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Tony woke up feeling more relaxed than he had in a while. Pepper was warm in his arms. The sun was shining through the cracks in the window curtains. I swore if he listened in, he could even hear birds singing as if it was a Disney film and he was the beautiful and rich Disney princess about to burst into song.
He didn’t though because 1) he had a terrible singing voice that he only used to perform shower concerts; 2) the bed was entirely too warm and peaceful for him to dare to get up from; 3) he was on vacation and breakfast could wait for another hour.
Tony made his decision and leaned in to cuddle with Pepper for another hour, before the house literally shook. There was a deep rumbling sound and a flash came through the curtains.
He jolted up in bed clutching a blanket to his chest. The house shook again, making everything vibrate with the shock. The trinkets on the shelves trembled, the hung frames threatened to fall right off the wall.
“Tony?” Pepper questioned, her eyes were wide and worried. She was partially raised on her elbows, trying to put on a brave face, but Tony could see the anxiety leaking into the cracks. “Earthquakes aren’t common in this area.”
A cold fear sunk heavy in his stomach as he pulled the covers back and placed his feet on the floor. She was right, earthquakes were virtually impossible in this part of the country.
And if being in a superhero team taught him anything, it taught him that impossible things meant that there was usually something villainous afoot.
Though it would have to a pretty stupid villain considering they were attacking a billionaire super suit family, America’s favourite PSA icon, two Norse gods, the Princess of Panthers, and SHIELD’s best agents.
The house shook again, Tony heard the electricity stutter around him, and the whirl of machines go momentarily quiet. There was an ear-deafening crack accompanied by a deep rumble and the electricity completely shut down.
Great. Not only were they potentially under attack, but now they had to deal with not having electricity too. He guessed they were lucky to be attacked at sunrise rather than the middle of the night.
“Jarvis, what’s our status? Are we under attack?”
Jarvis was on his own separate power source, so he shouldn’t be affected by the lack of power. Sure enough, the AI answered in a calm voice. “We have sustained no damage and do not appear to be within danger.” There was a pause, and Jarvis added with a more humourous tone. “I suggest that you go to the kitchen, Mr. Stark.”
“What?” he said to himself as he padded into the kitchen. His anxiety was trickling into to caution.
The room was bright despite the lack of electricity. One of the walls was completely glass, allowing the buttery morning light to flood into the space. The view of the mountain would have been breath-taking if Tony wasn’t too busy trying to figure out what was going on.
“Hey, Mr. Stark.,” Peter chirped, startling Tony. The boy was standing next to the glass wall, looking back at Tony over his shoulder. The sunlight made the angles of his face appear golden. The boy didn’t appear nervous at all, actually he looked more relaxed than he had in a while.
There was another quake and the earth trembled below them.
“Morning Pete. You know what’s going on?”
“Oh yeah, everything is okay. Don’t worry. I told them not to be too loud because everyone is sleeping, but they didn’t listen to me.” He huffed a laugh and looked back out the window.
Tony walked up next to him to see what he was looking at. The house was built into the side of hill, overlooking a lake. Beside the water was a small clearing that seemed to be occupied by two figures.
They were at too far of a distance to make out their clear details, but there was no mistaking the Viking leathers, graceful yet dangerous movements, and the fact that it looked like a scene straight out of a Shakespearean play. From this far away, Tony couldn’t tell whether they were smiling or growling.
The gods circled each other like a pair of snarling wolves, magic and lightning crackling on their respective fingertips. Their power almost seemed to create a visible aura around them.
“Are they fighting?” God, he swore he was going to kill them if another one of his buildings got destroyed by a Space Viking Family Feud.
He watched as Thor lunged towards his brother, trying to strike at him with his axe. The trickster slipped away in a single fluid movement, just managing to get a jab in before he danced back out of Thor’s reach. The axe struck the ground instead causing the earth to shake with the force of it, proving that the god really wasn’t pulling any punches.
