. "She's smiling down on you. She looks at me and says get your ass out of that Godsforsaken dump of a house, old man, before your children have to bury you in it."
Yet again, he’d managed to imitate Bodi's delivery and pacing perfectly.
All those years of theatre, not entirely wasted.
Hela had smiled through her tears, much like she's doing again now. "She's right, da. You know that."
He'd snuffled a little. "I do," he'd assured her. "Your mother was always right, and you’re not nearly far enough behind her." They'd shared a wet little chuckle. "But I'm not ready, Helli," he said. "Not yet. I’m sorry."
"You let me know when you are ready," she'd told him, breezing right past his apology. “You will, right?”
"As if you'd let me get away with anything less," he'd shot back at her. They’d laughed yet again, a little more genuinely that time.
~
Finally, now, after months of cajoling and sweet-talking and bossing around - and, recently, nothing short of downright nagging - something had shifted. "Can you come visit for a few days, sweetie," he'd asked her a month ago. "I want to put the old dump on the market, and- and I could use someone more- well, a bit more objective to help me poke through all this garbage."
Hela'd sighed quietly to herself - you did this one to yourself, kiddo - and dutifully checked her calendar. Sure, she had some freelance jobs due in the next couple of weeks, but it wasn't anything she couldn't work around if she had to. "Of course," she'd told him. "Is the last week of the month okay?"
"That would be perfect," he'd said, his voice warm and agreeable. So much so that little warning bells sounded. "See you soon, Hela."
"Looking forward to it, da."
She wasn’t, she really wasn’t. Isn’t, she thinks, bracing the small brown bottle against her thigh and working the cap free.
Her father doesn’t need to know that, though. She pops a pill in her mouth and swallows it dry, then wipes the last tears from her face. He really, really doesn’t.
~
Hela’s car bumps and rattles up the long gravel drive. At the crest of the hill the house looks- well, like it has since Bodi had first taken ill. The lawn is (short enough to avoid a fine but) mostly given way to weeds; the former gardens are a tangled mess, pure and simple. The once-white clapboard siding, long since soiled a sad, dirty grey, is dreary and tired-looking even in today’s pleasant sunshine. One shutter lies on the lawn. Another flaps aimlessly in the late spring breeze.
Da, da, she thinks. When her father had called the place an old dump, he hadn’t been kidding.
~
The house where Hela and the boys had grown up, across town near the grade school, had been bigger. Much bigger. Nicer, too, she thinks, and then frowns. That’s not fair; Bodi had taken good care of this place, while she could, and with the kids off to college there hadn’t been any reason to keep the big house. This one was manageable, Bodi’d said. And it she was right; it was. Until suddenly it wasn’t. And by then Loki had been too far down in his own troubles – and with no one to drag him out that time – to take notice.
“Whatever,” Hela mutters aloud as she slows to a bumpy stop in the turnaround. He could fix the place up if he wanted to. It’s not like her father lacks for money. But she’s glad he’s not planning to. Loki just needs to get away from this house. From the slow decay. From the death. From everything he’s lost here… everything he’s still losing.
~
He stands in the doorway, arms folded loosely across his chest and head resting against the frame. “Thanks for coming, sweetie,” he tells her as she climbs the chipped concrete steps. “I’ve missed you.”
I would have come sooner, she doesn’t say, if you’d only let me. When it comes to Loki, even the most accurate I-told-you-so-ing is pointless. “It’s no problem,” she tells him instead. “You know I’m glad to hear you’re finally getting out of here.”
Up close, Loki looks tired. Worn, like the house. His hair is still the same raven-feather black she remembers, a little tangled and frizzy in the early season humidity, but the deep lines in his face aren’t from laughing now.
Then, too, his eyes are bright with tears. His glasses dangle from one hand, and she’s carefully not to smudge them as she wraps him in a huge hug. “Oh, da, it’s good to see you.” And it is, too… despite this sad, lonely place she feels accepted. Loved.
~
They go out to dinner at the Italian place they’ve always favored, the one Bodi’d often sworn had been in the same family since the end of the last Ice Age. The elderly hostess, long since old enough to call Loki “sonny” and get away with it, beams as the two of them walk in together. “Helli, Helli. How is my little artiste?”
Hela smiles. As much as she’s still thankful she got out of this town, it’s nice to know people still care. It’s nice to feel treasured. Remembered. “For you, Miss Elena,” she tells the hostess as she leans in for enthusiastic cheek kisses, “I can be anything.”
The meal is as good as she remembers. Her father is quiet and withdrawn, though, and no amount of coaxing even begins to make a dent in it. We need to get you back out in the world, da she thinks as she watches him methodically working his way through a plate of linguine. We need to find something that leaves you smiling. It has to be out there. It has to.
