“I have been astonished that Men could die Martyrs for religion — I have shudder’d at it — I shudder no more. I could be martyr’d for my Religion — Love is my religion — I could die for that — I could die for you. “ — a love letter written for fanny brawne by john keats
✾
It starts and ends, with a dress. Specifically her dress.
He hasn't taken appointments in a while, wielding his live grief for his mother as a shield of some sort. His body lies curved in the alcove of his apartment window and he ignores the vibration of his phone against the meat of his thigh.
He knows it's Thor, and that with him comes good intentions, but also with him comes noise and flashes of reality and things that will destroy the careful bubble Loki has built for himself.
His eyes fall on the horizon, pale buildings spidering their way up into the clouds and sparkling as light after light is turned on, becoming visible through the tiny square of their windows.
So many people, living lives separate from him and separate from the memories of his mother that have taken him over. He thinks that reincarnation happens even when you are still alive. He feels as though he's been born cruelly in the bones of his mother and that now he's trying to rise through them, like a star that can't recognize that it has been blown out.
His eyes switch from the distant buildings full of people who are not him, to the river beneath his own high rise. Blue on blue, cold to cold, slow movement mirroring movement.
He feels trapped in time and closes his eyes, pressing his tongue to the roof of his mouth. His phone vibrates again and this time he stands, feet curling out from underneath him to settle on polished wood.
He falls asleep underneath the satin of the last gown he touched before the news. The bodice stands proud and unfinished, intricate beading catching the last rays of the dying sun.
They gleam silver and Loki follows their reflection of light to the bare wall near his door. It reminds him of fireworks, and he closes his eyes again, fingers twitching softly against the soft skin of his clavicle.
It's not real , he thinks.
It's for real , his apartment echoes back. It's for real.
✾
She inserts herself into him.
That's how he explains it later, over lunch with some unimportant fabric vendor who won't remember anything other than the fact that they're sitting at the same table with an award-winning costume designer.
She inserts herself into him, slides her hands up his neck and onto his face, the pads of her thumb catching underneath his lower lip.
She inserts herself into him, mouth curved into half a smile, his hands trembling as he touches her waist to correct measurements and slid pins into silk.
He feels as though he's growing out of her bones instead.
That's how he explains it later, over dinner with Wanda, who'll remember tenderly how his eyes softened and how his pinkie finger slid down gently to collect moisture from the rim of his martini glass.
It's a low-lighting restaurant, and they can see all the people through the large front window. Wanda thinks she recognizes a man, and Loki knows no one at all.
✾
"Sylvia."
He blinks sharply and steadily continues to wind tape around the valley of her stomach. He gently pushes the small of her back, until the front of her is arching forward.
He wonders briefly, teeth worrying at his red lips, what it would be like to be there for her to fall into.
She smiles at him, once he's aligned with her face again, and stretches out her hand.
"That's my full name. You can call me Sylvie."
He does a crooked tilt of his lips back and clasps her hands, stumbles when she yanks him forward so that his nose brushes the shoreline of her hair as she bends forward to examine his palm.
"You have a long lifeline. I think that's what it's called anyway. My mum had a wide array of books on palm-reading and other things. I don't think I actually read any of it, I think I was reading more so that I could consume her, make myself something resembling her, collect her in my teeth."
He stares at her bent head for a long time and then says,
"All that lamenting and illustrating, just with words. And you chose to become an actress."
She rises and the rich brown of her dress kisses against the blonde of her hair. It's shoulder-length.
"I've always been a star, and stars are meant to be seen."
He fiddles with her sleeves and mentally runs through his catalogue of mesh to consider colors close to her skin.
"And, I'm very good at pretending. So, I can tell when others are too."
He chuckles and steps away. She looks at him carefully and touches the pin on her left sleeve. Her face turns to stare at his view, and he thinks that he'd like to kiss along the bend of her nose.
✾
On one of their holidays, Sylvie looks up to the sweep of his face and smiles with all of her teeth. She's floating in a lake, somewhere deep in the skin of New Zealand and her face is almost submerged completely in the water.
