The Jotuns bring food, and a lot of it. They must be trying to make up for the earlier lack of edible hospitality, because not too long after Tony herds Loki into the blanket fort, the bedroom door opens and six of them parade in. All carrying platters and cartons. They set the food down on the floor as Tony crawls out of the fort, then stand back and wait. They look an awful lot like spectators at the zoo, clumped together and muttering to each other, and Tony feels an awful lot like a monkey on display. Awesome.
He grabs something – is that a piece of dried fruit? – from one of the cartons and lifts it to his mouth. The Jotuns lean forward, following every movement with bright red eyes. Two even open their mouths to mimic him. Jesus, that's creepy. And if Tony weren't hungry as all hell he'd probably crawl back into the fort to hide, but since he is hungry as all hell... He crams the weird fruit thing into his pie hole. As he chews, the Jotuns nod in approval.
They're obviously enjoying the dried fruit more than he is, which is fully understandable since they're not the ones who have to eat it. The damn thing is stale and gritty and tastes like it's been sitting in a wooden box for a hundred or so years. It's mostly crystallized sugar. But since it still technically qualifies as food, Tony quickly grabs another.
"Uh," he says through a sticky mouthful of fruit-sugar, nodding at the Jotuns. "Thanks?" Is that what they're all standing around waiting for? Or does he need to do something else to get them to leave and stop chilling his fire-warm air with their frozen bodies?
"Is this adequate?" one of them asks.
"Well..."
There's a lot of food. At least enough candied fruit, dried meat, and other unidentified edible (at least theoretically) objects for a good size dinner party. And a big chunk of ice in a bucket, which is supposed to stand in lieu of water? Maybe? Tony grabs something that looks like a biscuit. It is a biscuit. A very old, stale, tasteless biscuit. (Wait, no, it has a taste. The taste is 'freezer burn with a lingering hint of damp shelf dust'.)
"I guess, um," says Tony, coughing to clear his throat of crumbs, "I could really use some clothes or blankets or at least another pile of furs?"
"We have clothing for you," says one of the Jotuns.
"Clothes that will fit me?" Tony asks, eying up the asymmetrical leather loincloths and hammered metal belts that seem to be all the fashion rage in this corner of the universe.
"Asgardian clothing."
Okay that sounds like it could work. And the Jotuns must have anticipated this request, because as soon as Tony mentions it, one goes to open the door and three more troop in. All carrying armloads of wadded-up fabric. Which they then take turns holding out for Tony, one piece at a time. A pair of heavy wool pants, caked with mud at the worn-out knees. A shirt with a whole lot of awkward buckles and straps. A second pair of pants. A fur-lined left boot, and another, larger, left boot. Tony puts it all on as it's given to him, mud, mismatched boots, and all. "Where'd you guys get this stuff anyway?" he asks as he laces up a quilted vest.
"From Asgardians."
The Jotun who said that holds up a pale gray sheepskin-ish coat. A suspicious rust-brown stain surrounds a large hole in the center of the back, crudely repaired with sinewy whip-stitching.
"...I'm just going to assume it was all forgotten here by tourists," says Tony.
"Yes," the Jotun replies.
How utterly reassuring. But in the absence of any other options, Tony puts on the coat. And then another coat. And wraps a scarf around his head before topping it all off with a hooded cloak. "I guess you can leave the rest of it on the floor for Loki," he says to the third clothing-bearer, who looks visibly upset at not having been able to help dress the human and decides to plop another cloak down over Tony's shoulders anyway. "...Yeah great, thanks."
"Do you require anything more?" asks one of the food-Jotuns.
Well, a hot shower and some clean underwear would be nice, but... "No? I'm good? Thanks?"
Somebody shoves a tray of congealed, stuck-together yellow something under his nose. "More food?"
"...Sure, why not..." Whatever it is sticks unpleasantly to his fingers and is frozen solid in the middle. It tastes like sweetened rice flavor gelatin and takes an awful lot of crunching to break up the icy core to the point where he can swallow anything. Gelatinous starch sticks to his teeth. Terrific. "I will remember those for later," he says. "Oh hey, is there a toilet around here?"
The Jotuns all stare at him, and stare at each other, but clearly nobody wants to be the first one to admit they have no idea what he's talking about.
"You know, any place I could take a piss, or...?"
No. They don't know.
"Okay," says Tony, nodding. "I will... find a bucket somewhere. You guys don't pee at all? Urinate? No?"
