No one, not even Doctor Stephen Strange, knew why the Cloak of Levitation grew so attached to Tony Stark.
Perhaps it had been a mistake on Tony’s side to dismiss the garment’s antics so casually at first. Apparently, a flippant remark like, ‘I'm going to allow that,’ after getting swatted by the cloak wasn’t going to fend the Sorcerer Supreme’s loyal piece of outerwear off.
And now it followed Tony around until it wasn’t funny any more.
When Tony started to date Loki, the Norse trickster god, things escalated quickly. The cloak insisted on accompanying the fresh couple on each and every date and refused to stay at the wardrobe with the other outerwear. Instead, it made a point of sitting at the table with Loki and Tony where it soused its hem into their drinks and sometimes, it even danced next to them while visiting some fashionable night club.
After a short while, it turned out that Loki didn’t have much patience with magic artefacts that didn’t belong to him.
‘You go home or I’ll donate you to an arts and crafts class where they'll turn you into a quilt,’ Loki said resolutely when the cloak tried to follow them into the bedroom after a lovely evening in a posh restaurant. ‘Hush.’
Tony watched as the cloak hurried away. ‘Huh,’ he said after a while. ‘That was awesome in a not overly sensitive way. Where do you think it is heading?’
‘The New York Sanctum, probably, to mope in it’s vitrine.’
‘And is it going to come back?’
‘We’ll find out soon enough,’ Loki replied darkly.
‘So you feel the jury’s still out?’
‘It’s up to Doctor Strange, I guess,’ said Loki. ‘The cloak is known to be a fickle thing, but when it returns to ruin our night, the good doctor is going to find himself in a tight spot, courtesy of me. I think I’ll have to talk to Strange anyway, because this might be a case of emotional neglect. I’ll never understand why some people don’t understand the responsibility they take when adopting a magic artefact. These things are sentient and have feelings.’
‘Yeah,’ Tony remarked thoughtfully. ‘Maybe the cloak just wants to have fun and I don’t object to taking it with us when we go out. We can even be friends, if that's an option. But it needs to go to the laundry first because it's smelling of moth balls.’
‘And we can’t have that!’ exclaimed Loki. Then he drew Tony into an embrace. ‘Now, my dear, shall we forget about other peoples clothes?’
‘Sure.’
‘And would you mind taking yours off?’
‘Certainly not!’ With a light touch on his elbow, Tony invited Loki inside his bedroom. He watched with satisfaction as the trickster sealed the door and the windows with a spark of magic.
‘Just to be on the safe side,’ muttered Loki, who knew how to get his priorities straight.
Outside, the Cloak of Levitation hovered around a little and used its supernatural hearing ability to listen in on the men's conversation. Then it returned to the Sanctum, just as Loki had predicted. There, it retired to its vitrine and processed the information it had gathered that night and the first thing it did was to cleanse itself to get rid of the moth ball scent. They could just have told me, the cloak thought. It felt slightly offended at first, but then it lit up: Loki and Tony had been talking about visiting a museum tomorrow morning.
Just my thing, the cloak thought joyfully, hoping that neither Dormammu, the ruler of the Dark Dimension, nor any other mythical enemy of Earth would turn up to ruin its appointment with its newfound friends.