Only little things have changed: meaningless, insignificant details that might slip unnoticed past somebody less obsessive than Tony Stark. That chair, for example, has been moved. Shoved aside and out of the way so something else could temporarily occupy its space. That pile of magazines used to be on a different table. Two highball glasses, not four, sit on the tray behind the bar, and the cases of computer equipment stacked up against the wall have been rearranged. Case number four shouldn't be on top. Four goes on the bottom. They have a specific order. But other than that, other than this scattering of minor differences, it's as if the clone troopers of S.H.I.E.L.D. were never here. Cleared out completely, leaving not even a scratch on the floor.
"So they're all gone?" Tony asks aloud.
"Yes, sir," comes the reply from Jarvis. "All S.H.I.E.L.D. agents vacated the premises last Friday. Agent Coulson returned briefly on Sunday afternoon, but has not been back since."
Tony's eyes dart over to Loki, who stalks in a shallow arc along the wall of windows, head just cocked to one side. Sensing something? Maybe. When Loki turns around he dips his chin in a small nod of confirmation. Nobody here.
It's a nail to Tony's heart being forced to doubt Jarvis on such a simple question, but hey: better safe than sorry after S.H.I.E.L.D.'s been screwing with his stuff.
"So," he says to Loki, pushing that unpleasant bit of new reality to the back burner for the time being. "Considering we've been in New York for about two hours and in the tower going on four minutes now, I estimate we have four more minutes tops before S.H.I.E.L.D. makes a move. You want a snack or something while we wait?"
Loki shakes his head 'no'. He's tense. That's easy enough to see. Hell, he radiates enough charged-up tension to be seen a mile away in the dark, and who can blame the guy? Last time he was in Stark Tower he ended up leaving through a sheet of solid glass. Last time he interacted with S.H.I.E.L.D. they shoved a HYDRA gun in his face. And before that? Tony remembers all too well the lunar topography of alien scars that ravaged Loki's chest that first day they spoke in Atlantic City.
"Hey," Tony tries, stepping closer. "This is going to happen on our terms. We're the ones with the intel they want, and it's up to them to give us a fair deal. We won't take threats, and we won't take any shit. This is an alliance. Not a surrender. There's a big difference between those two things."
"And you think they understand that?" asks Loki.
"They better. Or we can always head right on back out the way we came."
"You know if they bring the Tesseract with them shifting will not be an option."
True. But there's always the classic choice of leaping from tall buildings in a single bound. "Well, you'll be able to sense its location before it gets too close, right?"
Loki nods, though it's not the most confident of gestures.
"Can you pick up on its presence now?"
"Approximately two hundred miles to the south-east, and slowly moving in our direction."
So the Technodrome is in motion, heading back to in to dock. Thought the big question now would be, who's on it, and who might've stayed behind in the city as a lookout? Probably...
"Romanoff," Tony says, which gets him a raised eyebrow from Loki.
"What about Agent Romanoff?"
"Any second now. She's going to call or override Jarvis' sound system or crash through one of the windows. I have a feeling. The Force is strong with me today. Just wait."
Eyebrow still riding high, Loki says nothing, but he does wait. He crosses his arms over his chest, then paces, then yawns as seconds tick by and accumulate into minutes and Tony's forced to amend his original prediction.
"Okay, make that any minute now. Cut me some slack here; I'm not Loki Skywalker. I've always been more the Han Solo type. I just get bad feelings about stuff. One more minute."
Half a smile hitches on Loki's lips. The smug bastard. "Oh, but of course. I'm sure if we wait long enough, something will-"
His words are sliced neatly in two by the unmistakable buzz of a cellphone vibrating across a hard surface somewhere nearby.
"Well, would you look at that," Tony says with a grin. "Sorry, you were saying something about having to wait?"
"Sir," Jarvis cuts in. "The incoming call is from an unknown number. Shall I block it?"
"No, I got this. I know exactly who it is."
The phone is the one he left in Atlantic City. Of course it is, sitting there like an unassuming addition to a an end table beside what has to be a deliberately placed, unused coffee mug embossed with the S.H.I.E.L.D. logo. Subtle. The words 'Unknown Caller' illuminate the screen as Tony picks up the phone. (Immediate thought: has anything good ever been on the other end of those words? No, of course not. They're they exclusive domain of telemarketers and pre-recorded robotic scams. Among other untrustworthy individuals.)
