Loki rolled his eyes as Rogers interrupted Stark for the umpteenth time. He was grateful to Carol (and to some extent Thor, he supposed) for helping him to clear his name and getting him recruited into the Goody-Two-Shoes Club Avengers after he had helped to resurrect Stark, Romanoff, and Gamora, but by the Norns, their meetings were unbearably boring. And very loud, between Stark and Rogers shouting at each other and Thor speaking at his normal volumes.
He conjured a small scrap of paper and his favourite blood-red ballpoint pen and discreetly scratched out a note in Kree so that only Carol could read it - ‘Why have you done this to me? This is a fate worse than death. Trust me, I would know.’ Carol just about managed to hold back a snort of laughter when she read it. She tugged the paper over and stole Loki’s pen to write her own message - ‘Suck it up, buttercup, this is what you wanted!”
“I take it back!” Loki whispered. Peter Parker, the young spider-child, overheard and raised an eyebrow. Peter glanced to his other side to check that none of the other Avengers were looking at him, before scooting closer to Carol.
“Hey, what are you guys talking about?” He whispered. “Are you plotting to escape? Please take me with you if you are, I’m so bored.” Loki’s eyes lit up in delight, a mischievous plan already beginning to form.
“Peter, do you speak Kree?” Loki whispered, pulling out a fresh piece of paper. Peter glanced at Carol, lost. “Never mind. I’ll just enchant it so that only us three can see it.” The three of them spent the next few minutes drowning out Rogers’ incessant droning – Loki was beginning to wish they’d sacrificed the Captain for the soul stone instead – as they focused on their Master Plan of Escape. Princess Shuri leaned over Loki’s shoulder to join in halfway through. Loki was quite proud of all of them, actually.
“What did you have in mind?” Carol asked.
“Hmm… Get ice cream?” Peter suggested hopefully. Scott Lang, on Peter’s other side, perked up at the sound.
“What’s this about ice cream?”
Loki huffed. “The plan is hardly secret if so many people know about it…”
“Stop complaining. Scott, we’re escaping.” Shuri whispered across the table, sliding over their carefully concocted plan. Loki sulked, but magically allowed Scott to read it too.
Carol elbowed Loki. “More people in on the plan means more people to cause chaos…” She pointed out. Loki relented with a small smirk. Carol turned to the group of troublemakers with a glint in her eye. “Right, Peter will take Shuri, I’ll take Scott, Loki will make some sort of dramatic exit, then we’ll get ice cream.” She summarised. Everyone nodded. Loki grinned slightly manically.
Thor was sat directly opposite from Loki, explaining Fortnite to the Valkyrie instead of listening to Rogers. Loki picked up the proof of their Master Plan and set fire to it with a flick of his fingers, before throwing it at such an angle that it looked like he was aiming for the wastepaper basket behind Thor. Unfortunately for Thor it landed right on Loki’s real target – Thor’s hideous facial hair.
Thor let out an ear-splitting yowl, launching backwards in his chair as if that would move him away from the fire attached to his face. The Valkyrie yelled in surprise and started trying to fan the fire to put it out, which immediately made it worse, to Loki’s delight. “Lackey!” She hissed in frustration.
“What?” Loki asked, feigning innocence. “I didn’t do it on purpose!” He caught Stark quirk up an eyebrow at him. “I didn’t! I was aiming for that bin.”
“It did look like he was aiming for the trash can…” Barton piped up, watching Thor devolve into hysterics, seemingly with no intention to try and help. He leaned around Romanoff to get a better view, clearly thoroughly entertained. Loki tried not to be visibly smug. He lived to please.
Loki watched as Peter began to abseil down the side of the tower, Shuri clinging to his shoulders. Ha, the plan was working.
Thor started to blow on the fire. He yelped as it just grew larger, and started to blow harder rather than deploy any logic. It was becoming increasingly difficult not to laugh at him. Rogers was panicking, Strange was trying to explain the science of how to put out a fire, Stark was openly cackling, and Carol and Scott were quietly climbing out of the window while everyone was distracted. Thor started to cry.
“Lackey-“
“Hey! His name is Loki, don’t be so disrespectful.” Stark cut in. Loki was a little surprised that Stark would vouch for him like that. He shot him a grateful smile, which Stark returned with a small thumbs-up.
