Chapter Text
Loki pinched his nose as he paused the video he was editing on the laptop in his study. Even with bookcases lining the walls, he still heard the dull thump through the walls. Loki tugged his dark green shirt down and stepped out into the hall.
“Magnus!” he bellowed in the house. The third door on the left creaked open, and a head popped out.
“Yeah, Dad?” Magnus asked.
Loki stared down at his youngest son. With his long mop of blond curls, he looked nothing like Loki, but his personality was all his father’s.
“How many times have I told you, no drums while I’m doing voiceovers?” Loki sighed.
“I don’t know Dad, like twenty times.” Magnus smiled an all too familiar smile. “Maybe number twenty-one will be the one that sticks?”
“No drums, Magnus. Or I am sending your mother after you.” Loki matched with his own smile.
Magnus mouth dropped open. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“Try me, son. I heard her and Emma could use someone to hold their purses at the mall.”
“But the band has a gig on Sunday! I have to practice!”
“You are ten years old, you are too young to have gigs. Your lead vocalist still has a 7 o’clock bedtime.”
“Dad! Ragnarok is the one of the best bands in the neighborhood. We are playing a bat mitzvah.”
Loki snapped his fingers at Magnus, whose mouth snapped shut.
“You are not naming your band that! Give me an hour to get this done and then you can practice that noise you call music.”
Magnus huffed and slammed his door. Loki returned to his study. He hated to be so cruel to Magnus, but this video needed to go up tomorrow morning. Loki glanced around the room as he collected his thoughts. His golden YouTube button hung next to his James Beard Award. Loki smiled. If anyone told him, people would know him more for his knife skills in the kitchen than in battle. He would have laughed in their face.
Loki returned to his script and pressed play on his video of him making candied bacon. As he was uploading the video for rendering, a pair of hands gripped his shoulders.
“You know, in my younger days, doing a thing like that would get you killed.” Loki hummed, leaning back as the hands pressed into the knots forming where his shoulder blades were.
“I think I will take my chances, dear husband.” Mina tilted her head to kiss his cheek. “How is the editing going?”
Loki moaned in pleasure as she massaged the knots out of his back. “Better now that my personal masseuse is here.”
Mina smacked his shoulder playfully. “Very funny. Did you really tell Magnus you make him go to the mall with Emma and me?”
“Perhaps.” Loki’s head dropped when she hit a particularly tough knot right in the middle of his back. “Right there, love. Harder.”
She chuckled and whispered in his ear. “I thought that was my line.” Her voice was as rich and decadent as the sinful chocolate desserts Loki demo’d on his blog.
Loki stood and wrapped his arms around her. “Close the door and it can be again.” His lips latched onto the spot on her neck that made Mina’s knees buckle.
“Isn’t that how we ended up with three kids?” Mina’s fingers weaved into Loki’s hair, her blue-gray eyes sparkling. He kept his hair shorter these days. It was that or the truly awful man bun Mina hated, so Loki compromised with keeping in chin length curls.
“We could also go for one more.” Loki purred, his hand traveling down her torso, delighting in a body he had memorized over the years. “Trying for a matching set, two boys and two girls.”
“Are you changing the diapers?” Mina hummed, scratching his scalp.
“Why would I do that?” Loki questioned, his lips trailing down towards her chest. Mina yanked his head up by his hair. “Ow.”
“Because I’m not doing it alone.” Mina smiled at him, pecking his lips. “Now before you go to take cold shower, I came up here for a reason.”
“Which is?”
“Jane called. Three times.”
Loki groaned. “Why did I agree to cater her wedding to my brother?”
She smoothed out his shirt. “I believe the words ‘you owe me’ and ‘the time you stabbed me’ were used.”
Loki’s lips curled into a smile. “I missed those days.”
“I don’t. Worried about you coming home hurt. Or worst not coming home at all. No, thank you. I prefer that the biggest worry is that you’ll burn dinner.”
Loki’s mouth dropped open. “I haven’t burned dinner in years.”
“I know.” She kissed him once more and swatted his ass. “I just like getting a rise out of you. Call Jane back while I go comfort your youngest son.”
“Or I could talk to Magnus…”
“I’m walking away, Loki!” Mina shut the door behind her, leaving Loki alone in his study.
“I hate brides.” Loki muttered as he punched in Jane’s number.
-
“I heard his brother Thor is getting married, and he is cooking all the food for it.” Corvus Glaive commented, rubbing his chin with his long fingers.
“Since when does Loki cook?” Proxima commented.
Ebony Maw growled from across the table, staring at the rest of The Black Order. “He’s gone soft.” He sneered with a long face. “He has a blog where he cooks food. And has kids.”
Obsidian Cull grunted. “Weak.”
Proxima slammed her fist on the table. “Which is why it is the perfect time to go after him. It’s been years since he last fought.”
Corvus smiled. “He’ll never see it coming.”
Ebony rose and clenched his fists. “And if we enlisted a few others loyal to the cause, we should easily defeat him.”
Proxima leaned forward. “Who did you have in mind?”
-
Jane paced along the length of Loki’s commercial kitchen. While he usually did recipe testing and most filming at home, he kept the professional kitchen for the small catering business he ran on the side.
“So I know I said to do the crab puffs for the cocktail hour, but then I started thinking, what if people are allergic to shellfish, or what if they don’t like shellfish? Or what if they are vegetarian or vegan?” Jane’s hands gestured wildly in the air. “Is anyone in your family allergic?” She turned to face Loki.
