"I don't usually make judgments about people after I've just met them," is the first thing Loki says in response to Tony's graphic and detailed description of what exactly he'd like to do to him with his mouth and hands. "But you're a sexually overdriven narcissist."

Tony grins. "Hey, you call 'em like you see 'em. That's hot. I'll let you be on top."

"But how do you even know I'd be interested?" Loki presses. "How do you know if I'd sleep with the first person I meet? Or anyone, for that matter?"

Tony hesitates, grappling for an answer and the possible meaning behind Loki's questions. When he gets extremely drunk—which he does, often—he tends to fail in his basic understanding of the English language, especially if the person speaking isn't as shitfaced as he is. "You're in a bar, alone, on a Friday night," he says finally. "But you're gorgeous, so you don't have to be. Which leads me to only two conclusions: either a.) you're single, or b.) you're just getting over a break-up. Either way, I'd like to be the one to take you home and fill that hole in your heart."

The way he says it, a little awkwardly around his cigarette, makes Loki think he's not quite used to this kind of flirting, maybe a little out of practice, maybe used to just fucking and getting it over with as fast as possible. He laughs, sharp and sudden, but not entirely without humor, emerald eyes flitting over Tony's face. In the dim glow of the fluorescent lights overhead, his already pale skin looks almost yellow, throwing into focus the sharp angles of his skull, the shadows cast over his face by his high cheekbones. Tony reaches out and runs a thumb over Loki's cheek, curling his other fingers around to the back of his head. It's hot in the bar, from all the bodies packed into one space, but Loki shivers anyway, an expression crossing his face that Tony can't quite read.

"C'mon," he urges, watching Loki falter beneath his touch. "Just let me buy you one drink."

"All right," Loki murmurs, breathing out. "One drink."

Half an hour later, Loki is still sitting upright, but Tony is half leaning against the bar, one arm tucked under his head, the other stretched out, fingertips brushing his glass. "Do you, I don't know… enter contests about how much liquor you can hold in your body before you explode?" he asks. A smile curves up the edges of Loki's lips for a moment, and he shakes his glass, freeing the last droplets of scotch from around the ice cubes before setting it down.

"I haven't drunk as much as you, actually," he says, though in the back of Tony's mind he knows that's a lie, it has to be, judging from the raised eyebrow the bartender gives Loki as he refills his glass. "Anthony—"

"No, no, it's Tony, like everyone else calls me."

Loki shakes his head. "Anthony," he says again, and it sounds okay, coming out in that cultured voice of his, so Tony doesn't bother correcting him. "You have clearly lost the boundaries between where you can stop and where you cannot."

Tony raises his eyebrows now, lifting his head enough to nod the bartender over for a refill of his own. "What happened to not judging based on appearances?"

"I can tell you're an expert at this whole drinking thing," Loki says, looking pointedly at the practiced flick of Tony's wrist as he tosses his glass back, the way he doesn't even flinch when the strong liquor goes down. "I'm not judging, but—"

Tony shakes his head. "But nothing. I'm sure you've got your vices, man. Everyone does. I invited you to drink with me; you didn't have to stay this long. Anyway, it kind of comes with the job."

"The job?" Loki tilts his head to the side, looking for all the world like a confused puppy, and it's all Tony can do not to lean in and kiss that sweet expression right off his face.

"My job," he clarifies. "It's pretty stressful. I do things I'd rather forget; I've discovered I can pretty much forget about ninety-five percent of them in bars. So I do." He sucks down the last of his drink and sets the glass on the table again. "I'm just not used to seeing a guy of your stature pack away half the fucking bar in thirty minutes and still be able to sit up straight, that's all."

Loki's smile returns, though it's directed more at the ground now. "I have practice too."

"Stressful work situation?"

Loki hesitates, drumming his fingers on his knee. "You could say that," he murmurs eventually, reaching up and running a hand through his long, dark hair.