“Whatever, Loki, then, aren’t you a Frost Giant?” The Valkyrie demanded. Loki felt his insides go cold, no pun intended, and his face fell. “Can’t you use Frost Giant magic to put this out?” Loki looked at Thor. Thor shot him a look that clearly said ‘You don’t have to if you don’t want to’, but he seemed afraid to actually say it out loud in case moving the fire around made it spread. Loki and Thor’s relationship had improved massively since Loki came back from the ‘dead’, facial arson notwithstanding. Thor had been so relieved to have his brother back that he had been determined to become the universe’s best brother or something, so that the next time someone murdered Loki they wouldn’t be arguing. Loki had vowed a while ago to never tell anyone that he hadn’t really died, fearing it would set them back to square one.
The room had been silent for a beat too long, everybody either confused or uncomfortable, when Romanoff, never one to put up with nonsense for very long, emptied her glass of water over Thor’s beard and attempted to continue the meeting. Thor let out a yell of relief and foolishly tried to hug her. Romanoff punched him in response, and a small scuffle broke out. Rogers tried in vain to diffuse the situation, Barton started up a chant of ‘Fight! Fight! Fight!’, and Stark pulled out that device thing that all the humans used for everything they could think of and held it up before him, probably recording a video. Loki waited for the Valkyrie (more like Balk-yrie) to stop glaring at him and turn her attention to the fight before disappearing from the room with a small flash of green that only Stark seemed to notice.
He reappeared on the pavement outside Avengers Tower, where Peter, Shuri, Carol and Scott, his merry band of troublemakers, were waiting for him. “What took so long?” Shuri complained.
“Agent Romanoff punched Thor and I had to stick around to see it.” He told them – not lying, just omitting certain events. Carol hummed, eyes narrowed. Damn. She knew him too well. “So. Ice cream?”
Peter and Scott visibly brightened, practically bouncing on the spot, and led the rest in the direction of the ice cream parlour at the end of the street. The women (plus one being of unspecified gender) followed behind, Loki resolutely not looking at Carol in case she spidey-sensed his upset.
The insect duo ordered ‘forty of the biggest and most disgustingly sweet ice creams’ they had, to Loki and Carol’s surprise. “Forty? Why do we want forty?” Carol asked, looking a little like she was beginning to regret doing this.
An enormous grin split across Peter’s face. “Mr Stark gave us two hundred dollars to spend on our ‘escapades’, as he put it.” He revealed, giggling. Loki felt his jaw drop.
“How did he know-?”
“Uh, he saw me leaving. I wasn’t as subtle as you told me to be, sorry.” Peter admitted, looking sheepish and genuinely remorseful. “But nobody else saw me! And Shuri, Scott and I thought we could buy everyone on the team some ice cream!” Loki and Carol blinked. “You know, to, uh, raise morale…”
Loki couldn’t stop himself from laughing. “Peter, you are officially the best of your species.” Loki declared. Peter beamed. Shuri and Scott grumbled in the background, but neither of them were as adorable as the Spider-Child, so Loki didn’t care.
Loki used magic to float the rest of the ice creams behind himself while the group wandered around New York as they ate their own ice creams. They’d ended up with a quadruple scoop of mint, strawberry, bubble-gum and banana, covered with raspberry sauce and multi-coloured hundreds and thousands and with a chocolate flake wedged into one of the scoops. Loki thought that he had never eaten anything so delightfully disgusting.
Shuri’s phone started to ring and she groaned irritably. Probably her older brother, Loki thought. “What do you want, T’Challa?” Shuri huffed upon answering the call. Bingo! Loki thought, giving himself a mental high-five. “We left. We were bored.” She informed him. Peter looked like he wanted to interject, probably to apologise profusely for disrespecting the other Avengers or something, but Shuri held a finger to her lips, shushing him pre-emptively. “We’re coming back now.” She sighed, rolling her eyes and hanging up. “I guess we’re going back now?” She said to the group. “Sorry, guys.”
“No biggie.” Scott shrugged.
“Yeah, we can give out the ice cream now!” Peter grinned. Loki smiled at how wonderfully kindhearted Peter was. He decided officially that he would die, for real die, for this child.
“Race you back!” Scott challenged, and took off running, Shuri following close behind. Peter slung a web and started to swing back. Carol turned to Loki.
“Don’t magic yourself back instantly, that’s not fair.” She warned.
Loki grinned, the picture of innocence (not). “Carol, darling, I would never!” He exclaimed, trying his very best to sound genuine. Carol raised an eyebrow, then powered up and started to fly away, expecting Loki to follow. Loki magicked himself back.
“Christ!” Stark exclaimed when Loki and thirty-five ice creams suddenly appeared next to him. Rogers barked at him about blaspheming.
