Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

They don't know how he has done it, but lately Tony often finds himself with a lap full of Asgardian god of Chaos, Lies and Mischief. For a while now, the evil god has taken to appear during the quiet periods to drape himself over Tony in the resemblance of a lazy cat. It just started one day, without explanation, not that either Loki or Tony are in the habit of explaining themselves on the best of days.

There is something soothing about the way Loki seeks contact with the engineer, be it when snuggling up under a blanket, lying onto his lap or leaning into his side. During visits, the crazy god acts much like a cat that has decided it wants cuddle time and when he’s had enough he simply leaves. The Loki-is-like-a-cat metaphor has become more fitting with the discovery of the billionaire freely petting the god of Chaos and that said god leans into the touch with clear pleasure and a purr.

Tony never reacts much to the sudden presence of the very tall, dark and heavy trickster draping his full body over the inventor. As he is wont to do, Tony doesn’t let it interrupt his activities, be it designing new things on one of his ever-present devices, tinkering with his toys, rambling about one thing or another or energetically gesturing with his hands to burn his manic energy, though he does look Loki over for injuries with a careful eye whenever the green-eyed liar appears more lethargic than usual.

The first time the other inhabitants and regular visitors of Stark Tower did come across the scene of Tony sharing personal space with Loki the reactions were—unsurprisingly—volatile and panicky. Predictably, Clint in particular didn’t react well to the discovery of their most quirky teammate cuddling with one of their archenemies. This became even worse when it was established that it was far from the first time and that there was no sex involved—which meant that ‘lust has temporarily addled Stark’s brain’ could not explain it away.

People repeatedly walking in on them snuggled up together somewhere in the Tower did wear off the novelty in mere weeks, which then led to Loki giving up all pretenses of infiltrating the Tower—now he just teleports straight in without a sound, walks up to his human pillow and drapes himself over Tony in whatever fashion the estranged asgardian prince feels like.

As was mentioned earlier, Tony isn’t at all fazed by the irregular addition of an extra person in his space, and he is usually sitting anyway. However, when Tony is not in any position to remain stationary for the time being—or simply does not want to do so—a visit from Loki can lead to unintentional hilarity. On days that Tony has too much energy to stay still he will drag the taller frost giant along like one would an oversized child too clingy to leave alone, all the while pulling and whining until the heavy oft-half-asleep sorcerer lets himself be manhandled into moving along.

Curiously, Loki—for all that he still regularly pops up outside the Tower with plans of destruction—doesn't seem to be out for blood whenever they find him settled in Tony’s lap or draped over the mortal’s shoulders. He seems mostly relaxed, or tired a few times, and appears to be nearly incapable of having his hackles raised once he’s settled himself in his comfy spot.

The god of Lies is a good conversationalist, and being sprawled out over the billionaire does not detract of that in the slightest, which sometimes leads to curious conversations in the middle of the night when certain team members wander about not anywhere close to their beds and Tony is still on one of his bouts of days-long inventing or cannot even hope to sleep with the unfathomably high levels of caffeine still in his blood.

SHIELD tries just once to take advantage of the strange arrangement, but finds out the hard way that Loki can leave whenever he wants and that Tony won’t try to stop the sorcerer when he does. The unspoken temporarily ceasefire that is in effect when Loki visits for a nap with Tony lasts only as long as their physical contact—any time before or after is fair game.

For all that Tony and Loki are often found being quite cozy together, their precise relationship is hard to define. They cuddle, they hug, Loki sleeps on Tony or gets manhandled into what could literally be called sleepwalking and the playboy indulges some of the leather-clad mage’s odd urges without protest—and yet the word ‘friend’ does not ring true.

But then again, Tony simply doesn't do normal relationships anyway. In comparison to the rest of his connections to other people, the one Tony has with Loki was possibly the most peaceful in nature, odd as it would sound to most.

