Chapter 10 - Goddess of Cuteness and Rainbows
Tony was convinced that there had been an easier route, and that Loki had drug them through that cave out of spite. Even after three showers and two baths, he was still finding sand in weird, uncomfortable, and inconvenient places. (He'd kept some of it as samples to study later. It was alien sand, after all.)
He'd also lost his phone somewhere. It had probably fallen out of his pocket when they'd crawled through that cave. So much for his vacation slide show. Which would have only been two pictures, now that he thought about it—why hadn't he taken more? Not that it mattered now, since photos didn't get uploaded to the cloud when you were out of range of any satellites whatsoever.
As revenge, he'd put Loki up in the worst of the tower's guest rooms. Of course, it was only the worst because it didn't have its own wet bar. It was still larger than some studio apartments, had a queen-sized bed with a pillow-top mattress, an en suite bath with a walk-in shower, and large windows overlooking the city and both the Hudson and East Rivers.
It was one of two rooms in the tower that didn't have a television, but even that was probably ideal, because according to Samson, the kid had sleep issues. Everybody knew you weren't supposed to have a TV in your room if you had insomnia. That was why the other room in the tower without any screens was his and Pepper's—she'd insisted on it after figuring out that he only slept about four hours a day and usually not at night. (And yeah, he'd complained at first, but then he'd realized that at least when Pepper was at home, the two of them could find much better things to do in bed than watch The Late Show.)
Anyway, he was having a lot of trouble staying mad at the kid, because clearly, he was dealing with some shit.
And now Thor was leaving, and Loki looked pissed, though it was difficult to tell if that was because his brother was leaving him, or because Thor had just told him to "be good for the Avengers," and patted him on the head.
The kid made a rude gesture that he could only have picked up on Earth (Thor didn't seem to know what to make of it, for one thing) and stomped back to his room. Tony heard the door slam.
"You really have to go so soon?" Tony asked, a little apprehensive himself. Frigga was staying, but she seemed to be enjoying her newfound freedom, and had been spending more of her time out of the tower than in it. So much for keeping Loki under her watchful eye.
"I have duties I must return to in Asgard," Thor told him. "I must also try to convince Father that banishing Loki was a mistake."
"You sure about that, Thor? Because honestly, getting kicked out of Ass-gard might have been the best thing that could have happened to your brother. He certainly wasn't getting the help he needed locked up in solitary."
"I cannot thank you enough for allowing both Loki and my mother to stay here," Thor told him.
"It's not a big deal," said Tony. At least, it wouldn't be a big deal as long as Loki behaved himself, and as long as Pepper didn't freak out too badly when she came home from her business trip and found out who their latest house guests were.
At least Pepper wasn't due back for a while.
( ゚~゚)つ=lニニフ (゚ー゚ )
Doctor Samson had given Loki a journal and told him to write down any thoughts that plagued him before trying to go to sleep, because it might help to purge himself of them.
He had also mentioned that it might help to write a to-do list for the next day, if Loki found himself worrying about things he had left unfinished. But Loki had no need for a to-do list; for the first time in centuries, he had few if any responsibilities at all.
Loki settled on writing a short to-stab list instead:
To Stab:
Thor, for leaving me alone with the mortals
Odin, for being a liar and a hypocrite
The Other, for being a whiny little bitch
Ah yes, that did seem to quiet his mind a bit.
Doctor Samson had also told him to make sure to avoid the myriad screens the humans entertained themselves with for at least an hour before bed, but he couldn't help checking Stark's text messages one more time. (He'd pickpocketed Stark's phone when the man had been asleep in the bottom of the skiff. Stark hadn't seemed to notice yet.) His lady had sent a text a short while before:
Peppermint: Thinking of you ;)
Pepper seemed like a sweet person. Loki wondered how someone like Stark had ended up with her. Feeling magnanimous, Loki decided that he'd try to help the man keep her, even though he obviously hadn't been thoughtful enough to contact the poor woman to tell her he'd lost his phone.
Ironic Man: Lady, as you are mine, I am yours.
A few minutes passed before her reply came.
Peppermint: Are you drunk?
