Hey! Who needs something light and fluffy to read? My hand's up!
.-.
Playground
Chapter 4: Lunch
There were few things Loki would less like to do than sit down for a meal with Tony Stark. Unfortunately, breaking Ollie's heart was one of them. He was hard pressed to say no to his son in anything – another occasional source of conflict between him and Jane – but their time on Midgard had been a strain on Ollie. Their situation wasn't permanent, of course. Jane would find a research position, they'd find a place to live with some kind of outdoor space where Ollie could work off energy without running into any of Loki's old enemies or anyone else who might still be holding a grudge. And Loki would figure something out. In the meantime, though, Loki could not deny Ollie a friend and playmate.
Even if that friend was, at the moment, more interested in him than in his son.
"Is your daddy a king?" Morgan asked as the four of them walked toward the place Tony had said he had planned to take his daughter for lunch.
"He was. Now my older brother is king."
"Did your daddy die?"
"Hey, Pumpkin, we don't ask people things like that."
"Why not?"
"Because it might be rude. It might make people sad."
"It's all right. Yes, he died."
"Are you jealous 'cause you don't get to be the king?"
"Morgan!"
"Still all right. No. My brother is stuck on Asgard and I get to go to Mid— to New York and other places with my family. And have popcorn. We very much enjoy popcorn, don't we, Ollie?"
"We love popcorn!"
"I like popcorn, too," Morgan said.
"Sorry about the Grand Inquisition there," Tony quietly said over the kids' popcorn talk. It sounded vaguely interesting – because almost everything his kid said was interesting and because Ollie, who was apparently new to popcorn, thought microwaves were the coolest thing ever – but if Morgan kept up like this it might be his only chance to cut in. "She may've seen one too many kids' movies about sibling rivalry over a crown. Prepare yourself for questions about evil stepmothers and stepsisters."
"Thank you for the warning, but I don't have any of those, evil or otherwise. I'm not actually afraid of questions from a four-year-old."
Morgan let out a shriek then, yanking Tony's attention away from Loki's look of disdain in a panicked heartbeat. She'd come to an abrupt halt and pulled her hand out of his, but she was still on her feet, and he could see no cause for alarm.
"Is your mommy a princess?"
Ollie nodded. "But don't call her that. She doesn't like it."
"Why not?" Morgan asked, glancing up when Tony gave her a nudge to keep walking and took her hand again. "If I was a princess, I'd make everybody call me that all the time."
Tony feigned a choking spell. Imagining that was so easy.
"I don't know. She just doesn't. She tells people to call her Dr. Foster."
"Not a fan of the fancy royal life, huh?" Tony said to Loki.
Loki swallowed and studied the sign on a storefront they were passing. "She says she prefers 'doctor' because she earned that title."
"I can see that. Though I'm pretty sure she earned the royal one, too."
Only the familiar soft warmth of Ollie's hand in his kept him going, pace steady. "I'm not certain what you're trying to imply, but I will not stand for you slandering my wife."
"I wasn't slandering Jane," Tony said, running a hand over his beard and extending a single finger to point in Loki's direction when he knew Loki would see it.
Three shrieks in a row this time cut off Loki's reaction, or simply caused Tony to miss it.
"Prince Ollie?"
Tony knew exactly what question and answer he'd missed.
Ollie was giggling. "Not like that. My real name's Oliver. And I won't be 'ficially a prince until I'm ten."
"That's ages from now," Morgan said, crestfallen.
"Would that it were," Tony murmured.
"Indeed." When Loki finally looked up from Ollie, he found Tony watching him with a strange look on his face. A thoughtful look, strange because it did not scream distaste or anger or ego-driven superiority. Loki narrowed his eyes and looked ahead again, trying to think ahead, too, to how he was going to deal with this lunch. He hadn't intended to be out this long. His stomach sank. He hadn't intended to go to a restaurant.
"Do you have elephants?" Morgan was asking Ollie.
"No, do you?" Ollie asked, prompting a spate of giggles.
