The Sun Will Shine On Us Again

'We're airing in three... two... one... go!'

The idiotic intro plays, the audience goes wild, yelling and clapping, bright yellow lights blind him for a moment, leaving orange burning spots in his vision. Loki keeps a wide smile on his face, shakes hands with the host after he's done with his supposedly witty introduction. Sits down gracefully on a leather sofa and clasps his hands on top of his knee, one leg crossed over the other, elbow resting on the armrest. A perfect picture of nonchalance and relaxation.

'So, Loki,' the host says, and Loki forces himself to focus, to conjure a somehow believable expression of interest on his face. 'Your latest novel climbed on top of the most significant lists a week after its' release and has been a bestseller for the last three months. How does it feel to be the most successful writer under thirty of the decade, as estimated by Forbes?'

Real fucking shitty, if I gotta be honest, Loki thinks. He makes sure to look bashful before answering.

'Definitely much more free meals at fancy restaurants than I have expected,' he says. The host laughs. The audience laughs. Look at him, being his charming self even with a hangover the size of a newborn blue whale.

'Your next book is being released on Friday. It is said to be – quote – your most immersive novel so far – end of quote. Can you tell us something more?'

The questions are boring, standard, nothing unexpected. He's answered them a thousand times before. Loki allows himself to doze off a little, fantasize about when he'll go back home and hug in bed with a bottle of vodka.

'Your books often deal with topics such as mental health issues, heartbreak and battling inner demons. The question is obvious – where do you take your inspiration from?'

He perks up at that. Oh, this one is always fun. The interviewers trying to be sneaky, salivating for a snippet of his private life like vultures. Sensing all the scandals hiding behind his unaffected, perfectly composed facade. Loki's been successful at keeping them at bay so far.

'These are more common than any of us would like to admit. In fact, everyone faces some kind of inner turmoil. I like to challenge people by throwing it into their faces, make them look in the mirror and admit their weaknesses. It's more interesting than any image a writer can ever paint.'

Perfect. His agent Darcy will be so proud. The host frowns in almost unnoticeable disappointment and Loki resists the urge to smirk. He'd hoped for something more juicy, of course. Loki's own misery. The demons haunting his mind. Wounds that never stop bleeding. Things that he likes to keep to himself and himself only. Things he hides for the sake of it. And because he has no one to share them with. Though the last part doesn't sound very impressive. This one he usually doesn't think of.

The interview continues smoothly and Loki's amazed at how well he handles it despite a growing headache, migraine wriggling its way inside his temples. By the end he feels nauseous with it, wants nothing more than crawl into bed and cry.

Darcy drives him home, talks about some errands and meetings they have before the next book's release. Loki hardly listens. He doesn't always actively try to be an obnoxious client he is anyway, this being one of these rare occasions, and yet, there he is. An anxious mess at the back of his agent's car. The most successful writer under thirty, they said. Look at him in his full fucked up glory.

They stop at his block and he reaches with shaky hands for the handle but Darcy's sharp voice freezes him in place.

'Don't drink tonight.'

He meets the agent's gaze in the rearview mirror, her eyes cutting and acute. Loki hates her sometimes.

'I don't know what you're talking about,' he tries. Darcy snorts.

'Like hell you don't. Seriously, Lokes. I mean it.Take your goddamn Prozac and go to sleep. No drinks. No scotch. No vodka. No beer.'

Loki chuckles weakly. 'Beer? I thought you think better of me.'

'Cut the bullshit, Laufeyson.' There's no humour in her voice. Oh, sweet lovely Darcy. 'I saw you during the interview. You were clenching your hands and doing that weird thing with your eyebrow. I know you're about to walk in and drink yourself to sleep. Don't. I need you sharp tomorrow. Don't be difficult for once.'

His stomach fills with ice.

Don't be difficult, Father would say. Stop being a disappointment. Do better. Try for once. Why can't you be like your brothers? Why are you such a failure?

'Fuck you, Darcy,' he spats.

Her eyes widen a fraction, realization dawning upon her. Loki can't muster a single spark of sympathy.

'Call me an hour before so I can prepare and not look like a disaster for once.' With that he leaves, cold November wind immediately ruffling his clothes and hair. If he cries, he pretends it's rain pouring down the grey, relentless sky.