Loki wondered what it said about Stark that sending a coherent, romantic message made his lady think him inebriated.
Ironic Man: It is no sin to be drunk on love.
Stark's woman began to type something. Then she stopped, perhaps changing her mind about what she was about to say, before starting to type again.
Peppermint: Are you really okay? You're being weird
Oops. He supposed he'd better send something more in character, to assuage her suspicion.
Ironic Man: Send nude pix
A moment after he'd hit the "send" button the other party was typing.
Peppermint: Real cute, Tony. Just go to bed
Loki couldn't resist having a little more fun with her.
Ironic Man: Good night, my peerless paramour. As you are fair and beauteous, be generous and merciful to him that is your slave.
Her response was nearly instantaneous.
Peppermint: GO TO BED
Loki supposed he really ought to do as she said, so he turned the phone off and stashed it in his bedside table.
Samson had suggested he make the room as dark as possible, so Loki asked JARVIS to lower the blinds over the large windows and dim the lights until it was almost dark, but not pitch-dark—as bad as the intense lighting in his prison cell had been, full darkness made him anxious as well. He knew it was ridiculous, and he would never admit to anyone else that ever since his return from the void, he had needed to sleep with the lights on like a small child. Hopefully, Stark's artificially intelligent servant would not tell on him.
He attempted to count his breaths as he inhaled slowly through his nose and exhaled through his mouth, another of Samson's recommendations (all of which he had scoffed at, but in truth, he was exhausted and willing to try anything that might help to start sleeping at regular intervals).
Loki lost count of his breath after a minute or so. The bed was too soft—how could mortals stand to sleep on such things as "pillow-top mattresses?" It was less like sleeping atop a pillow and more like sinking into quicksand. The bed in his prison cell had been decidedly firmer—and before that, he couldn't recall having slept in a bed at all, so much as he'd curled up on whatever rock he could. Sanctuary was not known for its luxury accommodations.
Loki tossed and turned for what felt like hours, before he remembered Samson's last piece of advice. If none of his other advice worked, he was to try getting up for a while and going to another room.
(。し_し。)
Tony looked at the time on his computer screen. It was four in the morning, which meant he had been up all night trying to work out how to make a nanobot that could fly through the air like a tiny autonomous drone, because apparently, that wasn't a thing yet, and would definitely need to be a thing if he wanted to make a bunch of them form into something wearable over his body. Either that, or they would have to crawl over his body like tiny spiders—ugh.
He was on the verge of a breakthrough, he knew it, but he needed a little more brain fuel. He called for his helper. "U, get over here. Get me another coffee, got it? Ata-boy, you can do it."
The robot made an excited beeping noise and spun towards the kitchen counter. U rolled towards it. Then he rolled back, tried again, and made a grab for one of the cups that had been sitting in the strainer by the sink, which he accidentally dragged off onto the floor. Almost all the dishes shattered into a million little pieces.
A single cup survived. U picked it up and attempted to place it on top of the coffee machine's drip tray. It took U a few tries, but he finally got it.
U beeped excitedly. Then he attempted to press the buttons on top of the machine, but he kept missing them, until he karate chopped one of them hard enough to crack the top of the machine.
U gave a disappointed, or perhaps apologetic beep.
"That's okay, buddy, you tried," said Tony. He'd never expected him to get it, of course—U's range of motion had never been designed for operating kitchen appliances. But the bot had a persistent domestic streak, and if Tony didn't let him at least let him try once in a while, he got all mopey.
And it wasn't like he couldn't afford to replace the coffee machine every other week, even though Pepper always complained that replacing them so often was bad for the environment. He wouldn't just throw the old one out, though—he'd donate it to Midtown High, so the kids in the so the kids in the engineering classes could take it apart or fix it or whatever. Maybe the art classes could use the broken dishes?
U gave a shrill cry and rolled away. For a moment, Tony was actually worried. Maybe he ought to get Doc? If he could handle Loki, he could probably deal with a robot's emotional meltdown.
U came back with a broom, and Tony breathed a sigh of relief that this was not the day one of his creations took another step towards the technological singularity that would be the downfall of human civilization.
