Loki Misses the Asgardian Prison System

Chapter 42

Loki is halfway through his Harry Potter movie marathon a few days later when Steve finally comes back. For anyone else, Loki would be a little annoyed to have to pause his movie, but it's been at least a week since he's seen Steve (probably? He doesn't really count the days while he's stuck here. It gets discouraging) so he supposes it's a sacrifice he can make to greet him.

"You're not in your room," Steve remarks, an eyebrow raised.

"I don't have a television in my room," Loki says with a shrug. "Is Peggy okay?"

"Oh, yeah, Peggy's fine," Steve says. "The nurses are taking good care of her."

"That's good." Loki's not actually sure how painful a dislocated hip is for a human, but he doesn't seem at all worried about her so it must not be too bad.

"Who taught you to use the TV?" Steve asks, glancing at the young wizards on the screen.

"Thor did," Loki says. Technically, Thor taught him how to use cable TV and Loki just fooled around until he figured out the DVD player by himself, but he'll give credit where credit is due.

"So you're talking again?" Steve asks, a small smile on his face.

"Occasionally." If Thor tries to talk to him, he'll usually let him, but he doesn't go out of his way to see it happen. He's never been the type to forgive and forget, much to Thor's chagrin, but he's been working on it. For all his faults, Thor really is trying to be a good brother.

Steve gestures with his head to the gameboard on the table. "Was that your chess game?"

"It was."

"Were you playing with Banner or Thor?" Steve asks, as if Thor would know how to play chess.

"Stark."

Steve gapes at him. "Stark."

Loki nods slowly. "That's what I just said."

"You're talking to Stark now?" Steve says in disbelief.

"Not frequently," Loki says. He's barely seen Tony over the last few days, and when he does, they're usually content to ignore each other. Occasionally Tony will make some "polite" conversation that's really just an excuse to get some less-than-polite jabs in, but that's about the extent of their interactions. "I couldn't sleep and he didn't want to, so we played a few rounds." And even then, the only actual speaking they did was about the game. It may well be the most impersonal game of chess the world has ever seen.

"Okay, clearly I missed more than I thought," Steve says. He walks over to the couch and gestures to the open cushion. "Mind if I sit?"

"I can't say that I do."

Steve gives him a small smile and sits down next to him. Loki gets the feeling this is more than just his way of saying he wants to watch the Harry Potter movies, so Loki looks over at him expectantly while he waits for him to speak.

After a beat, Steve says, "I heard you had an interesting wake-up call a few days ago."

Loki hits his head against the wall behind him. "Of course they told you that," he mutters.

"It was pretty much the first thing Thor said to me," Steve admits.

"Of course it was."

"Can I ask what happened?" Steve asks.

"It doesn't matter," Loki says. "It was a bad dream. That's all."

"It sounded a little worse than that," Steve says.