Whoa, I'm surprised by the response the last chapter got. It made me super happy :) As always, thanks to everyone, all my readers, favoriters, followers and reviewers!
I'm really sorry for the longer update time. I got struck with an idea that just wouldn't leave me alone, so originally this chapter was rather different, so I basically had to rewrite it. I didn't even have most of what's here now until the beginning of this week.
To be honest, this is really just a filler chapter, but I really liked the idea and didn't want to pass it up, and I hope you like it, too. On the bright side, I already have a good bit written for the next chapter, since I'd written some before deciding to add this in.
Bruce can't hide a smile as he watches Loki declare that they're family. He vaguely hears Tony whisper something affirmative, which Tony probably didn't want him to hear, and Bruce's smile grows a little more. Loki snuggles up with his head near Tony's arc reactor. The genius inventor glances at Bruce and rolls his eyes almost fondly.
"Say it again?" Loki asks Tony, almost sounding worried that he misheard the man. "We're family, right? Ohana?"
"I think we just established that. Yes, we're family. Okay, legally, we're technically- No I'm not even going to go there. We're family." Tony says, which confirms Bruce's theory about him whispering to Loki minutes ago about how they're family now.
Loki suddenly stops hugging Tony with one arm and slaps his own cheek very forcefully. Tony reaches out to grab his wrist. "Hey, don't hit yourself." A look of realization crosses the billionaire's face, and he adds "Trust me, this isn't a dream. And you don't have to smack yourself to tell that you're awake. You can give yourself a light pinch or poke or something. No need to beat yourself up." Tony demonstrates by pinching his own arm.
"Again?" Loki grins up at Tony hopefully.
"Don't hit yourself this time." Tony says, grabbing Loki's wrist again. Loki nods hesitantly. "We're family." Tony says, and Loki squeals and flicks his fingers. He buries his head into Tony's shoulder, half giggling, half crying.
"Uh, Bambi, you've been hugging me for almost a minute." Tony says, before mumbling "It kind of rocketed past the awkward line over fifty seconds ago. And Bruce, wipe that grin off your face." Bruce only sort of tries to remove the grin from his face while Tony glares at him, partially seriously.
Then, it's Bruce's turn. The hug Loki gives him isn't as awkwardly long, but when it ends, Loki just sits there to gaze at him contemplatively.
Loki blurts out randomly. "What happened to yours?"
Bruce isn't sure what Loki's talking about at first.
"My what?"
"Family." Loki stares at him intently.
"My... family?" Bruce asks unsurely. Both his parents are actually dead, and he knows both of Tony's parents are, too.
Loki nods. "Hulk-y's too."
"They're... not here." Bruce says eventually. He half expects Loki to take that literally as in right here in this very plane, and say something along the lines how obvious that is.
"It was rainy, and they went for a drive." Loki says, and Bruce realizes that Lilo had said the same thing, although she'd said it before asking Stitch what happened to his family. Bruce has to wonder if Loki's just quoting the character, or if he actually understood the unspoken words about them being dead.
Loki continues quoting Lilo. "I hear you cry at night. Do you dream about them?"
Bruce actually does have nightmares, but they're less about his family and more about Hulking out and killing everyone. Besides, he doubts Loki actually knows about them, or Tony for that matter. He's had a couple since moving into the tower, but thankfully Jarvis has kept his secret.
Loki seems to be staring into Bruce, as if he's talking directly to the Other Guy. "I know that's why you wreck things, and push me." Bruce knows he's quoting Lilo here, but it's oddly relevant. Hulk, like Stitch, had wrecked things and so far, the only time he'd assaulted Loki had just been a simple push. But the Other Guy's just an angry monster, right?
"You can be part of ours. Wanna be?" Loki asks Bruce, or maybe he's asking the Other Guy. Loki had listed off both of them when listing people he considers to be members of his family, but Bruce is still somewhat surprised Loki's inviting them into his little family. The Other Guy has pushed Loki and attacked Tony, too. But he's also hugged Loki and contentedly watched Beauty and the Beast with the god. Not to mention, he does seem quite protective of Loki, as evidenced by confronting Thor, although that had been in a rather violent, monstrous way.
Bruce notices that the Other Guy seems less angry. Actually, he almost seems happy, and not the kind of happy as when he gets to smash things. Bruce has noticed that the Other Guy seems to calm down in his mind whenever Loki's hugging either Bruce or the Other Guy, almost like he actually likes Loki's hugs. This is a really welcome change, since the Other Guy isn't too crazy about planes.
The Other Guy seems to really like the idea of family. Which is somewhat surprising, but then again he really seems to like Loki.
"Yeah, we do like our family." Bruce says with a small smile.
"My family's the bestest." Loki grins and claps his hands, moving back to sit next to Tony.
"I noticed you've been speaking differently." Tony blurts out randomly, completely tactless. "Um, is there a reason for that?"
Bruce has noticed that recently, too. He'd noticed the weird Ss added to words even before yesterday, but had chalked it up to All-Tongue glitches. This, though, seems to be something else, something that worryingly sounds more serious. Loki's making grammar mistakes he hadn't made before, and Bruce has noticed it a couple times here on the plane.
Whatever it is, that can't be good. What if the sedatives S.H.I.E.L.D gave Loki yesterday caused this? Bruce doesn't know how Loki's body or brain would react to those sedatives, since his body has to be a bit different. He's an alien, after all. Still, Thor had assured him that those drugs wouldn't have any permanent negative effects on Loki, and for another, some of it had been happening before yesterday.
"Hard. Harder nows." Loki says, looking down and biting his lip slightly. Bruce tries to think of some other reason for speaking to suddenly be harder. Stroke? Bruce sort of doubts people like Loki can get strokes.
"Speaking's harder now?" Tony asks, concerned.
Loki shakes his head. "Can say more than there." Tony looks about as confused as Bruce feels, because it certainly seems like he's able to express himself less than he could before, so how does this work?
"I thought you just said speaking is harder?" Tony asks, and Loki nods. What? Why does he keep contradicting himself?
Bruce asks him how it's harder, and he and Tony wait. For a bit, it doesn't even seem like Loki's going to answer, but then he does. "They gets out bad. Wrong. They gets out wrong. Comes out wrong."
"What comes out wrong?"
"Not same heres" Loki waves a hand in the general direction around him, looking very frustrated. "As heres." He points to his own head, frowning. "Stupid!" He suddenly screeches, slapping his palm against his right temple.
Tony reflexively grabs his wrist and says again "Loki, don't hit yourself. And you're not stupid." He sounds like he means it, too (although, to be honest, Bruce is pretty sure that anyone who Tony thinks is stupid has been told so by Tony).
"All wrong." Loki . "Well... right in here," He points to his forehead. "But wrong heres." He adds, pointing to his mouth.
Tony has his phone out now and mentions Broca's Aphasia, or Expressive Aphasia. Apparently he's already researching the problem. Bruce remembers reading about this in one of his college psych classes. Basically, it makes it hard for someone to speak or write, but it doesn't really explain why Loki only seems to be showing signs of it now. Bruce isn't going to just jump to the conclusion that Loki has it, and at least it seems like Tony isn't going to either.
It's a pity they're not still in the tower where they have all sorts of things like MRI's, F-MRI's and other brain scanning equipment on the various medical floors. Then again, considering that Jarvis' sensors apparently pick up on some weird sort of energy around Loki (undoubtedly his magic), Bruce starts to doubt that those machines would even work on him. Of course, this hypothetical scenario all depends on if they could do the whole scan without Loki freaking out about being in said machine, which isn't certain, especially after the incident at the Helicarrier yesterday.
