It took roughly thirty seconds for Loki to take his female form and drag Tony by the hand to the elevator. He had three days to make Tony entertain his whims, and he was going to get the most out of it.
Tony quickly grabbed his wallet and a pair of sunglasses, slipping the glasses onto his face as a minimal attempt to conceal his identity. He knew it was bound to happen anyways, but the moment some photographer caught him walking around the unfamiliar woman, the paparazzi would go batshit. Especially since, by all accounts, Loki's female form was a walking definition of the term 'bombshell'.
"So, do you have any plan of action?" He asked her as they rode down in the elevator together.
"I'll figure something out." Loki replied with a small smile to him.
"So, that's a 'no'." Tony said with a small sigh, walking out of the elevator with her once they hit the ground level.
Once they walked out onto the streets of Midtown Manhattan and started walking around together, it took Loki about five minutes until she'd spotted the words 'booksellers' on the side of a building and started hauling Tony towards a Barnes and Noble.
Once inside, Tony made a mental note that taking Loki into a bookstore was essentially the same thing as taking a child into a candy store. He tried to remember the way the god could have smothered him in his sleep that previous night when he saw the way her green eyes seemed to light up with glee at the sight of the place. On one hand, he knew she was dangerous and could go unhinged at any second. On the other hand, though, the way her eyes lit up and the way she bounced eagerly next to him was pretty endearing.
"Okay, don't wander out of here without me. I'll be around in here, so I'm sure you'll be able to find me." Tony said to her, wondering if he ought to hover around her, just in case.
"I think I can handle a bookstore, Stark." She replied with a roll of her eyes before going back to surveying the area around her, as if planning an attack.
"Fine, fine, damn. Go have your fun, then." Tony replied, letting go of her hand and watching her leave to start perusing the aisles of the store. He sighed a bit and rubbed the back of his neck, watching her go and forcing himself to look away when he caught himself staring at the way her hips swayed when she walked. He meandered through the store alone, though always making sure to keep a couple aisles away from her, just in case.
"Let's see what we're working with here." He thought aloud as he wandered over to the meager shelf dedicated to mythology books. Most of them were dedicated to Greek and Roman stories, though he was able to find one on Norse myths. He didn't like that Loki had a leg up on him and he was determined to find something he could consider a weakness for the god.
He paged through the book, skimming over a few of the stories until he'd find one with something that might help him. He read over the oddly convoluted story of how Thor got his hammer after Loki decided to cut off Thor's wife's hair just for shits and giggles, then promised to get her new hair from some dwarves so Thor wouldn't kill him. Instead of getting just hair, though, he ended up conning the dwarves into making a bunch of other shit for the gods, including Mjolnir. A later story told about how Thor had lost the hammer, leading to him and Loki donning drag to seduce the giant who'd stolen it to give it back. While the stories were interesting, there was nothing all that juicy. He couldn't use any of it as a weakness against the trickster god he'd decided to share a home with.
Tony was about to put the book away and give up when he paged further a bit more and found an illustration that was supposedly depicting a man tugging at the reins of a bucking stallion while a white horse stood a few hundred feet away, watching it all go down. The caption below read 'Loki and Svadilfari (1909) by Dorothy Hardy'.
"Damn, Dorothy, where are you leading me?" Tony mumbled, flipping through the book until he found the name Svadilfari. He found the beginning of that story and sat down on the floor of the aisle, deciding to actually read through that one. He quickly found out just how hard that particular story was to read as he went further and further with it. He forced himself to read until the bitter end where Loki's new horse baby, along with the rest of his children, were taken and locked away from him out of fear that they would play a part in the Ragnarok. The idea of Loki getting a horse forced upon him, even in the form of a mare, was enough to turn his stomach. The idea of having beloved children torn away from him to be imprisoned on their own only rubbed salt on the wound.
Tony hadn't known how long he'd sat down on the floor, staring in awe at the book, only getting torn from his trance when a green mist lifted the book from his hands, slammed the thing shut, and forced it back onto the bookshelf. He looked up to see Loki frowning down at him with a stack of about four or five books in her hands. Without any words being shared, Tony couldn't help but get the feeling he'd found out something he wasn't supposed to. He figured that probably meant he'd found the god's weakness, but it would be a real dick move to ever use it.
"Are you good to go, then?" Tony asked as he moved to stand up from the floor.
"Yes, and then I want to go home." Loki replied shortly.
"Really? We've only been out for less than an hour." Tony asked.
"Home, Stark." Loki snapped back.
