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Her phone pinged, signalling a text and, although it was late and she was nearly ready for bed, Verity picked it up.
are you awake
Loki, Verity thought even before checking the name of the sender. Never mind that he was one of the very few who texted her at all, he was the only one likely to text her this late unless there was an emergency.
She felt no sense of urgency in the text, but Loki was seldom so solicitous. If he wished to text her, he texted her, and if she did not respond, he assumed she was busy and tried again later. Or else texted her repeatedly until she gave in and replied, often to find out all he wanted was attention.
This seemed an attention situation and Verity briefly considered ignoring him until morning, but something in the simple request gave her pause.
Biting her lip, she chanced a reply.
Up now. Bed soon.
oh okay night
Verity frowned at the screen. Loki wasn’t lying – he had said nothing that could possibly even be a lie – but something in the text sat badly with her. The formatting, maybe, or perfunctory wording. Loki was usually very chatty. She supposed she should simply wish him a good night in return. If he didn’t want to share his thoughts, it wasn’t up to her to drag them out of him.
And yet…
Only soon. I’m up now. What do you need?
don’t worry i’ll see you tomorrow night
The avoidance of her question set off all of Verity’s alarm bells. The only reason Loki would have for avoiding a direct answer was her ability to see through lies. Normally, if he wanted to hide information, he simply spun a tall tale that sounded plausible enough and threw the listener off. Unfortunately for him, such deceptions didn’t work on her, so he tried to get around them by side-stepping them.
Verity couldn’t see through this, but she’d grown accustomed to it all the same.
Too late. I’m already worried. What’s wrong?
Loki took entirely too long to reply. Although his response time was probably less than five minutes, given the nature of the conversation, Verity worried that something had happened to him. He texted,
nothing
A lie. And then,
lonely
Less of a lie, but not entirely correct. An answer to throw her off.
Jaw clenched in anger, Verity called her friend directly. He didn’t answer, so she left a message telling him she would try again and to pick up his phone. She waited several minutes, although it nearly killed her, and then called again.
No answer.
PICK UP YOUR FUCKING PHONE I SWEAR TO GOD
she texted, hoping the caps would emphasize her displeasure and concern.
She waited a few minutes and, when she didn’t receive a text in reply, tried calling again. She thought for sure she would be shunted back to voicemail, but at the last possible moment, she heard the line connect.
“Verity?” Loki said cautiously.
The angry demands for an explanation that she had stockpiled on the tip of her tongue died before Verity could open her mouth to respond. Something was wrong with Loki’s voice. It sounded… Well, not quite slurred, but it was the only description Verity could think of on short notice.
“Are you drunk?” she said.
“No?” Loki replied, his voice small and faint. “Maybe? I don’t know.”
And he didn’t, she thought. The realization brought a wave of fear with it.
“Are you all right? Where are you?”
“Don’t know,” Loki said miserably and Verity wondered if the answer applied to the first question, the second question, or both. “Had a mission.”
“It didn’t go well?” Verity prompted.
“Went great. Had to take something to… to… allay suspicion. Used to handle it pretty good.”
Verity felt her stomach twist. “But not so good now?”
“Nuh—“ Loki replied, and then the sound dimmed on the other side. Verity could hear a faint noise that sounded like retching.
“Loki?” she prompted when the sound had died out.
“Thought I could get home,” Loki said, “but I couldn’t. Don’t know where this is.”
“What signs do you see?”
“Uh…”
“I don’t understand what that means,” Verity said when no further description was forthcoming.
“Vision’s off.”
“What do you mean ‘off’? Are you seeing double? Is it fuzzy?” Verity said. “You have to help me here.”
A faint whine reached her from the other end of the line.
“Loki?” she said nervously. When he returned to the line, he sounded almost cheerful.
“It’s all right, Verity. You don’t need—“
“Stop lying to me!” she snapped. “Stop lying! You know I can tell! You know! Are you trying to make me notice? I’m noticing! I’m listening! Tell me what’s wrong!”
When she heard nothing for several second, she added quietly, “Please. You’re scaring me. Please tell me what’s happening so I can find you.”
