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Two Rival Podcasts That You Have To Listen To This New Year!

BuzzFeed, January 1, 2024

 

Two true crime podcasts have been telling the same story of the mysterious murder of aspiring singer Celia Twenty (known professionally as C.20) — Apocalypse: Murder! with Sylvie Lushton, and Stolen Relics with Loki Laufeyson. Sylvie Lushton’s narration has been riveting, with tons of details and a great narrative arc. However, no one can deny Loki Laufeyson’s fetching personality and irresistible charm!

And we can’t avoid the elephant in the room… these two used to be an item! Lushton and Laufeyson dated for quite a while, and they used to work together… until a dramatic breakup split them apart! Now they are rivals for the same story… ooh, the drama!

So… are you a Sylvie or a Loki? Take our quiz to find out!

Apartment of Victor Timely, Chicago, IL

January 2024

“Give me the letter!”

“No, you give me the letter?”

Sylvie held the coveted object just out of his grasp, cackling and taunting him. Without hesitation, Loki leapt at her; she dodged him expertly, and he ended up sprawled out face-first on Victor Timely’s clock-printed rug. Good, Sylvie thought, it was my idea to sneak in here and search for clues. He just copied me! He deserves a good face-plant.

Loki raised his head and whipped his hair back into place. Sylvie had a brief and unwelcome flashback: he’d loved to do that as they lay in bed together, back in the day. It had always made her laugh...

Whatever. Sylvie began to traipse to the front door: time to make her triumphant escape with the evidence she'd found.

“Not so fast,” Loki muttered from the floor. He grabbed her leg, sending Sylvie off-balance and making her land in a heap on top of him. They rolled across the floor together, with Sylvie struggling to hold the letter out of his reach, until they crashed into the coffee table. When Loki’s hand landed on her face, Sylvie took the opportunity to sink her teeth into it.

“OW!” Loki cried, and Sylvie skittered away, leaping to her feet.

“You don’t deserve C.20’s letter to Victor Timely!” she growled. “You’re a hack. Your last episode accused Brad Wolfe, the incompetent actor, of murdering Celia? Ridiculous. He couldn't pull off a murder.”

Loki, on his feet now, screwed up his face in frustration. “Well, I wasn’t the one who made a definitive declaration that it was Timely's girlfriend, when we now know she was in fact at McDonald’s at the time of the murder!!”

“I just said that the video evidence was quite damning!” Sylvie snipped. “Damning isn’t definitive. How was I supposed to know that Renslayer was going to come up with an airtight alibi for five minutes later? I’m the one who unearthed the video, at least give me some credit for that. So…”

“So nothing, if she didn’t actually murder her!”

Loki lunged towards the letter once more, but Sylvie scurried away from him. Loki’s elegant ankles got tangled up in his unnecessarily large backpack full of podcasting equipment, and he had to stick his arms out to the side like a scarecrow, attempting to maintain his balance and his dignity. 

As he took a few wobbly moments to catch his breath, Sylvie clicked her tongue and nodded at the backpack strap that had ensnared him.

“I don’t know why you carry so much gear with you. All you need is this.” She flashed her handheld recorder at him and stuck it back in the pocket of her jeans. “I’m a minimalist.”

Chin held high, Loki extricated himself from the backpack, stepping over the fuzzy head of the collapsible boom mic that stuck awkwardly out of the top. He picked the whole thing up, putting it on his back so it didn’t get in his way again.

After a few moments spent rearranging his hair, Loki held out his upturned hand and took a few slow steps in Sylvie's direction. “I need that letter. It’s evidence, Sylvie. More people listen to my podcast than yours, they’ll be counting on me to give them the story they need."

Sylvie snarled at him and tried yet again to make a beeline for the door, but he stood in her path.

“You’re in my way,” she snapped.

“You are my way!” Loki retorted.

Sylvie laughed and made a face. “What does that even mean?” 

Loki immediately looked embarrassed. He was used to modifying sentences to turn them into insults… but he hadn’t quite created an insult here. Sylvie continued mercilessly: “I’m your way? You sound like a romance novel, which I’m pretty sure is not what you were going for. We left that all behind us last year.” 

Their breakup had been messy and loud and sudden, and to this day, Sylvie wasn’t even sure exactly what had gone wrong between them. The one thing she was sure of was that it must have been Loki’s fault.

