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Tony stands in front of his father’s desk in his Captain America pajamas, staring up at the tuxedo-clad man. His father shuffles through the stack of papers, expression blank except for the downward angle of his eyebrows.
“What is this?” he asks.
Tony’s heartbeat speeds up and he clenches his fingers into fists, ignoring the way his palms sweat. “You told me I couldn’t have a dog,” he replies steadily, trying to maintain eye contact like Jarvis taught him to. “So I want to make one.”
His father studies him and then the plans for another few seconds before he tosses the stack of papers down onto his desk without preamble. “I will not allow you to waste your time on something like this,” he states.
Tony swallows against the lump that wells up in his throat, and even though his father is using the tone that brokers no argument, Tony can’t help himself. “But—“
“Enough,” his father says sharply. “Do not bring this up again. Your mother and I have to go or we’re going to be late.”
His father leaves the study without another word, and Tony doesn’t move, his feet suctioned to the ground. Tears burn his eyes and the lump threatens to choke him, growing by the second, but he refuses to give in to it. He will save his allowance, he tells himself. He will save his allowance and buy the parts himself. He worked on the schematics for the better part of the month, and he isn’t ready to give up. He will not give up.
He swipes at his running nose with his sleeve, and the sudden movement causes the first tear to breech his eyelashes. A hiccuping sob escapes and he covers his face with his hands to stave off the onslaught, his shuddering breaths leaking out between his fingers.
“You can do it,” he whispers to himself.
“Do what?” an unfamiliar voice rasps.
Tony gasps and turns around, socked feet almost slipping out from under him on the polished wood floor. Across the room and framed by the fireplace, a man crouches, dark hair hanging in his face. Seeing him makes Tony realize that the hair on his arms and the back of his neck stand on end, like they do before a thunder storm.
“Who are you?” Tony whispers.
The man doesn’t answer. Instead, he maneuvers himself into a sitting position and rolls his neck on his shoulders, exposing a pale face and green eyes.
“Where am I?” he grunts.
Tony takes a step backwards, and then another, until the desk is at his back. A part of him, the part that's making his heart race, tells him to bolt out of the room, but another part of him, the part that gets him in trouble, keeps him there.
“New York,” he finally says after the man stares at him expectantly.
“The realm,” the man clarifies.
“I don’t know what a realm is.”
The man narrows his eyes, forehead creasing with displeasure. “Your attire,” he finally says. “Is this Midgard?”
Tony stares at him with wide eyes.
“Earth,” the man grits out, nostrils flaring in annoyance. “Do you call this realm Earth?”
Tony nods jerkily.
The man’s head drops back against the brick lining the fireplace and he laughs, except it doesn’t sound amused. “Of course it is,” he mutters to himself. “Of course. Why would I be sent anywhere else but here.”
“Who are you?” Tony asks again, voice wavering. “Why are you in my house?”
“Do not fear,” the man replies says with another hoarse laugh. “I am not here for you. I will leave shortly.”
Tony blinks, and a burst of courage urges him to take a step forward. His curiosity is winning the battle, and he thinks briefly about Jarvis telling him he’s like a cat, and that curiosity will get him killed, but the thought floats away as the man locks eyes with him.
“How did you get here, though?” he asks.
The man’s smile turns cold. “An ant like you would not understand.”
Tony bristles, indignant. “Yes, I would. I’m really smart.”
The man raises a dark brow. “You understand time travel, then?”
“I could,” Tony says. “If you explained it to me. My IQ is 208.”
The man cocks his head to the side and straightens up. “And what, pray tell, is an IQ?”
“Intelligence quotient,” Tony scoffs.
“You are intelligent, then?”
Tony scowls. “I told you, my IQ is 208 and I’m only nine. Also, I’m going to build a robot dog. I bet you’ve never seen that before.”
The man stares at Tony for a moment and then sighs heavily. “I know what neither of those things are.”
Without thinking, Tony turns around and grabs at the papers on his father’s desk, then stalks towards the stranger and thrusts them out to him. “Robot,” he says, nostrils flaring, “dog.”
The man’s lips quirk upwards and he takes the pages Tony offers.
Tony takes a few steps backwards and watches the man as he studies the schematics and his stomach twists and turns when the smile slowly slips off of the man’s face.
“You created these?” he asks quietly.
“Yes.”
“What is the purpose of a dog in this realm?”
Tony blinks, taken aback. “Are you asking me what a dog is?” he asks and then laughs. “It’s a dog. You know, a pet animal. You can play fetch with it and stuff.”
The man studies Tony for a few more seconds and then looks back down at the pages. Something Tony can’t pinpoint changes in his expression, but Tony thinks it makes the man look sad.
“Will you build it?” the man asks suddenly.
Tony’s horrified to find tears springing to his eyes. “I want to,” he manages and swipes at his face. “I want to, but my father said I shouldn’t—“
“Do not waste your talents,” the man hisses, eyes narrowed, “because your father is an imbecile.”
The charge in the air sparks, making Tony’s skin crawl, and his eyes widen. He takes a few steps back, ready to run if he needs to.
“Your father is a worthless piece of meat if he does not see the brilliance in such plans,” the man continues, and something in his expression changes, softening the hard lines. “Build the bloody robot dog.”
Tony nods a few times, not trusting himself to speak, but steels himself when the man holds out the schematics and takes a few steps forward so he can take them back.
They stare at each other for a few more seconds, and then the man begins to climb to his feet. “I must be going.”
At his full height, the man is tall, much taller than his father or even Jarvis, and Tony stares, wide eyed, as he rolls his shoulders and runs a hand through his dark hair, pushing it back.
“I do hope, if I return to this pitiful realm, to see robot dogs abound,” the man says with something that looks like a smirk.
Tony smiles slowly and nods, and then the man disappears in a flash of green light.
***
Tony graduates from MIT at age seventeen and his parents host a party.
Well, his mother insists there be a party. His father could care less, caught up in some business deal or another, but it doesn’t phase Tony, even when his father disappears half an hour in and doesn’t come back down from his study. He’s used to Howard’s disappearing acts and his mother’s apologetic smiles, and he smiles back because nothing, not even a teenage son with two degrees, will ever be enough to turn Howard Stark’s head. It stings even though Tony doesn’t want it to, and he stares hard at the diplomas sitting on the table, surrounded by piles of envelopes and gifts. They’re framed in expensive wood and non-glare glass, and people ohh and ahh at them.
Tony thinks about grabbing them and tossing them like frisbees, but instead, he greets everyone that shows until the gardens and pool are packed with some faces he recognizes, but mostly faces he doesn’t.
***
It's a few hours in and Tony’s buzzed from expensive vodka he sneaks shots of when his mother isn’t paying attention when Obadiah shows up. When he spots Tony, he snags the teen in a head lock. Tony blushes, not because he gives a shit about being embarrassed but because Obie is the closest he has to a male role model next to prim and proper Jarvis, and Tony was afraid he wouldn’t come because of some head butting he and Tony’s father are currently involved in.
“Tony, look at you,” Obie says, a big smile on his face. “A goddamned genius. Just look at you.”
“I’m pretty awesome,” Tony replies and laughs when Obie ruffles his hair even more.
“Today, MIT,” the other man says and finally lets go, then holds out a hand for Tony to shake, his eyes serious. “And tomorrow, the world.”
Tony grins wider and grips the man’s hand.
Yeah, he’s ready to take over the world.
But first, he gets more drunk. Beer, more shots, champagne when his mother makes a toast, Obie standing proudly beside her in place of the father who is god knows where. Tony smiles until his face hurts and his stomach churns, and sometime after midnight he stumbles upstairs, the first few buttons of his shirt undone and his suit jacket slung over his shoulder.
