LONG CHAPTER GUYS! LONG CHAPTER! Omg, this was fun to write! I hope you guys enjoy this one because I took a lot of pleasure in writing it!
Hydrangeas Say Our Family Will Flourish
Chapter Thirty-Eight: It's All Fun and Games
It all started with a little harmless fun. Loki thought it was a funny idea to tiptoe up behind Amelia, grab her by the shoulders and yell 'boo!' to scare the life out of her, and scare her it did. The resulting scream from his wife brought him endless amusement and he laughed openly as she turned around and gave him a look of murder.
"It's not funny," Amelia claimed, but if it wasn't funny, why was Loki laughing so hard?
He pulled himself together eventually, his laughter sizzling out into uncharacteristic giggles instead, and he gave her a charming smile as he kissed her forehead in apology, "Sorry love, I couldn't resist. You're adorable when you're frightened."
Amelia continued to glare up at him, and then ominously promised him one thing, "You keep this up, you will regret it."
Loki snorted, finding the supposed threat empty. Nothing would come of his boundless little scare pranks on Amelia, she wasn't the type to take revenge and she couldn't exactly scare him in response. That didn't mean she wouldn't try, however.
A couple days later after Amelia and Loki had put the children to bed, they were getting ready to snuggle into their own bed for the night and Amelia had stepped into the bathroom to brush her teeth. As she approached the door to exit the bathroom, she halted, peering through the small gap in the ajar door and spotting Loki standing by the bed, changing into his pyjamas with his back turned to her.
Bingo. The perfect opportunity to get back at her husband.
She pushed the door ever so carefully, opening it slowly to avoid making any noise and inadvertently making herself known; thankfully the door opened completely without even a creak. Loki was still distracted, his head turned away, and Amelia moved with tiny steps, confident that she wasn't making any noise to bring attention to herself. Loki was none the wiser over her current position. He must've thought she was still in the bathroom cleaning her teeth.
Her eyes narrowed. This would teach him to catch her off guard and scare the life out of her, she was going to give him a taste of his own medicine, and he was going to swallow it down and choke on it.
She waited until she was just a few steps behind him, and then rushed forward, tackling him to the bed with a loud war cry.
Except she didn't tackle him to the bed. She squealed in shock as she simply fell through him and her face planted hard against the thankfully soft duvet; her resulting flail lasted just a few seconds as her mind tried to catch up with her and figure out what had just happened, but it all became clear when she heard the telltale sound of his laughter moments later.
She pulled herself up and looked over her shoulder. Loki was hiding behind the bathroom door that she had pushed open, and the Loki that she'd tried to tackle was simply an illusion.
Her jaw hung open as Loki grinned at her, once again finding immense joy at the vexed look on her face, knowing he had gotten the better of her. It just so happened he had been planning on scaring her again, but had faltered upon seeing her pitiful attempt to sneak up on him with the intent to frighten him too.
"I hope you know you could never sneak up on me. Your footsteps are far from subtle, even if you think you're being quiet. I could hear you coming from a mile away, Amelia, you'd never succeed in scaring me." Loki told her, smug, eyes glinting with mischief, and Amelia groaned, burying her face in her arms as she tried to push down her frustration.
Clearly it would not be so easy. How exactly was she going to outwit the God of Mischief? He knew every trick in the book, Amelia doubted there was any cheap trick she could pull that Loki hadn't already tried himself before, but she was nothing if not creative.
In her head, a plan formed. She was going to have to be a little cruel in order to pull one over on him, and at this point in their marriage, Amelia wasn't above playing dirty. She knew exactly how to scare him, and she would be successful.
Precisely three days later, Amelia waited until the children had gone to bed, because she didn't really want them to be around to witness the prank on the off chance that it might traumatise them.
It was the same time of day, the same setting as when she'd last attempted to scare Loki, and she hoped that he wasn't expecting it again or standing outside the door waiting to startle her yet again. She'd been about to hop into the shower, at least that's what she told her husband, who was presumably getting changed or laying on the bed already; Loki wasn't paying too much attention when she smuggled her important prop into the bathroom, wrapped in her bath towel, which would be particularly useful in her scare attempt.
She pulled the item out from its bundled state within the towel and chewed her lip, wondering if it was really a good idea to do this. Was she taking it too far?
The bottle of red food dye in her hand stared back at her.
She wasn't planning to keep the prank up for very long, just the initial fright would be enough for her to be satisfied with her little revenge. It would teach Loki a lesson and that would be it, no further harm done.
Amelia made up her mind and unscrewed the cap; she peered into the bottle, pleased that the liquid was dark in colour, perfect to replicate the look of freshly spilt blood. Oh, she was so evil for this idea.
She needed to make this seem realistic. She needed Loki to burst into the room and think she actually fell and hit her head. With perhaps a little too much joyful enthusiasm, she picked a spot on the floor and poured out a small puddle of fake blood before screwing the cap back on and hiding the bottle inside her towel once again.
Right then. She promptly knocked over the multiple bottles of shampoo and product lined up at one corner of the bath to cause a loud startling noise and then gave a convincing scream before quickly taking position, lying down with her head placed squarely in the centre of the goopy red dye.
"Amelia?" Loki called through the door, having heard the commotion. He knocked twice and called again, "Amelia?"
When his wife did not immediately respond, Loki opened the door and his eyes fell down to where Amelia was sprawled motionless, lying in a puddle of red. Amelia kept her eyes closed as she heard the panicked hitch in Loki's throat and not a moment later she felt him knelt at her side, urgently trying to rouse her.
"Amelia? Amelia?" He called to her with urgency and cupped her cheek, tilting her head slightly to examine the injury. Amelia couldn't keep up the prank any longer and snorted, opening her eyes to see the fear wash off Loki's face to be replaced by disapproval and indignation.
"What the fuck, Amelia?" Loki snapped, inspecting the side of her head more clearly - there was no visible wound, just an abundance of sticky red across her skin.
Amelia snickered, "You said I'd never scare you… I was just proving you wrong!"
Loki didn't find the payback as amusing as Amelia did, "I thought you were hurt," he growled, giving her a light shove and pressing her face further into the red liquid.
Amelia sputtered, pulling away from the floor to smirk up at her husband, "Well maybe you should've thought twice about scaring me the other day, huh?"
"That was harmless fun," Loki responded with an affronted tone.
"Well technically so was this. Nobody got hurt. Besides, I couldn't resist. You're adorable when you're frightened." Amelia raised her eyebrows as she parrotted his previous words back at him, her red-painted face radiating smugness.
Loki made a noise of annoyance in the back of his throat, giving his wife a drawn out look that showed he really wasn't happy with the way she had chosen to get him back, but at the same time he couldn't really pitch a fit when he was the one who initiated the mischief to begin with.