"That's right, you clean this up, while Daddy goes downstairs to get coffee."
U chirped happily at having been given a purpose, and Tony headed downstairs.
"JARVIS, hit the lights, will you?"
The lights in the common floor kitchen came up, and Tony realized he wasn't alone. Loki had been standing in front of one of the windows in the adjoining sitting area, looking out at the city. He was wearing a set of fluffy pajamas covered in little red, white, and blue shields—Tony had snuck a bunch of surplus Avenger's merchandise into the clothes he'd had JARVIS order for him, thinking it would be hilarious when the kid had a fit about it.
The joke was on him, he guessed, because Loki had been wearing it. And of course, he seemed to wear the Captain America stuff the most. He didn't know if that was because the kid knew it would give him a complex, or because Loki had a secret crush on Steve.
"Can't sleep?" Tony asked.
"The repairs to your city have not been completed yet," said Loki. It hadn't been a question. While it would have been difficult for Loki to see the destruction he'd caused from this high up in the tower, especially at night, they'd walked past plenty of it just the other day.
Loki's passageway between realms had somehow led out into the stockroom of a Walgreens in Hoboken. He'd have called Happy to come pick them up, but that was when he figured out he didn't have his phone, and apparently he'd never taken the time to commit Happy's number to memory. Instead they'd had to take a bus to the Port Authority bus terminal.
From the bus terminal, they had walked, since none of the Asgardians seemed to have appreciated the bus much, and Tony wasn't at all sure they were ready for the subway. Also, parts of the subway were still under construction, having collapsed in the invasion—it had been nearly a year, but Loki was right, the repairs were ongoing, and would probably be going on for a long time. Since they had done a decent job of evacuating people, the final body count from the invasion hadn't been as bad as it could have been—less than one hundred—but entire buildings had gotten leveled.
They had passed a couple of the places where skyscrapers had been replaced by fenced off construction sites and makeshift memorials made up of flowers, photos, and other mementos left by bereaved friends and family members. Tony had noticed the kid looking at some of the photos, which could have just been out of morbid curiosity, but on the other hand, maybe he was actually starting to feel guilty about what he had done.
Well, good— it might be too little too late, but at least Loki wasn't gloating over the mess he'd made. "There was a lot to repair," Tony said, deciding to say as little as possible.
"I wish I could—" Loki didn't finish that statement, but Tony could guess.
"You want to help?" Tony asked. For a fleeting moment, he thought Loki might be about to make him proud.
Loki's shoulders visibly tensed. "Perhaps I was going to say that I wish I could finish what I started."
Tony's almost-feeling of pride crawled under a rock and died. Not that he believed what the kid had just said about finishing things, but clearly, he wasn't feeling as up to making amends as he'd hoped. Plus, he'd made a threat, which was against the rules now.
Tony had suggested the idea of having rules, because there was no way he was letting Loki run around his tower doing whatever he wanted, and Doc had agreed that Loki would benefit from having "clear boundaries." Even Loki had gone along with the idea, although it might have been just because Frigga was on board with it—the poor kid seemed almost to have a phobia when it came to contradicting her. Then again, maybe he just liked the idea of knowing what people expected of him upfront; Tony had gotten the impression that Odin hadn't been great at making his expectations clear. (Like how the kid had apparently thought thought invading the Earth would be okay, but then it turned out it wasn't.)
At the moment, there were only a few rules. The kid was expected to show respect to the people he was living with, and that included respecting their property. He wasn't allowed to leave the tower without a chaperone for any reason. He wasn't supposed to cop an attitude when someone asked him to do something, as long as that thing was reasonable. And he was specifically prohibited from making threats.
The problem, Tony had realized by now, was that rules only worked when there were consequences for breaking them. He briefly considered the merits of sending the kid to his room, but he had the feeling that wouldn't be the best idea in that moment. There was just too much of a chance that if he let Loki out of his sight while he was in the mood he was currently in, he'd just get into more trouble, break something, or maybe hurt himself.
What he really needed right now was for the kid to just calm the f*ck down. He also still needed the coffee he'd come in here for. He pointed to the couch. "You and I need to have a talk, but first I think you need a time-out, Mister Cranky Pants. You know what time-out is? It's where you sit on your hands and keep your mouth shut while I make coffee."
