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Chapter Text

Tony decided, with an addict's logic, that the first one was a freebie.

Because, okay, the thing was, just for a start, he'd been pretty drunk, and people know better than to let him get that drunk, right? And furthermore, Loki was Thor's...sibling, sibling was probably the best gender-neutral word, and what was Thor doing letting his sibling consort with men of low moral character like Tony Stark? And on top of that, okay, yes, Loki was technically the enemy, but he -- rather, in the moment, she -- wasn't quote-unquote evil. Dogs bark, cats scratch, Loki causes trouble. It's in his (/her) nature. Tony had long held the belief that you have to actually choose to be evil, in order to be evil, and he just couldn't see how that applied here.

And, and! As far as trouble went, this was minor. Minor! It wasn't actually trouble at all unless she was going to give him some kind of terrible otherworldly STD and he was at least eighty percent sure they'd remembered condoms.

Also, what the hell kind of god gets STDs? So probably no problem there.

But the point of all of this was that Tony was only a mortal, and when Thor's very-hot-currently-female sibling showed up in his doorway he did not remember that this was a bad idea (Tony's morality consisted more of remembering rules than actually believing in or understanding them) and so yes. He had sex with Loki.

And it was fantastic.

It was at this point that Steve, who had been patiently listening to Tony's monologue while wrapped around a cup of coffee as if it was the only constant in his horrible changing world -- Steve, who had actually tried to understand Tony's angle on this -- said, "Which is why I am not sorry for you. At all."

"Well then a lot of good you are!" Tony said. "What do I do now?"

"How many women have you slept with?" Steve asked, squinting at him. "You'd think you'd have some kind of computer program written for this by now."

"Half the time she's not even a she! She's a god, Steve, the god of mischief with whom we are currently...are we at war? Or is this like...a debate with explosions? Am I allowed to send flowers across enemy lines? Flowers are usually what I do. Flowers and then never calling. Is that going to work here?"

Steve stood up and patted him on the shoulder. "I have two pieces of advice for you, though I want you to consider the irony of me giving you advice on your love life."

"I truly despise you," Tony said.

"One, do not call Loki. Ever. Two, do not tell Thor."

Tony took a moment to consider what would happen if Thor found out he'd banged Thor's sibling, and then a moment to do some counting, and yelled "FIVE HUNDRED AND FORTY THREE WOMEN FIFTY TWO MEN AND ONE GOD OF MALLEABLE GENDER," over his shoulder, in reply to Steve's half-forgotten question. Steve laughed from the hallway.

***

Once was a freebie. He was drinking alone, a god showed up naked, he rolled with it.

Twice, he didn't really have an excuse for, except that again, people knew better than to let him get this drunk. Especially at a party.

The thing about being powerful and rich and kind of promiscuous was that nobody ever had the good sense to stop him. Except Steve, and Steve was busy being mauled by a bunch of society people. Okay, and Pepper, but Pepper was trying to rescue Steve from the black-tie-and-pearls crowd at the moment. So he was standing on the balcony of this fabulous hotel, while inside a lot of wealthy people were giving money to some cause he was supporting (it was a Stark party; Tony didn't go to other peoples' parties, they came to his) and he was enjoying the top-notch champagne. It was a nice night, the breeze was doing awesome things to his hair, and as he looked down at his half-full champagne flute he heard a voice say, "Hello, Mr. Stark."

He frowned.

Surely, surely even in his insane life that included hanging out with Captain America and being best lab buddies with a guy who regularly turned into a rage monster, surely his champagne was not talking to him.

On the other hand: crazy life. Anything was possible.

"My eyes are up here," the voice said, and Tony's head jerked up.

"Oh, thank god you're wearing clothes," he said. And then, because Tony was a truthful drunk, he added, "Kind of."

You'd think Loki would wear a green dress, green was kind of her thing, right? But she had this amazing black hair (so thick, tangled in his fingers) and skin so pale it was almost blue-white, and she'd gone for a black dress, slit almost up to her hip, cut above her knees, hugging her breasts (soft and heavy, smooth under his hands) beneath an emerald choker, and the only spots of color in the whole horrifyingly erotic ensemble were her eyes and that emerald.

And he just knew, with the clarity of the drunk, she wasn't wearing any underwear. Only fair, as he wasn't either.

"Like what you see?" she asked, leaning on the railing next to him. She plucked his champagne from his fingers, downed it in a single smooth swallow (oh god, the slim beautiful line of her throat), and threw the glass over the edge. He heard it shatter on the decorative rocks below.

"This is a bad idea," he said, more to convince himself than for any other reason. "I have a thing...policy...about not sleeping with people a second time. Especially malevolent gods."

"Why?" she asked, and for the life of him he could not think of an answer.

She tucked a black-polished fingernail under his bow-tie, tugged him forward with it, and turned so that she was pinned between him and the railing.

Well, hell, he couldn't think why he shouldn't do this, and he was a genius, so...there probably wasn't any reason. Not one that would hold up, anyway.

He bent forward and kissed her neck, enjoying the shiver that ran through her when the bristle of his beard brushed her skin. She clenched a hand in his hair, a moan catching in her throat.

"I do like that," she murmured in his ear, and of course she did -- he was awesome at this, already sliding a hand up the slitted edge of her dress, fingers tracing over her hip under it.

"I have a room," he murmured into her collarbone, as she twined a leg around his. He didn't, but this was his party -- he might even own the hotel, he wasn't sure -- and he could get a room.

She nipped at his earlobe, the corner of his jaw, his lip. "Lovely, do you not remember?" she asked, lifting her other leg, rolling her hips against his. "God of illusions."

"Mm?" He was seriously not about to fuck Thor's sister on a balcony during a party.

Oh wait, yes he was.

"Nobody can see us," she whispered, raking her fingernails down the back of his neck. He closed his eyes and hummed. "Not that we wouldn't make a fine show."

He tugged one of the slim straps of her dress down her shoulder, followed it with his mouth and pulled it gently past her breast, enjoying the way the nicks and calluses on his fingers caught her smooth skin, stiffened her nipple. She kissed him hard and undulated, laughing when he inhaled sharply.

" -- don't know where he went," he heard, off in a hazy corner of his mind, and Tony turned his head (Loki bit his earlobe again) enough to see Steve and Pepper stepping out onto the balcony. He froze, but their eyes drifted past him carelessly, like he wasn't there entwined in Loki's pale arms. He felt one of her hands at the waistband of his pants, flicking the zip down, sliding inside --

He bucked helplessly, turning his face back into her skin, even as he heard Pepper say "Well, I need the fresh air anyway," even as he saw them sit down on a nearby bench out of the corner of his eye. Loki laughed, grasping one of his hands to help him slide her dress up further, pulling him in closer with her thighs.

"Condom," he mumbled.

"God," she answered back. "I think we're okay."

"You say that now -- "

She pushed forward, one hand at his hip, the other on his dick, and well, there went that idea. Wet, tight, rippling against him -- how did she even do that?

Tony was pretty sure he was one of the foremost experts on sex with Asgardian gods on the planet, unless Loki got around more than she let on, and the thing he had noticed in his extensive (one time) experience was that basically once they had you, all you could really do was hold on and enjoy yourself. She was going to take what she wanted regardless of his experience or skill, which was in some ways a relief, because it meant he could just rut and touch and kiss until she threw back her head and cried out yes --

He wasn't sure where she ended or he began, coming for what seemed like ages, curled into her, panting and careless. When he finally opened his eyes she was cradling his face and looking down at him with an almost...tender expression. At least for her.

"You mortals," she said gently, and kissed him, and disappeared so fast he almost fell into the railing. He was still catching his breath when he heard a startled exclamation from Pepper.

"Tony?" Steve asked.

Tony pivoted, blinking.

"What happened to you?" Steve said, looking vaguely bewildered.

Pepper looked him up and down. "I think the question is who," she corrected.

Tony looked down at himself -- tie undone, tuxedo shirt rumpled but tucked in, fly fortunately done up, nice of Loki to make him presentable -- and then back up at them.

"You are going to be so disappointed with me tomorrow," he announced, and went inside to get another drink.

***

"Get drunk and make bad decisions" was practically a Stark family motto. Tony felt legitimately that not all of this could be pinned on him. At least some of it had to be genetic.

Also, she was a god.

"Maybe she has a thrall," he said, eating scrambled eggs and trying not to move too much. Hangovers were something that happened to other people right up until he turned thirty-five, which was much too old to be coping with this kind of crap. No more champagne. Scotch or nothing from here on out. Scotch had never betrayed him this terribly.

"A thrall," Steve repeated skeptically.

"It's possible," Bruce said. Tony wasn't sure why Bruce had been brought in on this discussion. They might just not have noticed him until they sat down to eat. "She could be controlling his mind."

"Would it really take that much to nudge it in that direction?" Steve wondered.

"I am getting downright tired of you calling me a manwhore," Tony said, head hanging low over his eggs. "You think just because you make me breakfast you can judge me?"

"Yes," Steve said. "Me and the five hundred and forty-three women and fifty-two men you've slept with."

"Please tell me you made those numbers up," Bruce said.

"Five hundred and forty-five," Tony mumbled. Steve dropped his cutlery. "Sorry. I got bored after the battle last Tuesday."

"You missed a debrief to have sex? Twice?" Steve asked.

"Just once."

"But then how..." Steve trailed off weakly. "Oh."

"I got the brunette's number, if you want it. The redhead left before I could get her business card."

"You know, when they told me you had a bum heart, I thought you'd probably be a quiet, calm, unexcitable sort of person," Steve said.

"There's nothing wrong with my heart," Tony said around a mouthful of egg. "It's the shrapnel trying to get into it, we've been over this."

"Where does Loki go in your numbering?" Bruce asked curiously. Tony approved. Bruce had the mind of a scientist.

"Technically I guess she'd make five hundred and forty-six, since she's been female both times, but she's not always female so she gets her own special classification," he said. "God of malleable gender."

"That's appropriate, I suppose."

"I don't feel I'm doing enough judging, here," Steve said.

"Stop slut-shaming, it's very old-fashioned."

"No, I think shame is precisely what's called for in this situation. Who you...avoid debriefings with is your own business, Tony, but you gotta stop having liaisons with Loki. I mean, even if she is mind-controlling you, what's going to happen when she puts the whammy on you in the field?"

"Well, so far she's only shown up when I'm drunk," Tony said. "And I don't drink and fight, you know that."

"It's about the only thing you don't drink and do."

"Slut-shamer!"

"There seems to be an obvious solution," Bruce said. Both of them looked at him. "Next time she shows up, stop drinking and call Steve."

Tony glanced sidelong at Steve. Steve was blushing faintly.

"It does make sense," Steve admitted.

"Great. It's a plan. Can I die in peace now?" Tony asked.

"No. Drink your orange juice," Steve ordered.

***

The phone rang at three in the morning.

"So, when we made that plan where I'd call you...that was supposed to be before I had sex with Loki again, right?"

"Tony!"

***

"Wait, so, I have a new, better plan," Tony said, hands held up defensively.

He was standing in front of the couch in the communal living room. Cap was on the end, next to Bruce, and for some reason they'd brought in Clint and Natasha, Tony wasn't sure why. But at least now it wasn't just him, this was officially a conspiracy and Thor couldn't possibly kill them all if he found out. Well, he could, but he wouldn't. Probably.

"Man, bros before trickster gods," Clint said. "This is uncool, Tony."

"But you understand this isn't some sort of...chastity drive," Steve said. Only Steve could say that kind of thing with a completely innocent expression. "Tony, we're genuinely worried that you are being..."

"Taken advantage of," Bruce supplied. "I mean, mind control has been mentioned."

"No, sorry, at this point I'm pretty sure this is a hundred percent me being just that easy," Tony said.

"Have you tried not being easy?" Clint asked.

"Worst six months of my life. But okay, hear me out," Tony tried again. "Here's my plan: don't get that drunk. At least not until, you know, she's not a problem anymore."

The rest of the Avengers, sans Thor, looked speculative.

"You can't really argue with its simplicity," Natasha said finally. "It's very motivational for you, too, to get Loki...behind bars?"

"Are we putting him behind bars? Can we do that, even?" Bruce asked Steve.

