“Be careful with that, would you? And try to keep your agonized screams down, eh? Some of us are trying to get a bit of work done.”

Ray glowered at Thor’s back. He expected a bit more sympathy from his roommate, not callous dismissals of his pain. “I spent hours unearthing subquests. My party is a team of efficient killing machines, even the stripper who attacks with a feather boa! I have the best armour, the best weapons, the best everything, but it still takes me out. Every time! Since when do they make final boss battles difficult after all that?”

“Maybe the level of difficulty of the final boss is determined by the level of your party. Is Fagin supposed to be sympathetic?”

Ray got the impression Thor was not devoting his full attention to the problem at hand. “All the games that did that sort of thing are old, Thor. They don’t do stuff like that anymore, they want stuff made easy for mainstream audiences or something.” He glared resentfully at the still of the world being devoured. It was with great reluctance that he addressed Thor’s actual question. “Don’t talk about Fagin. Talking about Jewish characters in anything written before World War Two is like shooting yourself in the foot. With a laser cannon,” he added as an afterthought. “Fagin’ll just mess you up.”

Thor went “Huh” and typed for a bit. “Didn’t they do that with the final boss in Twisted Carnival?”

“That game was designed to make people’s heads explode and be damn near impossible to finish. It doesn’t count.”

“It came out last year.”

“It doesn’t count, Thor.”

“Whatever helps you sleep at night, Ray.” There were several minutes of Thor’s irregular typing and depressing “Game Over” music. “Maybe you just haven’t hit on the right strategy yet.”

“Maybe,” Ray admitted dubiously. He nudged the controller with his toe.

“Just don’t tell me, eh? I kind of want to figure it out for myself.”

“Assuming you ever get past the ten hour mark.” Ray grinned and leaned over to poke at Thor.

Thor smacked Ray’s hand clumsily and hit his knuckles on the arm of the couch. “Fuck!” He lifted the hand to his mouth and blew on it, still trying to write his paper with the other hand.

“That’s what you get for trying to escape the powers of the ninja, Sigurd.”

“Yeah, I’m absolutely terrified by your mystical couch power. I’m sure the thought of furniture leaping up and attacking them keeps scores of potential enemies away.”

“They never expect it.” Ray watched as Thor put a knuckle between his lips and sucked, a pained expression on his face. “You know what would help that?”

“Mmf?”

“Getting another three or four hours into Ultimate Legend.” Ray grinned encouragingly.

Thor spat out his knuckle. “This paper’s due on Wednesday, you know.”

“You aren’t a real man until you pull an all-nighter,” Ray countered.

“I also like sleep.”

“You’ve gotten enough sleep the last two nights to last you a week.”

Thor made an irritated noise and turned to face the monitor again, his eyebrows drawing down into a frown of displeasure.

Oops? Ray sighed. He shouldn’t have let Thor’s convincing imitation of someone without issues lure him into a false sense of security and the apparently crazy believe that simply alluding to Mini-Thor would be something that he could do without pissing his roommate off. Time for a topic change, of sorts. “So, how’s the paper coming?” He climbed onto the couch and leaned over Thor’s shoulder to peer at the monitor.

Thor looked at Ray out of the corner of his eye. He didn’t turn his head, something that Ray was secretly grateful for. They didn’t both need concussions, after all. “It’s going slowly,” Thor said at last, eyes returning to the monitor.

Ray eyed the screen. The most recent sentence read ‘It may be that Olivshkgsqfuck fuck fuck ow Ray cookie.’ Warily, Ray tilted his head to one side, but the words didn’t magically coalesce into anything sensible. “So I see.”

“You need to write one of these too, y’know.”

“I know.”

“You started?” Thor began to slowly delete the garbled line.

“Not as such, no.”

“You read the book?”

Ray mussed Thor’s hair in a friendly way and fell back to lie on the couch before Thor could try to smack him again. “Years ago. At St. Barn’s. I think I remember the important bits.”

“Really?” The image of Thor in the monitor raised an eyebrow.

“Sure,” Ray shrugged. He was pretty sure it had been Oliver Twist that they had read that year. Unless it had been A Tale of Two Cities. It probably wouldn’t make difference in the long run.

