Tony knotted the drawstring of his sleep pants, then turned and looked at the bed. Loki had already slid up on top of it, and was busy arranging himself in a neat coil on one of the pillows. Tony wrinkled his nose, and considered declaring the bed off-limits to snakes, but really, snakes weren't that bad. Dry and smooth to the touch, the temperature of their body varying from a little too cool to a little too warm, very quiet... still a bit creepy, yeah, but the memory of Dummy charging around the lab wearing the snake like a hat tended to remove a large portion of any unease he might have otherwise had. Dummy usually showed excellent taste in playmates; he'd never liked Obadiah, but had all but climbed into Steve's lap the first time Rogers had visited the lab, and seemed to damn near worship Bruce. So, that Dummy had decided that Loki was now an playmate slash acceptable toy slash article of apparel or whatever; well, it was at least food for thought.
Besides, Loki hadn't hurt any of them in the month plus that he'd now been here, and surely there wasn't really any significant difference between letting dog-Loki sleep on his bed and sharing it with snake-Loki. If it really bothered him he'd have ignored the furry exterior and puppy eyes and made Loki sleep on the floor, or better yet, somewhere downstairs. It would be kind of silly to change his mind now just because he wasn't entirely comfortable with snakes. Though he'd definitely have to draw a line if Loki ever changed into a spider. Or anything that scuttled, really. In fact when compared to anything with too many legs, a snake was damn near cuddly.
He still found himself tensing up a little getting into bed, but thankfully Loki seemed content to remain curled up on the pillow he was already occupying. Tony settled down comfortably, thinking about Fury's visit. He was a little relieved that Fury had figured it out and now knew about Loki's presence, truth be told. They had all become a little too comfortable with having Loki around, after all, and it couldn't hurt to have someone aware of his presence who wasn't being exposed to him on a pretty much daily basis. Loki's famed silver tongue might be bound, but there were other ways to lie than with words, as expert manipulators such as Natasha could easily prove. While Tony wanted to believe that Loki's stay among them and the animal forms he'd been taking had been slowly influencing Loki's behaviour, it's not impossible that it was all an elaborate fake, that Loki was coldly, calculatingly manipulating them all instead. It might even be that the real answer was somewhere in between the two, that all of them were having their expectations and emotions altered by their unexpected and lengthy cohabitation.
He rolled on his side, and looked at Loki. Loki's head stirred a little, turning to focus one unblinking eye on him. "Fury's right, you know," he found himself saying. "Your presence here does mean that there's at least a small chance that the chitauri will show up here looking for you. If they know or guess you're here. If they can get here short of someone on this end using the tesseract or something like it to open a portal for them again. If they can even spare the manpower to try and snatch you while Asgard is at war with them. If Asgard hasn't already beaten them into a pulp. If they haven't changed their mind about just how much they want revenge on you. A whole lot of ifs, but... not impossible. Is it." A statement, not a question.
Loki didn't respond verbally, of course, but the way he shifted himself into a tighter spiral seemed to speak volumes. Tony sighed. "Look... I promised Thor to be your... your handler, and to protect you. I keep my promises, and whatever any of us feel about you, the team's got my back on this. But, if the chitauri do show up? It might really help if you've told us anything you can about them first. I know you can't talk, but there are such things as keyboards, and your interface to Jarvis includes one. You've already demonstrated that you can read, how about, oh, I don't know... taking a stab at writing some time. Give it some thought, anyway," he said, then sighed and rolled over onto his other side, facing away from Loki.
There was silence for a few minutes, then the faint rasp of scales sliding over sheets, and the pressure of Loki's long body pressing up against his back and legs, followed by a faint weight across the top of his hip. Tony glanced down and saw that Loki was resting his head and a bit of his neck there. "You know, that's not nearly as cute as when you did that as a dog," he said sleepily, and let his head drop back down to the pillow.
Tony startled awake, blearily aware of sound and motion going on nearby that shouldn't be. An intruder, was his first thought, and he moved away from the source of the sound before realizing it was Loki; in human form, and, it seemed, in the middle of a nightmare. He froze for a moment, thinking of how poorly he himself sometimes reacted on being woken from his own nightmares, then as Loki gave another pained whimper, reached over and shook his shoulder anyway.
Loki cried out, waking and jerking away, staring wide-eyed at Tony.
Tony stared back, feeling about equally wide-eyed; Loki was awake, and still in his human form.
"What...?" Loki said, voice sounding raspy and disused.