"What is it exactly that you do?" Tony asks, pulling out a pack of cigarettes and offering one to Loki. He declines, and Tony shrugs, setting it between his lips and flicking his lighter to its tip. "Because gorgeous body like yours, I'd bet you're a greeter of some sort. Or a model. And they probably pay you extra to just stand there and look pretty." The flirting is rolling off his tongue easier now, more fluidly, but Loki can tell it's rehearsed, and he just snorts, glancing around the bar, through the smoky haze.

"I'm actually unemployed," he says, and Tony nods, looking away too. In the dull light he's pretty sure Loki can't see the way his cheeks redden.

"Sorry, man," he says. "It's not my business. Or whatever." Another drag on his cigarette. "But if you're not employed, how come you're stressed enough to do sixty billion shots of Jack every night?"

"Perhaps job hunting is tougher than you think, Anthony," Loki says. "What is it that you do?"

Tony bites his lower lip, hesitating. "I'm a um. Car mechanic. Like my father."

Loki nods. "Stressful."

Tony rolls his eyes at the way Loki throws the word back in his face, but he can't quite keep the smile off his lips. "When you're forced into the family business against your will, yeah, it's pretty stressful."

Something in Loki's expression softens minutely at that, and he takes another sip of his drink and doesn't say anything else for a while. Tony recognizes the cognizance in his expression, and he wonders if Loki's spent hours on the road too, moving from place to place every few weeks, never settling down, never staying long enough anywhere to call home.

He sucks on a chip of ice from the bottom of his glass and wonders if Loki is him, just darker haired and more in control.

When Tony speaks again, his voice is lower, even though the bar is pulsating with energy. "Do you read?"

Loki shoots him a startled look, a half-laugh escaping his lips like he wasn't expecting the question—which of course he wasn't, it was probably the most random question Tony could've ever come up with—and he swallows before rephrasing:

"I mean. When you aren't job hunting or whatever. You talk like you've had your head stuck between the pages of more than one novel, so do you frequent libraries or bookstores or what?"

"Oh." Loki nods, running his finger around the outer rim of his glass. "Yes. I like classical literature, mostly, although there are a few modern authors I quite enjoy. What about you?"

Tony shrugs. "Stephen King, man. Him and Ray Bradbury, and that one book by Ken Kesey."

"One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest?" Loki suggests, and the other man's face lights up in an unspoken yeah, that's it. Loki looks mildly amused. "Most people I've met have seen the movie without ever reading the book, not the other way around."

"Not bashing Jack Nicholson's performance," Tony immediately swears, holding up one hand like he's about to sign the Declaration of Independence. "But the book is fucking fantastic." He mirrors Loki's approving smile and asks:

"What classical literature are you into, Shakespeare?" The nickname comes easily and unbidden from his lips, and Loki looks momentarily surprised, like he wasn't expecting it, before gesturing vaguely into the distance.

"Fitzgerald," he says. "As in F. Scott. Some of Oscar Wilde's works. As far as science fiction goes I'm partial to H.P. Lovecraft." A pause, and then a small smile slides over his face. "I enjoy Stephen King as well."

Tony lifts his glass and taps it gently against Loki's in a sort of cheers gesture, and the two of them drink; Loki with contemplation, Tony with the same practiced flick of his wrist that intones long-term familiarity from earlier.

When it's gone down, Loki adds, "I also enjoy reading things most people wouldn't dare look at except for English seminars."

"Like what?"

"Shakespeare, for example." The smile comes back, fleetingly, then drops off. "Dante's Inferno. Milton's Paradise Lost. 'Here we may reign secure, and in my choice, to reign is worth ambition though in Hell: better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven'."

"You say that like you're talking from experience," Tony murmurs, half-jokingly.

The same expression crosses Loki's face as when they were first seated together; pained, unhappy, almost longing. "Honestly, Milton carries a far more accurate portrayal of the afterlife in his work than Dante. The Italian didn't know anything about Hell."

Tony snorts into his glass until he notices the seriousness in Loki's eyes. "And I suppose you do?"

"Well." Loki resumes trailing his finger over the edge of his drink. "I'll say one thing, Anthony Stark; if I had just returned from Hell, I would not be composing prose about it."

