Working at a McDonald’s on midnights wasn’t very stimulating work, hell, working at a McDonald’s during the day wasn’t very stimulating. Mostly Loki wanted to hit his head off things, or better yet, hit other people’s heads off things. The only benefit to his dead-end minimum wage job was that he got to work with the woman of his dreams, assuming he would ever actually take an interest in women, Darcy, who could make moping entertaining.
“God,” she says, leaning against the counter, “this is worse than that one time we found that dead old lady,” she says, wrinkling her nose and leaning against the counter.
“No, this is worse than the fact that we took selfies with what we thought was a sleeping old lady only to find out hours later she fucking died in that corner over there,” Loki says, pointing to the far left corner of the restaurant. Here they thought they were being hilarious and when they had gotten a little worried that the old lady hadn’t moved in hours they had ended up being traumatized for life.
“I hope you know I kept those pictures and I’ll tell everyone you’re a necrophiliac if you ever screw me over,” she tells him and wanders off to deal with the sure-to-be drunk customer that has wandered over to the counter up front.
“I don’t do sex with or without dead bodies,” he calls after her, freaking the customer at the counter out. He ignores them and goes back to leaning against the counter trying not to look like his soul was trying to leave his body and ascend to a higher plane of existence where he could actually live a fulfilling life. He didn’t think he was having much success and the astral plane seemed to be rejecting his mental proposition to beam him the fuck out of here.
He expected a lot of things working in this job, once he found Tony Stark asleep on the baby change table in the ladies washroom, he had actually made friends with him after that, but Thor threw him for a loop. He was minding his own business hoping for a freak asteroid to hit the store and kill him, releasing him from his flesh prison into the ether when someone started banging on the drive thru window.
He jumps and quickly gathers himself, grabbing a coffee pot to throw at the next fucking drunk person that tried to rob them by crawling through the drive thru window and leans against the wall, triggering the sensor and opening the window. What he finds is the best thing that would ever happen to him but he doesn’t know that at the time. What he knew at the time was that there was a giant drunk blonde guy on a tiny pink bike bawling his eyes out, “I don’t have enough money for chicken nuggets,” he blubbers and Loki steps back from the window, letting it close again.
Darcy walks over grinning, sensing something fucking weird just happened, “what’s at the window Loki?” she asks, walking over to the wall and hip checking it. The window opens and the blonde guy cries harder, prompting Darcy to step away with a raised eyebrow, “you found the freak first,” she tells him and runs off.
Loki isn’t even sure what prompted him to do it but he gathers a few slightly over cooked nuggets, throws them in a box and goes back to the window, “do me a favor,” he tells the blonde guy, “don’t follow the lead of dogs or seagulls and assume you’ll get free food if you annoy me for long enough,” he says and hands the nuggets over. The change on the blonde’s face was so amusing, he immediately lit up, gave and enthusiastic thanks before biking off on his hilariously small ride.
“To Valhalla!” he yells, making a poor attempt at pedaling the tiny bicycle before hitting a curb and falling over, making a loud distressed noise as the nuggets fumble but he catches them and let out a victorious shout. He picks himself up, gets back on his to-small ride and takes off into the metaphorical sunset.
Loki goes back to making an attempt to look busy, sharing annoyed looks with Darcy before he hears the familiar rumble of Tony’s sports car. “Welcome to Hell, where the souls of the damned become slaves to major corporations that suck out the remains of our good until we are husks of our former selves,” he says into the headset.
“Yikes, every time I come in these things get darker, you okay?” Tony asks.
“If I pay attention I can feel my life’s energy being pulled from my body into the unknown by some invisible force I refuse to call a god,” he says.
“Wow, okay, can I have a burger?” he asks and Loki bites his lip to keep from laughing, god Tony was bad at this.
“Flesh of a dead animal coming right up,” he tells him, looking over to Darcy, who had already had Tony’s order half made. He didn’t even care what he ate half the time, they had given him some truly awful concoctions and he never seemed to complain. Loki figured because the shit they fed him was indistinguishable from all the other shit they served here, daring to claim it was food.
He opens the window and Tony half leans out of his car, “this is going to sound weird but have you seen a big blonde guy?” he asks, squinting at him. Clearly someone needed to sleep.
“There appears to be one in your passenger seat,” he says, looking at Steve, who was glaring at Tony, presumably because he had done something to piss the moral crusader off in the last ten minutes. That was nothing new.
Tony rolls his eyes, “not that one,” he says and Loki points him in the direction Nugget Guy took, handing his food to him while he does. Tony throws some bills in his general direction and takes off, apparently in a rush to find Nuggets.
“Wow, it really must be nice to be this rich,” he says, counting the hundred dollar bills that were thrown his way, “guess we don’t have to worry about rent.”