“Look,” he said, collecting himself and readjusting his backpack, “Perhaps we could try working together again. Like we used to.”

“Work together? I’d rather solve a murder with the Home Shopping Network.”

“Fine!” Loki huffed. They circled each other warily, heading deeper and deeper into the lengthy living room of the apartment, past the kitchen area and bathroom, and towards the bedroom. “It was just a suggestion to make both of our lives easier. But I should have known you would lack the proper vision for such a collaboration.”

“Oh, god. Shut up!”

“You shut up!”

“Why don’t you stick your skinny tie up your skinny—”

“Shh!”

Both of their heads snapped to the security monitor, which had just pinged. On the grainy black-and-white video screen was a weary-looking figure, trudging slowly to the door with a large and convoluted mechanical device under his arm.

“Victor Timely!” Loki whispered, pointing to the monitor.

“No shit!” Sylvie responded, mockingly imitating his gesture.

“I can’t believe this,” Loki hissed. “My prime suspect for the murder is coming in the door and I’m about to get killed here with you?”

“He’s my prime suspect, and let’s not get killed.” Her head turned in the direction of the window, which was far away and too close to the front door for comfort. But they had to try… “The fire escape, we can still— hey!”

During the few seconds she had looked away, Loki had ripped the letter out of her hand and stuffed it somewhere upon his person.

“There’s no time! Here!” Loki said. He grabbed her wrist and dragged her into the nearby bedroom, dropping his backpack and shutting the door softly behind them just as she heard the lock click and the front door open.

“Bastard,” Sylvie muttered. “Where’s the letter… ow!” She massaged her wrist. “I didn’t need your help getting in here!”

He shook his head. “You’re so weird! You were aiming for the window, and you'd never have made it in time. You should be thanking me.”

Sylvie peered through the keyhole and saw that Timely had seated himself on the living room couch, talking to himself and gesturing expressively. “Great,” she bemoaned in a low rumble. “Now we’re stuck in the bedroom. It’s almost 10:00 — don’t you think he might be, I don’t know, coming to bed soon? In the bedroom?"

Loki shrugged and whispered back, “I’ve heard he’s a night owl… keeps himself awake until all hours working on his inventions… Maybe he’ll stay up!”

“And when precisely do we escape? Hm?”

Loki appeared to have no answer for this. 

I can’t believe I let him get the damn letter… Where did he put it? Sylvie knelt down and made a cursory sweep through his backpack, but his unconcerned demeanor told her that the letter was definitely not concealed within it. She sighed and paced around the room. 

I bet he’s got it in his trousers…

Well, there was one obvious move she could make; Loki had never been able to resist her advances. She sauntered over to her ex and rested her hands on his shoulders.

For a magical moment, he softened… Yes, it’s working…

“What are you doing?” he asked curtly.

Damn.

“What are you doing?” she countered, trying to confuse him.

“Are you trying to pretend you want me? It won’t work. I’m not easily bamboozled by flirtation. My mind is too strong.”

Sylvie grimaced and shoved him. “Well, are your balls too strong?”

She stuck her hand down his pants, rooting around for the letter. Loki squawked and resisted, and they tumbled to the ground together, rolling around in circles. Sylvie was convinced that they were making enough noise that Timely would hear them, but she was almost beyond caring at this point.

They were lucky — Timely didn’t come in. But she ended up with her arms pinned under Loki’s strong hands, his whole body looming over hers.

“Look,” he said, “Do we really need to do this here? Again?”

She scrunched up her nose at him. “What do you propose instead?”

“A truce? Listen, neither of us is going to get out of here alive if we don’t put our heads together. More importantly, neither of us is going to have a podcast if we don’t get the letter out of here safely, so let’s make sure we don’t rip it.” 

His eyes flicked somewhere when he mentioned the letter, rrg, where had he looked? With a burst of adrenaline, she surged upward and rolled him onto his back, patting him down like a criminal.

“Where do you have it hidden?”

He gave her a withering look. “In my heart!”

“Well, then, I’ll cut it out!”

“Nice. Very droll. Lovely. You’ve always been so—”

“Shh—” Sylvie waved her hand abruptly at his face in a “volume down!” gesture and left him lying there on the floor. She tiptoed to the door, putting her ear to it. “Timely’s on the phone!”

