Prompt Post 3
Welcome to norsekink .
Keep up the awesome, folks.
Announcement: All new and continuing fills for Round 3 should be posted in the Overflow Post.
THIS ROUND IS CLOSED TO NEW PROMPTS.
( Rules )
Keep up the awesome, folks.
Announcement: All new and continuing fills for Round 3 should be posted in the Overflow Post.
THIS ROUND IS CLOSED TO NEW PROMPTS.
( Rules )
“No. He talked a bit, but then he stopped. What’s a speed dial?”
“…Right. Nevermind. Speed dial’s a small library of numbers that you phone call up quickly and recognize, you should get someone to show you how it works sometime. Anyway, I’ll have Pepper call up the science team for you. Clint said Thor left with what’s-her-name-”
“Jane,” Steve helpfully supplies.
“Jane, yeah. Well, she’s a SHIELD division scientist, so they’ll probably have her number…”
“Move fast, Tony,” he feels compelled to add. “I think there’s something wrong.”
Tony snorts. “Obviously. Loki’s using a phone. Hold onto your balls if that bastard figures out the internet.” The communicator crackles a bit then, and the little light on the button goes off, which lets Steve know he’s been disconnected. He puts it carefully back into his pocket, and then, yet again, returns his attention to the phone at his ear. A small cluster of pedestrians are staring at him from a nearby bus stop. Steve gives them an awkward smile and a nod and then turns so that his back is towards them a little more, pretending to look at some of the goods on display in the bakery window.
The people inside of the bakery are staring at him, too.
Steve pauses, and then gives them another awkward smile, and a little half-shrug. Phones, he tries to convey. What can you do?
The people inside of the bakery hastily begin to pretend that they were never staring at all, even while they keep watching him out of the corners of their eyes. He wonders if it’s because he’s doing something wrong, or if they’ve recognized him from the news (and the history books, which is really strange to think about), or both.
“Loki. Tell me where you’ve been hurt,” he tries again, pitching his voice low and firm, his command tones. He doesn’t know if it’ll work. Loki’s not a soldier, and Steve doubts he ever has been, but it’s something to try, anyway.
There’s a long breath across the line, and he hears what sounds suspiciously like a rattle in it. Steve frowns. That’s not good.
“…chest…” Loki replies, so small he could have easily missed it.
“Where in your chest? Just… alright, tap the receiver once for ‘yes’ and twice for ‘no’. Is it your lungs?” he guesses.
Tap.
“Just your lungs?”
Tap, tap.
“Stomach?”
Tap.
“Are you bleeding?”
Tap.
“Are you coughing blood?”
Tap.
Steve frowns, considers.
“You can’t heal yourself like you normally would,” he says, more statement than guess. He’s seen Loki deal with injuries. Thor tends to just shrug them off, which is impressive enough on its own, but Steve once watched Loki run his hand over a gash in his arm. A second later, the gash had been gone. His shirt had mended, too, and taken the blood stains with it, which led him to think it had more to do with Loki being a magician than an Asgardian.
Tap.
“Alright. Is the blood from your wounds very dark?”
A bit of a wait.
Tap.
Steve’s mouth firms into a grim line. If Loki was human, this would be around about the time when he asked if he had any messages he wanted passed along to his family.
“Alright, soldier. You just do what you can to staunch that bleeding. If you’ve still got that cape of yours, ball it up and use to stem the blood flow, you hear me? Help’s on the way.”
Steve swallows, then shakes his head. Loki’s not a soldier, he reminds himself. If he was one, he’d be an enemy soldier. But he’s also audibly suffering, and Steve’s never had much of a stomach for other people’s suffering. He supposes he could hang up. No one would blame him for it.
He gives it a moment of honest consideration, but in the end, he doesn’t. Maybe it’s just curiosity, maybe it’s got more to do with right and wrong, but he doesn’t.
It’s only a half a minute until the communicator goes off again, then he pulls it out of his pocket and hits the button again.
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“I’m not sure that it’s a game, Thor,” Steve replies. “He’s badly injured, and he can’t heal himself with magic. Is there some way for you to figure out where he is? I can’t seem to get him to-”
There’s a fizzle, and then the little light on his communicator blinks off. Steve pauses, taken aback, and wonders for a moment if he broke it somehow. But then he hears something like thunder roar from the other end of his portable phone line, and closer by the receiver, Loki makes a sound that has suspicious similarities to a sigh of relief. A few dark clouds begin to gather on the horizon. There is the crunch of heavy, fast-moving footsteps, and a muffled sound of movement. He hears Thor say something - loud as ever - though the only words he can make out are ‘brother’ and ‘who would dare to’, and then there’s more thunder cracking, and a snap like something just broke.
The line goes dead.
Steve stares at his portable phone for a minute, and then decides that the situation is probably out of his hands now. He replaces it in his pocket, and tries to remember what he even went out for in the first place, before the phone started jangling at him.