The house creaked around them and Tony worried about its structural integrity for a moment.
Peter chuckled, shaking his head. “Nah, Mr. Stark, I think they are playing.”
Tony couldn’t help but drop his jaw. “This is playing?”
“Yeah, Thor finally managed to convince Loki to spar with him.”
Tony looked back at the figures, feeling a little bit of the blood rush from his face. Logically, he knew that the brothers were gods and, therefore, a lot more powerful than them. So powerful that his ancient ancestors made a whole religion based around them.
But it was one thing to know a fact, and another thing to feel that fact shaking his house and threatening to break his very expensive stuff. All because of playing.
Below them, Loki made a graceful, deadly movement that had him nearly throwing Thor over his shoulder. Thor twisted in the air, latching on to Loki’s arms and causing both of them to tumble to the ground. They tossed their weapons to the ground and immediately began tussling against each other, looking more like a pair of puppies than the wolves of before.
They rolled over the dirt, taking cheap shots at each other, and grappling for control. They continued like that until they slammed into a huge tree. Instead stopping the brothers, the tree swayed and uprooted, a casualty of the gods’ play fight. Thor and Loki paused to watch the tree crash on to the ground, and then, Loki said something that must have been incredibly snarky because they were suddenly at each other’s throats again.
This time, though, Tony could see that both of the gods were laughing.
“Holy shit,” Tony said in disbelief, because he realised that Peter was right. Tony had thought they were under attack and the truth it was just their resident myths playing around like a couple of puppies. He turned on his heel and beelined to the kitchen. He needed more coffee for this. This was a situation that basically mandated caffeine.
Unfortunately, coffee machines required electricity, which their golden thunder god had so kindly shorted out. Tony swore, putting his head in his hands. This morning had started out so well.
He heard Peter move away from the window and come to his side. He didn’t need to look at him to know that the boy was beaming at him and getting ready to ask a question he definitely wasn’t going to like.
He both hated and loved that he had developed this “dad” sense.
“What is it?” Tony looked at Peter through the corner of his eye. Indeed, Peter was giving him that 1000-watt smile that Tony just couldn’t say no to.
“Let’s go down so we can get a better look.”
Tony didn’t even think about his answer. “No.”
“But why not?”
Almost on cue, the house shook again, momentarily lighting up in Loki’s signature green magic colour before returning to normal.
Tony flailed his hands out as if to show off the general weirdness. “Because I don’t want to get electrocuted or magic zapped.”
“But please, Mr. Stark, when do we ever get to see a magic god fight. And Mr. Thor and Mr. Loki would never hurt us, they love us too much. So please, please, please can we go down there. This might be the only moment in my life that I get to see this.”
Tony snorted, “Those two bicker 25/7, I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before they are fighting again.”
Peter didn’t answer, but he was staring at Tony with those huge, watery puppy dog eyes. Tony felt his fortitude waver. The kid made his lip quiver and Tony was done. He sighed and wished that he hadn’t gotten out of bed.
“Fine,” he grumbled, walking to the stairs that would lead them into the clearing below. Peter cheered, entirely too excited to put himself in certain danger. And yet, Tony was walking into it right behind him.
The cool morning air filled his lungs, and the lingering tickle of ozone prickled on his skin. The world around him would have looked idyllic if it wasn’t for the two morning-ruining Vikings. Peter was sprinting towards the gods, full of the reckless abandon that only a teenage could have.
The brothers hadn’t noticed them yet and were still tussling together. Thor had managed to get Loki in a headlock and was laughing as his brother squirmed and shot insults at him.
“Mr. Thor! Mr. Loki!” Peter shouted. Tony couldn’t see his face, but he could imagine the huge smile he was giving them.
Both the gods perked up like dogs and, if they had them, Tony was sure their tails would have started wagging. Thor gave a bright, wide smile that rivalled even Peter’s.
“Spider-child, good morning!”