The light in his father’s study is still on. It leaks out from under the door, and Tony considers making a shit ton of noise and banging on the door, but he hears his father’s angry voice seeping into the hall around the wood and doesn’t want more of a headache, so he continues through the mansion, feet dragging, until he makes it to his room.
The bed envelopes him, and Tony thinks he’ll just pass out, but when he closes his eyes, the room spins and he lurches up. It takes his vision a few seconds to settle, and when it does, he realizes he is not alone in his moonlit room.
No, there’s a man standing in the corner like a shadow, a man he hasn’t seen in years. A man he convinced himself didn’t exist, because some magician materializing in his father’s study makes a lot less sense than a lonely, terrified boy making up superheroes to keep him company.
“Your eyes,” Tony slurs. “They used to be green.”
The man’s eyes widen and he steps forward. “So it is you, then.”
Tony laughs, head lolling down, and feels like he might vomit. “S’me. Who else did y’expect? S’my room.”
The man studies him, head tilted to the side. He looks the same, even though his hair is a bit longer and his eyes are blue, so blue that Tony can’t really tear his gaze away.
“How d’you get ‘ere?” Tony asks.
“Magic,” the man replies quietly and glances around the room. “Though I do not know why this place is where the magic chose.”
Tony shrugs and then falls back against the bed, unable to keep himself upright any longer. He feels like someone filled his head with a ton of bricks. “Here’s not so bad,” he lies and throws an arm over his face in an attempt to stop the ceiling from spinning. It kind of works.
The man doesn’t respond for several seconds, and Tony begins wonder if he’s gone, but then he asks, “Did you build it?”
Tony snorts. “Built a lot o’things.”
“The dog,” the man clarifies with a gentle chuckle. “Did you build the robot dog?”
The tears are unwelcome, but they spring to his eyes anyway, and Tony can’t stop them. His face feels hot and grows hotter, and his lips tremble in an attempt to keep the vulnerable sounds on his tongue from slipping out. He sucks in a ragged breath, and above the pulse pounding like drums in his ears, Tony hears boots scuffle across carpet.
The bed moves, dips, and when Tony slowly pulls his arm away from his face, the man is leaning over him, black hair falling like a curtain around them. He frowns as he touches Tony’s face, his cold fingertip trailing down the damp, hot trail the tears leave on Tony’s cheek.
“You are a very lonely boy,” the man whispers as he stares down at Tony, his blue eyes glassy.
Tony squeezes his eyes shut. “Who are you?” he croaks.
“I am no one,” the man replies, his touch withdrawing. The bed moves again, and then the man is lying next to Tony, one hand supporting his head. “Who are you?”
Tony laughs and continues to laugh, his entire body shaking and tears rolling down his cheeks. “No one,” he finally gasps. “I am absolutely no one.”
He falls asleep with the man next to him, barely touching him, and wakes up, alone and hungover.
***
The second he turns eighteen, Tony moves into his own penthouse suite, as far away form his father’s presence as possible. His father owns the building, sure, but Tony doesn’t care about that. He just wants to get away, to find out the person he can be without Howard Stark’s heavy, disapproving gaze weighing him down.
He wonders, the day he moves out, if the man will find him again. He doesn’t really know why the man appeared where he did, and he got the feeling the man didn’t know, either, but he didn’t want it to stop. Getting away from his father was more important than a mystery magician, though, so he left and hoped.
Two months into Tony's newfound freedom, said mystery magician appears, literally. One moment he isn't there and the next he is, slowly making his way around the room, studying the art on Tony’s walls and random mechanical parts littered on every flat surface. Tony’s heart races at the sight of him.
“What do you call this?” the man says when he stops in front of the TV and glances over his shoulder at Tony.
Tony sits on his couch in his boxers, remote in his hand and a bowl of popcorn in his lap. He doesn’t indulge in things like this often, mostly because he usually can't turn off his brain, but tonight he feels like he needs some time outside of his own head. Mindless action films always fit the bill, and he was in the middle of a Jean Claud van Dam punch fest when the man appeared in the middle of the room.
“A television,” Tony replies, trying to keep the grin off his face but failing. “You watch it for entertainment. Except I don’t have x-ray vision, so sit down and watch it with me, or get out of the way.”
The man raises a brow, a smile quirking his lips, and despite Tony's words, his eyes follow him as he circles the room once more before he sits down next to Tony on the couch. He looks more tired than the last time Tony saw him, a little thinner, those sharp cheekbones even more prominent, but none of that is able to erase the underlying elegance. Tony was drunk and sloppy the last time he saw the man, but he isn’t now, so there’s nothing— no emotional or alcohol-induced haze— to dull how beautiful the man is.
“How do you conjure the images?”
“They’re sent via radio waves,” Tony says and forces himself to look away. “Invisible patterns of energy.”
“Interesting,” the man hums and leans back. “We do not have this in Asgard.”
“Is there where you’re from?” Tony asks and offers him some popcorn. “Where is that, anyway?”
The man doesn’t answer. Instead, he reaches out and touches the popcorn with his fingertips, then slowly sinks his hand into the bowl.
Tony laughs, he can’t help it. “You eat it. It’s edible. A snack.”
The man retracts his hand and takes a kernel of popcorn with it that he then deposits very deliberately on his tongue. He chews thoughtfully, with purpose, and his eyebrows raise towards his hairline.
“That,” he says seriously, “is delightful.”
And that’s how Tony introduces the man to action films and microwave popcorn.
***
His mystery magician comes and goes spontaneously, and Tony introduces him to other things. Whiskey, steak, Mythbusters, physics, coffee. The man doesn't talk much about himself, and Tony allows it.
What he hates-- absolutely hates-- is that the man has a tendency to appear on the nights Tony is actually able to sleep.
This is one of those nights, and Tony is startled awake by a shift of his mattress. He's learned not to panic anymore, but it doesn't stop him from grumbling, “You’re a lonely bastard, aren’t you?” on the end of a yawn as he angles himself so he’s propped up on one arm.
It’s still dark, but Tony can make out the silhouette of the man. He sits at the edge of the bed, his back to Tony and his head bowed.
“Be that way, then,” Tony grunts and face plants back into the pillow.
He’s almost asleep when the mattress shifts again and the man scoots up, kicking his boots off as he does, and lays on the other side of the bed. There’s only a few inches between them, and the intimacy of this makes Tony’s chest tighten, especially because he doesn’t even know the man’s name. Neither of them moves to close the distance, and the silence and stillness drags on so long that Tony thinks he might fall asleep.
“Yes,” the man suddenly says, his voice so quiet Tony almost misses it.
“Yeah, me too,” Tony murmurs and closes his eyes. He falls asleep with the tips of his fingers barely brushing the back of the other man’s hand.
***
Tony’s in the middle of fucking a dark-haired woman he met at the club when he gets the call.
“Don’t answer it,” the woman pleads, face flushed and chest heaving beneath him.
Tony considers it, but no one calls this line unless it’s an emergency, so he rolls off of her, ignoring her frustrated sigh, and grabs the phone.
“This better be good,” he answers, panting.
“Sir,” Jarvis says over the line. There’s something off about his voice, something strained, and Tony sits up in bed and turns, feet planted on carpet to ground him. The woman— he forgets her name, doesn’t care about her name— trails her nails along his bare back. He almost slaps her hand away but stops himself, his fingers gripping the phone so tightly his knuckles ache.
“Jarvis, what is it?” he demands.
