Hallucinogenics
Loki decidedly did not want to attend Tony Stark’s Saturday Night Extravaganza but wanted to spend the night home alone with Odin even less. Hence, he finds himself sandwiched between his third cousin and his brother, desperately waiting for his joint to hit him properly and allow him the slightest chance at enjoying himself. It wasn’t as though the party was particularly atrocious or distasteful; at the very least it was well stocked, giving him a much-needed chance to stock up on supplies before the school week ahead. Rather, it was the close proximity he was being forced to maintain to Thor that he was finding particularly chafing.
Odin had only allowed him out on the condition he would be adequately minded. Of course, the man had his own reasons for wanting a free house, but as Loki had been frequently reminded, those were none of his business.
“Thor!” A gentle mellow is beginning to settle over him, just as Stark - Thor had well and truly worn out the boy’s first name already - himself enters the picture. “Hey buddy, good to see you here!”
A remarkably garish button-up adorns the evening’s host, as well as a completely unnecessary pair of sunglasses which appeared to be tinted red - though the pulsing, overhead lights make it difficult to discern their true colour.
Loki is too busy tracing the various flowers crawling across Stark’s chest to hear Thor introduce him but catches the moment the other boy’s gaze turns to him, gently blowing his smoke into his face.
“So, you’re the fucker who let Thor drag me here.” Honesty, Loki has found, is always the best policy. Or, at least, a carefully twisted version of it is.
Sipping quickly from his drink, Stark gives him a spaced-out smile. “Let is a very… active word. Sure, I told your brother he could bring some friends, but if you look around, you’ll see my word counts for very little here.”
What Loki assumes was at one point a lounge room now serves as a mosh-pit of hedonism, a breeding ground for each of the deadly sins. Several of the guests are most certainly college-aged, and a couple appear to be sophomores. “It’s chaotic, I’ll give you that.”
The grin Loki receives is much too intimate for comfort. “I know how to have a good time, Sabrina.”
His single joint is suddenly woefully inadequate, and as Stark drags a very reluctant, spectacled partygoer towards their unfortunate group, Loki finds himself running off in search of something significantly stronger. Fortunately, Stark’s boasts are not empty, in a few short minutes he is able to locate and consume two generous shots of vodka.
For the rest of the evening, until his brother comes stumbling up to him in dire need of a taxi, he plans to be glued to the bar. The seats offer an ideal vantage point for observing the dance floor, and the bench perfect for sampling some of his recent purchases. With a sigh of content, he leans back against a stool, letting the liquor slowly the incessant noises inside his head.
“Hey, doll.” A somewhat flushed brunette has slid him another shot, though he’s not exactly sure of its contents. Probably whiskey, but he’s too buzzed to be entirely sure.
The face staring back at him is squarish, clean shaven, and heavy lidded. Loki doesn’t rule out the possibility the other boy has mistaken him for a girl; even with his hair only just past his shoulders, it has happened often enough to make him wary.
“Not dancing tonight?”
Sweat is trickling gently down the brunette’s forehead, his neck. He has certainly been dancing. Or otherwise physically occupied. But Loki doubts the latter, he doubts the boy would be seeking his company if he’d already found it elsewhere.
Fingers wrapping around the offered shot glass, he turns to face the other completely, showcasing his decided lack of chest, just to be sure. “I’m yet to find a partner.”
He tilts his head back and downs the shot.
“But I could be persuaded.”
A hand is held out towards him, palm upwards. “Bucky.”
Despite himself, Loki smirks, failing to suppress a huff of laughter. “That name is absurd, and certainly not your given one.”
“How about James?”
A purple-tipped hand reaches for the one outstretched, playful interwinding their fingers. “A pleasure, James. My name is Loki.”
James is already leading the way towards the dancefloor as he practically snorts in response. “And you called Bucky absurd?”
Bringing James in close amongst the heaving mass of bodies, he drops one hand to the small of his back and begins to move. “Perhaps. Though it truly is my given name, so I have naught else to go by.”
“Right then. Loki it is.”
Hips roll and hands grope in a messy attempt to match the heady beat of the music. They tumble together until they both silently decide the time is right, until something primitive and desperate grows to heavy between them and they are forced to seek the privacy of one of Stark’s guestrooms.
With the pounding of intoxicants inside his head, and the heated press of James above him, below him, Loki’s mind is deliciously hazy. There is no need for constant calculations and schemes, for a wonderful burst of time, he does not have to be two steps ahead. For a moment, one he wishes were an eternity, there is only the feeling of James around him as they dance uninterrupted.
