The music was catchy, pop-y, and Scott was moving around the kitchen as he cleaned. He couldn't help the shaking of his hips because it was Shakira. If you didn't shake your hips, you were doing it wrong. Thankfully for everyone involved, he had the apartment to himself and he'd promised to clean it. Being stuck while small and as a civilian had shown all the little nooks and crevices that had gotten missed. It wasn't that any of them were particularly disgusting, either! But it had made his skin crawl anyway and he had been on a deep cleaning binge.
I'll be there, and you'll be near And that's the deal, my dear
He tied off a trash bag and brought it to the door, opening it with his free hand before stopping. Surprised. "Hey, Loki," he greeted the other, a confused smile appearing. "Everything okay?"
This was, in fact, not the apartment he'd been expecting when he left his own, but Loki couldn't escape the fact that he'd arrived at Scott's instead. His head gave a vicious little throb, and the area around him wavered. Or maybe he did. "The walls are very loud, and my brother is a hedgehog."
Scott blinked slowly. "And your father smelt of elderberries?" he tried, unsure but game for whatever they were doing at the moment. Shakira continued to play from the kitchen. "What do you mean the walls are loud?" Why did 'Thor is a hedgehog' make more sense out of the two?
At the very least, Loki waited until Scott had spoken before he clapped a hand over the other man's mouth and jerked his head toward the source of the music and sending it clattering to the floor in a burst of green magic. "Shhhh, too loud." His lips pulled back in a jaw-clenched grimace. "Flower delivery. Whatever is living in the walls—bugs of various provenance, I'm assuming—have all decided to make their tiny thoughts known to me. It's deafening."
He didn't jump at the hand over his mouth. That, he was somewhat used to. No, Scott jumped at the speaker hitting the floor and breaking. But while he could have simply stepped backward and away from the hand, Scott just looked at Loki and tried to express with his eyebrows to ask if he could talk again.
It took him another second to decide to just take action and he reached up with his free hand to slowly pull Loki's hand away. He then carefully moved to put the bag of garbage down with as little noise as possible. "Are they in your head or are they only in your ears?" he asked in a whisper.
Rather than answer aloud, Loki tapped the side of his head. He didn't try to remove the hold his friend hand on his wrist, though he could have easily. "You… speak to ants, do you not? Are they… in your head? All the time? Or only with the aid of your suit and technology?"
Scott winced a little though it was from sympathy and not pain. "Not all the time." He tugged on Loki to get him into the apartment and gently shut the door before turning back and holding up a finger. Scott finally released Loki to make a placating, wait-here gesture with both hands before he turned and hurried away. When he returned, he was fitting an earpiece and he tipped his head side to side like he had to release some tension. "EMP waves," he explained, still trying to keep his voice low. "Come here."
He had stopped in the middle of the living room and gestured for Loki to join him. It wasn't often that Scott was so quietly assertive when a joke or some stupid magic trick would do. Scott focused and reached out to familiar sense of the ants and asked them to cooperate. They needed to be quiet, they needed to spread the word as much as they could--in their own way, of course. It was the best Scott could do. "Hopefully that helps a little. Have you tried music? Headphones. Drown the rest of it out through your ears."
Whatever Scott was doing might as well have been literal magic as far as Loki was concerned. He had no idea if it was simply proximity—he'd joined Scott as silently requested, but he wasn't willing to test the sudden odd muting to the buzz in his head. "Better, yes. It picked up as soon as young Reggie alerted me to my brother's own curse. I never got far enough to find alternatives before I found myself disoriented at your door instead of Alexis's. Is it you? The device? What did you do?"
"I, uh, asked them to be quiet?" Scott answered, the response turning into a question because he wasn't exactly sure what he had done. It had been the only thing he could think of in the moment. He wasn't touching how Loki had ended up at his door because he didn't want to scare the other off. Friends were probably hard to come by in large numbers. "Sit?" he added, gesturing at the couch. Scott pulled up the ottoman that he liked so much but sat on it himself so he was nearly touching knees with Loki and he leaned forward.
He frowned. "Do you want to try alternatives? I can sit here and try to be quiet. Wait- Are you able to hear more than the insects?"
Loki sank with a laugh, one part relieved and another bemused at the seeming simplicity of it all. The fact that it was nothing short of a marvel wasn't lost on him, however. He flicked a hand toward the windows, but didn't look in that direction. It was a bit like focusing on a singer in a chorus and suddenly hearing their voice above the others despite them never changing their volume. "More than. Tell me more about your device, please? I picked up a certain appreciation for mechanical engineering while I was away."
He'd picked up a great deal more than that, but Loki was still hesitant to let it spill out everywhere.
Scott's eyes narrowed for just a moment but he wasn't sure he wanted to know the answer if he asked if Loki could hear his thoughts. Which inadvertently brought up their recent conversation about the Spice Girls. It was perfectly fine to listen to the Spice Girls! So I'll tell you what I want, what I really, really want...
