So I really apologize because honestly, this story has been sitting on my computer for almost a month, just waiting for the final edit. And I finally got around to it. My b. Seriously. But heeeeey! It's done! And posted! So there is that. It'll probably be a while before the next one-I'm reaching the end of my job term and that means job applications and job interviews. Lots of them. But hopefully I can get the next one up too. Also, bonus news: a new idea for a one-shot! Remember last update, how Loki agreed to jump-start the arc reactor as a personal favor? Well, Loki's gonna call that favor in soon.
Side note but most important note of this whole thing: thank you to all the reviewers! You make my heart smile every time!
As always, read, review, and enjoy!
Honestly, the first time it happens, Tony isn't expecting it at all. As far as he's aware, Loki is safely locked up on Asgard, far away from Stark Tower and even if Loki decided to grace them with his presence, he thought he had enough security protocols from Jarvis to at least warn him that there was an intruder. All of these thoughts were well established facts in Tony's mind.
So when he walks past the living room on his way to the kitchen—to coffee, thank god—he doesn't realize there's someone sitting in one of his armchairs until he is well into the kitchen. He freezes, mid-rant to Jarvis, and backs up slowly until his head emerges from around the door frame. Loki sits in the arm chair, eyebrows raised in amusement, as Tony takes in his form. Tony opens his mouth to say something, pauses, then shuts it and disappears into the kitchen. He's been up way too long to deal with this shit. He needs coffee.
Once the coffee mug is refilled, Tony turns back to the living room. He hopes it's just a figment of his imagination, that Loki was never really there, but a) he can't possibly imagine why his mind would imagine Loki sitting there and b) he hasn't been up nearly long enough to start hallucinating.
Sure enough, Loki is still sitting in the armchair when he comes back in. No, sitting is too plain of a word. Loki was practically lounging in the armchair, body easily fitting into the curves of the chair in ways that make Tony's back twinge painfully. Loki…he looks like he belongs there. Tony forces himself to walk into the living room, to sit in the armchair across from him, where he has the safety of the coffee table in between them.
Really, it was his first mistake. He should've known better.
Tony takes a drink of the coffee, the burn from the liquid forcing his mind to come to terms with the fact that, yes, Loki is indeed sitting across from him. Loki is still staring at him in amusement and Tony blinks back at him.
"So," Tony says finally. "I notice you're not on Asgard anymore."
"A very keen observation, especially from one supposedly as smart as you," Loki says. Tony hadn't ever realized how smooth Loki's voice was. He has complete control over every lilt in his tone, every syllable he pronounces. Tony had learned to do that once, a long time ago, but he's only just recently started doing it again, now that he has to go out in public and be decent. The purpose of such control is to get the listener to feel whatever you want them to. Loki wants to get a rise out of Tony—start an argument. Had Tony been a little less shell shocked, it might have worked. As it is, Tony just blinks at him again.
"I just assumed that we'd, I don't know, have some kind of warning system in place for when you escaped," Tony says, almost wincing at his phrasing of when Loki would escape, not if. The rest of the team, minus Bruce, seemed to think Asgard would be able to control Loki. Tony knew the god's type—definitely not because they were similar enough that even Tony could see it—and people like Loki couldn't be contained forever. He also probably shouldn't be admitting that they didn't know he'd escaped, but Tony figures he blew that the second he came into the living room.
Loki scoffs and leans back a little in the chair, apparently comfortable enough to relax. "Thor is busy searching the cosmos for me. If you have not noticed, he has a very one-track mind."
"Oh, believe me, I know," Tony's saying before he thinks about just who he's talking to. He should be calling Fury or at least the rest of the team. "I've never had to tell someone so many times not to touch something."
There's a flash of anger and something that looks suspiciously like nostalgia in Loki's eyes. He shifts, this time a little more sharply and Tony tenses before he even realizes it. He figures there's a small chance that Loki didn't catch it and forces himself to relax. "Then you already know my-Thor well," Loki says, and Tony figures that if Loki can ignore his obvious sign of nervousness, then he can ignore the slipup in phrasing.
"Oh, I wouldn't say that," Tony says, finishing off the rest of his coffee. He hates sitting still in the best of times. High stress situations are murder. "There's a lot of layers to your brother." Loki flinches minutely. "Notably, not nearly as many layers as you have-"
"-or you?" Loki adds with a sly smirk. Tony decidedly ignores him.
