Tony knows he fucked up when, two days after explaining Midgardian marriage customs, Loki presents him with a pair of matching cock rings in a velvet box.
There was a rather prolonged moment where he could have said something not insulting or rude like 'yes' or 'thank you' or 'are you unsatisfied with my performance, sweetheart?' and cleared up the misunderstanding later. But he is a fucking moron, so instead he laughs in Loki's face and asks where the real ones are.
Apparently this isn't a scenario Loki prepared for, because instead of smirking playfully and making a dig at Tony's refractory period his face falls in the most heartbreaking expression Tony's ever seen and he fucking vanishes.
It's while he is sitting there, absorbing what just happened and trying to keep Jori out of the ficus that Sesame Street lays codifies his mistake. Think Before You Act. It's not a fun rule, but he has a kind of intuition that it's going to be important.
Maybe it's because Loki's sudden departure leaves him to wrangle the shape shifting hell spawn by himself, or maybe its because Big Bird keeps reiterating the lesson over and over again on TV, but after thirty minutes Tony is ready to make reparations. He knows he can't find Loki if he doesn't want to be found, but he has Jarvis do a global scan anyway.
When lunchtime rolls around J informs him that Loki isn't detectable anywhere on Earth, and Tony starts to get properly upset. He wants to rocket off and look for him but he knows it's pointless.
The little bits are hungry, so he packs that impulse in a mental box and thaws some rabbits for the menagerie. He tries not to think about which of the take out menus Loki would have chosen, which leads to him staring at the mess of greasy pamphlets long enough that Hela picks up her phone and orders Thai.
Not that Hela doesn't like rabbits. Tony still has nightmares about the time he watched her split one with Fenrir, but thankfully she thinks forks are amusing so most days it's people food for her. He's about to pat her head and give her a gold star when she opens her mouth and ruins it.
"Are you and dad getting a divorce?" she asks through her nose, like one of the insufferable Disney idols in those movies she watches on her phone while the rest of them are trying to enjoy a perfectly good family game night.
"Artistic differences, sweet cheeks." Tony says, shucking off the cloud of depression that he's totally not slipping into and falling back on that snarky businessman voice. "Soon to be resolved."
She twirls one of her purple extensions through her finger and chews her lip, scrutinizing him. Tony's gut clenches because there's so much Loki in that expression that it brings back all the awesome pangs of guilt and regret he's been pushing down all morning. Hela honestly, unironically rolls her eyes and Tony briefly feels sorry for the college professors that he inflicted with his presence at her age.
"I want the Maserati." she drawls, blinks and then asks. "What is 'resolved'?"
"Uh, fixed? Determined, decided."
"Oh." she says, "So you and dad will be fixed soon."
"Sure hope so." he says, and shoves his hands in his pockets. "Also, we aren't married. Divorce comes after marriage, not before."
"This realm is strange to me." Hela says. The sentence is kind of a catchphrase of hers, one that she seems able to bend into a thousand different meanings. Right now it feels like she's saying i see no difference between marriage and your relationship and Tony silently agrees.
"No Maserati. Finish your Calculus book and I'll consider giving you the Jag." he says and goes to get the rodents out of the microwave.
"I do not like the Jag." she pouts, pointedly going back to her Sudoku and not the pristine textbook on the coffee table, which he supposes is the end of that.
By sunset Tony gets tired of arguing with NASA about whether or not Stark Industries has clearance to launch the L.O.K.I locator satellite he built during nap time and just tells his team to go ahead. All three of his phones start screaming after that, so he throws the kids in the limo and takes them to Burger King. Fen and Jori predictably spend the whole ride back complaining about everything from the meat being cooked to the strange white things on the bun, but Tony's happy just to be out of the tower. Besides, the Real Monsters of New York are gonna have to start embracing the culture. Apparently he's buying enough frozen mammals every week to feed the whole Central Park Zoo reptile house, if the guy at the pet store had his facts straight. The more you know.
Bath time is traumatic, as usual. Between Jori's completely rational fear of water and the flashbacks that Tony gets when he holds the kid down in the tub, it's everyone's favorite pastime. Somehow they all survive. The kid might have soap scum on his scales later, but that's a tomorrow problem. Hela takes pity on him after that and does the whole tucking in rigmarole. He almost wants to give her the Maserati after that, because story time is usually Loki's show and Tony just can't. He decides it's cheaper to pour himself a highball. Though not by much, given his taste in whiskey.
Poetically, its right when he decides not to wait up that Loki reappears. It's the middle of the night and Tony is sitting in bed toeing off his socks when Loki walks through a wall in full battle regalia, covered in blood, with handcuffs dangling from one wrist. Another great day in the asylum, he thinks, nods a lazy hello, and slips into the sheets.