Tony raises his eyebrows and opens his mouth to reply, but before he can there's a loud, incessant booming outside, and several people scream as what sounds like fifteen car alarms go off at once. Panic washes over Loki; Tony can see it in the stiffness of his body, the way he half-rises from his seat, setting his glass down precariously close to the edge of the bar. "Hey," Tony starts, reaching out to put a hand on Loki's arm, "it's okay, it's not—" but his sentence is cut off as the door bangs open and a large, almost unnecessarily blond man comes storming inside. His expression bespeaks torture in several degrees as he shoves past several patrons, reaching Loki and Tony in what looks like five long strides.

"Thor," Loki starts, but the blond guy is grabbing Tony by his shirt collar and throwing him—throwing him—backwards, so that he crashes into the brick wall behind him. A television shakes, the image on its screen flickering momentarily before clearing. Tony's head hits directly after his spine, and the last thing he's aware of before he passes out is Loki being hauled bodily from his seat and dragged towards the door.

They end up in the parking lot outside, underneath a fluorescent streetlight, Loki's spine pressed hard against the metal, his toes dragging the ground. He's tall, almost six and a half feet in shoes, but Thor has a good two inches on him, and he's stronger, with broad shoulders and thick muscles that remind Loki of a childhood littered with beatings, taunts, loud laughter from the others at his supposed inability to defend himself.

"What the hell were you doing?" Thor growls. "In there? With him?"

Loki squirms, trying to get Thor's hands off his windpipe. Humans are so fragile, he thinks, irritably. "I didn't tell him, if that's what you're getting at."

Thor's grip lessens minutely. "Loki, brother—" he starts, and Loki immediately shifts gears, narrowing his eyes into emerald slits and shoving a long, elegant finger into Thor's face.

"I am not your kin," he snaps. "Surely Odin told you that in my long absence?"

"He told us something," Thor admits, his voice strangely quiet. "But Loki—you cannot have a relationship with Anthony Stark. You know that."

Loki's frown deepens. "Why? Because of what I am? Or because of his gender?"

"This has nothing to do with—"

"Why was I cast out, then?" Loki nearly shrieks, finally shoving Thor away and turning so that he's standing on the pavement instead of in the grass. The new angle casts shadows over his face, and Thor winces, watching him.

"Anthony is dangerous," he says, in that firm 'you'll do what I say because I'm older than you so there' voice Loki absolutely hates. "He would kill you soon as look at you if he knew."

"If I knew what?" Tony's voice cuts unexpectedly across the parking lot, and both Thor and Loki turn to look at him in surprise. There's a bruise forming over his left temple and he's limping slightly, but other than that he seems okay.

"Nothing," Loki says, with a sharp glance at Thor. "It's nothing."

Tony hesitates for a second, then sighs. "Okay," he says, and starts to turn away. Loki feels his shoulders relaxing, and that's when Tony turns again, the knife out of his back pocket before either Loki or his brother can blink, pressed hard against Thor's throat as he shoves him against the lamppost. It glints in the light coming from overhead, and strange symbols swirl across its hilt.

"What the fuck are you?" Tony snarls, digging the knife edge into Thor's skin. "Demons? Vampires?" He turns to face Loki as he's speaking, and a wild, almost manic grin stretches his lips. "I may have lied a little when I told you I'm a car mechanic, Shakespeare."

Loki winces at the nickname. "Anthony—"

"Don't," Tony interrupts, harshly, the liquor gleaming in his eyes. "You knew what I am the whole time, so why even bother getting me halfway ready to lie down in your bed if you were just going to kill me?"

"Harm my brother, hunter, and you will pay dearly for it," Thor says, voice rising sharply and then going static against the blade.

"I haven't even threatened your precious brother yet," Tony snaps. "It's my life I'm a little concerned over right now, so why don't I just go ahead and end both of yours before you can do anything to me?"

"Wait," Loki says, holding out his hand. His tone is fierce and firm and a little bit desperate, and before Tony or Thor can say anything he reaches down and threads his fingers along the hem of his shirt. "We are not demons, Anthony." He glances around, then lifts his shirt over his head, revealing tight, whipcord muscles, a flat stomach that would otherwise have Tony already halfway on his knees. Turning, Loki flexes his shoulders, tensing them, causing a few of his vertebrae to stand out sharply against his skin.

