It was so cold Peter couldn't even think.
The only thought that went through his head was how cold it was, how terribly unspeakably cold. There was a thin sheen of ice covering all of him, his limbs were stiff and the cold had infiltrated each and every one of his cells, his bloodstream, his muscles, even his head.
The cold wasn't letting him think anything else, no way of escaping from here, no way of alerting the others, no way of stop being so cold. The freezer where he'd been thrown was locked, bolted, and even equipped with some high tech laser bolts, and a magic block for those few that were able to get out without by teleporting. Yes, it was almost impossible to get out, especially when you couldn't think straight because of the cold.
Peter thought that maybe his spider powers would help him, slow the freezing process down or even prevent it, but now. He was very cold and the only thing he could think of was how cold he was, and how little could he move. His teeth had been chattering, but not anymore. He had been shivering like crazy, but not anymore. He knew this bad. He knew the next phase was his limbs dying and falling off.
But how to stop it? He could hardly move, he couldn't talk, he couldn't think all there was around him was cold, cold and the noise of the motor of the machine working at full blast, cold and the realisation that he didn't have a lot of time before his brain stopped. Was there such a thing as a hypothermic coma? If there was, it was exactly where he was headed. He had, like, minutes at best until he closed his frozen eyes never to wake up again.
Steve Rogers was able to survive 70 years in the ice, a voice inside him had said, back when he could still think. But the more reasonable voice in his head said that he wasn't Steve Rogers, not by a long shot. And he didn't want his last moments to be so terribly cold.
There were ice bits on his eyes, on his hands, everywhere on him. They had stripped him of his suit and clothes, and he was left wearing only his boxers in that grey, cold, lifeless, cold, terrible, cold freezer.
Peter was losing hope, something he thought wouldn't happen, not to him. But all that cold hurt, a lot, and it was bringing him down. He didn't even have the energy to wish for a nice warm cup of cocoa, or a blanket, or an scalding shower. It would be better if he could, that way maybe the time would pass quicker. But every waking second was spent thinking about how excruciatingly cold he was, and it made every second of every minute feel incredibly long.
He was tired, he was hurt and he was cold. He wanted to cry but couldn't – the cold was depriving him of everything, even the bad things. He hated the cold. He wanted something else, something different from watching his own body slowly freeze to death. At least a distraction.
And his wish was granted, much to his surprise.
The door opened and one of the guards threw someone inside.
“Uuuh, a bit of cold.” the person said, with a slightly familiar grave voice.”I will be ever so helpless.”
That person looked like Sam Wilson, but he wasn't Sam Wilson. Peter didn't know exactly how he knew, but he knew. Maybe it was the fact than he couldn't even imagine Sam Wilson saying “I will be ever so helpless” despite having just heard it.
Peter tried to get his voice to work, despite the deplorable state of his throat, mouth and lips.
“Not.... him. … Who?”
What he had meant to say was, I know that you aren't him, so, tell me, who are you? But his frozen mouth and vocal chords had only allowed him to go for an abbreviated version. He was still terribly, horribly cold and on the verge of passing out, but he was grateful to have a distraction.
A distraction who turned out to be, of course, Loki. Peter wanted to smile but couldn't.
“Sorry about the ruse, it was the only way I could get in. Those magic blocks are good, really.” Loki said, looking great as usual, not at all frozen and wasn't wearing one of those suits with vests and what not that he liked so much, but a simple cotton tee and tracksuit pants. Maybe he'd been hangover or something when he heard that Peter was missing.
“A bit cold in here, isn't it?”
Loki tried some warming spells, but Peter was too cold for him to do them without sending the boy into shock, or burning tissue. It needed to be gradual, it needed to be little by little, careful.
“Warm... you.”
“You mean I should get myself warmer so that you'll recover you regular temperature by contact? Sounds... healthier and probably less damaging than any of the alternatives I had in my mind.”
And so Loki closed his eyes and moved his head and after a while he knelt just in front of Peter with a stern but determined expression.
“Embrace me, child. I am a beacon of warmth.”
Well if there was a sentence Loki never thought he would say, it was that one. And yet...
With difficulty, Peter moved his arms around Loki, and his body stopped its tension immediately. Loki was the perfect temperature: warm enough to thaw the ice that covered him but not so hot that it burned. Just perfect.
“It will take some time for you to get back to your usual temperature. It will also take a while for me to charge and create a spell that I think can bypass the block, so get comfortable.”
Peter did. He embraced Loki harder, buried his frozen head on Loki's warm chest. He could hear his heartbeat. It was pleasant. But the cold was still a bit too much to bear.
“Distract me.” Peter asked, recovering his voice little by little.
“This spell requires focus, so I won't be able to use most of my tricks.”
“Can you... a story?”
“Why of course, I love telling stories. What about? Asgard? Young Thor?”
But Peter had had a terrible day, and was still pretty damn cold, so he wanted something that spoke specifically to him, and to his needs.
“About you and... Mr. Stark are my dads.”
Loki smiled an enigmatic smile.
“Really?”
“Maybe... you fall in love? Adopt... me?”
“Nah, that's too easy. Too... nice, too how was it that Lang called soft things... too vanilla. How about a story where you are Tony's and mine biological child?”
Peter's eyes widened. The cold was suddenly forgotten.
“Yes, tell.”
Loki cleared his throat dramatically. He'd always had a flare for the theatrics.
“It was about eighteen earth years ago, give or take. I was mad at Odin and Thor and everyone, and sometimes when that happened I went to other planets where nobody knew me to, you know, blow off some steam, party, try the drugs of the place, forget myself.