Loki just stood there staring at him, because apparently, doing what Tony told him to do would be too easy for both of them.
Wonderful, now he had to figure out just how to handle a non-compliant but not actually psychotic Loki. Shit. Psychotic would have been easier, because then he would have had a legitimate excuse to call for Doc and let him deal with it. He still didn't want to wake the guy up when nothing had happened that he shouldn't be able to handle on his own. But there was someone else he could call, or at least threaten to call. "JARVIS, wake up Frigga—"
"No!"
Yeah, he thought that might get Loki's attention. "Then sit. You agreed to the whole rules and consequences scheme, princess."
"Don't call me—"
"I know you're a boy right now, otherwise I wouldn't call you that."
"I haven't broken any of your rules," Loki argued.
Tony begged to differ. "You made a threat."
"I wasn't serious, and you know it. If you had thought I was serious, you'd have already called for backup. Besides, I said that 'perhaps' I was going to say such a thing."
"Whatever, your attitude still sucks. Now, sit your ass on the couch, or I can get your mom involved. Up to you."
Loki's jaw worked from side to side, but then he stomped his way to the couch and slumped down on it.
"JARVIS, fifteen-minute timer, please. Any talking or growly noises from Bambi—and again, that is a name I would only use for a boy, because if you call a girl that it pretty much implies she's a stripper—start the timer over. Oh, and make some coffee."
Tony watched the AI controlled, automated coffee maker as it heated itself and began to make satisfying whirring noises. He almost missed it when Loki started sniffling. When the sniffing turned into whimpering, he tried to ignore it, but JARVIS had to go and make it an issue. "Sir, should I start the timer over? You said to start the timer over if Master Loki spoke or growled, but I am not certain if you meant that I should restart the timer for other types of vocalizations."
Tony knew that JARVIS didn't really need clarification, so much as he was forcing him to do something about the fact that he now had a millennia old demigod-turned-mortal bawling his eyes out on his couch. Okay, maybe it was more like mostly silent weeping, but that didn't mean Tony was any better prepared for it. He'd almost take invasion psychotic Loki over this.
He didn't even have his coffee yet.
"Of course I don't want you to reset it. Just stop the timer altogether, okay? And get Leo up here, like five minutes ago." He should have known better, and called the man before he'd ever spoken to Loki.
"Unless you have finally discovered a method of time travel, Sir—"
"Don't be a jerk, JARVIS. That's my job."
Tony watched as the coffee finished brewing. (What was taking Doc so long?) He grabbed a mug, filling it to the brim. He didn't bother with cream or sugar. "Hey Lokes, you want a cup?" Loki didn't answer. "It's okay, you can talk now. Punishment canceled, just please stop crying. I don't know how to deal with that. Damn it, JARVIS, do we have some Kleenex around here?"
"In the powder room, Sir."
Still holding onto his coffee, Tony ran to the half-bath off the common kitchen to retrieve the Kleenex.
After tossing the box to Loki, he settled down on the other end of the couch. Then he noticed that Loki was just staring at the box in his lap and realized that the kid might not even know what it was. "Kleenex—it's like disposable handkerchiefs."
"I know what it is." Loki pulled a tissue out of the box, stared at it for a second, and then blew his nose into it. Then he tossed the used tissue to the floor, pulled two more out, and used them to blot his face.
Tony would have liked to point out the existence of the wastepaper bin less than two feet away from where the used tissue had landed on the carpet, but he decided it wasn't the time. "You okay?"
Loki nodded. It wasn't convincing.
"You want me to make pancakes?"
Loki shook his head, this time with more conviction. Less than a week, and the kid had already figured out that Tony couldn't cook.
"You want Steve to make pancakes?"
Loki nodded again, and the tears seemed to have stopped. Tony wondered if he'd just gotten played. But then again, he had a difficult time believing hat Loki, God of I Don't Have Feelings, would cry crocodile tears just to get out of a timeout, and besides, the kid still looked like a scarecrow. He could stand to eat some pancakes. "JARVIS, get Steve up here. Tell him it's an emergency."