"Are the words stuck in your head?" Tony asks while reading something on his phone. Bruce can see through the holographic screen of the Stark Phone, which currently shows a bunch of text, though he can't read what the text says from over here.
"It's lower now." Loki says, seemingly irrelevantly. "Use it lesser now. Harder without All... Talk? Speak? All-Speak!"
"Wait, you're not using All-Tongue?" Bruce asks, caught by surprise.
"Can't gets it to go 'way to-tally, 'specially nots in my ears. But I use it lessers now in my mouth and it's reallys... really hard, it is. Using it the leastest now, but it's still kinda there? Not listening to it 'xcept for getting words, but it's all wrong from my mouth." Loki groans, sounding very frustrated as he rocks back and forth, flapping one of his hands and fiddling with the tuft on the end of Simba's tail.
Tony blinks. "Wait, so why are you speaking without All-Tongue? I think it would be awesome, having a handy super-translator in my head."
Loki frowns. "'Cause... I'm reading it and write it too?" He frowns. "Easy then, 'cause it's slow and I can think 'bout it mores. Ands I don't wanna... talk Asgard's stinky... lan-gauge." After a bit, he adds. "I cheated, 'cause I used All-Tongue for that. And this. Didn't know the words. All-Tongue's lots easier, but still not perfect, nope nope nope."
Tony's eyebrows rise in surprise, and Bruce is sure his own are doing the same. He hadn't known Loki was trying to not use All-Tongue in the first place. "How long have you been doing this?"
Loki shrugs. "Most right now. Somes before. Can't gets it all off, but mosts now."
Bruce, once Loki mentioned trying not to use All-Tongue, has relaxed considerably. At least this doesn't hint towards anything serious. Still, he's shocked at how well Loki's doing, considering he's trying to speak a language he's heard for less than forty-five days, and also considering that his language is a little strange even with All-Tongue. Then again, Loki had said he can't totally shut it off, and Bruce isn't sure how much translation is going on in the background. Loki had said something about getting words with it.
Still, Bruce is impressed, particularly at Loki's drive to speak a different language when he has a simple solution at his fingertips that probably requires minimal or even no effort.
"Hey, you're doing a good job." Tony says, putting a hand on Loki's shoulder.
"You really are." Bruce smiles softly. "You're doing well with reading and writing, too." Loki gives him a million-dollar smile, showing a fair number of teeth. It's not empty praise either. Loki has seriously impressed him with the rate he's been reading and writing, presumably without All-Tongue. Sure, it's not perfect, but it's a lot farther than Bruce feels most people would have gotten after only being exposed to it for about a month and a half. And Bruce hadn't even started teaching Loki to write in English right away.
"I'm not sure if you want corrections or not," Tony says. "But it's least and less, not leastest and lesser. Still, great job, though."
"Oh." Loki says simply. "It's harder to have off. Too long.
"What? All-Tongue?"
Loki nods and sighs. "Hard to get it not there, hard to speak with it not there. It's all back now, you know. It was gone for too long, and it wanted to come back." He sighs. "Gonna just use it now, 'kay?" Both of them assure him that's fine.
"If you want," Bruce offers, "I could teach you to speak in English, like how I've been helping you with reading and writing without translating."
"Yes please! Thank you!" Loki grins, clearly loving the idea.
The rest of the plane ride, Loki doodles on paper, looking very restless as he shifts around in his seat. He draws Stitch- he'd obviously loved the blue alien- and then spends considerable time on another drawing of a small crowd.
Bruce and Tony both look at that one when he's done. Loki's in the center, holding Simba. Tony's right next to him, but closer to the right side of the paper than the left. To the right of Tony is Bruce himself, and behind him is Hulk (Loki drew them as two separate people). To the right of Hulk are Pepper and Dum-E, and at the very end is a blue sphere that is supposed to be the holographic representation of Jarvis, even though Loki's only seen the AI's "body" a couple times.
On the left side are what Bruce is pretty sure are Hel, Fenrir, Sleipnir and Jormungand, judging from previous drawings and the Jormungand accessory with little charms of the other three. For some reason, Elsa is also featured in the drawing.
"So what's this a drawing of?" Tony asks, quirking an eyebrow at Loki.
"My families. Both of 'em. Here's my Midgard family, Ohana like Stitch." Loki points to the right side of the page, where Bruce and Tony are. "And here's my Monster family." Loki points to Sleipnir, Fenrir, Hel and Jormungand and Elsa.
"Elsa's part of your family?" Bruce asks, somewhat confused.
Loki shrugs. "Maybe. We're... we're both Jotuns, and she's a princess, and Laufey's the king of Jotunheim." Loki says in a quiet voice. He clearly still doesn't like talking about Jotunheim, and Bruce is surprised he actually is.
"But the King and Queen in Frozen weren't Jotuns, were they?" Tony asks.
Bruce is pretty sure they weren't- it's somewhat debatable if Elsa even is- but Loki apparently considers himself and her to be related. He fiddles with his Elsa doll and says "Maybe she's my sister. I'd like that."
Bruce isn't entirely sure what to say.
Eventually, the plane lands. Loki seems eager to get off, and actually undoes his seatbelt before he's supposed to.
Loki seems somewhat reluctant to put on sandals, and seems ready to kick them off until he, for some reason, crouches down to brush a hand against the asphalt, which is being heated up by the sun. He yanks his hand back, at first letting out a yelp and then practically hissing like a cat, and sucks on his palm for a bit. When he pulls his hand away from his mouth, Bruce swears he sees some frost on Loki's palm. When he gets a closer look, he sees there's also an ice cube poking out of Loki's mouth, but Loki hadn't been drinking anything with ice before.
Loki is perfectly content to keep his sandals on after that, clearly not liking the idea of walking on hot asphalt. Then again, Bruce would be somewhat impressed with anyone who chose to walk across this long stretch of hot ground. He certainly has no desire to put his skin up against it, and as a Jotun born for a very cold climate, that's got to be even worse.
Loki prances around, singing some song from that movie about horses he'd watched on the plane. He sings to the beat of his footsteps, hugging Simba with one arm and galloping Maximus through the air with the other.
"Under the starry sky, Where eagles have flown
This place is paradise. It's the place I call home
And everything I want, Is everything that's here
And when we're all together. There's nothing to fear."
Waiting for them by a car are Pepper Potts and a man in a suit, who Tony introduces as Happy Hogan. Tony seems slightly surprised but pleased to see Happy here.
Apparently, they're running late to some important board meeting, so they're rather quickly loaded into the back of the car, while Happy takes their luggage into the trunk. Loki seems very disappointed about being strapped to a seat again.
"So who are your friends?" Happy asks Tony, and Bruce sees the driver glance back at him and Loki in the mirror.
"Bruce Banner." Bruce introduces himself, not exactly surprised he wasn't recognized. After all, Bruce himself isn't even as well known as the Other Guy, who people know from the Battle of New York and subsequent battles. Well, Bruce is still known, but not as much as, say, Tony.
Happy claims he already knew that, which means he was mostly asking about Loki. The god pipes up on the subject of Bruce, cheerfully saying "He turns into Hulk-y, and Hulk-y turns into him... like, like a circle." He makes a circular motion with his hand and says "Bruce, Hulk-y, Bruce, Hulk-y."
"It's the ciiircle of Bruuuuuce!" Loki suddenly sings the melody to Circle of Life, looking like he's trying not to laugh as he thrusts his Bruce Banner action figure in the air like Rafiki holding Simba. "When he be-comes Huuuuulk!" As Loki sings this next part, he changes the Bruce toy into the Hulk one, and he looks rather pleased with himself before he's unable to contain his own laughter.
