So I started thinking about all of those vital moments that really need to be explained and shown in Tony and Loki's relationship and this was one of them: how Tony got comfortable enough with Loki to let him touch the arc reactor. I don't think it's done yet. It doesn't feel finished yet. But I'm not sure how I want to finish it yet, so there may be a part two or I may just come back and edit it on the end later. Other moments that you may be looking forward too:
1) The first time Loki shows up in the tower (almost finished)
2) The time when Loki and Tony physically fight (about halfway done)
3) The time that Loki and Tony break it off but totally get back together, don't worry (not started)
If there's more moments you can think of that are vital to the relationship that you want to see, let me know. I'll see what I can get done!
As always, read, review, and enjoy!
If he works fast enough, maybe he can get the arc reactor back in before any of the team finds out. He hadn't realized he'd gotten so far behind—how could he have let all of the other arc reactors get in such bad shape? Pepper would be so pissed. And Steve, oh god, don't even get him started on the lectures Steve would give him. He had about two minutes before he went into cardiac arrest when the reactor was out. He only needed one minute for a quick clean that would tide him over until he could get another one cleaned and fixed.
Hesitantly, Tony pulls up his shirt to stare at the arc reactor. He hasn't done this in forever and he isn't really looking forward to it. Yeah, he can survive having the arc reactor out but it wasn't comfortable at all. It was hard to breathe and the pressure on his chest made him feel like Thor's hammer was resting on it.
"Sir, the sooner you begin…"
"Yeah, yeah, thanks Jarvis." With one last, final, deep breath, Tony reaches up and catches the release button, twisting the reactor counterclockwise. It dislodges with a hiss, and instantly Tony feels pressure building in his chest. He began to pull the reactor out, gritting his teeth against the feel of metal off metal vibrating through his chest.
Which is about when everything went to hell.
One second the lab was empty, and the next Tony was staring at Loki, leaning against a work table, all casual for about a second until his eyes connected with Tony's startled ones before trailing down to his hand with the arc reactor and over into the gaping hole in his chest where the arc reactor should be.
Tony freezes. Loki freezes.
"Sir, if you do not return the arc reactor to the casing in thirty seconds, cardiac arrest will occur."
Jarvis' voice breaks their silent standoff and Tony fumbles with the reactor to get it back in place, scraping it against the outer casing before it finally sinks in. Instantly, breathing becomes easier, like someone took off the planet they'd left to rest on his chest. He sucks in a breath, letting oxygen filter through his body again. But even when his body feels back to normal, his brain still seems to be stuck. He can't seem to take his eyes off of Loki and Loki can't seem to take his eyes off of Tony's chest.
"How-how long Jarvis? Until it fails?" Tony manages to stutter out. He needs to know how long he has to stall Loki before he can die on his own terms. Well. Kind of his terms. But preferably before Loki kills him.
"Approximately two hours before the reactor begins to fail."
Tony lets that hang in the air, still waiting for his brain to kickstart and talk him out of this one. He and Loki have skirted around the topic of his arc reactor several times, but Tony's always managed to deflect the conversation away and Loki's always been willing to let it go. Until now. Until Tony took out his reactor and Loki had seen straight into his body.
"Your…reactor?" Loki asks slowly. Tony doesn't move, doesn't say anything. "It…keeps you alive?"
"I need a drink." Tony gets up to move towards the bar. Loki shifts and Tony freezes automatically. His finger twitches towards the reactor but ends up tapping against the table.
"I believe that this is the third time you have used alcohol as an excuse to get out of this conversation. I have seen your secret, Stark. What are you going to do about it?"
It might not have been a threat, but it felt like a threat in every fiber of his being. The words seem to ring through his bones, flow through his veins, flood his already taxed heart. A wince of pain shoots through his chest. The reactor really needed to be repaired.
"I'm going to pretend like this never happened," Tony says sharply. He forces his legs to keep walking towards the bar. "If you could go along with that plan, that'd be great."
Loki's posture eases slightly and for a second, Tony thinks he's actually going to go for it. But he sees one of Loki's masks come down and Tony shifts defensively without a conscious thought. He rolls a wrist, feeling the weight of a metal bracelet press against the bone.
