My Best Friend's the God of Mischief // Peter x Loki

need a place to hide, but I can't find one near

Loki's issues continued to grow.

///

"Well, now you see it," Loki smiled. It was anything but happy. "What a savage beast that I am,"

He wasn't currently blue. His skin a normal colour of an Aesir, though that was a lie, wasn't it? His true self, the self Loki had been hiding and running away from his entire life, once again concealed behind the strong seidr. (How long could he escape from something that was within his body, really)

"I'd really appreciate it, if you could stop calling yourself that," Peter said. His voice flat. His arms crossed over his chest. Standing there leaning against the wall, his eyes were on Loki. And so were the rest of the team all gathering here, suddenly having an unexpectedly meeting in Peter's room, Loki the centre of their attention.

And what a strange picture this made; Loki being the only one sitting on Peter's bed while everybody else was standing, which made him look surprisingly very small.

(Peter wondered if that was the intention; Loki seeing himself as some sort of a monster and so he was trying to make himself look less threatening as he could. The thought disturbed Peter greatly, it frustrated him, for Peter felt like he wasn't doing enough to help. Mister Loki sees himself as a what, a savage beast?! That was what frustrated Peter.)

"It is what I am," Loki said, not making eye contact with anyone. "A beast. There's no use pretending otherwise," the corner of his lips twitched, something went across his expression, something that looked like an ugly mixture of shame and pain.

"No one is pretending here," Thor said, and if there was a hint of anger in his voice. "If anything it is you who thinks so little of yourself,"

"Am I?" Loki rose his brows at his brother almost challengingly. "Mother and father kept me in the dark my whole life, would have continued to fool me for the rest of my days, had not for me accidentally finding out the truth myself. If they truly believed I was not a beast, had they not any doubt in me that one day the savage blood in me would win and I would turn against them, they would have told me what I was." Loki cracked a hollow, ghostlike chuckle. "They never did."

"They wanted only to protect you," Thor insisted, and if his voice wavered only a little his face remained stern.

"Now you sound like your father," Loki hissed.

"Our,"

"Now let's just not fight," Tony stepped in, cutting the brothers off when he felt the tension rise. "Lokes," he cast a look at him. "For what it's worth, no one here sees you as what you're seeing yourself. And I wish you could believe that. Damn, I hope you can believe that. Maybe one day. Don't be too harsh on yourself,"

Loki huffed, but he did not argue.

"You had us all worried there," Steve said and Loki looked at him with a hurt puppy expression. We thought you ran away, was held back, but it was heard nonetheless. And the look on Loki's face said, 'I'm sorry,'

"It's not your fault," Steve quickly added. "Must be... scary, right? You wake up and who you thought you were is gone," Oh, Steve knew how that felt. Maybe not the exact same, but him waking up to a world he didn't know after 80 years in ice was, well, Steve would say it was close enough to what Loki was going through.

"I thought," Loki started to say, but he stopped as though he was afraid to speak it aloud. He ended up going on, anyway, "I thought I could... keep running away from it forever, the blood running in my veins, the beast's blood,"

That word again, Peter was getting more and more irritated each time he heard it from Loki's mouth.

"The truth is," said Steve with a smile that somehow looked reassuring and sad at the same time, "you don't have to run from it at all,"