“There’s been an accident,” Jarvis replies shakily. “I am so very sorry, Anthony, but your parents…”
Jarvis’ voice trails off, and then there’s just a static-filled silence. Tony nods and opens his mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. His breath sticks in his chest, the pressure building until he feels dizzy. The silence is punctured when Jarvis continues to speak, accent even more pronounced with his anxiety, and he explains that the breaks malfunctioned, that the car crashed into a truck on the highway, that the initial medical exam reports state that his parents died instantly and that they did not suffer.
“Sir?” Jarvis says gently, his voice watery like he’s been crying. “Anthony? Are you still there?”
Tony nods, realizes that Jarvis can’t see him, and then manages a sob-like grunt that sounds like a “yes.”
“Will you come tomorrow to the main house? We will need to make arrangements. The lawyers will be there, as well, with paperwork. I am sorry to talk of such things, Sir, but it must be taken care of, with your father’s company as it is. He’s left it all to you, you know, and his lawyers wish to finalize everything before the shareholders—”
Tony can’t listen to any more of it. “Of course,” he manages, cutting Jarvis off. “Yeah, I’ll be there.”
The calls ends and Tony sits there silently for a few moments, an eternity, before he throws the phone against the wall with so much force that something in his shoulder pulls and pain shoots down his arm. The phone, a prototype Tony made himself and was trying to convince his father to begin producing, shatters, parts flying with signficant force, and the woman gasps and scrambles of off the bed.
“I should go,” she says as she scours for her clothes.
Tony doesn’t look at her. “Yes.”
She hurriedly dresses and leaves, and less than an hour later, Tony is drunk on expensive scotch his mother bought him for his 21st birthday. He’s so drunk that he almost doesn’t feel it, the change in the air. It actually makes him feel sick, like the jump in static churns the contents of his stomach.
“You,” Tony slurs, not moving from his place on the floor, his back against his bed, “have amazing timing.”
The man doesn’t speak, just settles next next to Tony on the floor so that their shoulders touch. At first, Tony is furious. He doesn’t want company. If he wanted company, he would have invited the woman to stay, would have lost himself in her body instead of in a bottle, but he didn’t want it. And yet, here is the man, his mysterious magician, taking up Tony’s space and breathing the oxygen Tony so desperately needs because the panic fluttering in his chest makes him feel like he can’t take in enough air.
Tony rolls his head so he can look at the man, so he can snap at the man, and even though his vision is a bit blurry, he’s still cognizant enough to notice that the man is pale, so much more pale than usual, and the dark circles under his eyes are like bruises against his white skin.
“Oh,” Tony says instead, his voice steadier and gentler than he anticipated. "Bad day for you, too, I guess."
“You have no idea,” the man whispers, staring straight ahead.
There’s something about his voice that hits Tony at his core and plays at his heartstrings.
Tony shrugs. “Maybe not,” he admits, “but I’m getting there real fucking fast. I guess we both need each other around the same times. Funny how that cosmic bullshit works.”
The man turns to stare at him, his blue eyes glittering, and before Tony knows what’s happening, they’re lip locked and pulling at each other’s clothing. Tony’s only wearing a t-shirt and sweat pants and he still smells like sex and stale booze, but the man doesn’t seem to care as he tears through the thin cotton and slides his cold hands across Tony’s chest. Tony gasps into his mouth and is rewarded with the man’s tongue, insistent against his own. Tony claws at the leather, desperate to feel skin, and the man helps, tugging at clasps and ties until inch by glorious inch of pale skin is revealed.
Tony drags his nails down pale, lean muscle and watches the tracks of red bloom. The man is gorgeous, so very beautiful, and Tony doesn’t think he’s ever felt such insistent hunger in his entire life, especially for another man. He knows it’s just a front for the misery burning him from the inside out, but he doesn’t care because he thinks the man understands, and he thinks the man will be able to douse it, if even just a little.
“God,” he moans as the man licks his way from Tony’s collarbone to his jaw.
“Indeed,” the man murmurs, and then drags his lips back to Tony’s.
He peels Tony out of his sweats, and Tony doesn't see him shed his own clothes, but suddenly the man is naked. Tony almost stops to wonder how and when, but then the man is straddling him, their erections pressed together, and Tony doesn't care. He grips the man's hips hard enough that his fair skin might bruise— he doesn’t care about that, either, and the man doesn’t seem to mind. He nips and sucks at Tony’s bottom lip, hands carding through Tony’s hair as he grinds down and up, and Tony thinks he might go mad.
He reaches up, his hand blindly searching for the night table drawer he keeps his lube in. When he finally finds handle, he yanks it open, the lamp on the piece of furniture teetering as he retrieves the bottle. The man grins down at him like a shark, his eyes dark with lust and want, his cheeks flushed ever so slightly pink.
They don’t speak as the man slicks his hand and then reaches between them to wrap his hand around Tony’s cock, coating him from hilt to head. Tony groans and arches into the feeling, but it’s gone quickly as the man reaches behind himself. Tony leans forward to press open-mouth kisses across the man’s chest and neck. The man moans when Tony’s teeth graze a nipple, and then he rears up onto his knees, grabs Tony’s cock, and lines it up with his hole.
Tony nearly comes as the head of his cock breaches the tight ring of muscle. The man hisses out a breath, teeth bared, and then throws his head back, dark hair cascading over his shoulders like ink. Tony wraps both arms around the man, his fingers digging into his waist and arches up as the man rides him.
The man comes without Tony touching him, his moan similar to a strangled sob followed by several quick gasps. Tony continues to fuck him through it, holding on for dear life even though the heat is pooling in his abdomen. When the man sighs and sags forward, his hands tangled in Tony’s hair, Tony slams the man down and comes with a curse.
Boneless and sates, he stays wraps around the man, who doesn’t move, either. The man rests his cheek against Tony’s temples and Tony leans into it.
“Stay for the night,” he finally manages to say quietly, turning his face to press a kiss to the man’s jaw. The man doesn’t say anything at first, and Tony repeats, “stay,” the word breaking as the emotion rises up.
“For the night,” the man agrees, his hands cupping the back of Tony’s head, and after five minutes, ten minutes, an hour, they climb to their feet, clean up, and lay in the bed, face to face for the first time even though Tony has shared this bed with the man before.
“I don’t know your name,” Tony says sleepily, twirling a strand of dark hair around his finger.
“You do not need it,” the man replies. He traces lazy patterns up and down Tony’s side. “Names are nothing more than a title we did not choose for ourselves. I would rather you know me as I have been with you and not as I have been forced to be for others.”
Tony swallows against the lump in his throat. He’s been shadowed by the Stark name ever since he was born, trying and failing to meet expectations he never wanted to have set before him.
“I know exactly what you mean,” Tony manages and brushes his lips against the man’s.
They doze, and the moment the sun breaches the horizon, the man disappears.
***
Tony signs paperwork, prepares to run a company, and buries his parents. His life is a whirlwind, filled to the brim, and yet he feels empty.
He doesn’t see the man again.
He tries not to be disappointed. There was no rhyme or reason for the man’s visits, anyway. The first two were separated by almost eight years, and since then, he appeared only sporadically.
He’s almost relieved the man doesn’t show up again because there’s something fermenting in his chest he isn’t comfortable with, so he pushes it down, buries it, and gets on with his life.
Stark Industries becomes even more of an empire, and Tony makes money and more money on top of weapons and more weapons. He builds himself a mansion in Malibu. The building all but hangs over a cliff, as reckless as its owner, and the wall-to-wall windows show off the ocean and the endless blue sky spotted with perfect white clouds. Tony appreciates the beauty for a day, maybe two, and then busies himself with beautiful people instead, a rotating list of men and women in his bed he can lose himself in.
