In his rawest form, Tony honestly thinks Loki is a bullied kid who learned very early that you either stand by the biggest guy in the room or you fight him. Loki likes fucking big men too much to fight them, so it really shouldn't be so surprising that he's a master manipulator.
It is not lost on Tony, as he sits up on the gurney with Loki asleep in his lap, that this new development in their relationship makes him that guy. It's an uncomfortable place to sit. The one fighting him or fucking him depending on the day is supposed to be his lover, and it disturbs him that Loki must think of him like one of his past keepers. Someone to handle and appease on threat of exile.
The lab lights are still powered down, but it's a glass room inside a glass building, so the sun finds its way in. Diluted, sure, but it filters through and creates a soft, cool glow on the steel and concrete. It feels like morning, like a beginning, and he soaks it in.
He pulls up a workspace hologram and opens the legal folder. After some scrolling he finds a comparable document and makes some edits. It's weird. The whole thing is weird, but they abandoned normal the second Loki showed up in a cocktail dress on his second week on Earth and called him Mister Stark like some kind of sultry Bond girl. He feels a little gross looking back on that, knowing what he knows now.
It's boring work. His attention drifts off the display while he's waiting for the printer to do its thing, and checks out the tray near the bed. Two empty bottles, a dried up yogurt cup, and a crinkled granola wrapper. It's the one he pointed to, the one with the immune boost, and all the others are right where he left them. Loki woke himself up and ate it, just like Tony told him to. He feels like he's pressing his finger to his entire life and magic blue letters are hovering over it. This feeling is true. Yeah, ok, he can get used to this. He can be the big man beside Loki.
Loki looks human today, seems to have morphed in his sleep. Tony guesses that's a good sign, since Loki prefers this form but needs magic to hold it.
Some people are cute sleepers. Loki isn't one of them. He looks like a Halloween decoration laying on the laboratory bed, skeleton skinny with dark bruises discoloring his left cheek and forehead. He's snoring. His mouth is hanging open, and he's drooling all over Tony's jeans. Damn, he isn't cute at all. Some kind of smile takes over Tony's face anyway, which just proves he's defective.
The room gradually turns gold as the city wakes, the sun creeping over the neighboring buildings of Manhattan and Tony figures he better get up before Loki catches him being a sap. It takes a couple tries. Loki is really heavy when Tony doesn't want to move him.
The floor freezes his toes when he touches down, so he makes it to the printer and back at about the speed of sound. If it weren't already off the table for sanitary reasons, Tony officially rules out lab sex right then. Way too cold. They can get nasty in the workshop if they're itching for adventure. Nearly all of his cars have heated seats.
Loki yawns like a cat when Tony sits back on the gurney, legs sliding under the blanket and stretching out his toes. He smiles a good sleep grin. Maybe he isn't great to look at right now, but he is a lot more appealing while awake. Something about the way he moves.
"Good morning, darling." Tony says.
"I have to piss." Loki mumbles. Bless him, his sweet summer child. Tony taught him that slang. He's so proud.
"Hm, I've got some bottles."
"In your dreams, Stark." Loki smirks, pushing himself up to sit cross-legged near the medical tray.
"My dreams sound dirty." Tony says, eyebrows raised.
"Every part of you is utter filth." Loki replies warmly, touching a hand to Tony's jaw. "That is one thing I love about you."
There's a hitch before he says the word love, like he's never tried it out before. It echoes a few times when it hits Tony, and he tries to take it in stride. Fusses with the stack of paper in his hand. Sincerity is new, coming from Loki. Kind of intense. Intensely pleasurable.
"And here I thought you just wanted my dashing good looks." Tony smirks, because he refuses to call it blushing.
"You come with an offering." Loki observes, letting go of Tony's cheek with a satisfied look. He takes the printed contract and inspects it.
Technology easily could have allowed them to sign it digitally in a matter of seconds, and on any other occasion he would have done it that way. But while he worked this morning the folded parchment of Loki's letters kept poking him from his pants pocket, and he tapped print instead. Unwrapping Loki's gifts and holding the undeniable evidence of their connection has comforted him. He's a physical person, and he knows Loki is too.
"This is a sale of property." Loki states, flipping through pages, eyes narrow and thoughtful.
"Nice place." Tony says, "Big plot upstate. Call it a contingency."
"An unpredictable future event which may result from present action. What action might you be considering?" Loki muses, reading closely.
"Ok, fine, wrong word." Tony says, scratching his beard, "A safety net."
Loki hums, piercing Tony with a perceptive gaze.
"You think yourself a danger to me?" he asks. "Enough to warrant a property in my own name."
"Maybe I don't want to feel like a sugar daddy." Tony says, then supposes Loki might not know that particular slang. "It means-"
"I am familiar with the vernacular." Loki says, "Your world has unconventional views of ownership. On Asgard it is a high honor to be held in retainer by a respected person, regardless of services rendered."
