The first time Loki has a evening to himself in Avengers Tower and watches a Midgardian film like Synecdoche, NY or Call Me By Your Name or anything that’s intensely moving and quietly, emotionally devastating
And he’s never experienced anything quite like it before, because he’s used to theatre and the symphony— the sense of grandeur that comes with the stage and the Asgardian sense of drama, and how public and larger than life the spectacle of it is. And he finds all that to be incredibly moving in its way, just as he finds books to be incredibly moving, his escape has always been in books, but somehow
Watching a film where the emotions are quiet and intimate and you can see the nuance in the actors’ faces and bodies, in the space between them, and the score is just subtle and dramatic enough in turns to play up their yearning or their sadness and inner turmoil — and he’s watching it alone, or maybe Steve or Thor is in the room, but it feels like he’s being drawn into this world and it’s unlike anything he knows how to process
Anyway picture Loki clutching his hands into fists and weeping quietly to himself, trying not to let it show how affected he is by this beautiful thing; how he can’t quite understand how these short-lived mortals have captured something inside of him that he didn’t even realize was there to ensnare, but it’s pulling all these dormant feelings from deep inside of him and he’s overwhelmed by it but can’t quite let himself fully give into it
And the feeling follows him for days, weeks after the film, he can’t stop thinking about it, he craves more of this even though he fears it. And then Thor or Tony or Steve or Natasha start ‘accidentally’ leaving Netflix popped up on the communal TV with Forrest Gump queued up, or a careless DVD of Steel Magnolias is left on a coffee table (despite the fact that Tony can’t stand having them around, so outmoded) and nobody mentions it aloud but they start planning their evenings so that once a week there’s a perfect opportunity for Loki to watch a film alone and just cry to himself out of happiness or sadness or something else entirely
And then eventually Thor joins him for one, and then Steve pops in, and by the time Nat shows up with popcorn and Kleenex, all the boys are red-eyed and teary and when Brokeback Mountain ends, they cue up Dead Poet’s Society at her suggestion
And Loki will still never openly acknowledge it, or thank them for it, but something changes in him after that— he feels lighter, somehow— and he thinks it might be for the better
“Thor and Loki are interesting because their father so completely screwed up their childhood; you don’t tell two boys that their both meant to be king, but only one will do it.” -Alan Taylor
museum curator, watching steve waltz into the smithsonian, the memory of having the stolen cap america authentic howling commando era uniform returned dirty and ridden with bullet holes still fresh in their mind: hide the VALUABLES
steve, reaching over the rope to poke at something on display: it’s my goddamn stuff???
I’M SAYIN’, every single level of management at the Smithsonian must have had an extensively well-documented migraine after dealing with the colossal shitshow raised by such thrilling items as “sock (woolen)” pulled from the pack of one “Rogers, Steve G., 1918 – 1945 lol whoops he’s back″
like i said in my initial reblog… all the people building stories out of this make me laugh with delight, but smithsonian & dc museum people adding their tags give me LIFE
… also steven grant rogers would be KIND and COURTEOUS to the front-line museum staff and not ask them stupid questions and you will pry that headcanon from my cold dead hands thankyouverymuch
oh steven grant rogers is KIND and POLITE and CONSIDERATE to front-line museum staff, he will politely move himself to the side so he doesn’t cause traffic issues if he gets recognized and a couple kids want pictures, he apologizes to security for causing a scene (he didn’t mean to! he thought his baseball cap disguise would work, bless him). he returns his maps (sweet and so unnecessary but then one of the volunteers can take a map captain america used and will probably sign for them back to their grandkids so that’s nice). the docents LOVE him; he’s both a Nice Young Man and also from Back in Their Day.
the collections and conservation staff however have sworn a blood oath of pure vengeance against him and nothing he ever does will change their minds. the textile conservator (we’ll call her lorraine) who had to restore the old captain america suit spent THREE YEARS OF HER LIFE on that stupid thing and it’s still too unstable to ever exhibit again. lorraine went through FIVE INTERNS, two of whom CRIED ON HER. she had to spend a fourth year making a replica because everyone was writing their representatives that the captain america suit wasn’t on display and they MADE HER DO IT.
like if steve thought any debrief in wwii he ever had sucked lol try lorraine, who has given up trying to catalogue what the fuck happened to that piece of shit suit and finally tracked down his cell phone number after six months of this hell project out of sheer bloody mindness and desperation and tricks him into her office through a series of absolute goddamn lies about idk public programming or some shit that steve might actually care about and then corners him and makes him give her a play by play of what, exactly, the fuck he did to that suit.
cuz, okay, listen. blah blah save the world blah blah, but steven grant rogers* stole a priceless museum artifact, bled on it, set it on fire, dropped it into the potomac, dragged it (WHILE WET) through river mud and god knows how many plants and bugs and microbes, got melting plastic and metal and shrapnel and other people’s body juices and skin and hair embedded in it–the only reason he lives is because he can give the full and accurate account of what the fuck he did to it and answer questions of how the fuck it can be slightly, slightly unfucked. not saved! not made to look like it was! certainly not able to be put on a mannequin and exhibited again! but like she can get some more of the mud and that chunk of charred plastic out maybe. otherwise, lorraine would have murdered that dumb bitch in a fit of justifiable rage, and no amount of charming “sorry ma’am”s would fucking save him.
themusechronicles 