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Loki had a lot of thoughts about Vivien Hugo after meeting him, far more than he could admit, even to himself.
Truthfully, it wasn’t just him; everyone who crossed paths with Hugo seemed to walk away carrying a stubborn opinion. It was impressive, the way he could leave such a strong imprint on people with a single conversation.
Not that surprising, when the boy demanded to be understood the moment he opened his mouth. Hugo didn’t ease people into knowing him, didn’t care enough to soften his edges for the sake of comfort, he presented himself as he was, and expected others to keep up.
He was blunt in a way that did make him insufferable, his sophisticated speech didn’t help make any of his remarks sound less harsh.
And yet, people struggled to hate him for it. Mostly because he was passionate about everything he spoke about, pouring his heart and soul into every word.
It left people conflicted, caught off guard and unsure how to react—whether to take offense and punch him in the face, or to sit there and actually consider that he might have a point.
It wasn’t like that for Loki, though, not really. Because Hugo, for all his sharpness and cutting remarks, never seemed to turn any of it toward him.
He made it clear since the second they met that he held Loki in a higher regard than anyone else. He didn’t even bother hiding it, a mere glance was enough to show how captivated he was.
His full attention was on Loki, like he finally found something worth analyzing and studying.
But instead of tearing him apart, he built him up, using the same intensity he applied to everything else and the most technical and precise words to praise him. It was almost detached, but still praise nonetheless.
Loki had heard countless compliments and praises for his talent from coaches and teammates over the years, their words feeding into his ego in a way that was most definitely earned. But he never expected in his fifteen years of life to get called a “perfect organism”, and not only like it, but actually let it get under his skin.
If it was a weakness, then it was a strange one, less of a flaw and more like a pathway straight to his heart. After turning it over in his mind more times than he would like to admit, Loki eventually settled on that being the only real reason he had agreed to meet Hugo in the middle of the night, in a poorly maintained football pitch that only children bothered with.
He told himself it was just for fun, but neither of them were particularly good at keeping things light, at not pushing a lot further than necessary.
It didn’t take long before their breaths grew heavier, Loki’s clothes clinging uncomfortably as sweat gathered despite the midnight cool air.
The dim lighting and uneven ground didn’t slow them down, it only added to the intensity, their focus narrowing until the rest of the world seemed to fall away.
It ended abruptly, exactly the way Loki had expected. A harsh tackle stopped him from using his speed just in time, sending them both to the ground, the impact jarring enough to knock the breath out of his lungs.
Neither of them moved, they remained on the ground with their backs pressed against the rough grass, just staring up at the dark sky as they struggled to catch their breath.
The ball had rolled somewhere out of reach, but he didn’t have it in him to get up and fetch it. And from the way Hugo remained just as still, it was clear he didn’t either.
Loki could feel the strain in his limbs, the dull ache settling into his muscles. He was going to kill Hugo if he actually got injured like this, that if their coach didn’t get to him first.
“Any god fearing referee would’ve given you a red card for that.” Loki panted, his voice coming out rougher than he liked. He clearly needed to work on his physicality, he was still lacking if something like this left him worn down.
“There aren’t any referees nor gods around here.”
A laugh slipped out of Loki before he could even try to stop it. Hugo really was a hilarious guy, mostly because he didn’t mean to.
“Ironic,” Loki muttered, lifting his leg to kick Hugo with enough force to earn him a pained sound in return. “Because according to you last week, I was the closest thing to a divine entity.”
Hugo shifted slightly beside him, rubbing at the spot where he’d been hit, before he turned his head away from Loki, gaze drifting elsewhere.
“That doesn’t disprove what I said.”
With those dark, deep eyes no longer fixed on him, the second best thing was the sky endlessly stretching overhead, Loki let his gaze fall back to it.
“It does. I am a god, and I am around.”
He heard Hugo sigh in defeat by his side. “I admit my contradiction, but I just didn’t want to compare you to the gods that only live in books.”
Loki let himself smile childishly at that, indulging in the words. He kept his eyes fixed upward, silently hoping Hugo was still turned away.
For a moment, he let himself believe he got away with it.
“You have dimples.”
But of course he didn’t.
Hugo stated simply, the same tone he used to say something certain, like describing the color of Loki’s eyes and how he was destined to win the World Cup four times.
Loki couldn’t quite understand why, but Hugo not noticing such an obvious feature on him until now made his chest tighten.
He frowned faintly, more to himself than anything, trying to push the feeling aside before it could settle into something harder to ignore.
