It’s been a couple years, and this is the first gathered Avengers party since the defeat of Thanos.
They had all gone their separate ways for a while, the team splintering at the seams and going to lick their wounds, to rebuild, to figure out what comes next.
“Ah, but I’m a Revenger now, remember, or perhaps an Asguardian of the Galaxy,” Thor had said, gamely, when Sam Wilson had called him up with the invitation, but the other man had been unfazed. “Once an Avenger, always an Avenger,” he’d said, and it’s clear that Sam is creating… something, some new team, some replacement for the lost camaraderie, patching up the wounds and bringing them together.
So, Thor answers the call. And brings a hefty keg of Asgardian mead, and Valkyrie and Korg and Miek and Sif, and in his opinion, the party doesn’t truly start until their group arrives. They do bring a much-needed kick of energy to the group, considering the Avengers’ numbers are thinned — the victory had been bittersweet, they lost comrades during the war — but it only means they savour this all the more. It’s an opportunity to drink, and laugh, and catch up with people they haven’t seen in far too long, and remember that perhaps there is still something, here.
Some reason to stay together and fight together. Perhaps it isn’t all gone, with Steve and Tony and Natasha off the scene.
The night has been passing in a haze of music and laughter and stories, and mead. Ever more mead. The clock is ticking closer to midnight (Sam had tried to explain, some human custom is steadily encroaching for the end of the night, but Thor had not been paying attention), and while pouring himself a refill, he suddenly finds himself beside a certain blonde, and his face lights up.
“Ah! Carol Danvers!” he declares, brightly. “Captain Marvel. Welcome back to Earth.”
Had she turned his head, the very first time they’d met and she’d stared him down at the Avengers compound? Yes.
Had she turned his head on that battlefield, tearing her way through Thanos’ flagship? Also yes.
They’ve crossed paths a couple times since then — unlike most of the other heroes at this party, their realm of responsibility crisscrosses an entire galaxy, jaunting between planets — but it had always been work. Business. Seeing who could outdo each other with bursts of energy while taking out hordes of enemies. A party is another setting entirely.
It's immediately reminiscent of their first meeting - when Carol hears her name being called, she turns, looks over her shoulder first, and then turns all the way around. This time though, she smirks immediately, instantly cocky.
"Thor!" she calls out, just as bright and delighted to see him. Being on Earth is often very complicated for her, between the ghosts of a past she can't quite remember and no longer being fully human and all that, but Sam Wilson's made her feel welcome. Still, it's when she sees Thor that Carol feels herself brim with delight. Their little battlefield competitions have been brightening her work across the galaxy.
"Welcome back yourself. I see you're working on turning Sam's sweet little get-together," - there's a 'hey' of protest from somewhere else in the room, and Carol doesn't care - "into a full on raging feast. Where's my drink of the good stuff?"
“We Asgardians know how to party,” Thor says, grinning, and then he’s ducking down to grab a glass for her and to fuss with the spigot.
It’s not all happy-go-lucky, of course — his scarred eye is a tell-tale hazel, not matching the blue, and there’s been some restlessness humming beneath his skin, some indefinable ache which had led to him abdicating the throne and going off to find himself across the galaxy instead — but none of that is tonight’s problem. Tonight, he’s drinking, and he’s weaving along that careful line of ensuring he didn’t go too far. It helped that Korg’s rocky fist had jabbed itself into Thor’s side whenever it seemed like he was going to overdo it with the liquor, reining the former king back in line.
So he’s trying to keep his shit together, is the thing. Drinking just enough that he’s feeling a little looser around the edges, a little brighter, the stakes and losses of the war a little further off. Having gotten the spigot working, he reaches out and hands Carol a glass filled with a golden, almost-sparkling liquid.
“We also brought beer. Val has been marketing Asgardian Ale,” more reasons why she’s a savvier and more canny king than he ever could be, “but this is the good stuff.”
"Gotta say, abdication continues looking good on you."
And she doesn't mean his body - Carol's not as shallow as that. Thor always had the body of a god, there's very little denying that. But it's the rest of him that draws interest, as least as far as Carol's concerned. No, she recalls the emptiness in his gaze years ago, before she went back to the stars and the went into a house he reportedly rarely left.
More people should leave the places in which they aren't happy and go find themselves in the stars, she thinks. Especially if it means she gets to compete for killcounts with them on the battlefield.
Carol lifts her drink in a toast.
"To King Valkyrie, then? And to bringing some life to the party."
Meaning himself, not the ale, but there's plausible deniability here.
