"Sir, Thor has just arrived," JARVIS announces.

Tony glances at the younger god warily. He doesn't seem too excited about it, but he doesn't seem upset, either. He looks back at the engineer, but he doesn't make a move to get up. Neither does Tony. Watching TV for the last few hours has been much more fun than either of them expect a visit from Thor to be.

"How long do you think he'll stay?" Loki asks.

"No idea," Tony says. "Maybe we'll have spaghetti for dinner in a couple hours and then call it quits."

"I suppose that's alright," Loki says. He doesn't sound all that sure.

"I'm thinking we can play a board game or something," Tony adds. "Instead of just talking. That might be insufferable."

"For hours on end?" Loki nods. "It most certainly would be."

So, with this settled, they both get up and head out to find Thor. It's easy to do; he hasn't moved from the lobby by the time they reach it. The big smile on his face doesn't quite match the smaller one on Loki's, but they still share a brief hug in greeting. It's a nice start to what will hopefully be a nice day.

"How have you been, brother?" Thor asks.

Loki shrugs awkwardly. "I've been alright," he says. "And you? How is Asgard?"

"Asgard is doing well," Thor says. "We've nearly put an end to the uprisings in the other realms. Everything is beginning to return to normal — or as normal as it can, given the circumstances."

"That's good," Loki says. He paused, brows knitting together in confusion. "How are you traveling between realms? We destroyed the bifrost."

"Oh, it's been fixed," Thor says, waving that off.

That only seems to confuse Loki more. "How?"

"Do you remember learning of the Tesseract when we were young?" Thor asks.

Loki nods slowly. "A lost relic from the vault."

"We found it on Midgard," Thor tells him. "We were able to use it to rebuild the bifrost."

Tony looks between the brothers warily. Thor doesn't seem to think much of this, but Loki certainly does. His thoughts are sealed away, but his confusion is clear on his face.

Instead of giving any questions or concerns he doubtlessly has, though, Loki just says, "I'm glad you could fix it. I would hate to be the reason Asgard was cut off from the rest of the Nine Realms."

"Fortunately, it was fairly easy to rebuild," Thor says. "And now the Tesseract is safely locked away. It's been lost on Midgard for far too long."

Loki nods slowly, processing that. He looks between the two men. "Is that how you know each other?"

Thor furrows his brows. "What do you mean?"

"Did you meet Tony in your search for the Tesseract?" Loki asks. "And Director Fury and Natasha Romanoff, I presume?"

Thor glances at Tony uncertainly. "I did." His tone is a little more closed-off than it had been. If he's hoping to hide from Loki the fact that he's hiding something from Loki, he's doing a piss-poor job at it.

"I think Fury had it," Tony adds. "I don't know; I wasn't all that into it." That's a nice, vague, non-indicting statement, right?

Still, Loki seems confused. He's silent as he takes that in, and Tony and Thor share a look. Was this a bad idea? Tony certainly wouldn't have brought up the Tesseract so casually, but he wouldn't have thought that of all things would blow this open.

But then Loki shrugs, just a little bit, and turns his attention back to Thor, the faintest hint of a smile on his lips. "In unrelated news, I got you a gift."

Thor furrows his brows. "You did?" He seems even more taken aback than Tony was when Loki first said he wanted to do this.

"I did," Loki says. He holds out his hands, and in a swirl of green light, a very familiar mug appears in them. "For you."

Thor cocks his head to the side. "A cup?"

Loki turns it around to reveal Tiana and Naveen on the other side — in frog form, of course. He points to the obviously feminine frog. "It has a picture of you on it!"

Thor scoffs at that. He grabs the mug from his brother's hands and throws it at him, though Loki catches it with ease. "I thought you were being nice for once!"

"Then you must not know me very well," Loki says teasingly.

