.-.

Playground

Chapter 15: Scissors, Snow Cones, Spoons

Loki's throat bobbed and his eyes closed for a second, too long for a mere blink. "I told Jane Ollie was here, when we were on the phone."

And yowzers, that was about what Tony figured his own face would look like if he had just realized he'd possibly unknowingly revealed where his kid was to the guy who'd tried to convince his brother to torture him.

Tony thumbed up the volume and answered the phone, signaling Loki to keep quiet. "Whatever you're selling, I already own thirty of them. Not interested."

"Is Loki's son at your house?"

"Oh, hi, Nick," Tony said, meeting Loki's stormy gaze. "I'm fine. How are you?"

"This isn't a social call. I don't do social calls. I asked you a question."

"In that case, as it turns out, he is. Cute little squirt. He's upstairs playing with Morgan."

"Have you lost your mind? And did it not occur to you that maybe you ought to let someone know about Loki dropping by Planet Earth? I'm disappointed in you, Stark."

"Aw, come on, Nick, you should be used to that by now. But in the interest of playing nice and making up, I hereby officially inform you that Papa Loki himself is here, too."

Loki's head dew back, eyes narrowing. Otherwise, thankfully, he didn't react.

"Is he listening?" Fury asked after a brief silence.

"He's a couple of floors up getting in on a little tea party action. I'll make sure to get a picture for you. It's weirdly funny."

"You left him alone with your daughter? I repeat: Have you lost your mind?"

"Not exactly alone, Pepper's there, too. You can let go of the pearls. It's fine. How'd you know Ollie was here, anyway? I thought we agreed on a mutual eyes-off policy."

"I had a visitor today. Your new pal didn't fill you in?"

"About your social calendar? Oh, wait, not social? You don't do social, right? Anyway, no, can't say that he did."

"But you knew he wanted to set himself up here on Earth."

"I knew he wanted to take his kid somewhere to play and get lunch while Jane worked on finding a job. Was Jane your visitor? That's how you found out about all this?"

"Unfortunately, yes. They've obviously figured out how to conceal the use of the bifrost. Imagine my surprise to find out Dr. Jane Foster, last known location on Asgard in marital bliss with their Dark Prince, is here in New York and wants to talk to me."

"I'm imagining it now and I have to admit it's a little funny. Did you get a picture of that? What did she want to talk to you about?"

Loki looked confused, and no wonder. Jane hadn't been suckered into Nick's spider web; she'd sought it out and sauntered into the center of it of her own accord.

"She wants a favor from us, for Loki. If you really want a picture of something you should've seen that. Did he track you down?"

"We ran into each other."

"You ran into each other. In a city of eight and a half million, a planet of seven and half billion?"

"It happens. And he was with his kid. Say what you will about Loki, he's not going to intentionally put his four-year-old in the middle of a potential battle."

"You have a surprisingly short memory."

"Give me a break, Nick. My memory's fine but a lot has changed since then. And your memory is selective. There's a fifty percent chance we wouldn't be here to have this conversation if Loki hadn't come back here to help us stop Thanos. What favor did Jane want?"

"She wants us to leave Loki alone. Not provoke him." Fury laughed. "I reminded her who had provoked whom. Seems her memory's not so sharp, either. But that's not the best part. She wants us to help rehabilitate his image. The woman has balls of steel, I'll give her that."

By the time Fury finished, Loki had silently pivoted, apparently no longer interested in sharing his reaction.

"Maybe that's a fair ask," Tony said, partly for Loki's sake, since he agreed with Fury's assessment of Jane's balls. "We couldn't have defeated Thanos without him. How many people are aware of that? I bet it's a lot less than those who know he was the guy letting in all those alien attackers over the skies of Manhattan."

"We might have found a way. But we wouldn't have needed to defeat Thanos in the first place without him."

"That's not fair. It's not even true, and you know it. We wouldn't have known we needed to defeat Thanos without him. Not the same thing. Thanos was still out there, and still going to come for us and everybody else regardless of anything Loki did or didn't do back then. If you wanted to get pedantic, you could even argue it's a good thing he showed up with his little 'free from freedom' speech. We may never have known what was coming otherwise."

"If you're volunteering to head up Loki's PR rehabilitation campaign, go right ahead. Try out that argument. I'll be sitting back with some popcorn and an ice-cold beer waiting to see how it polls."