"Please Stark, let us act like the adults we are. How long did you think you could avoid this conversation?"
"Forever," Tony snaps. "I figured you'd come around once or twice, and then you'd fuck something up and you wouldn't be my problem anymore."
So it may be a little suicidal, trying to antagonize Loki into a fight, but anything, anything, to get out of this situation. In response, Loki merely raises an eyebrow.
"Defensive then. Must be very personal."
"No, what would make you think that? The fact that I have a giant fucking hole in my chest? Well you're wrong. I put that there myself. I just figured 'you know what I don't need anymore? My sternum. Let's just cut that out.'" Tony hadn't meant to lose control but yes, yes he was very much so defensive and he very much so didn't want to be having this conversation.
"I must admit, I am quite curious on why you would allow such a thing to happen," Loki says smoothly.
Two seconds from snapping out another answer, Tony takes a deep breath in, trying not to think about how shallow his deep breath really is. Loki is, once again, manipulating him and he almost allowed him to do it. Again. He wonders what would happen if he told Loki to leave. He highly doubts it would end in him actually leaving.
"Well I figured that it seemed like it would be a grand old time. We threw a party and everything. What, exactly, are you even doing here?"
"Is it not our usual night for our engineering lessons?" Loki asks innocently.
Tony throws his mind back. Was it really Wednesday night already? Hadn't last night been Sunday night? Where had Tuesday and Wednesday gone? Right. Tuesday had been board meetings and movie night. Wednesday had been going well as his usual day in the lab, trying to hurry through designs that were supposed to be done two weeks ago when they'd gotten called out. The suit had—for once—survived the outing, but he'd worked the reactor hard and it had definitely felt it. In his haste to get it back in working order, it had slipped his mind what day it was. Or even what time it was.
Hell, he still didn't know what time it was.
"God damn it," Tony mutters. "You couldn't have reminded me, Jarvis?"
"There were more pressing issues, sir."
"Mute," Tony says before Jarvis could continue like he knew the AI was about to. Tony had been keeping track of the time. He knew he only had one hour and twenty-two minutes left before the reactor failed. He needed Loki gone at least five minutes before that.
There's a ghost of a smile on Loki's lips and it doesn't comfort Tony at all. "Still bent on avoiding the topic?"
"You should really go," Tony says carefully.
"Perhaps I will wait around for another hour and…what is it, eighteen minutes? I am curious on what is going to happen."
"Be curious all you want. Jarvis, shut down the lab."
Tony wonders if he'll break the mute command—he has before—but the lab shuts down with its usual quiet efficiency. Only a quarter of the lights remain on, sending just enough light for Tony to find his way out. If leaves him and Loki shadowed in the strange light. The arc reactor glows dimly, not nearly as bright as it should be.
"And where will you run to this time? Your most noble team, who will no doubt worry and fuss over you? Will give you lectures and watch you closely forever after?"
Tony flinches, because Loki knows exactly how much he hates being fussed over and exposed, but he isn't completely suicidal yet. "Yeah, I think I will, thank you."
And with that, he stalks out of the lab, the back of his neck prickling as Loki's gaze follows him.
Steve does end up following him around the house for the next week but that's okay because Tony will totally work on the arc reactor under Steve's watchful eye and he serves the dual purpose of keeping Loki far, far away.
Tony is running out of power to supply the modified generator they're being forced to use to close the god damn portal someone opened up in Central Park. His suit is almost depleted and Thor is a little too occupied with whatever strange creatures are forcing their way out of said portal to give him a refill of energy via lightning strikes.
"Tony, we're almost there," Bruce says in his ear. "We just need a little more."
Tony weighs the choices in a second. He could give everything the suit had and hope it's enough or…
"Give me a second Banner," Tony says, shifting the manual release on the suit. It falls away in a clanking mess. He's just happy that they were able to set this up in some tunnel below the fight, safe(r) than above ground. He grabs some of the cords lying in the heaping mess and stares at them like they'll just start charging themselves.
"Tony!" Steve yells.
Tony groans and just goes with it—he hooks the damn clamps up to the generator and manages to finagle the cords into enough of the arc reactor that they begin to charge. The pure energy the reactor gives off will definitely give them everything they need to shut down the portal. Or he'll die. Either one really.