"Well this isn't Asgard." Tony insists, aware that he sounds like a stubborn idiot. And that he doesn't want to think of he and Loki's fucking sprees as a service rendered.
"Indeed." Loki sighs, and is that regret? Tony files that reaction away, decides it requires further investigation. "Then this property is to be a sanctuary for me and mine should our union be broken."
Tony nods, because that's really all there is to it. The word union has a few connotations he shies away from, after the double cluster fuck of the rings and the apple, but that is essentially what they have.
Loki takes a long time reading. It's a little amusing, because Tony is pretty sure he's never personally read an entire legal document. Loki would though, he is the king of loopholes so of course he reads every word. He even asks Jarvis to define a few of the more obscure terms, and the feeling that interaction gives Tony doesn't have a corresponding word. His greatest invention being useful to his most valued person, there's no word for how that makes the engineer inside him preen.
Turning on the coffee machine, he gathers a few pens while he waits for it to heat up and make him a cup. Waiting is not Tony's strong suit, so by the time the coffee is ready two of the three pens are completely disassembled and rigged together into a sort of abomination that has absolutely no useful potential at all. It looks wrong in a pleasing way. He stirs in some sugar, because he doesn't hate himself today, and takes a sip. Nice. Papers rustle behind him and Loki calls back his attention.
"I do not see the purpose of this 'indemnity clause.'" Loki starts, sitting up straight with his shoulders square and indignant. "In the event of damage or loss, I believe I should pay for repairs myself."
"I have a lot of enemies, Loki. Even if I'm not on the deed, there's a chance someone could go after you to get to me. You've seen the Malibu pictures after the whole Extremis incident." Tony says.
"Yes, and I fail to see how my own actions in such a situation would not equally damage the property." Loki counters, tilting his jaw into a beautifully defiant edge, "If you are in danger, then I will use whatever force is necessary."
"Ok, so what?" Tony sighs, frustrated. "I don't care how it gets destroyed, I just want it in writing that I'll pay to fix it."
"Then it is not truly independent from you, is it?" Loki presses, smiling despite himself because he knows he caught Tony out. "And on the subject of payment, I cannot fathom how I shall pay the sum at which this property is valued."
"Ok, now that's not true." Tony points a finger at Loki, and looks to the ceiling, "Jarvis, do a One Ring check. Use today's gold market value and assume twenty four carat purity."
"Yes, sir." the phantom voice replies, then after a moment of processing informs him, "The floor sensors are not designed for this task, sir. I'm afraid the estimate is not very precise."
"Ballpark it, J, it's not like we're buying a Lichtenstein."
While they wait for the computer to respond, Tony takes the last survivor of the pens and draws a big x through the indemnity clause and initials below. Motions to Loki to do the same. His boyfriend nods as he initials, satisfied.
"At current market values, using a weight of 294, 900 ounces, the value of Mr. Liesmith's gold is $187 million dollars, sir."
"Not bad for a nest egg." Tony says, and laughs because it's the understatement of the century. "Congratulations, Lokes, in a year you'll be one of the richest men on Earth."
"That silly trinket?" Loki asks, eyes wide while he shifts to lay back on the gurney and stretch out his legs. "It has been a nuisance to Asgard's quartermaster since I commissioned it eight centuries ago. His thanks was most enthusiastic when I came to retrieve it as Odin Allfather."
"Incidentally, sirs, it would be wise to move the gold as soon as possible." Jarvis says, "It is approaching the maximum weight capacity of the penthouse floor."
Tony almost wants to leave it, just to see nine tons of gold rings rain down through the floor and over the Avengers headquarters below. Damn, that would be sick as fuck. He takes a sip from his coffee and walks back to Loki's gurney.
"Ok, get an appointment with a dealer on Monday. I'll have to get it all melted down and stored somewhere." Tony tells Jarvis and sits beside Loki's legs. With one hand on Loki's knee, he watches him. Loki chews his lip, looking down at the last page, where a series of lines await their signatures.
"The mortal faith in one another's word is baffling." Loki says, his shoulders bent and voice a bit dark, "How could this paper protect me from you, or you from me, if truly we are broken and hold only hate for each other?"
"I dunno, Lokes." Tony says, "But it's how human society works. We chose to build a world where we fight with words and not fists. As much as possible, anyway."
Predictably, the notion that his new home is run by weak mortals waving around pieces of paper does not appeal to Loki. But he does accept Tony's word, and with a quick look to check his face, Loki places the contract on an unoccupied section of the bedside tray and signs his name. The tray is crowded with food wrappers and empty bottles, so there's really only room enough to sign, the corners of the packet hanging off the edge. His signature is pointed and elegant, the perfect balance of graceful loops and dangerous drops.
"A noble ideal, as charming as it is naive." Loki drawls, and spins the contract so it faces Tony. He lays the pen down on top with a graceful snap, and Tony scrawls his own mark. After a lifetime of signing a couple hundred documents a day, it doesn't really have the same significance for him as it does Loki. It's just a squiggle of letters and one thing off the list. An important thing, sure, but he knew Loki would accept it.