Blank looks all around. The concept seems as foreign to them as warm weather and sandy beaches. So much for Thor's 'Jotun piss'. But then again, it must be pretty difficult to take a leak when liquid turns to ice upon contact with your body. Unless it contains some kind of natural antifreeze or-
Tony stops himself right there. That's officially more than enough time spent contemplating Jotun whiz. "Super," he says, picking up the tray of biscuits. They may be bland, but they're the most tolerable of everything he's tried so far. He grabs the bowl next to it too for good measure; the weird wrinkly brownish contents look like they're probably dried meat strips. "So I'm going to go back in my fort for a while. And thanks for all this, but you guys don't have to stick around. I mean you're probably busy doing..." Whatever ice lizard alien men do in their spare time. Fight each other? Dig holes?
"We may stay with you."
Not exactly the answer Tony was looking for. Not by a long shot. "You really don't have to," he tries, but with every passing second it becomes more and more abundantly clear that these frost assholes have no intention of leaving. (Wait, if they don't pee, does that mean they also don't have assh- Nope, not going there.) "Sure, stick around, why not," he mutters, carefully kneeling down to crawl back into the fort. It's a lot harder getting inside without taking out an important load-bearing pillow now that his hands are full and the bulky clothes have expanded his body size to linebacker proportions. But somehow he manages with minimal damage.
Immediately, Loki greets him with a wrinkled nose and an overdramatic turn away. "What are you wearing and why does it smell so terrible?"
"Asgardian hand-me-downs, and because this planet doesn't have laundry facilities would be my best guesses," says Tony. "You want some..." He looks down at the meat bowl. "...beast jerky?"
"No, I want you to take those awful clothes off. I don't like the smell."
"Yeah well news flash: I don't like the cold. Suck it up."
"Fine," Loki sighs. "But if I accidentally murder you in my sleep because you smell unfamiliar, it's your own fault."
"I'll take my chances." Both with accidental sleep murder and awkward meat snacks. "What exactly is this anyway?" he asks, waggling a piece in front of Loki's nose.
"Dried, salted meat," Loki replies without looking. "The Jotnar do not cook, so this is one of their only methods of food preparation that outsiders find acceptable. And I should add that this amuses them greatly. To them, dried meat is only eaten during lean times when nothing fresh can be found. It's taken as a backup plan on long journeys and fed to criminals who deserve no better."
Upon tasting the stuff, Tony immediately knows why. It's... not good. Actually, 'not good' is an excessively kind assessment. It's flat-out bad. At first it tastes like an overpowering mouthful of salt, but underneath that it's stringy, gamey meat shot through with strands of fat as tough as rubber. It takes a lot of chewing to finish even one mouthful. "Wow," Tony says, clearing his throat with a cough once he swallows. "That's... yeah, that's a backup plan if I ever tasted one." He takes another bite, and he's hungry enough to power on through it, even if it's an unpleasant ride from start to finish. Damn. All that salt screams for water to wash it down, but when he lifts a wall-flap to reach for the ice bucket...
Two sets of large, red eyes meet his, inches from his face. "Jesus Christ!" Scrambling back, he nearly knocks over another load-bearing pillow. The blanket-wall he opened falls back into place, but Jotun eyes still peer in through gaps on either side.
"Do you need more food?"
"No!" Tony answers, probably too loudly, while Loki snickers.
"They like you," Loki whispers.
"I don't like them liking me!" Tony hisses back.
"Would you rather they disliked you?"
"Well no, but this is weird!" Nonetheless, Tony opens the flap again. All nine Jotuns are now crouched on the floor, leaning over each other and craning their necks in search of a better viewing angle into the fort.
Of all the possible series of events Tony imagined falling into place during his adventure on Jotunheim, this was definitely not one. "...Can one of you please pass me the ice bucket?"
The Jotuns quickly oblige, four of them fighting over who gets to actually slide the bucket over to Tony. "Do you need-" one of them starts.
"Nope," Tony quickly cuts in. "Everything is now perfect. Except... D'you think you guys can move back a little? See, you're all really cold, and you're making the air cold, and that makes me cold. So if you could just, you know, mosey on over to the back of the bus..."
After consulting with each other through a series of questioning glances, the Jotuns all scooch back about ten inches.
"...Okay," says Tony. "I'll just, um..." Deal with it. He'll just deal with it. "Thanks."