"What in Odin's name are you fools doing?"
The voice is so unexpected and so, so unwelcome right now. "I don't know, I was thinking about a nice walk in the damn park. What the hell does it look like we're doing?" Tony snaps back at the fuming Norse god behind him. He braces himself against the wall as the energy begins to drain out of the reactor.
"Tony?" Steve's voice comes across the coms, confusion very plain in his voice. Shit. Everyone can hear him.
"You almost caused me to destroy several worlds with this rift you've created!" Loki continues, like Tony's totally not getting ready to die over here.
"Excuse me? In what world do you think we would open a god damn portal to who the fuck knows where? You can either keep complaining about it or you can help fucking close it!"
Honestly, Tony didn't mean to say that last part, but he's getting desperate because Bruce still hasn't said anything about the portal closing yet and he's almost out of juice.
"Tony, who's down there with you?" Steve's voice demands.
"Is that Loki?" Clint asks and Tony wants to groan.
"Brother?" Oh good, for once Thor is actually paying attention to the coms.
"You worry about what's going on up there, I'll worry about what's going on down here. Bruce, what the hell is happening with this portal?" Tony demands. The earth shakes above him. Some rocks shift down on top of him, but the bigger pieces seem to mysteriously divert off to the side.
"I don't know!" Bruce's frantic call back makes Tony's heart stop. Not literally. Not yet, at least. "It's like something started feeding it more energy!"
The reactor is dying. He can feel it and he can see it. He looks up and sees Loki's eyes on his chest. Even Loki can see it.
"You thought to feed your life force to this battery, to create enough power to close the portal."
"Something like that, yeah."
Loki pauses for a second and Tony wants to scream in frustration. He's dying, the team could be dying, and for all he knows, this portal is going to suck New York into some god forsaken place in the universe. Finally, Loki nods.
"I can close the portal, but I would rather not be…up there." Translation: he doesn't want to face Thor. Surprise, surprise. "However your…battery should serve well to close it. If you remove yourself from this device, I shall take over."
Tony tugs the cords out of the reactor without a second thought, sliding almost immediately to the ground as his heart picks up a strange rhythm that leaves his breaths gaspy and his vision swirly. And his thoughts a little strange. Strangey?
With determination, he forces his eyes over to Loki. The god is standing with his hands right above the battery, eyes closed in concentration. Tony feels a shift in the air, like when you touch a blanket just out of the dryer and it molds to your skin. Static electricity.
Loki opens burning green eyes and sets his hands on the battery. Green light flashes through the dimmed tunnel and Tony closes his eyes and turns away until the light dies down.
"Whatever you-or whoever-just did, it worked. The portal is closed," Bruce says and Tony sighs in relief. "They're just doing some clean up and we'll be good to go. Do you need help?"
He appreciates that Bruce trusts his judgement enough to not just jump straight down here. That would not go well at all. "Just peachy. Can't wait to hear Fury complain about the damage we did."
"You've depleted much of your life force," Loki says, drawing Tony's tired eyes back up to the god. Spots blink in and out of his swirling vision, but he forces a hand up to his ear to flip a microscopic switch to mute his line, left for instances just like this.
"Yeah, one more favor before you leave?" Tony asks. Alarms are ringing in the back of his head somewhere, but they're drowned out by his harsh breathing and off beat pulse. Loki cocks his head slightly. "Give me a shot of that energy. Right in the chest."
There's silence before Loki states blandly, "You are far more deluded than I thought."
"Listen, it'll totally work. It won't kill me-" he hoped. "-and it'll totally help."
Loki stands in silence longer before the connection finally dawns on him. "Your life force is a battery," he says. "You wish me to…hm, recharge it?"
"Yeah, pretty much. You know, personal favor or whatever."
Loki gives him his best impression of a Cheshire Cat grin and Tony only has a second to think "oh fuck" before Loki is agreeing. "Of course, as a personal favor."
