"Hey. You awake?"
There are few things comparable to indulging a morning between sheets softer than cub fur, warm and smelling of sleep, wrapped in a loose embrace as if such a tenuous thing could keep one safe from the garish, jarring world that lies beyond the silence of the walls. Although his own bed from whence he had been a prince of Asgard had been positively lavish, his mornings found him rising early, giving him precious moments to himself to observe the cosmos at precisely the right time, when the stars in their galaxies would fluctuate just for him, and he would not feel so alone. There is no need for such habits now; the stars are hardly visible even at night, and he has no cause to feel solitary.
He has grown to appreciate the indolence of a morning lie-in. There is nothing vying for the attention of his bed mate, and he cannot think of a reason so immediate that it would require him to rise. The sun is warm on his bare back, the air is temperate, and his mind is quiet. Thus, he is very much not awake.
Familiar fingers pockmarked by scars and calluses drift down his bare side, the touch like the hum of a whisper causing gooseflesh to break out in its wake. It is still a novelty, being at ease in his vulnerability with another. To be touched in such a way. To be the most interesting thing in the room.
Tony pokes him hard in the side. "No, seriously, are you awake?"
"I have the ability to turn all my trespassers into small, inanimate objects," Loki mumbles into the pillowcase, eyes resolutely closed. "It is very convenient."
"I'm bored."
"Go to your laboratory."
Tony huffs. It is like dealing with a particularly spoiled child. "But I'm comfortable, and you're all mushy."
Illustrating his point, he curls into Loki, who is helpless to do anything except press against him and fill all his spaces. Tony, despite having showered whenever he deigned to come to bed, smells more like metal than he does soap, and it is a comforting reminder of whom he has allowed to share his body. The arc reactor hums a gentle song against Loki's diaphragm.
"Sleep," Loki bids him, murmuring the word into Tony's mussed hair. "Lying with you like this pleases me. I do not want to decorate the walls with your insides if you refuse to stop talking, but I will."
It wins him a chuckle that vibrates against the hollow of his throat. "You're such a romantic. It's one of the things I like about you, Comet. That, and your very long legs. Like when you wrapped them around my head last night. Did you enjoy that? I certainly did. I don't remember you complaining, or being able to form coherent sentences, but I just want to make sure. Stark Industries is all about customer satisfaction. 100% money back guarantee, free coupons, the whole shebang."
"Have you ever given thought to what life would be like as a chair?" A nice, sturdy, silent chair upon which Loki could sit and nap.
Tony does not reply and instead maneuvers Loki until he is lying on his belly, cheek pressed into the pillow. It is the position in which he started this ridiculous morning. Sleep, however, appears to be the last thing on Tony's mind as he presses a kiss to the skin of Loki's shoulder, his intent easily read in the way the touch moves lower, taking care to mark each notch of his spine with lips and tongue and teeth and beard. A clever hand catches his stomach when he arches off the bed, holding him up, and Loki gasps into fabric and down.
"Or we could go back to sleep," Tony murmurs into the place where thigh meets buttock. "Just drift right off. Snooze the entire day away. That's what you wanted, right?"
The retort on Loki's tongue dies a swift death behind his teeth as Tony's tongue licks a long, slow line from the small of his back to the base of his cock, and the arm he is using to hold himself up buckles, leaving him at the mercy of Tony's hands and mouth.
The hand at his belly disappears and he collapses to the bed, hips in the air, as wanton as he can ever remember being, and then there are thumbs that spread and expose him. He shivers, gripping the sheets and unable to prevent his body from writhing. Tony kisses him right at his core, as if it were a mouth, lush and wet and leaving him dripping, and Tony spreads him further, presses him down as he tugs his hips up, kissing and kissing and - oh - sucking at the rim of flesh and muscle with a noise that sounds so obscene to his ears, cracking through the warm haze like an explosion, and his head lolls off the pillow to press into the mattress.
He is so wet, positively sopping with it, and his cock weeps into the sheets as Tony tries to gather him closer, dragging his beard over the insides of his thighs, holding him open and eating him. His body trembles hard enough that his muscles protest the strain, but he cannot keep still, cannot relax, betrayed by sensation and his own mind, lost entirely to the mouth that gorges on him like he is the finest delicacy this universe has to offer.
And then in, in and in and in. The whine tears itself from him without permission or even thought, growing higher and louder when the tongue and mouth leave him.
"Come on, Blitzen, you can be louder than that."
"I-I wait for the day when you run out of reindeer names to call me," Loki pants, his voice a reedy thing, little more than air rattling around in his lungs. "What will you do then?"
Tony hums, then bites the crease of his leg, jolting him. "Hm. You're still able to talk. I must be losing my touch or something."
Loki is the one who's lost Tony's touch and he helpfully nudges back against him.
"Oh, sorry, did you want something?"
"Your head on a pike if you do not continue." He sucks in a wet breath, keeps his eyes closed and grips the sheets in anticipation. Either this is commonplace on Midgard, or his former lovers lacked imagination. None ever dared to taste him in such a deliciously filthy manner. It should not surprise him that Tony is the first.
Tony's mouth returns without warning, his tongue stabbing in, and Loki cries out into the bedding, unable to keep silent as he is laid to waste by the invasion, which keeps pressing forward as if to lay claim to some fortress inside him. He feels Tony get up onto his knees, does not fight when he is tugged half off the bed, an arm forcing his knees to his chest so that Tony can lick deeper, further still, until he is thwarted by human limitation. Loki has no doubt that if Tony had the ability he would press until he could run his tongue along the underside of his ribcage. It feels like it is already in his belly.
He has never wanted something so much, never loved a feeling like he does this, never felt so used and in control and ready to split at his seams. Not even when, weeks ago, he spent hours spread and tied down to a work bench in the laboratory, hips lifted, while a false, vibrating cock attached to a sleek machine fucked him beyond the capacity for thought. Then, it was solely about the pleasure, the challenge, Tony finding arousal in Loki's craved helplessness. Now, it is about the closeness. The intimacy. It feels as though Tony would happily do this for days, open him with his tongue until he were able to crawl inside entirely.
Tony's tongue pulls out, his mouth disappears, and Loki's growl of protest is strangled when two fingers slide in easily to fill him.