He closes up the blanket fort, taking care to tuck in the edges and seal the gaps. Not that these thin walls will do much to discourage Jotun spies (he can already hear them shuffling around out there, searching for new peep-holes), but it makes him feel a little better. And a very slight bit less like a zoo monkey.
ooo
When Helly and Boo-boo finally show up, they want to speak to Loki alone. Which means Helly wants to speak to Loki. Boo-boo still seems stuck in the shyly-whisper-everything-in-his-brother's-ear phase, so he'll probably just stare at Loki. Whatever the case, it's made clear that Tony's not welcome to join the family hangout. Helblindi gives him a green jewel pendant to wear around his neck, a symbol of being under the king's protection so the other Jotuns don't eat him (how thoughtful), and sends him on his way. It's like the grown-up equivalent to being given a hula hoop and told to go play outside for a while.
And that would be why Tony presently finds himself trudging through the frozen, rocky corridors of whatever the hell this place is. It's not open landscape. But nor is it an urban center, really. It's more of a... Well... He stops in the middle of a narrow, snowy path to take a good look around. The best way to describe his surroundings would be like the slave housing on Tatooine in Phantom Menace, except with little house-caves tunneled into cold gray slate instead of sunny sandstone. They're residences, he's pretty sure. There's a Jotun hiding out in that doorway up ahead, carefully observing him. One of the goblin-Jotuns.
The more frost giants he sees, and the more he looks at them, the better Tony's getting at picking out the differences in their appearances. There are two distinct kinds of Jotuns that he can see. Races, maybe. The goblins and the trolls. The goblins are the ones that look more like Loki, with lean, wiry bodies and skin in a deeper, richer tone of blue. More angular faces and pronounced ridges of bone on their skulls. They are, if Tony can allow himself to make such a judgment call (and yes, he feels weird doing so even in the privacy of his own thoughts), the more attractive ones. Which may just be his Loki-centric bias speaking, but considering the competition...
The trolls are bigger. Bulkier. Barrel-chested and bulldog-faced. Paler, grayer skin, and a bare minimum of cranial ridges if there's anything up there at all on their bald heads. They also seem, in Tony's minimal experience, to be the grumpier ones. It was a troll-Jotun who threatened Tony with a snarl and a violent gesture when he accidentally wandered into what was probably a private courtyard. It was a goblin who calmly told him to get the fuck out. Not in those exact words, but the implication was clear.
And then there's the pack of creepy little white ones that have been following Tony for the past half hour, scuttling through the shadows and hiding behind corners. Based on their size – most of them are close to Tony's height, and the biggest one looks only a little taller than he is – he's assuming they're Jotun children. Incredibly terrifying, nightmarish children with oversized red eyes bulging out of ash white faces, and sharp, skeletal angles jutting under skin that looks like it's two sizes too small. Whenever he glances back, their gray fangs are bared by lips stretched too tight around gaping mouths. They move with a jerky gait at an awkwardly uneven pace. And as far as Tony is concerned, they are legitimate snow demons.
Compared to these horrible juveniles, the adult Jotuns look positively pleasant. At least the adults have skin that fits and they don't closely resemble the unfortunate offspring of Voldemort and a Moria orc.
He picks up the pace a bit, making a left turn and heading for a wider open square where he can see a handful of adult Jotuns mingling, talking, and going about their daily business of hauling around dead animal carcasses. The juveniles scurry up to the corner, but don't follow him any further. Their bug eyes and overstretched mouths look upset; maybe they're not allowed to leave that little area. What a shame. Tony makes a beeline for the opposite end of the square and takes another quick left to leave the little creep-demons behind.
And suddenly he's at the edge of town (City? Settlement?), staring out across a plain of jagged ice and whirlwinds of snow. Everything ends abruptly. Homes fade into cliffs, streets become crags, and if Tony stands even ten feet out on the plain and looks back, it's almost impossible to tell that anything at all lies behind the wall of rock. If he gets lost out here... Good luck ever finding the way home. All the extra cloaks and left boots in Asgard won't help him for long against the cutting wind. So he walks only as far as he dares, which is about half a mile along the wall. It flows in a shallow curve, which probably means it stands in a ring around the Jotun town. (Settlement. Whatever.) A solid defense.
That does, however, beg the question: what kind of predators exist on this planet that the Jotuns might want to keep out, and exactly how terrifying might those predators be to a puny human?