"Wait that's not-" but Tony doesn't get time to finish the sentence before there's green light shooting straight at him, aimed directly for the arc reactor. The pressure of the shot pushes his back against the wall and for a second, Tony thinks he's wrong as the arc reactor heats up against his skin, but as the green light-magic-energy-whatever settles into his skin, the heat cools and the light pulses stronger. Tony's heartbeat evens out.
When he looks up, Loki's gone.
"Shit."
The manhole cover flips open to reveal Steve and Bruce. Tony flips his com back on before anyone can question why his voice doesn't come through when he speaks.
"Where's the suit? Who was down there with you?" Steve asks at the same time Bruce asks, "How'd you get enough energy to close the portal?"
"I didn't," Tony answers Bruce, avoiding Steve's questions. He taps the bracelets and the suit reforms itself. "Take it home, Jarv."
"Of course, sir."
Steve and Bruce move back as the suit shoots out of the tunnel and heads for home.
"Tony?" Steve asks uncertainly.
"I used a lot of the reactor's power trying to get that damn portal closed. Enough that flying the suit isn't the best idea."
"But I thought you said you didn't do it?" Steve asks. Bruce moves back into his line of sight as he emerges back into Central Park. The spies and Thor are helping to direct S.H.I.E.L.D traffic, but he notices them tossing looks his way as they work.
"I didn't. I was about out of power when Loki shows up and starts bitching about us opening a portal." He's suddenly remembering that Loki told him he'd almost destroyed worlds because of the interference from the portal. He's wondering if he even wants to know what kinds of spells Loki was using. Probably not.
"Loki showed up?" Bruce asks in disbelief. Steve doesn't look much better.
Tony shrugs. "Yeah, pushed me out of the way and used his own power to close the portal. Said it was messing with his magic." So Tony was skirting around a lot of the truth. Sue him.
"What did he do after he closed the portal?" Steve asks cautiously, his eyes scanning the park around them like Loki's going to come back after making a clean escape to hover in the crowds that are forming now that the portal is down. Actually, he probably would.
"Left," Tony says. There's a skeptical noise in his ear that came from Clint, not that Tony can blame him.
"What about the suit? Why did you take it off, especially if Loki was there?" Steve asks.
"Yeah, about that…" Tony says, looking for something, anything, to distract Steve with, but it wasn't Steve he needed to distract. He should've known that.
"Oh Tony, tell me you didn't," Bruce says. His eyes aren't on Tony's face, but on the arc reactor.
"We needed more power!" Tony protests, but it doesn't seem to move Bruce at all. The scientist looks back up at him.
"Home. Now. Let's go." Bruce rarely gives out demands, so when he does, the team tends to take him very seriously.
"I don't understand," Steve says before Bruce can get into full out mother hen mode.
"He took the suit off so he could hook the reactor up to the generator and give it more power," Bruce says. "That's why the reactor is so depleted and that's why he hasn't been able to stand still since he got up here. I'm impressed he even made it out of the tunnel."
Bruce wraps a hand around Tony's arm and begins leading him off to one of the nearest vehicles. Even the agents don't mess with Bruce when he tells them they need to get back to the tower now.
"How do you even do these things? Just know something like that?" Tony asks as Bruce manhandles him into the car with a surprising amount of strength.
"Call it my sixth sense." Bruce sits in the quiet for a minute as the SUV pulls out into traffic. Somehow they've gotten emergency lights on the car, although they don't tend to help much in New York traffic. "Did anything else happen with Loki down there?" Bruce asks suddenly. It catches Tony completely off guard, scrambling for words.
"No, why?"
"You were surprisingly quiet while he was down there. Usually you wouldn't let any opportunity go when you could try to antagonize him." Bruce turns and looks out the window. "He saw the arc reactor, didn't he?" Bruce's voice is quiet. Tony swallows.
"Yeah, he…yeah."
"Did he ask what it was?"
"I told him it was a power source. A powerful one that was easier to carry around."
"So was the tesseract," Bruce says, turning back to look at Tony. "What if he thinks that the reactor could be a new tesseract?"
Tony's heart pounds harder in his chest. He's had the same thought before. He laughs uneasily. "Compared to the tesseract, the reactor is child's play. If that's what he's looking for, he's going to be sorely disappointed."
"It might not be enough to stop him," Bruce warns as the car pulls over.
