Chapter 33 - Sorry, Was That Weird?
AN: I'll be posting the "Summer Special" next Friday, August 13th, and Part 2 will begin on Friday, September 10th! More details in the end notes
"Did you tell Loki he could do this?" asked Leonard as he leaned against the door to Bruce's lab.
"Do what?" asked Bruce, even though he was looking directly at the man.
"My hair."
"It's green."
"Yes it is. So did you tell Loki he could permanently dye my hair green?"
Bruce frowned. "It's permanent?"
"That's what he said."
"He was probably kidding."
"Or maybe not, and I'm going to be stuck with green hair for the rest of my life."
"If Loki can't turn it back, I'm sure Frigga—"
"You know that Sif woman, the one that wants to kill him? That's because he did something like this to her hair. So obviously Frigga couldn't fix it."
Bruce closed the distance between himself and Leonard and put his hands on the other man's shoulders. "I don't think Loki would turn your hair green permanently. Not on purpose. It was just supposed to be a joke. I'm sorry, but I couldn't say no to him after everything he's been through the last couple of weeks, especially when I thought it would be harmless."
"So this isn't about Betty?"
Bruce arched an eyebrow at him. "Neither of us have been with Betty in years. Sometimes I get a little sentimental about it, but I like to think I'm over her. Aren't you? I mean, Tony has JARVIS looking into the whole underground bunker thing, because obviously we can't just leave her there if it's true. But that doesn't mean—"
The other man stepped forward, closing the gap between them, and Bruce became aware that they were closer to each other than people normally stood unless they were about to do something intimate. Leonard's eyes were closed, but Bruce's were still open when their lips pressed together.
Briefly, something moved in him that hadn't moved for a long time. Sometimes it only takes a drop of oil for the gears of an old clock to spring back to life, thought Bruce. Then he thought, Why am I thinking about clocks right now? What the hell do I know about clocks?
Leonard opened his eyes. "Sorry, was that weird?"
"Surprisingly, no, it wasn't." Bruce had never been with another man before, but it wasn't as if he'd never thought about it before. He'd had a few fantasies, which he figured was normal even for someone who was mostly straight. Sexual attraction was a spectrum, and he'd always thought it was possible he might be a little to the center. "Have you ever been with another man before?" he asked Leonard.
The man who had just kissed him shrugged. "Freud believed that everyone is born bisexual. There's no scientific proof for that, but it did lead to this, ah—interesting week back in college. A professor brought it up in a lecture, and then almost everyone in class seemed to be going through an experimental phase."
Bruce shook his head. "I must have been the only one who spent my time studying when I was in school." Wait—that they were both men in their forties who had never been in actual intimate relationships with other men wasn't the problem anyway. It wasn't safe for him to be with anyone! "Leonard, this isn't a good idea. You know I can't—"
"Just breathe, okay? We can take this slowly, and figure it out as we go."
Bruce nodded, and at least for the moment, Leonard seemed to have forgotten about the color of his hair. But then Bruce thought of something. "Can we not tell anyone about this for a while?"
The big grin Leonard had broken out in only a moment before faded. "You think the others wouldn't accept our relationship?"
"It's not that. It's just Tony—"
Leonard's smile returned. "You think he'd be jealous?"
"Actually, I have a feeling he might be too happy for us. You know how some parents, when their kids come out to them, actually go too far trying to be supportive and end up embarrassing their kids by wearing rainbows all the time and bragging to all their friends about how awesome having a LBGTQ+ kid is? I'm imagining it would be like that, but a million times worse. Pride month would come early to New York. I'm serious, he might actually throw us a parade."
"That does sound like something Tony would do, doesn't it? You're right, we should probably wait a while before telling anyone."
(っ˘з(/~/);;
Loki found Natasha's tablet by her bed. He knew how dangerous it was to be in her room without permission, but Stark had charged him with testing the others' cybersecurity, and he was taking his task seriously.