"Oh, now would you look at that," Tony says, hot and low, and Loki arches into him with a faint moan. "Look how open you are. You took those so nice… bet you could take them all if we tried. How about it? Think I could fit my entire fist up there?"
He can't help but heave once, overcome, as those fingers assault him, and he grows impossibly harder at the thought. Tony's entire hand, his entire arm, pushing up until he could slip under his ribs and close his fingers around Loki's heart.
"I want…" Words fail him. Grunting, he pushes back against Tony's fingers and tries again. "I want your cock. Now."
"Still too coherent," Tony says, and sinks another finger into him. Loki keens. "We'll have to work on that."
There's the snick of something being opened, a cap, followed by the slick sound of lubrication.
"You planned this." Loki grins into the sheet, jolting with loss as Tony's fingers slip out of him, and forces his shaking arms into use, pushing up onto his knees. An arm immediately circles his chest and yanks him back, the arc reactor pressing into his spine, and he tips his head back with a huffed laugh as Tony's cock breaches him, hot and wet, sliding down until he sits against Tony's thighs, uses him like the chair into which Loki threatened to transform him, and feels him burn like fire.
"Fuck," Tony grits out, biting into the meat of Loki's shoulder, and thrusts up. "Fuck, fuck."
"Yes." He draws the word out on a sibilant breath, and oh, how exquisite the feeling is, full and hot and wet, buried so deeply that Loki can feel every twitch, every pulse, the flesh dragging against his insides with every minute pump. He uses Tony's arm, wrapped helpfully across his chest like a sash, for leverage and slides up slowly, aching, burning, clenching as he goes, and then slams back down. Pleasure sings through him, and he laughs as Tony curses into his neck and presses Loki back against him as if he means to join them in one body.
It's slow, their hips moving in syrupy rolls, quietly desperate and slow. Tony drops his arm and replaces it with the fingers of both hands, dragging them up sensitive skin to pluck and rub at his nipples, sending flashes of heat through him, the sparks of iron against iron, n = c / v in which he is n, refractive light, and he groans and bears down as Tony pumps up into him, over and over, hitting that spot inside with frightening accuracy.
The time for words has long since ended, and yet he wishes nothing more than to find his tongue and tell Tony - tell him - tell -
Lush kisses sweep his neck, hair, the curve of his shoulders, Tony's beard scratching pleasurably, and fingers beg his lips for entrance. He sucks the taste of oil and metal from those fingers, gags on them and loves it, tongues the creases and relishes the feel of Tony's own tongue licking up the saliva that trickles down his jaw.
Tony's thighs begin tightening underneath him. The fingers slide from his mouth and wrap around him, striping him, faster and faster, thumb twisting on the spot beneath the crown that never fails to -
He throws his head back, arches, and the orgasm punches out of him as much as it races up to obliterate his mind. Tony works him through it, his strokes wet and quick, and then follows him, his cock swelling impossibly inside - oh, he feels it, the phantom rush of spilled seed, heat, and they rock together, swaying, breathing, while Tony softens inside him and slips out. Tony lies back, tugging Loki down with him, and they touch absently, fingers brushing fingers, any skin within reach, and they come down together.
He feels messy, absolutely filthy with seed and sweat, and he cannot help the grin that comes to his face.
"Good morning," Tony says cheerfully, breathless, and Loki laughs, shifting as his body begins to cool and reminds him that it will ache something wonderful in a few hours. The seed inside him… It would be easy, more than, to push it into a womb of his own creation and bear Tony a child of kings. He closes his eyes and wills it away with only a hint of regret.
Inhaling and then letting it out slowly, he hums with satisfaction, glancing over to where Tony lies blinking dazedly at the ceiling, and for a moment he waits. It is a foolish thing to do, especially when he has been proven wrong time and again, but this would be the moment his former lovers on Asgard would remove themselves from his bed and chambers, feeding him excuses for their departures - and did they not think the god of deceit would see through them? - and bidding him farewell, never again to make eye contact with him, never to be around should he seek them out.
Tony rolls over to lie on his stomach and crushes such thoughts and part of a lung with the arm he throws over Loki's chest. He kisses Loki, a deep, drugging drag of mouths and tongue, sloppy and affectionate. It is his favorite kind; Tony has a mouth made for kissing. "The day we stop having sex that good is the day I go bugfuck insane and buy an iPad."
Tony has many thoughts about Apple products, and they are all of them long-winded and scathing.
"Then we won't allow the sex to grow boring."
It has been over a year since his bid for the Earth. If he knew then what he knows now… he would not have changed a thing. Well, maybe he would not have caught that exploding arrow during the battle. That had been an utterly humiliating mistake on his part and Barton has vowed to never let it go as long as he lives. If Barton keeps it up, he will not live much longer.
He would catch as many of those foolish things as needed to keep waking up next to Tony like this, to remain the object of his lust, his affections, and retain access to his library. No matter what the loud-mouth idiot believes, the computer glass is no replacement for an actual book.
Tony catches Loki staring; a grin tugs at his mouth. "Hey."
"Hello."
Tony lifts his hand and brushes the edge of Loki's mouth where it feels hot and swollen. The playful expression on his face slips into something unreadable, and he studies Loki's bottom lip the way he would a particularly interesting series of partial differential equations, thumbing it gently, fascinated.
"So, before I forget, because you know what happens when I forget things, which is all the time, I know, shut up, but… there's this -"
A chirp interrupts him, and Tony makes a face.
"Ignore it."
"Sir, it is Miss Potts," JARVIS announces suddenly, the ghost of the tower, and Loki cannot help but smile up at the ceiling in greeting. No doubt JARVIS has cameras that would catch such a gesture; words, sometimes, are not needed.
Tony growls and struggles up onto his knees, an altogether impressive display. For a Midgardian whose eating and sleeping habits are most irregular, not to mention his lack of exercise (except when fighting in a metal suit), he is cut from the cloth of warriors. Loki reaches out and slides a proprietary hand up a hip.
"Tell her I'm attempting to do feelings," Tony snaps at the ceiling. "You might actually want to film this and send it to CERN, because this is history in the making and it'll never happen again." He then catches Loki's wandering hand in his own. "Hey, quit that, I'm trying to -"
The chirp sounds again, and Tony groans.