In the end he heads back to the mansion without the groceries he’d volunteered to get, without the sketch book he’d meant to pick up for himself, and without half a clue as to what, exactly, just happened.
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Steve is eating lunch. So is Clint, though Clint has made it very clear that he is eating his lunch Over Here, Leaning on the Counter, and Not at the Table with Steve Because Tables are For Sissies Who Don’t Lean (as near as Steve can decipher it, anyway). He looks up when Thor walks in, and stands, because it’s only polite when he hasn’t seen the man in weeks.
“Hey,” Clint greets, as if Thor had just run out for cigarettes a half an hour ago.
“Thor! You’re back. That’s good, Fury was won-” Steve tries, which is about as far as he gets before he finds himself enveloped in the sort of hug that threatens to crush even his ribs. The rest of his words get squeezed out of him like air from a paper bag, and he flails a bit, not sure if he’s trying to get free or just maybe sort of pat Thor on the back. He winds up pounding his shoulder, vaguely, and then Thor lets go, moving back so he’s holding Steve’s shoulders and staring at him intently.
“My friend,” he says. “I am in your debt. If ever there is a boon you would ask of Mighty Thor, do not hesitate to do so.” Then he claps Steve across the back, once, and walks over to the fridge instead. “Have we any of those tiny cheese treats to eat? The freezer was replete with them ere I left.”
Clint looks at Steve, and raises an eyebrow. Steve can only shrug in confusion.
“What, no hugs for ole Hawkeye?” Clint tries.
He’s given cause to regret it, of course, because then Thor decides to ‘favour’ him with one, and Steve snorts and settles back into his chair to watch Hawkeye squawk and then devoutly pretend that he didn’t just squawk at all, no, and having his torso crushed in a living Asgardian vice is nothing he can’t handle, except that it isn’t manly to display this kind of affection and for fuck’s sake, Thor, let go, and stop laughing dammit! Of course, a minute later Fury turns up, and then Thor’s being interrogated (which goes about as well as anyone could expect, particularly since Thor doesn’t even seem to realize that suddenly leaving for weeks at a time is a problem of some kind) and then Tony’s phoning in because some lunatic from China has just shipped crate-loads of animated warrior statues to a local museum, and they’re currently trying to murder anyone they can get their hands on. Back to the usual. Steve, again, files away the odd behaviour in some distant part of his brain, but doesn’t think to pay it too much more heed. That’s kind of just what Thor is like, after all.
A few days later, he’s helping Iron Man right some overturned cars - “clean up is good for PR”, Tony says, and Steve decides that he will be happy if he can never hear about publicity ever, ever again, and tells him so - when his phone rings. He listens to Star Spangled Man’s chorus chime as he fumbles it out of his pocket, then carefully opens it, and hits the green button.
“Hello? This is Steve Rogers speaking.”
“What was the name of that restaurant we battled across from last month? You know, the one with the engraved window and the little outdoor dining section that your archer stuck like a pin cushion while he was trying to shoot me,” Loki asks without any preamble.
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There’s a sound reminiscent of someone snapping their fingers.
“That was it. Thank you,” Loki says, and with a ‘click’, the line goes dead again.
Steve stares at his phone carefully.
“Who was that?” Iron Man asks him.
“Loki again,” Steve honestly replies. “He wanted the name of a restaurant.”
A small chuckle of disbelief passes through Iron Man’s voice filters. “From you? No offence, Steve, but you’re not exactly up to date on New York’s current dining scene,” he jokes.
Steve feels a pang, of course, because he’s not up to date on anything at all anymore, and sometimes he doubts he’ll ever properly feel like he is again. But he brushes it off, and just shrugs. He makes it a point to check out La Rosa later that day. And then the next day. And the next. It’s an impersonal sort of place, quiet, and they have good coffee and very sweet berry tarts, and nice sandwiches. Steve has taken to sandwiches of late. They’re usually the same, just bread with meat and cheese and maybe a tomato slice or lettuce in there somewhere, and he generally knows what he’s getting when he orders one. He eats a few at La Rosa, but after a couple of weeks go by and nothing spectacularly bad happens, he goes back to his usual routine.
Two weeks after that, it’s ‘Movie Night’ at the mansion when his phone rings again. Movie Night is usually translated as Steve and Thor sitting there while someone else on the team picks out a ‘classic’ film that they absolutely need to see, with the two of them giving a fair and honest assessment of the film after the fact. Tony Stark has what amounts to his own movie theatre (in Steve’s opinion) in the mansion, and there are, apparently, a lot of classic films. They’re halfway through one called ‘Indiana Jones’ when his pocket begins playing Star Spangled Man. He’s almost relieved to have an excuse to duck out, as the titular character is busy fighting Nazis and magic and its all just a little bit too close to the wrong things for Steve. Not that he wants to say so and spoil the evening for everyone else.
“Hello, you’ve reached Steve Rogers.”