Bruce actually finds himself smiling at that.
Loki's too busy laughing to introduce himself at the moment, so Tony mentions his name. Once he stops laughing, Loki exclaims "Tony and Bruce are my family now." He nods happily and turns to Pepper. "I drew you in my family too."
"Did you now?" Pepper asks, smiling, and Loki pulls his picture out of his drawstring bag to show her, pointing out each individual member. He then shows her his drawing of Stitch and goes into a lengthy description of the little blue alien while hugging Simba.
Loki looks slightly nervous as he asks Pepper "Do you... do you wanna be part of my family?"
Pepper smiles slightly and says "Well, I'm in your drawing, right?"
Loki grins at her, clapping his hands.
Pepper glances at her watch and says "Happy, we really are running late. I guess you should drop Tony and I off at Stark Industries and drop Bruce and Loki off at Tony's house, after."
"Nah, I want to give them the full tour personally." Tony says and looks at Bruce and Loki. "You two are coming with us."
Bruce looks down at his clothing, which is rumpled as usual, and then at Loki. Neither of them are exactly passable as employees (especially Loki), and he just raises his eyebrows questioningly.
"Really?" Pepper asks just as skeptically as Bruce feels. "Tony, what are they going to do all day? And don't say you're bringing them to the meeting."
"What? You think I would subject them to hours of tortuous boredom?" Tony asks, smirking, before becoming slightly more serious. "There are spare labs there. They can just hang out in one of them and do whatever. I mean, basically all our time is spent in various labs in the tower, anyways, so it's not like it's a big change. Heck, I can get them their own lab, probably. What do you say, guys?" He grins at them.
Bruce sighs, knowing they're not going to be able to talk Tony out of this ridiculous idea, and he glances at Loki. Loki just stares at Tony and asks "I'm gonna get to stay with you?"
"You're going to get to see where I work." Tony answers. "But you're going to be with Bruce for the day."
"You sure people won't care that we're not dressed up?" Bruce asks skeptically, resigning himself to the fact he's going to be spending the day at Stark Industries. He sincerely hopes he won't have an incident with the Other Guy.
Tony sighs and says "What part of a private lab don't you understand?" At least privacy greatly reduces the risk of Hulking out. Bruce is grateful for the fact they'll get a private lab. Loki, however, is glancing between Tony's suit and his own clothes.
"You want us to wear those?" He asks. Tony doesn't actually confirm it, but Loki's clothes begin to morph into a nice-fitting suit that looks nearly identical to Tony's. It would actually look spiffy, although the effect is sort of ruined by the Jormungand accessory- currently in its unanimated necklace form- his starry long coat, which was unaffected by the magical clothing-transormation, and the fact he's wearing sandals with a suit. However, his hair actually appears more tamed than usual.
Loki looks down at his clothes in surprise, his mouth forming a little 'o' shape. "Well, don't you look snazzy?" Tony says with a slight smirk, and Bruce bets that Tony's hoping Loki won't freak out. To their relief, he doesn't, instead grinning and saying "They're just like your... you said it's a suit, right?"
"You look just like Tony in that suit." Pepper says, smiling, clearly choosing to ignore the coat, snake and lack of shoes. Loki grins even wider, obviously liking being like Tony.
The billionaire can't seem to resist adding "I wear it better, though. And I'm way hotter." That seems to fly over Loki's head, or maybe he just doesn't care at all.
"Good job staying calm." Bruce says, smiling, glad that Loki hadn't freaked out about his magic.
Loki seems to glow a little at the praise. "Elsa changed clothes too. And Toy Stark and Hulk-y change a lot!"
Loki looks between them again as he tries to wriggle out of his long coat, clearly noticing that Tony's not wearing one. Now, he doesn't stick out quite as much- that coat is certainly an eye catcher. Now, the only abnormalities are the snake, Simba, and sandals coupled with a business suit.
Loki actually undoes his seatbelt to take off his coat, and seems very annoyed about strapping himself back in. Admittedly, he'd probably survive a car crash even if they got in one, thanks to his super durability, and they're not likely to get in a crash anyways, but still...
They pull up to Stark Industries, and Loki seems very eager about getting out of the car and as far away from his seatbelt as possible.
Loki's bored out of his mind. This room that Tony had left him and Bruce in is sort of like Tony's and Bruce's labs, only without as much space to move around. Bruce is doing... something. Loki has no clue what it is, but Bruce seems very absorbed in it. Loki sighs, really wanting to stretch his legs. He'd kicked off his sandals a while ago and, while they're not bad, he really prefers being barefoot.
Still, despite the boredom, all in all, today's turned out to be great. Tony had said they're family, and Pepper said she'd be part of his family, too. It had almost seemed too good to be true and Loki had thought perhaps he was dreaming, like when finding out they still liked him after Thor came.
After all, Loki had thought it was weird enough that Tony thought of him as a friend, wondering who would want to consider themselves friends with a Frost Giant. But Tony doesn't seem to care about that at all. Loki has been thinking recently, Tony's a really great friend, and they've been living together almost like a family. Of course, he'd lived with Odin for centuries and centuries and Odin never felt like family, but Odin's really mean whereas Tony's really nice.
Besides it turns out that Frost Giants and weird blue creatures like Stitch can be family with people totally different than them. Anna doesn't care about how Elsa's a Jotun, and Anna and Elsa are family, but Anna's not a Jotun. Stitch and Lilo are a family, too, and they're nothing alike. And he and Tony and Bruce and Hulk are a family, too.
He should have been nervous about talking about families like he had a little bit ago- both his monster family and his new family with his Tony- but he wasn't. He's said so many things here that wouldn't have gone over well at all in Asgard and Tony's never made him feel like an idiot for them.
He'd told them about how Sleipnir and the others were his pretend family and they hadn't laughed, and then he'd even said he thought of them as family, hardly daring to hope that they'd ever feel the same way about him. Especially since he kind of threw pencils into the wall while watching that movie with Stitch and Lilo. He'd pulled his pencils out of the wall, feeling rather bad about it. He'd been worried that Tony would be mad at him, but at least he didn't have to worry about being beaten anymore, since Tony's promised not to hit him. Tony had seemed slightly annoyed, yet at the same time, seemed shocked and almost impressed.
But Tony even agreed they were family! Loki grins, and after a bit, idly sings one of the songs from Spirit to himself.
"Here I am, so young and strong,
Right here in the place, where I belong."
Loki knows where he belongs- with his family. His grin grows even wider, and he doesn't even think he could possibly stop grinning as he flicks his fingers happily.
For a while, Loki entertains himself with going over these recent events as he sits on a table and swings his long legs idly. He's fiddling with the box-like thing that had been clipped to his pocket. He'd unclipped it and is bouncing it up and down with the elastic cord it's attached to, which is really fun. Tony had said he can talk to people in that box, and that it's called a phone, and that Jarvis can talk through it, too. Right now, though, he's too busy thinking to talk to Jarvis.
He still really wants to stretch his legs.
He asks Bruce if he can run around, and Bruce glances at him, saying not to leave the hallway right outside the lab. Loki nods as he grabs Simba and heads out the door.
Loki gallops down the hall and back in his bare feet, wondering if this is what it's like to be a horse. They always run so fast, and Loki thinks that would be really fun to be one. He imagines Sleipnir trotting beside him, and he can actually see his horse friend, now. He grins and starts to race Sleipnir, who's a lot faster than him, being a horse and having eight legs. Loki ups his pace and tries to catch up to the gray form in front of him, and Sleipnir says that there's no way Loki can win. Loki sprints even more, but Sleipnir still beats him.
