Loki Misses the Asgardian Prison System

Chapter 10

Steve goes out of his way to buy Loki a new pair of pants. If his problem is that he's hot, he's probably looking for some lighter pants, so he walks throughout the entire men's clothing section of Walmart until he finds some loose cotton pajama pants. They look much lighter than his leather ones, they're probably about his size, and they're cheap. That feels like a success to him.

While he's out, he also runs to the grocery store to get more dinosaur chicken nuggets. He picks up a few things for himself while he's out, too. Grocery stores have a lot of new options that they didn't have 70 years ago. He'd like to give some of them a try — and anything he doesn't like, he can just give to one of the other Avengers. It seems there are some perks to having this many housemates.

Tony is, per usual, nowhere to be found when he gets home. He spends most of his time in his lab, much to Steve's relief. It's not that he doesn't like Tony. They just... don't always get along. Clint is out, too — Fury still calls him in at SHIELD most days, because unlike Natasha, he's not actually assigned to Stark Tower.

That leaves Natasha as the only Avenger hanging around the compound, and she just happens to be in the kitchen when he comes back. He dumps his bags on the counter and begins stocking the food away.

"You know," Natasha says, "I'm pretty sure Stark was kidding when he said you had to do your own grocery shopping."

"No, I know," Steve says. "I just have a lot of new foods left to try."

Natasha cracks a smile at that. She props her head up on her fist. "Alright, what'd you get?"

Steve begins showing her the various foods as he puts them away. "Microwavable mac n cheese."

"Oh, absolutely delicious," Natasha says. "Not as good as normal mac n cheese, but great when you don't have time to cook."

Steve grins. That's good to know. It looks good, so he hopes it tastes it. He pulls out the next piece of food. "Cookie dough ice cream?" He eyes the picture on the front of the container. It looks weird. It sounds weird, too, for that matter. But he does like cookies...

"Oh, you're gonna love it," Natasha says. "And if you don't, I will gladly eat the rest."

Steve chuckles. "Duly noted." He slips it in the freezer. The next thing he pulls out also goes in the freezer. "Apparently these are pretzels, but they're also bread." Which doesn't strike him as a very pretzel-y quality, but he does like bread.

"They sell those frozen?"

Steve chuckles. "Apparently. Wanna try one with me?"

"Oh, hell yes," Natasha says.

Steve reads the instructions on the back of the box. There's a microwave option and an oven option, and he chooses the latter just because he understands it better. He sets the oven to preheat, then goes back to sifting through groceries.

He pulls out the next thing he found. "I think these are like nachos?"

Natasha bursts out laughing.

Steve furrows his brows. "Are they not like nachos?"

Natasha smacks her fist on the table, her face beginning to turn red from laughter. "'Are they like nachos?'"

He reads the bag again, confused. "They say they're nacho cheese chips. Isn't that...?"

Natasha takes a few moments to recover her composure before saying a very amused, "No, Steve. Doritos are nothing like nachos."

"Huh." Steve eyes the bag for a minute. These really aren't like nachos? They say "nacho cheese" on the bag. How are they not like nachos? God, the 21st century is wild.