"Should I call the lawyers?" he asks.
"Is American penal code enforced during an apocalypse?" Loki replies, stone cold. Tony rolls over and checks the floor-to-ceiling window. Yup, that's New York. Still standing.
"I'm gonna guess no." he slurs.
"Then no, you do not need to call the lawyers."
Heavy footsteps trudge to the bathroom and he hears Loki take a leak with the door open. Classy.
It's a shame, because Tony really was going to apologize as soon as he saw him. For the first twelve hours he was the poster boy of sheepish contrition. Unfortunately Loki came back at three in the morning and Tony's remorse grew some claws around ten. Besides, why should he apologize? Sure, he laughed at Loki, but tough shit, it was funny. They would have cleared it up in five minutes if he wasn't dating the boogie man. Maybe his reaction wasn't very nice, but that wasn't an excuse for Loki to pull this disappearing act bullshit.
It's for the best that they ignore each other for now, which is what Tony intends to do, but apparently that's not in the stars. He tracks the movement behind him by the slaps of Loki's leather coat against his boots, and then by the sight of them when his boyfriend rounds the corner to Tony's side of the bed.
The cuffs rattle when Loki spins his hand in a circle and pulls the Tesseract out of thin air. Wonderful.
"Thought we put that back on Asgard." Tony says, wary.
"We did." Loki replies, which doesn't tell him anything. Then he bends over to slide the drawer of Tony's bedside table open with a bruised and bloody hand.
"Hey, that's not a sex toy, put it on your side. My side is the fun side. Only fun stuff goes there."
Loki does not put it on his side. He closes the drawer with a snap and pets Tony's hair. It feels nice, which pisses Tony off.
"Hey, don't be nice. I'm mad at you. I can't be mad if you're nice."
"I am needed on Asgard." Loki says, which is also not an answer.
Loki presses a kiss to Tony's forehead, and that is when he really gets concerned. Suddenly the whole cock ring debacle seems stupid. It hits him that he missed Loki today. That it felt wrong to do stuff without Loki there doing it better than him. More than wanting to punch him, he just wants him to stay. He might say that out loud, he's not sure what his mouth is doing.
"I will miss you also, Anthony." Loki whispers. Red flag. Red flag.
"Hey no, stay. I'm sorry, okay? I actually am sorry." Tony says, trying to sit up despite the room wobbling. He wishes he wasn't drunk right now. Well, ok, maybe he just wishes Loki wasn't seeing him drunk. He hasn't gotten this fucked up since the Palladium poisoning, and now he remembers why. It makes people look at him like his mere proximity depresses them. Loki lays him back down and smooths out the blanket.
"I will return." he promises, and something about his tone itches at Tony's brain, but it doesn't really connect.
"Course you will. You always come back." the alcohol blurts out, thank you triple malt truth serum. Tony hedges. "Skip the boring part. Play hookie. We'll paint each other's nails and have a pillow fight. It'll be fun."
Loki looks out the window. Sighs. Then he seems to decide he's had enough and starts to stand. Tony changes tacks, misses his sleeve and grabs a coat tail instead.
"You need a shower. Hop in, I'll make you a sandwich."
His partner sighs again and lays his hand on Tony's eyes. He thinks it's a weird thing to do, until Loki says sleep and Tony can't think anymore.
In the morning he wakes up feeling like hot roadkill. The sheets are sweaty, his hair looks like it's been frozen mid-jump in a bouncy castle, and his breath could kill small insects.
"Animal House protocol, Jarvis." Tony croaks.
"Right away, sir."
The curtains close over the windows, thank fuck, and the shooting pain in his eyeballs lessons from excruciating to agonizing. The AC kicks on and after a while one of his roombas putters in with a bottle of water and some aspirin. Even when he kind of wants to kill himself, Tony has to admit that his genius knows no bounds. He pops pills like they're tic-tacs and takes his time with the water. Because water blows and humanity should really have made it obsolete by now.
When the image of Loki in handcuffs comes to his mind, he assumes he had a really pathetic dream. The blood is new, but now that he's banged Papa Smurf the standard kinks seem kind of tame. Not all that alarming. So far it's a pretty standard post-fuck up morning until he reaches into the bedside table looking for his glasses and the drawer glows.
"Ah shit." he groans, and pulls a pillow over his face until he falls asleep again.
The extra sleep does wonders, but this day needs a miracle just to be palatable. Jori does indeed have itchy white residue on his scales that Tony has to sponge off like a fucking nursemaid. Normally this is the kind of shit that would send him running to the workshop, but before he even gets his shoes on he realizes he can't do that. With Thor doing Thor stuff and Steve's gang of misfit assassins in hiding, it's just him and the rugrats in the Tower.
