Introductions
“Do you delight in being a moron?” Loki asks as Peter pulls his hands away.
“That’s not nice,” Peter says, because of course his brain would choose the least appropriate words to say when you’re staring possible death in the face and that death just unexpectedly healed you.
Apparently it’s not the worst thing to say, because Loki responds with a grin, somewhere between fond and feral. “Am I the sort of person you’d expect to be ‘nice’?”
“Well… I mean, you did just heal me.”
The grin disappears. “You wouldn’t have been hurt in the first place if you had the sense to let go of dangerous creatures.”
“What, the snake? It didn’t look like a poisonous one, and I didn’t think you’d bite me. Besides, a hawk might grab a snake as much as a parrot, and I couldn’t let you get hurt.”
Loki gapes at him. Then his eyes narrow. “Does Midgard not have salamanders?”
“Sala—of course we have salamanders!”
“And you didn’t think to let go of a lizard that can set itself on fire? ”
Peter flounders. “Um… uh… salamanders on Earth don’t do that. I don’t think. Although… hold on. We’ve got electric eels and bombardier beetles and pistol shrimp, so a few animals have evolved to use attacks like that, so I guess it’s not impossible that some type of salamander might be able to—wait, that’s what that thing was?”
Chuckling, Loki steps back and sits on an air duct without even looking, casually crossing one leg over the other. “I suppose you’re less of an imbecile than I took you for. So tell me, child of the sky, what name might you be known as?”
“I’m, uh… I’m Spider-Man,” Peter says, thankful that (for once) his voice doesn’t crack. “How, um… how are you doing that?”
Loki blinks at him, then raises his eyebrows questioningly.
“The air duct,” Peter clarifies. “I know people sometimes lean on them, but they’re kinda fragile, and I mean, you’re like six hundred pounds, right?” He recalls that much from some discussion of how Asgardians differed from humans. “How is that thing not buckling under your weight?”
“When I was a parrot, I sat on your head. Did I feel unusually heavy?”
“So you’re… doing something to your weight? Making yourself lighter? Or making the object stronger? Or… maybe you’ve shapeshifted into a human form somehow, even though you don’t look any different?” He shakes his head, like that’s gonna be enough to make the laws of physics reassert themselves.
There’s an odd fondness to Loki’s smile. “Do all your peers approach information the way you do, or is it only you?”
There’s no hint of condescension in the question, only genuine curiosity, but Peter still looks away, hunching his shoulders, all too familiar with what his peers think of the convoluted way his brain works. Even before the bite, before the random absences (and increasingly implausible excuses), he’d always been counted a weirdo. Joining a high school for geniuses just made him stand out more: the weirdest kid in a school full of weirdos.
But Loki’s waiting for an answer, however poorly Peter might phrase it. And Peter doesn’t want to learn what Loki might do if provoked into impatience.
“I’m… unique,” he says, which is a ridiculous start: Every human being is unique. “Nobody really thinks the way I do,” he adds. “People say it’s hard to follow my brain.”
For a long moment, Loki simply regards him, head tilted thoughtfully. “Treasure that,” he says at last. “Far too many people are depressingly predictable.”
At that, Peter can’t help a nervous chuckle. “God of Mischief,” he mutters. “Of course you’d hate predictability.”
Loki’s eyes narrow. “Well, Spider-Man,” he says, pushing to his feet again and stalking forward, “it seems you have a good idea of who I am. And now that you know that I’m alive, and back on Earth… what do you intend to do with that information? You did claim to know the Avengers. I’m sure they’d be most interested to learn of my whereabouts.”
Peter swallows, taking a step back, as if that’s gonna save him. “Is this the part where you decide whether or not to kill me?”
“Oh,” Loki says with a predatory grin, “I’ve already decided that part. No, it’s only a matter of whether I have to go on the run again. And you needn’t try to lie to me; I’m rather skilled at picking up on falsehoods.”
“Well… um… how long have you even been here? In Queens? I’ve been patrolling almost every night, and I’ve never noticed you doing anything… other than flying, I guess. So you’re not here to hurt us. Why are you… why are you even here? If you’re trying to hide from the Avengers, this is the last place you’d want to be.”
“Perhaps I’m hoping to run into them,” Loki suggests. “Even the score.”
Frowning, Peter shakes his head. “No… you could have done that already, if you meant to. And they would have warned me. I think. You’re… keeping an eye on them, maybe? Maybe setting up some sort of attack, but I don’t think so.”
“So impatient, you mortals. I once pulled a prank on Thor that required me to cultivate a particular fruit tree from seedling to harvest over the course of two hundred eighty-seven years. Do you honestly think me incapable of biding my time to get back at those who have wronged me?”
Peter gapes at him. “T-Two hundred ei—?” he echoes, ending in a squeak. “How… how old are you, anyway? Is that rude? That’s probably rude. Sorry.”
