Tony attends the Alcoholics Anonymous support group meeting that Pepper has to threaten him to go to exactly once. The man who sits beside him comments and laughs at most of the people who stand up to share their stories and when he catches Tony trying not to join in he starts adding full on cynical commentary. He can't help think that the man is ridiculously attractive.
There are three smoke breaks scheduled for the meeting and the first one starts almost twenty minutes early. Tony steps outside, automatically following his inappropriate associate.
"Loki." The man turns with more grace than Tony was expecting and extends long, pale fingers to gesture to himself.
The name sounds fake but the man seems to fully believe that he is, in some form, the embodiment of the Norse god. That or his parents have a twisted sense of humour.
"Tony." He responds in kind, putting on the smile he uses when he flirts.
"Are you an alcoholic, Tony?"
The words startle a laugh out of him but he nods his head in assent and adds, "Among other things."
Loki leans in close like he's sharing a secret, and maybe he is. "I have alcohol at home."
The concept is enticing. It's more than enticing when compared to the group of morbid people behind them. "I could drink."
They leave the meeting early without saying anything and they go back to Loki's to down a shot of liquor before they screw quickly and part ways.
Neither of them attends another meeting, but they both keep meeting up for sex. "I don't want a relationship." Tony states outright around the tenth time they've gotten together. It's not the first time he's told Loki this but he wants there to be no miscommunication on this.
Loki is leaning back onto the pillows of his bed; he's naked and smirking and makes a gesture that always reminds Tony of royalty. "Why ruin great sex with feelings?"
"If I wanted to talk about feelings I'd have stayed in that damn group." Tony agrees before taking Loki into his mouth and continuing what they started.
They switch things up on occasion, going to Tony's when Pepper has the weekend off, but they mostly stay in their comfort zone, which is the exact size and shape of Loki's bed.
Tony arrives at Loki's late one evening and Loki is scowling when he opens the door. Rolling his eyes Tony shoves the bag of take out he's holding into Loki's hand and sheds his jacket. "Pepper wouldn't leave me alone; she was insisting I finish the design for the new cybernetic enhancements." He pulls the bag back from Loki who is still standing in the doorway and opens up one of the containers, digging in with the provided chopsticks.
The look that Loki is sending Tony from across the room is simultaneously horrified as well as stunned, first that Tony would bring Chinese food to his house with, presumably, enough to share, and second that he didn't know Tony was someone who was technologically and scientifically savvy enough to create a cybernetic toaster let alone enhancements for anything.
Tony catches the look, noodles halfway to his mouth, and pulls back. "I didn't have time to grab supper; so it's a convenience, alright, not a date, so you can stop staring at me and help me eat this lo mein."
Eventually they both end up sitting on Loki's couch, the owner spending the entire meal laughing every time Tony burns his mouth on wanton soup. It's not their usual thing, but it works out anyway, even if it ends with Loki threatening to not allow Tony inside if he shows up again with such sub-par food.
Another night they're together it's, again, not their usual routine; they've spent hours fooling around, their hands and mouths finding every inch of skin the other has to offer and, for them, it's insanely intimate; more so than the rough quickies that have made up most of their time together.
Neither of them comment on how they get to learn further intimate things about each other, like the fact that Tony is ticklish just behind his knee – something that Loki finds himself filing away for future reference – or the fact that Loki's breathing changes when Tony so much as brushes past his nipples. Still, the strange part of the evening only comes when it's close to three in the morning and Tony is pulling his pants back on and sees outside.
"It snowed." He comments, idly figuring if it's too early for the snow to start to fall yet in New York. Mother nature says it isn't even though it hadn't been close to snowing when Tony had entered the house.
Loki sits up from where he had been basking in the warmth of his bed to glance out the floor to ceiling window, humming in agreement. It had fallen more centimeters than New York is ever comfortable with and the streets look dead and dangerous.
"Take your shoes off." Tony looks over to where Loki is shifting to one side of the bed. "Stay." It's not a question. "At least until the snow plow and ice trucks get out."
Asking for a pillow has never made Tony feel so old before but Loki is laughing at him, calls him girly after he explains that he needs to use it to sleep comfortably. Loki seems to sober mildly when he further explains that it's for his messed up joints. He doesn't elaborate and Loki doesn't ask, but they both know that he's seen enough of Tony's body up-close and personal to understand that he's been to hell and back. Loki still calls him princess when he hands him a body pillow, big enough to allow Tony to curl around it the way he has to, but Tony's just glad nothing's changed between them.
The next day when Tony goes home and is changing his shirt to attend another meeting he sees the number of bruises –love bites, his brain supplies before he can stop it – that Loki left all over his chest. A shirt will easily cover it but there is still so many of them. He takes a minute to stare at them, wonderingly, but then Pepper is knocking on the door and telling him that if he's not out in less than one minutes she is dragging him to that meeting with or without clothes on.