Now, what kind of password would Natasha use? Of course, the first thing to do would be to try the default password, as unlikely as it was that Natasha wouldn't change it. Loki typed in PASSWORD123, and the tablet unlocked. No, that couldn't be right—alarms immediately started going off in Loki's head, and he stepped out of the way just before the cover of the vent he had been standing under fell on his head. Unfortunately, he wasn't fast enough to get out of the way before Natasha dropped out of it, landing on Loki's back and wrapping her legs around his waist.
"Are you trying to give me another concussion?" Loki demanded.
Natasha threw her weight backwards, pulling him to the ground with her and rolling them until she was sitting on his back. "Loki, do you know why it isn't necessary for me to choose hard to guess passwords?"
"I'm beginning to guess." Loki wondered if Natasha could understand him with his face smashed into the carpet.
"Tell Stark he doesn't need to worry about my cybersecurity. And if you ever come into my room without permission again—well, let me tell you a story. You see, I used to have a little sister. Her name was Yelena. One day, she thought it was okay to come into my room without permission, and—you know what? I'm just going to skip to the end of the story. Like I said, I used to have a sister."
"Got it," Loki said into the carpet, nodding in case what he'd said hadn't made sense.
!(`o´)- ゚0゚)/
"I'm beginning to think this isn't a serious punishment at all."
"What makes you think it isn't?" asked Tony.
Loki pointed to Natasha, who sat on the other end of the couch with a large bowl in her lap. "Natasha has brought popcorn."
Tony shook his head, but Loki could tell from the way he was pursing his lips that he was trying not to smile. "JARVIS, play all of the 'Rappin' with Cap' videos in order. Except for you-know-which-one."
"Are you certain you do not wish for me to delete that one from my servers?" asked JARVIS.
"No, don't delete it. I'm still thinking there might be a use for it. Like if we have to interrogate someone; although come to think of it, that might be a violation of the Geneva Convention."
JARVIS dimmed the lights in the room, and a sixty inch holoscreen appeared in front of them. What Loki supposed must be 'patriotic' music played and the words "Rappin' With Cap" appeared on screen in front of a waving American flag. Then the Captain appeared, standing in front of a green screen on which no image had been imposed.
"Hi, I'm Captain America, and I'm here to talk to you about drugs." To Loki's bewilderment, the Captain held up an egg. "This is your brain," said the Captain. Then he crushed the egg the palm of his hand. "And this is your brain on drugs," he said, the yolk dripping down his fingers. "So remember kids, unless it's the government asking you to be injected with a super-secret serum, just say 'no.'" Another graphic appeared on screen, with the Captain saluting and the words "This has Been Rappin' with Cap."
Had that been the entire video? Natasha and Tony burst out laughing. "Oh my God." Natasha wiped a tear from her eye. "It isn't even original. They just ripped off that one PSA from when I was a kid."
"You know," said Loki, "while I had no desire to 'do drugs' before, I think they might have just gained some appeal."
"What's so funny?" Loki looked up to see Steve wander into the common room from the kitchen. When he saw what they were watching, his face flushed in embarrassment. "Oh God, why are you watching those? You're not going to show him the sex-ed video, are you?"
"I still have nightmares about that one, so no," said Tony.
Later that night, after the others had gone to bed, Loki's curiosity got the better of him. He snuck back into the common room. "JARVIS, play the sexual education video featuring the Captain."
"I'm not sure that's wise, Master Loki. In the past you have proven yourself to have a rather weak stomach."
"I do not have a weak stomach, JARVIS. It is normal to vomit when one is inebriated, ill, or has just turned back into one's mortal humanoid form after having consumed a large number of ants."
"Very well, Master Loki, but don't say I didn't warn you."
( ⋛~o⋚ ) -This is your brain on this fanfic. Any questions?