Amora calls on Friday to congratulate him. Loki makes a small talk and jokes around and responds with mild interest to her flirting, eyeing a bottle of wine sitting on the kitchen island the whole time. He was supposed to wait until two PM for the sake of appearance but fuck this, the girl takes two weeks off his life span every time they talk.

Which might actually not be a bad thing.

His apartment is spacious, minimalistic, in the very centre of the city, twentieth floor. White wood and marble counters and floors. An electric fireplace and a commissioned bookshelf for all of his novels. Service comes twice a week to clean.

Loki hates the place.

Sometimes, when he's drunk enough and lets his inner sentimental fool loose, he likes to stand by the large floor to ceiling windows in the living room and observe fairy like lights of the city. Imagine all the lives going on around him and how they mean nothing. How they never had and never will. How lonely he is in the middle of all of that. How much more pathetic than any of them, little insects with a purpose. A knowing fool among ignorant ones; the fool aware. How very romantic.

He sits at the kitchen island and drinks straight out of the bottle, A-minor waltz playing in the background. His phone keeps buzzing with messages. People congratulating him. Friends, acquaintances. Loki doesn't remember most of their names.

This is really my life, he thinks with amusement. Are you proud yet, daddy?

It's dark outside when he startles back to reality, realizes he's been dozing off with the bottle in hand for what must have been hours. There's dried tear tracks on his cheeks and Loki wipes at his eyes absently. Weird. He doesn't remember crying.

It seems like he doesn't remember a lot of things these days.

His newest book sits in an honorable place on the shelf, mocking him silently. Loki's lip curls in disgust. Storm, he called it. Hates himself for allowing that little weakness. Easy to connect with the storyline. Only Loki knows what it truly means. Him and Thor.

God. What the name itself does to him. Loki's still totally, hopelessly in love.

It's selfish. Probably reckless, to risk like that. Not on his own account, no; he's long since had nothing to lose.

But Thor. Gods knows Loki would never willingly do anything to hurt him. Not anymore.

He's disappeared from his life just to make sure of that. Made a great work of bottling that thrice cursed feeling inside, deep deep down, compressed into an infinitesimal molecule, choked and beat and bled into submission. Sometimes it was almost possible to forget it was still there. For months, Loki would be okay.

And then, seemingly out of nowhere, the dreams would be back. And once again he could not breathe.

It's a sweet, delicious pain. One Loki would trade for nothing. If it was gone, he would be gone too. It is what makes him. What fuels him to write – write and write and write because only then does he breathe.

It built his life, this pain. This longing. The one and only source of his stories.

It's a part of him, he thinks. After all those years – he'd be nothing without it.

He would not want to be anything.

And yet, to the last moment, right before the final approval, he had been hesitating. Sure, he'd always liked to play with the devil, but this – this was different. Even if no one would know. Even if there was a minimal chance Thor still remembered him and an even smaller one that he'd ever read the book.

Well, he's never been one to make wise choices. And it feels so good to bathe in the light of that immortal flame. Always burning, no matter how hard he tried to suppress it. He's been a responsible man – well, somehow – for so long now. It feels just fair to allow himself that one tiny mercy. To let it out, even in such a metaphoric way. It burns and it hurts but it's out to the world and there's no stopping it now. It's a good pain, anyway.

Storm. His grand comeback. Worth a celebration, Loki decides, and wanders off to the cabinet in search of something more adequate than wine.

Loki wakes up in the bathtub some hours later, hugging a bottle of scotch. Everything is numb and far away and suddenly he can't breathe. He turns the faucet with shaking hands and buries his hands in his hair and cries loudly as the cold water soaks his clothes, its surface climbing up steadily.

He chokes on his sobs so hard it makes him nauseous and leans over just in time to let the bitter bile splatter against the floor. It burns on its way out. Loki presses his cold forehead against the cold smooth surface and cries and it echoes around the empty apartment but there's no one to hear him.

The cleaning lady, a corpulent older woman finds him the next day and almost passes out herself. It takes Loki a considerable amount of time to convince her not to call an ambulance and send her off. It also stirs him enough to take a shower and brush his teeth. He may still feel like utter shit but at least he doesn't reek anymore.