Ollie knew what elephants are; they had watched the movie Dumbo.
"What kind of restaurant are we going to?" Loki asked as quietly as he could. Tony was wealthy. If he had to back out now, it would be much worse than had he said no when Morgan first asked.
"Getting anxious? We're almost there, one more block. Don't worry. We're in 100% truce mode with my kid here. Yours, too."
"I'm not worried." That wasn't quite true. He was worried – a constant prickling feeling of nerves on edge. He was walking next to his enemy, surrounded by more potential enemies, if they happened to recognize him, with his son beside him. Not worrying was not possible. "I simply didn't bring much money. I had planned to take Ollie for ice cream, not a meal at a restaurant."
Tony looked down, as the kids' previous chattering took a swift detour with eager cries of Ice cream, Daddy! and Ice cream, Papa! "We're not going for haute cuisine here. Just ye olde Golden Arches. McDonald's?" he added when Loki still looked uncertain. Not that that helped, either.
"Yayyyyy! McDonald's, McDonald's," Morgan said over and over in a sing-song voice, tugging on Tony's hand.
"What's McDonald's?" Ollie asked.
Loki silently thanked him.
"You don't know about McDonald's?"
Ollie shook his head.
"It's the best! Ice cream cones and Happy Meals and the Cookie Monster!"
Loki was distracted by Tony mouthing "not the best" to him and the reason for Ollie's hand slipping into his didn't immediately register. Cookie Monster. Someday, if Ollie was raised Asgardian at least, the mention of a monster would make his boy's blood sing for adventure and battle. Right now he liked tame stories of monsters, but he liked them best safely in his father's arms. Loki could not imagine that Morgan Stark was much different, and her father clearly cared for her and would not intentionally put her in harm's way. The name was also a rather strong indicator that this was one of Midgard's many fictional monsters for children's entertainment. "I'm sure there are no monsters at McDonald's. Are there…Mr. Stark."
"No monsters at all," Tony said while Morgan giggled beside him. He could swear there was a tiny bit of disappointment alongside Ollie's more obvious relief. Nah, he was probably imagining it. "Cookie Monster's not a scary monster, but he's not at McDonald's anyway. He lives on Sesame Street." Morgan jumbled them all up into a giant heap of not-real people, and Tony and Pepper had stopped trying to correct her. That she correctly sorted them into real and not-real was good enough.
"Do you know Sesame Street?"
Ollie didn't, of course, so Morgan started singing the song for him.
"Your kid'll be all caught up on the five-and-under Western civilization pop culture scene by the time lunch is over," Tony said. At least neither McDonald's nor Sesame Street had any princes or princesses; Morgan had been momentarily distracted from that line of thought. It would be back; Tony was certain of it.
"He knows some of it already," Loki said, still worried about lunch. Manhattan was expensive, even if this McDonald's wasn't among the most expensive restaurants. "Jane bought some of those disks on Midgard."
"Oh yeah? Which ones?"
Loki gave Tony a side eye, keeping Ollie in his field of vision. "The Sword in the Stone, The Lady and the Tramp, The Jungle Book – that's his favorite at the moment."
"Jane's hooking him up with the old classics?"
Loki made a noncommittal noise; they were approaching the McDonald's. Tony, thankfully, didn't seem interested in pursuing the discussion of Midgardian children's movies any further.
"Okay, Pumpkin, what'll it be?" Tony said as he opened the door.
"Happy Meal!"
"Hamburger or nuggets?"
"Nuggets."
"Apples since we're getting ice cream…juice or milk?"
"Apple juice."
Loki filed the entire exchange away for reference as they approached the counter, where one ordered, much like at the standing pizza-by-the-slice establishments he'd discovered here. Those slices were one dollar each, and one was enough for Ollie, who liked the plain cheese pizza; Loki found it tolerable if not particularly enjoyable or satisfying. He'd had hope when they first entered, but once he started examining the menu he realized this was neither a restaurant as he thought of it nor a pizza-by-the-slice place. He found the Happy Meal: $4.59 if he got it with a hamburger. $5.09 if he got it with a "4-piece Chicken McNugget." With the tax added in, he would just be able to pay for the one with a hamburger.