Loki doesn't mind too much, though. He always loses to Sleipnir, unless Sleipnir lets him win, although Loki can tell when he's doing that, so that never feels like much of a victory. Sleipnir prances around happily as he says he wins.
He suddenly realizes that he's nowhere near where he started out, having gone through some turns and a bunch of other hallways in the effort to keep his race with Sleipnir going. Sleipnir has no clue where they are, either.
Great. Bruce had said he wasn't supposed to leave that hallway. He's probably going to be mad when he finds out.
He bites his lip and asks "Jarvis?" There's no response, and Loki frowns. Jarvis had even been there eventually when he'd been in that glass thing yesterday, and he's supposed to be in that phone thing...
It's only then that he realizes he'd left the phone back in the lab, having never put it back in his pocket like Tony's said he's supposed to. Tony's probably going to be mad about him not listening, just like Bruce is going to be mad about him leaving that hallway. Loki hates the thought of making both Tony and Bruce mad.
He glances around and spots one of those metal doors that means an elevator, like in the tower. He remembers that there had been elevator doors by the lab Bruce had been in, and Loki's noticed that elevators travel between elevator doors. So maybe he can get back that way?
Loki presses one of the buttons outside the elevator, which he knows by now open the doors, although this elevator's taking its sweet time. Eventually, it shows up, and there's nobody else in there. Loki looks at the rows and rows of buttons, wondering which one to press. Tony had said he'd been some floors down, right? So he should go down, but Loki has no clue which floor he's on. So he figures he should just press one of the buttons near the bottom.
He's pretty sure that the lab is somewhere to his right, so he figures he should push one of the buttons on the right-most column of buttons. However, the elevator lurches downwards, so he's definitely not going the right way. He hugs Simba as his mind imagines all sorts of horrible things that could be awaiting him when the doors open again. Maybe it'll be like that room with the rafters, which led to him being in that petri dish cage...
When the doors open, though, it's actually quite colorful and not at all threatening. Loki sees a bunch of really tall shelves with bag-like things in them, and a lot of the bags have pictures or patterns on them. There's even one that looks like Steve's shield. Wondering what these things are doing here, Loki takes that bag off the hook its hanging on and curiously looks at it. The straps definitely aren't strings, like his drawstring bag, and it doesn't close by pulling on the straps. There are these tiny plastic things he has to pull along little tracks that look like teeth. The thing he pulls locks the teeth together when he pulls it one way.
It's almost like sewing a mouth shut...
Loki closes his eyes and hastily shoves the bag back where it had been, hugging Simba tightly and rocking back and forth. No, can't think of that can't think of that... The silver stallion gallops away, His herd follows him and they start to neigh...
"Their hoofs beat to the stars and moon above
Just follow them to find the one you love."
Loki and Sleipnir sing the song together and it helps him calm down somewhat.
There's suddenly a scream from somewhere, and he jumps, badly startled, and his heart races again.
Part of him tells him to go away, to turn back to the elevator, but part of him wants to find out what the scream was. Other screams follow it, but they don't sound like scared screams. They sound... young.
He goes down the hallway to where there's an open door. He stares at the room, which is full of children running around and screaming. Loki cautiously enters, looking around as he clutches Simba tightly. Does Tony know this place is here?
He enters the room and immediately there are children crowding around his legs, looking up at him and shouting a million questions. Loki stares down at them, unsure how to react. All the children he's known haven't been too nice to him, but that was mostly Thor and his friends when they were children.
They don't seem very scary, except for one, who whacks his leg with a doll. Loki edges away from that one. Well, even that one isn't actually scary, per se, not like the Warriors Three, just mean. Loki's a lot taller than these kids, though. They're only toddlers, and none of them even come up to his waist, so they probably can't hurt him. It's not like getting hit with that doll hurt. Loki has a feeling it hurt the doll a lot more than it hurt him.
"Who are you?" At least four different children shout, and the question is also asked by an adult, a lot closer to Loki's size than the kids but still shorter.
Loki doesn't answer, hoping they don't know he's a Jotun, because maybe they're not like Tony and they hate those sorts of things.
"I'm Tony." A little boy announces.
"No you're not." Loki, wondering if this child's trying to jest. This kid is a lot shorter than Tony, and he has bright red hair instead of dark hair. Plus he doesn't even have a beard, or an arc reactor, and there's the obvious part about him being a kid...
"Yes." The kid says again, even though he's clearly not.
"No." Loki shoots back with a snicker. He's not fooled at all.
"Yes!"
"No!" Loki's pretty sure he wouldn't even need All-Tongue for this.
"Uh huh!"
"Nuh uh!"
"Yes! It's my name!"
"You took Tony's name." Loki frowns at him, wondering how Tony will feel finding out this kid stole his name. He'd probably be annoyed at this kid. "You can't be Tony. So there." Loki concludes decisively, smirking slightly. That had been an easy argument to win. He looks away from the child, glancing around the room without the kids. He spots a shelf with plastic horses on it, and he grins heading over.
With Simba tucked under one arm, Loki grabs one that's sort of a yellowish color like Spirit. He sits down with Simba in his lap and starts to prance the horse around the shelf, singing one of the songs from the movie with Spirit.
"Here I am. This is me
I come into this world so wild and free."
Suddenly, a little girl with straight blonde hair crawls into Loki's lap next to Simba and grabs part of his Jormungand necklace. Loki blinks and looks down at her, uncertain of what to do. This has never happened before.
The little girl is wearing a blue shirt. It's almost the shade of his Jotun skin, actually. He wonders why she'd want to wear something Jotun colored, because it's sort of like pretending to have Jotun skin, in a way. On the shirt is some sort of blue... creature, with a round head, a large toothless mouth, and two eyes on top of said head. The eyes are basically white circles with smaller black circles in them.
Loki's still not too big on blue, but it can't be all bad. After all, the sky is blue, and the night sky is sometimes just a really dark blue, and Tony's arc reactor is sort of blue. Besides, Stitch, Sulley and Genie are all blue, and Elsa wears blue and they're not bad.
"Is your snake real?" The girl asks him, still looking at Jormungand. "My mommy says snakes are gwoss, but she says mouses are too and they're cute. Like Mickey."
"Snakes aren't gross." Loki frowns, before answering the girl's question. "He moves and sometimes he hugs me, but sometimes he's not this snake, nope nope nope. Sometimes he's like Fenrir." Fenrir's never tangible, along with Sleipnir and Hel, although Loki really wishes they were. Fenrir would be really nice to curl up with, Loki thinks.
The girl, still in Loki's lap, grabs one of the other toy horses, trotting it up Loki's arm and then across Simba. She squeals out Simba's name and then asks "Why's he Iwon Man?"
Loki laughs and hugs Simba. "He's like my Tony. I made the suit 'n my Tony made the Arc Reactor. My Tony, he's my family now." Loki nods happily.
"I have a little brudder. William." The girl says. "He's two. I'm Claire and I'm four now." She holds up two fingers when talking about her brother and then adds two more when proudly stating her own age. She looks like she'd be at least a century old by now, Loki thinks, until he remembers that Tony said he's only forty-three. Loki frowns, remembering that humans die quickly. He doesn't like that.
Claire keeps talking, presumably about her brother. "He frowed up in the bafroom. He's in the sick kid room."
Loki isn't entirely sure what she's talking about, and he points to the blue creature on the girl's shirt and asks "What's that?"
"Cookie Monster." Claire says, smiling toothily. "He likes cookies! I love cookies soooo muuch!" She dances around on her tiny feet a little and hugs her body, as if giving the picture on her shirt a hug.