"You know, he's not even an A-list villain, as they go," Tony said. They all looked at him. "I'm just saying. He shows up, he causes mischief, he goes away. It's not like I'm doing von Doom or something."

"Until Loki is contained," Steve said firmly, "this seems to be the best idea we have going. Tony, you give a call if you need any help with your more-or-less sobriety plan, and the rest of us will do what we can."

***

It worked great for about a month.

The thing was, they had neglected to tell Darcy about this plan. Partly because she was close to Thor, partly just because, well, who thought Darcy would deliberately get Tony hammered?

But Darcy was about five feet tall and ninety pounds soaking wet (he wasn't going to lie and say he didn't find that image appealing), and when she challenged him to a shots contest he had to defend his manhood. It was an issue of honor.

"Nooo, you can't leave," he said, around the twelfth shot.

"It's okay, you win," she replied. Tony pivoted on the bar stool slowly, mostly to make sure he didn't fall off it.

"We need a cab."

"I need a cab. I'm going home in shame," she proclaimed.

"Better men than you have lost faster to me," he said, scribbling a blurry signature on their bar tab. "It takes decades to get this good at getting this drunk. Trust me. No! You can't leave me here, it'll be all bad. Loki will show up or something."

She gave him a vaguely surprised look. "You're threatening me with villains?"

"She's not a villain! She's a terrible sexy seductr...seducing...thing," Tony waved his hands, trying to explain.

"You are making zero sense."

"Split a cab," he implored.

"I'm going to Brooklyn!"

"I'm a billionaire, I will pay your fare!"

So they ended up in a cab on the way to Brooklyn, Darcy mostly sleeping on his shoulder while Tony watched the lights of the city go past. He supposed he could be using this time for meditative reflection, but honestly he was mostly telling himself that a) he couldn't sleep with Darcy, even when they were no longer drunk, because it was like sleeping with a best friend's little sister, and b) if Loki showed up he was absolutely not going to sleep with her, either, because that would be actually sleeping with a best friend's little sister.

Though the odds of Loki appearing in a cab on the way back to Manhattan after Tony had dropping Darcy off at her apartment were pretty slim. Loki, whatever else you could say about her, had style.

So Tony left Darcy in Brooklyn and the cab turned towards home, and he dozed off and on in a pleasant, floaty kind of place until they stopped somewhere quiet and dark, and he heard a door slam.

He lifted his head and opened his eyes, which was about the time he saw the cabdriver open the passenger's door across from him and slide onto the seat.

"Wow. You're a man," Tony said, and Loki grinned at him. Long black hair still, yes, but coarser now, and his face was sharper, jaw more defined. Definite lack of breasts but broad shoulders; slimmer hips, but longer legs.

"Hello," Loki said, crawling on top of him.

"Oh, man, I can't not do this," Tony managed. "I'm not supposed to do this but seriously, okay, once-in-a-lifetime chance here. And you only live once..."

"If you're unlucky," Loki replied, kissing him.

***

"So," Loki said. He was lying across the backseat, legs bent, head in Tony's lap, smoking a cigarette that had appeared from nowhere (and didn't smell like anything, so Tony couldn't really complain). His pants were still unzipped, shirt hitched up, and he looked like debauchery made manifest. "Preferences?"

Tony considered this, brain fuzzed from alcohol and orgasm. He petted Loki's hair clumsily.

"Not the helmet," he said. "Never wear the helmet. Otherwise, I'm good."

"Yes you are," Loki replied, exhaling smoke. "You don't like the helmet?"

"Logistics. S'big."

Loki laughed.

"You have to stop doing this," Tony managed, and then corrected, "We have to stop doing this. We're not on the same side."

"No, we don't," Loki replied, and reached up to brush the backs of his fingers over Tony's cheek, arm warm against his chest. Tony closed his eyes, leaning into it --

And woke to someone shaking his shoulder.

"Tony?" Steve's voice. "Tony, do I want to know why you're asleep in a taxicab in your garage?"

Tony flailed awake, stared up at him, and blurted, "Are hand jobs considered sex?"

Steve gave him that stupid Captain America grin. "Don't look at me, I've never had one." Then a furrow appeared between his eyebrows. "Where's the cabdriver?"

Tony staggered out of the cab, sore all over. "Loki. No, shut up, say nothing. I have now had sex with the same person as two different genders, you're not ruining that for me."

"It's not a goal, you know, they don't give out merit badges for that," Steve remarked, following him through the garage to the workshop, looking a little hapless.

"Well, they should, because it was awesome." Tony's brain caught up with him around then, and he turned. "You've never had a hand job?"

"I was protecting the free world from the Nazi regime," Steve reminded him.

"Do you want one? Because apparently I'm giving them out like candy and it sounds like you've earned it."

"No, thank you, I'm fine," Steve said firmly.

***

It might have come as a surprise to some people, but Tony had played football in college.

Not for the school team, of course; he wasn't even sure MIT had a school football team, and if they did he wasn't going near it. He'd only been fifteen but he was strong and fast, and the local intramural team was, well, local to MIT, so it was a couple of professors and a lot of nerds like him. It didn't matter how well you played; he was on a team with Reed Richards, for God's sake, who'd blow over in a strong breeze. But that just meant that for a couple of hours, a couple of times a week, Tony could put on a jersey and run around like an idiot and feel normal.

It wasn't that Tony didn't play well with other people. He just didn't play well with stupid people.

In football, they had a saying: nobody shot my gap. By definition, every defensive player had a gap, and it was the offense's job to get through that gap. If the offense did get through, then they'd shot someone's gap. When the coach got cranky, that was the default every defense player fell back on: nobody shot my gap. Football was a very good preparation for life as an Avenger, because everyone had a gap.

Loki had been up to tricks, small harassing annoyances that seemed to be his reason for living these days, and they'd gone out to scare away whatever big bad he'd dragged in to try and trash the city and see if they couldn't, this time, dig their hooks into the trickster. But Thor and Cap had been distracted with giant clumsy robots, and Bruce wasn't really a great strategist when he was Hulked out, and Clint and Natasha were busy watching each others' backs, so nobody saw.

Tony saw the gap. He saw Loki's gap, he saw a weak point, and --

He might have done many things in his life, but he had never, never ever, hit a lover. Not even when one of them had taken a swing at him. He had never hit a lover and he never would, and so he hesitated just for a second. He hesitated because you just didn't do that, you didn't, and by the time he was getting past that and raising a repulsor to fire, the gap closed.

Nobody else even saw. Nobody saw the hesitation, except perhaps JARVIS in the flicker of Tony's eyes, and JARVIS kept his secrets.

Maybe that was the real trick -- not mind control, but manipulation. Loki didn't need to control him if he could create a situation where Tony would hesitate, because Tony Stark never hesitated. All in or all out, that was him, and now here he was. Hesitating.

He got through the rest of the fight without incident, watched Loki laugh and vanish per usual, followed the others back to HQ, shed his armor and showered away the sweat from battle, joked and exchanged insults with Clint and Steve and Thor as they dressed (Bruce was still out cold, would be for another hour or two), and headed for debriefing. He survived debriefing, made it home to the mansion, and poured himself a stiff drink.

Two hours later, with the bottle empty and a tablet in front of him, he was tucked in the corner of his couch and clumsily programming some new auto-targeting software for the armor (he did some of his best coding half-conscious) when the tablet was tugged out of his hands and a warm body settled in the curl of his. He looked down at the lapful of naked female god and said, "I'm feeling a little used."

Loki nuzzled into his throat, breasts pressed against his shirt. "And?"

"And I told you, we have to stop."

She shook her head, ass rubbing against his thigh. "And I told you, we don't."

"Okay, it's a given that I'm going to fuck you, because..." he gestured to her body, to his. "But, so, uh. Not stopping: present your rationale."

She turned into him, molding her body against his, hands sliding under his t-shirt.

"You have it backwards," she said into his shoulder, squeezing her thighs around his hips when he bucked. "We don't have to stop, and I definitely don't have to stop. Baby, my lovely little pet, my beautiful bright spot -- "

"Flattery," he managed.

"I don't have to stop, because I'm the bad guy," she said, nibbling her way along to his neck. "I don't have to stop doing anything I don't want to. Surely you understand that."

He kissed her forehead, the smooth soft skin of her temple, her high cheekbone, ignoring the little voice that said yes, he did indeed understand what it was like to have so much power you didn't have to do anything you didn't want to.

"So the only person who has to stop is you," she finished, stretching up, twisting her shoulders. He bent to lick at one hard nipple, entranced. "And you aren't going to either, I think."

He wanted to shove her away, knew that if he could just get her off his body he could probably say no and at least halfway mean it. Instead he gripped her hips and held her still, both of them breathing hard.

"Lovely, lovely pet," she repeated, her hair falling around his face like a screen against the world. "The shiniest boy I ever knew."

He knew he should ignore it because she was, after all, a liar god. That was part of his rationale for why this kept happening in the first place. He should remember that he'd risked his life that same day to prevent the chaos she was determined to wreak on New York.

But a warm flush of pleasure filled him, to be special in a way that meant attention and love instead of odd looks and quick fucks and loneliness.

"I was always the smart one too," she said in his ear, and he groaned and lost himself in her body, in the quick sly words and the soft warm clench of her. He'd have plenty of time to ignore all her praise tomorrow.

***

"How many plans does this make now?" Steve asked the next morning. He looked amused. Natasha leaned around the edge of the table and poked Tony's jaw where a bite-mark stood out in livid purple.

"Okay, genius, and I use the word loosely, you come up with one," Tony said.

"Steve doesn't need a plan, because he keeps it in his pants," Clint said.

"And thereby misses out on at least half of the fun of existence," Tony retorted.

"Hey! I have fun!" Steve protested.

"You know I offered him a hand job?" Tony said to Clint, who squinted. "You know what he said? He said no thanks, I'm fine. Who does that? Who is fine with no hand jobs?"

Clint looked at Steve. "He has a point. That's just weird."

"It's not weird," Steve argued.

"Cogently put," Tony observed.

"He's saving himself," Natasha said. All three men looked at her.

"Suddenly way less interested in Tony getting dirty with the bad guys," Clint announced.

"For who?" Tony demanded.

"Who said that?" Steve asked.

"I notice things," Natasha said airily.

"I'm sorry did I not ask for who loud enough?" Tony repeated, verging on gleeful. The true mark of a good team was when you could subtly shift attention away from yourself without anyone batting an eye.

"Pepper," Natasha answered.

This time Clint and Tony's heads swiveled back to Steve, who was blushing.

"My Pepper?" Tony asked, way beyond gleeful now. "My Pepper Potts? You're keeping yourself pure for Pepper?"

"They're two entirely unrelated things!" Steve insisted.

"Has anyone told her? She should know. Because first, she hates it when men suffer for her, unless it's me, and she has good reason there," Tony said, while Clint fell off his chair laughing. "Second, big guy, she will climb you like a tree. Like a tall blond tree."

"Let's bring this discussion back around," Steve said calmly, even though his face was now red. "Let's circle back to the very real threat to national security that is your -- "

"Penis? How kind of you to say," Tony said. "No, no. We're not abandoning the Steve and Pepper ship quite so soon."

"Is Tony talking about his dick again?" Bruce asked, yawning as he walked into the room with a giant mug of coffee. The others looked at him. "Did I miss something?"

"Tony slept with Loki again and Steve's saving his virginity for Pepper," Clint said, crawling back into his chair.

"Can we please not discuss relationships before I've had coffee?" Bruce asked. Then he glanced at Steve. "Not that I disagree with your taste."

"MY FRIENDS!" Thor's voice boomed from the hallway. "WHO WOULD LIKE SOME STOLEN EGGS?"

"POACHED, THOR," Clint yelled back.

"INDEED!"

"I'll go help," Steve said, standing up. He leaned over Tony with all the menace he could muster, which was a surprising amount. "You mention a word of this to Pepper and I swear I'll tell Thor about Loki," he hissed.

"This is better than television," Clint remarked to Natasha.

"Fewer ads," Natasha agreed.

***

"So he is nursing a deep, abiding crush on you," Tony said, when Pepper showed up two days later to update him on 'his' company and make him show her the designs for the new tech he was working on.