“It’s a rough chronological translation, but Thor’s birthday is in a month,” Loki tells him. “He probably won’t tell you because he doesn’t much like being reminded of how old he is. Not unless he’s getting something worthwhile out of it, anyway. Naturally, I recommend making the hugest fuss you can. It’s only fair, since you’re his friends, that you take the excuse to embarrass him once in a while…”
“Um,” Steve replies. But he marshals himself quickly - he doesn’t want to get caught flat-footed this time. “What’s your game here, Loki?”
But Loki barrels on, heedless. “The Man of Iron is particularly wealthy. Do you think he’d be willing to arrange a large and very public announcement? Perhaps one of the aeroplanes could spell out an announcement in a trail of clouds, and several others could drop well-wishing fliers signed by you and his other comrades? I could do it myself, of course, but my brother would quickly doubt my intentions. We’ve grown so tragically apart.”
“Uh. Well. I’m sure if I mentioned it to him, Tony would be happy to…” he hears himself say.
“Wonderful. Good luck with the celebrations,” Loki replies. Then, of course, he hangs up.
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Clint snorts. “Alright, this whole ‘phone buddies’ thing you’ve got going on with him is weird,” he asserts.
“We aren’t ‘phone buddies’,” Steve replies, even if he can’t deny the weirdness factor. “I’m concerned, though. Maybe he’s taunting us? He could be planning on doing something to ‘celebrate’ Thor’s birthday…”
In the end they decide to play it safe. SHIELD goes on high-alert, and the teams are instructed to keep an active look-out (not that that ever works very well with Loki). There is a party. There is no air show or public extravaganza. There is a lot of cake, though, and a lot of alcohol, and Thor doesn’t seem put-out so much as supremely delighted by the festivities. He invites some of his Asgardian friends, and Steve finds that once he brings out the war stories they’re actually fairly easy people to talk to. He and Clint seem to earn almost immediate approval. Tony gets the cold-shoulder from the lady warrior, who spends half the evening looking like she’s contemplating sticking sharp things into soft places, and the one who looks kind of like Robin Hood spends a lot of time saying fancy things to Ms. Romanov. They don’t seem to work out in his favour.
Loki doesn’t make an appearance. But at the end of the month, an Asgardian woman calling herself Enchantress does, and that’s more than enough to handle. Particularly since she’s very fond of hypnotizing people. Steve doesn’t get anymore phone calls until after that’s all over. He does get one ‘text message’, though, which takes him a while to figure out. It looks to be in code, and reads:
‘gl w/amora lol ;)’
He sends it to the code-breaking team in SHIELD, but they just send it back to him along with a rather strongly-worded message about bad jokes and wasting project resources, so he decides not to do that again.
The fourth time Loki phones, he asks for Steve’s opinion on drapes.
“What do you think would look better on long windows, a dark green or a middle green?”
Steve contemplates his phone for a moment before deciding on his response.
“Dr. Doom’s castle curtains are a middle green, aren’t they?”
“Point. Dark green it is,” Loki replies, before, of course, hanging up on him. A few minutes later he gets another message, which he thinks is a text message again, but which actually turns out to be a photograph of two windows. They’re adorned in dark green and gold drapes, which hide any possible view of exterior buildings or a skyline. Steve will concede that, as drapes go, they’re probably pretty nice. It would be better if he had any idea of why he was assessing Loki’s interior décor, though.
The fifth phone call at least makes a little bit more sense.
“You wouldn’t happen to know the SHIELD security codes, would you?” Loki asks.
“No,” Steve replies truthfully. He’s not sure why they don’t trust him with that sort of thing, but frankly, he’s never asked, and he’s never much wanted to be burdened with it, either. “But I wouldn’t give them to you if I did.”
“Ah well, it was worth a try,” Loki cheerfully replies, before hanging up on him again.
Steve sends a message to SHIELD letting them know that Loki might be considering an infiltration project.
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Steve blinks. “Thor,” he acknowledges, with a slight nod of his head, just on the off chance that Thor happens to be standing outside of his door incidentally. Or something.
There’s an awkward pause.
Just as Steve is considering pushing his way past his massive coworker, or maybe asking him a question, Thor speaks.
“I have heard that my brother has continued his correspondence with you,” he says.
Steve blinks. His hand moves to pat the phone in his pocket, almost absently, and he nods. “Yes. But. Well, look, if you’re going to ask me why, I’m sorry to say that I don’t really know,” he admits. “He did ask me for the SHIELD security codes once.” This is offered up with a certain amount of optimism not normally associated with attempted security breaches, largely because it’s the only thing Loki has done so far that almost makes sense. For Loki. Although Steve has been considering that this may be part of a masterful plot to confuse him. In which case, it’s too little, too late, because he’s spent pretty much the past year of his life being as confused as humanly possible, and he’s pretty sure that he’s reached some kind of threshold for it. ‘Confused’ is a near-constant state of being that no longer perturbs him now. It’s like combat. It never stops being stressful, really, but a man learns to adapt.
Thor’s brows knit.
“Is he…” he trails off for a moment, and then seems to settle on the rest of his question. “Does he sound well to you?”