Loki took the opportunity of the distraction and switched their positions. Thor yelped when he was suddenly shoved to the ground with Loki’s knee digging into the small of his back.
“Hello mortals,” he greeted smoothly, as if his overpowered brother wasn’t flailing under him. Loki was also smiling, though it was smaller and more reserved than Thor’s. It still filled Tony with warmth, though. It had taken them months to coax that smile out of the god.
Thor and Loki had landed on Earth nearly a year ago, caught within some of the worst sibling issues that Tony had ever seen. Thor was prideful with a quick, destructive temper and so stubbornly sure that he could do no wrong. Loki was shattered by family secrets and convinced that he was nothing more than a monster to be put down.
I took months of work. Months of shifting through crappy Asgardian parenting and teaching the brothers how to communicate, but eventually they did it. And now the Asgardians were here to stay.
To stay and apparently destroy Tony’s vacation home.
He looked at the gods and frowned. Life really was unfair. Tony had seen them physically fighting and uprooting his property, yet neither of them looked winded or rumpled. In fact, both of them (even the struggling Thor) still had that cool grace that only a Norse deity could have.
“Would it kill you guys to wait till at least noon until you start destroying my landscaping?” Tony pointed to the downed pine tree behind him.
Loki shrugged a shoulder. “The tree should have known not to be in our way.”
“Loki,” Thor whined from the ground. “Let me up.”
The trickster hummed, putting a finger to his lips and looking up to the sky in contemplation. “No, I don’t think so.”
“But it is embarrassing to talk to my friends from the ground.”
Loki kept looking up as if he couldn’t even hear Thor’s voice. Apparently, that was the final straw for Thor, because he reached up, grabbed his brother’s ankle and yanked Loki on to the ground with him.
Loki made a sound like an angry cat and proceed to try to shove Thor’s face into the dirt. “You oaf, you almost twisted my ankle.”
Thor was letting out a full-bellied chuckle, even as it looked like Loki was trying his hardest to kill him.
“You must be better, brother,” Thor teased playfully, “I don’t even think I’ve broken a sweat.”
Which wasn’t saying much because it didn’t look like either of them had sweat on their brow.
The comment seemed to make the wrestling intensify, though, because now there were bits of lightning and magic in the mix between the brothers.
That’s when Tony really started worrying that there might be a murder on his lake side.
Beside him, though, Peter was laughing like this was the best thing he had ever seen in his life.
He watched silently as the brothers took out another tree (this one was even bigger) and he decided that he had had enough.
Tony put his fingers in his mouth and let out a loud whistle that echoed over the lake water.
The sound made the gods freeze mid-fight, both of them whipping their heads in his direction with their attention perked. Thor was crouched over Loki, pinning his little brother’s shoulders down with his two hands, and Loki seemed to have be trying to kick Thor below the belt. Tony almost laughed at how much they resembled two overgrown puppies. Deadly puppies that could tear this place to the ground with their play. But still puppies.
It struck Tony for a second, how young they looked. Thor had mentioned once that both of them were considered barely into adulthood by Asgardian standards, but this was one of the only times that Tony had seen it on their faces.
Most of the time they just looked haunted. Haunted by the hurt between them and the weight of Asgard on their shoulders. Their past had nearly broken them apart, and it was by some miracle that they had managed to put it behind them and begin to rebuild the sibling relationship they once had. It had taken months, but Tony was beginning to see more of the innocence in both of them, glimpses of who they once were before their world that shattered around them.
And now, even though they were both unthinkably older than Tony, he couldn’t help but feel protective of them. Hell, both of them looked hardly older than Peter and almost like they could have been his much stronger, elder siblings.
Which actually made sense considering that the gods had practically adopted Peter, and Tony swore he could have heard both of call him “tiny brother” at some point.
God, if he wasn’t careful, he was going to find himself adopting two Norse deities into his family.
“Okay, why don’t you lumberjacks wrap it up so we can head inside and have breakfast.”
He didn’t know how it was possible, but both of them perked up more at the mention of food.
