Chapter Text
“Hey, guys, I'm off to pick Peter up,” Bruce says. “Anyone need anything while I'm out?”
“A will to live,” Tony answers monotonously.
Loki looks at him. Tony has no idea. He's just looking at his phone, seated on the floor with his legs stretched out in front of him, as casual as casual can be.
He looks over at Steve, who meets his gaze, the same silent question (Is he okay?) in his eyes that Loki's asking himself. He doesn’t seem to have an answer, and Loki doesn’t plan to be the one to ask it aloud.
“Uh, yeah,” Natasha says, “he already told you, he's bringing Peter over.”
Tony doesn't look up from his phone, but he does huff in quiet amusement.
“Peter cannot be Stark's will to live,” Pietro says. “He will be too busy being my will to live.”
“You already have Wanda to be your will to live,” Natasha reminds him. “You don't need to steal Peter, too.”
“And Stark already has Pepper,” Pietro says.
“Yeah, and which one of our lovely redheaded wills to live are currently in the compound?” Tony asks.
Oh. That's what he's moping about. In hindsight, they probably should have known. Pepper is his emotional crutch. Anyone who's ever seen them together knows it.
Pietro, it seems, doesn't care. “It is not my fault that your will to live is gainfully employed and mine is not.”
Bruce clears his throat. “So, nobody needs anything while I'm out?”
The team – or those who are in the common room, which is, honestly, most of the team at this point – all mumble some sort of agreement that they don't need anything.
“Drive safe,” Tony adds. “You're gonna have precious cargo.”
Bruce huffs. “Yeah, I will.”
So Bruce heads off to bring Peter over, and the common room returns to its formerly quiet glory.
Loki looks around, but everybody else – Steve, Tony, Natasha, Pietro, and Wanda – turn their attention back to their phones, so Loki does the same. Humans can be so boring sometimes. One would never find a group of Asgardians, say, lounging around reading books (and that's only partly because he's not convinced most of them know how to read).
If he can't socialize with these loser humans, he'll socialize with a different loser human instead. He pulls up his text chat with Harley. It's always nice to talk to Harley. He does prefer his in-person visits (or as in-person as they can be, when his body can't leave the building), but he's pleased to admit that he's become quite adept at texting from all of these phone conversations with his young friend.
Loki: I don't suppose you're doing anything more interesting than the Avengers are. (Admittedly, it would be hard to find something less interesting.)
He sends the message, and then he waits. This is one thing he most certainly does not enjoy about text conversation as opposed to in-person visits: he can never know if he'll get a response until he gets it. Harley could be far away from his phone right now, and Loki would be none the wiser.
Fortunately, it doesn’t take long for the three little bubbles to show up at the bottom of the screen, and an answer appears shortly after.
Harley: Probably not
Harley: Working on my English essay
Harley: Any chance you knew William Shakespeare
Loki blinks.
Why does that name sound familiar?
Hmm…
Oh! Is that…?
Loki: Did he write plays?
Harley: Lmao yeah and they suck
Loki: I rather enjoyed them. They were certainly preferable to what Asgard puts together. But I would have thought that was many decades ago at the very least. How do you know William Shakespeare?
Harley: WAIT YOU ACTUALLY KNEW WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE???
Loki furrows his brows. Wasn't that his question? Was it a sarcastic question? This is another reason he prefers communicating face-to-face. Tone is so hard to read over text.
Loki: I never met the man, but I watched a few of his plays. I believe he was the playwright behind an interesting story where a man can't find it in him to kill the king, so his wife, the mastermind behind the plan, does it instead. It's quite fascinating, especially in a time when women were judged so harshly.
It was nice to see the women commit the gruesome crimes for a change. Everything was so male-dominated back then. Women were seen as too fragile to murder. It was fun to see that turned on its head, where the woman was the only one who could work up the guts to do it. (He doesn't really remember how the rest of the play went. He hopes things worked out well for her.)
Harley: WHAT THE FUCK
Admittedly, that's a rather boring response to what Loki would have considered a well-thought-out text. Is it really that shocking that he happened to watch this specific playwright's work?
