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 )
“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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you know I always wonder why they try to FIGHT the Hulk and not do stuff like..flatter him and be nice to him or sth
ANGER ONLY MAKES HIM STRONGER
but then again I don't know too much about the Hulk :>
Silent protagonists are the best <3
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Reacquainted
Loki heard the Avengers return long before he caught sight of them. He had dozed without meaning to, and a quick glance at the nearest clock told him that three hours had passed. He would have frowned if he could; where had they been in all that time? Again, Loki cursed his magic's slow return.
Loki's first impulse was to run to the door and see whether or not Tony was in one piece, but he recognized his brother's heavy tread and the muffled boom of his voice and found himself frozen in place. He wondered then why he had had that impulse to begin with. He had given Iron Man some of his more vicious battle scars and hadn't thought twice about them, but he supposed that his priorities had changed now that he was relying on - well, mooching off of - one of his enemies. It wouldn't do for Tony Stark to die while Loki needed him as a meat shield.
Loki supposed that he should hide away in some dark nook while Thor was here, but he could not fight off that gnawing desire to know. He crept up the stairs on silent feet and glided down the halls from shadow to shadow, following his brother's unnecessarily loud voice and the more subdued voices of a few other people, footsteps and what sounded like creaking wheels.
Loki peered around the corner to see Captain America, sans mask, steering a wheelchair containing a rather battered but sprightly Tony Stark. Behind them trailed Thor and a resigned-looking Agent Coulson.
"Mr. Stark," said Coulson, quite marvelously dwarfed by Thor's bulk, "for the last time, if you're not going to stay in the hospital, then at least let me assign someone to look after you while you - !"
Tony flicked his wrist and mimicked the sound of a whip's crack, craning to look at Steve as best he could with a neck brace limiting his movement. "Hyahh!" he shouted. "C'mon, Steve, let's see how fast this thing can go!"
"This isn't a toy, Tony," Steve said wearily. A smirk twitched at his lips regardless.
"Aw, you're no fun."
"Mr. Stark," Coulson pressed.
The parade wheeled past Loki's shadowed corner, and Loki's eyes followed them.
Tony rolled his eyes and waved away Coulson's concern. "Don't worry about me," he said. "Pepper will take care of me. She's good at that sort of thing."
Loki suspected that Pepper would give him an earful once those words got back to her. That would be fun to watch.
"Pain-killers are awesome." Tony's words sounded a bit slurred. Suddenly, it was a whole lot clearer why Tony Stark was in such a good mood.
Inwardly, Loki chuckled, only to wince when the sound came out as a loud purr. At the sound, Thor's eyes met his, and the Thunderer stopped, blue eyes flashing like lightning.
"You."
Shit, shit, shit.
Loki fled back the way he had come with Thor's heavy footsteps in pursuit.
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Arranged stiffly on his bed, Tony shifted his body to look. "Well, Loki was bound to come out of the closet sooner or later," he said, his words still slurred. This close, Loki could see the mottled bruises that covered the left half of the human's face. Tony fought back a grin for a few moments before a series of giggles bubbled up from his chest. Loki glared at the human, but Tony did not seem to notice.
Twice, Thor sucked in a breath as though to say something only to let the silence lengthen. He looked helplessly at Steve, who shrugged in response.
"You said Loki," Thor finally said, speaking insultingly slow.
"Yes," Tony replied, waving aside the comment. "That is his name, you know." His eyes glittered wickedly.
Loki stared at Tony Stark and held perfectly still. Did the human suspect - unlikely with painkillers clogging his brain - or were he and Thor holding two completely different conversations?
"I thought..." Thor's mouth worked uselessly again. "How long has he been here?"
"Pepper found him outside about a week ago. He's a bit of a brat but not too much of a hassle. S'been helping me work on a new arc reactor." The words were spoken with a hint of affection, which seemed to reduce Thor to silence once more.
In his normal form, Loki would be laughing until tears streaked his cheeks. Fate had a bizarre sense of humor.
Tony patted the bed next to his hip. "Put him here," he said.
Thor looked at Steve for confirmation, and Cap offered him another shrug. "Are you sure?" Thor asked Tony, eyes narrowed suspiciously.
"Yeah, yeah," Tony groused, waving Thor over impatiently.
Hesitantly, as though afraid that Loki would sprout a scorpion tail at any moment - Loki considered doing just that for old time's sake - Thor placed the cat on the very edge of Tony's bed. Loki glanced over his shoulder and growled at Thor one more time for good measure before sashaying towards the head of the bed and curling up by Tony's hip. The human's hand scratched behind his ear, and Loki purred, staring at Thor the whole while and rubbing salt in the wound.
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Steve Rogers had made the mistake of trying to pet him, and now the back of his hand was lined with livid claw marks. He had made a face like a kicked puppy that had immediately put Loki in mind of Thor. It had made the exchange twice as enjoyable.
Thor himself came to sit by Tony soon after - Steve had left, mumbling something about cats being the spawn of the Devil - and wore a grim face that indicated he was in lecture mode. The chair creaked under Thor's weight, and Loki blinked complacently up at his brother. Next to him, Tony's snores went up a decibel.
"I do not know what you are planning, brother," Thor pitched his voice low in deference to the sleeping human, "but if you hurt him in any way..." Thor trailed off but pointed an accusatory finger at Loki, a warning clear in his expression.
Loki sighed and rolled his eyes as best he could in cat form. A long, low meow was the closest he could come to saying, Oh, please.
Thor sat back - his chair groaned in protest - and stared at Loki with what he probably thought was a shrewd expression. Loki rather thought he looked like he was in pain. He folded his paws under him and returned his brother's stare.
After a while, Thor shook his head and chuckled, reaching out to pat Loki on the head. Loki hissed indignantly, irritated at this sudden, universal fascination with touching him; he did not like people invading his personal space as it was. Unlike Steve, Thor did not pull back when Loki swiped at him but merely chuckled again and scratched harder. Loki glared even long after Thor had taken his hand away.
"You are surprisingly patient with the mortal," Thor noted, tilting his head to the side. "If I didn't know better, I'd say you were fond of him."
Loki bristled at the accusation, and his ears flattened back against his skull. With a regal sniff, Loki rose to his feet and walked to the end of the bed, this time curling up so that his back was to his brother.
Thor rolled his eyes but smiled.
In the doorway, Pepper exchanged glances with Steve. "He does realize he's talking to a cat, right?" she whispered.
Steve shook his head. "I've stopped asking questions."
Pepper nodded at the wisdom in that. "I really need a vacation," she sighed. Steve smiled sympathetically.
"Don't we all."
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Hmm. Getting awfully cramped over here, aren't we? What do you guys think: should I continue this on my livejournal instead? This puppy's turning out to be waaaay longer than I thought it would, so. Yeah.
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If you do take the story over to your LJ, make sure you post a link over here so that I can follow it.
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I second asking for a link if you do continue this on you lj. I'd hate to lose track of this story, it's just precious. ^__^
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Ch. 7 is up as of this posting! :D
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