Loki's not sure what cookies are, but that's not the important part. "He's blue." Loki observes, frowning slightly. She'd said he's a monster, but she seems to like him. "Is he a good monster, likes Stitch? Stitch's a good blue monster, and he doesn't even have'ta be a monster. Like Quasi's no monster, and Elsa too."
"Cookie Monster's funny." The girl practically shouts "Gwover's blue too. Blue's my favowite color."
"Really?" Loki doesn't know why anyone would like blue most. "Would you wanna be blue?" He asks, although it's a stupid question. Of course the answer's going to be no. He's not even sure why he asked.
"Yeah!" Claire exclaims excitedly, and Loki blinks in surprise before smiling. This girl's nicer than Sif was as a child.
The girl, fiddles with the charms hanging frm the Jormungand necklace's mouth. She looks at the Hel one and says "That's a girl."
"She's Hel." Loki explains.
The girl wrinkles her nose and says "You said a bad word." Loki frowns, sad that she doesn't like his friends.
Claire runs off to an area with what looks like a mini wooden fridge, stove and cabinets, judging from the fact there's a sign that reads Play Kitchen. Loki watches the girl rummage through things before seeming to find what she's looking for. She brings it back to him and shoves it towards his mouth. It's a brown disc-like thing with small, darker brown chunks in it.
"Eat the cookie, Cookie Monster!" She says, and Loki figures she's pretending he's the thing on her shirt. At least the monster on her shirt is a good monster, like Sulley. Loki frowns and takes a curious bite, only to immediately spit it out. It's horrible!
"You like this?" Loki asks in disgust, while Claire starts to laugh.
"You don't really eat it! It's just pr'tend!" She seems to find it hysterical that he had eaten it, though.
"Claire, what are you doing? You shouldn't talk to strangers." A lady asks before looking at Loki and asking "Who are you?"
Loki doesn't like the tone he has, and he decides to mess with her a little. "Stitch." He answers, and he's pretty sure he has a straight face.
"Stitch?" The lady asks skeptically. Loki grins and curls his hands into claws, like Stitch's, and grinning with a lot of teeth showing. "That's not a real name-"
She sounds just like the woman at the pet store that Lilo got Stitch from, so Loki finishes the line for her. "...In Iceland. But here it's a good name. Stitch it is."
The lady looks at him for a bit and plasters on a smile. "Stitch, then. How did you come here? Are you lost?" Loki is sort of lost, but this lady's talking to him like he's an idiot. Loki doesn't like that, much.
"Tony said Bruce and I can comes here." Okay, that's a lie, because Tony only said something about coming "to work." He said nothing about this room with children, but Loki likes it in here. Claire is really fun, and they have toy horses!
"Who's Bruce? And who's Tony?" She asks.
"Tony Stark. He's Man of Iron. And Bruce is Hulk-y. They're A-vengers." Loki nods. He's worked out that Tony's pretty famous here on Midgard, and he apparently works somewhere in this building, too (Is it an Avengers building? But then why would Bruce coming here be new?) So this woman has to know Tony at least, right?
The lady's eyes light up in recognition, and she says "Oh. Tony Stark! Of course." She doesn't sound like she believes it as she pulls a device off her belt and says something into it, but Loki's not listening.
He wonders if she'll fall for the fake food trick Claire had tricked him with. He holds out the nasty plastic thing (what had Claire called it? A coo-tie?) to the lady and tells her to eat it. The lady smiles and pretends to take a bite, and Loki's somewhat disappointed that she didn't actually bite it like he did. Maybe Claire tricked her with that, too. Loki wonders if Tony would fall for this trick, but decides he probably wouldn't. Tony's too smart for that.
Claire has grabbed his hand with her own tiny one and his tugging on his hand to lead him over to a table with water, like a mini bathtub. There's a sign by it that has a picture of the exact same table, and Loki reads the words "Water Play."
Loki can't even stand up fully when Claire's holding onto his hands, so he follows along on his knees, hugging Simba and all the plastic horses.
Claire reaches for the horses and dunks them in the water. She reaches for Simba, too, but Loki pulls him away. "Simba can't gets wet." He says, which is true. Jarvis has told him that Simba might stop talking if he gets wet, and Loki really doesn't like that. Loki never really got that, since Simba swam in the movie, but he doesn't want Simba to stop talking.
Loki continues holding Simba, hugging him tightly. It's a good thing, too, because little boy with glasses and a girl with green eyes run up and try to just take him. Loki hugs Simba tightly to his chest with one arm. The last time someone took Simba, which was only yesterday, they hadn't given him back for a while.
The little boy and girl continue to yank at Simba, and a different adult, a man, pulls them away and tells them they need to wait their turn. Both of them are screaming and crying by this point, and the man asks Loki who he is. Loki's getting really tired of all these questions, and he again says his name is Stitch, trying not to laugh as he does so.
"Is that one of our toys?" The man asks. "I can kind of imagine Mr. Stark making something like that."
Loki grins. "He dids! Well, I made the suit, but my Tony made the Arc Reactor, and, and he gots me Simba as a gift!"
"You know Tony Stark?" The man asks. Why does nobody seem to believe that? This man also speaks into one of those things he pulled off his belt, saying something about an "odd man" Loki frowns. Is this man talking about him?
Claire's been tugging on Loki's hand this whole time, and he turns back to her.
With Simba hugged tightly to his chest with one arm, Loki prances the horses through the water with Claire.
Something whirs past Loki, and he sees it's a miniature version of those car things that he hates. Only, it's driving by itself. Loki glances at the horses, wishing they could run by themselves. He starts imagining it, and suddenly, they start to. For a second, he thinks it's still his imagination, but he realizes it's not and both Loki and Claire scream in delight.
Becoming friends with Claire was almost as easy as becoming Hel or Pepper's friend. Loki wishes that making friends had been this easy in Asgard.
"You have green hands." Yet another kid suddenly says behind Loki. Loki glances at his hands and sees green magic around them, and then glances at the running plastic horses. Had he done that? That's... really neat, actually.
One of the horses puts its mouth under the water and starts to drink, but Claire claims that animals drink with their tongues. Loki knows that's wrong.
"Um..." Loki tries to think of how to say what he wants to. He's trying to speak in English instead of just speaking his usual language and letting it come out as English thanks to Allspeak. He can't really "shut off" All-Tongue, and it helps with trying to find the right words in English, but he's trying not to use it when he actually speaks. It's pretty confusing even in his head, and he's pretty sure it all comes out wrong when he doesn't use All-Tongue. Sometimes All-Tongue seems to take over, although even that's not perfect. Stuff often sounds better in his head than when it comes out of his mouth.
"Spirit... he drinked water really weird." Loki's pretty certain that hadn't come out right at all. "Like, horses, they don'ts..." He frowns and bites his lip. "They don't haves their mouth above the water and use their tongues, nope nope nope. Not like a dog." Loki shakes his head and flicks his own tongue out to demonstrate, before deciding against it. That water looks gross to drink. "They put their mouth a bit under the water, likes that." He points to the horse on the water table.
Claire doesn't seem to be listening, though, as they both watch the horses prance around. Soon there's a crowd of other kids gathered around, excitedly watching the horses run and reaching out to try to catch them. It's kind of nice, actually, having all these people really excited about something he did with his magic. Actually, Loki really likes what had happened this time, kind of like when he made Toy Stark look better.
Loki vaguely wonders if he can make Simba move sometime. Though maybe he should wait until there aren't as many grabby kids around, he thinks, looking at the small hands grasping for the horses.