“And you think that’s enough?”

“Could be.” Ray stretched, gave the TV one more dirty look, and grabbed the remote to turn it off. “You hungry?” he asked, thinking of ‘cookie’.

“I’m always hungry, man.” Thor had a way of making typing sound annoyed.

“I’ll check the fridge.” Ray slid off the couch and watched Thor for any sign of a reaction, but he just made an inarticulate but appreciative sound and kept typing. Ray added ‘fridge’ to the list of things that were safe to mention while Mini-Thor was around.

Optimistically, Ray poked around the kitchenette. He looked in the cupboards, in assorted containers that had been left out, and in the fridge itself, but his search yielded nothing that wouldn’t be found in the apartment on a regular basis. Which tended to be nothing plus cold pizza or stale Chinese food. He was finding extra nothing. Did the kid make stuff invisible? As a test, he thrust his hand into the fridge and waved it around for a bit.

No magically invisibled containers of leftovers.

“Nothing here that isn’t frozen, Thor!”

“Fuck.”

“There’s that stuff in the freezer your father sent – ”

“Using the microwave is a last resort. Collin’s being allowed to stay here so we don’t have to worry about this kind of thing.”

“He’s here because you’re afraid of your own mother.” Ray grabbed two beers from the fridge and kicked the door shut.

“Fuck you.”

Ray shook his head and went back to the couch. Setting one beer on the floor, he took the other and tried to balance it on Thor’s head, without success. The can toppled and hit Thor’s shoulder, but Ray caught it before it hit the floor.

“Ray – ”

“Have a beer. It’ll help you think and tide you over with nourishing nourishment until there’s food again.”

“There should be food right now. Collin’s late.”

Ray groaned. “Christ, Thor, don’t even start. I don’t know if I could put up with things getting dumber around here.”

Ray could hear Thor grinding his teeth as he opened the beer with a loud snap followed by the hiss and bubble of agitated beer foaming through the opening and pouring over Thor’s hand. He yelped, set the beer down, and licked at his fingers. “Sorry if a bit of fraternal tension is making it difficult for you to play video games – ”

“It’s just stupid, that’s all I’m saying.”

Ray picked up his beer and took a long drink. Maybe, if he was lucky, it would make the rest of the night a lot less painful. For him, at least.

“Like you’re one to talk. You’re the master of stupid shit.”

“Drink your beer and write your paper, Thor.”

Hunching his shoulders sullenly, Thor turned his attention back to the computer, wiping one hand, in an attempt at unobtrusiveness, on his jeans to dry it. Relieved, Ray fastened his lips to the rim of his beer can and drank while staring at the dark TV. He was hovering uncertainly between the decision to turn the console off or turn the TV back on and give it one more try. It was good for a ninja to be persistent, but he also had to know when he was confronted by a battle he had no hope of winning. He gnawed on aluminum as he thought.

Ray was saved the pain of being decisive when the door opened and Mini-Thor staggered in under the bulk of a barely full, but very large, duffle bag. His face was a bit red and his hair was half on end and half plastered down with now-dry sweat. He wasn’t wearing a jacket, and his forearms looked wind burnt, but he was grinning. Ray lifted one hand in greeting, even as he crouched down to turn off his game. With Mini-Thor came the promise of food, which was an infinitely better prospect in Ray’s mind than watching his party be brutally massacred by something that looked like a cross between a mop, a roll of toilet paper, and a cockroach.

Then, everything went straight to a very cold Hell. Metaphorically. The heating didn’t suddenly fail and the apartment wasn’t transported to a realm of eternal torment. Thor just stopped typing and every muscle in his body seemed to tense. There wasn’t much to get tense, of course, but slight as it was, there was so much of Thor that it was impossible for Ray to ignore even out of the corner of his eye.

And Thor spoke.

“How’d you get in?”

“Keys.”

“You steal mine?” Thor had a surprisingly good interrogation voice. If Ray hadn’t been aware it was Thor talking, it might even have been creepy. As it was, it was just kind of weird.

“No!” Mini-Thor was indignant. “Don’t be stupid.”

“Then where’d you get keys?”

“Ray, dumbass.”

“Ray.”

