Helooooo! Look who's back for the last time in 2018? Hope you all had a nice Christmas time, and I wish you a happy new year :) May 2019 be better than 2018 ;)
Here's my gift to you, I hope you like it well enough.
PREVIOUSLY ON ASAF: Loki burst out laughing and a smile tugged at Tony's lips. In the next step Loki bumped his shoulder – well, his upper arm, really, with the unfair height difference – against Tony's shoulder. A second later there was a blue arm draped over Tony's shoulder, and Tony shivered. He shivered because the skin was a bit chilly. He totally did not shiver for any other reason. (Also, his lips didn't tingle at all in remembrance of earlier).
"You really ought to meet Heimdall. I assure you, you would never dare ask such a question if you were standing in front of him."
"You'd be surprised. I'm suicidal like tha—"
A dark shape suddenly dropped from the ceiling right in front of them, and Tony screamed.
CHAPTER 29
He did not scream like a fairy tale princess, thank you very much. His scream was very manly, if slightly high-pitched. And he had totally not plastered himself against his soulmate's side – Loki had pulled him close. Which to be fair was not totally untrue. It was a joint effort, that's what it was. A defence mechanism, nothing more.
Clint – the bastard – stood up from his crouch. "Fucking finally! Do you have any idea how long I've been stuck in that vent? Your robot butler stopped me from getting out and threatened to electrocute me if I tried to bypass—" He stopped short and looked them up and down properly. "Ooookay, mind putting on some clothes? I'm not a big fan of PDA." Tony quickly stepped away from Loki's side, breaking the bond's pulsing connection. "But it does answer my question of what the hell was taking you so long. Pretty sure dinner's cold by now, if there's anything left at all. I didn't even get to eat more than one egg roll before Coulson roped me into getting you two." Clint crossed his arms, frown firmly in place.
"I feel like I've said this way too often, but this. Is. Not. What. You. Think!" Tony said, breathing hard and feeling flustered. It wasn't what Clint thought, it wasn't! But they'd had quite a bit more bare-chested action than might be seen strictly appropriate for a, you know, normal platonic friendship between guys. Also, the kiss. Well, the barely there peck on the lips. Let's not make a big deal out of it.
"Why do you keep putting yourselves in situations that make it look like something when it isn't anything? People aren't gonna believe you for long if you keep doing it." Even Clint looked pretty sceptical when he said that, as if he didn't believe them now.
"The— the shirtlessness was necessary for a better magical connection," Tony explained.
"Yeah, right," Clint said with a disbelieving snort, the bastard.
"It was!" Tony turned towards Loki. "You tell him."
"It was necessary," was all Loki said.
"Gee, thanks," Tony muttered. He closed his eyes for a second and took a calming breath. Right. Learn how to be clear and concise, Stark. Clear and concise. "We needed a good magical connection to exorcize the sceptre. Which we did. And it was a long process, which is why we couldn't come up earlier. And a dangerous process, potentially, which is why J.A.R.V.I.S. locked up there. Though to be fair you wouldn't have been stuck in a vent if you hadn't crawled up the vent!"
"It was more like crawling down, but sure. Let's say I believe you."
"Yes, let's!" Tony growled. God, how come Clint got even more on his nerves than… than… Capsicle and his old-fashioned righteousness? Probably just because Clint was a jerk.
"Did you manage to exorcise the sceptre?"
"Yes!" Tony half-yelled, exasperated, just as Loki calmly replied: "We did."
"Great. And was does exorcizing that thing actually mean?"
Tony let out a frustrated roar of mangled outrage. Clint was doing it purpose, wasn't he? He had to. He was doing everything in his power to be excruciatingly annoying, no doubt about it. That fucker. Tony wanted to kick something, preferably Clint's crotch. Repeatedly. That would teach him not to drop out of vents in front of his face and doubt everything he said and then act like a clueless idiot.