"Natasha," he says, rolling the name like a pebble on his tongue. He used to think it was a nice name, exotic and pretty, once upon a time. Now it sounds harsh as bristled wire.
On the other end of the line is a beat of silence, followed by a breath. Then, "Not quite."
And that would be a man's voice. Okay then. "Agent Phil?"
"Mr. Stark."
Well, same shit, different pile. "Agent Phil. Long time no talk. It's been two weeks; I was beginning to think you'd forgotten about me. So to what do I owe this honor?"
Coulson's voice rings with that tinny, distant sound again over another bad connection. Wherever the helicarrier is, their phone service is crap. "You've returned to the land of the living. We were worried about you there for a few days."
"Yeah," says Tony. "Life in hiding isn't exactly my thing. After a while I start to miss the glare of the spotlight and the pleasure of having you guys track my every move. So here I am. Back out in the open. Ready to make a deal."
"I'll send a car for you."
"Or you'll sit back for a sec like a good little negotiator while I list my demands," Tony counters, and when Coulson inhales, ready to strike that idea down, Tony cuts him off. "Listen, bub. Here's the thing. Loki and I have successfully escaped from you three times already, and we can do it again just as easily. It's our game right now. We're calling the shots. You got that?"
The muffled sound of a hand sliding over the mouthpiece drowns out any speech on Coulson's end, and a moment of silence drags out into half a minute. Somebody has to be discussing something in the background. It doesn't take a genius to guess who or what. When Coulson returns, all he says is a toneless, "Go on."
"Thanks. Now first, keep in mind that we willingly returned to New York. We willingly came back to place where we knew we'd be found. This is us holding out the olive branch. So any ideas you have of capturing the bad guys? Toss 'em right now. We're not here to be captured, but to trade knowledge for security. We can tell you everything you need to know about the Tesseract and the Chitauri. In return, you're going to call off your witch hunt and let us live like civilized people. Not prisoners. Consultants. As of today, Loki is working with me."
"And?"
"And," says Tony, "we're uninterested in dealing with S.H.I.E.L.D. directly. This project now falls solely under the jurisdiction of the Avengers subcommittee. You hand-picked a group to deal with the problem, so we're going to deal with it. Alone. And by 'we' I mean myself, Loki, Captain Rogers and Dr. Banner."
"Loki is the problem, Stark. He's the reason you were called up in the first place."
"Not any more. We're looking at something a lot bigger."
"Bigger than an alien invasion at the hands of your Asgardian friend?"
"Potentially, yes. That's for the Avengers to know and you to find out. So what's going to happen is that tomorrow at-"
"We'd prefer to start on this as soon as-" Coulson interrupts, though Tony interrupts right back over top of him.
"Tomorrow at noon you are going to send Rogers and Banner over here to Stark Tower. Tomorrow. Not in an hour, not this evening, not in the middle of the night. You're working with my schedule and I have other plans for the next twenty-four hours. So tomorrow, Rogers and Banner can arrive by car, or by helicopter, or by Rocketeer jet pack, or they can even take the subway; I really don't care, but they won't be allowed in the building before noon. The will also not be allowed in the building if they're accompanied by any other S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. Only Rogers, only Banner, and only tomorrow. If any one of those conditions is violated, Loki and I blow town again until we decide you're ready for another chance. And you know what? By then it might be too late and Earth might start to resemble a Michael Bay movie. I suggest you take me up on this offer."
A hand blots out all sound on Coulson's end again, but this time the pause is longer: a minute or more. Probably close to two. Tony stifles a yawn and glances down at his fingernails, which are too long, and his shoes, which are an old pair he found in Phoenix and scuffed to hell. Both of those things need to be fixed. He's not technically a fugitive any more and should probably start making an effort at looking like a decent human being. Keeping up appearances and all that jazz.
Coulson's answer once he resumes the conversation is a single, terse word. "Tomorrow."
"Is that agreement or a disparaging question?"
"Agreement."
Aw, somebody's not too happy about this. Poor little Agent didn't get his way. "Good to hear," says Tony, which is a statement could really apply either to the acceptance of his terms or the sulky frustration in Coulson's voice, now that he thinks about it. "Tell Rogers and Banner I'll see them tomorrow. Until then? You have yourself a gosh-darn swell day, Agent Phil."