“I don’t know,” Loki replied, a faint edge of desperation creeping into his voice. “Had to drink with a guy and take a thing and I used to handle it pretty well, but I didn’t and it’s messing with my head and I can’t think straight and it hurts. I thought it was the alcohol, but maybe not. I don’t know. It was a long time ago, but it only hurts now.”
“Can you get an ambulance?” Verity said.
“What would an ambulance do?”
Good point, Verity thought. She doubted most paramedics were trained to deal with gods.
“I just need home,” Loki said, whining slightly. “If I sleep, I’ll be fine. I just need home.”
“Did you try Thor?”
“He’s gone a lot. Have to go through the switchboard. I don’t want to leave a message with the Avengers…”
“All right,” Verity said in what she hoped was a soothing tone. It was difficult to tell with her own heart racing. “Can you ask someone where you are? It’s not that late. There must be someone out there.”
“They won’t talk to me.”
Verity sighed inwardly. If Loki was stumbling around in his armour speaking only semi-coherently, she supposed she wouldn’t talk to him either.
“Is there a store or something nearby?” she asked and heard what she thought was the sound of someone dragging themselves to their feet. “Even if you’re not seeing straight, you should be able to see lights on in windows. If you can see a place that’s open, go inside and ask someone behind a counter to take your phone and talk to me.”
“Okay. I’ll try. Have to walk a bit.”
“I’m right here,” Verity told him. “We’ll find a way to get you home.”
“Okay.”
Verity waited, not wanting to pressure Loki more than she needed to. She waited until she heard a grunt and a sound like a body falling against something that rattled. A door, perhaps, or a pane of glass covered with a protective grill.
“Loki?” she ventured. “Are you all right?”
“Food store,” he said, as though this contained all the knowledge of the universe. There followed another thump, the chime of what might be a door, and faint, echoey sounds of protest mingled with Loki saying, “My friend wants to talk to you.”
“Hey!” Verity shouted, hoping she would be heard without waking everyone else on her floor. “Hey! Pick up the phone!”
She heard a moment of relative silence, followed by a begrudging voice saying, “Yeah? What you want?”
“That guy who gave you the phone,” Verity said, trying to think of a story on the fly. “He’s really sick. He went to a party, costume, and ran out of meds.”
“So? What you want me to do about it?”
“I can come and get him, but I need to know where he is,” Verity said. “Just give me your address and keep him in the store.”
“Look, lady…”
“No, you look,” Verity said. She had a low enough opinion of most people that giving them a piece of her mind was not an inconvenience. “I have ways of finding out where you are. What I don’t have is time because my friend is sick. But, if he wanders out of your shop and gets hit by a car, I will have a very good place to start looking and all the time in the world to do it.”
“I don’t need head cases in my shop.”
“He’s not a head case!” Verity snapped. She sighed and bit the bullet. “I’m a registered superpower. Tested and proven. I can tell when someone is lying. If something happens to my friend and I walk into your shop with a cop, I am not going to stop at asking whether you’re the one who turned him away and let him get his ass killed. I will ask you every awkward question I can think of that might possibly incriminate you and you’d better have the right answers because the cop will be holding a little card with my picture on it and that card will say that I know damned well when you’re lying.”
She did not say it, but she let the implication that she could lie hang in the air.
“Fuck, man. I’m not getting paid enough for this shit.”
“I know,” Verity told him, trying to sound understanding. “Just give me your address. I’ll come and get him and bring him home and you won’t have to worry about it anymore.”
The man on the other side relented and gave her the address of a small convenience store.
“Got it,” Verity said. “Just sit him down somewhere. Do you have soda crackers?”
“Yeah. Some.”
“Give him some soda crackers and a bottle of water,” Verity told him. “I’ll pay for them when I get there.”
“Come on, lady…”
“He has an upset stomach and will throw up all over your floor unless you give him crackers,” Verity said, not bothering to mention that Loki might very well throw up anyway. The person on the other end swore profusely and Verity let him finish before continuing. “I’ll be there soon. Give the phone back to my friend.”
Only a moment of silence passed before Loki’s voice returned to the line, suggesting that he had been hovering around, waiting for it.
“You there?” Loki said.
“I’m here, don’t worry,” Verity told him. She didn’t have a landline with which to call a cab and was loathe to hang up on him, so she accessed the online request through her computer, marking it as urgent. “I’m coming to get you in a taxi.”