He looks over at Steve, though admittedly, the guy who was in the ice for seventy years probably isn't the best one to ask about pop culture. Still, if the name means something to someone else, he imagines they'll cut into the conversation whether they're invited or not.
“Captain,” Loki says.
“Yeah?” Steve looks up from his phone.
“Have you heard of a man named William Shakespeare?”
Steve raises his brows. “Uh, yeah,” he says, confused. “He's an old playwright.”
As expected, Tony pipes up with a comment of his own. “He wrote the Romeo and Juliet play that Taylor Swift wrote ‘Love Story’ about.”
“Oh?” Loki hums thoughtfully. “I did not know it was about a play.”
“Yeah, it's very sweet,” Tony tells him. “She fake-kills herself so he really kills himself and then she kills herself right after. Cute story.” He flashes him a smile.
Loki blinks at that.
That… is not the message he gathered from the song at all.
Huh.
“Why're you asking about Shakespeare?” Tony asks.
“Harley mentioned him,” Loki says. “He seemed quite shocked that I knew of his work – and I find myself quite surprised that he knows of his work. The height of his popularity must have been decades ago at the very least.” It's a question of a sort. Was it more recent than he thought? Or is the work simply very long-lived?
Tony huffs. “Try ‘centuries.’”
“Centuries?” Loki repeats, dumbfounded. Was it really that long ago that he would watch these plays on Midgard? He knew it wasn’t recent, but he didn’t realize it had been quite that long.
“Yeah, Shakespeare was just as old-school when I was a kid,” Steve tells him. “Back in the 1500s, I think?”
Loki balks at him. “It couldn't have been that long ago.”
“They still show his plays,” Steve tells him. “He was from the 1500s, but you could know him from whenever.”
“No, I distinctly remember the plays were advertised as new,” Loki says. He definitely saw the first onstage performances. Right? He's pretty sure. Unless he misremembers, which he supposes could be possible; this was half his life ago, apparently.
“Must be nice to have watched Shakespeare back when Shakespeare was cool,” Natasha remarks.
“Is Shakespeare not cool anymore?” Loki asks.
“Not at all,” Natasha deadpans.
Tony gestures to his phone. “Ask Harley if he thinks Shakespeare is cool.”
Loki furrows his brows, but he opts to do just that, out of curiosity more than anything. He looks back down at his texts, only to find that Harley has messaged him quite a few times during this conversation.
Harley: WHAT THE FUCK
Harley: DID YOU EVER SEE ROMEO AND JULIET
Harley: CAN YOU HELP ME WITH MY ESSAY
Harley: LOKI
Harley: LOKI!!!!!
Harley: LOKI YOU CANT JUST DROP THIS ON ME AND DISAPPEAR
Harley: LOKI COME BACK AND TELL ME ABOUT ROMEO AND JULIET
Harley: LOKI
Harley: I NEED TO KNOW WHY SHAKESPEARE WOULD START THE PLAY BY SAYING HOW IT ENDS
Harley: UGHHH DON'T MAKE ME WRITE MY ESSAY BY MYSELF
Loki chuckles. Every conversation with this kid is a joy.
Loki: Stark told me to ask if Shakespeare is cool.
Harley: Lmao no he is definitely not cool
Harley: The fact that school forces kids to read his plays should qualify as cruel and unusual punishment
Loki: You have to READ his plays?
Harley: Uhhh yeah obviously
Harley: Why
Loki: A play is not meant to be read. It is meant to be performed on the stage and enjoyed from the audience.
Harley: Well tell that to my fuckass teacher then
Loki covers his mouth with his fist in a vain attempt to stifle his laughter. Steve laughs beside him. He glances over to see, unsurprisingly, that Steve is looking at his phone, too, though he looks away a bit sheepishly when Loki notices.
“He puts together words in an order they have never before been used in,” Loki remarks – both a commentary on Harley and his “fuckass teacher” and an assurance that he doesn't mind the Captain reading his conversation.
“I would love to meet him someday,” Steve tells him. “He sounds very… unique.”
“Is this the child from Tennessee?” Pietro asks, his first venture into this conversation. “Because I would also like to meet him. There are too many old people on this team.”
