I was really busy this week, so I'm kind of surprised that I managed to update by now.
As always, thanks to all you awesome readers, reviewers, followers and favoriters. This story went up 1,000 views in 2 days, which made me so happy I can't even describe it.
Wow. Short author's note this time. Well, on to the chapter.
Tony and Loki are alone again. The other Avengers had left about an hour after they'd watched Aladdin. That hour had really just consisted of them talking. Bruce had pulled Tony aside to ask him more about the Hulkbuster armor, but to Tony's surprise, he really hadn't seemed very annoyed about it. He had almost seemed a bit relieved that someone else might be able to prevent the Hulk from hurting people if he was out of Bruce's control. Other than that, they'd just had rather mundane conversations that Loki occasionally derailed when he'd completely change the subject.
On the whole, Tony thinks tonight went pretty well, even with Loki's episode caused by his probable-but-not-official-PTSD. Tony's talk with Clint, Steve and Natasha had been better than expected. The others certainly agreed that Loki hadn't been treated right in Asgard, although Tony's not sure who would disagree with that. Actually, that would probably be Thor, and every other Asgardian. Asgard sounds like a pretty messed-up place, if they can justify that. It seems like Thor has done some pretty horrible things in his lifetime.
But then again, most of the Avengers had done some pretty regrettable things in their pasts.
The other Avengers seemed to have warmed up to Loki, although the feeling doesn't seem to be reciprocated yet. Loki still acted nervous around them, even though he'd taken to Tony and Pepper really quickly. It had taken Loki longer to not be nervous around Bruce, though he still seemed to warm up to Bruce faster than with Natasha, Steve and Clint. Thrusting all three of them on him at once might not have helped, now that Tony thinks about it.
Still, Loki had seemed slightly more comfortable with them at the end of their visit than he had at the beginning. It's pretty obvious how the Avengers rank in Loki's mind. Tony's rightfully at the top (it would be an outrage if he wasn't- he's Tony Stark, for crying out loud! Of course he's at the top! Plus there's the whole bit called everything-that's-happened-these-past-two-weeks that would undoubtedly put him on the top even if he was someone other than the great Tony Stark).
Below Tony is Bruce, who Loki seems pretty comfortable around. Comfortable enough to be alone with him in a room and not freak out at Tony's absence, anyways. Clint- who had seemed to warm up to Loki the quickest of the Avengers Loki had met today- seems to be next. Although Natasha had been surprisingly nice after Tony's talk with them, she appears to be behind Clint, although it doesn't seem like she's too far behind. Loki had stopped casting worried looks at those two, but he didn't seem totally comfortable around them either. Tony's not sure how Loki would react to being alone in a room with them. Hilariously (to Tony anyways), Steve is clearly at the bottom and Loki had still been watching him warily as he left. Tony's certain that Loki would hate being alone in a room with him. Though Tony's not sure why Loki had disliked Steve so much.
As Tony and Loki take the elevator to the penthouse, Tony glances over at Loki. "So, what did you think of them?" He asks. Sure, he sort of already knows Loki's opinions towards the others, but hearing it from Loki's point of view might help.
Loki shrugs at first, and then says quietly "Steve's scary."
"How come?" Tony asks, raising an eyebrow. As funny as it is that Steve for once isn't the golden one, Tony has to admit that it's rather odd that Loki would befriend the Hulk almost instantly but still be worried around Steve. Normally, Steve is the one other people are most comfortable around.
Loki cocks his head to the side, thinking about what to say. "He looks like them." That's not exactly helpful and Tony's about to ask him to elaborate when he continues on his own accord. "Is he from Asgard too?"
"Uh, no." Tony answers, noticing Loki looks rather relieved. "He's about as all-American as you can get."
"American?" Loki asks with a blank look. Tony's sort of surprised this is only coming up now, especially since a certain extremely-patriotic super-soldier had just been over. Astonishingly, America hadn't been mentioned by Steve during this visit. Tony goes on to explain about countries and how they're on Earth. It takes him a couple seconds to recall what Thor keeps calling it, but then he remembers and tells Loki they're on Midgard. Loki nods. "I knew that, 'cause Thor said the Avengers were on Midgard." Sheesh, did Thor tell all of Asgard about them?