Loki scooted over next to her and they jockeyed for door space until they finally stilled, realizing just how close their suspect was to the bedroom door. So close, in fact, that the door gave a little hitch as Timely leaned back against it.

“He’s sitting right on the other side!” Loki said through clenched teeth.

Sylvie waved him quiet and stuck her handheld recorder up to the keyhole, pressing play as they listened to Timely’s voice on the phone call.

“No… no! I can’t do it anymore… it’s not right… but… all right, all right. No, you’re right. I don’t want anyone to know. You win. Oh dear, oh dear…”

The phone call had apparently ended. “That was so suspicious! Who was he talking to?” mouthed Loki.

“I’ve got some ideas, but I’m not telling you!” Sylvie rasped hotly. She really didn’t have any ideas, beyond the obvious answer of his girlfriend Ravonna… and her instincts told her it had not been Ravonna.

They sat there glaring at each other for quite a few minutes, listening hard for more, until…

There was an unmistakable snore.

“Loki… did Timely just fall asleep sitting against the door?”

Loki nodded fervently. “He must be so stressed out from murder-guilt that he just passed out! Should we call someone to help us?”

“How could anyone help us? There’s no window in this room. We can’t get out. Unless someone can break into his locked apartment and manage to tiptoe around his unconscious form and open this door while he falls over without waking up... and we can step over him without him ever noticing… then I’d call that a shit plan.”

“Well, it’s better than no plan at all!”

“My plan,” said Sylvie, “is to wait here until he wakes up, hide under the bed while he gets his towels or whatever, listen for him to get in the shower, and then sneak the hell out of here.” She sneered at Loki's long legs contemptuously (or at least, she was aiming for contempt, but those legs really were distractingly attractive). “I don’t know if you’ll fit under the bed. You might be too tall. Tough luck for you.” 

Sylvie strode over to the bed. As she plunked herself down on the edge of it, she felt suddenly exhausted and stifled a yawn.

Loki turned to her, still sitting on the floor, his arm resting jauntily on his raised knee. “Oh, are you a bit tired? Feel free to, you know, get some rest.”

She shook her head. “I can’t sleep in a place like this.”

“You can’t sleep in a bedroom?”

“No. I can’t sleep around untrustworthy people.”

“Oh, right. That’s me.” Sylvie thought she saw a bitter, wounded look pass across Loki’s face as he said this, but she had probably imagined it.

“You can feel free to take a nap,” she offered.

He narrowed his eyes at her. “Nice try.”

Sylvie shrugged in defeat. “Oh, just do it! I’m not gonna waste time rooting around for the letter when somebody has taught you fairly decent espionage.”

Loki smiled. “It was Mobius, actually.”

“Oh.” Sylvie said, looking down. “How is he?”

Sylvie thought of their mentor, formerly their shared mentor and producer. Of course he would also be well-versed in spycraft; he had so many hidden talents, she should have known that would be one of them. When she and Loki had broken up and dissolved their business partnership, Mobius had had the wrenching decision of who to follow. Ultimately he’d chosen Loki, and much as Sylvie had tried to be angry with Mobius, she couldn’t quite manage it.

“He’s doing well,” Loki said. “You must have seen on Instagram, he had a second kid. Another son.”

“Hm,” Sylvie said. “That’s nice.”

“You know you think it’s more than nice. I saw the comment you left on his picture, you were melting over that kid.”

“You stalk my Instagram?”

“No! I was just reading the comments on his picture! I…” Loki sighed. “Well. Who did you end up getting as a producer? A.D. Doug? Wait, no, he’s writing sci-fi novels now… Verity Willis? You got Verity, didn’t you, I knew I should have hired her when I had the—”

“No one.”

Loki looked at her curiously. “Why not? Why do it all yourself?”

She threw out her arms and tucked her feet up under her on the bed. “It’s what I’m used to, isn’t it? My whole life, I’ve been on my own. If anything, working with you and Mobius was the anomaly in my life. This is… better.” Sylvie tried to believe her own words.

Loki stood up and walked over to the minibar across from Timely’s bed. He uncorked a bottle of wine and poured himself a glass.

“Want some?” he asked, already pouring one for her.

“No, I’m good, thanks.”

“More for me. To our near-certain doom,” he said, toasting her with both glasses and taking a sip out of each one in turn.

