And we're back! Thank you so much to everyone who left their comments and well-wishes on the last chapter. It's been a hectic time, but things are returning to normal here. While there's still a lot of damage in some places, I'm thankful at least that everyone I know is safe and well and back at home now. There's been a huge amount of support through donations and volunteers working to clean up and rebuild the city and surrounding areas. We're on the right track. :)

Now back to your regularly scheduled Tony/Loki programming!

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Tony would've bet money that Loki would be the first to crack, but after four days, the so-called God of Mischief seems nothing but perfectly content. It's like they've fallen into a lazy, domestic routine, and it happened so easily, unchallenged in comfortable silence. Nobody brings up the awkward question of whether or not what happened on Friday night was a one-hit wonder. Friday was Friday. No need for discussion. No need to ask why or what next. That answer's obvious enough in the way Loki doesn't hesitate to follow Tony into the bedroom every night, and in the way Tony shrugs off his clothes the second they're through the door. In the way Tony wakes up each morning with Loki's arm wrapped vine-like around his waist.

Tony says nothing when Loki slides like a ghost into the shower behind him, because there's nothing to say. No complaint. No hesitance. It feels like Loki should be there. Like something would be missing if Loki weren't there, tracing soap lines down his back under a curtain of water. It feels natural to sit next to Loki at the breakfast table, knees barely touching as they eat a hodgepodge of eggs, Tony's ridiculous invention of fruit sandwiches, and badly fried potatoes. Tony touches Loki's back in passing as they search the kitchen for dishwasher tabs. Loki's hand brushes up Tony's arm when they give up and decide, yet again, to just add to the growing pile of dirty plates in the sink. Little gestures that Tony knows weren't there before. Though now it feels like such things always were.

They're not in a relationship. They might be in a relationship. Nobody's bothered trying to define what they are. There's no need to. Things just work.

Except for the part where unemployment in Phoenix doesn't suit Tony at all: that part goes over like a lead balloon, and Tony's pretty sure that one more day of not actively trying to reclaim the Tesseract will have him climbing the walls in anxious boredom. Four days, and Loki hasn't said a word. No plan of action, no forthcoming information, and no suggestion that maybe they should get their asses back to New York. Silence all around.

Thus if Tony Stark had bet money on Loki being the first to crack, and on Loki being the first to insist they get their show on the road, Tony Stark would've lost.

ooo

"I fixed the toilet," he says to Loki, as if Loki might care or even be the kind of person who would have noticed that the toilet needed a tune-up in the first place.

Loki's gaze stays right where it is, focused on nothing in particular in the middle of the living room. "Oh?"

"Yeah. The flush was a little off, so I shortened the chain. Works like a charm now. Then I noticed the hot water tap in the shower was loose, so I tightened that, and rebalanced the ceiling fan to cut down on noise."

"Mm."

"My next project might be trying to see how well I can adapt an old aromatherapy vaporizer I found in the spare room into something more useful."

"Mm."

"Are you just going to-"

"-Sit here all day allegedly doing nothing at all?" Loki finishes for him. "Until you grow too bored to function, having fixed every toilet and door hinge in the house at least twice, and you decide to come over here and make a nuisance of yourself by sitting down and slowly inching closer as if I won't notice? Until you're practically sitting in my lap and things quickly escalate into tearing our clothes off and falling to the floor in a repeat of what happened when we had this exact conversation yesterday? If so, yes: I had scheduled that into my plans for today. But later," he adds, holding up his hand when Tony makes a move forward. "I'm otherwise occupied at the moment."

Killjoy. "Doing what?" Tony asks, because as far as he can tell, the answer to that question is 'nothing'. Loki's sitting on the couch, facing towards the TV but with a blank expression that says he's not taking anything in. Just sitting and staring.

"Attempting an astral ascent to Thanos' scepter so I can unbind my armor."

And suddenly there's that name again, its reappearance jolting through Tony's body like a tiny electric shock. In four days, Loki has said less than a peep about the Tesseract and the psycho who sent him to get it. Total avoidance, and now it comes up again in that offhandedly casual way. So does that mean he's finally ready to talk a little more? Carefully, Tony takes a seat in the overstuffed leather chair opposite Loki's couch. "Thanos' scepter?"

Thor had said the scepter wasn't of Asgardian origin. Said that somebody must've given it to Loki, but didn't yet know who. So there's the answer to that question. Thanos. The would-be Evil Emperor.

But Loki doesn't take the bait. "This is very advanced, very difficult magic," he says instead. "I need to concentrate."

