TW: homophobia, biphobia, fluidpobia

Loki stood with his mouth hanging slightly open as he stared at the cast list. As expected, he was cast as the show's lead. However, the show was not, as he'd suspected, Macbeth. No, it was Taming of the Shrew.

It took several seconds for him to move from the spot, finally turning on his heel and marching right into Mobius' classroom. It was a large space for a classroom, with a little stage area at the front, and movie posters coating the walls to the point none of the students were sure if they were painted the same bland white as the rest of the school. A few students were scattered around the room, early for first hour, most on their phones or napping with their head on a desk. Mr. Mobius was sitting at his desk, typing away on his laptop when Loki stormed up. "What the hell?!"

Mobius casually looked up from the screen. "Is something wrong, Loki?"

"You cast me as Kate?!" Loki demanded.

"It's the lead," Mobius shrugged, reaching for his mug of coffee and taking a sip. "I thought you'd be happy."

Loki looked incredulous. "The female lead!"

"You can play Kate as whatever gender you want. We can do a full gender-flipped cast, or we can have the lead couple be lesbians. Either way," Mobius said assuringly.

Loki's face drained of what little colour it usually had as his head whipped around to see if any of the other students had heard. Luckily, none of them seemed to be paying attention. "What do you mean?"

"Well, when you told me that you're-"

"Don't!" Loki cut him off.

It was then that Mobius seemed to get the hint. His eyes widened slightly with realization and he nodded. "Okay, sorry," he said, then quieter than before, "When you told me you're," he mouthed the word 'genderfluid', "I wanted to try to be accommodating, and thought you might have fun with the chance to try something different with the character. Besides, Kate's a great character, and a great fit for you."

Loki's shoulders relaxed a bit as he thought about that. Mobius was the first adult Loki had ever come out to about being genderfluid, and only the third person total. Wanda and Vis had been super accepting, but Loki didn't have a good track record with adults. Specifically, his father. He'd almost gotten kicked out of his house when he'd told his family about being bisexual.

'No wonder you're in theater. You're lucky you're not a full on faggot, or you'd be gone right now. Don't be bringing any boys home, got it?'

His mother, Frigga, had given Odin an earful for daring to suggest that. She was always so loving and accepting of him, but Loki didn't want to push his father. Instead, he'd pushed his reality down, ignored all the boys he'd ever wanted to kiss, and pretended to be the kind of son Odin wanted. Well, at least when it came to his sexuality and gender identity. Odin could pry theater from his cold, dead hands.

Mr. Mobius had always been so different from his father. Really, Loki hadn't been planning on coming out to him. One day after school Loki had been in the costume closet, he wasn't supposed to know where the key was, but Loki knew a lot of things he wasn't supposed to. It had been just a few days after coming out to Wanda and Vis, and he wanted to just see what it would be like to try on a dress. Mobius had walked in, and his only question was how Loki had gotten in there, not a word about what she was wearing.

It had all just come pouring out that day, sitting on the costume closet floor. How he was bisexual and what Odin had said to that. How he was genderfluid and terrified of what his father would do if he ever found out. Mobius just listened, and told Loki that she could borrow clothes from the costume closet whenever she wanted.

Mobius hadn't treated him a bit different since that day. Until apparently now. When he'd been trying to give Loki a gift. Acceptance.

Acceptance she couldn't take.

Loki shook his head. "I'll play it gender flipped then," he answered. Not that it really mattered, Odin hadn't been to a single play. Still, he couldn't risk it.

"Of course," Mobius nodded. "It's a great part, you're going to have so much fun with it."

And that was that. Just acceptance. Not pushing Loki to do something he wasn't comfortable with, just the opportunity to play with a character's gender as he liked. It gave him a weird warm feeling in his chest.

Then Mobius added, "Especially with Sylvie as Petruchio, I think you two have some real chemistry."

That pulled Loki out of his head. "Wait, what?" He turned and went right back outside the classroom, where the cast list was posted. He hadn't gotten past his own name, so shocked at the part, causing him to completely miss who would be playing his love interest.

There it was. Right there in black and white. Petruchio would be played by Sylvie Laufeydottir.

Loki wanted to scream.

"I just can't believe he'd do this to me," Loki told Wanda and Vis that day at lunch. He was poking disinterestedly at the square pizza on his tray with his plastic fork. "Give me Sylvie as a love interest, of all people!"

"You two did seem to have chemistry," Vis mused through a half chewed bite.

"We didn't perform anything together, how could we have chemistry?" Loki huffed.

"Oh please," Wanda rolled her eyes, "you totally locked eyes with her during your audition monologue. You were practically professing your worship of the Goddess Sylvie!"

"I looked out into the crowd while doing a monologue!" Loki protested. "Nothing more."

"You were pretty enchanted while she did her audition," Vis pointed out.

"I was not," Loki grumbled.

"Not what?" Thor asked as he sat down next to Loki at the lunch table. Thor didn't usually have the same lunch period as Loki, unless it was an away game day. Since he got out of classes half an hour early to catch the bus, his schedule was a little jumbled and he ended up in a different lunch hour. Which Loki was just so happy about.

