Somewhere on Knowhere: Book Three

27

The last surprise of Loki's birthday was the surprise arrival of another friend. He and Strange were sitting on the stairs in the Sanctum's hallway, drinking tea (Loki had taken a liking to the special wizard tea Strange made) when Scott burst through the front doors without knocking.

"Stephen, you went to space?!" Scott shouted, holding out his phone as though they could see what was on it from about 10 metres away. Then Scott did a double take as he saw Loki. "Loki?!"

Loki raised a hand in greeting, but he couldn't stop the grin coming onto his face. "Hi, Scott," he said simply.

"Scott, why are you in my house? I thought you were on the other side of the continent!" Strange said, raising his voice to the same astonished tone as Scott, at the same volume. Loki had to admit, it was a perfectly valid question.

"I tried to ring you to say I was coming to New York and I was going to visit you while I was here!" Scott said, still half-shouting from the front door. "You didn't pick up, so I thought I'd check in anyway, and then when I'm a block away, an update comes from your social media and you were in space this morning?! And Loki's here as well?!"

Loki couldn't help smirking as he sipped his tea. This was amusing.

"I posted that like one minute ago!" Strange said, surprised. "And you appeared like 10 seconds later, so that's like, crazy timing. And why are you in New York anyway?!"

"Reasons! Now are you going to tell me why you were in space or not?! And why is Loki here?!" asked Scott again, and Loki was starting to get the impression Scott was surprised he was here.

"Nice to see you too, Scott," Loki smirked. He was the only one not shouting. "Why don't you both calm down?"

"Never!" Scott and Strange shouted in unison. Loki nearly spilt his tea he was laughing so hard.

At some point they both calmed down and Scott joined them on the steps, but they kept shouting meaningless things at each other before that happened. When he came over, he showed Loki what he'd been showing them on his phone, which was a "status update" from Strange, which was a series of the digital images they'd taken in space, along with the caption:

Just your typical morning – waking up at 4am to go to battle space jerks, complete with near-death spaceship chases and learning to use the crazy space tech they have up there just lying around, introducing a friend to chocolate and nearly dying. I know, you've heard it all before!

Loki could see why Scott was confused. He would've been too.

It took nearly half an hour to explain everything to him (Scott wanted details about the near-death spaceship chases, right down to the translation of what Loki had shouted at them – I dine drømmer, du tispe mor jævel – which Strange actually told him off for while Scott laughed) and eventually they finished the story.

Scott exhaled. "Wow. That's awesome. But I can't believe you didn't let me come along!"

"Eh," Loki shrugged. "I'm glad it's over. At least we got some funny pictures of Strange to tease him about from now on."

"Yep," laughed Scott. "And you've never tried chocolate before today? That is like, the saddest thing I have ever heard in my life."

Loki nodded. "I plan to get as much from the shop as possible for Christmas."

"Have you ever had a McDonald's?" Scott asked, and Loki was surprised to say he actually had.

"Not since 1963," Loki shrugged. "It wasn't much good back then."

"Well, I'm taking you both to get one right now, because I was going to go anyway," Scott insisted. "No arguing."

Loki didn't know what to say. If McDonald's was anything like Scott's other obsession with nachos, he wasn't going to like it. But he was so happy to be with friends again, he was hardly going to argue. "Thanks, Scott. You two are way too kind for your own good."

"Of course we are," Strange smiled. "Every murderous god has to have a couple of way too kind besties."

"Speaking of way too kind, Loki, you're invited to my family's Christmas get-together as well," Scott said. "If you want to come, of course."

Loki couldn't say no. Besides, Scott might have chocolate on offer. "Of course I'll come," he shrugged, but purposely gave it away by smiling. "Got nothing better to do."

"Great," Scott said, clapping once. "Now let's go get some lunch. I don't know about you, but I'm starving."

Loki couldn't believe that after that absolutely shit morning he was going to end it in such a normal way. With the promise of a free lunch and a Lang family Christmas to look forward to, as well as all the chocolate he was planning to get, this was going to be a great end to the year.

It was time to finally get that damn break.

The End.

(For now...)