11

He wasn't coming. Bastard.

The intercom splutters. 'Sir, its 20:40. Would you like to wait another ten minutes?'

'Yes- No. Maybe another five. Yeah, five more minutes.'

'Yes sir.'

Bastard.

Fine, he'll just go back to sleep. The whole thing had been a hare-brained idea anyways. A bad egg hatched on the cusp of too many whiskeys; so what.

'Stark-'

Tony snorts. This is what you get for wolfing down too many shit-eating oysters-

'Stark!'

He tries not to scream like a girl and scramble backwards when Loki suddenly appeared in the plane, seatbelt already in place, damn his dancing green eyes.

'Fuck you.'

'I do apologize for startling you, Man of Iron.'

Tony realises that he's crossing his arms like a girl from a Jane Austen novel, but who cares; it's not like Loki reads earth books.

'Have you ever heard of an RSVP?'

'I looked up the animal in your little visual. Truly I am flattered.'

'Only you would see being compared to a murderous rampaging carnivore as a compliment.'

'I should like to see one up close,' Loki speaks over him like the asshole he is. 'It would pass for quite a suitable diversion of my time here.'

'You'll see several hung up for filleting soon,' Tony retorts as he flicks the intercom switch. 'Ok Timmy boy, take her away.'

'Yes Mr Stark.'

~o0o0o~

'You could have told me it's this easy for you to turn invisible,' Tony grumbles outside Narita Airport early next morning, blinking rapidly against the brisk 3 am air.

'You could have asked.' The god of mischief shrugs. 'I am frequently invisible.'

'You could have saved me a tonne of red tape,' Tony pouts. Although he chooses not to comment on the fact that Loki has become comfortable enough to use magic in front of him. He's trying not to smile as it is. Here they are in a city where nobody would look twice at Tony Stark, and he gets to play host to a stuffy, disagreeable deity. In Tokyo, which is maybe the world's coolest city ever.

The only downside is knowing he must look a total space cake, speaking to thin air.

'I thought you're used to the attention,' Loki scorns when he complains.

'Not this kind of attention.' the billionaire grouses as yet another small Asian woman points him out to her husband whilst making a cuckoo bird sign with her other hand.

~o0o0o~

They watch the early morning fish auction at Tsjuki and the giant fishes being tagged and numbered by steely faced Japanese fishermen. Tony points out the pinbone removers, the giant saws that hack fish flesh into chunks, and the giant slicers that reduce the chunks into oval cuts or thin slices, unrecognisable from their formal selves.

They step delicately over pink-washed puddles of blood and called upon JARVIS to identify the hundreds of species of seafood being efficiently converted from dead animal to packaged goods in the world's largest seafood abattoir.

Loki breaths in the air around him like a mastiff, catching scents and cataloguing them for god knows what purpose.

Unlike most humans, the god has no squeamish notions of where his food comes from. He pokes and prods; he criticises, examines and compares; for an almost-vegetarian, Loki possesses an almost unholy fascination with meat. The scientist in Tony appreciates this. There's an honesty to it that's refreshing.

(There's also no compassion to be found anywhere, but that's for another day.)

After that, Tony whisks them off to Sukiyabashi Jiro, which he explains to Loki is a sushi bar of high repute in a dingy locale. Loki had looked sceptical, until Tony inadvertently blurts out;

'Fuck, I forgot, you're not wearing cologne or anything, right? There's a strict policy here about perfume for some reason.'

The god glance askance at him. 'On Asgard only women would resort to scented waters and pomade.'

But he looks a great deal happier after that, and made no complaint when Tony gets them both lost in the basement of the Tokyo Ginza station.

'C6, Dancer. Keep your eyes peeled for C6.'

An elegant eyebrow arches. 'Peeling ones eyes would cause great pain and do little to assist you.'

'It's another one of our lovely human phrases which I'm sure you'll grow in time to love. Come on, I found it.'

He drags them through a humble sliding door and into a tiny, cramped sushi bar with only ten seats, where a cagey old man with even older eyes waves away Tony's pathetic attempt at Japanese and locks gaze with Loki non-stop for five minutes in some crazy contest of wills that Tony is definitely not included in.