~
“Gods, da,” Hela yells down from the attic, out the hole where the pull-down stairs drop away. “Do you have our entire old house stashed away up here?!” The attic is- well, it’s crammed, really. Old furniture, a few footlockers (packed, on quick inspection, full of blankets that stink terribly of camphor), and – along the far end wall, stack upon stack of boxes. Her father doesn’t need a dumpster; he needs a fire. Or a tornado, maybe. She smiles to herself, picturing the endless remains of her childhood spread across this whole corner of the state. “Any more crap and you could be on Hoarders.”
Loki comes to the foot of the stairs. He looks exhausted; his face just short of pasty, the lines around his eyes and mouth etched deeper than ever. “I was kidding,” she says. She wasn’t, but Hela hadn’t expected he would be so- so down. She feels bad; it’s not like he’d invited her out here because he’d needed someone to insult him or to leave him feeling shitty. “Where do you want me to start?”
“I’m sorry it’s such a mess,” he says quietly. “With Bodi sick I let it get away from me… and since then I just haven’t been able to face… all the memories.” He wipes some imaginary dirt off his forehead. “Start with the pictures,” he suggests, climbing up a few stairs and pointing past her towards the huge stack of boxes. “And set aside anything you think you or your brothers might want.”
~
Everything is covered with a thick coat of gritty dust. There’s a narrow window set in the end wall; as she starts to move things around the air in its shaft of sunlight is thick with it, enough so that the room could be full of smoke. Or fog. Hela has sneezed so many times already that her sides hurt.
Many of the boxes are full of childhood memorabilia: school pictures, candid shots from endless picnics and birthday parties. Fen’s track-and-field trophies, Jorrie’s swimming medals. Her own art show ribbons. She sets aside a few pictures, including one of her with her parents taken at her childhood favorite state park. They’re hanging from the swings upside down, just the three of them, grinning like crazy. The picture is a little crooked and a little blurry, but she loves it just the same. It’s hard to remember a time when any of them could have felt so completely, impossibly happy.
The early pictures, though - the ones before the accident - prove a little too disturbing. She hadn’t really expected to find looking at herself the way she was in those days… at the flawless, smiling toddler whose good looks hadn’t yet been lost (in the span of three heartbeats, seriously) to a stumbling fall that ended on the fresh asphalt in front of their homestead… upsetting, but it is.
It’s like looking at someone who’s died.
Worse, even… seriously, by comparison, looking at pictures of her mother doesn’t bother Hela in the least.
She hastily stuffs all of those early ones – every single fucking picture – into a contractor bag with the rest of the garbage.
~
One more box, Hela promises herself, wiping her sweaty, dirty face ineffectually on her even dirtier arm, and then you can go outside and treat yourself to some fresh air. The attic is musty and stale, and she’s right on the verge of not being able to stand it. Just do one more and get it over with, she tells herself sternly. It will only take a few minutes.
She selects one from the very edge of the pile; this one is clearly older than the others, its cardboard sides faded and brittle.
Good. It has to date back to before she was born. No more creepy toddler pictures, then.
~
Sure enough, she’s right. It’s an old one. Really, really old; close to half a century. The first stack of pictures is mostly of her father, probably from back when he was in early grade school. Little Loki frowns into the camera, dark hair too long and lower lip jutting out, and Hela can’t help but smile. She pauses to drag the box closer to the window, where even with all the dust the light is better, and settles down with her back resting against one of the studs. These photos, she wants to savor.
The pictures are a treasure trove. Loki with Grandma Farbauti and Grandpa Laufey, posing (with a group of people Hela doesn’t recognize) in the gaping mouth of a cave. Loki’s high school drama club productions. Loki and his brothers caught in the midst of a sledding adventure, posed stiffly - “look natural,” she can imagine Farbauti ordering in that guttural accent - around a gigantic old-school toboggan.
Hela flips through the photographs slowly, studying each one. Looking at them she can’t help but note that her father had been a bit of a late bloomer, a skinny, gawky kid who had grown into something beautiful. To look at him just out of high school graduation, the wind kicking his gown out behind him and his mortarboard dangling from slender, graceful fingers, you’d think he had been a model.
And yet he’d chosen to stay here in this backwater. Had married Bodi, solid and dependable and as plain as they come. Hela frowns. Why, da, she asks him silently. Loki could have been somebody.
It’s the last stack of pictures in the box, thought, that stops her cold. Hela actually gasps as she picks up the first one. It’s her father, for sure, but he- he’s transported. Never in all her years with him can she remember Loki looking so animated. So free. Not even once. And yet here he is, so vibrant, so full of life it’s practically bursting out of him.
With him, one arm slung companionably around her father’s slim shoulders, is a young man Hela isn’t sure she has ever seen before. A blond man, college-aged, perhaps a couple of years older than Loki. He’s muscular and tanned, with blond hair pulled back behind his blocky head in a ponytail or bun. His grin is friendly, open and infectious; his eyes are impossibly blue. The two of them, Loki and the mystery guy, look like they’re made for one another.