"Steve Rogers," Pepper repeated. "Captain America Steve Rogers."

"Yep. He burns for you."

Pepper tapped a nail against her lips. "You know, I don't think I've ever been adored by a national icon for truth and justice before."

"Not true," Tony grunted, heaving a pile of scrap metal off the printouts he'd been scribbling on for her. "I know at least three Nobel Peace Prize winners who would hit that."

"Hit what, exactly?" Pepper asked, a razor-sharp edge on her voice.

Tony looked up. "Um. And by 'hit that' I mean enjoy an evening of your scintillating company."

"Better." She leaned against his workbench. "How did this even come up? Were you boys having a sleepover and playing truth or dare?"

"Uh." Tony paused.

Pepper sighed. "Who did you sleep with and why was Steve bothering you about it?"

"Okay, you know what, the first time was a freebie and the second time I blame the champagne and the third time, well, that just happened, and the fourth time Darcy got me drunk -- "

"You slept with Darcy? Isn't she about twelve?"

"I didn't sleep with Darcy!"

"Did you try?"

"No! I haven't been trying anything at all! It just happens!"

"What happens?"

"Loki! Happens! It's like being in a landslide. A sexy landslide," Tony said, while Pepper gaped at him. "She just...happens."

"Sexually."

"Yes."

"She?"

"Mostly," Tony said. "Sometimes he."

Pepper sat down. "Only you, Tony."

"Look, it's not like I asked her out for drinks. I don't even know why she's doing it," he added plaintively. "I have theories, but...it's like a natural disaster. An act of god. Literally."

"And you don't see any problems with this?"

"Yes, yes, I know it's morally wrong to sleep with -- "

He broke off, because Pepper had concealed a snort of laughter, badly.

"What?" he asked.

"Well, I'm guessing everyone's worrying about what you'll do when you have to fight her," she said. "Or him."

"Pep, I'm worrying about that. Yesterday..."

"How many women have slept with you more than once?" she asked.

Tony paused and did some math.

"Five," he said.

"How many women have wanted to sleep with you more than once?"

"I don't know, that's a lot of variables. At least five? Probably less than fifteen? Not to imply I have low self-esteem, but most women...personality and sexual prowess..." he made a balancing motion. He was well aware that his inability to give a damn post-conquest was a hindrance to repeat business.

"And why do you think you keep getting the celestial booty call from Loki?" Pepper asked.

He looked at her, confused.

"You think on that, genius," she said, patting his shoulder. "Just turn it over in your mind. I'm going to go flirt with Captain America."

"Don't be cruel to him, he's delicate."

"I wouldn't dream of it. Just testing your hypothesis."

***

They were at a bar.

Admittedly not the best place for Tony's shaky 'Don't get THAT drunk' plan, but he was sticking with beer, and he knew Steve was keeping an eye out in between horrifying attempts to flirt back with Pepper and turns at the pool table with Clint, because if there ever was an epic battle in the making, it was billiards between the supersoldier and Hawkeye. A Vegas bookmaker couldn't give odds on that.

This kid who looked too young to even be drinking slid onto the stool next to him, and Tony was prepared to be all yes, I am Iron Man, here's an autograph but instead the kid leaned back and said, "Can I buy you a drink, mister?"

He had short dark hair and that too-smart look on his face, even under the sunglasses he was wearing. Tony knew that look, because it was a look he often had, and okay, he'd give the kid a pass on wearing sunglasses in a dark bar because he'd been young and douchey once too.

"Nice try," he said with a grin. "No."

"Aw, man, it's not like that," the kid said, wrinkling his nose. "I just want to buy you a drink."

"Out of the goodness of your heart?"

The kid leaned forward, frowning. "Mr. Stark, what if I said I was here on an urgent mission to buy you a drink in order to save the world as we know it?" he asked. And the thing was, he honestly looked like he meant it.

Tony turned to study him. "The world as we know it, huh?"

The kid nodded. Tony turned back to the bar.

"Scotch on the rocks, double up, on the kid," he said, and the bartender poured out and took the kid's cash and when Tony looked back, the kid was gone.

"Weird little fucker," he muttered, and shot back the scotch before Steve got out from behind the eight-ball and came over to be the morality police.

What happened next was probably inevitable: Pepper whispered something in Steve's ear that made him turn pink, and Clint got a mysterious phone call and fucked off, and then Pepper and Steve slunk out like it was possible to be casual when you were two of the hottest people in the room.

And so Tony had another drink (or three) and went to the bathroom, where -- of course -- the lock flicked without him touching it, and Loki stepped out of the shadows.

"Now you're buying me drinks?" he asked.

She frowned at him. "What?"

"Was that you, at the bar? That was you, wasn't it?"

She kissed him, fingers sliding around his neck. "I'm sure a lot of people like to buy you drinks. I don't need to."

The world went a little blurry as they kissed, as he propped her against the counter and hitched up her dress, fucked her with his pants around his thighs.

"You have," she said, as he rolled his hips slowly, gaze steady on hers, "the widest blue eyes, pet."

"Not your pet," he muttered, closing them, bending over her shoulder to get better leverage.

"Well, you do come when I call," she answered, hands sliding up his arms, fingernails digging into the soft skin there. Tony hissed and tightened his grip on her thighs.

"Let me see them," she urged, reaching out to tip his chin up. "Let me -- oh, let me see -- "

He lifted his head and opened his eyes, looked straight into the unearthly green of hers, and came so hard he had to lean into her just to keep upright.

***

"This is wrong," Tony said, hovering above the chaos. "This is seriously wrong."

"Thanks for stating the obvious!" Natasha yelled down the comms.

"No, this is..."

Tony twisted, scanning the skyline, dodging stray chunks of masonry as Loki turned downtown Manhattan into a war zone.

"I hate to say this," Clint grunted, "but your girlfriend's a bitch, Tony."

Which was the problem, when you got down to it.

Tony didn't know exactly what had gone down in Asgard when Loki made his bid to be king. He knew Loki had trashed a small town in New Mexico as part of that bid, but he'd been going through some things, working out issues with his dad. Everyone had issues. Tony probably would have trashed a small town in New Mexico himself, if he'd thought about it when he was younger. Had to be cheaper than therapy.

And yes, after that Loki had somehow gotten himself banished to Earth and been a pain in everyone's ass, but he was a trickster. He pulled pranks; he did stupid shit that the Avengers rarely had any trouble stopping. He wasn't exactly an international headliner, though. He was like the super-evil city councilman that everyone in the zipcode knew was on the take but nobody outside the city was even aware existed.

This -- what was happening down there now -- it wasn't Loki's style. It nipped around the edges of his consciousness as he ferried people out of buildings and caught flying cars and vaporized monsters: last night she'd held his face in her hands and admired his eyes and today she was standing on a rooftop cackling about destruction and threatening to enslave the human race.

This wasn't their song. This was a whole symphony of chaos, but the closer he looked, the less anarchic it seemed. Fire bloomed, but only momentarily; buildings fell, but...small ones, and he had yet to see any actual casualties. A battle with Doom, they'd be up to their elbows in the wounded and dead by now.

The girder of a particularly ugly parking garage creaked, snapped, fell --

And, as Tony watched closely, stopped a few inches from the ground. A terrified woman scrambled into the shelter of an alley, and the girder crashed into the street.

Tony cocked his head. Interesting.

"Little help down here, Iron Man!" Cap said, and Tony twisted in the air, dropping fast. The monsters, whatever they were, nine feet tall and ugly as sin, tended to vanish pretty quickly when he fired on them.

Definitely interesting.

He caught Clint mid-fall from a building, tossed him onto another one, checked that Natasha was secure, and then said, "Going off comm briefly."

"Tony don't you dare -- " Cap got out, before Tony flicked his comm off and jetted straight for the high ground, the tall tower Loki was standing on top of, conducting the destruction. There was a force-field surrounding the roof that Cap's shield, about a dozen of Clint's arrows, and the Hulk had already bounced off --

But he slid through it like it wasn't even there, landing lightly.

Inside the field it was quiet. He could hear servos in his armor whine as he stood from his crouch and yanked his helmet off.

"Tony," Loki said, giving him her best smile.

"You," he replied, tossing his helmet aside and coming forward. He pulled his gauntlets off next, dropping them as he went, and then flicked the catches on his breastplate. It dropped with a crash, the back falling away naturally.

"Tony -- "

"I am this close to kicking your ass so hard it comes out your front," he snarled, still advancing.

"But you won't," she said with a smile, right before he picked her up by the front of her cloak and held her in the air.

She didn't struggle. She might even have kicked off a little as he lifted.

"Stop it now," he growled. She gestured with a hand, gently; all movement outside their little bubble of silence ceased abruptly. He gave her a little shake.

"Did you seriously do all this to get my attention?" he demanded, as she gripped his wrists.

"Well, it worked," she replied.

"People are dying out there!"

"Nobody's dying," she retorted. "I made sure of -- "

She broke off when she saw his feral grin.

"Oh, clever pet," she murmured. "You knew. You saw."

He set her down. She dropped to the gravel on the roof, legs tucked under her, cloak pulled around her breasts.

"Why?" he asked, honestly bewildered.

"Sit down," she said, pointing to his feet.

"Tell me why."

"Sit down," she repeated.

Tony dropped to his knees, the armor on his legs clanking lightly.

"This is not acceptable on any level at all," he said. "My friends are out there risking their lives so you could -- what, flaunt that you can whistle and I'll follow? Is this considered flirting on Asgard? Because let me tell you it does not go over well down here."

"Nobody died," she said rebelliously.

"They could have. I could have."

"Well, how else was I going to get you to look at me?" she asked, pulling the cloak tighter across her shoulders. Tony stared at her. "I'm the fallen heir. I'm the little brother. Don't you get it, pet? I'm the bad guy. And I just wanted someone to look at me."

Tony blinked.

"Okay, so out of the young horny archery master, the virginal supersoldier, the incredibly hot assassin with commitment issues, and the nerdy desperate scientist, you picked me?" he asked. "The fucked-up drunk engineer?"

"I told you, you didn't even listen -- "

"Sorry if I wasn't paying attention while hammered and staring at your amazing breasts, my bad!" he yelled, spreading his arms.

"I'm the smart one too," she said desperately.

Oh.

Oh.

"Oh my God," he said, covering his face with his hands. "You're even more fucked up than I am, it makes sense now."

"You shine so brightly," she said, tugging at his wrists. "That wasn't a lie, I could see you across miles, you don't understand how we see things -- you don't know -- "

"And I wouldn't go near you sober," he said, allowing her to pull his hands down. "That's what you thought."

"Was I wrong?"

He pulled his arms back, trusting she'd keep her grip on them, and she did; it tugged her forward and he kissed her.

"Why all this, why now?" he asked, feeling her fingers tighten. "You never did this before, it's like a hell party out there -- "

"I just wanted -- " she twisted, resting her forehead on his shoulder. "I don't know. There was a reason I chose you -- "

"The bright spark thing, okay, I get that, I'm magnetic -- "

"I'm pregnant."

Tony froze.

"Last night, I felt it," she said. "Don't be afraid, the child will be brilliant, child of a god -- "

"Yes, I'm familiar with the myths," he managed, untangling the two of them enough to look her in the face. "If you're lying, so help me, I will sic Thor on you."

"Oh, thank you very much!"

"God of lies! What do you want from me, I just found out my occasional hookup has a thing for me so hard she blows up a city to make me notice her, gimme a break -- " he cut off because she was kissing him again, laughing and kissing him.

"He'll be a king," she whispered, patting his cheeks, his shoulders and chest, kissing him, murmuring into his mouth. "Ice and iron and mischief, he'll be magnificent, you'll see -- "

"Oh my god, how is this happening," Tony managed.

"A lot of scotch and a very poor decision," she replied. "Honestly, aren't you used to this kind of thing by now?"

Tony pulled away slowly, stood up and offered her a hand. She stood without taking it.

"New rule," he said, pointing at her. "No blowing up New York. Not even for my babymommy will I refrain from beating down the next person who attacks my city so it had better not be you, understand?"

She nodded.