"I said you could argue that. Didn't say I would." Tony could hear Pepper calling him petulant, telling him he was arguing for the sake of arguing. He couldn't help it. Fury was being annoying.

"Right. What's your assessment of Loki, then? I assume this isn't some fool's version of 'keep your enemies closer,' and that you don't see him as an immediate danger."

"Not unless you mess with his kid, and the word for that is 'parent,' not enemy. Although now that you mention it, I did see him take a wicked-looking knife to an innocent buttermilk chicken sandwich."

"What about the kid? Any superpowers?"

Loki's shoulders visibly stiffened.

The guy had to be terrified of what Tony might say. The moment of truth.

Or, the moment of obfuscation and deflection.

"The kid's half Loki and half Jane and all brains. But other than that, he's a pretty typical four-year-old. He's not swinging a mini-hammer or tossing people across the room if that's what you're getting at."

"And you wouldn't have a problem with Loki settling down on Earth?"

"Nobody's more surprised than me to say this, but nope," Tony said as Loki slowly turned, face guarded. "I think I might even be glad to have him around."

"Would you still say that if he wasn't standing right next to you? Don't waste my time or yours denying it. Do you think I called you before confirming who was located where?"

Tony silently swore. He'd guessed that Fury's team would have checked street cameras or real-time satellite imagery and already knew Loki was there. Maybe the techies had even been tracking Loki's phone while he was trying to track Jane's, with the added advantage of being able to trace their earlier call in real time. But to know Loki was standing next to him…infrared imagery? Loki was way taller than Pepper so nobody would mix the two up even without seeing any features other than height. He was confident there were no bugs of any kind inside the house. Though he'd be checking again and reviewing all of his security protocols after this.

"Yeah, in fact I would be saying the same thing," he said, missing only a short beat. "Got a question for you. Back on the helicarrier, did you really ask Thor to beat the secrets out of his own brother?"

Fury didn't miss even a quarter of a beat. "Desperate times, desperate measures. I'd think Loki would understand something like that. It wasn't personal. I was hoping we might save the planet from an alien invasion."

Loki's hand was motioning for him to hand over the phone, so he did. Whatever followed should be interesting. Tony grabbed the phone back before it was fully out of his hand and pressed the speaker button, then let Loki take it.

"Hello, Director Fury."

"Well hello there! Speak of the devil. How've you been, Loki? Life treating you well?"

"As you said, this is not a social call. I'm not interested in exchanging pleasantries, or pretending that I feel anything but contempt for you. You are not my friend, but you are not quite my enemy, either. You are, or were, meeting with my wife, and you were asking about my child. You do not want to make an enemy of me. I will have the rest of a very long life to dedicate to making you and all of your descendants regret it."

"You done?" Fury said after a missed beat that was clearly deliberate; Fury didn't miss them otherwise. "I wanted you to be able to get all that off your chest. You sound tense. When's the last time you took a nice family vacation? You heard of Disney World? Little Oliver would love it. Get his picture taken with Mickey Mouse. Course, the Magic Kingdom can be plenty tiring itself, so follow that up with a couple of days at the beach. Maybe get some a little bucket and shovel for the boy to build sand castles with."

"If you care too little for the generations who follow long after your own death, know this: Make me your enemy in this way, and you will also make all of Asgard the enemy of Midgard."

"My kids used to like building sand castles. Burying me in sand, too, when I let them. And they loved Disney World. My grandkids that've been, they love it, too. I don't know who you're used to dealing with out there in the big bad universe, but my little organization, we do what we can to protect the Earth from things no army or navy is prepared to confront. We get our hands dirty when we have to, when the threat is imminent. Innocent people, like your wife and son, are not targets. And Tony tells me he doesn't see a threat in the first place. Is that accurate?"

While Fury made his semi-subtle points and Loki – who probably got them but chose to ignore them –bulldozed right over them, Tony conceded that Fury was correct: Ollie would love Disney World. They'd taken Morgan there last October. Eaten in Cinderella's Castle, after Morgan recovered from nearly hyperventilating over meeting Cinderella. Taking in everything through her eyes…good memories. Morgan and Ollie would have a blast doing Disney together. And what would Loki make of the place?

"It's accurate," Loki said, after so long a beat Tony had started to lose track. Threats. Loki wasn't one, not now. "Except in response to a threat against me, or those I love."

"Aw, that's just adorable. Isn't that adorable, Tony? Loki's a family man now."