Steve blinks.
“Well?”
Thor unfolds a hand from where it’s crossed over his chest, and waves it vaguely. “Healthy, sound, as reasonably sane as can be expected of him?” he elaborates.
Steve considers this question for a good moment. Loki seems to spend a considerable amount of time and energy on killing Thor, or ruining Thor’s happiness, or turning Thor into small animals, or breaking Thor’s possessions. But Thor, he has noticed, is not the kind of man who takes that sort of thing personally. Even when Loki starts shouting about how he very personally he hates Thor on a personal level, directly relating to Thor’s person. And, well, that first phone call… Steve’s never had a brother. The one person who came closest to being his brother certainly never betrayed him. But he doesn’t know how he’d feel about it if he had, if he would ever be able to stop caring, or anything like that. Somehow, he doubts it.
“He doesn’t usually talk for very long,” Steve decides on. “But apart from that first call, he’s seemed fine.”
Thor looks at him steadily, and then nods. He takes a deep breath and claps Steve on the shoulder. “Often, when he is possessed with his schemes, he neglects himself. If he begins to sound strained, it would be prudent to remind him that even the mightiest of villains requires food and sleep. If only to distract him from his wicked tasks.” Thor clears his throat. “Of course, if he should seem to be up to something, it would be best if you told me of it. I am far more capable of thwarting his impulses than most Midgardian forces.”
“Right. Of course,” Steve agrees.
He thinks that’s it.
Naturally, he’s dead wrong.
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He also finds himself wondering if getting out of the middle is an option yet.
Then one evening he gets a call at around four o’clock in the morning. Star Spangled Man starts playing, over and over, from where he’d set the phone down on the desk in his room (his room which is frankly humungous) and he tries to just let it ring, at first, half convinced he’s caught in a dream, before he finally gets up and picks his way across the room to hit the by-now-familiar green button in the dark.
“Hello, Steve Rogers,” he sleepily answers.
“No, you’re Sreve… Stefe… you’re Steivrögers,” the other end of the line slurs. “I’m Loki.” There is something which sounds like a slurred giggle, and then a soft clatter.
Steve stares suspiciously at the little glowing screen for a moment, before formulating a response. He’s well and truly awake now. He would have been awake in an hour or so anyway, but the loss of that hour is a real disappointment, because Steve’s never been able to go back to sleep once he’s been properly woken. “Are you drunk?” he asks.
“Oh, we’re well past drunk right now,” Loki earnestly replies. “This is… this is… there is drunk, Steivrögers, and then there is Asgardian drunk, yes? Yes. That’s where I am now… it’s like a place… instead of a drunk…”
For a few seconds, he considers the various merits and pitfalls of hanging up on an inebriated ancient god of mischief.
Then he has a better idea.
“Why are you phoning me?” he asks, as he heads out into the dim light of the hall, and takes a left towards the end of the corridor.
Loki sighs, deep and long and rasping, into the receiver. “Why would you… do you… would you keep asking me a thing like that?” he slurs. “I’m an impossibly powerful being begond - beyon… be… above your mortal mind’s ken! You should be flattered to have me telephone you. I am a very good conversationalist! Silver tongue!” He laughs again. “Sssilver tongue!”
Steve’s not sure, but he suspects that somewhere in the world, a dark-haired man giggling drunkenly into his portable phone just turned part-snake.
“They call me the lie smith! Loki Lie-Smith!”
“That’s nice,” he distractedly replies.
“No… no, not really… buts true, which is perhaps ironic, don’t you think? You’d be surprised… so surprised… how easy it is to lie even when everyone knows you’re a liar. You’d think they’d stop listening to me! But they don’t… no…”
He stops outside of one of the mansion’s larger doorways, knocks once, and then opens it. The room inside is dark. A sound vaguely reminiscent of a buzz saw emerges from the shadows, and Steve sees Thor’s massive shape roll over in the darkness. Without missing a beat, he walk into the room, puts the phone on the pillow beside Thor’s head, and then stalks back out again. Being certain to slam the door behind him as he goes. He feels pleasantly unburdened as he asks Jarvis to tell Tony that he’ll need a new phone, but not to worry, because he’ll pay for it himself. He just needs to find out how to go about getting one.
Then he heads down to the training room, and spends the remaining hours of the morning cheerfully punching the stuffing out of the old Everlast bag.
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That’s when he hears the ominous sound of Star Spangled Man emanating from his desk.
Again.
He stares at the phone for one long, bewildered moment, before he lets out a heavy breath. Right. It would be too much to hope that Thor would actually just keep the thing, as Steve had intended, and use it to converse with Loki himself rather than through a proxy. He lets it jangle until he can’t take it anymore, and then the forces himself up, gives in, and answers.
“Why did you leave your phone next to a mechanized motor last night?” Loki asks. “That did nothing for my headache. Actually, I think it may have made it worse. Oh. Wait, no, that’s actually quite diabolical of you. Hmm. I wouldn’t have pegged you as the type - ah, well. Perhaps I’m being a good influence.”