"Amelia… this means war." His promise echoed something more chilling, which just made it sound way more dramatic than the situation really was, but Amelia felt a tickle of dread in the pit of her stomach at the realisation. There were going to be a lot more pranks to come.
Amelia groaned, "Why did I have to marry the God of Mischief?" She mumbled to herself.
Loki was a master at pranks, and as such, he knew that the key to pulling one off was seeing things from his victim's perspective in order to pick the opportune moment when they allowed their barriers to lower and reveal their vulnerability, or in this case, when they kept their guard up as high as it could be. He took advantage of it.
See, Amelia was smart, but she wasn't as smart as him. At least not on the level of deception.
So when Amelia entered the communal living room that very next morning to the sight of Loki serving breakfast to his children - cereal and fruit, because he couldn't cook a thing without burning it - she reacted with pure distrust when he offered her the cup of coffee he had made for her.
Amelia gave him a look, "Nice try. I'm not drinking that."
Loki frowned, head tilting slightly as he played dumb, "What? But I made it just for you." He looked down at the coffee, inspecting it carefully, "Did I put too much milk in?"
His wife's brown eyes narrowed, "No, but I know you've done something to it." Her suspicion was incorrigible, just as Loki had expected it would be. "I'll be making my own coffee, thanks." She marched past him and headed to the kitchen, so Loki let out a quiet sigh and sat down in the armchair, watching the children. The twins sat on the couch, eating Fruit Loops with their fingers one at a time, with their eyes glued to the cartoons on the television, too oblivious to the tension between their parents.
Loki resisted the urge to glance over at Amelia in the kitchen as she prepared her own mug of coffee, he needed to remain inconspicuous, because if she caught him glancing over, she might become even more wary.
He successfully kept his eyes away and she eventually returned to the sitting area, hands wrapped around her cup of steaming coffee as she sat in the armchair opposite him on the other side of the sofa. She looked at him smugly, as though she had won this round and evaded one of his pranks, and he enabled her to think this, looking at the coffee he had made for her that had been rejected, with a despondent look.
Amelia smiled, blew gently on the surface of her coffee, and then took a large sip.
She promptly spat it all back out into her cup, sputtering and coughing with a look of disgust on her face; the children stared at her with wide eyes, none the wiser to what had gone down, while Loki's lips formed into a complacent, superior grin.
"What the f-!?" Amelia just about stopped herself from yelling an obscenity in front of the kids, and stared down at her coffee in revulsion and confusion, "What did you do?" She pinned Loki immediately, her tone beyond accusatory.
"I have no idea what you're talking about," Loki stated calmly, and picked up the mug he had initially offered to Amelia. He took a long sip and then smacked his lips, sighing as if in satisfaction, "Is there a problem with your coffee, love?"
Amelia glared hard at him, looked down at her revolting coffee, then over at the kitchen, then back to her husband. "You swapped the sugar with salt, didn't you?"
Yes. He had done exactly that.
"I did no such thing," Loki claimed, shrugging his shoulders innocently.
Perhaps Amelia should've trusted him in the first place when he offered her the perfectly normal coffee he had made - but he'd known her misgivings after last night would lead her to doubt him.
His wife grumbled under her breath and stormed back to the kitchen to rearrange the salt and sugar into their proper containers so that nobody else would fall victim to Loki's treachery.
Loki smirked, pleased with himself at having gotten back at his wife. Aster and Kari looked confusedly at him, the two of them clearly having difficulty understanding what they had just witnessed, so he gave them a charming smile and told them to continue watching their cartoons.
It wasn't easy to embarrass Loki, but Amelia had an idea. She wasn't entirely sure if it would even work, and it was more of a joke than a prank, but if Loki did take the bait, it would be at his own expense because Amelia wouldn't let him live it down so easily.
Come lunch time, when the communal living room was filled with Avengers, Amelia chose to strike.
She pet Aster and Kari on their heads and left them to their colouring with their crayons and colouring pages on the living room rug, and set her sights on Loki who was sat reading a book, minding his own business.
Tony, Clint and Natasha were also present in the room, and Amelia had waited specifically for more people to be around as she felt her little joke would go over better with an audience. A small part of her hoped Loki wouldn't fall for the joke, because it would reveal something important regarding how Loki felt about a certain part of her body.
It was the only 'prank' she could think of currently, however. She still hadn't gotten the taste of salty coffee out of her mouth.
While the children were suitably distracted, she slinked up behind the couch and leaned over the back playfully, peering over Loki's shoulder, "Hey darling, I finally figured out why my boobs are too small," she spoke, her voice open and inviting and unassuming.
She noticed several heads of the Avengers lift up at the remark in her peripheral, but Loki was predictably distracted by his book and only half paying attention. "Hmm? Why?" Was the God of Mischief's innocent response, not even looking up from the pages of the novel.
The friendly smile melted off of Amelia's face at once when he did take the bait.
"What do you mean WHY?"
Amelia's tone was just shy of shouting, and that drew Loki's attention away from his book; he looked up over his shoulder with an almost startled expression, locking eyes with her furious glare, and he realised then what he had said.
His eyes flickered down to her chest and then back up to her face, and then he glanced quickly to the other occupants of the room. Stark and Clint were staring at him with concerned looks, while Natasha was fighting to hide a smirk.
Loki looked back to his wife, and then plastered a forced smile over his face, "Love, I didn't mean-"
"No, I know what you meant. You think my boobs are too small." Amelia muttered, fully prepared to give her husband the silent treatment for the rest of the day for that little mistake.
"Now, hold on-" Loki tried again.
"Don't even try to talk your way out of this," Amelia hissed, knowing her husband had the tendency to weasel out of things by utilising his silver-tongue. Well he couldn't sweet-talk his way out of this one.
Loki held his tongue for a moment, a look of consideration passing over his face as he once again skimmed the nosy gazes of his fellow Avengers before his eyes settled on the children; the slightly guilty gleam in his eyes suggested he knew he had fucked up, but it grew bright and eloquent again as an idea occurred to him.
He placed down the book and stood quickly, "Stark, watch the children for a while," he demanded, hearing the man's confused response of 'uh, okay' before grabbing his wife's arm and leading her out of the room.
"What's this all about?" Loki questioned Amelia as he led her to the elevator down the hall.
Amelia did not answer, and had her arms crossed over her chest as she walked rigidly.
"Come now, Amelia. You don't actually believe that I think you have small breasts, do you?" He tried gently.
Amelia pursed her lips.
"Darling?"
"...I wasn't expecting you to actually take the bait," Amelia grumbled, "You did not pass the test."