Suddenly, from another part of the room, he hears a loud but high pitched cry of "HULK SMASH!" A little boy wearing big, green fake Hulk hands and a Hulk mask runs up to a tower of blocks another boy is building and punches it to the ground. The little boy who was building it bursts into tears.
Loki frowns at the Hulk boy and says "You know, you wreck everything you touch. Why don't you try making something for a change." He's going to have to remember to ask the real Hulk that when he sees him again. Loki hopes that's soon, as he scoots over to the area with the blocks (keeping a careful hold of Simba) and grabs some.
"We're gonna make the best tower ever!" He exclaims to the boy who's crying. Loki's really good at building towers. When he'd first met Bruce, they'd build a tower for that game where he had to pull blocks out without having it fall over. It never had fallen over, actually.
Loki starts to stack some of the blocks as he hums his and Sleipnir's song, since it always calms him down. He doesn't want everyone to know the words, though. Just his family. The crying boy sniffles, wipes his nose, and grabs a block, putting it on the top of the stack. Loki looks at the boy dressed as Hulk and says "Hulk, help too!"
The boy has to take off his huge Hulk hands to even grab them, but he does. Other children crowd around and start placing blocks (Claire stands right next to Loki) while some of them go off to build their own tower.
The tower falls down when there are only eight blocks in it, but they restart, and Loki's determined to have it stay up.
Bruce is pretty sure Loki should be back by now. After all, he'd heard him running up and down the hall a couple times, and he'd said he wouldn't go far. It's been almost fifteen minutes since he left, but Bruce had been absorbed in his work. He should have been more attentive. Bruce abandons his work for a bit to poke his head out in the hallway.
There's no sign of Loki. Frowning, Bruce walks down the hall for a bit, calling Loki's name, but there's still no response.
Great. Had Loki left? Teleported accidentally? Had he gotten kidnapped or stopped by security? Bruce forces himself to take deep, calming breaths as he heads back towards the lab, although it's a little hard when he keeps thinking about how he failed, although if Loki teleported, there's no way he could have prevented it. This shouldn't be too bad, he tells himself. Hopefully it'll be nothing like yesterday, although Loki does seem to go missing a lot. After yesterday, they've started to have Loki carry around his own Stark Phone. Bruce dials Loki's number, which he'd put on speed dial yesterday, only to realize as he walks in the lab that Loki's phone is in there.
Wonderful. That sort of defeats the whole purpose. Bruce forces himself to take more deep breaths as he scans the lab, realizing that Loki left his drawstring bag with all his toys (except Simba) here.
Then he remembers that Loki has that tracking watch, and he grins. Unfortunately, he doesn't have an actual way to track him, so instead he dials Tony's number.
Pepper is at first rather annoyed when Jarvis announces from Tony's phone that he has a call until he mentions Dr. Banner's name. Tony simply answers it as he leans back in his chair, not even bothering to take it somewhere private. "You lost him? What did he do, te-" A quick glance at the board members, and he pauses before amending whatever he was going to say. "Did he pull his disappearing act again? Hopefully this won't turn out like yesterday.
Pepper frowns. Something happened to Loki, it seems, both now and something yesterday. Apparently, yesterday's thing was pretty bad. "Yeah, of course I'm going to look for him. I've got the software. What do you mean he doesn't have his phone?" Tony sighs and mutters. "Snoopy, you'd better be wearing that watch I gave you." He hangs up, not even glancing at the other board members, and starts doing something on his phone when Jarvis announces that he has another call, from the director of the daycare.
Frowning, Tony asks the AI "Why the hell is the daycare calling me?"
He answers that call and he says "What? Yeah, I know him. He's with me, and he's perfectly harmless. He's not going to eat any of your kids or anyth-"
Pepper simply snatches the phone from him, listens as they describe a strange man who had wandered into the daycare and started playing with the children, and says "Of course we'll come down."
Tony stands up to leave, presumably to check on Loki, but Pepper says "I'll go." She can totally picture Tony trying to ditch the rest of this meeting, and she'd rather that not happen. Plus he doesn't even know the people who run the daycare. She wonders how in the world he ended up there.
"Yeah, and pick up his phone beforehand. It's in the lab Bruce is in." Tony scowls at her but sits down when she glares at him. Hopefully he won't derail the entire meeting while she's gone.
She leaves and heads down towards the lab where Bruce is to pick up Loki's phone and reassure Bruce that Loki's perfectly fine and still in the building. Once that's done, she heads towards the daycare center. Stark Industries has a daycare for all its employees' kids, though in the mornings its mostly just babies and toddlers, kids too young to go to school. From around three to five, the school-age children of employees start arriving. There's even a separate daycare/clinic for sick children. It's actually more efficent to have a daycare here, as it takes less time for employees to drop off and pick up their kids.
When she gets to the daycare, she's greeted by the director, Abigail. They watch as Loki, surrounded by a crowd of small children, is building a block tower far above their heads. Right now, it's around Loki's chin level, and Loki is pretty tall, even for men. He's certainly over six feet.
The kids seem amazed with the tower's height, and are holding up blocks for him to add to it, clambering to have the block they're holding picked next. Frankly, Pepper's surprised the thing's still standing, especially since there are some large flat blocks at the top that stick out from the rest of the tower, like a deck. Loki grabs a block from a little boy and puts that on top of the large flat blocks.
There's one little girl in a Cookie Monster shirt who keeps tugging at Loki's pants and seems closer to him than the other children, though a lot of them seem to love him.
"At first we were a little worried about him." The director of the daycare, Abigail, says. "You know, a strange man showing up somewhere with a bunch of children..." She trails off and says "We were wrong about that, definitely."
"Yes, you were." Pepper agrees. They watch Loki for a bit more. Honestly, he sort of does seem like an overgrown child, but he's surprisingly good with children. Apparently, he'd- perhaps unintentionally- solved a crisis with a boy in a Hulk costume knocking down a block tower.
"He says his name is Stitch." Abigail ventures. "I don't think that's really-"
"It's not." Pepper assures her. "He's named Loki." Abigail mutters something about that being just as strange.
"He's special, isn't he?" Abigail asks with the slightest emphasis on the word special. She doesn't say it in a patronizing way like some people would, but Pepper just shakes her head.
"I'm not sure. He's just Loki, and he's great to be around." His enthusiasm is really nice, considering most of the time she's around corporate bigheads. Pepper smiles and snaps a picture of Loki with her phone.
Abigail says that somehow, some plastic horses that weren't supposed to move started running, but she doesn't pin it on Loki. Pepper decides to remain quiet on that subject.
The children around Loki hop up and down excitedly as they hand him more and more blocks to stack on the tower, and half the time, Loki's hopping up and down too. A tow-headed girl, probably three at the most, accidentally bumps into the tower's base, but it somehow remains standing, even though it should be impossible. Then again, Pepper had caught the slightest flash of green around Loki's hands.
There's a small group of children building a smaller tower next to them, although that group gleefully kicks their own tower down, looking at the huge tower with awe and grabbing blocks to add to it. Some of the children are building a base around the tower.
Some of the children have noticed Pepper by now, but Loki's apparently absorbed enough in the block tower not to notice.
She walks over to Loki and he notices her now, grinning and exclaiming "Pepper! Look, I builded home!"
"Built." Pepper corrects. Bruce had briefly filled her in on Loki's new habit of trying to speak without All-Tongue, which is apparently the translator in his head. She looks at Loki's tower again and sees that it actually does sort of look like Stark Tower, at least with the large balcony protruding near the top, around most of the tower. "It's a lovely tower."
Loki flaps his hands, delighted, and several children scream that they helped.