"Second new rule, no more hookups. We're going to do this right and destroy a relationship properly. If I'm going to traumatize my child it'll be the old-fashioned Midgardian way."

"Are you suggesting monogamy?" she asked delicately.

"Don't say that word," he warned, walking back to where half his armor lay discarded. He pulled his breastplate on, secured it to the backplate, picked up his gloves, and shook grit out of his helmet before pulling it over his head. "Comm on."

" -- have a damn good explanation for what the heck you just did, Iron Man, before I get Thor to carry me up there and start throwing rocks -- "

"Cap," Tony said, somewhat enjoying Steve's enraged tirade. "Iron Man here. I've secured Loki. Everything peaceful down there?"

Silence.

"Can you repeat please?" Steve asked.

"Repeating, Loki is secured. What's the situation on the ground?"

"Uh," Clint said. "Dandy. We're just peachy keen. You did what? Is secured a euphemism?"

"Did anyone call SHIELD for cleanup?" Tony asked with a sigh.

"En route," Coulson's voice crackled over the comm. "Do you need secure transport for Loki?"

"No, but if you guys could make sure Thor leaves his hammer behind before coming to the debrief, that'd be awesome," Tony said.

"BROTHER IN ARMS," Thor yelled. "HAVE YOU CAPTURED MY PRINCELY SIBLING?"

Tony glanced back at Loki, who was grinning.

"Tell you what, big guy, I'll see you in the debrief. Seriously, don't bring your hammer," Tony said, and buzzed off the comm. He pulled the helmet's faceplate up. "So, do I carry you, or...?"

She shook her head. "I'll meet you there."

"Are you sure? Because -- "

She was already gone.

"NEW RULE!" he yelled at the sky. "NO MORE FUCKING DOING THAT!"

***

Tony was honestly concerned that when Thor saw his brother (sister) in the SHIELD debriefing room, he would try to beat the crap out of her. And frankly, while Tony was no slouch even out of the armor, he wasn't a match for an enraged thunder god.

Instead, before Tony could even react, Thor was across the room and sweeping Loki up into his arms in a fierce hug.

"I have missed you!" he roared, and Tony winced. "And you have turned yourself in! There is no dishonor in surrender, my broth -- my sister," he corrected, "when one admits one is in error."

He set Loki down. She shuffled to one side and her fingers drifted out for Tony's. Oh shit, he was holding hands with someone in SHIELD HQ. He was holding hands with their enemy in SHIELD HQ. Coulson was going to taser him.

Thor looked down at their hands. Looked up at Tony. Narrowed his eyes.

"Excuse me, should we not be restraining the villain?" Clint asked, barging in. "Because, no offense, fucking one of the Avengers does not give you free pass to wander unchecked around HQ."

There was a long, dangerous silence.

"Oh," Clint managed.

"Can I kill him?" Loki asked Tony.

"I'd say you should make it look like an accident but I'm a little worried you'd take me literally," Tony replied. "Rule: no killing Avengers."

"You have a lot of rules for someone who dislikes authority," Loki remarked. Thor was still...simmering? glowering? in front of them.

"You," he said finally, crossing his arms and looming over Tony. What was with all the looming? "You are intimate with my sister?"

Tony squared his shoulders. He wasn't the king of bad decisions for nothing.

"Once when she was your brother," he said.

"Thor, if you hit him, I'll tell father," Loki said. Tony looked at her. "What? I can't beat him, we've been over that already. Odin can."

"Father wouldn't care," Thor said, muscles flexing. Tony got ready to duck.

"Thor," Loki repeated.

He looked at her, and then he looked down, and apparently Asgardians could just sense that kind of shit, because he uncrossed his arms and pointed at Tony.

"You will name him Thor," he said.

"Seriously? One Thor in the family isn't enough?" Tony heard himself say.

"Thor Lokisdottir would be a lovely name for a girl," Loki said with an absolutely straight face. Which was of course when Steve and Nick Fury walked into the room.

"What the everloving hell is this?" Fury asked.

Thor turned around.

"I am to be an uncle!" he announced, beaming.

"I hate you so much," Tony said out of the corner of his mouth.

"You don't, really," Loki replied.

***

They held a secret meeting at the mansion once the official debrief was over, because there were some things not even Tony would say in front of Nick Fury.

"So, just for clarity," Steve said, rubbing his face. "Last night you got that drunk despite the 'don't get that drunk' plan, and then you showed up and the pair of you had tawdry relations in an unsanitary environment -- "

"Fucked in the bathroom," Loki put in.

"You don't get to talk, drama queen," Clint said.

"Don't make me punch you, I think I'd hurt myself," Tony told him.

"I'll do it for you," Natasha offered.

"Thank you." Tony smiled at her.

" -- without using even the most basic of contraceptive precautions -- "

"Oh, talk dirty," Tony said.

" -- and the mass havoc you rained down on New York today was because you wanted to get his attention?" Steve finished. "You know he has a cellphone, right?"

"You do know where he lives," Bruce added.

"I'm new around here," Loki replied calmly.

"I made rules," Tony offered. "No destroying New York, no random disappearing, that kind of thing."

"And out of all of the nominally responsible people in this room, you're the one who's going to be in charge of a tiny helpless infant," Steve said.

"I save the world on a regular basis," Tony objected. "Besides, if you want to be the one who gets up with Junior at three a.m., be my guest, I won't stop you."

"Do Midgardian babies do that?" Loki asked, looking alarmed.

"Oh, this should be fun," Bruce muttered.

"This was so much less stressful when we had a plan, even when it was a bad plan," Steve groaned.

"Hey, you're Captain of the Avengers, not Captain of me or my relationships or my sudden but inevitable paternity," Tony said. "I'd like to point out that I took a dangerous criminal off the streets of New York armed only with a bottle of alcohol and my virility, and you're welcome."

"Captain," Loki said. She was holding Tony's phone out across the table. "There's a woman named after a condiment on the other end of the line who wishes a word."

"You can't deny she's smooth," Clint said, as Steve eyed the phone.

"She's very interested in your reaction to my capture," Loki added. Now Steve just looked hunted.

"This isn't over," he said, but he took the phone and left the room. "Pepper, listen -- "

"She was always the clever one," Thor said to Bruce, in a somewhat noisy undertone.

***

When Tony stumbled into the nursery at one in the morning, woken by intermittent wailing, someone was already there. His first instinct was to attack, but he stifled it; he was pretty sure it was his night to get up with the baby (thirty seconds ago Loki had poked him in the ribs and suggested as much) but it could very well have been Clint's or Bruce's turn. Steve had a rota, somewhere.

The man standing next to the crib looked up, nervousness evident in his body if not his features.

Tony had thought a lot about the kid at the bar, since it all went down. Loki swore it wasn't her. While she wasn't above lying to get out of a tight spot, Tony had begun to learn her tells and he thought she was being truthful. But someone had shown up in the bar and bought him a drink with the intent of altering (or possibly restoring) reality -- because if they hadn't, he probably wouldn't have kept drinking, meaning no filthy drunken sex, meaning no son now lying in that crib, snuffling noisily.

So he'd had reason to make sure he remembered the face, and to wonder about who the kid was, and to form some deeply unsettling theories.

And here he was.

This time Tony took a moment to really look at him, illuminated by the moonlight coming in through the window. He had a narrow, handsome young face, with the first hints of a sharp jawline; his skin was pale but not unhealthy-looking, and he was slim, like he was built for speed. His short black hair was nonetheless messy, sticking up in tufts here and there like he'd been running his hands through it. He wasn't wearing sunglasses this time; his eyes were vivid green, but they didn't glow in the night the way Loki's sometimes did.

"So," Tony said, because someone had to talk and perhaps his son inherited Loki's ability to be silent, "time travel."

He could see his theoretical conclusion hit home -- could see the surprise and then amusement cross his face. The man -- his child, holy shit, grown to manhood -- executed an elaborate bow. "T. Stark Lokason, time-traveller, at your service."

"Went with the middle name, huh?" Tony asked.

"You named me Thor."

"Blame your uncle. He threatened dire consequences. You should feel lucky you weren't a woman; Loki was very attached to the name Mildred."

"Didn't get any say in it, did you?"

"I thought Oops would be a nice gender-neutral name. Voted down."

Stark laughed, Tony's laugh through and through. "Fair enough."

"Here on business, or is this a social call?"

"Oh, just checking in. And I know what you're going to say, so don't bother. You get one question. Use it wisely."

Tony lifted an eyebrow. "I thought we weren't supposed to know about the future."

"My parents are a god of mischief and you, and you raised me in a superhero commune," Stark reminded him. "Does any of that scream conformist to you?"

There was another wail from the crib and Tony brushed past him to pick up the baby, bouncing him lightly, carrying him to the chair in the corner. Stark folded himself gracefully into another one.

"I want two," Tony said. "Two questions."

"Yep, that's dad," his son murmured, amused.

"They're harmless enough."

"Okay, fine. Two questions."

Tony decided not to push for three. "Did you save the world?"

Stark looked taken aback. Perhaps that wasn't what he was expecting.

"You said the fate of the world was involved. Taken care of?" Tony prompted.

"Ah," Stark nodded. "Yep, got that covered."

"Awesome." Tony curled his infant son against his shoulder, then shook his head and laughed. "You caused your own conception. You bought me that drink. Look at the cojones on you."

"What can I say?" Stark relaxed languidly into the chair. God, it was like looking at himself in his twenties, youth and arrogance and cleverness. "That's one question..."

Tony stroked his son's hair, ruffling it a little in the back. He liked that -- everyone said you couldn't tell what babies liked, but Tony knew.

"Are we good parents?" he asked. "I mean, we didn't fuck you up too badly or anything?"

Stark's reaction was -- strange. When he heard the question his smile went broad and unguarded and bright, like it made his day just to be asked; then Tony saw him actually register that he had to answer, and it dimmed just slightly.

"You did fine, Dad," he said, still smiling.

Not perhaps entirely honest, Tony thought. Then again, everyone screwed up their kids, and at least Stark liked him enough to sugar the truth. Couldn't be easy, being the son of a billionaire and a god.

"Good." Tony wiped at some drool on his shoulder ineffectually. The baby burbled and sniffled. "I do the best I can by you."

There it was again, the smile like the sun. He had probably taken smiling lessons from Steve or something. Tony settled back and let the silence settle around him, until a thought crossed his mind.

"I haven't had a drink in three months," he said. Stark cocked his head. "Every time I think about it I think, what if I have to pick him up and I drop him? What if he gets sick and I have to take him to the hospital?"

"You miss it?" Stark asked.

"No. Don't really have time to. Besides, you know. Priorities," Tony said. He glanced at Stark. "Okay, I have a third question. Did you invent time travel or did you steal it from someone?"

Stark snorted. "Never can put one over on you." He shook his head. "I stole it. From you, if that makes a difference. Which reminds me, I should go. See you in a few," he added, laughing, and disappeared.

"You get that from your mother," Tony told the baby in his arms, giving him a thoughtful look. "I'm taking credit for the rest. "

Chapter Text

The invitation was delivered by a hawk as large as a man, with literal golden feet and bronze wings. Tony would have liked to have studied it, but it just swooped in, dropped the letter on his head, and flapped away.

It was addressed to Prince Loki Odinson.

Tony wasn't usually shy about reading other peoples' mail, but when the other person is the god of mischief whom you're dating, you learn to be circumspect. He tucked it in his armor and went back to the SHIELD van where Coulson was managing cleanup of Doc Oc's latest attempt to take over the world.

"Ditching the debrief," he told Coulson.

"No, you're not," Coulson said, without looking up from his tablet.

"Okay so the thing is," Tony said, "A giant mechanical hawk just dropped out of nowhere and gave me this."

He held up the envelope. Coulson peered at it.

"You're excused," he said.

***

Loki, who wasn't yet in SHIELD's good books and thus was banned from being anywhere near Avenger battles, was waiting for Tony on the Iron Man landing pad at the Tower.

"Did you vanquish your enemies, pet?" he asked, arms crossed.

"Verily," Tony replied with a grin. "Got some mail for you, too," he added, holding out the letter. Loki took it, frowned, and slitted it open with a sharp movement.