"Concentrate on...?"

That earns Tony one sharp look (the 'you idiot' look with which Tony has become very familiar of late) and a grunting sigh. The implication is clear: 'either sit there and shut up, or make yourself scarce'. Tony can do that. Or he can try. For a little while, at least. He leans back in the chair, folding his hands behind his neck, and makes a show of shutting his mouth with tightly pursed lips.

The 'you idiot' look stays firmly planted on Loki's face as he lowers his eyes and goes back to doing... whatever he was doing before. Staring into space. If what he's doing really is high power magic, it's magic unlike anything Tony ever expected to see. No hand-waving use of the Force. No Latin-sounding Hogwarts incantations. Not even any meditation in a yoga pose. Most disappointing, though, is the complete lack of evidence that anything at all is happening. Loki sits there with glazed eyes and a vacant expression, like any other moron watching daytime TV, with not so much as a flicker of the living room lamps in the presence of his amazing wizard powers. Minutes crawl by. Five, then ten, while Tony drums his fingers on his knee and watches the horse-shaped clock on the bookshelf, waiting for anything to explode or, at the very least, start glowing.

Nothing does. The session ends as uneventfully as it began, with a sigh and a shake of the head as Loki sinks back into the couch, concentration broken.

"So... every movie about wizards has lied to me?" Tony asks.

Loki doesn't even dignify that with a verbal response. Just a raised eyebrow.

"Your advanced, difficult magic. I guess I was expecting something a little more... I don't know... not completely boring? That had almost all the excitement of watching somebody solve a Sudoku. It should've been more showy. You know, like you rise up into the air in a ball of blinding light while electricity crackles around you."

"You have a very odd sense of what magic should be."

"Maybe," Tony agrees. "Maybe my line of work has conditioned me to associate progress with loud noises and things catching on fire. Or maybe you're just pretending to do invisible magic as a means of stalling."

At that, Loki looks up to meet Tony's eye again. "Stalling?" he asks. A sliver of poisonous intimidation bristles in his voice.

Not that Tony's in any mood to be intimidated by somebody wearing a towel and a Heineken t-shirt. "Yeah. Stalling. We know we need to get back to New York. We know we need to get the Tesseract. But every day, instead of telling me you're ready to go, you come in here, sit your ass down in front of the TV, and do sweet fuck all. You have to admit there's something off about this scenario. Almost like, oh, I don't know, you have absolutely no interest in getting back in the saddle?"

"Possibly," Loki turns around on him. "Or, possibly, the Tesseract is no longer in New York, and I am trying to track its location before we go skipping off across all of Midgard. I told you at the beginning of this adventure that, unlike you and Thor, I like to plan things carefully."

"Or, possibly," says Tony, "you just like spending time with me but are too prickly to admit it, so you make up elaborate stories about-"

It's not often that a look can shut Tony Stark up with all the efficiency of a punch to the face, but somehow Loki is one of few people able to do just that with no trouble at all. There's a darkening menace in his crystalline eyes that screams out, If you say one more word, I will cause your head to explode. Also something in the back of Tony's mind that says, It's probably not normal for me to legitimately worry about having my head exploded by the guy I'm fucking. But then, the guy he's fucking is a murderous immortal shapeshifting ice giant alien warlord, so trying to apply the rules of normalcy to this sort of situation might just be a square peg/round hole kind of deal.

"...Right, okay," he says slowly. "It's definitely not my scintillating conversation that keeps you around, so I'll just assume it's my Adonis-like body and move on back to safer topics of conversation. Like magical relics from outer space. The Tesseract. It's not in New York?"

Loki holds his head-exploding glare as long as he can, but ultimately it melts into a grudging nod. "It's no longer in your tower, or in the city at all. Neither is the scepter. Neither is Thor. All three have gone somewhere I can't easily find, too far away."

"So they're back out over the Atlantic in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s flying submarine," Tony says.

"You think so?" asks Loki.

"Well, I don't know how familiar you are with Earth geography, but if something is farther from here than New York, there's a good chance it'll be over the ocean, yeah. That's some scientific logic to augment your voodoo. Which actually brings up an interesting point: how about you try telling me what the hell you're doing so I can maybe help?"

The glare comes back. Silently. Quite possibly with more murderous intensity.

"I like you way better when you're naked in bed," grumbles Tony. "You're a lot less horrible."

"And I like you way better when your mouth is too busy to talk," Loki smoothly replies. "You're a lot more tolerable."

"So you agree we should drop everything, starting with pants, and have sex right now?"