It was probably just dissatisfaction, he decided.
His midfielder wasn’t paying him as much attention as he thought. As much as he should. One way or another, he will make sure Hugo’s focus stays exactly where it belonged.
“They’ve always been there.”
“Why did you make them disappear?”
Make them disappear? Only then he noticed that he was still frowning without him even realizing it. He exhaled softly, letting the tension slip out with the breath and forced his face to relax.
The question itself was so ridiculous, so genuinely earnest in a way that made no sense, that he had to use actual effort to stop himself from laughing again. Hugo didn’t deserve to see them again, not yet.
“Just wait till you make me laugh,” Loki replied, choosing his words carefully. Laugh, not smile. There was a difference, and he wanted it to be clear.
“I always do, but I can’t figure out how I do it.”
That was the whole point. Hugo never tried to be funny, his sincerity is what made his words unintentionally amusing.
He opened his mouth to say exactly that, but Hugo continued rambling.
“It’s just another thing I apparently have the suitable aptitude for, but I’m not sure how to hone it like my other skills.”
Loki just stared, attempting to process the meaning behind the words, but the certainty in which Hugo spoke about being fated to make him laugh made something in him recoil instinctively.
Hugo had no idea he just dug his own grave, the thought of being tied to someone like that so inevitably was suffocating. Loki would never let something as fleeting and personal as laughter belong to anyone but himself, even if he had to stop it for the rest of his life.
“You’re a weirdo.” That was all he could give in response, the words fell out flat, stripped of their usual bite.
He was grateful when Hugo didn’t immediately reply and just let the silence stretch instead. He needed to think about something other than the warm presence beside him, and the so-called destiny that tied them together.
His gaze drifted upward again. The sky above them was almost blank, the light of the stars swallowed and blurred by the glow of the city.
“Does looking at the sky work the same way as looking at the blank pages you love so much?”
Loki didn’t want to speak, but he found himself voicing his thoughts anyway.
The emptiness above somehow pulled him down, towards the darkness of Hugo’s eyes and his strange habits.
Hugo hummed, uncharacteristically soft. “Yeah, only when it’s completely empty though.”
“Lucky for you, we can barely see the stars nowadays.” It was just another thing, he supposed. Another part of the world that had to fade somewhere along the line in the name of progress.
“Maybe we don’t even deserve to,” he added, voice softening into the tone he used when he didn’t want people to look too closely at what he actually meant.
It wasn’t really a question, he already knew they didn’t. The vast and unreachable space shouldn’t concern them. All they had were their earthly, grounded ambitions. A game of kicking a ball into a net, and the burning need to win.
That was all that mattered, all they were meant for.
Loki replayed his own words in his mind before shaking his head slightly. If he could recognize teen angst in movies, then he could definitely recognize it in himself.
Beside him, Hugo suddenly moved, pushing himself up onto one hand to sit up. He looked into the distance with a familiar look on his face, like he was sorting through something internally. The same expression he wore when he sat with one of his empty notebooks, filling them up with his own thoughts.
“It doesn’t matter if we are deserving or not,” Hugo said slowly, placing each word with care. “If a spark that had died hundreds of years ago managed to break through light pollution and reach us, then it must be our destiny to see it.”
Loki blinked. The simplicity of it caught him off guard.
That… was true.
He mirrored Hugo’s movement, pushing himself up to sit, his hand pressing into the rough grass beneath him. He found himself nodding, eyes dropping to the ground as he turned the idea over in his mind.
Hugo had a habit of being right and saying exactly what Loki needed to hear, even when he didn’t realize it himself.
“You’re right,” he said absentmindedly, his gaze still fixed on the grass in front of him. You always are, was left unspoken, he refused to flatter him that much.
He turned his face to speak directly to Hugo, intent forming somewhere in his mind but never quite reaching his lips. His mind blanked abruptly, short-circuiting the moment Hugo moved closer, closer than he had any reason to, until Loki felt something warm brush lightly against his lips.
It was soft and brief, gone almost as soon as it happened.
If it weren’t for the faint graze of Hugo’s long lashes against his cheek, Loki might have convinced himself he imagined it.
Hugo hovered there for a second longer, looking down at him with narrowed eyes, exhaling sharply. The sound snapped Loki back into his body, awareness crashing in on him all at once.
He jerked his head back, heat rushing through his body as he felt every muscle in his face twist into an expression of pure disbelief.
“What the fuck?”
The curse came out higher than he intended, strained and unfamiliar to his own ears. It wasn’t just the shock, he genuinely wanted to know what the fuck had just happened. He stared, waiting for an explanation.