They look like lovers, not like friends; they share the kind of easy familiarity that comes with knowing someone inside and out.
Figuratively.
Oh, and literally.
~
“Who’s this,” Hela asks her father late in the afternoon as they sit on the stoop drinking iced tea. She shows Loki the picture, the one where the guy has one arm around him. “Whoever he is, he’s gorgeous. Good Gods. You both are.”
Loki snatches the picture away from her. Something strange passes over his face, and Hela worries briefly that she’s made a serious mistake. But her father doesn’t crumple the photo into a wad… or rip it up, or yell. Instead he gazes at the two happy men for well over a minute and then smiles sweetly. “Wow,” he breathes. “I didn’t know I still had this.”
“Who is he,” Hela repeats. Now, more than ever, she needs to know.
Her father blinks at her, looking like he’s sure she’s lost her mind. “That’s Thor,” he tells her, the way someone might say “that’s President Kennedy.” She frowns, puzzled; the name means nothing. “Thor Odinson,” Loki clarifies. “My-.”
“Boyfriend,” she finishes before Loki can lie. “Lover. Something like that. I can see it in your faces,” she explains when he shoots her a look. “The two of you adore each other.”
He swallows a huge mouthful of tea and starts coughing weakly. “Adored, maybe,” he concedes. “For my part, at least. But it was- it was nothing like you’re thinking. We grew up as neighbors. He was like a brother to me, more so than your uncles. My so-called real brothers. But that was it. Brothers, neighbors, friends.” He shakes his head slowly. “Anything more- it simply wasn’t done. Not in those days. And it doesn’t matter,” he continues, smoothly slipping from earnest into more than a little bitter. “He went off with a girl.”
“So did you,” Hela reminds her father.
“I wouldn’t have, though,” he tells her, looking off towards the rutted drive. “Not if he’d asked me not to. I would have done anything for him,” he stresses. “Anything. He was my best friend.”
“With benefits,” she teases.
“No, Hela, not with benefits. We were friends. Don’t try to make it something it wasn’t,” her father insists, curt and rapidly closing in on agitated to the point where she regrets having gone there at all. “Plus, it- that was a lifetime ago.”
“Da, it’s okay,” she says. “Whatever it was, or wasn’t, you know you won’t find me judging.” She tugs Loki’s wrist, pulling his hand close enough that she can take another look the picture. “I do have to say, though, that how anyone could not want to tap that is beyond me.”
Loki shrugs. He doesn’t smile, even though she’s sure he knows she’s ball-busting. “I didn’t say I- never mind. It’s just- he’s not someone I’ve thought about in a long time,” he tells her, setting the picture carefully aside. “Can we talk about something else now?”
~
Back up in the attic, she goes back through the pictures – the ones from her father’s teens, especially – with a fresh perspective. Now that she knows what to look for, sure enough, there he is: Thor, bright and blond and never far from Loki. Drama club. Neighborhood picnics. A pool party where Loki – skinny and pale in his little green speedo to the point Hela is actually embarrassed for him – is tipping the pool volleyball away from… sure enough… Thor.
She can’t believe she missed it the first time around.
And whatever her father tells himself, there’s no mistaking it; the kid in these pictures, already tall and strong compared to everyone around him, adores Loki. At least, he did. And Hela likes to think love like that can never really be broken. Twisted and stretched, sure. But not broken.
~
They’re unbelievably tired by dinnertime. So tired, Loki is yawning constantly and Hela is tempted to fall into bed hungry. Her father is worn and thin, though; much as he’d said about the house, he has clearly not been keeping up within his own needs since Bodi’s death. For his sake, Hela knows she should make the effort.
~
That night, exhausted or not, she can’t sleep. In the privacy of what’s serving as the guest room, Hela hauls out her MacBook and googles Thor Odinson.
It takes some digging – he’s not a particularly public guy – but as a freelance writer and artist Hela knows how to research. That, and no child of Loki’s could possibly be anything short of nosy.
By midnight she has an address. Like her, Thor has moved to the big city; unlike her, he’s actually living in the thick of it. By 2:00 AM, she has (a headache, and)… well, it’s not a plan, exactly. But she has ideas, for certain.
~
A few days turns into a few weeks and then more than four months, punctuated at regular intervals by trips back to her own apartment to meet with clients and make sure the place is still standing. On one of her early return visits Hela brings her high-speed wireless router to Loki’s, so she can keep up with her work on the days he’s less in need of company. And between them they slowly whip the house back into saleable shape.
She doesn’t mention Thor again. Whenever he thinks she’s not paying attention, though, Loki pulls that picture out of whatever he’s reading. The longer he looks at it, the more his expression softens.
Whenever she catches him at it, Hela can’t help but smile.
~
Price it right, the realtor tells them, and it will be off your hands by the weekend.
