Silk

“Alright then, meeting adjourned,” Pietro proclaims in a mock trial voice, smacking a notebook onto the table the Avengers are gathered around.

Everyone begins getting up and the sound of chair scraping fills the air. They all walk towards the other side of the wide room, with many conversations all about.

“Ah, yes! Breakfast,” Thor heartily realizes and rushes towards the counter to save a stool.

Loki strolls slowly, making sure to keep some distance between him and Chloe. He can’t help but stare at the back of her head. 

They all sit down, unintentionally leaving a seat for Chloe right in the middle. Everyone’s chairs faced towards the other side of the counter but their magnet drawn to Chloe was noticeable, as they all turned their heads in her direction.

Wanda and Sam begin cooking, the crackling of butter on the pan is heavenly. 

Soon enough, Nat’s making conversation with Steve, Wanda’s smiling over the counter to an impressed Vision, and Thor and Loki are bickering about whether or not they have pancakes in Asgard. 

“Oh now, you bringing pancakes back to Asgard does not count,” Loki points out.

“It does too,” Thor retorts, with no further explanation.

“No, because they’re not of that nature. They’re not from Asgard, they’re from here,”

“Ooh, so it’s an invasive species!” Peter blurts out and then as his cheeks become pink: “We learned about it in biology last year,”

“Oh by the way,” sticking out his hand to Chloe to shake, “I’m-“

“Peter by day, Spider-Man by night,” Chloe finishes for him with a knowing smile and shakes his hand lightly.

“You know?” 

“Yeah, I know. I know all of you actually,”

“All of us?”

“I had to study you guys for ‘research purposes’ in case an Avenger ever interfered with hyDras PlAnNed MiSsIon,” she says mockingly, talking with loud animated hands. 

It was obvious she had thought about this a lot, and still held the valid hatred. Next to her, Loki felt a strange sense of jealousy, jealousy that she hadn’t fallen quiet because of the abuse. Unlike him.

“So yeah, I know your powers, backstories, that sort of thing, but I've probably forgotten half of it. It was a very boring lesson, trust me,” she continues with a grin, egging them on.

“Ouch,” Sam jokingly responds, while flipping the pancakes.

“Also I don’t live under a rock. Everyone knows about you guys. But don’t worry, it wasn’t really much confidential stuff, mostly just public knowledge,” Chloe explains with a shrug and forks scrambled eggs in her mouth, pleased. “Plus I had to watch the movies, too. Though that part wasn’t too bad,”

“The movies?” Bucky repeats, muffled with a biscuit in his mouth.

“Oh, the Marvel movies,” and with the confused faces around her, “The MCU?? No, don’t tell me you’ve never heard of them,” She looks to Vision for help, because if anyone would know it would be the walking computer.

“Oh,” when he realizes, “I believe Ms. Duchess is referring to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, am I correct?”

Chloe nods, still surprised.

“The MCU is a franchise based on our lives actually,” he continues.

“Yeah, except they spice it up cuz apparently your lives aren’t dramatic enough as is. So it’s like fan fiction kind of,” she adds, waiting for one of them to remember hearing of it, though none do.

“The movies are quite popular,” Vision says, apparently trying to rack their memories too.

”I can’t believe this, how have you never heard? They’re literally about you,” Chloe asks.

And with that, a distracted Peter speaks up, “Wait, am I in them?”

“Yeah of course, you’re in…” Chloe looks up at the ceiling, remembering which ones, “uh, Civil War and Hoco,”

“TWO MOVIES woAh,”

Loki’s voice breaks through, and when they look over at him, he is slowly cutting his french toast.

”Perhaps we could begin watching them during Family Movie Nights,” holding up his fork, syrup nearly touching his lips. 

A hint of a smile grows as he chews, when Thor takes over in that bright-eyed way of his.

“Tony??” he asks hopefully. 

“Yeah sure, I guess,” Tony responds. “Friday?” 

“It’s in the schedule, boss,” a loud disembodied voice rings out.

“Holy shit!”

Chloe jumps so hard her stool begins to wobble, but Loki steadies it just in time.

“WHAT WAS THAT!” she yells out, clutching her heart, while the others lightly chuckle.