So of course Ollie wanted the nuggets. He knew what they were; Jane had had them made for him on Asgard several times. Ollie loved chicken nuggets and they reminded him of home, of Asgard, ironically enough.
"I'm sorry, Ollie, we have to get the hamburger."
"But why? I don't like hamburgers. I like nuggets. I want nuggets."
"You do like hamburgers. You had one just last night."
"I don't like them anymore. I want nuggets."
"Is there some kind of weird Asgardian 'no-nugget' dietary restriction?"
The humiliations of this day had no end. "No."
"Then what's— Oh. Hey, it's on me. Don't worry about it."
"That will not be necessary."
"Seriously. Don't be a douche. Besides, if a fiver's your limit, you should know the Happy Meal doesn't include the ice cream."
Loki closed his eyes, squeezed them tight for a brief moment. He saw no way around it – no way that wouldn't bring Ollie unhappiness. Tony Stark was paying for Ollie's lunch.
"What's a douche?" Morgan asked.
"It's French for 'shower,' but forget that one. We speak English. Huh. That reminds me. Morgan, don't let me forget, Mommy and I need to talk about which foreign language we want you to learn."
"I already know French. Douche!"
"Here's the amazing thing about French. People speak it very quietly. Okay? Like little French mice. So, done deal, yeah? Happy Meal with nuggets? What do you want with it, little man? Apples and apple juice sound good, or are you more of a milk type?"
"Apples and apple juice," Ollie said with a big smile.
"Four pieces enough? They also do six pieces. Nuggets."
"Four is enough," Loki said, doing his best to keep a smile plastered on his face for Ollie's sake. Ollie who was now grateful to Mr. Stark for getting the lunch he wanted.
"Excellent. Two Happy Meals with nuggets coming up. What about you, Loki?"
"Me?" He so hated obvious questions but Tony's had truly caught him off guard. "I don't need anything."
"It's lunch. Dads eat lunch, too. Come on, as far as favors go, picking up the tab at Mickey D's isn't exactly a big one. How about you and me holster the weapons, let the kids have some fun, and enjoy a nice tasty meal of way too much sodium and carbs. Sound good? Some advice, and I really do recommend you take it. The nuggets are kids' food. I don't know why they like 'em but they do. Stay away. The competition has better burgers, so stick to the chicken sandwiches. The buttermilk one isn't bad. The salads are okay, too, if you're into that kind of thing. And—"
"A chicken sandwich is fine," Loki said, just to shut the man up. "The buttermilk one."
"Fries and a Coke?"
"Fine."
"Ooookay. How about this, then? I go order, and you pay me back by swearing on your life to protect my kid right alongside yours over in the play area."
Loki took a literal step back, pulling at Ollie whose hand he had and who was busy chattering away with Morgan. "You said paying for lunch was a small thing. The safety of a child is no small thing."
"No. It's the only thing. Didn't mean to compare the two. The equipment's all safe. Just…watch over them both, okay?"
Loki nodded, slowly. "I swear it."
-,-
-,-
"Hey, Munchkin, you never did tell me what actually happened earlier. How'd you fall out of the tree?"
Morgan shrugged, mouth too full of McNugget to answer. Ollie was less impressed with them, eating about three-quarters of one for Morgan's sake, it seemed, before accepting half of Loki's sandwich sans the tomato that Loki pulled off of it for him. Loki's kid probably ate gourmet chicken fillet nuggets on Asgard and found the McDonald's version not quite on par.