"Of course, Sir."
Steve got there in less than a minute, still in his pajamas and with his hair sticking up in places. "Tony, what's going on? JARVIS said—"
"The kid and I require pancakes," said Tony.
Steve furrowed his eyebrows at him, probably about to make it known that pancakes were not an emergency. Then Loki looked up at him with doe eyes still full of tears. He didn't have to say a word. Steve blinked down at him with an indulgent smile, then reached down to ruffle his hair. "Anything for you, sweetheart."
As Steve turned towards the kitchen, Tony snorted. He wondered what Steve would do if he knew that it was Loki who had him wrapped around his finger, and not Loki's nearly identical twin sister Lofn, mild-mannered Goddess of Star-Crossed Lovers or some bullshit. (If she seemed kind of distressed most of the time, who wouldn't be when their twin brother was still in Asgardian prison, awaiting trial for mass murder?)
Those that knew "Lofn's" secret had agreed that the others should be told soon. All it would take would be for Loki to have a moment like the one he'd just had in front of Steve or Clint, and they'd figure out something was up. Natasha probably knew already, or at least suspected that they had failed to mention something important. They had intentionally been a little vague when it came to the reason that Queen Frigga had suddenly left her husband, brought her daughter with her, and taken up residence at Avengers Tower instead of going literally anywhere else in the universe.
Doc's presence had been easier to explain—he'd been brought on officially as staff psychiatrist to the Avengers. Since it was no secret that collectively, the Avengers had enough psychological issues to fill a mental ward, no one had questioned it much. Steve seemed to approve, anyway, and Nat had been the first to book an appointment, although it was probably just so she could feel him out.
Clint had seemed a little edgier than usual, but Tony couldn't actually tell if it was "Lofn" or Doctor Samson's presence that was making him that way.
Tony took a sip of his now room-temperature coffee. "I'm going to go top this off," he said. "You sure you don't want some?"
Loki wrinkled his nose. Right, the kid didn't like coffee, because kids generally didn't. "Hot chocolate—but not from the coffee machine, or one of those packets."
Tony rolled his eyes. "Hey, Steve. The Goddess of Cuteness and Rainbows wants hot cocoa from scratch."
"No problem," Steve called back from the kitchen. Oh yeah, Steve had it bad for "Lofn"—although it was probably in a little sister he never had kind of way. At least Tony hoped that was what it was.
###Steve's Hot Chocolate###
######(^-^)_旦~~#####
- 8 oz whole milk
- 1 tbsp heavy cream
- 2 tbsp chocolate chips
- 1 tsp brown sugar
- 1/8 tsp vanilla extract
Combine all ingredients in a
saucepan over medium heat.
####################
"Thanks for helping me unpack," said Leonard, as he opened one of the boxes he'd forgotten to label in his haste to pack them, and discovered it to be full of canned goods he probably hadn't needed to bring.
"It's no problem. When I moved into the tower, I didn't have much with me, so—" Bruce put the box he had been holding down on the coffee table. "Was it really not a problem to just drop everything and move to New York? I mean, weren't you still teaching?"
"Oh, it wasn't that much of a problem. All I had was an intro class this semester. One of the TAs is going to take it over." Only seventeen students had been enrolled in that class anyway—three less than the minimum for full enrollment. The class had been prorated, meaning he got half the pay he would have gotten otherwise, as if having three fewer students would have meant he'd be spending half the time preparing for and actually teaching the class. Thanks a lot, Rate My Professors, for giving students a way to warn each other against anyone who expected them to actually do the reading assignments, or show up to class.
"But what about your psychiatric practice—was it really okay to just walk away from that?"
"I've already referred all of my patients to colleagues." Colleagues that he had lost most of his clientele to already— again, online reviews had been his undoing. How could he have predicted that cell phone lady would slam him on Yelp?
"What about your house?"
"After Betty left, the house felt kind of big for one person, so I sold it then." He'd had to. The house had been in her name, and he wouldn't have been able to afford the mortgage on his own anyway. Betty had always made more money than he had. "The lease on my condo was almost up anyway." The truth was, he was about to be evicted, because he was three months behind on his rent, but Bruce didn't need to know that.
