Chapter 37 - Happy Birthday

"I feel fine," Tony complained. "I don't need to be in this wheelchair."

"You know it's hospital policy, Tony. I mean, you should," Pepper told him as she pushed him out the front doors of the hospital. "You only end up in here once every six months."

"Oh, yeah. Did you remember to get my frequent visitor card stamped? One more and I get a free colonoscopy."

"When you start making jokes that bad, that's how I know you haven't completely recovered from the anesthesia. You're just lucky that you get to come home with us."

"How am I not in jail right now, by the way? I remember being handcuffed to the bed, and not in the fun way."

"Officer Knight decided not to arrest you for assaulting her, given the circumstances. And luckily, that neurosurgeon, Strange, declined to press charges for attempted assault—although I think that was only because Doctor Palmer convinced him not to. Apparently, the two of them are dating."

"You're kidding. That blowhard actually has a girlfriend?"

"Somehow, you still have a fiancée."

"Good point."

Happy pulled up to the curb behind the wheel of the custom Rolls Royce limousine that Tony had bought just to make an impression on business contacts he personally found insufferable unless he had the opportunity to show them up.

"Isn't this overkill for driving a few blocks home from the hospital?" asked Tony.

"It's the only car we have that seats six people comfortably," Pepper explained. "Although I guess I could have taken a taxi and met the rest of you back at the tower—"

"Wait, six?" Tony looked up and saw that both Loki and Pietro were standing, hanging out of the sun roof. "What the hell? How was he released before I was?"

"The doctors were amazed, but Pietro seems to have already made a full recovery."

"He just had brain surgery!"

"Which is why I had SI's lawyers to come out and make sure everyone involved signs an NDA. The last thing I need to deal with right now is having his 'miraculous' recovery make the tabloids."

"Hey, sit down," Tony called to the boys. "That's dangerous."

"I told you," he heard Wanda shout from inside the car.

"They always do it in movies," Pietro protested.

"We're only in the parking lot." Loki rolled his eyes. "We weren't going to do this it while we were driving on the roadway."

"Accidents can happen anywhere, even in hospital parking lots. Just sit down and put your seatbelts on."

"You're being overprotective again," complained Loki.

"I don't care. By the way, we still need to have a discussion about your listening skills."

"We already did."

"When?"

"When I was a cat."

"When were you a cat?"

Happy got out of the car and opened the front passenger door. Pepper decided that was probably a good idea; while there was plenty of room for all of them in the back, the trip back from the hospital wasn't the best place for Tony and Loki to renew their earlier disagreement over the events of the previous day.

√v^√v^√

Happy opened Tony's door for him, and he grasped the top of the car door to pull himself up. Happy frowned at him, but he knew Tony to well enough not to bother offering to help more than he already had. On his own, Tony trudged towards the open elevator, where Pepper and the kids were already waiting for him.

"Welcome home, Sir." As the elevator doors closed behind him, Tony had never been so glad to hear JARVIS's voice. All he wanted to do was go up to the penthouse and finish sleeping off the anesthesia.

"You should know that the others have returned. They have gathered in the common room."

"All the others?" asked Tony hopefully.

"Doctor Banner is with them," JARVIS confirmed. "However, Zora did not return with them."

"So we're down one guest, huh? It was starting to get crowded around here anyway."

"Actually, we are up by one. They brought Doctor Betty Ross and Doctor Karla Sofen back with them."

"They brought that nut job Sofen here?"

"She is currently secured in one of the guest rooms. The others have been deliberating over what they should do with her."

"Yeah, well, I'm definitely not adopting her." Tony closed his eyes as he leaned against the side of the elevator. "The three I have are more than enough trouble."

"Three?"

Tony realized his mistake, and began to backpedal. "You're not any trouble, J—well, much trouble, anyway. Also, you aren't adopted. You're my biological kid."

"I appreciate the sentiment, Sir, but that is physically impossible."

"It's the truth, J. Your mother was a Commodore 64. It was a whirlwind romance—"

"Should I be jealous?" Pepper pursed her lips at him, but he knew it was only to keep herself from laughing.

Tony went on. "You know, J, you really ought to stop calling me 'Sir' all the time. You're family, not a servant."

"What should I call you then?" asked the AI.

"You could start by calling me 'Tony."

"Very well. I shall call you Tony from now on, Sir—I mean, Tony."

