Interchangeable

Everything went downhill too quickly for even Loki's millennia of battle reflexes to help. One minute they were putting a protection spell on a piece of armor that Tony had added a highly volatile chip into and the next they were blacking out on the floor. Tony dreamed of falling, of stitches in his lips and battle scars hidden from unwanted eyes, of a rainbow bridge and a castle that he couldn't see the end of. Loki dreamed of a mansion on the beach and a workshop filled with all of the billionaire's favorite things. He dreamed of things inside his chest that didn't belong and agony. 

When Tony woke up he knew immediately that something was wrong. He felt odd- like his arms were too short and his legs were too long and his skin was too tight. He only had to open his eyes to figure out the issue. 

He stared into the eyes of himself, knowing that Loki was the person whose emotions were showing on his face same as it was his on Loki's. 

"Well fuck," Tony muttered, his voice coming out with the Asgardian lilt that he had always noticed in Loki more than Thor. 

"Of course this would be the week Thor chose to go back to Asgard," Loki muttered in angry Italian, taking the billionaire's real accent and native language for a spin. 

"You're speaking Italian and not hiding my accent. We can't go anywhere until you learn how to sound like me," Tony said flatly, everything in his body language saying he wasn't going to negotiate. 

"At least that explains why your voice always sounds a bit forced. I'm glad I decided not to bet on it anyways," The God said, speaking English again but with a heavy accent. 

"Try again," Tony urged, sitting up and taking inventory. 

He was bruised to hell and back from the fore Loki hit the floor when they fell and he couldn't find his center of gravity but, otherwise, nothing seemed broken or anything else equally as damaging. Tony wondered why it was that his skin felt so wrong before his normal voice startled him out of his train of thought. 

"Now?"

"Yup. Good job, you sound nice and American now," The billionaire muttered, shifting uncomfortably. "Why does it feel so wrong to be in your skin? Not because I'm in you but it's like you aren't the right shape right now and the thing inside my chest wants to be the right shape," 

Loki's face went through an array of emotions all at once, amused, calm, bitter, excited, anxious, and finally resigned. 

"Great- You have my magical pathways at your disposal," He said dryly after a moment of carefully considering her options, knowing that he wouldn't be able to get out of explaining after taking a careful look on his face. "I'm a frost giant. I don't just say that for fun, but I'm a shapeshifter on top of that. It's always been there, to some degree and I only realize how prevalent it's been now that I'm in the body of someone not itching to change, but once I touched the Giant's Tesseract it lifted the flimsy block Odin had placed on me when I was a child. I always wish to be in my natural form but the issue is that frost giants were made for snow and ice, not heat and humidity. Even if I wanted to shift in this environment would make my lungs burn. " 

Tony looked considering for a moment before his eyes lit up. 

"We don't have to tell the Avengers right away... Do we?" He asked slyly, making Loki's accent posher and closer to Jarvis's without even really thinking about why.

"No..." Loki answered with the beginning of a smile on his face. 

"Well in that case," Tony muttered, walking closer to his own body and swaying his hips enticingly in jest. They both knew the game that they played would never end in a relationship but it was fun to try out new seduction techniques on each other anyways. Now that he had the God's body he couldn't resist figuring out how everything and anything worked. "How do you feel about teaching me how to use magic so that I can fix this if yours doesn't work in my body or teaching me while you wait for it to gather enough for a spell of this magnitude?" 

Loki threw his head back and laughed at the predictable way Tony's priorities were placed, still chuckling even as he leaned closer to his own body. They had been tactile friends before but now that they were literally in each other's bodies the last of their personal space boundaries were gone- why not take advantage?

"I can feel the dredges of my power building under your skin and there is nothing that I can do to stop it. That means that when we switch back you will either have a strong affinity to feel magic or you will retain the ability to do magic. The pathways being built in your body are kind of like puberty for a magic user and they are connected to your soul- not your body. That means that if your body has the pathways when we switch your soul with be forced to build its own pathways when my soul leaves. That would give you your own magic specifically tailored to you as all magic is to me. The other option is that my soul being in your body will leave traces of my magic which you will theoretically be able to use so long as you learn how to grab for it properly. Either way, I think it might be in our best interest to teach you how to use magic when you still have access to my refined pathways which are familiar with channeling magic,"

It took Tony a moment to fully understand the words, but once he did he didn't know what to think. 

"So I'll either get my own magic, have some of yours inside me to use at my leisure, or be sensitive to magic used around me once this is all over?" He asked for clarification, knowing immediately that he was in way over his head. He liked to study magic but he had never wanted to study it this close. 

"Yes," Loki confirmed without hesitation, knowing that concealing the truth would do nothing for them in the long run. 

"Fantastic," The billionaire muttered sarcastically, taking a deep breath before speaking again, "Teach me your ways, Reindeer Games," He conceded, offering the truce genuinely and earnestly. 

"This should prove to be interesting," The God muttered before following Tony to the back of his lab where they had done most of the tests on his magic.

Let me know what you guys think! Hope that you enjoyed. -Rose