Loki raised an eyebrow as they stepped into the elevator and he hit the button for their floor, "I wasn't even paying attention, I clearly didn't mean what I said."
Amelia nibbled her bottom lip, wondering if that was actually true. Had she actually tricked him into admitting how he truly felt about the size of her boobs, or had he barely been paying attention and didn't mean what he had said?
"Why are we going to our room?" Amelia asked instead, keeping her voice terse to show her displeasure.
Loki urged her out of the lift when it reached their stop, nudging her in the direction of their bedroom, and leaned in to murmur in her ear, "You told me not to talk my way out of this, so instead I'm going to show you why I think the size of your breasts are absolutely perfect."
His words caused her stomach to flutter, and for the next half an hour or so, he used his tongue to worship every inch of Amelia's skin, paying special attention to her breasts, sucking and nibbling her nipples to the musical sound of her moans.
After shedding both their clothing and spending a little time beneath the sheets, Loki curled up to Amelia's side and sucked a hickey into her neck; he fondled her chest with a gentle hand and murmured, "You see? They are perfectly sized… even if they are a little on the smaller side."
The fog of pleasure cleared from Amelia's head at the latter half of Loki's statement and she growled in the back of her throat, batting his hand away and slipping out from under the covers to quickly redress.
"Wh- love. Love, come on I was just joking. I was kidding. Darling!" Loki tried to backtrack as he reached to drag her back into bed, but she slipped out of his attempts to pull her back in and silently seethed while she got her clothes back on. She ended up storming out of the room while Loki tried to apologise, and returned grumpily to the communal living room where she forced a smile and greeted her kids when they rushed to show her the pages they had coloured using crayons.
Tony approached cautiously, seeing the irritation hidden behind her expression, and spotted the mark on her neck, "Uh, what's that, Bubbles?" He enquired, knowing full well what it was.
Amelia hesitated. "It's a snake bite."
"Snake bite?" Tony blinked.
The sound of footsteps echoed down the corridor.
"Yep. And here comes the snake." She spoke her quip just before Loki re-entered the room in a huff. Natasha and Clint howled with laughter.
Amelia managed to stay mad at Loki for a whole twenty-four hours before she allowed his jest to blow over and forgave him, the children were thankfully none the wiser to the little disagreement between their parents and life continued as normal for all of five days, until Loki and Amelia took their children to the mall to do some shopping.
"I want this one mama," Kari declared, holding up an outfit that appeared to be based on Kristoff from Frozen as the four of them strode through the dress-up aisle in the toy store.
"You wanna be Kristoff? Okay, put it in the cart. What about you, Aster? Who do you wanna be?" Amelia asked, flicking through the many colourful Disney princess dresses on the rack, "There's Anna and Elsa, or there's Sleeping Beauty… Snow White? Which one do you want, darling?"
Aster walked back and forth, her eyes prowling over the dresses before her with intense interest until eventually she pulled on the fabric of a sparkly light green dress and looked back at her mother with an expectant gaze.
Amelia picked the hanger off the rack and showed the dress in all its glory, "This is Princess Tiana's dress from the Princess and the Frog, you haven't seen that movie yet, is it definitely the one you want?"
Aster nodded.
Amelia looked up and smirked towards Loki who was pushing the cart, her eyes conveying her amused thoughts - that Aster only wanted the dress because it was green, her favourite colour.
Loki shared the knowing smile, "Well, it is a very pretty dress." He took it from Amelia and added it to the cart on top of the Kristoff costume and prepared to follow after his wife and the kids as they began heading down the end of the aisle, but stopped when something caught his eye.
On the shelf opposite where the outfits were hanging, there were packs of all sorts of different styles of wigs, many different hair colours, short and long, straight and curly. Loki gazed at them curiously for a few seconds before a light bulb sprung to life in his mind and he quickly checked to make sure Amelia wasn't looking his way before picking off a pack containing a wig that had a very similar colour and level of curliness - the same of which Amelia's hair had.
He had a plan. A way to get Amelia back for her pitiful prank from the other day. He hid the wig below the costumes and caught up to his family; he offered to get everything packed up and paid for while Amelia returned to where their driver had parked and got the kids settled back into the car. She was oblivious to his blossoming prank idea when he rejoined them in the car with the shopping bags.
Loki expected his prank would cause a lot of swearing and yelling on Amelia's part, so he sensibly decided to wait until the children were sound asleep and he and Amelia had headed downstairs to the communal living room for the evening, and therefore didn't have to worry about the children being awoken by Amelia's furious shouts that would soon be echoing throughout the lower levels of the Avengers Tower.
They sat and watched the television for a while, Amelia was cuddled up to Loki's side getting very comfortable and dozy, and eventually Loki slipped off the couch under the guise that he was heading to the kitchen to grab a drink, and while he was out of Amelia's eyesight, he pulled the wig out of his inner pocket and used a pair of scissors to cut a lock from it. Perfect.
He returned to the sitting area and tiptoed up behind the couch, and make a snipping noise with the scissors right at the base of Amelia's neck; she flinched away immediately and practically dived forwards, turning to stare over her shoulder with eyes as wide as saucers as Loki held the scissors up in one hand and the lock of hair in his other.
"If you just did what I think you just did, you better not have."
Amelia's voice was dangerously quiet and composed. The calm before the storm, Loki presumed. She lifted her hand and felt her hair near the base of her neck, feeling it for any signs that Loki had actually just cut a lock of her hair off.
She patted her neck with increasing wildness, uncertain and unable to tell herself whether she was missing a chunk of hair - it was difficult for her to discern with such messy, curly tresses in the first place.
"Loki, tell me you fucking didn't," Amelia practically begged, her voice now tinged with anger.
Loki smirked a cruel smirk, "I did," he lied.
Amelia's face scrunched up in fury at once, "What the fuck, Loki? Why!?"
Loki's evil grin persisted, "Revenge. Payback. Whatever you want to call it."
"You fucking asshole! You actually cut my fucking hair!? How the fuck can this be considered payback when you've gone way too far? Fuck you!" Amelia predictably let loose with the expletives, throwing them out left right and centre, all the while Loki stood there clutching the fake lock of hair. Really, if Amelia had looked just a little harder she would've been able to tell that the colour of the strands were slightly off, but she was too consumed by her rage to notice that.
"I think the punishment fits the crime. Tricking me into saying you have small breasts and then giving me the silent treatment for the rest of the day was deserving of something more severe, I think."
"I am going to murder you," Amelia spat.
"You can't. It's basically impossible for you to overpower me."
"I am going to murder you in your sleep," Amelia rectified, her eyes welling up with moisture from just how outraged she was.