The elevator opened out onto the common room, where sure enough, all the other residents of the tower had gathered, but there didn't seem to be much deliberation going on. Instead, it seemed that they had gathered there to stare at one another in silence. Bruce was there, sitting in between Leonard and a woman with long dark hair who must have been Betty. A couple of dogs—or what he guessed were dogs, since while they had four eyes between them, they weren't distributed in the way that he would have expected—sat at their feet. Thori was also there, playfully biting at one of the bigger dog's ears. It turned around and licked the top of his head.

"Hey, Brucie Bear," said Tony. "Glad to see you're alive."

Bruce smiled at him weakly. "Sorry if I worried you."

"Yeah, we can talk about it later. Did someone die?" Tony immediately regretted the comment, though, because in their line of work, it was entirely possible that someone had died. JARVIS hadn't said why Zora hadn't come back with them.

Natasha looked up at him from the other sofa, where she and Clint sat, half a couple six packs of cheap beer between them. They must have picked it up themselves somewhere, given that he hadn't had the tower restocked since Thor's buddies had visited. Tony couldn't help smiling at the image of the Quinjet landing outside a 7-11. The corner of Nat's lips twisted upward. "No one's dead, but as it turns out, Steve is a man after all."

"Was that in question?"

Steve, who sat in a chair at the end of the room by himself, frowned at her. "What is that supposed to mean, Nat?"

"I believe she means that an attractive woman offers to hold your scepter, and you completely forget she's an enemy spy," Sif answered from the other side of the room. From the look on her face, she didn't seem to find it nearly as funny as Natasha did despite the double entendre; then again, maybe it hadn't been intentional. He was pretty sure that like Thor, she was fairly dependent on AllSpeak to communicate with them, and as far as he knew, AllSpeak didn't really lend itself to that sort of thing.

"Zora isn't a spy; she's a college student! How do we even know she took the scepter to Doom, anyway? Maybe there's another explanation."

"Oh, wow," said Natasha. "I was kidding, but you actually have it bad for her, don't you?"

"I, uh—" Steve's face had gone red, and for once, Tony felt a little bit sorry for the guy.

Bruce interrupted them. "Steve, you know Zora's only seventeen, right?"

Steve blinked at him. "Really? She looks older than that."

Tony burst out laughing. "Oh, wow. And you're what, ninety-five? I'm pretty sure that officially makes you a dirty old man."

Steve slumped further down in his seat. "If you don't count the time I lost, I would only be in my mid-twenties."

"And maybe that age difference wouldn't have been a big deal in your day, old timer, but now it's considered pretty bad. I mean, the age of consent in New York is seventeen, but in some states sleeping with a seventeen-year-old is a felony for anyone over the age of twenty-one—"

"Just to be clear, she stayed in my room while she was there, but she didn't consent to anything."

Natasha shook her head. "You might want to try rephrasing that, Steve. Although I have to say, I also find the fact that Tony knows so much about statutory rape laws a little disturbing."

"It's common knowledge, Nat. Personally, I haven't been interested in scoring with a seventeen-year-old since I was fifteen. I've always been into mature women."

Steve's face turned an even deeper shade of red. "I meant that we didn't do anything that would require consent! She slept in my bed, and I slept on the couch."

Tony leered at him. "Yeah, but you totally want to do things with her that require consent, don't you?"

Steve looked like he wanted to crawl under something and die. Tony was enjoying it immensely.

Pepper hit him on the arm. "Cut it out, Tony. Honestly, I thought Zora was older than that, too. She's very mature for her age."

"That doesn't make it right," Tony objected. "I know I wouldn't want Loki dating an older man. Or woman, for that matter."

"So it is alright with you if I date Loki?" asked Pietro.

Tony had almost forgotten that the kids were standing right behind them. "I've told you before, you're too young to date anyone."

"But you said that when you were fifteen—"

"You're fourteen."

"I'm fifteen."

"Since when?"

"Today."

Damn. Somehow, he'd never thought to ask when any of the kids' birthdays were. Loki was bound to have had one at some time during the past year too, but Tony hadn't thought about it, and the kid hadn't said anything. Maybe birthdays weren't that big a deal when you'd already had over a thousand of them. He turned and smiled at both twins. "Okay, well—happy birthday."

Steve looked at Bruce, and the hope in his eyes was palpable. "Hey Bruce, when did Zora tell you she was seventeen?"

