Chapter Text
“What... What is this?”
“Don’t judge,” Toni said, not bothering to look away from the holo screen in front of her. “Mama needs a break.”
“Certainly,” Loki agreed, and Toni heard him walking further into the bathroom. “I am simply confused as to why you are bathing while wearing a mask.”
“Sheet mask,” Toni corrected, now leaning back against the tub in satisfaction. “Cleansing.”
“You say this as if it explains...” He made an exaggerated gesture to encompass the entire room. “All of this.”
All of this being: Toni, wearing a sheet mask, laying in a large tub – with dubiously silver-purple bubbles all around and a suspiciously flowery sweet smell –, with a tray in front of her – holding a glass and a bottle of Bruno Paillard, a tray of chocolate covered strawberries, and a holo screen –, while Girls Got Rhythm played in the background.
“This,” she said, in a very dignified tone, “Is called self care.”
Loki did not look very convinced.
“And the reason for it?”
“It’s Monday,” she said, immediately trying to make a face – which the sheet mask did not help with at all. “And I am already done with the week. Unfortunately for everyone involved, the week is not yet done with me.”
“Ah,” Loki said, straightening up again. Toni opened her mouth to loudly complain, but he didn’t move towards the door.
“Apparently me being pretty and smart is not enough to distract the people oversea from the fact that my most lucrative sector is technically closed for business. Can you believe it?”
“Hardly so,” he said, still from somewhere behind her. “Though, with that... thing over your face–”
“Not everyone is blessed with Jotun genetics, you bastard,” she complained, turning to glare at him. She valiantly refused to be distracted by the sight of him taking off his clothes. “Some of us have normal human skin that breaks out when we are stressed.”
“The horror,” he mocked, shooing her to move forward – unfortunately, while still wearing shorts. “And was that a poor joke about my lack of parental figures?”
“It could have been,” she agreed, moving to let him slip in behind her. “But, as I said before, what you have is an overwhelming number of parental figures. You are the opposite of a bastard. You are the anti– ooh, that’s nice.”
“I thought you would enjoy it,” Loki said, and she could literally feel the smug expression on his face.
She did not comment on it, though, because Loki’s fingers on her sore muscles were magical, and he was a bitch enough to deprive her of it over one catty comment.
That was one thing that had not changed.
The bitchiness.
In fact, Toni was inclined to say he had gotten more bitchy in the past weeks they had been around each other.
His relationship with Laufey and the other Jotnar had grown. Loki was still very uncomfortable around them, but other than trying to do everything in his power to make Loki like him, Laufey didn't seem to be doing anything nefarious.
And the two siblings, well.
Byleistr was a sweetheart as usual. He was intrigued by Loki now, and very curious about everything his half brother had to say.
And yet, it was Helblindi that Loki seemed to gravitate the most to.
Aka the one member of the family who had been the most hostile to Loki. Despite his behaviour - maybe because of his behaviour - Loki seemed to like him best.
Toni, who also liked him best, commended him for the great taste in enemies.
“Where are you headed to, tomorrow?”
“London,” she said, eyes still closed as she enjoyed the massage. “First thing in the morning to, which I think is unnecessary. I am flying with a private jet: shouldn’t this mean I get to choose what time I leave and go?”
“Most certainly.”
She ignored the condescending tone. “I am going to have meetings back to back all morning because someone had the bright decision to create two different SI bases in the UK. I bet it was Stane, and this was his original plan on how to off me.”
Loki’s fingers hesitated for a second, before he continued with a sigh.
“Your choice to continue to use your most painful experiences as the butt of jokes will never cease to confuse and worry me. Perhaps the dear Pepper was right in her insistence of making you see a mind healer.”
Toni chose to again ignore the blatant collusion going on between her friend and her... her Loki (yes, the term was catching on and no, she had no interest on trying to work out the meaning behind this).
She was very glad to see that her friends and Loki were getting along, but really: did they have to use their new alliances against her?