"We are angels," Loki murmurs, and wings unfold from his back, bright and dazzlingly brilliant against the dim light from the streetlamp. Tony's grip on the knife goes slack, and he allows it to dangle, half-forgotten, from his fingers as he stares. Loki's wings are fucking gorgeous; turquoise and sapphire and the shade of the night right after the sun goes down, with emerald feathers scattered here and there, matching his eyes. Brown and gray line the edges, fade into the blue.

When Loki turns, he spread his wings a little so Tony can see their undersides as well—more dull grays and browns than before, with faint sheens of blue and green here and there. They start soft at the tops, where they arch out from his back, and grow longer and stiffer in appearance as they extend downwards. Tony gets the impression that Loki is holding them in somehow, hiding their true size. He wonders how large they get when Loki is fully unrestrained.

He doesn't believe in god, doesn't have a religion of any sort really, but the beauty of Loki makes him want to have faith.

Before he knows what he's doing, Tony is starting forward, his hand outstretched. Immediately Thor steps between them, anger creasing his face. "Don't you lay a hand on my brother, you defiler," he says, but Loki moves, then, his arms tucked against his sides.

"Thor, don't," he says, softly. He looks at Tony, and Tony raises his eyebrows, silently asking for permission. When Loki nods, Tony reaches forward again, his hand sliding over the uppermost part of the wing, then traveling downwards, over the ridges and layers of feathers. He can feel bone, and heat, and ice, and power, and where his fingers go, light follows in quiet rays. As Tony strokes, he watches Loki's face, watches that strange expression cross it again—an almost painful want, a longing Tony doesn't understand, like Loki's holding himself back from something he seems to need.

He's shivering, the way he did in the bar, his eyes half shut, mouth open.

Tony wants to keep touching. He wants to touch and touch and touch; to take from Loki something he doesn't fully understand; he wants, and he aches, and he—

Thor clears his throat, and the sound is a gunshot in the silence of the night. Tony winces, only noticing now that his eyes too have fallen almost completely shut, and removes his hand from Loki's wing, turning away. "What's up, Ben Hur?" he asks, and Loki snorts behind him.

Thor looks puzzled. "I do not know Ben Hur," he says.

"Forget it," Tony mutters, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Just. What?"

"Now that my brother has so foolishly established what he and I are, I'm afraid we must be parting from your company." He glares pointedly at Loki, who shakes his wings before folding them back into himself and reaching for his shirt, draped over the back of a car. "We, too, are hunting things, here on Earth—"

"Look who's spilling secrets now," Loki says mockingly.

"What are you hunting?" Tony asks, looking between them. His years as a hunter, and the loneliness it brings, have made him automatically warm towards fellow hunters, even if one of them happens to be a cockblocking blond asshole from Heaven.

"Demon—" Loki starts, but Thor grabs him by the arm, in an almost possessive gesture that freaks Tony out more than a little.

"It's a mission from our father," he says. "It is no concern of yours."

"Your father." Tony looks skeptical. "Right. Like, God?"

"Exactly 'like God'." Thor makes over-exaggerated air quotes, his lips twisted. "He has many names; you may refer to him as Odin in our presence."

"Oh, so I will be seeing some more of you two." Tony grins, his arms folded across his chest, and doesn't miss the way Loki's lips twitch.

Thor frowns, clearly upset at being tripped up on his wording, and he tightens his grip on Loki, causing the slimmer man to flinch. "Until we meet again, Anthony Stark," and he and his brother vanish into the air, causing a few more car alarms to go off.

It's time for another drink, Tony decides, heading back into the bar and tucking his knife away, a headache starting to pulse behind his eyes.

"So you've met another guy who's fallen under the spell of your false charms," Steve says, an hour and a half later, leaning against the booth with his chin resting against the palms of his hands. "Jesus, Tony."

"Aw, you're just jealous," Tony says, and takes a final bite of the chicken which sits, cut up and covered in seasoning, on his plate. "Isn't that right, Bruce? Steve wishes it could be him an inch away from fucking my genius brains out."