Of course, the moment is not an eternity, and it comes to an eventual end. After lying sated in the comfort of the Stark fortune for an incalculable amount of time, there comes the inevitable scramble for hastily discarded garments, the awkward feigned excuses, and farewells.
Loki is ultimately too blissed out to let it bother him.
James, shirt on inside-out, goes to return to the dancefloor, apparently in search of an abandoned friend, but Loki stops him just before he disappears. With eyeliner his sober self would have remembered was prone to smudging when mixed with sweat, Loki scribbles ten digits down the boy’s arm.
“Should you ever need to forget again.” His thin lips press chastely to the other’s as he bids James goodnight.
Returning to the party is somewhat anticlimactic, as the formerly bustling crowd has already begun to disperse or simply collapse onto nearby furniture. He wonders if anyone has ever died at Stark’s parties, and how much money it would have cost to cover it up. It is quite astounding to him, the length that the wealthy will go to falsify themselves. Particularly since the secrets they tried so desperately to bury always ended up unearthed, nonetheless.
Through blurry eyes of intoxication and afterglow, Loki searches the dissipating crowd for his brother, hoping he isn’t one of the faceless bodies lying across the mosh pit. Thor was always impossible to wake when sleeping off a night of drinking. Across the room, he thinks he can make out James being confronted by six feet of muscles topped with an over styled shock of blonde hair. Without hearing a word of their conversation, Loki is eerily reminded of his brother, and winces in sympathy for his hook-up.
At some point during the night, someone had set up a smoke machine and forgotten to switch it off. It’s the reason Loki almost misses the hands frantically waving him outside.
Unfortunately, he already has a good idea of what Stark wants.
“Sabrina! Thank you for joining us! You have a good time upstairs with -”
Christ. Absentmindedly, his hands pat down his jacket in search for a familiar box, but only come up with his lighter. “Shit.” He can’t deal with this right now. Doesn’t want to deal with it. “Where is he?”
Stark’s hands reach out placatingly, and Loki curses again.
“Hey, it’s not that bad,” Stark tries, but the rhythmic tapping of his fingers against one another gives him away, and Loki fixes him with a glare. “Okay, okay. I lied. It’s that bad.”
Following the other’s gaze across the patio, his brother and at least two of his cousins sit propped up against each other, water dripping out from beneath them and their soaking clothes. Something that looks suspiciously like blood drips from Thor’s forehead, and Loki’s hands go to his head. “You don’t by any chance smoke, do you?”
A chuckle from Stark, followed by an irritatingly smug grin. “You know, I think Thor might have concussion.”
“And I just might be on the verge of an aneurism. Do you have a cigarette or not?”
At nearly four in the morning, a light mist hovers above the pool Loki can only assume is responsible for at least part of his brother’s condition. The air outside is bordering on frigid, making him miss the humidity of the lounge.
“Nah. Can’t stand the shit.” Stark leans back on his heels, before leaning forward and starting the process again. Loki has to dig his nails into his palms to resist shoving him into the almost certainly icy water.
“Heh. You should see your face right now. My Dad’s addicted to ‘em, I’ll go grab you a pack from his office.”
In a few short minutes, the warmth of sticky, bitter tar is filling his lungs, and he sighs with relief. He and Stark are sat under a thick duvet watching Thor, Fandral and Volstagg half-heartedly, prodding them every now and then to ensure they remain alive. He has absolutely no idea where Hogun or Sif have run off to and cannot bring himself to care in the slightest. Neither of them is related closely enough to him for it to take responsibility for their survival. So long as Thor makes it home alive, his job is done.
And what a needlessly difficult job it is. He had asked Stark for the full story, but the man was far too intoxicated to tell it coherently, and Loki was far too intoxicated to remember it. There might have been something to do with football and diving. Maybe. What he does know is that Stark and his father share an appreciation for quality product, and the money to afford it. With every drag, his mind begins its return to equilibrium. And slowly, the sun begins to rise.
Morning comes with the jarring realisation Stark has sat beside him for his entire three hours of babysitting. He tries to pry an explanation from the other but is shrugged off with vague allusions to guilt and hosting duties. As he makes to leave, he turns back to hand Loki a piece of paper bearing ten digits.
“Give this to Thor when – if – he wakes up, yeah? Say it’s from Bruce.”
With absolutely no idea as to Bruce’s identity, Loki takes the number and tries to disguise his confusion. Not that it matters to him. Thor’s friends are absolutely none of his business.
A loud snore emulates from the slump of bodies beside him.