His boyfriend can blame Tony's silly moral compunctions if he wants, that's why he brought them up in the first place, but he knows one day Loki will understand this. Right now it is good enough for Loki to be comforted by the fail safe. Which he is. Maybe he doesn't make a show of it, but Tony knows his tells. He sees Loki's shoulders drop and the tension around his eyes lessen, the slightly pleased play of teeth on the inside of his cheek. Loki may not believe this contract will hold water, but he is still touched by the gesture, by the message Tony is sending. That's enough.
"On the subject of agreements, I suppose I should uphold ours." Loki says. One side of his mouth quirks up in a peevish little grin. Flopping the contract on Tony's lap, he turns to the tray and assesses what he has left. It's not much. Two more power bars and a yellow Gatorade. Loki makes quick work of them while Tony watches. It settles something fierce and worried in the back of his mind, something he recognizes from Pepper's bout with Extremis. The urge to protect is a little unexpected at such a bland moment, but Tony shrugs into it. This is him and Loki, nothing is ever expected. A few minutes later shiny plastic wrappers crinkle into a ball in Loki's hand, all gone.
"I am ready for my reward now." Loki says archly, sliding off the gurney and wobbling on his feet. There's a definite hint of flirtation, a little acknowledgement of how fucking weird last night was, but it's undermined by his shaky footing. Tony doesn't make a production of it. A plastic tube still hangs from Loki's wrist, so he wheels the steel IV stand around the gurney and shows Loki how he can stabilize himself with it, how he shouldn't let the tube drag.
"Right away your highness." Tony mocks gently, "But we'll hit the bathroom first. You gotta piss, and I think we both need showers."
Tony leads him through the newly constructed Avengers floors. The whole top half of the tower had to be rebuilt after the invasion, but this section was an even more recent addition. A whole unrelated incident involving Spider-Boy and some rogue tech had ended with a giant bot embedded in the north side of the top ten stories. It was kind of unfortunate, but he'd been looking for an excuse to scrap the old layout anyway.
These days the Avengers floors are more of a cathedral-like atrium, encased in glass and housing an internal network of staircases and interconnected partitions. The architecture magazines deemed it "an inspired visual metaphor for transparency and scientific advancement." Yeah, more like Tony got tired of constantly repairing any walls between Thor and his hammer, and Hawkeye had a bad habit of nesting in any vent he could reach. With the new arrangement all he had to do was order a new sheet of glass whenever Point Break got frisky, and the whole system was heated and cooled by one very eco-friendly heat exchanger 150 feet up. Try styling on that, Barton.
Given that the rest of the team still think Tony's either crazy or brainwashed for banging Thor's punk rock brother, Loki hasn't been down here before. The trip is pretty drawn out, what with the number of stairs he has to lug both Loki and his saline drip up, but it's otherwise uneventful. Steve and Co. are laying low in Wakanda and Thor is, well, mourning probably. Off-world. Loki follows him barefoot, still in a smock and not in any way bothering to cover his ass, so it's probably for the best.
Once they get to the top floor Tony angles them toward the bathroom, and points out whatever he thinks might interest Loki. Mostly amenities. He knows Loki doesn't give a shit where people live or what booze is on tap, but he points out the training room and Bruce's hippie dippie zen garden. No questions follow his half-assed tour, so he just babbles until Loki's voice interrupts him when they're almost to the bathroom.
"Why is the Tesseract here?" Loki asks, sharp, and Tony just about reboots his brain.
"Well, because that's my lab. Kind of a, you know, personal space thing." Tony says, backtracking.
"You touched it?" Loki says with alarm. Ah jinkies, gang. We might be in trouble.
"Ah, it was on my side. Fun side remember? Did we talk about that? It's kind of a blur-"
"I very specifically put that in a safe place." Loki says with a sliver of flinty madness in his posture. He stands with his free arm in a casting stance as though hostiles might drop from the ceiling any minute.
"Uh, last I checked the toy bin ain't exactly Fort Knox, Slugger." Tony says, hands up like there is a gun pointed at him. Loki's angry, so potato potahto.
"It is enchanted so only the owner can open it. You really think me so reckless?" Loki says, "I assumed you wise enough to leave it alone."
"Pro-tip. Don't ever bet on me not doing something." Tony says, split down the middle between self deprecation and utter sincerity. "Can I put my hands down? Are we fighting? Cause, for the record, I'm pretty sure you'll still curbstomp me."
Loki drags the IV stand into the lab, talking over his shoulder as he removes the cube from the vice.
"Had I trousers, rest assured I would best you most handily." he boasts.
"Woah, what are you doing with it?" Tony asks.
The cube pulses in Loki's hand like it's being welcomed home. It would be intimidating if Loki didn't need a metal stand to stay vertical.
"I am demonstrating why you should not touch objects you do not understand." Loki says.