A cool hand landed on Tony's shoulder, accompanied by a breeze of calm and control through the bond, and Tony felt himself exhale slowly without his own consent, as if his anger was being leeched out of him somehow. "Calm, kærr. Calm, elskan mín," Loki murmured, his voice low and soothing, vibrating through Tony's very core.
Loki turned his attention to Clint, yet he kept his hand firmly on Tony's shoulder. "It means that the Mad Titan's power no longer lingers around the sceptre's core. We are therefore out of danger, for now."
Tony stiffened at the lie that pinched him in the chest at the very end of Loki's statement, and he did his best not to react to it. He shouldn't call him out in front of Clint; they were trying to convince him of the necessity of their shirtlessness and seclusion. Revealing that Loki was lying about something would be extremely counterproductive.
"Awesome. Does that mean you can put your shirts back on and go up to dinner? Pretty please?"
Tony's twitch of annoyance was interrupted by Loki squeezing his shoulder – he guessed it was supposed to be a gesture of reassurance or something, but it was more like his muscled being grinded to pulp. Stupid aliens and their stupid strength that they didn't know how to control. Tony tugged his shoulder out of harm's way and went to grab his shirt, picking up Loki's and throwing it in his bewildered blue face.
He didn't look when Loki pulled his tee over his head and the raised swirling lines on his skin disappeared. He could still remember their pattern even as he looked at the cotton that covered them, anyway. It was the downside of having a genius-level memory; his mind's eye was very good at remembering patterns and superposing images. No, wait, why should this be a problem? It wasn't as if he was in any way phased by Loki's naked torso. Being a genius was great!
"Come on, Stark! Get dressed and let's go!"
"What? You embarrassed by my awesomely manly torso, Clint?" Tony wiggled his eyebrows and Clint's face contorted in a strange grimace, as if he was both disgusted and wanted to laugh at the same time, the arsehole. "And I told you, birdbrain, it's Tony," Tony ground out.
"Maybe if I wasn't starving I'd remember your name, genius!"
Tony inhaled, ready to deliver some sort of scathing response – he didn't know what yet, but his genius brain would find something, no worries – and was stopped by the return of the dreaded shoulder squeeze. Though this time, it was more like a human shoulder squeeze, thank God. He didn't need his shoulder to become as blue as his soulmate's.
"Tony. I will go to dinner without you if you do not hurry." Loki said, and that was a lie. Tony's chest unexpectedly heated up at the thought that Loki wouldn't leave him behind, even if it was just to find food. Unless it was that he didn't want to confront the other Avengers on his own. Right, that had to be it. "I am rather famished," Loki added, and Tony felt like that was a huge understatement. Tony was rather famished. Loki was probably ready to eat a whole cow or something.
"Yes, Tony, listen to your space princess," Clint said before skipping ahead towards the elevator. He pushed the button but nothing happened – no light appeared around said button, the doors didn't open, and Clint stood there like an idiot, stabbing the button like that would solve the problem. Tony looked up at the nearest camera and the dot of light blinked. Tony smiled as he put his shirt back on. J.A.R.V.' was such a good boy. "Tony. Your house sucks."
"Don't be a dick. My tower doesn't suck, it just survived an alien attack! Everything is working pretty fine, all things considered."
"We're not waking all the way up to the kitchen, dude!"
"For the record, you can't walk up to the kitchen. There are no stairs here."
"Yeah, I know, I had to use the vent because you are a crazy fucker who doesn't even follow proper construction regulations. Where's the emergency exit in case the elevator's broken?"
Tony pointed over his shoulder with his thumb. "This is also a garage, dickhead. You can walk out that way."
"I do not care how we get to dinner. I only know that if we were to truly be stuck here, I am eating you."
Tony's head whirled towards Loki when he realised this strange statement only felt like a half-lie. Loki's head was cocked to the side, pointy teeth bared and red eyes gleaming, like a predator taunting its prey. And said prey was looking back at Loki, then at Tony with slowly widening eyes, back plastered against the elevator doors.
