Chapter Text
So, this was what mediocracy felt like.
Sitting on logs around a blazing fire, cuddled up in blankets, while the moon’s cool light painted everything outside of fire’s shine blue and silver, as the smell of burning wood and caramelized sugar filled the air.
It was beautiful. Perfect even, which made Loki all the more shocked by how deeply unhappy he felt.
The feeling had set in in the late afternoon when bit by bit Thor’s friends arrived at the camping spot and a wild back and forth began, of people greeting one another, helping each other setting up their tents, joking and laughing as they prepared the fireplace, hung up hammocks between the trees and collected firewood.
There was an effort to make Loki feel like he belonged, and Thor practically urged his friends to include Loki in whatever they were doing but despite their good intention it felt forced. Loki was the outsider.
His knowledge about setting up tents was clearly rusty because he failed miserably when helping Thor and the frustration was enough to almost set him off into a fit, but he controlled himself- he wasn’t used to being bad at things.
He was used to being efficient, professional, and graceful in everything he did but it seemed he was done with that. He felt like an idiot, failing even the simplest tasks, making a fool of himself, while everyone around him worked like a well-adjusted machine, seemingly effortless and all while thoroughly enjoying themselves.
And then there had been dinner.
When Loki had been certain that his mood couldn’t drop any lower, it turned out that dinner was baked potatoes, cooked in the embers with butter and sour cream, which was not in line with his ideas of a healthy meal at all.
When asking if there was at least a salad to go along with the potatoes, everyone stared at him stupidly. Volstagg’s girlfriend, Birgit, explained to him patronizingly that the salad wouldn’t have stayed fresh for the drive. But Sif interrupted her and told him that that was a great idea and that she knew where to find ramson at this time of the year and that it would make for a perfect salad.
It had been Loki’s only reprieve this afternoon, following Sif through the forest and picking ramson, which filled the air with a fresh garlic-like scent. They stayed silent and Loki was grateful for it.
At dinner, everyone praised the salad, even Volstagg’s girlfriend and Loki got the creeping suspicion that Thor had given his friends a talk about being very nice to his very broken friend, while he and Sif had been away.
Not that Loki needed nice. Modeling hadn’t been nice, and he had been just fine.
Now he was sitting next to Thor, with the fire heating up his face, while the others were emptying an entire bag of marshmallows- he wanted one too but he denied himself. Just this once he needed to know that he even still possessed the kind of self-control, that he had counted among his highest virtues.
But Thor was looking at him weirdly and it was starting to frustrate Loki.
How hard was it to simply leave him alone about all of this? His eating was monitored every single day, to begin with, refusing to eat literal, pure sugar should be his right without being questioned.
“So, Loki, you’re looking great,” Fandral tried to start a conversation with him and while it was a compliment Loki usually loved to hear, the only thing he heard now was: you’ve gotten fat.
“Thanks,” Loki forced a smile. “I’m trying at least to maintain some kind of…well never mind.”
“Yeah, I can tell,” Fandral grinned at him. “So how are things going?”
“It’s going,” Loki smiled wryly. “What else is there to say?”
“I see, sometimes it just…goes. It’s better than when it doesn’t huh?”
“I suppose.”
“So, how’s sober life treating you?”
Loki glared at him for bringing up the topic in such a blunt way and he could feel the way Thor tensed beside him, looking over to interrupt the conversation if necessary if it turned out to be too much for Loki.
“Well, it sucks,” Loki said curtly.
“I bet. When I stopped smoking weed, boy I’m telling you things were shitty.”
“You’re an addict?” Loki asked with a frown and sat up, moving a bit away from Thor to look more directly at Fandral.
“I guess, yeah. I didn’t go into treatment, like you. I just realized I couldn’t go on like that, you know? Not gonna go into detail, but it wasn’t a fun time. And I hear withdrawal isn’t even as bad with weed addiction as it is with some other substances, but man, it was bad enough.”
“I can imagine,” Loki said, feeling a bit less alone for the first time since they had arrived.
