Prompt Post No. 2
Announcement: Norsekink Round 2 is closed to new prompts!
Attention: All new and continuing fills to this round should be posted in the Overflow Post.
( Rules )
Attention: All new and continuing fills to this round should be posted in the Overflow Post.
( Rules )
Oh, Helheim. How degrading.
Pepper had oh so helpfully brought a disposable litter box, which she had then set up and placed in a corner of Tony's workshop, much to her boss's chagrin. Tony was treating it like a piece of alien technology, poking at its sides with his feet, and Loki was reacting much the same, sniffing at the box distrustfully and whacking at it with one paw.
Loki glared up at his “keepers” as the humans stood over him, waiting, expectant.
If you expect me to publicly defecate into a box, you are sorely mistaken.
“C'mon, go ahead, kitty.” Annoyingly enough, Tony was starting to adopt some of Pepper's high-pitched, babyish tones when he spoke to Loki.
Loki glared at the man, ears flat against his scalp, before lifting his head and marching off. Even in his normal form, Loki would not have dignified that comment with a response.
Tony and Pepper exchanged uncomfortable glances. “I guess he doesn't have to go,” Pepper offered with a shrug.
It took Tony hours to find Loki - the cat, and boy did that amuse him more than it should - after introducing him to his new litter box and cat food, hours that could have been better spent in his workshop or cozying up to some long-legged goddess. If he didn't know any better, Tony would say that the cat had been insulted by the litter box, and he did not want that cat to start peeing in his shoes out of spite or something. Pepper assured him that cats could be picky and moody at times but that Loki would get over it. Tony was beginning to think that he would much rather be a dog person.
When he did find Loki, the cat was under his bed, all glaring green eyes and teeth as he hissed at Tony. The rest of his body blended in with the darkness.
“Oh, don't give me that,” Tony snapped, at the end of his patience. “Do you want Pepper to throw you back out on the street?”
The cat stopped hissing then. Tony reflected that it probably didn't speak well of his sanity that he was trying to reason with a cat. The look Loki gave him then was really just pathetic.
Tony's shoulders slumped, and much of his anger evaporated at the guilty look in those green eyes.
“Okay, okay, so I wouldn't actually throw you out.”
Loki mewed softly in response.
“But this would be a hell of a lot easier if you stopped being a pain in the ass.”
This time Loki's meow bordered on a growl, like a cat equivalent to a warning, Hey.
Okay, seriously. It was like the cat actually understood what he was saying. Tony shook his head and reached out slowly, cautiously, to pat Loki on the head. The cat stiffly allowed the contact for a moment, though he looked decidedly unimpressed, before sniffing and turning around.
“What are you doing?”
Tony crawled out from under the bed to look at Pepper in the doorway. He let out a long-suffering sigh.
“I think I just got the cold shoulder from a cat.”
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By the fourth day, Loki grudgingly realized that his magic would be slow to return and that he had better get used to living as a cat.
After three days of sulking in the dark corners of the Stark Mansion, Loki decided to occupy himself by exploring the rest of the layout. None of the other Avengers were at the mansion that day, thankfully, so Loki was able to take his time. The place was tastefully decorated in the modern minimalist style, and Loki peered curiously at the high-end, expensive-looking gadgets and appliances. He could not resist poking a few of the shinier buttons and ended up turning on a stereo and making toast without even knowing how.
A startled and wild-eyed Pepper turned off the stereo and shooed Loki into the basement. Loki suspected she was going to eat his toast.
Loki skittered down the stairs on silent feet, slowing to look around him when he reached the bottom. Last time he came down here, he was too offended by the litter box to take in any details, and now he made up for lost time. Spare parts and half-assembled machinery littered every flat surface, except for a cleared path barely a foot wide that connected each section of the workshop. Compared to the almost sterile spotlessness of the rest of the house, this room was the only one that looked lived-in.
Loki's ears perked at the sound of muttering nearby.
“Hold still, hold still, hold still!”
Crash!
“Dammit.”
