Nine Lives 11
A/N: I may or may not have derived an evil amount of enjoyment from leaving you with that last line (blame the Loki part of my brain), but I figured two days was enough evil for me. ;)
Also, writing this has really cheered me up after a... less than stellar weekend. At least Enemy Transmissions Comics is still considering me as a colorist, which is awesome.
Previous Next
The Morning After
Consciousness was a hand around his throat.
Steve Rogers' hand, to be exact.
Loki did not remember blacking out, but the world was hazy around the edges the way it was when he overtaxed himself. His vision had narrowed to a tunnel of clarity, currently focused on the snarling, half-masked visage of Captain America. Loki's eyelids drooped closed, and the hand on his throat shook him awake.
The wall was solid against the planes of his back. Sound barreled into him.
“ - did you do to him?” Steve was shouting, over and over judging by the hoarseness of his voice.
“Calm yourself, my friend.” Thor's voice - not the loudest, for once - weaved under, in, and through Steve's barrage. Thor's hands were on Steve's shoulders, gripping and tugging.
There was a third voice, higher, feminine, and quavering. Loki's eyes slid to the side, and his tunnel of vision centered on Pepper, who knelt on the ground with Tony's head on her knees. Her mascara was running, and she jabbered into a phone, her face and knuckles white. She was rattling off an address, asking for an ambulance.
Tony.
Loki noted the soft flutter of the human's eyelids and the steady, if shaky, rise and fall of his chest. Steve's hand was still around his throat, but Loki could hardly feel it. The haze crawled towards the center of his vision, and the sounds grew distant and unintelligible. The world tilted, and the hand on his throat fell away to a pair of arms around his chest.
Haze turned to black.
Next, Loki awakened to the sensation of movement, aware of being held, cradled like a child. His cheek was pressed against cool metal, and a voice like thunder rolled over him. He closed his eyes and fell back into nothingness.
He felt cold. Unbearably cold.
Loki could feel Thor's eyes on him before he was even fully awake. He rolled over so that those eyes bore into his back instead. He squinted, but the light bouncing off the white, white walls was a dagger in his skull.
“Brother.” Thor's voice was a soft rumble, like a lion's purr. “Are you awake?”
Loki huffed weakly and pressed his face into the pillow. “No,” he said and, half-floating as he was, he was not entirely sure that was a lie. Nothing ached, exactly, but he felt exhausted, as though it took all of his energy just to breathe. He wanted to drift off to sleep again, but something niggled in the back of his mind, telling him that he needed to know something first.
He was too tired to figure out what it was. The light shone red through his eyelids, and he burrowed under the sheets to block it out.
“How are you feeling?” At least Thor had the presence of mind to keep his voice soft.
Loki sighed loud enough to convey his annoyance. “Like shit,” he said. See? Not everything he said was a lie.
That something in the back of his mind tugged at his awareness, like an itch between his shoulder-blades. There was something... he had been worried about something.
“Tony is awake,” Thor said, and that something, the question mark in the back of his head, turned into an exclamation point. Loki's eyes snapped open. “He is pale and a little shaken, but he will recover.”
Tony.
Loki squeezed his eyes shut and swallowed past the painful lump in his throat. Right. He had been a cat, hadn't he? But he wasn't now, which meant...
Which meant.
“I don't know why you think I care,” he grated out. “What is one mortal's life to me?”
He should have let Tony die. Now he was going to have to face being his enemy again, the object of his anger and disdain, and for some reason that... hurt.
Why did it hurt?
“You are usually a much better liar, brother.”
Loki would have hexed his brother for his impertinence had he the energy. As it was, he could do little more than glare at the wall directly in front of him.
Thor changed tactics.
“What happened, Loki?” he asked. “Tony does not remember anything, and we only found the aftermath. We know that his arc reactor shorted out, and Lady Pepper says that Tony would have been in no condition to replace the reactor on his own. After calming down, Steve agreed that it looked like you helped Tony, but why was it necessary?”