"Hold that thought."
Loki rolls over and watches the hard lines of Tony's form as it crawls out of bed and walks, unashamed, over to where a smaller version of computer glass rests on the table next to the bed. S.H.I.E.L.D. have tried to foist one of those ridiculous things on him, claiming they may need to communicate with him for reasons that escape him even now, apparently not understanding that if he needs to talk to them he will do it when he so chooses. Tony gave him one, but it sits unused somewhere in the Tower; should Tony need him, JARVIS will patch him through.
"Timing is everything, Potts, and yours is spectacularly awful." Tony grins down at the glass. From the bed, Loki can see the backwards image of the woman, her red hair a small flame against the edge of Tony's thumb.
"Tony, you have blown off this meeting with Logico Solutions - a meeting, might I add, that you yourself set up - for weeks. You promised them an R&D merger and you haven't even laid out your terms. You haven't told me your terms. Their CEO called me this morning and half-way through the call he began crying. Crying, Tony. I am many things, but I am not equipped to deal with a man full-on sobbing and demanding to know why you don't like him anymore."
He has met Pepper Potts a handful of times; she always seems to be so busy with the bureaucracy of running Tony's empire, a queen seated upon a throne once occupied by one too brilliant for the mundane day-to-day rule. She is frighteningly competent, a quality many on this planet lack. Beautiful, kind, and knows Tony's mind better than anyone. Loki is not prone to insecurities with his relationship with Tony, but he does have to wonder what happened between them that Tony would ever willingly give up a woman like Pepper Potts.
"Pep, sweetheart, light of my life, apple of my eye, keeper of my soul, I'm kind of in the middle of something -"
"Hi, Mr. Laufeyson."
"Hello, Miss Potts."
Theirs is an acquaintance built upon long-suffering, mutual affection for one particular man.
"I'll meet with Jeremy tomorrow. At eleven. Ten. I will voluntarily get up before nine to make sure I'm there by ten to meet with Jeremy and tell him how much I want to be his BFF. And… you can figure out what kind of merger we can do. What does Logico do again? I'm gonna say plastic fish, but I know I'm wrong."
"Ten o'clock, Tony. And if you're even a minute late, I'll know."
"Damn, nature, you scary." Tony grins and salutes the tiny image in the glass. "I promise, scout's honor, gospel truth, I will be there at ten."
"Now if you'll excuse me, I have a ridiculous merger to draw up."
"That's the spirit. Until tomorrow's donkey sh -"
"Goodbye, Tony."
Smiling, Tony tosses the glass onto one of the pillows on the bed and slides back in. "I know I said ten, but I'm sure eleven-thirty is okay, too."
This can only end in harassing phone calls and a trip to a doctor in order to remove the expensive shoe from Tony's backside. Loki is invested enough in his own well-being to be scarce tomorrow when the explosion occurs. He has not yet seen Miss Potts lose her temper, but he is positive that when she does no one in the immediate vicinity will survive the fallout.
Loki shrugs and then lazily waves his hand. "You were about to ask me something…?"
"I was?" Tony snaps his fingers. "I was. Yes. Something. The thing. Right. Well."
A ball of ice forms in his gut, an entirely ironic image to be sure. "You are not ending this… arrangement, are you?"
"What? No. What? I just had my tongue in your - No, I'm not ending this arrangement, Aunt Doris, but… okay, so every year there's this -"
The air is suddenly filled with the obnoxious bleat of the Avengers alarm, startling Loki nearly off the bed. Tony groans loudly and scratches his hands through his air in that rodent-like way of his, a tic Loki is horrified at himself for finding absolutely dear.
"This is unbe-fucking-lievable." Tony points at him. "Rain check. Don't even think about letting me forget. This is big. This is me trying. Repeat after me: I pledge allegiance to the Jag, which is currently parked in the third-floor lab. And on it's not-at-all-street-legal modifications do I solemnly swear to remind Anthony E. Stark to -"
"Shut up," Loki interrupts. "And stop pretending I am my brother. I can follow basic directions."
"You know, Thor's actually pretty quick on the upt -"
"Were you not about to save the world?" It is for the incredulous look on Tony's face that he crawls back up to the pillows and pulls the blankets over his naked body, curling onto his side and closing his eyes. "Please draw the curtains before you leave."
There is a moment of stunned silence. "Are you seriously going back to sleep while I go off to battle?"
"I could conjure a flower to tuck into your armor, a token of my favor for a most brave warrior." He hides his grin in the pillow as his tongue drips with false disdain. Tony, for all his own bluster and sarcasm, makes it so easy sometimes.
A hand swats his hip, followed by the sounds of clothing being pulled on. "Is that any way to talk to the guy who just gave you a mind-blowing, sonnet-worthy orgasm?"
"There are people in peril," Loki mumbles, body already growing relaxed. "Will you sit and debate with me while a bus full of orphans is crushed under a building? It would be quite amusing, but most likely damaging to your image. If there is anything left of your image to damage."
"Cute. Assembling now. Don't wait up. Don't forget!"
The pounding of footsteps heralds Tony's exit, and Loki allows himself a minute or two of quiet before he rolls over to stare at the ceiling. "JARVIS, what is the threat?"
"There appear to be great scaly, antlered beasts attacking Manhattan."
He claps his hands over his eyes and lets out a truly un-kinglike groan. He knows that description well and truly hates whoever released bilgesnipe into the city. How they came to be on Midgard does not matter so much as getting rid of them, which - no matter where they are found - is no easy task. If they have no enemy to fight, they will turn on each other, causing large amounts of damage. Thor loves them, naturally, and on one memorable occasion as a child brought three of them into the throne room to plead Odin for permission to keep them. The walls were repaired… eventually. There are still cracks where they destroyed the stairs.
There is nothing for it. The bilgesnipe must be eliminated before they do irreparable damage to the city or Thor attempts to keep them. Knowing Tony, he will make a pen for them and name them.
Slipping from between the sheets, he pads over to the large window, more of a glass wall, that overlooks the city and basks for a moment in the sun. The glass is soundproof, but his hearing is not so bad that he cannot hear the chaos and violence that grows in the streets below. What is it about New York that attracts such hostility? Not even Asgard appealed in such a manner to the creatures that lurked in the shadows of the cosmos.
