So I don't know if this got uploaded and then deleted, or if I just totally forgot to upload it, but heeeeey here's a chapter that I finished months ago. If I have uploaded this before and it just got deleted somehow, I'm sorry to all of you people who thought it was a new chapter. But if it hasn't been uploaded, well look! A new chapter! I hope that you all enjoy it :D
As always, read, review, enjoy!
"Would anyone like to explain to me what has occurred?" a cool voice says from the balcony entrance to the living room. The team is grouped around the couches, Tony lying out on the couch with his head on Natasha's crossed legs. Clint is perched on the back of the couch, hanging worriedly over Tony. Bruce is crouched beside the couch, while Thor and Steve are sitting in the chairs to either side of the couch, Thor looking sullen and Steve looking worried. At Loki's words, Clint splutters and almost falls off the couch. "I was not aware that you received a summons tonight," he says carefully.
"Looookiiii," Tony drawls happily. Loki's frown deepens.
"There wasn't a battle," Bruce sighs as he pulls back a cloth from Tony's head. It comes away red and Loki tenses. Clint and Natasha tense in response, always worried about his control. "There was an accident in the lab."
Tony is restless now, making grabbing motions towards where he hears Loki. Natasha is holding him down, and he never fights with the glare Natasha is giving him. Loki moves forward, still stiff, and takes one of the hands thrown in the air. Tony smiles sloppily at him, eyes glazed over. Natasha relinquishes her spot to Loki, moving instead to the other end of the couch. When Tony goes to sit up, she glares at him again and he pouts as he lays back down, squirming against Loki's legs.
The pout only last seconds before Tony is beaming up at him. "Lover!"
"Yes Tony?" Loki says. He is not a patient man, much like Tony, but his tone betrays nothing more than concern.
"You're pretty," he says, still beaming. Clint groans while Natasha rolls his eyes.
"And you are concussed," Loki says, leaning down to give him a kiss on the forehead. Tony frowns.
"Is that why my head hurts?" Tony asks, bringing a hand up to rub at the wound. Bruce knocks his hand aside before it can touch the still oozing wound.
"Yes love. Now hold still," he says, and his hands glow green as he cups Tony's head. Tony hmms and snuggles into Loki's hands, eliciting an eye roll from the god.
"'M sleepy," Tony mutters.
"You must remain awake until after the majority of the effects of the concussion have gone away. You know this," Loki says quietly.
"Do I? Know that, I mean. I feel like I would remember something like that," Tony says, eyebrows furrowing in concentration.
"Do you remember how the accident happened?"
Tony's eyes narrow as he tries to remember. "I was in the lab…with Bruce…and Clint?"
"So far, so good," Bruce encourages.
"I was working on…arrows?" Tony asks. He tries to bring a hand up to rub at his head and through his healing connection, Loki can feel the pain stab at Tony's brain. Healing Tony is always tricky, because the arc reactor tends to suck up some of the energy he uses for healing and he can do little to stop it. Instead, Loki pushes more energy into Tony, directing it to ease his pain. Tony shifts minutely in response, but it seems to bring his pain level down.
"Some newer designs, yes," Bruce prods. The wound has all but closed up now and Bruce works on cleaning up the blood coating Tony's head and matted in his hair.
"And then…" Tony's squints even more and only the seriousness of the situation keeps Loki from showing a fond smile. He finds it adorable when Tony regresses in age, though it's usually due to sleeplessness, not concussions. "Nope. That's where it ends."
Bruce sighs. "It'll probably come back after he gets some sleep. He was working on the arrows and tripped over a piece of metal he left on the floor. The arrow was a little more…explosive than intended. Clint was able to tackle him to safety, but in the process, he hit his head against one of his tables."
"I tried to avoid it," Clint says, actually a little shamefaced. This time, it's Loki who sighs.
"Better a small knock to the head than trying to regrow body parts," Loki says. "I thank you for protecting him."
"Could you do that?" Clint asks, suddenly distracted. "Regrow body parts, I mean?"
Loki considers the idea of it. He's never done it before and he honestly hopes he never will have to. "I would possibly be able to reattach a limb, if it was immediately after the accident. Let us not test this though, yes?"
"Sounds good," Tony mumbles sleepily against Loki's hands. That he was able to track the outside conversation is a good sign. "Sleep now?"
"For a little bit," Bruce says. "We'll have to wake you up in a half hour."
"Mhm," Tony says, already drifting off to sleep. As soon as he settles into sleep, everyone in the room seems to relax.
"In your defense," Bruce says to Clint as he leans against Thor's chair. "I told him to clean his lab several times."
"As have I," Loki adds, shifting as carefully as possible. He doubts anything will wake Tony up, but he always takes precautions.
Thor laughs. "You could not even keep your own workroom clean! I remember when Fandral-"
"Yes, yes," Loki says hastily. "If you remember correctly, I kept the area clean after that particular event."
Thor laughs even harder and Loki debates just transporting Tony and himself up to their room, but fears leaving Thor alone with the team. "You did not! You just created more inventive locks to keep everyone else out!"