The elevator reaches the penthouse, and they step out. The penthouse looks slightly better. The craters formed by Hulk's fists have been patched up, along with the cracks surrounding them, but the hole in the floor is obviously taking more time. Plus, there's now damage on another floor from when Bruce hulked-out today. So it looks like the repair service is going to be fixing stuff up here for a while.
The two of them head towards Loki's room but Tony hangs back as Loki enters to change into his pajamas. Since Loki usually falls asleep with almost no warning whatsoever and Tony would rather not haul him to his bed, he's started having Loki sit in bed during the evenings and do whatever he was going to do so that when he conks out he'll already be in bed. Loki had fallen asleep on the floor once, and Tony didn't feel right leaving him there, but it had been so inconvenient having to suit up just to deposit him in his bed.
Tony sometimes sits beside Loki's bed to keep Loki company (though he's usually doing his own thing) until Loki falls asleep, but sometimes he's in a separate room. Tonight, he's in Loki's room working on a tablet while Loki prattles on to Jarvis about something. Suddenly, the talking that's become background noise ceases, and Tony looks up to see Loki is asleep. He gets up and leaves, leaving the door ajar as Jarvis flicks the lights off.
Loki wakes up and can immediately tell something is off, For the first second or two, he can't put a finger on the odd sensation he's feeling, but he can tell it's bad. It's sort of like when he'd been a very small child and would occasionally wake up to the feeling of having to pee just before wetting the bed. Only this isn't at all related to his bladder, though that's about the only good thing he can say about it.
He's realized what it is. His body is starting to get colder, which means his hideous other form is starting to come out. Fortunately his skin hasn't started becoming blue yet. He's not sure if his eyes are red or not, since there's not a mirror anywhere.
He sits up, eyes widening more than they already were. No! This can't be happening! He can't let anyone know he's a disgusting Frost Giant. He scrambles to get out of bed and ends up tangled in the sheets. He yanks them free and drags them behind him as he crawls under the bed with Simba.
He makes a sort of nest out of the sheets and curls up on it. Then, he tries to force his Jotun form down, filling his head with thoughts about his body being warm, his skin pale, and his eyes green.
He's always been fairly good at controlling whether or not his Frost Giant form is showing- unlike his tentative control over his magic. Loki's never been sure why, and it's not like he could ever ask somebody abot it, though he had heard people mention that they'd needed to hide his disgusting blue form. He has no idea how they did that, though. When he was a child, Loki had asked if they'd hidden it with magic, but he'd gotten a beating instead of an answer.
Of course, that's when he's awake. When he's sleeping it's an entirely different story. Asleep, he has no control over either his magic or his Frost Giant form.
Loki thinks back to the dream he'd been having. It hadn't been a nightmare, thankfully. He's had far too many of those. He's not sure how many nice dreams he's had recently, or if he's had any. He can't remember that many, but he's heard people forget a lot of their dreams. So he probably forgot them, though he wishes it were the other way around and he'd forget his nightmares.
He remembers the dream he'd been having tonight, though. It had involved Genie from Aladdin. Genie also has blue skin, but Loki's pretty sure Genie isn't a Jotun, since sometimes he hadn't had legs and he kept changing his size. Not to mention, he didn't have red eyes with his blue skin. He's not sure why Genie would willingly show his blue skin, when it seemed he could take on any appearance he wanted.
Like Loki, Genie also had magic, though Loki can't do some of the stuff Genie can. He can't change his size or juggle his own head, but he did accidentally make himself look like someone else a couple times, though he's not sure if that's related to being able to hide his other skin. One time he'd been so desperate to hide that he'd somehow taken the appearance of a palace guard. He thought that would be a really good way to hide from people in general, but he couldn't get it to work all the time. Besides, even when he'd gotten it to work, people somehow recognized him a lot of the time and he'd be punished. Soon he'd stopped trying.
Anyways, in his dream he'd been talking to Genie, and Genie still looked like a line drawing but everything else looked real. He'd been telling Genie about how similar they are. He'd asked Genie why he wasn't hated for those things, but hadn't gotten an answer since he'd woken up before Genie's reply.
Loki's still confused by Tony's answer to that. Tony had said that there wasn't a reason to hate Genie, but the reasons had been right there in front of him! Tony's super smart, so how had he not noticed?