Picking his way across the floor, Loki padded towards the voice - Tony's voice - and found the human bent over a desk, fiddling with something small that let off a soft blue light. Loki flinched as the human cursed and threw something behind him. The discarded object landed with a hollow clang.
Loki crept around the desk until he was next to Tony's foot. He craned his neck to look up at the human and saw his face awash in blue light, his mouth set in a grim line, but could not see what the human was working on.
Loki watched him for a long moment, cloaked in shadow, and marveled at the intense concentration that deepened the lines along the human's brow. Loki wondered if he wore that same expression when he pored over his spell-books.
He bristled at the comparison, decided he was bored, and swatted at the human's leg to get his attention. Tony twitched and yelped in surprise, turning wide eyes down at the green-eyed menace watching him expectantly. He chuckled softly and put down whatever he was holding.
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Loki mewed in greeting, earning him a smile from the human.
“C'mere, you.”
Tony scooped up Loki and placed him in his lap, one hand holding the cat in place and the other stroking gently down his spine. Loki tensed and growled at the manhandling, but Tony whacked him lightly on the nose.
“None of that now,” Tony admonished gently. Loki stopped growling but still held himself stiffly. Sitting in Pepper's lap had been one thing, but Tony was a man and this was all very untoward and - !
Oh.
Well then.
Tony's fingers, surprisingly agile, scratched behind Loki's ear just so, and the Trickster shivered, slowly relaxing into the touch. Those fingers moved again, now massaging Loki's scalp with just the right amount of pressure. Loki closed his eyes contentedly and hummed under his breath. The sound translated into a purr, but Loki decided he would be mortified later.
The hand braced against Loki's chest loosened its grip and then fell away to go back to fiddling with the glowing gadget. When the other hand fell away to join the first, Loki opened his eyes and the purr ebbed into silence. In Tony's hands was a round object nearly identical to the one that glowed in the middle of his chest. An “arc reactor”, his brain supplied.
Was Tony planning on replacing the one in his chest with an upgrade or was he making a spare? Either way, Loki filed this information away for later. He knew this arc reactor was a source of great power, and already the gears in his mind were churning over what he could do with one of his own.
Loki watched the human work for a while, fascinated despite himself, and marveled at the delicate work those hands were capable of. He was used to warriors being large and ham-fisted like his brother, and this more cerebral side of Tony Stark intrigued him for reasons he could not pinpoint.
Loki was Loki, however, and he eventually grew bored. He whacked at Tony's hand to let him know that he did not like being ignored. Tony paused and looked down at the cat in his lap, arching one eyebrow wryly.
“Pushy, are we?”
Loki innocently returned the stare. Tony sighed heavily, put down the arc reactor, and leaned back in his chair. Those marvelous, clever fingers returned to Loki's scalp, and the Trickster sighed happily and let his eyes slide shut again.
Somewhere, in the decidedly Not-Cat part of Loki's brain, the god wondered lewdly what else this human could do with those hands.
Loki opened his eyes and studied Tony's face, which was attractive in its own way if he thought about it, with dark eyes and fine bone structure. In another life, perhaps.
Loki closed his eyes and enjoyed the massage.
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Loki should just use the toilet :-D (I've never seen one do this IRL though ;_; )
...I had a friend once who liked to nom (dry) catfood and claimed it was tasty.
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Well.
That was so funny and soooo cute i think I died for a short time with overload can't wait till the next part XD
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Adjusting
It was difficult to rifle through classified documents without opposable thumbs, but Loki managed.
He had been stalking the hallway for this one purpose, waiting for someone to open the office doorway just enough for him to slip inside, unnoticed and unattended. It had been laughably easy, since no one expected a cat to give away their secrets.
For his part, Loki focused on the files dealing with the Avengers, pulling open drawers and batting and tugging aside paper with his paws and teeth. His magic reserve was still too low and too precious to waste on something like this, even if the difficulty of maneuvering in this form was grating on Loki's nerves. The Trickster had never been known for his patience.
Still, he was rewarded for his efforts, even when most of the documents turned out to be encrypted. Loki merely viewed this as a pleasantly stimulating mental puzzle and sat, half on half off the paper, reading and translating for the better part of an hour. The Avengers, it seemed, were currently looking to recruit more members, most prominently a young man named Peter Parker and few of Xavier's former students. Loki read the files on these would-be heroes and filed the information away in the back of his mind.