Click.
Steve stares tiredly at the phone. It really is a very tiny, fragile thing, he thinks. It would be easy to break it by accident. He’s already said that he needs a new one - no one would be any wiser. Except maybe Thor. And if anyone at all could have pity for his situation, it would be Thor. Especially since he apparently slept through all of the stomping and drunken rambling and door slamming that Steve had felt confident would wake him up the night before. He considers it for a long, silent moment, but in the end simple sighs and puts the phone back onto his desk. There’s got to be a better solution to all of this than foisting it off on someone else, or wantonly destroying the phone. He just needs to think of it, that’s all.
The phone blips again right as he turns his back to it.
Shoulders slumping, Steve wonders if maybe this is actually a complicated plan to destroy his morale and fracture his sanity. It’s his best guess yet, he decides, as he carefully re-opens the phone to find both a text message and a photograph waiting for him.
The photograph is of an engraved gold-and-platinum bucket full of empty, expensive-looking liquor bottles. The text message reads:
‘how much i drank lol ;3’
After a moment of silent consideration, Steve applies basic logic and the previous knowledge he has acquired about his portable phone to reply to the text. It takes some doing, some fancy coordination, a bit of trial and error, and some patience to type out his careful response:
‘what does lol ;3 mean?’
He waits. And waits. And then the phone beeps, and he reads:
‘lol ;3 = laugh out loud smiling face, n00b’
Oh, Steve decides. That… doesn’t help very much. He suspects that he’s missing some fundamental context to apply to the response he’s gotten, but with an internal shrug, he sends back a simple ‘thank you’, folds the phone so it’s closed again, and then flops back onto his bed. When he sleeps that night, he dreams of phones in horned hats. They’re hunting him. They also have German accents, but on balance, Steve considers it an improvement from the dreams about Bucky falling to his death, so he actually finds himself in a better mood the next day. Thor doesn’t mention the phone and doesn’t seem overly discomfited about anything. He keeps on asking Steve to pass along messages, which Steve takes to doing in the text format, and prefacing with ‘Thor says’. Loki usually texts back, which is better than actually listening to him rant. Especially since the little messages apparently have a size limit.
The phone calls themselves don’t stop, though. If anything they seem to get more frequent. Eventually, Steve just catalogues the calls away into the big file of Things That Make No Sense And Probably Never Will, and once he does that, he finds that they’re surprisingly easy to deal with. Loki usually just spouts off a sentence or two. Sometimes they’re questions, and he expects answers. Sometimes he just seems to want to say something. It doesn’t often take more than a minute, and the questions only occasionally pertain to classified material or subjects which Steve would rather steer clear of.
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Steve raises an eyebrow, and hopes that’s a trick question.
“None?” he hazards.
Loki snorts. “Tragically, no.” There’re some voices in the background then. Steve hears Loki snap something that sounds like ‘your mother, of course’, before he abruptly hangs up. He’s gotten used to never hearing a ‘goodbye’ or a ‘hello’ in any of these conversations. Not unless they come out of his own mouth, at least.
On the return trip to the mansion, in a moment of daring, Steve turns - the wind’s against him; he’s flying with Tony, but Thor’s close enough to hear - and dares to ask.
“Your brother’s been pregnant?”
Thor blinks. Then he opens his mouth. Then he closes it again, and, looking vaguely embarrassed, shrugs.
“We did not think the horse would actually catch him,” he says.
Steve decides right then and there that he doesn’t want to know. He just does not want to know.
Tony whistles. “I’ll hand it to your brother, Thor. I’ve got quite a reputation, but it’s nothing on his.”
“Indeed. Upon more than one occasion, he has-”
“Sure is windy up here,” Steve interjects. “Do you ever feel the wind in that tin suit of yours, Tony? At all, I mean? Or is the interior of that thing heated, somehow?”
Tony and Thor take the hint - probably because it’s delivered with all the subtlety of a brick to the head - and Steve makes a mental note to steer any further lines of conversation well away from Loki’s love life. And Tony’s. And also possibly Thor’s, just as a precautionary measure, because he’s not sure but he seems to recall hearing about at least one cross-dressing myth in his childhood, and… well, there are some things that are better left unsaid between friends.
It’s movie night that evening, and Clint’s turn to pick. Steve’s not too sure about the title. He supposes that dying easy would probably be doing so at age ninety, in bed, surrounded by loved ones, but Tony assures him that ‘Die Hard’ is probably supposed to mean something more like ‘hard to kill’. It’s not a bad movie, as far as it goes. Clint decides to argue that it is, in fact, the best movie ever, and that Steve and Thor have no taste (Thor loudly proclaims that he wants to have a turn to pick movies now, and Steve suspects that those movies will almost always contain the words ‘Lord of the Rings’ somewhere in their titles.) When his phone beeps, he fishes it out of his pocket, pointedly ignoring the way Clint mouths the words ‘phone buddies’ at him.
