“Who’s the wanna-be?”
“Tony,” Pepper said, her warning falling flat as her husband rounded the tall Asgardian.
“No, really. Where’s Thor?” He frowned, his arms crossed over his chest. He may have been getting a bit older, but there was no way Tony Stark was going to let some elvin, Legolas look-a-like with Thor’s extraordinary blue eyes sneer at him like that.
“He’s busy.”
“So he sent a runt?”
That got under his skin. Tony’s smirk was back, firmly planted along with his feet. He wasn’t’ going to let some strange Asgardian into the main meeting room for the Avengers without asserting his authority first. Thor was a handful, but he was a god and unfortunately he wasn’t going to be around.
So he’d agreed to send someone competent to take his place and deal with the affairs on Earth.
The kid, because Tony really couldn’t think of him as less with that rather pretty face, opened his mouth to speak.
“Don’t,” Tony held his hand up. “Really. I don’t’ know if I’ll find you any more tolerable if you talk.”
“Tony!” Pepper yelled. “Let. Him. In.” She pushed up from her place at the table and came to stand at his shoulder. “We have a meeting to get on with. Won’t you come in, Mr…”
“Kurt,” he said, his voice holding that same high bred ring to it that the other Asgards seemed to have perfected. “My name is Kurt, and I am here on behalf of my cousin’s request.”
“C-cousin?” Pepper asked, her smile not wavering.
“Yes.” Kurt tugged at the hem of his tunic, the stiff leather of his vest creaking with the newness of it.
Tony’s lips thinned as Pepper yanked him back. Kurt stepped lightly around them, gaze jumping to look at the rest of the group gathered in the large room.
“So, what exactly are yo the god of, Kurt?” he asked. A bit too innocently to those who knew him.
Kurt’s head snapped back to them, and his shoulder’s drawing back and chest expanding with a deep breath. “I’m a lesser god.”
“No hammer then?” Tony pushed.
“No. I—“
“Do you bat your lashes at the enemy? Sing to them?”
Face burning, Kurt’s mouth pulled back into a sneer very much like his elder cousin’s. But before he could unleash a single word of rebuttal, a new voice joined the conversation.
“Dad,” came something that sounded more like music to Kurt’s ears than anything he’d heard in the great halls back home, “leave him alone and let him sit down. I’m sure he had a long journey. Here, sit beside me, Kurt.”
With his heart beating nearly out of his chest, Kurt turned from Tony’s glowering form and looked to the man’s only son. The one called Blaine.
