Accurate
Tony lets out a tense breath as the door shuts. He gets up pulls on Loki’s pants, exerting great effort to omit the fact that they’re his, and they are making ‘direct contact’, considering his lack of boxers – Tony shudders in arousal – he snaps out of it –
The heck’s he supposed to do with the tail???
He shoves it down one of the legs – that’s uncomfortable. One potential solution after the other skim through his head till land on one and he looks at the bathroom, tugs off the pants, Loki’s shirt on him blanket-like to mid-thighs – Stupid tall handsome bastard.
[I’ll get you a new pair,] he thinks moving in seek of scissors. [On the second thought,] that being Loki’s inevitable amusement at what he’s to do next, [maybe not].
Scowl hardens glimpsing his reflection. No wonder Loki laughed. He pokes at the ridiculous ears, glanced down to the shirt pawed at the soft cloth.
Pulled it up to his nose breathed in, eyes closed he absorbed the clean, minty winter scent that was distinctly Loki, that of he’d catch a whiff whenever the god passed him or drew near, very near – He sees himself, dark lidded eyes Loki’s shirt in his clutch at his mouth and nose. Before he decides to stop he is quite sure.
It is too late.
XXX
He wants coffee. He also wants to avoid the others,
until he doesn’t look half-cat!
Barb brings him one up he would stay in Loki’s room but then Jarvis says Banner waits in his lab – nursing the mug with an eyeroll he heads out, curious himself as to the biology of things. Bruce was discreet enough, and not an asshole.
And of the very few people Tony would let draw blood. Bruce sets the vials aside, lifts the scanner,
asks directly: “So. What’s going on with you and Loki?”
Tony would rather be teased about the tail.
With his signature poker face retorts: “What do you mean?”
“I mean, Clint thinks you slept together, again.”
“Again??”
“Yeah he keeps, insinuating it – and, I mean, you were, butt-naked when I-”
“Yeah cause I was a naked cat! And what you guys debate whether or not me and Loki’ve fucked behind our backs?!!”
“…Well-”
“No! Okay? Just-” he chuckles dryly. “No – really? I’m with Pepper.” He feels sick.
“Yes. You are,” loathes the way the tone underlies with certain scorn even if Bruce remains polite and probes: “So, why spend the night with Loki?”
“Wh- I just, fell asleep!”
“Yes you do that a lot around him.”
He does. They don’t tend to watch movies in groups they do alone way past midnight way past any healthy bedtime because they’re both hopeless insomniacs – it helps not how they’re always seated adjacent- he shakes his head pressed: “What are you trying to say, exactly?” what he doesn’t want said what he hasn’t the will to think right now, digest and react and act
because he must because-
“Nothing, I’m just. Asking. I mean. You guys are, close. Like. Really close-”
“Yeah so?? We’re friends.”
“And you flirt.”
“I flirt with everybody. I flirt wi-”
“Loki doesn’t.”
“Loki, doesn’t like any of you-”
“Accurate.”
“I mean, we’re practically best friends. So what, there’s nothing. Going on,” another humorless chuckle.
Another blatant lie that, lately, he realizes. Promptly and strongly, overwhelmingly…
He can’t make sense of things he says before he thinks it: “Fuck there is.”
Bruce paused.
“There’s something. I just. I need…” tensely huffed eyes low, tail darting ears twitching agitated.
…Bruce sets down the scanner, faced him in full arms crossed expression patient, expectant. “Look I. I love Pepper, really. But…”
“But. You’re not. In love. Anymore…Right?” Bruce needn’t a verbal answer. His eyes alone, guilt-riddled and wayward answered. “…How long. Have you had feelings for him?”
“…I don’t know,” another lie.
He’d been drawn to him, from the start, had allowed these gods into his home into his life into his every day and Loki, into his lab into his habits and routines, onto the platform where he crafts onto the rooftop where he hides, by him on the couch by him when they dine by him at the bar, with him all the time – and to wonder…“…A while.”
“…You do realize, that he treats you the way he does, flirts the way he does, because he definitely sees you as more than a friend, right? Tell me you don’t see it.” He sees it
in coy jade eyes, that could soften his way, in sly smiles that could warm in a way, in proximity and long hours, in stories told and words that consoled and healing magic, only for him.
He wonders, how he had never wondered…
“I think,” Bruce says. “First. You should talk to Pepper. Break things off. It’s not right, staying in this when. You have feelings for someone else.” It isn’t no it isn’t fair to her and he hasn’t been anything close to fair with her. He-
“Maybe when you don’t look half-cat so she’ll take you seriously,” Bruce said to break the ice and Tony huffed a laugh wry, lost sooner in thought as then Bruce mumbled on with his tests to change the subject that Tony’s mind stuck to wondering, how he’s been the person he has been how fed up she near always is,
and what the heck Loki sees in him.