"Happens to the best of us," Tony said.

"I guess it can. You know, we have a saying in these parts, that one I was referring to earlier: Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Since we aren't friends and we aren't enemies, maybe we can find a compromise. I'm not going to insist, because I figure I know how you'd react to that, but I encourage you to come in for a little chat. No funny business. Bring Jane. Bring Oliver if you want. We'll clear up any confusion about where things stand, and how we all want them to go. Don't answer now. Think it over. Jane'll have my number. Give me a call when you're ready to talk."

./.


./.

"How long do you expect this tea party to last?" Loki asked, sitting stiff-spined on a chair at the bar.

Tony glanced at his watch. "Pepper's got another hour, hour and a half, before she has to go."

Loki drew in a couple of steadying breaths. How did one cope here without servants? Without either family or friends? Jane had some extended family in Colorado, but they were not close. There was Erik, of course, but that was complicated even without factoring in Erik's even greater physical distance. He could always send Ollie home, but that could not be a daily solution, not if they wanted Ollie to feel settled here. Also, shrouding the use of the bifrost wasn't exactly easy, and now Fury would be looking for it. Then there was Tony, currently piling dirty dishes into the sink.

"You okay? You look like you're constipated," Tony said once the dishes were out of sight. Someone else would probably come along to actually clean them later, because Tony had staff.

"Jane and I need to have another talk." She had not been tricked and she was not in danger, not at the moment. The relief over that had been fleeting, quickly overtaken by a sickening churn of other less positive reactions.

"Ollie's welcome to stay here as long as you need. Well, for the next two days, anyway. The Stark Fam was planning to head back upstate on Saturday. But…if I may?"

Loki deliberately made Tony wait before waving a hand in invitation.

"You're miffed that she went to Fury behind your back, right?"

"I'm rather more than miffed. I have never lied to her, not about anything. Lately it seems she's done nothing but lie, and now sneaking about and going to Nick Fury, of all people?"

"I'd be pissed, too. But hear me out, okay? Maybe we can defuse this thing a little before it blows up. Jane's been lying and keeping secrets, yeah. But not about just anything. She's not cheating. She's not living some separate life she doesn't let you in on. It all goes back to the Jotunheim problem. Maybe she's lied and kept secrets in part because you made her feel like she couldn't talk to you about it."

"That's not—." Except it was. It had already come up last night. Jane had given up trying to talk to him about it, because, as she'd put it, it was about as productive as talking to a brick wall and a brick wall was more rational. "There is some truth in that."

"And you have lied to her."

"I have not."

"You told her you changed your mind about moving here, didn't you? You didn't tell her you were just giving in so she wouldn't leave you."

Loki opened his mouth but promptly closed it again. He shouldn't have told this man so much. Now it was being wielded against him. "I may have…misrepresented my position, slightly. I wouldn't call it a lie."

"Just like she 'misrepresented her position' when she said her career was her main motivation for wanting to move here?"

"That was a lie."

"Potato, potahto."

"You can hardly—"

"I'm not saying they're exactly the same," Tony said, hand briefly out in a way Loki would not normally tolerate. "Who actually says 'potahto,' anyway? I'm just saying…it's something to think about. And another thing. Yeah, she should've told you about looking up Fury. But it sounds like she did it for you. That should count for something. And most importantly, you said yourself she didn't know about his little request to Thor. You weren't sure if she knew who he was at all. My guess? She knows he was the head of SHIELD, she knows he's still a major player when it comes to extraterrestrial threats, maybe through Erik Selvig. She wanted to make sure they don't see you as one, and to get them to make sure nobody else does, either."

"She should have told me."

"Can't disagree."

"How am I supposed to protect her if she keeps such things from me?"

"See, I wouldn't use that argument when you and Jane have your pow-wow. She was trying to protect you. And Ollie. I guarantee she won't appreciate it if you try to take that from her."

"Ollie…. I knew this was coming. That my presence would be discovered, that there would be…concerns. I didn't expect it so soon. I didn't expect my own wife to march into the belly of my enemies and announce my presence."

"You said Fury wasn't your enemy."

"It's called leaving maneuvering room. When your opponent has something you value, you do not back him into a corner such that the only move left to him is to destroy the thing, or the person, you value."

"Thanks for the lesson, Sun Tzu. But you're not at war, and Fury and ragtag SHIELD really aren't your enemies. Erstwhile enemies. Allies, more recently."