I was having a cocktail in a bar in Seattle when I heard a man (a fairly good looking man, to be honest) talking incorrectly about quantum physics to some people that were sucking up to him, and corrected him. Instead of getting angry, good looking seemed fascinated by me, and asked me to continue, ignoring all the people he was with.
I looove showing people how intelligent I am, so I let him buy some more drinks and check me out and question his sexuality. Then he invited me to his place, to show me some prototypes, he said, and we drank some more and.... well, the inevitable happened.”
“Sexy... times.” Peter said, absolutely hooked on the story.
“Indeed. The next day Anthony seemed terribly confused about the whole thing, but kept saying that he wanted to see me again, and practically talked about us being soul mates, and I got scared, erased his memory, and ran away. To this day, I don't know if it is a Jotun thing or a shape shifter thing, but it turned out that I was with child. I don't know why I decided to keep it, maybe I could sense, even back then, how special a boy it would be.
(Peter smiled, like Loki knew he would, and hugged Loki harder. Another success.)
I shifted into an earth woman and had the child here. You see, nine earth months is like ten minutes in Asgard, so nobody noticed my absence. The problem was, I didn't think that I would be a good parent, or that Tony could be one. We both were emotionally unstable, had considerable self-worth and paternal issues, and were in no way prepared for everything that a child required.
And that's when I saw the Parkers, who had just lost their days old baby boy to sudden infant death syndrome. Good people, who were having a wanted baby, who were prepared and could give the child what it needed, comfort him when he fell, clothe him when he was cold, enroll him in school, that sort of thing Tony and I wouldn't do because we were too busy being grandiloquent or self-destructing.
So, I replaced the dead baby (that I buried, of course) with you and erased any record or memory of anyone that the baby had died. That way, the poor Parkers didn't have to go through that grief and you would have a good, honest family that could take care of you properly. Besides, if you had stayed with us there would have been a lot of drama, and you would be the first person every bad guy that wanted to against Stark would take hostage, ask for ransom. Being with the Parkers got you out of the line of fire.”
“And gave me someone calm to raise me. I mean, there's enough whirlwind in my mind to fill an stadium, if you combined it with your crazy and Mr Stark...” Peter said, completely lost. The cold no longer existed, they were not in a freezer. None of that mattered, when he was suddenly the lovechild of a god and a millionaire playboy Avenger.
“And haven't you wondered why are you the one to have such interests? Why you can think so much alike a mind as peculiar as Tony Stark's? He chose you amongst hundreds of kids to be his protege, because he is drawn to you, even if he doesn't know why exactly.”
“Because he doesn't know! You never told him, he doesn't remember being with you! He doesn't know he's my dad.” Ok, so maybe Peter was getting very into this story. Loki continued.
“And you think other humans would live after being bitten by a radioactive spider? They would all die, Peter, but you didn't, because you have the blood of gods running through you. You know what made that radioactivity turn into mind-numbing powers? Adaptive magic.”
“Like you have!”
“Like I have, my child. You've always been drawn to Thor, your favourite Avenger after Iron Man, you've always wanted to visit Asgard. You accepted me as well very quickly, despite my rocky past. You're drawn to us, just like we were to you.”
“That's right! You don't like kids, you avoid them. But you're super cool with me, show me magic, call me “my child”... because you're my mom.”
“Don't get me wrong, your parents are, and will always be the Parkers, and as an adopted child myself I know what I am talking about. But sometimes, knowing where you biologically come from, well... it explains things.”
“It explains everything!” Peter jumped, back at his regular temperature, not even remembering the horror he'd been in before Loki came in. “I don't know what option I like best, the one where you are the greatest story teller in the universe and you just made up all of this or the one where you are actually my birth mother and used this excuse to tell me the truth in a convoluted way so that I won't reject you or be disgusted or something.”
Trapped in a freezer who? Peter was living! He kept talking.
“Think about it, Peter Lokason Stark, half god, half genius, all awesome.”
“You'd put my name before Stark's? Good boy.”
“This is why I can always see through your illusions, I always know it's not the person you're pretending to be. And how did you find me when no one else did? Because, like they say, a mother knows these things. Oh my god, Loki! This is so cool!”
“Peter.”
Loki was suddenly serious.
“What?”
“The spell is prepared.”
“Oh, good!”
“But it can only transport one person.”
“Whaaaa....?”
“It required too much energy, I can only do this once, and I'll be too drained afterwards.”
“Oh no!”
“I need you to promise me that you won't go against these people alone, but you won't try to free me. You get the others to come for me, understood?”
“I cannot leave you here, all drained to get frozen.”
“I can handle the cold. You can't, and I wouldn't be able to get you out a second time.”
“No, it's wrong! I can't leave you!”
“You have to do it!”
“Why?”
There was a sad smile on Loki's lips.
“Because your mother asked you to.”
And so it happened. Peter got out of the building and with tears in his eyes asked for the others to come and rescue Loki. When asked about why he was crying, Peter said that he'd been “emotionally blackmailed” and refused to elaborate.
When they got Loki out he was passed out, and there was dried blood in his face, from what seemed to be a very copious nosebleed. He did that for me, Peter thought, feeling awfully guilty. Got himself in a locked place with magic blocks, drained himself to get me out, endured all that cold.
“He'll be okay, right?” Peter asked, and his voice broke a little.
“I'm sure.” Steve said, with his absolute certainty face.
Good. He had to be.
Peter kept thinking about that moment in the freezer. I am a beacon of warmth. People thought Loki was cold and mean, when all he wanted was to be loved, to be seen, to be cared for. And he deserved all of that.
The next mother's day, there was a package on Loki's room, that came from one Peter Parker, and inside there was a card and a coffee mug, that simply read
“I ❤ my mom”