"Oh, uh, well. It wasn't my invention so the core of it eludes me a little. But it's an EMP communication device. Hank calls it the Ant Training Device. Doesn't work on all ants, by the way. Some are too stubborn. Dang bullet ants. Tangent, sorry. It uses electromagnetic waves to stimulate the olfactory nerve center of insects and mimic their pheromones, allowing the user--me-- to communicate with and control them. Control is a little harsh, really. I make suggestions and ask for help? Hank and Hope trained me back in 2015. I think I'm pretty good at it now?" It was a lot of words all at once but that was pure Scott Lang. He gave a small wave of his hand. "The suit is kind of unrelated, if you think about it. Hank just has a thing for ants. Never ask him about ants if you aren't prepared for a whole lecture."
"I've met people whose only way of communicating was through lectures." Loki had sat through thousands, some longer than others. The trick, he'd found, was to ask guiding questions. Not unlike he was doing now. It helped keep his mind on the low buzz still trying to crash through the thin barrier of calm he'd been given. "Is it only vocal commands, or mental, or some combination of the two? Does it only work when you're wearing the array? They like the song you're singing to yourself, by the way, but they prefer ABBA."
Scott was about to answer the first question when Loki was moving on and he couldn't help the laugh. He had been trying to be quiet so it wasn't his fault that Loki had caused the burst of amusement. He grinned and it eased the worry that had been lining his face. "Only when I'm wearing the array or using the suit. It's built into the suit. And it's mental, I don't need to actually verbalize though... I mean, it's me we're talking about here. I can't ever shut up," Scott said with an amused raise of his eyebrows.
"I really need to know what they think about the Spice Girls or Cascada now because those are my cleaning go-tos," he added. There was a hesitation and Scott tilted his head. "Do you want to try music and headphones? I have noise canceling ones though if they're in your head, it probably doesn't matter."
The sudden sharp sound should have been set off a flash of annoyance, but Loki could honestly say he liked getting that kind of reaction from his friend. And somehow Scott Lang, the Ant-Man himself, had become just that: his friend. Probably for the best that they'd never had to fight in New York, although apparently there was a musical floating around the world that alluded to Scott's involvement in one of Loki's lowest moments. This wasn't the kind of thought he wanted to use to distract himself, so he focused on Scott again. "It's part of your charm and affability. And some verbal element is likely appreciated by your comrades-in-avenging, so they don't accidentally swipe at or stomp on your helpers."
He lifted his shoulders in a small shrug, then leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. "The distraction of simply being here and talking to you seems to help. I don't see how adding the headphones could hurt." Loki smiled dryly. "I'm choosing not to think of those as famous last words."
"Charm and affability. Yup, that's totally me," Scott replied with a tone of sarcasm simply because he couldn't help it. But he moved to get up, careful to not whack Loki with a rogue limb, and made another wait here gesture. For as much as Scott Lang could probably live and thrive in organized-chaos, Hope and Cassie kept him in check. Carol, too. But it also meant that it was easier to find the headphones he was looking for and held them in one hand while he scrolled through his phone with the other. But rather than take the seat on the ottoman again, Scott set both things down on the couch and grabbed hold of Loki's calves. He probably should have asked first but Scott was in helpful mode and that meant putting Loki's feet on the previously-occupied ottoman.
In another smooth movement, he scooped up the headphones and phone before turning and landing heavily next to Loki. "Okay. Music is pulled up. We can start with some lo-fi and ramp up into something louder if you want. I'm polyjamorous," Scott said and then turned to fit the headphones over Loki's ears, leaning to make sure it at least looked comfortable though he would let Loki adjust it all. He fiddled with his phone to make sure the volume was low and the headphones were paired. He grabbed Loki's hand and guided the other's hand to a spot on the headphones. "This little switch here," Scott explained and got Loki's fingernail to catch the small toggle, "is how you turn on the noise canceling effect. Ready?" And then he hit play and settled back into the couch, shoulder lightly pressing against Loki's as he tipped his head back.
At one point in time, Loki might have been offended at being seemingly coddled in the way Scott was doing, but with the benefit of a few centuries of self-reflection under his belt, he knew it was simply his friend's way of showing he cared. So he sank back against the couch, turned the earphones on, and let the first few notes penetrate the unrelenting alien chatter in his mind. It wasn't a complete success, but enough that more of the pounding between his temples was reduced to slightly tolerable levels. He sent a slightly wan smile in Scott's direction before his eyes slid closed.
"Thank you," he murmured in heartfelt sincerity. He'd still need to go retrieve his hedgehog brother in a while, but Loki knew Thor could take care of himself no matter what his shape. As far as Loki was concerned, all of this was another reminder that maybe asking for help from time to time wasn't the worst thing he could possibly do.