Sylvie watched him drink for a while, leaning gracefully against an overstuffed bookshelf. She wanted badly to ignore him, but old habits impelled her to carry on a conversation with him. “Pity it wasn’t Renslayer,” she remarked. “Love is always such a good motive for murder.”

“Indeed it is. I’m fairly certain we almost murdered each other a couple times, back when we…” He trailed off and took another sip from each glass. “Anyway. From the evidence we’ve unearthed,” he mused, “it seems that Renslayer kind of hates Timely as much as she loves him.”

“Maybe love is hate,” Sylvie said, as much to keep up the conversation as to say something meaningful.

Loki quirked an eyebrow at her and pulled out his iPhone.

“Hang on… I should tweet that! What was it? ‘Love is… hate’, you said?”

“Oh, piss off.”

“No, really! I’ve never heard anything so profoundly original.” He ceased his mockery more quickly than she would have anticipated, smiling at her and putting his phone away. “So,” he said, “on the subject of love, is there a... lucky beau waiting for you if we make it out of this apartment alive?”

Sylvie lifted her chin and crossed her legs, leaning back on one arm. “Yeah, there is, actually.”

“Ah. What’s their name?”

“Alexa.”

“I see,” Loki took a long sip of wine, hiding his expression until he emerged from behind the glass. “How did you meet her?”

“Oh, you know, the usual. She sits constantly on my desk, I ask her to play music for me when I’m getting stressed during editing... She sometimes plays the wrong song, but I always forgive her because she only nags me when I have an Amazon notification.”

Loki’s smile burst forth in full force (god, he could really light up a room) and he laughed. “And with charm like that, how could dear Alexa resist you?”

“How about you?” Sylvie inquired. “Any ladies or gentlemen striking your fancy lately?”

Loki gulped down the last of one glass and set it back on the minibar. “A bit of both, as ever. But… nothing ever…”

“Real.”

Loki swallowed. “Mm.” He finished the other glass and stared down into its vacant depths.

“Love is mischief, then?” Sylvie said, not knowing quite what she meant, but knowing he’d like it.

He did. He gave her a slight smile, and then his eyes grew misty. “No. Love is…” He took a step toward her, then paused. “...something I'll have to have another drink to think about.” He turned his back to her and refilled one of the glasses.

What are you thinking, Loki? She could only assume that his apparent emotion was a ploy of some type, but she couldn’t figure out how or why, since he was the one in possession of the letter. Really, she should be thinking about schemes to get the letter back from him. She tried to refocus her mind on the essentials.

“You do realize we still have no plan to get out of here,” she said.

“I do.”

“Maybe we should rest. Clear our minds.”

“All right,” Loki said, looking a bit wild around the eyes. “You relax your way, and I’ll relax mine.”

Sylvie hadn’t intended to fall asleep, but she suddenly roused herself when she sensed a commotion nearby. She vaulted up to alertness, and was met with the sight of Loki holding up his unplugged microphone to his mouth, listening to music on his ear buds, and lip-synching with silent but with unbridled vigor.

She watched him with eyebrows raised, trying to figure out what he was singing, until he noticed that she had woken up. Beaming, he directed his silent performance at her, and she managed to read his lips:

Acceptance is the key to be

To be truly free

Will you do the same for me?

“Katy Perry?” she whispered.

Loki put his finger to his lips and offered her one of the ear buds, which she inserted into her ear. He continued filming himself until he reached the end of the song:

Unconditional, unconditionally

I will love you unconditionally

There is no fear now

Let go and just be free

I will love you unconditionally

He concluded the song with a flourish and bowed to her, turning his phone so that her own face was reflected on the screen. Suddenly she had a realization:

“Are you livestreaming this?”

“To Sylvie, everybody!” Loki whispered. “Coming at you from an undisclosed location, but spoiler alert… it’s our prime suspect's house! And we’re trapped in his bedroom! Will we make it out alive? And more importantly, which of us will solve the mystery first? Tune in to Stolen Relics and Apocalypse: Murder! to find out!” He ended the livestream and turned on his heel to face her.

“Did you show them me sleeping?” Sylvie asked, nodding at his phone.

“Maybe. Probably. Definitely.”

“Brilliant.” Sylvie scowled at him. “Why the hell are you singing Katy Perry songs to your followers? You’re a murder podcaster. That’s not very murdery.”

“I’ve cultivated an appeal that goes beyond murder. You should consider doing the same.”