Clint had said something about Genie's magic being cool, though. But Genie couldn't be a Frost Giant because of his eyes and the fact he didn't have legs sometimes, so that hadn't made sense. Plus, he hadn't had any icy powers or anything. But the most confusing part had been that Clint's tone hadn't been disgusted, and neither had Tony's or the other Avengers. Sure, he understood that they said Genie's magic wasn't bad, but the concept of that is just too much to wrap his head around.
He turns and whispers to Simba, so softly he can barely hear himself "What do you think about Genie? I like him. He's really funny, don't you think? But he did... stuff like I can do, except people didn't hate him. At least that's what Tony said, and Bruce, and Clint. I dunno why though. It's bad. That stuff's bad." He frowns and remains silent for a bit, and then whispers "He looked a little bit like me. But I can't let anybody know 'bout that." If anyone here ever finds out about his other form, any good feelings they have towards him will undoubtedly be gone.
Jarvis hadn't actually needed to suggest to Tony that he get some sleep. Tony's nightmares, combined with staying up with Loki after the god's nightmares, have made him very sleep deprived. He's been running on even less sleep and even more caffeine these past two weeks, and it's starting to catch up with him, especially since he hasn't slept at all in around thirty two hours.
Tony had just gotten into bed himself to try to make up for some of that lost sleep when Jarvis tells him he might want to check on Loki. Tony sighs and gets out of bed, stretching, before heading to Loki's room.
Opening the door, he expects to see Loki in the throes of another nightmare, with that green stuff around his hands and a couple of other-Loki's present.
However, the sight that actually meets his eyes is Loki's bed, empty and without blankets. In fact, the whole room is suspiciously empty. Had Loki gotten abducted or something? No, it couldn't be that. Jarvis would have alerted him if something was happening. Furthermore, the AI would have sounded the alarm and used all the security measures under his control to fight someone off.
The room seems a lot colder than usual, and Tony finds himself wishing he'd thrown on some clothes over his boxers before coming in here. He's helpfully told by Jarvis that the room is ten degrees colder than what it's set to be at, and that he's working on fixing it as they speak. Sure enough, Tony can hear the heater click on. Jarvis also turns on the lights, opting for a very dim setting. As they're speaking, there's a slight shuffling sound from under the bed. Of course. Tony rolls his eyes.
He gets down on the floor to look under the bed and sure enough, there's a person under there who has to be Loki, though the shadowy area beneath the bed makes it hard to make out his features. He appears to have made a nest out of his blankets. He's facing the other way and he doesn't turn around.
"Hey, what're you doing down here?" Tony asks, going over to the other side of the bed and army crawling under it so he can look Loki in the eye and read his face. His arc reactor is providing most of the light. Like the first day when they'd been under Tony's bed, Loki briefly gives his skin- tinted blue from the light of Tony's arc reactor- a terrified look.
Tony grabs one of the blankets from the edge of Loki's nest and drapes it over himself for warmth. "It's like going back to your first day here. At least it's in your room instead of mine this time." Loki is uncharacteristically silent. After about fifteen seconds of silence, Tony asks "Did you have another nightmare?"
At least Loki responds this time, but he still doesn't say anything, instead just shaking his head no. He's looking at Simba instead of Tony.
Tony sighs. "Something's clearly bothering you, Snoopy." It's not like it's exactly hard to tell with Loki. He doesn't really hide his emotions. Right now he appears wary, though Tony's not sure why. Loki usually seems really comfortable around him.
Loki raises his eyes to meet Tony's, and Tony notices the god's eyes are a little more distant than they normally are until they slowly focus more on him.
"Would you hate him?" Loki asks. Tony's completely lost now, and Loki's looking at him expectantly.
"Who are we talking about?" Tony prompts more than asks.
"Genie."
"Um, no. Didn't we go over this earlier. There's no reason to hate him."
Loki starts to object but Tony cuts him off. "No, Loki. Having magic and blue skin don't count as reasons. They didn't hate him because he's awesome, and those things don't make him any less awesome. Actually, the magic bit makes him more awesome." Yes, he's referring to Genie's powers as magic, which is something he doesn't do with Loki's powers- but Genie's fiction. Plus it's the word Loki used to describe his own powers.
