Chapter 21
“Hey, want to go buy some books?” Tony asks. Loki lights up at that, of course.
Loki’s hair is down again, but it’s shorter than it was yesterday. He’s wearing green because apparently that’s the only color he wears. (Tony does a mental double take at that. He? Loki just nods and says that today is a boy day.)
When they get to the bookstore, Loki’s eyes widen. The entire building is covered in books, the scale Loki has only ever seen before in libraries. He knew Midgard had made mass production of books possible — but knowing so is different than seeing it all in front of him.
Tony and Loki are barely inside when a bookseller comes to greet them. He looks a little older than Loki, with dark brown skin and slender hands. He makes eye contact with Loki, who looks away, blushing. (Tony did not expect Loki to be shy. But stranger things have happened.)
“Looking for something?” the boy asks. “My name’s Thomas.”
“Hi,” Loki says. “My name’s Elle.”
The boy wrinkles his eyebrows in confusion. “Isn’t that a girl name?”
Loki scrutinizes him. “I don’t know, is it?” His voice is syrupy sweet.
Tony takes that opportunity to flee from the teenagers. He’s isn’t quite sure if they’re flirting or fighting, but he’d rather not find out.
When Tony’s gone, Loki asks his question. He has to restart a couple times, his smooth tongue betraying him. “Do you… I mean, are there…”
He stops to recollect himself.
Thomas isn’t laughing at him, though. He looks sympathetic.
“Do you have any books about loving… the same type of person. Or being both boy and girl?” He stumbles over his words, wishing he never said them the second they left his mouth.
But Thomas isn’t laughing at him. He doesn’t even look reproachful. A smile spreads over the boy’s face and he moves to show Loki the way. “I have so much to show you.”
“You mean… there’s a whole section of these books?” Loki asks incredulously. “And they’re allowed? And visibly displayed?”
Thomas looks caught between a laugh and a sob. “Yeah, they are. This isn’t all of them, of course. Just the popular ones and the newer releases. There’s a whole backlog of queer books if these aren’t enough.”
That last remark was probably meant as a joke. But Loki is too busy mouthing the word “queer.” His Allspeak translates it to “strange,” translates it to “peculiar.” But Thomas’s intonation is too light for that, too conspiratorial. The clues seem to indicate the word is a label for what Loki is. (What Thomas might be implying that he is, too.) Loki finds the word rather charming.
(Later, he’ll read up on the history of the word. He missed its first use as a slur by a couple decades. But he rather likes the word and, seeing as apparently a large group of people are attempting to reclaim it, he decides to do the same. It definitely doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that he likes the word in the first place, and has a tendency to hoard pretty words. It also doesn’t have anything to do with how cute Thomas is when he smiles. Definitely not.)
“Do you have any recommendations?” Loki asks. He is pleased when Thomas lights up, gesturing wildly towards the stacks and piling books up by Loki.
Tony comes back to find Loki surrounded by books, a huge pile of which he wants to buy. If Thomas wrote his number on the receipt for Loki, that’s none of Tony’s business.
(Nobody knows how Tony Stark and a teenage civilian were kidnapped. A young bookseller, a teenager named Thomas who was just trying to save money for college, says there was the sound of a scuffle and then silence.)
States away, James sees the flyer at a bus station. There’s a picture of a man with a shield on the front — and James’s mind says targetfriendcaptain. Part of him thinks the man is the same skinny kid from half of his journal memories. Even though that’s impossible, James changes his destination to DC.