They don’t usually stay the night, and if they do, he’s sure to sneak out of the bed the moment they fall asleep.
Life gets crazy and busy. He finishes the final touches on his amazingly awesome AI system and he hires a woman named Virginia Potts-- really, she hires herself-- to help run his business and his life. She’s feisty, and she’s capable of taking his shit and dealing it right back to him, and he might love her a bit because she’s the first person to choose to stick with him knowing full well the kind of stubborn, self absorbed person he is.
He doesn’t cross that boundary, though, afraid he’ll break her like he’s broken everything else he’s ever cared about, and in between hours spent in his workshop, fucking interchangeable men and women, and drinking his weight in scotch on an all-too regular basis, Tony is still alone.
It’s not too bad, though, and he tries not to think about the man because now that he has everything, he refuses to think about what he cannot have.
He falters a bit when he’s building a crude metal suit in a cave in Afghanistan, his chest cracked open and filled with a car battery and a handful of shrapnel. He hopes with a fervency he’s never felt before that the man will appear.
He doesn’t.
***
He escapes the cave, and he likes the crude metal suit so much he makes a fancier one that he has JARVIS the AI paint red and gold. It's how he becomes Iron Man, and it's how he comes to the conclusion that maybe, just maybe, things will be okay.
Except he's Tony, and Tony is a magnet for trouble. He almost dies by the hands of his best friend and mentor, the man who stood by him when his father walked away, and when Pepper presses the button that burns Obadiah to ashes, Tony doesn’t cry.
He almost dies again, body pumped full of palladium by the piece of tech in his chest keeping him alive, and again when a man tries to kill him thanks to Howard Stark’s legacy of being a gigantic asshole. He creates an element that saves his life and tosses clean energy onto a world table coated with oil and fossil fuels.
And at the end of it all, he ends up with homework and an initiative to save the world.
***
“You are connected, sir,” Jarvis says.
Tony grins as his music choice begins to play through his comms, all guitar, drums, and good old fashioned 80’s vocals.
“Agent Romanoff,” he says. “You miss me?”
He flies into the German square and finds Captain America on the ground with the target looming above him, arm drawn back and spear in hand. He’s dressed in leathers and a golden helmet complete with insanely tall, curved horns, and Tony suddenly feels sick because he knows that outfit even if he hasn't seen the perpetrator's face. Before he can react, the gem in the center of the spearhead flickers and begins to glow a blinding blue.
Tony gears up his repulsors and fires the second he’s within range. There’s a shower of bright sparks and the target flies back into the concrete stairs with an audible gasp. He crumples against them, the spear thrown from his hand at the impact. It lays, still glowing dimly, a few feet from him.
Tony lands on one knee with a heavy thud, the ground cracking beneath the weight of his suit. He stands immediately, all weapons on standby and pointed at the target, who is still hunched over on the staircase. Next to Tony, Captain American climbs to his feet.
“Stand down, Reindeer Games,” Tony directs to the target, hand repulsor humming with energy, and then glances to the side.
Captain America stands next to him now, all bulking muscle and angry frown wrapped up in red, white, and blue, and Tony can’t help the sour taste climbing up his throat. This man, this legend, was his father’s focus for years, and adult or not— father dead for years or not— Tony still feels the jealousy burn within him.
“Captain,” Tony deadpans.
“Mr. Stark,” the other man grits out.
Their attention is drawn away from each other as the target raises his hands. He keeps his head bowed, golden horns poised like a ram ready to charge, except he doesn’t move. He just begins to shimmer, gold dusted around him like fucking fairy dust. Tony powers his repulsor up to seventy-five percent, and he’s about to fire when the ornate outfit and the ostentatious helmet fade away until the target is dressed in much simpler leathers that are even that much more intimately familiar.
It’s like a punch in the gut. Tony powers off all the weapons he has pointed in the man’s direction, and when his faceplate rises, they make eye contact. He sees mild surprise flicker across the man’s face before a smug smile replaces it. It doesn’t reach his eyes, and there’s a emptiness there that chills Tony to the bone.
A few very heavily armed SHIELD agents swarm the square as the quinjet lands, and as they roughly grab the man by the arms and drag him to his feet, Tony wonders what he did to deserve this.
***
Tony stands towards the front of the quinjet, Captain America to his right, Agent Romanoff flying them back to base, and his magician strapped down with a handful of SHIELD agents surrounding him. He looks, for all intents and purposes, completely calm and unbothered, glancing around the jet like Pepper would glance around an art gallery.
Physically, he doesn’t look much different than the last time Tony saw him, really, even though that was over ten years ago. Pale skin, dark hair, and all sharp angles wrapped up in the same Renaissance Faire leather ensemble. Loki, Romanoff told him. The man identified himself as Loki of Asgard before he shot up a SHIELD base with his magic staff and stole the Tesseract, along with several of their agents.
He expects to feel something after learning the man’s name. It’s been almost thirty years, after all, since the first time the man showed up in his father’s study. He didn’t anticipate that one of those feelings would be disappointment. It weighs on him heavily, even more heavily than the shock of seeing the man’s face. He remembers the last time they saw each other when the man told him that names would only label them, and damn, wasn’t he right, Tony thinks. They can’t be any more labeled than they are now, couldn’t be any farther from each other on the spectrum.
It hurts, and Tony hates it. Almost as much as he hates that the man will not look at him, almost as much as he hates that he’s paired up with the legend who eclipsed his childhood and his father’s attentions and the woman who spied on him for months while on his payroll.
“I don’t like it,” Rogers suddenly states, turning to stare out the windshield of the jet.
Tony swallow the lump in his throat and pulls himself from his thoughts. “What?” he asks. “Rock of Ages giving up so easily?”
Rogers’ jaw clenches. “I don’t remember it being that easy. The guys packs a whollop.”
Tony stares at the man—Loki, he reminds himself— who stares at nothing in particular. “Well, still, you are pretty spry for an older fellow,” he says. He pauses and gives Rogers enough time to glare at him before he adds, “What’s your thing, pilates?”
Rogers blinks, his face screwing up, and demands, “What?”
Tony almost laughs, but manages to say with a relatively straight face, “You know, like calisthenics. You might have missed a couple things, you know, doing time as a Capsicle.”
The disapproving look Rogers gives him is totally worth it. Tony has to bite his cheek to stop from laughing. He looks over his shoulder in time to see Loki staring at him, a small quirk to his lips, but he looks away the moment he realizes Tony’s watching him.
This is going to get old real quick.
And then the quinjet shakes. A particularly violent flash of lightning striking down in front of them, followed by an even more violent bang of thunder.
“Where’s this coming from?” Romanoff growls, her hands tightening on the controls.
She isn’t the only one who’s worried. Loki sits ramrod straight, body pulled taught like a whipcord, and he stares up at the ceiling of the jet like he's waiting for something.
“What’s the matter?” Rogers asks. “Afraid of a little lightning?”
Loki raises his brows, but Tony doesn’t miss the way the muscle in his cheek jumps. “I’m not overly fond of what follows.”
Rogers and Tony give each other a look before something lands heavily on top of the quinjet, causing it to jolt. They all stumble, grabbing on to the nearest nailed-down object, but Loki just stares up, lips pulled into a grim line.
Tony isn’t really sure what to expect, but he’s the only one capable of checking things out, so puts his helmet on and walks towards the back of the jet. He can feel Loki’s eyes on him, but the other man says nothing as Tony hits a button that opens the back hatch of the jet.
“What are you doing?” Rogers calls over the wind.
