.-.
Playground
Chapter 12: Breakfast
Tony woke first, thanks to the faintly vibrating alarm he'd asked FRIDAY for in the wristband he'd put on, and managed to get out of bed without waking Pepper. It wasn't even 6:30 when he loped down the stairs, figuring he'd take a quick peek in at Ollie, then grab some coffee and head Loki off at the pass. The illegal alien – Tony chuckled, he liked that one – might need to get some things off his chest after whatever had gone down with Jane last night.
And Tony was less like the driven snow and more like snow that had been sitting around for a few days soaking up mud and exhaust fumes. He was curious, and wasn't going to shrug his shoulders and ignore it, regardless of what happened to the proverbial cat. Loki was a double illegal alien. A guy with an occasional god-complex who'd once been worshipped as a god, or at least his brother had, and, well, that had to be part of Loki's problem, didn't it? A guy who looked human but definitely wasn't; a guy who looked Aesir but definitely – biologically – wasn't. Tony had lain awake for a while last night wondering about the cold skin that Loki had expected to injure Morgan but hadn't, and the Jotun ability to create ice from their own bodies. How did that work? Did the water come from their cells? From the surrounding air? If from their cells, how much could they create before the depletion of their own fluids incapacitated them? The sad thing was – and it was truly sad – it sounded like Loki wouldn't be able, much less willing, to answer those questions, or any of the hundreds more that had occurred to him since the revelation out at the gazebo. And the guy would hardly be willing to participate in any tests to discover the answers. Didn't mean Tony wasn't going to try to get some answers anyway, if the opportunity came along. Sleeping through Loki showing up for Ollie wasn't going to create any opportunities.
He stuck his head first in Morgan's room; his Munchkin was on her side, one leg sticking out over the side of the bed, snoring. Yeah, she snored. The pediatrician said it was normal. The internet was a scary place.
He stuck his head next in Ollie's room and started. Too late. And yet, in fact, not. Ollie was still there, but nearly hidden by Loki curled up around the kid on his side, on top of the covers. Both of them were fast asleep, judging by Loki's lack of reaction to his entry. Beside the bed stood Loki's boots – not the black leather Oxfords he'd had on before – and his gray sweater was draped over the nightstand, but he was otherwise fully dressed in some kind of thin long-sleeved black shirt, belted black pants, and socks.
Getting some sleep was good. Getting it at somebody else's house…not so good. Maybe Loki had stormed out on Jane. Maybe Jane had kicked him out.
Maybe Tony should've slipped back out while he could because woops, Loki was stirring. He'd expected an unconscious four-year-old, not a likely hyper-aware super-soldier equivalent, and hadn't crossed the threshold in stealth mode.
He was still debating whether to try to step back unnoticed, announce his presence before Loki saw him, or stand there until he was seen and let the chips fall where they may when Loki took the decision from him by jerking up to a sitting position, simultaneously twisting around in a clear sweep of the room.
"Hi," Tony said quietly, wagging a hand in an approximation of a wave. "Didn't mean to wake you. I was just checking in on Ollie."
Loki relaxed more quickly than Tony would have expected, running a hand over his face as though to wipe away the remnants of sleep. He didn't quite succeed; the guy looked tired. And half the hair had come loose from the ponytail at the back of his neck, some of it bunched out in various directions.
"It's still early, you can go back—." Loki was shaking his head, so Tony changed tacks. "Want some coffee then?"
Loki glanced down at his Mini-Me, who hadn't twitched a muscle as far as Tony could see. "Give me a couple of minutes."
"Sure. Kitchen's two floors down."
By the time Loki trotted down the stairs, the coffee was ready. He looked considerably more put-together now, no ponytail but hair coiffed just so, sweater back on, tall leather boots on under his perfectly pressed pants. His face radiated morning freshness, eyes clear, bright, alert. Tony could swear they'd been a little red and puffy when he woke up. A splash of water to the face didn't accomplish what Loki was presenting. Make-up artist, hair stylist, and an iron, maybe. Or a few dabs of Oil of O-magic-lay.