“Not that I am aware of.” Loki stood off to the side, arms crossed.
“What about special diets? Is Odin vegan?” Jane panicked.
“I doubt Odin even knows what the word ‘vegan’ means. He is decidedly carnivorous.”
“And your mother?”
Loki smiled. “Is polite. What do you want me to do, Jane? The wedding is in three weeks. I need to put my order in with my suppliers.”
Jane chewed on her thumbnail and bounced on her feet. “Keep the crab puffs but halve it and do the other half with veggie quiches.”
Loki snapped his fingers. “Done. Now if you don’t mind. I have some recipes I will test since you dragged me into the city.”
Jane wrinkled her nose. “I can’t believe you live in the suburbs.”
Loki scoffed. “And pay the real estate prices of Manhattan? No, thank you. Once Magnus was born, we needed the space. I needed a full kitchen.” Loki reached out and patted Jane’s shoulder. “Just wait and see.”
Jane chuckled. “Thor and I are city people. The culture, my research…”
The door to the kitchen slammed open and a woman wearing some god awful white polyester dress from the 80s stepped in.
“If you are looking for a consultation on catering, make an appointment—” Loki commented, which was cut off by the woman hurling what Loki could only describe as a dagger made of water towards Loki and Jane.
Loki grabbed Jane by the arm and pushed her behind the stainless steel counters. The water dagger clinked against the metal and hit the wall behind a stove, droplets falling upon impact.
“Is this the little missus?” the woman sneered. “And I thought I was your true love, Loki. Before you decided to leave me for someone else!”
“Who the hell is she, Loki?” Jane questioned.
Loki peeked over the edge to see the woman prowling towards them. “If memory serves me, Venus.”
“The Goddess of Love?! You broke up with the Goddess of Love?!”
Another dagger hit above their heads as Venus got closer.
“Not exactly…”
“Loki,” Venus taunted. “Come and introduce me to your wife.” Another dagger.
“She thought she was Venus, but she turned out to just be a siren.” Loki finished, glancing over the counter again.
“And you broke up with her? What, did you do it by email?!” Jane continued to scream at Loki.
Loki stared at Jane in shock. “I had the decency to tell her to face.” Jane glared at Loki. “Okay, I sent a note centuries later. I was preoccupied at that time.”
“Doing what?” Jane sneaked a peek over the counter. Venus waved at her with a sadistic smile.
Loki shrugged his shoulders. “Escaping the underworld?”
“Come on out, darling. I just want to sing you two lovebirds a song.” Venus purred.
“Shit.” Loki’s eyes darted around the kitchen until they settled on a pair of oven mitts. “Put these on your ears and do not remove them for any reason.”
“Why?” Jane’s tone growing more shrill.
“So you don’t die.” Loki stood up and smiled at Venus. “Pet, I’ve missed you.” He held his arms out. “How about a hug?”
“I’m not falling for your charms again, Loki!” She hurled a dagger at his head, which he easily dodged. “You said you loved me.” Her lower lip quivered.
“And I did at the time.” Loki moved slowly towards Venus outstretched. “Remember, I promised you the world.”
She sniffled. “You did.”
“And remember that lovely necklace I bought you?”
Venus held up the pendant around her necklace. “I still wear it, pumpkin.”
Loki flinched at that awful pet name. He thanked the Norns Mina settled on far less irksome terms of endearment.
“As you should.” Loki could almost reach out and grab Venus’s hand. “Because it is a symbol of our love.” He slid around to her back and wrapped one arm around her waist. The fingers of his other hand ran along the chain of the necklace. He pressed his lips against her ear as he walked her away from Jane and towards the back wall. “It’s a shame it is nothing more than glass.”
Venus stiffened. “You tricked me.” She struggled, but Loki held her tight in his grip.
“I am the Trickster. You should have expected it.” He opened the door and shoved Venus in the massive walk-in freezer and slammed the door shut. “When will people stop falling for that?”
Jane stood up, a bit dazed. Loki lifted his chin towards the brand new heavy duty spatula he purchased. “Can you hand me that, please?” With a furrowed brow, Jane picked up the spatula. “A little quicker, please. I can’t hold the door forever.”
With a jump, Jane hustled towards him, handed the spatula to Loki. He bent it around the door handle.
“That should hold her long enough for the freezer to dampen her powers.” Loki turned to Jane. “I suggest we not be here when that happens. Can I take you to lunch?”
Jane blinked, not entirely sure what was going on or why Loki was so calm. “Ah, yeah, yes. Sure. Thanks, Loki.”
He led her out of the kitchen, with Venus banging on the freezer door. It took three blocks before Jane got her wits back.
“Does that happen often?”
Loki smirked and patted Jane’s arm, which was linked with his own. “Not as much as it used to. I racked up quite a list of enemies in my day. Lovers too. There quite a bit of overlap between those two lists.”
“And they just attack you out of nowhere?”
“Sometimes. Although, these days it is people wanting my brownie recipe.” Loki joked, trying to lighten the mood.
“But what about your family? Do they know…”
Loki stopped and yanked Jane around to face him. “No. They don’t know and you can’t tell them. There is no need to worry about something as trifling as jilted ex-lover. It will just upset Mina.” Loki said these things as much to convince Jane as he did to convince himself. Venus come back now was unusual.
Jane raised an eyebrow. “Fine, but I don’t like keeping secrets Loki.”
“Neither do I. Now, where should we eat? My treat.”