Disclaimer: I don't own the Avengers or Loki, or any Marvel characters. After seeing the Avengers 3 times, I finally decided that Loki was too awesome to ignore. Thank you, Stan Lee, Joss Whedon and Tom Hiddleston!

Trollin'

Tony Stark had just sat down for an afternoon drink after a long day of schematic revisions when his phone buzzed. "Damnit, always when I'm trying to relax." Even though the name and number appeared as "unknown," the genius playboy billionaire philanthropist knew who it was.

Loki had discovered cell phones, and Tony Stark was to blame.

When Loki had begun his exile on Earth, Tony had asked if it was supposed to be his punishment or theirs. As with Thor's terrestrial exile, the bulk of Loki's power had been stripped from him, but he retained his (even Tony had to admit) dazzling intellect and certain innate powers that Thor hadn't bothered telling them the extent of. Even with his magic (mostly) bound, the demigod had found his way out of the specially prepared SHIELD prison within two days. Tony had found Loki mixing himself a drink in the billionaire's California villa before Nick Fury even knew he was missing.

After he'd realized that he wasn't hallucinating, Tony had slapped the drink from his hand then and told Loki to get lost, spilling $200 worth of booze all over the carpet. He'd called Fury who insisted that Loki was still in custody and yes, he was quite certain of that. Pepper hadn't been happy, and Loki had been back the next day with an apology gift of the same booze that had been spilled and a dozen donuts. Tony knew from experience that the Norse god of mischief could actually be quite the charming and intelligent conversationalist even when he was threatening planetary conquest, but when he tried to be friendly and polite, he was more than doubly so. Tony also knew that this was still the same power-hungry, grandstanding nut job that had killed hundreds in the course of two days, trashed a significant chunk of Manhattan with an alien army, personally killed the only member of SHIELD he actually liked, and indirectly brought Tony himself to death's doorstep.

It was also quickly evident that Loki wasn't going to leave him alone.

He had plenty of reason to hate Loki, and Loki was very aware of that. He was also nearly powerless and quite unthreatening. Tony quickly went over the options in his head: leave a greasy Loki-shaped stain in his house, possibly destroying a good portion of his home in the process (again), and incurring the wrath of not only the Norse god of thunder (goodness only knew why he still gave a shit) but his girlfriend, too (she liked that house), or . . . Tony took a cream-filled donut and heard Loki out.

No matter what SHIELD may think, the terms of Loki's exile didn't include imprisonment. After what he considered to be an appropriate amount of sulking, Loki had decided to learn more about the modern world he'd tried to conquer with an army, slipped his chains, and sought a teacher. Tony couldn't begrudge him the prison break, and he had chosen the best source to teach him about modern technology ever . . . plus, educating was never a bad thing, he supposed.

Loki shadowed Tony through his labs and daily life for a few days, making suggestions for improvements (which Tony noted down for later) and asking questions about everything from everyday actions to things that went over his head. Even with the phenomenal technology gap between them, Tony managed to learn quite a bit of advanced astrophysics and multidimensional cosmological theory, and Loki managed to learn how not to talk about all of it as though he was educating a particularly slow child.

Oddly enough, true to their agreement, Loki was an avid learner and literally disappeared whenever Pepper or Bruce entered the room.

Loki seemed especially fascinated with Tony's smart phone. It was far more advanced than anything on the market, but the simple idea of communicating over vast distances by speaking into a little piece of circuitry was something the Asgardians had never considered. Some advanced society, Tony had internally scoffed. Loki had mentioned something about "astral projection" with an involuntary twitch, though.

It wasn't long after that when Loki also discovered the internet. It was as though the green-eyed demigod had just had his first Christmas morning, making use of Tony's computer (without his explicit consent) well into the nights after Tony had gone to bed. It had opened up a whole new world of questions mostly revolving around internet behavior and memes. "The trolls I am familiar with look and act quite differently," he'd observed at one point, "but the antics of these appeal to me far more."

Loki finally left just before Nick Fury arrived to inform Tony that he was missing from his cell. He'd apparently been conversant and reactive in his cell, but as soon as someone tried to touch him, Loki's image had shimmered and disappeared.

That's when Loki's first text had arrived.

Contained in the text was a picture of Loki wearing a dapper black coat, green scarf, and infectious grin. In the background was the famous giant donut above "Randy's Donuts," the Los Angeles landmark.

Nick had looked over Tony's shoulder and seen. The look in his good eye was dangerous. "You knew?" Fury said, full of his namesake.

Tony responded, affably incredulous, "Hey, you're the one who didn't believe me."

Loki was nowhere to be found by the time SHIELD agents paid a visit to the donut shop, and the number had been untraceable. The attempted traces when Loki's next texts arrived were similarly unhelpful, always under a different landmark, and there was no discernible pattern. Since no Earth-shattering chaos was reported anywhere near the positions Loki was publicizing, Nick decided to call off the hunt, heeding the advice Thor had tried to give them in the first place. Caging Loki had done no good. The most they could hope for was to keep tabs on him . . . the tabs he chose to give.

Tony wasn't the only one Loki had tried to text, either. Natasha changed her phone too often to receive the texts, Clint used his phone as an arrowhead the first time he'd seen Loki's face pop up and decided to follow Natasha's lead after that. Nick's phone didn't receive texts, Bruce didn't have a phone, and Thor and Steve wouldn't have known how to use one, even if they had them.

So that left Tony as Loki's unofficial parole officer and secretary. Sometimes the demigod would send him messages that he meant for other people as he traveled around the world, some interesting, some mean-spirited, and some honestly funny. He kept them mostly to himself, since the rest of the team (besides Thor) didn't seem to want any reminder of Loki's existence if he wasn't actually causing any trouble. Thor may still have considered him a brother, but the residents of Earth were stuck with him.

So it came as no surprise to Tony that when he put down his drink and picked up his phone, the text was addressed to Thor. It included a picture of Loki (grinning wider than usual?) with his arm wrapped around a pretty brunette who looked vaguely familiar. They both appeared to be enjoying the other's company. "U MAD, BRO?" followed the picture as text.

His first thought was "Oh, good for him, he got a girlfriend." When he showed it to Pepper to see if she recognized the girl in the photo, she said, "That poor girl. She doesn't know what she got into," but it was no-one she knew.

The mystery intrigued Tony enough that he actually showed the picture to Thor when he came in for his regular check-in, days later. The burly Asgardian grabbed the phone from Tony's hand immediately and bellowed at the still frame as though it could hear him, "Jane! Don't worry, I'm coming! Loki, if you so much as harm a hair on her head, I'll tear you apart so thoroughly, not even the Norns will know how to piece you together!" Thor then whipped his hammer around and flew off through Tony's roof, leaving the crushed remnants of Tony's phone behind.

When Tony finished configuring his new phone and loading the backed-up text conversations into it, he replied to Loki's latest message: Nice one, but now you owe me a new phone and a roof.

Loki's response was an immediate image of a trollface.

Tony's face froze with a bemused smile. "Good god, I've created a monster."