Trick of the Light

Rated T

A/N: I was going to try for a double upload tonight but I'm still packing for my holiday that I'm going on tomorrow. I'm getting away for my birthday for a week tomorrow night, Amsterdam yeahhhh! :D I promise I will try to get another chapter up tomorrow but it's going to be so hectic I don't know if I'll be able to! I'll do my best though!

…

Tony didn't arrive. Not for a long while.
Loki was beginning to give up hope of seeing his husband before he drifted off to sleep again. He felt the slightest pangs of guilt at brushing him off earlier that day but it was just so much easier to sleep. He wasn't used to dealing with pain for prolonged amounts of time without being able to do anything for himself. He'd have been able to patch himself up with his magic in no time. And then afterwards he'd usually be required to put his silver tongue to good use and try to talk his way out of whatever situation he'd gotten himself into.
His words wouldn't do him much good now though.

He was tired constantly, in pain constantly, and his desire to fix himself at an all time low. He could scarce keep up the energy to function and when he did have energy it was only because he was so far under the influence of whatever miracle pills Banner had given him that his thoughts were barely coherent anyway. He'd already divulged one of his more embarrassing moments to the entire team without so much as a second thought but now, in the dying moments of his high, he was seriously starting to regret his loose tongue.
He just wanted Tony here.
Another hour crawled by, the pain in his leg flaring up again to the extent that Loki lashed out and pounded his fist against his thigh, tears of frustration threatening to surface.
"Loki, hey whoa whoa, calm down! Shh, come on, I'm here now." Tony soothed as he darted over to the bed besides his husband. "What's wrong? Come on Rudolph you can tell me." He offered with a weak smile. Taking the tricksters hand into his own, uncurling the pale, trembling fingers he placed the others hand to his lips and pressed a reassuring kiss against it. Loki turned his head away, balling his other hand into a fist he tried to knuckle the tears away.
He blinked a couple of times, hissing at the dampness on his cheeks and closed his eyes as he felt warm fingers gently stroke the side of his face.

When he opened his eyes Tony was lying next to him.
"Apologies. I'm not quite sure what's gotten into me. There was no need for tears." He managed, his words clipped and stony.
"You're fed up, in pain, frustrated, angry, weak… There're a few reasons for ya. You also just told the best story of how you're the worst person ever too. I always did have you pegged for a mommas boy."
"With Odin's less than stellar parenting are you honestly that surprised?"
"Well… No. When you put it like that, but in all fairness you were sort of a problem child weren't you? That doesn't mean I'm defending him in any way though! But you did get knocked up by a horse age what, eighteen? And you appear to have made a habit of getting off your face and causing chaos. I do love how you ran to your mom though. That's kinda sweet."
"Please be quiet now." Loki snivelled, wiping his nose discreetly and rolling over to face the shorter man. "And it was seventeen. My Gods, seventeen and pregnant, sounds like one of your terrible Midgardian reality shows. The horse is just another nail in the coffin."
"Wouldn't have been the worst claim to fame I've ever heard of. I can just imagine you in a pink tracksuit and pigtails with a pram in tow. Hottest. Trailer trash. Ever."
"A pink track suit? Have a heart, I'd wear a green or gold one at least. I am royalty after all."
"Gold. Gotcha. Gonna buy you one now."
"Now all you need to do is impregnate me and I'll have use for that pram." Loki quipped.

Tony fell oddly silent.

"It was a joke Stark."
"I knew that." Tony coughed, giving the prankster a shove.
"Did you really?" Loki asked, quirking his eyebrow, an amused grin toying with his features.
"Of course I did." The engineer huffed as he pulled his partners face towards his chest, muffling the well-spoken voice when it tried to retaliate. The immortal grunted and pushed himself away enough to have his voice heard.
"Actually, as awkward as this conversation makes you feel, we probably should have it. We should have discussed all this before we got married really but the less said about that debacle the better. " He smirked.
Tony groaned loudly.
"Really Loki? We're having the 'kids' conversation while you're on a massive come down from some hard-core painkillers and I'm… well, me."
"Now is as good a time as any, husband. So, children… Do you want them?" The deity asked. Tony felt all the potential replies and retorts he could've spoken turn to dust in his mouth.
This was bad.
The look on Loki's face spoke volumes as Tony continued to struggle through his silence.
"Perhaps we shouldn't broach this conversation then. It's late. I should get some rest." The dark haired man said flatly, he sat up sharply, grabbed the bottle of painkillers and twisted the cap but before he could take one a rough hand fastened around his wrist. It wasn't vicious, or particularly painful, but the grip on his skin was fierce in the way that someone holding on to something might grab at their only tether. It was desperate.
And it wasn't like Tony at all.
It took the deity aback.
He lowered the pills and turned to face his lover and noticed the downcast hazel eyes that slowly travelled up to reach his face.