Other than the kids gabbing over their Happy Meals as they opened them – and Tony had to admit, Ollie was adorable with his wide eyes as he took it all in and let Morgan explain everything – the table had been silent. Morgan and Ollie insisted on sitting next to each other, which left Tony next to Loki. That was all kinds of weirdness, but as the minutes ticked by, the weirdness at least became less uncomfortable. How freaked out could you be over a guy who clapped for your kid when she hit the bottom of the slide with her hands up in the air, who sliced his sandwich in half with some kind of dagger he pulled out from underneath the table and picked the tomato off the half he gave to his kid before sliding the mayo-smeared dagger back under the table and out of sight, who was munching on French fries and washing it down with Coke he drank through a striped straw? He was less worried about Loki now than he was about Morgan.
"Why were you climbing a tree in the first place?"
He got another shrug, before she swallowed and spoke. "I just wanted to."
Not helpful. Despite that fact that Morgan was getting pretty good about being able to explain why she did what she did. He didn't think he was hearing the full truth. "You're not in trouble, Morgan. But I do want to know what happened." Beside him, without directly looking, he could see Loki tensing, sitting up straighter.
Loki took in Morgan hunched over her chicken and Ollie picking at the sandwich bread. The last couple of bites of his own half of the sandwich went down. "Ollie. Did Morgan perhaps decide to climb the tree because you did?"
"I don't know," Ollie said, looking right up at him. His son was – thankfully – a terrible liar.
"Ollie and me both wanted to climb it," Morgan said, full of the confidence her earlier answers had lacked. A better liar than Ollie, then. Loki vacillated between pride and embarrassment. The ability to tell a lie and thoroughly sell it was an important skill, of course. Just not one he actually wanted his son to be able to use against him.
"And then what, you slipped or something?" Tony asked.
"My foot didn't stay where I put it."
"Okay, well, sometimes feet do that."
"What about your arm, Ollie, how'd that happen?"
Loki turned and narrowed his eyes at Tony, but Tony either didn't notice or was ignoring him. He was the only one who got to question his son, not Tony.
"I fell, too."
Loki's gaze shifted back across the table just in time to see Morgan twisting away from Ollie and wiping wide-eyed surprise from her face. He couldn't quite hold back his smile – he knew Ollie was fine, he wasn't worried – because Morgan wasn't such a skilled liar after all. Then his smile faded. Ollie, he knew, had not pushed Morgan. But could Morgan have pushed Ollie? He reminded himself again that Ollie was fine, and that Morgan at least did not seem like an ill-tempered child. Something else, then? "Ollie, the truth please. How did you hurt your arm? You aren't in trouble, either," he added, following Tony's example. Which was rather grating, but it did seem an appropriate reassurance to make. His stomach gave a twist at the realization that he had just implicitly taken parenting advice from Tony Stark, but he shoved that thought away to keep his focus on Ollie.
Ollie bit into an apple slice, eyes fixed firmly on it, and chewed.
"If you think I'm going to forget that I asked you a question, son, you're mistaken."
Ollie swallowed, then mumbled, "I jumped."
Loki blinked heavily, and otherwise did not react. He'd been schooling himself not to. He'd expected something worse, though. Jumping out of a tree was nothing so terrible. Jane might disagree, of course. "You jumped…and your arm struck a branch on the way down?"
"I don't know. I didn't feel it."
"Don't be mad at him. He was being nice."
"I'm not mad at him, Morgan. Only worried, because I love him and I don't want him to hurt himself. Yes? Ollie?" Loki reached across the table to get a finger under Ollie's chin and nudge it upward. "You wanted to check on Morgan when she fell?"
Ollie nodded, still subdued. Loki could only assume he was still afraid of being scolded. There had been some scolding lately, with various accidents in the hotel room.
"That was thoughtful and kind of you, to worry for someone else. Come here," Loki said, tickling under Ollie's chin then giving his ear a light tug.
Ollie ducked away with a smile and slid out of his seat to come around the side, while Loki twisted to swing his legs out from under the table and pulled Ollie up onto his lap. He could never quite entirely forget that Tony Stark was right there next to him; now at least the man was at his back.
"You fill my heart up to the top," he said, leaning down and speaking quietly.
"To the very top?"
"To the very very top. I want you to be careful, though. Uncle Thor once hurt himself badly trying to climb a tree, so you had me worried. Better to climb down than to jump."