“You don’t…” Loki began, faltered, and then. “Can you afford a taxi?”
No, Verity thought, but that wasn’t important right now.
“It’ll be fine, don’t worry,” she repeated. “Now, listen: I need you to stay out of the way of the staff members, okay? They’re going to find you a quiet place to sit and I want you to sit there and wait, even if you feel like you want to do something else. You have to wait. They’ll give you some crackers and water and I want you to eat them—“
“I’m not hungry,” Loki said.
“If your stomach hurts, the crackers will help,” Verity said as she pulled on her jacket, not bothering to change out of her pyjamas. “Sit down, eat your crackers, and drink some water. Ask the staff if there’s a bathroom in case you feel sick. I’m going to try to stay on the line with you, but if my battery gets low, I might have to hang up. I’ll let you know if it comes to that.”
“Okay,” Loki said.
“What did I ask?”
“Sit down, eat crackers, drink water,” Loki told her. “And wait.”
“You got it,” Verity told him, grabbing her purse as she left the apartment. “Wait for me. Everything will be all right.”
“I want to go home,” Loki said, crouching and leaning against the wall of the corridor while Verity unlocked the apartment. She’d thought at first that his stomach hurt, but it turned out that Loki felt sore all over and the folded-up position was more comfortable than stretching his muscles to stand up straight. She didn’t think it was healthy, but also didn’t have a choice but to let him do it until she could find a more comfortable spot for him. “It’s close. We can go there.”
“I know where everything is in my apartment,” Verity reminded him. “I have no idea what you have.”
“I have a bed.”
“I have a bed too.”
“You need your bed.”
“And you need to stop whining,” Verity said, a cheerful assessment that she did not feel in the least. Loki was paler than usual, bluish and bruisey around the eyes and lips, and he shivered at irregular intervals. It was no wonder the convenience store staff didn’t want him around.
Verity unlocked the door and held it open until Loki could pull himself to his feet and stumble inside. She wondered why he didn’t just amble off on his own if he was so desperate for his own place, but in truth she knew the answer, even if he wouldn’t admit it. He felt sick and wanted someone nearby who could help him in the event that he couldn’t help himself.
He collapsed on the sofa and curled up again before Verity could protest.
“You should really use the bed,” she told him, but he ignored her, pretending he hadn’t heard. “At least take your boots off. And your headgear. And armour. Oh, for fuck sake. Why do you have to be such a pain in the ass?”
“Sorry,” he said, a wispy, breathy sound. Not a lie, although Verity noticed he did nothing to rectify the matter either.
Because he’s in pain, she decided, watching him shift his position very carefully. He’s in pain and he won’t admit it.
“What did you do?” Verity asked conversationally, grabbing one of his feet to pull off his boot. Loki grunted and clutched at the sofa cushions, but gave no other indication that it had hurt.
“Power blocker,” he murmured. “Prove I won’t use magic to mess up their plans.”
Verity snorted. “Like you need magic to mess up plans.”
“I know, right? Got’em good.”
Fake cheer, but not fake pride, Verity thought, finishing with the footwear and pulling the diadem from his forehead. He curled his fingers around her wrist before she could withdraw.
“Why?” he said quietly.
“Why what?” Verity said, taking the headpiece in her other hand and putting it on a side table. She rested the hand he held against his temple, fingers curled. In spite of his shivering, the skin felt hot and dry. She wondered if he trembled with fatigue instead of cold.
“Why all this? Why?” he said.
“You’re my friend,” Verity told him. “I wasn’t going to leave you in an alley somewhere.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“If you didn’t want help, why did you text me?” Verity said absently, the answer coming to her on its own when Loki didn’t reply.
lonely
A lie that wasn’t entirely a lie. He had fully expected to be stuck in an alley – or wherever else he had holed himself up – until whatever was messing with his system had run its course. He had texted because he wanted someone to talk to, but she was going to bed, so he would have let her go and sat there alone. If sickness hadn’t interfered with the usual tone of his texts, she would never have asked. She would have said goodnight and put her phone away.
“That hurts,” she said, surprised to feel a lump forming in her throat. “That really hurts. Did you not think I cared enough to come?”