“And it’s not just giving up the weed,” Fandral went on. “I also had to cut ties with all my stoner friends. They were cool, I liked hanging out with them…but I just couldn’t anymore if I wanted to stop.”
Loki laughed humourlessly.
“Sounds familiar. Feels like I have to give up everything just to be miserable. My friends, my career, my possessions. I thought it was supposed to be the other way around, where you start out with a perfect life and addiction takes all of those things from you.”
“That sucks man,” Fandral said sympathetically before he stuffed another marshmallow into his mouth.
“It does,” Loki sighed. It was good talking to Fandral. Easy. He might not understand exactly what Loki went through, but he was ready to offer his sympathy, nonetheless. "And now I’m broke and I went up two sizes and don’t fit my clothes anymore…”
“Oh, that’s a shame, I bet you’ve got cool clothes.”
“Yes. I’ve got a lot of cool clothes,” Loki said melancholically as he looked up at the night sky.
“But…it’s just clothes you see? You could just sell them, that would help with the money problem.”
Loki huffed. The mere idea of having to sell his treasures so that other people could wear them, people who still fit them, was filling him with a feeling of unnameable dread. Those were his. He had selected them over years, they were the reward for all the excruciating stress he put himself through and a mirror of his personality.
It went far beyond simple vanity.
They were a part of him.
“I’d probably be getting only a fraction of the price I bought them for,” Loki argued. “There are not as many men invested in fashion for there to be a huge market of second-hand designer pieces.”
“You don’t think the fact that you’re a pretty big name in the industry will make the pieces more valuable?”
“No,” Loki said. His voice had gone a few degrees cooler but Fandral didn’t seem to notice. “I don’t believe it will make that much of a difference.”
“Well, money is money. I had to sell my old guitar once, it was a limited edition, beautiful, top condition. I barely got half of its original price and I was pretty angry. But I needed the money and that’s just the way things are,” Fandral shrugged, as he put another marshmallow on his stick, to roast it over the fire. “How much do you think your clothes are worth? I bet you’ve got a lot, maybe you’ll get some money out of it even if the selling conditions suck.”
Loki was completely fed up with this conversation by now but against his better judgement he still went on talking to Fandral. Maybe it was the fact that it was an opportunity to show off and Loki hardly missed those kinds of opportunities.
He looked into the flames, as he did a brief calculation in his head.
The true value could of course never be summed up in a simple number, besides emotional value, they had cultural importance, often being one of a kind originals by genius designers.
“Well, altogether it’s probably worth around one million dollars.”
Fandral stared at him wide-eyed, his mouth gaping open.
“You have clothes worth one million?!” He blurted out, loud enough to draw attention from the other members of the group.
Suddenly, everyone’s attention was on them, the mention of this outrageous sum had been enough to make everyone curious, even if they hadn’t followed the conversation up until now.
“Dollars?” Hogun asked stupidly.
“Of course, dollars,” Sif said with a laugh, but it sounded forced.
“Well then I don’t see how being broke is an issue anymore,” Fandral, who had recovered a bit from the shock, pointed out. “Even if you got half of that money for the clothes, you’d be rich.”
“He wants to sell them?” Hogun’s wife asked.
“I don’t want to sell them!”
“But you said you’re broke?”
“Yes, but I’m simply not sure yet.”
“How can you not be sure?” Volstagg went on, incredulous. “You’ve got a million-dollar check hanging in your closet!”
“I simply haven’t made a decision yet,” Loki said through gritted teeth.
“Hey, guys, how about we drop the subject?” Thor looked around and Loki would have been grateful for his effort to end the conversation, but the group didn’t even pay attention to Thor.
“I think all of that designer clothing is a fake anyways.” Birgit declared loudly, sounding very pleased with herself for that insightful statement, as she looked at Loki from across the fire. “Most of it looks awful, to begin with. Some of these clothes, I wouldn't even want for free. You only pay for the tiny label on the inside. It’s nothing but a scam, I don’t get how anyone can fall for that.”
The group muttered in agreement, while Loki’s hands had balled into tight fists and he clenched his jaw.
“Actually that’s not-“ He began but he was interrupted before continuing the sentence.