"But I didn't know how to climb down."
"We'll work on that and you can learn, how's that?"
"Okay," Ollie said, nodding eagerly. "Did you ever get hurt climbing a tree, Papa?"
"No. I was much better at it than Uncle Thor. So you will have an excellent teacher, and you will also be better at it than Uncle Thor."
Loki sent a giggling Ollie back to his seat and turned to find Tony watching him with tilted head and raised brow. Loki ignored him.
"Give me your arm," Morgan said as soon as Ollie was back in place.
Ollie held it out to her and Tony grimaced when Morgan grabbed it, twisting it around and sending Ollie twisting with it to avoid dislocating his shoulder.
"Be gentle, Pumpkin. Ollie's not a toy, he's a real boy."
"I know."
"Mr. Stark?"
"What's up, Ollie?"
"Was my papa mean to you? When he came here a long time ago?"
Tony's thoughts, which had mostly been along the lines of gosh that kid's awfully cute with a new idea for his 3-D visualization platform running in the background, came to a screeching halt.
Morgan let go of Ollie's arm, because this was clearly way more interesting than her new friend's healed arm. He and Pepper insulated her from what they could, but their little Angel was observant and bright, and they'd had to explain that there were a few bad people out there who didn't like him and might try to be mean to him, or to her because she was his daughter. Morgan knew all the rules about strangers and secret codes and her own address and phone numbers.
Tony snuck a look at Loki out of the corner of his eye to find Loki looking at him, not with his usual disdain or annoyance but something a little closer to nervousness. Even fear.
That snapped Tony out of his freeze-brain. He got that. Loki didn't want his kid exposed to all the miserable rotten things he'd done before. Yeah, Tony got that. He could bring a few dozen skyscrapers-worth of hurt down onto Loki right now. That kind of hurt, though? No way. Not to mention he'd be burying little Oliver and his big innocent brown eyes under it, too.
He had just opened his mouth to respond when Ollie beat him to it.
"It's okay. Papa explained it to me. He said he did some things that weren't nice, but now he helps people. So nobody has to be mad at him anymore."
"He helps people now, does he? Well," he continued to Ollie's jackrabbit nodding, "he helped you and Morgan today, didn't he?"
More enthusiastic nodding. "You don't have to be mad at him anymore. Papa says it's hard to forget about it, when somebody was mean to you, but you're not mad anymore, are you?"
"How could I be mad? This guy? My old pal Loki?" Tony said, slinging an arm around Loki's shoulders. Loki stiffened and Tony felt the movement in the shoulder under his hand in the split second before Loki twisted and fire licked across his belly. When he looked down, blood was gushing and his insides were spilling out.
Ollie and Morgan were staring up at him, Morgan full of curiosity and Ollie full of desperation for Tony to like Ollie's dad.
Tony swallowed, hard, and did not look Loki's way, much less sling an arm around Loki's shoulders. His chest was tightening and he took the time for a few deliberately slow, deep breaths. Wires were getting seriously crossed here; he wasn't even afraid of Loki. But whoever said panic attacks were logical? And who knew a trip to the playground and lunch at McDonald's could be this stressful? "Your dad's right, but it's easier to forget that somebody was mean if they're nice and help people afterward. And he also helped us stop a bad guy who was really mean. So, no, not mad anymore. Hey! If I was mad…would I go and buy us all some treats? Huh?"
"Ice cream!" Morgan cried.
"Ice cream!" Ollie echoed, thus setting off a series of chants.
"Hush now, we're indoors," Loki said as Tony made his way back up to the counter.
Loki watched Tony go, then observed as the children discussed their favorite ice cream flavors. He could breathe again now, the peril of a moment before resolved, crisis averted. His mind had raced, supplying half a dozen different ways to intervene, whether speaking up himself, or causing a distraction, or simply announcing it was time to leave.
