“Together, we form a necessary paradox, not a senseless contradiction.”
- Criss Jami, Healology
Tony walked through the doors of his lab in the Avengers’ Tower half-asleep. He had spent most of the previous night repairing a glitch in J.A.R.V.I.S.’ programming that had the AI doing some incredibly odd things. When he had arrived home the previous day, he had found his lights bling on and off to the beat of Britney Spears’ song Toxic which was blaring so loudly that all of California had probably heard it. When he had entered his home, he had found one of his Iron Man suits doing laps around his kitchen island. It had been an easy, but long, fix, and he hadn’t gotten to bed until almost three in the morning, only to have to get up at six to head to New York. Ever since their adventure with Loki in New York City, S.H.I.E.L.D. had made a point of keeping at least two or three Avengers on-call in the tower at all times, or, at least, whenever possible. It was Tony’s turn in the tower for forty-eight hours, where he would be joined by an unusually full house that included Bruce, Natasha, Thor, and Loki. Bruce had wanted to get some research done in the tower, so he wasn’t there on-call, and Loki was always there. Loki was now, more or less, a ward of his elder brother and S.H.I.E.L.D. After the incident in New York, Loki had been given a choice – lifetime imprisonment on Asgard or a lifetime of service to S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Avengers. Loki had chosen the Avengers – mostly to keep away from the wrath of Odin.
Upon arriving in his lap, he noticed Bruce, Natasha, and Loki huddle around a laptop computer. Bruce was laughing uncomfortably. Natasha’s face was beet red. Loki was almost crying; he was laughing so hard. Thor, on the other hand, was standing with his back to the screen, and his arms crossed over his chest. He was refusing to turn back around.
Setting his coffee down on a lab counter, Tony walked over to check out what his teammates were up to. “Do I even wanna know what the three of you are looking at?” He leaned against the table they were all gathered around. “And what has Thor so scandalized?”
“This is the best thing I’ve seen in ages,” Loki clapped his hands together.
“It’s indecent,” Thor growled.
It was Bruce who eventually answered him. “No, you really don’t want to know. Trust me, Tony, I wish I didn’t know.”
“What the big guy said,” Natasha agreed as she slowly started to turn back to her normal pale color.
“Bullocks,” Loki disagreed. “I think we should do a mass print out and hand them out to the public. Who knew that Thor and I weren’t the only gods here?”
“Shut up, Loki,” Thor warned.
Tony was lost. “Print out what? And who’s a god around here besides you and Point Break?”
“Why you are!” Loki was much enjoying whatever was going on, which never bode well for anything or anyone. “If this fanfiction writer is to be believed, you, Mr. Stark, are a sex god!”
“I’m a what now?”
Bruce turned the computer so Tony could see the screen. They were on a website called Wattpad, and they were reading the stories of a fanfiction writer who went by the nom de plume Eden’sCrush1287…and she only wrote stories about him…and they were all marked with a ‘MATURE’ tag.
“Seriously?” He pretended not to care while at the same time clicking out of the webpage. “Are you children?”
“No, but I do love mischief,” Loki smirked.
Tony felt compelled to confiscate the laptop. Even he wasn’t narcissistic enough to be comfortable with his friends and the pain in the ass god of mischief reading this kind of crap about him.
ns 15.158.61.20da2