"Perhaps," Thor murmurs one time to the view of Tony and Loki peacefully sleeping on the couch in front of the TV, limbs tangled together in a way that could lead to serious misunderstandings if they didn't already know about the non-sexual nature of their interactions. "The Man of Iron and my brother have found a sense of kinship since their minds often travel along the same pathways."

They think alike Natasha translated, and then thought yes they do.

Tony Stark is the wildcard of the Avengers, the equivalent of the trickster role Loki had played in Thor’s group on Asgard. He stirs the pot whenever things get dull, provides alternatives to any plan Steve cooks up and is definitely not afraid to go against the established order.

Loki was like that too, before his untimely fall into the Void Between Worlds from which he has never quite recovered. He was the Prankster, made of mischief and magic, but he lost the mischief somewhere in favor of destruction, has gradually traded his pranks in for plots of domination, changing him drastically until the brother Thor remembers is no longer recognizable. Was Loki once a relatively docile cat hanging around Thor’s group of friends, now the younger brother is a hissing, angry menace of a feline intent on clawing at anyone coming near.

Even beyond the resemblances of the past Tony shares a lot of personalities aspects with the god of Chaos, to the point where Thor gets along most easily with the futurist despite their enormous cultural differences—the man reminds him so painfully much of Loki in better times that the thunder god gravitates to this specific comrade. Tony and Loki mirror each other, show an image of what would have been under different circumstances.

Tony could have been a psychopathic pathological liar hell-bent on getting his revenge.

Loki could have been playing a hero with a penchant for trouble and insubordination.

Both men know things they shouldn’t and somehow find a way to deduce what they don’t. Both make excellent mass murderers. Both are geniuses in their own right and renowned masters of their chosen crafts. They are free spirits that cannot be controlled but sometimes do allow to be redirected if they like or respect the person enough. They keep to themselves and wander sometimes to where others cannot follow. Both are traumatized, twisted, sarcastic and insane—bags of cats, as Bruce calls it—but see things that nobody else does which leads to their warnings often being ignored.

Even the daddy-issues parallel nearly perfectly, with Steve/Thor as the older brother that could never be measured up to and Howard/Odin as the neglectful father that had little thought for their son’s needs and mother Maria/Frigga who tried but couldn’t offer enough affection to balance out the hurts. Where Tony has his creations to take comfort in, Loki has his children—just as the engineer has his technology and the sorcerer has his magic.

The only significant person the other Avengers haven’t seen mirrored in Loki’s life is the Starks’ late butler Jarvis, the man for whom JARVIS is named. And who knows, maybe that is what has ultimately made the difference?

Sometimes, Loki ventures into the Tower with other things on his mind than cuddle time with Tony—as evidenced by the pranks the Avengers at times come across when they return from their world-saving duties. They’re low-key things, very juvenile stuff that a teenager might get up to, but that doesn’t detract from the admittedly ingenious fun of them one bit.

Clint’s arrows and gear are frequent targets of glittery paint in all shades of painful and Steve’s drawing supplies keep being moved to all sorts of exotic spots on the Avengers’ floors that need an adventure and a half to be recovered. Thor has once been led on a Tower-wide wild-goose chase designed to mock his eagerness for adventure but is otherwise exclusively targeted by all the classical practical jokes in the book. Bruce keeps finding silly little things in his labs (locked room murder-style, to the doctor’s secret amusement), while Natasha’s clothing gets replaced overnight by impractical variations of the same and she has to hunt her rooms for the genuine articles.

Tony, however, gets tailored deathtraps that the mechanic takes a lot of glee in avoiding or dismantling. More often than not Tony wins this part of the game of one-uppance between the Trickster and himself, but when he does lose the human genius is clearly more going through the expected motions of frustration than actually feeling upset.

Bruce figures that Tony likes the challenge and is addicted to the adrenaline high dealing with extremely unstable people like Loki brings. Each subsequent visit from Loki that they have caught makes the theory just that little bit more likely. Loki himself is probably caught by the curiosity of the cat he so resembles.