Clint's hands came up in a sign of surrender. "Stark— Tony. Don't let Fiona eat me, I beg of you. I have a nest full of chicks that need feeding." Clint made some attempt at puppy dog eyes, and it looked like it could be surprisingly effective – if his opponent was anyone but Loki. Loki's fiery gaze remained unchanged. "What would they do without me?" he pleaded in a half-whine so fake it made the whole puppy-dog eyes completely ineffective regardless.
"They'd be better off, that's what would happen. You not afraid of being eaten? 'Cause I can tell you, he's only half kidding."
Clint's jaw twitched and his usual I'm-a-crazy-assassin-and-you've-got-no-idea face came back on. "Nat' threatens to eat me every two days, so I guess I've just been desensitised. So sorry I couldn't muster up more genuine emotions for you," he said, smirking.
"The Black Widow must have a lot of restraint," Loki commented.
Tony smirked and walked up to the elevator doors and they opened instantly. "That depends. Either she has a lot of restraint, repressing her spidery instincts and all, or… She doesn't have to. Because Clint ain't triggering her instincts, if you know what I mean."
"Ha! Don't worry, I'm triggering her instincts all right!" Clint scoffed as the doors closed, and winced half a second later.
"I knew it! How long have you two been together?" Clint's mouth was a straight, unhappy line. "Come on, you can tell me! I won't repeat it to anyone. Pinkie-swear." It was really hard not to burst out laughing at Clint's sour look, but Tony proudly controlled his mirth.
"Since the… battle against the Chitauri was won," Loki said, and Clint's eyes bulged.
"How the hell do you—" The elevator doors opened and Loki walked out, Clint on his heels.
"You do realise I asked you all you knew about your fellow Avengers when the sceptre controlled us both, do you not?" Loki said as they walked into the kitchen and its long table all set and ready to cater to them all. It looked like no one had actually started eating, and Tony felt a twinge of guilt. "You were very… effusive when it came to Natasha Romanoff," Loki continued, ignoring Clint's dawning horror once he'd noticed the kitchen wasn't empty.
There was Cap with wet hair and an almost see-through white tee that left nothing to the imagination leaning with his back against the kitchen counter, and next to him Phil in a simple blue button-up with a tablet. Both their heads had turned towards them at Loki's voice, and Phil's eyebrows were doing some kind of surprised-frown-twitch. Obviously Phil didn't know that the hawk and the spider were playing Tetris under the sheets, otherwise Clint wouldn't have looked like he'd just been dragged to the electric chair.
Loki continued speaking as if he was blind to the dread that was thick in the air. "It was rather obvious from the way you spoke then that while your feelings were strong, they had not been returned in any physical manner." Loki's upper lip jerked up once and Tony could feel his own lips wanting to stretch of their own accord into a giant smirk. Ah. So Loki knew exactly what he was doing. Tony didn't know why that should surprise him. Silvertongue and God of Chaos, wasn't that how Thor had described him at some point on the Helicarrier? "After the battle, however, you were both reeking of each other – even your magic signatures look similar at the edges now – and that has not changed ever since. I therefore have to assume that you are—"
"Dude!" Clint hissed, but Loki ignored him.
"—getting as close as mortally possible." Loki cocked his head innocently. "Am I wrong?"
Clint's face was white as a sheet, his eyes darting from Phil to the darkened corridor on the right. Tony squinted. There was an outline there that could only have been human, and he didn't need Natasha to step forward to know that had to be her.
"You can smell when people had intercourse?" Phil said, breaking the sudden breathless silence. "Don't answer that, of course you do. Tell me more about the magic, though. How can sex change people's magic? We don't even know how to use it. Ah, unless that is what they mean when they say it was 'magical'. Tell us, Agent Barton, would you describe your experience as magical?"