“After the meeting, I have to see my favourite bottoms in STEM because they want to show me something. Knowing the two point five of them, this could be anything from a pretty rock to the Bifrost itself.”
Loki gave one of his long suffering sigh (which was incredibly rude; did he not know that Toni was a delight to have around?). “One cannot simply see the Bifrost without it being activated. And point five? I fear Darcy might have a problem with being referred in such a manner.”
While they did not know exactly who he was (trust issues? Toni and Loki had never heard of them, of course), Darcy and Jane knew Loki was Toni’s partner, not exactly socialised, and that he had a strange understanding of physics and science in general.
That was just a little more than the world at large was aware of.
Toni hadn’t necessarily hidden Loki from view.
There were a lot of columns and gossip about who her new dark haired beau was and where Toni had fished him from. The conspiracy theories in particular were going crazy, because it just so happened that Loki had been friend with many famous painters who had made portraits of him throughout the centuries.
But, despite many pointed comments from the peanut gallery that self identified as her ‘friends’, Toni had not gone out in public and called him her boyfriend.
Or her soulmate.
And look.
Toni was not a private person.
When you had been the Stark family’s favourite accessory since birth– pardon, only daughter, you weren’t exactly allowed privacy. Articles had been written about her first steps and her first words, and they had not stopped cataloguing (or trying to catalogue) all of the firsts in her life after that.
Privacy was not a concept she had ever expected.
On the other hand, Toni was not one for sharing everything about herself with the world, either.
Because Howard and Maria had paraded her to the world before she was old enough to form an opinion for herself, she had learnt how to keep the things that mattered to herself a secret. The world already had every part of herself they could reach for: at the very least she could keep her thoughts to herself, no?
Loki... Loki was important to her.
And she did not want to keep him hidden. She did not want to act like he did not exist to the world.
But she also did not want to share him with the world.
Sue her, she was selfish. And Loki was hers.
Why did she have to tell anyone who he was? Why would she have to explain what he meant to her to the outside world?
She knew what he meant to her.
That was really all that mattered, no?
“Toni Stark?” Loki placed a finger on her chin and turned her head slightly so that she was looking in his direction. “Are you well? Where did you go?”
Toni forced herself to focus back on the now and the hot wet guy in the bath with her instead of wherever her thoughts wanted to take her.
She slipped the sheet mask off and then turned around so that she could kiss him.
Loki allowed this with no resistance, fingers not quite touching her face.
When she leant back, though, he had an annoyingly knowing look on his face.
“You are terrible at distractions,” he told her. “Also, your face is terribly sticky. Is this natural?”
“Natural for my face to be sticky?” Toni pretended to think about it. “Considering what my favourite activity is, yes. That’s quite normal. Why, I thought you enjoyed–”
“You,” Loki said, cheeks dusted pink, “Are terrible. Terrible.”
“I take that as a compliment,” she said, plucking a slice of chocolate strawberry from the bench and waving it in his face. “Now, we can go on with this annoying conversation about my thoughts...” A soft kiss on his lips. “We can waste time discussing what else we have planned for the week ahead...” Another light kiss. “Or you could enjoy the fact that you have me wet and naked and pretty willing in front of you.” With that, she pressed the strawberry to his already parted lips and then pressed another kiss.
This time she made sure to kiss him properly : kneeling between his legs, forcing him to tilt his head upwards, fingers tangling around his split ends while her chest pressed against his, lips still tingly with the champagne she had been sipping.
She pressed her teeth lightly on his lower lip before releasing him, a smile on her face she knew was just a little bit unhinged.
“Your choice, of course.”
Loki’s hands were on her waist before she could move, tongue running over his lower lip.
“You are a menace,” he informed her, pulling her even closer to him, “And one day your tricks will not work.”
“By then, I will have figured out new ones,” Toni said, doing a bad job at pretending smugness.
