Still Holding On

Chapter 13

Loki seems to have no problem walking through the halls of Stark Tower — certainly not as much of a problem as he did the first time. Occasionally he'll stumble or hold onto the wall to steady himself, but he's able to do it all himself, with Tony's help only to show him where he's going.

"If I take you to a room with a window," Tony says, "you're not gonna throw me out it, right?"

Loki furrows his brows. "Why would I do that?"

Tony rolls his eyes. "I'm joking. 'Cause you threw me out a window last time." And he should really get around to fixing that window soon. Maybe he'll wait until Thor takes him to Asgard and then start working on it.

"When did I—" Loki begins, but then he cuts himself off, realization flashing across his face. "I did do that, didn't I?"

"Yeah," Tony deadpans. "You did."

A part of him almost hopes for an apology. It almost feels like that's where this is going. It's not.

"You're fortunate your armor travels faster than gravity," Loki tells him.

"Something tells me you knew that when you threw me out it," Tony remarks.

Loki doesn't answer, but the way his lips quirk upwards at the comment is answer enough. He knew exactly what he was doing.

"You had this whole thing meticulously planned out, didn't you?" Tony asks.

"Not meticulously enough, it seems," Loki says.

Tony cocks an eyebrow. He's not sure he buys that. If he wanted to fail, he did so spectacularly, whether he wants to admit it or not. He knows better than to expect a confession out of him, so he doesn't try to push for one.

"Any idea what kind of movie you want to watch?" Tony asks.

"I do not even know what kinds of movies exist," Loki says.

Tony frowns. Right. They probably don't have movies in Asgard. "There's, like, comedies and dramas and romances and horror movies and musicals. Any kind of story you can think of, they have a movie for it."

"Musicals?" Loki repeats, his interest piqued.

"I mean, they're mostly kid movies," Tony tells him. There aren't a whole lot of adult musicals. He'd say there should be more, but just the idea of characters bursting into song feels kind of childish.

"Meaning...?" Loki prompts.

"Meaning they're kids movies," Tony says. "Movies for kids. It's in the name."

"And what decides whether a movie is for children or adults?" Loki asks.

"Well, you don't exactly want kids watching movies about violent, gruesome murder," Tony says. It seems pretty self-explanatory to him.

"Why not?"

Tony scoffs. "How violent are the kids in Asgard?"

"Not violent," Loki says. "Prepared." He pauses thoughtfully. "And I suppose somewhat violent."

Tony shakes his head to himself. Asgard is weird.

He leads Loki into the living room, where his TV miraculously survived the Chitauri invasion. He gestures for Loki to have a seat, and the god plops himself down on the couch, his head falling back against the wall.

Tony opens up the drawers of the TV stand, and he's faced with stacks and stacks of DVDs. He thumbs through them briefly, but nothing really catches his eye. He turns around and sits down on the floor, looking up at the god with a frown.