"I'll deal with it when it becomes a problem," Tony promised. Bruce looks less than pleased, but they both know there's nothing much they could do about it.
Tony's not sulking because sulking is for misunderstood teenagers and he is definitely not one of those. Yes, he is somehow—impossibly—sick, and sure, ever since he rolled out of bed with a headache, stuffy nose, a hacking cough that's totally not normal he's been avoiding the team but he's totally not sulking.
No, Tony's hiding.
He despises being sick. It slows his thought process, makes him tired all the time, and all of the medicine he could take make both of those things so much worse. If Steve finds out about this illness, he'll force feed the cold medicine to Tony and then make him sleep. Ugh. And if Pepper found out, she'd tell Steve and they'd be right back to where they started. Besides, it's not like he's never hidden from the team before.
Of course, it's not the team he should be hiding from.
"You do realize you have been staring at the computer screen for almost ten minutes, yes?"
Tony blinks moisture back into his eyes discovering that, yes, he must have been because Jarvis had turned the computer off at some point and he didn't even notice. He turns to see Loki standing at the end of the table. He wonders if Loki has actually been standing there for ten minutes, watching him stare at the screen. As he shifts, Loki's eyes take in his haggard face, red nose, and harsh breathing.
"You are ill," Loki declares.
"Shhhh. Don't let the team hear you say that. Then they'll force me to take cough medicine and feed me and cover me in blankets and expect me to sleep."
Loki rolls his eyes. "You mean that they will take care of you and wish for your speedy recovery."
"You say 'care' but I say 'torture'."
"Would you at least allow me to see if I may remove the illness from you? I have no desire to listen to your lecture with your constant sniffing and whatever it is you are attempting to cough out of your lungs."
Tony glares at him, but Loki is rarely ever moved by his glares. Come to think of it, nobody ever really seems moved by his glares. With a sigh, he puts his hand in the middle of the table. Loki rests a hand on the back of Tony's, letting his power spread through Tony's body. He has done this once before, after he had brought Tony to one of his safe houses with a knife in his lung, but he had been trying to push much more power through Tony at the time, everything focused on closing the wound and repairing the damage to the lung. Then, he had struggled to keep his power focused, away from the glowing machinery—a power source, as Stark would have him believe, but Loki knew it was also a device to keep him alive. Now, as he uses less power to burn out the infectious virus flowing through his veins, he can still feel the tugging pull of the machine's energy. He circles around where it lies, but as he moves closer, he can feel his power draw him in.
Wrong. Something was wrong.
Loki moves closer hesitantly. There, alarmingly near the heart, lay a tiny, jagged piece of metal. It was dangerous to leave it there, as Tony no doubt knew. Loki frowns. Why would he have left it there? He reaches out to grab it, dissolve it from being, and-
Suddenly blinked his surroundings back into view. Tony had pulled his hand out from underneath Loki's. He was leaning over, a hand over his chest, breathing hard.
"I…apologize if I caused any pain," Loki murmurs. He sees the quickest tensing of muscles running down Tony's body. He forces the hand back into his lap and Loki instantly notices the dark humor in his eyes.
"Nothing I haven't felt before," Tony says, turning back to the computer. With a gesture, he brings it back to life.
"Why do you not remove it?" Loki can't help but ask. Tony is not a stupid man, nor is he, despite his numerous claims, suicidal. Leaving such a thing so close to a vital organ defies both of those statements.
"At this point, it would do more bad than good," Tony says grimly. He stops the screen where he wants it, then slides it over to the 3-D hologram table. It lights up Tony's shadowed face. Loki sees the haunted expression for only a second more before Tony takes a deep breath and suddenly sends a blinding grin at Loki. "Ready to begin, my young padawan?"
Loki debates calling him on it, but figures he won't get anywhere if he tries to force it. Instead, he allows the mood to pass. "I can hardly be considered young to any of you here."
"I think Thor begs to differ."
"Except that I know for a fact Thor is back on Asgard, which therefore means that I still have at least a thousand years on you."
Loki's curiosity is still strong in him, begging to find answers, to figure out why and what. But the look of relief that flashes across Tony's face when he lets it go makes him wonder when he started to find such sentimental things important.