The hills behind her are green and lush, mouthing at the ankles of the mountains looming behind them. Loki smiles back and sketches a line for the beginning of an a-line skirt.
A play that has contracted him is airing a dress rehearsal soon and the main interest needs at least one costume to dress in.
Sylvie swims to where he is on the shore and climbs on a rock a few feet from him. Her eyes are calculating and she purses her lips, pressing wet fingertips to her cheekbone.
"Do you believe in God?"
Loki blinks at her, surprised and brain half immersed in the varying shades of green he'll need for the hem of this skirt.
"I do," she continues, not even waiting to see if he had spoken.
"I think God is the universe and love and the fracture of light across a glass. I think God is the tenderness I feel when I look at you, and the ache that I get when I dream about my dad, and the way I slam my hands into the steering wheel when I give my mum an inch and she takes a mile."
Loki is quiet and sets aside his pen.
"I'm not sure if I do. I think it's less of not wanting to believe, and more of never having been asked otherwise."
Sylvie chews the inside of her cheek and traces the skin of her ribs through her bathing suit's cutout, brain working hard to straighten out what she wants to say.
"Say I'm afraid of the dark and by some weird circumstance, some fantastical element, I'm thrown into the dark of space out of an airlock into the dark. To die."
Loki presses back a laugh and nods very seriously, brow furrowing and eyes bright blue with mirth.
She rolls her eyes, smiling briefly and then going back to her scenario.
"Would you come after me? Even if you were to die too?"
"Yes," he tells her. "I wouldn't want you to die afraid in the dark without anyone."
"Then you do believe. Because that feeling, to me, has to be something bigger than us."
She slips off of the rock into the water. Her bathing suit is pale yellow, his pen rolls off into the gravel of the shore.
✾
The dress is too long. Sylvie yammers on about her day on set, throws her hands up in exasperation when she speaks about her co-star, and yet the dress is still too long.
"You're not even listening to me," she hisses.
"I'm trying to make sure you don't trip and fall down the aisle when you sing, darling ," he hisses back.
"What is wrong with you today?"
He presses his lips together, hard, and turns away to face the post-it on his wall that holds her measurements. She huffs and falls silent. He tenses and studiously pretends to not notice her carefully lowering herself from the podium.
The dress shuffles across the floor, and soon a clicking noise joins the fray. He furrows his brow in concentration and then whirls around.
Sylvie walks to the door and then to his large window, wobbling only once.
"The dress is just fine. It's not too long."
Loki looks up to his ceiling and measures out his voice, speaking evenly with a cool bite underneath.
"You came in, quite early, and said it was too long."
Sylvie sighs, her chest heaving dramatically, and walks slowly to stand in front of him.
"Hands are very beautiful, I've noticed. They hold things, they break away, they come together, they articulate."
Loki stares at her, face blank.
"I like— ugh !"
She kicks off her heels, the shoes clattering across the room as they fall against the blank white of his apartment door.
They're as gold as her hair, silver stars threaded into the four-inch stiletto.
"Your designs feel personal. Do you know why I've been coming to you only? Because Sylvia Laufeydottir is a difficult actress with difficult taste and a penchant for self-interest."
She smiles wryly and sits on the podium, the tulle blooming all around her.
"That was from my first film review. The best one I think."
Loki sighs and sits on the floor, drawing a finger through the dust.
"So you keep making up issues and roles to spend time with me."
"Not all of them," she corrects.
There's a pause and she looks away.
"I'm difficult," she tells the city.
"So am I," Loki responds.
She turns back to him and holds out her hand, smiling sadly.
"That's why it's personal."
He holds it.
✾
Some years after they both turn a little older, Sylvie pokes his bare ankle with a perfectly manicured finger.
He peers down at her from his kitchen chair, and she smiles tenderly as she wipes orange paint from the tip of her nose.
"What made you realize you loved me?"
He raises a dark brow, and tucks a piece of hair behind his ear, night against the snow of his skin.
"Certainly not the moment when you chose to repaint our kitchen cabinets orange, I can tell you that."
She shakes the leg of his chair, and he sticks his tongue out, unimpressed.
"No, really ," she croons, getting up to hop on the circular table at which he sits.