“To King Valkyrie, and the life of the party,” Thor agrees, and clinks his glass against Carol’s — careful, mindful to not to shatter the glass itself with a too-strong impact, a tightrope he’s grown accustomed to walking over the years of dealing with weak Earth furniture.
And his mood is a work-in-progress. Always has been. Slowly but steadily digging his way out of that pit and regaining his spark, both literal and metaphorical. He’d hoped that winning the war would instantly set everything back to normal, no further work required, but it hadn’t: the god might continually smile, bright and effervescent, but that smile doesn’t always reach his eye.
But on the eve of a new year, surrounded by friends and compatriots and the noise of merriment? There could be far worse places to ring it in. His heart feels lighter.
“How long has it been since you were here last? It’s strange to think I may have lived on Earth longer than you have, in recent years.”
Her grin turns ever so faintly rueful at that, but she shrugs it off after taking a deep drink. She can burn through other alcohol like it's nothing - but the asgardian stuff? That burns the good way for someone like her. She's not quite as resilient as Asgardians, but she can outpace a super soldier for sure.
"Almost certainly true."
Of the time she grew up here as a human, she still doesn't remember most of it. Bits and pieces, like puzzles someone left incomplete, like shredded paper towels blowing in the wind. She clings to the present because the past is a minefield of blank spaces, and she could never properly explain to anyone how she, the woman who flies through spaceships to blast them to smithereens, is so very frightened of the pitfalls in her own mind.
"The funeral, actually. I've been out and about since. Kicking ass and taking names, you know the works."
Her grin turns challenging.
"Given how you're the second best warrior out there."
The mention of the funeral is the briefest pall in the conversation, the briefest flicker on his expression like clouds temporarily scudding across the sun. (It was the only time every hero had been present in one place after the battle. All of them gathered to pay respects to Tony and Natasha and Vision. There were so many of the fellow combatants that he hasn’t seen at all, since then.)
But Carol’s tone is light, her smirking grin the equivalent of a gauntlet thrown on the buffet table beside them, and Thor seizes that tone like a lifeline. He scoffs.
“Second-best?” he echoes, incredulous and mock-affronted (and, alright, perhaps also a little genuinely affronted). “That was never officially arbited nor agreed upon. We were going to have an official count,” the god continues, with very much the sound of someone who has not yet buried a particular hatchet (the hatchet is named Stormbreaker), “but then the space station collapsed and it was impossible to say who should claim credit. It was, as I recall, a draw.”
Carol sometimes wonders about this - if she ever had social graces to speak of, or if she'd just always been this blunt around the edges. She'd like to think it's just something inherent about her, rather than another thing she owes to the Kree. Memory of before is still... fleeting at best. But it seems she has a habit of stepping into things, not always on purpose. She watches Thor's face carefully, glad when she sees the tease lands as she'd hoped it would.
"A draw to spare your honor, perhaps," Carol quips back, lips curling on the rim of her ale as she takes another sip, eyes dancing with sheer mirth. "I'm nothing if not generous like that."
This byplay is casual and astonishingly comfortable — it reminds him, more than anything else, of the competitive camaraderie he’d once had with Sif and the Warriors Three. Deep in their cups, quick to brag and fight and armwrestle and vie to outdo each other, like a chaotic pack of dogs tumbling all over each other, warm and affectionate.
He misses it. He and Sif have occasionally tried to catch up with each other, but they’re always too painfully aware of the missing third and fourth and fifth of their party, the silence which had once held Fandral’s quips and Volstagg’s deep booming laugh and Hogun’s insight.
But with Carol— there’s none of that baggage or those memories, just that smile of hers, mischievous and bright as the sun and needling him onward.
“I believe,” Thor says after another deep swig of that mead, cloying-sweet on his tongue, “it sounds as if we are both due for a rematch, Danvers.”
Carol doesn't remember all of her life back in the Air Force - but she remembers this. Maria, and the way they'd both needle each other. A united front against everyone who'd hold them down, and yet always pushing and prodding one another. Higher, further, faster, baby. It's similar enough to gently brush against that strange sense of familiarity Carol sometimes gets when she leans closer to memories lost or only partially recovered, a sort of deja vu balanced precariously on a tight rope. Vertigo just before the fall. But it's not uncomfortable, not in this instance. For once, the sensation is relaxing - not all memories and echoes of them are bad, after all, or trapped under a haze of bitterness.
So she shrugs an errant strand of hair back over her shoulder, raises her chin and grins like a cat chasing a lightning bolt canary. Let her get her teeth on it, see if it can shock her.