Tony is about to unleash a spiel about science explaining the unknown, when the cube abruptly changes color in Loki's hand and shuts him up. Instead of the beaming, cold light, it is now a sloshing mass of blood red liquid with pits of absolute darkness in its circling waves. It seems alive, not ever settling like a liquid should, but instead defying gravity and crashing chaotically against what Tony can now see is a magic container. While he watches, the cluster of bubbling something clenches into a tight sphere and strikes, violent and fast against one face of the cube. He flinches away.
"That's not the Tesseract." Tony says intelligently.
"Oh, it is." Loki says, sliding his hand around the faces of the cube and returning it's blue appearance. A glamour, he called it once, when he thought Tony wasn't paying attention. "The Tesseract is merely a vessel for containing and transporting powerful items."
Tony crosses his arms, inferring. "Then you switched what's inside it."
"It now contains the weapon which Malekith the dark elf extracted from Jane Foster." Loki says.
"The Aether." Tony recalls. Thor mentioned it once, when Tony made him explain Loki's death a second time. The memory puts him on edge, even more than the disturbing reveal already did. He'd fired uranium at a cube of space goo that could infect and kill him in days. Shit, no wonder Loki looks alarmed.
"I did not trust Thor and his quartet of fools to handle it's keeping." Loki says, vanishing the cube with another circling gesture of his hand. "It was simple enough to create a decoy and replace it."
"You could have warned me." Tony grumbles. Being the last one to know everything is getting very old. Loki makes to start explaining, and he can already tell what a long conversation this is going to be. His feet are freezing on the concrete and Loki's legs are trembling, his knuckles white where they clutch the IV stand tightly.
Tony cuts him off by pointing to the communal bathroom a few feet down the hall.
"Hey, let's talk about this somewhere warmer. I'm getting fucking frostbite here."
Loki doesn't even disguise his relief when Tony brings him a stool and gets him seated under a steaming shower. He winces when Tony removes the IV, staring at the massive needle and wringing his fingers like he's afraid they might not work anymore. Then Tony turns on the hot water faucet and Loki seems to forget where he even is. The water pools under his long body, turning his hair shiny and smooth and rippling where Loki's toes curl into the warmth. He groans, just sitting under the spray and enjoys it.
Tony pumps some shampoo from a dispenser on the wall and starts massaging Loki's scalp, working it until his hair is more white bubbles than black strands. It's a nice feeling, looking down while he helps Loki get a little closer to normal. His partner sighs under his touch, pleased and regretful as he wraps a hand around Tony's wrist, and looks up at him through the steam and dripping water.
"Weak as I am to your pampering, I can do this myself." he says, "And it would be a far greater gift if you could bring me clothes."
Tony can't argue with that. Actually, he's kind of chagrined that he didn't think that far ahead. He nods but finishes rinsing Loki's hair because he wants to, and he needs to get the soap off his hands anyway. Two-fer.
The Avengers bathroom is nice, but not really Tony's style. Unfortunately, part of it being a team space meant that he had to accommodate the team's opinions. Never in a million years would he have expected so many opinions to focus on a fucking line of showers and sinks. Steve wanted something low maintenance while Bruce wanted a sauna. Natasha insisted on gender neutrality even though none of the boys were actually comfortable peeing in front of her. And finally Clint wanted a TV in the mirror just because everyone else got something. God, it had been a nightmare. So it kind of figures that the place ended up looking like the complete franken-room that it is.
The floors are old school white hex tile, like Steve requested, but with granite showers in a classic military line and slate privacy dividers because Tony is not getting naked next to five Adonises and Natasha with his self-esteem in tact. He used to be pretty proud of his figure back during the early days of Iron Man. He was in his prime, boxed three times a week, and lugged engines around the shop the rest of the time. Yeah, not anymore. The dreadful approach of his fiftieth birthday and the frankly unfair alien competition degraded whatever measure of pride he once felt for his physique. So now privacy walls are his contribution to the bathroom collage.
Passing the line of marble sinks with individual televisions in the mirrors, he turns the corner to the bay of lockers on the other side of the wall. They are standard steel, several feet wide to accommodate chest plates and vibranium shields, set over two foot lockers each. Tony crosses his arms, looking around the parallel lines bisected by a classic wood bench on steel poles and does some real thinking. Seven lockers to choose from and absolutely none of them are Loki's size or shape, not even close.
Sliding open Steve's locker he finds a pair of sweatpants that smell dirty and a perfectly pressed set of pleat front khakis. Ha, that's hilarious. Next. Clint also wears thirty fours, but the hem is short on Tony so on Loki they'd be a fetching pair of capris. Another hilarious mental image. Briefly he wonders if Loki would go pink in the name of good fitting clothes, because he knows Natasha has a stack of lululemons in exactly girl Loki's size. Tantalizing mental image, but he figures it would be insensitive to suggest it.