He sighs. This was to be a day of leisure. He had algorithm problem sets to give Tony to perhaps aid in the construction of the new repulsors in the Iron Man boots.
His armor cleaves to him like his own flesh, heavy and familiar, and he takes a moment to put a bit of shine into his helm. Despite what Tony says about it being a "bug hat", it is indicative of his status as a prince of Asgard and should look like it. He has the honor to wear it where before he had none; it has been, is, and always will be his blazon. Even here, horns are a symbol of renewal and power.
"JARVIS, how do they fare?"
"They are currently holding strong, but I am afraid Mr. Stark and the others are growing weary of Thor's… enthusiasm."
Loki rolls his eyes. "Of course. Idiot."
He touches his reflection in the window, his own image superimposed over the city he has adopted as his home. The inhabitants are still no more than scurrying insects, but they are his, his dependent variables, his basic components. He sees into their hearts, their darkest desires and dreams and fears, and sees himself staring back. Saving them is simply self-preservation on a greater scale. Also, he rather enjoys the sausage vendor on the corner of E 20th and 1st.
Slipping into the shadows on the walls, he pushes through easily, finding the next one, the next, another, and another, all of them linked by tendrils of sunlight, of false light, of lamps and headlights and flickering bulbs in various subway stations. He is the one way speed of light, cannot be measured independently, cannot quantify what is the same time between two places, and so he is everywhere and nowhere until he steps out on the roof of Barclay Tower and watches as a bilgesnipe passes him and brambles down the street. It tramples cars and buses, and Loki can only imagine what the death toll will be by the time the Avengers are helping the clean-up crew.
"Brother!" The joyful call comes from above him, and Loki tips his head to watch Thor slam a large bilgesnipe into the street, creating a crater that swallows some cars and crumbles two shops to rubble. "Isn't it glorious? It is just like home!"
"Can I shoot him?" Loki hears as he taps into their communications system. Barton sounds annoyed; for once, Loki is not the cause. "Someone call it. Like, I'm talking right in the ass. He'd be fine. It might shut him - Thor, stop playing with them!"
"We have three more, incoming," The Widow intones gravely, and Loki searches for her dark, lithe form on the street but cannot see her. No doubt she will spring into action at the most opportune moment and bring an entire bilgesnipe down with little more than one of her small knives.
"So, these are annoying." Tony. "I am annoyed. I can't remember being this annoyed since the Chitauri death dragon planes broke every law of physics. Someday, Dasher, you will explain that to me."
Loki cannot help but grin. "I will when I, too, understand it."
"How do we take them down?" The Captain speaks in the deep voice he adopts when he dons his ridiculous uniform, making it clear there is no room for frivolity whilst the city is under siege. "Loki, do you have any ideas?"
He watches two bilgesnipe, monstrous scales catching the sunlight, their tails volleying streetlamps into the air, and clenches a fist around his staff as it materializes in his palm. The sharp end of the blade glistens like the finest wine. "The base of the head. You must pierce it to sever the spinal cord. A hard blow. Their scales are incredibly tough."
Another joins in the fray, and the two tussling bilgesnipe let each other alone to gang up on the newcomer, ripping into its flesh with relish. The third roars wetly, its tail lashing out and cracking against an exposed support beam, severing the metal in half.
"And keep watch for their tails."
The Widow hisses "еб твою мать", and Loki sees a silhouette dart for new cover as the building it was hiding in is destroyed under the weight of the now dead bilgesnipe. The remaining two turn on each other, ready to fight for the claim to the carcass.
Iron Man blasts into the air, stops, I=m (a²+b²) , brilliant and golden and pushing against gravity until the suit works with it, uses the fall to accelerate, spirals like it expects to create inviscid line-vortex instability and paint the sky with irregular contrails, and pushes to the closest beast beneath it, firing a missile directly at the base of the bilgesnipe's skull. Iron Man pulls back at the last minute, hanging in the air to survey its work.
The bilgesnipe goes down with a roar, and then is still.
"I have so many 'losing your head' jokes right now," Barton says over the comm.
"No one wants to hear them," Captain America says. "All right, Avengers. You know what to do. Widow, you and I will work on crowd control, get civilians to safety. The rest of you, take them down, fast and hard. No need to draw this out further."
"Can I -"
"No, Thor, you cannot," Loki hisses, and his belly grows warm at the sound of Tony's amused laughter in his ear. For a moment, it is as if they are still in bed, wrapped up in each other, legs tangled and Tony's mouth against his collar bone.
Later. They will have time for it later. And he will remind Tony to ask him whatever it is that Tony needs to ask him.
"Get your ass over here, Merida. We're going for a ride," Tony calls, and he lifts Barton from the rooftop of a building and spirits him away to another part of the city. Before they disappear into the "concrete jungle", as he has heard it called, he sees Barton fit his bow with a very familiar arrow. Loki almost pities the bilgesnipe for which it is intended.
Thor is suddenly standing beside him and places a meaty hand upon his shoulder. "It is just like when we were children!"
"How did the bilgesnipe manage to find their way to Midgard, brother?" Loki inquires sweetly and finds great joy in the flash of fear and guilt that crosses Thor's face. "Jane is still attempting to open the Bifrost, I take it."
"She has successfully opened it," Thor says proudly, beaming. "She and Heimdall are working together to open other portals on Asgard in case there is ever need for… evacuation."
The flash of a grin illuminated by the blue light of a golden scepter, the promise of death, and Loki shivers.
"Is she opening these doors without a map?"
Thor only grins. "She is ambitious."
Quite.
A roar and someone shouting "incoming!" over the comm are the only warnings they get before the largest bilgesnipe Loki has ever seen careens into the building on which he and Thor stand. Loki leaps into the air and presses his palms together, forging a blade between them. He drops onto the bilgesnipe's back, twirls the blade between his fingers, enjoys the way the metal feels against his skin, before bringing it down mightily, willing it to elongate from the point of contact, slicing through bone and muscle to sever the nerves. The blade bursts through the bilgesnipe's neck and slams into the asphalt.
