Loki threw a blanket over Amora, smiling down at her fondly, and then turned the movie off. He grabbed the half empty bowl of popcorn and brought it with him to the kitchen, discarding it on the counter.
"Phone call for you, sir," Jarvis said overhead, startling Loki into turning over the bowl of popcorn.
"I thought I disabled you," Loki gasped, glancing sourly at the mess scattered across the counters and onto the floor.
"Temporarily, sir. Tony reactivated me when you didn't answer his call earlier today," the A.I. replied.
Loki sighed and took his phone from his pocket. He'd turned it off shortly after his fight with Tony, but it seemed Tony still had ways of getting around that. He turned it back on and just as expected, there were several missed calls from Tony.
"I'll call him," Loki mumbled aloud and then leaned back against the counter, crossing one arm across his chest.
"Thank you," the A.I. said.
The phone barely rang when Tony answered, "Loks! Oh my god, Loks."
Loki frowned, pushed off the counter, and stood tensely. "Are you okay, Tony?" Tony's tone was shaky and he sounded so scared.
"I am sorry, Loks," Tony moaned. He sounded bad, messed up. "I'm so, so sorry."
"Slow down, keep calm. What is this about? Is this about earlier?"
A sharp sniff from Tony and Loki knew that he was crying.
"Are you drunk?" Loki asked instinctively. He felt an initial twinge of resentment but his consuming worry took over. "Are you at the hotel?"
"Yeah…" Tony trailed off and sniffed some more.
"Can you get yourself into bed? Can you do that for me?" Loki asked gently.
"Yeah." The phone shuffled around loudly. "I'm sorry, Loki," Tony repeated.
Loki shook his head, feeling the tears and hurt from earlier coming back. "It's okay. I forgive you, okay? Don't worry and just go to sleep."
"No," Tony cried. "You are going to hate me. Tomorrow you are going to hate me for sure. I hate me."
Tony's words were growing seeds of doubt and fear within Loki. "I won't hate you, I promise. Just sober up, okay?"
His boyfriend continued to whine into the phone, "You are going to hate me. When you see tomorrow…"
"I won't," Loki reassured him. "But I really need you to go to bed. Can you make it?"
Tony sniffed one last time. "Yeah, I can do it."
Loki pressed a twitching hand on the counter and absently swept the popcorn into a pile, feeling exhausted. "Thank you. I'll stay on the phone with you until you get there, okay?"
"You don't have to. I'm already there."
"You're already in bed?"
"Goodnight, Loks," Tony said. Then the phone went dead.
Ah, Tony hung up on him. Loki looked at his phone wistfully, wishing he could be there with Tony and curl up at his side. He missed that.
He pocketed the phone and quickly cleaned up the mess before heading upstairs to his bed. Loki did smile to himself though. Maybe Amora was right; all they needed was Tony to screw up a little and now he was groveling at Loki's feet, just as Amora predicted. Things would better tomorrow.
In the late morning, the doorbell woke Loki, echoing across the whole house. Loki moaned, disrupting Sprinkles from his slumber in the crook of Loki's arm. The doorbell rang a second time and Loki was forced from his bed to trudge down to the front door.
He glanced briefly into the living room where Amora had been sleeping last night but she was gone. The blanket was laid flat across the couch.
Loki shrugged, figuring she must've went home early, and he channeled his attention back on the door. He took a moment to stare at it questionably. For a minute he couldn't recall who could possibly be at his door if it wasn't Amora, so he checked the peep hole. Oh, it's Thor.
It all rushed back to him and he felt kind of proud for remembering so quickly. It seemed that he was getting better bit by bit.
Now cheerful, Loki opened the door and greeted his brother, "Hiya, Thor."
Thor was scowling at him. "Don't try to get in my good graces, brother. It's not going to work that way." He swept past Loki and dropped his things onto the tile just inside the door while Loki closed the door behind him. When he was finished, he turned on Loki, "Car keys, now."
"What?" Loki asked, gaping at him.