Thor had loosened his grip, allowing his brother to sit up. He even moved to the side to give his brother some room.
“Will Lady Natasha make the thin pancakes?” Loki asked, leaning against Thor. It was crazy how quickly these two went from nearly killing each other to loving on each other.
“Probably if you ask nicely enough,” Tony said, and laughing at how the gods scrambled to their feet. Thor nearly tripped over his feet in his excitement.
It figures that even a pair of Norse myths couldn’t resist the allure of Natasha’s famous Russian pancakes.
They all began walking together back to the house, both of the gods laughing with Peter between them. Tony trailed behind, feeling more peaceful than he had in a long time.
The boy must have said a joke because both Thor and Loki suddenly let out a peal of uninhibited laughter. Thor reached out laying a huge arm across Peter’s shoulder, shrugging him into a sideways hug.
They reached the house and were about to start climbing the stairs when Tony spoke up. “Hey, Sparky, you took out the power again. You need to go give it a jump.”
Thor sighed heavily as if this was the world’s greatest inconvenience. Well, if he hated it so much then he should refrain from shorting out the electricity every other week. Living with a thunder god was making the Avengers team very familiar with blackouts.
“Go and clean up your mess, Thor” Loki quipped with a satisfaction that was all little brother.
Thor glared back at him and Tony worried then might start wrestling again, which would be a terrible idea considering they were standing next to some very structurally important pillars for the house.
Tony, Peter and Loki went into the house. There was a shimmer of green and gold and Tony turned around to see that Loki had switched into sweatpants and a red hoodie that Tony was sure was Thor’s. He had also freshened up, wiping away all the dirt on his face and any of signs of exertion.
Tony really wished that he had magic powers sometimes.
When they reached the main floor, Tony saw that the rest of the guests had already begun to stir.
They were collected in the kitchen, unable to cook anything because of the electricity and still blinking sleep out of their eyes.
Peter smiled at everyone and wished them good morning as he bounced into the room. Loki went around through the kitchen to fish a water bottle out of the fridge.
Clint looked up at them as they came in. “When’s the power coming back on?”
Tony looked at the ceiling. “It should be—” the house’s electricity snapped into life “—soon.”
The Avengers cheered and began to make breakfast. Peter was excitedly telling Shuri about the god fight, waving his hands in over exaggerated motions. Clint was hovering next to the coffee machine, beginning to get a pot brewing. Cap had cracked a couple eggs into a pan and the heavenly sizzle of them filled the room.
Loki had taken a seat at the kitchen island and was currently sweet-talking Natasha into making the pancakes that he loved. There was no doubt she was going to make them, but Tony thinks she liked making him beg a bit. He did always come up with new ways to creatively compliment her.
Thor lumbered his way back into the kitchen and took a heavy seat next to his brother while greeting his teammates. There was another green-gold sparkle and Thor was suddenly similarly outfitted in comfy clothes. The hoodie was green with a snake on the front. It seemed almost blasphemous to see the brother outfitted in the opposites’ colours.
“Thank you, Loki,” Thor said as he swung an arm over his brother’s shoulders and the trickster leaned into the touch. They murmured to each other until both of them broke out in quiet, warm laughter.
“And thank you for sparring with me, it has been a while since we’ve had the chance,” Thor said his voice full of affection.
Tony half expected Loki to shove him off, but instead he leaned his head on his brother’s shoulder. It was a miracle considering that only a year ago Loki probably would have shoved a dagger between his ribs.
Thor must have been thinking along similar lines because the guy had a starry, glossy look in his eyes and a smile so warm that it could have melted chocolate. He leaned down and pressed a kiss into Loki’s temple.
The trickster blinked, giving Thor a confused glance. “What was that for?”
“Nothing. I’m just glad you’re here.”
Tony looked at the peaceful morning spread before them and found himself agreeing.
Even if Tony hadn’t yet adopted the two Norse gods, the Avengers’ family certainly had.