Tony doesn’t have a chance to reply before a man lands on one knee on the open hatch door. A man with bulging biceps and a scowl to rival Rogers’. His blond hair and red cape whip around him in the wind, and as their new guest stands and starts to walk forward, Tony raises his hand and powers up his gauntlet. He doesn’t have time to shoot, though. The blonde man raises his hand, and in it he’s clutching a fucking hammer, Jesus Christ, and he whacks Tony with it in the chest so hard he goes flying back into Captain America.
He sits up in time to watch the man yank Loki out of his restraints like they were made of paper, wrap a hand around his throat, and dive headfirst out of the jet.
“So now there’s that guy,” he grunts as he stands.
“Another Asgardian?” Roman yells.
Rogers stands, too, pulling his helmet on. “I thought they were friendly.”
“It doesn’t matter. If he frees Loki or kills him, the Tesseract is lost,” Tony says, and there’s truth to that, sure, but there’s also a part of him that refuses to let Loki go after all of this time because he wants answers, and Tony Stark is nothing if not stubborn as a boar.
“Stark, we need a plan of attack!” Rogers snaps.
Tony glances over his shoulder a Captain America. “I have a plan. Attack.”
And then he flies.
***
In theory, tackling, insulting, and fighting a very muscular man with a hammer was probably not the best idea. In practice, there’s a lot of yelling, and about two dozen trees lose their lives in the squabble, but eventually Rogers, Blonde Guy, and Tony all make peace.
And Loki, magically, remains where they left him.
Thor— blonde guy finally introduces himself as Thor, the God of Thunder, and this is his brother Loki, God of Mischief— rides with them on the quinjet, and when they finally get back tot he helicarrier, Loki smiles as he’s escorted down the halls.
He still won’t look at Tony.
***
Tony watches Rogers stalk out of the lab and pops another blueberry into his mouth.
“I wonder if they should have kept him on ice,” he mutters.
Bruce laughs. “They guy’s not wrong about Loki, though,” he adds thoughtfully. “He’s got the jump on us.”
Tony hums his agreement, and he wants to tell someone, but he isn’t sure he can trust Bruce, not yet. Instead, throws a few commands into his program and he says, “I’ll be back. Don’t hulk out without me.”
Bruce rolls his eyes but smiles and swipes at something on the holoscreen.
The cage they have Loki in reminds Tony of a terrarium. He isn’t quiet when he enters the room, and he can tell by the change in Loki’s posture that the other man knows he’s no longer alone. He doesn’t turn towards Tony at first, just stands there, his hands clasped loosely behind his back.
“I did not think you would come,” he remarks, shifting his weight. “I thought they would perhaps send the woman to befriend me. Alas, I was wrong.”
“Are you disappointed?”
Loki shrugs elegantly and then turns around to finally face him. He looks tired and almost sickly, the color drained from his skin, but his eyes are bright and intense. Tony feels like someone wrapped their hands around his lungs and squeezed the air from them.
“I do not think it would be smart of us to have this conversation here. Surveillance and all,” Loki comments and gestures up at the cameras littering the room’s ceiling.
Tony sucks in some air and walks forward. “I took care of that before I came. It’ll loop some older feed for the next ten minutes.”
“Clever boy,” Loki chuckles, letting his gaze go from Tony’s face, down to his toes, and back up. “Or should I say man. My, you have aged since our last meeting.”
“You haven’t, though."
"An astute observation," Loki replies dryly.
"How long has it been for you? Since you last saw me.”
“Not as long as it has been for you. Time moves much differently where I was held. Or, I moved differently through time, I should say.”
Tony stops when he’s not more than six inches from the glass. “Why are you here?”
“You would not understand.”
“Eh, try me. I’m smarter than I look.”
Loki smiles sadly. “Ah, yes. Two-hundred and eight, wasn’t it?”
Tony forces himself not to react even though his heart skips a beat or three beneath his reactor.
“What is the saying you Midgardians use?” Loki continues lowly. “Ah, yes. Stuck between a rock and a hard place.” He levels Tony with a stare. “I have no choice.”
“There’s always a choice.”
“I once told myself such fairy tales,” Loki snarls, stalking forward, and slams his fists against the glass. He’s like a tiger stuck behind bars, feral and crazed for freedom, and Tony’s surprised he isn’t clawing at the glass. “I once told myself I could write my own destiny, but that is a lie if there ever was one. We are what we are meant to be, and that is why I am here and you are there. I have no other route to travel, Metal Man.”
“I was meant to be a lot of things, and I told them all to fuck off,” Tony replies levelly. “You’re giving up.”
Loki laughs, and there’s so much anger and hurt behind the sound that Tony winces. He’s always wondered about this man, about what life he lead, but the wonder is now a need and the need burns him.
“What did they do to you?” he asks.
Loki’s eyes widen, something vulnerable shining through, before he bears his teeth and slams a fist against the glass again. “You know nothing.”
Tony doesn’t rise to the bait. “I can help you if you’ll let me.”
“I do not need your help,” Loki snaps, his dark hair falling into his face and specks of spittle flecking the glass.
“Maybe not,” Tony says and takes the final two steps forward, placing his hand opposite Loki’s on the glass. “But do you want it? Because I’m offering it.”
Loki stares at their hands, chest heaving, and whispers, “You can do nothing.”
Tony chuckles humorlessly. “I can do a lot of things. I’m a genius with a lot of money. Tell me what you’re trying to create so I can stop you.” Loki starts to speak, and Tony cuts him off, already seeing the argument. “I can. I will. You want me to.”
“I want nothing from you.”
Tony bows his head and tries to reign in the emotions bubbling to the surface. He’s never been good at reigning anything in, and he’s losing his patience, but he doesn’t think forcing anything on this man is going to work. He gets the feeling that a lot’s been forced into Loki’s hands.
Except the camera feeds are going to be resetting soon, and the agents will be making their rounds.
“Loki,” he murmurs, “please.”
“Do not call me by name,” the other man rasps.
Tony’s head snaps up and he sees it again, the raw vulnerability, and his stomach clenches. “Let me help you.”
Even though his fists are still pressed to the glass, Loki says nothing. Tony’s phone buzzes in his pocket, and he curses under his breath. He’s got to go now before Fury finds him here and asks for an explanation. He can’t help Loki if SHIELD tosses him in an interrogation room, and he doesn’t really want to try to explain that he may have possibly boned this particular villain.
He starts to slide away from the glass when Loki finally speaks.
“My men will come,” he says, voice barely above a strangled whisper. “They will target the ship’s engines, and they will target you and yours. I will use the Tesseract to open a portal, and an army will come. There will be death, but no matter the cost, you cannot make it seem like you know of my plans. If he suspects, he will kill me and destroy this planet.”
Tony’s mouth is suddenly dry. “Who will kill you?”
Loki smiles wanly. “I cannot speak his name. He will hear it. He always hears.”
“Okay,” Tony breathes, even though he doesn’t particularly feel it. “Okay.”
“Prepare yourself, Anthony Stark, and try not to die before we meet again.”
His name on Loki’s lips sends a shiver through him, and he isn’t sure how he’s learned it, but before Tony can reply Loki turns away, his hands leaving the glass, and Tony’s phone buzzes insistently in his pocket. He spits out a few curses and leaves the room before his inclination to open the glass cage wins him over.
***
It happens like Loki says it will.
Tony’s back in the lab, the whole gang together, when JARVIS finds the files. Phase Two, they’re titled, and then Rogers is demanding answers from Fury because of course he’s gone and found the weapons. Bruce is pissed, and Fury throws the blame to Thor, and then everyone’s at each other’s throats.