"You heard me. I need your car keys to make sure you don't do this again. What if you had forgot something or had some sort of reaction while you were driving? What would any of us had done if anything happened to you?"
Loki groaned, throwing his head back and pressing his fingers to his temples. "Fine! If it will get you to stop bothering me, I'll do it."
Thor beamed, clapping Loki on the back. "That's the spirit! Now get those for me."
Loki rolled his eyes and led the way into the kitchen. The keys were on the counter near the refrigerator and he tossed them to his brother who pocketed them.
"So how long are you staying?" Loki asked, going over to sit on one of the stools by the counter. Thor came to sit with him.
"Well I figured I could for the rest of the weekend, but I'm not sure what I'll do come Monday. I do have many things to attend to at school and I don't want to be away from Jane for long."
Loki nodded. "Don't worry about me too much. Besides, I often have Amora here these days."
"Hey, who is that anyway?" Thor asked. The curiosity was plain on his face.
"She's the bookstore owner's granddaughter. She sucks at everything and she's afraid of people, so she doesn't do a good job. But she's hilarious. She's almost as clueless as you, Thor."
Thor smiled fondly. "She sounds like a great person."
Loki lit up at his words. This was the first time Loki had heard someone say something good about his friend. "Thanks! She really is the best!"
"I would like to meet her if she has the time this weekend," Thor said. "I've got to know the person who has been taking care of my little brother."
Loki shrugged and took out his phone. "Well, like I said, she doesn't handle talking to people well, but I can see if she is willing to try." He scrolled down to Amora's contact number and clicked it. He hopped off the stool and gestured to Thor to hold on for a moment, before leaving the kitchen as the phone rang.
It rang a few times but went to Amora's voicemail, "Leave me a message or else I will assume you have nothing important to say. Peace!"
Loki laughed as it beeped and said, "Your voicemail message is ridiculous, Amora! Call me back, I have something I want to ask you." He hung up and headed back into the kitchen. Thor looked at him expectantly but Loki shook his head. "She didn't answer but I'm sure she'll at least text me in a while."
"Well, either way, I will be here taking care of you, so I even catch a glance of her I would feel better about her being here with you."
Loki sat back down next to Thor. "Otherwise I can always go to stay with my parents over in Ohio. I'm sure they would be glad to have me, you know?"
Thor beamed, excited. "That's a fantastic idea, Loki! We should set that up!"
"Yeah, we'll see," Loki said. He looked at his brother, taking him in. Thor looked very similar to the last time he'd seen him and Loki was happy to notice that he didn't feel disconnected from Thor like he felt for Tony. Loki wasn't even sure why he'd expected that. "So what would you like to do today, Thor?"
Thor grinned. "Let's have some hot chocolate just like the old days. Do you remember that?"
"Yeah, I remember. And I even have the same brand. Let's drink some and watch some Harry Potter."
"You are too predictable, brother," Thor said.
"Am I?"
"Harry Potter? Come on, anyone would guess that you would watch that."
"Well it is only the best series ever."
Thor rolled his eyes, taking the packet of powder that Loki passed him from where he was rummaging through a nearby cabinet. "Come, let's make these drinks, you will take your medication, and we will watch your overplayed movies."
"You remembered what time I take the medication?" Loki asked, looking at his own personal list of his medications on a sheet of paper laid on the far side of the counter.
"Yeah, I still have the one Tony gave me," Thor said, pulling out a heavily crumpled sheet from his pocket and smoothing it out on the counter.
Loki felt a pang in his chest. It felt strangely good to see Thor carrying that around for him. Loki turned away from his brother to pour milk into a cup for the hot chocolate. "Thanks, Thor," he said softly. He hoped his quiet thanks would be enough to convey to Thor how much he was grateful to have a brother like him.
So Loki ended up having another movie day with Thor with more popcorn and several other snacks. They had just finished the first movie and Thor was already snoring away on his half of the couch, even though it was only 1PM on a Saturday.
Loki turned off the movie and switched it to a normal station while he cleaned up a bit. He took the empty bowls into the kitchen just as whatever show came on and he set the dishes in the sink with a promise to himself that he would clean the dishes later.