Tony loved Phil. Had he ever told him that? He should, he totally should. That guy was perfect – well, almost. He worked for S.H.I.E.L.D., was the Deputy Director even, but he was on some sort of babysitting holiday right now. Almost perfect. Phil obviously knew Clint and Natasha had been going at it – sure, it had seemed very probable to Tony, but then he had thought they'd had to have been together since forever and if Loki was right about it not being the case… Phil just acted like that was totally not an issue even though Clint seemed to think this revelation was the end of the universe. And Phil obviously pinpointed the more interesting matter and focused on that – magic – and Tony completely agreed with that method. Interrogating Loki about magic should be anyone's priority, really.
Loki smirked. "Surely you do not believe I will reveal my secrets for free?"
Phil's gaze turned frightfully calculating. "What do you want?"
Loki sniffed disdainfully. "Food. Obviously."
"Deal. You can have all the Peking Duck. It's the best I've ever tasted. J.A.R.V.I.S. knows what he'd doing, that's for sure."
"Thank you, Phil," J.A.R.V.I.S. answered. What the hell? 'Phil'? Had Coulson already corrupted his baby boy?
Loki hummed. "Deal."
And that is when it dawned on Tony that J.A.R.V.' had ordered the food, and if it was Peking Duck… "Hey, wait a sec'! J.A.R.V., is this from Buddakan?"
"It is, Sir."
"No way you're getting all the duck! It's paid with my money, I'm entitled to the best Peking Duck New York has to offer!"
Phil came over to the table and picked up a huge dish covered in at least five layers of aluminium foil. He took a healthy step back. "Perhaps we can come to an agreement, if you have valuable information for me, Stark."
"I can tell you stuff about magic too, I've been studying it all day. Oh, and we exorcised the sceptre." Phil's eyebrows went up at that, and Tony knew he was hooked. Now he just had to reel him in gently. "We can now safely send it up to Asgard and be rid of whatever doom that thing is going to bring if we give it up to S.H.I.E.L.D.. No offense." Loki's amusement flared at the blatant lie of those last two words. "Though of course the fine details probably won't interest you," Tony added, and bingo! Phil was caught. Tony was getting that duck.
"All right, how about you two share the duck?"
"Deal," was Loki's immediate response, the idiot. Didn't they know bargaining over there in Asgard? Phil handed the dish to Loki, and Loki turned to Tony with a mischievous glint in his eye, and that was when Tony realised that Loki did know how to bargain and he was probably about to lose big time. "Let's make this short, shall we? I have all the leverage and you have none – you cannot stop me from taking all of this duck. Therefore you have no reason to complain if I magnanimously give you a tenth, knowing that you could very well have none. Deal?"
Tony sighed. It was a totally unfair deal, but to be honest he was tired and hungry, and it was a big dish, right? A tenth was still a nice enough amount. "Fine. Deal."
"Great," said Phil. "Let's finally have dinner, people!" Natasha shuffled in from her dark corridor, soon followed by Bruce. "And Clint, no more egg rolls for you."
Tony sank down in the nearest chair to the grating melody of Clint's discordant whines, and whished dinner was already over.
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Tony had been rather silent since the beginning of dinner, eating his food sullenly and without the gusto that his empty stomach should have occasioned, and Loki did not like it at all. He was supposed to be the one that sulked moodily for some reason or other, not his soulmate. Tony was the one that could break the tension in any type of situation – even if breaking that tension made the situation worse. Loki doubted that whatever he said would help – he did not have Tony's mysterious power that made him instantly likable to all. (He was loath to admit that it unfortunately reminded him of Thor). It was more than just charm; it was like he managed to somehow enchant anyone who spoke to him.
Loki touched the side of his arm to Tony's, re-establishing their soul's full connection, but it was not as noticeable as he had hoped. All their time touching earlier must have soothed their soul enough for quite some time to come. It didn't even look like Tony was aware they were touching, and that was just unacceptable. Loki put down his… chopsticks, what that what they called these? And stopped all pretence of eating.
