Familiar
At the desk Nat and Bruce are sat Loki pulls out the chair opposite and Tony hops off his shoulder, top the table sits tail sweeping slowly. Loki grabs a book from the pile the pair’d stacked and starts skimming through it.
“Most of this isn’t making any sense,” says the scientist rather begrudged with concepts of magic.
“To you,” Loki retorts smoothly.
“Mm. Then how do you expect us to help?”
“Find a way to be useful. There’s this thing called the internet and google translate. There’s also dear Jarvis.”
“If you’ll kindly read the title Mr. Banner, I’m happy to allocate a translation for you.”
“Right. That’ll be annoying,” Loki stands, hand waves a bunch of books vanish. “I’ll be in my room.” Tony’s worried Loki will leave him, just as Pepper slams through and the god grumbles: “Oh joy.”
“What the hell is going on?!” she demands confounded. Tony pats towards her his tail twitching in agitation. He wants to reassure her obviously can’t. Seeing him she stops, points. “Is that Tony?!” At her bewildered face Loki smirks and Banner’s quick to answer, stands.
“Um, yes-”
“Wh-what in the- How???”
“This’ll be a while,” Loki drawls, lifts Tony over his shoulder and moves past them. Tail twitching still Tony makes with Pepper’s wide gaze contact, vexed by the entirety of the matter and that he can’t talk.
In the lift, deliberate or not he can’t tell, Loki’s fingers card through his mane. It’s nice and soothing, inappropriate perhaps, intimate almost. He ought bring it to attention put to it halt, doesn’t, tail stilling as his head tilts into Loki’s hair, smelling of winter and flowers he can’t name. The lift stops, stirring his fogged thoughts as Loki walks out onto his and Thor’s floor, for his room. He lays Tony top the bed and flops down beside him.
“Honestly, that woman is a walking headache,” casually iterates. Tony meowed to chide that as one of the books materialized in Loki’s grasp and he faced the Stark smugly. “Sorry what was that? I don’t speak ‘cat’.” Its brown eyes narrow tail sweeping and it grumbles, head tilted sideways. Loki smirks at the sight, reverting attention to the book’s contents.
He flips through the pages too quickly as usual, speed-reading in a way Tony often thinks inhuman. Accurate, probably. And too quickly Tony’s bored, as usual. Tired too. He moves up to lean against one of Loki’s pillows, watches him for some time. Noting so, without looking his way the mage asks coolly: “What do you want?” faced him then. “Bored?” The Stark blinks, perching his chin top his paws eyes lidded. “Sleep then. I’ll wake you once I’ve found something.” He starts slightly at contact, glanced sees the sheets of their own accord slide atop him. He smiles and looks towards Loki, who’s refaced the pages and Tony’s back to just watching, the contours of the god’s sharp profile his focused gaze, the proximity that’s familiar and easing. His eyes close.