Loki's fingers ghosted over his throat. He remembered the squeeze of a hand around his windpipe and the unmitigated fury in the Captain's eyes.
“The Horseman,” Loki rasped before he could think better of it. “He was drawn to the arc reactor's energy.”
He was drawn to my magic first and then I led him to Tony. But he left that unsaid. Let Loki be the hero for once, even if the thought of it was strangely cloying.
“The Horseman?” Thor blurted, and Loki winced at the stab of sound. “But... I thought Hela said-? ”
“She is my daughter. She says many things that aren't true.”
The chair creaked at Loki's back, and he could all but see Thor fidgeting in discomfort.
“Did he sap you of your magic as well, brother? I know he has done so before.”
Loki shuddered at the memory but did not bother stating the obvious. He wished Thor would stop speaking of pointless things and mention Tony again. But at the same time, he never wanted to hear that name for the rest of his immortal life.
“You should speak with Tony,” Thor said. Loki got his wish and didn't at the same time. “He has been asking for you.”
Those words made his pulse jump until, “He's been asking for his cat you mean.” Idiot human.
“Aye,” Thor replied, his voice subdued, almost puzzled. “What is the difference, brother?”
Loki blew out a sigh, and the angle hid his eye-roll. “He doesn't know, Thor.”
A pause, followed by more creaking. “He doesn't know what, Loki?”
“He doesn't know that I've been masquerading as his cat.” The creaking stopped, and Loki could feel Thor's disbelieving stare centered on the back of his head. “Tell him the fur ball ran away or got run over or something.”
“That... would surely break his heart, brother.”
“'Tis better than the truth.”
Loki did not want to deal with this. He wanted to find a dark hole to crawl into and sulk for a few centuries until he felt better. Or at least until Tony Stark was dead and no longer an issue.
“No.” There was both a challenge and a finality in that one word. Loki rolled onto his back to give Thor an appraising look. His blue eyes were pure steel, and that one word echoed between Loki's ears.
No, Loki.
“You are not running from this.”
With his magic again depleted, Loki realized that he had no choice in the matter.
Tony was curled up on the couch, a blanket around his shoulders and the TV remote in hand. He had whined and wheedled until Pepper had - exasperatedly - agreed to make him soup, though he had a feeling that she might spit in it.
He was tired and hungry enough to eat it even if she did.
He hopped from channel to channel and came to the conclusion that the only shows on his 3000+ stations were the Teletubbies and Spanish soap operas. Why did life keep handing him these hard decisions?
The couch felt strangely empty without his Lo'kitty curled up at his feet, staring at the TV with an appraising eye. Tony had asked where his cat was, but his assistant had stuttered and mumbled something incoherent before going off to, well, make his soup. At least he had gotten food out of it.
He had finally decided on a telenovela where some handsome, swarthy man kept wailing, “Por qué, Maria?” when Loki sidled into the room and sat on the couch at his feet. And by Loki, he meant Loki, not his little fur-ball.
Except... wait.
“What exactly is going on in this... show?” Loki said the word as though what was in front of him hardly qualified.
Tony wanted to ask what was going on with him that the god was just sitting there on his couch like he owned it. He looked at Loki for a long moment, all lean lines, pale skin, and dark hair, his green eyes watching the TV with a calculating look as though he could disassemble the device just by staring at it. It was a look Tony had gotten used to from his cat.
His stomach dropped into his groin.
“Well,” Tony said as he turned back to the screen. “It looks like Carlos here has been messing around with Maria, who has in turn been messing around with Julio, who has a love-child with Juanita that was adopted by Maria's sister. Or something like that, anyway.”
Loki arched an eyebrow at the human. “You understand Spanish?” he asked.
“Do I need to?”