When they meet the next week—Tony's graduated Loki from lectures to hands-on activities—everything is normal. Bruce is in his lab a floor down and Natasha, Clint, Thor, and Steve are all in the training room doing their usual weekly sparring session. Loki continues to prove to be a dedicated and insanely—in a good way this time—curious student.
That is, of course, when everything goes wrong. Again.
"Sir, I'm detecting-" Jarvis starts to say before he suddenly shuts off. A second later, the lights follow. All of the lights. Instantly, Tony's hand goes to the arc reactor.
"An EMP?" Tony mutters, trying not to panic. "There's no possible way." Because there isn't. There isn't any way that an EMP could make it into his tower and there was no EMP powerful enough to take out the entire tower. He made it part of his job to keep track of shit like that. He had extensive screening processes, in public eye and hidden throughout the towers, that could detect the devices. And even if one had managed to sneak past those sensors, the security guards, the god damn Avengers, the casing around the arc reactor should've been able to stand up to the pulse.
A green light flickers to life over his head. Tony looks over at Loki to see a similar one floating above his head. His green eyes practically glow in the eerie light.
"It appears you are under attack," Loki says quietly, his eyes passing over the lab, carefully identifying every object in the darkness.
"Yeah, no shit." Tony turns to cough into his shoulder. Maybe Loki will think he's still sick. Maybe he'll think that something just got caught in his throat. Hell, maybe he'll-
"Your light is no longer glowing," Loki states, and suddenly Tony thinks he might be more scared of what Loki will find out than the strangers who are in his tower.
"It's fine. You should go. The others will come down here looking for me," Tony says. Assuming they're in a place to get to him.
"I would rather not leave it up to hope that your teammates will arrive before whomever it is that has invaded your home," Loki says smoothly. He's not looking at Tony, who kind of appreciates that. "You do not seem to be at…full strength."
Tony opens his mouth to start an argument—again, more scared of what Loki will figure out than the people staging the attack—but instead, a coughing fit comes out, stealing precious air that he doesn't exactly have to waste.
"This…power source you have. It is not just a power source, is it?" Loki asks when Tony recovers his breath.
"Is too," Tony says, forming pained words. This is not the condition he wanted to be in when he has this discussion with Loki. "Powers the suit. Hell, you saw it when I plugged it into that damn generator."
"Hm," Loki says, his eyes still searching the darkness. "Yet that piece of metal near your heart—I have seen such wounds before. The forces within the body, they do not mean to doom their host, but they slowly bring such debris closer, until it pierces the owner's heart. It is a slow death, a painful death, but it is certain killer unless a healer is nearby. Such a piece of metal should not be able to be held at a standstill within the body unless there was something holding it there. And something like that…something like that would need a power source."
"Interesting theory," Tony says weakly. Loki knows too much. Far too much. A flash of pain shoots through his chest.
"You were weak after supplying power to that generator," Loki says. "And you were very defensive about it in previous discussions. It was personal, how it happened."
Tony snorts before he can stop himself. "How would something like this not be personal?"
A flash of light reflected off the glass of the labs. The little blobs of light disappeared without a noise. "Wait," Tony whispers. "It could be a teammate."
While Tony couldn't see, he was able to quickly identify that it wasn't a teammate. It could have been Clint or Bruce—the shadow had a similar body structure—but he moved too boldly to be Bruce and didn't move nearly as stealthy as Clint would have, especially in these circumstances. Tony raised up out of the chair, only to lean against the chair as the darkened world got darker and began to spin. His hand went back up to the arc reactor. What the hell kind of EMP did they have that kept the power out for so long? He catches a flash of Loki as the god stands and Tony immediately flinches, but Loki vanishes from his sight. There's a sharp gasp of air, then the sound of someone hitting the floor. Tony blinks and suddenly Loki is beside him again.
"There are more coming," Loki whispers. "I can hold them off, but…" his voice trails off and Tony can feel his eyes on him. He gets it. Like this, he is weak and vulnerable. Easy to pick off. "Do you trust me?" the god murmurs suddenly. Tony freezes.
"Why?" he breathes. He knows why. After all, they've done this before. Loki knows how it works.