"You forget that your every move is horrendously loud, you cannot sneak up on me even when I'm sleeping. How exactly do you plan to murder me?" Loki continued to taunt her.
Amelia stood up suddenly and prowled around the couch like a cheetah ready to pounce, her eyes were on the scissors in Loki's hand and there was a treacherous glimmer in her gaze, "Maybe I'll just cut your hair in return. I'm sure you'd fucking love that."
Loki raised the scissors out of Amelia's reach preemptively before she could even think to tackle him in an attempt to snatch them, "As if you would do anything to ruin my hair, like you aren't constantly gushing about how pretty it looks and how you want to braid it every day," Loki pointed out, "You're just giving me empty threats at this point."
"I will shave your fucking head to get back at you. I don't care if you look ugly when you're bald. You cut my hair without my permission, I'm literally planning your untimely demise and you're stupid if you think I'm lying," Amelia growled lowly.
Loki faltered, wondering if he had maybe gone a little too far with pretending to cut Amelia's hair. Perhaps it was time to reveal that it was all just a harmless, silly prank and that her hair was all still completely intact.
"Amelia, I'm just kidding."
She didn't stop giving him her absolutely lethal stare, and in fact only looked angrier at his admittance, "Shut the fuck up. You can't backtrack now." She didn't believe that he had just been joking around.
"Amelia, I'm serious, it's just a prank. Of course I didn't cut your hair," Loki pulled the party wig out of his pocket, revealing the truth to Amelia, and she stared at the mess of fake hair with a perplexed expression.
It slowly dawned on Amelia that he had just been messing around, and Loki was amused by the palpable comprehension in her gaze; she blinked a few times and then let out a vexed growl which was all too funny. Loki laughed. Amelia grew even madder.
"This fucking close, Loki," she seethed, holding her thumb and forefinger half an inch apart, "this fucking close to a divorce."
Loki threw his head back in another fit of laughter, "I know you don't mean that."
"Just you fucking wait," Amelia snarled, "you're gonna regret that." She was definitely not in a playful mood, she hadn't appreciated his prank, and she certainly wasn't going to admit that it was in any way funny even though it was ultimately harmless.
"Really, Amelia?" Loki smirked, "You still aren't going to give up? I will win this prank war, I am the God of Mischief, there is no practical joke you can play that will be superior to anything I can come up with. You can't outwit me."
"Jesus fuckin' Christ, if your ego got any bigger you'd literally explode," Amelia snapped as she jabbed him in the chest with a finger, "you sound awfully confident for somebody who's gonna have to sleep with one eye open for the rest of his damn life." With that, Amelia stormed past him and left the room, her voice filled with dangerous promises.
Loki lifted an eyebrow. Amelia was getting better at her threats, too bad Loki knew she couldn't easily get the upper hand, even when he was asleep - he was too alert even in his unconscious state, so he wasn't exactly worried.
As loathe as Amelia was to admit it, she didn't actually want to shave Loki's head in his sleep; his hair was too pretty to be ruined, even though it would eventually grow back, but she wasn't so cruel that she would actually chop off his hair in response to him pretending to chop off hers.
It left Amelia at a bit of an impasse, because she was struggling to come up with a good way to prank her husband back; the fact that she was having difficulty thinking of something made her even more irritated because it was, in effect, proving her husband right in his ego-driven remarks about him being better than her at practical jokes. She was not going to let him continue to think that. She needed to come up with something.
It wasn't until about three weeks later that something finally came to her mind, and by then Loki was less suspicious of her at all times because enough time had passed that he probably assumed she had given up. The idea struck her when, in the middle of a little arts and crafts session with the children, Loki had grimly made a comment about how glitter was so annoying and that it simply got everywhere, and how annoyed he was that it had somehow gotten on him when he was the opposite side of the room to where Aster and Amelia were, at that point, sprinkling it over their glue-smeared paper.
So, Loki despised glitter, huh? That little snippet of information gave Amelia an idea.
There was a system at Avengers Tower that dictated whether or not mail addressed to anybody within the building would reach its recipient. Being the superhero organisation that they were, there was a certain level of discretion they had to reserve for receiving mail so that it wouldn't be easy for any bad guys to mail anything harmful into the building. It all went through a special machine that scanned the contents of envelopes and packages for anything suspicious, and the things that turned out to be innocuous were then sorted into a crate which the Avengers sifted through every now and then.
It was kind of fun, because at least eighty percent of everything in the crate ended up being fan mail, and the children loved to watch everybody open them up.
Amelia used this little postal system to her advantage.
On the day the Avengers next opened their mail, Amelia slipped by the crate as Tony wheeled it into the communal living room, and she covertly dropped a special envelope into the mix - it was addressed to Loki, with the Avengers Tower building address on the front, she'd even gotten one of the building's staff members to write out the name and recipient location on the very likely chance that Loki was to recognise her hand-writing. Tony gave her a weird look, but she subtly held a finger to her lips, silently asking him not to mention it; his curious expression turned wary as he understood that this must have been to do with her next ingenious prank.
The mail-opening session went ahead as normal with each of the Avengers occasionally reading a letter out loud and having a laugh when they read something funny.
"Whoa, hey," Steve said after a while, looking down at the unfolded paper in his hands, "this one must've gotten lost in the post, it's pretty old. They're saying thank you for all working together to defeat Thanos."
Amelia felt Loki stiffen beside her, and she didn't blame him, hearing that monster's name after all these years made her own heart stutter in her chest out of pure fear. It had been so long, and yet not long enough for the mention of that big purple son of a bitch's name to not still implant a sense of terror in her body.
A silence fell on the room. Incidentally she and Loki weren't the only ones that felt that way.
"Who is Tah-noss?" Kari asked with innocent curiosity. Aster also paused digging through all the mail to listen for an answer.
"Nobody," Loki answered rigidly and all too quickly. He was glaring at Steve for even bringing that name up to begin with.
The tension in the room was thick, so thick that you could cut it with a knife, so Amelia quickly sought to dissipate it, "Just another bad guy that your daddy helped take down," she told the kids with a forced smile. She clapped her hands together, as if the action itself would help banish the negative thoughts trickling through the room, "Right, let's grab some more mail, huh?"
Tony agreed and reached into the crate, finally pulling the envelope Amelia had added to the pile at the beginning of the session, and he locked eyes with her. She smiled innocently, so Tony handed the letter to Aster, proclaiming, "This one's for yah dad, kid."
Aster skipped over to her father and held out the envelope with a big smile, happy that her daddy had some mail to open, and Amelia quickly sweeped the girl up to sit on her lap, craftily shifting a few inches away from her husband to avoid getting any of the imminent mess on herself or her daughter.