He notices that Loki looks completely startled when he brings up blue skin not being a reason to hate him, but then Loki's face becomes confused, with some worry mixed in for some reason, and not long after he's looking at Tony like he's crazy.
Tony once again thinks about how Loki might be a Jotun. Tony's been holding back from asking Loki if he is for a while, since he doesn't have any proof of Loki having blue skin and red eyes. Those are pretty major criteria for being a Jotun. But he may never get proof about whether Loki can change his skin color or not, and while it's a bit of a leap to assume he can do that because he can change the color of his shirt, it is plausible. Loki meets all the other criteria. Besides, his reaction to the blue skin comment and his skin being tinted blue from the arc reactor make it seem even more plausible.
Tony decides to just ask him about it. He'd already considered doing so earlier tonight, and to be honest, not knowing is driving him crazy.
"Hey, Snoopy, I was wondering- are you from Jotunheim? Because-" That gets an immediate reaction and Tony shuts up. Loki's head snaps back and his eyes are wide and fearful for a second before Loki squeezes them shut.
About half a minute passes, and Loki doesn't respond. "Uh... Loki? You still here?" Loki's eyes open, and Tony notices they look even more glassy and distant than normal.
"No." Loki says eventually, and Tony's almost certain he's answering the question about Jotunheim instead of the one about him being there. He says it in a surprisingly smooth voice for someone who'd just flinched violently and had then seemed to drift elsewhere mentally. His tone is the the same tone somebody would use if asked if they were from Neptune, a tone that makes it clear that it's a stupid question and there's no dispute about the answer.
If they'd been talking over the phone and he'd only had that one snippet of Loki's voice to go by, Tony certainly would have believed him. It sounded so convincing. But Tony's fairly certain that's not the right answer. In addition to the rather telling flinch and suspiciously long pause, Loki's avoiding eye contact by turning his head down to look at Simba and twisting his fingers together. He has to hand it to Loki, though- the verbal part had been very well done. But his body language needs a bit of work- or, rather, a lot of work. It's giving him away.
"Really?" Tony arches an eyebrow. "It's not a problem if you are. Actually, I'm kind of curious to see what you'd look like in Smurf form." He grins at Loki, but Loki doesn't respond.
"Seriously, I don't care at all if you are a Jotun, so-" Tony stops as Loki recoils in fear at the word Jotun. Now Tony has no doubt whatsoever that Loki's a Jotun. He's acting the same way as whenever he notices he's used magic in someone's presence, like he's expecting to be beaten. Loki doesn't say anything though. He seems to be completely elsewhere mentally again. It's almost like he's looking straight through Tony.
So Loki just lied to him about not being a Jotun. He already knows Loki doesn't completely trust him, since he still acts like he's going to get beaten whenever he does magic and he has to ask whether or not he hates him, but he seems to mostly trust him. Tony's pretty sure Loki trusts him more than anyone else. He hadn't actually expected Loki to lie to him. He can't actually recall if Loki's lied to him before, but he doesn't think so. But apparently Loki doesn't trust him enough to tell him about his true form.
Tony remembers that Loki had seemed to accidentally blurt out the stuff he'd said about his powers when Tony had first questioned him about it. Perhaps the silence treatment he's getting now is Loki's way of ensuring that doesn't happen again.
For a bit, Tony keeps reiterating that there's nothing wrong with being a Jotun and he doesn't think any less of Loki because of it, but he's not sure if Loki even hears him.
Tony sighs. He's not sure if he should stay here for Loki or not. What he's saying to Loki doesn't seem to be having much of an effect. He asks Loki if he's going to get out from under the bed, but Loki doesn't respond.
Dum-E suddenly rolls into the room. Jarvis had evidently called him up and given him a lift in the elevator.
"Sir, you should go to bed." Jarvis speaks up. "I'll notify you if anything happens. Dum-E can keep watch under the bed." Sure enough, Dum-E's arm is lowered so his camera is pointed at them. Dum-E gives a worried beep, but Loki doesn't even acknowledge that.
"Thanks Jarv." Tony says. He glances at Loki, who's curled in his nest of blankets, holding Simba. The god has a very vacant expression on his face. "See you, Snoopy." Tony tells him before army-crawling out from under the bed and heading back to his own room.