Loki and Tony watched the screen for a few minutes in silence. There was an awful lot of making out and passionate shouting and staring that turned into more making out. Loki sat back with an amused, though puzzled, air.
“You are right,” he said at length. “There are some things that transcend the language barrier.”
Tony smirked. There were so many things off about this situation, but stranger things have happened. To him, anyway. “Guess we've been doing diplomacy all wrong if sex is the international language,” he said because he can't turn off the snark switch in his brain.
“I do not think that is quite what they mean when they say 'public relations', Stark.”
Tony chortled and twisted so that he could face both Loki and the TV. “Well, you know,” he said, falling into his look-how-sexy-I-am voice automatically, “we really should work on public relations between Asgard and Midgard. You know, for the sake of justice.”
Loki did not look at Tony, but his lips twitched in a barely suppressed smirk. Hmm... usually Tony's pick-up lines were met with derision and some amount of pain when directed at the god. Tony filed away this bit of information in a section labeled Interesting Things to Poke At Later.
“Then perhaps you and Thor had better get on that,” Loki blithely rejoined. “Then again, you might curry more favor by taking matters directly to the king.”
Loki's eyes finally slid to Tony's, and they glinted with mirth. That look made Tony want to run and hide behind his suit. You know, just in case.
And then the words caught up to Tony, and he shuddered at the mental image. “Whoa, now,” he said. “If we're talking about leaders dealing with public relations, then it should be Fury getting his freak on with Odin.”
Okay, that mental image wasn't any better.
Loki agreed if his glazed look and full-body shudder were anything to go by. “Frightening thought,” Loki sighed. “Then again, together they make a full set of eyes. Perhaps it is meant to be.”
“Nothing can stop their love.”
“...oh dear Odin, now I've just envisioned them frolicking across the Bifrost. Have you invented Brain Bleach yet, Tony?”
“Patent pending,” Tony replied even as he wondered, When has Loki ever called me Tony? It was always “Stark”, “Mr. Stark”, “Idiot Mortal”, or some sort of expletive. “And is this Bifrost thingy really a rainbow bridge? Because that just sounds like something a My Little Pony would throw up.”
“A little... what?”
Tony offered his best imitation of Loki's “I'm-about-to-put-you-through-Hell” face and picked up the remote.
The clack of heels and the clink of dishes alerted Tony to Pepper's presence. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw tension wind itself around Loki again.
“Soup?” Tony chirped.
“Soup,” Pepper sighed as she rounded the couch and came into view. She handed him a bowl of steaming chicken noodle, a spoon, and a huge wad of napkins.
“Oh, Pepper,” he said, looking up at his unimpressed assistant with big eyes, “no one understands me like you do.”
She nodded and patted his arm consolingly. Tony cradled his bowl of soup and blew gently across its steaming surface. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Loki watching them, eyes sharp and body stiff as though tensing to run. Then he realized...
“You don't seem too surprised to see Loki, Pepper.”
Pepper and Loki exchanged measuring glares, and Tony pulled back as far as the couch allowed to escape the crossfire.
“No,” she said. “I was actually wondering when he would sit down since he's been standing in the doorway for the past half hour.”
Tony picked up his spoon, sipped at his soup, and felt the room drop at least ten degrees as Loki dialed up the glare.
“I believe the real question,” Pepper said, and Tony admired her complete nonchalance in the wake of that glare, “is why aren't you surprised?”
Tony found himself pinned by two intense looks from either side. He paused mid-sip and nearly burned his tongue. “What?” he sputtered. And then he thought about it. A god with a penchant for destruction sat down next to him and he didn't panic, didn't call for the other Avengers or run to grab his suit.
Before he could possibly think of an answer, Pepper smiled and slinked out of the room, looking altogether far too satisfied. Tony turned his questioning look at the only other person in the room. Loki was staring down at nothing, long fingers picking at the seams in Tony's leather couch.
“So...” Tony began, hoping to change the subject, because he thought he knew why it seemed like Loki belonged there, sitting by him on his couch.