‘magneto v/boring man’ the text reads.
After a moment’s thought, Steve shakes his head a little and replies with:
‘i think you just have high standards’.
Then he makes a mental note to tell Fury that Loki is working with mutant radicals now, and closes the phone. When he looks up, it’s to see Thor staring at him. Frowning. Steve blinks, and wonders if he did something wrong, but before he can ask Thor stands up in a hurry.
“It is late,” he says. “We should perhaps retire for the evening.” Then he’s gone in a flurry of heavy footsteps, the door to the movie room thudding heavily shut in his wake.
Clint glances sideways at Steve.
“What was that about?” he asks.
Steve can only shrug. “I don’t know,” he honestly replies. His best guess, initially, is that it must have been something to do with the movie.
Of course it isn’t anything that simple.
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Ten minutes later, he’s rethinking his decision, as Thor lands another hit on Steve’s jaw. He feels a spike of pain as the blood vessels underneath the skin burst and bruise, but he recovers quickly, and uses Thor’s continuing forward momentum to send him flying towards the wall. Thor manages to stop himself, but not before Steve gets a hit on his knee. It isn’t enough to send the gigantic Aesir down, but it staggers him again, and brings in something of a delay before Thor goes back to liberally bruising his ribs. Since the serum, Steve hasn’t actually fought too many people whose punches really hurt him. Really hurt him, not just ‘sting’ or ‘bounce off’. He gets knocked down and kicked around a lot, especially when he doesn’t have his shield, but usually that’s more a matter of physics and less a matter of pain.
Thor, though, Thor has punches that remind Steve of the one time he almost got run over by a tank. It’s almost enough to make him flash back to the days when he was small enough to get tossed around in the alleys behind restaurants. Probably good practice, he thinks, as he finally gets an opening to hammer two fists into Thor’s gut. Thor staggers back, grunting, before he charges forward again.
The bout ends when Steve finally gets thrown into one of the training room’s walls. He hits with enough force to send stars blinking across his vision. All of the air goes flying out of his lungs, of course, and his spine protests the impact. He bites back a groan as he hits the floor. Thor’s boots swim in and out of his vision. Gingerly, Steve tries to right himself, and blinks as one of Thor’s hands hovers into view. It wavers into double vision for a few seconds before he finally takes it, and lets himself get hauled back onto his feet. Underneath a few growing bruises - and Steve’s glad, in a way, because at least he’s not the only one coming out of this feeling like a punching bag - Thor actually looks a little apologetic.
“A good spar,” is what he says, though, clapping Steve on the back with enough force to almost send him tumbling down again.
“Yeah,” Steve grits out. Then he sucks in a breath, and lets it out again, gingerly stretching out his muscles and feeling what hurts. The answer is, unsurprisingly, ‘everything’, but the pain is already starting to recede. He doesn’t imagine he’ll be aching for more than a day or two, tops. “So,” he says, as Thor carefully prods at his own split lip. “You feel like telling me what I did to make you this mad?”
There’s a pause. He glances over, and Thor seems surprised. Then annoyed. Then chagrined.
The norse god sighs, wiping some of the sweat from his palm off onto the side of his pants. “You did nothing, my friend,” he says. “The issue is mine alone. I apologize if I made it seem otherwise.”
Steve shakes his head. “Still. If there’s something wrong, I’d like to know.” Thor hesitates, so he tries a different angle. “We’re teammates, after all. Isn’t it better to clear the air before things get out of hand?”
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“It is… good that my brother has found a friend of sorts in you,” Thor says at length, his eyes fixed straight ahead of himself. “You are a good man.” He reaches over, claps a hand against Steve’s shoulder, but still doesn’t quite look towards him. Then he smiles a smile which doesn’t really reach his eyes. “In truth, a better man than I. I can see why he would seek out your company.”
A lot of people have paid a lot of compliments to Steve ever since he came out of the ice. It’s been strange, he can admit, because he doesn’t generally feel like he’s earned them. Sure, he likes to think that he’s a good man, and most days he doesn’t have a reason to doubt it. But are good men really in such short supply? You’re supposed to be a good man, Steve thinks. It’s when you’re not that it’s noteworthy. He only really feels comfortable with those kinds of comments when he’s around people who, well, who he feels like he’s earned respect from. Proven himself to. The rest… frankly, the rest probably just think he punched the actual Hitler all those times, and that, he knows, is just ridiculous.
Thor’s one of those people who Steve can, on an ordinary day, feel like he’s earned his respect from. Some other time, if Thor had told Steve he was a good man, it wouldn’t have made him worry. But right now it feels a whole lot like Thor is talking more about the kind of man he isn’t, and the kind of man Steve is reputed to be, rather than anything good or solid between the two of them.
The day that Bucky fell to his death, Steve didn’t feel like a good man. He felt like a failure. He felt like the kind of person who put their friends in danger, and then didn’t have the strength to drag them back out of it again.