Darcy gives him a look, “neither of us pays rent, we live with our parents.”
He wrinkles his nose, “don’t remind me.”
*
His second encounter with blondie went much the same way the first did, he showed up on his tiny pink bike, smacked at the drive thru window until Loki opened it and rode off happily with nuggets. Two weeks later Darcy was starting to wonder if Loki was starting to grow feelings and if blondie was an alcoholic. “I am not growing feelings,” Loki says, “I am heartless and cold, like a barren winter,” he sticks his nose in the air and walks away, ignoring Darcy’s laughter following him.
“You’re growing feelings!” she yells at him.
“I have pictures of you with that dead woman too,” he yells back, earning a freaked out look from the customer at the front counter.
He looks at the deep fryer and wonders if he can cook his own head and release himself of his earthly duties. He figures it would take too long and walks off to do busy work in order to not get yelled at by his vampire boss, who seriously needed to eat a fucking garlic clove and turn to dust already. Today, at least, was a day shift and he was off at noon so he could go home and try and sleep off the lingering smell of passive aggressive customers with a life time of regrets. Plus he got to work with Darcy, who was bound to make working with the rest of the staff bearable or at least make him less likely to try and escape this hell hole by crawling out the drive through window and into the oncoming traffic.
He’s tired, he’s cranky, he’s had a long day, and he wanted to go home or at least deal with decent customers instead of people who act like they have a right to look down on him while simultaneously using his services. In short he really really hated people. It probably wouldn’t be so bad if people didn’t think ‘McDonald’s employee’ meant ‘can treat like shit and get away with it’ but no, god forbid people acknowledge he was not a robot. Finally he has enough when some asshole thinks that because he screwed up punching in the order twice he gets some sort of right to verbally berate Loki, yelling about how he works so hard for all his things in life like that actually meant something.
“Right,” Loki says, talking over Fuckhead, “because you getting up early in the morning and going to work somehow negates that when you got up I’d already been here for an hour, and your ‘working hard’ somehow negates that I’ve been dealing with customers out the door since a half hour after I got here, and your attitude towards me is somehow going to encourage me to move faster or something. I’m not sure what planet you have fallen off of but humiliating workers in the middle of their job for accidentally giving you the wrong combo isn’t going to foster better customer service, and frankly with the way you treat people you don’t deserve it anyways,” he snaps. He was so going to get written up for this, but he had one more warning, he’d be fine. All he had to do was not get fired for the next few months, then he could apply to school and his asshat dad told him he’d pay if he managed to hold the job. He could do that; he could survive the next few months.
Fuck, who was he kidding, he could not. He hated this job and the only reason his father had made that deal with him was because he wanted to go through a music program instead of, and this was a quote, ‘getting a real job’. He was fairly certain this ‘lesson’ was because he assumed this was where Loki would end up anyways but he was wrong. He was good, and he loved his violin and he’d sooner launch himself into the sun than work another unneeded hour at this sorry excuse for an establishment.
Asshat starts his returning spiel eloquently by calling Loki a string of nasty names, a good half of them slurs, but he gets interrupted by a loud, “excuse you!” The guy turns around and finds one very angry blonde guy glaring at him, “how dare you come in here and assume that just because someone has accidentally put your order in wrong, which he apologized for, that you get to assume that you work harder than he does! Working for minimum wage doesn’t mean ‘works less’, it means they get paid shit wages to deal with ignorant people like you all day, getting flustered and annoyed which, yes, means that sometimes they mess up and who can blame them? Then you decide the solution to your problem, which can literally be fixed with pressing a few buttons, is to treat him like he’s less of a person. You have no business coming in here and demanding respect when you refuse to treat the workers here with the same respect you think you’re entitled to, and if you think this job is so easy than get behind the counter and do it yourself!”
He thinks Shit for Brains probably would have continued being an ass but Nuggets is scary when he’s mad and Loki thinks he just might marry him considering it was legal now. Shithead slinks of to get his food, which was conveniently ready now, and Nuggets steps toward Loki, smiling now that his rant was finished. He shakes his head, “wow, that was an impressive rant but please don’t encourage him to try the job, I’d rather not train that asshole,” he says.
Nuggets laughs, “that doesn’t sound particularly pleasant,” he says.
“I’d rather be in Azkaban,” he says bluntly and Nuggets snickers.
“You must really hate the job,” he says.
“It wouldn’t be so bad if I didn’t serve as a verbal punching bag for the middle class frustrations, but hey it’s a paycheck. What is it you want?” he asks.
He gets the order and almost misses the note with his name and number. Darcy squeals when she finds out because Darcy had a not-so-secret love of drama and insists that he text or call immediately, which he does not do because he isn’t desperate. Darcy throws fries at him but lets him go home in relative peace.
