Several days ago, your brother reached his breaking point. “And on one very noteworthy occasion, Mister Stark’s AI. “But mostly Stark,” said Loki with a slight grin, leaning against the doorframe.Ĭoulson tightened the tie. “Given that your brother is not the one with a reputation for transforming, hexing, setting ablaze or throwing the people who mock him into pocket dimensions, he’s been hearing that phrase repeated to him constantly by other enemies, passerby and occasionally his teammates ever since.” I believe there’s merchandise.”Ĭoulson seemed to finally notice his loose tie and began adjusting it. “The world seems especially taken with your eloquently expressed desire to go your own way regardless of your brother’s wishes. And some of those moments, such as the five minutes of footage a civilian recorded of that particular battle, including your outburst, are seized by the public as something of great shame, or wisdom, or amusement, or just for including a large number of grammatically impaired cats.” He smiled wryly. Any moment can be recorded and displayed for the entire world to witness. Technology is a powerful entity, Mister Liesmith. “Teaching you anything about our culture is probably against protocol, but these are desperate times. He’d only bought it because it reminded him of Sleipnir.Ĭoulson sighed. Loki glanced down at the Rainbow Unicorn Attack logo and shrugged.
“I had assumed you were familiar with the concept of an internet meme,” he said, nodding towards Loki’s shirt. The moment had been neither mature nor dignified, but it had shut Thor up for the rest of the fight and both Stark and Barton had gone down pretty easily once they were doubled over in laughter.Ĭoulson raised an eyebrow. The homicidal look on Coulson’s face was made infinitely more threatening by virtue of the fact that it was on Coulson’s face. “This is dated several days ago,” he said finally. Loki read the letter over a few more times, and it failed to make any more sense than it had the first. If you ARE Loki, then you should know that your brother is currently in the 2 nd floor women’s bathroom and we would appreciate it if you would go comfort him because as far as we can tell from what he’s saying, he wants to hug you. It is rude and hurtful to yell ‘I DO WHAT I WANT, THOR’ whenever Thor says something if you are not Loki. Loki blinked blearily down at the crumpled piece of SHIELD letterhead and tried to arrange the words into something coherent. “You’re responsible for this,” he said with narrowed eyes. His current overwhelming apathy towards the enemy agent who had apparently worked out at least one of Loki’s private hideaways without his knowledge was actually rather refreshing, in any case.Ĭoulson thrust a letter into his hands. For all that it improved his work ethic during his late-night endeavors, Loki had noticed that he’d begun developing a rather worrying case of listlessness when he attempted to start his day without the aid of the savory beverage.
The Loki of yesteryear in all likelihood would have committed ritual suicide before answering the door in his pajamas, but that was before he had discovered the wondrous Midgardian creation that was coffee. And usually a great deal more humiliating.
Which, while an effective enough disguise to convince his delightful landlady that he was not in any way, shape or form related to the charismatic, snappily dressed super-villain occasionally bent on world domination, was considerably less effective on people who actually knew who he was. As disheveled as Coulson looked, he was a sight more dignified than sweatpants, fuzzy slippers and a T-shirt. Loki was beginning to regret answering the door in his pajamas. There were heavy bags under his eyes and his suit was looking unusually rumpled between the badly buttoned shirt and untied tie-which were flashing warning signs of Coulson’s imminent mental collapse, as Loki had once seen the man come out of a one-on-one fight with a hellhound not only victorious but with his jacket somehow more starched than when he had started. I usually don’t expect guests at four in the morning, so I hope you’ll excuse me if I don’t invite you in for coffee.”Ĭoulson had seen better days, Loki noticed. He peeked surreptitiously behind Coulson for any sign of Thor and his new-and-improved merry band of destructive lunatics, but the agent appeared to have come alone. “Agent Coulson,” Loki said with a thin, blatantly insincere smile. The whole point of having a secret lair was that it was, in fact, secret, but no one seemed to have informed Agent Phil Coulson of that little detail.Įven if that secret lair was actually a less than secret penthouse registered under an alias.