Except for when they are.
“Would you mind terribly helping me drag my brother out to the front of your house? Our taxi should be here soon.” Until he absolutely must, Loki refuses to bear Thor’s literal weight alone.
In his strangely amenable mood, Stark agrees, supporting Thor’s left side all the way to the awaiting taxi. Once finally shoved inside the cab, Thor’s head thuds against the window, causing the teen to grimace. “Is he gonna be all right?”
Climbing into the seat beside his brother, Loki waves his newly acquired packet of cigarettes. “My brother has quite a knack for avoiding serious trouble. Thank you, again, Stark.”
A tired smiles answers him. “Just make sure to give him the number, Sabrina.”
The taxi pulls out onto the street, leaving Stark a lonely blimp on the horizon, and Loki edging slowly towards home. The thought has his fingers tapping the red box sitting in his lap. At least his mother would be home in two days. Until then, well, he supposed he’d have to make himself as busy as possible.
Perhaps James would message him.
The driveway outside Loki’s house is occupied only by Odin’s Jaguar, but that itself means precious little. Yellow taxis against the pale cement were all too common, whether they were dropping off or picking up.
Fortunately, their arrival home aligns with the arrival of the estate’s scheduled maid service, so Loki isn’t forced to drag Thor through the many halls of the house alone, whilst remaining rather intoxicated himself. Once the oaf is secured out of sight and mind in his bedroom, Loki breathes a soft sigh of relief, withdrawing himself to the library for the rest of the day. Ordinarily, the library would double as Odin’s study, and Loki would avoid it like the plague. However, creeping out of his brother’s room, he’d heard the tell-tale creaks and groans of a moving mattress, which was always followed by several hours of post-coital napping, thus giving Loki free reign of the house at least until dinner.
Nonetheless, he locks the doors behind him. He assumes his coveted position, nestled in the alcove beside the room’s largest window. The sunlight shining through is pale, autumnal, and weak, but pleasant enough. It falls quietly across the pages of his book, brushing softly against his equally pale skin. During more extreme summers, Loki had in the past been forced to wear sunscreen whilst reading in the alcove, golden rays turning his skin a painful, burnt pink. But summer had always been Thor’s favourite season, not Loki’s. It made sense that the forces which raised his brother would inadvertently spite him.
Autumn, however, was subtler. His mother’s favourite season. Far more precious than most realised. Then most deserved.
With a sudden flash of red, Loki shakes his head to clear it. Frigga had been gone not even a week and he was getting sentimental. She’d been going on her fundraising trips since he was twelve, it was embarrassingly pathetic to think he might still be unaccustomed to her absence.
It wasn’t as though Odin didn’t find a plethora of women to fill it.
His book slams shut with a dull clap as his thoughts send him back upstairs to his own bedroom. His stale, meticulously ordered, bedroom, filled only by himself. He moves quietly, eager to avoid the numerous confrontations scheduled in his near future, but fate conspires against him. He’s not even made it up the staircase when he runs into the first of the day’s many anticipated arguments.
Loki doesn’t know her name; he’s fairly certain he’s never seen her before, but he knows her type anyways. Dark blonde hair, dishevelled. Natural but alluring make-up, smudged. Acrylic nails, wrapped tightly around a designer purse and expensive heels. Not scandalously young, but still a decade or two behind his mother. When he gets close enough, an intense wave of floral perfume hits him, strong enough it must have been only recently applied to cover the stench of sex.
She pauses when she notices him, bright eyes fully aware of the situation she’s been caught in. A small smile is all she manages before she has the decency to look away, abashed.
He doesn’t smile back. Once, he would have banished her in earnest, put all his misplaced anger into admonishing the woman to the point of tears. Ensured she felt every ounce of his disgust. Now, he merely grits his teeth and settles his face into something almost neutral, nodding his head towards the front door.
“Just leave.”
To her credit, she exits without a sound. As though she was never there. It is the pretence Odin and Thor will shelter under when they wake, as they continue their game of house as though there is still a family to play with. Loki will never understand their insistence on lying to themselves, all the while making him out to be the household deceiver.
In two days, his mother would return. He holds onto that truth.
When dinner is served, Loki tries to simply skip what he knows will be a disastrous affair by sheltering away in his room. But Odin sends Thor, who possesses the unfair ability to both lift and carry Loki for an unreasonable period of time, so he obeys the call with his tail between his legs.