Loki sprawled face-first on the floor of the common room, willing the contents of his stomach to stay put. Damn his curiosity; that video had been the most disgusting thing Loki had ever seen, and one time in the swamps of Vanaheim, he'd seen Thor get swallowed by one end of a swamp-thing and fight his way out the other. It had clearly been designed to frighten Midgardian school children away from ever touching another living being. Perhaps it was part of the U.S. government's plan to fight overpopulation? If he ever saw Thanos again, he might recommend he switch tactics from murdering half the population of the universe to simply broadcasting that video in as many places as possible.
Someone shook him lightly by the shoulder. "Hey, you aright? Should I have JARVIS wake Bruce up?"
"No, I'm fine—Barton?"
"If your stomach is feeling bad, you should sit up. Lying down will make it worse."
"I have always found that it is sitting up after lying down that makes it worse, so forgive me if I stay exactly where I am."
Barton's hand moved from Loki's shoulder to his upper back, and Loki tensed, unsure of what he was doing. Then the man began rubbing his back between his shoulder blades. "Um, Barton—what are you doing?"
Barton paused, and Loki regretted saying anything. "Oh, sorry. This just always seems to help when—ah, never mind. I can stop."
"No, please continue." Even though it embarrassed him to admit how good it felt, the gentle massage proved a welcome distraction from the queasiness in his stomach.
Barton began petting him again, and Loki arched up into it, moments away from turning himself into a cat so he could take full advantage. "Look, I'm sorry for how I've treated you, okay? That's going to change. And if you meant it when you tried to apologize, I accept your apology. Not that you have anything to apologize for. You're just a kid, and most adults would have broken under those circumstances. As an adult, I'm the one who should apologize to you—"
"Don't be absurd." You're only mortal, Loki nearly said, but he had gotten better about not saying the first thing that popped into his head at any given moment. "We were both under the scepter's influence," he said instead.
Clint continued rubbing Loki's back until Loki couldn't stand it anymore. He jumped into the surprised archer's lap and began butting his chin with his head.
The man froze for a moment, but then he started petting Loki again, this time all over his small, furry black body. He shook his head. "You know, this shapeshifting thing is going to take some time to get used to."
Loki purred and arched his back again in response.
~(=^‥^) ヽ( ̄_ ̄ )
Bruce's eyebrows crept upwards as he stood in front of the couch. "Wonder how this happened?"
The other Avengers came to see what he was looking at. Tony took his phone out of his pocket to take photos, but at the sound of Bruce's voice, Clint's eyes had already begun to flutter open. He looked down his chest at the young demigod sleeping on top of him.
"You guys do some drinking last night?" Tony asked. "Because we talked about it, and Loki's not allowed to drink anymore."
Clint glared at him. "I don't drink with teenagers, Stark. When I went to sleep he was a cat." He tried to shake Loki awake, but Loki only snored more loudly and cuddled into Clint's chest. "Damn it. He's a lot heavier than he looks. Come on, help me get him off—"
"A cat, huh? I know, maybe if he hears the can opener, he'll wake up."
"You're hilarious, Tony."
"I don't know, I think he might have the right idea." Steve went into the kitchen and grabbed a pan from the cabinet under the stove.
( ^_^)つ―===
Loki awoke to the smell and the sizzle of cooking bacon. He yawned and stretched as he pushed himself up.
"Would you mind getting off me now?" asked Clint, as Loki straddled his stomach. "Are your bones coated in Adamantium, by the way?"
"I may be more or less mortal at the moment, and I may look human, but I'm not. I would surmise that my bones are in fact somewhat denser than your brittle human bones."
"All the more reason for you to get off my brittle human bones. I don't mind if you want to sleep on me as a cat, but in the future, could you not turn back into yourself in the middle of the night?"
"I am always myself," Loki told him.
"Whatever, just get off."
Loki hopped off Clint and headed straight for the kitchen, where everyone else already sat around the table. Natasha had the newspaper spread out in front of her, likely scanning the myriad stories about SHIELD's fall and Hydra's reappearance. Tony and Pepper sat catty-corner from one another, and Bruce and Doctor Samson sat practically on top of each other on one side. Loki realized that with everyone there they would be short a chair, so he turned into his female self and sat in Thor's lap.