“Didn’t want to keep you up,” Loki murmured.
“Like finding out later that I’d let you sleep curled up on the pavement half out of your head wasn’t going to keep me up at night? For fuck sake, Loki.”
Verity sighed. She supposed she couldn’t be too hard on him. If he was half out of his mind, he wouldn’t be thinking straight even without the arrogant immortal attitude.
“That kind of posturing is fine if it’s not an emergency,” she told him, not unkindly, “but if you’re sick in an alley somewhere it’s okay to call. What do you think friends are for?”
“Dunno.”
Verity felt her heart lurch. He really didn’t know, and that was the absolute truth. He would manipulate a hundred people into doing what he wanted before simply calling her and asking for help. Why? Because he wasn’t used to having friends? Because she’d flat-out refused to help him with capers when he asked directly? Did he think that applied to everything? Was he trying to be considerate and completely missing the point? Some weird mutation of all the above?
“They’re for calling when you’re sick in an alley, okay?” she said, and then shook herself loose from his grip. “I need to do something really quick. I’m just going to step into the kitchen.”
The kitchen was little more than a nook off the living room. Loki could see her just fine from the sofa, but wouldn’t get mixed up in her conversation. Verity bit her lip as she scrolled through her contacts, located the one she wanted, and called Lorelei.
“Hi, Verity. Do you have any idea what time it is?”
“Yes. Believe me,” Verity replied, “but you get around, so it might be different for you. Do you have a second?”
Lorelei laughed. “As it happens, it is different for me. It’s morning here, just maybe not as late as I’d prefer. What did Loki do now?”
“What makes you think it’s Loki?”
“Loki’s the only mutual acquaintance we have besides Sigurd and I know he’s not giving you a problem,” Lorelei replied, implying that Sigurd was with her. “Besides, isn’t it always Loki?”
“Fine,” Verity said. “What do you know about magic blockers?”
She waited until the laughter on the other end died down.
“Really?” Lorelei said. “Really, really? Did he get himself into trouble with those?”
“He’s… He’s really sick,” Verity said.
Lorelei snorted. “Probably looks that way to you, but he’s no worse for wear, even if he’s regretting it right now.”
“He says he used to handle it all right,” Verity prompted, hoping for an explanation.
“I’m sure he used to,” Lorelei said, and then relented. “He used to be much more of a sorcerer type,” she said. “What they typically do is infuse their body with a lot of magic to make it virtually unkillable and the concentration will just metabolize magic blockers like they’re nothing. Might suppress any energy output they have for a bit, but blockers are mostly useless against heavy-duty sorcerers. That’s one of the reasons he used them to gain trust.
“The protection’s not perfect,” she continued, “and the gods go through, or at least went through, different cycles of Ragnarok and other things that can destroy their bodies, but they can be brought back. Loki’s done it a few times and infused the new body every time until now. I don’t know what re-set button he hit, but he’s avoiding excess magic this time around and probably forgot that the blockers were actually going to work. They cause some discomfort, but he’ll get through it. Tell him to stop being such a baby.”
“This is more than some discomfort,” Verity said, offering a brief description of Loki’s aches, fogged vision, and disorientation.
“Did he have citric acid with the blockers?” Lorelei said immediately.
“I… I don’t know. He said he had a few drinks.”
“I’ll bet money they were screwdrivers or hard lemonade or something else with citrus,” Lorelei said. “Citric acid will ramp up the side effects of blockers even if it’s taken a few hours afterward. Nothing you can do about it but let him sleep it off. You should have left him in the alley and saved yourself the trouble. He’d have come slinking back in the morning.”
“Well, as long as it isn’t poison or something,” Verity said, resisting the urge to argue. She had the information she needed. “I’ll let him sleep then. Thanks.”
“Best thing for it,” Lorelei agreed. “Take care of yourself.”
Verity disconnected, put her phone on the counter, and returned to the sofa where Loki sprawled, half-asleep, but still half-awake, trying to find a comfortable position.
“Come on,” she said, grabbing his arm and tugging, ignoring his groans. “You’re going to sleep in a proper bed, without your armour. You won’t like it now, but you’ll be glad later. Get up.”