“I'm your cat,” Loki said in a rush, lacking his usual Lokean eloquence. His body was one whole compact line of tension, ready to bolt like a startled deer despite the look of cold defiance in his eyes.
Tony surprised them both by saying, “I know.”
Loki blinked at him for a long moment, brow furrowed. After a few aborted attempts at speech he said, “You... what?”
“Well, I didn't know know, but I did know something. You know?”
“...no.” Loki was looking at him like he was an idiot now, and - really - he got that look often enough from Pepper as it was.
Tony smirked and went back to his soup. The TV broke through the silence.
“That's it?” Loki said warily. “I was expecting a more... explosive reaction. Something.” He gestured expansively.
Tony considered it a victory that he had managed to confuse the crap out of the God of Mischief. He doubted many could say the same. He took his time answering, savoring his soup and the anxious, doe-eyed look Loki was giving him.
“Well,” he said at length, settling against the back of the couch. “It is a little weird. I mean, you used to sit on my lap and purr.” Tony considered it an even greater victory when she saw splotches of red creep up the Trickster's cheeks. “But if ever I feel some great injustice was done, all I have to do is think about how Pepper and I were going to h-have you fixed.” Those last words barely surfaced through a hiss of laughter.
Loki folded his arms across his chest and scowled. “What?” he snapped. “I heard you and Pepper mention something about that, but what does it mean?”
“You don't...? Oh man!” By now Tony was curled up on his side and holding his stomach as wheezing gales of laughter escaped him. His bowl was on the floor where he was less likely to spill it. Loki arched an eyebrow, decidedly unimpressed, and Tony took a few deep breaths and forced himself to calm long enough to explain. “We were going to get you neutered. You know, snip?” Tony gestured with two fingers like a pair of scissors and bit his lips against a giggle.
Loki's eyes popped wide, and his hands immediately dropped to protectively cover his crotch. “Ahh!” he shrieked. “You, you - barbarians!”
Loki shrank back, and Tony fell over laughing again.
Also, writing this has really cheered me up after a... less than stellar weekend. At least Enemy Transmissions Comics is still considering me as a colorist, which is awesome.
Previous Next
The Morning After
Consciousness was a hand around his throat.
Steve Rogers' hand, to be exact.
Loki did not remember blacking out, but the world was hazy around the edges the way it was when he overtaxed himself. His vision had narrowed to a tunnel of clarity, currently focused on the snarling, half-masked visage of Captain America. Loki's eyelids drooped closed, and the hand on his throat shook him awake.
The wall was solid against the planes of his back. Sound barreled into him.
“ - did you do to him?” Steve was shouting, over and over judging by the hoarseness of his voice.
“Calm yourself, my friend.” Thor's voice - not the loudest, for once - weaved under, in, and through Steve's barrage. Thor's hands were on Steve's shoulders, gripping and tugging.
There was a third voice, higher, feminine, and quavering. Loki's eyes slid to the side, and his tunnel of vision centered on Pepper, who knelt on the ground with Tony's head on her knees. Her mascara was running, and she jabbered into a phone, her face and knuckles white. She was rattling off an address, asking for an ambulance.
Tony.
Loki noted the soft flutter of the human's eyelids and the steady, if shaky, rise and fall of his chest. Steve's hand was still around his throat, but Loki could hardly feel it. The haze crawled towards the center of his vision, and the sounds grew distant and unintelligible. The world tilted, and the hand on his throat fell away to a pair of arms around his chest.
Haze turned to black.
Next, Loki awakened to the sensation of movement, aware of being held, cradled like a child. His cheek was pressed against cool metal, and a voice like thunder rolled over him. He closed his eyes and fell back into nothingness.
He felt cold. Unbearably cold.
Loki could feel Thor's eyes on him before he was even fully awake. He rolled over so that those eyes bore into his back instead. He squinted, but the light bouncing off the white, white walls was a dagger in his skull.