*
Home, he supposed, was a relative term. Not that he didn’t enjoy the illusion of a charmed life, people would think living in a house this large with a man that rich that he’d be happy or at least attached to the lifestyle. In reality he hadn’t even known his father existed until a year ago when his mother died and he had shown up and made a very sorry attempt at trying to dictate Loki’s life. As much as he loathed admitting it he was just like his father, mean and nasty with a bad habit of doing whatever he wanted with little regard to who he hurt in the process. Neither he nor his father seemed to like themselves very much when pitted against one another. Not that it mattered, his father was paying for his college tuition out of guilt for abandoning him and his mother when he was a baby, and he was unwilling to involve his father any further in his life. Truth be told he was fairly certain his father was just as unwilling to be involved in his life so they were even.
He’s looking to escape to his room without having to run into his father but his luck ran out when Nuggets, whose name was Thor of all things, decided to tell that guy off. “Loki,” his father appears at the entrance of the living room, “come say hello, if you have time.” It was phrased like he had a choice but they both knew he didn’t.
Playing nice wasn’t his thing though, and his father really shouldn’t be surprised, playing nice wasn’t exactly what he was known for either. He walks down the few steps he had already gone up and lingered in the doorway beside his father, looking much like a smaller version of him. Technically they were the same height but the man was rather intimidating and always made Loki feel smaller than he was. Not that he ever let it show. “And what have you been up to Loki?” he asks, giving him a shrewd look that Loki knew meant play along.
He wasn’t a puppet though, “I’m surprised you care, after abandoning my mother and I only to return after she died and left you an heir to your company I didn’t think you cared much. But I guess everyone has to have a plan B hmm?” If he wasn’t so stubborn he would have bowed under the weight of the glare he received but if was a battle for who was the most stubborn here he wasn’t about to lose, “what? Don’t like blunt honestly and dragging skeletons out of people’s closets when it’s your closet that being dug through?” he asks casually, tilting his head to the side in question. His father’s jaw clenches and he knows he’s won so he gives the room a winning smile and heads back towards the stairs.
“Wow, he really is your son,” some guy says, making a bad joke that everyone laughs at for some unknown reason.
“That he is, so I’m sure he’ll see reason and give up his pipe dream of going to some music school and take after me,” he says, glaring Loki down.
Loki snorts, “oh I do intend to take after you, as soon as it’s feasible I’d be happy to follow your shining example and completely abandon you until it’s convenient for me to come back. Preferably when you’re dead and I can claim my inheritance,” he says, walking the rest of the way up the stairs and purposefully ignoring the tittering downstairs. What his father had expected he had no idea, but he wasn’t interested in playing whatever game his sorry excuse for a father had in store. Sadly even McDonalds was a better option to him than that.
*
Darcy was the actual devil, he swore, because she decided he was taking too long to text Nuggets so she found the damn slip of paper in his number on it and did it herself and now she was having a conversation with the guy. “You guys will be the cutest couple every,” she says, grinning and tapping away on his phone.
“He isn’t even texting me you ass, how the hell are we supposed to be ‘cute’?” he asks, glaring at her because his reflexes weren’t as fast as hers and his attempts to snatch his phone back had been fruitless.
“Relax, I’m doing a great Loki impression, I’m being lovingly mean, pissed off at the world, and acting very much like a very angry hamster,” she says. He is very much worried about her perception of him if she thinks he is anything like an angry hamster. “See, that face is how I’m acting. Angry hamster,” she says and goes back to texting Thor.
“Give me my phone back,” he tells her, holding his hand out.
She, surprisingly, goes to hang it over but pulls back at the last second, “are you going to text him back?” she asks.
“Yes, now give me my phone you savage,” he says. Darcy gives him a skeptical look but hands his phone over so he can read her disastrous impression of him. He reads over the conversation and he’s somewhat surprised that Darcy has not only done a fairly good job at impersonating him but she’s started a conversation about politics of all things. They seemed to have common ground in assuming Donald Trump was a horrible person, which was basically common sense. “Why would you start a conversation about politics? Nothing pisses people off faster than politics, religion, sexuality, and whether or not you’re a dog or a cat person,” he says.
“Minions,” Darcy says, “they piss people off too,” she says when he raises a questioning brow.
“They wouldn’t have been so bad if it wasn’t for Facebook,” he says.
“Facebook is where dreams go to die, I don’t even know why I have one anymore,” she says.
He continues his conversation with Thor about Donald Trump’s sad excuse of a comb over, which Thor insisted looked like a dead Guniea pig, but Loki told him that was insulting to the rodent. They end up on talking about how Guniea pigs were neither pigs nor were they from Guniea, which Darcy said didn’t matter because they were cute. Loki had a Guniea pig once but he had hated the noisy rodent and took the first opportunity to pawn it off on some other kid who thought it was cool. The pair of them had had some very pissed off mothers.