“Or maybe you’re just plastered and you have no plan.”

“Not plastered! I’m just… full. But bear in mind, I am very full.”

She stood up and crossed her arms. “How are we going to explain the missing bottle of wine from Timely’s minibar?”

“Pshh. This guy doesn’t strike me as someone who keeps close tabs on his liquor.”

“What if people figure out whose apartment we’ve broken into and call the police on us?”

“Hey!” Loki completely blew past her question. “Guess what? I thought of an answer.”

“To what?”

“Your question about what love is.”

“I didn’t actually ask you, I just—”

Out of his gear backpack, Loki pulled a pop filter — a circular screen that sits in front of a recording microphone to filter out unwelcome popping sounds in consonants when recording the spoken word.

“Love is a pop filter. It makes everything you say sound so much more beautiful, like you have the most melodious voice in the world and only poetry to impart. It disguises all those unpleasant things that you don’t want anyone to hear, until it gets old and can’t hide those aspirated plosives anymore. But whenever you most need it…” He tossed the pop filter over his shoulder, behind him and onto the bed.

“It’s not there for you.”

“Yes.”

“Love is a pop filter that you, like, forgot in your car or something.”

Loki’s expectant face drooped. “Doesn’t make sense, does it?”

“No. Terrible metaphor.”

“Damn. I thought I had something there.” He sighed and downed the rest of his current glass of wine. As he did so, Sylvie noticed that he had taken off his shoes... and that he gave a significant (and unsubtle) glance at his shoe before he went to put the glass down.

Gotcha.

Sylvie charged at the shoe; Loki dropped the glass and dove back to her. Operating on pure instinct, she lifted up the insole. There! As her fists closed around the folded letter, Loki’s fingers were there, too, his body smushed against hers, his face wrought and fretful…

For an endless moment, they both stared at the letter clutched in Sylvie’s white-knuckled hands, knowing that she was holding it tightly enough that if Loki tried to get it back, he’d rip it.

He looked into her eyes with reckless determination.

“Don’t you dare…” Sylvie growled.

He dared.

He pulled her hands apart, tearing it right down the middle. As Sylvie let out a silent “fuck!”, Loki ripped off one swatch above Sylvie’s right hand and another below her left hand, leaving them each with approximately half the letter… but the pieces didn’t match up with each other.

Apparently satisfied that he’d ruined everything quite enough, Loki stood up and folded the scraps, this time tucking them into an interior pocket of his shirt.

“You asshole,” Sylvie hissed, too furious to rise from the ground. “You destroyed it!”

“Technically, we destroyed it together…”

“You’re a clown.” She shook her head. “You got drunk and livestreamed our location and probably made things worse for us.”

“I’m hedonistic. That’s what I do.” Loki patted his shirt, not even bothering to conceal the location of the destroyed letter.

“I’m hedonistic!” Sylvie said, standing now. “A lot more than you, I assure you. But never at the expense of the story.”

“Oh, the story? The murder? Give it up,” Loki said, with unusual venom. “You’ll never beat me in the ratings. Exactly how many Apple Podcasts reviews do you have? Four?”

Despite the fact that they’d been equally nasty to each other, Sylvie felt his professional scorn cut through her like a dagger. She couldn’t allow herself to feel hurt by him, though, so she turned back to the bed, grabbed a pillow and screamed into it as she tossed herself face-first onto the comforter.

She remained there for several minutes, her scraps of the letter trapped under her prone body. She expected Loki to try to swipe them away at any moment, and she tried to summon up the vim and vigor to punch him in the nose in response.

But the anticipated theft never occurred. Instead, after a few minutes, she felt a shift in the mattress as Loki sat gingerly next to her on the bed.

“Did the, ah… scream make you feel better?” he asked, his voice surprisingly soft.

“Yes, it did,” she said, and she rolled over on her back so she could look at him. “You should try it sometime.” She tucked her letter fragments in her bra.

Loki nodded. “What now?”

“I don’t know. You ripped the letter. We have nothing.”

Loki looked genuinely chastened. It was impossible to ignore the fact that she knew him very, very well, and his face betrayed sorrow for having mocked her podcast’s performance. They regarded each other for a while, and Sylvie had an irrepressible memory: Loki coming to bed late one night… Gazing at her adoringly… She pretended to be asleep, she didn't know how to show her affection — but she knew, she knew he was there, and she loved him for his love of her…

Why couldn’t I just accept his love?