He sighs, pretending to be put out by her curiosity, and settles his chin inside the home of his hand. He looks her in the eye, blue on blue.
"Well, we were in Australia, for that biopic you were filming. And you were so tired, stumbling through the doorway like a drunk man."
She laughs. He reaches out for her wrist.
"I was in the hallway, about to go to bed because you told me not to wait up for you. You smiled knowingly at me and told me that I would never listen. I said that—"
"—That was just not you," she finishes, eyes too deep to swim through.
"The truth is, I had seen you coming down the hill earlier, walking slow and steady towards our little rented home. You had stopped halfway there and closed your eyes. You looked like you wanted to give it all up."
The kitchen is quiet, except for the heightened sound of her breathing.
"And then you looked towards me, to the house and gave this big sigh, as if you could just not fathom another choice but to come home to me. So you continued on until you stumbled through the doorway and saw me standing tall in the hallway.
"I knew then that I truly, utterly loved you. Because, at that moment, I realized two things: you would always choose to never give us up, and I would always choose to stay for you, whether that was to stay up or stay awake or stay away upon request."
Sylvie has paint on her brow.
"You don't tell the truth easily," she says after a while.
"Neither do you," he says, honest yet again.
She smiles and slides her hands up the plane of his neck to cup his face.
He helps her finish the cabinets.
✾
The night of her award show, he laces the back of her dress and she watches him the reflection of the mirror.
She squeezes his hands when he turns her around to face him, and touches his mouth, the pads of her thumbs sweet against his lower lip.
"Can I read my speech to you? I'm nervous."
She's lying.
"Of course."
She moves away, the dark teal of her bodice like a jewel melting in the heat. Her skin looks soft against it, her hair clipped back with mother of pearl.
( He knows she's won, he checked. )
She picks up the weathered-looking parchment from her nightstand and turns to him. She clears her throat, loud and important, eyes sparkling as she watches him sit on the edge of the bed.
Her voice spills out and pools against him, intoning gratitude towards everyone that has made this film what it has become. She looks to the sides of him, posturing to her imaginary audience, and even squeezes out a few tears.
He laughs and she winks. She steps closer and makes her voice softer.
"And thank you to my own private star, Loki. You've not only sown me the clothes that have made me but the pieces of me that required repair. I once told you that you designed personally, trapped parts of yourself into hems, and took pieces of people in exchange.
"In a rare moment of truth, I will tell you this: I am not used to being personal. I have a part and adjust myself to how it has to be played. But I received no lines from you, not even a setting.
"Loki, you and I are a forever thing. I'm difficult, and so are you. I can be terrible, and you can admit to being worse. I can be wonderful, and you will never think of yourself as being better.
"We aren't a relationship that gives up dreams as a symbol of love, we simply support them. This is a lot of sweet-talking and heavy-handed with tenderness, but I mean it."
She looks away from her paper and lets it drop to her side.
"I won't have time to say all of this tonight, the way I want to. So now, you're hearing it on the edge of the bed with my back reflected in the mirror."
She's memorized it, he thinks.
"I will never be anything more real than in love with you. It's for real."
He doesn't know when he stood, but now he meets her where she is like he always does. He holds her, nose meeting the shoreline of her hair, mouth twisted to avoid more emotion.
"I've never done this before," he whispers. "The whole 'love' thing. I'm glad I've done it with you."
She squeezes his hands tight, and then she steps away and picks up her handbag. It's as teal as her dress.
They walk out of her bedroom, and he leads her to the door. He reaches over her to open it, letting her out into the hallway first.
She walks ahead a bit and then looks over her shoulder, hair bright, blonde, shining, and hers. She smiles with her teeth and wiggles her fingers in a short wave.
"See you there."
He nods and watches her go, on her way to her separate limousine. She has to be there earlier than him.
The muscles of her back ripple as she moves and then he can't see her anymore, her body now over the corner of the hallway, to where the elevators are.
It's for real, he thinks, It's for real.
He looks back into the sliver of the apartment that's visible to him, and the city winks at him through her balcony window.
It's for real , it agrees.
The door's now closed. He follows her.