"-but there are layers there nonetheless." Tony stands up, the need to move too strong. Loki's eyes track him across the living room to the bar. "If I make you a drink, will you promise not to throw me out any windows?"
Loki laughs, and Tony takes a second to listen to it. There's actual delight there, and he wonders when the last time was that someone talked with him like this, didn't show fear straight to his face, but more importantly, there's far less crazy in the laugh than the last time they met. Still, Tony discreetly checks to make sure the bracelets for the suit are on when he moves behind the bar.
"You may hold me to my vow that I will not be throwing you out of windows on this night, Man of Iron," Loki says. "I am bored. I merely came for conversation."
Tony raises his eyebrow as he pours whiskey into two glasses, hoping it will help him keep his focus tonight. "Let me get this straight. You break out of Asgard, come back to Earth, find one of the people on the team that sent you to Asgard in the first place, and just want conversation?"
Loki accepts his drink with a small nod of thanks. "Thor was most insistent with his company during my time on Asgard. He enjoyed speaking of his travels and his…team. I admit, I was curious." Loki takes a drink from the glass. "Smooth, but warming. It is far weaker than any alcohol found on Asgard however."
"Why do you think we have so much?" Tony asks with a nod to the well-stocked bar. Like hell did Tony think that Loki was actually admitting to anything. Guys like him never showed weakness, especially to an enemy, which, as puny as Loki might think him, they both knew he still was. There was definitely an alternative motive for his presence here tonight. Tony just didn't know if it was dangerous or not.
That should've been his second clue.
"Hopefully Thor tells you only the best about us," Tony says with a warning smile to tell Loki that, should he decide to make a more violent change to the night, he's prepared.
"Honestly I did not listen most of the time." Bullshit, Tony thinks but doesn't say. "He told me of adjusting to live with many people in such a small house."
"Small house?" Tony splutters, caught off guard despite himself. The Tower is a point of pride, no matter what Cap says about it. "This is huge, especially for New-" he cuts himself off at Loki's smirk. "Right. Castle. Royalty. I see your point."
"He mentioned the strangest quirks that he observed," Loki says, and somewhere in Tony's stomach, a knot rolls over. What was Thor thinking, talking about the team's personal lives to Loki? "He spoke of strange eating habits and even stranger sleeping habits. Is your chest supposed to be glowing?"
The question is so out of the blue that it takes Tony a second to realize a question was even asked. Heart racing, Tony looks down to see that, yes, he was wearing the black wife-beater, and yes, the arc reactor is completely visible through the thin shirt. He resists the urge to cover it up instantly to hide it from Loki's piercing gaze. He can't stop the hand from going up to the reactor in time, so he just lightly taps his fingers against it once and then forces his hand back down. He hopes that Loki doesn't notice, but those green eyes are fixed on every movement he makes.
"It's an energy source. I plug things into it," Tony says lamely. No way Loki missed that one. "Kind of a trade secret." Loki is looking at him skeptically and Tony gets up to refill his drink before he can shift under the scrutiny. "Want another?" he offers but Loki shakes his head, still studying the glow of Tony's chest. It makes him want to melt into the ground a little bit. "I gotta tell you, Reindeer Games, I'm not quite sure what kind of conversation you have with a trickster god-turned supervillian-turned trickster god. I'd ask what you've been up to, but I don't think I want to know."
"If you must know-"
"I really don't."
"-I have been doing perfectly normal things. I travelled the cosmos for a while until they finally learned of my escape on Asgard. I needed to lay low for a while-"
"Needed to remain…low key for a while?"
Loki pins him with a glare before continuing. "-so I returned to Earth. It will be the last place Thor would think to look for me. I need only wait out until Thor gets bored with his searching and then I can safely return to my travels."
"Wait a second. How long had you been out before they realized you were missing?"
Loki smirks and Tony wonders if he got onto a dangerous topic. "A few weeks."
"And how did you manage that?"
"I am quite adept at illusions. I merely placed one in the cell that looked and acted as I had. They discovered I was missing only after the illusion had no more power to sustain it."
Tony lets that process in his brain, filing it away for future reference, while he lets his mouth keep talking. "And how do I know you're not an illusion now?"
Loki raises a challenging eyebrow and extends a hand. "Would you care to come touch my skin and see for yourself?"
"You know, you promised not to throw me out any windows tonight, but I'd rather not push my luck."
"You didn't have nearly as much self-preservation last time we met," Loki says casually.
"Hey, I enjoy living!" Tony protests. It's an argument he's had too many times to care that he's having it with an enemy. Tony shrugs. "I just held the lives of half of Manhattan above mine."