“I’m sorry, Sylvie,” he said, low and deep, and she gave him an affectionate kick in acknowledgement.

“Well…” she said.

“Well what?”

“When you were irresponsibly, drunkenly broadcasting our location and misdeeds to the world… it was actually cool of you to mention both of our podcasts, instead of just yours.”

“Oh.” Loki’s cheeks turned pink. “No trouble at all.”

Unexpectedly, Sylvie screwed up her face and felt a swell of emotion. Don’t cry, don’t cry…

“You’re right, though,” she said. “My ratings haven’t been good.”

“I… am aware of that. I really am sorry.”

“I’m just shit at the self-promotion thing!” she said, sitting up next to him on the edge of the bed. “I can create a great narrative and get the technical stuff perfect, but if no one knows about the podcast, then how will I ever get listeners? But that’s never been my thing, schmoozing and networking. I barely have any followers, I don’t even have friends. I don’t really have… anyone.” 

She realized she was revealing too much about her state of mind, and drew up her shoulders. “Which is fine. All I need is myself.”

“Sylvie, you have…” Loki looked as though he was about to say you have me, but he stopped himself. Good thing, too, because it obviously wasn’t true. He was just drunk.

(Even though he actually looked like the letter-ripping had sobered him up a bit… No, no, drunk drunk drunk. Surely he wouldn’t get all sentimental about her when he was sober.)

Loki started over:

“If it’s any comfort at all, I worry that I don’t have the narrative element down. Mobius does all the tech stuff, but the storytelling is up to me, and I’m afraid I’m not as adept at it as you. It’s why I try so hard to trounce you with my follower count, because I know that if people started finding your podcast, they’d vastly prefer it to mine.”

She gave him a small smile and had the urge to put her hand on his knee, but tilted her head at him instead. “Why did you zero in on the same case as me, Loki? Why? Were you trying to make life harder for me?”

“I swear I wasn’t. I know my first episode came out three days after yours, and that it sounded rushed and thrown-together, but that’s just because I ignored all of Mobius’s technical advice and went rogue with the editing. I promise you, we’d been working on that episode for a week before yours went up. We just… had the same idea, you and I. Our brains are eerily similar, Sylvie.”

Sylvie was quiet, but she knew it was true. She’d wanted so badly to find ways to stay angry at him, after their relationship had disintegrated. But deep down, she had known that, whatever his flaws might be, he wasn’t an idea thief.

“It’s cold,” Sylvie said, feeling the goosebumps on her arms; she wished she’d worn two layers. “Doesn’t this asshole believe in heating his home?”

As though he’d been programmed to do so, Loki jumped up like a jack-in-the-box and grabbed something off of a chair across the room. Returning, he wrapped it around Sylvie’s shoulders. While the fabric was distinctly coarse, warmth snaked throughout her body.

“It’s not very snuggly. Is this a towel?”

“No. It’s a blanket.”

It was clearly a towel, but Sylvie chose not to mention it again.

“Thank you,” she said, giving him a tight-lipped grin. These words never left her lips easily.

“My pleasure,” he responded, and the huskiness in his voice made Sylvie’s heart do something she hadn’t felt since they were together. She cleared her throat and pulled the towel closer around her shoulders. She tried to bury her mind in the details of the case, but Loki's proximity kept stubbornly intruding into her thoughts.

“I just don’t understand how the murderer wasn’t Renslayer. This kind of crime screams ‘jealous girlfriend,’ doesn’t it? Celia’s all over Victor’s social media… sending him DMs about how much she loves his inventions… Victor responds… It all culminates with a handwritten letter… boom. Ravonna steps in and takes care of the competition.”

“I know. It really does make sense, but we know it’s not her.” Loki sighed. “Should we look at that Casey fellow again? He does have a criminal history…”

“No, we both ditched him as a suspect weeks ago, and rightly so. He’s a thief, not a murderer.”

“If only we could read that letter…”

They gave each other sidelong glances. The mismatched pieces of the letter were burning holes in their respective garments. If we could just figure out how to work together again…

“Do we trust each other?” she asked, hoping she wouldn’t regret it.

Loki’s face melted. “We do. And you can.” Loki took a moment to search her face and saw that the mistrust lingered. “Sylvie… you really can trust me. I never really figured out what happened between us, in our relationship or in our business partnership. But when it was good, wasn’t it… really good?”