In the end he finds a v-neck in Bruce's handily labeled clean section and digs out a pair of joggers from his own locker that he never wears because they make him feel ancient next to the trendy millennials that run around central park in similar digs. They are also about three inches too long, but he isn't about to acknowledge that, even in his own mind. He has no idea about shoe size, apart from massive, so he grabs a one-size pair of foam flip flops from the basket by the sauna and figures he's covered. Grabbing a set of loose workout clothes from his own stash, he rounds the corner to find Loki. Then he catches his reflection in the mirror above the sinks and, while blinking at the unbelievable travesty happening above his hairline, remembers that Loki will need a brush. Shit, that's a tough one.
Only two Avengers have hair long enough to justify an actual brush, and he's not going anywhere near Natasha's cosmetics. Sure, he can be reckless, but that is just suicide. Thor's locker kind of looms, not because Tony has any concerns about rifling through his shit. Nah, Point Break wouldn't care less, but Loki definitely would have a problem using big bro's hair brush to tease out his lovely glam metal locks. Welp, not like he has a choice. Tony is actually kind of glad he finds Thor's hair brush before some bird tries to nest in it. Apparently nobody told him he needs to empty it sometime this decade. Ick.
A rather traumatizing trip to the garbage can later, he returns to the showers to find Loki vegging out in a cloud of steam, just letting the water bill climb. God he loves him. Loki has moved the stool so he can rest his shoulders back on the slate partition without missing any of the water and laid his head back. Water drips deliciously over his adam's apple, sliding to rest in the dip between his collarbones, and then all the way down. Sure, he's still half-dead and unnerving in the way his skin stretches tight around his bones, but apparently Tony isn't capable of resisting him in any shape or state of health. His hair frames him like an 80s wet dream, messy around his strong cheekbones and plastered to the line of his neck and athletic shoulders. Lazily he turns his head so his temple rests on the black divider and favors Tony with a look through his low hung eyelashes. Then he smiles a tiny, unintentional quirk of his lips and drills into him with those intelligent eyes. He would have to be dead not to see the invitation.
Tony nearly drops the clothes on the soaked floor, and has to restart his sentence twice because his brain is not firing on all cylinders. "Got your things." he chokes.
"I see that." Loki says, sitting up and turning off the tap. He breaks eye contact to wring out his hair, and it sets Tony free from that paralyzing electricity. "It is a shame we have so much to discuss."
"We could rain check." Tony says, maybe too eager, but what does he have to lose. They are equally as helpless when it's like this, the world far away and the two of them fighting the pull. This is the reason they're here, the reason they can't seem to keep the sex casual and the goodbyes breezy. There's just a circuit that seems to come online when they are nearby and alone that turns them into a gravitational field. Loki pushes his hair back from his face and leans with his arms on his legs, hands clasped and appraising him.
"I suspect you would accuse me of diverting your attention, if I took what I want from you now." he purrs, and that's just unfair. Party foul. Nobody should deliver such a great reason not to fuck them while their voice begs you to do it.
"Well I still need a shower." Tony suggests, shakily placing the pile in his arms on a bench in the stall across. "We can multi-task."
Loki raises one hand to cup his chin and smirks real dirty. "You have the most enthralling ideas."
"My genius is finally recognized." Tony quips, and shrugs out of his tee. Loki motions him closer with a delicate flick of his fingers and he obeys, laying his forearms over Loki's shoulders. His eyes follow his partner's nimble fingers as they pop open the button on his jeans and hook into his belt loops.
Loki only barely pulls down, draws out the motion of lowering Tony's pants so that every tiny catch and drag runs vibrations through his underwear and over his cock. His breath hitches and the involuntary motion gives him a sharp brush of friction, and he feels himself starting to go stiff. After what feels like forever, the waistband passes his hips and his pants hit the floor. Clint tried to make a joke about his loose fit pants once, but it was kind of weak when Steve was right there wearing actual dad slacks, and hey, here is Tony's prize. One sinful slide and he's halfway there, no uncoordinated wiggling or caught-on-the-ankles dance moves like Pepper used to do. Loki seems to appreciate his taste as well, if his impish smile means anything.
Loki runs a hand just a little too far right to touch anything fun and starts pulling down Tony's boxer briefs with a single finger, just running it from one side to the other when he can't get any further. Halfway down the band gets stuck on his hardening cock, and Tony thinks they are abandoning the talk all together. Suddenly that seems like an awesome plan. The best. Full marks plus extra credit. Then Loki starts laying it all on the table like his wet, perfectly fuckable lips aren't inches from Tony's dick.
"I first encountered the Mad Titan after I fell from Asgard's rainbow bridge in an attempt to end my own life." Loki says, drawing down Tony's boxers.
Tony puts a hand on the slate partition for a variety of reasons. Number one, he's almost hard, which feels incredibly inappropriate now. Number two Loki's tapping his leg in an obvious signal to step out of his underwear, and of course there's the total mindfuck of him actively deciding to get Tony aroused while informing him of a past suicide attempt. A lot of wires cross and in the end Tony just lets Loki untangle his boxers from his feet and waits for him to continue.