They talk for the rest of the day about stupid subjects and more meaningful ones, the conversation flowing with a surprising amount of ease. It wasn’t that he had a hard time talking to people per se, he was actually quite good at talking to people, but he rarely enjoyed the experience. He found people dull and boring and most time talking to them was about as desirable as sitting in a particularly prickly cactus. Thor though, he was easy to talk to, and he wasn’t boring though his general optimism regarding everything was a bit grating. That was mostly because optimism was generally naivety, at least to Loki, but Thor seemed aware of the draw backs of his views and Loki could respect that. Darcy was excited, mostly because she’d been trying to set him up forever but he had always brushed her off, uninterested in whatever boring encounter he’d have to deal with next.
*
“Okay seriously Loki, these fucking math equations are letters. What the fuck is the alphabet doing in my math? Is this Satan’s attempt to mix English and math because if it is he can eat a thorny cock because this is actual torture,” Darcy says, frowning at the pages in front of her, “I’m starting to think that old lady had the right idea dropping dead in the corner of a McDonald’s.”
Loki rolls his eyes and takes the papers from her, looking over the equations. First he decided she was awful at math, not one answer was correct, and then he decided that Darcy’s teacher should give her a passing grade just so she’d never disgrace math like this again. “God Darcy, my dog could do better than this,” he says, frowning at her sad attempts at doing equations.
“Well fuck you and your dog, which I didn’t even know existed, where is this dog I want to pet it,” she leans forward and wiggles her eyebrows.
“I don’t have a dog, which makes your lack of skill exceptionally sad,” he says and picks up her pencil. He just couldn’t allow math to suffer this way with Darcy making feeble attempts at solving the problems. Darcy looks pleased, like she had been planning for this all along, which she probably had. She knew he was good at math and that she was smart enough to know that if she showed him her sorry attempt at doing the work that he would just do it himself. She claimed it was control issues, an inability to let anything be less than perfect by his standards that apparently influenced his inability to play nice with others, he thought it was his inability to see his favorite subjects butchered.
“So how’s Thor?” she asks in a not very casual manner. She sucked at beating around the bush, which is why he secretly loved her.
“Thor is fine, we’re meeting up in an hour if you want to stick around and stalk us,” he says, smiling at her.
She squeals, “hell yes! I’ve been waiting years for this day!” she says excitedly.
“Have not, we’ve only worked together for eight months and we only got to know each other better after the old lady traumatized the shit out of us. Besides, why are you so damn invested in my love life anyways?” he asks.
She shrugs, “I like back seat living even if I am hella gay.” He rolls his eyes at her but finishes her homework and lets her bug him about Thor.
Thor shows up a little over an hour later with an actual vehicle rather than the tiny pink bike he seemed to always appear on. Darcy had informed him that that was an immediate improvement before running off to go do Darcy things. “How was work?” Thor asks.
Loki gives him a dirty look, “I’d rather chew off my own leg then go back,” he says, almost serious about that.
Thor smiles, “well I guess if this date goes disastrously it can’t be worse than that,” he says with such enthusiasm Loki doesn’t take that as an insult.
“Can’t be worse than the dead old lady that’s for sure,” he says and Thor gives him a horrified look.
“It was a particularly disturbing night in which an old lady died but neither Darcy nor I knew that until hours later. Don’t look at me like that, old people fall asleep all the time, how were we supposed to know it was a little more… permanent this time?” he asks. Thor snorts out laughter and quickly tries to cover it up but fails.
“God, that is an experience,” he says, “apparently working in a McDonalds is more eventful that I thought,” he says.
“Oh it is, once when I was cleaning the bathroom someone had decided to leave their shitty underwear on top of the garbage, not in it, on it. The worst thing was that I let them in to take that shit and they didn’t even have the decency to clean up after themselves,” he says grumpily.
Thor wrinkles his nose, “you have an oddly dirty job,” he says.
“You have no idea,” Loki says, getting into the car.
*
Loki isn’t usually a touchy person but with Thor it’s like second nature and instead of feeling invaded and claustrophobic he feels fine, pleasant even. Cuddles, he discovers, are pleasant with Thor, which is odd because cuddles are only ever pleasant with Darcy. Mostly he wanted to fling people in the nearest direction of off of him. That was part of the reason he hated children so much, they had no concept of personal space and if he had one more god damn child come up to him and touch him he was going to fucking fling it into a wood chipper. Thor loved kids apparently, and wanted an army, which had made Loki wrinkle his nose so hard he was fairly certain his face was stuck like that for a good half an hour. He didn’t even know the first thing about children and Thor had been happy to provide a list but he might as well have been speaking another language because Loki had no clue how to apply any of what he said to kids. Adults, he was good with those, he always had been, even when he was a kid he hated kids.