He concentrated on subtly sending… something. He definitely did his best not to send his frustration along. But what he should call this wish for Tony to be more himself, to be less morose and more buoyant, he did not know. He was sending something along, that was certain. There was a sort of puzzlement growing on Tony's side of the bond from whatever he was doing, but nothing else unfortunately.
There was tugging around his heart. Dot-dash-dash, dot-dot-dot-dot, dot-dash, dash. It took Loki a second to translate the Morse code into letters again. 'WHAT' was the word Tony had sent him. What was he supposed to answer to that? The whole reason why he had decided not to approach the issue with words was because he was not sure how to explain himself. He therefore decided upon something more obvious. 'YOU SHOULD EAT' he sent, and he had barely finished spelling the last word before Tony was replying.
'I AM.' It technically wasn't a lie; he was eating tiny morsels of a selection of dishes, but definitely not the amount he should be eating, especially after all the magic they had used today. Loki felt very hungry and tired after all the energy they had spent. A Midgardian had to feel the effects even more.
'EAT NORMALLY,' Loki sent, and all he received in response was anger and a hearty tug on their soul bond that would have made him teeter sideways if his arm hadn't already rested against Tony's. It took everything Loki had not to escalate this and tug back; Tony was young. It did not matter how Tony thought about their age difference and their age equivalences – Loki had still lived a staggering amount of mortal years, and it was time to use the experience he had gotten from it to control himself. 'YOU SHOULD EAT MORE FOR YOUR HEALTH AS YOU USED A LOT OF MAGIC TODAY,' he sent – it took some time to send but Tony understood it all right.
The sigh that exploded from Tony's lips was long and loud, and even the bond seemed to sigh along in exasperation. The 'FINE' Tony sent him even had a petulant quality to it, but at least he picked up some food and shove it into his mouth with exaggerated force. Loki kept his smirk in check and surreptitiously pulled some dishes closer to Tony's plate. And then he thought, to Helheimr with it, and simply emptied a whole dish of dumplings – what a silly name – that Tony seemed to go back to again and again onto his soulmate's plate.
"Uhm," was all that Tony said, chopsticks frozen in the air.
"As I said. You need to eat more."
"Yeah but can I at least choose what I get to eat?"
"You like those," Loki said, pointing at the dumplings with his own chopsticks.
"True, but how do you know that? I didn't say anything about it."
"You had a number of them on your plate already," Loki said before he could stop himself.
Tony's mouth tightened in a very straight line. "And the truth?"
"The moment you saw them I could feel you wanted them. Because even though I had no idea what these 'dumplings' were, I suddenly wanted to have those specific ones, which means it was a transference from the bond."
There was a spike of annoyance and exasperation, and Tony grunted. "I really need to learn the shielding bubble thing. Teach me."
"Let us perhaps finish eating first." And then that particular issue would perhaps conveniently slip his soulmate's mind again. Loki liked the fact Tony could not hide much from him. He knew it was unfair, and were their roles reversed Loki would not fare well – he would have demanded the instructions to the shield building immediately and practised until he had made it work.
"I can multitask, thank you very much. Start talking, Grover."
"You might want to multitask less and eat more, as it seems you have not been faring well with the latter."
"Perhaps if my brain has something to do it will forget the protests of my stomach and I'll eat more. Ever think about that?"
"Did I ever think that occupying your mind would make you eat?"
"Yeah."
"I am uncertain."
"Is that a way to not say yes or no so that the bond doesn't know what to make of it? 'Cause I still feel a kind of tingling behind the Arc reactor. So it ain't working, sorry."
"I take back what I said," Barton said with his mouth full. "Dinner was totally worth the wait."