Loki inspected the envelope, turning it over in his hands before taking the letter opener and slicing it open. He pulled the card out and raised an eyebrow at the print on the front of a teddy bear holding a banner that said 'thank you' in bubbly, colourful writing. Without suspecting a single thing, Loki opened up the card and recoiled in an instant when he was immediately showered with a lovely mix of glitter and tiny pieces of confetti.
It went all over him. Stray pieces went all over his clothes, his face, there were even bits in his hair; he looked like a unicorn had vomited all over him. There were echoes of hysterical laughter as the other Avengers in the room basked in amusement - Clint was particularly jovial about it and was slapping his knee as he guffawed - and Aster merely let out a soft gasp, followed by one quiet word.
"Pretty."
A fresh wave of delight rolled over Amelia and she hugged Aster tightly to her chest amidst her giggling.
Loki blinked - there was glitter in his eyelashes - and read the words inside the card, which were distinctly Amelia's handwriting.
'You'll be finding glitter in your asscrack for years to come. Don't test me.'
Loki slowly locked eyes with his wife, and all he saw in her gaze was smug determination. He should never have underestimated her.
A month passed, Amelia fell sick with a stomach bug for a few days and was unable to really get out of bed because she just felt too weak. Loki dutifully took care of her and looked after the kids by himself so that his wife had time to sleep and recuperate, but on the third day of her illness, she woke up in the morning feeling just a little bit better and determined to get up and out of bed.
Loki woke up behind her and kissed her shoulder, stroking her arm gently. "How are you feeling? Can I get you anything?"
Amelia moaned quietly, "I'm okay… I'd appreciate it if you could run me a toasty bath." It would be good to sink into the pleasing warmth of heated water and allow her body to soak and cleanse after feeling so awful the past few days.
Loki hummed and paused. "A toasty bath? ...Yes, I can do that love," he told her, shifting to get up and out of bed, and after a moment he added, "I just need to go check on the kids first, and then I'll get your bath ready."
He sounded so sincere and gentle that Amelia didn't really question the underlying odd tone of his voice as he got up, and her sleep-addled body didn't really help. "M'okie, thank you." Loki left the room, and after only a few minutes, Amelia fell back into a light doze.
She was awoken again an indistinguishable amount of time later to Loki knelt in front of her softly tapping on her arm to rouse her. He held a warm smile on his handsome face and Amelia gazed over his shoulder to see the children standing behind him, looking slightly sheepish and giggly.
The sight was suspect, but Amelia felt groggy and unable to think straight, she must have just been falling into a deeper sleep again when Loki woke her, so she didn't really dwell on it.
"Your bath is ready, love. Do you need help getting up?"
Amelia nodded sleepily and Loki helpfully aided her in sitting up. He grabbed her dressing gown to keep her warm on the short walk from the bed to the bathroom and offered his arm to escort her to her bath. Amelia yawned and held onto him as she stood, taking a moment to stand still as a slight dizziness passed over her for just a few seconds before subsiding. Her stomach felt a bit weird, but Amelia refused to suffer another day of endlessly throwing up so she took a few deep breaths until the feeling passed.
Loki helped her to the bathroom. The children followed along behind them, to Amelia's confusion, but she focused on walking rather than the sound of their impish tittering. Her husband held the door open and led her into the bathroom and up to the bath, and Amelia looked down to where the tub should have been filled with nice hot water.
It wasn't filled with nice hot water.
Instead, there were about ten pieces of toast scattered across the bottom of the tub.
Amelia blinked in tired confusion, eyes narrowed at the perplexing sight. The children burst into louder giggles behind her and she looked up at Loki with a questioning expression, murmuring a quiet, "What?"
"Hm? Oh, you said you wanted a toasty bath. So I made you one."
The children were squealing now, apparently beyond amused at what Loki had set up in the tub. It took all too long for Amelia to actually understand the joke, and when she did she massaged the bridge of her nose and groaned. From the way the kids were laughing, Amelia could only assume they were in on the joke and Loki had recruited them to carry toast all the way from the kitchen to the en suite bathroom in Amelia's and Loki's room.
"Really?" Amelia moaned, "This is a waste of food."
Loki put his hands on Amelia's shoulders, holding her steady; he gave her a kiss on the cheek and spoke, "Well you should've been clearer with your instructions, love. Here, go lie down on the bed again and I'll run you a real bath, alright?"
Amelia sighed, a little upset that she was going to have to wait another few minutes before she could sink into a lovely hot bath and soak, but a small part of her did find the joke kind of funny, "Alright." She was thankful that he had gone easy on her with his prank this time.
Loki stretched as he walked into the communal living room, freshly showered after his intense morning workout in the training room, and spied Amelia with their children in the sitting area. She had a board with a series of shapes on it and the children were giving her their rapt attention as she taught them the geometric names.
"This one's a hexagon, and you can tell because it has six sides." She proceeded to count each individual side while pointing to it, "Hexagon, can you say that?"
"Hetsagon!" Kari exclaimed, his pronunciation just a little off like usual.
"That's right!" Amelia matched the boy's excitable energy and then pointed to the triangle on her board and addressed her daughter, "Aster, can you tell me what this shape is called?"
Aster nibbled on her fingers shyly but quietly answered, "Triangle."
"Absolutely right!" Amelia praised, "You two are getting good at this, aren't you?"
Loki smiled. Aster was speaking more and more often nowadays, and while she often remained quiet and hesitant, the fact that she was making an effort to speak verbally as opposed to using sign language was a clear indication of progress. Loki was sure to encourage her use of sign language alongside speaking verbally as it was a good skill to know multiple languages, and it could definitely come in handy in the future for whatever reason.
Loki headed to the kitchen area, intent on grabbing a nice cool drink from the fridge, but he passed by the counter and spied a box of cakes just sitting there presumably for anybody to help themselves to. He had had them before when Amelia bought them once and they were quite delicious, spectacularly rich chocolate sponge cakes dipped in melted chocolate and covered with chocolate shavings. It was an immensely sugary treat and the pull to open it up and grab one was just too much for Loki, especially since he had just finished training and his body craved a quick energy boost.
He opened the lid of the box and rapidly deflated at its barren sight. No cakes remained, instead there was a note left at the bottom of the box. 'Haha. Too slow. No choccy cakes for you.'
Loki lifted his head and spotted Amelia subtly glancing over her shoulder at him; she quickly looked away and hid her sneaky grin and Loki sighed, rolling his eyes as he headed for the fridge instead.
