The elevator doors slid open for Tony.
Loki was waiting for him with open arms.
"Why does it look like you're gonna give me a hug when I should be doing that for you? Clint had no right! Our personal life shouldn't matter to him! And he just can't seem to move on-"
Tony's ranting words were cut off when Loki stepped forward and enveloped him in a hug; arms moving in calming circles across his back.
Loki said, "You're not some title that the media gave to you years ago. You are a good man, Tony Stark, a good person. Your friends, your team, they aren't using you for your mind or for your technology. Clint didn't go about that in the best way possible. But that is because he lacks subtlety despite the fact that his previous jobs required it. Perhaps he lacks that because he feels comfortable enough in your home to negate its purpose." He slowly lowered his arms and backed away from Tony. Loki continued to speak, "Clint had seen us the other night."
"We weren't even doing anything though," Tony mumbled.
With a smile Loki replied, "I'm sure the others would have figured it out eventually. Besides, it's his job to notice things. And when was the last time you cooked let alone the fact that you were cooking for someone other than yourself."
With a shrug Tony walked into the kitchen and started looking for something edible in the fridge.
Loki followed after him and watched him open and close various doors before mentioning that he had asked Jarvis to order from a nearby Italian restaurant.
Tony paused with his hand around a cabinet handle and smiled. "Great. Now I don't have to do a 4th sweep of this room looking for something to piece together for dinner."
Shaking his head Loki walked a few steps closer and joked, "You mean now you don't have to look around and settle for digging your hands into a box of my snacks."
They moved back to the living room hand in hand. They curled up on the couch to watch a mindless episode of something involving cooking as they waited for the food to arrive.
Jarvis interrupted after a while to say that the food was on the elevator and heading for floor 77. After a pause he added, "Bruce Banner is asking if it is alright for him to visit. What should I tell him?"
Tony shared a searching look with Loki before he said, "You can let him up."
After a few moments the elevator opened up to reveal Bruce holding onto their bags of takeout. He handed the bags to Tony who placed them on the coffee table in front of the couch. After handing them over Bruce pulled a chair over and sat down.
The plastic bags crinkled as Tony unloaded them. They were full of containers of eggplant primavera, some sort of pasta with shrimp, chicken marsala, fettuccine alfredo, and some kind of salad which seemed to have apples and walnuts mixed in. The salad was automatically handed over to Loki with a plastic fork on top.
With a wave of his hand Loki summoned the utensils he preferred from the kitchen along with some napkins.
As the crinkling slowed down Bruce began to speak, "Clint probably shouldn't have jumped right into that. We have sort of suspected that you two are...dating I guess. Clint definitely wanted everyone at dinner tonight to confirm or deny that suspicion. And I guess in a manner of speaking he did confirm it. But-"
Loki held up his hand and placed the salad back on the coffee table. "As soon as I arrived on the floor I rather suspected that someone would ask a similar question to what Barton asked. I did not feel comfortable with answering in such a setting. Nor did I feel like dealing with the aftermath of that question, answered or not. You can tell the rest of The Avengers that it isn't their business who either Tony or I are seeing. Though if you must know, I care for Tony. We seem to do better together and I don't need judgement for that. And he doesn't need judgement because of that either. In future, if any of you feel the need to ask questions just ask. I don't particularly enjoy being lied to."
The room was silent for a few moments. Bruce let out a breath and said, "I'm sorry...we'll keep that in mind….Clint might have meant for it to be an ambush of sorts but I don't think all of us wanted that. In the end I think we just wanted to make sure that Tony, and you, were alright. That you weren't manipulating him or something-"
Tony let out a splutter but Bruce continued, "And I would add that it would be good to make sure that Tony wasn't manipulating you. I'm just an outsider and you two have been keeping this pretty well hidden without that much effort it seems. But we...we're a family and need to keep looking out for each other."
Bruce Banner nodded, stood up, and walked to the elevator. As the doors opened he said, "Enjoy your evening. Hopefully we can actually have dinner together sometime." The doors slid closed behind him.
The two curled up on the couch with their dinner and watched mindless television until they fell asleep. The sounds of various cooking shows floated through their dreams. That combined with the existence of the comfort found in each other's arms led to uninterrupted sleep.
In the morning, once Loki had blinked the sleep from his eyes, he cleared the dishes and put the kettle on to boil. He knew that he would have to assure Barton that he wasn't as bad of a person as he could be. Yet in the drifting morning light, Loki felt calm. He was peaceful. Almost unpained as he walked about the floor of Stark's tower that he could call his own. Reassured by Banner's words from the night previous, Loki was sure that he would be fine. He was almost confident that he would not find violence when he left this section of his home.