"You don't have to turn yourself into a female to sit in my lap, Loki."
"I didn't turn myself into a female just so that I could sit in your lap." Loki grabbed a piece of toast from her brother's plate.
"You don't have to turn yourself into a female so that you can steal food from my plate, either."
Loki shrugged and dipped her toast into the yolk of one of her brother's fried eggs.
"Sister, while it is good to see that your appetite is back, are you going to eat all of my breakfast?"
Loki responded by shoving all of her brother's bacon in her mouth. Steve placed another plate of bacon down on the table in front of them, and she grabbed some of that too.
"Guess I'm going to have to get a bigger table," said Tony. "Maybe big enough to fit a few extra, just in case anyone else moves in."
"You planning on adopting more kids, Stark?" asked Clint as he took his own spot at the table.
"You never know."
Pepper arched an eyebrow at him. "Not that I have a problem with anyone who's already here, but if you are going to adopt any more kids—or pets, wild animals, aliens, or adult humans— you might run it by me next time. I probably won't say no, but as your future wife, it would be nice to be included in the decision."
Tony nearly choked on his coffee. "Wait, future wife? I haven't even proposed yet!"
"Yes you did, Tony. You just forgot."
"Must be all the drugs you did in the sixties." Loki stabbed the egg he'd already broken with his fork and lifted it up, the yolk running down onto the plate.
"The sixties? Just how old do you think I am?" Tony turned his attention back to Pepper. "If I proposed to you, why don't you have a ring?"
"I do, I just don't wear it. It's an ethically mined six-carat oval cut diamond set in platinum. I've been waiting for a good time to announce our engagement to the public."
"You mean you're waiting until you need to distract the public—wait, only six carats? There's no way I only bought you a six-carat diamond—" Pepper shut him up by capturing his lips with her own. Bruce and Doctor Samson exchanged small smiles with one another and tried to maintain eye contact but failed, like a couple of coy maidens flirting with one another. Curious, thought Loki. Things were certainly starting to get interesting in Avenger's Tower.
Steve put a plate of pancakes down in front of Loki and sat in the last available spot at the table. "This is nice. Everyone sitting down around the table, eating breakfast with one another."
"It is," agreed Pepper.
"Sir," JARVIS interrupted, "there are two Jones in the lobby of the tower. Should I send them up?"
Tony looked up at JARVIS's camera. "Two?"
"Ms. Jessica and Miss MJ."
"Do you suppose they're related?" Loki wondered aloud.
"I don't think so," said Tony, "but I guess they could be, now that you mention it. They're both pretty intense, when you get right down to it. Oh right—Natasha, I kind of promised this little girl she could meet you. Sorry, I know you don't like doing this kind of thing."
"Someone like me shouldn't be a role model for little girls," complained Natasha.
"Hey, I know how you feel," Tony told her. "But this girl totally blackmailed me into saying yes to this, so I don't think you're going to corrupt her or anything. You'd be too late."
A few minutes later, Jessica Jones stormed out of the elevator, followed by MJ, who walked in a more leisurely manner as she observed her surroundings.
Jessica smiled an obviously fake, plastered on smile. "So I'm wondering, Stark, if this shrink of yours can somehow help me fulfill the requirements that I take a court ordered anger management class. Because I will freaking murder someone if I have to do the one at the Hell's Kitchen community center again."
Tony gestured to Doctor Samson. "Why don't you ask him yourself?"
Doctor Samson extended a hand towards her. "If you'd like, we can talk about it up in my office."
Jessica declined to shake the doctor's hand, but after grabbing some coffee and some bacon, she followed him upstairs.
MJ sat in the seat Samson had vacated, which happened to be across from Natasha. "Hi. I'm MJ," she said.
Natasha smiled at her in a kindly, big sisterly way Loki had never seen her smile before. It was almost believable. "Hi, MJ. My name's Natasha."