Loki accepted the coffee mug Tony pushed his way and spooned in a little sugar from the tray.
"Want some oatmeal?" Tony asked, pulling a couple of bowls from the cabinet. FRIDAY, God bless her, had adjusted the timer on the crockpot based on his alarm time.
"No, thank you. I'll take this back upstairs."
"Don't worry about Ollie. FRIDAY'll let us know when the little scamp shows signs of life."
"I don't want him to wake up and be afraid."
"FRIDAY, give us a feed from Ollie's room. On the fridge. How's that?" he asked once the junior prince's sleeping form appeared on the refrigerator door.
Loki stared for a few seconds, forehead screwed up like he'd just eaten something that had gone bad. "That is so disturbing."
"And yet, so handy. FRIDAY's a very good AI, obviously, but, still an AI. There's nothing creepy here. Relax. And join me for a bowl of oatmeal. Good for your cholesterol. Is that a thing on Asgard? Do you have to worry about cholesterol?"
"No," Loki said, sliding onto one of the bar chairs.
"No fair. Gotta watch mine. Blueberries or strawberries?" Tony asked after a quick survey of the little glass containers in the fridge.
"Blueberries."
"But you know about cholesterol," Tony said as he took out the blueberries and started scooping up.
"Jane and I have been married for over six years now."
"Ah. Jane has to watch her cholesterol."
Loki didn't respond, but you could only make morning small talk about cholesterol for so long. Tony placed a bowl in front of Loki and sat across from him with the other bowl. "So did Jane give you the boot? Not the ones you're wearing. Metaphorical boot."
"No," Loki said, looking thoroughly offended. The progress of his spoon halted just shy of his mouth.
"No boots, that's good. When did you come back, then?"
"A couple of hours ago. Jane has a full day of meetings tomorrow…today, so she went to bed. And I…I needed to think. I walked around for a while, but then my feet brought me here. I wasn't entirely comfortable leaving him here alone."
"He wasn't alone," Tony put in quickly.
"I know. And…I trust you with him. Thank you. Really. It's just that he has enough changes to deal with right now. As I said, I wanted to be here when he woke up. I want him to feel secure."
"Of course you do," Tony said, just to say something. It had been there before, unspoken, but Loki had gone and spoken it. Trust. Maybe it didn't extend much beyond the kids, but when it came to the kids, the trust was mutual. If he and Pepper needed to have some serious – and seriously loud – adult conversation in a cramped hotel room, he'd absolutely trust Loki to take care of Morgan. Yesterday afternoon at the playground already seemed like a lifetime ago.
Loki cast a lingering look off past Tony's shoulder; Tony didn't have to turn to know what the guy was looking at.
"We're going to tell him. I'm going to tell him."
Tony nodded. Loki already knew his thoughts on that, and further commentary wasn't going to contribute anything.
They ate in silence for a minute or two, but Loki had the look of someone who wanted to talk. Tony waited him out.
"You were right about why Jane wanted us to move here. Why she wanted us to move here now."
"Ah. Well, it was the timing more than anything. And you two not quite being on the same page."
Loki snorted a laugh and dropped his spoon into his half-eaten oatmeal. "The same page? We've not even been in the same book."
"That bad, huh?" Tony said with a wince. "Sounds like things got a little ugly last night."
"No, they…."
The spoon came back up and the words stopped. A man who didn't want to violate the sanctity of his marriage by divulging private matters between him and his wife. The time to speak up had come.