"It's from father," he announced, skimming it. He sounded angry. "I am invited to an audience with him in Asgard."

Tony gave him a blank look. "He couldn't just call you?"

"I was banished from Asgard. Disowned. Who does he -- " Loki's green eyes glowed, which was never a good sign, but then he shook his head and they settled. "Heimdall," he muttered.

"Person, place, thing? Verb?" Tony tried.

"Heimdall the all-seeing. That ass tattled on me." Loki looked up at him. "Father knows I'm pregnant."

Tony considered this.

"All-seeing?" he asked.

"Yes."

"So he knows because -- "

"Yes."

"Your family is creep fucking tastic," Tony told him.

"I'm well aware." Loki snapped his fingers around the paper and it caught fire, ashes flying upwards. This was actually progress; last week he'd set an entire magazine on fire for running a nasty story about Tony.

Clint had been holding the magazine at the time.

Mainly they were all grateful he hadn't set the person who wrote the story on fire.

"I'm not going," Loki said, and stalked off.

***

The second invitation was delivered in the middle of the afternoon, while most of the household was basking in the late-summer sun on the pool terrace of the penthouse. Sif brought it in person.

Wow.

"Are there more like her back home?" Tony asked, as Sif disappeared back up the bridge. She'd handed this one directly to Loki, who was staring at it in concern.

"Monogamy," Clint sang out.

"We're not saying that word," Tony sang back, as Loki ripped it open. "Another invite to Dad's house?"

"More of a demand," she replied.

"What is father threatening?" Thor asked, peering over her shoulder.

"He doesn't say specifically. I can't really imagine. You'd think casting me out to Midgard was punishment enough."

"Scuse me," Tony put in.

"Don't be fussy," Loki told him. "At any rate, it's not like Father's going to personally torture me."

"No, but he may send the Warriors Three to...escort you," Thor pointed out.

"Oh look, you're invited too, goody," Loki said.

"Some of us don't require an invitation," Thor replied loftily.

"Some of us are Father's favourite."

"Some of us didn't allow Jotuns into Asgard and then destroy a village in the New State of Mexico," Thor retorted.

"Ladies," Tony said. Both of them glared at him. "Don't argue about who's prettiest. There's plenty of teenage rebellion to go around. You don't want to go, you don't have to go."

"The Warriors Three -- " Thor began.

"Uh, Avengers," Tony said, gesturing at the superheroes that currently surrounded them. "She's probably the safest person on the planet right at this very minute."

"Loki, if your Dad sends your brother's gang to retrieve you, I'm not risking my life for you," Clint called.

"Yes you will," Steve intoned sternly. Natasha smacked Clint on the back of the head.

"Well, I won't enjoy it," Clint replied sullenly.

***

The third invitation was delivered in the courtyard of SHIELD's New York headquarters.

By horse.

"Sleipnir!" Loki cried, with some of the first real non-ironic absolute joy Tony had ever witnessed in him. He hurried across the grass to where a coal-black, fire-eyed, eight-legged giant fucking horse was standing, throwing his arms around its neck. The horse nuzzled his hair, grunting.

"You know," Coulson said, even-toned, "I read a lot of mythology after New Mexico."

"You can't believe everything you read, Sir Agent Coulson," Loki answered, as Sleipnir nosed against his chest and dropped a letter into his hands.

"Someone wanna clue me in?" Tony asked.

"Sleipnir is the mythological steed of Odin," Natasha said. "Loki gave birth to it."

"Uh," Tony said.

"Nothing but untruths," Loki replied, ignoring the letter, stroking the giant eight legged horse's muzzle. "Mortals always mix up the legends. I was there at the birthing, nothing more; his dam was a dear mount to me in the hunt. Who is my favourite of all my father's steeds?" he asked Sleipnir. "You are my favourite! Indeed the most gallant and many-legged!"

Sleipnir whinnied, backing away a few steps. Loki frowned.

"You have discharged your duty well," he said. "Return now."

The eight-legged horse disappeared.

Things you never think you'll think, Tony thought to himself.

"Another invite from dad?" Tony asked, as Loki opened the letter.

"Certainly. This is more like it," he said, walking back to where half the Avengers and most of SHIELD's local staff were still gathered. "He has extended his invitation to include the Crimson Iron Knight, Anthony Stark, son of Howard, of the Isle of Manhattan of Midgard."

Tony couldn't deny that Asgard had style when it came to titles.

"Very well. We shall accept," Loki declared, folding the letter. "Sir Agent Coulson, inform my brother to make ready. We depart tomorrow at daybreak."

"Wait, hold up a second," Tony said. "Suddenly I'm on the guest list and you're a-okay with this?"

"Of course. I'm not going to be summoned to the court like a child without you present," Loki said calmly.

"So all the shouting before -- "

"Well, it's tradition. These things go in threes. Third invitation, you're invited, so we shall go," Loki said. "You do wish to see Asgard, don't you?"

"Yeah, that's every man's dream," Tony muttered, as Loki swept inside. "Meeting the in-laws in the palace of their home planet."

"Could be worse," Coulson said.

"How?"

Coulson cocked his head. "Point. Good luck."

***

"Where does it go?" Tony asked that night, because he couldn't sleep and they'd already had pretty much all the possible sex.

"What go?" Loki murmured sleepily, twisting in Tony's arms.

"The baby. When you're, you know, Boy Loki. Where does it go?"

Loki frowned. "Nowhere. I can assume any form I like."

"Yeah, but you'll be...showing soon. I mean," Tony said. "Is this a magic thing? Because I actually really sort of distrust magic. We maybe should have discussed that."

"I was aware," Loki said, rolling his eyes.

"So where does it go?"

"He doesn't go anywhere. He remains within me. Your perception alters, that's all."

"Okay but I just had a pretty vivid perception of sucking your dick," Tony pointed out.

"Yes you did," Loki said smugly.

"But -- "

"Pet," Loki said patiently. "I've ceased a vast majority of my mischief-making and made peace with my brother for your sake. Could you not, please, for my sake, calm yourself and accept that there are things Midgardians cannot comprehend?"

Tony frowned. "No."

"Ass." Loki turned again, back to him.

"Look, it's the way I am, okay, I want to understand things. If you say I can't, fine, I'll stop bugging you, but I'm not going to stop wondering."

"Well then you shall have to wonder in silence."

Tony was silent for a good five minutes.

"Is there some kind of pocket-dimension, well, womb-dimension -- " he broke off when Loki hit him with a pillow.

"Go to sleep, bright boy. Tomorrow we journey to Asgard. You would do well to be rested so your Midgardian lack of manners does not wholly mortify me at court."

"Hey, this is Thor's family we're talking about here. I bet I'm the only one who uses a fork."

He could just barely see the edge of Loki's mouth tilt upwards.

***

The process of travel between Midgard and Asgard wasn't pleasant. Probably, being gods, Thor and Loki were cool with it, but Tony was in the armor and even so he had to stop on the steps of the gate-house and put his head between his knees for a minute. Heimdall the All Seeing gave him a look like he knew what Tony had been up to. Loki gave Heimdall the silent treatment.

There were horses waiting for them at the gatehouse. Even though all of them had only the requisite four legs, that was almost as bad as travel-by-rainbow-bridge.

When they finally reached their destination, a ring of guards ushered them into the palace, which was fucking huge and did jack-all to help Tony's nerves. They were shown into a wide arching hallway and led up to a large pair of doors. Thor was fixing his hair; Loki shuffled his robes a little.

"Should I have worn a suit?" Tony asked, helmet tucked under one arm.

"Absolutely not," Loki said.

"A warrior wears armor when being introduced to court," Thor added.

"Oh well, good thing I had some lying around," Tony replied.

"Do try not to infuriate father," Thor said.

"Oh no, do, I'd love to see that," Loki put in.

"I was talking to you," Thor told Loki.

"A pointless task. Shoulders front," Loki said, as the doors swung open. A voice boomed.

"Crown Prince Thor Odinsson of Asgard, heir to the throne," the voice announced. "Prince Loki Odinsson of Asgard and Jotunheim." The voice lowered slightly. "Sir Anthony Stark Howardson of Midgard."

"I can tell your dad likes me already," Tony said, as they started walking up the long carpet towards the big throne at the other end. It was occupied by an immense, grizzled man with one eye.

As they passed, people on either side of the carpet dropped to one knee.

"Crown prince," Thor said smugly.

"Ass-kiss," Tony muttered. He heard Loki choke off a laugh.

They stopped in front of the steps to the throne, Tony taking his cue from the others, and Thor took a final step forward.

"Father, at your summons," he said, bowing his head. Loki grabbed Tony's sleeve and dropped to one knee, pulling him down after. The whir of the suit's servos was loud in the silence.

"Rise," Odin commanded. "So, my son," he said, as Tony rose to his feet next to Loki. "You've been busy on Midgard, I hear."

"Indeed, father," Thor replied.

"I spoke to your brother, Thor."

Damn, and Tony had thought Howard was a cold bastard.

"We have both been busy, father," Thor said blandly. Tony fought down a hysterical laugh.

"Some more so than others. Loki, you have reconciled with your brother?"

"Yes, father," Loki murmured.

"This is pleasing to me. Perhaps I should send more of my court to Midgard; the rural air seems to do you good."

Both brothers were silent, but Tony was...well, Tony.

"Excuse me?" he asked, crossing his arms. "Rural? You people ride horses."

"Tony!" Loki hissed.

"He speaks," Odin said, with a kind of menacing interest. Tony'd had worse; Nick Fury only had one eye too and he did way more with it than this douche. "You are Anthony Stark of Midgard, the Crimson Iron Knight?"

"Sir Anthony Stark," Tony said sharply.

There was a ripple of laughter.

"Forgive me, Sir Anthony," Odin said, looking amused. "You are what passes on Midgard for a warrior?"

"Tony is one of the finest warriors of Midgard," Thor said. Odin quelled him with a glance.

"Well, we shall see. My son, Loki, I am informed by Heimdall that you are with child."

A noise ran through the crowd, hushed, shocked whispering. Loki straightened his shoulders.

"Yes, father."

"This is the father?" Odin indicated Tony with a gesture.

"Yes, father."

"Midgardian."

"Yes, father."

Odin grunted. "Unacceptable."

Tony started forward. "Listen to me, you pretentious prick, acceptable or not -- "

Loki grabbed Tony, pulling him back. Odin's face darkened.

"I will not be insulted by a Midgardian -- "

"Well you just were!" Tony retorted, twisting out of Loki's attempt to forcibly gag him. The rest of the court were gasping and murmuring to each other in stage whispers. "I'm sorry if my kid isn't acceptable but the way I see it you're the most fucking irrelevant -- "

"Enough!" Odin roared.

" -- asshole who ever decided a throne and an eyepatch gave him the god damned right to pass judgement -- "

"ENOUGH!"

Silence fell around him, but Tony wasn't about to back down from the fight now.

" -- on something that has fuck-anything to do with him," Tony finished. "If you called us here to insult my family and embarrass your own son, congratulations, you've done your part. Thor, can we get out of here without having to get back on a damn horse?"

Thor was staring at him, aghast.

"Are you finished?" Odin asked. Tony swore the temperature in the room dropped.

"Actually, no," he said, turning back to Odin. "You one-trick dick, the best you can think of to do when your kids are having issues is to shove them off on Midgard, and then you get surprised when they prefer it to this?" he asked, gesturing at the court. "You should be lucky I deigned to come here." Asgardian language must be contagious. "I'm an Avenger and a billionaire and to translate that in little words you'd understand, that makes me royalty where I come from -- "

"Is this true?" Odin interrupted sharply. "Loki?"

"In the Midgardian sense, yes," Loki answered. Tony didn't think it was possible for him to get paler than he was normally, but he was managing it.

"Thor?" Odin asked.

"He is my brother in arms," Thor said. "Heir to an illustrious family of wizard armorers on Midgard. His wealth is untold. He is a fierce warrior who has never been bested in battle. He has defeated Obadiah the Ironmonger, Justin of the Hammer, and Volkov of the Whip; together we have battled the great wizard Doctor Octavian and -- "

"There's no need for an epic," Odin said, cutting him off. He turned his eye back to Tony. "Sir Anthony, you have insulted me -- "

"Oh, I'm just getting warmed up -- "

" -- that will be sufficient from you. You have also violated my son. This will not stand. If you are a champion of Midgard you may prove it in single combat."