“I think people who buy clothing that expensive are either stupid or pretentious. Because with the money you spend on a single one of those pieces, you could get a whole wardrobe of perfectly fine clothing!”
“I see why someone with a dress that hideous would say something like that,” Loki snapped and once more everyone was staring at him with their mouths gaping open.
“Loki,” Thor tried, once more attempting and failing to calm everyone down.
“What’s wrong with the dress?”
“Nothing is wrong with it. But there’s also nothing right with it, let’s put it this way,” Loki said sharply. Years of quarreling in the industry had served as training to come up with the most biting insults in the blink of an eye and Loki didn’t hesitate, letting this unsuspecting woman feel it. “So why don’t you stay out of my business, if you make it so painfully obvious for everyone that you don’t have a clue about fashion?”
The only response the woman could come up with, with a few awkward seconds of delay, was a heartfelt ‘fuck you’, which was all Loki needed to get up from the log he had been sitting on.
“I’m tired,” Loki stated. “Thanks for the lovely evening.”
And with those words he stomped off, away from the warm flames and into the cool night towards the tent he shared with Thor.
He crawled inside, not even using his phone to light the way, hiding away from the fire and the stars in the darkness, and started crying softly, cradling his face in his hands as he shook with quiet sobs.
He wished he hadn’t come along. Better to be isolated in his room and watch shitty TV than to be here in the middle of nowhere, with all those people invalidating everything that meant anything to him, and then making it out to be like he was the bad guy because he didn't just accept it.
For a while he was just lying alone in the darkness, trying and failing to stop crying but before he could manage that, the tent's zipper was pulled open and Thor’s large body entered the tent, filling out what little space there was.
“Go away, Thor,” Loki demanded hoarsely, but instead, Thor lied down beside him.
“It’s my tent though.”
“I want to be alone.”
“We don’t have to talk about it,” Thor offered quietly. “But I don’t want you here alone either, okay?”
Loki stayed silent in the velvet darkness, choking down the sobs that crawled up his throat. In the tight space of the tent, Thor and he were already right next to each other and it was easy for Thor to lie one broad arm around him. When Loki didn’t try to get away, Thor wrapped another arm around him, holding him close.
For a while, they stayed that way. Loki fought to keep from crying while Thor was simply…there.
“You don’t want to go back to your friends?” Loki asked hoarsely.
“Hm, I’d like to go back yes, but I brought you along for this trip,” He explained. “And since I brought you along into a group of almost strangers, I’m responsible. And it’s more important for me to know you’re okay now than to hang out with my friends. I have the entire weekend for that.”
Loki scoffed.
“Am I okay though? I don’t think I’m okay. Maybe I’ll never be.”
“Don’t say that…I think we were pretty okay down at the river. For a moment at least.”
“What’s it worth when I’ll only ever be okay being alone with you?”
Beside him Thor stayed silent for a few moments, then gently placed a kiss on Loki’s shoulder, which made something unexpected and bright flutter in Loki’s stomach, that had only been filled with heavy dread so far.
“It’s a place to start maybe. Those people out there might be my friends but that doesn’t mean that they have to be yours. They’re very different from the people you usually spend time with, so don’t let their judgment get to you too much.”
“But this is the world I’ve got to cope with now, isn’t it?” Loki asked and he moved a bit closer, seeking comfort from Thor’s warm, large body. “People who think what I did was worthless. Who’ll laugh at me and think of me as pretentious and stupid. That everything I did was shallow and easy.”
“They don’t think so.”
“In a way they do,” Loki argued, his voice bitter. “And maybe they’re right. I wasted my whole life for some useless, superficial thing that nobody cares about anymore.”
“Loki,” Thor sighed wearily. “This was by no means your whole life.”
“But the meaningful part of it.”
“No. No part of life has more meaning by default than another. It’s about giving it meaning, you see?”
“Wow, how comes you’re a Dom for a living when you’re so clearly a philosopher?” Loki said bitterly and at that Thor snorted a laugh, that made Loki allow himself a secret smile in the darkness.
“Good point. Maybe that’ll be the next step of my career.”