Finally the old man nods curtly and disappears into the kitchen to bark something at his minions, and Tony releases the breath he didn't know he'd been holding.

'This is place is unusual.' Loki says, shifting around and looking almost happy.

'What the hell was that little show there all about?'

'You're the human, are you not? You tell me.'

Lunch was weird; Tony can find no other way to describe how surreal the experience is. Which is really saying something considering his life.

There is no menu, no choices. Instead the scary, scary old man and his assistants made sushi in front of the counter, which they placed piece by piece in front of Tony with nothing new appearing until the previous piece has been consumed. Granted the food is fantastic; even to Tony who's no stranger to quality. There's no time to talk however; no time to relax or make any of the usual banter with Loki that Tony suddenly realises that he's come to sorely depend on.

As for its ancient proprietor, Jiro can teach classes on the art of silent intimidation. Small wonder he and Loki had that electric eyes thing going, which Tony is not jealous of in any way.

It's disconcerting. Tony feels like he'd been shuttled of to some odd sort of discipline class that involved being quiet, keeping your head down, and wolfing down as many pieces of sushi as you can, which pretty much makes it the strangest Michelin star experience ever. The billionaire ends up spending most of lunch avoiding Jiro's probing stare and trying not to burn his tongue on the exceptionally hot wasabi, and this is nothow he'd anticipated his Tokyo jaunt to go down so somebody back in Stark Co is going to get fired when Tony get back to New York.

At the end of the meal (in which Tony feels relieved and unaccountably accomplished for some reason), Jiro abruptly goes over to them and with one imperiously cocked finger, motions to Loki to follow him into the kitchen. This is apparently unprecedented, because there is a collective (very polite, very Japanese) gasp of shock and awe, followed by a flurry of cameras clicking

Tony tries to draw his arm back; 'Heyyyy, are you sure you want to do th-'

Loki of course ignores him, the prick, and disappears behind a curtain amidst a cloud of speculative whispering. When the billionaire tries to follow suit, he finds his path blocked by two surprisingly burly assistants.

'Urm. Loki?'

Silence from within. Tony cocks a worried eyebrow. Who knows what mischief Loki could be up to in there? Could he be mind-controlling Jiro to make him watermelon sushi? Or heavens forbid, could they be-

Naahhh. Jiro looked to be eighty, if he was a day.

(But then who knows what alien gods found attractive?)

Tony clears his throat. 'So I should really check on my, urm, associate, he speaka-de no-ah Nippon, yu-ah under-stan?'

He looks hopefully at the assistants, but no salami; and they look as if they moonlight as sumo wrestlers. Tony should have brought the suit. Why didn't he bring the suit?

'Ok, fine. I'll just be right here. Waiting.'

Thus the billionaire finds himself twiddling his thumbs for a good ten minutes, ignoring the other murmuring patrons around him until Loki suddenly appears again, bearing a box. Which he slides immediately out of view under the table.

'So-' Tony begins, and Loki immediately cuts him off with a look that could freeze ice.

'I am ready to depart, Stark.'

Tony exhales irritably. 'Fine. I'll get the bill.'

~o0o0o~

Tony would love to call the whole exercise a failure, but one look at Loki would make it evident that the god of mischief considered it the opposite; slouched over a reclined seat, his long legs crossed at the ankles and an almost mellow expression on his face.

If anything, he looks on the verge of humming.

Occasionally Loki's eyes would stray to the mysterious black gift box that Tony swears upon every relative's grave that he'd one day investigate, come hell or high water.

For now though, they had a six hour flight and several jars of olives to go through.

~o0o0o~

'Stark.'

'Tony.'

'I have enjoyed our excursions.'

Well, that is something at least. 'Glad to hear it, Reindeer Games.'

'Although your transport methods are truly primeval.'

'Shhhhh, you'll hurt her feelings. It's alright baby, daddy loves you,' Tony rubs a reassuring palm over the walls of his G650 and scowls at the god of mischief. 'This is the fastest civilian plane you'd ever get into, Jingles, and FYI, 704 mph is practically the speed of sound.'