He ends the call without saying good bye, because that's how bad guys do it in movies when they're trying to show somebody who's boss. They just stop talking, flick the phone off, and then go right back to yelling at their henchmen or plotting to take over the world. Or, in this case, helping a magical alien prevent some other aliens from taking over the world. He fixes Loki with a sly smirk. "All set. Am I an awesome negotiator or what?"
"Do you think they'll comply with your rules?" Loki asks.
"Of course not. They're S.H.I.E.L.D.; they'll try to weasel something past us and push the limits. But as long as I don't have to deal with Romanoff, it turns out I don't really care."
"Hm."
It's hard to tell whether that's a 'hm' that means 'okay' or one that means 'I'm still skeptical'. Loki's face reveals nothing either way. He paces back over to the bank of windows like a dragon on the prowl, surveying his domain. Silently, Tony slides up behind him. Loosely wraps one arm around Loki's waist. Not a full-on hug – that doesn't seem right; not yet – but a touch of intimacy all the same.
"What does Asgard look like?" he quietly asks. "Anything like this?"
Loki turns his head to halfway look at Tony from the corner of his eye. Is he surprised at the question? Yeah, maybe. But it shows only briefly in his expression, and he keeps any opinions to himself. "You mean the architecture?"
"Yeah."
"No. Everything here is so... square. Square and glass, all closed in. Asgard has a more organic feel. The buildings flow in curves, lines gliding from one to the next like mountains and seas. Shapes rise up in columns and spires, each distinct from the next but still melding seamlessly together through open plazas and colonnades. Some places are forests of gleaming pillars, while others mimic the arched, skeletal remains of a legendary giant. It's very different from your world of primitive little boxes. Do any buildings here not have four sides?"
"Uh... this one that we're standing in right now?"
"Hm," Loki says again, though this one is clearly an 'I suppose you're right' sort of 'hm'. "It's true this is the most imaginative structure I've seen so far."
"Of course it is," says Tony. "I designed it myself." Obviously.
"It has something of the look of Asgard to it. The asymmetrical rise. The shape of this room. The style of the floor and walls. But in Asgard, all of this glass would be absent, leaving us open to the air."
Safety regulations and the concept of wind-tunnel death traps must not exist on Asgard. "No thanks," Tony replies. "I like my safely glassed-in little compartment. Less chance of drunkenly stumbling off the balcony and ending up as roadkill on Park Avenue."
Loki smirks. "You have no sense of adventure."
"Is that a challenge?"
The wicked grin that grows out of Loki's smirk says yes. Yes, that was a challenge.
"Okay, smartass, you're on. As of right now, it's officially Adventure Time with Loki the God and Tony the Human."
"What type of adventure?"
"A perilous quest the likes of which you've never seen. It's called 'let's make ourselves look respectable for our guests tomorrow'. Part one is 'Tony seeks out a haircut, a manicure and a straight razor shave from the mythical men's spa that plays sports on big TVs', followed closely by 'Loki unlocks the mystery of the Amex of Darkness so he can buy new clothes'. You in?"
"I am in," Loki answers.
Then let the fun begin. "Jarvis?" Tony calls out.
"Yes, sir?"
"Call down to the garage and have somebody pull a car out front for me. The M5. Loki and I have some serious business to attend to."
ooo
It's not a long adventure. They're home by seven, sitting in front of the gas fire with a jug of chocolate milk and a family pack of Twizzlers, collection of shopping bags spread out in a straggling archipelago at Loki's back. It's time for a new quest now. This time, it's the quest of teaching Tony Stark how to unleash his inner wizard.
"What are you thinking?" Loki asks.
Difficult question to answer, that. What is Tony thinking, exactly? This is stupid comes to mind, along with We're making no progress at all and Maybe if you told me what to do, things would go faster. But those are all new thoughts brought on by Loki's question. Before that, what was he thinking?
"Well, I seem to have the Ghostbusters theme song stuck in my head."
"Does that mean anything to you?"
"No. Nothing special."
"And where is this song coming from?"
"Who knows? Maybe Ghostbusters'll be on TV later tonight. Or maybe I'm just thinking of it because I saw that guy who looked like Dr. Spengler at the sushi restaurant."