The bites stay on Tony's mind as he explains the details of his new plans, they remind him of one of the nights where Loki came to his place and Tony was working on a personal project and silently entertained himself until Tony was satisfied enough with it to finally go have sex or when he finally complained that Loki kept wearing this one cologne that Tony hated and that Loki had told him where he could shove his complaint, but that he stopped wearing it anyway.
A million moments flit through Tony's mind; conversations that filled voids of what should have been silence, watching as Loki finished up conversations with his half-brother that left the other man deflated even if he had been the one mocking his sibling or start the yelling, Loki seemingly to conjure him coffee when Tony's day has been long and far-too stressed.
Honestly, Tony is able to justify all of it as convenience or simple courtesy until he knocks on Loki's door like usual and Loki opens the door in sweatpants and a loose T-shirt, looking less regal than Tony has ever seen him before. His nose is red and his skin is more pale than usual and his hair is messy in a way that's not on purpose. Tony can't help but think he still looks amazing. Then Loki's glaring and trying not to sniffle as he says, "I'm too sick to fuck, go away."
Something in Tony twists at his words because, as much as he hates to admit it, it's been more than just fucking for at least a month now, even if neither of them are interested in admitting that ever. Instead his mouth runs off without him like it always seems to do and Tony finds himself saying, "You look like shit, let me in so I can at least hear you up a can of soup." Even though he barely does that much for himself.
Loki calls after him, saying something that Tony doesn't listen to because he's rustling around in the kitchen, opening drawers in search for a can opener and banging the pantry doors open looking for soup.
The fussing is different for both of them; Loki isn't used to having someone make him hot soup, or touching his forehead with a cool hand, or running out to the corner store because "What do you mean you don't have orange juice? Next you'll be telling me you don't have cough drops either." He's simply not used to being helped out of his clothes and gently into the shower, being seen as himself instead of the grand image he shows people. It's probably the illness, but Loki doesn't mind as much as he'd like to pretend he does.
In a similar way, Tony isn't used to taking care of people, he doesn't let him think about it until Loki is passed out with Tiger balm on his chest and Nyquil keeping him unconscious. He remembers taking care of his father like this and it's the only person he's ever made this sort of an effort for. Tony only associates this level of care with the iron band of love that grips his heart at the fond memories he carries of his dad. The scary part about this is that it doesn't feel entirely different. Not the same, never the same, even a little smaller, but not entirely a different feeling at all.
Morning comes and Tony wakes from where he was dozing on the couch, his joints are sore and he doesn't know how he used to do it when he was younger. He hears Loki pad into the living room and he still has a blanket wrapped around him like a shield when Tony looks over. Tony might feel like shit but Loki still looks worse.
Loki's hair is damp with sweat and he's still too pale and, Tony realizes, that he looks like he's shaking as he nearly collapses into the chair. "Morning." He mumbles, almost as if it's an afterthought for him.
"I think we should date." Is what Tony finds himself blurting in lieu of any formal greeting. Frankly it's better than what he's been thinking all night, which is that he's pretty sure he's in love with this stupid asshole.
The cocky smirk that Loki draws his face into looks strange and less haughty on his blanched face. "Thought we've been doing that for months."
Tony thinks back to the Chinese food debacle and agrees. "Have we?" Is what he says out loud. He shrugs. "You've never made me spend money on you, so I wasn't sure."
For his efforts he gets Loki to full on laugh and Tony finds that it warms him a little.
Nothing much changes between the two of tem once they decide to cross into the realm of dating. Loki gets dragged to stuffy parties where he is enjoys showing off but finds that he can't say much more than one word sentences like "Charmed" and "Undoubtedly" for the entirety of his conversations. The awkward politeness aside he doesn't really mind, especially since Tony looks spectacular in a suit.
Both of them had walked into that community center all those months ago, hoping that it would provide something that would help change them and, while at the time it hadn't seemed like it, it had. Tony's life has been tripping and falling into good things that he doesn't think he deserves, and Loki has had so much good taken from him that he knows better than to throw away something a scrap of something decent.
They aren't conventional together and they are even less perfect but they find that they aren't alone anymore, and with everything that they've survived through, it counts for more than something. It counts for a lot.
A/N: I honestly don't ship these two and have never in my life read a FrostIron fic. Apologies if it's the weirdest thing you've ever read but take solace in the face that it won't ever happen again. I've also been up for 15 hours at this point with 5 hours of sleep under my belt. Thusly I have decided to not read it over so all of the apologies for all that entails. Sable; I am a goddess. You're welcome.
-Reiver