Loki stared at him and he stared at Loki. Loki's insides felt like molten lead, coursing and rushing and burning within the cavities in his chest. He wanted to twitch and tug at his skin until it could pour out of him, and pool at his feet, and cool and entomb him in it's hold. He wanted it to stop moving. He wanted to rub and ruin and pull. He wanted to run.
But he waited, diligently, loyally. Even as Stark began to shake - his fingers first, then his head. He saw Stark's hands clench and hold those fingers still, his veins white against his skin. Loki wanted to grab those hands and hold them still and smooth away those angry tertiary rivers of blood. But he held still. And he waited for Stark to voice what he already knew, what he wanted to fly away from in the night.
"I can't"
When Stark finds his voice, he finds it suddenly, and pushes it through and doesn't wait to mull over the words and feel them. Loki has been waiting for them to come out, and he is still unprepared. He has schooled his face for the things that hurt, that truly, truly hurt. He's had hundreds of years for them. That which breaks inside his chest and lets little cascades of water drip between his organs. It isn't cold, exactly, as he has always been more comfortable in the cold. It's fresh, and sharp, and he thinks he would liken it to acid, except it doesn't burn - it cuts. Through everything it touches until it reaches his very core. And from then on, he is in most essences, numb.
Rather unpleasant, he thinks. He remembers one day after Thor left him behind. Thor was always leaving him behind, but this was the first, most blatantly obvious time that Thor had looked at him, looked to his friends, looked back at Loki, and then continued despite Loki's pleas. He remembers going to mother, who had just started teaching him magics, just started schooling him, lightly, very lightly, mostly explaining, really, and asking if there was a spell to cut out someone's heart.
"Loki! Why, how could you ask after such a thing?"
"But Mother, I do not want for mine, it…"
He hadn't known how to explain the alien-ness of it, pouring and cutting inside him. She had understood just fine, however, as mothers do, and even after much pleading and holding, still could not convince him to explain what had hurt him so (This is, he thinks, when he first began to lie, as well, for she asked twice if it had anything to do with Thor, and wisely, wisely, he said no both times. He would be teased - and consequently beaten - if the others found out later.) and told him about magic and wonder until he'd fallen asleep in her arms, encircled in a safe and warm and gentle place. He never could find a way to describe it to her afterwards, the numerous times later he came to seek her council.
He has a word for it, now. And he'd rather like to find it's creator and cut out their heart.
Tony is…trying not to shake. But that in itself is a falsehood, a deception. And Loki is the God of fallacies. His hand wavers at his side, and ghosts over Tony's shoulder; he wants very much to grasp it, and steady the man, but he knows it will receive no thanks, so he settles for the shadows of a touch. He always settles for the shadows of the things he wants. His brother. His Father's love. A throne, so briefly that he had, and then failed miserably when he'd tried to cut himself out of the shadows, into the light. but he'd simply found that a creature of shadow did not belong in the light, that it was better suited to that which did not burn and fell him.
Tony looks at him. Hard. "You…you can't expect me to…" He's trying, and Loki feels the dark twist to let him flounder there, let him drown in the words he can't speak, that cloud his lungs and drag them down. But the deeper twist to pull Tony away from this, this which is making him hurt, is insufferably greater, and he admits to it, bows to it, bends and snaps and flutters away in the wind like a butterflies wing under it.
"I know."
"I can't Loki." And he's pleading, which in itself is wrong, but Loki can't help but close his eyes when he hears his name. He wants to make it so that no one else may speak his name. Wants to silence the world and listen to Tony, instead, and let it reign supreme and let there be no more sound, not even from his own voice. But he thinks Tony, for all that he "likes to listen to the sound of his own voice" would grow lonely and sad and desperate, and perhaps hateful of Loki.
"Loki"
His eyes snap up to Tony's, burning, ever burning. He says he is not good, that he is selfish and not inherently good as Banner is, nor guided as Fury is, nor righteous as the Captain is, but Loki knows he is wrong. He is darkness, a darkness like Loki's own, singing sweetly to Loki's own twisted soul, trapped in himself as Loki is, but he too is light, and akin to light he burns Loki, and it is his light alone that fells him. "Loki, I can't"
"I know." He repeats, echos himself, and he feels as that - an echo of himself, and he will echo and echo and echo until there is nothing left and he will finally be empty and free and gone. He'd thought he was empty and free and gone when he had tried to claim the Earth. He hadn't his Father's love or his Brother's love, and though he was sure he had his Mother's love, at the time he had been desperately trying to cling to the fact that she was not his, was never his, would never be his. And it hurt, to think that she had raised him under that lie.
But it hurt ever more to not even have to think about forgiving her for it, that it was forgiven when first she held him and cooed at him. When first he scrapped his knee, unlike the others, warriors that he was not, and brushed her hands through his hair and blew magic kisses and healed the wound and answered all his questions of magic until he fell asleep. For every time she held him and let him fall asleep, anchored in her arms. That it had hurt her every moment of that lie, that it hurt him to know it had hurt her. How unfair, how coarse, how rude of the universe, he had thought.
Now he's slowly wasting away in front of this man he cares for just as much, and again he is cursed to understand, exactly, why this person is hurting him so.