There’s a lingering potential question here, and he recognises the shape of it. That sense of two people in simpatico, and it was perhaps time to drop that invitation, the inevitable do you want to get out of here —
but he has not been paying attention to the clock. The party isn’t over yet, but it is creeping awfully close to midnight. There’s a buzzing excitement in the air, a sense of rising chatter, and then their host, Sam Wilson, wanders over wearing some giant oversized novelty party sunglasses in the shape of the new year. He’s doing the rounds, making sure everyone feels welcome, papering over any potential cultural misunderstandings. Such as:
“Hey, y’all having a good time?” A smile, crinkling the edges of the man’s eyes. “I’m just checking in, ’cause I figured you might be caught off-guard. Anyone told you about the tradition at midnight, Thor?”
Halfway between taking another sip of his drink, the Asgardian looks a little alarmed, scrounging back through his tipsy memory and seeing what he remembers. He hadn’t spent new year’s eve on Earth before; he’d been on another plane when he was here last, when Jane went to a party like this. Was someone going to be raised on a chair while everyone else chanted and roared their name? Was Sam going to be raised on a chair? Did someone have to cut down a tree and then fling it? Customs varied so much across the galaxy.
“Not unless it involves slaughtering a draugr for good luck for the year to come,” Thor says, cagily, glancing between the other two. “What happens?”
A glances passes between Carol and Sam, a silent check in by two people who know the fun of mischief and know to temper it sometimes. It's like they're checking how the mood is leaning. Do they tell him, are they honest, or do they mess with Thor?
In the end, Sam is no fun - Carol pouts briefly, and he shrugs in apology. But she understands - he wants to make sure everyone has a good time here. Besides, the tradition - if memory serves - is good fun for her, too, if Thor's in the know and the mood stays where it's at.
Sam makes a gesture encompassing the whole room. "You gotta find someone to kiss, man. On the mouth, no cute playground sweetheart stuff here. Can be a peck, though."
Carol scoffs. "It absolutely can't be a peck. Are you joking or just setting yourself up not to go for it, Captain?"
Sam crosses his arms, fidgets. Gaze skittering across the room to who knows where - or to whom, more likely. "Nah, just tryna be nice to the guests, Captain."
Yeah, that's a thing. Carol and Sam have made a habit to only ever adress one another as Captain in exceedingly loud and boisterous ways. Why be normal when you can go higher, further, faster, and all that jazz?
Sam claps Thor on the shoulder. "The way you ring in the new year will determine how the rest of your year will go. That's the idea. So, you start the new year with a kiss, obviously the new year can only be great, right?"
Carol nods with an air of sage wisdom. "Oh, yeah, totally. Everyone on Earth 100% believes that, and it's totally not just about getting to kiss someone you like or find hot or has a nice mouth."
Grinning over the edge of his drink, Thor watches the comfortable byplay between the two captains play out. The whole mood of the party is warm and loose and comfortable. It’s been a long time since he could cut loose and simply relax like this — he can’t even say how long. Before his father died, certainly. He had always felt slightly ill-at-ease in New Asgard, too aware of his failures, too aware of the fact that he was the king who wasn’t, and that he might be letting them down by not stepping up. It’s easier here, with fewer expectations.
“Oh! Interesting,” Thor says, squinting at Sam. He would have assumed it was a jape — he was too used to Loki, too accustomed to looking for the prank around every corner — but it sounds very much like Sam has that streak of honesty to him, much as Carol wanted to tease. “Midgard seems to have a trend with this; I’ve heard there are similar rules for standing under mistletoe? Mistletoe was used to kill Baldr, so it is a little different back on Asgard.”
He still just sounds relatively cheerful despite the talk of death — it is what it is — and takes another deep swig of his drink. That feeling of building anticipation and that waiting question has taken on another layer to it. Midnight, he thinks, and he purposefully does not look at Carol Danvers’ mouth.
Yet.
“Do Midgardians always need to come up with such ritual excuses? Do people not just kiss the people they like or find attractive or have nice mouths, or must it be a holiday?”
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new year’s eve.
They had all gone their separate ways for a while, the team splintering at the seams and going to lick their wounds, to rebuild, to figure out what comes next.
“Ah, but I’m a Revenger now, remember, or perhaps an Asguardian of the Galaxy,” Thor had said, gamely, when Sam Wilson had called him up with the invitation, but the other man had been unfazed. “Once an Avenger, always an Avenger,” he’d said, and it’s clear that Sam is creating… something, some new team, some replacement for the lost camaraderie, patching up the wounds and bringing them together.