"No. We should definitely have this conversation now. I think now is as good a time as any. If you ask me again later I'll only deflect it again and again, and I don't know how many more times I can take that look."
"What look?" Loki spluttered, his eyes widening slightly at the accusation that he was not the master over his own facial expressions. He was a master liar and manipulator. He did not simply give away such vital 'looks'.
"I can't describe it Loks. It's too much like disappointment and resignation and despair and I never want to see that expression again. So I'll have this conversation with you now and we'll try and work our way through it as best we can, 'kay?" The engineer tried his best to explain, removing his hand from the others wrist to run it through his already tousled hair.

Loki nodded.
Now was hardly the time for eloquence, he didn't need pretty words and glib remarks, he just needed the truth.

"I want children." He stated with a level of bluntness that surprised himself. "More children I guess. With you. I don't know when and I think we can both guess how, but I do want them. That's it. That's all I've got." The wordsmith declared raising his hands in the air and resting his hands on his thighs.
Tony nodded along, running his finger across his lips and furrowing his brows in concentration. Time crawled by at an agonisingly slow pace before he spoke again yet Loki's face remained impassive.
"I don't want them. Or at least I never did. It's not that I don't want kids it's just that I don't want to be a father. Never have. I'd never make even a halfway decent parent and let's be honest with each other now, I'm hardly husband, hell even friend of the year material, there ain't no way I'd ever make dad of the year with my track record. I'm not going to bring a child up in a world where I won't give it the love and attention it deserves through no fault of its own. I know you want a family, the whole sprawling suburban house with the tire swing outside and children crawling out of the woodwork. I didn't know that back then but I know it now. And I'm so sorry but this is the one thing that I just can't give you." He finished. He couldn't meet those emerald eyes, he couldn't stand to see the way they were looking at him.
"Can't or won't?"
"What?"
The deity straightened his back and flexed his fingers against his legs.
"Are you unable to give me children or do you simply refuse to?" He asked again, clarifying his question.
"I've just told you, I won't. I can't. It's the same damn thing!" Tony snapped more harshly than he'd intended. Instead of flinching away Loki rallied himself and shoved the shorter man, his lips curled back into an ugly sneer.
"Liar. You know that's not true. None of it. You want this as much as I do. You're just too scared to let yourself believe for even a second that you could lower yourself to the same level as the rest of the human race because you might actually enjoy not being the centre of the fucking universe for once!"
"Don't even presume to know how I work or why I do what I do! Fuck Loki what more do you want? You wanted an answer, yes or no, do I want kids? And I said no. Leave it at that."

The prince grabbed his husband by the throat and pulled their faces closer until they were mere inches apart.

"I want you to stop lying to me! I know, the irony hurts, the God of Lies wants to stop being lied to! I would never force you into something you truly didn't want but I know you. I know what you are. You are a good man. An arrogant, insufferable, foolish waste of skin but you are a brilliant and fantastic fool all the same. And at the end of the day you are still just a man. Strip away all the genius and money and issues and traumas and what do you have left? A husband, my husband. You are my good man and you are lying to me. Tell me the truth. Please? I won't care what your unique brand of logic has to say on the matter, I just want to understand. Give me that much Tony." Loki begged, his fingers splaying over the exposed neck until their touch shifted from volatile to desperate.

"I can't. It's not that easy. If I tell you… I don't want to ruin what we have and trust me, this'll do it."
"There are few things you could ever say to me that would manage that." Loki said with a tight smile.

Tony shook his head sadly.
"Why don't you want children?" Loki urged.
"I do." Came the Avenger's reluctant reply.
Loki smiled a little more genuinely at the sound of those two little words.

"I just don't want them with you."

…

I know. I'm a dick.