Chapter Three:
The next few weeks past in a blur to Tony. He and Loki continued to have sex, she claimed it was to keep her from being bored to tears in his mansion. Clint and Natasha had gone on away missions, probably to avoid coming in contact with the God, who seemed to see them as her favorite targets. She avoided Bruce, not mentioning why, though Tony privately figured it was cause she didn't want to take any chances with the green rage monster at the moment. Steve beyond his own comprehension seemed to be the only one safe from being pranked, which Tony was absolutely not pissed at.
There wasn't a surface of his house that hadn't been...christened by the two of them. Except for his own bedroom. They had even had sex in Thor's bedroom and Tony had spent half the time out of his mind with fear that Thor would walk in on his sister going down on him at any moment. Sex with Loki was a ritual in concentration. Best sex of his life, and half out of his mind with fear. One time she had decided to have her fun while they were watching tv in the living room. Steve had been in the room. It was all Tony could do not to melt into the floor when Steve had looked over at him due to the moans he'd been making. Apparently he couldn't see Loki's hand down Tony's jeans.
A room had also been put aside for the baby. Next to the room that Loki had claimed as her own. It had an interconnecting door and was actually too far away from Tony's own room for his liking. Pepper had decided she wasn't going to leave the room in Tony's hands so she had sat Loki down and apparently made a well enough impression that Loki actually took her advice for what to do. The room had been painted in neutral colors, with wallpaper strips near the floor and the ceiling that oddly enough had moving horses, wolves and what seemed to be snakes. The crib had been placed near a bay window in the room and was old and handmade, found in an antique shop in London. Loki had come back with it a few days before. Thor had even brought a bunch of hand made wooden toys for the baby. Without Tony even truly realising Loki had moved in permanently into his life.
He had no idea when she'd done it but she seemed to have moved her entire library into her own room at the mansion. Books were everywhere, shelves had been moved into the room and stacked by order. Old books, new books, books in different languages. If not for the bed which had replaced Tony's old guest bed, a four poster with green hanging curtains, he'd have thought the room was a bookstore.
They were crashed out on Loki's bed now, naked and sated and for once Tony wasn't fearing that Thor was going to walk in on them. It was clear no one could enter Loki's room without Loki wanting them too. Coulson had found that out the hard way when he'd tried and spent the next few hours as a bunny. Loki's eyes were closed but she wasn't asleep. Tony had found that she seemed to be most truthful in this half asleep, half blissed out state then at any other time she'd talked to him.
He asked her all sorts of things during these times. Sometimes she would stay silent, sometimes she'd answer. Asked her to explain why it was so easy for her normally to shapeshift between a man and a woman and she'd replied that her true form was both and neither. Thor wouldn't elaborate anymore on that statement when it was brought up to him, explained that it was something his brother was sensitive about.
"You know," he said, tongue flicking out in tiny cat licks across her stomach, "I have sex a lot. Always use protection. And yet, somehow this still happens." A tiny foot bumped against his mouth. It should have freaked him out but it made him feel more relaxed and calm then he ever had.
"It was defective. I'm a god, doesn't work the same way with me," she said, half yawning. Her eyes were still closed by her hands had come up to play with his hair.
"You knew that and you still slept with me anyway? Completely knowing this was a possibility?" He arched his eyebrows up.
"Why not?" Tony sighed at her answer, looking at her face. Yes, why not jump at the chance to change the life of one of her brother's friends. For the fun of it, so she had claimed. Not for the first time he wondered how much of the truth she kept hidden.
Tony, for the first time in a long time, sat alone in his garage, looking at slides of himself as a baby. His mother, doting on him and happy and far different then he remembered her being in her later years, as the work and drinking had consumed his father. He took a swallow of his own scotch and looked through the scant few pictures of his father and him as they went past on the projector.
Even knowing now that his father had loved him, he still struggled with his own relationship with him. Cold and distant, he'd spent a lot of his life in boarding schools and in the company of nannies. Thor had explained that royal children were often reared by nannies as well, but that Frigga had often taken a more hands on approach with her youngest, possibly because Loki had been unlike any other male child of the Aesir. Magic in Asgard was considered a feminine art and so Loki had been odd even in his own home land. Thor had also explained that he did not know exactly how Loki would react to being a parent, because he had usually been allowed scant few moments in his children's company. Never the less it seemed to effect Loki in ways that were obvious.
As her time drew nearer she seemed to be growing more and more suspicious. The sex and the pranks had all but stopped and worry lines had appeared on her face. She would disappear for days at a time, causing Tony and Thor much lack of sleep and not a small amount of anxiety but each time she came back she would seem tired but relieved. She would explain nothing. Due to this Thor had put away his plans for marriage and seemed more determined to make his brother comfortable then anything else at the moment.
Pepper and Loki had also become very close. Pepper had taken over everything when it came to helping the expecting mother, she took her shopping for baby clothes and had gotten her to a very discreet doctor for regular checkups. She seemed to have forgotten that Loki was someone the Avengers had just a few months before been trying to stop from world domination, or perhaps just didn't care having put up with Tony for so many years. She knew how to handle difficult people.
The other strange thing was that for the past few weeks there had been no supervillain activity in what seemed like weeks. Tony knew it had to be no coincidence that this was coinciding with Loki's rather odd disappearances lately and Fury seemed to be suspicious as well. He came around the house everyday, looking and checking all his cameras as if they held the secrets of the universe and glaring at Loki whenever he came into contact with her. And been giving Tony some rather odd looks, muttering about Starks and their freaky habits. She always held the same serene, perfectly innocent look on her face. Which on her meant there was no innocence.