Bruce does one of his quiet, 'I'm not getting into the middle of this' smiles, shrugging down at his own plate. "Personally, I think you're going to end it within a week anyway."

"You two have no faith in me, I swear," Tony mutters, shaking his head. "Why do you think that?"

"Mostly because that's what you do with every other relationship you enter," Bruce smirks. "You fuck 'em and then you leave 'em."

"Not always."

A snort from Steve's side of the table. "Yeah, the only time you keep anyone is when they have shelves of Stephen King stacked in their homes and every Sondheim musical recorded on albums."

"Sondheim is brilliant, okay," Tony growls defensively, leaning forward so that his face is about five inches away from Steve's. "Marry me a little, love me just enough," he sings, and Bruce laughs as Steve jerks backwards. "Anyway, that's really not even why I keep anyone—for example, I stayed with Pepper for a good, what, six months before she realized what an incorrigible asshole I actually am."

"Or because she started boring you in bed," Bruce interjects mildly, and even Steve smiles a little at that.

None of them mention the real reason why Tony's relationships don't last—why the three of them haven't ever really had steady, stable, healthy partners. Bruce and Steve are hunters, same as Tony—not lifelong like him, but just as dedicated to the job, just as willing to take risks. Tony owes them both for getting him out of some pretty tight scrapes in the past—not that he'd ever mention it in public, but he's grateful to have Bruce and Steve in his life.

"Well," Tony says, after a short silence, taking a sip of his drink. "This guy, I think he's gonna stay for a while. I didn't mention this earlier but—he's not exactly human."

Bruce raises his eyebrows. Tony is notorious for hating non-humans; he kills first and asks questions later, just like his dad taught him. Sometimes he doesn't even ask the questions at all. It's an unspoken rule between the three of them that if they encounter a creature on the job, Tony will slice it open first, in whatever way it needs to be done.

"What is he, if he's not Homo sapiens?" Bruce asks.

Tony hesitates, then leans in, an expression on his face which his companions can't quite read. "He's an angel," Tony says, in a voice that clearly states he's expecting to be laughed at, disproved.

Bruce and Steve exchange glances. "What's his name?" Steve asks.

"Loki," Tony says, and if he wasn't so drunk he'd swear he saw Bruce's eyes flash with recognition for a second, but it must be a trick of the light or his alcohol-laden brain and he really needs to go home and get some sleep—

"Loki," Bruce repeats, quietly. "An angel, like from Heaven?"

"Yeah, like from Heaven. And he has this brother, some dickwad named Thor?"

Again, the fucking recognition flash, passing between his companions like electricity before being neutralized. Tony frowns, suddenly uncomfortable for reasons he can't understand, and he shifts against the padded leather of the seat.

"I hardly think angels would be interested in members of the same sex, Tony," Steve says, after a long silence.

"Blah, blah, blah," Tony mocks, rolling his eyes. "Just because you're perpetually stuck in a forties mindset doesn't mean we all have to be, Captain fucking America." When Tony gets drunk, he gets nasty, and when he's around Steve it seems to escalate more quickly than around anyone else. Bruce frowns, laying a hand on Tony's arm, but Steve doesn't seem to have noticed. Of all Tony's friends, hunters or otherwise, Steve is the only one who seems oblivious to the consistent, sometimes slightly degrading nicknames Tony likes to slap on everyone he meets.

(Kind of like Thor, Tony thinks, and then immediately disregards that thought because how weird.)

"Angels don't have genders," Bruce says, adjusting his glasses on the bridge of his nose. "According to myth, anyway. So an angel would technically not be acting on any homosexual or bisexual impulses were he or she to fall in love with a human."

"See," Tony says, nearly jabbing Steve in the chest with his breadstick.

"And anyway," Bruce murmurs, his tone bordering on affectionate, a tiny smile playing across his lips, "Tony wouldn't have any problem bedding an angel, even if they are all anti-gay up there like the Christians want us to believe." He turns and smiles at his friend, nudging him lightly with his shoulder.