Fear hadn't stopped him. Hope had. They'd caught each other off guard at the playground, both of them expecting the worst and close to drawing weapons. But Tony's love for his daughter was obvious, and surely Tony had likewise seen Loki's love for Ollie was infinite. Loki had healed Morgan's ankle, and Tony had trusted Loki to keep an eye on her while she and Ollie played in the McDonald's playground and Tony ordered lunch. Tony, he had hoped, would not seek to denigrate him in his son's eyes. And Tony had not.
"I knew you were nice," Morgan announced.
Loki smiled warmly for both children's sake, even if his lips puckered from a trace of acid. Nice wouldn't be the first word he'd use to describe himself, or even frankly to aspire to be, but Morgan was young and could not be blamed for the lack of finesse in her vocabulary. The poor girl hadn't even known what recalcitrant meant. Not every child could be as brilliant as Oliver, of course.
"Papa's always nice."
Loki kept the smile on and shoved three French fries into his mouth at once.
"Almost always."
His eyes met Ollie's; Ollie reached for the toy car with its grinning figure inside that had been in the Happy Meal box and started pushing it around on the table. Loki felt ill, and he wasn't sure if it was the memory – the one he was fairly certain Ollie was thinking of, too – or the food. No, people didn't forget when someone was mean to them, not even four-year-old people. Loki had truly lost his temper with Ollie once, just once, and he would never forget it, either. Jane said it was normal; Jane had lost her temper before, had shouted when she didn't mean to, and she swore to him that her parent friends said it had happened to them, too. But it was different. Loki knew how to frighten, and frighten he had. He'd wanted to frighten Ollie out of his misbehavior, but he'd lost control, probably of his good sense in addition to his temper. Seeing your own son fear you was unbearable, and Loki lived in his own fear of it happening again.
"Push that car over to me. Let's see how fast we can make it go."
Ollie looked back up at him, eagerly, and the car was on its way over, between his and Ollie's red plastic trays on one side and Morgan's and Tony's on the other.
"Well done," Loki said when Ollie's toy zoomed over at him at high speed without crashing into the trays. "Morgan, shall I send it your way? Care to give it a test drive?"
"No, thank you. I have way better toys at home."
"What kind of toys do you have?" Ollie asked, interest piqued, toy car forgotten.
"Fun toys. And lots of cars. Me and Daddy make them just the way we want them."
"Big ones or little ones?"
"We make little ones. But I have big ones, too. Big ones that I can drive, and Daddy, too."
"How do you drive them?"
Loki was curious, too, but Tony returned with another tray then and Morgan's response was cut off with more cries of ice cream.
"What is this?" he asked when Tony placed a tall cup of something brown topped with white and drizzled with more brown in front of him. "I didn't order anything."
"Mocha frappe. I figured it might be fun to see you drink one. Here, you need a straw."
Loki took the straw handed to him but made no move to use it. Instead, he reached into his pocket with a frown, pulled out his wallet with a frown, opened it with a frown, pulled out his five-dollar bill with a frown. Tried to get rid of the frown before handing it to Tony, who didn't take it and was instead peering into his wallet. The frown came back.
"Why exactly are you bothering with a wallet? You seriously don't have anything, do you? I mean, I guess you wouldn't. No license, no ID, no credit cards, no membership cards, no social security card, no voter registration card, no nothing. Not even any pictures of the fam. That's the saddest wallet I've ever seen."
"Can I try yours, Papa?"
"Yes…ah, does this contain alcohol?"
"At McDonald's? No, no alcohol. Pretty sure it mostly contains sugar."
Loki opened the straw, stuck it in, and set the drink in front of Ollie.
"Jane's working on it," he told Tony.
"It tastes funny."
Loki took it back and took a quick sip. He cleared his throat. Icy and incredibly sweet, with a hint of coffee flavor that he was certain Ollie was reacting to. Ollie wasn't paying attention anymore, though; he was leaning over toward Morgan, who was whispering in his ear.
"Does Jane know much about getting IDs for people from Asgard?"
"I don't think so. But she knows people who do."
"People who are willing to do that for you?"