Thor’s voice didn’t make Ray feel like things would become any less uncomfortably stupid any time soon. “I leant him my spare set in case he needed to get in and we were both out. Just in case, so he wouldn’t get locked out.”

Thor ignored him. If he had said he had given Mini-Thor his spare keys because an extensive study had shown that doing so would eliminate world hunger, Thor would still have ignored him.

“You’re late.”

“Got talking with some of the other guys.”

“About?”

“Basketball. Music. Hockey. Random shit. You wanted me to call, Mom?”

“We were waiting on you for supper, Collin.”

“You could have just ordered a pizza or some crap like that if you were hungry.”

“We were expecting you, so we didn’t.”

Mini-Thor made a noise of pure frustration, his eyebrows drawing down sharply. “Well, I’m here now, okay? There’ll be food.” With a scowl, he threw his bag on the floor, kicked it into the wall, and stormed into the kitchenette. Where he proceeded to make as much noise as humanly possible, rattling pans, kicking the stove, and slamming cupboard doors.

“Way to play the mom card, Sigurd.”

Thor grit his teeth. “Shut up.”

“Think I can get some tips from you on fraternal relations?”

“Shut. Up.”

“Do you find the noise of someone trying to put a hole in the wall with a metal spoon to be a muse-like song to inspire your literary endeavours?”

Thor said nothing. He simply sat, seething, and stared at the monitor. Long fingers curled tightly around the mouse, tensing so that his knuckles stood out, white and sharp.

Ray emptied his beer can, stifled a burp, and patted Thor’s shoulder. It was painfully taut under the fabric of his T-shirt. Carefully, Ray removed his hand. “You need help, my friend.”

“You need more milk,” Mini-Thor called from the kitchenette. To emphasis his point, he slammed the refrigerator door shut, causing the entire unit to shake.

“We bought milk for you already,” Thor said coldly.

“It’s gone.”

“Not my problem.”

“I need more.”

“Tough shit.”

Ray suppressed the urge to smother himself with a pillow.

“I need milk.”

“That’s fascinating, ‘cause I don’t.”

“I need it for this recipe.”

“Should have checked that before you started, eh? Use something else.”

“No!”

“Deal.”

“C’mon, Sigurd, it’ll take, like, twenty minutes to get a new carton.”

“I’m working on a paper, Collin. Which I can’t do later tonight because you have to sleep on time. In the room with the computer.” To make his point, Thor tapped a button on the keyboard, looking over his shoulder at his brother the entire time.

Mini-Thor scowled at his feet. “I’m sorry, okay, but I do need the sleep. It’s not my fault Mom ditched me here. I just . . . I need the milk, okay. Please, Sigurd?”

“What part of me working did you not get?”

The head of Mini-Thor lifted and he glared at Thor, one hand clenching into a first, then unclenching, only to repeat the motion with a rhythm so even it was unnerving. “You are such a dick, Sigurd.”

Ray lifted a hand. “Relax, both of you. Kid, Sigurd’s busy, but I’ll go down to the store with you, no problem.”

Mini-Thor snorted. “Forget about it. Fuck it.” He grabbed his duffle from the floor. “Fuck you, Sigurd. I’m going out.”

“Like I care.”

“Fine.” Mini-Thor grabbed his boots and yanked the apartment door open, slamming it behind him as he left.

A cup fell off the edge of the counter and shattered on the floor.

“Well,” Ray said after a minute.

“It was ugly,” said Thor. He went back to typing, as though nothing had happened, only the force with which he was striking the keys betraying his anger. And the way his jaw was clenching so tightly his teeth would probably shatter. And the way his shoulders were so tense you could probably break a board across them. And the way the back of his neck was an angry patch of red, under the messy ends of his hair down to the collar of his shirt. And . . .

God, Thor, you are the most disgustingly honest person in the history of the universe. I think I’m going to puke. Ray shook his head. “Thor, my boy, promise me you’ll never do something stupid enough to get you up before a judge.”

That seemed to pull Thor out of his stupid, irrational anger. The more familiar expression of complete bafflement covered his face as he looked over his shoulder, his eyes round and his eyebrows quirked at absurd angles. “Eh?”

“The legal system would eat you alive, kid.” Ray flashed his roommate a lopsided grin and ruffled his hair. “So. You made the food leave.”