"You were having a nightmare," Tony told him. "You okay?" He managed to keep his voice reasonably calm, but his mind was racing, wondering how much danger he might be in, whether or not he needed to have Jarvis sound an alarm or be signalling for his suit.
"I... yes, I am fine," Loki said. He lifted one of his hands, staring at it and slowly flexing his fingers, before reaching up to pat at his own face. "Oh," he said softly, sounding surprised. And then fainted, or went back to sleep, something that has him dropping limply down on the bed again anyway. He changed again, back into a snake, draped in an inelegant sprawl across the bedding; a different snake, considerably smaller, though that was all Tony could see at present.
"Lights, Jarvis," Tony ordered, and scrubbed a hand down his face. "What time is it? And did you catch the last few minutes?"
"Yes sir. It is twelve after four in the morning."
As Tony watched, Loki stirred again. He was only a little over a couple of feet in length now, and pretty spectacularly coloured, in black-edged scales that shaded from a vibrant green on his head and neck to a warm red-gold on his tail, his underside a buttery cream colour. "Wow," Tony said. "Jarvis, do you think he's venomous or non-venomous?"
There was a slight but noticeable pause before Jarvis responded. "I believe he may be a speckled racer, sir... non-venomous. I would need a closer view of him to be certain."
Tony nodded. "Well, no point in going back to sleep," he said, and rolled out of bed, heading into the bathroom to shower and shave. He checked the arm injury, which seemed pretty well-healed now but was still a little swollen and sore to the touch. He dressed in blue jeans and a red tank top, and pulled a black button-down shirt on over top, then walked back over to the bed, where Loki was piled up in a heap in the middle of the bed. "I'm heading down to the lab, do you want a lift downstairs or would your prefer to stay up here today?"
Loki lifted his head and looked at Tony for a moment, then uncurled and moved over to the edge of the bed. When Tony reached down to pick him up, Loki wrapped himself around Tony's hand and wrist. Tony lifted him up an took a closer look at him, and found himself smiling. "You look like something from a high-end jeweller's shop," he told Loki.
He headed downstairs to his lab, setting Loki down on his workbench before digging a couple of frozen burritos out of the freezer to heat up for his breakfast. He started the coffee maker running before sitting back to work on building his own version of Dr Foster's sensor machine. His was going to be much better than hers, of course, since his would incorporate Jarvis along with a ton of extra sensors that would allow Jarvis to perform the equivalent of noise-cancelling on the results of the sensor element. Basically in addition to shielding the element from external energy sources as much as was possible, the machine would also track any energy sources that might still be affecting the output, and Jarvis could then subtract the variations caused by them from the waveform, for a much cleaner final signal. At least that was the theory, if Tony could get it all working correctly.
Loki explored the top of the workbench for a while, sliding around and poking his nose into the assorted components and bits of partially-assembled electronics that were scattered across the bench. Dummy came over and watched him for a while, but didn't seem to want to resume the games they'd been playing the day before; perhaps because Loki was so much smaller now.
Tony took a short break for once in mid-morning, sitting tilted back in his chair while nibbling on some puff pastry appetizers he'd heated for a snack, while waiting for a fresh pot of coffee to brew. Loki came over to where Tony had one of his feet braced up on the edge of the workbench, nosed interestedly around his ankle for a moment, and then flowed up onto his leg. Tony froze, stopping in mid-chew to watch as Loki glided along the length of his shin and thigh before coiling up in a loose pile on Tony's thigh and stomach, his head nosing at Tony's clothing.
Tony swallowed the bit of food still in his mouth. "Going exploring?" he asked hesitantly. "I'm not sure I'm comfortable with this."
Loki's head lifted and looked at him, then the snake flowed up the front of his torso, nosing briefly at the crystal bead necklace before slipping under the collar of the shirt and gliding around the back of his neck and out the other side.
"Jarvis, you're sure he's not a constrictor, right?" Tony asked as Loki settled himself in a couple of loose loops draped from shoulder to shoulder around the base of Tony's neck.
"I suspect he's in search of heat, sir. Your lab is a little on the cool side for his current species to enjoy."
"Great. So now I'm a space heater," Tony said, and popped another appetizer in his mouth, chewing and swallowing hastily before setting aside the now-empty plate and rising to his feet. Loki's weight shifted a little as he did so, but the feeling of it wasn't unpleasant or anything like that; just a little unsettling, knowing what Loki was. Tony poured himself some coffee, and turned to find Dummy right behind him, the robot's head/hand just inches from him, camera seemingly focused on where Loki's body and head were visible at the front of his shirt. Tony found himself smiling. "Looks like it's my turn to wear him today, Dummy," he told the robot. "Come on, out of the way, time for me to get back to work."