"You could seduce God, if you really wanted to," Bruce says, and he and Tony both laugh at the scandalized expression on Steve's face.

In the morning, what wakes Tony up is the shrill ringing of his cell phone, high and harsh in his ear. He groans, grabbing at it on the bedside table of the motel room he's currently staying in, and punches at the 'talk' button until it actually works. "What," he growls, not even looking at the caller ID.

"Why are you still asleep at this hour, Anthony?" Howard Stark's familiar voice floats over the phone, irritated, and Tony breathes out, squeezing his eyes shut.

"Dad," he says. "Hey. I uh, learned the technique of drinking all night and then sleeping it off from you; sorry you forgot."

"Don't take that tone with me," Howard says warningly, but Tony ignores him in favor of sliding out from between the sheets, checking surreptitiously for any signs that he brought someone back with him last night who might now be in the shower before heading into the bathroom himself, squinting into the mirror at his bloodshot eyes, his ruffled hair. "I have a case for you. Are you ready?"

"Literally just woke up five fucking seconds ago, give me a minute." Tony presses the phone between his ear and his shoulder, pulling his fingers through his hair until it resembles something not quite like a bird's nest and running his toothbrush over his gums, trying to get rid of the taste of dead rodent.

"Are you finished?" Howard snarls after what sounds like a little under ten milliseconds, and Tony, with exaggerated politeness, acquiesces that he is ready.

"Okay." Howard's tone takes on its usual businesslike air, the one Tony hates more than anything except possibly when Pepper and/or Rhodey are chewing him out over something stupid. "It's in Baton Rouge, Louisiana—"

"That's two fucking states over, Dad, come on—"

"—and it looks like an incubus. But of course, I could be wrong." Tony can practically see his father shrugging, daring him to say 'yeah, Dad, I'm sure you are'. So he doesn't say anything, and after a long time Howard says:

"Are you going or aren't you?" and Tony just hangs up, barely resisting the urge to chunk his phone clean across the room.

Fucking asshole.

He calls Bruce and Steve, who take cases with him sometimes when they aren't busy with their own, but Steve's still sore over last night (which makes no sense because they joke around all the fucking time about Steve and his unrequited love for Tony, which doesn't actually exist—Tony hopes to god—so why should last night have been any different, talking about gay angels?) and Bruce woke up running a low fever, so he's out for the day. Tony packs his things—the knife, which can kill virtually anything except certain species of werewolves and, apparently, angels; his handgun that he keeps on his person twenty-four/seven; and his clothes—and heads out, handing in his key at the front desk before getting in his car and driving off.

It's a two-day drive to Baton Rouge, and by the time Tony gets there he's antsy, impatient to kill. Howard is staying at the Crowne Plaza, off I-10, so Tony books a room at the Holiday Inn and settles down, sleeping off a bit of the road exhaustion before calling his father and letting him know he's in town. Howard says something about the demon possibly being in or around Perkins Rowe, and Tony searches around on the Internet for a bit before finding directions and driving uptown.

At first, he doesn't see anything unusual, not in Barnes and Nobel, not in McDonalds, not even in the theater, packed with people. But the instant he goes into Starbucks he senses it, in the way that it's too quiet for a public place at noon on a Saturday. He orders a tall Frappuccino and a slice of carrot cake and sits in one of the booths, his hand wrapped around his knife, eyes scanning the building.

In the corner, by the large-paned glass windows, a man sits next to his girlfriend, one arm draped over her shoulders, the other hanging extremely close to her lap. He's whispering things in her ear and she's giggling, but her shoulders are stiff and she's leaning just far enough away from him to rouse Tony's suspicions. He shifts, watching them, and after a few minutes she gets up, touches his shoulder and says something about how she'll 'be right back' before heading into the women's room.

Of course he follows her.

There are shrieks in the bathroom, and Tony's up before any of the other patrons can react, brandishing the knife and barging in. The man is leaning over his girlfriend, pressing her against one of the sinks and pushing her backwards so that her hair dangles in the drip of the faucet. "I'm going to make you mine," he's sneering, lips dangerously close to the pulse at her neck. "Right here in this bathroom, I'm going to mark you with one of my own."