"Ah. Brother. I didn't know it was a game day," he said flatly. Usually he knew when they were so he could mentally prepare for lunch with Thor, but he'd been so thrown off today he'd completely forgotten.

"It is! We're going to crush the Bears," Thor grinned. "Coming to the game?"

"Can't, have rehearsal," Loki answered.

"That's too bad, I'll miss having you there," Thor said.

"Of course," Loki said back, not believing him for a second. Why would Thor miss him? Practically the entire school came to cheer on the star Quarterback. Dozens of people chanting his name. Odin and mom never missed a game. What was one less person? Still, Thor always made such a show of inviting him, as if it was just so damn important Loki was there. It was patronizing, really.

"So, what's the play this year?" Thor asked. "What will my little brother be starring in?"

"Taming of the Shrew," Wanda answered.

"That sounds like the perfect part for Loki!" Thor laughed and gave Loki a single good natured, but strong, thump on the back. "I mean, you are playing the shrew of course?"

"Actually, yes," Vis nodded, causing another round of laughter from Thor.

"Well, who's going to be taming him then?"

"New girl named Sylvie," Wanda said. Then, smirking, "I mean, in a way she already did."

Thor turned to Loki, raising an eyebrow. "Does my brother have a crush?"

Loki looked at him with disgust. "She punched me!"

"That's an odd reason, but I support your choices," Thor nodded.

Rubbing his eyes with one hand he groaned in frustration. "I don't have a crush! I dislike this girl immensely because she punched me for no reason, and now I'm going to have to kiss her because of this stupid play."

"Sounds like she's the shrew you need to tame," Thor joked.

Loki paused as he thought about that statement. "Are you suggesting I need to make this girl fall for me in order to break her heart and get revenge?"

"No," Wanda and Vis answered immediately, at the exact same time.

"Not particularly," Thor added.

But Loki was already smirking. "Too bad, here I thought you were onto something."

After school, at rehearsal, Mobius had a stack of scripts on the edge of the stage for the cast to pick up before making their way to their seats. Sylvie was the first one there, not having any reason to linger after class or at her locker to talk to any friends. She liked Nat so far, but Nat left early that day with the rest of the cheerleaders for the away game, so today Sylvie was on her own.

She leafed through the script as she waited for everyone else to arrive. Sylvie wasn't sure how she felt about the choice of play. Even though she'd read several Shakespeare plays and sonnets before, she hadn't read this one in particular, and had heard it was rather sexist.

Footsteps echoed through the almost empty theater, but Sylvie didn't look up to see who it was until they sat next to her.

"Hello, co-star," Sylvie grinned a little triumphantly. She wasn't exactly looking forward to playing his love interest, but it was satisfying that she'd gotten one of the leads.

"Hello," Loki said formally, opening his script to the first page and beginning to read it.

"Not going to congratulate me on getting a lead?" Sylvie taunted him.

Loki looked up from his script at her. "Oh, is that worth congratulating? I'm so used to it, I forget it's a big deal to some people."

"Well, I can see Mr. Mobius cast the shrew correctly," she rolled her eyes.

He just looked back to his script. "My brother already made that joke."

"It was rather low hanging fruit," she conceded.

After a moment of silence, Loki looked up at her again. "What do you think of the play?"

"I haven't read it yet," Sylvie admitted. "I've heard it's rather sexist though, but I guess that's why we're doing a gender flipped version."

"I think if it's sexist one way it'd be sexist the other," Loki mused. "Though I think it's debatable whether it's sexist at all."

Sylvie thought it was a bit strange he seemed to be trying to make casual conversation with her, but no one else was there yet. Maybe he was just bored. "Why's that?" she asked.

"Well, the big thing people point to when they say it's sexist is Kate's monologue at the end, right? But I think that's a pretty surface level interpretation of the monologue," he answered. "If you really listen to it, yes, she's saying women should love and obey their husbands, but she's saying the reason they should is because it's the husband's job to care for his wife. He should be doing everything in his power to love and care for her. It sounds much more like an equal partnership to me, just with some outdated ideas about marriage."

"You've really thought a lot about this, haven't you?" Sylvie asked.

"Of course I have," Loki nodded, "it's my job, I'm an actor."

"Well, I do love Shakespeare, so I'll get back to you after I've read it myself," she said.

More of the cast was starting to arrive, including Wanda and Vis who sat next to Loki, getting his attention, which gave Sylvie a moment to think on the conversation she'd just had. How weird it had been. It had been almost nice, an almost nice conversation with Loki of all people.

Sylvie had always loved reading. Loved digging into books, poems, plays, sonnets, whatever she could and fishing out metaphor and meaning. Loved talking about her theories and what she thought an author meant and all those things that usually stayed confined to English papers until most people got bored of talking about the subject. However, from that little bit of conversation, it seemed like Loki did the same thing, at least with his scripts. Was that what an actor was supposed to do? Maybe this acting thing was for her after all…