Unfortunately his sleep is plagued by nightmares, one of which is severe enough that Jarvis has to calm him down.
When Tony leaves, Loki's face crumbles and he feels like he's going to cry. He hears a worried beep. He turns over to see a familiar claw poking under the bed, but Loki can't recall when Dum-E had gotten here. Loki starts to cry silently as he scoots over to grab Dum-E's claw, hugging Simba with his other arm. Dum-E moves to pull him out from under the bed, but Loki doesn't want to come out just yet. So he remains under there.
His mind is still reeling from the fact that Tony had asked is he's a Jotun. How does Tony even have any idea about that? Had Thor told him? Loki has no way of knowing, but if that was the case, why would Tony only ask him about it now?
When Tony had asked him that, Loki's mind had filled with all sorts of unpleasant images of Tony being furious at him for being a monster, saying that they're definitely not friends anymore, and starting to hate and torment him like everyone else. Loki's mind had even provided him with a detailed image of being forced out of the tower to live on the streets.
Tony can't find that out that Loki's a monster, ever, since Tony will surely hate him. But he already seems to have an idea about Loki's other form. Within his first couple days here, Loki had slipped up and accidentally told Tony about his magic, which was bad enough, and he couldn't afford to do that again. He'd actually lied about this. To help make it easier, he'd imagined that Tony had instead asked him whether or not he'd want to admit he's a Jotun, and the answer to that is an obvious "no." He thought the lie had come out really well, even though it had only been one word, but Tony hadn't seemed to believe it.
To ensure that he didn't reveal anything else like he had when they'd been discussing his magic, he'd tried to shut everything happening around him out. He'd hoped that way he wouldn't have to listen to Tony tell him what a horrible monster he is and how they'll never be friends again. But he'd still heard what Tony had said, and it still doesn't make sense since he hadn't said that. He'd said quite the opposite, in fact.
Loki desperately wants to believe Tony's words about it not mattering that Loki's a Jotun, but they have to be lies- or maybe a very cruel prank. Because the idea is absurd, even more absurd than the idea of someone liking his magic. It goes against everything he's ever known. Everybody hates Frost Giants. Even Loki hates Frost Giants, and he is one.
This is so confusing! It seems like Tony knows he's a Jotun. But at the same time he can't know. Because if he actually knew, he'd be disgusted and hate him and call him a monster, and he hadn't done those things. He'd spoken about Frost Giants like they were no big deal.
Talking about Jotuns means he has to know about them, but he must not really know about them because his reaction would have been a lot different. Why is he getting so many mixed messages?
In any case, Loki knows he's going to have to avoid the subject so Tony doesn't find out the truth about Jotuns and start to hate him.
This isn't the only confusing message Tony's given him, though. There have been so many, actually.
Tony had said that Genie's magic made him more awesome, though. But instead of reassuring Loki, it just makes him more confused, because magic is bad. That's just a common fact, like how grass is green and Jotuns are monsters. But Tony doesn't seem to get that. Loki's still not sure why Tony hasn't been punishing him for his magic, or at least disliking him. It doesn't make sense, and he's waiting for the other shoe to drop, though he's not sure whether that would be Tony starting to hate his magic or Tony hating him for being a Jotun. Or maybe both. No matter what, Tony's going to end up hating him.
Loki wishes he could pause time so that would never happen.
Tony and Loki are down in the lab. Tony had woken up not nearly as rested as he would have liked but unable to sleep more, either. He's compensating for that, once again, with coffee. Loki apparently hadn't slept at all after waking up and hiding under his bed, but he seems to be unaffected, if his usual bouncing on his toes is anything to go by.
Perhaps that's some perk of being an Aesir like Thor. Or a Jotun, Tony amends. They're different races, apparently. It seems like they have the same perks, though, and they have a lot of them. It's so unfair, he thinks. Loki doesn't even drink anything caffeinated, and he's been going with about the same amount of sleep as Tony but Loki still has more energy.
Tony's almost finished designing a higher-powered repulser for the Hulkbuster armor. As he takes a break to eat a couple Pop Tarts, his thoughts shift to the conversation he'd had with Loki under the bed last night. He glances at the god, who has grabbed a Pop Tart and is eating it in quick, snatching bites with Simba tucked under one arm.