"For what it's worth, Pepper and I went through our rough patches. Years of them. I was selfish, took her for granted. She can be really stubborn and she kept getting cold feet. Not that I can blame her for that one. Even now…it's hard. Fifty years ago, maybe more now, most women were housewives. Stay-at-home moms. Then it became the norm that both parents were working, but let's be real, women were still expected to be the primary caregivers. Work all day then come home and work some more, laundry and meals and the…the emotional core, you know? Looking after the kids. Stay-at-home dads, on the other hand, were probably one step up from lepers. And times haven't changed all that much. So here we are. Pepper's the career woman, and I'm the stay-at-home dad. Those were our choices, and we're privileged to have choices. I still get comments, though. Maybe I couldn't hack it anymore, maybe I was out of new ideas, maybe I was a nervous wreck who couldn't cope with the stress."
Tony paused, noting the slight narrowing in Loki's eyes. "None of that's true. I have some anxiety issues, sometimes, nothing a little focused deep breathing and wide-open space can't help get me past. It's just prejudice. Real men don't choose to stay home with the kids. It doesn't bother me. I'm totally confident in my masculinity."
Tony ignored Loki's eye-roll and continued. "But whatever little comments come my way, it's got nothing on what Pepper hears. I never got how unfair society is to women until after Morgan was born and I stepped back from work and Pepper went right back to running Stark Industries. Probably because I was one of the schmucks being unfair to women. I won't repeat the things that have been said about her, even to her face, by people who apparently mean well – not good for my blood pressure, something else we mere mortals have to watch. But I can guarantee you it wouldn't occur to anyone to say those things to a man. You're going to work when you don't have to? You're not happy being a parent?"
He grimaced and swore. He'd just said he wasn't going to repeat it.
"It's hard on her. You internalize that stuff. I try to support her, and sometimes that makes it worse."
"Supporting her makes it worse?"
"I asked the same thing when she first said that. It's like you can't win. What, I shouldn't support her? And then she started crying. That was a bad day. Hormone fluctuations were involved, too, but little tip, the crying does not get better when you point that out."
"You mean an intelligent person objects when you characterize her thoughts and feelings as resulting from nothing more than hormonal fluctuations?"
"Hey, I liked you better when you just sat there eating and occasionally scowling at me. Anyway, my point, to the extent I had one, is that Pep and I have had our share of problems. Still do, though we're pretty good at working through them by now. Annnd…sometimes it helps to have someone to talk to."
Just like that, the scowl was back.
"Do you realize how transparent you are? You're simply curious."
"Hasn't killed me yet," Tony said with a shrug. "But it's not just curiosity. Come on, seriously, do you even have anyone else you can talk to? You've never struck me as…I don't know, the chummy type. Not that I've ever particularly known you before yesterday. You're just so…" – Tony squinted his eyes at Loki and stuck out a hand toward him, waving it up and down – "reserved. When you aren't spewing out overwrought villain-y monologues."
Loki gave an irritated put-upon sigh, but, to his credit, didn't spew out any villain-y magic, or knives or fists, or even a single measly villain-y word.
"You and Thor talk much these days?"
Loki's expression hardened in an instant, and Tony realized he might be pushing his luck. But the guy hadn't acted peeved when Thor came up before. A frown followed, and the moment passed, signaled by Loki going back to his oatmeal.
"Not about my marriage," he said right before the spoon disappeared into his mouth.
"Right. I guess that would be a little awkward."
"It isn't. And yes, we talk. Regularly, in fact. But we have a few ground rules. One of them is that I don't discuss conflict between Jane and me with him."
"So…you haven't had anyone else to talk to about it?"
"Thor isn't my only friend, you know."
"So you have had someone else to talk to about it."
The spoon went down with a clatter. "How was it that you were so familiar with those 'performance issues' you mentioned to me before? I had never even heard of such a thing until you shared your expertise in the matter."
Tony laughed. Loki was making jokes – okay, acerbic Loki-style jokes – about that day and Tony was actually laughing at it. It felt good. Time had passed, things had changed. Letting go of things and looking forward instead of back really wasn't such a bad philosophy. "TV ads. Look, you were a wreck when I first saw you this morning, and I'm guessing you put a little magic mojo into your five-minute grooming routine. Makes me think you had a rough night. I'm also guessing that given the secrets involved plus your ground rules with Thor, there's no one in the entire universe you can talk to. Besides me. What does Goldilocks know about marriage, anyway? He's not a member of this little club we're in."