Thor thought that was funny but Loki was actually serious, it wasn’t until recently he’d even been able to relate to people his own age, for the most part he had always found them immature, stupid, unable to hold a decent conversation. Nothing about them had interested him and though that still held true a lot of the time there was the rare person he’d connect to, like Darcy or Thor. He never really craved human connection, he was more than content on his own, but he found when he didn’t talk to Darcy or Thor he felt… oddly sad, he knew logically he missed them but he couldn’t really imagine why. It wasn’t as if he’d never been friendless before, he’s been friendless most of his life, but it seemed for the first time in his life he had actually allowed himself to have a connection with someone and he kind of enjoyed it.
He liked having things to do with his down time and it made him significantly less cranky at… well, everything. His ass of a father had made a snide comment about his Loki’s non-existent sex life improving, which just went to show the stupid emphasis people put on sex, as if having stable platonic connections with other people wasn’t enough to make a person feel nice. He’d decided that was a good time to tell father dearest he was asexual and one that had zero interest in sex at that so his attitude adjustment had been due to stable emotional relationships not fucking. As if sex even had that power, it was a physical act, not a fucking mood stabilizer.
Not to mention sex wasn’t necessary for orgasms, so all those people who would argue that orgasms have health benefits apparently conveniently forgot that masturbation exists and that sex is not the be-all-and-all of any relationship, otherwise there wouldn’t be restrictions on who can have sex with whom. It isn’t like people fuck their pets and they still loved them and their pets made them happy and vice versa. He had a lot of asexual frustrations and wasn’t really looking forward to having that conversation with Thor, who was bound to be open minded and accepting, but for how long? When people constantly told you sex was necessary for any romantic relationship to work for your entire life it didn’t take long to believe it and doubt your partner. It wasn’t fair to anyone but what was he supposed to do about it?
*
Thor is sitting on a log and he’s sitting between Thor’s legs, letting him pet his hair, which is usually a hard no, even for Darcy. Thor was special though, and he kind of felt like a cat being pampered, he finally understood why the felines liked having their scalps massaged so much. “Okay but like literally all of my friends are ace,” Tony says, kicking some sand at Clint, who immediately spat the sand out of his mouth. That’s what he got for having his mouth open while laying on the ground. He had no idea who thought ‘beach fire’ and ‘Tony Stark’ mixed well because Tony fidgeted like crazy when he had nothing to do and the result was sand on everyone. “Seriously, Clint’s ace, Nat’s ace, Coulson’s ace, Steve’s ace, Bucky’s demi, Bruce is ace, the only thing Jane would ever be sexually attracted to is astrophysics, Loki’s basically King Ace, Thor’s the odd guy out,” he says, kicking some sand over their way. Loki makes sure to send plenty back because fuck Tony, if everyone else is going to have sandy ass cracks because of him Loki was going to make sure he had a sandy ass crack too. Then they can all be trapped by social convention and not scratch their itchy asses.
“You’re asexual?” Thor asks and Loki had really been hoping he missed that but Thor was observant.
Tony immediately realized his mistake and his eyes go comically wide, “oh shit I am so sorry,” he says and he genuinely looks it too, which is difficult to do because Tony almost never apologized, even when he should.
Loki shrugs, “someone had to tell him, at least you ripped the band aid off, I would have taken forever to say something so stupid,” he says bluntly.
Thor looks upset and Loki figures he knows why, they both knew Thor wouldn’t have had a problem with it and Thor was bound to be hurt that Loki thought he would. “Did you think I would care?” he asks, sounding as hurt as he looked.
Loki shakes his head, “no,” he answers honestly.
Thor frowns, “then why didn’t you say anything? Frankly a lot of things make sense now, actually,” he says, probably piecing together Loki’s disinterest in anything beyond kisses and the occasional make out session. Loki doesn’t answer right away because he doesn’t exactly know how one would soften the blow of his words, which usually isn’t something he considered, but he didn’t want to hurt Thor’s feelings. “Do… do you not trust me?” he asks, looking more upset with Loki’s silence.
Loki opens his mouth to say that yes, he did trust Thor, but he changes his mind because it wasn’t true, not really. “No, I don’t, but it isn’t any fault of yours,” he tells him, “when you get told your entire life that you’re supposed to love sex, to a point where it’s supposed to be an inherent part of my identity as a man, which I recognize is absolutely ridiculous, and you don’t have that it’s… confusing. Every time I hear someone talk about a romantic relationship it’s like it’s only valid if there’s sex, the ‘next step’ thing you know? And I know that you wouldn’t be so shallow as to think I was less worthy as a romantic partner because I don’t want to rub our junk together and whatever but what if that changes? What if you only think you don’t care, what if one day you wake up and wonder if our relationship is somehow broken because of the lack of a sexual component? I didn’t want to risk that,” he says quietly.