Then Loki saw a file on himself sticking out of the filing cabinet and crept back towards it, wondering wryly how much or how little these humans really knew about him. His smugness subsided when he remembered that they had Thor as a source.
“Hey! Bad cat!”
The shout and the sharp sound of two hands clapping together startled Loki, and he jumped, tensing to run. When he turned to see Tony stalking towards him from the open doorway, Loki half-feared for a moment that he had been recognized and immediately reached for magic that was not there. Instead the human shot him a half-hearted glare and knelt beside him, sighing as he gathered the papers into their respective folders.
After clearing much of the mess, Tony paused for a long moment to regard Loki. Loki stared back and mewed softly, and Tony's glare softened into that look of grudging affection again. The human sighed and reached out; Loki flinched back, but Tony's hand only lightly stroked down his back and paused to scratch behind his ears.
“How did you even open that drawer, anyway?”
Loki chuckled wickedly but the sound came out as a purr. Tony's smile curled higher at one end.
“You are a strange cat,” he said. Then he shooed Loki out of the room and locked the door.
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Curled up on the couch, Loki allowed himself to sleep but sleep did not allow him to rest. He dreamed of needles and blood, of a raw, deep-seated humiliation that should have scarred over and stayed in the past. Thor held the needle and stabbed and pulled, but he would not look Loki in the eye. The Thunderer frowned, intent on his task, and the skin around his eyes and between his brows was pinched with something between concern and grief.
Brother, Loki tried to plead, but the strip of leather pulled painfully at his swollen, bleeding lips. Please.
The words were mangled by his mangled lips.
His vision blurred with tears until Thor and the rest of the court were merely blurs of color. He could hear the peals of laughter over the throb of his racing heart.
Stab and pull. He tried to scream, but his lips were bound shut.
Loki startled awake, but his scream came out as a cat's howl. He tried to speak, to curse, to say anything, but all that came out were broken mewls.
What would happen if his magic never returned? Would he be stuck in this body, small and weak and unable to speak? For how long?
Loki wanted to cry and rage, but he was trapped.
He knew he would be unable to sleep for the rest of the night, so Loki jumped down from the couch and padded through the dark, silent halls. If he was miserable, he would damn well make sure that his human “keeper” was miserable too.
Loki pushed his way into Tony's room. Perhaps he could wake the human by digging his claws into his feet. Yes, that would make him feel better.
But Tony Stark foiled his dastardly plans by already being awake. He was sitting at the edge of the bed, the pale glow of the arc reactor making his face look sickly pale. His gaze was unblinking but unfocused, and Loki glanced over his shoulder to see what he was looking at. On the opposite wall hung a mirror, and Tony stared back at it, his dark eyes glazed and haunted. He fingered the arc reactor glowing in the middle of his chest, and there was something painfully lost in his expression.
Loki knew because he had seen that same expression in the mirror many times before.
I do not understand you, human, Loki told himself. Except the real problem was that maybe he did.
It seemed that Tony Stark was already miserable.
Loki jumped onto the bed and sat beside the human, turning to watch him expectantly. Tony blinked and looked down at the cat next to him, the spell broken and his eyes clear and focused again.
“Hey, little guy,” he murmured. His smile did not reach his eyes.
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“It's all right,” Tony murmured, and Loki realized that he was as tense as a bowstring. He forced himself to relax as much as he could. Tony was staring at him then with an intensity that made Loki fidget. “You always flinch when I pet you. Someone hurt you bad, huh, little guy?”
Loki looked up at Tony, who seemed to look right through him in that moment. For once, he was grateful he was in cat form since he did not know what to say to that.
“No one's gonna hurt you again, I promise.”
Loki told himself that the human was a fool for making assumptions and talking to a cat. He pointedly ignored the lump lodged in his throat.
Would you be so kind to me if you knew who I was, Tony Stark?