"Sometimes I think I don't know anything about marriage."
"Uh-huh. Same. Well, I think I'm getting there."
"We did everything so quickly, by Asgardian standards. We had our reasons, but sometimes I think we suffer for it. On the other hand…the things we spoke of last night, if not for Ollie forcing it, I don't think I would have spoken of them had we been betrothed for half a millennium."
"Jotunheim stuff?" Tony prompted after Loki fell silent, staring into his bowl.
"Jotunheim stuff," Loki said with pinched lips and a twitch of a shoulder that Tony supposed was a quarter-hearted shrug. "You make it sound so pedestrian. It is anything but. It was draining. Exhausting. I wish I could sleep for a week."
"Literally? Do you do that?"
"Figure of speech," Loki said, not even bothering with a scowl this time.
"That's good. Having kids isn't very conducive to the whole 'sleep for a week' thing. Or even the 'good God I'd really like to sleep until 9AM and I'd even take 8:30' thing. I was a night person. Am a night person."
"I didn't want to move here."
"Yeah, you said."
"I really didn't want to move here. I asked myself if I was being selfish, and perhaps I was, in part. I wanted Ollie's childhood to be spent on Asgard. But I had good reasons for that. He will be educated here to be an American Midgardian. The history and science he studies, even the way he learns to approach mathematics will be different from what he would learn on Asgard. What he needs to learn on Asgard, as my son, who will be in the line of succession to the throne, and who will surely ultimately live out the bulk of his life on Asgard. He does not need to know who Julia Child is. He needs to know the great works of Remi Balundottir and Alvi Gandurson, and Remi and Alvi and countless others will not be taught here."
"If I can allay one tiny concern, I don't think kids study Julia Child in school. Unless they covered that in one of the years I skipped. Or they didn't cover it at my boarding school. Remi and Alvi definitely weren't on the reading list, though."
"Boarding school?"
"When the kid lives at the school."
Loki stared back at him, clearly dumbfounded. "The parents send the child away to live at a school?"
"It's not as bad as it sounds. Builds character. That's what my dad used to say." Tony shrugged. "Good experience. Mostly. Learned a lot, way more than what was on the syllabus."
"You would consider this for Morgan?"
"Uhhhh no."
"Enough said on that, then, I think."
"I have to ask, you do know Julia Child was a cook, right? Who wrote a classic cookbook? Not a writer of fine literature or a world leader or something? I mean, she was a famous cook, and didn't exactly lead a boring life, but—"
"Yes, Tony, I know. My head is filled with random bits of disconnected Midgardian trivia. I didn't literally mean her. Her name was the first that came to mind."
"The first Midgardian name that came to mind was Julia Child?"
"Will you cease this fixation if I substitute Julius Caesar?"
"I guess. Never really thought of those two in the same breath. We do actually study Caesar in school."
"Disconnected, remember?" Loki said, tapping his head with a finger.
"Midgard has plenty of things worth learning about, by the way."
"Of course it does. I know that. Every realm, and every individual country on your realm, has plenty of things worth learning about. I no longer hold Midgard in the disregard I once did. But there are things Ollie will need to learn that he will have no exposure to here at all. That is my only point. Living on Midgard would be…complicated, at any time in our lives. But this seemed an especially inappropriate time for such a change, and I objected."
"Okay. Eventually, though, you changed your mind."
"I did not change my mind. I wanted to support my wife's work. She is revolutionizing astronomy on Asgard, and she was already beginning to do so here when she chose to— when she permanently moved to Asgard. I had feared she might feel…stifled, in time, in her new life on Asgard. And that was exactly what was happening. 'Revolutionizing' isn't quite the right word, she's reinventing the formal study of the cosmos. We have nothing like the academy of scientists you have, doing the type of research you do. Jane needs that community of fellow experts."