Darcy calls and demands a meeting in their favourite cafe two streets away. Loki changes into fresh sweatpants, pulls a hood over his head and puts on ridiculously huge sunglasses. The weather is still awful and there's no trace of sunlight. So what if he's a modern vampire, sue him.

His limbs feel like they're made of lead but he manages to get there somehow. Darcy's already there, two mugs of americano in front of her. He flops into the seat across the woman ungracefully and she pushes one in his direction.

'You look like shit.'

'Tell me something I don't know,' Loki deadpans. His coffee is bitter and disgusting, just like he fancies it.

'Take these off',' she waves a hand at his face. 'You look dumb.'

Loki does just so and lifts an eyebrow at her. Darcy hisses sympathetically.

'Exactly,' he nods and puts the sunglasses back on.

'So,' Darcy leans across the table after a while. 'What's wrong?'

He laughs hysterically, high pitched, and spills some coffee, his hands are shaking so bad. 'I don't know what you're talking about.'

But oh, he does. Of course he does. And she knows it too. There's no bullshitting Darcy. Probably why she's his agent.

'Listen,' she sighs. 'As your agent I'm just happy you're a prolific writer. As your friend though... I have reasons to be concerned. Sorry, buddy, but you're doing shit work at taking care of yourself.'

Loki shrugs and keeps his gaze on a coffee stain that seems so interesting all of sudden.

'And yeah, I know you've always had... self-destructive tendencies... but you've been outdoing yourself these, like, what? Past ten months?'

He puts the mug down, rests his elbows on the table and hides his face in his hands.

'I'm not stupid and you know that. It started around the time you first came with the idea of Storm.'

A quiet sigh escapes past his lips. Of course she's noticed.

He pushes his hair back with one hand and straightens.

'Listen, I don't know what you want me to say...' A wave of dizziness hits him and Loki has to close his eyes, pause, count to three to make sure he's not going to pass out before continuing. But Darcy beats him to that.

'No, cut the bullshit. I want you to tell me what the hell is going on. You're literally going to kill yourself at this rate and Lord knows I'm not letting that-'

'I saw Thor.'

The silence is deafening. Loki risks a quick glance at his agent and sees her sitting there with her jaw dropped. She blinks, shakes her head. Loki returns to scanning the table's surface.

'The day when I called you and told you I'm starting a new book. Right after Christmas. It was... I was at Helblindi's at the time.' He balls his hands into fists to stop their shaking. His knuckles are dry and raw, skin around the nails bitten to blood. 'I was at my brother's for Christmas and we went shopping on twenty-third and. I saw him there. At the mall.'

'So I call him and ask if he's coming and he's telling me no, that he's at Bahamas with whatever model he's dating right now. So I get pissed of course, tell him if our little wayward brother can make it then he sure as hell can too!'

Loki nods absent-mindedly, not really paying any attention to his oldest brother's ranting. It's bizarre, to be back in that small city they grew up in. The city he never belonged to. Helblindi feels good here, he stayed and made a family. It was Loki's first time back since he left at eighteen and it felt like being trapped in a dream, reminiscing the past years, seeing the shadows of his past self in every corner.

The Christmas decorations around the mall are exactly the same as they used to. Some shops have closed and some new opened but hey, that's exactly the same bench he and Thor used to sit on while eating ice cream. This is the makeup store he loved so much and his friend felt so uncomfortable going in. Loki would tease him about it, challenge Thor into letting him use the testers on him. Good memories. It almost makes him smile despite a tight metal band constricting his lungs.

Helblindi's phone rings. His brother excuses himself, steps aside to pick up. Loki busies himself with watching the shop window of a pet store. A bunch of white and brown fluffy bunnies is sitting in a cage right behind the glass. There was a man in their neighbourhood when they were little, he remembers – he kept similar rabbits in his garden and then fed them to the great constrictors he had inside his house. Loki had never seen the snakes with his own eyes but his older brothers would tell him that, and at the age of seven he had no reason to doubt anything his big brothers said.

Absorbed by memories, his eyes drift to the side and Loki's entire body freezes.

There, inside the pet shop.

An abbeys of nothingness opens underneath his feet and he's falling like a stone thrown in water; a rush of long suppressed memories breaking the gate and flooding him with ice cold water and he cannot breathe.