“Unfortunately for you, my dear, I am quite adept at tricks myself,” said Loki, hands slipping from her sides and further down, under the water.
Yeah, Toni was going to keep him as hers only for a little while longer.
“Wow,” Darcy said, as soon as Toni stepped out. “Is that a fucking Veyron?”
“It was before I got my hands on it.” Toni grinned at her. “Now it runs way faster and smoother.”
“That cannot be possible.”
“Is too,” She said, throwing the keys at Darcy. “Wanna take her for a spin?”
Darcy let out a delighted squeal before rushing towards the car, and when Toni turned to Jane, the woman was glaring at her.
“Stark, please stop with attempts at corrupting and bribing my intern,” she said, very stern.
“It’s like you don’t even know her,” said Bruce, making a general noise of complaint when Toni put her arms around him. “Ugh. Hi to you too.”
“Hello, my favourite nuts in STEM,” she said, pressing a big kiss on his cheek. “And Janey, I could have sworn we had worked our way up to Toni? Why am I suddenly Stark again?”
Darcy revved the car with another whoop of excitement, and Jane pointed at her.
“I have always and will always be innocent of any wrongdoing.”
Jane rolled her eyes, before beckoning her towards the decrepit building behind her.
“Come on,” she said, pulling out her phase metre. “We actually do have something to show you.”
“Two somethings,” said Bruce.
“Is this building even up to code?” she complained, even as she fell in step with them. How couldn’t she? When Jane Foster and Bruce Banner called you up to talk physics, who would ever say no?
Originally, it had just been Jane.
Part of Toni’s reasoning had, of course, been Loki, but she had definitely been intrigued by the concept of portals all around the planets.
If there was one that connected Earth to Asgard and one between Asgard and Jotunheim, and Yggdrasil was less a tree and more a space-interstellar body, then it stood to reason that there were even more on Earth.
Once bitten twice shy, after all, and what if the conspiracy theories about D. B. Cooper and Einheart's disappearances could be answered by ‘they fell into another planet in the nines’?
She wanted to find out, and to do that, she had looked for the smartest space scientist on Earth – a Dr Jane Foster who seemed to be at an all time low in terms of respect from the scientific community and yet was also the person who had gotten closest to prove what Toni knew for sure.
But then Bruce had appeared back into her life, and Toni had managed to seduce him with talks of space and magic and sensual protection from nosy-bodies trying to kidnap him and the Hulk.
Obviously, he had been unable to say no, and he and Jane had gotten along shockingly well.
For all he liked to act like Hulk was the impulsive one of the duo, he would forever be the man who drank an uncovered product in the lab and–
“Uh.”
“Right?”
Toni moved in front of them, staring at the falling cup with some confusion.
In front of her was what looked like an empty space, with nothing but air and perhaps particles of dust swivelling within it.
And yet, a small plastic cup kept falling for about two metres before re-appearing at the top again, as if it was stuck in some sort of loop.
Or a strange tube, that Toni could not see nor – when she waved her hands in front of her – perceive in any way.
“What is this?”
“It acts like a wormhole,” Bruce said, “Except that it continues in a loop, and isn’t destructive. Sometimes, we throw objects and it acts like the cup.” He threw a small pebble, and Toni watched as it just fell to the ground. Bruce shrugged. “Sometimes, it does that.”
“What do your readings–”
“I—” Jane started, but then she paused. She raised her screen, looking closer, a frown line appearing on her face. “What the hell?”
“What?”
“It’s been inconclusive for days,” she said, looking between the screen and Bruce. “We have been trying to gather as much information before calling you, to see if you could perhaps fix it or help us figure out a way to circumvent what seems to be a massive magnetic field around here that confuses the meter. But... it’s working.”
“What?” Bruce moved closer to Jane, and Toni watched the bewilderment in his face grow as he studied the screen. “How...?”
“Clearly, I’m the goddess of technology, and no tech products wants to fail in my vicinity,” teased Toni, glancing back at the... for lack of better terms, portal.