"You do enjoy your jests, don't you? Allies. No one here views me as an ally. Certainly not Nick Fury."

"I do."

Loki mustered a sufficiently sour expression after a few flustered seconds.

"Potential ally? As for the rest…no one in Fury's crowd's forgotten you helping us defeat Thanos, either. They'd be stupid not to consider you a potential ally. Stupider not to realize that it's in their interest for you to be an ally and not an enemy. Fury's a lot of things, but he's not stupid."

Loki agreed, reluctantly. When he'd first encountered Fury, he'd thought the man was more bluster than brains. At the time, of course, he'd thought of all of them essentially that way. Even the more learned ones, like Erik, had been so easily manipulated and overcome. Later he'd realized how well SHIELD's director must have read him. The man had barely bothered to question him at all, but instead had known exactly who to send to get him to reveal something he hadn't been quite ready to. Of course, that was after first going to Thor, who had informed Fury – correctly – that no amount of pain would break him. No, Fury wasn't stupid. The man knew how, and where, to strike.

"He asked about my son," Loki said, chest tightening anew.

"He knew you were here. He was trying to rattle your chain. He does that. But he's a father, too, in case you missed that blaring hint. And a grandfather. He's not going to mess with a kid. He's actually kind of a softie toward them."

"You're so certain of that? Thank you, for not saying anything about…about Ollie's other heritage. But he will eventually find out about that, too."

"So? The kid turns blue with red eyes, so what? Not like he shoots laser beams out of those eyes. Props, by the way. Ollie told me about the shapeshifting shenanigans you shared this morning. He was excited about it. I didn't know you were going back up there to give him the family backstory right then and there."

"I wasn't planning on it. The moment seemed…not right precisely, but as right as it would ever be. But you still don't grasp the situation. A Frost Giant—"

"I thought we were going with Jotun."

"A Jotun isn't defined solely by skin and eyes. I didn't expect this somehow, but Ollie…he can make ice. He was upset about his ears, and his fingers dug into my neck…I could feel the temperature dropping where he touched me, and when I pulled his hand away, ice flaked off of it. He didn't realize he'd done it, it was perfectly innocent. But that's how they attack. If he'd been touching a…a true Aesir like that, he would have caused what we call frostburn. Blackened, dead skin, damaged blood vessels and soft tissues. It requires a healer's treatment. If he'd been touching one of your people…I don't know. It could have resulted in death."

For once, Tony didn't have an immediate glib response or a moderately to severely insulting jest. He looked worried. The correct reaction, to be sure, but it still stung that Tony was almost certainly imagining Ollie injuring or even killing Morgan.

"What will happen, then, if Fury learns about this? That Ollie…that he could be dangerous? We shouldn't be here. This is a mistake. How can we possibly raise him here now? He could seriously hurt someone, even if simply by accident. Would Fury's SHIELD remnants not then swoop in to contain the threat? I can protect my son, but I cannot be at his side every moment of every day, not if he's to attend school, or to have any sort of normal life."

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves, Usain, you're racing right off the track. First…okay, so Ollie could be dangerous, if he accidentally gives somebody freezer burn. But he could also be dangerous if he picks up a pair of scissors or a kitchen knife and starts playing Magic Monkey and accidentally stabs someone. What do we do to prevent that? Hide the butcher knives and teach our kids not to run around with sharp objects. You'll just have to teach him.

"Second. Wouldn't this be a concern no matter where you lived? I mean sure, you're pretty hardy, but your kids are just kids, right? Not strong like they'll be when they grow up? That's what I thought you were saying earlier."

"That's correct," Loki said. Correct both that Aesir children were just as vulnerable as Midgardian ones, and that Ollie could thus accidentally cause serious injury to either. That hadn't occurred to him before, not that he'd had a chance to think any of this through yet. "But I—"

"And third, Ollie's four. Kids don't get locked up, prosecuted, or persecuted for things they do when they're four, not even if they did it on purpose."

"Does that also apply to 'illegal aliens?'"

"Hey, you're the illegal alien. I'm not sure of the details, but I think Ollie's got U.S. citizenship, if you want him to have it. His mother's a U.S. citizen. You probably just need to document it."

"I find it hard to believe that any mere document would stop Fury from doing whatever he wanted to do. Do you not also have documents forbidding the torture of compliant prisoners?" Nevertheless, in his first free moment Loki was going to be investigating the rules for ensuring Ollie was a citizen of this country, as long as it didn't require renouncing Asgardian citizenship.