“Nope, it’s just me!” He grinned, then pointed to the ice creams. “We brought gifts! The others are racing each other back. I cheated.” He announced as Carol swooped in through the window. She glared at him as she landed.
“Cheat!” She yelled.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Loki said loudly, starting to levitate the ice creams over to the rest of the team. “There you go, Merry Christmas.”
“It’s March.” Banner pointed out.
“I don’t care, eat your unhealthy goop and shut your mouth.” Loki scoffed as Peter webbed in through the window.
“Hey! Don’t be rude to Doctor Banner.” He admonished. Loki raised an eyebrow. Peter ignored it. “I see Loki gave out the ice creams without me.” He sniffed. Loki felt guilty. Stark glared at him for daring to even mildly upset his fake son. “Hey, I’m joking, it’s fine. The banana flavour is the grossest, just FYI.”
“Really? I thought it was the bubble-gum.” Carol frowned.
“I thought the bubble-gum was kind of… weirdly nice?” Peter shrugged.
“The entire thing was revolting.” Loki interjected, then quickly added before Peter’s face could finish crumpling, “In a good way. I adored it.”
Thor wandered over, five different colours and several hundreds and thousands and chocolate flakes smeared across his face. “Brother. My tongue can’t reach the bits inside the cone.” He announced, as though it was some kind of intergalactic emergency.
“The cone is edible.” Loki told him, resisting the urge to roll his eyes. “It’s not very nice, but you’ll probably enj- never mind.” He trailed off as Thor shoved the entire cone into his mouth.
“Itf goof!” Thor exclaimed, spraying a bit of ice cream on Loki as he spoke. Loki grimaced so hard he almost pulled a muscle. “Oopf! Forry…”
“Don’t worry about it. Payback for the beard, I suppose.” Loki huffed, using magic to clean his clothes. “But it does look much better at this length.” He added, admiring his handiwork for a second. Gone was the unwashed monstrosity that used to reach the bottom of his brother’s ribcage. Now it was just a little longer than it had been before Loki died (the third time) and Thor’s face was actually visible.
Thor swallowed his food, pouting crossly. “Did you set my beard on fire on purpose so that you could run away?” Thor folded his arms and stamped his foot when Loki just smirked. “Loki!”
“Apparently magicians aren’t supposed to reveal their secrets.” Loki grinned, remembering the so-called ‘magician’ that Carol and Stark had forced Loki, Strange and Wanda to see, to show them ‘what real magic looks like’. Thor yelled at him again, then yelled some more when Loki just sniggered in response. “Did you like the ice cream or not? Shut up.” Thor huffed, but agreed that he did like it and that it was a nice thing to do, he just would have preferred a different method of distraction. Loki just smiled, counting it as a win.
Stark wandered over, still working on the flake. “Very successful meeting. Ten out of ten. In fact, this might be the best Avengers meeting we’ve ever had.” He grinned. Loki narrowed his eyes.
“How did you know what we were doing?” He demanded.
Stark laughed. “I pay a lot more attention to my surroundings than people give me credit for! Plus, Carol taught me to read Kree.” Loki growled in annoyance, but decided to let it go when Stark reminded him who had funded their adventure. “Did these cost the whole two hundred dollars?” He questioned.
“Not even close. The insects insisted we give the rest to the homeless.” Loki informed him. Stark smiled.
“I love that kid. Do you think his aunt would let me adopt him if I asked nicely?”
“What if I just kill his aunt-“
“No! What is wrong with you?” Stark exclaimed.
Loki hummed, considering. “Well, I was kidnapped as a baby by a realm that was at war with the realm I was kidnapped from, by a man who despised me because of my true nature my entire life, and my parents’ love was always conditional-“
“Okay, wrong question to ask. Let me rephrase that – thank you for your commitment to the cause, but it’s unnecessary.” Stark corrected, already knowing all of the main awful parts of Loki’s life and deciding he didn’t want to hear them again, not over his gross ice cream.
“Duly noted. Your ice cream is melting.” Loki pointed out, using magic to re-freeze it.
“Hey, that’s so cool!” Stark grinned in surprise. “You’re way more talented than you let on, aren’t you?”
“I could obliterate this entire city with a wave of my fingers.” Loki told him. Stark paused, starting to frown. “I won’t though, Stark, stop worrying.”
“Call me Tony!” Tony requested. “Just – if you ever get the urge, just go get some ice cream instead. It always helps, right?”
Loki smiled. “That it does. Merry Christmas, Tony.”
“Merry Christmas, Loki.”
Banner slurped at the remains of his ice cream, confused. “It’s still March!”