"It is unwise to say his name, but what matters is that he is powerful, a warmonger, and a respected leader of many armies. I rarely pay much attention to ethics when choosing allies, but I admit that I would not have dealt with him under other circumstances." Loki continues, reaching to turn the water back on and adjusting the temperature. "The situation was dire. My fall left me weakened, without leverage, and still very much seeking death. As you well know, the realization of my heritage left me-"
Loki huffs, seemingly unable to put words to the experience.
Attempting to distract him, Tony asks, "Why shouldn't you say his name?"
It seems a good detour, since Loki answers it with much less difficulty.
"Names bear a unique significance to mages. Our seidr is formed by the fusion of energy to our sense of self. To say the name of one so powerful risks attracting the attention of their magic, and by extension the user of it." Loki explains. "And I have already earned the Titan's ire. At the time it seemed a most expedient way to die."
Loki reaches to the dispenser on the wall and pumps out a palmful of shampoo. Tugging at Tony's hand, he directs him to sit in front. Normally Tony would never use the cheap stuff down here, but this is a special circumstance. He can apologize to his poor abused follicles later. He sits, and long fingers wind their way around his hair. He's glad for the tingling comfort of Loki's nails behind his ears because the things coming out of his mouth start scaring Tony.
"After I failed to succumb to the beatings and mind games of his allies, it seems he decided I was more useful as a tool than a toy. I was given a scepter, which you are already familiar with, and tasked with retrieving the Tesseract. They thought my duress would be sufficient motivation-"
"Well obviously not." Tony interrupts, "You wanted to… to die."
"Precisely." Loki says, covering Tony's eyes with his hand while he pulls him under the shower head to rinse. "I could not decide what I wanted to do. Should I intentionally fail, and prove myself so worthless that I could not be kept? Or perhaps, given sufficient time and information, the defenders of Earth might devise an honorable death for me in battle? That seemed the more appealing option, since I knew you would not hesitate to land the blow."
Loki guides Tony back from the water and when he removes his hand Tony looks up at him, hating the pity that he can't keep from his face. He knows Loki detests that look, and he understands that too. But he can't help it, this is the man he adores revealing the circumstances by which they met in a time of war. A time in which Tony tried to kill him. Loki stares at the falling water as he continues.
"My indecision lead me to where we met in your penthouse. I was confused, worried I would succeed and at the same time terrified that even failure would not be enough to guarantee my demise. My greatest fear, being returned to Asgard to face Odin, seemed ever more real."
Tony turned to face Loki. His partner was intense, just as pale and uncertain looking as on the day he describes. It feels like touching is too much, but he wants to offer something. He lays a hand on Loki's long, narrow foot and squeezes. It's odd, but Loki seems to break from a trance when he does that, and meets his eyes.
"What changed?" Tony asks, because obviously something did. By the time they beamed Loki back to Asgard he'd looked calm, relieved even. Like this was all according to plan. That look more than anything convinced Tony that Loki threw the invasion. Even while he drove Bruce to the airport that day, he'd come to that conclusion, and only believed it more when he reviewed the crashing of the helicarrier. Loki hadn't accomplished all that much by getting captured. Aside from wasting a cool billion in taxpayer dollars.
"Well, I tried to enthrall you with the scepter and it did not work." Loki admitted, smiling wryly. "You no doubt remember, for you landed your first of many poor attempts at humoring me. But you do not know what I saw when the scepter touched your reactor."
"Please tell me it showed you my dick." Tony jokes, standing to pull some body wash from the dispenser. Loki shakes his head, perfectly disapproving.
"What Than-' Loki halts, eyes wide at his near mistake. One hand covers his mouth in a very un-Loki way, and when he catches himself he sets both palms very carefully on his knees. Exhaling, he starts again, "What th-the Titan did not want me to know, and what I discovered when I touched your reactor, was that the scepter contains an ancient focus of power known as the Mind Stone. When I attempted to use it on your reactor, the stone believed it had touched its sibling, the Space Stone, and thus refused to harm it."
"The notes that helped me build that reactor were based on my father's study of the Tesseract." Tony says, realizing even as he speaks, "Oh, so the Tesseract used to hold this, uh, Space Stone. And that's how you and Selvig made portals with it. By controlling space."
Loki smiles rigidly up at him, clearly anxious about the topic, but still impressed.
"You really are very clever, Anthony." Loki says, "Yes, it did. But allow me to finish."
Loki leans back against the partition again, closing his eyes as though trying to picture the memory.
"I was granted two insights, visions you might call them. First, as I have said, was the identity of the scepter's power. It's objectives and ambitions. The other one," Loki pauses, eyes scanning Tony up and down as he stands under the shower and scrubs the soap off his chest. "The other showed me you. All of your abilities and accomplishments, but more than that. It showed me your loneliness, your loyalty, and your potential. The stone has a consciousness, and it is attracted to luminous minds. It tells the user how to ensnare them."