"I mean where inside you," Loki clarifies. "Try to find the source. A place in your brain is producing this thought. You need to locate it."
"A place in my brain," Tony repeats. Okay. A place in his brain where a single thought originates. One speck of a place, traced through the web of sparks and nerves in an effort to pinpoint its source. Only this feels like trying to pull a sliver with salad tongs: his search mechanism is clumsy and untrained, pawing over vast swaths of consciousness in a single swipe. As graceful as a Mack truck. "Give me a hint?" he asks. "Seriously, it feels like the song is coming from my mouth, because I keep humming it."
"You're concentrating too hard," says Loki. "This needs no strong thought. Only accurate thought. Let your intuition guide you, slowly and carefully, one tiny step at a time. Imagine your fingers are sifting through a stack of papers one by one. Those papers are all the thoughts and memories stored in your head, and you need to pluck out the right one."
"Amongst the hundreds of trillions of synapses?"
"I never promised this would be easy. Nor did I say you would be quick to master the skill. In fact, I think I implied the opposite. You have a long way to go, Tony Stark, and this step is only the beginning. It may take years before you manage any progress at all, if you ever make any progress at all. Right now, the only thing you can do is attempt to locate the place in your brain that is sensitive to these subtle fluctuations in energy. It exists, and if what you told me about the frequency of your 'coincidences' is true, it is already stronger and more developed than what we would see in most humans. Remind yourself of that fact whenever you feel discouraged. But it will be impossible to move on before you find this place. You need to know where it is before you can start attempting to control its actions. Once you know where you need to focus your attention... you can slowly train yourself to read energy waves as easily as you can now clench your stomach or hold your breath."
"So I just have to keep trying?"
Loki pours himself another glass of chocolate milk to finish off the jug. "Yes. But not right now. By now, the song has spread beyond itspoint of origin to other areas. However, next time you have a thought or memory seemingly out of nowhere, immediately try to trace its provenance. Eventually you will succeed."
Tony nods, though in all honesty he's starting to feel like a skeptic again. There has to be a better way to do this than by waiting around for a chance to play trial and error. Like maybe with a neural imaging scan that shows him exactly where to look for this elusive magic brain spot? Might be worth a shot. Nothing in the rules says medical science can't help with magic, right? Though maybe he'll refrain from mentioning that possibility to Loki until he's had a chance to try it out. You never know what space Vikings might consider cheating, after all.
"Do you realize you've consumed almost a whole gallon of chocolate milk by yourself in less than an hour?" he says instead to change the subject. "I only had one glass."
"I'm hungry," Loki replies with a look that sits somewhere on the spectrum between sulk and pout.
Fair enough. It is eight o'clock, after all. "Point taken," says Tony. "Jarvis? How about you order us in something for dinner. Something interesting. Surprise me."
"I have a note you made last month regarding a new Thai restaurant you wanted to try," Jarvis suggests.
"Yeah, sounds good. Get a bunch of everything. Meanwhile," he adds, turning back to Loki, "I'm going upstairs to get changed. After a week of sweats and t-shirts, these clothes with buttons are too structured. I think I now know how dogs must feel when they're forced to wear sweaters. So let me slip into something more comfortable. And by that I mean pajamas. And by pajamas I mean boxer shorts. Back in a sec."
ooo
S.H.I.E.L.D. replaced the window in the bathroom. Why that's the first thing Tony goes to check on once he's upstairs is anyone's guess, but the bathroom draws him in like a magnet before he even has a chance to consider what he's doing. Everything's back in place. Bottles back in the cupboard under the sink, hair ties and curling iron back in drawers, glass back in the wall. Exactly as if Tony never attempted some homemade explosives, and Loki never dragged him through a hole of broken window shards.
(Did it even happen? Was that real? Or a drunken, drug-addled dream? Did he hallucinate the whole thing? Parts of it? Maybe he only made it halfway to the bathroom while crawling across the bedroom floor. Maybe he passed out right here, right next to where he just kicked off his shoes, and Loki found him there and spirited him away. Maybe he didn't even make it that far, and the drugs got the better of him while he was still in bed. His last certain memory is talking to Pepper. Everything after that is so fuzzy, like a grainy, hand-held Super 8 movie playing in his brain at double time, skipping ahead here and there over scenes he just can't recall.)
He shuts off the bathroom light and closes the door.
