Tony kicked back on the couch with a bag of dried blueberries and a tablet. Loki crawled over, practically crashing onto the couch next to him. With their late-night, or early-morning lab sessions, Loki had developed a particular fondness for Tony.
Tony gripped his tablet tighter. Loki may have shown almost no interest in his own tablet, but had started showing quite a lot of interest in other people's. Tony wondered if he simply enjoyed the chaos that ensued whenever he snatched a tablet out of someone's hands or knocked it to the floor, before covering the screens in spit. He would have broken numerous run-of-the-mill tablets by this point, but not StarkPads.
Loki ignored Tony's tablet, this time. He somehow had a book in hand, one Tony hadn't seen him holding on his way over to the couch. Had he stashed it in the cushions, or called it over with his powers?
Tony was about to ask Jarvis when the book was unceremoniously dropped atop his tablet. Loki seemed to have picked up that Tony didn't like being handed things.
Loki tapped the cover, impatiently. Expectantly. He'd declared it was reading time, and had decided Tony's work would wait.
"JARVIS, read this to him." Tony passed the book back. JARVIS's smooth voice immediately filled the room. Loki grinned; he had a particular love of British accents.
Tony turned back to his work, but the book was dropped on his tablet again. Loki smacked the cover, even more demanding, grabbed Tony's hand and moved it to the cover. Tony sighed, leafing through the pages until he found the one JARVIS was reading.
In the few moments Tony spent flipping through the book, Loki snatched his bag of blueberries, upended it, and began squishing blueberries into the sofa cushions while shoveling others in his mouth. Some half-chewed berries made their way back onto the cushions.
Tony shook his head. He'd have to buy a new couch, with those stains, but if anyone could afford it, it was him.
"You did that just to get my blueberries, didn't you?" he asked as Loki pushed the almost empty bag back towards him, ignoring the book entirely.
Loki's favorite method of mischief seemed to be stealing people's food. He wasn't hungry, and while he mouthed what he stole, he often spit it back out.
Loki was the only one brave enough to steal from Natasha, and the only one who wouldn't receive a glare filled with promises of pain.
But his favorite thing to swipe was Clint or Tony's coffee.
"Aw, Loki." Clint groaned as the coffee pot was snatched from the counter. The pot shattered, and burning coffee splattered. Loki shrieked but his burn was already healing. Clint fared less well.
JARVIS began brewing another pot of coffee, and they all kept a careful eye on Loki, but Loki was more focused on attempting to put his mouth on Clint's burnt skin as Bruce looked it over. Clint awkwardly looked at Thor for help, who explained "Mother used to kiss our injuries, when we were small."
Loki managed to get Clint's- more of a lick than a kiss- but Clint mumbled that the pain had almost entirely faded. Clint drank another pot as Bruce inspected his leg, which looked better as well.
Clint and Tony quickly learned to drink their coffee out of Loki's reach, until one time, Tony's mug was knocked from his hand by an invisible force.
It was awesome, seeing Loki's powers. He wasn't sure if Loki was doing it intentionally or not, but one look at Loki's grin told him he probably was. Tony just wished his coffee wouldn't be the victim, but at least Loki had yet to smash his scotch.
Tony devised a new way for Loki to make choices and interact with technology. Really, for Tony's inventions, it was downright basic. At first, there was only one button, which Loki hit to start playing songs from his personal playlist compiled by JARVIS.
Of course, JARVIS could still watch for Loki's tell-tale head-swaying, watch his expressions until they found a song that satisfied him. But this way gave Loki more control. He'd hit the button to start the music.
Loki picked it up quicker than most of them had expected. He mashed the button to skip past unwanted songs, and stopped on whatever he was in the mood for.
Clint took the time to show Loki how certain buttons on remotes did the same thing on his (old-fashioned, according to Tony) stereo, but Loki waved the remote around like a club.
Soon, Loki had a whole panel of music controls, like a DJ. All involved sensory components. He had different buttons for different genres of music, a disk to fast-forward and rewind, a slider to control volume, a dial to distort the sounds.
They almost regretted giving Loki the panel.
He loved causing chaos with it, and driving them bonkers (all except Clint, who could simply switch off his hearing aids). Blasting music wasn't exactly uncommon, especially in Tony's lab, but Loki enjoyed switching songs and genres at such speeds that they became a chaotic mess of notes and lyrics. He'd spin the disc back to play the same part over and over, or play non-preferred genres around certain people.
Loki played classical around Tony, and heavy metal around Bruce and Steve. There was no use giving Loki headphones- he ripped them off in a heartbeat and hurled them to the floor every time.
"You are being being discourteous to our teammates." Thor frowned. He tried to distract Loki with books, but the more he tried, the more Loki wanted to use his new, custom remote control.
Only when the team began using sign language rather than trying to shout over the myriad of musical noises emerging from Loki's panel did Loki seem to tire of it.
Bruce, especially, struggled with Loki's musical mayhem. He had a hard enough time with Tony's rock music, let alone when it was mixed with incompatible songs at whiplash speed.
One floor of the tower had a grand piano that was almost never used. Bruce wheeled Loki's chair over there, pushed aside the bench, and showed Loki how the keys produced notes.
He really should have predicted the outcome.
Loki hammered the keys to create a jumble of bass notes that rumbled throughout the room, chuckling. He pounded incompatible chords and began screeching along to his music.
Bruce left swiftly to listen to calming, classical music. He had to move several rooms away to drown out the piano.
A few minutes later, Loki joined him, having evidently pitched himself out of his wheelchair to follow.
Loki was suddenly content to listen to Chopin, letting the notes wash over him in peace.
"Are you trying to bring out the Hulk?" Bruce sighed. "I know you like green, but I don't think you'd like him."
Loki rubbed his eyes with his fists. He wasn't crying, didn't seem tired. It could have merely been an itch, but Bruce chose to respond as if he was saying something.
"You have green eyes." Bruce says. "When my eyes go green, the rest of me follows."
Loki's green eyes followed Bruce for a bit, but soon shifted to the view outside.
Clint had some pretty awful experiences while growing up in a circus, but he still enjoyed juggling. Loki, at first, seemed content to watch Clint juggle all sorts of items. Loki shouted with excitement as apples, knives and balls spun through the air.
But of course, Loki had to start chaos. He'd grab anything nearby and throw it at Clint, but Clint would swiftly and smoothly add the TV remote, a grape, or whatever Loki threw to his cycle.
Then Loki started using his powers.
It was one thing for Clint to catch something that was thrown- it was another for an item to suddenly be yanked or pushed by an unseen force. Once, Clint himself was pushed backwards with such force that he toppled, and all the items crashed to the floor.
Loki's eyes were wide as he cackled.