"I managed to see that from all the way over here and it was hot," comes Tony's voice in his ear, and Loki grins down at his kill. "Did anyone find that stupidly hot? Because I certainly did. Inappropriate reactions all around. Barton, you're just as bad as Peter, Paul, and Mary over there. Stop playing with the thing and -"
There is a crack, a sound like metal being punctured.
"Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck! It just slammed him into - Fuck - Tony! Tony, answer m - WE NEED HELP! IRON MAN IS DOWN! REPEAT, IRON MAN IS DOWN!" Barton shouts over the comm, and Loki does not think, he does not hesitate, he moves, he rips the sky open and tumbles through to where Barton paces and screams for help. A bilgesnipe rears up, tail whipping, and Loki conjures the biggest spear he can and, arm cutting through the air, drives it through the beast's throat. It drops like a stone and Loki whirls, intent on Barton.
"Where is -"
Loki follows Barton's anguished, useless gaze and feels the world disappear from under his feet.
Don't wait up. Don't forget!
The way the Iron Man suit looks, gold alloy spattered red, draped over the broken girder that impales it like a marionette with its strings cut, is something he will never forget.
Everything is too stark.
There is a joke in there somewhere. Too stark and not enough Stark. Tony would laugh himself sick to hear it.
But Tony cannot joke. Tony cannot breathe; a machine does it for him. Another machine is hooked up to his brain. It reports nothing.
Punctured lung. Complete abdominal perforation. Peritonitis. Paralysis. Coma. A woman in a white jacket said these things, as if all her years of study and practice gave her the right to speak the words. She does not know Tony Stark from anywhere other than the television, the articles on the internet, the medical equipment that bears his company's logo. And yet she stood there and wrote off his life like it was nothing, a flame to be blown out when its light was no longer needed. Tony, who does twenty impossible things before his second cup of coffee.
They did not remove the girder for the longest time, too fearful of causing more damage, too afraid of Tony's body bleeding without recourse. Nine surgeons cut it from him, and Loki waited for hours and hours and hours in a staid room that smelled of death and resignation and antiseptic, until it was unbearable enough that he slipped into the shadows and watched as they split flesh and bone like a melon, cauterizing skin, sucking out blood, pumping more in, all while Tony lay still with a breathing apparatus taped to his silent mouth.
Tony's heart stopped. The arc reactor flickered and then went dark. The device used to shock the heart would have killed Tony faster than the metal impaling him, and Loki did what he could to set it to rights, fed his own power into the arc reactor from his hiding place and forced it to turn back on.
Pepper Potts sat with Tony for hours. Hours and hours, and said nothing. Cried little. Stared at the walls and the floor and never once asked for a miracle. She is an entirely practical woman. Loki does not know what has become of her since. One moment she was there, and the next she was gone.
With his heart beating under the guidance of the arc reactor and Loki's phantom touch, and the help of the mechanical respirator, Tony's body lives. It is Tony's mind that remains silent.
In the stark room, he sits in an uncomfortable chair and watches the punched-out rise and fall of Tony's chest. Loki rests his clasped hands against his mouth, blockading it. There is a scream roiling in his gut, demanding leave, and he will not let it. Once he starts, he fears he will never stop. This room, this blank page with its sterilized smells and the horrible silence broken only by the gasp of the respirator, is a tomb unfitting for a king.
All right, Rudolph. Find X.
His eyes burn hot, and he closes them to will the feeling away, but his body betrays him by shuddering, lungs contracting. It is suddenly impossible to breathe without whimpering pathetically. He pushes away from the chair and paces, swallows his tears back because this is not how he acts. He has not - he has not acted in such a manner since the day he fought Thor on the Bridge.
He just cannot understand how. The touch of expensive linen against his bare skin still lingers, the oil he licked from Tony's fingers still heavy on his tongue. Time had given them but a year, barely a breath, when Loki had hoped for linear flow to cease and forge a new, unending path. They began with the offer for a drink and somehow ended here.
The term for a mathematical starting point is an axiom. Loki does not know if there is a word for an ending.
Loki walks to the large window and presses his heated forehead to the glass, closing his eyes at the sight of the city. Its occupants never do give the Avengers their gratitude for their protection, millions of thank yous gone unsaid, unfelt, and Loki hates all of them for their sense of entitlement. They surely have seen the headlines about Iron Man, about Tony's surgeries, and none of them will give a second thought to the man who gave his life so that they may live another day.
"I should have let the Chitauri lay waste to this city," he breathes, the words coating the glass with frost. He clenches his fists. "I should have asked Odin for the mercy of death. Had I known it would come to this, I would have asked."
Tony does not reply. The machine forces a breath into him with a mechanical whir.
Loki swallows and turns. "Do you remember when you first gave me your textbooks? There were four of them, three in algebra and one in novice physics. I saved the physics for last; perhaps you gave me it in error, as you wanted me to read up on the math, but… when I opened to the first page, there was a quote. An imperfect hypothesis to begin a chapter on gravity… "
Trailing off, he remembers. He had read the words over and over, found himself in them, the child who had grown up under a shadow, and kept them close. They well up in him now, sticking to the soft inside of his throat, and he cannot swallow for fear of splitting the flesh.
Loki is at the bedside in an instant, his legs threatening to collapse beneath him, and he grips Tony's arm, careful to avoid the various apparatuses that dot the crease of his elbow. "Tony, you must wake up. You wished to ask me something and I demand to know what it is. Enough of thislazing about. If you don't open your eyes in the next moment, I will call Barton and tell him the passcode to your laboratory. I will tell him to go wild. Do you know what he will do? Because I don't, and that ought to terrify us both."
The future yawns before him, completely devoid of color, gray, beige, where math is a decaying corpse and Loki wanders, purposeless, growing lesser and lesser with each passing day, where the hours go by like minutes and he does not acknowledge them, just freezes, hardens into ice, and remembers nothing of the way it felt to fall asleep pressed against a warm body. Where he does not know how to laugh.
He shakes Tony by the arm. He cannot breathe and his heart pounds out the beat of a kick drum. The whir of the respirator is like thunder in the silence, a shock every time it sounds.