Just like he didn't need to know that Leonard had over ten thousand dollars in credit card debt—he didn't even know the exact amount, because it was spread over five different cards. And even without that he'd have been paying off his student loans until he retired—if he ever had been able to retire, because he didn't exactly have a retirement plan, unless you counted an old coffee can full of pennies. He couldn't have afforded to turn down Tony's offer if he'd wanted to.
"What's this?" Bruce asked.
"Careful with that, it's—" Delicate, but also not something I wanted you to see. (Why hadn't he just thrown it out?)
But Bruce had already lifted the orchid out of its nest of shredded newspaper and heat packs. "Is this—"
Leonard tried not to cringe. Yes Bruce, I've been tending your love flower. "Betty just kind of left it. I thought it would be a shame to let it die after she put so much effort into it, so I've been taking care of it."
Bruce frowned as he gently set the flower on the coffee table. "She just left it?"
"Well, to tell the truth, she never came back to the house after everything that happened—I kind of assumed she'd gone with you, actually."
Bruce just blinked at him. "You mean you haven't seen Betty since then?"
"She called once to tell me she was okay. But then she said she didn't need anything from the house, that I could just give her clothes and everything to charity. She really wasn't with you for any of that time?"
"I haven't seen her since what happened in Harlem."
Leonard and Bruce just stared at one another for a long time. That last time Leonard had talked to Betty on the phone, she had sounded a little strange, like there was something she wasn't saying, or couldn't say—but Leonard had assumed it was because she'd gone into hiding with Bruce. He'd been a little surprised when the Hulk had resurfaced again, but Betty hadn't. "You don't think—" Leonard began.
"We don't know anything bad happened," said Bruce. "Maybe she just needed to—I don't know, go somewhere to get her head clear?"
"Yeah," said Leonard. "I mean, it's not like her father would lock her in some underground military bunker just to make sure you couldn't get to her, right?"
"Right, because that would be insane—"
Again, the two of them just looked at one another for a long time.
"Well, want some coffee or something?" Leonard asked. "Tony gave me his Amex black card and told me to buy myself a housewarming gift, so I bought an espresso machine."
Bruce arched his eyebrow at him. "You realize that card doesn't have a limit? You could have bought a car with it, and Tony probably wouldn't have cared. He already bought Natasha a car, and he bought Steve a motorcycle."
"And they just let him?"
Bruce shook his head. "You've got to realize—for Tony, that kind of money is like spare change he found in his couch cushions. He keeps offering to buy me a Mini Cooper, just because he thinks it would be funny to see the Hulk driving one."
"But you haven't taken him up on it, I'm guessing."
"I always have to remind him that there's no way I could drive in the city without risking the world's most dangerous road rage incident. Actually turning into the other guy inside a subcompact would not be funny."
Leonard decided he might want to add a zero or two to his proposed annual salary. The patients he would be treating were all extremely high-profile, after all.
(. ❛ ᴗ ❛.) ╭
Author's Note:
I've added enough material at this point to bump the chapter count up to 29. From this point onward, Loki will switch back and forth between identifying as male or female.
Thank you for all the comments and kudos. I've said it before, but I'm so happy you guys are enjoying this-now hopefully I can keep you guys interested for at least another nineteen chapters!
I like to use dark chocolate chips in that hot chocolate recipe, but milk chocolate or semisweet would work as well-or you could chop up a candy bar and use that. You can also use different types of milk, and you could probably leave out the cream, if you wanted it to be slightly healthier-I've even used almond milk-but it's really decadent with the whole milk and cream.
How did my attempt at writing a text conversation go? I'm one of those weird people who writes in complete sentences and spells things correctly even when I text. To save myself trouble, I decided that it might make sense for Pepper to be the same way. And of course, Loki doesn't know how to text properly. I'm not even sure where he got "send nude pix." He might not know what it means.
The one thing I really couldn't remember was if you could tell when the other person was typing while you text back and forth, or if that was just instant messaging-? If not, we'll just say it's a feature Stark Phones have.