Thor ran a gentle hand through Loki’s hair and he sighed softly, not feeling half as bad as he did upon entering the tent anymore. It was warm and comfortable, and Thor just seemed to be everywhere, all around him, holding him the way he always wanted to be held.
“Apropos career,” Thor said. “Have you thought about what you’d like to do once you’re out of rehab?”
“Way to ruin the mood,” Loki sighed heavily. They could have just fallen asleep like that but of course, Thor had to pry information out of him. “No. I’ve got no idea what to do. I’m pretty sure En Dwi has burnt my name, I don’t think I could even get a position as an intern in anything fashion-related.”
“Have you considered studying? You could live with me, and I actually earn quite well. I’ve got a pretty basic lifestyle, so I could support you for a while no problem.”
“We’ve barely even figured out what we are. Isn’t it a bit early to move in together?”
“Well, we spent quite a lot of time together, even if it wasn’t officially titled a relationship…a lot of difficult times too. Whatever it is we have it seems to be pretty durable. And I just know that I want you to be close to me.”
Loki huffed.
“Wait until you’ve actually been close to me for a while,” He said bitterly. “I’ve given a small preview of what I’m like by the fire.”
“That’s by far not the first preview,” Thor chuckled. “Don’t forget that you’ve dealt me quite a few verbal blows as well. And at times I wanted nothing more than to slap you…”
“Well, it was fun when you did.”
“It was,” Thor agreed. “And this…abrasiveness of yours is definitely something you need to work on. But it couldn’t make me love you less. I know you’ve lived in a world in which you had to defend yourself at every turn. I know it takes time to let go of old habits when they’re no longer needed. But for now, don’t let them undermine our future.”
“I try,” Loki said softly. “You believe me, right? That I’m trying?”
“Of course. I know you’re trying and it’s not fair that it’s so hard for you. But you’ve got to keep on trying regardless.”
“It sucks. I wish I didn’t have to fight for everything. It’s so fucking tiring.”
“I know…” Thor answered and gently ran his fingers through Loki’s hair. “How about you apologize to Birgit tomorrow? She can be a bit unbearable at times…I know. They shouldn’t have gotten themselves involved in your business like that. But you went too far.”
Loki clenched his jaw.
“Well, I called her dress ugly, which it is, and she called me and my entire life’s work stupid and worthless, so I think she should be the one to apologize. If I even cared for her apology, that is.”
“Hm. How about I’ll give you a bit of an incentive to swallow your pride on that one?”
Loki perked up hearing that and he lifted his head to catch a look at Thor’s face in the dim, barely-there light of the moon filtering through the tent.
He licked his lips and tilted his head.
“What kind of incentive?”
Thor laughed in the darkness and pulled Loki closer.
“How about the sexy kind of incentive? I’ve heard you complain that you’re sexually unfulfilled a few times…and I think you’re stable enough for me to feel comfortable with going a bit further than what we've been doing so far. But only if you’re going to be a good boy tomorrow and apologize.”
“Even if she doesn’t deserve it?”
“Even then.”
“And what will the reward be?”
“Be nice tomorrow and you’ll find out,” Thor chuckled.
“Will you fuck me?”
“I just told you, you’ll find out tomorrow. If you apologize.”
“So, do I have to be nice, or do I just have to apologize?” Loki asked.
“Ideally both. Just do your best and it’ll pay off,” Thor said and pressed a warm kiss to Loki’s temple. “But for now, let’s just go to sleep, alright? I imagine that day was probably pretty exhausting for you.”
“I was hoping it wouldn’t show," Loki sighed and slumped back against Thor. "I used to be up on my feet for twenty hours at a time if I had to. And now a small road trip and some conversation makes me feel so damned drained…”
“You’re still recovering. Don’t beat yourself up because of it,” Thor said gently as he momentarily let go of Loki to pick up one of the thick blankets in the corner of the tent and spread it out over the both of them. “Now just rest. It’s okay. Tomorrow is another day.”
And Loki felt oddly reassured by those simple words and it wasn’t long before he drifted off into sleep.