"At Frigga's wedding," Bruce told him. "Why?"

"That was in October. So if her birthday was in November or December—"

"It doesn't make you trying to justify having a crush on a teenager any less creepy?" Tony finished for him.

Pepper hit him on the arm again. "Personally, I don't think it would be inappropriate for an eighteen-year-old to date someone who was in their twenties, especially if they took things slowly."

"I think you're all missing the point here. If they got married, Victor von Doom would basically be his father-in-law." Tony had almost forgotten that Clint was there.

"She isn't Doom's daughter," Steve protested. "And who said anything about marrying her?"

Tony gasped. "You mean you're not going to marry her after you've plucked the flower of her youth?" Pepper glared at him again, but this time Tony was ready for her. Before she could hit him again, he backed out of her reach—and ended up bumping into one of the end tables and aggravating his injury. Tony bit his tongue to keep from crying out, while his fiancée grinned sadistically.

"Okay, everyone just stop," said Natasha. "Steve's possibly inappropriate feelings for a girl who may or may not be underage aren't the most important thing right now. We need to get the scepter back. I think it's safe to assume that Zora's taken it to Doom."

"We don't know that," sulked Steve.

Tony couldn't help noticing how miserable Wanda looked. She had hung back as far as possible from everyone else. He saw Loki watching her as well, then his eyes went back and forth between her and Tony a few times. Loki closed the distance between them. "May I speak to you privately?" he whispered to Tony.

"We still need to talk anyway," Tony reminded him. "So yeah, let's go upstairs."

ﾟ.*･｡ﾟ-(•̀_•́)-ﾟ.*･｡ﾟ┌iii┐ ┗(^o^ )┓三

When they got up to the penthouse, Tony discovered that it wasn't empty. Other Loki had his feet up on the coffee table in front of him, his nose in what appeared to be some sort of trashy romance novel, although the text on the front was in a language he didn't recognize and the male cover model appeared to have three sets of eyes. "You're still here?"

"I'm on vacation." Other Loki looked up at him over the top of his book. "I might just stay another century or two."

Tony remembered the conversation that the two of them had had over the summer. "You're just avoiding your responsibilities, along with the feelings you have for you-know-who."

"There will be plenty of time to deal with both later," Loki told him. "Not only do I have thousands of years left to me, I can spend as much time in this time line as I like, and when I return to the TVA, seconds will have passed."

"Huh. I guess that's the benefit of being an immortal time traveler. Alright, fine—you can stay and get yourself sorted out."

Other Loki blinked up at him. "You really don't mind?"

"Nah, stay as long as you like. Just not in the penthouse. You can stay in one of the guest rooms on the common room floor." In the back of Tony's mind, he had begun to form a plan, although it was still a little foggy. After all, the guy had style, he had flair, he was there— "Now get out, because I need to have a discussion with your younger self regarding his recent behavior."

Other Loki grinned at his Loki as he stood. "Good luck with that." As Tony watched him leave, he wondered which one of them he'd been talking to.

Once he was gone, Tony looked the remaining Loki in the eyes. "Sit down."

Loki rolled his eyes at him again—he'd been doing that way too much lately—but did as he was told. "Before you scold me again, there's something I need to tell you first. It's about the twins."

Tony sat down next to him. He had intended to stay standing, to make a point about just which one of them was in charge. But he had just had surgery, and he didn't heal nearly as quick as Pietro did. "Go ahead," he told Loki.

"It's my fault that they're the way they are."

Tony's mouth worked for a few seconds, because it took him that long to think of the right response to a claim that quite frankly, made the kid sound delusional. "That's impossible, Lokes. Not everything is your fault."

"In this case it is. They received their powers from the scepter. When I confronted Wanda yesterday, she told me. Before they came after you, the twins had escaped from a HYDRA facility—likely the one the others raided yesterday."

All the righteous anger Tony had intended to aim at the kid drained out of him. "Even if that's true, what happened to them still isn't your fault. It isn't anyone's fault but HYDRA's—and the guy who sent you to Earth with the scepter in the first place, Thabos or whoever."

"Thanos," Loki whispered corrected, and Tony regretted bringing the guy up, because he was sure that Loki's shade had just shifted from cerulean to sky blue.

Tony put his arm around Loki's shoulder. "It's okay. If he ever shows up here, we're going to protect you from him no matter what."

"I don't doubt that you would try," said Loki.