(It was real. He's going to choose to believe it was real. Everything he said, everything Loki did, everything that happened... It was real. Loki risked everything to save him. It was real.)
He unbuttons his shirt and shrugs it off, steps out of his pants, and shakes the watch from his wrist. Opens the dresser drawer for a clean pair of shorts. The selection seems limited to bright yellow, a horrible pastel plaid, motorcycle print, or Saint Patrick's Day shamrocks. Did S.H.I.E.L.D. steal all his underwear or something? Or is this just the bottom of the barrel before laundry day? Son of a bitch. Shamrocks it is. Maybe they'll go with Loki's inexplicable fondness for Thai elephants.
What he really needs is one of those burgundy velvet smoking jackets like his dad used to have. To class things up a bit.
"Okay," he calls out to Loki as he comes down the stairs, "you better be wearing those silk elephant shorts again, because I'm going to feel like a real dick if you're-"
Sitting there offering the bag of Twizzlers to somebody who looks an awful lot like Pepper. There's a profile with familiar eyes and nose. Slick red lipstick. Ginger-blond hair pulled back into a sleek braid.
Oh. Oh... Yeah, that pretty much makes him feel like a dick. A stunned and confused dick.
"Pepper," he barely manages to squeeze out.
"Tony!" she replies, voice full of an overenthusiastic lie as she stands up to greet him. "What an interesting surprise. I really wasn't expecting you."
"Uh. Right. I really wasn't expecting..." Any of this. "What are you doing here?"
"I live here." The tight smile on her face drops into a look of suspicion as she gives him the once over from head to... shamrocks.
Fuck. He really does need a smoking jacket. But all that's handy is the leather coat he wore out earlier, tossed down over a chair next to the elevator, and there's no way boxers with leather looks any less ridiculous than boxers alone. So he crosses his arms over his chest, stands his ground, and defiantly pretends he doesn't feel like a complete goddamn idiot.
Meanwhile, Pepper just looks away. "I checked into a hotel after our... discussion," she adds in explanation. "To avoid any awkward meetings."
(Like this one we're having right now, is the unspoken implication.)
"But when Phil called two days later asking if I knew where you were, I assumed you'd taken off and it was time for me to return. What are you doing here?"
"I also live here," says Tony. "When I'm not running around the country with the dogs of Fury on my tail, I like to kick back in my luxury penthouse and drink chocolate milk with my Asgardian pal, Loki. We're having a nice, relaxing evening. Might watch a move later. I'm thinking Ghostbusters, but an argument could also be made in favor of Raiders of the Lost Ark. So, um. Can we talk in private for a minute?"
The way she pointedly stares down at his shorts again makes it pretty clear she has the wrong idea about what kind of 'talk' this will be, but nonetheless follows him over to the bar with a world-weary sigh.
"It's not that kind of talk," Tony quickly adds. "Don't worry. I'm safely ensconced in a very absurd rebound relationship and I promise I'm not about to try anything."
"Rebound with-" Pepper starts, and those words are all she needs before sudden understanding (and probably also some alarm) lights up her eyes. "Oh my god!" she hisses. "Are you and...?" Her braid spins around like the needle of a compass homing in on north as she turns for a quick glance at Loki before whipping back to stare Tony down.
"Hey, I said 'absurd', didn't I?" is Tony's feeble reply to that fire-eyed glare.
Lucky for him, it only lasts a second longer before Pepper shakes her head. The tension drains from her lips, and she presses a hand to her forehead. "I know I should probably be shocked or upset, but really... I'm not. I want to be upset. I think I should be upset. But it's your life, and you can do what you want, and at least now I know what constitutes 'normal' for you: hooking up with a gay alien supervillain."
And hell if she doesn't have a knack for making everything seem ridiculous. "Well of course it sounds weird when you put it that way."
"Which other way could I possibly put it, Tony?"
"Um," he says. "You could suggest that I'm introducing said supervillain to the wonderful kaleidoscope of Earth culture and thereby saving the world."
"Is that what you're doing? Saving the world? With your dick?"
"Oh come on. You always knew it would happen."
She was supposed to laugh at that. She doesn't laugh at that.
"Are you planning on staying here tonight?" she asks quietly, shifting her gaze down to the floor and resting her hands on her hips.