Loki knows it too. "Do you trust me?"
No. He's still has a wild side, unpredictable, that he can't trust—doesn't know if he ever will be able to.
Kind of. He's saved Tony's life before, and, as far as he knows, gained very little more from it than learning how to build a car.
Yes. He's spent sleepless nights with him down in the lab, pouring over engineering details, or trying to explain to him what magic is, and how it's used. And—most telling, really—he's asking permission.
Tony can hear men moving down the hall. "Yes," Tony hisses out from between clenched teeth. Loki puts one hand on Tony's shoulder, the other coming to hover over the reactor, just barely not touching. Tony flinches, but before he can pull away, Loki's hand glows green and he clamps it over the reactor. It heats up quickly, almost painfully, and the heat tries to take him mind far away, out into the deserts he vowed to never go back to, but before his mind can get carried away, Loki's hand tightens on his shoulder, the coolness of his skin grounding him back into the lab.
Loki draws back suddenly, and the lab is filled with the comforting and hated blue glow of the reactor. Tony braces himself against the table as coughs force their way out of his chest, his heart beat evening out, though his pulse is still frantically fast. The hands that braced him on the table were definitely shaking, but he ignores it in favor of the situation at hand.
"Thanks," Tony says as he straightens out, his breath caught. "Well, I suppose the time for stealth is over. It's pretty hard to hide when you have a flashlight in your chest." Tony pushes chairs out of his way to get to another table that was piled with spare parts from an old suit. He was working on upgrading them, but all of them were still in working order. With the ease of practice, Tony slides a gauntlet on, hooking it up directly to the reactor. He doubts Loki gave the reactor enough energy to run the whole suit, but he could make do with just one arm. About the same time, the glass panes shatter into a million pieces as gunfire opens. Tony ducks behind a table, waiting for a lull. They could've blown out all the windows and come in all at once, but instead they had only blown out two windows and had to step through them one at a time.
When the gunfire dies down, Tony swivels, barely having time to line up the shot, but still managing to take out one of the guards. Despite the teams' assumptions, Tony has pretty good aim—he had grown up handling guns and he learned to fire the repulsors without a guidance system in place. He gets another shot off before all of their guns turned to his direction. When Tony ducks back behind his table, he notices a shape moving to flank all of the guards. Green light flashes in the broken remains of glass and Tony darts back up as all of their attention turns to Loki. Between the two of them, they easily take them all down, leaving the two of them standing, Tony with his repulsor aimed at Loki and Loki with his hands still covered in unformed magic. Old habits apparently die very hard.
Tony quickly lowers his hand and notes with relief that Loki mirrors his movement. A light pops over his head as he leans down to check out the uniforms on the guards. Plain black, without any quick identifying features. He bets if he were to raise up the sleeve of the guard's Kevlar jacket, he'd find an identifying tattoo that was very specific to certain A.I.M. employees. Looks like it was time to do some hacking again. He'd been distracted lately. It wouldn't happen again.
"Someone you-" Loki starts, then cuts off and vanishes before Tony can say anything else. A few seconds later, Clint is standing next to him, arrow still out and pointed at the dropped agents.
"Well you're looking a lot better than we expected," Clint says quietly. "We expected you to be a drooling mess on the floor."
"One day you'll remember that I keep my back-ups very, very safe. Speaking of which, do we know how this happened? Because there's no possible way this should've happened."
"Let's talk about that when we get the tower cleared, yeah?" Clint says, jerking his head in the direction of the broken panes. He really needed to get rid of those things. This would be the fourth time this month they'd had to be repaired.
"How's Banner?" Tony asks. He nearly has a heart attack as another shadowy figure drops down beside him, but blue electricity jumps over Natasha's knuckles before Tony can turn to fire a shot.
"Still Banner," Nat says. "We thought it better if he leave the tower for now, so Thor took him a couple buildings over. Steve's taking care of the rest of them."
"Where can we go for you to get Jarvis going that's not your lab?" Clint asks.
Tony thinks of all of the different stations he has where he can at least look at his poor system and see what the hell they did to it. "The kitchen," he decides, figuring it would be the last place they'd look for a tech junkie.