He's pretty sure Rogers is ready to punch his face in when an explosion shakes the helicarrier. Glass explodes and Tony is tossed into the wall. Smoke billows from shredded electrical panels and small fires. Metal and plaster litter the floor. Tony climbs to his feet unsteadily, ears ringing, and turns, fists ready, when someone grabs his arm.
It’s Rogers, pupils blown wide with adrenaline. “Put on the suit,” he says, and pushes Tony towards the doors.
***
Loki gets away, the Hulk makes a devastating appearance and disappearance, Thor is missing, and Coulson is dead. The only upside is that Barton is safe and himself again, and Romanoff’s injuries are minor. The helicarrier is still in the air, but just barely, and there are dozens of SHIELD agents in need of medical attention.
Tony’s never been known to give up, though, and he’s finally found a group of people as stubborn and stupid as he is, so the Avengers who aren’t MIA suit up, steal a jet, and head for Stark Tower.
***
As suspected, there’s a piece of tech on his roof with the Tesseract in the center glowing a beautiful, etherial blue, and Dr. Selvig monitors the energy readings. Tony stops midair, his thrusters barely keeping him up after his run in with the helicarrier’s propeller system.
“Sir, I’ve turned off the arc reactor,” JARVIS states. “The device is already self sustaining.”
Tony doesn’t like the sound of that, not one bit.
“Shut it down, Dr. Selvig,” he calls.
Selvig looks up at him, eyes blue and glassy. “It’s too late! You can’t stop it now,” he yells back. “She wants to show us something! A new universe.”
Tony was never one for fanaticism unless it was directed at him, so he says, “oookay,” raises his hands, powers up the repulsors in his gauntlets as much as he can without it taking him out of the air, and fires.
The blast hits dead-on, and the energy from his suit mingles with the energy around the Tesseract like oil floating on water, and then it explodes. The resounding boom echoes through the city, and Dr. Selvig and Tony are both thrown from the blast. Tony’s thrusters sputter dangerously.
“The barrier is pure energy. It is unbreachable,” JARVIS says.
“Yeah, I got that,” Tony grunts and then something catches his eye.
Loki stands on the roof and stares up at him with an unreadable expression. He has the scepter again, and it glows, highlighting the man’s high cheekbones and dark hair.
“Plan B.”
“The Mach VII is not ready yet, Sir,” JARVIS warns.
“Well, skip the spinning rims. We’re on the clock.”
Tony lands on the roof. An arch rises up behind him and a robotic hands begin to strip him of his suit. He and Loki lock eyes, and they continue to stare at each other until they both reach their respective doors that lead into Tony’s rooftop bar.
He heads straight for counter.
“Do you want a drink?” he calls as Loki steps into the room.
“I do not think that wise, all things considered,” Loki says.
“I’m still gonna have a drink.” Tony slips on the Mack VII’s bracers, then searches the shelf for his favorite scotch, the same scotch his mother gave him for his twenty-first birthday, and pours himself two fingers.
Loki steps up to the bar, leaning heavily on his staff. He looks even more exhausted, if that were possible. “There are things I must tell you before it is too late.”
“I can multitask.” Tony takes a sip, relishes the burn. “Lay it on me.”
“They will come from the sky,” Loki says, “once the Tesseract opens the portal.”
“Them?”
“The Chitauri. They are a combination of organic material and machine. Easily killed, but their numbers far outweigh yours.”
Tony swirls the scotch in his glass. “Can I close the portal?”
Loki looks up at Tony through his lashes. “You can, but I will not tell you how. Not yet.”
“Why the hell not?” Tony laughs.
Loki rolls his eyes. “I need the defeat to look realistic, or this will be for nought, but do not worry. Dr. Selvig knows, and I will lay the pieces out for him. He will tell you or yours in time.”
Tony sighs and tilts his glass in the direction of Loki’s scepter. “Okay, fine. How do I beat the control the Glowstick of Destiny’s got on you?”
Loki’s eyes widen. “What?”
“I figured it out a bit ago. That’s what this is, isn’t it? They’ve got some kind of hold on you, just like you had on Barton and Selvig and all of those agents.” Tony sets his drink down and slowly walks out from behind the bar until Loki is within reach, but he doesn’t touch. “You’re fighting it, though, aren’t you? It’s how you’re able to even consider turning on them. You’re a tough bastard.”
Loki licks his lips, fingers tightening on the scepter. “You are indeed clever.”
“Two-hundred and eight, remember?” Tony murmurs, and takes another step forward. “How do I break it’s hold on you? Same as with Barton? A hard hit to the head?”
Loki laughs gently. “Even in your suit, it would not be hard enough.”
Tony shrugs, smirking. “We have a Hulk.”
They stare at each other for several seconds, and then Loki whispers, “You’re impossible.”
Tony takes that as an invitation. He reaches out, one hand closing around the back of Loki’s neck, the other grabbing the lapel of his leather outfit and yanking him forward. The man—no, the god— comes easily, and Loki makes a wanton sound at the back of his throat when their lips touch. Though one hand still grips the scepter, the other comes to the side of Tony’s face, gently brushing over the bruising at his temple.
“I would have let them burn the entire planet to the ground had I not seen you,” Loki whispers against Tony’s lips, his voice thick with emotion. “I was ready for destruction.”
“Why?” Tony combs his fingers through the man’s hair, and when Loki arches into it, Tony has to bite back a groan.
Loki nips at his bottom lip and then rests his forehead against Tony’s, his breathing fast. “There is much you do not know. About Thor. About me and what I am. About who found me when my family cast me aside.”
“I want to know,” Tony says, catching Loki’s eyes. “I’ve wanted know about you since I was a kid.”
“You may not live to hear the story, and if you do, I will surely not be around long to tell it to you.”
Tony’s response is immediate. “Worth the risk.”
“Is it?” Loki pulls back to stare at him, his brows angled down and his lips, reddened from their kiss, turned down at the corners. “You just agreed that you do not know me. You cannot know, then, if this is work the risk of your life and the lives of those you care about.”
“I do know. You know how?” Tony wraps a hand around Loki’s, the one holding onto the scepter. “Years ago, a man showed up when I was torn down and gave me hope. Maybe it was thirty years ago for me, but it wasn’t for you, which means even if I’ve changed a lot since then, you haven’t had the time.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” Loki snaps.
“You knew you were going to try to destroy this planet before you ever met me, and you could have killed me, could have laughed in my face when I showed you those stupid schematics, but you didn’t.” He chases Loki’s lips with his own and murmurs against them, “I believe in you even if I don’t know you. There’s something about you. So prove me right, Loki. I’m tired of being wrong about people I care about.”
Tony pulls away before Loki can respond.
“JARVIS, anytime now would be great.”
The suit bursts through the far wall without warning. Tony’s tower is already in need of some repairs, so he figures he can just add a broken wall to the bill. He holds out his arms, and the pieces of the suit dismantle and reassemble themselves over his limbs and torso, clicking together with efficiency.
He looks over his shoulder before he puts on the helmet. Loki stares at him, mouth slightly open, gaze warm. Tony grins.
“See you on the other side!” he calls, fires up the thrusters, and then flies straight through the glass.
***
The pep to his step doesn’t last once the Tesseract sends a burst of energy up towards the sky. There’s a portal, and then there’s aliens— a lot of aliens— and Tony regrets ever deciding he wanted to be a superhero.
That regret hits him tenfold when the gigantic alien whale monsters float on by.
***
The Avengers fight well together, all things considered. Bruce shows up, just like Tony knew he would, and when he goes mean and green, Tony maybe whispers “Loki smash” to him and hopes Bruce is in there somewhere to understand what he means.