"I know who you are. So what was it like to be an assassin for the Russians? How many people have you killed? What do you think is going to happen now that all of SHIELD's records have been leaked and everyone in the world knows about your past?"
Natasha's smile turned into a scowl. "What are you, a miniature reporter? No comment." She fixed Tony with a glare. "Cute little girl, Stark."
Tony beamed at MJ like a proud father. "Isn't she just?"
MJ, seeming to have lost interest in Natasha once she had made it clear she wouldn't be answering any questions, turned her attention to Tony as well. "I'm meeting Peter and Ned in the park later," she told him. "Can Loki come play with us?" She seemed to have morphed back into a little girl now, all full of sweet innocence. Like Natasha's earlier performance, it was almost believable.
Tony just blinked at her.
"May I?" asked Loki, batting her eyelashes and also putting on her best "innocent little girl" face. Though she was every bit as surprised as Tony was that she was being asked to "play"—she couldn't recall anyone ever asking if she could come out to play before, even when she had been very young. Instead she'd have to run after Thor and his friends, who would complain bitterly about having his younger sibling tag along.
"Ah, hell no," said Tony. Pepper jabbed her elbow into his side. "I mean, heck no. You kids got on the wrong train and ended up in Texas. There's no telling what you guys would get up to with Loki."
"What if Peter and Ned come here?" asked MJ.
Tony threw up his hands. "Yeah, sure, why not? You guys really shouldn't be running around the city without an adult again anyway."
"Okay," MJ chirped. She pulled out her phone, presumably to text them. Loki wondered if it had been her goal all along to get them into the tower.
( ° ᴗ°)~ð (/❛o❛\)
When MJ's friends arrived, Loki had lead them all into his room. Though now that they were there, he wasn't sure what you were supposed to do with a group of twelve year old children.
"I can't believe I'm in Avenger's Tower," Peter said breathlessly. "And that you're actually Thor's sister, and that you live here!"
At least he could speak. Poor Ned seemed to have been stunned into silence, and Loki kept expecting him to fall to his knees and prostrate himself before the glory of the Avengers' living quarters. He and Peter hadn't even met any Avengers that they hadn't already met; Stark and Pepper had been the only "adults" there to greet them, while the others had all begged off before their arrival and disappeared into training rooms or laboratories.
"Your room's kind of boring, though." MJ had taken up residence on Loki's bed, and seemed to be entertaining herself with some sort of game on her phone. "No offense, there's just not much in here."
"I couldn't bring much with me from Asgard," Loki told her. "Just a few books."
Peter's eyes grew fractionally wider than they already were, and Loki worried that if anything else took him by surprise, his eyeballs might pop out and roll across the floor. "You have books from Asgard here?"
Loki pointed to the books sitting on top of her dresser.
Peter scrambled to pick up one of the books. He flipped through a few pages, then put it down and picked up another. Again, he flipped through a few pages. "Wait, I can understand this one. How is this in English? Do they speak English in Asgard? I mean, obviously, you speak English really well, but—"
"I speak many languages 'really well.' I have found that when one is immortal, one has plenty of time to learn to speak several languages fluently; though somehow, most Asgardians never manage to become fluent in one. The book you are holding is for beginners, so it is written in Allspeak," Loki explained. "Most of the more advanced books are written in ancient runic languages."
"Allspeak? Is that like, a universal language that gets translated to whatever language the person reading it understands?"
"Something like that."
"How could that possibly work?"
"I could try to explain it to you, but it would take several of your lifetimes."
"Lifetimes? How old are you, really?"
"One thousand, fifty. But I am still quite young; Asgardians can live to be five or six thousand years old."
"Whoa, that's crazy," said Peter, still leafing through a one of the first books that Frigga had taught Loki from, which she had kept for sentimental reasons more than anything else. "Although I'm not sure what you mean by immortal, if you only live for five or six thousand years. I thought if you were immortal, it meant you lived forever."