"I know you're not going to be a fan of this idea, but the best way to make sure you've got nothing to worry about from Fury? Go talk to him, like he said. Let him meet Ollie. Tell him about being born on Jotunheim. Tell him about Ollie's freezer burn issue. No— Okay, okay, don't kill the messenger, hear me out, all right? Just take away the potential surprise factor. He'll get it. Ollie might be the first kindergartener here with a unique ability, but he won't be the last. What if Steve has a kid with super-strength? Or Wanda has a kid that could give all the other kids and their moms and dads nightmares? God knows what we'd be dealing with if Bruce ever managed to find a woman brave enough to set a nine-month timer on the oven. But who's better equipped to deal with the most epic of epic toddler tantrums than Bruce, Jr.'s dad? Fury knows that."

"Even if I was willing to discuss such personal matters with that man – which I most assuredly am not – 'Bruce, Jr.,' is irrelevant. I told you I don't know how to teach my son how to control this ability. I have no idea how it works. I don't know if what he experienced today is normal for…for one of their young, or abnormal, because Ollie is half Midgardian. And this is what they use to kill my people." Loki paused; his voice had been growing louder and he didn't want it to carry upstairs. "I could not possibly instruct him in this, even if I did know how."

"Au contraire, mon ami. Bruce's angrier half wasn't with him as a kid. Good luck getting a preschooler on board with the self-control Bruce has. But never mind that. Since when are you such a Negative Nancy? It's always no, I can't, that's impossible with you now. Where's the guy who showed up all by his lonesome announcing he was here to solve our freedom problem by…what, enslaving us all? What was your plan? Whatever it was, it was a dumb plan, but by God you sounded like you were convinced it would work."

Loki forced his jaw to open. "At the time I was severely—"

"Delusional?"

"I was going to say underestimating your people." He swallowed. That wasn't all. And maybe, for once, it was worth saying so. "And under a great deal of pressure."

It was another of those rare times when, apparently, he'd managed to surprise Tony enough that the response was slow in coming. Slow enough that Loki wished he'd simply rolled his eyes and let the man say whatever he wanted. It wasn't as though it mattered at this point.

"But also a teensy bit delusional, right?"

Loki hadn't anticipated a particular response, but no response, no direct one – Tony essentially ignoring what he'd just said – was unexpected. Annoying and gratifying in strangely equal measure. "Perhaps a teensy bit," Loki said in a sour tone. Better to show the annoyance.

"In other words," Tony finally said, "not that much has changed. Maybe you're underestimating Ollie. He's a bright kid. You're giving up before you've tried."

"I am not giving up. I'm simply noting that it's…all right, not impossible, but difficult. Exceedingly difficult."

"Another thing. Stop thinking of it as 'those people' killing 'your people.' Your son is your number one people, no matter who was born where. And why not run with the scissors? Metaphorically, obviously, that being the whole point. You can kill somebody with a pair of scissors, too. Or you can do nifty stuff like cutting paper. Do Asgardian kids make paper snowflakes? Maybe Ollie can make the real thing."

"They do not make snow," Loki said, growing impatient. He'd endured a great deal of lecturing over the last twenty-four hours; Tony was not truly belittling him, but he was perhaps reaching his limit. "You can't tell the difference between a Frost Giant and Thor."

"Okay, his own snow cones, then? That'd be a neat trick. All the kids would—"

"Ollie is not going to do tricks!"

"Woah, Nellie. What raw nerve did I just touch? Calm down, will you? Do you even know what snow cones are?"

"No," Loki said after a moment. "Though it makes no difference."

"You wouldn't say that if you'd grown up with snow cones. Never mind. Look, all I'm saying is, if he can make ice, and he can learn to shape it into stuff, it's not like the only possible thing to shape ice into is a knife for slaughtering noble heroic Aesir, is it? Is it? Come on, Loki, you've got to give me that much, at least. The only times you ever saw them was when you were fighting them, is that right? So of course the only thing you saw them make was weapons. But it makes no sense that 'killing tool' is the only thing they're capable of making."

Loki grit his teeth and stared down at the countertop while he worked on keeping himself in check. In some unfathomable way, he did like Tony. But there were still times – like now – when he wanted to punch the so-called Iron Man. Had he been speaking with Thor he already would have. But Thor would have laughed it off and given him a hard shove, or perhaps punched back if he'd pushed his brother far enough. Tony's jaw might shatter.

