Originally this was a six-chaptered part but I'm condensing them a little also I posted all 3 parts of The project at the same time.

Rating: T

Genre: Adventure/Drama

Takes place after Lunch.


Numbers. Numbers had never been his favorite things to pour over for long hours, at least not in this context. He hadn't minded, for years it hadn't bothered him, but the longer he spent looking at these numbers the more they started to bore him. No, the numbers didn't bore him, he was just tired, and working long hours always did that to him.

A quick glance at the clock hanging above his large mahogany desk showed that he still had at least 5 more hours to go until he could quit for the day- or rather night. At least he would soon be switching from the accounting, business running part of his job to the, at least currently, more fun job of working on new inventions, that he would send to R and D to mass-produce. He sent them to R and D with detailed specs, of course, including what materials every cord, chip, and wire was made of. For a long time, it had been hard to figure out which earth materials were similar to Asgardian materials and which replacement was sufficient to replace materials that didn't exist on Earth.

Still, he was going to be stuck doing accounting until it was finished. He didn't look at these numbers often. Most of the accounting was done by their office and the more sensitive information was dealt with by Barry. It was only the most sensitive information, the ones Barry couldn't know about, that he dealt with and usually only took a couple of hours every week. The rest of his time was spent in conferences with R and D, other executives, and various companies, along with many other people. He had no more appointments for the day and it was already 6' o'clock, but he knew he would be working until at least midnight- if he was very quick. Normally, he didn't even notice the time going by, but doing the numbers was wearing thin on him and he was glad that he only did this once a week.

"Mr. McMillion," his assistant's voice came through to him, sounding off.

He had two assistants, a daytime assistant, and a night-time one. His night-time assistant's name was Janice. She was a young, strong woman with dreams of eventually running her own company. He was more focused on her voice though than anything else as she sounded hesitant and something else, shocked? Not exactly but it was similar, and it put him on edge.

"Yes, Janice?" He asked slightly confused but masking his voice so it didn't show. He wasn't expecting anyone, there was no meeting to get to and there was nothing that he was aware of going on at the moment.

"There's someone here to see you."

Loki frowned as Janice knew that he didn't see anyone outside of the company without an appointment, well except sometimes for Tony. If it was Tony or anyone else that he knew then Janice would have included their name; she knew Loki was a stickler for that sort of thing.

"Who is it?" Not managing to hide his curiosity or annoyance that Janice hadn't included the name when she knew that she was supposed to. He did not like surprises, he had never liked surprises, but especially now with his current circumstances, he very much hated surprises. There wasn't a response for a long moment, before finally, she replied, voice slightly shaky.

"Um...he's you know…"

Loki blinked as he got up from his desk chair scraping on the old floor. He was done trying to wait for Janice to tell him who was there. Janice seemed flustered, and Janice didn't get flustered all that often. He opened the door to his office, intent on seeing what Janice was having trouble saying. Of course, the moment he decided to open it, was the moment that Janice was able to gather her thoughts together.

"It's Thor, the Avenger," came Janice's voice on the intercom, though at that point it was entirely unnecessary as the Thunderer was standing right beside his assistant's desk, clad in full battle armor.

Loki's jaw tightened in anger; Thor knew he was not supposed to be here. His eyes flickered between the blond and his brunette assistant Janice. She was in her mid-twenties and was wearing a smart black suit, a single sideways glance let him know that he had misjudged what had been wrong with her voice earlier. Awe, awe was what had been in her tone. She was still staring at Thor wide-eyed and it struck him that she had probably never seen one of the Avengers up close before. She had spoken to Stark before on the phone, on occasion, mostly to set up meetings for the two of them.

His assistant may be feeling awe, but at the moment the only thing Loki was feeling was his anger bubbling. Thor was not supposed to come to his work ever. He had been adamant about that several times and yet Thor had decided to come anyways. Even though he was seething inside he managed to stay in a cordial tone.

"Thor right? The Avenger?" He said like he didn't know the blond in front of him.

Right now he didn't want to know the blond in front of him. In fact, he wanted to throw him through a wall and if he could by some means keep his cover and throw the blond through a wall he would. Unfortunately, Robert McMillan wasn't Asgardian or Jotun and as such he was going to have to resist the urge.

"What can I do for you?" He asked as politely as he could muster.