Sylvie turned to face him fully. “I don’t know what the hell happened either! It wasn’t perfect, but it was good, and then it just… went to shit. It’s almost like we…”

“...never figured out what love was,” Loki finished for her. It was exactly what she’d been about to say. She nodded glumly.

“Or how to share it with each other.”

“How true. But…” He sucked in air through his teeth. “...if we’re more aware of it… couldn’t we maybe… fix it this time?”

“This time?” Sylvie blinked rapidly. “What do you mean, this time? Are you suggesting we work together again? Get back together? A bit of both, as you so eloquently put it earlier?”

“I don’t know,” Loki said, his eyes wide and honest.

Sylvie rubbed her brow. “I don’t know how to do this.”

“I don’t even know what we’re doing!”

She looked up at him. “You brought it up!”

“Did I?”

“Oh, Loki, look… if we can just share this information that we have, right now, then maybe… maybe there’s hope. For the work thing, or the dating thing, or both. Or maybe not. But right now, we’re both going to come up empty unless we genuinely trust each other. So we can either keep fighting over the scraps of the letter until we destroy it completely, or we can both work with incomplete information and hope for the best, or maybe… maybe…”

“...maybe we can figure it out… together.”

Sylvie hadn’t realized how close to each other they’d been leaning. When Loki spoke, Sylvie snapped her eyes to his. His face was right next to hers…

“Sylvie… being apart from you…" His face was wracked with emotion. “It’s like being trapped at the end of time.”

“Oh, Loki, that’s utter nonsense, you’re so drunk…”

“I’m serious, Sylvie. I’m lost without you. No matter how many people are around me, no matter how many listeners I reach or entertain with my work, it’s like… no, there’s no other way to describe it. I’ve been trapped at the end of time with nothing for company except my memories of you. Please, Sylvie, bring me back. Bring me back to life.”

She drank in the sight of him, pleading and imploring and so vulnerable. And…

He had pulled the pieces of the letter out of his shirt.

With a nod, Sylvie retrieved hers as well.

“Should we… read it?” he asked, breathing heavily.

Sylvie allowed a smirk to play about her lips. “In a bit,” she said, and after they had both let their papers fall to the side, she took him by the neck and pulled him in for a kiss.

Oh… there he is.

How I’ve missed him.

Loki wasted no time in drawing her down to lie on the bed. He pulled her up to straddle him, letting her kiss his chin and neck… Oh, it would be so easy to give in, to let this happen…

“No, Loki, not like this.”

“Why ever not?”

“You’ve been drinking. I don’t want to take advantage of you.”

“Oh, please do! I'd be honored.”

She kissed him again, and this time it went on for quite a while, with hands wandering and breath patterns growing more erratic.

But the thought of Timely on the other side of the door was far too distracting for Sylvie to let it get too far… not to mention the crumpled pieces of paper that were calling to her from a foot away on the comforter.

She rolled off of him, trying to catch her breath. Loki whined at the loss of her.

“Come, come, you know we’ve got work to do,” she said.

“Oh, Sylvie…”

“We’ll have plenty of time for the other thing. Right now, if we’re serious about this, let’s share our information.”

With a groan, Loki picked himself up and they worked on completing the jigsaw puzzle that they’d managed to turn the letter into. They arranged the pieces together on the bed and read the words:

Dear Victor,

I hope I’m not overstepping my bounds by writing to you via snail mail of all things, but I just can’t bear to give up our correspondence. I really hope we can continue the collaboration we mentioned — I’d love for you to do the pyrotechnics for my next gig. I’d be beyond thrilled.

I know that there’s a certain lady in your life who isn’t happy about us chatting… Missy keeps DMing me and telling me to keep away from her man. I was confused at first, because I thought that you were still with Ravonna, but Missy swears she’s your girlfriend, and she blocked me from your account… 

Anyway. I’m rambling. I’m just so sorry if I made anything uncomfortable between you two. I never wanted to make it weird. I was so enjoying exchanging ideas with you and couldn’t bear to give it up. So if you want to keep the lines of communication open, I’d be happy to do so via letter.

All the best,

C

“Missy?! Who’s Missy?”

“Oh my god…” Loki scrolled through Victor Timely’s Twitter account. “It’s her. Look.”