It was curiosity more than any need of warmth that drew Loki to investigate the bead still strung around Tony's neck. He shouldn't have been able to wake in human form, not without changing form first, but there had been a definite delay between Tony waking him from his nightmare of his time in the Other's hands, and him being forced into this second snake form. Such a change might mean that the artifact and the spell bound within it were beginning to degrade; it was after all only a temporary thing, reasonably durable of its kind, but not meant to hold forever.
Tony's tenseness as he flowed up the man's body to check on it amused him. He nosed at the bead, then slid himself along the length of the cord it was strung on, extending what little magic he had left to him to check the integrity and potency of the spell. It was still quite tightly-woven, but yes... the faintest hints of fraying were visible. Not in the actual physical structure of the cord, but in the pattern of energies it anchored. It would continue to hold for some time yet, but if Thor was long enough delayed before returning to either retrieve Loki or recast the binding with a fresh artifact... he would be free.
He settled himself in loops around Tony's neck, tucked up against the necklace, enjoying the warmth of Tony's skin against his own as he considered this new development, and whether or not there might be anything he could do to hasten the dissolution of the binding. There had been no point in attempting anything while it was fresh and strong, still perfect, but now that it was beginning to fade and fray... yes. It was, he decided, time to start subtly fighting the binding. Wear it out, deplete its energies. Try and force it to break earlier than it might of otherwise.
While he gave consideration to ways in which that might be accomplished, he watched Tony at work, finding his viewpoint from just under the man's chin to be a pleasingly good one, even with his reduced eyesight. It was interesting to watch the speed and skill with which Stark worked, blunt-fingered hands moving steadily as he brought together bits and pieces of machinery, joining them together with some goal in mind.
At one point Tony paused, putting down his tools, and moved over to a collection of interfaces that hung in mid-air to one side. His hands flew through the air, sculpting a shape out of light, and a little while after he resumed his seat Butterfingers brought him that shape made real, a complex bent form of metals and plastics that a number of the smaller assemblies he'd been creating slotted into neatly. He was clearly a craftsman; an artisan, adept with his hands.
"Sir, Captain Rogers has asked me to let everyone know that he's making soup for lunch today." Jarvis suddenly announced.
Tony paused in his work and looked up. "What kind of soup?"
"Beef barley vegetable, I believe. He's baking rolls to go with it."
"Sweet, count me in. Let me know when it's time to go eat."
"Of course, sir."
Tony resumed work, but it wasn't very much later before Jarvis announced that the rolls were out of the oven and the table being set, and Tony headed back upstairs.
"Interesting necklace, Tony," Bruce said as he sat down beside him. "Starting a new fashion?"
Loki lifted his head as Tony laughed. "I'd forgotten he was even there," Tony said, and reached up to touch his fingertips to Loki for a moment. "Surprisingly comfortable, once you get used to him, though I doubt live snakes are a fashion just anyone can pull off."
"He's a pretty specimen," Clint said, leaning over for a better look. "Don't think I know that type."
"Jarvis said he thinks he's a speckled racer."
"I've seen those," Bruce said, taking out his glasses and putting them on then leaning forward to take a closer look at Loki. "They're found from southern Texas down through Central America. Looks like one, though not the same colour morph I've encountered; it's the blue-green ones I've seen before,not a green-brown like that."
"Met a lot of snakes, have you?" Tony asked, sounding amused.
Bruce shrugged, putting his glasses away and returning to spreading butter on a split roll. "Spend as much time hiking around in the wilds as I have, and you learn to brush up on local snakes, spiders, frogs and so. Not a bright idea to take shelter from the rain under a manchineel tree, or get too touchy-feely with a poison dart frog."
"Ow, yeah... manchineel is nasty stuff," Clint agreed. "One of my earliest assignments with SHIELD, I got flown south to replace a sniper who'd made the mistake of trying to climb one to get a bead on his target. Didn't kill him but the blistering scarred pretty badly."
Loki tuned out their conversation after a while, more interested in his own thoughts that theirs. He thought he knew what would be the best way to wear down the binding spell faster; change forms as often as he could. Every time he slept and woke, the binding had to expend at least a little energy to enforce his shape-change from animal to human and back again. What he needed was a form that could sleep several times in a day. And he knew just the one to aim for. Tomorrow, though... for now, it was pleasant to just stay where he was.
