Prompt Post 3

[norse_kink]

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Announcement: All new and continuing fills for Round 3 should be posted in the Overflow Post.

THIS ROUND IS CLOSED TO NEW PROMPTS.

Comments

Telephone 1/17

[anonymous]

(First lj post, so sorry if I screw anything up! Also, Loki does phone the (completely) wrong person, but it isn’t Tony. My apologies in advance for the inexplicable abundance of Cap in this… and the, y’know… oddness… also, it's way longer than I expected...)

TelephoneSteve stares at the small, smooth, deep blue 'phone' which Tony's secretary had given him a month ago. It’s ringing. Steve has no idea who decided that his phone should produce a tinny, constantly repeating version of the chorus to 'Star Spangled Man', but it wasn't him. He listens to the song loop over and then over again as he mentally goes through the instructions to activate the thing. It isn't as simple as the Avengers communicators, which were designed with both himself and Thor in mind

Re: Telephone 2/17

[anonymous]

“Uh…” Steve isn’t really sure how to phrase his issue in the form of a message. He clears his throat, and regroups after only a beat of hesitation. “I just got a phone call from Loki.”

“…Huh.“Well, I’m pretty sure it’s Loki, anyway

Re: Telephone 2/17

[anonymous]

He can almost hear Tony giving him a skeptical look from the other end. “Okay, Cap. Quick question. If he’s not saying anything, how do you know it’s him?” he asks. “Don’t tell me he’s in your speed dial

Re: Telephone 4/17 (above should have been 3, whoops)

[anonymous]

“My brother has spoken to you through the telephonic?” Thor booms. “Truly, his aptitude for Midgardian technology is impressive! Though I can only speculate as to how he obtained your specific calling number. What game is he playing now

Re: Telephone 5/17

[anonymous]

Steve doesn’t forget about the ‘Loki’s Emergency Distress Call’ incident, exactly, but Thor disappears without comment for three weeks shortly after it happens, and as he and Loki seem to be the only one who knows more than Steve himself does about what went on, the whole thing just gets shelved. A lot can happen in three weeks, Steve has found. Between dealing with the giant ants trying to take over Manhattan, having to fly to Latveria to bodyguard a U.S. ambassador (who was almost assassinated anyway), and attending a press conference where Tony said ‘no comment’ a lot and Steve didn’t say much at all (but did get to watch, afterwards, as a bunch of newscasters debated whether or not he was a clone of himself), the phone call is reduced to a mere blip on the list of oddities that make up his day-to-day life. So he’s put it from his mind by the time Thor makes his reappearance by landing on the roof of the Avengers’ mansion, and thumping on heavy boots down into the informal dining room

Re: Telephone 5/17

[anonymous]

Steve’s mouth is operating on autopilot, so he hears himself say “La Rosa?”, because he remembers that fight, and the gigantic etched golden lettering (he’d almost got thrown through it, after all) and the name pops into his head before he can think to say something more relevant. Like ‘why are you phoning me

Re: Telephone 7/17 (and above should have been 6... -_-;)

[anonymous]

Steve gives serious consideration to throwing his portable (cellular, he reminds himself, it’s called a cell phone, except that he’s always worried he’s going to mix that up with ‘cellophane’ and come out sounding like an idiot) phone into the trash. But he doesn’t. Partly because it does serve an important function, and partly because he’s sure something like that’s expensive, and it was a gift, after all. So instead he just goes back inside to finish watching the movie, and when it’s done he pulls Tony and Clint aside and tells them that he got a phone call, and Loki says that Thor’s birthday is next month.

Clint snorts. “Alright, this whole ‘phone buddies’ thing you’ve got going on with him is weird,” he asserts

Re: Telephone 8/17

[anonymous]

Some time after the sixth phone call (“Tell me, has the mortal capacity for musical innovation degraded over time, or has it always been this bad?”), the fourth text message (“l8test prnk on news, turn 2 CNN! :D”), and the second picture (a close-up of Loki’s new boots), Steve almost crashes into Thor when he goes to leave his room in the morning. The god of thunder is standing right outside his doorway. He’s… well, Thor doesn’t fidget. But if he did, then that’s what he would be doing. Somehow he manages to project an air of fidgeting, even with his arms folded and his expression tightened into something difficult to read