Loki glared at Tony while the children were too distracted to notice. It was a fair point, though.
"Wait, you never had that stuff before. And you haven't been back on Earth since" – Tony glanced at the children and lowered his voice – "since Thanos. So what's up? You planning on dropping by more often?"
"We are…moving here," Loki said, then quickly continued past his initial hesitation, preempting the questions he knew would follow. "Jane isn't able to do the kind of research she wants to, the way she wants to do it, on Asgard. And she wants— we want Ollie to experience living here, not just Asgard. We haven't figured everything out yet. Jane is meeting with her old contacts, trying to secure a position. We've already been to London and to Pasadena. Now she's having meetings in New York."
"Moving to Earth. Huh. Why haven't I heard about any of this? How long have you been here?"
"We aren't required to inform anyone of our intentions. And we've kept it all quiet."
"You kind of are required to inform…actually you're required to get permission. Don't go getting all snarky. I don't mean from me. From whatever country you go to. You're literally an illegal alien right now. Is Jane working on that, too?"
"I…don't know. Are you being serious?"
"I am, believe it or not. Maybe no one will care, but having one document in place helps you get the next one. If you're really moving here and you want a Costco membership – I can't believe I just said that, because I really can't picture it, you'd probably vaporize the place if you got there and found out they ran out of the rotisserie chicken—"
"I would not. I will not." Loki kept his expression open, honest, and just on the edge of earnest. If he was going to live here, if his family was going to live here, then talk of him vaporizing marketplaces, whether serious or in jest, had to cease. If people suspected he posed a threat to them, they would respond accordingly to him and, more importantly, to his family.
"Okay. Sure. Got it. So what would you do?"
"What do you mean?"
"If you got to Costco and you were supposed to get a rotisserie chicken and they were out?"
Loki stared for a long moment. As best he could tell, Tony was actually expecting an answer. A test of some sort, perhaps. A probe, to see if he was as serious as he meant to convey. He doubted it had much to do with an unsuccessful attempt to buy chicken. "I would go somewhere else and buy one there."
"Nope. No other store has it, not as good."
Loki shook his head. He was supposed to be back at the hotel playing with Ollie right now, or perhaps reading while Ollie napped. But in the end, this could be good for him, for all of them. If Tony could accept his long-term presence here, it could only help. "I suppose I would call Jane and ask her what she wanted me to do."
"That sounds familiar. I'll accept that."
"I shudder with relief. Why, is that what you do when Costco runs out of rotisserie chicken? Call…"
"Pepper. And no. I don't shop at Costco. I don't do my own shopping. But the chicken's pretty good."
A sarcastic retort was on the tip of his tongue but fell away, forgotten, as another realization came to mind. "I've never done my own shopping, either. Not for food. If Jane is working, I suppose that task will be left to me."
"Servants, right! Not bringing along a retinue?"
"No."
"None? But you are still a—." Tony glanced at the children, whispering to each other as ice cream dripped onto Ollie's shirt, and mouthed prince. "Right? Shopping, cooking, cleaning, laundry? Driver, security, PR? If anybody ever needed a world-class PR team it's you."
"I don't even know what that is. But we will figure these things out, Jane and I. She wants Ollie to have a normal childhood here. We will not be bringing any servants."
"Normal for who? Okay, we call them staff in these here modern times, not servants, but lots of people with money have staff. Lots of people with middle-class incomes still pay for a cleaning service or grocery delivery. I have lots of staff. And okay, so Morgan's life isn't exactly typical, but look at her, she just scooped up melted ice cream with her finger and stuck it in her mouth. From this table that a hundred or so other people used before us. That's pretty normal."
Loki grimaced. It was disgusting, but it wasn't his place to say so. Not in front of Morgan, at least. Oliver, thankfully, had learned better table manners.
"What? It builds a strong immune system. Look, I'm not saying we don't struggle with that, too, Pep and I. We do. A lot of things about my life are not normal. Case in point, sitting across from you in McDonald's. That's about as normal as Elon Musk tooling around town in a classic station wagon with the finest imitation wood-grain side paneling. Well, or me doing that. And we can't avoid it affecting the kiddo. Case in point, the kiddo is also sitting—"
"All right, Tony, yes, I understand."