"Father -- " "No, father -- " Thor and Loki spoke at the same time.

"SILENCE!" Odin boomed. "You may have some little time to prepare for your fate. At the strike of the hour, I will see you on the field of blood."

He rose, which was a little like watching a landslide happen, and left the room.

"Two questions," Tony said, turning to Loki. "One, what the hell is the field of blood -- "

"That was magnificent," Loki interrupted. "I've never seen anyone -- "

"Truly, a feat," Thor put in. Asgardians were crowding around Tony, which was making him extremely nervous.

"Okay, but this field of blood -- "

"To be challenged to combat by the king!" a man said. "An honor for any man, let alone a Midgardian!"

"Volstagg," Loki said urgently. "Volstagg, you must go to father."

"This field, is it made of blood, or just steeped in it, or...?" Tony tried.

"He wouldn't kill him, would he?" Thor asked Sif.

"Well, he might," Sif replied.

"Seriously, though, so putting aside the field of blood, how long until that whole 'strike of the hour' thing -- "

"We must make him ready," another man said. "Do you have a sword, Sir Anthony?"

"A sword?" Tony asked.

"Are you really with child?" someone was asking Loki.

"Yes, a sword and shield -- or do you prefer the staff?"

"I don't really -- "

"Boy or girl?"

"But we must speak to father -- "

"A boy. They're naming him Thor."

"Such a shame, the child will grow up a bastard -- "

"Just a fucking minute now -- "

"Or an orphan, if the Allfather lets it grow up at all."

"OKAY, THAT IS IT," Tony yelled, firing a repulsor blast into the ceiling. Dust rained down, but at least it got people to shut up. "I'm going to ask TWO QUESTIONS and if I don't get DIRECT ANSWERS I'm going to start swinging, and you DON'T WANT TO SEE AN ANGRY MIDGARDIAN TAKE YOU FUCKERS DOWN."

Thor cleared his throat. "Yes, Tony?"

"One. Field of blood. Go."

"A combat field in the palace courtyard. No actual blood is involved," Loki said. "Traditionally battles held on the field are to the death, but that hasn't happened in ages. I'm sure Father won't go that far."

"I'm not," Thor muttered.

"Okay. Two, how long do I have until I have to enter into mortal combat with your father, the god-king of Asgard?" Tony asked.

Thor looked out through the arches of the throne room. "Twenty minutes, perhaps?" he ventured.

"Fine. Wait, I have a third question," Tony said. "Am I allowed to hit him with stuff other than swords and sticks?"

The Asgardians exchanged glances.

"Your lance of light should be permissible," one of them said warily.

"Fine, that evens the odds a little," Tony said grimly. "Now, somebody get me a sword. And the name of whoever it was who just suggested Odin got to say whether my kid grows up at all, so I can beat them down once I finish kicking the shit out of your dad."

"He boasts like a warrior," someone said approvingly.

"You're damn right I do," Tony replied.

***

Tony doubted that the ensuing fight would ever be written in song or go down in history as anything other than him getting the holy shit kicked out of him by Odin. The repulsors definitely helped, and he got in a few good hits, but he couldn't really deny the thorough beatdown that followed.

He was still pretty proud, though. Because there was this one moment, where Odin had him pinned in the mud and he could barely breathe, the sharp head of Odin's staff stuck right through his helmet and the point digging into his jaw, and Odin said, "Yield," and Tony said, "No."

"I could kill you," Odin whispered. Tony struggled as much as he could with a sharp blade pressed to his throat. "Save your own life. If you yield I will spare you."

"No."

"Why do you not yield?" Odin asked harshly, clearly frustrated.

Tony dragged enough air in his lungs to choke out a reply:

"If it were your sons, would you?"

There was a pause, and then the blade receded, the weight lifting off him. Tony heaved a deep breath and rolled over, pushing himself to his knees. His armor was flashing ninety-five different warnings and error messages at him.

"I declare the combat finished," he heard Odin say over the roar of his own pulse. "To the feasting hall."

Tony gasped and tried not to retch up breakfast, flipping his faceplate up. He was covered in muck, bruised all over, and probably had a concussion. Blood slicked down his chin.

He was barely conscious of hands helping him to his feet -- the world tilted and spun for a moment -- and then he was being guided slowly, Thor on one side and Loki on the other, off the field.

Someone wiped the blood off his face and a few other someones cleaned his armor with him still inside it, and he'd probably have enjoyed that a lot more if he wasn't still trying to catch his breath.

***

"Feasting Hall" turned out to be something of an understatement, when Tony was finally declared presentable and led to it. There were about a million Asgardian gods seated around a table covered in what looked like roasted everything, and someone was pouring mead for him even before he sat down.

"Is he going to kill me later?" he asked Loki in an undertone. Loki was sitting next to a woman (presumably...Queen Odin? Odinswife?) at Odin's left hand; Thor was on his right, looking like he was born to be at this kind of shindig. Loki was picking at what Tony dearly hoped was venison, because after the asskicking he'd just had he deserved venison.

Loki kissed his cheek, which elicited good-natured hoots from the table.

"Honor is satisfied," he said in Tony's ear.

"What does that mean, exactly?" Tony asked, as Odin stood up. Everyone else did too, so Tony groaned and staggered to his feet.

"Sir Anthony Stark Howardson, the crimson iron knight of Midgard," Odin said. "You have fought with valor and refused to yield in the face of death."

People were looking at him.

"Uh, thanks?" Tony tried.

"If the men of Midgard produce such warriors, then a lord of Midgard shall not be considered unfit for my son," Odin continued. "I acknowledge the son of my son, and welcome you into the royal house of Asgard."

"Did we just get married?" Tony asked Loki.

"Is now a good time to bring up monogamy?" Loki asked, an amused glint in his eye.

"Let us feast!" Odin declared, and everyone was about to sit down and presumably start gnawing bones and throwing away cups when one of the women a few seats down from Thor cleared her throat. Odin paused, cup halfway to his lips.

"Yes?" he asked.

"I do not wish to spoil any feast, nor impugn Sir Anthony's performance on the field," she said delicately, "but I wonder, my king, if you have fully considered the consequences of this...happy occasion."

Odin gestured for her to continue.

"This child will be half-Midgardian, and no blood of the house of Asgard," she said. Loki was glaring at her like he wanted to jump over the table and strangle her himself.

"To the point, my lady," Thor said, looking murderous himself.

"When it is born, the child will be third in line to the throne."

"And you object to the son of a warrior and a prince having a claim to Asgard," Odin concluded.

"A warrior of Midgard and a prince of Jotunheim? This particular son, yes, sire."

Odin looked at Loki. "Midgardian custom is different to ours. When the child is old enough, we will foster him here for a time, so he may learn our ways."

"My lord -- " she began, but Loki interrupted.

"No, I see where her aim lies," he said, setting his cup aside. "We will discuss fosterage some other time. The concern is easy to assuage; I renounce my claim to the throne, and the claim of my child."

Asgardians were pretty keen on dramatic silences.

"Loki," Thor began.

"No," Loki said. "It's all on you now, my dear brother."

He was grinning. Thor looked stressed, Tony thought.

"I am content to be crown prince of Jotunheim and I'm certain our son will have no trouble being a Lord of Midgard," Loki continued. "Clearly you will have to find a suitable wife, and produce heirs as quickly as possible," he added to Thor.

"You catty bitch," Tony muttered to Loki. "You just had to screw Thor, didn't you?"

"It's one of life's small pleasures," he answered.

***

Tony wasn't going to say he couldn't party with the best of them, at least on Earth, but he'd never met the best partiers in Asgard, and about six hours into the feast he was willing to admit defeat. Loki patted his arm and spirited him away, Thor following, while one of Thor's pals caused a distraction.

Heimdall and Loki cordially ignored each other again when they returned to the gatehouse. Talk about your fucked up family reunions.

They arrived back on Earth just as the sun was setting, and fortunately on the terrace of the penthouse; Tony staggered through the armor removal process, desperate for a bath and at least nineteen hours of sleep.

"Well?" Steve asked from the couch, when he saw them enter. "How did it go?"

"Mrrr," Tony replied, not stopping in his slow but steady quest for a horizontal position.

"He challenged my father to single combat," Thor said.

"You what?" Steve asked, getting up to follow them.

"He was very valiant and very, very stupid," Loki said over his shoulder. Tony began shedding his undersuit.

"JARVIS, hot bath," he called, sliding wearily into the tub as the water switched on. Thor, Loki, and Steve crowded into the bathroom with him. Tony glared through narrow, weary eyes.

"You're not modest and it's nothing I haven't seen before," Steve informed him. "So, uh, did you win?"

"No," Tony groaned, as hot water rose around him. "I did the exact opposite of winning."

"Why did you do that?" Steve asked.

"Because he's huge and violent!"

"No, why did you challenge him?"

"He called our son unacceptable," Loki said.

"He was a douche," Tony put in.

"What is a douche?" Thor asked Steve. "I have long wondered."

"I'm not entirely sure," Steve answered.

"Oh my god, go away," Tony moaned. "Go, go away, let me die. Not you," he added, as Loki turned to follow the other two out. "You can stay and tell me how awesome I am."

"You are not awesome. You lost," Loki informed him, but he settled crosslegged next to the bathtub anyway. "Although...I have never seen someone who wasn't mother speak to father that way. His face when you called him a 'one trick dick'!"

Tony slid deeper into the bathtub, eyes closing as he listened to the soft splashes Loki's hand made where he dangled it into the water.

"Half-Midgardian he may be," Loki said, after a while, "but our son will be magnificent, pet. He will. You can teach him about your machines and endow him with the wealth of Midgard, and I will teach him to be exceptionally clever and deceitful -- "

"Not evil," Tony murmured.

"Fine, not evil," Loki said, sounding only a little put out. "And he can be fostered at the court, where he'll learn the ways of warriors. He may not be considered in the succession, but he will still be a prince."

"I'll make him a crown," Tony drawled. "I want you to promise me one thing."

"Bright boy, you know I'm a liar."

"Yeah, well, hang it up for a second," Tony said, opening his eyes. "Promise me that when Thor finally knocks Jane up, I get to be the one to tell your dad."

Loki laughed. "That would be a pleasure. My pet," he added affectionately, and kissed Tony on the cheek.

***

Tony expected -- because he might not be up on his mythology but he sure as hell was Genre Savvy -- that his son would be born either:

a) In the middle of a firefight;
b) In a broken elevator while a battle raged outside;
c) While he, Tony, was being held hostage and unable to reach them;
or
d) In some wacky unlikely scenario involving several Avengers and a flying car.

Tony was prepared for the birth of his first (please God: his only) child to be a farce of epic, narrative proportions, so he was shocked when Steve called him and said "Loki's on her way to the hospital, you should meet her there" and Tony made it to the hospital no problem, traffic not being an issue when you can fly, and everything went according to the way these things were supposed to, as far as Tony could tell. It was distressingly normal.

Twelve hours after he got the call, he was holding his son in his arms.

Holy shit he was holding his son in his arms.

The kid had a full head of black hair and slightly pointy ears and enormous green eyes and a set of lungs that proved, yes, he was definitely half-Stark. Tony stared down at the tiny creature spastically making horrible faces at him and said, "Fuck, what have I done?"

"Language!" Steve said.

Because of course it wasn't just Tony at the hospital, now that the kid was out amongst them. The entire superhero population of New York had apparently disinfected themselves and shown up to get a peep at the next generation. Steve was actually in the hospital room poking at the child with unnervingly large hands. Thor had come in, boomed "A fine namesake!" and fucked off to tell all of Asgard that he was an uncle. Outside the room, peering into it like creeps, Bruce and Natasha and Pepper and at least three quarters of the Fantastic Four and Spider-man and Darcy and Jane and Phil Coulson were watching. Clint was looking at the kid like he was some kind of alien (well, okay, he was half-alien, but there was no need to stare).