Loki scowls at Thor. "And it didn't work very well, did it? If I remember, you decided to smash the door down and triggered the security spell I had laid out for a reason, and I had to spend two days in the Healing House with you."
If the incident is supposed to tame Thor, it doesn't work, because the blond giant just grins. "You had spent three days straight in the work room, going without food or sleep. Something had to be done!"
"How are you a good influence on Tony?" Clint asks. Steve is better than to wonder the same thing out loud, but Loki can read it on his face.
"That was in my younger years," Loki says stiffly.
"It was merely a hundred years ago!"
"That means absolutely nothing to me," Clint says. Natasha tilts her head, considering.
"I'd say that would probably be about 10 years equivalence," she says.
"Right," Clint says, looking at Loki. "Younger years. You know what? I'll take it. If you can still get him to sleep every once in a while, it's good enough for me."
Loki thinks that he's going to leave, probably go to bed because not everyone is as insane as his boyfriend and Clint looks tired, but he merely walks around the couch and sits on the floor, resting his head against Natasha's legs. Clint's words seem to trigger something with the rest of the team and everyone seems to settle in. Jarvis turns on the TV and quietly plays some history show that nobody is really paying attention to.
"It's been a half hour," Bruce says into the silence. "Would you do the honors?"
Loki leans down, allowing a small trickle of energy to flow into Tony to spark him awake. "Wake up love," he whispers into his ear. He feels Tony start to shift, fighting back to awareness. Finally, Tony opens chocolate eyes and blinks sleepily at him.
"Mm, thought was 'pposed to sleep as much as possible," Tony slurs, turning onto his wounded side. Loki feels a throb of pain go through Tony's head and carefully helps Tony turn back over onto his back. "Why does my head hurt so much?" Tony says, his words coming across clearer as he surfaces further. "Did Clint actually hit me with Cap's shield?"
Loki raises an eyebrow at Clint who is suddenly very occupied with the TV. "Do you remember the accident love?"
Tony considers Loki's words. "Mm. That piece of metal had it out for me."
Bruce smiles grimly as he pulls away from prodding the completely closed wound. "Tony, I told you to pick that up at least five times. I'd ask you what the date is and who the president is, but I doubt you even know that when you're not concussed."
"Hey," Tony protests, but it doesn't have his usual drive behind it and Loki can feel him slipping back into sleep. "I know who the president is. I've got a company to run here."
"I'm pretty sure that's Ms. Pott's job," Bruce says. Instead of the typical concussion questions, Bruce asks him a series of complicated mathematical and scientific questions that Loki just barely understands. "Go back to sleep Tony. You'll be fine now," Bruce says when Tony answers the questions to Bruce's satisfaction.
"Knew that already," Tony says, settling back to mold himself to Loki's form, asleep in seconds. Loki's pretty sure he could transport them to their bedroom without waking the man, but he decides that a night on the couch won't hurt either of them. He waits for everyone else to drift off, now that they have seen for themselves that Tony is alright, but nobody moves. Natasha hands Bruce and Clint a blanket and when Loki looks over at Steve, the captain's eyes are closed, his head tilted back against the chair. Loki waits another ten minutes, then opens his mouth to say something, but Thor catches his eye and shakes his head with a slight smile.
The first shock comes from the idea that the team feels safe enough to let down their defenses with him around. Yes, it has been almost three years since Loki first arrived on Midgard and yes, he and Tony had been "dating" for almost a year and a half now, 8 months of which the team has known about, but he had left lasting scars; he knew this. Yet after Steve, Bruce falls asleep, leaning against their couch, close by on the off chance that a problem arises during the night. Thor's snores cover up the quiet volume of the TV. Most surprisingly, Loki looks over and sees Clint, his head leaning against Natasha's legs, his blanket pulled up to his shoulder, asleep. Natasha's eyes are closed, but he can tell that she's only dozing, ready to wake at the slightest prompt.
The second shock though, comes from the fact that, even though the team knows that Tony is going to be perfectly fine, they still hold a vigil. The only people who had ever done something like that for him were his mother and Thor and even then, they usually left once they knew he was going to be okay—the royal family led busy lives, after all. It sends a weird feeling through him and it takes him a moment to identify it. He might actually…be thinking of these people as more than his boyfriend's friends or his own allies. He's starting to think about them as his own friends. And, more than that, the tower had always been a place he retreated to when he was tired of being alone and, later, when he was missing Tony. Now, though, now he's starting to think of it as a home. More so than his safe houses he has created in the pockets of the universe, and far more than the palace of Asgard.
Part of him starts screaming in his head, telling him to get out now, before he gets attached. Attachment leads to pain, loss, and betrayal. But another part of him knows he won't leave, couldn't leave even if he wanted to. It's too late. He couldn't leave Tony now. But maybe that's not necessarily a bad thing.
He thinks that, maybe, this time, things could be different in this tower he thinks of as home, surrounded by people who have also met pain, loss, and betrayal.