He isn’t sure what he expects from Thor but he sure as hell didn’t expect him to laugh, “Loki sex is completely interchangeable. I can, in theory, have sex with anyone in the world and vice versa, it’s completely impersonal. Even the most exclusive of kinks, the oddest of interests, the most taboo sexual experiences are shared by thousands of people. The fact that people seem to think a relationship should hinge on something so absolutely exchangeable is… well its sad. Even when people talk about the supposed ‘making love’ what they’re talking about isn’t sex, they’re talking about the emotional connection that supposedly makes the act special. I don’t think the sex is necessary to have that emotional connection to a person and I think if someone thinks it does than they never had that emotional connection to begin with,” he says, “if a relationship can’t function without sex than it isn’t a relationship.”
Loki thought that too, but he never considered that people who weren’t ace, people who didn’t have to worry about not being loved despite their disinterest in sex, held the same opinion. He stares at Thor for a second because he doesn’t have words for the relief he feels so instead he kisses Thor. It doesn’t exactly translate, he thinks, but he knows Thor gets the point.
“Okay that’s touching and all but does anyone feel that way about romance? Because I think romance is fucking dumb and I’m so tired of people telling me I should aspire to it like it’s the be all and all goal of life, like why are platonic relationships not enough? Why are they considered inherently lesser? I just have a lot of feelings about this and I’m just so…” he trails off, flapping his hands around and completely ruining Loki and Thor’s moment.
“Aromantic?” Loki says and Tony turns to look at him so fast Loki gets whiplash just looking at him.
“That’s a thing?” he asks excitedly, “other people think romance is fucking dumb too? Like other people have no god damn clue what romance even is?” he asks. Loki nods and Tony’s eyes get comically wide, “my entire world view has shifted dramatically,” he says, staring into the fire like he’s seen some shit.
“Huh,” Clint says, “we all thought you knew you were aro, guess not,” he says, kicking sand at Tony but mostly succeeding in kicking sand all over himself.
“Tony Stark and the orientation awakening,” Natasha says in a very serious voice and an exaggerated serious expression.
They all start laughing and Tony mock glares at them, “don’t be fucking rude,” he says.
*
The chances, Loki knew, of him getting into Julliard was slim to none but he wasn’t one to just not try at all. So he applies there when he sends out his applications elsewhere, with Darcy’s loyal help of course. And Darcy, he hadn’t seen that coming, had ended up being something of a music prodigy, which they had found out when she asked what was so hard about playing the violin and managed to play the instrument with surprising ease once he explained a few things. She sent out her own applications with his because she had no idea what she was doing with her life and fucking off to music school sounded like a good plan to her. Also she genuinely seemed to enjoy the instrument and appeared more and more to learn how to play it, which hadn’t been at all difficult for her to pick up. He’d be jealous but it hadn’t been that difficult for him either and he’d been writing his own music for years, so really he was ahead of the game. Plus Darcy still messed up sometimes and he got joy out of it even if he didn’t tell her that.
Even more of a bonus was that his asshat dad ended up having to make good on his promise to pay for Loki’s schooling because he made it past the deadline his father set by a day. He managed to get fired the day after the set deadline for giving Thor free nuggets, which Thor had felt awful about but Loki hadn’t minded. Now he got to make fun of Darcy at all hours of the night, though she paid him back by making him do her math. The lack of a staff discount sucked though, but Darcy was a nice person and gave it to him anyways because she didn’t give a damn if she got fired either.
He hadn’t really expected to hear back from schools for a while, most people didn’t, but he had gotten early acceptance into most of the schools he applied to and he had, against the odds, gotten an audition from Julliard. He would have asked Darcy for a ride there but she had ha d to work, so he ends up on a road trip and a half with Clint and Tony that ended with them getting kicked out of a casino for counting cards, which all three of them happened to be good at though Tony was the best by far, and not because they were underage. Clint had been happy with the winnings he got away with though, which wasn’t a lot because Tony was a fucking moron and had no idea what subtly was. But Clint had money to buy himself Taco Bell for an extended period of time and he was a simple man so that had pleased him.
The downside was that he ended up playing the audition hung over though Clint insisted it sounded great, which would have been a compliment if he wasn’t fucking deaf. Tony had managed to fall asleep so he took that as an immediate bad sign though to be fair he had zero taste in music, he listened to AC/DC for Christ sake. He hadn’t thought he sounded bad but not sounding bad didn’t mean he sounded good, and good wasn’t good enough in this case. Not that it mattered, he supposed, because he had a choice of several other schools. He just wanted to cost his father a pretty penny, make up for lost years and all that.