And it works, and even though the city gets wrecked, rubble and smoke and glass everywhere, they’re somehow all still standing when Fury says over the comms, “Stark, do you copy? There’s a nuke heading your way.”
Tony feels like his heart and stomach both drop to the boots of his suit. The sweat beading on his brow turns cold.
“Stark, do you copy?”
“Yeah, I copy,” he rasps, and before he can ask, JARVIS has already honed in on the nuke’s signal. Tony heads for the bridge.
There’s some static on the comms, and Romanoff says, “I can close it! Can anybody copy? I can shut the portal down!”
“Do it!” Rogers yell, but Tony cuts him off.
“No, wait!”
“Stark, they’re still coming!”
“I’ve got a nuke coming. It’s gonna blow in less than a minute.”
There’s is silence on the comms, but Tony already knows what has to happen.
“I know just where to put it,” he says and veers over the wires of the bridge. He grabs onto the barrel of the nuke like the man holding the world.
“Stark,” Rogers says grimly over the comms. “You know that’s a one way trip?”
“Save the rest for the turn, J,” he replies, ignoring the comment even though his heart is pounding and there’s a lump in his throat threatening to choke him.
“Sir, shall I try Ms. Potts?” Somehow, his AI has the same tone as Rogers.
“Might as well,” Tony manages.
It rings. And rings. And rings.
Probably for the best, Tony thinks, and when he gets to the tower, he flies up the side of it, past the floors he designed, past the office he built for Pepper with a perfect view of the skyline, past the rooftop bar where he kissed the man he’s probably been a bit in love with since he was seventeen, past Romanoff, Loki’s specter in her hands and pressed into the bubble of energy around the Tesseract.
Past everything and into the portal.
He goes from the afternoon sunshine of Manhattan to darkness, and the sudden change causes him to let go of the nuke. The call to Pepper, still ringing, fails, and JARVIS’ voice begins to stutter. Tears burn his eyes as Tony stares into the black depths, floating because his suit is slowly but surely failing and shutting down. Around him, the shadows move, and he realizes that they aren’t shadows at all, but more Chitauri warriors and whales and ships, hundred and hundreds, and he regrets nothing.
Almost nothing.
He closes his eyes as the nuke collides with the Chitauri ship. A fiery brightness flares on the other side of his eyelids, and thinks he’s falling, and then there’s nothing.
***
And then there’s a roar, a horrible sound, and Tony’s eyes spring open to brightness, his heart pounding so hard he thinks it might be trying to burrow it’s way out of his chest.
His vision focuses and he sees the Hulk above him, chest out and head thrown back as he roars again.
“What the hell,” Tony gasps, looking around at Thor and Roger’s startled faces. “What just happened?”
They say nothing, just stare down at him.
“Please tell me nobody kissed me,” Tony puffs.
Rogers gives Thor an exasperated look, but there’s a smile playing on his lips when he says, “We won,” still nodding like he needs to convince himself.
Tony lays back on the ground and maybe moves his arms a little. “All right, yay. Hurray, good job, guys. Let’s just not come in tomorrow. Let’s just take a day. You ever tried shwarma? There’s a shwarma joint about two blocks from here. I don’t know what it is, but I want to try it.”
“We’re not finished yet,” Thor intones, and he glances around. Rogers follows his gaze.
Tony weighs all of things he could say, all things considered, but he says, “And then shwarma after.”
Rogers smiles again. He counts it as a win.
***
He is somewhat surprised, when he gets back up to the rooftop of his tower, to find Loki sprawled a few feet away from a hole about his size, covered in dust, his face bruised and bloody.
The Avengers crowd around him, Barton aiming an arrow at his head, and Loki looks at them.
And his eyes are green.
The relief that surges through Tony is stronger, disproportionately stronger, than the relief he felt when he woke up alive on Earth and not exploded in space.
“If it’s all the same to you,” Loki murmurs, his gaze finding Tony’s, “I’ll have that drink now.”
***
It’s nearly two in the morning when SHIELD decides that Earth’s mightiest heroes should probably get some R and R.
Tony has a fancy hotel room complete with jacuzzi tub booked— has similar rooms booked for the rest of the Avengers— and even though he makes it to the hotel with them, he slips back out into the chilly night air. The city is surprisingly dark with most of the street lights being smashed to bits and all, but police cars, fire engines, and ambulances still brighten the darkened streets despite the time, and Tony follows them until he makes it to ground zero.
SHIELD agents swarm the ground floor, but they let him pass by without question. Even though the tower is in ruins, JARVIS still works and, true to form, warns Tony against roaming the wreckage, especially without his suit. Tony ignores the AI and takes the still-working elevator to the top of his ruined tower, pours a glass of scotch because the bar is still intact, and sits down. The simple action makes his muscles ache
“How did you know I would come to you?”
Tony doesn’t flinch even though his pulse picks up. He swirls the alcohol in his glass. “Had a feeling.”
“Despite my circumstances?” Loki asks as he settles down on the barstool next to Tony. “I was, if you did not notice, indisposed.”
Indisposed is a very mild word for chained and gagged with Asgaridan-strength restraints, but Tony just says, “You seem to have a lot of tricks up your sleeve.”
He glances at Loki in time to see the other man grin wide despite his split lip. He’s dirty, his hair is greasy, and his leathers are scuffed and bloodied, but Tony has to pull out all the mental stops not to lean over and bite at Loki’s already injured mouth.
He takes a very long drink and asks instead, “Did it work, you think? Big Bad off your scent?”
“So it would seem,” Loki murmurs. “Though now I have Thor and his almighty sense of justice to fend off, not to mention Odin’s wrath. I can feel it even from Midgard, and I know that he will not hesitate in exacting his justice for my wrongdoings.”
Tony snorts. “You could just tell Thor, you know. About the whole situation. He seems like a good guy, even if he’s a bit stubborn and overprotective of that hammer of his.”
Loki no longer smiles, but there’s a quirk to his lips that Tony can’t read. “Part of me does not wish to offer him the truth after all that has happened between us. I am not innocent it any of it, of course, but some rifts are hard to cross once they have been wrought.”
“Are you going to tell me about it?” Tony asks. “This rift of yours.”
“Will you tell me how that contraption came to be in your chest?” Loki retorts, gesturing towards the faint glow of the arc reactor beneath Tony’s t-shirt.
Tony snorts. “I wondered when you’d ask.”
Loki reaches across the minuscule distance between them and rests his open palm on Tony’s chest. Tony tries not to arch into the touch, and he thinks he’s mostly successful.
“It radiates a very interesting energy,” Loki says thoughtfully. “How did you come upon it?”
“I made it. Obviously.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he sees a grin flash across Loki’s face. “Why?”
“Because I ran into some problems with mortality in a desert a few years back.” Tony takes a drink, hoping the burn of the scotch will dampen the burn that still lurks when he thinks about Afghanistan. “Desperate times.”
Loki doesn’t ask him to explain further, just slowly pulls away. They sit in silence for a few minutes, and while it’s not uncomfortable, there’s something tense between them, like a rope at breaking point.
“I was raised as a prince of Asgard,” Loki murmurs. “I knew that I was different, I just did not know how different until the day of Thor’s coronation. I wished only to raise a point, to reveal how unfit for rule Thor was at the time, and events played out as I expected.” Loki stares down at his hands, splayed open on the bar top. “Except I did not expect to find out I was not only different, but a monster.”
“You don’t look like a monster,” Tony says gently.
Loki grimaces. “Magic, Tony Stark, has many uses.”