Hugo didn’t answer right away. He just paused, completely still, before a quiet laugh slipped out.
Loki froze. That was the first time he had ever seen him laugh. The sound was unexpectedly gentle, carrying a warmth that didn’t match the way Hugo usually held himself.
For a moment, it almost felt like the ground beneath him wasn’t as steady as it should be.
“That reaction aligns with everything I gathered about you.”
Loki raised an eyebrow, completely dumbfounded and offended at his first kiss being taken from him like this.
“You just did that just to see how I would react?”
“Oh no, absolutely not.” Hugo shook his head lightly, the curve of a smile still on his lips. “It was purely self-indulgent.”
Loki could only stare, completely thrown off, his thoughts tangling over themselves as he struggled to make sense of him.
Hugo then moved closer again, slower this time, and Loki almost flinched. “I’m going to kiss you again, okay?”
That confirmed what he had already known but hadn’t fully processed, the terrifying fact that this was indeed a kiss, not just an accidental touch.
At least he was considerate enough to brace him for it this time.
Hugo’s hand came up to cup his face, rough and callused from the weights he lifted, yet impossibly gentle as it settled against his skin.
His palm covered nearly half of Loki’s face, he couldn’t decide whether it helped him stay grounded or completely hypnotized him. Because he knew he should’ve used the divine speed he relied on and ran out of there, but Hugo’s touch clouded everything else, dulling the edges of his thoughts until they stopped forming clearly.
Their lips met once again, and he closed his eyes this time, focusing on the warm press. Hugo took his bottom lip between his, making an electric feeling rush through his body. Every move took more of his self control, and he found himself leaning in, an unknown force drawing him closer as Hugo’s thumb brushed softly against his cheek.
“I knew this was going to happen from the moment I laid my eyes on you.” Hugo murmured when he pulled back, his voice barely a whisper against Loki’s lips.
How disgustingly arrogant. The fact that he couldn't stop himself from being drawn to it only infuriated him more. He let the soft kisses Hugo pressed to the corners of his mouth melt all of it away, though.
Hugo’s hand shifted, his thumb pressing more firmly into Loki’s cheek, coaxing his eyes open.
“I wanna see them again, your dimples.”
Loki’s expression instinctively resisted, a frown pulling at his lips. He was ready to snap back, to tell Hugo he didn’t get to have everything he wanted. But the words never escaped his throat. Hugo kissed him again, this time rougher and more insistent, like the expression had personally offended him and he needed to wipe it off Loki’s face.
And somehow, it worked. When he pulled away, Loki felt his face loosen, the tension slipping away before he could stop it.
Yeah. It was most definitely hypnosis.
He let a crooked smile form, just enough for the faint indent of his dimple to show beneath Hugo’s thumb, completely disregarding his earlier resolve about not letting any part of himself belong to Hugo.
“That’s much better,” Hugo mumbled, pressing a soft kiss right where Loki’s cheek dipped.
It was so intimate, so soft, that Loki felt his heart melt in his chest. It wasn’t a feeling he had ever accounted for, not in all the careful planning he had done for his life.
He had always been ready to give everything up for his dream, to strip himself down to only what was necessary and to discard anything that might weigh him down.
But strangely, this didn’t feel like something that needed to be sacrificed.
Despite everything he knew about himself, he didn’t want the moment to end. He let his body move on instinct and grabbed Hugo’s jacket to bring him close again, instantly regretting it when the accidental force sent both of them to the ground.
Loki barely had time to register the movement before their limbs tangled briefly, the grass and dirt catching on their clothes. Hugo finally caught his balance, steading himself to settle on top of him.
Their teeth clashed awkwardly when their lips met again, but neither of them pulled away.
He continued like the interruption hadn’t even happened, he pulled Loki’s bottom lip between his own before biting down lightly, and Loki rolled his eyes at the sheer audacity.
He let his irritation seep through, leaning in and returning the gesture with twice the force.
“Ouch.”
A slight pout formed on Hugo’s lips, and for some reason, that only made his irritation burn sharper. He reached up without thinking, fingers tangling into Hugo’s hair in a grip that was harsh enough to hurt.
A thought lingered faintly in the back of Loki’s mind, detached from everything else he was feeling.
Kissing should’ve been gross. It was messy, too close and wet in a way that should have repelled him.
Worst of all, he had no idea what he was doing, not really. And judging by the way Hugo’s teeth kept knocking against his by the lack of any real coordination between them, it was clear that he didn’t either.
