Tony planning monthly Avengers picnics around Loki's tolerance of heat is now headcannon. Thank you for sharing this! (P.S: Since you might want a distraction from your writer's block, got any ideas on how the Asgardian Trio would handle such a picnic?)
I’m assuming the Avengers picnics are really just for team-building purposes and, as such, Loki really has no idea why Tony even wants to invite him, let alone ask his preference on the weather. It’s actually kind of touching, but rather than admit that outright, Loki decides to just be honest (since Tony asked him to, after all): “Heat’s not unbearable, exactly; we had summer on Asgard, after all, and I found it quite enjoyable. It’s just that if it’s too hot, I get a little …”
“Wilty,” Val supplies. “He gets wilty.”
Loki rolls his eyes, but can’t disagree with the assessment. Of course, there is a certain point where the heat stops making him wilty and starts being dangerous, but, as long as Tony isn’t planning to take them all to, like, the desert in July, that should hardly matter.
“Wilty,” Tony repeats, and nods. “So, too hot is like, what, eighty degrees? Ninety?”
“I don’t know,” Loki says. “Your measurements of temperature don’t make a great deal of sense to me.”
“We’ll say seventy, to be on the safe side,” Tony says.
“Do you have a weather machine or something?” asks Val.
“No, but I do have a private jet and a lot of money,” Tony replies with a wry grin.
So Tony whisks them all off to a place called Maine a week later. He’s rented a large pavilion on the beach. It’s September, so the breeze coming off the ocean is chilly and crisp, and none of the humans dare go in the water for fear of freezing to death before the hot dogs are even finished cooking.
Val and Loki do, though - not far, but Val convinces Loki to join her in taking off their socks and shoes and wading into the water a bit. It doesn’t feel cold to Loki at all, which Thor finds impressive. He follows their lead but only lasts about three minutes before he’s shivering.
“This isn’t any colder than the lakes we used to swim in on Asgard, brother,” Loki reminds him.
“I was cold then, too,” Thor returns. “Don’t you remember?”
“Mostly I remember that you used to shove me under the water and then sit on me.”
Thor laughs. “Oh yeah. I wanted to see how long you could hold your breath.”
“Quite awhile, if I recall. Thanks a lot, by the way.”
“Is that not what older brothers are supposed to do?” Thor reaches out and ruffles Loki’s hair with a wet hand, and Loki yelps.
“I feel so sorry for your mother,” is Val’s contribution. “You two sound like you were a nightmare.”
They fool around in the water for awhile, kicking little splashes at each other and skimming their fingers along the surface. When Tony calls out that the food is ready, they head back up the beach, joining the others.
When it’s just Val and Thor and Loki, Loki is able to relax enough to be himself. Tony is all right, too. But the rest of the Avengers - Steve and Natasha and Bucky and Sam and Clint and Wanda and Vision - make Loki nervous. They’re not hostile to him, exactly - he’s been around long enough by this point that they’re sort of used to him and have accepted that he’s not crazy anymore, nor does he have any intention of trying to take over the world.
But they aren’t friendly, either. Clint hardly ever even looks at him, let alone talks to him, which Loki can’t really blame him for. Everyone else just sort of tolerates him, but Loki is painfully aware that it’s only for Thor’s sake. Maybe a little for Val’s, too. They liked her right away. They probably wonder what she sees in Loki at all.
So Loki is quiet throughout lunch. He doesn’t comment on how disgusting he finds hot dogs, nor does he remark that what the humans call potato salad looks more like something someone’s wolf vomited up. He just sits sandwiched between Val and Thor and sips his Dr. Pepper - one of his few Midgardian indulgences - and listens to everyone else chat and joke and laugh. He feels terribly out of place, and invisible, but invisible is better than ostracized, at least. Occasionally, Val will slip her fingers between his or nudge him with her shoulder, and when he looks at her, she gives him a warm smile and it makes him feel a little better.
After lunch, Thor, Val, Steve, and Bucky get a game of something called “football” going. Really, they just toss the football ball back and forth between them, but Thor and Val are Asgardian and Steve and Bucky are enhanced and soon they’re hurling the ball twenty five and fifty feet, running as fast as they can to catch it before it sails beyond their grasp, their laughter ringing in the air behind them.
Loki helps Tony clean up and tries not to feel left out. He tries not to imagine that Clint and Sam and Natasha, who are sitting close together and whispering to one another, are mocking him just for daring to exist in their space. Loki feels Vision’s gaze on him periodically, and his skin crawls whenever he looks up and catches Vision’s gaze and the Mind Stone just above it. Wanda is nice enough, and she sort of drifts around between all of them, not really staying in one group for long.
Eventually, she ends up on the beach with the football players, and it becomes a friendly-spirited game of keep away - Thor and Val on one side, Steve and Bucky on the other, tossing the ball every which way so that Wanda can’t get it. It reminds Loki of all the times Thor and the Warriors Three would play keep away with him in their youth. Somehow, Loki always ended up the one scrambling for the ball.
He watches them for awhile, feeling sorry for Wanda, until Wanda lifts her hands and scarlet light jumps out of her fingers. She wraps the football ball in tendrils of magic and hurls it so far down the beach that none of them can see it anymore. From the pavilion, Natasha laughs loudly. “Way to go, girl!” she shouts, and Wanda tosses a grin over her shoulder, along with the universal thumbs-up sign.
When the day is over, they fly back to New York and Thor, Val, and Loki return to their apartment. “That was fun,” Thor says, slinging an arm around Loki’s shoulders. “Can’t wait for next month.”
“Yeah,” is all Loki says, and he gives his brother a smile that is only half forced.