He forced himself to set aside the continued lecturing and consider what Tony had said. To his further annoyance, the man had a point. Though he hadn't consciously thought about it before, he'd never imagined the Frost Giants forming anything other than a weapon with their ice. Which made about as much sense as Tony suggested it did. Of course they could make other things, too.

Still staring at the countertop, he grimaced. Then his chest pulsed. Then he was laughing hysterically.

Staring at Loki, Tony wondered if something in Loki had literally snapped, because the guy looked like he'd blown the last fuse and all the lights were out and nobody was home, with certifiable insanity filling in the space Loki's brain had once inhabited.

"Care to let me in on the joke, there, Walter White?"

"Not a joke," Loki wheezed out, head coming up. There were honest-to-God tears in the guy's eyes, which were squinted nearly shut. "I imagined them…." Loki cleared his throat, got the laughter mostly under control, and made an effort to open his eyes. "I imagined them making their own cutlery."

"Okay. Juxtaposition of the big bad evil Jotun stereotype with the mundane. I can see that." Nothing had snapped, thankfully, but Loki's sense of humor had some weird quirks.

"Where is your imagination, Tony? I imagined them being served a bowl of oatmeal."

It still took a couple of seconds, probably only because it was coming from Loki. "Piping hot oatmeal?"

"Steaming. I imagined one of them trying again. And again. And again. And never comprehending why he couldn't get a single bite into his mouth."

Loki dissolved into cackles again and Tony chuckled along with him. Seeing Loki able to stretch his ideas about the Jotuns a bit was nice. Less nice that the stretch was accompanied by a Jotuns are so stupid that framework. Progress? Mixed bag? Either way, it was kind of funny. And Loki had looked like he could use some lightening up.

"That's the spirit," Tony said, whether it was or it wasn't. "When you work on it with Ollie, you make it fun. Make it a game. And while you're at it, you work on the temperature issue, on being careful about touching people when he's rocking his Jotun look. You figure out how he can control it together, over time. Who knows how hard it might be in practice, but conceptually we're talking kindergarten-level stuff here. A reach for you, I know, but I'd think you'd be able to grasp this."

"Perhaps," Loki said agreeably – shockingly agreeably – hands raised and fingers spread. "And you're right, Ollie is a bright child. Did you know he can already operate Jane's telescopes? I've always picked up new things easily, even at his age. But I think he bests me."

"You think you'll talk to Fury?"

"No," Loki said immediately. "I'll have nothing to do with him."

"Whatever you decide, you might want to think about letting bygones be bygones, for everybody's sake."

"I should forget about what he asked my brother to do?"

"Forgetting's hard. But you could leave it in the past and keep your eyes on the present. The future."

"No."

"Hypocrite much? That's exactly what you're hoping everyone does for you, isn't it?"

Every last bit of joviality lingering from the dumb-Jotuns-with-melting-spoons moment vanished. "I have been forced into that position. I didn't seek it out. And I don't particularly care what anyone else thinks of me, except for in how it affects my wife and son."

"And yet look at us here. You threw me out a window, and let's be clear about that: If I hadn't been ready with a suit nearby and the means to get it on mid-dropping-like-a-stone, some poor public servant would've had a really nasty clean-up job, and whatever he managed to scrape up of me would be six feet under right now. But I've managed to let go of that. Or does that not count because you didn't ask my non-existent brother to throw me out the window for you?"

To Tony's surprise, Loki slouched back in his chair and sighed. "All right," he said, sounding more tired than irritated, Tony thought. "I'll consider it. At some point. But I make no guarantees. I…I trust you. I do not trust him. You yourself said he should not be trusted. Can we stop talking about this now? Otherwise I'm going to have to embark on a renewed quest to find that newspaper you asked me to bring in."

"Sure. But when you talk to Jane about all this, just try not to lose your cool over that uncool cloak-and-daggers meeting with Fury. When you tell her about him trying to get Thor to smack the answers out of you, she'll get why she can't keep you in the dark on things like that. In addition to the whole not keeping secrets from your life partner, we're in this together thing."

Tony stuck his hands in his pockets as he finished speaking and found a phone not just in the right one, where he expected it, but the left as well. Loki's phone. He pulled it out and handed it back to Loki, who was fixing one remarkably imposing frown on him.