Stark still seems set in his decision to put these things out in the air, these terrible, intimate things into speech. Loki would like to hate him for it, really, he would. But here is Tony Stark, struggling and dying and breaking just as he is, burning his own self away.
"I've never been particularly good at where or in whom I put 'my heart'. In fact, I rarely do well. My entire life, actually." Tony looks…distraught. He murmurs, "I think the best people I've put my heart in are Happy and Pepper." He chuckles humorlessly, "And JARVIS, right Jar-Jar?" The air is quiet, because Loki had asked that he not preside over their conversation, and Tony had acquiesced. He seems to shrink at the realization. He looks so alone. "Damn it, Loki."
He looks as if he would truly, truly like to give over his heart. He does. He is folding in on himself, like one of his building designs, layer upon layer upon layer his bones are steel pillars and his flesh and skin are tinted glass and wire and electricity. Loki wants to peal it away until Tony is just as bare as he is, and show Tony that he will not break him, not more than he already is, and that he is just as ruined, and they may be so together. But he pulls it out again, like worn cloth tossed aside but still perfectly trustworthy, brushing his fingers and palms over it, feels the tug within cautioning him not to put it out again, not to leave the cloth out in the rain, not to turn it to shreds and tatters.
"I know."
He is just barely breathing it now, and he swallows. Tony is starting to get more upset.
"I don't get to hand it off to the fucking God of Lies." He says it almost without inflection. He sounds angry at the world. If the weight of his place as a protector of Earth did not lay itself upon him so heavily. If not so many depended upon him - the souls of Earth clinging to him like chains, pulling him down.
Loki is about to say it again. He manages to mouth it before Tony continues.
"I…what if you're playing me."
It is not a question, not an accusation, but a demand.
That he not sway and move to hold Tony, though he is distressed. That he keep his distance and let Tony war with himself, even though the battle he plays for Loki is the one he is losing. That he not play Tony's heartstrings like the composer of lies that he is.
He used to think he was only made up of fraudulence and chicanery.
Now he is horrified to discover he is made up of something more, because he can feel it dripping down and sliding through him cutting is all away. Where does it go, I wonder he thinks, after it is cut away from me. Does it turn into a raging star or an empty black hole?
this time his voice does not fall like he has in battle so often. It curls like a fist in his heart and sings through his throat and stings his tongue.
"I know, Tony, I know."
Tony cackles and stops, his hands lifting immediately to hold his face, as if to push it somewhere it will not fall. Loki wants nothing more than to cup that face and hold it up for him.
"I…will not, then." Stark sounds a little broken, but the utter ordinariness of it is surprisingly blunt.
If it had been gentle or soft or angry or quiet, or worst, worst, holding no emotion at all, it would have cut Loki down where he stood, through his flesh and bone and undone that what he was, what he had built himself up to be.
But it was…it sounded much as a promise would.
As if he was saying, If I were anyone else...
They immediately relax, this test avoided, over, in it's meek way, done and gone.
Tony had decided, and Loki knew why.
Still
"would you consent to marry me?"
Loki says it more to himself, thoughtfully, not even looking at Tony, speaking as if it is one of the equations Tony places before him and tells him to make a hypothesis about because Tony is single-minded in his teaching Loki human sciences. He says it because the thought flits briefly across his mind, because he is so open and raw and unprepared for his own self at this moment and unprotected for everything, from even his own heart.
Unadulterated openness.
It suits him ill.
Tony blanches, then appears to choke, then begins to shake.
Loki is by his side now because the trial is over and he may touch and reassure again and it is almost painful, too.
His hands slide under Tony's elbows, holding him above the chains and his own foolishness.
"I apologize. I was not thinking." He blurts.
Tony is shaking, and then Loki realizes he is laughing.
"Damn, but love makes you high." Is what he thinks he hears. He looks sharply at Tony. "are you…" Alright would not describe them on a normal day of being a part of the Avengers. It would be severely less than sufficient for right now.
Tony gives a noise imitating a chuckle, and leans into Loki. "Yeah." he says, "Sure, whatever answers the question."
Loki hums non-committed-ly.
"That is the same as asking for someone's heart." Tony says with a grin into his shoulder, "Here on Earth." he adds.
Loki sighs; this he knows. Still, "On Asgard, it is used to bond together two people - usually as a political maneuver. I have already been married, in fact."
Tony snorts into the crook of his neck, very distracting, "You're an old creepy man. Of course in your young creepy years you got married."
Then, a heart beat latter, "That was a no, by the way. Also. Suckiest proposal ever. And I've gotten a lot, so I know."
Loki grins, "Are you calling me a pedophile?"
Tony grins back cheekily, "Are you asking a man whose age would have to be multiplied by more than three, three, to marry him? Because if the answer is yes, generally that means you're a super freaking pedophile."
Loki laughs, and the glass forming over their hearts is shattered and at least they are not awkward and unsure, at least they are the same. "A god can dream." He says wistfully, and then JARVIS comes back with a ,"Sir, you and Mr Laufeyson have been speaking for over an hour now, perhaps you are done?" and they are still doubled over from laughter after Tony began to laugh and infectiously sent it over to Loki.
He has a word for this, but Hel if he will ever say it out loud.
Helheim if he will admit that this is love.