Tony's righteous anger was back, but this time it wasn't directed at the kid. He knew that if he ever came face to face with Thanos, only one of them would be walking away. "Loki, when was your birthday?"

"A month ago," Loki told him, furrowing his eyebrows at the non sequitur.

"JARVIS, do me a favor and order three birthday cakes. Actually, make that four. We've never celebrated your birthday either."

"Of course, Tony."

"Weren't we supposed to be having a discussion about my behavior?" asked Loki.

Tony reached up and ruffled his fingers through the kid's hair. "I'm starting to think you've suffered enough over the last couple of days. Not that what you did was okay, because it wasn't. I can't protect you if you don't let me."

Loki put his head on Tony's shoulder. "I just wanted to protect you, too. You don't understand how important to me you are."

Damn it—while he still didn't care if he had to be a hypocrite sometimes, it wouldn't kill him to set a better example, would it? "I'm sorry I scared you, so let's make a pact. From now on, I won't do anything unnecessarily dangerous if you won't."

"You know that's a promise that one of us is going to break eventually."

"Yeah, well if one of us does break it, there's going to be consequences."

"For you, too?"

"Yes, for me too, and for everyone else around here. It's about time we had some house rules, now that I think about it."

(。。(・෴・ )

JARVIS had ordered food from Chef Zemo's again, including a couple of traditional Sokovian cakes—one made with honey, and one that was covered in fruit—as well as one chocolate and one vanilla sheet cake. Natasha had gone out and gotten a few hundred birthday candles to put on top of them; after all, even if she crammed as many candles as she could on all four of the cakes, there still wouldn't have been enough to represent each year of Loki's long life.

Also, there was just something about fire that spoke to her.

"That is a lot of candles," said a voice from behind her. At first she had trouble placing it, because it was one she hadn't expected to hear for a while.

Natasha turned around and looked the king of Asgard in the eye. "What are you doing here? Did you come for your brother's birthday?"

"Loki's birthday was a month ago."

"Yes, but we missed it. Why didn't you tell us?"

Thor shrugged. "I thought that if Loki wanted you to know, he would tell you. I suspect he might have mixed feelings about celebrating such a day now."

"Because it isn't really his birthday," Natasha guessed. "It's the day Odin brought him home."

"That would be my guess, though I remember he was tiny when Mother showed him to me. He must not have been more than a few days old."

Natasha didn't know the exact date of her own birth either, so she could understand why Loki might not be too enthusiastic about celebrating the day he'd only recently found out wasn't really his. "So why are you here, if you didn't come for the kids' party?"

He didn't have time to answer. The elevator dinged, and Loki came out—not the Loki that had come downstairs an hour ago and announced that he was now living with them, but the one whose birthday they were celebrating. When he spotted his older brother, he stopped in his tracks, and pulled the hood of his sweatshirt over his head. "Heimdall told you what I did, didn't he?"

"He did, but—"

"You've come to take me back to Asgard, haven't you?"

"I'm afraid so, however—"

"I won't go. You can't make me." Loki ran past them in the direction of his own room, and a few moments later they heard the door slam.

Thor sighed as he leaned back against the counter.

"You're not really going to try to take him back to Asgard, are you?" asked Natasha. "Tony isn't likely to let you take him without a fight. I'm not sure I'd let you take him either."

"I'm grateful you're all so protective of him," Thor told her. "But I'm afraid I must take Loki back to Asgard temporarily."

"Temporarily?"

"Loki is still a prince of Asgard. I'm afraid it's unavoidable that he'll be called upon to make an appearance at certain state functions."

Natasha sensed that there was something Thor wasn't saying, but she didn't ask him to elaborate. She was sure that whatever it was, they would all know soon. Instead, she started rummaging through the kitchen drawers for a box of matches.

Thor was silent for several moments as he stared in the direction his brother had gone in. Finally, he broke his silence. "I've never seen him in that form before."

"Does it bother you?"

"No, of course not. I have known for two years that my brother is Jotunn by birth. I am more disturbed that he thought it necessary to hide his face from me just now."

"You should tell him that. Otherwise, he's going to keep worrying about it."

Thor nodded to her, then started walking towards his brother's room.

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Author's Note:

While the story is headed towards a conclusion, I'm starting to suspect that there might be slightly more than 40 chapters by the end. Just as a heads up, the last few chapters might be posted late Friday or even Saturday (for North American time zones), but they will be posted!