Turns out superhuman nannies aren't a category on Craigslist so he puts on his sweatpants and turns on Jersey Shore. The little biters barely understand normal English, so the accents probably make it child safe. Even scrubbing a shedding anaconda with a Shamwow beats thinking about Loki, so by the end Tony is actually kind of glad he did it. Besides, Jori's a sweet kid. Says please and thank you and even puts clothes on when he turns into a real boy, unlike Fenrir. Tony tells him he is a good boy in Asgardian, because it's true, but also because he realizes he doesn't know the word for son .
Things are kind of okay for about five minutes. He thinks he can do this, can learn to be the one waiting and quietly freaking out until the crisis is over. Then Channel 2 plays an emergency bulletin from London and Tony takes it all back. Waiting is pointless, Loki is a bastard, and Tony is going to motherfucking London in a fast suit. He tosses Hela the keys to the quinjet and pulls the bedside drawer right off the tracks.
The cube shines in the drawer, pure and dazzling and totally out of place in the middle of he and Loki's collection of flavored condoms and butt plugs. There's the instinctive impulse to take it apart, to reverse engineer the laws of physics and rewrite the world's list of Tony Stark's most amazing feats. Then there's the crazed blue cracks he remembers corrupting Loki's eyes just before he threw him out the window. Then there's the unexpected flashback from the blue light bathing his arms and he spends the next twenty minutes getting waterboarded in a cave in Afghanistan. When he finally claws his way back to the present the sun has gone down, and his only company are a hole ripped in his shirt and a very broken bedside lamp. He slams the drawer closed and the impact leaves a dent in the drywall.
When he forces himself to return to the living room Doc McStuffins is on TV, but Thor's talking head on a tablet informs him that the battle was won and Earth is safe. Hela gives him a pitying look that makes him want to throw himself out the window and he gets started on dinner. When his sorry attempt at cooking is ready, he dishes up five plates and rallies the troops. Gets them all in Jotun skins while he is at it, because he wants to have an actual family dinner where people talk instead of bark and hiss. The boys eat their gerbils without complaint and chatter nonstop about becoming doctors like the girl on TV. Tony would normally mark that as a miraculous occasion on par with the Padres winning the playoffs, but tonight he barely manages to nod along.
He feels physically incapable of moving his eyes from the landing pad on the balcony, and he finds himself quizzing the boys on vocabulary long after everyone is done eating. The end of dinner feels like a ticking clock. He convinces himself Loki just got held up hugging it out with Thor or something. He just needs more time. After forty-five minutes of inane questions Hela proclaims Tony's sudden interest in pop quizzes "strange" and storms off to curl her spider webs or whatever she does in her room. He feels ancient after that tirade, and when he turns his attention back to the table he feels like a bastard.
The boys look freaked out, staring up at him and fidgeting in their chairs like they would bolt if they had anywhere else to go. He feels like his dad and that is the last thing he needs right now. Jarvis informs him that it is bed time and he's never been more relieved in his life. They run off to change clothes, practically jubilant that Tony skipped baths all together, and he has his head in his hands before the pattering feet reach the hallway.
He knows something is wrong. He doesn't need a reason, or a news report, or a cosmic cube. He just knows. Then Thor shows up, and for once in his life Tony wishes he was wrong.
Thor doesn't stay long. He's a god, he's got more important places to be. Aether to hide. Grief to unleash at the mourning banquet Loki would resent Thor throwing in his honor. He just stopped by because Tony is a friend. He does the hand-neck-forehead-touch thing and Tony has to fake a coughing fit to get out of it with his dignity intact. He tells Point Break to get lost and Thor says that without his brother he already is. The goddamn literal Asgardian language must not have any idioms at all.
Loki's food is untouched and cold on the table, and Tony can't make himself go near it. He has a stand-off with it, calls it all the rude names he wants to call Loki, but it doesn't judge him for sucking in deep, meditative breaths, or for nearly shoving knuckles into his eye sockets when they start leaking anyway. He sits on the coffee table because he can't make it to the sofa, and when he's overcome with the need to punch something he cracks the glass in half.