So, Thor answers the call. And brings a hefty keg of Asgardian mead, and Valkyrie and Korg and Miek and Sif, and in his opinion, the party doesn’t truly start until their group arrives. They do bring a much-needed kick of energy to the group, considering the Avengers’ numbers are thinned — the victory had been bittersweet, they lost comrades during the war — but it only means they savour this all the more. It’s an opportunity to drink, and laugh, and catch up with people they haven’t seen in far too long, and remember that perhaps there is still something, here.
Some reason to stay together and fight together. Perhaps it isn’t all gone, with Steve and Tony and Natasha off the scene.
The night has been passing in a haze of music and laughter and stories, and mead. Ever more mead. The clock is ticking closer to midnight (Sam had tried to explain, some human custom is steadily encroaching for the end of the night, but Thor had not been paying attention), and while pouring himself a refill, he suddenly finds himself beside a certain blonde, and his face lights up.
“Ah! Carol Danvers!” he declares, brightly. “Captain Marvel. Welcome back to Earth.”
Had she turned his head, the very first time they’d met and she’d stared him down at the Avengers compound? Yes.
Had she turned his head on that battlefield, tearing her way through Thanos’ flagship? Also yes.
They’ve crossed paths a couple times since then — unlike most of the other heroes at this party, their realm of responsibility crisscrosses an entire galaxy, jaunting between planets — but it had always been work. Business. Seeing who could outdo each other with bursts of energy while taking out hordes of enemies. A party is another setting entirely.
no subject
"Thor!" she calls out, just as bright and delighted to see him. Being on Earth is often very complicated for her, between the ghosts of a past she can't quite remember and no longer being fully human and all that, but Sam Wilson's made her feel welcome. Still, it's when she sees Thor that Carol feels herself brim with delight. Their little battlefield competitions have been brightening her work across the galaxy.
"Welcome back yourself. I see you're working on turning Sam's sweet little get-together," - there's a 'hey' of protest from somewhere else in the room, and Carol doesn't care - "into a full on raging feast. Where's my drink of the good stuff?"
no subject
It’s not all happy-go-lucky, of course — his scarred eye is a tell-tale hazel, not matching the blue, and there’s been some restlessness humming beneath his skin, some indefinable ache which had led to him abdicating the throne and going off to find himself across the galaxy instead — but none of that is tonight’s problem. Tonight, he’s drinking, and he’s weaving along that careful line of ensuring he didn’t go too far. It helped that Korg’s rocky fist had jabbed itself into Thor’s side whenever it seemed like he was going to overdo it with the liquor, reining the former king back in line.
So he’s trying to keep his shit together, is the thing. Drinking just enough that he’s feeling a little looser around the edges, a little brighter, the stakes and losses of the war a little further off. Having gotten the spigot working, he reaches out and hands Carol a glass filled with a golden, almost-sparkling liquid.
“We also brought beer. Val has been marketing Asgardian Ale,” more reasons why she’s a savvier and more canny king than he ever could be, “but this is the good stuff.”
no subject
And she doesn't mean his body - Carol's not as shallow as that. Thor always had the body of a god, there's very little denying that. But it's the rest of him that draws interest, as least as far as Carol's concerned. No, she recalls the emptiness in his gaze years ago, before she went back to the stars and the went into a house he reportedly rarely left.
More people should leave the places in which they aren't happy and go find themselves in the stars, she thinks. Especially if it means she gets to compete for killcounts with them on the battlefield.
Carol lifts her drink in a toast.
"To King Valkyrie, then? And to bringing some life to the party."
Meaning himself, not the ale, but there's plausible deniability here.
no subject
And his mood is a work-in-progress. Always has been. Slowly but steadily digging his way out of that pit and regaining his spark, both literal and metaphorical. He’d hoped that winning the war would instantly set everything back to normal, no further work required, but it hadn’t: the god might continually smile, bright and effervescent, but that smile doesn’t always reach his eye.
But on the eve of a new year, surrounded by friends and compatriots and the noise of merriment? There could be far worse places to ring it in. His heart feels lighter.
“How long has it been since you were here last? It’s strange to think I may have lived on Earth longer than you have, in recent years.”
no subject
"Almost certainly true."
Of the time she grew up here as a human, she still doesn't remember most of it. Bits and pieces, like puzzles someone left incomplete, like shredded paper towels blowing in the wind. She clings to the present because the past is a minefield of blank spaces, and she could never properly explain to anyone how she, the woman who flies through spaceships to blast them to smithereens, is so very frightened of the pitfalls in her own mind.
"The funeral, actually. I've been out and about since. Kicking ass and taking names, you know the works."
Her grin turns challenging.
"Given how you're the second best warrior out there."
no subject
But Carol’s tone is light, her smirking grin the equivalent of a gauntlet thrown on the buffet table beside them, and Thor seizes that tone like a lifeline. He scoffs.