The idea that a weapon could be sentient sounds far fetched to Tony, but he can't argue with the man that wielded it.
"Well I did wonder how you knew my fondness for Bond girls." Tony admits, if only because he doesn't know how to respond to anything else Loki said. Loki doesn't laugh, he just tilts his head in his will you be serious way, and reaches to a shelf by the partition door where a couple of towels are folded.
"You are not so special." Loki quips, waiting until Tony turns off the faucet to hand him a towel. "Any Earth man who has an interest in women has at least one Bond girl to aspire to. They are varied and numerous."
They towel off, Tony silently digesting about ten different revelations at once. For a few minutes it's overwhelming and a bit terrifying to consider this Than guy, somewhere out in the universe right now destroying some other planet. Or maybe plotting a second attempt at Earth. The various scenarios start circling until Loki vigorously rubs his head with a towel folded in two and wraps it in a twist to hold his damp hair out of his face. Tony smiles while Loki's view of him is blocked, and decides not to tell him that Jori and Hela both do it the exact same way.
He helps Loki to his feet, which are a bit steadier after the break but still not great, and together they hobble to the locker room bench. It's maybe a little unnecessary, but by this point they've been in the shower for what feels like hours and Tony gets claustrophobic. Loki doesn't seem to care. He leans into Tony with an arm around his shoulders and follows, lost in thought. Once he has Loki settled, he sets about getting himself dressed, and decides to start with the easiest line of questioning.
"So the stones have objectives." he begins, sitting beside Loki and pulling on a pair of nylon running pants.
"Yes. They are-" Loki pauses, struggling with his socks like he always does. As far as Tony can tell they wear some kind of wrapped wool stockings on Asgard. Stockings that are totally hilarious, but that he has never once laughed about because he only sees them on the rare occasion that he and Loki are having sex and Loki opts to get undressed the old fashioned way. Which is almost never.
"Here." Tony says, turning the black bundle so that it actually looks foot shaped and showing Loki the opening.
"Thank you." Loki says, and as bizarre as it sounds, just doing that calms Tony down. It makes everything he's learning manageable, because maybe there is a looming threat hanging over their heads, but they are still here and alive. They are safe in the tower putting Loki's feet in socks like any other morning.
"As I was saying, Odin told Thor and I a story when we were children, about the first war of Asgard. It was a story of how Malekith fabricated the Aether from the remnants of creation to fight Odin's father Bor. Apparently the elves came from darkness, and wished for the rest of existence to return to darkness."
"A singularity?" Tony suggests, pulling on his own socks and watching Loki fiddle with the ties on the speckled charcoal jogging pants. They look great on him, the bastard. "As in the Big Bang?"
Loki blinks at him, confused and a bit annoyed at the discovery of yet another Earth term that means nothing to him. The first few months involved a lot of vocabulary, and although he's gotten better at admitting when Tony loses him, he also gets more peeved as his knowledge expands and he needs to ask less and less. These days it is a rare thing, and apparently it pisses Loki off. Fair enough. It will probably piss Tony off too, when it comes time to meet the in-laws and not follow half the conversation.
"It's a theory about how the universe was created." Tony clarifies, "It began as concentrated chaos, then some kind of reaction caused an explosion that created the stars. As the stars run out of energy over time, the universe will collapse again back to nothing."
Loki says, "Your application of that theory is quite uncanny. For the Mind Stone wishes to return to its origins, just as your theory states the universe will one day collapse to nothing."
"So you're saying these stones want to destroy the universe." Tony says, and the idea is such an insane notion, so completely big that it comes out kind of flat. He can't really fear it, because it's just so distant and massive.
Loki looks at him then, and although every word he said in the last hour sounded strained, this time it takes him quite a long time to get it out. Tony gets his shirt on and jacket zipped in the time it takes Loki to compose his thoughts, bare chested and tangling the rumpled ball of Bruce's shirt between his hands.
Loki stares at the folds of the v-neck like they hold the secret to everything and murmurs, "It was an odd feeling, to have my mind invaded by a part of the universe itself and see my desire for self destruction reflected. To realize that all existence is as fickle and doomed as me, and that my life and my anger has no bearing on it."
Once the words are out Loki won't let go of Tony's gaze, like he needs to know his thoughts. Tony feels himself inhale and shiver, scratching nervously at his beard while he tries to say something, anything. He's a little ashamed that he doesn't have anything that deep to respond with. Well, he's got one thing he wants to know, but it seems unimportant and petty. Not really worth bringing up.
For a minute, he holds it in, hoping that for once he'll be divinely inspired, and that he will construct the most perfect, sensitive, insightful response. It will be sincere and it will be full of truth and Loki will be better for hearing it. But nothing comes to mind, nothing.
"So then why throw me out the window?" Tony asks. Loki smirks, but it's not amused. It's painful and reflexive.
"Because I was angry. I knew then that I needed to get back to Asgard. I did not wish to live any longer, but I realized I was too proud to die a tool in someone's hand." Loki growled, growing agitated and tense.