So Loki hadn't wanted to tell him that he was a Jotun, and from what Tony's heard from Thor and seen in the myths, there's a lot of prejudice against Jotuns in Asgard. Tony's not sure if Loki was the only Jotun in Asgard, but even if he wasn't, a lot of those bitter feelings were probably dumped on him.
He's still not sure whether or not Loki had heard him say how it doesn't matter in the slightest if he's a Jotun, so he decides to say it again now. However, as soon as he reaches the word Jotun, Loki flinches and then shrieks that he doesn't want to talk about it. The shriek is so loud it leaves Tony wincing.
Figures talking to him about this is about as difficult as talking to him about his powers. It's probably just as difficult for Loki to talk about those topics as it is for Tony to talk about Afghanistan.
That seems to be a good indicator that he shouldn't pry further, but Tony can't help himself. "What does everyone have against Jo-" He quickly cuts himself off. Saying the word Jotun isn't going to help, and he has a feeling Frost Giant would be, if anything, worse.
"What does everyone have against... Ice People?" He tries, watching Loki for his reaction. Loki doesn't flinch or scream, which seems good. But he's still looking at Tony with wide eyes and equal amounts of fear and nervousness on his face.
"They hate them." Loki mumbles. "They hate everything about them!" Tony can't get anything else out of him other than that non-answer, and so the subject is dropped.
Throughout the day, Loki sings songs from Aladdin just like he does with The Lion King. (Jarvis had apparently played the Aladdin soundtrack on loop after Tony's conversation with Loki under the bed last night). It doesn't take long for Tony to have Jarvis switch on some music so the songs won't get stuck in his head.
Loki works on Simba's Iron Man suit for a couple minutes before wandering off and flipping aimlessly through the book on outer space. A few minutes later, he's back to working on the suit, then drawing, working on Simba's suit, staring at Tony, playing with Dum-E, fiddling with random holograms...
These activities cycle in short bursts. It's not like Loki's ever had a particularly long attention span from what Tony can tell, but he flits through activities very quickly today and doesn't seem to be able to focus on anything.
Tony's theories for that are either because he hasn't been sleeping much (which would explain the lack of focus but not the energy) or that he's nervous about something. Loki has been acting nervous, and Tony has a feeling that it has something to do with their most recent conversation under the bed.
Tony isn't able to get Loki to talk about Jotuns for the rest of the day, and he brings it up a couple times. However, he has a plan.
That evening Tony picks the movie. He's been thinking about Loki's reaction to Genie. Loki had seemed really confused about how Genie wasn't hated for being blue and doing magic. He doesn't seem to get that hating and mistreating someone for those reasons is wrong.
Loki had been unwilling to talk about his blue form, but they'd talked about Genie. So Tony's decided to provide him with more examples of blue-skinned characters and try to get Loki to understand why they shouldn't be hated.
The first movie he thinks of is Avatar. He's not sure how similar the appearance of a Na'vi alien in the movie is to a Jotun, but it's probably closer to a Jotun than Genie was.
They go to the tower's private theatre where they'd watched Aladdin yesterday. Jarvis starts the movie, and Tony takes a seat next to Loki. Since Tony's already watched Avatar a couple times, he ends up watching Loki's reactions more than the actual film.
Loki seems to love the opening shot of Pandora, but when it starts showing Jake, he starts to appear bored. He wanders off during the beginning parts in the spaceship and the base on Pandora, walking back and forth across the aisles and seemingly not paying attention to the movie.
Tony's not sure why live action movies seem to bore Loki while animated ones don't, but the main point of showing Loki this is for the blue-skinned Na'vi aliens, and those are technically animated, though they look a lot more realistic than Disney characters. He wonders if Loki will be bored during that.
When the screen shows a Na'vi floating in a tank when they're introducing the whole concept of alien avatars, Tony glances at Loki and sees him looking at the screen. "What's that thing?" He asks. Tony's not sure if he's referring to the alien or the tank. Jarvis pauses the movie on the alien. Tony starts to talk about the tank, planning on explaining both anyways but Loki shakes his head and says "Not that!"
"Oh, you mean the alien?" Tony says, but before he can continue, Loki interrupts.
