A/N: Not too pleased with this chapter but never mind. Reviews?
Chapter 21: Fetch Me A Sandwich, Bitch
Tony woke up the next morning with Loki wrapped around him like a six-foot-two gangly puppy and showing no signs of waking up. He managed to writhe away from him, leaving Loki to curl up and scrunch his face like the cute little bastard he was, and then went into Loki's kitchen to make calls.
First call was obviously Darcy, who had Loki's best interests at heart and was therefore the person Tony actually wanted to talk to.
The girl was hyperactive, chattering in Tony's ear as soon as he rang, wanting to know if she could come home and see him, wanting to talk to him on the phone even though he was asleep. Tony told her to give it a few days before coming home in case Malekith came back. Darcy wasn't happy about it, but she agreed.
Then the Avengers' Tower, for an update on Loki's condition and for more vitriol just for Clint. Tony said he was staying at Loki's until he could say for certain that Loki could be left alone.
Then Fury, who wanted Loki woken up and debriefed now. Tony hung up on him.
Finally, he called and ordered a large English breakfast, with lots of calories so that Loki could get on the road to regaining some lost weight.
When it arrived, Tony ate some and left the rest on a low heat in the oven.
Loki didn't wake until around 2pm. The moment Tony saw Loki's black eyelashes fluttering, he went and grabbed a hot cup of tea and held it out to him.
Loki woke up with only a vague recollection of the last 24 hours, and a pressing sense of purpose.
Oh yes, he thought, there is something I have to do, and I will burn the world down to do it. Stark was right about focusing all that angry energy into making a solution.
I should probably thank him. Or just ignore it. Yes, the latter.
"Darcy, you are a saint." He murmured as he smelt the drink. Then he opened his eyes properly and saw it was Tony offering him a beverage. "My apologies; force of habit. Many thanks."
"Come into the kitchen, big guy. There's lots of food and we need to fatten you up." Tony grinned, offering a hand to pull him up.
"You had better not have any, Stark. Your waistline does not need the hardships." Loki smirked as he stiffly pulled himself to his feet and stretched languidly.
"It's muscle, Lokes, and we can't all have corsettish stomachs." Tony sniffed theatrically, internally breathing a sigh of relief that Loki seemed much more Lokish today if that sassy rejoinder was anything to go by.
"Oh, of course." Loki said dryly.
As soon as Loki was standing solo, Tony grabbed him and squeezed him into an enormous hug.
Loki made a noise of annoyance. "Unhand me, Stark, or I will take evasive action."
"Don't you leave again," Tony ignored Loki, burying his face against the taller man's clavicle. "Or I'll fry you."
"That's my line." Loki chuckled. "It was not by choice. Let go of me."
Tony did, pulling Loki by his hand into the kitchen. "Eat. Now."
As Loki ate, Tony noticed he was a lot more lucid than the day before, probably because he'd had some sleep and the shock had worn off.
"Where is Darcy?" Loki said eventually, making sure to swallow before talking. Fancy English people and their fancy English manners. Or maybe it was just Loki.
"Still in England. I figured you'd want her out of the action." Tony shrugged.
"And you were quite right." Loki acknowledged, working through his hazy memories of the previous night. "What did you say last night about Server?"
Tony thought back. "The tower needed something to look after it, so I started making a replacement. Couldn't copy your design, of course, so I copied JARVIS's. It's called SADIE; Stark Always Does It Eventually."
It was a surprisingly big gesture for Tony to just give away a huge piece of information like that. Loki gave a small smile. "I gather it is not installed?"
"Nope, but it's finished, if you want it."
"I will think about it." Loki said plainly, returning to his bacon.
"So what's your game plan? You have to have one." Tony asked after a short silence.
"The beginnings of our counterstrike to Malekith's and his master's plan have already begun to form in my mind. Give me a few days, a lot of sleep and plenty of food, and I will gladly present this to the Avengers and Director Fury."
Tony idly noted that Loki didn't seem to include himself in the Avengers. Probably a slip of the tongue. "You'll have it. And, Sparkles?"
The corner of Loki's mouth quirked at hearing his old nickname. "Yes?"
"If you need anything, anything at all, just ask me." Tony said.