Sure enough, he’s right.
~
“Where are you thinking of moving, da,” Hela finally asks her father as they flip idly through the signed contract. The buyer is paying cash and can close in four weeks; whatever Loki’s going to be doing, he needs to get on it.
“I thought I might move to the city,” he tells her. “If you don’t mind. I’ll find my own place, don’t worry; I’m not going to invade your life and settle down right on top of you.” He sighs. “It’s just- I’ve gotten used to having you around. I’d like to be able to catch up with you once in a while.”
Hela thinks back to her ideas… her not-quite-a-plan. To Loki and the picture. She nods enthusiastically. “I’d love to have you closer, too,” she assures him. “And in the city you could work again. If you get bored, I mean, and find you want to.” He’d left his job to take care of Bodi; someday, she has to imagine, he’s going to tire of sitting home moping.
He hasn’t yet, but Hela clings tightly to the hope that her old da is in this sad, quiet man somewhere.
Once they’re no longer fighting geography, she hopes, maybe spending time together will coax the old Loki back out. Because Hela misses him… and, from the looks of it, he misses himself. Or should, anyway, because what he’s been doing is no way to live.
~
It all makes sense. It does. It’s the smart thing to do. But (like it always seems to) life gets in way somehow.
Six months later, Hela has picked up a couple of big projects that – combined – have become almost all-consuming. Her father gives lip service to- to doing something, be it a job or volunteer work, but nothing seems to strike his fancy. Dinner once a week has turned into once a month has turned into a long string of excuses – some hers, more his - to the point that it’s been nearly three months since they’ve seen each other at all.
“I’m coming over tomorrow night,” she tells him Wednesday afternoon. “And I’m bringing Italian. Complete with chianti. Save room,” she teases, “because I won’t be leaving until it’s all gone.”
“See you then, sweetie,” he says, just like always, but his voice has no life to it.
She’d been excited to see him again, albeit a bit guilty about her part in permitting such a long hiatus. Now, though? Now, she’s worried.
~
“It’s been too long,” they say in inadvertent stereo - as he greets her at the door of his apartment and reaches for the bags of food - followed by “Are you okay? You look awfully tired.” Loki shakes his head in mock frustration; Hela giggles.
“You do, though,” he tells her. “You’re clearly working too hard.”
He, for his part, looks awful. “Right back at you,” she says. “Are you even eating?” He’s skin and bones, like he was in the days right before Bodi’d died. When Hela hugs him one-handed, her other hand still clutching the bottle of good chianti, the bumps of his spine dig painfully into her forearm. “Seriously, da, I mean it. Are you?”
Loki shrugs. “A little. I’m not very hungry. There isn’t any-.”
“Any what,” she asks when he doesn’t finish.
“Nothing,” he says. “I forgot what I was going to say, that’s all.”
~
The chianti helps. By the time she pours them the last of the bottle they are talking, really talking, and laughing. Conversation flows easily; he gets her complaining about her latest client, and she gets him gushing about drama club. “You were Ariel once” she asks, thinking back to the box of pictures. “I love The Tempest.”
Loki grins. In the (mildly drunken) moment, Hela can almost pretend her father is happy. “I was,” he agrees. “And it was summer stock, not a school production, so it was a bit outrageous. Your grandmother loved it – she kept going on and on about how her boy was Broadway-bound – but Laufey couldn’t get past the way I was all but naked.” He snickers. “It’s nothing by today’s standards, but back then… scandalous!”
She can’t stop herself in time. Or, at least, she doesn’t try. “I bet Thor liked it,” she kids her father.
“Oh, yes,” Loki admits. And then he blushes. “I mean- he thought the play was really good.”
Hela nods, barely hiding her smirk. “Right, exactly.”
Her father hugs her tightly as she gets ready to go. “Thanks for coming by,” he says into her hair. “It- life sometimes gets lonely.”
~
When she gets home, despite being sleepy from all that food and wine, Hela fires up her laptop and takes another quick look for Thor. Sure enough, he still lives in the area… maybe half an hour away.
~
She and her father both commit to making an effort, and this time they do better; Hela and Loki actually do manage to share dinner together once a week. Normally, they aim for Thursday. On the weeks that night doesn't work, they do their actual best to find another day or time. Her father looks a little less gaunt now that Hela is regularly stuffing him chock full of good Italian, and their evenings together are largely relaxed - almost fun, sometimes - but any attempt to draw Loki further out of his shell invariably fails.
He won't come to her place. He will only meet her out if there's no other way, and then he fidgets and sulks and sneaks in little complaints. Loki has managed to find something to do – whether it’s volunteer or paid isn’t clear – at the museum, but it sounds as if it’s very, very part-time and Hela can almost never get him to talk about it. As best she can tell he's spending his time there in the archives, cataloging collections; he's just trading being all alone at home for being all alone in a windowless room downtown.