The rest of the Avengers were taking it as a blessing. Clint had decided to go on a vacation, Natasha had ran off to who knows where, probably somewhere she could hit someone whom she felt deserved it. Bruce was off studying in his lab and hadn't gotten angry enough to destroy something in weeks and Steve was still hanging around the house. He was a great help to Tony during his more maudlin moments, drunken discussions of everything from his fears of being a crappy dad to how he might be starting to become obsessed with the mother and how that was really, really bad.
He sighed when the last of the slides finally came to an end and put his head in his hands. Who the hell was he kidding. When had his life ever been easy? From being kidnapped in Afghanistan and then to being almost killed by someone he'd trusted his whole life, Iron Man and the Avengers, the icing on the cake would of course be to fall for someone who was probably incapable of loving him or not blowing up the world. Not that he was falling for her. The feeling was akin to an obsession, the type of all consuming passion he'd had for building the Iron Man suits.
Being near her was like being near a wildfire. Stand to close and you'd get burnt, a living reminder of why nature said that everything beautiful was deadly. But Tony was the moth in this scenario, drawn to the flame and almost eager to get burnt. And wishing desperately for a TARDIS so that he could turn back time and have his life be normal again. As normal as it would ever be.
He gulped down the last dregs of his scotch when the door opened. He expected to be seeing Thor or Steve as he turned around but to his surprise it was Rhoadey. Back from whatever mission he'd been sent on now. Tony smiled at his friend, getting up to hug him.
"So, heard you're going to be a father. Heaven help that child. Kid will be learning how to fly around in a cyber powered suit before he can walk," Rhoadey joked, pouring himself his own scotch and topping off Tony's.
"She might end up with wings of her own and not need the suit," Tony replied, only half joking. He hadn't had the guts to ask if the rumors about snakes and wolves and eight legged horses were true, or if the moving wallpaper panels in the babies room were just Loki's idea of a joke at the expense of earth mythology. He didn't want to become a smear of ash on the floor if they were true. And asking Thor anything about his brother was almost as bad, Thor wouldn't lie, he'd just become a stone wall. One time he'd actually replied that since Tony had better be courting his brother it was his duty to ask these things for himself.
"Wings huh? Well I haven't met Mommy dearest but from what I've heard, this child's got some frightening genetics. You and someone who defies all laws of reality. Only you would place that kind of headache on the world."
Tony laughed. Yes, only he would. The greatest thing he'd ever created, his father's words rang through his mind.
Rhoadey had left about a half hour before when Tony stumbled, slightly drunk, out of his garage to see Loki standing outside, leaning forward over his balcony. She wasn't wearing much, something that looked like an Asgardian style tunic, leaving her legs and feet bare. The sleeves were rolled up to her elbows and her shoulder length, curly hair was a mess at the back of her head. It was a freezing night outside, rare in Malibu and she was standing there in basically nothing. She was going to get sick, he didn't care about any alien genetics.
There was a blanket tossed on the couch and he could see rain hitting the ground through the glass. Not a lot, just mist, but enough to cause even more of a chill in the air. He grabbed the blanket and quietly slipped through the door. Her gently threw the blanket around her shoulders, wrapping her in it. Her could see her smirk slide onto her face from where he was standing at her side.
"I don't need this. Can't feel the cold," she told him, turning her head to look at him and nevertheless burying her hands in it. Tony could see tiny water droplets from the rain splashing against her cheeks.
"Thor feels the cold. And if not you, I'm sure she does," he replied, gesturing to Loki's stomach where their baby was. Water was dripping down his own face and he had forgotten to put on a coat, worried that Loki was going to make herself sick. He wrapped her arms around himself, feeling goosebumps on his skin.
Loki sighed, "You're an idiot." It sounded almost fond. She brought one of her hands out to touch Tony's cheek and her touch felt like ice on his skin for a moment before it felt like his body was warming itself. The kind of feeling like hot chocolate sliding down your throat on a freezing winter's day.
She drew her hand away and her gaze at the same time, looking up. He felt the sudden urge to hug her, an urge which he barely suppressed. Sex with an enemy turned co-parent to be was one thing, intimacy was a step Tony was terrified and wary to take. He felt like he would fall and never land on the ground again.
"Asgard never really gets cold. Not like here. The seasons are always warm. To counter the frost of our neighbors I suspect. Thor never did dress warmly enough, I never needed to," she said, her voice distant and like she wasn't talking to him at all, but was addressing some phantom presence.
She reached over and twined her fingers through his in a flash, still not even looking down. Tony blinked in confusion, looking at their two hands. Hers so much smaller and pale, the blue of her veins shining through like it was glowing, like water. She brought their hands up to study them, like she was looking through a microscope.
"I guess it doesn't get cold enough here either," she mused, sounding equal parts relieved and pensive.
"Doesn't get cold enough for what?" Her face was as still as a statue, looking at their hands.
"Too show. It's buried. Almost not even a part of me...and yet it can take over and bleed out everything else. Like waves crashing on the sand and washing away what's left behind. Sandcastles, footprints, memories. Gone. Changed, in the blink of an eye." She let her hand fall away from his and started to walk back inside, leaving him to stare after her confused. A most natural state for him these days.