No. Loki's not that easily swayed. Which is a real shame, because Tony is.

"Once I've located the scepter and unbound my armor. For now, Tony Stark, I'm sorry, but I have work to do. I'll need to concentrate a great amount of energy to follow such a weak trail. We can play later."

I'll count on it, Tony can't help but think. Because now that the idea is lodged in his mind, imagination spinning through all the better ways they could spend this sluggish afternoon... Shit. Why does Loki have to look so ridiculously attractive all the time? Sitting there with his adorable TV-zombie expression, hair all uncombed in wild curls after this morning's shower, wearing a loosely fastened towel, long and graceful limbs sprawling out over the couch...

It might not be the best of ideas to jump on him right now, but hell if it's not tempting. Really tempting.

Tony'll just have to distract himself with stupid questions instead. "How many different magical powers do you have anyway? Sexual harassment, Jedi mind tricks, illusions, invisibility, now you're a mental bloodhound?"

"Magic is not a sport with a set of allowable actions, Tony Stark," Loki answers with the kind of exasperated frown usually only managed by humorless elementary school teachers. "It is not a musical scale with a certain number of notes. Assuming a finite number of magical abilities is about as sensible as assuming a finite number of answers to mathematics.

"Then what?"

"I'm trying to concentrate."

"No you're not. You admitted just a minute ago the Tesseract is too far away for you to track, so trying again won't do much. You should probably give up now and come to bed with me. A nice, long, relaxing afternoon nap. Sort of. Maybe not relaxing. Or nap, so much. Nice and long: yes."

"Tony Stark."

It's a warning. The verbal equivalent to his 'I will make your head explode' glare.

"Or," Tony offers as a compromise, "you can tell me how your magic works."

"Why would you..." Loki doesn't finish the sentence, though it more or less finishes itself.

"Why would I want to know?" Tony asks. "Well, one, because I'm curious, but mostly, two, because I'm bored out of my mind and want to leave this place. I have a theory that if I can understand what you're doing, and what your limitations are, I'll be able to help. Magic and science together have a way better chance of success than either of us alone."

He's right. He knows he's right, and Loki knows he's right. They've already come so much farther together than they could've done alone, and they'll need to keep going down this road together if they hope to have any chance of success against the behemoth that is S.H.I.E.L.D.. But what Loki says in reply is almost too quiet to hear, a growl under his breath that Tony barely manages to catch: "Magic is a science. That's what you don't understand."

Tony blinks. "Huh?"

The blade of Loki's voice has been sharpened on something, though it's not so much annoyance now as it is resignation when he sighs his answer. "You keep saying 'magic' and 'science' as if they're two completely different disciplines. What we call 'magic' is nothing more than another science largely unknown to humans. And those few humans who do know it are often treated as frauds by ignorant peers who lack the ability to understand. Magic is..." He pauses, eyes darting from space to space in empty air as if searching for elusive words, before settling on, "Think of this. What separates humans from animals?"

"Reason?" Tony asks, shrugging. "Critical though? Ingenuity?"

Loki nods. "Exactly. Humans are able think in abstract ways. They have moral guidelines and worry about what is right and what is wrong, and how to better themselves and their societies. In contrast, an animal in the wild thinks only of eating and mating and surviving. Humans have the capacity to learn and teach and build on the knowledge of others. Think of how much your people have done in the last thousand years, yet what have wolves done in that same time? A human today is vastly different from the humans I first knew. But a wolf has not changed at all. So with that reference in mind: can you imagine the differences that must exist between humans and the next step up on the scale of higher beings? What the Aesir, for example, must be able to do with their minds and their bodies, if we are to humans what humans are to animals?"

"I..." Had never thought of that. It's the unavoidable attitude of a planet that has yet to develop practical space travel: that smug, self-centered belief (no, knowledge) that humans are the pinnacle of evolution. Nothing is better. Never has been and never will be. Just humans, with no competition. There are gods, sure, but those exist only as distant figures in the minds of the religious, unknowable and immeasurable. Humans have no real rivals for top spot on the pyramid of life. In their own safe, insular little world, they're king of the castle.

Until now.

"Humans can manipulate their vocal chords and tongues into millions of varieties of speech," says Loki, "because their brains are advanced enough to allow this ability. If you came from a species that could only howl and shriek like animals, you might consider speech to be 'magic'. Likewise, I am able to choose the pace at which my blood regenerates, as you recently witnessed, but this is not 'magic' as you understand the word. It is simply me having far more control over my body than most humans would think possible, because healing, to you, is an autonomic function. Magic is not a fantastic fairy story. It does not come out of the air with a puff of smoke to create something from nothing. It is the ability to harness energy flows and use them manipulate matter. All it takes is knowledge and skill. There's no limit to what a magic-wielder can do. Only how well it can be done."