"You see the stone reflected my own desire, and in it I saw what I wanted so clearly. I wanted my family to mourn. I wanted to prove to them, with their own pain and regret, that I was loved and betrayed. And I wanted to force them to remember me with pride, to hail my sacrifice as a loyal son. If Odin spared me I had a chance, if he executed me I was no worse off."
Loki laughs bitterly as the words seem to pour out of him, beyond control and seething.
"Such a pathetic goal. And now you know. You see the weakness in my heart for what it is." Loki hisses, bent over and digging fingers into the ball of fabric he's clutching to his stomach like a lifeline.
"Hey, now, don't put words in my mouth." Tony says, tugging the shirt away. "Stop, come here."
Loki relinquishes the shirt and then he crumbles. He doesn't cry, or scream, or anything like Tony expects, he just sits there hugging himself and bending almost so his head is on his knees, shaking and sucking in breaths. He may not know what to do about living in a suicidal universe, but he knows how to comfort Loki.
Tony stands behind him and puts a hand over his collarbone like a necklace. Loki goes limp in his grasp, and Tony pulls him upright, moves his hand to secure his arm around Loki's neck, his chin tucked over Tony's elbow. It's not tight, not even close to choking, it just makes him look up and surrounds his vision and hearing with warm skin. Loki looks at him, and his upside-down eyes beg for something he doesn't seem able to articulate. He looks lost and sad and Tony understands. He really does.
He kisses him, because it seems like the thing to do. When someone looks at you like that, you can't not. Loki's response is weak, so he stops, moves up to his forehead and kisses him soft and dry above his eyebrows. Loki's eyes slide closed and he exhales. Tony touches their foreheads together and waits, does the weird fucking Asgardian forehead thing and keeps Loki pinned and stable and warm.
"What will you do now, Stark? Now that you know." Loki whispers.
Tony replies with his mouth to Loki's brows, quietly, as if speaking loud would make it too raw.
"I'm going to make sure you don't kill yourself, you maniac. What the fuck else do you think I can do?"
For the moment he gives Loki the rough gift of total, brutal honesty and keeps his head down so he doesn't have to meet his crazy, bloodshot eyes. He lets go when Loki starts to twitch and fidget, and reaches for the hair brush on the bench beside them. His jacket is damp and clingy thanks to Loki's wet hair.
The black hairs are tangled badly from their little stranglehold hug, but Tony has done this once before. It's calming for both of them to untangle the ends, to work slowly upwards a little at a time as the knots come loose. It's painstaking. Loki's hair is hardly straight and smooth on a good day, but there's no rush. Eventually the brush slides from Loki's crown to the tips, and Tony does it over and over again, waiting and coaxing him back with something better than the horrors in his head.
Loki settles after a few minutes, and his head falls to his chest. Tony swaps the brush for his fingers then and recalls how Thor sometimes weaves braids into the hair above his ears, running back from his temples and down. He doesn't know how to do that, not exactly, but he learned how to braid copper wires on his father's workbench at three years old.
The motion is still buried somewhere in his kinetic memory and his fingers seem to do it on their own. It works, although it's a lot harder to pull off when the wires keep trying to split into even smaller wires and occasionally poke out in random directions. When he gets to the end he realizes he can't just twist and solder them, so he lets them hang. Loki will probably hate them anyway, because they'll look like Thor, and take them out. He isn't complaining right now though, so Tony keeps going. He does three on each side, and is a little proud to discover that they aren't even crooked or lopsided. Actually, he thinks, Loki looks rather handsome like that. Neat and archaic like he ought to be. He's fourteen hundred years old after all.
"So you believe this Titan is after you?" Tony asks, kneading Loki's neck.
"I know it." Loki admits, "He seeks the stones so that he may make an empire of the cosmos. I not only failed to deliver the Space Stone, but lost the Mind Stone in my attempt."
"And now you have the Aether too." Tony says, "I assume from Odin's story that it's another stone."
Tony's hand finds a knot in his neck and Loki rolls his head to give him access.
"Yes." Loki sighs. "It is called the Reality Stone. I do not know the boundaries of its power. Malekith was not able to use it, despite having forged it himself."
"Well most sentient things don't obey their fathers." Tony grunts. Loki actually chuckles at that, and nods. He turns on the bench, one leg folded beside him so he can look up at Tony's face.
"I do wonder whether Malekith's desire to bring the world to darkness infected the stone at it's creation, or if it was the other way around." he says.
"Does it matter now?" Tony asks, putting the brush down on the bench and kissing Loki while he's down there. You know, just to be efficient.
"I suppose it does not." Loki agrees, and snatches the abused v-neck from where it's bundled on the floor.
A/N: Wowwee, what a chapter. Thank you all for reading along, I really appreciate you. If you're enjoying yourself, reviews are really appreciated. I'm not a very experienced writer and constructive criticism, or even just "Loved it, thanks!" go a long way.