“Brother.” Thor's voice was a soft rumble, like a lion's purr. “Are you awake?”
Loki huffed weakly and pressed his face into the pillow. “No,” he said and, half-floating as he was, he was not entirely sure that was a lie. Nothing ached, exactly, but he felt exhausted, as though it took all of his energy just to breathe. He wanted to drift off to sleep again, but something niggled in the back of his mind, telling him that he needed to know something first.
He was too tired to figure out what it was. The light shone red through his eyelids, and he burrowed under the sheets to block it out.
“How are you feeling?” At least Thor had the presence of mind to keep his voice soft.
Loki sighed loud enough to convey his annoyance. “Like shit,” he said. See? Not everything he said was a lie.
That something in the back of his mind tugged at his awareness, like an itch between his shoulder-blades. There was something... he had been worried about something.
“Tony is awake,” Thor said, and that something, the question mark in the back of his head, turned into an exclamation point. Loki's eyes snapped open. “He is pale and a little shaken, but he will recover.”
Tony.
Loki squeezed his eyes shut and swallowed past the painful lump in his throat. Right. He had been a cat, hadn't he? But he wasn't now, which meant...
Which meant.
“I don't know why you think I care,” he grated out. “What is one mortal's life to me?”
He should have let Tony die. Now he was going to have to face being his enemy again, the object of his anger and disdain, and for some reason that... hurt.
Why did it hurt?
“You are usually a much better liar, brother.”
Loki would have hexed his brother for his impertinence had he the energy. As it was, he could do little more than glare at the wall directly in front of him.
Thor changed tactics.
“What happened, Loki?” he asked. “Tony does not remember anything, and we only found the aftermath. We know that his arc reactor shorted out, and Lady Pepper says that Tony would have been in no condition to replace the reactor on his own. After calming down, Steve agreed that it looked like you helped Tony, but why was it necessary?”
Loki's fingers ghosted over his throat. He remembered the squeeze of a hand around his windpipe and the unmitigated fury in the Captain's eyes.
“The Horseman,” Loki rasped before he could think better of it. “He was drawn to the arc reactor's energy.”
He was drawn to my magic first and then I led him to Tony. But he left that unsaid. Let Loki be the hero for once, even if the thought of it was strangely cloying.
“The Horseman?” Thor blurted, and Loki winced at the stab of sound. “But... I thought Hela said-? ”
“She is my daughter. She says many things that aren't true.”
The chair creaked at Loki's back, and he could all but see Thor fidgeting in discomfort.
“Did he sap you of your magic as well, brother? I know he has done so before.”
Loki shuddered at the memory but did not bother stating the obvious. He wished Thor would stop speaking of pointless things and mention Tony again. But at the same time, he never wanted to hear that name for the rest of his immortal life.
“You should speak with Tony,” Thor said. Loki got his wish and didn't at the same time. “He has been asking for you.”
Those words made his pulse jump until, “He's been asking for his cat you mean.” Idiot human.
“Aye,” Thor replied, his voice subdued, almost puzzled. “What is the difference, brother?”
Loki blew out a sigh, and the angle hid his eye-roll. “He doesn't know, Thor.”
A pause, followed by more creaking. “He doesn't know what, Loki?”
“He doesn't know that I've been masquerading as his cat.” The creaking stopped, and Loki could feel Thor's disbelieving stare centered on the back of his head. “Tell him the fur ball ran away or got run over or something.”
“That... would surely break his heart, brother.”
“'Tis better than the truth.”
Loki did not want to deal with this. He wanted to find a dark hole to crawl into and sulk for a few centuries until he felt better. Or at least until Tony Stark was dead and no longer an issue.
“No.” There was both a challenge and a finality in that one word. Loki rolled onto his back to give Thor an appraising look. His blue eyes were pure steel, and that one word echoed between Loki's ears.