-O.O-
Probably in a bid to get his strength back, Loki spent the next three days alternating between eating, sleeping and hashing out what seemed to be a very well-developed plan.
He spent hours in his office, doing god knows what, abusing Tony's presence by making him bring snacks and asking the weirdest questions, such as:
"Would the Iron Man suit teleport?"
"Is the Hulk technically invulnerable, or just highly resistant?"
"Could you carry me in an emergency?"
"Would you make me a sandwich?"
"Is it possible for you to bring me a glass?"
The latter was when Loki threw a little bean bag at Tony, who was sleeping on the couch, to get his attention so he could get up and bring Loki a glass that was literally five metres away from him.
Yes, Loki was being a dick.
He barely spoke aside from questions, except when Darcy rang.
"Lokiiiiiiiiiiiiii!" Darcy shrieked into the phone line as soon as Loki picked up.
"Yes, Darcy, I am thankful for my return too." Loki chuckled.
"I swear, even though I'm in England at the moment I've never been happier to hear your stupid accent." Darcy said delightedly.
"Darcy dear, my accent brings all the wanton golddiggers into my bed. I would say it has repaid any debt it might owe me." Loki teased, smiling genuinely.
As they caught up, Tony wandered down to the lab with an external hard drive containing SADIE, which Loki had given him permission to install. Server's, well, corpse was perfectly equipped to run her (gender specific pronouns for computers. Tony wasn't even sorry) so it was as simple as installing her over and flipping a few switches.
When he made it back to the penthouse, Loki was speaking to Frigga with the gentlest, most affectionate smile that Tony had ever seen grace his face. When he saw Tony he instantly banished it.
Once the call was over, Loki went to test SADIE. Weirdly enough, they made fast friends.
"Mr Laufeyson, you are my principle priority. Your wish is my command." She said in her smooth English accent.
"Why can the general public not act more like her?" Loki said affectionately. "Your self included in that, Stark."
-O.O-
On the fourth day after Loki made it home, the first day of August, Tony woke up on the couch to find Loki in full Lightningrod regalia looking down at him.
"Yaaah!" Tony squeaked. "Jesus fuck, Sparkles, my heart!"
"If you cannot handle a sudden jump in heart rate, I would advise giving up any and all exercise, including that of the horizontal kind." Loki smirked.
"Uh, nope. Just, it'd be easier if tall scary people in pointy helmets didn't scare the shit out of me." Tony stuttered, sitting up and rubbing his eyes.
"You think I'm scary?" Loki said amusedly.
"When you wanna be, yeah. But you already knew that." Tony said. "What's with the get-up? Not that it's not sexy, 'cause it is, but you've been kind of distracted as of late."
"Stark, I come here because any sudden leave of absence regarding myself would be met with intense panic; that and you would have to be the only person I trust to not stop me." Loki said seriously, his expression growing darker as he spoke to Tony.
"I'm...flattered, I suppose. Just tell me." Tony said.
"I want to delay the army coming to Earth, giving us time to prepare. To do this, I plan to resteal the Tesseract." Loki explained, silencing Tony's objections with a hand wave. "It isn't a complicated operation. In, out, do not get shot. Rather like sleeping with a crime lord's daughter."
"You'd know that, of course." Tony smirked. "You're not planning to bring the cube back here, are you? 'Cause they'd just do a repeat of May and we'd be no better off."
Loki laughed. "A door may open from both ways, I know that. I want them to think I have brought it back here, so when they open the door, they end up on an alien planet with no idea what happened, and a great deal of time spent recalibrating will be necessary."
Tony suddenly remembered that Loki was a genius and a tactical master. "That's a great idea. You're right, I'm not going to stop you. I'd offer to come with if I didn't know full well I'd be in your way."
"This," Loki said with a gesture regarding the conversation. "Is why we work well together. I will return within an hour, in all probability; do not panic if it takes longer."
"Don't you dare vanish for good. And good luck." Tony said. He was caught in a quandary; he wanted to do some kind of affectionate gesture, like you did with someone going into war, but somehow a back pat seemed too distant for someone he'd fucked on several occasions and another hug was a little too...gooey, for two people like them.
He compromised by grabbing Loki's hand and pulling him into an awkward one-armed man hug.
Loki gave a short laugh and a respectful nod before vanishing with a fizzle.