"Yeah, I think. The blue thing. Is it there 'cause they don't like it 'cause it's ugly?" Loki looks as if he's regretting saying that as he glances at Tony nervously. Tony pauses for a bit, but he's not exactly surprised to hear the disgust in Loki's voice considering he seems to think blue skin makes someone a monstrosity. Loki doesn't seem to like even looking at the alien, so maybe it does sort of resemble Jotuns.
"He's not ugly." Tony says, frowning. This really isn't the effect he wanted the movie to have. "I actually sort of like the way he looks. Blue really suits him, don't you think?" Loki's turns to stare at him like he's suddenly sprouted another head and a couple extra arms.
Loki starts to reply but clamps a hand over his mouth after the first syllable as if he wants to avoid saying anything whatsoever. After a bit, Jarvis resumes playing the movie. Loki once again goes back to seeming uninterested in the movie. That is, until Jake's first time in his Avatar body.
"He looks like that now?" Loki's fiddling with his hands nervously and hugging Simba to his chest as he stares at the screen.
"Sort of. He's controlling the body." Tony answers. Technically, they're two separate bodies, but when Jake controls the avatar it basically becomes his body. He notices Loki growing more and more nervous as he watches Jake- in his Avatar body- knock things over.
Loki starts to ask "Why don't they-" But then, when the other scientists tell Jake somewhat forcefully to sit down, Loki says "They hate him." matter-of-factly. They really don't, but Loki apparently thinks their annoyance at him is much larger than it is. Tony hadn't considered he'd take it that way.
Loki starts to ramble. "They hate him, hate him, hate him, hate him... They hate him 'cause he's a monster!" A horrified look comes over his face and he shrieks "I don't wanna watch this!"
Loki flees the room before Tony can explain that they don't hate him. Tony sighs. This really didn't go how he wanted it to. It seems this movie might be a bit too close to the subject of Jotuns for comfort.
Jarvis and Bruce were right. Loki really needs a therapist, Tony thinks, since he might have just made things worse. He's not sure. Though considering that Loki refuses to talk about his powers or the fact he's a Jotun, Tony's not exactly sure how therapy would go.
Loki flees the theatre and, not knowing where else to go, curls up under the kitchen table. He had been wondering why Tony was showing him this movie. The forest stuff in the beginning was really pretty, but everything else looked so boring, and there were real people in it. He likes the ones that don't look as real.
Then he'd seen the blue creature floating in a tank. It didn't look exactly like a Jotun, but it was pretty similar. And it was big, like Frost Giants (apparently he's on the short side for Frost Giants, since he'd heard they were almost twice as tall as some men, and he's not).
Loki hadn't liked seeing that, but he hadn't meant to say the creature was ugly, although that was totally accurate. Blue skin is ugly. He hadn't meant to say it because he'd expected Tony to agree, but Tony had said he liked the way the thing looked. Tony couldn't have been serious about that, though.
When the guy became his blue-skinned form, Loki had been very uncomfortable. That's too close to what he does (although he hadn't actually seen the guy shift forms, but maybe he'd missed it. He hadn't been looking at the screen the entire time, after all). Then the other people had started to get annoyed at him, and Loki didn't stick around to watch them taunt him as they give him a beating. Surely that's what happened, right? What else could happen, really?
The worst thing about this is if Tony has seen some other guy change forms, it probably won't be long before he knows Loki's hiding another skin, even though that guy's other skin and Loki's other skin are technically different. Apparently Tony likes watching that blue guy get beaten- he'd said he really likes this movie, which means he likes what happens in it- so he'll undoubtedly feel the same way about Loki. Maybe Tony will even be the one giving the beatings.
Loki starts to cry. It makes sense that Tony would do that, but he'd rather be tormented back in Asgard than have Tony turn on him like that.
I hope you enjoyed this. So now, after thinking about it since chapter 4, Tony knows Loki's a Jotun, though that hasn't really helped anything. I feel really bad for Loki in this chapter, though.
Originally I'd planned to have a couple other scenes in here, but this stuff ended up longer than I expected, and those didn't have to be part of this chapter, since they were sort of unrelated.
I've been trying to update once a week and have been basically meeting that. Hopefully that'll continue.