"It's Iwon Man's tower." The little tow-headed girl who'd almost knocked it over says.
The kids and Loki start discussing the Avengers. Loki says that Tony's his favorite (obviously) and a little boy declares he likes Hawkeye most. Another little boy, wearing a Hulk mask, apparently likes Hulk the best, and the little girl in the Cookie Monster shirt, the girl who seems to really like Loki, declares that she likes Captain America because he's a hero. There are several children who voice their agreement about which one's their favorite when someone mentions them.
"I've met them." Loki says simply, grinning. "And I live with Tony and Bruce and Hulk-y and Tony and Hulk-y gives really good hugs!"
"I like Thor!" A girl exclaims and Loki freezes, happy expression gone in an instant.
"I don't like Thor, nope nope nope! He's mean!"
"But he hits the bad guys with his hammer."
"Tony says I'm nots a bad guy!" Loki shrieks, darting away to a corner of the room, clutching Simba tightly while rocking back and forth and singing something about a field and horses rather loudly, as if he's close to panicking. Slowly, though, his voice quiets down as
Pepper approaches him and goes to lay a hand on his shoulder. He flinches away but soon recognizes her and lets her hug him.
"You're not bad." She assures him.
"Likes Stitch 'n Genie 'n Quasi 'n Elsa 'n Esmeralda, right?" He asks, and Pepper tells him that's exactly right. Loki smiles slightly.
Loki, eyes lowered guiltily, says "I forgots my phone, and Bruce said not to leave the hall but I was racing Sleipnir..." Looking at her, he asks "Are you mad?"
"Not really." She says. "I know you didn't mean to. Just try to keep your phone in the future." She hands him his phone, and he clips it back to his pocket, bouncing it slightly on the elastic cord.
"Where's Tony?" Loki asks.
"He's in a meeting."
"Who's he meeting?" Loki asks, and Pepper smiles slightly at that question.
"Some business people."
"Biz-ness?"
Pepper's unsure of how to explain it, but Loki's already glancing back at the tower he'd built and clearly wanting to continue with it.
Suddenly grinning, Loki stoops down and picks something up. He holds out a toy cookie to her and says "Eat." Pepper stares at it. It looks like it has a chunk missing, as if someone actually took a bite out of it. Or maybe it had been made to look like that, but wouldn't the manufacturers have put an edge along the bitten part instead of leaving it open to show it's hollow?
Pepper obliges and pretends to take a bite, to appease Loki. Loki, however, looks disappointed, and mumbles something about her being too smart for that, whatever that is.
Everything seems fine again, and Pepper's vaguely wondering if maybe Loki can stay here until they leave- the children seem to love him. Pepper trades glances with the daycare staff, since it's really their decision if he stays.
However, a little boy dressed up as Thor approaches them with a toy version of Mjolnir and hits Loki in the leg with it.
Loki completely loses it, grabbing the hammer and flinging it across the room, where it actually goes through the wall. Yeah, there's no way they're letting him stay after that. And wow, it seriously went through a wall?
Loki seems all too content to leave, though, and practically pulls Pepper out the door.
Tony's mentally checked out of this board meeting. Really he hadn't been totally engaged before finding out Loki was missing, and then immediately finding out his location.
He's been thinking about how the heck Loki ended up at the daycare facility and what he's been doing there. He's probably re-enacting Disney scenes with a bunch of hyperactive children or something. That actually seems rather suited for him.
Pepper still hasn't returned, and Tony idly messes around on his phone. Unfortunately, he can't really do anything productive like hack into S.H.I.E.L.D again or even read about those X-Men people he's itching to learn more about, since he's in a room with a bunch of other people who shouldn't know about that stuff. The one disadvantage of having a holographic phone is it's hard to hide what you're doing on it.
He receives a text from Pepper (who apparently knows he's on his phone). First, there's a picture of Loki building what looks to be Stark Tower made out of blocks, surrounded by half a dozen children. He smiles slightly, and receives another text about fifteen minutes later, saying that Loki's back with Bruce in the lab, saying rather vaguely that Loki freaked out.
Pepper returns about , and she trades a look with him, saying she'll talk to him later. Bruce should have the situation under control. While Tony was originally annoyed at Bruce for 'losing' Loki, he's realized he can't really blame him. After all, he's lost Loki too, and Loki disappearing isn't anyone's fault. Tony's not sure if Loki teleported this time or not, since nobody had seen him in the hallway.
Finally, after a couple more tedious hours, around one-thirty, the meeting is over.
"So what happened with Loki?" Tony asks as they walk to the lab Bruce and Loki are in. "By the way, that picture was awesome."
"A little boy in a Thor costume hit him with Mjolnir." Pepper sighs.
"Yeah, that'd do it. How long did it take to calm him down?"
"About five minutes, and that was after calming him down when a little kid said Thor hit bad guys with his hammer. That first time, I just had to remind him that he's not bad, though."
Well, that's good news, Tony supposes. Tony wonders if Loki had asked her to compare him to Disney characters.
Tony fills Pepper in on what happened with S.H.I.E.L.D yesterday, and she looks murderous. Tony smirks. Heads at S.H.I.E.L.D are going to roll, probably Fury's.
When they enter the lab, Loki rushes up to hug Tony. "You okay?" Tony asks him.
"Yeah! I made horses run!" Loki announces.
"What?" Tony knows he's missing something here, and Pepper fills him in, saying a daycare worker said that some plastic horses had started running on their own. Tony grins at Loki and tells him he did a good job, glad to see Loki happy about something he did with his magic. Pepper also claims that Loki had gone by the name of Stitch, and Tony thinks it's a good sign that he'd chosen a blue character to pretend to be.
Loki gazes at Simba, and the toy suddenly moves its head. Admittedly, it's not much- Simba does that anyways when talking- but it's something. Tony wonders if that's all Loki can do at the moment or if he's hanging back on purpose.
Tony, Bruce and Loki head towards the parking lot, where Happy is waiting for them with a limo. Tony's pretty sure that driving him around isn't part of Happy's job description as Head of Security, but Happy's apparently making an exception for them.
"Tony, a kid stole your name." Loki suddenly says. "He said he was Tony, but he wasn't you."
"How dare he!" Tony says, and he sees Bruce hiding a smile.
Loki seems to think he's serious and claims proudly "I wasn't fooled! I know you're Tony."
Tony bursts out laughing. When he regains his breath, he says "I'm not the only Tony. And Tony isn't even my real name, it's Anthony. Tony's just a shortened version."
"Anthony?" Loki wrinkles his nose and looks very confused and asks "No, Tony's better. Lots better. Why do people have your name?"
"Because, well, a lot of people have the same first name. Bruce isn't the only Bruce, either." Loki looks shocked. Tony wonders if there are other people named Thor and Loki up in Asgard, but he kind of doubts it.
For the rest of the ride, Loki chatters on about a little girl named Claire and something about a good, blue "Cootie Monster", whatever that is.
As much as being chauffeured is convenient, Tony really would've liked to drive one of his sports cars at ridiculous speeds, especially since driving in New York traffic just plain sucks, but he'd been dropped off in the limo and thus didn't have a car to take home.
They exit the limo when it pulls up by the fountain in front of the mansion. Loki immediately starts dashing around, going up to different trees and sometimes running a hand across their trunks and sometimes hugging them. Eventually, he scrambles up one tree with Simba. Most of the trees in the huge yard aren't great climbing trees, since the vast majority are palm trees or trees without many branches, making them sort of hard to climb.
