Peter Parker: -on meeting Loki, offers his hand- Hi, I’m Peter!
Loki: -shakes his hand- Loki of Asgard.
Peter: Aren’t you like…a bad guy?
Loki: It varies from moment to moment.
Peter: So like…on a scale of one to ten, ten being the worst evil imaginable, like…killing puppies, and one being I’ll spit on your hotdog…where are you right now?
Loki: …maybe a three?
Peter: Cool. Lemme know if it gets above a six.
Loki: -thinking- I like him.
It had been a joke, a flippant line, but somehow, Loki found himself taking the youth up on it.
It was hard living around these heroic Avengers, hard trying to stay close to Thor. And when he felt his need for mischief rise too high, when he felt exasperation with these Midgardians turn too close to spite, he would casually say “Six.” to the young man, or sometimes “Seven.”
And Peter would spend the rest of his day with Loki. He would badger him with questions about magic, or drag him across his beloved city to see its entertainments, or take him along stopping petty crimes. He grounded Loki to the here and now, and distracted him from the churning, jagged shards of ice in his mind.
WE NEED LOKI AND PETER FICS
“Brother, why does young Parker have a gravity emulator ball?”
“Why would I know?”
“Because when I asked him, he said you’d told him it was a toy. Loki, that’s a weapon of war.”
“And?”
“Are you trying to usurp Stark as the boy’s mentor?”
Loki looked up from his phone (when did he get one of those?) to take an obnoxious sip from his frappe.
“Look, he’s a smart kid. He can handle it. I really don’t care about it that much.”
There was a loud bang from the other side of the room, and the brothers looked over to see Peter (and the couch) pinned to the ceiling, the gravity orb thauming angrily in midair.
“Mr. Loki? I’m uh. I’m kind of stuck.”
Thor snorted and let a small tongue of lightning flick from his fingers to deactivate the orb, and everything crashed back to the floor. Loki shot up in his seat, peering over to see if the couch had crushed him.
“I’m okay!” Peter yelled
Thor stifled a laugh “You don’t care?”
“Not. A. Word.” Hissed Loki, already planning to stab his brother for the third time that week.
peter parker, expressing his affection as any teen would: thor i would die for you 🙂
thor, gripping his shoulders with the intensity of ten thousand burning suns: i would never let that happen
peter parker, later that week: i would die for you loki
loki, looking him dead in the eye: you will.
drax: [really bad joke]
peter parker: mr. drax? I would die for you
drax, with a pause spent determining that peter is probably joking and then a hearty guffaw: but my muscles and fighting power is several times your own! your death would be meaningless!
peter parker, in the middle of battle with no regard for his own safety: i would die for you
t’challa, who has lived with shuri long enough to know exactly what answer peter is looking for: then perish