"This is getting officially weird," Tony murmured, and kicked Steve in the shin, because his arms were full of his offspring. "Everyone out. Cap, make them leave. Go, go on, out, my kid, mine," he said, and Steve reluctantly left, closing the blind on the window as he went. In the semi-darkness of the hospital room, Tony settled on the edge of the bed.

"You look hotter than you have any right to look," he said, because Loki had given birth and then promptly decided screw weeks of recovery and made himself male. He held out grabby arms for the baby.

"Hello, princeling," Loki crooned, when Tony reluctantly gave up the kid. "Little prince of Midgard. Prince Thor Stark Lokason, my apologies for the name. And for your uncle. And a little for your father."

"Don't listen to your mother, he's crazy," Tony said to the baby. "Oh man, you are going to be one confused child."

***

When Thor returned from Asgard, he came with presents, which Tony was not expecting. Apparently granddad had taken one look at Thor's camera-phone photograph of T.S. Lokason in Loki's arms and lost his shit.

"You should be glad I was there to moderate his exuberance," Thor said, and the idea of Thor moderating anyone's exuberance was terrifying. "I convinced him I should leave the goats behind."

"Goats?" Tony asked weakly, staring at the enormous trunk Thor was unpacking. There were tiny little baby onesies made out of what looked like the hide of some strange alien animal. There were several swords of varying sizes. There was a downright terrifying toy jester head on a stick. And a rocking horse with eight legs.

"The young prince has been gifted with two mares of good stock plus a chariot and four goats," Thor said. "Big goats."

I can't believe we have to babyproof your dad," Tony said. "Did you get goats when you were born?"

"Of course," Thor said.

"We can't give this stuff to my kid."

Thor offered him a wooden sword.

"Do you want your only nephew to die?" Tony asked. He waggled the terrifying jester head. It tinkled with little bells.

There was a sudden squeal from the doorway, and Tony looked up from his contemplation of the birth-gifts of Asgard to find Loki in the doorway with Stark in his arms. Stark was staring at the jester head, fascinated.

"I see Odin has found reason," Loki said, coming forward. "Oh, this will serve," he added, picking up a red embroidered blanket. "Mother's doing. Practical."

Stark squealed again, eyes still fixed on the jester's head. Tony resigned himself to the madness and shook it at his son. Stark burbled. With a groan, Tony rested it on Stark's chest and the child promptly began chewing on its hat. Loki, hardly looking at either one of them, thrust Stark into his arms and began digging through the trunk with Thor.

"Dare I ask about the goats?" Loki asked. Thor held up four fingers. "Well, I suppose that's sufficient."

"You knew about the goats?" Tony inquired.

"I suspected. They're very traditional."

"Father was excessively pleased with the prince," Thor said.

Tony settled down in a nearby chair and watched Thor and Loki reminisce about their own terrifying childhoods in Asgard. Stark was warm and heavy in his arms.

"Don't worry," he said. "I'll protect you from granddad's good intentions."

***

The Avengers were, as a concept, still kind of terrifying, even with the advantage of familiarity.

Billy thought they were going to have to invent a new word, ultraterrifying maybe, to describe Tony Stark standing in the doorway of Little T's nursery, arms crossed. And then another word on top of that (megaultraterrifying? Terramegafying?) to describe Tony Stark and Steve Rogers arguing.

"No," Tony said.

"It'll teach them responsibility," Steve answered.

"I think you have it exactly backwards," Tony said.

"Tony -- "

"No! You teach them responsibility and then maybe they can look after him!"

"You're being unreasonable," Steve said. "It's four hours. They'll be fine. There's three of them."

"Only because I'm not leaving those two horndogs alone without a chaperone," Tony replied.

"I think I'm insulted," Tommy said.

"Not nearly as insulted as I am," Teddy replied.

"Oh, like I wasn't sixteen and dating an ethereally beautiful brunette once," Tony retorted.

"Point," Teddy said. Billy preened a little.

"There are three people in the world I trust to look after my son," Tony continued. "Phil Coulson, Pepper Potts, and CAPTAIN AMERICA. I'm not leaving Stark with three teenagers, one of whom almost blew up New York."

"Hey!" Billy frowned. "I didn't do it on purpose."

"That's not helping!" Tony replied.

Loki coughed delicately from inside the room.

"Oh, don't give me that, if it were up to you we'd be teething him on the bones of our enemies in Asgard," Tony called over his shoulder.

"Sinew. Bones splinter," Loki replied.

"The Young Avengers are not appropriate babysitters! Be on my side!" Tony ordered.

"Your side is stupid," Loki replied. "Get out of the doorway before I turn you into a rabbit."

Tony looked back and forth from Steve to Loki to the three Young Avengers, eyes narrowing.

"I'm only doing this to make him happy," he said, jerking a thumb at Loki. He stepped aside.

Tommy was through the door at lightspeed, slamming to a stop next to the crib.

"Hello, my little delinquent in training!" he cooed, lifting Little T out of his crib. The baby giggled at him.

"This is weird," Teddy said out of the corner of his mouth.

"So weird," Billy agreed. Apparently the only thing on earth that turned his hardened cynic juvie of a brother into a heap of goo was a baby.

"They're Young Avengers. They'll be fine," Steve insisted, all but hauling Tony out of the room towards where Pepper was waiting by the front door.

"Thank you, children," Loki told them, as Tony's protests died away down the hall. "We'll be back after the party. You have all the telephone numbers."

"Yes, sir," Teddy said dutifully.

"And Kate stands ready to give aid if you need help."

"Yes, sir."

"There's money on the kitchen table. If you use it to buy drugs, make sure one of you stays sober enough to mind the baby."

The boys exchanged glances.

"Can we just get a pizza instead?" Billy asked.

"Well, if you must. Youth these days, no sense of fun," Loki said, and bent to kiss Little T on the forehead. "Keep things interesting, my love."

"Isn't he supposed to tell him to be good?" Billy said, as Loki swept out regally. Loki did everything regally.

"God of mischief," Teddy replied, looking only vaguely worried.

Tommy hefted Little T in his arms and walked out.

"Go make out if you want!" he called, heading for the living room. "Little T and I are going to watch movies and plot world domination."

"He's kidding. I think," Billy said. "We can't make out. We have to make sure Tommy doesn't teach Little T how to pick locks or blow things up."

"Well." Teddy said. "I mean, we could."

"No. No, we can't," Billy said reluctantly. "Tony'll kill us if he finds out."

"Just a little making out?" Teddy pouted.

There was a crash from the living room.

"It's all good! That wasn't the baby!" Tommy called. Teddy sighed.

"Look how responsible we're being already!" Billy said brightly, trailing Teddy down the hall to where Tommy and Little T were curled up on the couch, Little T gnawing on Tommy's fingers while Tommy channel-surfed.

***

For a while, when he was young, Stark assumed everyones' parents could change gender at will. After all, some of his friends had two moms or dads, and Billy and Teddy were dating and Teddy could shape-shift too, though he'd never seen Teddy turn into a girl. When he bothered to apply logic to it, Stark decided either his father liked being a boy, or his mother was just really indecisive and liked to change a lot.

He figured it out by the time he was about four, but it left him with a pretty permanent impression of gender as an irrelevant consideration in life. Which was probably what Mum intended.

It took him slightly longer to sort out the concept of 'parent' properly. Yes, Dad was the one he went to when he scraped a knee or needed something explained to him. Dad was the one who usually tucked him in at night -- he'd run down to the workshop and stand in the doorway in footie pyjamas watching Dad build things, and then Dad would look up and say "Past your bedtime, what are you doing down here?" and tuck him in, his goodnight kiss smelling like ozone and steel. Mum was the one who always let him off easy when he got into trouble and taught him how to be sneaky and fed him breakfast, because at seven in the morning Dad was frequently unfit for human company.

But there were all these other people too, and they cooked his meals or tutored him or watched him when Mum and Dad weren't around, and Uncle Thor sometimes took him to Asgard for a weekend, even though when he was little he'd really rather have gone to Disneyland.

Eventually he figured out that it wasn't normal, he wasn't normal, but normal wasn't always awesome. Once he'd worked that out, he settled easily into the idea of having a Mum and a Dad and four extra superheroes. Plus Tommy, his favorite babysitter, and Tommy's brother Billy and their friends Teddy and Eli, and Uncle Clint's friend Kate. And Agent Coulson, his second-favorite babysitter only because Agent Coulson was sneaky.

He didn't realize until he was grown that babysitters generally didn't carry guns.

***

When Stark was four, Dad caught him dragging a piston as big as he was out of his workshop and asked, "Where do you think you're going with that?"

Stark looked up at him. "S'for my Big Wheel," he said.

Dad raised an eyebrow. "What are you going to do to your Big Wheel?"

Stark shrugged. "Could go faster. Gonna make it go faster."

Dad looked the proudest Stark had ever seen in his life. "Faster, huh?"

Stark was his father's son through-and-through in at least one respect: faster. Steve didn't look happy about it but Mum said Steve could stuff it and that made Clint fall around laughing, so Dad bought him some tools and a machine kit, and they made that Big Wheel go fast.

***

Stark was seven when Mercy was born, and he got to stay overnight at Tommy's apartment because Mercy was born while Mum and Dad and half the Avengers were off battling evil and the other half were at the hospital.

Stark brought along his Iron Man pyjamas and his tool kit and three textbooks, and by the time Tommy was done making dinner he'd set it up so that Tommy's TV got every television channel everywhere and one that both of them suspected might come from some other solar system.

"So, whatcha reading?" Tommy asked, picking up one of Stark's books and making a face at it.

"Readin' about polynom'al equations," Stark answered, scrawling a formula carefully in the margin of the book he had open on his lap. "That one's about temporal uncertainty."

"You are scary smart, Little T. Don't you want to watch cartoons?"

"I like Roadrunner," Stark offered.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, Dad says when I'm eight I can write a paper about dimensional physics in animation."

"Why not now?" Tommy asked.

"He says there's no need to show off."

Tommy laughed. "Fair enough. Need some help?"

Stark offered Tommy his textbook. Tommy's lips moved, eyes narrowing, and Stark watched carefully. Usually Dad or Mum helped him with math, though Mum's idea of 'helping' was making the numbers dance. Still, both of them looked at his textbooks like they understood them, even if Mum refused to admit it.

Tommy's face was blank, eyes confused rather than knowing. Stark waited for him to work it out, but eventually Tommy looked over at him and said, "I guess if you do need help, we're gonna have to call your dad. I got nothin', kid."

Stark had a sudden, shocking understanding: he was smarter than Tommy.

"S'okay," he said, trying to block up the awful, fearful sensation he had. Tommy noticed, though.

"What's wrong, Little T?" he asked.

"I'm weird, huh?" Stark asked. "Nobody else my age reads about polynom'al equations."

Tommy slid an arm around his shoulders in a sideways hug. "Well, no, but that doesn't make you weird."

"No?"

"It makes you special. Anyway, there's something very important I think you should remember."

"What?" Stark asked hopefully.

"You will always be littler than me," Tommy replied, and squeezed him in the ribs right where he knew Stark was ticklish, and Stark squealed and shoved at him.

"Roadrunner?" Tommy asked.

"Yes!" Stark agreed, and then they ate ice cream and Stark showed him where Looney Tunes got the physics wrong.

The next morning, he woke up from the little trundle bed Tommy had made up for him in Tommy's bedroom, but he stopped when he got to the door, because he could hear Dad and Tommy talking in the kitchen. He put his ear to the crack and listened, like Mum had taught him.

" -- lost some blood, but she's okay," Dad was saying. "Pep's a fighter."

"What about the baby?"

"Healthy. Big," Dad replied.

"But...but I mean is she...?" Tommy asked, and Stark wouldn't understand the tone in his voice until years later.

"No, no birth defects. Well, nothing so far, but Bruce had a look at her DNA and he says nothing's likely. I don't know why everyone's even worried. There's no reason Steve's enhanced genetics should cause any kind of problem."

"Well, at least they're both safe and healthy."

"Yeah. Hell of a night," his dad said, sounding tired. "How was Stark?"

"Oh, great. Fixed my cable, did some polynomial equations, stayed up too late."

"He's a hell of a kid," Dad said, sounding pleased. Stark grinned from behind the door.