“S’okay…”
“Get up right now,” Verity ordered and Loki obeyed. Slowly and with much discomfort, but he obeyed. When he reached a sitting position, Verity helped him remove his cuirass and the cuffs on his hands and wrists.
“Are you going to be more comfortable with or without your shirt?” Verity demanded. “What about your pants? Is all that mail attached?”
“It has fasteners,” Loki said, bewildered.
“And the pants themselves?” Verity prompted. “Are they stiff? Are they uncomfortable?”
“I… I don’t have anything else on,” Loki mumbled.
“I don’t care,” Verity told him, dragging him to his feet. “Take them off in the bedroom if it makes you feel better, but you’re going to sleep in a real bed, wearing whatever’s comfortable, and you’re going to wake up feeling better. You are not going to sleep in alleys in grimy armour while I’m around. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Loki said. And meant it, as far as the instructions went.
“Do you really, really understand?” Verity said and this time Loki only shook his head miserably.
“That’s okay,” Verity told him. “One day you will. You’re winging it pretty well. Now come on… We’ll get you tucked in, okay?”
“Okay.”
He followed her meekly, cowed by the strength of her determination. She helped him strip down to nothing, thinking of nothing, merely wanting to fly in the face of what was obviously an established convention. He was a bit dirty from sitting on the ground, but that was fine. The sheets were a few days old anyway. Neither of them had cause to complain.
“Where will you sleep?” Loki said as she pulled the blankets up around him.
“Sofa, probably,” she told him. “Maybe here on the floor. Don’t worry about it. It’s not your place to worry right now.” She ran her fingers though his hair while he burrowed in her blankets as though he wanted to hide from the world. “Did you have any orange juice today? Or lemonade?”
“Mmm,” he replied, a non-committal response.
“No more orange juice with blockers, all right?” she told him and he shook his head against the pillow. “Nothing with citrus. No mixing drinks with strange magic drugs you don’t remember.”
But why stop there? she thought. She was no more used to having friends than he was, but there were rules. Rules she had grown up with and never had cause to apply until now.
“No wandering around sick on your own. No holing up in alleys like a wounded animal. No evasive texts. If you want to chat, commit,” she said. “No dealing with things alone if you don’t have to. Not anymore.”
When Loki didn’t answer, Verity turned to leave, but he caught the hem of her top and held her in place.
“You… You too,” he said haltingly. “No dealing with things alone. Not anymore.”
Verity’s entire life revolved around doing things alone: working from home alone, reading books alone, drinking wine alone, but these were normal things. She never rushed off to pull stupid stunts on her own, getting lost in alleys, texting people in the middle of the night.
“I don’t really…” she began, but weren’t there nights when mathematics weren’t enough? When the wine wasn’t a glass, but most of the bottle? When the forms blurred under her vision until she feared she wouldn’t fill her quota on time? He didn’t really know those things, did he?
“I’ll break in next time,” Loki said. “The next time you won’t talk because of ‘work’. The next time your voice sounds funny on the phone. I’ll break in. I mean it.”
“Okay,” Verity said, wondering how long he had noticed and how often he had stayed away because she hadn’t asked him to come. Now that she had shouted down his choice to sleep in an alley, she supposed she didn’t have much to say if he wanted to save her from an extra measure of wine. “No dealing with things alone. But that’s for tomorrow. Tonight’s for sleep. I’ll be on the sofa.”
Loki rolled the fabric of her pyjama top between his fingers and let her go. He curled up in her bed, nestled deeply in her blankets, and Verity closed the door on her way out, leaving the merest inch of space to let the air circulate. She gathered extra bedding, spread it out on the sofa, and then paused. She picked it up again and tossed it through the bedroom door, collected the sofa cushions and did the same. In the bedroom, she rigged an impromptu pallet beside her bed with the cushions and a fitted sheet, and then stretched out upon it. Above her, she heard Loki shift and sigh, breathing deeply in his sleep.
No more alone, she thought, testing the notion, tasting it. She would need to take breaks from her work for reasons other than migraines brought on by false data. She would have to account for Asgaridian tolerances and buy more wine. She would need to learn to use her phone for something besides calling her mother and ordering take-out.
She would need to adapt, but she thought she might enjoy the change.