When would this stupid prank war end? At least he was more creative with his pranks. Eating the last of the chocolate cakes was hardly a prank, it was just rude and spiteful and petty. He needed to come up with something that would put an end to Amelia's pitiful attempts to prank him, she would not take the proverbial trophy as the Goddess of Mischief while he still lived.
And so, he took advantage of a few tidbits of information that only he knew about Amelia.
Amelia was by no means cowardly, but she had a few secret fears that Loki simply did not understand. Obviously her phobia of spiders was no secret, she often reacted irrationally at the sight of the furry little scuttling creatures which were merely a thousandth of her size and meant her absolutely no harm, and as such Kari had inherited the very same fear. Seeing his mother freaking out at the sight of the arachnids made him react similarly.
A secret fear of Amelia's, however, was a certain fictional character from a horror movie series that Loki and his wife had sat down to watch one night. The movie was A Nightmare on Elm Street, and at the time of watching, Amelia had flinched a few times at the sight of the scarred serial killing man who murdered people in their dreams, Freddy Krueger, but beyond that she hadn't shown any reactions that she was truly terrified of him. Until that night when they went to bed and Amelia laid awake for almost the entire night, scared to fall asleep in case the murderous maniac came for her in her dreams.
It was completely illogical for her, an adult woman in her thirties, to be so terrified of a fictional character, but no matter how much Loki had tried to reassure her that she shouldn't be afraid, it hadn't seemed to work.
"Well if he comes for you, I'll just kill him," Loki had attempted to comfort her at two o'clock in the morning after she had tossed and turned and whined about the various shadows in the room looking like figures in the darkness. It hadn't worked, her response was incredibly frustrating.
"How will you be able to kill him if he's in my dream!? You won't even know I'm being murdered until I'm already dead and lying in my own blood!" She whimpered pathetically.
"Amelia, you can't be serious." Loki couldn't believe the words coming from his wife's mouth, it was as if she couldn't separate fiction from reality. Loki knew his wife wasn't that stupid. Eventually, he just ignored her occasional anxious murmurs and fell asleep, figuring she would wear herself out and fall asleep too at some point, and then she would wake up and see that she was perfectly fine and had nothing to worry about.
Except she awoke in the throes of a terrible nightmare that morning, claiming Freddy Krueger had been after her. Similar nightmares persisted for at least a week before she began to settle on the reality of the situation, which was that Freddy Krueger did not exist and could not harm her.
Loki tried to be empathetic to her terror, knowing that he had suffered nightmares long after the death of Thanos and that despite knowing logically that Thanos could not come back, those terrible dreams still gave him sleepless nights for a long time.
But at least Thanos had been a real threat. The only threat that Freddy Krueger posed was based in Amelia's imagination.
That had been months and months ago, and the creepy killer had long since escaped Amelia's mind, unable to terrorise her unless something were to reignite that fear. Perhaps Loki's idea was a bit too cruel, but Amelia had done some questionable things in her bid to out-prank him in the past, and maybe going a little too far would encourage the prank war to come to an end.
With that in mind, Loki ordered a life-size cardboard cutout of Freddy Krueger off the internet - when Stark had inquired about the odd expense, Loki had simply told him to shut up and keep it quiet - and he waited for the opportune moment to scare his beloved wife out of her socks.
He rallied up the kids one Sunday afternoon and informed them furtively that he was going to prank their mother once again; the children looked gleeful and it was that very look that cemented how alike his children were to him, he wouldn't be surprised if they ended up as little Demigods of Mischief in the making.
Loki ushered his children into the en suite bathroom of his and Amelia's bedroom and had them hide around one side of the doorframe, peeking into the bedroom, while he hid around the other side with the cardboard cut-out in hand, facing it away from the children just in case the sight gave them nightmares as well. They didn't need to know what was printed on the cut-out, just that it was something that would scare their mother.
The children remained impressively quiet as they waited for their mother to return to the room - Amelia had mentioned grabbing a special delivery from the mail-sorting room and that she would be back up in just a few minutes. It tickled Loki a bit that the only time he could truly get his kids to be still and quiet was amidst the playing of a practical joke. Kari even had his hand over his mouth to make sure he didn't say a word or make a sound. Loki supposed Aster was used to being quiet anyway.
Loki kept his ears open, waiting for the telltale noise of the elevator doors sliding open down the hall or the footsteps of his wife approaching, and when a hint of noise reached his ears he signalled his kids and pressed a finger over his lip, noiselessly telling them that it was time.
A few moments passed and then the entrance to the bedroom opened and Amelia walked into the room, carrying something in her arms, "Hellooo? Where'd everyone go?" She called when she realised nobody was present, but before she could turn and check for them in the kids room, Loki nodded his head to the kids and shifted the Freddy Krueger cut-out into the doorway in plain view of Amelia, and at the same time all three of the pranksters made a startling roaring noise to truly make Amelia jump out of her skin.
What followed was a piercing scream, and then the sound of something fragile breaking into a million pieces.
Uh oh.
Loki threw the cardboard cut-out face down and stepped out of the bathroom, looking for what had broken and found his wife with her hand over her heart, breathing heavily and staring down at what must have been a ceramic vase in pieces.
The kids scrambled out of the bathroom, looking sheepish as if they knew they were in trouble, and Loki swallowed, expecting to get an earful from Amelia after this. He really hadn't been intending for anything to be broken in the process, he just wanted to scare his wife and then laugh at her over the top reaction to a piece of cardboard.
Instead, Amelia's eyes welled up with tears and she started crying.
Loki's eyes grew wide at the sight, knowing he'd seriously screwed up, and he tentatively took a few steps forward to comfort his wife, "Love? I'm sorry-"
She shrugged his hand off sharply and then buried her face in her hands, and Loki peered back at the kids who looked devastated that they'd helped to make their mother cry, in fact they looked only moments away from crying themselves.
"I… I really didn't mean for anything to break," Loki tried gently, hesitantly reaching out again to touch Amelia's arm. She didn't nudge his hand away this time, but she sniffled to show that she was genuinely tearful behind her hands and not fake crying at all.
"That was an expensive beautiful vase. I was going to display it on the dresser and fill it with flowers." Her words were tight and rigid, and it felt as though Amelia was using every ounce of strength to not scream expletives in his face, "What is wrong with you?"
Loki rubbed the back of his neck, "I'll buy you another, darling. I promise."
Amelia finally peered between her fingers and saw the looks on the kids faces, "You shouldn't be dragging the children into your awful 'pranks'. You're gonna buy me a new vase and then you're going to tell the kids that what you did was wrong and that none of you should ever do that again, understand?"
It wasn't often that Amelia reprimanded him in such a way, but he supposed he could have crafted his prank better and ensured Amelia wasn't holding anything heavy, fragile and expensive before putting his plan into action, so he swallowed his pride and nodded his head, "Understood."