An account named Melissa Minutes, whose avatar was an alarmingly chipper orange clock, had responded to an astonishing number of Victor’s tweets.

“Do you know who she is, Sylvie?”

Suddenly, the name clicked in Sylvie’s mind.

“Yes! In my research, I saw that she used to work with Timely, but he fired her a long time ago. Clearly she’s developed a parasocial relationship with him…”

Loki put a hand on top of hers. “She must have hacked into his account to block C.20!” 

Sylvie put her other hand on top of his. “And then she somehow found out that Celia was writing to him! I wonder why Missy Minutes didn’t kill Ravonna? She was Timely’s actual girlfriend.”

“Yeah, but come on, Sylvie, Ravonna’s not the most pleasant person, is she? Celia was delightful. Minutes probably saw her as a bigger threat.”

“Loki!” Her other hand landed atop the hand pile. “Do you realize that we’ve solved it? Right here, with this letter?” Sylvie swooped in for another kiss, pulling him down backwards on the bed so that Loki was on top now.

“Now wait, Sylvie!” Loki said, between kisses. “We mustn’t jump the gun. This letter is still only circumstantial evidence…”

“Well, let’s search the room! We must be able to find something else…”

“Okay, let’s do that, but first I’m going to kiss your bewitching mouth just one more time—”

A tentative cough from the doorway made them both spun their heads in its direction. Victor Timely stood there, very awake, and looking quite unlike someone who wanted to murder them. Indeed, he didn’t even look like someone who minded having his apartment broken into.

“Excuse me,” Timely said. “Pardon me for interrupting, I don't mean to intrude.”

“Well, we are on your bed…” Sylvie murmured, frozen in place.

Timely didn’t seem to hear her. “It’s just that… you happen to be right.”

Loki and Sylvie looked at each other, then back at Timely. As one, they broke apart and sat on the edge of the bed, hands folded primly.

“What do you mean?” Loki asked.

“Missy…” Victor’s eyes grew wide and horror-stricken. “She won’t leave me alone. It’s terrifying… that smile of hers… it haunts me!”

Reaching down to his backpack, Loki slowly began pulling out pieces of gear, one after the other. “Would you be able to provide any proof of that?”

Timely nodded slowly. “I can. She’s been blackmailing me not to give her up to the police — you see, years ago, some of my inventions were fraudulent. I was a con artist, and I never wanted anyone to find out about it. But I can’t do it anymore! I need to tell the world what Missy did to that poor girl…”

As Timely wrestled with his past, Sylvie had to bite her lip to stop herself from mocking the amount of work Loki was doing to set up his recording station. Her brain screamed at her to just shove her portable recorder in Timely’s face and be done with it.

But she didn’t. Perhaps neither of them would ever know what love was, or have the proper metaphor for it, but maybe the metaphor he’d provided earlier wasn’t so bad after all.

As Loki frowned, looking around for the finishing touch on his work station, Sylvie crawled across the bed to pick up the pop filter from where he’d tossed it earlier.

She clipped it to Loki’s microphone, giving him a significant look: We've got this. We're in it together.

“Victor?” Loki began. “Tell us everything."

Us.

One Year Later

As Loki and Sylvie snuggled up on their couch (with a proper blanket over them), Sylvie cradled their new bundle of joy in her arms: the Best Truth & Justice Podcast Webby award.

“Neither of us would have gotten this award on our own,” she said, admiring the silver coil that was emblazoned with 0s and 1s. “Honestly, I think the story of our two podcasts merging was as much of a draw as our solving the murder itself.”

“I think the story of us merging was the real draw,” Loki said, pulling her close and kissing the top of her head.

Sylvie’s phone pinged. “It’s Mobius,” she said.

“And what does dear Mobius want?”

Hey you crazy kids, are you gonna stop canoodling any time soon and give me a name for your new podcast?

They had decided to give up true crime podcasting for the time being and they were still working on the exact nature of their next venture. But they knew it was going to be a storytelling podcast with a sci-fi bent, as inspired by their writer friend A.D. “Ouroboros” Doug. It was well out of both of their comfort zones, but then again… love was also supposed to be out of their comfort zones. And they were doing pretty well at that.

“Are we doing it?”

Sylvie nodded, typed in their idea, and pressed send:

Escaping the End of Time, a new podcast brought to you by the Gods of Stories