It was nothing like the portal in Afghanistan. Toni had not stepped foot near it since her return, and while she knew Bruce would eventually convince Jane to visit it, for now they were ignoring it.
But still, it was some sort of portal. It was breaking the space-time continuum by connecting point A & B despite the distance, in near instant time. Maybe she could calculate the rate–
“There is something,” said Jane, bringing Toni’s attention back to herself. “Something bigger. This way.”
“Is that safe?” Bruce asked, watching the brunette start to walk through one of the corridors. “And she’s not listening. And you’re not listening either.”
“You can tell us you told us so later,” said Toni, trailing after Jane. The woman was holding a second device in her hands, following some sort of wave she had detected. “Are you scared of a little adventure, Banner?”
“Terrified, actually,” he said, with a deep sigh. He still followed them, though, because he was at heart a nerd who wanted to figure out things as much as Toni and Jane did. “It’s weird, though. Both of them were useless yesterday and even earlier today. What did you do?”
“I took them out to show Toni and they just worked,” said Jane, still frowning at the screens.
“Why do you think SI is still as big as it is?” Toni sniffed. “My mere presence makes scientific discoveries happen.”
Clink.
Toni and Jane paused at the same time, making Bruce nearly crash into them.
“Hey, what’s... why have we stopped?”
“Did you hear that?”
“It’s glitching again,” said Jane, frowning at her screen. “Hear what?”
“That,” said Toni, glancing at the dark ceiling over her head. “It sounded like... I don’t know, a half full glass of red wine clinking against the bottle.”
Jane and Bruce both stared at her.
“My father was a functioning alcoholic, I know what I’m talking about,” she complained. She could still feel her ears ringing slightly. “Seriously, you didn’t hear that?”
“You’re bleeding,” said Bruce. Toni glanced at Jane, who was looking at her worriedly, before she realised she was the one Bruce was speaking to.
She raised a hand to her nose, and sure enough, it came away with a few drops of blood.
“I’m fine,” she said, looking around. She was starting to have a bad feeling about all this. “I think we should get out of here.”
“Finally, a sensible argument from you,” said Bruce, immediately turning back. “Let’s go, Jane.”
“But–”
“Let’s go.”
She huffed, shoving the machine back in her pocket. “Might as well, this thing is not working.”
“I’m starting to think that thing works on convenience,” said Toni, but she didn’t sound as amused as she had felt earlier, even to her own ears.
Something smelled off, and it wasn’t just the sudden nose bleed or the slight metallic taste in the back of her throat.
“Is this the way we came?” asked Jane, looking around with a frown. “Are you guys sure?”
“I was following you,” said Toni, also glancing around. It had felt like they were just walking straight along, but to be fair, she hadn’t been paying much attention. “But it should–”
“Did you hear that?”
They both looked over at Bruce who had stopped in his tracks and was staring at the dark corridor in front of them. They couldn’t make out his expression, but he seemed suddenly tense.
“Heard what?”
“That,” he repeated, and cocked his head to the side.
It was a move more Hulk than it was Bruce, and the bad feeling intensified.
“We need to get out of here,” she decided, grabbing Jane by the arm and moving in the opposite direction of where they had come from. “Let’s go.”
“What– Toni! This is the wrong way!”
Toni ignored her. “Bruce–”
“We need to move,” he said, turning around suddenly and grabbing Toni’s arm, also moving in the same direction as her. “Now–”
And now Toni could hear it. Now she could hear the sound Bruce had been hearing, and this was so unfair.
Loki was going to get a kick out of this, she decided, as all three of them started running down the corridor.
He was going to get a kick of it, and laugh at her, and make fun of her forever.
And JARVIS and Happy were going to chain her to her house and demand that she never try to leave it by herself again.
It was going to suck.
They did not make it very far.
Her last coherent thought, as a wall of sand smashed into her, was that water would have been better.