Once upon a time, Steve knows, Thor watched Loki fall. And yes, it was different. But maybe not as different as all that, when it comes right down to it, and Steve is suddenly hit by the notion that Thor is lucky. Because Loki’s still out there. Still breathing. As long as he’s still breathing, that’s still a chance, isn’t it? A chance to make things right. A chance that’s a whole lot better than nothing.
“I think the only reason he talks to me is because he wants to talk to you,” Steve finds himself saying. Thor blinks, and finally looks over at him. Properly. And on that note, Steve decides that this, right now, this is the best theory he’s ever come up with for what’s really going on with these phone calls. “Makes sense when you really think about it,” he continues, reaching into his pocket and pulling out his phone. “I mean, you and I aren’t really all that different. We’re both huge. Blond. Stubborn. Not always, you know, on par with the genius types and all their gadgets and robot suits and magic spells and everything.” His wrist protests a little bit as he motions vaguely between the two of them. “I don’t know what you’re talking about with this ‘good man’ business, but it’s not like you to put yourself down. Doesn’t do anyone any favours, either. If you’re asking me, I think you’re a good man, but if you disagree, well, then maybe you better settle the score with yourself.”
Thor blinks again.
Steve opens up the phone, and hits the little center button that says ‘menu’ in tiny white letters, and scrolls down until he’s managed to get a handle on the ‘recent calls’ list. Then he hits the button for the long number at the top (Loki changes numbers a lot, he’s noticed) and hands it over to Thor. “Press the green button to talk. If you want,” he says. “I’m going to hit the showers.”
He’s halfway across the room before Thor speaks again.
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As promised, Steve hits the showers, and in the end he doesn’t see Thor again until the next day. When he does Thor wordlessly gives him back his phone. Steve decides not to pry, and instead nods, and pockets it, and then waits. And waits. And time passes, his life doesn’t really slow down any, but he doesn’t get anymore phone calls from Loki, either. No more text messages. No more photos. He isn’t sure if that’s a good sign or a bad one. Oddly, he finds, he almost misses the conversation. Sure, it had been weird. But somewhere between the first injured phone call and the photos of Loki’s stylistic choices, it had also become consistent. And maybe in some way it had been kind of nice to have someone to just randomly talk to.
“Down in the dumps, Cap?” Tony asks him one evening, and he blinks, because he hadn’t realized he’d been at all obvious about it. But before he can answer, Tony keeps going. “We haven’t had a lot of breaks lately. You know, you should get out more, see more of the modern world when it isn’t being attacked by psychopaths.” He snaps his fingers. “I know. Van Dyne industries is having one of their charity fundraisers next week. Normally I just make a short appearance at those things, but Jan always knows how to a throw a good party. We should go. Make a splash, break up the routine a bit.”
Steve considers this.
“The last party we went to got crashed by that Hulk fella,” he feels compelled to point out. What he actually means is ‘I’m not much for those kinds of shindigs’, but it seems rude to say it. Especially when Tony’s making an effort to cheer him up.
Tony waves off his comment about the Hulk. “A fluke. Besides, intelligence reports have suggested that he’s in South America right now. What are the odds of it happening again?”
Pretty low, Steve finds out. But apparently fancy parties are just magnets for larger-than-life men with a taste for the colour green, because Loki shows up at this one. And not in his subtle-mode either, Steve notices, as yet another ice sculpture comes to life and starts pecking at party-goers. He manages to get the shield out of his briefcase, and covers Tony while his briefcase turns into a useful set of red-and-gold armour. There’s screaming. There’s shouting. Tony calls for back-up as a variety of party accoutrement comes to life, and a few rampaging boars decide to appear from seemingly nowhere. Loki, of course, is at the center of it all, smirking and wielding a spear that’s taller than he is.
“I thought you said we were going to break from routine?” Steve quips, as he sends the shield smashing through the necks of several malevolent ice swans.
“Tell you what - when this is over, I’ll take you to Disney World,” Tony replies, before trying to blast Loki into the sky. His repulsor beams pass right through the trickster’s image, which shimmers slightly, and then slam into the building behind him. Tony swears. “I hate fighting this son of a bitch!”
“Watch your tongue, my friend!” a familiar voice booms at them from overhead. “That is also my mother you speak of!”
“Right, sorry,” Tony acknowledges, before waving pointedly towards Loki. Or the projection of Loki. “Go, smite, wrath of the gods, you know the drill.”
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That leaves him with the ice dragon.
He dodges another bout of icicle breath, one of the shards ripping through the shoulder of his suit, and sends his shield arcing towards the corner of its neck with as much strength as he can muster. There’s a tremendous crack, and the thing roars, a frozen tail whipping out to knock Steve into the air. The shield hits with enough force to lodge itself firmly in the joint between the dragon’s shoulder and neck. Steve rolls when he lands, and scowls, because now he’s got to go and get it back. Which means scaling the dragon.
No pun intended.