Amelia wiped her tears away and sighed grimly, kneeling down to pick up the broken pieces before any little feet ended up stepping on them.
A sin such as the one Loki committed deserved some scathing retribution. Amelia wasn't going to play games with her next prank, she was going to go all the way and ruin her husband's day because after breaking her brand new pretty vase, he well and truly deserved to be punished.
It was the childrens' fourth birthday, January 24th 2024, and the twin's birthday dinner consisted of takeout pizza from a very fancy pizza place that Tony had recommended, a place that used only the finest ingredients and the owner of which Tony knew personally.
So, Tony had been sweet enough to throw Aster and Kari a little party at his own expenses, one that all the Avengers were invited to, and he had called up his fancy pizza place to personally order a bunch of pizzas for each of the invitees. From medium and large sized pizzas, to a bunch of sides, and then finally a small personal pizza each for Aster and Kari.
They were to be spoilt that day, naturally. Not to mention, the big ice-cream cake they were going to have a hand in devouring after dinner. The kids were excited, and Loki was happy for the incoming pizza as it was one food that held a special place in his heart.
Amelia was still salty about her broken vase. Loki had admitted his wrongdoing and ordered her the exact same expensive vase, but it wasn't due to be delivered for another few days and now the bouquet of flowers she had ordered especially for it had to be placed in a plain vase and they just simply weren't as elegant of a decoration.
Maybe she was going overboard, but Loki needed a metaphorical kick in the butt to stop him from pulling all his abhorrent pranks, and so Amelia stooped to his level and chose to play extra dirty.
She excused herself to the bathroom shortly after Tony had ordered everyone's pizza over the phone and zipped away to the closest restroom, pulling out her phone to dial the pizza place back.
After a moment, an Italian-sounding man picked up and answered, "Hello, this is Francesco's Pizza, would you like to order?"
"Oh, hello. I'm calling on behalf of Mr. Tony Stark, I'd actually like to modify the order slightly, I hope it's not too late to do so?"
There was a pause, and then the man responded, "That would be fine, ma'am, but I require your order number first."
"Of course," said Amelia, and then she rattled off the 12-digit order number that Tony had idly scribbled on a piece of paper in front of her several moments prior.
After a moment of confirmation on the man's part, he sounded satisfied, "That's great, ma'am, how would you like me to change the order?"
"I would like for one of the large cheese pizzas to have chopped up ghost pepper added to the base sauce, please. Is that possible?" A devilish smile came over Amelia's face at just how evil her plan was, but she kept her tone void of playfulness so as not to rouse suspicion.
The man on the phone sounded surprised, "Ma'am I must warn you, the ghost pepper is incredibly hot and should only be eaten by those who can tolerate-"
"I'm well aware, thank you," Amelia interrupted, "That is what I would like, can you do that?"
"Yes ma'am. Is that all you would like to change?"
"That's all. Can you please mark the ghost-pepper pizza with an L on the edge of the box so that I know which one it is?"
"Of course, ma'am. The order should arrive at the Avengers Tower within half an hour."
Amelia was very pleased with herself and promptly thanked the man, said goodbye and hung up. She was giddy with the fact that she was going to get back at her husband in quite a savage way, and if this wasn't enough to stop him from continuing their stupid prank war, she didn't know what would dissuade him.
She returned to the living room where Tony was setting up the Nintendo Switch he had gifted the twins for their birthday and she snuggled up next to Loki, giving him a warm, deceitful smile that he misinterpreted as something soft and gentle, but was in actual fact spelling his doom.
Half an hour later, the pizza arrived and was brought up to the living room where the Avengers gathered around the dining table ready to dig in. Amelia spied the marked box, the L subtle enough on the side that nobody saw or questioned it, and she swiped it up quickly before any of the other Avengers could mistake it as their own.
With the ghost pepper-laced pizza in hand, she took the two small cheese pizzas and lovingly gave one to Aster and one to Kari, smiling sweetly at them as their eyes lit up with delight. Then, she handed the ghost pepper-laced pizza over to her husband who looked ravenously hungry.
"Here you go, darling, this one's for you," Amelia offered it to him in a melodic, innocent voice and Loki took it eagerly.
"Thanks, love." He smiled back.
No doubt the last wholesome, saccharine expression he would throw her way in quite a while.
Amelia took her own pizza, sat down at the table, and waited while all the others dug into their food.
Loki, hungry as he was, wolfed down two whole slices before his face showed the beginnings of something wrong. He cleared his throat as he chewed and swallowed, frowning down at the pizza before him, making a noise of discomfort before coughing slightly into his hand; his gaze narrowed as he gave a few airy breaths and blinked his eyes a few times fast as the heat in his mouth no doubt began to grow with more and more speed and ferocity.
He coughed again, more loudly, and again. Loki looked more like he was choking, and the actions garnered attention from everybody else at the table.
"Uh, you okay Loki? You need help?" Steve enquired, surprised that Loki seemed to be having trouble getting his food down.
"Is it stuck in your throat?" Bruce asked, standing up with the intent to give the Asgardian a few hard blows to his back to help it along.
Loki shook his head rapidly, denying that he was choking, but he was still coughing and drawing far too much attention to himself for his liking. Amelia knew he was about to find this extremely humiliating, and hid her wicked grin behind her hand, making it look as though she was concerned instead.
"Dada?" Aster asked with quiet worry.
The legs of Loki's chair skidded against the floor loudly as he stood suddenly and steadied himself with a hand on the table, his body buckled over slightly and he began to fan his mouth with his hand, panting aloud. There were tears in the corners of his eyes, Amelia noted with a sudden feeling of concern.
Before anybody could say anything more, Loki quickly left the table, walking quickly to exit the room as calm and composed as possible, though he failed to do so when he ended up stumbling and more or less breaking into a run, and took off down the hall, presumably to the closest bathroom.
Amelia blinked, mouth hanging open slightly. Oh. Had she fucked up? She didn't think that was going to happen.
"Okay, what the heck was all that about?" Clint wondered out loud.
Amelia stood and grabbed the open pizza box, closing it up and walking round the table to hand it to Natasha, who took it with a hint of confusion on her face.
"Don't let anyone eat that," Amelia warned, but didn't explain further.
"What did you do?" Natasha asked as Amelia turned to follow her husband out of the room, so Amelia tried to force a look of innocence.
"Nothing!" She exclaimed with a shrug, totally unconvincing, and then mumbled, "Be right back!"