"It sounds like you changed your mind," Tony said when Loki briefly paused.
"I did not. I said we could move here for a while, a long while even, at some point after Ollie turned twenty."
Tony grimaced. "Sixteen years? That's a long time to ask somebody to put her career goals on hold."
"Not really. I—"
"Yes, really. Maybe not to you, but to people like me and Jane,0 sixteen years is…a few centuries ago it was almost half a lifetime."
"As you say," Loki said, expression devoid of any particular reaction. Despite the words of acquiescence, Tony was under no illusion that Loki was acquiescing.
"Okay. So you wanted to support Jane, but you wanted Ollie to go to school on Asgard more, and you figured that could come first and moving to Midgard for Jane could come later. You didn't change your mind, yet here you are."
"I gave in. I chose to support Jane's preference. I told her I changed my mind, that she had persuaded me, but that was untrue. We'd been arguing, and it was getting worse. Things were tense between us. And one night, when she—. Never mind that. The point is, I began to fear that if I didn't give in…she would leave me. Go to Midgard anyway, and take Ollie with her. In that light, the decision was easy. If not for Ollie's unique position on Asgard, and" – he paused, closed his eyes, shook his head – "the enemies I created here, who probably pose little risk to me but great risk to Ollie, I would have gladly supported her desire to return to Earth and reestablish her career here."
"But Ollie was the main reason she wanted to come back now."
"Yes. I was wrong about that. But I wasn't wrong about her thinking of leaving me." At that, Loki, whose eyes had gone distant, zeroed in on Tony with laser focus. "lf you say a word, Tony, to anyone, I swear I—"
Tony mimed zipping his lips and tossing away the key.
Loki settled into a silent frown for long moment before continuing. "She told me last night, when I asked."
"Things got real."
"They got very real. Jane was the best thing to ever happen to me, until Ollie came along. Some days I still don't think I deserve her, or understand why she chose me. But Ollie…I know I don't deserve him. And I have no idea how to be a father."
"Join the club. You figure it out as you go. You seem to be doing okay. For the most part. Just the one little wobble."
"It wasn't a little wobble. But I'm sorry. I'm being overly dramatic."
"Nooooo," Tony said, slapping a hand to his heart. "You?"
Loki narrowed his eyes, then stared off into the distance. The expected joking-with-hint-of-maybe-not-a-joke death threat didn't follow.
"Should I keep waiting? Because I really thought that would get a response."
"Supply it yourself. I'm too tired."
"I'll think it over, come up with something good later."
"I miss laughing with her."
"Are things that bad? No more laughing?"
"There hasn't been much to laugh about lately. But no. We've simply favored different approaches to certain things, and now—"
"Jotunheim."
"Yes, Jotunheim. And now we're striving for a more unified approach. I will no longer…pretend that certain things – yes, Jotunheim, that Jotunheim is…that Jotunheim was…"
"Still working on it, huh?"
Loki released a heavy breath and visibly relaxed, the guy was so relieved, apparently, not to have to finish that sentence. "Very much so."
As he downed the last of his coffee, Tony decided he didn't have it in him to ask Loki anything more about Jotunheim, no matter how many questions he still had. The guy deserved a break. "How'd you and Jane wind up together, anyway? I asked Thor last time I saw him. He kept uncharacteristically mum. Said something about you two suiting each other. We were kind of busy at the time, otherwise there's no way I would've let something that meaningless and open to interpretation slide."
"I can say only that the universe is strange. I didn't care for her at first. Obviously. She was mortal. And she unwittingly played a key role in Thor getting between me and what I wanted at the time…which was reducing Jotunheim to dust."
"Uhhh, metaphorical dust?"
"Literal dust."