Tony curled up on the edge of his bed and pulled Loki with him, holding him just shy of too tightly with one hand and petting him with the other. Loki tried to wriggle free for a moment, panicking at the closeness, but Tony held him in place. Slowly, Loki forced himself to relax. After so long of viewing this particular human as an enemy, it was difficult, but the hand soothing down his spine helped. Loki could feel the pulse of the arc reactor against his flank, could smell the mix of sweat and engine oil that clung to Tony's skin.
Tony drifted off to sleep with one hand buried in Loki's fur. The lines of his face smoothed over, and he looked peaceful, almost innocent, as he slumbered. Loki studied him as he slept.
It reminded him of when he was child, when he and Thor would sometimes sneak into each other's room in the middle of the night. Thor was always restless, and Loki would tell him stories to pass the time, watching as his brother's eyelids grew heavier and heavier. Loki would lie next to him and watch over him until sleep claimed him too.
Loki tried to remember when he had last been this physically close to another being - without trying to kill them, anyway - and drew a blank. Something ached in his chest, and Loki forced these thoughts into the back of his mind, where they could not hurt him as easily.
Trapped beneath Tony's arm, Loki rested his chin on his paws and closed his eyes. The human's surrounding weight and warmth was solid and comforting, and when Loki drifted back to sleep, he had no more nightmares.
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My wireless keeps dropping so Imma post this while I can real quick!
Allegiances
The next morning, Loki awakened to the softness of a cushion beneath him and a warm body against his back. A disembodied voice with a British accent was talking about the weather - something about unexpected thunderstorms in the New York area - and Loki tried to blink the sleep from his eyes.
Trying muzzily to remember how he had ended up in someone else's bed, he yawned and stretched, closing his eyes and arching back into the body behind him. Male, if he went by the flat planes of his chest and the low rumble of his snores.
Hmm. When was the last time he had taken a male to bed? He didn't feel particularly hung-over...
It was only when he tried to sit up that he remembered.
Ah, right, he thought wryly. I'm a cat. Lovely.
Which meant that the snoring, drooling sack of flesh behind him was Tony Stark. Loki jumped up and away, disgusted with himself for spending the night spooning with Iron Man, quadruped or no.
Tony's snores ended in a grunt, and then his eyes opened to tiny slits. He mumbled something under his breath and then pushed himself into a sit, wiping crusted over bits of drool from his chin. His hair stuck up like a cockatoo, and there were creases in his cheek from where it had pressed against the mattress. Inwardly, Loki smirked.
Tired, puffy eyes landed on Loki, and Tony smiled, reaching out to tousle the fur on his head. Loki ducked away from the hand and glared, rearranging himself until he was sitting in a more dignified position. Tony chuckled.
“Morning, Loki.”
You snore.
The disembodied voice - Jarvis, right - continued in the background, informing them pleasantly of the football scores from the previous night and of a battle raging in the middle of Central Park. Apparently the Hulk was throwing another tantrum. A normal enough day.
“Shit.”
That was Loki's only warning before his human jumped to his feet and sped out of the room, jostling the bed and almost upending Loki in the process. He hissed after Tony's retreating footsteps.
“...Captain America and Thor are requesting that you join them, if you are not otherwise occupied...”
Loki turned towards the voice almost fast enough to give him whiplash, ears perked as high as they would go. Thor was back in Midgard?
Damn, damn, damn...!
If Tony went to Thor's aid, there was a better chance that the God of Thunder would come back to the mansion. Of course, chances are he would do so anyway if he was back in Midgard, but Loki was in too much of a panic to really care about that bit of logic. If Thor saw him, the ruse was over.
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Stop, you idiot human! The shout came out as a long, whiny meow.
Tony spared him a distracted glance. “Pepper will feed you, kitty.”
Loki growled. Does it look like I'm interested in food right now?
But Tony's full attention was on his suit. This would be so much easier in Ancient Egypt. They revered cats, like sensible humans. Now that he thought of it, he wondered how Seth was doing. He'd heard all sorts of gossip about those squabbles with his nephew...
Focus, Loki.
Damn it, mortal! I am a god, and you will pay attention to me!