He gets back to find Darcy and Thor hanging out in his room singing loudly to the Hunchback of Notredam, specifically Frollo’s song using his lamp as a makeshift microphone. He decided the two of them were embarrassing and unnecessary but he loved them anyways. “Guess who gets to disappoint her parents by doing a bullshit degree in music? Me!” Darcy says, grinning.
“Great, we can disappoint our parents together,” he says, “we should live together and we can tell everyone Thor is our golden retriever,” he says.
Thor makes a face, “if I was an animal I would not be a golden retriever, I would be a battle ostrich,” he says because sometimes he was more dramatic than Tony, which was saying something.
“Well I’m not a fucking penguin but that’s what you people made me, live with it,” he says, wrinkling his nose at Thor. The only ones who had agreed with their animals was Clint, who absolutely was a sloth, and Nat, who absolutely was a panther. Bruce had been so offended at being labeled a gorilla but Tony was the one who picked it and he refused to be argued with, he seemed to think because he struck gold with Nat and Clint that he had struck gold with them all. Rhodey was a naked mole rat though so at least none of them ended up as bad as him, who would now forever be remembered as a penis with teeth. To be fair Tony would absolutely be a cockatoo because those things were fucking loud and annoying, but pretty.
“Battle ostrich,” Thor says, narrowing his eyes at Loki.
“More like battle kitten, you’re an absolute pushover,” Darcy says, rolling her eyes.
“Oh, speaking of Tony decided you were a bonobo,” Thor says and Darcy looks so unbelievably outraged.
“I am deleting him off Snapchat!” she says as if that would make any difference at all to Tony. He’d probably miss her gay jokes; Darcy was a comedy genius when it came to gay jokes. And jokes about bad hair days, Loki had a deep connection with her jokes about her inability to deal with any kind of humidity without her hair making her look like a poodle face swapped with a human. If he had nice hair like Thor it wouldn’t be an issue but no, his hair unstraightened made him closely resemble a homeless man with a nest of rats living in his hair. Thor insisted it looked fine but Thor also insisted he would be a battle ostrich.
“That’s cold, Darcy,” he says sarcastically, flinging himself onto his bed and dragging Thor with him.
“It is, that fucker is now deleted and he is going to miss al my gay jokes, and all the pictures of my cute ass cat,” she says, giving her phone sassy looks as if Tony was watching through the screen, which, creepy. “Dog pile!” she yells and jumps on the two of them, not giving them time to roll the hell out of the way.
“So how did it go?” Thor asks, managing to squeeze some breath out even with Darcy crushing the two of them.
*
He had a bad habit of self-sabotage, he knew, but he was really regretting fucking over his Julliard audition now. He was supposed to hear back from them any time now and his father was giving him looks, like he knew Loki wasn’t good enough and wondered why Loki had even bothered to try. To be fair he wasn’t doing anything different, it was Loki who felt differently about the looks now, but it was still difficult to deal with. Thor insisted that he’d get in, that he was good, very good actually, but Thor was supposed to be supporting and stuff. Darcy said he’d get in too and she wasn’t one for lying to make someone feel better but that didn’t mean she was right, what the hell did she know about music anyways?
When he gets the letter he stares at it for a good hour, maybe more, before father dearest gets home and gives him that fucking look. “Well don’t act like you haven’t been staring at it for an hour, open the damn thing. There’s no use in dragging it out, you might as well get rejected quickly,” he snaps. Loki, having lived a life of solitude and general bullying from his classmates for being alone all the time, was well used to cruelty and he was glad for it now. He knew the hurt he felt didn’t show much on his face, the defiance though, that was loud and clear. He picks up the letter and rips it open, pulling the letter out and reading it quickly.
“Well that’s not surprising,” he says casually and tosses it on the table, walking upstairs without giving much of anything away.
Once in his room he sends Darcy and Thor the thrilling conclusion in his daddy issues saga and settles on his bed with a book, full well knowing his father was bound to make a comment sooner or later. It doesn’t take long, less than ten minutes, and at least the asshole has the decency to knock before he opened the door, that was new. “You got in,” he says, voice coated in disbelief. Loki wasn’t really sure it was real either but he wasn’t going to give that asshole the satisfaction of knowing it.
He ends up taking a page from Elle Woods’ book, “what, like its hard?” he says, raising an eyebrow as if he felt as casually uncaring as his body language and facial expressions led him to believe. His phone was buzzing like crazy beside him but he let it go in favor of staring his asshole of a sperm donor down because now he couldn’t claim Loki wasn’t good enough and neither one of them knew what to do with that.
“God, I can’t believe you got in, you sound like a dying cat when you play that thing, this has got to be some kind of joke,” he says, making a sorry attempt at brining Loki down.