"Do you? Oh."
"What?"
"Sorry. I just realized this is none of my business."
"Just now?"
"Yes, just now, actually. It kind of struck a nerve. My problem, not yours. Well, yours, too, apparently, but solving it is definitely your problem."
"Our problems are not the same," Loki said, questioning the wisdom of not simply letting the matter drop as it seemed Tony was at last inclined to do. "You are wealthy."
"Yeah. And you aren't?"
"Not here. Our currency is useless here, and your banks have no means to exchange it. Unfortunately, Jane frowns on the use of magic to create legal tender."
"Uhhhh, yeah. If you're looking to stick around, best not to do so on the basis of serial felonies. I'm sure something can be figured out."
"Eventually, probably. But in the meantime I can't—." Loki glanced up at the large menu full of items he could not buy his son. "Never mind. My problem, not yours."
Tony lowered his voice. "Do you not have any money?"
"Jane had a little of her own left from before. Erik gave her some more."
"Gave her some more."
Loki looked down at his drink, the ice melting, the creamy white top collapsing in on itself, and took a long sweet pull through the straw. When he straightened up again, Tony had still not spoken further, much to his surprise. That made the repetition much harder to ignore. "He is retired. His own money is limited. I was not comfortable accepting it." He paused, swallowed. "Especially from him."
"Daddy, we figured it all out."
Turning an indulgent smile on Morgan, Loki had never liked the child as much as he did at this exact moment.
Tony, too, was grateful, because it hadn't quite hit him just how truly personal he'd been getting with Loki until he realized he was feeling bad for what happened to Loki back then. It didn't happen to Loki. It happened to Erik, and to Clint, and to him, and to pretty much everyone else unlucky to run into Thor's black sheep brother. It was confusing and unsettling.
"What did you figure out, Angel?"
"We're going to go back to the garden house" – what they'd taken to calling their place in upstate New York, their main residence, with a big garden in the back – "and we're going to watch Sesame Street because Ollie's never seen it and he doesn't even know who Cookie Monster is, or Big Bird or Elmo is, and then we're going to play with my cars, the little ones and the big ones, and then we're going to watch Frozen and Cinderella because they're about princesses, and then we're going to go over to Ollie's house and feed his horses and I'm going to learn how to ride a horse."
Ollie leaned over and whispered, loudly enough that Tony didn't need superhearing to catch it, "And then The Jungle Book."
"Oh, yeah! I almost forgot. And then we're going to watch The Jungle Book. I already saw that one, and Ollie, too, but Ollie wants us to watch it together at his house. With popcorn."
Tony turned to look at Loki, who turned to look at him, and who seemed about as stunned as Tony. Clearly they should have been paying more attention to what those two little schemers were up to over there. Boundless enthusiasm, with a significant dearth of reality tossed into a high-speed blender. And four-year-olds didn't quite get the concept of time yet; they'd planned days of activities, for what they presumably intended to do "this afternoon." They were in Manhattan, not in upstate New York, and Ollie's "house" was Asgard's palace on Asgard.
So of course an hour later all four of them were boarding Tony's private jet for the short hop up to Watertown.
Notes
I was kind of reaching a breaking point, and thought it might be better for me to work on Playground for a bit, as still getting in writing at least but writing something with a much lighter tone. (Though it doesn't all stay light...it's me writing it, after all.) That "add-on" chapter has wound up being a much more integrated part of the story than I originally anticipated, and is probably two chapters now, so, at this point I estimate 6 chapters. But who knows (again, me writing this). I think it's a fertile ground for random additional vignettes down the line, too, but for now anyway I'd just like to get this one out there and marked "complete" as planned. I'd been really badly wanting to work on it anyway. And I do think it was good for me. I hope it gave you some smiles and maybe even some chuckle. (Nov. 30, 2020)