Re: Telephone 9/17

[anonymous]

After that exceedingly stilted conversation, things go from ‘peculiar’ to ‘tiresome, sometimes entertaining, but most just plain sad’ as Steve finds himself in the middle of a situation he hasn’t been in since grade school, when Michael McConner and Bucky had stopped speaking to one another, and had forced Steve to pass messages between them before and after class instead. Only whereas that had just been a lot of ‘tell Bucky I said he has a fat head’ and ‘tell Michael I’d rather have a fat head than his ugly face’ type comments, this also features a lot more ‘remind Loki that the summer weather always taxes him more than he expects; he shall be forced to curtail his negative impulses’, and ‘tell Thor to mind his own business, and also that if he insists on traipsing about the city, he should at least have the common sense to take his hammer with him - I wouldn’t want him to die before I can kill him’ sentiments. Steve finds himself wondering when he got caught in the middle of… whatever, exactly, is going on

Re: Telephone 10/17

[anonymous]

Steve’s day is a busy one, and so when it’s close enough to being finished for him to finally take a break, he flops down onto his bed with little ceremony and almost instantly falls into a light doze.

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

Re: Telephone 11/17

[anonymous]

“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

Re: Telephone 12/17

[anonymous]

Thor stops giving Steve messages to pass along to Loki. At first it takes him a while to notice. He does pick up on Thor’s bad mood, but after a while he assumes it’s something he’s done. Maybe some staple of Asgardian etiquette that he’s unknowingly violated, or some such. He tries to engage Thor in conversations, but Thor always abruptly ends them, and when he does talk to Steve his tone is clipped and to-the-point. It’s only because he takes to stomping dramatically out of the room whenever Steve’s phone makes a sound (whether it’s Loki calling or not) that Steve finally puts two and two together. Mostly. He decides to corner Thor about it while he’s in the training room, demolishing some of Tony’s new targeting bots with extreme prejudice

Re: Telephone 13/17

[anonymous]

That seems to hit a note, as Thor blinks, and almost takes a step back, like Steve has hit him again. He wonders why. But he doesn’t see much point in bombarding the other man with too many questions all at once, so instead of asking he just waits, and takes the opportunity to sink onto one of the benches in the corner of the room. It’s a sturdy seat, designed to take the weight of a suit of mechanical armour, three heavy men, and a giant hammer. All at once, if need be. So it barely even wobbles when, a moment later, Thor heavily does the same

Re: Telephone 14/17

[anonymous]

Steve pauses. Then he shrugs. “Well. That’s out of your hands, I guess,” he says. “But it’s up to you whether or not you keep trying.”

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

Re: Telephone 15/17

[anonymous]

Thor looks like he’s dangerously close to rolling his eyes before he flies off in compliance, a hoard of black storm clouds trembling across the stars overhead. Steve decides that, on the whole, this is probably a bad sign. Not that Loki was completely inactive while he was still sending Steve encoded text messages or anything like that, but he had been decidedly less… loud about his attempts. He doesn’t have much time to think about it, though, because the ice swans are reforming themselves into a gigantic ice dragon, and in short order he’s ducking shards of ‘ice fire’ as he tries to get the thing to shatter. He aims for the joints, mostly, because crippling it would probably be the next best thing. Tony gets off a few shots at its head, but then he’s being swamped by suicidally aggressive place settings. A few arrows rebound off of the ice, but Steve doesn’t actually see Clint anywhere; though he also notices that the crowds of panicked party-goers have thinned out considerably. Distantly, he can hear Thor shouting something

Re: Telephone 16/17

[anonymous]

Steve curls in on himself, bracing for the fall, and only has time to shout a loud warning - “Incoming!” - before he’s crashing back down to earth in a flurry of pain and ice and cold. The dragon’s body shatters beneath him. He ducks below the shield as the shards fly up, and then down again, collapsing on top of him in a hail of ruined wings and claws. Most of the pieces shatter against his shield. After the last dull thud of impact has reverberated down through his arms, Steve pulls back, and carefully begins to stand. He’s covered in ice shards. One of his hands comes up to brush them off as he takes one step, then another, and then all at once the ice seems to decide that it likes where it is just fine, because it grips around him like a vice and suddenly he can’t move.

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