Tasha refuses to leave her house (her parents are away for the week or something) so they pack up and head to hers. By the time they get to Tasha's the pizza has gone cold and Clint gazes at it mournfully before Tasha reminds him that microwaves exist and he looks like he might kiss her (he doesn't which is probably a good move) and Tony feels sort of numb.
When they get into the kitchen they find it's not empty. Tony's eyes widen, "You."
Bucky frowns at him, "Yeah, I do live here, you know."
No, Tony didn't know. As evidenced by his surprise.
"Dude, how did you not know that?" Clint says, elbowing past him to get to the microwave.
"I don't exactly frequent Tasha's house, Clint." Tony snaps. In fact he's pretty sure he's never been here.
"Even I knew," Peter adds, helpfully.
"Leave, James." Tasha says, fixing him with a glare and adding a stream of Russian that makes him roll his eyes. Then James makes a face and leaves, thundering up the stairs. "He's my foster brother," Tasha supplies. "Lived her since he was thirteen."
Once the pizza is heated up they head up to Tasha's room and spread out across it; Bruce and Tasha sit on her bed, Tony and Peter take the low couch in her room and Clint situates himself just out of reach of all of them with the pizzas in his lap. For a few moments the only sound in the room is Clint happily munching away and Tony tries (and fails) to psych himself up to talk, but honestly, what is he meant to say? So guys, time to talk about our possibly dea- missing best friend, who wants to start?
Luckily, Tasha breaks the silence, "We've really got to stop pretending everything is all okay." She says quietly. "He's been gone four days, it's getting serious."
"He was his usual prissy self at school," Peter says with a small, fond half-smile. Tony doesn't like that smile, it reminds him too much of the one Howard has when he talks about Jarvis, their old butler. It makes something twist within him Loki's not dead, Loki's not dead, he's not.
"That's true," Bruce nods, "I mean he seemed fine to me. He was actually pretty happy."
Tony cuts off his brains helpful rendition of some fact he logged away an age ago. Loki wouldn't.
"Well," Clint says thickly through a mouthful pizza. "Something must have happened at home, right? Something big. And he ran? I mean Odin didn't kill him that guy was a douche but he loved his kids."
Tony was about to point out that Odin loved Thor but he knew it was a lie; he'd seen the way Odin looked at his younger son, full of regret and longing and love. It was the same way Howard looked at him in his rare sober moments; Bruce had once called it 'the universal gaze of father's who wished they could fix their relationship with their kids.'
"Do we know that he didn't?" Bruce asks quietly, everyone falls silent and turns to him. He fidgets nervously and looks down at his hands. "I mean they must have found something, some kind of evidence or they wouldn't have...I mean Odin's not exactly the kind of man you want to get on the bad side of." His cheeks colour and bows his head.
Again it's Tasha who breaks the silence. She puts a gentle hand on Bruce's back, "He wouldn't, okay? Odin was a dick but he loved Loki, like Clint said."
"If he ran away why wouldn't he have come to the tree house? Or at least called us?" Peter says, drawing his knees up to his chest. "That's what he usually does."
"Maybe he needed sometime alone."
"Four days is long enough," Tony mutters. "We need to find him."
"We will," Clint says, pushing away the empty pizza boxes.
Peter nods, "We need to talk to Thor, he was the last one to see him, right?"
"We won't be able to get into their house though," Tasha says pensively. "It'll be taped off as a crime scene now that they've accused Odin. I wonder why they did that..."
"I could hack in to the databases and see if I can get anything up," Tony says and even as he does so he laughs- it's ridiculous (this whole thing is ridiculous), but the idea that he'll be hacking in to police databases to investigate Loki's possible murder (also the fact that he can hack in to police databases (don't ask why he knows he can, seriously, don't)
"Good idea, so any ideas on where he might be then?"
They stay up till 2am talking about where Loki could be, why Loki could have left and one by one they fall asleep until Tony's left staring at the ceiling and trying to shift Peter off of his feet without waking him. He's not sure how the others are sleeping, he knows he couldn't; not with the images of Loki broken, Loki bleeding, Loki cold and still and stiff and-
He can hear Loki's voice in his head sometimes. That broken plea the younger boy had barely gotten out between his sobs, Please, Tony, please, I'm tired, I just want to go
He rolls over, away from the memory and kicks Peter off of him roughly (Peter still manages to sleep through it) and gets up, going to Tasha's door and padding down the hall. He finds the bathroom without too much trouble and splashes cold water on his face. It doesn't help much, his head is still a hurricane, a mess of emotions and Loki (and Tony's never been great with either of those things.)
When he leaves the bathroom he glances around Tasha's house. Aside from her room there are two others along the corridor, light spills out under one of the doors and Tony assumes its Bucky's room. He thinks about knocking but that's never been his style so he throws the door open dramatically making Bucky jump and turn to him with wide blue eyes.
"Fuck, Tony!" he hisses with a sigh of relief.
"Maybe later," Tony mumbles, doing his best to smile. "Can I come in?"
Bucky snaps shut the laptop he's sitting at and nods silently. Tony closes the door behind him. Bucky's room isn't particularly interesting; there are a few photos of him and his friends, a few of him with girls (which make Tony snigger because to the rest of the world Bucky Barnes is straight and it's sad and ridiculous all at the same time) a few band posters and clothes strewn around the place. Tony sits awkwardly on the bed and after a few minutes of silence Bucky joins him, watching him cautiously.
"They've arrested Thor and Odin," Tony says as if saying it to someone else will make it sound more real to his own ears. It doesn't.
Bucky ducks his head awkwardly. "I know. Steve told me." he says flatly. Then after a few more minutes he swallows and says, "Tony, I'm really, really sorry."
Tony knows he should say thank you but he doesn't. He snorts. "It's not your fault."
Bucky's watching him closely and he opens his mouth to say something, probably something about Loki and how it'll all be okay, and Tony doesn't want to hear it so he cuts him off. "I didn't know you were Tasha's brother."
Bucky looks thrown for a few seconds and then he says, "Its okay, not like we talk all that much anyway."
Tony nods, casts around for something else to say and doesn't find anything. Then the words slip out before he can catch them and choke them down. "If Loki's dead I don't know what I'll do." It doesn't sound broken or desperate, they sound bleak, emotionless, numb.
Bucky looks at him, really looks at him and his blue eyes look slightly wet, "Tony, I-"
Tony doesn't want to talk though so instead he grabs Bucky by his shirt front and kisses him hard. Another friend's brother.
"Lie to me," Tony mumbles against Bucky's mouth as he pushes the older boy backwards onto the bed. "Lie to me, tell me it'll all be okay, tell me everything's fine. Tell me nothing's wrong." He mouths down Bucky's neck and bites down on his shoulder.
Bucky gasps and arches. "It'll be okay. It'll be okay."
Tony closes his eyes and pretends they're back in the tree house before all this started and if Bucky starts whimpering a different name and Tony does too well, neither of them will say anything.