Now it’s Loki’s turn to frown. “Why would that be rude? Is age some kind of insult on Midgard?”
“Well… sorta? People don’t like to be reminded that they’re old. That they’re aging.”
“And here I thought Asgard was too easily offended.” He makes a thoughtful moue. “I suppose if one’s life gets measured within the blink of a century, one wouldn’t care to be reminded of how quickly the end will come. That being the case, though, could mortals even comprehend the lifespan of a god?”
“I guess not.” Rubbing the back of his head, Peter smiles a bit sheepishly. “So, it wouldn’t make sense. Waiting around to plot revenge, I mean. A few decades might be a short time to you, but to us… I mean, if you waited thirty years, Mr. Star—uh, Iron Man, he’d be, what, eighty? If he even survived that long.”
Loki’s look sours, and he turns away. “I’m well aware of how… fragile you mortals are.”
There’s an odd note of something like regret in that statement, but Peter doesn’t know what to make of it. Is Loki regretting the invasion? Troubled by the cost? Surely there isn’t anyone down here that he’d be close enough to to actually mourn.
“Are you okay?” he asks, before he can think better of it.
Loki glances back at him, his brows furrowed. “What?”
“You, um… you seem troubled. Uh, wanna talk about it?”
A disbelieving laugh, and: “Have you nothing better to do with your time?”
“Not really? You’re the biggest threat in the neighborhood right now,” he adds, before his brain quite catches up with his mouth. “Not that, um, not that you have to be a threat, but, I mean, if you wanted to, you could hurt a lot of people, and—I mean, I’d rather you not? But if there’s something I could help you with, or… we could talk it out. I mean.”
Looking torn between amusement, confusion, and a lingering sense of outrage, Loki crosses his arms and stares Peter down. “Do you expect to get at my secrets so easily?”
“Secrets?” he repeats, baffled.
“Is this how you handle the enemies you cannot defeat in fair combat? Converse with them until they see the error of their ways?” He raises his chin. “I am hardly so easy to manipulate, I assure you.”
“What? No! I wasn’t—” Peter protests, but Loki cuts him off with a snort. “C’mon, cut me some slack here! I just saved your life! Or, well, I tried to, at least.”
“You wasted your concern, and now you think to compound that error?”
“Saving lives is never a waste!”
Loki takes a step closer, his eyes dark and dangerous. “Would you truly save the monster, then?” His head lowers, his grin growing wide and feral as he continues to stalk forward. “The beast let loose upon your world, the creature that snuffed out life after life after life without thought, without remorse?”
Heart pounding in his chest, Peter quails and retreats before he even realizes it, and Loki’s smile grows even wider, a kind of dark, almost manic triumph.
“Oh, of course not,” Loki muses, his voice a patronizing purr. “Not the monster. When you rushed in, you were trying to save some pitiful mortal at the end of his rope, a man tossing aside the last scraps of a life he could no longer bear to live. You admitted as much. So you spend your evenings watching over this city, and you drop everything to save even the least of your own, and yet now?”
Another step, and Peter’s at the edge of the roof, his spider sense blaring at him not to step back any farther, and yet Loki keeps coming, into his personal space, holding his gaze with those deep green merciless eyes.
“Now,” Loki finishes, “you run from me. As you should, child. Run home and hide under the covers, for the monsters stalk the daytime now. And they will eat you up alive.”
“Are you—” Peter swallows. “Are you trying to scare me away? To, to make me think you’re really some kind of monster?”
The menace must have been deliberate, because the next second it’s gone, as Loki rears back, blinking at him in utter bafflement.
“That’s it, isn’t it?” Peter studies Loki’s face, not even sure what he’s looking for. “You’re trying to convince me to be afraid of you. Wait, that doesn’t make sense. I was already afraid of you, and then you saved my life and healed my hands, and… and you said you’d already decided whether or not to kill me, which means you’re not gonna”—his spider sense is quiet enough to confirm that hypothesis, though he’s not quite fool enough to point it out—“and if the Avengers knew you were here, then you’d have to go on the run again, because you’re still kinda in hiding, which means you probably don’t want them to know, except you’re trying to scare me enough that I’d end up telling them anyway, which means… actually, I have no idea what it means, because none of that makes any sense when you put it together.
“I mean,” he adds, more thinking out loud than meaning to say it, “do you really think you’re a monster?”
Loki stares at him incredulously. “Is this truly so hard to grasp? What more must I do to demonstrate my very nature?”
Peter stares back. “Monsters aren’t—I mean, you’re a person, not some weird creature that can’t help but attack people.” On Loki’s glower, he adds, a little weaker, “So you’re, uh, you’re not a monster unless you choose to be. It’s something you do, not something you are.”
“And if I have done these things anyway?” There’s something oddly vulnerable about Loki’s expression as he breaks eye contact and turns away. “If I’ve already slain the innocent, not through my own nature but through the choices I’ve made? What then?”