No, Loki.
“You are not running from this.”
With his magic again depleted, Loki realized that he had no choice in the matter.
Tony was curled up on the couch, a blanket around his shoulders and the TV remote in hand. He had whined and wheedled until Pepper had - exasperatedly - agreed to make him soup, though he had a feeling that she might spit in it.
He was tired and hungry enough to eat it even if she did.
He hopped from channel to channel and came to the conclusion that the only shows on his 3000+ stations were the Teletubbies and Spanish soap operas. Why did life keep handing him these hard decisions?
The couch felt strangely empty without his Lo'kitty curled up at his feet, staring at the TV with an appraising eye. Tony had asked where his cat was, but his assistant had stuttered and mumbled something incoherent before going off to, well, make his soup. At least he had gotten food out of it.
He had finally decided on a telenovela where some handsome, swarthy man kept wailing, “Por qué, Maria?” when Loki sidled into the room and sat on the couch at his feet. And by Loki, he meant Loki, not his little fur-ball.
Except... wait.
“What exactly is going on in this... show?” Loki said the word as though what was in front of him hardly qualified.
Tony wanted to ask what was going on with him that the god was just sitting there on his couch like he owned it. He looked at Loki for a long moment, all lean lines, pale skin, and dark hair, his green eyes watching the TV with a calculating look as though he could disassemble the device just by staring at it. It was a look Tony had gotten used to from his cat.
His stomach dropped into his groin.
“Well,” Tony said as he turned back to the screen. “It looks like Carlos here has been messing around with Maria, who has in turn been messing around with Julio, who has a love-child with Juanita that was adopted by Maria's sister. Or something like that, anyway.”
Loki arched an eyebrow at the human. “You understand Spanish?” he asked.
“Do I need to?”
Loki and Tony watched the screen for a few minutes in silence. There was an awful lot of making out and passionate shouting and staring that turned into more making out. Loki sat back with an amused, though puzzled, air.
“You are right,” he said at length. “There are some things that transcend the language barrier.”
Tony smirked. There were so many things off about this situation, but stranger things have happened. To him, anyway. “Guess we've been doing diplomacy all wrong if sex is the international language,” he said because he can't turn off the snark switch in his brain.
“I do not think that is quite what they mean when they say 'public relations', Stark.”
Tony chortled and twisted so that he could face both Loki and the TV. “Well, you know,” he said, falling into his look-how-sexy-I-am voice automatically, “we really should work on public relations between Asgard and Midgard. You know, for the sake of justice.”
Loki did not look at Tony, but his lips twitched in a barely suppressed smirk. Hmm... usually Tony's pick-up lines were met with derision and some amount of pain when directed at the god. Tony filed away this bit of information in a section labeled Interesting Things to Poke At Later.
“Then perhaps you and Thor had better get on that,” Loki blithely rejoined. “Then again, you might curry more favor by taking matters directly to the king.”
Loki's eyes finally slid to Tony's, and they glinted with mirth. That look made Tony want to run and hide behind his suit. You know, just in case.
And then the words caught up to Tony, and he shuddered at the mental image. “Whoa, now,” he said. “If we're talking about leaders dealing with public relations, then it should be Fury getting his freak on with Odin.”
Okay, that mental image wasn't any better.
Loki agreed if his glazed look and full-body shudder were anything to go by. “Frightening thought,” Loki sighed. “Then again, together they make a full set of eyes. Perhaps it is meant to be.”
“Nothing can stop their love.”
“...oh dear Odin, now I've just envisioned them frolicking across the Bifrost. Have you invented Brain Bleach yet, Tony?”
“Patent pending,” Tony replied even as he wondered, When has Loki ever called me Tony? It was always “Stark”, “Mr. Stark”, “Idiot Mortal”, or some sort of expletive. “And is this Bifrost thingy really a rainbow bridge? Because that just sounds like something a My Little Pony would throw up.”