"Tony. Tony. You made me promise to remind you. You nearly made me swear an oath on your ridiculous car because of it. I hate that slow, confining thing. I hate the way you drive in it. I hate the noise the engine makes. It is loud and ostentatious and I would gladly see it thrown into a canyon, but had you asked it of me, I would have sworn my life to you on it. Do you hear? Do you understand what it is that you have done? What I have given you? You cannot… you cannot take all there is of me and then leave."
Chapter One: Gravity. You are standing in a field looking at the stars. Your arms are resting freely at your side, and you see that the distant stars are not moving. Now start spinning. The stars are whirling around you and your arms are pulled away from your body. Why should your arms be pulled away when the stars are whirling? Why should they be dangling freely when the stars don't move?
Something breaks inside him, a hard thing, ice and blood and math, splitting like an impact fracture, and he straightens, swallowing. He closes his eyes briefly to inhale the sharp scent of rubbing alcohol and recycled air, and exhales.
"Loki," Thor says quietly, brokenly, from behind him, his footsteps heavy in the room.
Loki gentles his grip on Tony's arm and feels himself spin, arms open to embrace a beautiful fall, while the stars look down and care not for his loss.
"Did you come to speak to me under your own power, or did your team nominate you?"
He looks up, cheeks hurting from the smile that stretches them, and Thor stops. Whatever Thor sees in Loki's expression, it must be horrifying for his face to twist up like that.
"Brother, I am sorry," Thor whispers, and proves his oft-lauded bravery by venturing closer and wrapping his huge arms around Loki, the way he did when they were children after the others would laugh at him, or throw rocks, or refuse to let him join their games. "What can I do. Tell me, brother, how to ease your sorrow."
"Fix this."
"Tony was a fine warrior with an intellect so vast that even the greatest scholars on Asgard would have burned with envy. And he was my friend. He was a great friend." Thor's arms tighten around him and then release him, his meaty hands sliding up to grip him by the shoulders. "He will not be forgotten."
Loki pushes out of Thor's grip, his false smile falling away, and the short reprieve from his grief comes to an end. He is no longer falling; he has slammed into the ground.
"You speak as if he is already dead," Loki snaps, darting a glance to the bed to make sure Tony is still there. He remains unchanged. That hateful contraption still breathes for him. "He is not dead, Thor, and he will not -"
"The woman, the doctor, called it brain death," Thor says quietly, as if he has ever been so unobtrusive in his life. "Brain death following loss of brain oxygenation. Can you think of a worse fate for a man like Tony Stark? The doctor has explained the concept of organ donation, and Jane assures m-"
"No." He will not allow them to tear Tony open again, to steal his insides so that some sniveling ingrate who would never deserve it can live. If Thor and the other Avengers are determined to push for this avenue of action, they would do well to never take off their silly costumes and always be on their guard, to never sleep again, because Loki will have nothing but time. "You call yourself his friend and then so readily agree to desecrate his body? It would never stand on Asgard -"
"We are not on Asgard. Tony makes great strides in helping others with his technology. Surely he wants to give as much as he is able."
"He has given enough to these people -"
"It is part of his contingency plan," Thor says, turning to look at the bed, eyes soft with sorrow. He places a careful hand on Tony's exposed arm. "The Midgardians all do it, make arrangements in the event of an… accident. The lady Pepper has spoken to us. Tony had planned for this. It… his wishes are law in their eyes, brother. It cannot be undone. The lady Pepper simply must give the word."
Do these people not know Tony Stark? Is life so worthless here that they would bury their friend, their comrade, their compatriot, before he even stopped breathing?
Loki stands at the edge of the rail, hand curled around a fragile wrist, thumb brushing against the plastic nameplate.
"What will they do," Loki murmurs, freezing inside, even as his eyes burn hot. "What will they do without Iron Man. What will they do without Anthony E. Stark, who has done so much for them."
They were not finished. Tony had said so. They were not supposed to end. They were supposed to have time.
"He will dine in Sessrúmnir," Thor whispers, head bowed, reverent. "Freyja will welcome him home with open arms."
Loki sucks in a breath and turns to stare at his brother, a fine trembling beginning in his hands. "What did you say?"
"Sessrúmnir," Thor says. "Tony will surely go th -"
"No, you imbecile, after that. You said -"
Curious, Thor tilts his head. "I said Freyja will -"
Loki stops listening, gripping the bedrail for support when his knees threaten to give out. How could he have been so stupid, so caught up in his grief to allow his mind to desert him? Of course. Freyja, the Light Mother, the Life-Giver, the Word. She is the faceless keeper of life, the patron of fallen warriors, and will be the one to usher Tony into the afterlife.
"Freyja," Loki rasps, and a grin stretches his lips.
There is a flurry of emotion on Thor's face, confusion, sadness, curiosity, and then dawning realization, and it is then that Loki watches as the implication sinks in, the intent behind the name. Thor's jaw tightens, a muscle jumping in his cheek, and in that moment he looks every bit the king he will someday be.
"No."
"Yes," Loki counters, and turns his head to gaze down at the figure in the bed. The more he looks, the less it looks like Tony. It's little more than a shell. Even the arc reactor seems dimmer, its light barely visible through the sheets.
Thor grips him by the wrist, pulling Loki's hand away from Tony, and holds him fast. "She will not see you, brother. She has not seen anyone in centuries. Not even Óðr; not even father. You believe in a false hope."
"This will not be his ending, Thor. I won't allow it." He snatches his wrist from Thor's grasp.
"Then go."
Loki turns in surprise, as does Thor, and Pepper Potts regards the both of them solemnly. Her eyes are rimmed with red, but her jaw is tight, her shoulders straight. She lowers her chin and it feels as though she is granting him leave to act.
"Lady Pepper -"
She pays no attention to Thor, keeps her eyes on Loki, and it frightens him a little to be on the receiving end of such a stare. "You think you can bring him back?"
He swallows and nods once. "Yes."
"Then do it. I won't let them do anything while you're gone. I'm his emergency contact, the executor of his wills." Her lip trembles once, a telling thing, but she gains swift control of it, every bit the ruler of Stark's empire. For all that she stands so firmly, she is undoubtedly shaking apart inside. It does not matter that she is not Tony's lover anymore; she is still his oldest friend, his confidant, his partner, his queen. "How much time would you need?"