Loki pushed off of his hind legs and launched his tiny body at one of the robots attaching the plates of armor to Tony's arms and hands. He hissed and clawed on some circuitry that looked like it might be important.
“H-Hey!”
Tony turned wide eyes on Loki but dared not move as another robot arm locked his helmet into place.
“Bad kitty!” a second voice - Pepper - gasped behind him, and Loki knew that he was defeated. A pair of hands grabbed him about the middle and pulled him away. Loki scrabbled for purchase on the robot, but his claws only grazed metal before he was swinging at air. He hissed and struggled, wriggling out of Pepper's grip and onto the floor. By the time he landed, Tony had already taken off. The roar of his rockets was like a rumble of thunder in the distance.
Loki curled his lip and hissed at Pepper one more time before stalking up the stairs, his tail bushy and twitching angrily.
Loki was definitely living up to his name, Pepper decided. She sat on Tony's couch, legs curled under her and her fingers dancing over her laptop's keyboard. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched Loki, who was perched on the ottoman in front of her, eyes glued to the TV screen. On the television flashed the local news with live coverage of the three Avengers - Thor, Cap, and Tony - trying to subdue the Hulk, and Pepper thought she was going crazy because she could swear that the cat understood everything that was going in.
Ten minutes ago she had tried to change the channel -Tony had taken a rather vicious punch to the face, helmet, whatever, and she had cringed and needed a distraction - but the cat had glared and bared his teeth. She had pulled back and scooted to the other end of the couch while Loki had wrapped one paw protectively around the remote.
A little over a week, and the cat was already running the house. What a devious, nasty little thing he had turned out to be.
Still... sometimes, when she scratched behind his ear just right, he would close his eyes and purr as though her hands were the most delightful things in the world. And she had spotted him in the workshop the other day, curled up on Tony's lap. The goofy little smile Tony had worn as he talked to and petted the cat was alone worth the headache.
Now that she thought of it, the fact that he was a little devil made him a perfect match for Tony temperament-wise. She smiled and gave Loki an affectionate, though cautious, pat on the head. The cat did not react but continued to stare at the screen as though his life depended on it.
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Something about that gave Pepper pause. She watched Loki out of the corner of her eye and wondered if - ?
No. That was crazy.
Right?
She could hear Steve trying to say something, probably trying to talk down their friend and former fellow Avenger, and she watched as the Hulk uprooted a tree and used it as a bat. Steve deflected it with his shield but was sent skidding backwards, his feet leaving long twin furrows in the ground. The Hulk swung back around impossibly fast, catching Tony before he could dodge, twisting his neck at an angle that made Pepper gasp, and sending him through a line of trees.
Loki stopped purring.
Pepper leaned forward, one hand over her mouth as she stared at the screen. Tony lay in a heap on the ground, but the camera panned away before she could tell if he was okay. She cursed loudly, and Loki jumped, turning to stare at her as though only just realizing she was there.
On screen, the Hulk had calmed down. He dropped the tree - the reporter was narrating, annoyingly describing what Pepper could already see - and was saying something likely self-pitying. When he bounded away, the Avengers did not follow him.
The camera panned first to Thor, who watched grimly after the Hulk, and then to Steve, who was helping Tony sit up. Pepper sighed in relief that the idiot was alive, at least, but if she continued working for that man, she would be completely gray in a few years. The camera panned back to the reporter, who segued into another story.
Loki was staring at the floor now, looking bemused - Pepper had not known that a cat could look bemused - and finally unwrapped his paw from around the remote. She watched him for a long moment, and he turned to look at her as though to say, What, human?
“He'll be okay,” she said. It was crazy, she knew, but she suspected that, on some level, the cat understood that Tony had been hurt. Or maybe she was just saying that to reassure herself.
Loki stared at her for a long moment, his gaze intense but unreadable. She had never felt a cat see through her before. She wondered with a shiver if, maybe, there was something about Loki - the real Loki - that she should know or needed to remember.
Loki jumped down from the ottoman and slinked into the basement. When she peeked into the workshop a few minutes later, Loki was sitting at Tony's desk, waiting.
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