-O.O-
Loki appeared where he'd planned to: in a vent above the huge hall that had the Tesseract laboratory at one end. It teemed with creatures of all kinds that were in Thanos's employ, but the lab itself was sparingly guarded.
Crawling through the vent while looking down, he recognised every species there, and even recognised a few specific members. It felt weird, like he was at a conference on Earth, where he knew what company everyone came from but few actual people.
Briefly he even spotted Malekith talking to a Skrull captain, looking tired and worn out.
Loki almost felt sorry for him before remembering they were enemies.
Once he was over the lab, he eyed the restraints pinning the cube down, calculating the method of undoing them that would take the shortest amount of time.
He had about fifteen seconds at the most. Having done a huge amount of cat-burgling as of late, this wasn't too difficult.
Loki appeared, undid three different restraints in a few seconds, and would have made it out fine had a Kree mercenary not cried out a warning and shot him.
A searing pain fired across his ribs and he yelped, but he kept calm and picked up the Tesseract. As he vanished, he saw Malekith's mismatched eyes looking at him in confusion.
-O.O-
Quite frankly, Loki had no idea where to go. Wherever it was populated, the Tesseract could be accidentally activated, but finding somewhere he could go that he wouldn't suffocate or explode on would be a challenge.
Not for the first time, he rued the impracticalities of not having an airtight suit. Imagine using any of his powers underwater!
To fix this locational confusion, he appeared in a marketplace, looking for a map. Yes, the language barrier was in his way without Mal to translate for him, but everyone wanted maps, so it wasn't too hard for Loki to hunt one down.
All this space travel and intergalactic communication felt more like home to Loki than the stupid meetings and constant human presence of Earth, and he couldn't help but wonder why that was.
-O.O-
Tony was definitely not waiting up for Loki.
Nope.
He wasn't panicking even though it had only been 33 minutes and 38 seconds.
And he wasn't watching the clock.
None of these things were happening.
Except they were and Tony couldn't help but wonder when he'd changed from wanting to strangle Loki to fearing for his life.
Probably around the time Loki saved his life during the battle of Manhattan.
In any case, Tony was trying to distract himself by reading something from Loki's library. Having rejected the idea of reading Fifty Shades of Gray in someone else's living room for hygienic reasons, he was currently warring his way through the start of The Hobbit. There was a movie for it coming out soon, right?
SADIE was scanning through every floor in the building, identifying every person and registering the security systems. She'd taken well, and her soft female voice with its English accent seemed weirdly soothing to Loki. Maybe it reminded him of home?
Tony had reached the point of biting his fingernails when Loki appeared, clutching his side in pain.
"Loki!" Tony said in alarm, diving forward to see what was the matter.
"Calm down, Stark. It is a minor graze, nothing to panic over." Loki reassured. He shimmered into his workshop clothes and sat heavily on the couch. "The Tesseract is now in a small cave on a moon a long way from here, even by the standards of space. And Thanos is fully aware I took it, what with the entrance I made, so with any hope he'll assume it's here on Earth."
"Clever bastard," Tony said congratulatorily. "Show me your cut."
Loki hitched up his shirt with a resigned sigh to show Tony a long, shallow burn along his ribs. It had self-cauterised, so there wasn't even any blood.
"It is nothing. A flesh wound." Loki said shortly. "It stings a little, though."
"I could always kiss it better." Tony said, only half-joking as he stuck his tongue out.
Loki fake-swooned. "Oh, Mr Stark, whatever would the tabloids say?"
"'Prominent businessman caught licking laser burns?' You can't deny, it's got a ring to it." Tony theorised.
Loki burst out laughing at that, clutching his hurt side as he lay back on the couch. "I do wonder what the public would think of...well, everything they do not know of the happenings in our lives."
"They'd probably have us burned for indecency." Tony shrugged.
"True. Now, you should return to your own tower and inform everyone that our plans for Thanos's assault will be presented this afternoon." Loki said, returning to all seriousness. "Myself, I have a presentation to prepare for."
-O.O-
Loki stood at the head of the conference table, wearing his most domineering suit and holding a long golden pointer.
He commanded attention, and everyone in the room was focused completely on him.
"Today, Avengers, operatives of SHIELD, we are at war." He said.