"I… I don't know." Freyja will see him, he will make sure of it, but how long it will take is another matter.
"A week," Pepper says. "You have a week, Mr. Laufeyson. I'm not going to… I can't keep him like - he wouldn't want this. Not like this."
She is, of course, right. There is nothing of Tony Stark in the bed, and if he were awake he would rage endlessly about being held down, about being forced to recuperate. There is no voluntary movement. Keeping him like this is an insult.
"A week." He can do this in a week.
"If you can't, then don't bother coming back." There is something knowing in her eyes, something dark and resigned and terrible, and he knows that she is well aware of what will happen should there not be a happy ending to this story.
Thor steps forward. "Lady Pepper, that is unfair. Midgard is where my brother chooses to -"
"If I fail, brother, mine will most certainly not be a welcome return. Freyja will see me."
Thor's eyes narrow. "And if she doesn't?"
"Then I hope your team will be able to stand against me again," Loki says softly.
He once attempted to explain to Thor the concept of Occam's razor. It is the law of parsimony, the most basic of all thought: everything being equal, the simplest answer is often the correct one. For all Loki mocks Thor's intelligence, his brother can be quite clever, but Occam's razor seemed to escape his grasp, as none of Loki's examples illustrated his point. Tony, working on something and failing to hide his laughter, had been absolutely no help.
Perhaps now Thor will understand. Should Tony die of his injuries, of this brain death, the simplest answer is destruction. Loki will burn every branch of Yggdrasil, from Niflheim all the way up to Odin's gilded throne.
And because the Avengers do not know the meaning of privacy, they cluster around the doorway, piled into the hallway, in costume and still somehow diminished. Captain America steps into the room and comes to stand in front of Loki, placing a gloved hand upon his shoulder and gripping it as if they have been comrades all along.
Loki glances over the Captain's shoulder to where Hawkeye and the Widow stand. He catches the Widow's eye, and she nods once, mouth softening.
The hand on his shoulder squeezes once, then lifts away.
"Bring him home," the Captain says.
"Brother -" Thor reaches out to him as Loki turns to go.
Loki does not look back. "What if it were Jane, Thor?"
"… Will you not say goodbye to him?"
He spares a glance for Pepper Potts, who says and does nothing except watch him with an unreadable expression as he catches the nearest shadow and transports himself to the roof.
Loki closes his eyes against the wind and feels as though he's vibrating inside, resonating, oscillating, and there is a sinusoidal wave equal to this initial phase, reinforced, hitting him hard, and the fundamental frequency splits into a million multiples. Once he hits the right frequency, he will shatter like glass. Tony would no doubt find the comparison hilariously dramatic.
Please tell me you're going to appeal to my humanity.
Actually, I'm planning to threaten you.
Theirs was a beginning made of explosions, of amused threats and shattered glass. An axiom to remember. Since Loki does not know the word to counter it, there will be no goodbyes. Not yet. The Earth has a week before he is either found triumphant or burdened with new, terrible purpose.
"No, Thor. When I return, I will say hello to him."
He opens his eyes.
"Heimdall. Open the Bifrost."
The last time he stood before the Gatekeeper, he had returned from Jötunheim with visions of genocide, the Casket humming and warm in his cold hands, and Heimdall's twisted snarl of rage captured in ice. It burned him then and still does now, that the very thought of Loki on the throne would incite such mutiny, such insubordination. Thor's friends, so desperate for their companion's return, denied Loki even the chance to rule. Jötunheim aside, he planned to do all he could to ensure a golden age for Asgard.
Heimdall's Gaze slides upon him like a palpable touch, and Loki straightens.
"Gatekeeper."
"Laufeyson," Heimdall says, and for all that it is simply a name, it is also a cruel reminder that Loki has no claim to anything on Asgard now. Perhaps the Gatekeeper is still angry about being tricked. "Many things have changed since we last… spoke."
Loki's jaw tightens of its own accord, but he nods. "Indeed. I have business here on Asgard."
"So I have Seen," Heimdall agrees, head tilting, helm glinting with starlight and the odd energy that has always clung to the man, something that mystified Loki as a child. "Very interesting business."
Or perhaps it is borne of a simpler reason. Heimdall would not have turned his Gaze that day on Jötunheim when Odin defeated the frost giant king, when he bent down and plucked a monster in its infancy from the ice and brought it to the realm of the Æsir. It makes sense now, why Heimdall never allowed Loki to speak on his own behalf, never trusted him, never liked him; always treated him as lesser than Thor, as lesser than anyone, really. Heimdall Sees, and hated that which he Saw.
"Worry not, Gatekeeper." Loki pastes on a large grin. He reaches for the mask he used to wear as a child, as a prince, fingers brushing it before it floats away and leaves him utterly exposed. "My business here will be brief."
Heimdall says nothing for a long moment, and Loki feels every silent second like the poke of a knife, and it is worse than being interrogated by SHIELD. Worse than standing before Odin to answer for his crimes. Loki is suddenly a child again, standing before the Gatekeeper to answer for some prank, and there is no compassion for him in that gilded Gaze.
"And what will you say to Freyja if you find her, Loki Lie-Smith?"
Don't wait up. Don't forget.
"The truth," Loki grits out through clenched teeth, jaw impossibly tight. He remembers the day he came back from Jötunheim, how Heimdall's eyes had burned gold with hatred for his new king, how deceptively light the Casket felt in Loki's hands when he froze that rage in ice. He didn't need to, could have dealt with the Gatekeeper in another fashion, but it had felt so good to see the man entombed in the very blood that ran through his own veins. He had stood before Heimdall then, his own reflection distorted in the ice, and thought, what do you See now?
"Curious truths," Heimdall rumbles, then gestures with his head, helm shining, toward the door. "Your presence is expected."
It kills him to bow, but he does, bends at the waist and lowers his head, neck exposed. "Many thanks."
He straightens and turns, catching sight of the great spires of his childhood home through the open doorway, and ignores the pang of loss in his chest. Enough of this. He has gained far more on Midgard than he should have, and will do what he must in order to keep it, even if he must relive his entire boyhood. He inhales, holds in the breath for a moment, and then begins the long trek to the Great Hall.
