A/N: This is a follow-up story to "Casting Spells and Coming Out", but can be read as a stand-alone story. Please do tell me if anything in this story is horribly offensive, as I am neither trans nor genderqueer.

Loki, idly watching the people on the street below, barely managed not to jump when Peter crashed into the window. Merely watching as the teenager peeled himself off the glass, she waited as he swung around the corner of the building and alighted on one of the balconies to be let into Stark's tower.

It wasn't unusual for Peter to be clumsy but there was something about his movements that seemed off to Loki. Even as he walked into the room and took off his mask, Peter was careful to hold his arms away from his sides gingerly.

"What's wrong?"

Peter looked at Loki and then swiftly away. "Nothing."

"You can't get away with lying to me," Loki sighed. "You're clearly injured." She stood up, looking him over again, watching as he fought not to cross his arms over his chest. "Perhaps you should go see the doctor," she suggested.

Peter's head snapped up and he made eye contact. "No," he gasped. "I – no, I can't."

Loki fought the urge to chuckle. "I thought so," she said with a nod. "You haven't been using the spell I taught you."

Peter looked away again, hands fluttering at his sides as he looked for something to do with them. "It didn't work for me." He sighed, indicating his chest. "It's probably because I'm just a human but nothing happened when I tried it on my own."

Asgardian biology wasn't very far off from humans and Loki put the unspoken pieces together almost immediately. "So, you wore something compressing your chest," she said, trying to remember what Peter had called it the last time they had spoken about this. "You might have broken a rib."

"I didn't," Peter said quickly. "Karen checked and there's no broken bones."

Loki hummed, sitting back on the couch. "All right. What do you want me to do?"

Peter shrugged, tapping his fingers against his leg. "I don't know," he mumbled. "I mean – you're the only person in this place that knows. The only person at all really – well, except for May and Ned. And Michelle, she might know, I don't know. She's been acting weird lately, but that doesn't mean much coming from her."

He shook his head. "Anyway," he stressed, "I – I guess I came to you because, well, I didn't have anywhere else to go."

Loki stared. It was the first time in years that anyone had sought company or help from Loki Liesmith intentionally. Usually, she was most people's last resort, their advisor only when everything else had failed. And now, this young human was standing in front of her, looking for a solution that she had no idea if she could offer. "What do you want me to do?" she repeated acidly, her defenses coming up automatically.

Peter shrugged. "I don't know," he said. He coughed lightly and then tried to inhale. "It hurts to breathe," he whispered, moving to sit down on the couch.

Shaking her head, Loki tried to organize her thoughts. Part of her knew she should send the boy away; she could do nothing for him and there were others in the tower much better trained in the healing arts. But she also knew the power of keeping secrets and how one errant word or phrase could destroy a lifetime of hiding in an instant. "I'm not – " she began, but suddenly there was someone standing in the doorway.

"What's going on here?" Tony Stark asked, trying to project a façade of calmness.

"Nothing," Peter said, before Loki could speak. "I just came back from my patrol and, um, well, it's not what it looks like?" His sentence trailed off into a question and he glanced at Loki in apology.

Stark was completely unimpressed. "Kid, no offense, but you're injured and there's a stranger here. I feel like it's exactly what it looks like." He turned his attention to Loki. "You've got ten seconds to tell me who you are or you're going to be in trouble."

Loki wanted to laugh and say Stark's bravado was nothing she hadn't seen before. Years ago, just before being thrown out of his own window, he had threatened her, and she had laughed it off. This time, however, something about it was different, more serious. He has a child to protect this time, she realized, looking at Peter.

"Three seconds," Stark said flatly, gaze locked on her.

Taking a breath, Loki twisted her fingers and vanished from the room, Peter's shout echoing in her ears.

Peter bit his lip, fingers running up and down the seam in the leg of his suit. There was no good way to explain this. Either he told Tony the whole truth about Loki, which wasn't an option, or he made up one of the biggest lies he had ever told.

"Who was that?" Tony snapped, taking another step into the room. "FRIDAY, scan for intruders."

"There are no intruders in the tower right now, Boss," the A.I. said immediately.

"What?"

Peter could feel Tony's gaze on him, even as he stared at his knee. There was a loose thread there, and he started worrying at it like it was the most interesting thing in the world. There was no way he was going to out Loki, but he also didn't want to destroy Tony's trust. "She's right." His voice was so quiet he could barely hear himself. "FRIDAY's right," he said a bit louder. "There's no intruder."

"Then who was that?"

Say something! Peter begged himself but lying under pressure had never been one of his strong suits, and it was apparently not a power the spider bite had given him. "You see," he began, trying to think through the steady beat of pain in his chest.

Just then, the air rippled and Loki stepped back into the room, looking thoroughly male. "It was me," he said.

Tony blinked, visibly trying to put the pieces together inside his head. "Excuse me?" he asked finally.

Loki sighed. "The 'intruder' you saw was me," he explained, somehow verbally adding quotation marks to the word. "There was never a threat at all."

"Oh," Tony relaxed. "So are you…"

Peter barely saw the worry and fear that flashed across Loki's face. "Sometimes male. Sometimes female," the trickster said.

There was silence in the room and Peter looked between Tony and Loki. There was no shouting, no yelling, no reaction at all from the other hero. An idea began to take root in the back of Peter's mind, but he ignored it, not wanting to miss what was going to happen.

"Okay," Tony said, after the longest few seconds of Peter's life. "Is there something particular you want to be called?"

"No," Loki said coolly, not bothering to fully hide a smile as green washed over her skin and she was female once again. "The boy is injured, though," she said, just before she vanished once again like she had never stood there at all.

Peter had no time to say anything before Tony's gaze was boring into him. "You're injured." It was a statement, and the billionaire didn't wait for agreement before he kept talking. "Med wing. Now."

Secretly, Peter was glad to be on his way to do something about his chest. Despite Karen's reassurance that he didn't break a rib, something was moving in a way it shouldn't, and the pain was making it hard to think.

Before long, he was sitting on a table in front of Dr. Banner and Tony, and he was no longer glad to be here. "You want me to do what?" he asked.

"Take off your suit," Bruce repeated. "I need to be able to see your ribs in order to do something about them."

"Right," Peter agreed, not making a motion to do anything about his suit. Even though Tony hadn't reacted negatively at all to what Loki had said, that didn't mean he would respond well to what Peter had to tell him.

"Is it something private?" Tony put in. "I can leave."

"No," Peter hedged. If he was going to say anything, he wanted Tony in here too. "It's just, well, you see, I'm trans." He muttered the last two words, staring at his hands as he did. This was so much harder than coming out to Loki. Why was it so much harder? Was it because he was closer to Tony? Was it because he knew Tony was straight? It shouldn't be this hard – right?

A hand landed gently on his shoulder, and Peter looked up to see Tony smiling at him. "It's okay. Is there anything you want Bruce or I to do to make this easier for you?"

Relief hit Peter like a ton of bricks, and he stared in silence for a full beat before his brain started working again. "Uh, well, I don't know," he started. Not that he ever had a plan, a voice in the back of his head snarked at him. "Karen told me my ribs weren't broken," he kept talking, verbally processing whatever thoughts ran through his mind, "so I don't know what to do about – not that it – wait a minute."

He looked up at Tony. "Can I talk to Loki again for a minute?"

In hindsight, Loki reflected as she cast the glamour charm on Peter once again, she should have realized Midgardians couldn't use her seidr. Still, there was no reason she couldn't do it for the boy. Just as long as she didn't let Thor know. He thought she was getting soft enough as it was.