Loki examined the phone and considered questioning Tony on whether the man had surreptitiously done anything to it, but in the end slipped it into his pocket without comment. "Noted, and thank you for the unsolicited marital advice," he said, dour sarcasm mostly in response to the galling reality that Tony was right, again. He could berate and shout and let his temper get the better of him, but Jane, knowing him and Thor both, knowing how strained their brotherhood had been before and how strong it was now, would surely be appalled at how Fury had attempted to use Thor against him. Further chastening would be unnecessary, and possibly counterproductive.

"You're very welcome," Tony said with a self-satisfied grin.

"Boss, now seems a good time to tell you I've identified the location Dr. Foster made that call from. And it's the same location that Director Fury just called from, as I'm sure you assumed."

"Okay. Not an immediate need anymore, I presume? Shoot it over to both of our phones, FRIDAY. Oh, if Loki approves, go ahead and get his phone encrypted. Same suite I have. Soon as it's all set up and he's got his authentications in place, send him both of those videos we talked about."

"Loki approves," he said once he realized they were waiting on a response from him.

"It'll only take a few minutes, Mr. Odinson. You can establish your preferred authentications whenever it's convenient."

Loki nodded as though he knew exactly what authentications were. He figured it was something more than the passwords Jane had forgotten to her e-mail account, her bank account, her professional association account, and every other account she hadn't checked in years that she needed access to once they'd decided to move back here. He didn't want to think about that right now.

Instead, he pointedly looked around. "Don't you have a bar in this place?"

"I have three. Bit early, though, no?"

"No. Your 'after five' rule is infantile. But if it helps me acquire a drink, it's after five on Asgard at the moment."

Tony laughed. "You're invoking the 'it's five o'clock somewhere' exception? Not necessary, I was just ribbing you, but points for invoking another planet's time zone, that's a new twist."

"To my deepest regret, I can't claim the points. Jane says it all the time. Or rather, on Asgard she says it's five o'clock on Midgard, not that anyone is objecting."

"We really need to plan something. I barely know Jane but I think we're going to get along swimmingly."

"Wonderful. But if it's all the same to you, I'll have that drink now," Loki said, rolling his shoulders to try to force his muscles to relax.

Tony's visible recognition was nearly instantaneous.

Loki painted a smile across his lips.

"I guess I do owe you one, one you directly request. Okay, let's go down a level to the living room. Let Pep and the kiddos keep their space."

Loki slid out of the chair and followed Tony down the stairs. He was no stranger to multiple flights of stairs – Tony's home paled in comparison to the heights of Asgard's palace – but it did seem peculiar for one family's individual living space to be split apart on so many levels. He preferred the layout of Tony's other home.

"Did that hurt, by the way? Because it looked like it hurt."

"It hurt," Loki said, no need to ask what Tony was referring to.

"I feel like I should say 'sorry,' because that's the polite thing to do, societal expectations and all, but you did deserve it, so…."

"I thought we were letting bygones be bygones."

"We are. Doesn't mean you didn't deserve it."

"At the moment, I think I deserve a drink."

"I second that motion, and join it."


Notes

Still here! Extra complications lately, family complications. Few spare moments in the evenings and I spend those too exhausted to do much. Those of you who've sent recent PMs and not heard back, this is why. And if you've sent less-recent PMs, well, this is me still trying to drag myself out of the pandemic pit and basically getting thrown a setback. I'm otherwise doing better - a return to routine (and vaccination!) has been really helpful. Enough about all that (just trying to reassure those of you who may've been worried). I'd really hoped to finish this story before the Loki series premiered (today is June 8, 2021, so that is tomorrow!), and even that I could finish it tonight, because I am very very (very!) close, but there is just no gas in the brain-tank, I'm just not capable of it. Best I could do, then, was to do the tiny last bit of editing left on this chapter and get it out.

So who's excited about the Loki premiere? I'm just hoping I'll be able to set aside, mentally, everything else going on and give our Tom Hiddleston Loki the undivided attention he deserves. There is much that looks promising about the series. Someone today wished me that it was all I wanted and hoped for, and I wish the same to all of you! Sometimes I still can't quite believe we're getting this much Loki-focused content, when all these years we've had to settle for whatever individual here-and-there scenes we could get. (Yeah, I'm also kind of memorializing the day here.)