“Second-best?” he echoes, incredulous and mock-affronted (and, alright, perhaps also a little genuinely affronted). “That was never officially arbited nor agreed upon. We were going to have an official count,” the god continues, with very much the sound of someone who has not yet buried a particular hatchet (the hatchet is named Stormbreaker), “but then the space station collapsed and it was impossible to say who should claim credit. It was, as I recall, a draw.”
no subject
"A draw to spare your honor, perhaps," Carol quips back, lips curling on the rim of her ale as she takes another sip, eyes dancing with sheer mirth. "I'm nothing if not generous like that."
no subject
He misses it. He and Sif have occasionally tried to catch up with each other, but they’re always too painfully aware of the missing third and fourth and fifth of their party, the silence which had once held Fandral’s quips and Volstagg’s deep booming laugh and Hogun’s insight.
But with Carol— there’s none of that baggage or those memories, just that smile of hers, mischievous and bright as the sun and needling him onward.
“I believe,” Thor says after another deep swig of that mead, cloying-sweet on his tongue, “it sounds as if we are both due for a rematch, Danvers.”
no subject
So she shrugs an errant strand of hair back over her shoulder, raises her chin and grins like a cat chasing a lightning bolt canary. Let her get her teeth on it, see if it can shock her.
"Anytime, anyplace, Lightshow."
hands you this lad to npc
but he has not been paying attention to the clock. The party isn’t over yet, but it is creeping awfully close to midnight. There’s a buzzing excitement in the air, a sense of rising chatter, and then their host, Sam Wilson, wanders over wearing some giant oversized novelty party sunglasses in the shape of the new year. He’s doing the rounds, making sure everyone feels welcome, papering over any potential cultural misunderstandings. Such as:
“Hey, y’all having a good time?” A smile, crinkling the edges of the man’s eyes. “I’m just checking in, ’cause I figured you might be caught off-guard. Anyone told you about the tradition at midnight, Thor?”
Halfway between taking another sip of his drink, the Asgardian looks a little alarmed, scrounging back through his tipsy memory and seeing what he remembers. He hadn’t spent new year’s eve on Earth before; he’d been on another plane when he was here last, when Jane went to a party like this. Was someone going to be raised on a chair while everyone else chanted and roared their name? Was Sam going to be raised on a chair? Did someone have to cut down a tree and then fling it? Customs varied so much across the galaxy.
“Not unless it involves slaughtering a draugr for good luck for the year to come,” Thor says, cagily, glancing between the other two. “What happens?”
years later
In the end, Sam is no fun - Carol pouts briefly, and he shrugs in apology. But she understands - he wants to make sure everyone has a good time here. Besides, the tradition - if memory serves - is good fun for her, too, if Thor's in the know and the mood stays where it's at.
Sam makes a gesture encompassing the whole room. "You gotta find someone to kiss, man. On the mouth, no cute playground sweetheart stuff here. Can be a peck, though."
Carol scoffs. "It absolutely can't be a peck. Are you joking or just setting yourself up not to go for it, Captain?"
Sam crosses his arms, fidgets. Gaze skittering across the room to who knows where - or to whom, more likely. "Nah, just tryna be nice to the guests, Captain."
Yeah, that's a thing. Carol and Sam have made a habit to only ever adress one another as Captain in exceedingly loud and boisterous ways. Why be normal when you can go higher, further, faster, and all that jazz?
Sam claps Thor on the shoulder. "The way you ring in the new year will determine how the rest of your year will go. That's the idea. So, you start the new year with a kiss, obviously the new year can only be great, right?"
Carol nods with an air of sage wisdom. "Oh, yeah, totally. Everyone on Earth 100% believes that, and it's totally not just about getting to kiss someone you like or find hot or has a nice mouth."
no subject
“Oh! Interesting,” Thor says, squinting at Sam. He would have assumed it was a jape — he was too used to Loki, too accustomed to looking for the prank around every corner — but it sounds very much like Sam has that streak of honesty to him, much as Carol wanted to tease. “Midgard seems to have a trend with this; I’ve heard there are similar rules for standing under mistletoe? Mistletoe was used to kill Baldr, so it is a little different back on Asgard.”
He still just sounds relatively cheerful despite the talk of death — it is what it is — and takes another deep swig of his drink. That feeling of building anticipation and that waiting question has taken on another layer to it. Midnight, he thinks, and he purposefully does not look at Carol Danvers’ mouth.
Yet.
“Do Midgardians always need to come up with such ritual excuses? Do people not just kiss the people they like or find attractive or have nice mouths, or must it be a holiday?”