This time Tony knows they're getting onto a dangerous topic. He knows better than to throw out accusations because Loki will no doubt accept them and then try to twist his words to make him look like the good guy. It won't work on Tony because he's done it too many times. Instead, it'll just make him angrier and, like he said seconds ago, while Loki promised not to throw him out windows, he really doesn't want test what control Loki has on his anger.
"How very noble of you," Loki drawls. "And did they thank you for their lives?"
"If I was in this for the thanks, I'd have quit a long time ago," Tony says, his tone careless, but his words careful. Definitely dangerous ground.
"Then clearly your half of Manhattan does not value their lives, if they will not thank you for it."
"And how many times have you thanked someone who saved your life?" Tony challenges. Loki's mask remains carefully in place.
"And you? How many times have you thanked someone?" Loki deflects.
"And meant it? Three times," Tony answers, throwing back another drink of whiskey, one more to hold back the memories. "And I still owe thanks to a shit ton of people," he says as he pours some chlorophyll into a clean cup. The Capsicle is on the top of that list. Fury isn't far behind, but even Pepper is betting that he'd thank Cap before Fury. "Want one?" he asks casually when Loki eyes his drink cautiously, like it's some kind of poison. Tony would laugh at irony of it—since it had kept him alive at one time—if the timing had been better.
"I did not expect such humility from one like you," Loki says with a raised eyebrow. He's trying to insult Tony, but he's always full of surprises.
"Well, like you said earlier, layers," he says, motioning to himself. "Just because we're not immortal doesn't mean we can't be complex."
"Your version of complex and mine are a little different," Loki says with a slight sneer. This conversation is not going well. Tony wonders where Jarvis has been this whole time and whether he'll respond if Tony suddenly decides he needs to call for back-up. "Complex cannot form in a mere 100 years."
"Oh, so you had a monochrome personality before you turned 100?" Tony asks. "Before 100, you were just a bouncing ball of happiness and then once 101 hit, you suddenly discovered that you could feel more than one thing at a time?" Loki's mouth draws into a tight line and Tony spectacles if it's him trying to get this conversation back under control or if he just scored a point. "Did you ever think that maybe this was a bad idea?"
"I have yet to see you call your team in," Loki challenges.
"Do I need to?" Tony asks back. "I was under the impression that you were here for talking only. Although, you are supposed to be the god of lies…"
As predicted, Loki's face tightens for a nanosecond before going back to his emotionless mask. Well then. The god didn't like being told that his promises meant shit. That was something.
"I assure you, I am here for peaceful means only," Loki says smoothly.
"I'd really rather it was a promise," Tony says blandly. Loki studies him for a second and Tony takes a drink of the chlorophyll to keep from shifting under the scrutiny.
"I promise that I shall not attack you on this night," Loki says. Tony's sure that Loki could find loopholes if he wanted to, but Tony will have to at least trust him this much if he wants this night to end peacefully. He tries to ignore the little part in his mind that's telling him this is all just a ploy to keep Loki here, to figure him out. Tony nods in acceptance.
"Alright then. Why did you really come here tonight?"
Loki raises an eyebrow at him. "To talk. The better question, I believe, is why have you let me stay here?"
"To talk," Tony responds almost instantly.
Loki's smile grows into delight. "I believe that the two of us could get along very well, Mr. Stark."
"I'm really not sure if that's a compliment or not."
"You are learning then. I must leave this night, but I shall return another night."
With that, Loki vanishes from the chair. Seconds later, Jarvis' voice came on. "It appears something blocked me from communication within the room, sir. Should I call the team?"
Tony has never regretted changing Jarvis' command to either wait until Tony told him to call S.H.I.E.L.D or wait until violence had actually broken out to call them. Otherwise, he'd be having a very awkward conversation right now.
"No, hold off on that Jarvis. Figure out what blocked you from the room. We should fix that."
"Of course, sir." There's a pause of silence. "Are you-"
"I know what I'm doing, Jarv," Tony says before he can finish. "I think."
"Of course, sir," Jarvis says again. "I was merely going to ask if you were aware that the experiment you were working on is seconds from exploding. I would hate to have to inform Ms. Potts that the fire department needed to be called. Again."
"Right. Got it. Back to work Jarvis!"
And yes. I have waited this long to make the "low-key" joke. I've wanted to soooo badly. And I know you all have been waiting for it. You're welcome.