In the end, they never find out how the situation had come to be, or how Tony and Loki's very first interaction has gone, what words have been exchanged during a conversation the time of which they cannot pinpoint. But—and that is the important part here—every moment Loki spends hanging off his human playmate is one less that he could use for destruction.

That ought to be worth something.

Chapter Text

Bruce and Tony's interactions makes every onlooker highly nervous. Aside from the threat of the big green Hulk in the room, it somehow conveys the vibe of incest, for all that both of the scientists share no significant part of their respective family trees. Tony typically rambles on and runs ahead, while Bruce follows with calm responses, attentive silence, tolerant amusement or bemused smiles.

Hulk is by nature a playful creature that embodies everything that Bruce never had a chance to develop or lost at some point in his life. Tony purposefully draws out the childlike aspects, the fascination with everything new, and the delight in being out and about for however long he has until Bruce takes over. Much as with Bruce, Tony leads and Hulk comes after him, the billionaire always cajoling the green giant into continuing to play the never-ending game that only the two of them understand.

Thor and Tony are just about the two members of the Avengers with the biggest differences between them in personalities and the cultures they came from. They do share a sense of curiosity for the strange world the other represents, but this has different roots—for Tony it’s the engineer in him that demands he investigate for science and know-how, while in case of Thor it’s more akin to a simple man marveling over something new and exotic as well as taking comfort in the faint nostalgic sense of home Tony’s presence brings.

As for Natasha, Tony seems as much fascinated by her as she frightens him, which leads to curious and endless cat-and-mouse-esque interactions that contains more warily circling each other than actually interacting. The female assassin, in turn, has once admitted in private to being just as wary of the engineer’s intellectual prowess, world-class skills and insane unpredictability—and she had promptly threatened bodily harm to her audience should the billionaire in question ever come to know about these thoughts of hers.

Whenever Clint is in the same space as Tony everything is mercurial—moods, activities, the subject matter, seemingly even time itself. They snark and they bark but they rarely bite, sheathing their fangs for use on foes. The archer and the inventor are each other’s warm-ups, appetizers to whet their appetites for battle, and both solemnly swear that they do not like each other but the facts do not lie—they say something else entirely.

Then there’s Steve, who somehow inspires Tony’s very sharpest cutting remarks and elicits the most cynical aspects of the playboy’s worldview being put into words. The captain dares and challenges Tony like nobody else can, but whenever the two stubborn men butt heads again collateral emotional damage is a real risk that often cannot be avoided.

Agent, as Tony calls Phil, only ever communicates with the inventor in words that have more than one meaning. All of their conversations are layered, with the actual sentences they use as the first layer and the underlying messages as the next. Sometimes there’s yet another layer—which is when they use metaphors that convey meanings which contain what they mean to say.

Fury and Tony spend their every moment together maiming and mauling whatever they can reach, not in the least slowed down by what or whomever might happen to stand between the two men. A pair of alphas both claiming the room they are in as territory just cannot get along without fight, but even so, there is some respect between them, if only reluctantly and hidden as deep as they can manage.

Pepper seems to be a strange mixture of big sister, sidekick, lover and mom to the inventor, and though Tony still sleeps around there is no doubt that he is devoted to this woman and will always return to her. They pull and they push and fight like two cats over territory but as cliché as it sounds, they truly love each other, as evidenced by how accurately they can read their partner’s moods.

With Tony’s best friend Rhodey interactions are much more violent, be it in a non-physical way. There is an all-out war fought between them that never stops yet never tips over into true violence. The two of them constantly walk on the knife-edge, right between intimate snarky friendship and an epic break-up that would probably dwarf natural disasters in sheer destruction.

At first glance, Happy’s personal relationship with his boss appears to be non-existent, until one looks that much closer and finds entire worlds of meanings contained in—and exclusively exchanged with—non-verbal communication, unaccompanied by sound of any kind. It’s fascinating and alien and untouchable in equal parts.