"What's wrong, da," she finally asks him outright after yet another in a long stretch of dinners together where not one wan smile reaches her father's eyes. "You're- you just don't seem happy. I'd like to help but I don't know how." Her own sadness tends (hah!) towards anxiety, as did his in earlier times; consequently she doesn't begin to know how (he, or anyone can hope) to disperse the dense grey sadness that has settled like leaden fog over him. She leans back in the soft, worn chair and pulls her hair into a messy knot; Loki is never the least bit fazed by her scars, and around him she can almost forget about them. Almost. "You're good for me," she reminds him. "I just want to help you find some- something that's good for you."
She'd really rather help him find someone, but even getting him talking about the possibility seems an impossibly tall order.
He shrugs and takes a sip of his wine. "This is nice," he acknowledges sadly, swirling the last little bit in his glass, and Hela's heart sinks. "But in answer to your question... I don't know. Your grandparents are dead. Bodi is dead. You and your brothers have lives, good lives." He slumps back as well, eyes closing. "I don't- my work is done. Now it's just a case of waiting."
"I don't think it has to be that way," she tells him. It doesn't; she sees happy, joyful people every day (that she herself gets out and about, which probably isn’t often enough either… but she is not the project at hand), many of them much older than her father. "Maybe you're giving up too early."
Loki's eyes snap open. He glares at her from across the coffee table. "And maybe you have no idea what you're talking about," he growls.
Okay, good, he actually is still in there somewhere.
"Perhaps," she concedes. For now. "Let's not argue about it. Tell me a story," she suggests, curling around and pulling her feet up underneath herself. "One from when you were a child. You know, in the good old days, before they invented electricity," she teases, hoping to coax a smile, "when everyone still dragged women around by the hair."
"I can hardly believe I had any part in raising such a saucy brat," Loki says, but his tone is light and sure enough he does finally smile a little. Smirk, anyway. "Fine, then, a story. Have I told you about the time we dressed my friend Thor up as a girl?"
He hasn't, and she tells him so. When he goes on to spin the tale in its entirety, it's a good one and Hela gives him every bit of her attention. Almost every bit, at any rate; one small part of her can't help noting how, as he warms to his story, her father cheers up to the point he's practically glowing.
~
The whole approach turns out to be surprisingly effective. As Loki spins yarn after yarn, Hela is reminded of how his true gift for storytelling exceeds even her own. His accounts are so real, every last scene so vivid (and hilarious, and harrowing). Her father's stories are classics, classically told, and the act of telling them brings him alive.
Especially, she can't help but notice, when he speaks of Thor.
~
What harm can it do?
Hela doesn't let herself dwell long on that one.
Hi, her email reads. Sorry for the intrusion, but I'm looking for one Thor Odinson who was a childhood friend of my father's. Would you by any chance have grown up with a Loki L.? Best wishes, she signs off after some mental wrestling, Hela
~
She isn't going to check her phone obsessively for the next two weeks; she isn't. This Thor has a million possible reasons for not replying, not the least of which would be his junk mail filter.
~
She needn't have worried, as it turns out. Not quite four hours later, she gets a reply.
Hi, Hela! I hope you are well. Yes, I knew Loki L. well. Is it out of line of me to say I'm very much wanting any news you might have of him to be good news? If I am overstepping, I'm sorry. I’m also babbling. With love, he ends it, and that sounds promising, Thor.
~
They talk for a couple of weeks, first via email and then on the phone. Thor has a big voice, one that fits his pictures, but he's eager and sounds kind. He also sounds positively thirsty for any and every shred of news about her father.
Whatever happened between them, it seems Thor has long since moved past it.
"I can't tell you how much it would mean to me to get to see Loki," he tells her at the end of yet another laughter-filled call.
She's learned a lot about him in a short time: Thor is a retired framer, who got out at the end of the housing boom and is still nursing a few injuries from all those years, as he puts it, swingin' the hammer. His marriage ended a while ago; he cites differences and she doesn't pry, not after he confesses that they managed to set things aside and raise their now-grown children well regardless. He finds the modern dating scene, as he terms it, unappealing. At that Hela laughs - "I feel the same way and I'm the right age," she tells him. And then she takes a calculated risk: "I'm an artist, and I'm even bi. How could anyone be more trendy?"
She braces herself but his laugh when it comes is easy. "Oh, same here," he offers, still laughing. "Creative, bi. At my age even that doesn't sell anymore. Maybe I'm just doomed to be alone” he adds, sounding wistful.
Hela wants to hug him.
"Let's get together for coffee," she suggests. "And we'll talk about Loki."
She started this. Hela feels responsible for making sure seeing Thor is right for her father. Even just one time, for auld lang syne.