"Fine, fine, I'll pay for your shit and we'll go home." Tony sighed as he led Loki off to the registers at the front of the store to pay for his stack of books. He let Loki take the bag once they'd checked out and lead the god out of the building so they could return to the tower. Loki never said a word, even when the two of them were ambushed by people with cameras. Instead, she just let Tony quickly pull her close to try and hide her face, just in case, and rush her out of the area before too many of them could get a good enough shot of the two of them and notice how much her features looked familiar.
Tony knew he probably could have let her go after they'd escaped the crowd, but he didn't really think about that until they'd returned to the tower together. He kept an arm wrapped around her waist to hold her close until they had gotten into the elevator together and Loki finally pulled away and let the female disguise drop.
Loki didn't say a word as they left the elevator, clutching his bag of books close and plopping himself down onto the couch to lay across it and pull out the first of his books to start reading.
Tony personally didn't mind that Loki didn't seem to want to do much anymore, since that meant that he didn't have to put up with the god dragging him around all over, at least for that day.
Part of him wanted to head back down to his workshop and tinker away for the rest of the day, but he definitely wasn't going to leave Loki alone in his house. The guy was a ticking a time bomb, and he knew he'd fuck something up the moment he didn't have anyone to supervise him. So, he poured a small glass of scotch and moved to sit down in an armchair by the couch. After grabbing a Stark Pad from a nearby coffee table, he got comfortable and started doing whatever research he could on myths Loki was affiliated with. He knew a lot of it probably wasn't too accurate, since they were stories that had originally been passed down from generation to generation orally, like a huge game of Telephone. There were bound to be at least a few errors.
"Are you really drinking at this hour?" Loki asked, looking up from his book after a few minutes.
"You aren't?" Tony replied as he skimmed over the words on the screen of the Stark Pad.
"It's barely high noon."
"It's evening somewhere." Tony replied with a small shrug. "You wanna talk about whatever the hell happened back in that bookstore? I think it might be an elephant in the room."
"There's no such creature in here."
"I mean, if we don't talk about it, it's just gonna hang around until we do. Nothing will be solved or better until we do. We all know it's there, we need to acknowledge it." Tony explained, setting his Stark Pad down in his lap.
"If I tell you my problems, you need to do the same. I refuse to divulge something so personal unless it's reciprocated."
"Deal. Do you want something to drink beforehand?"
"If you have wine, I'll take some."
"Coming right up, Princess." Tony said before getting up from his seat, absentmindedly messing up Loki's hair as he passed behind him to get to the minibar. He returned with a glass of red wine, passing it over to Loki before he moved to sit on the couch next to him.
"So, spill the beans. What made you all pissy in Barnes and Noble?"
"You were reading that book."
"What, you have beef against the Prose Edda?"
"No, it's not that. Most of the stories in that book are false, anyways. That book will tell you Odin is my brother. They did get a few things relatively accurate, whether I like it or not. I got angry because I saw you reading about Sleipnir. I didn't want you knowing about my past concerning my children. How do I know you won't use the knowledge of that weakness of mine against me? Anyone who wanted to could dangle my children over my head with the intention of making me bend to their will for the sake of their safety."
Tony blinked at the reply, watching the god carefully as he explained the entire reasoning. "Blackmailing you with your kids seems like a total dick move. If I swear to you I won't use anything you say against you, and that nothing you say will leave this room, will you tell me what you don't want your enemies knowing about your children?"
Loki took a drink of his wine, looking over at Tony. "What are you willing to swear on?"
"My mother's grave."
Loki blinked in shock, holding eye contact with Tony. "Very well." He replied before setting his wine glass aside. "However, it's much better to show you than explain it all. If you would close your eyes."
Tony nodded and shut his eyes, feeling Loki's hand gently press to his forehead. He couldn't help but wonder if his hand was cold from the wine glass or if he was just one of those people who always had cold hands.
He didn't get too much time to think through it before an image of huge golden halls flooded his mind, Nordic runes etched into the walls as decoration. The sound of happy laughter filled the air as he saw a pair of young boys and a little girls running ahead of a much younger-looking Loki, who followed behind, cradling a newborn baby securely against his chest. The oldest of the boys looked like he couldn't be more than eight years old. The other boy looked around six, and the little girl had to be about four. The children seemed perfectly fine as they played, but Tony could hear a few other people whisper as they milled around together. The people never said anything bad about the little kids, thankfully, but they didn't hold back when they whispered about the young man following behind them. 'The Mother of Monsters' they called him before giggling and adding in a 'little whore prince' for good measure. Tony barely had the time to realize that they weren't speaking English, even if he had understood every word they'd said, as the scene changed to the three kids playing happily in a garden while Loki played with the baby, smiling when it giggled at the little illusions he could produce in the green mist that emerged from his finger. While he played, Loki happily talked with the woman sitting next to him as she rubbed his back gently. The woman looked rather young, and Tony wondered if she was Loki's wife for a little bit, until he heard him call her 'Mother'. He didn't know what all was going on, but he could tell that it was happy. Eventually, a much younger looking Thor joined them, contently playing a bit with his littlest nephew.