Fury shows up around midnight to bitch him out about arguing with NASA. Whatever, it's not like he's going to do it again. The One Eye Spy cleans up the plates like it's nothing, like Tony hasn't been psyching himself up to do it for four hours, and even fucking loads the dishwasher. Tony worries that one day this will all be normal to him and yells at Fury to come get his tumbler. Fury tells him to go fuck himself, and Tony silently shouts back that he might just do that if there wasn't a goddamn space weapon mixed in with his lube. Also if there was a single dildo in this house that won't remind him of Loki. Which there isn't. He falls asleep with his nose buried in the back of the couch and wakes up in bed with his shoes off. He doesn't question why Nick Fury of all people attended his pity party because he honestly can't bring himself to care.
That's how things go for the rest of the month. Stuff needs to get done, so Tony does it. He moves the essential tech up to the living room because he can't bring the kids into the lab, and just tinkers with whatever R&D sends him. It's easily the most productive month he's had since the Mark II, and he doesn't even remember what all he did. There are no manic creations, no late nights or new elements. He's just keeping his hands busy. Pepper and Rhodey come and go, messes get made and cleaned up and remade.
At some point Natasha drops in to tell him he's pathetic and clean out her metaphorical locker, and she ends up staying a few days. Kicks his ass in the gym like she thinks he's going to snap out of it. Nothing helps, because it doesn't really happen to him, he's just around for it. The worst part, like actually the worst, is that a shattered portion of him doesn't believe Loki is dead. Thor's told him twice now, explained the whole affair with the elves and Jane and the aether cloud, and a demented voice in the back of Tony's mind just refuses to believe it. Not possible, it says, not his Loki.
He knows he is in denial. He knows he will continue to feel like his life is draining out of his feet until he accepts that Loki is not coming back. But then there are the facts, and the facts don't add up. Loki left at ten in the morning and was missing until Thor found him in Norway three hours later and supposedly supervised him until he fell to the elves. And yet, the traitorous part of Tony insists, Loki was in the tower at three in the morning, he stayed for eight minutes and thirteen seconds and the security cameras caught him. He kissed Tony with solid, non-illusory lips and left the Tesseract in an unlocked drawer like a pair of sunglasses. Loki had been bloodied, which means he'd already fought someone and decided to go back for more.
However he spins it, Loki was doing a lot more than he was supposed to that night. At several points he obviously slipped Thor's watch, which wasn't exactly a challenge, but was still an insane risk. Loki's position on Earth rested squarely on his brother's oath to keep him in line. If anyone caught Loki sneaking around stealing cosmic cubes there wouldn't be any more second chances. Worse, he risked that more than once in order to visit Tony before going off to finish his endgame. Whatever that was.
Which is the rub, for Tony. Loki had a plan, and he executed that plan while Tony sat at home ignorant and drafting his apology for hurting Loki's feelings. There is no scenario Tony can think of where Loki was doing the right thing. No clever angle or change in perspective that makes it coalesce into a sensible decision.
If Loki really is dead, then he had foreseen his probable demise and planted the Tesseract in Tony's hand so he could clean up Loki's mess after he was gone. He also had the opportunity to tell him he was in trouble and ask for help. And didn't. Or at least, Tony hopes he didn't because the alternative is something he can't live with. Maybe if Tony hadn't been angry, maybe if he wasn't shit faced at the time. Maybe there was a look on Loki's face; a tick, a tell, or some hidden message that he was meant to understand in the way that Tony somehow always did. Always, that is, until the one time it actually mattered. Maybe, maybe, maybe.
And then there is the other version of the story, in which the whole debacle is a bunch of bullshit and Loki is alive somewhere drinking mimosas. In which he knowingly allowed Tony's guilt to keep him occupied while Loki threw the life they built together in the incinerator. In which he left Tony to care for children whose zits lived longer than he would, and lied to Tony's face about coming back. In which he whored himself out to Tony so he could use his money and connections to get out from under Odin's thumb. In which he destroyed Tony's reputation with the Avengers and S.H.I.E.L.D. for a cheap fuck and a train ticket out of Dodge.
The thoughts swirl around the whirlpool of his mind for a month while his hands pick and solder and deconstruct. He turns every possibility inside out and back again, until he collapses into bed every three or four nights. And when he lays in the fucking enormous bed he can't fill himself and stares at the cold skyline that still has Loki's silhouette cut out of it in his memory, Tony honestly can't decide which of the two scenarios is worse.
When he walks into the living room after a press conference two weeks later to find Odin Allfather drinking a smoothie at his breakfast bar, Tony decides the living Loki version of events is definitely worse. Luckily the brat pack are with Happy at the time, driving around the city like they do when Tony has to be a big boy, so no one is around to enforce the swear jar when he tells Loki what a goddamn motherfucking lying piece of dogshit he is. Along with some choice Aesir words he picked up from Hela.
"Smoothie?" Loki offers, his appearance melting back into his own. He's brazen enough to look apologetic, which is just fucking hysterical.