The meal is some delicate dish with rice, fish, and vegetables dissected in a way that makes them unidentifiable to Loki’s eyes. Across from him Thor, who has likely gone the entire day without food in favour of sleeping, digs into the dish with a repugnant fervour, sending tiny white grains flying to all manner of places. Odin sits at the table’s head, quietly enjoying the meal with well-practiced manners, deliberately avoiding the room’s rather gigantic elephant.
“How was last night’s party, boys?” he asks, voice distracted and uninvested. Loki pretends not to notice, and Thor does the same, although Loki is uncertain whether his brother abstains from mentioning their father’s detachment due to his injury, general stupidity, or some recently acquired understanding of tact.
With a mouthful of food, Thor takes it upon himself to maintain the forced conversation. “Excellent! It seemed as though half the school was there – Tony certainly has a gift for throwing parties, no Loki?”
Inwardly, Loki curses Thor for dragging him into the dreary small talk, but forces a smile onto his face, nonetheless. “Quite the gift, yes.” Likely, Odin detects the dry tone with which he speaks, but Loki can’t bring himself to care. Instead, he drags his fork across the bottom of his plate to emphasise his displeasure with the situation in its entirety. To his delight, the sound brings a frown to Odin’s lips.
“Actually,” he continues, a distant memory from that morning registering in his mind, “I have something for you. A number given to me by Stark before we left, he said it belonged to a ‘Bruce’.” Digging past his lighter, he draws the crumpled paper from his pocket and slides it across the table’s over-polished wood.
“Who is Bruce?” Odin demands, and Loki is forced to suppress a smile at the overt protectiveness and its covert favouritism. He’s not sure of the last time Odin inquired after any of his companions and for that, he is grateful. He does not wish to imagine the horror with which Odin would greet the news of each and every terrible thing he had let James to do his body the night before. Let Thor suffer for his father’s conservative elitism.
“A friend of Tony’s, I met him at the party. He offered me tutoring in mathematics,” Thor replies obliviously, tone as cheerful as ever.
Idly pushing his leftover food around on his plate, Loki privately hoped the elusive ‘Bruce’ would be adequately compensated for his tutoring services – engaging Thor in any topic he did not deem interesting was a gargantuan task within itself.
Odin replies without moving his eyes from the plate before him. “I see.”
Thor is undeterred. “Tony assured me he was more than qualified for the job. I’m glad he remembered to pass on the number to you, brother.”
Before Loki can scoff at Thor’s gratitude, Odin does it for him, but with a more distinct tone of derision than Loki likes to think he would have used.
“If your brother bothered to apply himself to his studies, he could tutor you himself.”
As pointedly as possible, Loki lets his cutlery drop to his plate, the resounding clatter calling the table’s attention to him.
Let the records show he had at least attempted neutrality.
“It’s quite interesting that you bring up my studies, Father, for I was just on my way out of the library this evening when I made the acquaintance of a rather remarkable woman.” Neither Thor nor Odin dare react to his words, nor do they dare interrupt them. “Unfortunately, she was just leaving at the time, but I do hope we can look forward to her company again in the future. Perhaps when Mother has returned, she could join us for dinner.”
The harsh creaking of a reversing chair sounds, the silence of potent rage.
“Since you seem to have finished with your meal, Loki, you may be excused from the table for this evening. I will excuse myself as well, as I have work matters to attend to.”
While Loki sincerely doubts the legitimacy of Odin’s ‘work matters’, he’s glad for the dismissal all the same. Having sufficiently irked the man, he knows he can expect to spend the rest of the night in blissful solitude.
Alone in his bedroom, he tips a generous amount from the small, plastic bag beneath his mattress into his grinder and rolls thin paper with practiced dexterity. As his thoughts slowly dull, he curls his toes into plush carpet, marvelling at its softness. Once his butt-end has been pressed into his makeshift ashtray – a sports trophy pilfered from Thor’s endless collection of appraisals – he lays himself down completely, vainly trying to form an angel in his carpet’s wondrousness. His new position gives him a perfect view of the sky beyond his open window, the endless stretch of groggy clouds and invisible stars. The razor-sharp point of the crescent moon.
And if in the tranquillity of the moment, that razor-sharp point manifests within his hand and draws blood, it cannot be helped.
The next morning, he arrives late to school as usual, ensuring he well and truly misses his family. It’s first break when he sneaks into the cafeteria, plain, long clothes hiding him from wandering eyes and inquisitions. The cafeteria was always a risk, but he’d skipped breakfast, and with his mother’s impending return, he didn’t want to cause her any additional stress. Despite his countless reassurances, she fretted after him much more than she should. There was enough to weigh her down already. Such as her dead-beat, philandering husband.