"Hm," says Tony, and he wishes he could think up some better reply, something clever, because despite the unfamiliarity of it all, and despite all the things that should logically be written off as total bunk, what Loki's saying actually makes sense. Fantasy magic, as nice an idea as it is with the ability to wave a wand and conjure sparkles and rainbows in the blink of an eye, never amounted to anything more than escapist entertainment. Pulp fiction and Saturday morning cartoons. But this... This, he could legitimately believe. This is no more outlandish than an undiscovered branch on the growing tree of evolution.

"Do you remember what I told you about coincidences?" Loki asks.

Tony nods. "That they don't exist."

"Exactly. Everything you perceive as 'coincidence' is merely a subconscious attunement to environmental energy. When we first arrived in this house, you started thinking of items you used to own, only to find them sitting there in a closet the next day. So what made you think of them? The books and clothing you told me about? Not coincidence: energy. Every time you touch an inanimate object, you leave residual energy behind. The longer you hold it, the more important it is to you, the more energy you transfer. This slowly degrades, in the manner of a radioactive half-life, but when you walked into this house there was still enough of your energy or the energy of someone you knew on those items for your brain to detect. But since humans lack the ability to control this recognition, the odd time it happens, you call it 'coincidence'."

"So humans can access... magic," says Tony, though it feels so strange using that word in what could otherwise be classified as a serious scientific discussion. 'Magic' just sounds so Las Vegas reality show.

"In some ways," Loki answers with a nod. "It's rare, but not impossible, for humans to master control over their bodies or develop a rudimentary ability to read energy flows and descry something of the future. Some claim astral projection, though I'd be reluctant to believe them simply because your brains are not equipped to perform such advanced feats. It would be like a sheep learning to fly: unnatural and not biologically possible."

"We're not sheep," Tony mutters, though he lets the insult slide. "But all Asgardians have these abilities?"

"In the same way as all humans have the ability to sing. Some croak dismally, some struggle to carry a tune, some have pleasant yet unremarkable voices, and some create awe-inspiring music to outshine the birds."

And what a stretch it is to figure out where Loki falls on that spectrum. "Let me guess," says Tony. "You outshine the birds?"

Loki just grins, and it's a smile that might be flirtatious if it weren't so damn menacing.

"But that comes with a cost," Tony continues. "I think I'm starting to get this now. You can control energy, but am I right in assuming that's not always a safe thing to do? Mess around too much and it builds up inside you. The inert magic."

"Very good," Loki murmurs.

"Yeah, and that's just with my underdeveloped human brain. Pretty impressive, huh? I'm also guessing you think you can outshine yourself and somehow dredge up the power to break your limitations and pinpoint the location of the Tesseract. But how's this for an idea: we go back to New York. That way your antenna will be in range and we'll have a lot easier time mapping out where we need to go."

The grin flickers, and falters, and fades. "And then what?" Loki asks, quietly wooden. "If we find the Tesseract, if we steal it back, what do we do with it? What is your grand solution, Tony Stark?"

"I don't really know," he's forced to admit. They never finished this conversation. They never really started it. Loki gave him hints, nothing more, about Thanos and the always-cliché plot to rule the universe: only a few scattered pieces of a puzzle as vast as space itself. "But I'm starting to think the smart thing to do would be to tell the rest of the Avengers team everything we – and by we I mean you – know about what's going on. Maybe letting Thanos have the stupid thing isn't such a bad idea. Maybe it's the worst idea in the history of time. We don't know, but maybe putting everybody's heads together we can come up with a plan."

Not his usual modus operandi, and on some arrogant level it's a blow to Tony's pride to even let those words pass his lips in a roundabout plea for help. But if being with Loki for the last two weeks has taught him anything, it's that when aliens are involved, he's in over his head. Way over. This is isn't just the deep end, it's the goddamn Marianas Trench, and having some other guys in his corner would be a welcome change of pace.

"You truly believe you can stop this."

The way Loki says those words drops an icy ripple down Tony's back. Quietly wooden again, and unnervingly blank. "Again, I don't know," Tony answers. Maybe too honestly. "But what the fuck good are we if we don't try?"

Loki's eyes narrow. He knows that was an exclusive 'we'.

"You're welcome to join the good guys at any time. You don't have to keep up this song and dance of trying to take over the world."