Loki found satisfaction in the fact that this wasn’t something Hugo had already mastered and could execute flawlessly. It leveled something between them, even if just slightly, and somehow the awkwardness and clumsiness of it all was easy to ignore.
He had never considered this possibility, never thought that something like this could be tolerable, let alone… enjoyable.
But maybe it wasn’t about the act itself, maybe it was about who it was with. He was glad that person happened to be Hugo.
A loud sound struck the ground beside them, abruptly cutting through the haze Loki had been lost in. It echoed against the empty pitch, jarring and out of place, both of their heads snapped toward it at the same time.
A plastic bottle lay there, rolling slightly before settling into the grass.
“People are trying to sleep! Get the hell out of here before I come down and get you both.”
The rough voice came from above, Loki’s eyes lifted, tracing the direction of the sound until they landed on one of the apartment buildings looming over the pitch. An old man stood behind an open window, still in his pajamas, leaning out just enough to glare down at them.
He must have been the one who threw the bottle. His tense posture was enough proof that he was ready to follow through on his threat if they didn’t move fast enough.
Panic surged through Loki so suddenly it almost made him dizzy. He had completely forgotten that the world existed beyond the two of them for a moment, let alone that they were in the middle of the city.
He pushed himself up frantically, grabbing Hugo’s wrist before he could open his mouth and yell something back at the man that would definitely make the situation worse.
“Apologies, sir!”
He didn’t wait for a response. He turned and bolted with as much speed as he could with Hugo dragged behind him.
They didn’t stop until the building was far enough behind them, its looming presence shrinking into the distance along with the threat of being chased. Loki finally slowed his pace, his breathing uneven again, though this time it had nothing to do with exertion.
The tension in his hands eased, and he let go of Hugo’s wrist. But before he could fully pull away, Hugo caught his hand, intertwining their fingers together.
There it was again, that unwavering audacity and arrogance. Hugo moved through everything like he was allowed to, like there was no question of whether he should. As if getting close to Loki and touching him like this, was something he could simply decide to do. And that Loki would have to accept it.
He exhaled sharply, something between a sigh and an attempt to steady himself. Hugo leaned down, tilting his head to look at him properly, eyes studying his expression.
“We had a good night, why are you mad?” He sounded genuinely confused, all it did was feed into Loki’s irritation.
Of course the bastard would consider it a good night. He managed to stop Loki’s sprint and knocked him to the ground, stole his first kiss without warning, and now held his hand like it was nothing.
“You keep doing whatever you want.” Loki answered, it lacked all the sharpness he might have preferred.
It was the closest thing he could give to explain his frustration, even if it barely scratched the surface.
“Why shouldn’t I? And who is stopping you from doing whatever you want, too?”
He tugged him a little closer as they walked, and Loki reacted immediately, kicking at him with his foot in protest, more out of principle than anything else.
Hugo had no idea.
No idea that Loki was doing exactly what he wanted. That letting him this close, letting him slip past every wall he had built so carefully was entirely his own doing. And that was exactly why it bothered him so much, he had never expected himself to want something like this in the first place.
“You think I would make out with another boy in a residential area in the middle of the night if I didn’t want to?”
“I thought so too.”
Loki had to actively stop himself from kicking him again.
They fell into silence after that, Hugo didn’t try to force more out of him, he just walked beside him, firmly keeping their hands linked.
He walked him all the way to his house.
And when they reached his doorstep, when Loki thought—hoped—that it would end there, Hugo leaned in once more, giving him a final kiss like it was the most natural conclusion in the world.
He couldn’t sleep that night.
Every time he closed his eyes, every moment replayed. The field, the warmth of his hands, his sweet lips and the praise that matched them, the certainty in everything he did.
All he could think about was how he was supposed to face him in practice in only a few days. And then again the week after that, and inevitably the one after it.
When he first laced up his cleats and ran his first mile with lungs burning and pushing him forward, he had decided what his life would look like. It had always been clear, he would use his talent and he would win, as many times as it took to prove it wasn’t a mere coincidence or a biological blessing.
But he had never once imagined that somewhere along that path, he would end up sharing a moment so personal and disarming with the person who would stand beside him through all of his victories.
The possibility of it not being a fleeting experience unsettled him, he couldn’t even comprehend that it happened in the first place, let alone it being repeated until it turned itself into routine.
At least he knew one thing, even though it did nothing except elevate his fear. If it did become a constant in his life, he wasn’t going to stop it.