"Yeah," Tony answers. "This is my building, after all. It has my name on it and everything. It's labeled. Really can't get any more mine than that, so I think it's appropriate for me to stay here. But as a show of good faith, I'll put all my crap in one of the spare rooms and stay out of your way. I'm not here to bug you. I'm technically here to bug S.H.I.E.L.D.. I did invite some guys over tomorrow to have a nerd party and talk about extraterrestrial quantum physics, but as long as you're cool with that, I think everything should work out."
The pause that stretches on after he looks to her for an answer might just be the longest in the history of their relationship, which is seriously nothing short of amazing considering how deeply experienced Pepper is in paralyzing Tony with her silent, titanium-clad stare.
"And Jarvis ordered a bunch of Thai food for dinner?" Tony tacks on. When in doubt, go for the bribe. "It'll be here any minute."
"Okay," Pepper finally allows. "I have my doubts, but... Fine, let's try. I'm too tired to want to go to another hotel anyway."
So that's how Tony ends up sitting in a prickling triangle with Pepper and Loki, eating som tam and masaman curry off paper plates while trying to think up inoffensive answers to bland small talk.
"So..." Pepper begins. "Did you two do anything interesting today?"
She's aiming the question at Loki, looking in his direction as she speaks, but Tony answers first.
"The usual. First we had manicures, then got our hair done. I took Loki to a Japanese restaurant for lunch and he ate over two hundred dollars worth of sashimi. Would've had more, too, but the waitress started giving us weird looks."
"I liked that food," says Loki.
"He likes raw stuff," Tony explains to Pepper. "Anyway, then we went shopping, and finally, after all that rugged adventuring, we were both feeling the need to assert our masculinity for a while, so we drove up to Connecticut to see how fast we could go before getting a ticket. As it turns out: a whopping eighty-three miles an hour. We came home in disgust shortly thereafter."
"Oh." The look on Pepper's face says loud and clear that she doesn't know how to respond. She settles on a vague nod, then eats another prawn before circling back into small talk. This time definitely aimed at Loki. "But you got your hair cut. It does look a little shorter, now that I think about it."
Loki nods while swallowing a mouthful of rice. "I wanted it shorter still, but Tony Stark said no."
"That's because the haircut you wanted from the magazine would've made you look like a cutthroat Reagan-era investment banker," Tony interjects. "The whole purpose of today's adventure was to give you a makeover to look less like a threat to S.H.I.E.L.D.."
"...Makeover?" Pepper asks.
"Yeah," says Tony. "He needs to dial down the aggression and go for a softer style if he's going to convince Coulson and Romanoff he's not a murderous psychopath any more. We're aiming for a socially awkward humanities professor kind of look. I bought him some sweater vests."
Loki actually growls over his food, sounding uncannily like his Jotun self for a moment. "I am not wearing those."
"Well you're not wearing that shit you bought while I was trying on shoes," Tony shoots back before turning to Pepper. "I let him hold my wallet for twenty minutes, and he comes back with skinny jeans and a gold sequined mini dress."
"I told you," Loki sneers, "the ridiculous rules you cite for women's clothing versus men's clothing are utterly baseless and arbitrary. There would be no such question on Asgard. Everything I purchased would be considered men's clothing." And then Loki also turns to Pepper, the safely neutral third party. "He's worried I'll look like a homosexual."
"No, I'd actually be thrilled if you looked like a homosexual, because gay guys have a reputation for good fashion sense. You look like a hipster in a dress."
"It's a sleeveless tunic!"
"It's covered in sequins!"
"It looks very similar to a coat I once had back home!"
"And has a low back that dips all the way to the waist!"
"Then I defy you to explain how it could possibly be worn by a woman! Her undergarments would show!"
Abruptly, Pepper jumps to her feet. "I should make some coffee," she announces.
Both Tony and Loki answer at the same time with one resounding word: "No!"
"O...kay..." She sits back down, looking uncertainly from one to the next.
"I mean... there's no need for you to go to all that trouble," says Tony, while Loki speaks over him: "Coffee is a breakfast drink."
Funny how things can go from a yelling match to uncomfortable silence in two seconds flat.
"Alright," Pepper says, trying that small talk thing again and dishing herself out more prawns. "Tony. You said you had people coming over tomorrow?"
"Some of the other Avengers guys," Tony confirms. "You know. The Team. Important, saving-the-world meeting."
