Loki likes Christmas.
It's not so much about the presents or spending time with the Avengers and their friends – though he does enjoy listening to them tease each other relentlessly – so much as it's about the food. For the second time in a row, he spent much of his Christmas Eve making cookies, and, once they're done opening gifts, he'll get to eat his beloved cinnamon rolls that hardly ever make an appearance outside the holiday.
He has faith that it will be a fun present exchange, if only because he has Snowflake in his lap and the Barton kids across the circle from him, and they're perhaps the most entertaining beings in the building.
For a tally of all the people in the room – many more people than he would like there to be – there is: the original six Avengers, the Barton family, Pepper, Rhodey, Jane, Darcy, and the twins, making a grand total of 16 people, himself included (and baby not included because babies aren't people). It certainly makes him miss the days where it was just himself and the original six.
The Avengers did their "Secret Santa" thing again, not that Loki had any part in it because he never does. Dum-E still has the important job of giving the gifts out to whomever they're addressed to, though, after a stern speech from Tony about making sure he gives the gifts to whomever they're addressed to instead of bringing them all to Tony, the robot seems to be better prepared than he was the last time.
The first gift he pulls out is for Clint. The robot whirs his way over to him and drops the little box on the ground, then moves out of the way to let him open it.
Clint picks the box up and shakes it by his ear. It's a decently sized box; not necessarily the biggest, but certainly one of them. He holds it out in front of him, eyeing it quizzically.
"Open it!" Lila urges him.
Clint chuckles. "Alright, hang on." He puts the box down on the floor and tears the wrapping paper off with no care put into the process. When he sees what's inside, he drops his head forward in playful disappointment.
"What is it?" Cooper asks, craning his neck to see.
Clint holds up the box to show everybody. "It is a baby pee shield," he says, shaking his head to himself. "It is a shield to stop your baby from peeing on you when you're changing its diaper."
Loki bites back a laugh. For a moment, he thinks this is actually how humans change their babies' diapers, but the laughs that echo through the room assure him that that is (most likely) not the case.
"That is hilarious," Laura says.
"Man," Tony says with a smirk, "whoever got you that must be a genius. Being peed on by infants is a real problem in this day and age."
Clint gives him a look that very clearly reads really?
"What?' Tony shrugs, his smirk unwavering. "I'm just saying, you should thank your Secret Santa. I bet that's gonna come in handy with the new baby."
"I hate you," Clint tells him, though the smile he wears says otherwise.
"Yeah, but I bet you hate getting peed on more," Tony says teasingly.
Cooper nods approvingly, eyeing Clint's new gift. "That's smart," he decides.
"No, Cooper," Clint says, "it's not smart. It's unsmart. It's an unsmart gift from an unsmart man."
"Hey," Tony says. "It might not be from a man. Maybe Laura got it for you. Maybe she's trying to tell you something."
Clint rolls his eyes lightheartedly. "Uh-huh," he says sarcastically. "I'm sure that's it."
Dum-E's sent to retrieve the next gift, and this one, he brings to Lila. It seems the Bartons are going first, then. (Did the children participate in this Secret Santa activity? He can't imagine that they did. Do kids know how to shop? He doesn't even know how to shop.)
Lila wastes no time in tearing the wrapping paper off her box, throwing it aside carelessly. Laura crumbles it into a ball and tosses it to Clint, who throws it in a trash bag with his own wrapping paper.
Lila furrows her brows and looks at her mother, confused. "What is it?"
"It's a Spirograph," she explains. "Grandma got me one of these when I was your age. It makes really cool shapes."
Lila peers down at it, intrigued. She picks it up and looks over the sides of the box, trying to make some sense out of it, though whether there's sense to be made, neither Loki nor Lila can tell. Maybe she'll use it before she leaves and he can see it in action.
Tony instructs Dum-E to get a gift for Cooper next – the sentiment implying that he wants to be fair to the kids, but the words implying that they have multiple gifts, which is more than the rest of them can say.
Cooper is just as careless with his wrapping paper as the rest of his family, and once again, Clint is left to clean up the mess – the mess that Cooper seems to completely forget the moment he lays eyes on his gift. He gasps, eyes lighting up with delight and he pulls it out of the paper, and he looks between his parents in disbelief.
"The LEGO Death Star!" he exclaims, beaming with excitement.
"Your mom and I were going to wait a couple more years before we got you it," Clint tells him, "but they just discontinued it, and we knew you were gonna want it."
"I love it!" Cooper says. "Thank you, thank you, thank you!" He hugs the box to his chest. "My friends are gonna be so jealous!"