Thor’s eyes darkened and he shook off Ray’s hand. “I didn’t make the food leave.”

“I’m hungry and you made the food leave.”

Thor sighed. “Just stay out of it, Ray. He’ll come back. Just order a pizza or something. None of this is any of your business, okay?”

“I’m hungry. Hunger makes it my business.” Ray stretched and stood up. After working out a knot in his neck, making it crack loudly, he went for his boots.

“Where are you going?”

“Out. To get food.”

It was dark outside, but the sky was clear, lit by dim stars and the sliver of the moon. The streetlights were on, and were about as helpful as the still-lit headlights that the owner of a Honda parked in front of Trudeau Place had forgotten to turn off. Even together, it all added up to very little in the way of illumination, but it was enough for Ray. He jammed his hands down as deep as they could go in his pockets and began to trudge across a field of unbroken snow that went up to his knees. After pushing through a pile of plowed snow that someone had inconsiderately left heaped right where he wanted to walk, Ray was able to stand upright without feeling uncomfortably frozen, wet, or like his legs were slowly being crushed. He peeled a compact chunk of snow out from behind his knee and shook more out of his pant cuffs.

“What’re you doing?” asked Mini-Thor accusingly.

Ray looked up and dropped his foot. Mini-Thor was glaring at him and lightly holding a basketball, which he could probably launch in the direction of Ray’s head at any moment. He kept his eyes on Mini-Thor’s hands. “I like your country for the most part. Lots of open spaces and trees and mountains and water. It’s all very picturesque. I like the snow, too. Snow is a pretty all around great thing. You can eat it, make decoys out of it, use it to build shelters, write in it, use it for projectile weapons, keep secret stashes of alcohol in it, hide the bodies of your enemies . . . It really is great. Most things aren’t so multi-purpose. But, there’s such a thing as too much. It’s like Aristotle said – any virtue, taken to an extreme, becomes a vice. Just replace virtue with snow and vice with giant pain in the arse.”

“You really like the sound of your own voice, don’t you?”

Ray grinned. “Hell yes.”

“Figures.” Mini-Thor bounced the basketball on the frozen pavement twice, watching Ray instead of the ball. “My brother send you after me?”

“He’s working on a paper. In case you hadn’t heard the first couple thousand times he whined about it.”

“May have had something along those lines,” Mini-Thor said, turning away from Ray to face the solitary basketball hoop. The kid remained the perfect picture of adolescent nonchalance, even as Ray could see his muscles tense and his knees bend ever-so-slightly. The ball spun from his hands and shot perfectly through the plain, unadorned metal hoop. Ray whistled appreciatively as the ball bounced – shallowly, four times – before rolling docilely across the frozen court to stop a few millimetres from the tip of Ray’s boots.

“Nice,” Ray said to the kid, who continued to face the hoop. “You must look particularly impressive doing that kind of thing with equipment that wasn’t designed to keep ten-year-olds amused.”

Mini-Thor shrugged, looking at Ray over his shoulder. “Practise is practise.” His eyes moved to the basketball. “You play?”

Thoughtfully, Ray nudged his foot under the curve of the ball, booting it upwards so he could wrap naked fingers around hard orange plastic. It took him two seconds to regret that, because apparently orange plastic could catch cold from the pavement. Carefully, he adjusted his hold so the ball was balanced between gloved palms. “Basketball isn’t really a good sport for the vertically challenged, kid. I’m strictly a soccer and rugby kind of guy.”

“Those’re good, too,” Mini-Thor admitted, grudgingly. He turned away from the hoop to stare expectantly at the ball between Ray’s hands.

Grinning, Ray tossed the ball to the kid, watching it spin until Mini-Thor deftly shot out a hand to deflect it. The ball bounced on the pavement and Mini-Thor lowered his hand to dribble it, turning slowly back to the basketball hoop.

“Cold out here,” Ray said. His eyelids drooped slightly as he watched the kid move, the ball bouncing like a living creature seeking comfort in his hands, only to be shot free smoothly toward the hoop.

“It’s February. What d’you expect?” Mini-Thor watched as the ball hit the hoop and made the circle of it three times before dropping through.