Right so maybe Tony should turn back now. He can do some more exploring inside the wall or, better yet, just return to Loki and the fire and the blanket fort. He's probably been out here for almost two hours already. How long do family catch-up talks take? Helly and Loki should be done by now. And even if they aren't, they'll just have to deal with a party crasher because Tony's toes and fingers are starting to feel numb, and not even all these layers of clothes can keep the cold completely out. Yeah. Time to head back.
It's beautiful out here, he won't deny, in its own weird, lifeless way. Might be a bit nicer if it weren't minus a fuckton degrees and he could stand to look with more than one eye through a tiny slit in his hood, but it's not exactly the white, arctic landscape he was expecting. There's hardly any snow on the ground. It gathers in drifts here and there, but for the most part the ground is hard, bare, blue ice. Or crystal and rock? Difficult to tell. But here and there crags rise up in shards or wind-eroded, twisted spirals to take the place of trees. Some waist-high, some as tall as a five-story building, casting muddled shadows in the light of the dim, red-orange sun overhead.
That thought makes Tony stop and open his hood enough to squint out into the frozen air with both eyes. There is a sun overhead. And yes, logically, there would have to be for Jotunheim to get its minute amount of heat and any light at all, but it's bigger than he was expecting. Appearing larger in the sky than Earth's sun by a factor of at least three. Yet at the same time it has to be giving off only a fraction of the heat and light for Jotunheim to stay so cold and dark. Even at what has to be mid-day, the sky's as dark as Earth at twilight. But that would only make sense if...
On a hunch, Tony scans the horizon, looking for any gap in the blanket of thick, gray clouds. And it's not much, but rising up through a break in the gloom at the edge of the wall is a long, thin, yellow crescent that on a clear day would dominate the skyline. The crown of a planet.
ooo
"It's a moon," he says, bursting through the door as if that's a common announcement to make while bursting through a door. "Jotunheim isn't a planet, but a large moon orbiting a larger planet that's in turn orbiting a red dwarf star!"
The bedroom may not exactly be warm by Earth standards, but that doesn't stop Tony from shedding the excess weight of most of his Asgardian outer layers before joining Loki by the fire. "I could barely see the planet, but it's there. And a planet close enough to a red dwarf to be in the habitable zone would be tidally locked, meaning no cycle of day and night, resulting in a tiny window for life between the overheated front side and the unheated back. But a moon orbiting that tidally locked planet, being itself tidally locked to the planet, could have a simulated night as it passed around the planet's far side to regulate the atmosphere. And I'm pretty sure that's the case with Jotunheim. Moon. It's a moon. It has to be."
"Oh," says Loki.
"Oh?" Tony repeats? "That's it? Oh? Another major scientific discovery by yours truly and all you can say is 'oh'?"
"Tony... I don't..."
He doesn't even need to look up for Tony to see what's wrong. In the gleam of firelight, Loki's eyes are red. Not in the Jotun way. "Oh," says Tony. And just like that, the feeling of exhilaration drains away, siphoned down into the floor. Right. Loki was back here talking to the brothers he's never known, trying to force a patch over a thousand years of distant hatred. "Sorry, I... I guess I got kind of overexcited and caught up in the..." Irrelevant details that can wait until later. "You okay?"
"Not as such, no."
Now what does he say to that? "Oh," again. Not exactly good enough, but it's situations like this that always make him feel like he has a brick wall built across the width of his brain: a barrier between those impossible-to-define, liquid feelings of concern and the words that might make them whole. Emotions always seem to have a life of their own on the other side of that wall, feral and elusive, dodging every effort to confine or articulate them. "Do you... want to talk about anything?"
Loki's gaze turns to the fire and stays there. "No."
"Okay." Shit. There has to be something physically wrong with him that he can't even think of a single thing better or more reassuring, or at the very least... compassionate. And there are probably more things wrong, too, that it feels so awkward sliding up to Loki's side and draping a hesitant arm over his shoulder. Going in for the quick physical fix while everything he wants to say, everything he should say, is soaring weightlessly overhead.
"You don't have to do that," Loki mutters.
"Do... Sit beside you?" Tony asks.
"Feel obliged to stay in here when I'm so depressingly miserable and you'd be much better off going back outside to be excited about space."
"I don't feel obliged. It's cold outside and space'll be there tomorrow. I just think it might be a good idea to... talk about this." Somehow.
"I'd rather not."
"You sure? Because you seem pretty upset, and..." People talk when they're upset. It's what you're supposed to do. Iron out life's glitches with a steamroller of words.