"Does that ever worry you a little?" Tommy asked.

"All the fucking time. You ever try keeping up with a toddler who knows how to build stable load-bearing structures out of alphabet blocks?"

"He just seemed kind of upset about it last night. I couldn't keep up with his homework and he thought he was weird."

"He is weird. That's his charm."

"Well, that's what I said," Tommy replied. "Man, Tony, I don't know about you but I had a pretty messed-up childhood -- "

"Welcome to the club."

" -- so like, we have to not fuck him up, right?"

"Working on it. Is he up yet?"

"Nah. Go on ahead, he'll be glad to see Dad."

Stark scurried back to bed, diving under the blankets and curling up so that when Dad came in he could yawn convincingly and say, "Dad?"

"Hey, Stark," Dad answered, scooping him up, blankets and all. "Guess what?"

"What?"

"Steve and Pepper had a baby last night."

"Ugh, babies," Stark groaned, and Dad ruffled his hair.

"Come on, my little head case, we'll get you dressed and take Tommy out for pancakes, sound good?"

"Are they bringing the baby?"

Dad laughed. "No. Just us boys and your mother. Now, what time is it?"

"Time is an arbitrary construct created to define an essentially unstable and nonlinear irrational existence!" Stark cried. "It's always time for breakfast!"

"Good boy."

***

Stark was the son of a futurist, and he'd been helping Dad run numbers on alternate universes since he was in high school (so...age ten) and while it was cool it could also be downright chilling. With a little concentration, he could sit down and untwine the threads of history, studying each individual element and how it related to the whole. Even Dad wasn't as good at it as he was; by his own admission, Dad had trouble being objective about the future now that he had a child who was supposed to live in it.

Take the Superhuman Registration Act, for instance. Stark knew that when he was three, the government tried to push through a law requiring all superheroes regardless of ability to register their real names and undergo training and qualification. He knew it hadn't passed, but that a year later, very quietly, a recruitment and outreach program had been funded with SHIELD resources.

He found out, eventually, that Dad had been instrumental in defeating the SHRA and founding the Superhuman Outreach Program -- and, from a slightly drunk Clint one time, that Dad had practically stormed into Congress and told them all he wasn't going to raise his son in some crazy fear-driven Fascist regime.

But Stark could see a different story, as well -- he could see his father as a different sort of man, supporting what he'd see as the inevitable, and where the break would come in. Too many of his parents' friends were too headstrong for SHRA to ever work effectively. That was the thing about people who fought world-threatening villains armed only with shields and arrows; they were crazy stubborn motherfuckers who would never give an inch against something they didn't believe in.

The difference for him was, his father was a crazy stubborn motherfucker who also had a zillion dollars to spend on making sure anyone who disagreed with him was made irrelevant, and his mother was even crazier but wicked good at politics. Without his mother driving Dad on, and without Stark himself to put his father's reality in perspective, Dad would have gone for SHRA wholeheartedly.

But Cap would have screamed bloody murder about it, and never knuckled under, and that would have caused a war, a bitter conflict that Stark only saw ending one way: with Steve killing Dad, or Dad killing Steve.

They were best friends. The idea of one of them killing the other made Stark sick to his stomach, made him screw up the holopaper where he was running the math and throw it across the room.

"Stark?" his father called, and Stark turned as Dad put his head into the room. "Time travel again?"

"Something like that," Stark sighed.

"Come on upstairs, give it a rest."

"Daaad. I'm nineteen, I don't need a birthday party."

"Tough nuts, Clint baked a cake, you have to come blow out the candles. There's money riding on whether we'll get food poisoning."

"Okay," Stark said, and Dad slung an arm around his shoulders as they left the workshop.

Upstairs, everyone was gathered -- Avengers past and present, various spouses and partners and kids, and there was Steve, grinning at him, Dad's best friend and as good as a second dad to Stark.

It hadn't happened. It might have, in some universe, but it hadn't here, and when Steve ruffled his hair, which he KNEW he hated, Stark just smiled back.

He had them all, all of his friends and family, and he'd do whatever it took to keep them. After all, in some ways he already had.

***

It had its drawbacks, though.

Stark could remember being sixteen and finding himself suddenly, painfully sober when he walked in the door at three in the morning after an illicit underage kegger to find Captain America standing in the hallway, arms crossed.

Dad had taken his side on that one, which surprised him, but a few days later Dad took him out for lunch and told him things about his grandfather and the way Dad had been before he'd been born that made him feel way more ashamed than Steve ever could. It also made him a lot more careful about drinking.

He had a vivid flashback to that moment, the "Oh shit busted by Steve" moment, when he arrived back in Dad's workshop not an hour after he'd left on his first multi-stop trip through time -- through TIME! -- to find Captain America standing there with his arms crossed.

It didn't help that Dad was standing next to him, arms also crossed.

Mom probably wasn't going to be able to get him out of this one.

"Oops?" he tried.

"Sit," Dad said, pointing to one of the benches in the workshop. Stark crossed his own arms.

"No," he said.

"You are not too old to be grounded," Dad said. "But we'll discuss that after your debriefing."

Stark blinked. "Excuse me?"

"You took proprietary Stark technology, jaunted through time with it, and affected your own past," Dad said. "Sit the hell down. You're being debriefed."

"But you know -- "

"And nineteen years ago I was willing to cut you a lot more slack than I am now," Dad replied. Captain America just glared.

Stark sat, giving his father a sullen look.

"He's all yours, Cap," Dad said, and left.

Oh, shit.

***

He emerged from the workshop about an hour and a half later, feeling like he'd just had the crap kicked out of him in spar practice, even though Cap hadn't touched him. Just grilled him relentlessly on where he'd been and what he'd done, and whether he fully understood what he'd done, and what this was going to mean if SHIELD got wind of it, and what a responsibility it all was. Cap had a way of talking at you, where he was earnest and cunning at the same time, that made you feel like a jackass for even thinking about doing what you'd just done.

He found his father on the terrace, with a mug of coffee and a tablet, basking in the sunrise, eyes closed. A second steaming mug sat on the table next to him.

"So, how badly am I busted?" he asked, sitting across from his father and picking up the mug. Dad opened his eyes and set his tablet aside.

"You are the reason I have grey hair," he said.

"I'm pretty sure old age is the reason you have grey hair."

"Do you really want to be a smartass with me right now?" Dad asked. He sighed. "You could have destroyed the continuity of reality as we know it, I hope Cap made that clear."

"But I didn't."

Dad cocked an eyebrow at him. "Which is interesting in itself," he said.

Mom definitely couldn't get him out of this.

"Listen, Dad, I can explain."

"Save it," Dad said. "Look, I fought with pretty much everyone in this house when we made the decision to send you to college. You were fourteen. I did the child prodigy thing, so I wanted you to have a normal life without all that crap, but you were bored out of your mind. Even I could see that. So I let you go. We let you run as fast as you could for as long as you could, and it's not that I'm not proud you're going to, I don't know, win the Nobel for physics before you're twenty five. But you are nineteen, and there is no amount of schooling or natural talent that is going to give you the two extra decades of experience you should have before trying this kind of thing. You think you're invincible? Yeah, I did too once." He tapped his chest through his shirt, and Stark heard the plasticky clatter of his arc reactor. "You're old enough to outpace your old man when it comes to temporal physics. I get that you understand the calculus of time."

"It's really more like algebra."

Dad groaned. "Stark -- "

"Sorry, Dad."

"So I think you knew the odds and the outcomes when you took off tonight. And don't think I'm not glad you did what you did," and his father reached out, ruffling his hair. "I am. I'm glad you're here, every day. But you can be the smartest man in the world and you're still not going to be old enough to resist making impulsive, inexperienced decisions. And I don't care -- " he began, when Stark opened his mouth to protest, " -- seriously, I don't care when it's your life you're making those decisions about, you have that right. I can let you flail around like a moron when you're the only one who suffers for it. But it's not just you anymore, Stark. It's the stability of existence you're messing with here. You can't hope to understand the import of that at your age."

"When you were my age you built weapons of mass destruction."

"And I regret it," his father said. "What does that tell you?"

"That you didn't learn much," Stark said before he thought about it.

Dad's eyes darkened. "And you mean by that...?"

"If you didn't want someone messing with time, you wouldn't have built the temporal manipulator with me," Stark replied. "If you don't want a bomb to go off, Dad, don't build a fucking bomb."

"Watch your mouth."

"Well, is it untrue?" Stark asked, and didn't wait for a reply. "I helped you make that tech. I had a right to test it, especially since I'm the only one who completely understands its use. I field-tested it with no measurable instability, even interacting with my own timeline. So are you treating me like a colleague who has a share in the success of this project and overstepped his bounds, or are you treating me like a child because I'm your son?"

His father sat back, fingers tapping on the table, eyes on him.

"Half the bad guys we've dealt with in the last twenty years have come of scientific advances that were field-tested long before they should have been," Dad said. "A significant amount of the work we've had to do has been a result of too far, too fast, with too little control. And yes, I am the embodiment of too far, too fast, but I worry about you. So I am speaking to you as both."

Stark laughed. "You're worried, what, I'm going to turn into a supervillain? Really, Dad?"

"Kang the Conqueror," Dad said, and Stark stopped mid-laugh, like he'd been slapped. He sucked in a breath, suddenly tense. "I'm not saying that's a path I see you following. But I doubt very much he thought he'd go down it either."

Stark looked down, ashamed. Cap could make you feel like a jackass; Dad could make you feel like a disappointment, which was much worse. He didn't, not often, but when he did it was the most helpless feeling in the world.

"Thor Stark Lokason, look at me," his father said gently. Stark looked up. "You are brilliant. Before you were born, your mother told me you'd be a king, and I don't doubt her for a second. But you have to be careful. You could burn down the world, but that's only part of it. If you were hurt, I'd do it for you. We are dangerous people, Loki and me, and the lengths to which we'd go for you are perilous. This kind of power -- "

" -- comes with responsibility, I know, I got the ethics lecture from Peter like a billion times," Stark sighed. "I'm sorry, okay?"

"Don't be sorry, be smarter," Dad said. He tilted his head. "And now for the fun part of the parental lecture."

"Don't tell me you weren't having a little fun taking me down," Stark said. "Just a little."

"Maybe so," Dad admitted, "but this is the part where I offer you a job."

Stark stared at him.

"You want to field-test that tech? SHIELD is getting ready to rotate two new recruits into the Avengers for training. You could be one of them."

"I -- what?"

"You want to be an Avenger?" Dad asked.

"Only since I was like six months old!"

Dad smiled. "Told you. Fun part."

"Who's leaving the team?"

They'd rotated Avengers in and out before. Bruce had left when Stark was still young. Mom and uncle Thor were probably going to outlive everyone by a few centuries at least, so they were still on the team, and Cap was forty-five and still looked like he was in his twenties, so he probably wasn't leaving, and the new people who'd come in were all still --

"Me," Dad said.

"What? Dad, no -- "

"It's past time, kiddo, and everyone knows it. I've been training with SHIELD to run ops and tech from the command center."

"You -- you don't want me in the suit, Dad -- "

His father burst out laughing. "No. God, no, Stark. Mercy's taking it over. She'll be training with me for a few years."

"Oh," Stark said. He thought about it; sure, why not give the Iron Man suit to Captain America's daughter. "Well, she'll be good at it, I guess."

"Going to have to let out the chestplate a little."

"Don't be a dick, Dad."

His father laughed again. "So? Interested?"

"But if you're leaving and Mercy's taking the suit..."

"Peter's stepping out too; he wants more time with MJ. That leaves a spot open for an agile smartass. We get you hooked up to the manipulator, get you some new repulsor tech, tie the manipulator into a phase modifier -- well, you won't be able to climb walls, but it'll get the job done. Training will give you time to fuck up without destroying causality, at least that's the theory." Dad looked at him. "So? In?"

"In. Completely in. Where do I sign?"

Dad grinned, standing up. "Start working on a superhero name. I'll get the paperwork set up."

"Trickster," Stark called, just as his father reached the terrace door.

"Hm?"

"Trickster. Apt, don't you think?" Stark said.

"Your mother's never going to let me live this down," Dad sighed.