Loki's no more sure what this LEGO Death Star is than he was the Spirograph, but Cooper seems excited, so he's excited for him. He'll have to ask about it later. He vaguely remembers the Death Star from those movies he watched with the Avengers a while back, but what exactly is this?
Dum-E brings out the next gift, and, with how the morning's gone, Loki just assumes that it will go to Laura. Instead, the robot brings it to him, dropping it in front of his feet before retreating back to the Christmas tree and out of the way.
It's a small box this year. That certainly surprises him. He's not sure he's ever had such a small gift before. That could either be a very good or very disappointing thing, and he's not quite sure which right now. It seems that the only way to figure it out is to open it up.
He's more careful with his wrapping paper than the Bartons, and Steve takes it from him to toss in a trash bag so that Loki can look over his gift.
It's...
DVDs.
But largely blank, boring DVDs in clear, boring cases.
There's a piece of paper taped to the side, so he rips that off and reads it over. It's typed out – to hide his Secret Santa's identity, no doubt – and reads, "These are definitely not pirated Taylor Swift performances because I'm a law-abiding citizen who would never pirate anything."
Loki's face scrunches in confusion. "Do I misunderstand what a pirate is?" He tends to picture pirates as pillagers on ships, not... whatever this is.
"What d'you mean?" Steve asks, and he holds out a hand.
Loki gives him the note. Maybe he can make more sense of it than Loki can.
But Steve seems just as confused. "'Pirated' performances?"
Natasha rolls her eyes. "It means someone ripped them off some site like YouTube without permission," she says. "Like how you can pirate a movie on Soap2Day and watch it without paying."
Loki furrows his brows. "I don't understand," he says. "So I own these DVDs illegally?"
"Nobody cares about pirating laws," Bruce tells him. "As long as you don't sell them, you're pretty much in the clear."
"Oh." He looks down at the DVDs. That's interesting — and a bit confusing, he will admit, but he's broken so many laws that a few more certainly won't hurt.
He doesn't realize it until now, but the bottom of every DVD case has its own typed note attached. He flips the stack over and reads each one.
"CMT Crossroads with Def Leppard 2008"
"NBC Thanksgiving Special 2010"
"iHeartRadio Music Festival 2012"
"VH1 Storytellers 2012"
"Live on the Seine 2013"
"iHeartRadio Music Festival 2014"
"1989 iHeartRadio Secret Session 2014"
"GRAMMY Museum 2015"
"1989 Tour (just released on Dec 20th so you're welcome)"
That last one gets a bit of a smile from him. They went through the trouble of getting him a very recent gift, too. He's still not fully sure what he's looking at, but he enjoys it nonetheless. He'll definitely have to give these a watch.
"Share with the class," Tony says. "Anything good?"
How he could possibly say whether these are good when he's yet to watch them, he doesn't know, so his answer comes in the form of a question."What is a Def Leppard?"
Tony's brows shoot up. "You got a Def Leppard CD? I thought it was all Taylor Swift."
"It says both," Loki says, sliding the stack over to Tony so he can look.
Tony picks up the Def Leppard DVD, and the confusion on his face makes Loki feel better about his own confusion. "Hey, FRIDAY," he says, "did Taylor Swift work with Def Leppard?"
"She did," FRIDAY replies. "They performed a handful of songs together for an episode of CMT Crossroads in 2008."
Tony scoffs. "Okay, now that, I want to see." He flips through the rest of the DVDs, reading the notes on the back. When he gets to the last one, he huffs a laugh. "I was gonna get Apple Music just so you could watch this."
Loki cocks his head to the side. "I don't know what that means."
Tony heaves a dramatic sigh. "No, you wouldn't," he says. He slides the DVDs back to him. "I've heard good things about the tour movie. I think you'll like it."
"I hope so," he says, "though it's my least favorite of her albums."
"Well, maybe you'll change your mind when you see the concert," Tony says with a shrug.
Loki's not entirely sure how seeing a recording of a concert could possibly change his views on these songs, but he's willing to give it a try. Maybe he'll prove to be right.
"Thank you to whoever got me these," Loki says. He'll definitely check them out soon — and until then, he'll just put them aside and enjoy the fun.
The gift-giving continues, though there's nothing overly interesting. Lila and Cooper each get a few more gifts, and even little Nathaniel gets a few little things, not that he pays any attention because he's just a little blob of babyness and doesn't know what's happening.
There are four gifts under the tree now – though only the twins haven't opened any, which is interesting. He's sure it will make sense by the end of the morning, though right now, he'll admit that he's a little confused.