It doesn’t work and Loki tips his head up defiantly, “I can assure you, father, that the only joke here is you. Now get the hell out of my room,” he growls, giving his father what Darcy had dubbed his evil villain smirk of satisfaction. He goes, mercifully, because he damn well knows that Loki has won and there wasn’t much battle to fight when some snotty teen beat you at your own game. Like son like father after all, except Loki was much more exceptional at this game than that of which he was spawned.
*
Partying with Tony Stark was kind of like wrestling a bear, sure, it seemed like the perfectly good kind of dumb idea at the time, but afterwards when you felt like you were dying and you were fairly certain your carcass has been picked dry by vultures it was not a good idea. “I need a shot of vodka,” Natasha mumbles. Clint, having overheard her from the bathroom, promptly throws up. Thor full body shudders and Loki lets out a long, thin groan of despair.
“I can feel my soul clinging to what’s left of the hope in this mortal world but with what hope it’s clinging to I don’t know,” he mumbles, curling into the protective warmth of Thor.
“Okay fucking Shakespeare,” Tony says, nudging him with his boot, “come on guys, get up, there’s a whole new round pf partying to do,” he says. Even Phil Coulson, arguably the most level tempered guy on the entire planet, seemed to think this was a bad enough idea that he was full on giving Tony a death glare. Tony raises an eyebrow, “need I remind you all of Thor’s birthday? That was a two week stint and we all survived it, except Loki, but he was working at McDonald’s with dead old ladies chilling in the corner so that’s worse,” he says.
In the end they all follow Tony’s lead because for some reason they rejected Steve, the much more reasonable and logical leader, in favor of Tony, the fucknut who was going to give them all alcohol poisoning. He wasn’t even sure why they were so set on destroying their livers; they were all going to school within hours of each other so this mess was largely unnecessary. He supposed that’s why they did it, because they were all perfectly free to do so and honestly Steve Rogers drunk was hilarious and everyone should have the privilege of seeing it.
They last a week and Steve decides to take over as leader when they somehow end up in the middle of Dubai with know fucking clue how they got there. It was an adventure though, and even Steve found it enjoyable once they located Clint, who had crawled into a dumpster and fell asleep only to be found by one Phil Coulson sometime in the afternoon. They had all decided that in addition to being deaf Clint’s nose must not work at all if he managed to sleep in that mess. Clint insisted it was selective smelling, which was what he said about his hearing, so for all they knew Clint really didn’t have a sense of smell. Bucky bet ten bucks he did because he sniffed the shit out of tacos, but Sam points out that if Clint could snort tacos he would so that was a bad example. In the end they settle on ‘it’s a mystery’ and leave it at that.
*
Darcy was such a lazy ass, he swore she never went to class ever but that couldn’t be true because her grades were good. “You two have really partied with Tony Stark?” some blonde douchefuck riding on his parent’s money asks. Loki was aware that he too was technically riding on his parent’s money but he had some considerably different circumstances.
“Hell yeah,” Darcy says, “we ended up in Dubai. No clue how it happened,” she says and leaves the story at that because it sounded more badass that way.
“Bullshit,” the guy says and Loki hands over his phone, which had a picture of Thor looking sideways at the camera with his weepy drunk face on in Dubai, which was probably enough to make it sound believable, but Tony was in the background on the picture draped over Pepper, who looked like she was attempting to get him to the couch. In the next picture she’s shown dropping him where he was and walking off but he doesn’t show Fuckdick that one.
“Seriously?” they guy says, examining the picture closely. They had used their pictures of the night before to try and find Clint but he had spontaneously disappeared around two in the morning according to the time stamps. Only Clint could slink off like that completely unnoticed.
“Mhmm,” Loki mumbles, more focused on his work than impressing Shitstain. He had something of a reputation, thanks to Tony though no one else knew who was behind his dramatic entrance. It was hardly his fault his friend had a flare for the dramatic and insisted on brining everyone else into it. He glances at the time on his phone, “got to go, I have a Skype date with Thor,” he says, getting up to go back to his room for said date.
“Thor? Seriously, who the hell is named Thor?” Dillweed asks, obviously unaware that he was talking to someone named Loki.
“Thor’s the blonde guy in the picture I showed you, now if you’ll excuse me I have a date,” he says.
“I didn’t know you were gay,” Fuckbrains says, obviously not getting the fucking hint.
“I’m not, I’m asexual,” he says bluntly, “and before you asks what that means it means that I don’t experience sexual attraction. Ever. Like at all,” he says, continuing when they guy looked like he didn’t believe him.
“What? That doesn’t even make sense, that like… what makes you human!” he says. Darcy’s face, oh she looked so damn pissed and it was hilarious.
He pulls his sun glasses out of his pocket and put them on dramatically, “then once again I’ve proven myself to be a god among mortals,” he says and walks away, hearing the sound of skin on skin that was no doubt Darcy punching that fucknugget in the face.