"And... you want to convince them Loki's no longer a threat by having him wear a sweater vest?"
"Again: when you phrase it that way..."
"I still think my hair should be shorter," says Loki. "I always kept it shorter on Asgard."
Tony shakes his head. "Your hair looks nice like it is."
"I thought your beard looked nice as it was," Loki flips back at him, "but you still shaved almost all of it off."
"You had a beard?" Pepper asks, wide-eyed with surprise.
"In my fugitive laziness I may have started down a dangerous path toward Commander Rikering myself."
"Yet you won't let Loki cut his hair."
Tony draws a breath, but lets it go without a word. There's a feeling. An odd little feeling, somewhere in his brain (nope, can't pinpoint where), that no matter what he says, and no matter what argument he throws out there, Pepper's going to have something bigger and better to shoot it down. "Um," he begins slowly. "It's not that I won't let Loki..."
"Your exact words were, 'No, you can't cut your hair that short'," Loki says. "Followed by a statement that I would look, if I may quote you again, 'like a douchebag'."
Pepper frowns. "No. No, Loki, I think you'd look nice with shorter hair. Maybe about here." She holds a finger up level with her earlobe, then tilts her head to the side like she's picturing the change in her mind's eye. "That, to me, would say 'socially awkward humanities professor'. Tony? Don't you agree?"
"You're doing this to prove some meddlesome point," he mutters through half-pursed lips.
And what a sweet smile from such a vicious girl. "I'm only offering a helpful opinion. And Loki, did you know I used to cut Tony's hair from time to time? It's true. When he was too busy to stop fooling around with whatever he was doing for two hours to go to a barber, he got me to cut his hair while he sat at the computer like a lump on a log."
Loki's smile is no better than Pepper's. "Is that so?"
"You're both trying to prove a meddlesome point, aren't you?" asks Tony.
"Oh, quit whining," Pepper says as she stands. "You did say 'makeover'. A sweater vest only goes so far. Let me get the scissors."
ooo
In all fairness, if Tony's forced to really think about it, and really look at things objectively, Pepper did a nice job on Loki's hair. Not that he doesn't already miss the way that floppy space mullet used to fall across Loki's face, and the way it dried in loose, erratic ringlets after a shower, and (especially) the way those long curls tickled his cheek and nose, filling his head with the scent of coconut as he pushed up against Loki from behind. But really, fairly, this is good, too. Pepper was right. Jaw-length fluffy guinea pig hair cuts Loki's intimidation factor in half. He looks younger. Calmer. Softer and almost innocent.
And shorter hair has one very nice side effect of exposing the back of Loki's neck, gleaming ethereal blue-white in the light of the arc reactor, to Tony's exploratory kisses.
"I could get used to this," he murmurs. And feels a gasp and a shudder ripple through Loki's body when the tip of his tongue traces the column of Loki's spine. "You? Do you like it?"
"Mm," Loki breathes.
Yeah. He likes that. He likes any feathery touch to his neck, or his ears, or his eyelids, or the underside of his jaw. He likes the reverential little kisses Tony leaves there. A tiny brush of lips against pale satin skin.
He also likes how the palm of Tony's hand slides flat down the length of his torso, over the rigid muscles of his chest and belly before dipping lower. He likes to be teased as much as Tony likes to tease him. He likes the anticipation. He likes the buildup. He likes to be worked up and slowly stoked into a frenzy, pushed almost to breaking point. Then a torturous pause. Then starting all over again.
Tony's always been a physical person, a hands-on person, learning through touch. He sees with his fingers as much as with his eyes. He wants to feel shapes and angles and curves and firmness in his grasp. He wants to know everything by look and by feel both, and there's always something new to learn.
There's always another piece of knowledge hidden in Loki's writhing body, in the way he surges into Tony's thrusts, and in the secret code of his breathless moans.
"One day," Tony hisses, teeth scratching against Loki's earlobe, "I will make you scream my name."
Loki's answering laugh comes ragged on the tail end of a gasp. "You will?"
It's a promise. Tony squeezes the hand that cups the back of Loki's thigh, fingernails sinking into soft flesh. "I will."
"Then you would be the first," says Loki. "But... oh..." The animal noise boiling up from the back of his throat as Tony bites down hard on his neck rips through any civilized words. "...You are very welcome to try."