Natasha scoffs, playfully offended. “Hey!”
“You are not one of the old people,” Pietro assures her. “Everybody else is, but you are not.”
“Wow,” Tony deadpans. “So I'm on the same level as the hundred-year-old and the thousand-year-old and not the chick who's, like, max two decades younger than me?”
“Yes.” Pietro flashes him a smile.
“Oh my god,” Tony mutters, and he pinches the bridge of his nose, shaking his head to himself. He turns his attention back to Loki. “What did Harley say?”
“He said that he has to read these plays,” Loki says. “In what world is a play meant to be read and not performed?” Unless they do perform it, and Harley is just understating it because he doesn't enjoy the art of theater?
“In the world of the American school system,” Tony answers. “So Shakespeare is not cool, then?”
Loki glances back down at his phone, and he cracks a smile at Harley's apparent intense hatred of William Shakespeare and his work. “No, I do not believe so.”
Tony gestures to him as if to say and there's your answer.
Loki looks down at his phone again, thinks for a moment, and then asks, “Would anybody with knowledge of Romeo and Juliet be interested in helping Harley with his homework?”
“Depends on what kind of help he needs,” Tony says.
“And how much of Romeo and Juliet we need to remember,” Natasha says.
“And if my knowledge of Gnomeo and Juliet is enough to suffice,” Tony adds.
Loki cocks his head to the side, puzzled, but he's frequently puzzled by Tony's presumed pop culture references, so he doesn’t bother to ask.
Steve does bother to ask. “What is Gnomeo and Juliet?”
Tony gasps, as dramatically as humanly possible. “You've never seen Gnomeo and Juliet?”
“Should I have?” Steve asks. He looks at Natasha. “Have you seen Gnomeo and Juliet?”
“Well, yes,” Natasha says, almost hesitantly, as if she doesn’t want to admit it, “but I also spend a lot of time with Clint's kids, so I've seen a lot of kids movies.”
Steve huffs a laugh. “Yeah, Tony, what's your excuse for watching all these kids movies?”
“Obviously, I need to vet them before I show them to my adopted child.” Tony gestures pointedly to Loki.
Loki scoffs. He has not been nearly argumentative enough today to earn that kind of remark!
“Tony, come on,” Natasha says, which almost sounds like she's going to come to the god's defense until she says, “Loki is at least your adopted teenager. He can vet his own kids movies.”
Again, Loki scoffs. But, given his affinity for movies that are apparently aimed at children, he's not sure he knows how to refute any of this.
Wanda is his unexpected saving grace, because she asks, “What help does your friend need with his homework?”
Pietro snickers. “I cannot believe you are volunteering to do homework.”
“I will not be doing this homework,” Wanda says. “I have never read Romeo and Juliet.”
“So you're volunteering us to do homework,” Natasha surmises. “Great. Thanks, Wanda.”
“Well…” Wanda shrugs sheepishly.
“Obviously,” Pietro says, “she is simply encouraging intelligent conversation. I know it will be difficult for you all, but I believe that you can do it.”
Tony shakes his head. “I can't believe I let you live in my house.”
“Well, there needs to be somebody in this building capable of intelligent thought.”
“Pretty sure that's what we keep Banner around for,” Natasha remarks.
Loki leans in toward Steve and whispers, “I'm beginning to suspect that Harley will have to write his essay alone.”
Steve chuckles and whispers back, “Sometimes I wonder how we get anything done.”
Tony raises his hand. “I am feeling left out,” he declares. “What're we whispering about? Something fun? Something juicy?” He bounces his eyebrows.
“Nothing,” Loki replies, donning an overly innocent smile that will doubtlessly have the opposite effect, just as he intends.
“They're probably talking about kids movies,” Natasha says. “I bet they're planning a Gnomeo and Juliet watch party right now.”
“Of course not,” Loki says. “Owen Wilson's isn't in it.” Which he knows because he has seen every single movie that Owen Wilson is in.
Tony shakes his head to himself. “You and your blond-haired golden boys.”
Loki looks over at Steve.
Huh.
He does have a type, doesn't he?
Weird.