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For Tony Loki becomes a maddening itch in the space between his suit and his skin; impossible to scratch, not really there, misfiring receptors in his skin sending electricity up the line of his spine to his cerebral cortex in an archaic impulse that serves no purpose.
Scratching causes infections.
He's a thing Tony doesn't want to let go of; obsessive nature out in full force, throbbing at the back of his skull and right between his eyes that Loki is his stuff. Who else is really going to take him apart and figure out the pieces, reverse engineer and repackage the whole thing? (There's that other impulse then, archaic but not so much useless, it's always served Tony well in the past, that need to put his name on things in diva-like displays of ownership. Stark on the tin. That's how you know it's a win.) The Avengers are a team of big guns, but there's only one other brain in the outfit and really.. Bruce Banner is nice and all, but he's no Tony Stark.
It puts a weird tic in his left shoulder to see the would-be king of Earth (no throne remember) shoot off in a pretty blue light with his brother, batting pretty lashes like the gag is all his own idea, bitchy little condescending look to the five, FIVE, people it took to get him in it. He's gone. Other realm. Incalculable (and there's a word he doesn't like), light years away to a place out of the only kind of books that he hates. Myth. Lies. Eat your vegetables, be better than your father, go to bed kind of scare tactic stories. Tony douses the flaring infection with liberal applications of alcohol strong enough to make most men cling to something to keep from spinning off the earth.
It's not his first rodeo, he thinks to himself; Glenlivet in hand, three ice cubes clinking around in his glass. He's got this.