That punch of emotion tells Tony that his attempt to cover up his slip of the tongue had not been entirely taken as a slip. It’s worrying, how quickly he has changed to fit the role of someone bonded to another, and how good it makes him feel to make someone else feel good too. That’s a foreign subject matter.

So when Loki embraces him, a way to play off Tony’s use of Asgardian as if he had been speaking endearments, Tony presses his face against Loki’s shoulder and stays in his arms for quite a long while.

He doesn’t even bother to mention that he only started learning the language less than three weeks before and that the human tongue could not actually make some of the sounds required.

Instead, he holds onto Loki until the warmth coursing through him becomes too hard to ignore.

“First we need to hook everything up to JARVIS.” It takes the better part of the morning, while Fury has linguists and code breakers trying to solve the language riddle. In the end, they do find a way to trace back the weapon’s signature to the mothership. A little science, a little magic, and it will tell them about how far away the marauders are.

The results will take weeks to analyze but at least they should be able to work on the next problem. SHIELD itself.