~
The coffee shop they've chose is warm and informal. She dresses comfortably and makes no effort to hide her face; in her experience, anyone who can't cope with her scars is unworthy of Loki's time and attention. Thor isn't there yet when she arrives, which is fine; she's early. Hela settles down with her tablet and - with one eye on the door - starts to draw.
~
When he comes in, the whole room changes. Thor is still big and still golden, unbelievably so, and he spots her almost immediately. He hurries over as she gets to her own feet, carefully studying his face for any sign of- anything. All she sees is joy.
"Good Gods, you look just like your father," he blurts out as they exchange a quick hug. "I would have recognized you anywhere."
She smirks. "You're too kind," she tells him. "None of Loki looks like the surface of Mars."
He hesitates for a second, like he's not sure how to react, and then ducks to tug up his pant leg. The side of his calf, what she can see of it anyway, is just as scarred as her own face. "Roofing tar," he explains. "Hurt like a sonofabitch, except for all the really bad parts where it didn't. I still walk a little funny." He beams up at her as he works the hem back down. He looks for all the world like a proud preschooler.
"Asphalt," she tells him in return. "Freshly rolled. And I don't."
He straightens, still beaming. "You don't just look like Loki, do you?" And then he stops smiling. "I'm sorry. Was that the wrong thing to say? I always hate it when people get all weird about my burns."
She shakes her head. "No, you were perfect. And same here. Coffee?"
Up close he's a little soft around the middle. His golden hair and reddish stubble are shot through with silver. His eyes are still that same impossible blue, though. She loves him already.
"Decaf," he says, like it physically pains him. "Black. My doctor is trying to kill me."
~
"So," she asks when they're mostly done with their coffee, "what happened between you and my father? At the end, I mean?"
He looks at her quizzically, genuinely puzzled. "The end?"
"The end," she repeats. "Why did you stop being- friends?"
Thor wilts a little. "I always thought we just kind of went off in different directions," he says, a little wistfully. "I didn’t think there was an end. Is that- is that what he told you?"
Hela feels bad for bringing it up - Thor sad like this is almost a travesty - but she needs to know. "Not in so many words," she admits. "He- I don't know. He won't talk about it at all. But then when he tells stories about growing up with you, he's the happiest I've seen him in forever." She takes a deep breath. "And when I kid him about there being more to it he turns the nicest shade of pink."
Right on cue Thor flushes too, his already-ruddy, weatherworn complexion so bright he's nearly glowing. "Does he," he says, and then "I can totally picture that, actually." He sets his cup down and scrubs at his face. "So," he asks, looking even less comfortable, "have I passed inspection?"
Hela laughs. "I'm losing my touch," she says. "Sorry."
"Not at all," Thor assures her. "It's- it's sweet of you to want to protect him, really."
~
Hela knows Loki. If she openly suggests that he and Thor get together, even just for a quick cup of coffee, he won't speak to her for a week. He's going to be mad that she meddled and mad that something outside his control happened and mad that he's mad. Under the right circumstances it might almost be funny. Here, though, the stakes feel awfully high.
"Are you okay pulling a little prank on him," she asks Thor on the phone a few days later. "Because I think it's our best option."
He laughs. "I'll do whatever it takes," he rumbles. "And to say he doesn't deserve it would be- dishonest. Very, very dishonest, even."
Hela smiles into her phone. "So what you're saying is that nothing's changed," she tells him. If only that was still true.
If only.
~
"We sometimes have dinner out on Thursdays," Hela tells Thor. "Loki likes it better when I indulge his hermity ways and bring him take-out, but I talked to him earlier and I think I can sway him. How does your Thursday evening look?"
"Better by the second," Thor says. "Just tell me where and when, and I'll be there. No bells, though."
~
“You look nice,” Loki observes as he meets Hela at the front door. “What’s the occasion?”
She makes a wry face. “I felt like dressing up a little?” Hela is nervous, probably even more nervous than she would be if this was her date, and keeping that from her father is going to be a serious challenge. “That’s the thing about working from home,” she adds. “I live in my pajamas. Sometimes I want to be sure I still know how to put real clothes on.”
Her father looks down at himself. Hela’s eyes follow his. Loki is wearing jeans, dark grey faded to light, but they fit him well and he looks nice in them. “Of course not,” she assures him when he asks if he should go change, “you look fine.”
He smiles. “Anyone with eyes is going to know you’re out with your doddering old father anyway,” he says.
Hela pokes him in the arm. “Since when do we care what anyone thinks of us anyway?”
“I don’t want to hold you back,” he teases. “You know, hurt your chances.”
“Let me worry about my chances, why don’t you,” she says, rolling her eyes. “I’ll drive. Are you ready?”
“For your driving?” Her father shoots her a devilish half-smile. “I’m not sure I could ever be ready.”
“Shut up, da, and get in the car.”
~
The place is comfortably busy. They’re not the only ones there, fortunately, as that would be a bit awkward under the circumstances, but it’s not so busy that watching for Thor will be a challenge. Hela makes sure she walks ahead of her father as the server leads them to their table; this way, she’s facing the entryway while Loki’s back will be to it.