"Can I talk to you in your office?" Thor said his voice tinged with worry and a hint of urgency.

Loki's anger was tempered slightly by caution; he gestured to the room behind him and moved so that Thor could make his way past him. Thor's legs quickly ate up the distance and Loki simply had to close the door for them to be alone. Loki held up a finger before Thor could talk. There were security measures in the room that he had to take care of before they could speak to, or more likely shout at each other. A simple gesture disabled the camera in the room, there were mics in his room too, but those had long ago been disabled, and they were only turned on for meetings that he wanted a record of. Now that the camera was down Loki set off various spells to ensure that they would not be interrupted.

When he was finished Loki turned to the blond scowling, the glare now prominent that he had been hiding from the receptionist and him till that moment. His hands balled into fists by his sides, and he was just barely able to keep himself from trying to physically or otherwise attack Thor.

"Thor I was very clear. You are not supposed to be here. You are not supposed to be in my office ever! Especially not in those clothes that pretty much declare that you are an Avenger!" Loki shouted his face felt warm, but that was probably because his anger was pumping his blood more rapidly than usual. How could Thor do this to him? Thor looked slightly abashed at his tone but then he straightened himself.

"I am not here for myself. I am here for Tony." Loki frowned not knowing what to make of that and with a slight nod of the head decided to let Thor continue.

"Tony said that there is a problem with one of your combined projects and that he needs your help. He asked me as his friend to come and get Rob as he and I are the only ones that can fly and he had to stay there to try to get the project under control."

"What?" Loki asked trying to think of which project it could be.

They met for a few hours every month and they had a variety of projects in the works. Both GO Technologies and Stark Industries were confused about their friendship and the higher-ups didn't like it, especially since neither company had any intention to merge with the other anytime soon. Both companies thought that the person working for the other company was only in this friendship to steal the others' ideas. If the executives of either company ever found out that they spent hours making items together, they would undoubtedly send the executives of both companies to an early grave over the thought of the legal battles of which company the product would be marketed and sold under. That was the reason that no one besides The Avengers, Pepper and Barry knew about their arrangement and while no one except maybe Thor was fond of it, they could keep their mouths shut.

If Tony was asking for his help at his workplace it must have gone seriously wrong. He started making his way to the door, mentally going through the projects in question trying to mentally calculate which would be the worst one to be malfunctioning when Thor spoke.

"You wouldn't even join me for Mother's Day, Father's day and you barely spoke to me on the Fourth of July, yet when Tony needs you, you don't even hesitate," Thor's bitter words hit his ears.

Loki turned back around with a sigh.

"Thor you know how I feel about Mother and Father's day and I had something coming out near the Fourth of July and they kept sending me things all night. Besides, we have lunch 2 times a week," he said. He didn't really have time for the lunches, and for the rest of the week, he had a working lunch. On the days they had lunch together he slept 3 hours instead of the usual four but-

"You spend most of our lunches thinking about work!" Thor shouted back.

Loki sighed, okay, yes, some of the time that he and Thor had lunch his mind was still back in the office. But there was always so much to do, and he couldn't just switch his brain off when it was halfway through figuring out something.

"Thor-" Loki started only for Thor to hold up his hand to quiet him despite still seeming upset.

"Robert, Tony seemed very worried, you should probably take care of the problem now. We can talk about this later,"

Robert. His full first name. The name was like a slap to the face, especially since Thor knew that he didn't have to use it because of the spell, that hurt more than he thought that it would. Loki nodded and took the spells away. He went to his intercom and said

"Janice call the car around."


Thor decided not to drive back with him and had flown away as soon as the two of them had hit the pavement. Loki could teleport there, but Robert couldn't, so he had to drive and hope that things wouldn't be too bad when he got there. He still had no idea which project of theirs was malfunctioning. It could be any of them despite their combined projects being nothing short of brilliant. He loved the way Tony's mind worked and he loved how seamlessly they seemed to work together. They were working on things that the Aesir were too lazy to work on. Asgardians with their longer lifespan seemed quite content to invent things when they got around to it, rather than with the fervor Midgardians had. He still sometimes had difficulty believing how much his views of Midgardians had changed over the years. The distance between the two buildings wasn't long but in New York traffic seemed to drag any journey so it seemed much longer than it should.