"You know, it might be much easier if you got married, Loki. I'm sure there's a wonderful lady around here who will gladly accept your children as her own as well." Thor commented after a bit.
"I know. And Sigyn is a lovely woman, but I'm not too sure yet. I've barely spoken with her." Loki replied with a small frown.
"Of course. I just don't like the things some of the members of the court call you." Thor replied seriously as he watched his younger brother watch his children run and play in the gardens with their grandmother.
"I don't mind what they call me. Just so long as they don't use any of those names on Fenrir, Jormungand, Hela, or Sleipnir."
With that the scene changed. All of a sudden, the air wasn't as sunny and happy anymore. He couldn't tell if the weather had actually changed, or if it was just the way Loki was projecting it all into his mind. Thor was holding Loki back as a large group of guards carried his kicking, screaming children away, Sleipnir wailing from his bundle of blankets as he was wrenched away from Loki, who was crying and screaming the loudest. Tony looked over around the room as his mother came over to try and help provide comfort as he fought against Thor's arms. The man he could only guess was Odin stayed sitting in his throne, watching with a face of stone.
The scene changed once again to Loki in his room, refusing to eat or sleep or leave as he made a mess of the area, looking frantically for anything that might help him steal his children back. Every so often, his mother would come, practically begging him to emerge and eat something, telling him it had been too long and everyone was worried. However, Loki only had the energy to frantically flip through each and every book that lined the colossal bookshelves along the walls of his bedroom. Anything else would be much too exhausting.
With that, Loki lifted his hand away from Tony's forehead, letting him return to the current time and place.
"Jesus Christ, what the fuck?" Tony breathed, looking over at Loki next to him. "I guess I can kinda see why you're so messed up in the head, now."
"Oh, Stark, that's not even half of it. If I told you my life story, though, we'd be here for quite some time more." Loki replied as he drank the rest of the wine in his glass.
"Why'd they take away your kids?" He asked with a small frown.
"Someone had come to the Allfather with a prophecy of Ragnarok. Evidently, their prophecy included my children and me all rising up against him and starting an all-out war between the gods. Eventually, I would kill the Allfather, and that would be the end of everything. I argued that everyone can have a 'prophecy', so you should always consider that they're more than likely absolute bullshit. He didn't want to listen or take the risk, though, and he ordered my children to be taken away to where I can't ever access them. The sei∂r that they got from me was cuffed and locked away, so Fenrir and Jormungand are forced to live their lives in the body of a wolf and a serpent. Hela lives alone in Hel, the realm of the dead. Sleipnir is forced to stay a horse in his prime. He's fed Idun's golden apples to keep him from aging any further from about six years. I see him all the time, but it's always when Odin is riding him as a steed. Every so often, I get close enough to make eye contact with him. He always seems so sad and so scared. One of these days, I'll let myself into the stables and steal him away."
Tony frowned a bit as he listened to Loki talk. "That's straight fucked." He breathed out with a shake of his head. "Hey, on another note, how come I understood you in that weird head vision thing you gave me? I'm pretty sure that wasn't English you were speaking."
"Did you really expect us to speak English in Asgard, Anthony? Why would anyone revered by the Vikings as deities speak English? It's known to you Midgardians as Ancient Norse or Old Norse. I don't speak a word of English, really."
"Then how are you speaking it right now?"
"We Asgardians have something that's known to us as Allspeak. This allows us to communicate with anyone, despite any language barrier that might stand between us. I am speaking in my native tongue, but you are hearing it in yours. You are speaking to me in your native tongue, but I hear it in mine."
"Can you turn something like that on and off?"
"Of course." Loki replied before immediately switching languages, speaking something that sounded a lot like Norwegian, though not entirely.
"That's really cool." Tony hummed after listening to Loki speak the foreign language.
"Thank you. Now, I think you're stalling. I told you about some of my problems, and now it's your turn to return the favor."
"Do I really have to?"
"We had a deal, Stark."
"I don't know where to start."
"Choose the one that's weighing most heavily on your mind right now."
Tony sighed a bit and stayed quiet, thinking over it for a bit. "I'll tell you what. Let me cut that hair of yours and I'll tell you while I do."
"What's wrong with my hair?"
"Babe, It looks like it hasn't been touched for a year at least. It's gross and it ages you."
Loki huffed at that and thought it over for a moment. "Fine. Deal." He replied.
Tony smiled softly to Loki and, without thinking beforehand leaned in to press a soft kiss to his lips before grabbing his hand and leading him off to the bathroom.