"Don't." Tony says, "Don't you dare."
"Tony, I swear I didn't intend-"
"Whatever it is you wanted, you got. Don't tell me you didn't plan this."
"Yes, and I am sorry I could not tell you." Loki pleads, he's standing now, bent at the shoulders as though equalizing their height will somehow lessen Tony's ire. There is a will to believe him, deep down. A part of Tony that wants to preserve what they built. But he can't, he would have to be insane.
"You aren't sorry, Loki." Tony shouts, because he's realizing that's what really disturbs him about this. Loki is a liar. He knows that, and he accepts it. No force in the universe can stop Loki from getting what he wants, including truths previously held to be unchangeable. Tony used to think that was a strength. Now that his trust is the unchangeable truth being bent, he very clearly understands why Thor put Loki in handcuffs.
"Don't you dare give me some bullshit apology." Tony says.
The way Loki stares at Tony's chin is all the admission he needs. He's about to tell him to get out of his tower when he notices something in Loki's hand. Something gold. Loki licks his bottom lip, watches Tony inspect him, and with blazing eyes and flared nostrils, lowers himself to kneel at Tony's feet. Shaking hands touch the floor in front of him, and hold out what looks like a spray painted plastic apple with some runes etched in. His voice sounds strange spoken into the concrete. Distorted.
"I have wronged you, Anthony Stark," he says, "and I have come to make reparations."
Immediately, he almost says you know you really suck at proposals, but he's had six weeks to regret fucking up the last time so there's a repeating record of think before you act think before you act think making a traffic jam between his brain and his mouth. He bites down that oh so thoughtful response at the absolute last minute and looks down at Loki. Really looks.
Contrary to popular belief, Tony does read. He knows exactly what Loki is offering, and he is willing to bet the only person in the realms allowed to harvest it is Odin. Another lesser known fact, which Tony is quite conscious of, is that Asgard puts a lot of stock on kneeling. Not the sexy variant people do in clubs with names like Leather and Lace, but the Knights of Camelot one where some people are inherently lesser than other people and those people stay the fuck on the ground while the adults are talking. So although the mental image of Loki executing a flawless submissive pose and kissing his boots would normally have him jacking off in the toilet, seeing him actually do it turns his stomach.
Besides that, there's Loki himself who looks a mess. His hair is still white gold in the back, his waist is saline-bag-at-the-hospital skinny, and his hands are shaking. His hands are also the wrong hands. Not that any of it changes how betrayed Tony feels, or removes his really very spiteful desire for Loki to suffer in kind, because it doesn't. But it is disquieting. It changes the chemistry. Different components yielding different results.
Tony is one sincere please, Anthony from forgiving him when his brain makes a connection that's been itching since the night in the bedroom. Shick. Network online, epiphany incoming. There it is. It's that insidious he planned this intuition informing him that kneeling prettily at Tony's feet is exactly where Loki wants to be right now. Well, okay, not true. The place Loki wants to inhabit at all times is the chaise lounge in Malibu with an ocean view and Tony eating him out under the breakfast tray. But on this particular day, kneeling on the floor begging for forgiveness is certainly where Loki intended to be, and, Tony would wager, is probably the optimal outcome for him. Because he apparently just stole a golden apple, got his brother to publicly mourn him, killed an ancient army, stole the Tesseract, and, ok let's admit it, convinced Tony to forgive him for it in six weeks. With no witnesses. Tony crosses his arms and fucking loathes himself for being a candy-ass, no spine enabler like every other dupe in Loki's world.
"And what was your plan if I said no?" he asks.
"Does that mean you are saying yes?" Loki presses.
"It means I'm done taking anything you do at face value." Tony snaps.
Loki bites his lip, and visibly forces himself not to dodge the question.
"Well I did offer you a smoothie." he admits quietly. Which brings Tony's anger right back to the surface.
"We need to have a talk about consent, Slugger." he says, and eats the goddamn apple.
Or, well, half of it. Loki gets a little panicky when he goes for the other half and chooses then to inform Tony that he needs the rest of his life force for himself. Looking dumbly at the half apple, Tony realizes he recognizes the runes, knot tangle wrinkle chaos. Belatedly they make sense to him because they are variations on the only rune he bothered to learn, which is loki loki loki loki.
He throws Loki out the window, because he can do that now. Tony has to admit that he can see the appeal when he glares down 59 floors at Loki, who flips him the bird from a crater in the sidewalk like he does this every day. After putting what's left of the apple in the closet safe, he snags the Hulk band-aids purely for comedic effect and goes to peel his boyfriend off the pavement.
Because somehow he still loves that motherfucker.