'Really? I find it a miracle that you get to any your heroic missions on time.'

'For that I take the suit, which I'd offer to fly you around on, but it might make for a slightly uncomfortable ride.'

'Uncomfortable for whom?' Loki asks, and there's an edge of tease in his voice, Tony is sure. Except he can't really tell, and Loki's inscrutable expression is driving him crazy. Especially when Tony realises that Loki has leaned over to better engage him in conversation, which place their shoulders flush together; trailing black hair and cheekbones within grazing distance – and oh, wow. Eyelashes. Like a cow.

'Uncomfortable for you, naturally,' Tony says, and his voice comes out hoarse because his brain is busy pointing out that he only has to shift an inch or so further closer to make things suddenly go very wrong. Almost as if Loki could read his mind his cow-lashes flutters like a breeze had picked them up (ridiculous, they were in an aircraft) and Tony can feel his palms getting wet again because Loki is smiling at him with the smile of a shark and-

-and the air is getting kind of thin because of cabin pressure, gooddammit. Nothing else.

Then the god of mischief is turning away to refresh his drink, and Tony gratefully sucks in air, just in case it's his last.

Now is a good time to give himself a pep talk: remember that it's all fake, Tony-boy. It's a disguise. For he knows, Asgard's true form is eight legs, cuttlefish skin and hairy udders.

'Perhaps you underestimate my capacity for discomfort, Stark.' Loki's eyes actually crinkle in amusement as he went right back into invading Tony's space after that minor interruption.

'Tony.'

'And what will you give me in return for calling you by such familiar terms, Anthony?'

Tony licks his lips, and watch the cow lashes flicker about like moths. Things are really not going very well, and maybe next time he should think about bringing the suit to make sure there's at least a layer of hard armour around between kinky alien moonstone skin and heated human flesh-

'Anthony-'

'Yes- what.'

Tony's not really gritting his teeth as he says that. Neither are his eyes almost squeezed shut, it's the cabin pressure, goddammit, because this is a really fast plane.

'Are we about to kiss now?'

And that. That must be how Hiroshima feels like, because Tony's bottom had fallen out.

'You knew.' Actually, of course he knows. A fucking inanimate object would know. His pilot probably felt the heat through the cockpit walls.

The mischievous expression on Loki's face could power a New Year countdown in the dead of winter. 'I was waiting for you to, ah- cotton on, I believe is the term your Migardians use.'

Tony is busy exhaling irritably, and grits his teeth through a rather painful time of it as it catches up. He feels cheated somehow. And his body is still not. Cooperating. Goddammit.

'Well, why the hell dinchan say something.'

At this the god drops his eyelids, looking almost modest. 'I have an uncommonly sensitive sense of smell.'

'Means what, you're part bloodhound?'

'It means, Anthony, that I can actually smell when someone's intention towards me changes,' Loki informs him, apparently deriving infinite amusement from the situation. 'Especially if he's a male someone, on account of the Miguadian musk you mortals tend to spray around in your hubristic bid to retain one another's attention.'

'We'll make sure that you never get into a subway then,' Tony huffs.

'Indeed I'm not certain humanity might survive the experience of my horror thus expressed.'

Tony laughs weakly. At least the sexual tension that been practically charring his lungs earlier had dissipated.

Loki suddenly rises over him, almost practically climbing into his lap. 'I shall give you a few days to adjust to the shock.' the god informs him with that most evil of voices – a promising one.

'And then, Anthony-'

Tony simply gapes at him, brain scrambling to catch up.

'Loki, wait-'

A long finger on his lips silences Tony's brain utterly. Tony's brain has switched off. Goodnight coherence, see you tomorrow, and Loki's face is much too close, the whisper of his voice much too intimate.

'And then, Anthony, we shall have ourselves a little conversation.'

And then the god disappears with a crack, leaving Tony alone in the cabin to stew in discomfort and dread.

~o0o0o~

AN: Jiro is the eponymous, super famous sushi chef from the documentary 'Jiro Dreams of Sushi'.