She scurried off to find her suffering husband, a small part of her worried that she was going to find him rolling on the floor in agony from the sheer level of ghost pepper he had consumed without knowledge. Her instincts were correct that he had fled to the bathroom, because the door was ajar and he hadn't bothered to lock it; when she entered she found him hunched over the toilet bowl, retching into it without dignity.
"Honey?" Amelia murmured, stepping into the room carefully.
Loki heaved and gagged, taking a moment to glance over his shoulder and point at his mouth, barely able to speak as he choked out the word, "Hot." Amelia winced at the sight of her husband's face - his cheeks were pink and wet with tears, his nose was running and he was dribbling. It was evident that he had thrown up before she'd entered.
She had definitely fucked up. He was visibly in pain. She hadn't wanted to hurt him, she hadn't expected the spice of the ghost pepper to affect him this badly. Or had she? She was filled with guilt immediately, wondering if a small part of her had expected this and relished in the sight of Loki suffering after he had pulled his stunt that got her pretty vase smashed.
She didn't dwell on it for the moment, and kicked herself into gear, "I'll be right back! Gonna grab some milk!" She knew the milk would help soothe the burning sensation in his throat and the least she could do at that moment was figure out a way to help correct her mistake.
Amelia zipped back to the kitchen, passing the Avengers and her two confused, worried children to grab a carton of milk from the fridge. She gave her kids a reassuring smile and stated, "Daddy's fine!" in the process.
The other Avengers were gathered around the pepper-laced pizza, trying to figure out what was wrong as the ghost peppers were not exactly visible since they'd been chopped too finely.
"Don't eat any!" Amelia repeated.
Tony looked irritated, "Amelia, are you going to tell me what's up with this pizza or do I need to phone the pizza place?"
Amelia froze. She didn't want the pizza place to receive any flak from Tony when it was entirely her fault, so she was forced to reveal her sabotage, "No! I… I may have called them after you ordered, to modify the order slightly…"
"In what way?" Tony asked, accusatory.
"Umm… I had them put ghost peppers in Loki's pizza."
"Ghost peppers!?" Tony raised his voice in exclamation as the others all stared at her in shock, "Are you trying to kill him!?"
Amelia flinched, the way Tony shouted reminded her of her father many years ago and she was rendered temporarily speechless. The children looked upset at what Tony had said, and Amelia swallowed tightly; Tony's face softened and he shook his head as he saw the effect his shouting had on both Amelia and the kids.
"Amelia, I'm sorry for yelling but I've had it with your's and Loki's pranks. They need to stop, please." It was clear Tony was fed up about it all, from the mess of glitter all over his furniture, to pointlessly using up an entire loaf of bread from the fridge, he had every right to be mad.
"I get it," Amelia spoke, "I'm sorry. I'm gonna stop, I promise, but I gotta- um, I gotta help Loki…"
"Go on, then. I can't imagine he's waiting with the utmost patience for you to return," Tony remarked with a sigh. Amelia nodded and quickly zipped out of the room, rushing back to tend to her husband.
"Is daddy okay?" Kari asked nervously, the poor thing had never seen his father act in such a way and it naturally worried both him and his sister.
"Yah, he'll be fine, kiddo. Don't worry," Tony assured the twins as he rubbed the back of his neck, "He'll be back for the ice cream cake, no doubt."
"Hey Stark, don't be too hard on Amelia," Clint spoke up, "I mean… that was hilarious, wasn't it?"
Tony rolled his eyes as the other Avengers chuckled.
Amelia reached the bathroom, announcing she had brought the soothing milk that would aid her husband. Loki looked even worse than the first time, his face had further reddened along with the rims of his eyes and he was panting endlessly, coughing and spitting into the toilet bowl every now and then. When Amelia held out the milk, Loki snatched it up and fumbled to unscrew the cap, then just straight up chugged almost half of the carton in one breath.
It was quite a sight, and Amelia's eyes widened as small streams of milk trailed from the corners of his lips. He gasped and wheezed with relief at the moderate level of alleviation the milk afforded him, and he groaned, using his sleeve to wipe his face free of all the tears, snot, saliva and milk.
"Oh, god, babe… are you okay?" Amelia tentatively asked, rubbing her hand in a circle on his back.
Loki looked like he'd been dragged through a cosmic portal backwards, his eyes wide and red-rimmed, "What happened?" His clueless, incredulous expression sent another fresh wave of guilt through Amelia and she cringed slightly at the thought of admitting what she had done.
"Darling, I… I'm so sorry…" Amelia murmured.
Loki looked at her with narrow eyes, curious and perplexed, "Huh?" He breathed, and then took another mouthful of milk as the heat began to crawl back up his throat.
"I… might have- this might be a prank gone wrong…" Amelia said it had gone wrong, but she was full of denial, because deep down she knew she had wanted to witness Loki lose his mind at the unbearable heat of a ridiculously hot pepper.
Loki looked at her with wide eyes, "What?" he rasped.
Amelia pouted, rubbing his back apologetically still, and admitted her guilt, "I called back the pizza place after Tony ordered… and asked them to add ghost pepper to your pizza," she paused, "ghost pepper is, um, a really hot chilli pepper."
Loki looked momentarily betrayed, the look on his face that of pure disbelief, and then he lowered his gaze, a sickly expression passing briefly over him, "You… you added a really hot… pepper to my pizza… knowing the effect it… has on me?" He huffed and puffed, wanting to make sure he heard his wife correctly.
Amelia frowned shamefully, "Yeah… I'm so sorry, Loki."
Loki covered his face with one hand, breathing out a slow sigh. After a few seconds, his shoulders shook slightly and the unmistakable sound of chuckling escaped him.
Amelia's eyes widened like saucers, "Uh, babe?" What did he possibly find so funny?
Loki shook his head, and then groaned again, "I give up."
Amelia blinked, "Huh?"
"I give up. I concede defeat. I surrender." Loki responded, "You win. You win the prank war. I'm afraid of what you might do next if I allow this to continue."
Amelia's jaw hung open. She couldn't believe it. How was Loki not tearing her head off? She was speechless.
"If it wasn't for the fact that you ruined my pizza, I would be proud of you. Truly, you're… terrifyingly mischievous." He gulped down more milk, "Why did it have to be the pizza?"
Amelia pouted again, disgraced that she had pulled the ultimate horrible prank and Loki was praising her for it while he continued to suffer in his condition, "You can have my pizza, babe. It's pepper-free, I promise."
"It better be."
For reference, the Scoville scale for Jalapeno peppers is 8,000 at most, and the ghost pepper, aka one of the world's hottest chili peppers, is rated 1,000,000. Amelia is truly EVIL.
This chapter is the last bit of joy and hilarity before the angst strikes next chapter so, prepare yourselves ;)
Please comment!