"Good luck," Heimdall calls from behind him, no doubt Watching Loki as he goes, but he sounds sincere enough. Loki does not turn to acknowledge it; it has been a long time in coming.
The bridge is not meant for travel on foot; they used to go by horseback. One memorable occasion, Thor lashed together some beasts of the wild as a show of power, and turned it into a game: whoever was able to stay on them the longest would be declared the victor. Loki had been the one, but his triumph was declared false by the others, because surely Loki used his magics to win. He hadn't, but none of them - not even Thor - believed him.
Loki stops, not even a quarter of the way across the bridge, and inhales. For a moment his lungs seize, so very used to smog and suddenly unsure of how to process such pure air, and then relax, recognizing. There is a mix of steel and cinnamon in the air, blood and feast, and he already misses the symphony of smells that make up the air of New York City.
As he nears the end of the bridge, he spies curious onlookers who stop to watch, their expressions of mild welcome souring as he draws closer.
We mourned you.
Loki forces on a grin and practically saunters the rest of the way, waving in greeting to those who stare with frightened, hateful eyes. "Why, it's so nice to see the good people of Asgard here to greet me. Have you so missed your prince?"
"You are no prince of Asgard, frost giant," comes from his left, and he turns his smile on the Lady Sif.
Their relationship has always been fraught with tension, Sif being more observant and intuitive than for which the others give her credit. She, like Heimdall, has marked him as other since their formal meeting so many years ago.
"My lady." Loki bows grandly.
Look at that hair. Total dye job. All of you people - is that what you do on Asgard all day? Is it just hair and makeup and ooh look at my muscles I can lift a hammer keyed only to those who are worthy which ignores everything logical ever and fuck the laws of physics but who cares for I am from Asgard, verily!
His heart skips a beat. It is as if Tony were standing beside him, his words both cavalier and sharp. Loki straightens and curls his left hand slightly, a phantom touch pressing into his palm. Tony rhapsodizes about Loki's long legs, but it's Loki's hands he will not let alone.
"State your business," Sif demands. Loki entertains the notion of summoning a blade to his hand and sinking it in her belly, one twist of the knife for every injustice he has suffered because of her and her friends. He wills the thought away.
"I am here to see my father."
Something darkens her expression, the same smug one she wore when she thought she had bested the Destroyer. "Laufey is dea -"
"And my mother," he speaks loudly over her, ignores the jab, and keeps smiling. "Heimdall assures I am expected, and we would not want to keep the king and queen waiting."
A muscle twitches in her jaw.
"Wonderful to see you, Sif, as always." He grins, enjoying this far too much, and this is exactly why he has never returned to Asgard since his exile. "Oh, and before I forget, my brother and his lovely bride-to-be say hello."
Had Thor never met Jane Foster and the Avengers, he would almost certainly be married to Sif and seated upon a golden throne, the worst king in all of the history of Asgard. Sif is loyal to a fault and will remain Thor's friend and ally no matter what, but Loki knows. He knows it burns her to see Thor's heart in the hands of a Midgardian, a mortal who has never tasted the blood of battle, and she knows he knows. She does not know how to hide; never has.
She steps aside with a snarl, allowing him to pass her by. He tries to reign in the self-satisfaction that wells inside him, but her murderous look is evidence that he fails.
He spares her one last glance, a reminder, and quite suddenly misses the Widow.
The rhenish helm spires of the Great Hall loom ahead, beautiful and golden, the apexes rising into the sky as if to challenge any and all who would dare see them fall. Their beauty and power is superficial at best; he cannot read the math in them. He once believed them to be built by knowing hands, but as he sees them now he knows they were forged by magic. Tony could do such wonders here. If he didn't annoy Odin into murdering him first, of course.
A great cry rents the air and Loki startles.
Circling above him, wings outstretched with envy of the length of the horizon, is Muninn. It flaps its wings once in a graceful sweep, and the air around Loki stirs with the force of it, his hair lifting from his neck to wave briefly in sycophancy. Odin's raven is as majestic now as it was against the backdrop of New York the first time Loki pressed metal fingers between his own. If Muninn is to be his herald, then he will certainly not complain.
He follows it into the Great Hall. The people around him part to let him pass - not out of loyalty or deference, of course, but fear. Hatred.
If there's anything they hate more than what you've done, Blitzen, it's when they can't touch you, can't make you suffer for it. So don't give them the satisfaction. Fake it 'til you make it.
The last time he stepped into Odin's throne room as a god, he stepped out a mortal. The floors still echo as he walks upon them, his shoes still as pristine as the day Tony shoved a box marked Allen Edmonds at him, and he feels underdressed for the first time since coming here. He has yet to summon his armor, clad in the simple shirt-and-slacks ensemble he has adopted as his choice of casual attire, despite Tony's insistence that he would look "like sex on a stick" should he opt to wear some of Tony's comfortably worn Led Zeppelin shirts. He thinks of the weight of his Asgardian armor, the greens and blacks, and probably ought to change for the sake of propriety. One should never go before the All-Father without presenting the very most of oneself. He looks down at himself and does not alter a thing.
His heel makes a thunderous sound in the Hall as he comes to a stop near the stairs that will take him to the throne room, and he takes stock of the various furnishings and embellishments that he has known since his infancy. The tapestries his mother weaves hang from the walls in great swathes of forever-shifting fabric, telling tales of warriors long-since passed, and he looks upon them fondly. They are magnificent things, really, but what he really wants is chrome, sleek frames that hug panes of glass, stretching across walls and overlooking the city he has come to call home. Sparring with the Widow in the gym and sneaking drinks out of Barton's still, which Barton continues to believe is a secret. Watching movies with Darcy, Jane, and the Captain. Discussing extra dimensions with Banner whenever he drops in. Leaving Pop-Tarts out for Thor to find and enjoying the fallout. Fitting the half-lives of W+ particles and their effect on neutrino emission into the latest mock-ups of the helicarrier. Laughing. Touching. Belonging.
Don't wait up. Don't forget.
"I have oft wondered what would bring you home of your own volition. I did not expect it to be this."
His heart skips a beat and he turns, unconsciously straightening under the amused gaze of the only woman able to still his tongue. She stands at the top of the stairs, gold and glittering, her gown spilling around her like water.
"Mother."