"Asgardians are immortal compared to your people. They're impervious to most diseases, and extremely resilient to injury." Loki decided not to mention that technically, she was neither an Asgardian nor was she presently immortal. Though she supposed she wasn't aging as a mortal would, and Hela had vowed to send her back if she wasn't satisfied with the way Loki died—those two things together actually might make her closer to being truly immortal than anyone else in the universe, yet didn't protect her from mortal sickness and injury. It was the perfect solution, really; she couldn't die, but she was still vulnerable enough to appeal to her mortal host's protective natures.
"It must have been really cool to live in Asgard. Earth must seem boring in comparison."
Loki shook her head. "I like it better here. The people here have treated me justly, and the food is much more interesting."
"Can you really do magic?" asked Peter.
Loki made a tiny butterfly made of green light appear in the palm of her hand.
"THAT IS THE MOST AWESOME THING I'VE EVER SEEN."
Loki blinked up at Peter in surprise. Looking around the room, Ned's jaw had also dropped open, and even MJ stared at the butterfly as if she'd never seen anything as intriguing as a simple light manipulation spell before. "I can't believe magic is real. What else can you do?"
"At the moment, I can't do that much, because I've locked away most of my magic."
"Why did you do that?"
Loki closed her fist over the butterfly, making the energy disperse. "You can never get what you really want without sacrificing something. But I haven't sacrificed it all—I can still create basic illusions, and I can turn myself into different animals."
"Ooh, do a llama!" Ned requested, as if Loki had offered to make them balloon animals. Apparently he had recovered his ability to speak. Loki couldn't help thinking it a shame the boy hadn't been rendered permanently speechless.
(* ̄ー ̄)ノ*:・ ᙙᙖ ゚✧ (*´▽`*) ヽ(´・`)ノ (・o・)
"Did you have fun with your friends today?"
"Friends?"
"Yes, Loki, friends. You know, the kids that wanted to play with you. That's usually what you call kids that want to play with you—I think. Honestly, I wouldn't know. I might have mentioned this before, but I had a fairly lonely childhood too."
"What are you doing here, Stark? I know we've joked about how you've adopted me, but I don't need you to tuck me in." When Tony had come into her room, Loki had been sitting in bed reading. She had already brushed her teeth and dressed for bed in chibi Avengers pajama pants and a t-shirt on which the Black Widow crouched in an offensive position, ready to spring out onto her opponents.
Tony shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "Oh, okay then. I really just came in here to check on you, make sure you're still doing alright. I know you weren't too happy about Frigga leaving again. I didn't want to wake up in the morning to find out you'd hacked into JARVIS again and bailed on us."
"I'm fine, Stark."
"Oh. That's good, then." After a moment of awkward silence, Tony turned towards the door.
Loki cast her book aside and leapt out of bed. Before Tony could make it out of the room, she threw her arms around his waist and buried her face in his back. "Thank you for letting me stay."
Tony tensed at first, but then he relaxed. "No problem, kid. You can stay as long as you like."
╮ (. ❛ ᴗ ❛.) ╭
Author's Note:
Friday, August 13th, 2021: Eat, Pray, Loki "Summer Special"
It will have some spoilers for the Loki Disney+ series, but you can skip it and come back to it later if you want. It's a side story, so skipping it shouldn't affect your enjoyment of Part 2.
EDIT 8/13/21: The first chapter of the summer special has been posted under the title Eat, Pray, Loki: TVA Beach Blanket Bingo. Please make sure to check it out!
Friday, September 10th, 2021: Chapter 1 of Eat, Pray Loki Part 2: Four Weddings and an Asgardian Funeral
Who's getting married? Who's funeral is it going to be? I've got the weddings mostly worked out, but even I'm not sure who's going to kick it, or how permanent their death is going to be! You'll have to read it to find out…
Thank you for making it all the way to the end of Part 1, and thank you for your reviews, favorites, and follows (*ˊᗜˋ*)/ᵗᑋᵃᐢᵏ ᵞᵒᵘ*