"What the fuck does that even mean?" the girl shrieks. "Leave me alone, you fucking psycho!" She shoves at him, and he tightens his grip, moving one hand to her throat and pushing up with his thumb.

"I could kill you," he snarls. "I could end your life, and you'd still carry."

"Fucking let her go," Tony says, and the incubus turns, startled, its pupils going wide and then curving up at the corners, laughingly. It releases the girl, and she runs, screaming, from the bathroom.

"Tony Stark," the demon says. "Defender of fucking dirty, disgusting humans everywhere."

"Yeah, don't glorify it." Tony rolls his eyes, before plunging the knife directly into the demon's chest. He lets out a hoarse, sharp gasp, body jerking backwards, and Tony grips his shoulder and hisses into his ear:

"I'm not some fucking comic book hero from the fifties," before yanking the knife out and allowing the incubus to fall at his feet. Its head hits the tiled floor with a sickening thud, and Tony wipes his blade on its shirt before walking out.

"There's been a spill in your bathroom," he says to the terrified manager as he leaves the coffee shop.

He's heading to his car when he's nearly run into by the two people (creatures?) he expected least to see: Loki and Thor, appearing out of nowhere and setting off car alarms right and left. Thor looks furious; Loki just looks faintly pleased.

"That was to have been our job!" Thor thunders, and the sky darkens a little—although that could just be the weather; Tony's pretty sure Louisiana's most famous attribute is its sudden, five-minute rainstorms. "Do you realize how much that will cost us with our father?"

"Was that the demon you two are hunting?" Tony asks, raising an eyebrow. "Because honestly, I don't see God—I mean Odin—sending two of his angels down just for one sorry incubus." He glances at Loki. "No offense."

Loki holds his hands out, palms upward. "None taken."

"No," Thor growls. "It is not the main demon. But it is one of them. And we were to kill it before you—"

"Jesus, Thor, chill," Tony interrupts, setting his hand on Thor's arm in what he's pretty sure is a completely suicidal move. "It's dead now, right? So who gives an honest fuck about how it got killed?"

Thor looks like he wants to say something else, but Loki quickly interjects:

"I have been thinking, Anthony—you are innovative, intelligent; you know how to kill fast and without any thought—"

"Listen to this guy, already reciting our wedding vows." Tony laughs, and Loki joins him after a few seconds, softly.

"These are traits needed to hunt and kill the most powerful demons, yes?"

"Well, naturally."

Loki glances at Thor, once, then stretches his shoulders so that Tony hears his wings rustle softly beneath whatever shield Loki hides them on a daily basis. "I wanted to ask you—would you care to help us find the demon we are hunting?"

"Loki," Thor begins, sounding at once both shocked and murderous, but Loki holds up a hand, and looks at Tony.

"You are free to say 'no'."

"Fuck," Tony says in response, swallowing. "Hunting a demon that God needs angels to find? Must be some kind of huge fucking deal, then."

"It is, yes."

Tony grins. "Well, then," he says. "Why the fuck not?"

Thor flinches, as if Tony just agreed to his own early death. Loki looks utterly delighted, a broad, unbidden smile stretching over his face, giving him the appearance of being ten, twenty years younger. "Excellent," he murmurs.

As far as Tony's concerned, all he can see is a way out of Howard's life, an avenue to freedom he only had once, years ago, but chose to reject in favor of the eternal but ultimately false statement: "things can only get better". He runs his finger down the edge of his knife, fully aware of how much Thor probably hates him at this point, and he says:

"What's the demon's name, Shakespeare?"

"Thanos," Loki says, clearing his throat. "His name is Thanos," and it sounds oddly familiar on his tongue, in the way that names sound when you're used to saying them often, but Tony disregards this entirely in favor of a new hunt, a powerful demon he's never heard of.

"This is a bad idea," Thor rumbles, glaring at Loki, but Loki's eyes are trained on Tony's face, on the way his hair falls slightly over his forehead, on the light that comes into his eyes when he talks about hunting, and he doesn't hear his brother over the beauty of this new human companion.