It was frivolous to obsess over what could have happened when he didn't know which one was malfunctioning, so he let his thoughts drift back to Thor. Thor was angry at him- no he was hurt, Loki corrected himself before he shoved that thought away. First, he would tackle the project problem then he would try to figure out if he wanted to do anything about Thor or not. He really wished he could teleport to the tower, but there was something he could do rather than just sit there in traffic, even though he was only a few blocks away now. He dialed Stark and his face came on the screen projected from his phone. He wasn't looking at him but at something else off-screen.

"So tall, blond, and handsome told you?" Loki nodded even though he probably didn't have to.

"First time you met an Avenger huh?" Tony spoke with a smirk as if he expected his meeting with Thor to have left him star-struck "-besides me", he amended with a nod.

Loki smiled always ready to try to take the arrogant, cocky man down a peg.

"He was much smarter and more entertaining than the other Avengers I've met." Loki paused for a second mulling that statement over in his head and decided that he would have said it and in the exact same way no matter what Avenger it had been. It had nothing to do with the fact that it was Thor.

"So you took the project home?" Loki asked raising his eyebrows and crossing his arms as he remembered that Thor had told him to come to the tower, rather than their usual workplace, which was supposed to be neutral ground.

Stark just shrugged.

"I had an idea, wanted to try it out, meant to ask, kind of forgot," Tony finished with a shrug of his shoulders and his eyes appeared to be scanning for something.

"What project?" Loki asked getting serious.

"The nanites,"

Loki blinked.

The nanites? They were trying to use the nanites to construct new limbs for people who had lost limbs using their own DNA. As far as he knew the nanites, the last time he had seen them, didn't do anything. They didn't work. The last time he had checked neither of them had been all that eager to work on the project. There were a lot of things they would have to do to market it, they would have had to convince and talk to people in the medical profession and try to get it approved for use. They were both more technological guys and less medically inclined. Guys? How did that word creep into his vocabulary?

"What, why were you working on the nanites?" He demanded.

"I figured it was the project that you'd be the least likely to notice went missing," Tony said glibly like he wasn't ashamed of the fact that he had broken one of their few rules. Loki was furious about this breach but tossed it aside to deal with later after he knew what the problem was and how to fix it.

"What did you do to them?" Loki asked instead, lips thinning in annoyance, not at all pleased with how this day was going.

"I tried to get them to work and I thought that I did but really," Stark paused and winced a little bit which did not help at all, "I think I might have gotten it backward," he said slightly chagrined.

"What are they doing Stark?" He demanded, not liking the other man's tone.

"You're pissed aren't you?" The man said looking even more abashed. "You called me Stark, you haven't called me Stark in a while."

"Stark!" Loki shouted trying to get him back on point.

"Right!" He said then his view of the room started to move again.

"You know how we wanted the nanites to scan the healthy version of the person's whatever and then rebuild it, or a mirror image of it, wherever we needed. Well… it scanned just fine, or at least what I assumed was just fine. However, rebuilding didn't work so well... it decided instead to destroy any kind of skin it can touch. Like piranhas, but piranhas that are too tiny to see without 100 times magnification. The good news is that it doesn't destroy anything that isn't flesh-based. The bad news is that there is nothing left of any of the lab rats," he said with a look of disgust on his face.

"I had to put the others in the hulk cage to protect them while the two of us deal with this. Bruce would probably be able to help as this stuff is right in his wheelhouse, but if those nanites start chewing on him, we'll have a Hulk in the place and that would only make a bad situation even worse."

Loki didn't disagree. The last thing he wanted was a repeat of his last trip to the Avenger's tower despite it having happened years ago, it felt like a lifetime ago. He had wanted to destroy all of them the last time he had been there and now he was friends with Tony, Barry, and speaking to Thor again. Loki had absolutely no idea how he had gotten from point A to point B. Rather than trying to retrace the past, he thought of what Tony had just done and felt the anger bubble up inside him again.

"Let me get this straight, you lied to me, screwed up and now you want my help to fix it?"

"Yep," Tony said popping the p just as the car came to a stop before the Avenger tower.

Loki hadn't been inside the tower, except for parties, since it had been redone after...after well, he had trashed it and thrown Tony out the window the first time around. He supposed that he owed it to Tony to help him out as he had thrown Tony out his own window. He would help him even if Tony had no idea why.

Sighing, he opened the door of the car, stepping out into the cooling evening air. "I'll be up in a moment."