He came back into the living room just as the host of the celebrity show announced, "We have some interesting news today about Tony Stark! Last night he was spotted—"
Loki flicked off the TV, not wanting to hear the tabloid's constant bashing of his boyfriend. He turned to Thor and kicked the edge of the couch, rousing his brother awake. "Thor, I'm bored!"
Thor jolted awake but took his merry time of actually opening eyes. After much moaning, Thor sat up, yawning. "Well… we do have to do your memory exercises."
"That's the last thing I want to do."
"We have to do it," Thor urged, rubbing his eyes. "I will go get it for you even. Wait here."
As Thor left the room, Loki huffed and sat down on the floor. He'd actually been neglecting the memory game, so it was going to be interesting to see how he would fair now. Waiting, Loki got out his phone and went onto the internet to surf while Thor got things ready. First, Loki flicked through his Facebook. Nothing interesting there. Then he headed over to his email. He paused on the home page when he was confronted with the image of Tony outside a night club.
His heart pounded as he stared, finger stuck hovering over the screen. The title of the article is what had stopped Loki from moving on. It read, The End of Tony Stark and Loki Odinson?
"What?" Loki hissed in utter confusion.
He went to click on it when Thor entered the room and he said down heavily beside Loki. "What are you looking at?"
"Do you see what this says?" Loki said, showing Thor the title of the article. "Absolutely ridiculous!"
Thor clicked on it for him and the page loaded slowly. "I wonder what it's about."
"Something stupid, I'm sure," Loki said as the article finally loaded. He scrolled down and froze. Thor inhaled sharply beside him.
The first picture on the loaded page was a picture of a quiet booth shadowed by the dim lighting of the club and there was Tony with a woman on his lap and they were… kissing. And that was wording it lightly.
Thor yanked the phone out of Loki's shocked hand and yelled, "Is this a real picture?"
Loki twisted his neck painfully to look as Thor scrolled further to reveal more pictures that had Loki crawling in his skin. A picture of Tony giving the same girl a piggy back, another of him taking her into an elevator…
"He cheated on me?" Loki asked lowly. He wished he could scream or cry or something but he was suddenly feeling nothing. Absolutely nothing.
"I'm sure this is all a misunderstanding," Thor said but he wasn't looking at Loki, just reading rapidly through the article, desperately searching for errors in the story.
"He cheated on me, Thor," Loki said, looking at his brother sharply.
Thor shook his head, his eyes wide when he turned on Loki like he was afraid Loki would explode. "That can't be true. Tony wouldn't do that to you."
"He would and he did," Loki growled through clenched teeth. He wrapped his arms around his middle, suddenly feeling painfully cold. "He did this to me." Loki got a flash of his conversation with Tony from the night before. "Oh God, that's what he was trying to tell me last night." Loki breathed in sharply, shaking.
"We need to call Tony, Loki. We need to find out if this is true."
"Why bother?" Loki yelled, feeling himself going into hysterics. "Why should I? I always knew this day would come! Tony is this goddamn celebrity and I'm just this broken half-person. Isn't it obvious?"
"Loki—"
Loki was shaking more than ever. "Why would he do this to me, Thor? What did I do wrong?"
Thor grabbed his brother and pulled him into a strong hug. "You did nothing, Loki. Nothing, you hear me?"
Loki felt numb and hot and cold all at once. It hurt. So he took a deep breath, inhaling Thor's comforting scent, and then breathed out just as steadily, but it didn't stop the storm of emotions crashing over Loki all at once. "I hate him."
"No you don't," Thor said softly against Loki's ear.
Loki wanted to hate Thor for how much truth was in his words. "No, but I want to. Fucking bastard."
"Yes, he is a bastard," Thor agreed, "but we need to make sure that this is true."
Another shaky breath made its way through Loki's lips. "It's true, it's obvious." Loki pulled away from him. "And I'm going to kick Tony's ass for this. I'm going to make him taste hell."