Dum-E picks up a gift and brings it to Wanda. It's a decent-size box, not too big but certainly bigger than Loki's stack of DVDs. Wanda thanks the robot, who then moves out of the way so everybody can watch.
Wanda unwraps her gift, and Loki knows exactly what it is and who it's from, just by the box. He's seen that brand name before – Capezio. And the size of the box? Definitely shoes.
Definitely some very familiar shoes.
Wanda's oblivious, and she takes the top of the box off and looks inside.
"Oh my..." Wanda pulls the shoes out of the box, and even Loki, who was fairly confident he knew exactly what he'd see, is surprised. "These are amazing."
They're tap shoes, much like the ones Loki and Natasha have, but instead of their usual sleek black color, these ones are covered in sparkling red glitter. Wanda is smiling from ear to ear as she runs a hand over the sides, feeling the glitter beneath her fingers.
Wanda looks at Natasha. "Was this you?"
"It was a joint effort," she says with a grin.
"Wait, hold on," Tony says, looking at her suspiciously. "I thought you got Loki the Taylor Swift stuff."
"Why'd you say that?" she asks, and the slight smirk on her lips says he might not be wrong.
"Well, the way you explained pirating kinda sounded like you did it," Bruce tells her.
"Maybe I did," she replies, a mysterious lilt to her voice.
Loki looks at her questioningly. He's fairly confident that she got Wanda the tap shoes. Nobody else would have done that. Did she get both of their gifts, then? What...?
Clint shakes his head to himself. "I got Wanda and she got Loki," he explains. "We kinda tag-teamed."
"I did the shoes," Natasha says proudly. "I painted them and covered them in glitter. They did not look that cool when we got them."
"And I made the DVDs," Clint adds. "I have seen Taylor Swift's face more in the last month than I have the entire rest of my life combined."
"You could've come to the concert with us, Dad," Lila says.
Loki raises his brows. Lila went to a Taylor Swift concert? Well, now he wants to go to a Taylor Swift concert. Maybe he'll ask Steve to tell him when the next one is and he'll just project his consciousness over there, just to see what it's like.
"I almost wish I did," Clint says. "It looks like she puts on a good show."
"She does!" Lila says eagerly. "She's so good!"
Loki cracks a smile. She is such a cute kid. The fact that she likes Taylor Swift is just a fantastic bonus.
To Clint and Natasha, Wanda says, "Thank you. These are perfect."
"At some point, we have to tap together," Natasha tells her. She gives Loki a point. "Because some people refuse to wear their tap shoes."
"Ah, that's not true," Tony says teasingly. "Don't you remember that wonderful tap solo we got after the last party?"
Loki groans and buries his head in his hands. He's been so good at pretending that never happened. Of course it would be Tony who would ruin that.
"Loki certainly doesn't," Thor quips.
"Stop it," Loki grumbles. "Why do I put up with you people?"
"You know, that is a great question," Tony agrees.
Loki just groans again.
"You know we bully you out of love," Natasha says teasingly.
It's a good thing Loki's face is buried in his hands, because that's the only reason he's able to hide his shock. It's not even so much about the sentiment of the words so much that she said them out loud. They do it out of love. They love him. And sure, she said it jokingly, playfully, but she still said it.
They bully him out of love.
Like they're a family.
Like he's part of their family.
He thinks he's going to melt into a puddle right here on the common room floor.
It seems that nobody notices Loki's existential crisis, because they move onto the next gift. Loki forces himself to sit up and rejoin the party, just in time to see Dum-E roll away after giving Pietro his gift.
Pietro tears the wrapping paper apart without a care in the world, and he wastes no time in opening his gift. He opens the box, and his face scrunches with confusion. He pulls out the thing inside, turning it over in his hands as he tries to figure out what it is.
"Is that a DS?" Clint asks.
Pietro gives him a weird look. "What's a DS?"
"It's a gaming console," Clint explains. "Cooper and Lila both have one."
"What do they do?" Pietro asks. He flips it open, slowly and carefully as though he's afraid that will break it.
"You play games on it," Cooper explains. "Did it come with any games?"
"I don't... think so?" Pietro says uncertainly.
Cooper scrunches his nose. "That's a boring gift."
"You can borrow one of my games," Lila offers. "I don't know if I have any you'll like."
"I brought a few games," Cooper adds. "You can borrow one of mine, too."
"I don't want to take your games," Pietro says with a frown.
"But you have to try your DS!" Lila protests.