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Tony said, pointing his chopsticks at the archer, his building anger flaring – but at least it was not directed at Loki. And the mind shielding was forgotten once again. Loki sighed internally in relief and Tony's head swivelled back towards him instantly, chopsticks following close behind. "Don't think you're off the hook, dearie. You are teaching me that shield bubble tonight." He turned back to Barton. "And what the hell is your problem?"
"I don't have a problem. That's the whole point. I had a problem. Now I don't anymore. Thank you."
"Are you saying my problems are entertainment to you?"
"Oh, you were you fighting? I'm sorry, I hadn't noticed," Barton said with a cheeky smirk and next to him Romanoff rolled her eyes. "Trouble in paradise? You seemed so chummy earlier, you even had your tops off and all. What was it for again? Was it open communication? Maybe you should take off more next time if your communication wasn't good enough."
"It was for magic—" Tony said through gritted teeth while the bond flared up in an explosion of mixed emotions.
"Thank you, Agent Barton. We will take your… advise into consideration," Loki answered with a smirk of his own.
Tony sputtered and savagely attacked a dumpling with his chopsticks, piercing it in the process. "The only reason we ever touch is for the bond and for magic." The bond buzzed with Tony's heated feelings but Loki could not read them, too focused on keeping a tight lid on his own heartache the reality of that phrase brought up. His jaw tensed with the effort and he felt Romanoff's gaze as if he had just lit the fire of a signalling beacon. He took a bite of duck and did not look in her direction. "Do you honestly think I'd go take off my shirt to stand in front of that bloody sceptre if I could help it?" Tony continued.
"You said you 'exorcized' the sceptre," Coulson said with sceptical eyebrows.
Tony started to explain the whole process of his understanding of magic and the removal of the Mad Titan's taint, and Loki stopped listening. He concentrated on eating and surreptitiously adding food on Tony's plate. Tony was so distracted by his story-telling that he didn't seem to realise how much food he was consuming in between two paragraphs of his convoluted explanation – if Coulson's eye-twitching was anything to go by, he was not understanding half of it, and to be fair, if Loki had not known what his soulmate was talking about it in the first place, he would not have been able to understand most of it either. The conversation moved from the taint to their discovery of the sceptre's core, and the tension rose palpably around the table.
"Wait. You're saying that the sceptre and the Tesseract are both made with those… stones?" Doctor Banner asked.
"Yep. They're what Thanos wants, we recon. And knowing he wants to come here to get to Asgard, we better send it to Asgard's magical dungeons that he can't easily get to. Or so I hear. We got two out of six, that ain't too bad, right?"
"That would depend upon the whereabouts of those Infinity Stones. If the Mad Titan has more of them…" Loki trailed off.
Tony turned towards Loki. "You didn't see any other stones with him, right?"
"I wouldn't know. I was not aware they were not mere legend when I was in his presence. I did not spend much time in his presence anyhow; his subordinate, The Other, was the one bringing word of the Mad Titan to me more often than not. Furthermore, my memories of that time feel somewhat muddled. A blessing and a curse both."
Tony turned back towards Coulson. "Anyway, our biggest chance to win this is to strike first. Well, Thanos struck first, but you know what I mean. We gotta take the fight to him. Not give him time to regroup and wait here like perfect little sitting ducks."
"Take the fight to where?" Captain Rogers asked.
"Wherever Thanos is," Tony answered, his tone exasperated. Barton rolled his eyes and Loki couldn't deny he had felt the urge as well.
Rogers' lips pursed. "Like on another planet? How? Are you hiding a rocket in your basement too?"
Loki could feel Tony's mirth grow exponentially, ready to explode into raucous laughter, and Loki yanked at their soul bond. Tony's body pitched sideways, their shoulders knocking together, and Tony's lungs exploded into choked coughs. "What the… Hell…" he managed to say between two breaths, obviously asking with his bewilderment why Loki had done that, but Loki royally ignored him. Now was to the time to antagonise the leader of the Avengers; they needed all the help they could get if defeating the Mad Titan one day was what the Norns had in store.