He cannot breathe.

Thor is standing inside, some distance away, his profile to the entrance. He's changed, obviously. Loki's last seen him years ago. He's even taller and bulkier and his hair is shorter and he's dressed differently but there's no doubt it's him.

At his feet a girl, no older than five, holding his large hands, head turned up as the man says something to her.

A golden band glistening on Thor's ring finger.

Loki takes a step back and almost loses his balance. Cold numbness is spreading from within his core. This... this is impossible. He'd flown thousand miles and run for years to get away from Thor. He can't be just standing there casually like he's never been the only thing keeping Loki alive during his dark adolescenthood. Like he hasn't been on his mind every night for the past ten years. Like Loki hasn't been drowning himself in alcohol and writing until he couldn't feel his fingers just to forget that smile and those eyes and those hands and that laugh.

And he's asked his brother so many times. Made sure Thor was not living in their hometown anymore before coming back.

So why is he there?

Can Loki not have a single moment of respite?

There's a hand on his shoulder. Helblindi talks to him and Loki hears the words but can't comprehend them. He's on the verge of a panic attack and needs to get out now or he'll break down right there.

He turns around and it takes all in him to run, to not go inside that shop. He runs and runs and packs his things and goes back to New York the same afternoon and drinks himself to stupor and calls Darcy, tells her he's got an idea for a new book.

Loki stops talking and hides his face in his arms. A stone has been lifted from his shoulders with every word and he's feeling hollow and weightless now, ready to float in the ugly rainy sky. Like in that new Stephen King story. Float and float and light the fireworks and erupt into a million little pieces and feel nothing at all. Nothing at last.

Darcy sits across him in stunned silence. Loki would smirk if he had the strength to.

'Storm,' she says eventually. Her voice is hoarse. 'As in...'

'Yeah,' he snorts bitterly. Wipes his eyes with the back of his hand. Another migraine threatens to appear at the edges of his consciousness. 'That fucking stupid nickname his teammates gave him. I used to tease the hell out of him about it.'

'And the dedication...' Darcy's voice wavers. Loki looks up in surprise to see her wiping at her eyes. 'Goddammit, Loki, why didn't you tell me anything?'

'And what would you do if I told you? I'm an adult, I need to get over it!'

'Yeah, and you're doing a great work of that!' Darcy snaps. Loki flinches. She looks him over with wide eyes and shakes her head. 'I'm sorry. I'm sorry. 'S just... I'm worried for you. You're a mess. I don't know what to do.'

'I don't know either,' he admits. And there's a kind of sad vulnerability to it that he once swore to never show to anyone.

But what's the point in hiding it now.

'When I started writing this book. It hurt like hell, every word of it. And I wasn't sure until the last moment. But I endured through it all because I hoped... I hoped...' It feels stupid now. To think he would be allowed that kind of mercy as if anything ever worked out in his favor. 'I hoped that it would give me some closure. To let it loose into the world. That... feeling. Even if I were the only one to know.'

He takes a shaky breath. Darcy squeezes his hand and he clings to her like it's a lifeline.

'I'd been living off this hope the whole year. I'd feel like shit and tell myself – you can do this, finish this damn book and then you'll feel better. And I'd believe it.'

Tears blurry his vision and Loki presses his face into his arms folded over the table. It takes everything in him not to fall apart in the most literal way.

'It didn't work.'

Darcy rounds the table and sits by his side, and her arms wrap around his waist tentatively. Her head comes to rest on his shoulder and Loki can't suppress a sob.

'I still love him the same.'

His apartment is still and quiet.

He walks to the kitchen and his steps echo loudly in the empty space. There's a half-emptied bottle of wine in the sink. Loki takes it by the neck and looks at it thoughtfully. Remembers Darcy's words and spills its content down the drain.

He'll regret it later but it's not like there isn't a twenty-four seven liquor store around the corner.

He turns on Nocturnes op. 9 and goes to the living room, spinning around a few times on his way just for the sake of it.

Sweet piano notes flow through the air like fading thoughts and dreams as Loki stands in front of the bookcase and stares at his new novel. It's getting dark outside, he can't see the colours very well.

He reaches for the book and opens it on the first page. Stares down impassively at the words printed there in black italics font.

The sun will shine on us again, it says.