The tree Loki's in is one of the exceptions to that, with several thick branches that (somewhat surprisingly) support Loki's weight. Actually, considering that Tony needs an Iron Man suit to lift Loki up at all, he's slightly shocked that the branches are supporting him, especially since Loki's near the end of one, where it's getting thinner and is more likely to break.
Bruce is apparently enjoying the quiet and outdoor air, which is almost eerie when one is used to going outside in NYC, with its numerous sounds and smells all competing for attention.
Loki grins at Tony from his spot in the tree. "Being high's al-most good as being b'low things." Loki says matter-of-factly.
Tony bursts out laughing. Loki probably has no idea what being high means, and it's pretty obvious he meant high up, like in a tree, but still, that wording is hilarious. Loki looks somewhat confused as to why Tony's laughing, but he grins as if he likes making him laugh.
Once his laughter has died down, Tony says "You might want to move closer to the trunk. I mean, that branch looks like it could break at any time."
Now that he thinks about this, the physics just don't work. That branch really should break. Tony bets it would break if he climbed on the end of it like that.
"Oh, no, won't break." Loki says with an odd grin, and Tony wonders if he's back to trying not to use All-Tongue. His speech had seemed normal (at least for him) in the car. "Wanna know why? I gaves them a hug, I did, so she likes me now." He leans down and wraps his arms around the branch, which still doesn't break with the weight even more towards the end of it. But then again, Loki's made stuff float and once- so long ago, it seems, despite not even being two months since Loki arrived- he made a Jenga tower not fall down when it obviously should have. And that tower he was building in the picture looked really unstable...
"She likes me." Loki says again with a soft smile, and Tony frowns, having no idea what Loki's talking about.
"Who's she?"
Loki just gestures towards the tree, and Tony can't help laughing again. "The tree?" Loki doesn't reply verbally, but he nods as grabs Simba and climbs even higher, as if he's been climbing trees for years. Then again, he had mentioned climbing trees a lot after climbing the Hulkbuster suit. Loki even uses his bare toes to attempt to grip things, although they're not too useful, it seems. Still, Loki does really well with only one arm, as the other hand's holding Simba- maybe he's used to carrying things and climbing? Maybe Loki's got some ape genes in him, Tony thinks, jokingly.
Tony realizes that Bruce is watching the events with a slight smile.
"Hey, Loki, do you want to come down for a while? I've got to give you the grand tour of mi casa, after all."
"Comes out later?" Loki asks hesitantly. Yeah, he's definitely trying not to use All-Tongue, although he either switches between using and and not a lot or sometimes he does pretty well and sometimes he doesn't. Bruce gently corrects Loki.
Tony shrugs and says "Of course you can come out later. The trees aren't going anywhere." Loki nods and proceeds to simply jump down from the rather high height, sticking the landing surprisingly well. At least, he doesn't break his legs, although he'd probably be able to fix them if he did.
Shockingly, the tree's branches briefly go down with Loki, as if reaching down for him, like the tree's hoping he'll stay. Tony scoffs. That's ridiculous. It's just the wind or something, he tries to tell himself, but that sounds flimsy in his head even as he's thinking it, seeing as he neither feels nor hears a breeze of any sort.
"Don't knows her name yet, but she's she." Loki says, and Tony wonders why Loki's personifying a tree.
The weather's a lot warmer in Malibu than in New York at this time of year, although Loki actually seems to prefer the colder weather. Which makes sense, considering his species is apparently from an ice planet that's probably a lot like Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back.
"All right, so who's ready for the complete tour of my humble abode?" Tony asks with his eyes flung wide. Okay, so it's only one of several abodes, and none of them are humble in any sense of the word, but oh well. Who cares? "Now come on, you two." He gestures and heads towards the mansion.
Looking at the house, Loki comments that it looks a lot different from the tower and doesn't sport a huge letter A on it. Indeed, the mansion does look different, mostly because it's a heck of a lot shorter (which also gives it the impression of being wider, even though the tower covers more square footage of the ground than the mansion does).
The mansion hosts three floors, plus Tony's lower-level garage/workshop. The house has an awesome ocean view, since it's built on- and partially in- a cliff, and like the tower, features many floor-to-ceiling windows.
They enter the front door, dragging luggage behind them, and Jarvis greets them. "Good afternoon Sir, Mr. Loki, Dr. Banner." Loki's face lights up like a Christmas tree and he happily calls out the AI's name.
"Jarvis is here!" Loki exclaims pointlessly, since it's pretty obvious. He frowns thoughtfully and asks "Do you lives here?"
"Yeah. It's one of my many houses."
"Not even Odin hads lots n' lots'o castles." Loki says, sounding awed. "But you're way better than Odin."
"You don't need to tell us that this living room." Bruce says mildly, looking around as they walk into the very spacious room with floor to ceiling windows that show off a brilliant ocean view. Sofas, chairs and coffee tables are scattered throughout it, and there's a huge television screen that covers all of one wall. Really, it's not too different from the tower, except for the fact it has an ocean view instead of a city skyline view.
"Bruce, Bruce, Bruce." Tony sighs, throwing aside parts of his suit jacket, shirt and dress pants so just the rock band t-shirt and jeans that were underneath them remain. "You should know that it's not the living room, it's a living room. Kind of a big difference, since I have like four here."
Upon seeing the ocean view from one of the living room windows and looking down at the cliff and small beach below them, Loki remarks "That's a lotta lotta water. Like a really big sea. Hey, do you haves a pirate ship?" When Tony corrects him and says it's an ocean, not a sea, and answers that no, he does not have a pirate ship, Loki asks him if he has "a wood water board." It takes a bit for Tony to work out that he's asking about a surfboard, like he'd just seen in Lilo & Stitch. Loki had seemed to find the whole idea of surfing ridiculously exciting when he'd watched Lilo, Stitch, Nani and David do it.
Tony leads them through the many living rooms, multiple kitchens (one on each floor), some of the entertainment and recreation rooms, even the gym with its boxing arena. He shows them the various guest rooms and lets them deposit their stuff in the ones they choose. None of the guest rooms are near the Master Bedroom, which Tony uses, but Bruce winds up choosing a room next to the one Loki chooses.
The other thing Loki seems to love about this house (apart from the outdoor parts) is that there's a waterfall by the stairs. He runs a hand under the falling stream of water, laughing as it sprays outwards, laughing even more when he angles his hand so it hits Tony. Tony mock pouts at him as he pushes his now-wet bangs off his forehead, while Loki laughs uproariously and Bruce tries to cover up his chuckles as coughs.
Too bad Dum-E's still in the tower, or Tony could set him on them with a fire extinguisher in retaliation. Actually, Tony's not sure if Dum-E would douse Loki or not, since the robot really, really likes Loki and vise versa.
Jarvis pipes up to inform them that the video appointment with Dr. Carlisle is in a couple minutes.
Tony groans. He'd forgotten about that, and was hoping to do some more research on the X-Men, but Loki probably wants him there for his therapy session. Loki's making that quite clear by firmly gripping his both his and Bruce's sleeves.
Tony sighs and plops down on the couch. He's still sort of annoyed about the last session.
I didn't really know how to end this, so sorry if it stunk. Also, I guess this chapter didn't really do anything, but it was fun to write. Hopefully you enjoyed it as much as I liked writing it.
I've been thinking about writing a one-shot about the MCU Loki (and possibly Tony?) crossing paths with my Loki and Tony (although Tony's not too different, aside from what he thinks of Loki). So far it's just an idea in my head, and not a very detailed one at that.
Since I have some of next chapter written (and it'll actually return to somewhat relevant topics), I might be able to have a shorter update time. Maybe. Although these past couple chapters would say otherwise.