Loki sighs. "Tony, I know you mean well, but I think I would rather be alone right now."
"And with all due respect, I think you probably shouldn't be alone right now. I know you're the kind of person who internalizes and holds onto absolutely everything way more than you should, and ten years down the road you'll still be upset about it. So maybe you should tell me what happened and maybe I can help you sort through some shit. Or if you really don't want to talk about your brothers, at least let me distract you with stupid moon rambling. And maybe things will seem better in an hour and we can talk then."
"You don't have to..." Loki starts again, though with a lot less conviction.
"No, I know. I don't have to do anything. That's one of the main perks of being me and being rich and fabulous. But I told you when this whole shitstorm started that I care about you and I want to take care of you, and I guess that means making you grudgingly talk about your family and pretending I'm any good at this kind of touchy-feely heartfelt whatever-it-is. Instead of being outside making up wild hypotheses about space, which I actually am good at. Awesome, even."
A threadbare hint of a smile is better than nothing as Loki slowly shakes his head. "You are ridiculous, Tony Stark."
"I am unable to refute that observation," Tony agrees. "But my being ridiculous has no bearing on the fact that I do care about you, and I want to be here if you need me, and I love you, and..."
...Well. That slipped on by the wall. Weaseled its way through and, by the looks of things, struck Loki smack across the face. His mouth has fallen open in a silent exclamation.
"...stuff," Tony finishes. Stupidly. But the whole conversation did start stupidly, so a full circle of stupid is a fitting eventuality. And as the hundreds of millions of frantic thoughts speeding like a cyclone behind Loki's wide eyes settle into one shocked reaction...
"Oh," Loki murmurs once he can move his mouth again.
"Yeah," whispers Tony. "So... That's a thing I said. Uh. Would you mind... Could you, like, tackle me in a crazy hug or something so this doesn't feel so embarrassingly one-sided and weird? Maybe?"
"Yes, I, um... Yes," says Loki, leaning forward. One arm reaches over Tony's shoulder; the other circles around his waist. It's fumbling and awkward, but... at least it feels like Loki. Which is exactly what it should feel like. Tony pulls him closer, and Loki responds in kind, clasping his arms behind Tony's back and squishing him in a way that gets noticeably less restrained with each passing heartbeat. "Might you be able to... say that again?" he asks.
"What, all the rambling crap or the 'I love you' fiasco?"
"Yes, that, thank you."
Tony squishes him right back. And takes care not to say anything else, because chances are it would come out really stupidly schmoopy.
But on a completely different note... "You, um, wanna talk about your family now?"
"No. I'd rather you take my mind off of them. Tell me about this moon."
"Okay. Yeah." Tony clears his throat, shifting his weight as much as he can into a more comfortable position while still accommodating the Loki-cuddle. Changing subjects doesn't mean he has to give that up just yet. "I can't really tell much because of the thick cloud cover in the atmosphere, but it looks like Jotunheim isn't a planet at all. It's a large moon orbiting what's probably a gas giant within the tiny habitable zone of a red dwarf star. I wish I could get a better view of the planet. It looked big, but... Does the cloud cover ever dissipate?"
Loki shrugs. "Nn-nn." (That clearly translates into 'I don't know'.)
"Anyway it's not just clouds blocking out light that make this place so dark. A red dwarf doesn't emit much light to begin with, and most of its output is in the infrared spectrum. But I'm willing to bet Jotuns can see that. You said back in Phoenix they can see heat, so it would make sense that they can pick up the infrared radiation given off by objects that produce heat."
"Well I could have told you that," says Loki.
"Well you didn't, so I had to figure it out for myself," Tony replies, into Loki's hair. "Lucky for me I'm a world-renowned genius and now, by default, Earth's leading expert in the field of Jotunology."
"No, I think I might be."
"You're not from Earth. You don't count. But anyway, that reminds me of something. The weird skinny white Jotuns. Are those children?"
"Yes. Did you accidentally wander into a residential area?"
"I think so. I got yelled at by some guys and then the herd of children started stalking me. They freak me out. Are they supposed to be white and skinny, or are they sick or something?"
"They're supposed to be white," Loki tells him. "Jotun infants are born dark blue and with a thick layer of body fat, but lose their fat and pigmentation around age four when they begin learning how to hunt on their own. They turn blue again once they reach maturity."