"While we do not know where the Mad Titan currently is, we can assume that he will come for the stones we have eventually, and Asgard can provide for transport to most places, once the Allfather has been informed, and convinced, of our hypothesis."
"Hypothesis. How sure are you about this?" Coulson asked.
"I must admit that more research would need to be done on the subject. Loath as I am to admit, the Allfather might be able to shed some light on the situation. If he were to observe both the cube and the sceptre's cores, surely he would come to the same conclusion as I. We will have to wait for Thor's return so that he may take the stone and perhaps advocate an official alliance between Asgard and Midgard, if you are so inclined."
"If we are— you realise that Earth is anything but united, right?" Coulson said. "Getting something like the U.N. to sign off on this—"
Tony cut him off. "Yeah, that's what I said. But if we don't inform the U.N. and S.H.I.E.L.D. makes the alliance instead – Fury's gonna love that I bet – then we might be able to sort this without world-wide panic."
"Have you any idea what would happen if that information got out?"
"If it got out after we get rid of Thanos it should be pretty much fine. And if it comes out before…"
"If it comes out before," Romanoff butted in, "it will be the end of S.H.I.E.L.D."
"Then I suppose that if you want your little organisation to survive, you should make certain that your subordinates know how to hold their tongue," Loki said.
The silence that followed was heavy and full of thoughtful faces. Tony's chair scraped the floor when he pushed himself away from the table. "Well, on that cheery note." Tony stood up. "I'm going to bed, I'm knackered. We can't do anything about all that until Thor comes down from heaven, so. See ya."
"You getting old? It's not even ten," Barton said, breaking the heavy mood with his unseemly snigger.
"Way past your bedtime then, wee Merida. You better hurry up and get ready before Daddy Fury sees you're still up."
Barton sputtered, and the corner of Romanoff's mouth twitched. Tony waved at them before walking straight out of the kitchen. Leaving Loki behind. All eyes were trained on him all of a sudden – the only outsider, the outlander who would not have been sitting freely among them if Tony had not been his soulmate. It was not as if Loki's skin itched to leave the room, but the curious, slightly prickly and cautiously probing magic that permeated the air unbeknownst to their owners was not exactly comfortable.
Loki couldn't help but take a sharp breath when Tony pulled on the soul bond's string. 'U COMING' was his unnecessary message. It was not like Loki found his current company especially thrilling. "I shall bid you good night as well," Loki said cordially – after being the harbinger of bad news and before that of much worse, there was no other way to act if he did not have Tony to serve as a possible defence. The sooner his magic was back to normal, the sooner he could make a quick escape if worse came to worse because of his sometimes too sharp tongue.
He could feel Tony's concentration on his exact whereabouts all the way up the steps and down the corridor to their room. The moment he walked in, Tony turned towards him, raised a glass full of amber liquid and took a hearty swig of it. "Finally. Want a drink? I think we deserve it." Loki didn't even get to answer – Tony was already pouring another glass, this one filled to the brink. "Here," he said, the drink swishing over when Tony carelessly handed it over. "You might need it. I know you don't wanna tell me about the mind bubble thing. 'Cause it gives you an advantage over me and all that. I get it. But it isn't fair and you know it. So. You're gonna teach me." He took another gulp and trained his fiery gaze on Loki.
Now it was Loki's turn to down some of his drink – a gaze like that was doing things to him that he wasn't sure he could entirely hide, even with his shielding. What else could he do if he did not want his soulmate's determination to turn to fury? "Very well. I shall explain."
All right! It's just been 29 chapters, but Tony is finally going to be taught how to keep his emotions to himself! Good news for Tony, bad news for our dear Loki ;)
Also, in the next chapter – whenever I'll have time to write that (-.-') – there will finally be something that justifies that rating I've been promising you since the beginning. It's not gonna be big, don't get your hopes up, but it's gonna be something at least. A good prospect for this new year, don't you think?
Spread the Luv!
LL