~
Earlier in the day she and Thor had laid out what they think is a reasonably workable plan. He will show up about 45 minutes after Hela and Loki do, to give them time to take their seats, order, and eat the majority of their dinner uninterrupted. “That way,” he’d explained when she’d questioned his suggestion, “if things don’t go well, you’re not out a good meal.”
“Why would things not go well,” she’d asked, but in her heart of hearts she already knew the answer: Her father is nothing if not stubborn. She’d gone on to say as much.
Thor had laughed. “Precisely.”
When he arrives – or, at least, at the next reasonable break in conversation – they’d agreed, she will excuse herself for a minute to- to something. Use the restroom, take a client phone call… whatever makes sense at the time. Once she’s clear of the table Thor will move in.
Hela’s own private plan is to find someplace in the restaurant from which she can quietly observe the two of them – Thor and her father – and get a feel for how things are going. At the first sign of trouble, she fully intends to intervene.
She hasn’t shared that with Thor. Not that it would likely surprise him; Hela just wants a chance to see their honest interaction. He’s grown on her quickly, and she very much wants this little experiment to succeed. Whatever succeed even means.
But not at her father’s expense, certainly.
~
She gets the Italian wedding soup; Loki, the minestrone. They’re both about halfway through when her father puts his spoon down with a clatter. “What’s wrong, Hela,” he asks her, his dark brows pinched together.
“Nothing,” she lies. “I’m just tired, and I picked up yet another assignment; it’s a good problem to have,” she admits, because all of this is true, “but it makes for a lot to do. I guess it’s making me edgy.”
“Tell me about your new project,” he suggests, not looking entirely convinced. She does.
Still, it’s a relief when their main course comes. Loki’s seafood fra diavolo is a bit of a project in itself – between picking everything out of its shells and keeping the linguini under control, it takes most of his attention – and conversation slows to a manageable crawl. Hela wisely picked gnocchi, under the well-tested premise that they’re easy to spear and eat without undo focus.
That part works well. When Thor bursts through the doorway and looks around, Hela spots him immediately and yet her father is none the wiser.
“Excuse me a moment,” she says, dabbing at her mouth with her napkin and then digging around in her small bag. “I seem to have left my phone in the car.” She isn’t sure he’s fooled – Loki eyes her shrewdly as she gets up to leave – but he goes back to wrangling his mussels before she’s even gone from the table.
“Gods,” she whispers to Thor on her way past him. “Don’t screw this up. The stress is killing me!” She’s out the front door before he can answer.
~
Once he starts making his way through the tables, though, Hela’s right back in. “I’ll be out of your way in a couple of minutes,” she assures their waitress. “I just want to see how this goes.”
The woman follows Hela’s head-jerk. Her eyes go wide. “Oh my. Me too,” she adds, laughing, but she does turn back to her work. Hela sidles closer.
~
“Hi,” Thor exclaims as he comes up alongside Loki. “Oh, I’m sorry. You look just like someone I- Loki? Loki Laufeyson?”
Loki jerks away like he’s been struck. Hela can’t see his face from where she’s standing, but his posture is unnaturally stiff. Rigid. “Thor,” he says flatly. “What are you doing here?”
Thor bravely smiles. “Looking at the best thing I’ve seen in a long time,” he answers.
It’s ridiculously cheesy but it works somehow. Hela breathes out a sigh of relief as her father stands up and- well, he doesn’t exactly hug his old friend, but he leans in a little and lets Thor wrap both arms around him. “You can come out of wherever it is you’re hiding, Hela dear” Loki calls over his own shoulder. “I promise not to kill you until after we’ve all finished eating.”
Someone at the next table over laughs, a little too loudly.
Hela slinks back to her chair. “Busted,” she admits as the two men sit down, Loki back in his own chair and Thor next to her. “You win,” she tells her father. “I simply cannot sneak anything by you.”
“I hate you, you know,” he tells her fondly.
“Of course you do,” she says. Her heart is still pounding. “Everyone hates me.”
“You have a nice girl here, Loki,” Thor tells her father cheerfully. For a moment she’s afraid Loki will think she and Thor are somehow the item.
One quick glance at her father’s face, though, and she can see she needn’t have worried. Not about that; not about anything.
Loki, fork back in his hand but stalled halfway to his mouth, is looking at Thor like there isn’t a single other person in the room. In the universe.
She clears her throat. “Uh, Thor, can I have the waitress bring you something?”
~
They talk for a couple of hours, easily, until the restaurant is nearly empty and the staff would clearly like to clean the place up and go home. At first they make awkward small talk, with Loki grilling Hela a bit about how she and Thor had met. Then it’s stories. She’s heard many of the early ones but, as things shift almost imperceptibly and the conversation turns more personal, Hela (happily) becomes the third wheel.