Tony takes a couple of steps backward, giving the gods their space. He's never seen them get along this well. If he can just disappear into the shadows and let the brothers have their fun, he's more than happy to do that. They can save their game day for later.

~~~

For a tower he just finished a few weeks ago and had no intention of moving into permanently, there are a lot of games here. Loki has the honor of choosing which one they play, and though they'd agreed upon a board game, it's Uno that they settle on, no boards included.

He'll be the first to admit, it's kind of weird that he'd choose to play a game he doesn't know he's already played before, but he chalks that up to the fact that it's probably the least daunting of the games he tried to explain. "It's a card game" is doubtlessly a lot easier to understand than the long-winded explanations he gave for games like Chutes and Ladders and Monopoly.

So they sit down on the floor — because why would they be adults and sit at a table? — and Tony begins dealing out the cards. He explains the rules as he does, and he puts down the first card to demonstrate. It seems they understand, because the next rounds go well.

Unfortunately, it doesn't stay going well, because it's only a matter of time until Thor's down to his last few cards and Tony's up to almost two dozen. He kind of gets the feeling he's not going to win this one.

Tony puts down a skip, passing over Thor's turn. Maybe he can save himself one extra round of embarrassment. After all, it's not like Loki's going to win. He's doing better than Tony, but not nearly as good as Thor is.

And then it's silent.

Nobody moves.

Tony glances at Loki. Is he just super into choosing what card he's going to put down next, or...?

It's Thor who finally says his name, a question in his voice.

Loki blinks a few times. "Is it my turn?"

"Sure is," Tony says.

"Oh."

Loki looks down at his hand, then the skip in the pile, then his hand again...

He gives Tony a weird look. "Have we played this before?"

Tony furrows his brows. "Uh..." Well, that wasn't part of the plan. "I don't know; we might've." If he remembers it, then yes, they did. If he doesn't remember it, then this is the first time. Easy peasy, right?

"This game just feels very familiar," Loki says with a frown. "But I don't..."

Tony looks at Thor helplessly, but he gets no assistance there. It's probably fair. This is Tony's mess, and he's the one who has to clean it up.

Somehow.

If he can.

But Loki surprises him. "This is something else I've forgotten, isn't it?"

Tony furrows his brows. "What?" How does he...?

"I'm not a fool, Tony," Loki says. "I know I've forgotten a lot. You said so yourself weeks ago, though I'm sure you assumed I'd forgotten that, too."

Tony grimaces. This is bad. This is really bad. "Loki..."

"I understand if you've been keeping this from me because you think it will make me uncomfortable," Loki says. "And it does. I don't like to think about it. But I suppose I should tell you that I do know that I've forgotten things. You don't need to pretend that I haven't."

Tony sighs. Well, at least it's out there now. It's one less thing he has to hide. And Loki doesn't seem too upset about it, so that's nice. It probably helps that he's apparently known about it all along. Nothing's really changed. They can just be open about it now — to some extent.

"I suppose I should ask while you're both here," Loki says. "Do you know why?"

Tony glances at Thor, but it's clear in his expression that he's not going to say anything. It's nice to know that he has full control over the situation, but god, if it isn't stressful.

"We don't," Tony lies. It's better than coming out with the truth right now. Today's been going so much better than he'd expected. He can't ruin that right now. He can't tell Loki what he did.

"Are you trying to find out?" Loki asks. "Is that why Director Fury was so interested in the scepter? My memories, it's related to the scepter, isn't it?"

Again, Tony looks at Thor helplessly. Is it time to come clean? Loki already knows a hell of a lot more than they'd thought. But he doesn't know the worst part. He doesn't know what he did. That's what he's really afraid of telling him. That's what he's really afraid will break him.

It's Thor who answers this one, though briefly and vaguely. "We're looking into it."

"When you find your answers — if you find your answers — you'll tell me, correct?"

"Of course," Thor says. "If we have anything to report, we'll let you know."

Loki gives him a small, awkward smile. "Thank you. I appreciate the honesty."

Tony has to bite his tongue.

Honesty.

Yeah, not quite.

Loki looks back down at his cards, then puts one down in the discard pile. Just like that, the game's back on.