For her, he would eat well. Brave the sharp set of eyes he knew without looking to be zeroed in on his figure, watching him as a hawk stalks its prey.
“Hey! Loki, hey, over here!”
He ignores the hawk as it tries to pounce.
“You’ll never guess what Steve’s just told me!”
An apple smacks into the back of his head with impeccable aim.
Loki catches it as it drops from his head to the floor and decides it’s sufficient to ebb his budding hunger pains. Turning, he flees the cafeteria, seeking refuge in the school’s library.
Tomorrow, his mother will be home, and he can spend the day seeking quiet refuge in her arms instead.
He drifts through his next two periods, only half aware of his corporal presence. His mind is buried in last night’s carpet, his body scarred by the moon’s kiss. A part of him knows he should wash the blood from his arms. A part of him wants it to stain his skin indefinitely, so that one day it might break him.
Out damn spot, out! The rest of him knows his choice is futile; the blood will wash away; the blood will return with undying vibrance. Waxing and waning.
By lunch, the world is quickly fading; he climbs a fence to escape it, flicking his lighter and pausing his mind’s gentle collapse.
Inhale. Exhale. Inhale.
He heads towards home, cigarette in hand.
Tomorrow will be better. Tomorrow will bring Frigga.
For now, he must make do with the demure breeze quietly removing any trace of his filthy habits. The walk from school to his house is just over half an hour but filled with a number of indiscernible charms which make it such a pleasant alternative to the offensiveness that was the city’s public transport systems. The streets along the walk shine with the sun, their houses blessed with blooming gardens and rustic brick facades. Cars navigate the roads at proper the speed limit, the thrum of their engines faint against the background of his churning thoughts.
Wishfully, he checks his phone for a hint of James, and predictably finds nothing. Oh well. He’ll clear his mind with the remnants of last night’s bag, tide himself over this final evening.
Hours later, he finds himself too dazed to respond to Odin’s dinner summons, collapsing into his empty bed instead.
To his surprise, he is awoken the next morning to a barrage of demanding knocks at his door. He does not recognise the sound immediately, his head still thick with the night before, and thus does not think to dress himself in anything more than the boxers he already wears.
“Go away Thor,” he groans, stumbling vaguely towards his door. “I’m not accompanying you to school. You ought to know me better than this by – Mother.”
“I should think I know you well enough, my darling. How else would I have known to find you here, asleep, during the middle of the school day?” Frigga’s voice has a soft humour about it, one that chides without degrading, admonishes without nagging. Her golden curls are wrapped neatly into a bun, almost dainty, but not quite. There was an unmistakable strength about his mother; feminine, but decidedly robust. The last thing Frigga could be considered was fragile.
Hurriedly, Loki steps forwards and collapses into his mother’s offered embrace. “I’m glad you’re home,” he breathes, carefully taking in every little piece of her he’s missed. The warmth of her chest against his, the comforting smell of her perfume and conditioner. The tap, tap, stroke of her fingers against his back.
Slowly, her hands withdraw, coming to rest atop his shoulders. “Loki, what’s that I can smell?” she asks, an eyebrow raised in query.
In his excitement, the tell-tale odour of his bedroom, and likely his body, had been entirely dismissed.
“He did it again, you know. And with a new girl, too,” he diverts, though he would have broached the matter soon enough anyways. He always does. Always lets his tongue talk him into trouble.
“Loki.”
“I ran into her as she was leaving, shoes in hand,” he continues, unperturbed – he tells himself - by the disappointment in her voice.
“What did you do?”
The white paint of his door frame is beginning to peel, chipping away piece by piece. If he’s bothered, he’ll asked one of the maids to paint over the cracks.
But he won’t be. Won’t ask.
“That’s hardly the point now, is it?” he snaps, almost surprised by the irritation in his voice. “You don’t deserve this, Mother. He doesn’t deserve you.”
“You know how I feel about this, Loki. There’s no need for you to concern yourself with your father and I’s marital life, though I appreciate you looking out for me.”
With a quick squeeze of his hand, she turns to leave, already resettling into the motions of home. This, of all things, distresses him the most. Black nails scrape at the dying coat of paint, coating themselves in flecks of white.
“He’s not going to stop. You know that.”
“I know.”
The smile she gives him, as she makes her way towards the same staircase where he caught Odin’s latest toy, is brimmed with a buried melancholy he can’t stand to look at it. Yet even as Frigga disappears from the horizon, his eyes stay fixated on her ghost.