"I told you, it's not that easy..."

"Not S.H.I.E.L.D.," Tony's quick to clarify. "After all they've done for us, I wouldn't touch those assholes with a thirty-nine-and-a-half-foot pole any sooner than you would. I just mean the other guys like Rogers and Banner that I think we can trust. Rogers has dealt with the Tesseract before, and Banner strikes me as a solid guy with a lot of know-how. And Thor-"

"Thor wants to take it back to Asgard," Loki snaps. "That is his mission. That is what he will strive to do."

"And maybe that's what'll end up happening," Tony says, which brings a dirty sneer to Loki's face. Well, suck it up, buttercup: Tony presses on. "Loki, you may not like it, but we gotta weigh all the options here and pick one. I'm not going to complain about taking this little break we've been on, it's been a good cool-down period to separate us from S.H.I.E.L.D., step back and get our heads straight, but we can't stay here forever. At some point, we have to act. Either we do this alone, or we do this with the Avengers, but we have to do something. Soon."

Crossing the room to sit on the couch at Loki's side is supposed to be a sign of friendship and support. The hand squeezing Loki's knee is meant to be a gesture of calm and peace.

The shock of inert magic ripping through his veins and setting his blood on fire knocks both those thoughts out of his mind at the speed of light. "Shit," he breathes, pulling back. Warmth tingles through his body, pin-prickling over his skin, touching every speck of him inside and out with a teasing caress before it settles, pulsing heavily, deep in his core. "You... really were using magic."

"I told you I was," Loki mutters.

"A lot of magic."

"Far more than I would normally attempt in one day."

"And you still want to push yourself further?"

Magic sparks as he traces his fingers up the outline of Loki's arm. Even that small point of contact echoes in expanding waves. His touch slides up to Loki's shoulder and his neck, pressing his hand flat out against cool skin, feeling the surge of energy that buzzes through Loki's being. Almost like it's calling to him. Pulling him close...

"It may be possible to persuade me to stop for the time being," Loki allows.

Loki's arms are around Tony's back before Tony even has words to reply, an iron grip dragging him into a kiss that burns and sizzles with electricity. Loki's lips are on his, tongue slipping past teeth, bodies suddenly tight against each other as the magic surges with need.

"Is this the part of the day you have scheduled to rip each other's clothes off and fall to the floor?" Tony gasps.

Loki's answer contains exactly zero words.

ooo

It's the middle of the night when Loki finally agrees to return to New York. But in the night, in the dark, in their bed, his agreement sounds a little too much like defeat.

Tony doesn't mention the word 'stalling' again, though that doesn't mean he's not thinking it. Something's driving a wedge between Loki and the Tesseract. Thanos. The Chitauri. Thor? The longer Tony weighs the options, the less sure he is about any of them.

"There are a lot of coincidences in my life," he says instead as a distraction as his fingers comb through Loki's hair. "All the time. An unusual word pops into my head and then it shows up in something I'm reading the next day. Or I suddenly remember a scene from a movie I once saw, and later that night it's on TV. I think of somebody I haven't seen in a long time and within hours he calls me. About a month ago I woke up with this old song in my head, '2 Legit 2 Quit' by M.C. Hammer, and I was humming it all day. That afternoon I got an email from my pal Rhodey. All it said was, 'Flashback: remember this?' and then a youtube link. To that stupid song. Is that magic?"

"Yes," Loki answers.

"So I actually have a real superpower."

"In a sense. You must be more attuned to changes in energy than the average human."

"A real superpower," Tony repeats. The power to occasionally accidentally predict irrelevant events. The world's lamest superpower. "That's kind of awesome."

"You merely lack control," says Loki. "If you could learn how to isolate specific energy signatures, it's possible you might be able to one day target this ability."

Tony shifts onto his side, propping himself up with one arm so he can look down at Loki, face to face. "And I could use real, honest-to-God magic," he says, followed immediately by, "I can't believe that's a phrase that just came out of my mouth."

"I said 'possibly'," Loki replies with a teasing smirk. "It may never amount to anything, but you can always try. What you just described, your series of 'coincidences', is exactly what magic-wielders of Asgard look for in children when trying to determine natural talent. You may be too old to learn much, as these abilities are best developed in the very young, but it may be interesting to try."

"Can you teach me?"

The smirk again. The coy twist of Loki's lips as he reaches up to brush sweat-damp hair back from Tony's forehead.

His answer is the exact opposite of anything Tony ever imagined himself hearing. "I don't see why not."