The tail comes back for a second round. Steve grabs onto it instead of getting hit this time, and grits his teeth as he gets whipped through the air. It’s spiked. That’s actually a good thing, because it means he has plenty of handholds as he drags himself along the dragon’s body, wincing at the impact as the tail crashes through a few nearby tables. The ice is cold against his palms. But it’s not melting, which at least means it’s not slick, either, so it only takes him a minute to scramble onto the thing’s back. He clings to the base of its wings as it roars, and its head snaps around, trying to bite him. Ice breath streams past its transparent fangs, but only succeeds in glancing against his leg. It freezes the fabric of his suit.
Steve’s not thinking about anything at all as he keeps going. He’s definitely not thinking about what happened to him the last time he felt this cold.
And while he’s busy not thinking of anything, and just climbing, the dragon gets fed up with trying to bite him and decides to just take off instead. Icy wings rock around Steve as he hangs on. Once. Twice. Then with a sweeping gust that sends shards of ice flying in all directions, the dragon leaps into the night sky. Through the transparent sculpture of its body, Steve watches as the party gets tinier and tinier below them. He redoubles his grip, wishing that he was wearing his boots and not fancy party shoes as he looks up, focusing on the glimpse of his shield up ahead. Framed by the glitter of ice against the starless sky.
He reaches it, after what seems like a small eternity, hands gripping against the dragon’s spines and feet scrabbling for purchase against the smooth sides of its neck. Its head thrashes again, and cracks spread like spider webs from where the shield is embedded. Steve needs both of his hands to pull it free. So he takes a deep breath, grips the dragon’s neck tightly with his knees, and wrenches against the edge of it as hard as he can. The dragon’s wings beat the air behind him, and his breath fogs across the back of its head as it breaths a stream of ice ahead of them. Once last, desperate attempt. Then he slams the shield down again, hard, and the head snaps off with a sound like breaking glass.
It plummets towards the party below.
So, of course, does the rest of the dragon.
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He swallows as his shoes stick against the frozen ground, and his arms refuse to obey his commands. He manages to move his head, just a little, enough to look down and realize that the ice has reformed itself again, only this time it’s made a conveniently Steve-shaped prison.
The sensation is eerily familiar. For just a few seconds, he blinks - while he still can - and finds himself in the wreckage of Red Skull’s carrier, rather than the shattered remnants of a magical dragon.
A shadow falls over his shoulder.
“You know, it’s bad form to give away another person’s phone number,” Loki tells him, leaning sideways to rest one elbow against Steve’s shoulder. At the other end of the battle zone, Thor is busy fighting about four copies of his brother, all of which spin about him with incredible speed. Steve can’t really see Loki very well, even when he turns his head a bit. He only gets a glimpse of his profile, and the curve of a horned helmet in his shadow, and the glint of an emerald gauntlet resting near his chin. It occurs to Steve that Loki could probably kill him right now. He can’t move, after all, and he knows for a fact that Loki would be strong enough to run him through. For one short moment, fear takes full hold of him. Later on he won’t be certain which near-hysterical idea bothered him more - dying right there, or not dying, but staying frozen again for years and years. Until somebody decides the need him again, and wakes him up into a world where everything’s different, and everyone he knows is either dead or old enough to be his grandparents. Unbidden, he thinks, and I was just making friends again, too…
Then Loki reaches over, pats Steve almost fondly on the head, and saunters away. Ice crunches underneath his boots. “Tell my brother he’ll have to do better than that if he wants to catch me out,” he calls behind him.
By the time Hawkeye comes over and starts chipping him out, Steve has decided that, from now on, he’s decided that there’s just no point in trying to understand Loki, or Loki-and-Thor. Ever. On any level.
“I’m not even going to bother anymore,” he tells Clint, once he can properly move his jaw again. Clint looks at him and nods in something almost like sympathy.
“I’ve found that’s a good philosophy. You know, in general,” he agrees. “Now quit moving around while I set you on fire.”
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The picture is of a red, white, and blue-coloured popsicle.
The text reads:
‘this = u lol ;)’
Steve stares at it for a moment. Then he sighs, and closes his phone, and honestly?
He’s not even sure why he feels a little bit better about the whole thing now.
~
Fin.
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Steve is eating lunch. So is Clint, though Clint has made it very clear that he is eating his lunch Over Here, Leaning on the Counter, and Not at the Table with Steve Because Tables are For Sissies Who Don’t Lean (as near as Steve can decipher it, anyway).
Ahaha god I loved Clint in this. And the hold still, I'm setting you on fire bit.
I love the idea of movie night and everyone trying to catch them up to date and the communicators being designed with Thor and Steve in mind and their talks and Loki, oh my god. The texts killed me.
“Do you have any idea how many times I’ve been pregnant?” Loki asks him one evening, after the Avengers have just finished dealing with a group of formless black shadow monsters which Dr. Strange had informed them were below his skill level and not worth his considerably valuable time, but still probably ought to be dealt with before they disemboweled anyone.
I full out belly laughed. I just need to reread this a hundred times because I can't stop giggling.
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