"Okay yeah, you're the grand master of Jotunology," says Tony. "Is this the kind of thing you pick up over the years as a prince of Asgard?"
"No. Asgard tends to deliberately ignore Jotunheim. Apart from vilifying the Jotnar, of course."
"Then what? You study?"
Loki breathes in, and out, and in again before answering. "My... mother brought me books while I was in prison."
"Ah." And Tony doesn't push any further, because that sounded a lot like the 'don't want to talk about my family' tone of voice. Specifically, the 'don't want to talk about why I was brushing up on Jotun knowledge' subset. He moves on to the next point. "Anyway, new question. Are there different races of Jotuns? Like, different sizes and skin colors?"
"No."
"But there are obviously two different kinds that I saw today," Tony insists. "The darker, pointier ones like you and your brothers, and the bigger, grayer, bulkier ones like most of our guards."
Loki pulls back just enough to look Tony in the face with a dumbfounded expression. "The larger ones are females." (You idiot.)
"...Ohhhhh." Right, okay, that's probably something he should have guessed upon encountering two distinct body types among the local population. Male and female. That would make sense, and also handily answer the question of why he didn't see any 'female' Jotuns earlier.
"You were expecting breasts, weren't you?" Loki asks with a sideways smirk.
"Um, to be honest... Maybe," Tony admits. "Yes. But in all fairness, I was not necessarily expecting two. I would have also have been totally fine with an unusual number of alien boobs."
"How disappointing for you," Loki says, settling back down against Tony's chest.
"Yeah, but fortunate for you. If all the ladies look like that, you have zero competition for being the most attractive Jotun."
"You've decided what constitutes an attractive Jotun?"
"I don't need boobs to tell me what's hot."
And Loki actually laughs at that, which has to be a good sign. Maybe Tony can risk asking one crucial question.
"Did your brother say anything about whether or not we can go back to Earth any time soon?"
"He said he'd consider our options," says Loki.
"Okay." Tony nods. That sounds good. If Helly's considering, that means it's something he and Loki talked about, and a valid potential outcome. And wait, if he's considering... "So he knows where the path to Earth is?"
"Yes," Loki answers. That one word alone is enough to make Tony's heart leap. "Laufey knew. Jotunheim once invaded Midgard. That was the cause of the war with Asgard, and how I came to be in Odin's possession, in fact. Helblindi knows where the path is, but he says it was sealed by Odin at the end of the war. If he lets us go, I believe we will need to clear away Odin's blockade, though I do not know what sort of blockade it may be: physical or magical. Helblindi did not say."
"Pretty sure we can make short work of either," says Tony, making a conscious decision to ignore that part about the Jotun invasion. If they unseal the path and the Jotuns decide to have another go... Well, that's something for Future Tony to deal with. Present Tony just cares about getting back home. "You're the self-proclaimed greatest sorcerer on Asgard, and we've got the scepter to help. I have two master's degrees in making stuff explode. Piece of cake."
"I appreciate your optimism," Loki says before lapsing into silence. The kind of comfortable, peaceful silence that should probably only be broken by a really important question.
A question like: "What are you thinking about?"
"Things," is Loki's typically vague answer. "You?"
"How nice it'll be to get back to Earth. Take a long bath. Towels fresh out of the dryer. Pizza. Sitting around in front of the TV. Making you watch all my favorite robot movies from the 80s. Having sex all day. The two of us being able to do nothing and not have to worry about Jotun kings or Asgard or S.H.I.E.L.D.."
"S.H.I.E.L.D. will likely still be a problem."
Hm. That's probably true. "Eh, nothing a couple weeks hiding out in Maui won't solve."
Loki's soft 'hm' sounds like he doesn't quite believe that, but once again, S.H.I.E.L.D. interference is a problem for Future Tony to deal with. "Anything you eager to do once we get back?"
"Bath sounds appealing. As does sex all day."
"What are your thoughts on sex in the bath?"
"Entirely positive."
"Good. I'll pencil that in for every morning."
"Tony?" Loki says, very quietly.
"Yeah?"
The first words trickle out of his mouth at a glacial pace; the last fall rapidly like a tumble of stones. "I, ah... I do... I... love you too, you know."
"I know," Tony whispers. "I can tell by the way you're squeezing me so hard I can barely breathe."
"Sorry."
"Not sorry enough to stop?"
"No."
Tony kisses the edge of his hairline and squeezes him right back. "It's okay. I'll live."