It takes him two minutes to figure out that they remotely hacked his system, only getting into the bare minimum it would take to break down enough of the defensive systems to get the EMP in. As to how they found an EMP powerful enough to take out the whole tower—they didn't, not really. They had gone to each of the main floors and set it off. It's still far more powerful than he's comfortable with; especially considering that some of the floors still haven't recovered. Steve and Thor join them a minute later and tell them that as far as they can tell, they're secure. S.H.E.I.L.D shows up ten minutes later, always concerned when they lose contact with the tower.
"Enjoy your vacation, Banner?" Tony asks when Bruce joins them in the living room. Steve feels it necessary to help the agents clear up all of their fallen enemies but Natasha and Clint long gave that up. Instead, they retire to the TV.
Bruce adjusts his glasses. "It was strange, really," Bruce says. Instantly, he has everyone's attention. "Thor didn't exactly drop me in a…discrete location," Bruce says diplomatically.
"I apologize," Thor says, looking like he just heard the worst news in the world. "I was most eager to get back to ensure everyone else was safe as well."
"Well I was standing there, trying to get a hold of S.H.I.E.L.D. and I notice a van sitting out in front of the tower."
"One of those 'totally not undercover' kind of vans?" Tony asks. Bruce gives him a passing smile before continuing.
"One of those. And I guess once they realized I had made them and who I was, they became more interested in me. They got out of the van, started walking towards me, and then there was this flash of light. When my vision cleared, all of the men were gone."
"Out of curiosity," Thor says, almost like he's trying not to be interested, "did this light have a certain color to it? For it must have been magic—I have no other explanations."
"It could have been mutants," Natasha puts in. "But it's….unlikely."
Tony's got that twisted feeling in his gut that tells him that two of his worlds are about to collide. He's tried his best to keep Loki separate from his Avengers life. But if Thor finds out that Loki's been hanging around here—how else would Loki know they were under attack and leave Bruce completely alone—it will only be a matter of time before he finds out Tony's what Loki's been hanging around.
"Yeah. You know, I almost expected it to be Loki, but the light was purple. Probably pretty unlikely, huh?" Bruce says. Tony holds back the choked out laugh he almost releases. Thor shakes his head disappointedly.
"Nay, that is most assuredly not my brother."
It totally is—Tony asks him about it the next day.
For once, they finally have the tower to themselves for the night. Tony and Loki are always willing to take every opportunity awarded to them to "lay" in bed together. Usually they manage to exhaust themselves into sleep, but somehow they're both lying awake in the darkness, only broken up by the bright glow of the reactor. When Loki rolls over and places his hands on Tony's stomach, he's beginning to suspect why they aren't asleep yet.
"Tell me how you got the arc reactor," Loki murmurs, running his hands up Tony's abdomen, stopping well before he gets to the reactor. Instead, one hand drops back onto the bed and the other trails onto his back to trace out feather light designs.
Tony minutely shifts away. It's been months since Loki's asked about it—and he hasn't tried to touch it since the break-in a month ago—and Tony was really hoping he'd forgotten about it. Honestly, he knew better, but sometimes he liked the worlds he created in his head.
"Loks…" Tony sighs. The hand on his back doesn't stop from its tracing pattern. Tony could easily break away if he wanted to.
He's just not entirely sure that he wants to.
"It's just…this-this man paid a terrorist organization to kill me. When they found out who I was though, they kidnapped me. But I had been injured in a blast and had shrapnel in my chest."
"The piece that is close to your heart," Loki says.
"Yeah, they had a doctor who removed most of it, but the piece was too close. Instead, he made an electromagnet to keep it from moving forward. I just…redesigned it a little."
Loki knows there's so much more to the story than what Tony is telling him. Should he want, he could recreate the scene that is no doubt very vivid in Tony's mind, but—for some reason—he has never broken into Tony's mind and he has no desire to, especially not now.
"Who was the man?" Loki asks, feeling it's the most important question. If he is not dead yet, though knowing Tony, he most likely is, Loki is not opposed to killing him.
"No one important," Tony says, rolling on top of Loki and leaves a trail of love nips up his chest.
Loki's heart breaks at how much of a lie Tony just told him.