“I thought you knew everything,” Loki banters.

“Yes but I thought FRIDAY was only in your suit,”

“I am now part of the compound sound and security system. Mr Stark recently added the new feature,” the voice speaks again.

“Yeah I got that,” she responds. “They never put that in the movies,” she mumbles, disgruntled. 

“Anyway…you’re gonna love this. Sam makes a damn good pancake,” Bucky smiles, eyeing Sam and his ever growing pile across the counter.

“Hah, thanks bud,” he blushes.

Bucky is definitely right.

Chloe devours the pancakes and the eggs and washes it down with coffee. One of the best meals she’s ever had, but she’s sure her opinion is affected by her mood. These people have a true sense of family. 

She could get used to this.

Hands sticky with syrup and stomach full of wonderful things, they all finish soon enough, Sam and Wanda taking their own plates too. 

“Well, this has been nice,” Pietro says, getting up, after sitting with an empty plate for a whole 3 minutes. 

“Yeah, we don’t normally have meals like this,” Nat smiles, “This was good.”

“Yeah, ok bye,” and with that, Pietro leaves with a tight smile and pocketed hands, disappearing behind his own room’s door.

Chloe notices Wanda’s eyebrows raise, irritated.

“So, Chloe,” Tony speaks up, bringing her attention to him, ”We’ll probably be pretty busy today. It’s still supposed to be a normal day, so I’ll be out and downstairs and whatever. But you should get acquainted. Maybe have a tour of the place. It’s massive and you can thank my father for that but you’ll definitely get lost every now and then. So a tour would be good.” He rolls up his sleeves and starts wiping the dishes, looking over to the others to see who volunteers.

And although Nat and Thor and Peter all offer, and enthusiastically at that, he notices Loki get quiet and apparently Thor notices too, because he shifts his offer onto his brother. 

“What about Loki? Brother, you love walks around the compound, it’s all you do. He will know it plenty well, every nook and cranny,”

Thor was always like this, pushing people to love Loki, or at least accept him. It did embarrass Loki quite a bit, especially when the person inevitably gets uncomfortable, but then again he was used to people finding him confusing, and Thor never stopped, no matter how much he pleaded with him.

But Loki needed some friends and Tony was trying hard to be supportive recently. God knows what he might do if he gets bored.

“Uh, yeah sure,” Tony says with the most confidence he can, turning his head to her, “Chloe?”

Chloe, surprising to all of the people present, seemed the complete opposite of uncomfortable. Loki could see her eyes brighten in a subdued kind of way. Why?

“Ok, sounds fun,”

“Alright, then,” Loki slides off his stool trying his best to hide his confusion as to why she would say anything involving him sounds ‘fun’. “Let’s go,”

Walking side by side, the two pass the meeting table and the rooms, the conversations in the background gradually fading away.

They turn the corner together, and as soon as they’re alone, the tension is obvious. To Loki at least. Chloe seems not disturbed though, which is good, in some way. 

She clearly feels comfortable enough to spark up an exchange.

“You know, it’s funny I’ve been obsessed with you ever since the whole New York Battle thing,”

Now, this of course comes as a shock.

“Obsessed?” he says smugly, raising an eyebrow and turning to look at her.

“In a fan way,” she answers back, making direct eye contact.

“Why?” he asks, slightly less playfully this time.

“I thought it was so cool,” 

“Destroying half a city for some bullshit plan?”

“Well, I don’t know, you just looked like you could get what you wanted. You could scare them for- What plan?”

Silence.

“Thanos’ plan,” his voice comes out softer than he expects.

“Who’s that?”

“A self-proclaimed god. A homicidal alien. He wanted the lot of the Infinity Stones, wanted me to take over New York for him, the whole world-domination plan they all brand themselves on,” he went on to explain. 

He winces like he’s pressing on an old bruise. Because this is his bruise. One of many.

“Sounds like a prick,”

“Believe me, you don’t know the half of it,” he responds, sparking intrigue in her. She knows not to push though. True they had only met an hour ago, but they had already shared enough traumatic memories to last a lifetime. I guess they just feel like the other knew what it was like.