“A little... what?”
Tony offered his best imitation of Loki's “I'm-about-to-put-you-through-Hell” face and picked up the remote.
The clack of heels and the clink of dishes alerted Tony to Pepper's presence. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw tension wind itself around Loki again.
“Soup?” Tony chirped.
“Soup,” Pepper sighed as she rounded the couch and came into view. She handed him a bowl of steaming chicken noodle, a spoon, and a huge wad of napkins.
“Oh, Pepper,” he said, looking up at his unimpressed assistant with big eyes, “no one understands me like you do.”
She nodded and patted his arm consolingly. Tony cradled his bowl of soup and blew gently across its steaming surface. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Loki watching them, eyes sharp and body stiff as though tensing to run. Then he realized...
“You don't seem too surprised to see Loki, Pepper.”
Pepper and Loki exchanged measuring glares, and Tony pulled back as far as the couch allowed to escape the crossfire.
“No,” she said. “I was actually wondering when he would sit down since he's been standing in the doorway for the past half hour.”
Tony picked up his spoon, sipped at his soup, and felt the room drop at least ten degrees as Loki dialed up the glare.
“I believe the real question,” Pepper said, and Tony admired her complete nonchalance in the wake of that glare, “is why aren't you surprised?”
Tony found himself pinned by two intense looks from either side. He paused mid-sip and nearly burned his tongue. “What?” he sputtered. And then he thought about it. A god with a penchant for destruction sat down next to him and he didn't panic, didn't call for the other Avengers or run to grab his suit.
Before he could possibly think of an answer, Pepper smiled and slinked out of the room, looking altogether far too satisfied. Tony turned his questioning look at the only other person in the room. Loki was staring down at nothing, long fingers picking at the seams in Tony's leather couch.
“So...” Tony began, hoping to change the subject, because he thought he knew why it seemed like Loki belonged there, sitting by him on his couch.
“I'm your cat,” Loki said in a rush, lacking his usual Lokean eloquence. His body was one whole compact line of tension, ready to bolt like a startled deer despite the look of cold defiance in his eyes.
Tony surprised them both by saying, “I know.”
Loki blinked at him for a long moment, brow furrowed. After a few aborted attempts at speech he said, “You... what?”
“Well, I didn't know know, but I did know something. You know?”
“...no.” Loki was looking at him like he was an idiot now, and - really - he got that look often enough from Pepper as it was.
Tony smirked and went back to his soup. The TV broke through the silence.
“That's it?” Loki said warily. “I was expecting a more... explosive reaction. Something.” He gestured expansively.
Tony considered it a victory that he had managed to confuse the crap out of the God of Mischief. He doubted many could say the same. He took his time answering, savoring his soup and the anxious, doe-eyed look Loki was giving him.
“Well,” he said at length, settling against the back of the couch. “It is a little weird. I mean, you used to sit on my lap and purr.” Tony considered it an even greater victory when she saw splotches of red creep up the Trickster's cheeks. “But if ever I feel some great injustice was done, all I have to do is think about how Pepper and I were going to h-have you fixed.” Those last words barely surfaced through a hiss of laughter.
Loki folded his arms across his chest and scowled. “What?” he snapped. “I heard you and Pepper mention something about that, but what does it mean?”
“You don't...? Oh man!” By now Tony was curled up on his side and holding his stomach as wheezing gales of laughter escaped him. His bowl was on the floor where he was less likely to spill it. Loki arched an eyebrow, decidedly unimpressed, and Tony took a few deep breaths and forced himself to calm long enough to explain. “We were going to get you neutered. You know, snip?” Tony gestured with two fingers like a pair of scissors and bit his lips against a giggle.
Loki's eyes popped wide, and his hands immediately dropped to protectively cover his crotch. “Ahh!” he shrieked. “You, you - barbarians!”
Loki shrank back, and Tony fell over laughing again.