“What kind of monster are we talking about here?”
“On Midgard, there is the boogeyman. On Asgard, there is the Jotun, and I am one of them.”
“Names are just the titles we didn’t choose for ourselves.” Tony smirks when Loki’s shoulders jerk. “Someone told me that a really long time ago when I was wrapped up in what I was supposed to be and not who I wanted to be. It took me a long time to figure it out, but at the end of the day, I like Iron Man a lot better than The Merchant of Death. Turns out that guy knew what he was talking about from experience. I wish he’d take his own advice.”
Loki chuckles bows his head, dark hair falling over his shoulders. “You are clever for a mortal.”
“I try.” Tony pauses, and then, as gently as he can, he asks, “So what happens now?”
“I return to Asgard and face the consequences of my actions.”
“And what about us?”
Loki stiffens, then slowly turns to face Tony. “What of us?”
“Is this it?” Tony gestures to the two of them. “Is this the last time I see you?”
Loki nods, expression unreadable. “This may be the last time we meet. I do not know what will happen.”
“How long do you have before they notice you’re gone?”
“I am projecting my likeness in the prison cell, but I will not be able to sustain it for long.”
“Well, I guess I’ll just have to take however long you can give me.” It’s meant to come out as a joke, as a light statement punctuated with Tony’s trademark grin.
The way Loki swallows, Adam’s apple bobbing sharply, makes Tony think he’s failed.
“Why?” Loki whispers suddenly and fiercely. “I watched as you flew into the portal, you stupid man, and by some miracle, you survived. And yet, even that will be for naught. I have turned his eye towards this meager realm by staging a war, and despite your metal suit, you will surely die of old age if stupidity has not taken your life before he eventually finds his way here. I have done nothing except cement your destruction, and yet you wish for more time with me—“
Tony grabs the front of Loki’s tunic, pulls him in, and stops his words with a kiss.
Loki stiffens, and for a moment, Tony wonders if he did the wrong thing because the air around them all but shudders, causing the hair on his arms and neck to stand on end. However, before he can pull away, Loki exhales a ragged breath against Tony’s lips and then surges forward, his long fingers cupping Tony’s cheeks before sliding into his hair, nails scratching against his scalp.
They somehow make their way to the elevator and down a few floors to the penthouse suite. Loki doesn’t give Tony time to turn on the lights before he rids him of his shirt. He touches all of the scrapes and bruises, maps them with his tongue if he can reach, and then runs his fingertips over the arc reactor with care. He traces the thick scarring around it, making Tony shiver.
“It must have been quite the brush with mortality,” Loki whispers hoarsely.
“Almost died. No big deal.”
“Your life seems to be many instances of almost dying.” Loki’s hands slide lower, and he grips Tony’s hips so he can pull him closer. “If you get yourself killed, the chance of our meeting again will be quite unlikely.”
Loki kisses him before he can respond.
They stumble towards the bed, shedding the remainder of their clothing as they go. Tony lays back and watches as Loki climbs on top of him, the glow of the reactor tinting him a pale blue. They don’t speak, just touch, hands and tongues and lips ghosting over familiar spots until they’re rutting against each other. Loki doesn’t ask, just reaches for the nightstand next to Tony’s bed, and Tony laughs thinking about the last time, years and years ago, until Loki opens the bottle and proceeds to slick Tony’s cock.
Loki barely prepares himself, need evident in the way his hands shake and his muscles tense, and just rises up and then sinks down slowly, his green eyes boring holes into Tony.
It’s almost too much, the tightness and slick heat. With a hiss, Tony rears up, wraps his arms around Loki, and flips them over. Loki says nothing, just stares up at him with the ghost of a smile on his face, his dark hair a perfect contrast to the pale silk sheets. Tony leans down and kisses him, running the tip of his tongue over Loki’s lips, and when Tony starts to move his hips, Loki sighs and brings his hands to the back of Tony’s neck, lacing his fingers together so he can more effectively arch up against him.
This is nothing like the first and only other time. That was fast and hard, tainted by too much booze and devastation and loneliness. This is slow, torturously slow, but Tony can’t bring himself to turn this into just another fuck because he wants more. He’s been mesmerized by this man since before he knew what love was, and the thought makes him sit up so that hips stutter. He doesn’t have a chance to linger on the thought, though. The change in angle makes Loki gasp, his back arching off the bed beautifully.
“God,” Tony rasps, flattening his hands on Loki’s chest and dragging them down slowly so he can feel every rise and dip of muscle and bone. When he reaches Loki’s erection, leaking against his stomach, he wraps a hand around him. Loki’s lips tremble, and Tony leans back down to kiss him as he begins to jack him off.
He doesn’t think he’s close until Loki comes with a rumbling groan. His entire body shakes and he claws so desperately at Tony’s back that he’s pretty sure he’ll have a few extra bruises tomorrow, but it’s the way he tightens around Tony that sends him over the edge. Tony grabs a fistful of Loki’s hair, alternately moaning against his mouth and biting down on his swollen lower lip as he empties himself.
They lay there for a while, panting and not speaking. When he stops seeing white-spots flickering behind his eyelids, Tony presses his lips to Loki’s shoulder, to his collarbone, then rests his cheek against the other man’s chest. His heart beats like a drum in his chest, and Tony’s happy to hear that it mirrors his own bombastic pulse. They’re a sticky mess, but Tony doesn’t care enough to get up, and the way Loki holds on to him makes him think he couldn’t care any less, either.
For the first time in days, Tony feels sated and like maybe, just maybe, he could sleep. Loki breathes evening and deeply, and his fingers trace lazy circles around Tony’s shoulder blade, like he can’t stop touching.
He knows, though, when Loki’s lips ghost against his ear that it’s all about to end.
“I will find you again,” he murmurs gently. “But for now, I must go. My magic cannot withhold the illusion much longer, if Thor has not figured it out already.”
Tony sighs and nods, then shifts so Loki can slip away. The sheets rustle and the bed dips, and then Tony is alone. It hurts more than he thinks it will, like a punch to the gut. Tony drags the comforter over his hips and watches the silhouette of Loki as he dresses. With each passing second, Tony feels his chest tightening and a lump that builds and builds in his throat until he can hardly swallow around it.
When he’s fully clothed, Loki approaches the bed slowly. He leans down, hair tickling Tony’s cheeks. His eyes travel across Tony’s face, from his hair to his chin, and they linger on his arc reactor before he meets his eyes again.
“Until we meet again, Anthony Stark,” he murmurs, and even though his voice is steady, Tony sees the way his lips tremble when he exhales. The kiss is worse than the words, too soft and too quick, and then there’s a flash of green and Loki is gone.
“Well, fuck,” Tony says to no one.
***
He doesn’t sleep, and he stands in Central Park the next morning hiding his exhaustion and red-rimmed eyes behind a pair of sunglasses.
There’s an empty silver suitcase still clutched in his hand after almost every else has gone. It was heavier when he arrived, but now the Tesseract is out of his grasp, gone back to Asgard along with Thor and Loki. Tony squeezes the handle until his palm aches and wills the lump in his throat that’s been there since the night before to go away.
“Ready to go?”
Tony closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and then turns towards Bruce, who stands near his convertible.
Bruce’s smile is tentative. “I couldn’t help but notice that look Loki aimed at you before they left,” he says slowly. “Is there something you want to talk about?”
Tony almost gapes, but manages to cover it up with a snort and scoffs, “God, no.”
Bruce’s smile widens and he shrugs. “Okay, if you say so. Where are we going?”
“Anywhere but here,” Tony says as he strides towards him with a smile.