"Okay," Tony said. He'd have to come back around to that one again later when maybe he could better wrap his head around the idea of Loki trying to turn entire planets into dust, and what kind of Asgardian Death Star would have enabled him to do it had Thor not stopped him, aided somehow by Jane. The key takeaway, though, was a reiteration of yesterday's lesson: Loki really hated Jotunheim, and everything connected to it.
"The first time we met, she slapped me."
"I knew I liked her."
"She was vessel to the Aether then, and as such, held a certain interest. Not unlike an antique vase."
"So far I'm not seeing the makings of a romance."
"There weren't any. Later, after my father died and Thor became king, Jane decided to spend a year working on Asgard. I wanted nothing to do with her. I thought she was…an exotic fad he'd lose interest in as soon as she was around all the time. But Thor and I were trying to rebuild our brotherhood, and for his sake, for the sake of our reconciliation, I decided I should make an effort to get to know her."
"Like a nice vase?"
Loki chuckled; the crinkles around his eyes and the deep lines running up to his cheeks made him look like an entirely different person. "Like my brother's lady. She surprised me by gaining my genuine respect. Then my admiration. I liked her. I don't know when it became attraction, but once I realized it was there, I chose to ignore it. She was with Thor, and I was hardly going to jeopardize that relationship for a passing one-sided fancy. Even when they broke up, I never acted on it."
"Somebody clearly acted on something, eventually."
"Mm. Eventually, yes. Jane knows exactly when she was first attracted to me."
"Yeah?"
"Thor sent me to help her with something she was working on. If you have ever seen Jane in the throes of a project…" – Tony shook his head and Loki continued – "she is a tornado. Difficult to follow. Impatient. Irritable. She forgets to sleep and to eat. Everywhere around her she leaves books, papers, images, drawings, notes that no one but her can understand. It can be maddening. Or…fascinating. I stuck around. Trying to decipher her notes, trying to get her to pause long enough to eat something with nutritional value, asking questions. She says that's the day she fell for me. Though she struggled with it at first, too."
"Because you were Mr. Bad Boy."
"No," Loki said, a sly grin slowly spreading over his face and sending those lines back up his cheeks. "Because she was still with Thor then."
Tony shared a laugh with Loki, who even years later was clearly still tickled pink that Jane had fallen for him while with his brother. Tony couldn't blame the guy. He'd seen Thor shirtless. And Loki used to have – probably still did have, because you never totally let go of things embedded that deep in your psyche – a boatload of envy toward Thor that went way beyond the god of thunder's arms and chest. Though it probably included the arms and chest, too.
"How'd His Majesty take the news?" Tony asked with an anticipatory grimace. No matter how copacetic everything was now, that initial conversation had to have been awkward.
"A story for another time."
Tony followed Loki's gaze over to the refrigerator, but he knew what he would see there from the fast fade of Loki's smile. When he turned back, Loki was standing.
"Thank you for breakfast. You can turn that off now."
"Spoil sport. FRIDAY, ixnay on the video on the iddokay, okay?"
"I didn't know you were a poet," FRIDAY said when the projection disappeared.
"Never too late to develop a new skill. Hey, Loki, plenty of oatmeal for Ollie. Lucky Charms, too. Or eggs."
Already taking the stairs two at a time, Loki didn't turn, but Tony was certain Loki heard.
_/_
Notes
I *really* thought that part of what's now the next chapter would be in this chapter, and was surprised to find there was just not at all any reasonable place to cut into the next scene. I'd thought there'd be a "cliffhangery" place to cut it, and while one place would have worked for that, it was too far into the scene and would result in a way too long chapter. Cutting in there in the next chapter would result in an extra-short chapter. So the next scene is now the entire next chapter, which I guess is the logical way to do things anyway. I've just learned to appreciate ending on something cliffhangery, though I guess this story hasn't had much of that. Ah, the weird things I wind up worrying about for this stuff! So, the next chapter is maybe a bit of a wild ride, and this one I guess is the calm between those two "storms." Anyway, 'til next time!