By the end it’s like she’s not there at all. Thor has one big hand resting gently atop Loki’s slender fingers; her father leans diagonally across the table and reaches his free hand out to tuck a loose bit of hair behind Thor’s ear. “I should go,” he says, finally, shifting in his chair and blinking at Hela as though he’s surprised to find her sitting with them.
“Call me,” Thor asks. “Please?”
Loki nods. “Mm.”
They hug their goodbyes outside the restaurant, Thor with a quick squeeze for Hela and a much longer one for her father. Loki buries his face in Thor’s hair for a moment and then pushes free. “I’ll talk to you soon,” he promises, and then throws an arm around Hela’s shoulders and steers her towards their car.
~
“That was an awful thing to do,” he complains as they drive away. Loki is grinning ear-to-ear, though. She can hear it in his voice, and see it in the flash of the streetlights each time she shoots him a quick look just to be sure. The rest of the drive home he sits silently; the whole time, though, he’s smiling.
~
“I hate to do this to you two weeks in a row,” her father says into the phone, “but can we reschedule tomorrow night? I might have plans.”
Hela smiles. “Of course, da. I have plenty to do. Don’t you worry about me.”
“But I do worry,” he tells her. “It’s what fathers are for. Thank you, though. I’ll try not to do this to you again.”
“You’re not doing anything to me,” she assures him. “Plan away.”
~
Over the next few months Loki has more and more “conflicts.” Hela might otherwise of have worried – in the past, when her father had been increasingly unavailable, it had been because he was withdrawing deeper and deeper into the hole inside himself that nothing whatsoever could fill – except for one thing: On the (increasingly rare) occasions they do find the time to get together, he looks- he looks wonderful. He looks happy. He’s animated and strong.
Her father is finally eating well again.
He might even have been working out. She’s not quite sure, but he could be. There’s more to him when he hugs her hello and goodbye, and in a good way.
And while he still doesn’t talk about it (and Hela’s careful not to pry; new things are fragile and easily disrupted, and she’s determined not to let her own curiosity get in the way of something so important), Loki does let little hints drop with increasing frequency.
Every now and then he slips and says “my boyfriend.” He mentions going out. Once, Hela picks a longish blond hair off his sweater… when she holds it up for him to see, he laughs. “At least it wasn’t on my pants,” he quips, and then turns the best shade of bright pink she’s ever seen.
~
“You can admit it, you know,” she kids him in the middle of Chinese food and bad TV. “I’ll even help you. Repeat after me: my daughter is the smartest thing that ever lived.”
He gives her a look, his eyes bright with mischief. “And what makes you so sure you weren’t under my spell all along? Maybe you were a tool, a means to an end, and I was just using you.”
“It’s really good to have you back,” she tells him, laughing.
~
Hela runs into Thor and Loki in the grocery store. Thor has the little basket; Loki is carefully stocking it with what must be their dinner makings. She watches them for a while before they spot her, smiling at the way Loki touches Thor’s arm when he asks a question and at how Thor listens intently to everything her father says as though the difference between yellow and Spanish onions is the most fascinating thing he’s ever heard.
“Hi, guys,” she says as they nearly walk past her. They’re completely oblivious to anything that isn’t- isn’t each other. It’s adorable.
They both jump. They both exclaim “Hela” at the exact same time, and they bump gracelessly together trying to hug her.
When they invite her over for dinner, she begs off; they obviously have plans, and she’s not taking so much as one good evening away from them. “We’ll set something up soon, though, da,” she promises her father when he pouts. “Call me.”
~
Hela looks around. There’s a lot of Thor at Loki’s apartment. A big, worn sweatshirt hangs on the coat rack, and a pair of battered slippers far too big for her father’s feet are tucked under the bench in the entry hall. There’s beer in the fridge and decaf coffee beans in the big glass jar by the grinder.
Later on, she notices that the plastic holder in the bathroom has grown an extra toothbrush. Also, there are so many more towels.
~
“I have a question for you,” Loki tells Hela over a glass of wine. He’s so anxious he’s vibrating; in turn, that’s making her nervous. “And I want you to promise you’ll give me an honest answer.”
“Of course, da,” she assures him. Lying’s always been more his thing than hers anyway.
He clears his throat. “Um. Would it bother you if Thor moved in with me? Here?”
Loki catches Hela with a mouthful of wine and she very nearly gets some up her nose. “Here I was expecting something awful,” she tells him, between coughs. “You should have seen your face. And no, of course I don’t mind. So things are going well, I take it?”
“Well, we have our ups and downs,” he starts in, but then can’t pull it off without laughing. “Oh, fuck it. Things are perfect. Just perfect.”
“I’m so glad, da,” she exclaims, leaning carefully past their wine glasses to kiss his cheek.
He kisses her back. “Me, too.”