Bruce awkwardly clears his throat, and everybody looks over at him. "The gift next to the DS was supposed to go with it – and it's a 3DS, by the way; I think it's supposed to be better."
"Oh! This is from you!" Pietro says.
"Yeah..." Bruce shrugs sheepishly. "I guess that 'secret' thing's not really working out, is it?"
"Yeah, we kinda failed at that," Tony agrees. To his robot, he says, "Dum-E, go get the other half of Pietro's gift."
Dum-E does just that, and he gives it to Pietro, who once again wastes no time in unwrapping it. It's a small stack of games, and, at Cooper's insistence, he shows them to everyone, one at a time. The first one is Super Mario Bros, which just gives Loki flashbacks to all the awful (but also somewhat enjoyable) game nights with the Avengers he's sat in on. Then there's Mario Kart – another one he's seen before – Nintendogs, Ace Attorney, and Pokemon Platinum, none of which mean absolutely anything to Loki whatsoever, but it does seem to amuse the kids.
And then it's time for the weird part of gift-giving.
Tony's gifts.
It's not inherently weird. It's actually a very sweet gesture, Loki would say. But he has no use for money and Tony knows what, which means he's going to get his own gift that's different from everyone else's, and that's weird. (Its weirdness makes it no less of a sweet gesture, but it's still weird.)
Tony pulls all the cards off the tree and begins handing them out. Loki just twiddles his thumbs awkwardly while he waits. At least everybody else has the anticipation that the next card might be theirs. Loki doesn't even have that to entertain him.
"No way!" Lila yells, and everybody looks over at her. "A thousand dollars?"
"You're kidding!" Cooper exclaims, looking over his sister's shoulder at the check in her card.
Loki glances over at Tony, who's smirking to himself. He must be proud of that reaction. He digs through his pile of cards until he finds Cooper's, and he hands it to him.
"You're the best, Mr. Tony," Lila tells him.
Tony just grins. "I know I am."
Clint folds his arms over his chest, rolling his eyes playfully.
Everybody else gets their cards, and then it's Loki's turn. Tony grabs the last box from under the tree and holds it out to him. "It's not quite a check for a thousand dollars, but..."
"That's alright; I can't shop," Loki replies dismissively. He's always the odd one out. He's used to it. He takes the box – a fairly small box, he notices – and tears the wrapping paper off.
The box his gift is in doesn't give him any hints as to what it is, but that may be because he's uncultured, because Natasha definitely whispers something about it to Clint. He chooses to think it's nothing snarky, though he wouldn't be surprised if he was wrong. (But it's out of love, she'd said. He'll continue riding that high all day.)
It's only when he opens the box that he realizes what it is, and he looks up at Tony, an eyebrow raised. "A 'flip phone,' you'd said?"
Tony huffs, a slight smile on his lips. "So, I splurged a little," he admits. "It's an iPhone 6 Plus – the newest one. It's probably a better phone than pretty much anyone in this room has."
"Really." Loki eyes him skeptically.
"Yeah, you know," Tony says, "if you ignore the parental restrictions."
That gets a chuckle out of the others that he promptly ignores.
Loki scoffs. "Parental restrictions?"
"I just don't want you doing stupid sh–" He cuts himself off with a glance at the kids in the room. "Stupid stuff on the internet. But you can pretty much do whatever you want outside of that; you just can't use Safari."
Loki has no idea what Safari is, but it doesn't make him any less frustrated. "Thank you, Stark," he says sarcastically. "Because I love to be treated like a child by men a fraction of my age."
"I'm not trying to treat you like a child," Tony says. "I'm treating you like an international terrorist who's in my custody that nobody can know is on Earth, and I don't think letting you browse Reddit is gonna help with that."
Loki rolls his eyes. "Wonderful," he says sarcastically. "I'm glad that the last three years have helped us establish a relationship built on trust and faith."
"Oh, come on," Tony says, annoyed. "Don't be like that. I got you a phone! A real, adult phone! It's not even a stupid flip phone! Don't I get some credit for that?"
Loki purses his lips. He supposes that is true. He's been living with them for over three years, and he's finally been given phone privileges. That's a good start.
So he asks, "Can it play games?"
Tony grins at his change of tune. "It sure can play games," he says. "And not only can it play games; it can play music, too — and I've already put all of Taylor Swift's music on there, including a few that aren't on any of her albums, so you have some new songs to listen to."
Loki ponders that for a few moments, then says, "Alright, I accept this — but only because it has my music."
"Hey, as long as you like it, I'm happy," Tony says.