Ray tilted his head thoughtfully. The kid definitely had good form. “Just thinking that it’s awful cold to be practising outside.”

“Not so bad if you keep moving.” Dribbling the ball again, Mini-Thor walked backward, past Ray and to the end of the tiny imitation of a court.

“Why don’t’ you come back inside?” Ray coaxed, just as Mini-Thor let the ball fly. It hit the backboard with an angry smack. The entire construct shuddered and the ball barely made it in.

Silent, Mini-Thor went to retrieve the ball.

Ray’s lips twitched. He gave in to the urge to smirk slightly. The kid couldn’t see him that well and from the expression of concentrated irritation, probably wasn’t seeing him at all. “Got issues with your brother?”

“He’s an idiot. And a spaz.”

“No argument here,” Ray said, eliciting a surprised, over-the-shoulder stare from Mini-Thor. “Hey, I didn’t come out here to defend him. He’s thick as a pile of bricks more often than not. And he’s the only guy I’ve ever met who can injure himself getting out of bed. Clearly has problems, that one.”

Mini-Thor crouched, tensed, shot. Scored. “It just sucks. Just being related to him. Everyone thinks that ‘cause he’s a spaz and can’t do a damn thing right, I’m the same. You know?”

“I have brothers,” Ray answered diffidently.

“You get it, then.” Mini-Thor bounced the ball once, fiercely, and it careened on the rebound into a snowdrift. Wordlessly, Ray went to kick it out. “It’s better, now that he’s here. But people up around Doherty, they don’t got much to occupy them. Remember things forever. I could get an Olympic gold in anything, and they’d still remember the time Sigurd got concussed by a puck to the head. What kind of guy can’t stay on the ice for two minutes without getting himself hospitalized?”

“Tough for you,” Ray said absently. He manoeuvred the ball out of the snow and kicked it into his hands again. Standing in the snowdrift, he took a shot.

“Yeah,” Mini-Thor said with a scowl that vanished when the ball fell through the hoop after rebounding on the corner of the backboard. “Nice shot.”

“I try.” Ray moved from the drift as Mini-Thor went for the ball. “We didn’t know you were coming until your mom showed up at our door.”

Restlessly, Mini-Thor dribbled the ball in circular patterns, watching it instead of Ray. Again. “So?”

“So . . . your brother’s kinda found his plans disrupted.”

“Sigurd has plans?”

“Well, school related plans.”

Mini-Thor snorted. “Dork.”

Ray grinned. “Yeah.”

“But that’s not my fault. It’s Mom’s. She’s just . . . being Mom about this.” The ball kept bouncing rhythmically, even as Mini-Thor’s words began to come quicker, hotter. Ray wondered if this irrational rage was some kind of Canadian Viking defence against the cold. “It’s not my fault, dammit! I’d rather be crashing with the other guys doing training too! And I’m trying to help out with cooking and stuff – ”

“Appreciate that,” Ray interrupted smoothly. “You’re good.”

“Like Sigurd cares.”

“You care what he thinks? He’s an idiot, isn’t he?”

“Well . . . yeah . . .”

“Then screw Sigurd. He’s an idiot whose idiocy increases exponentially with every hour he spends working on that stupid paper.”

Mini-Thor smiled helplessly.

A wide, answering grin lit Ray’s face. Casually, he reached out and stole the ball that Mini-Thor had been dribbling slower and slower. Before his nerves could remind him of how cold the ball was, he tossed it into Mini-Thor’s waiting, stunned hands. He threw a friendly arm around the kid’s shoulders. “Let’s get back inside before we freeze to death.”

Mini-Thor stared dubiously at Ray’s friendly, shoulder-gripping hand. “I still don’t have milk for supper.”

“I’ll take care of it.”

“Sigurd and me aren’t going to be hugging and making up or anything. He’s still an idiot spaz.”

“Don’t expect you to,” Ray answered affably, snagging Mini-Thor’s bag from the ground.

Slowly, Mini-Thor began to walk back toward King Place, but he continued to look unsettled. “If you didn’t come out here to defend Sigurd, or force some kind of brotherly reunion and forgiveness crap, why did you come out here?”

Ray laughed. “I’m just damn hungry, kid.”