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Trigger Warning: past abusive relationship, drug use

I don't own the Avengers or anyone therein.

Chapter 8
He wakes and doesn't open his eyes at first, fumbling a hand across the bed, until he hits a wall. He licks his lips, opening his eyes only a little. The wall is a soft pale blue colour and definitely not the tacky beige of the hotel room. It takes him a few minutes to process this, that the bed is much softer and more comfortable. He's awake (at least he thinks he's awake, he feels awake, the craving is eating at his insides and he's sweating even though he doesn't feel warm at all), but this is very clearly not where he had been hiding. He tries to remember the night before, but it's like reaching for mist.

He looks the other way and freezes. Tony. The older man is asleep in a chair he'd pulled by the bed, snoring softly, a book face down on his chest. How the hell did Tony find him? He sits up and tries to ease out of the bed, so he can slip past and hopefully out and get away. Maybe Tony would get the hint this time—Loki is nothing good for him.

A hand grabs his wrist and he looks back at Tony and meets sleepy brown eyes.

"Where do you think you're going?" Tony asks.

Loki licks his lips and is going to answer when he realizes that Tony's hand is touching his skin, bare skin of his right arm, he's in a t-shirt (not his) and boxers, that he's not wearing his clothes, and Tony can see his arm, has seen, because someone had to have changed him and in that moment he has never hated himself so much. He snatches his arm away, holds it to his chest, and looks away. He can't look Tony in the eye and he's shaking uncontrollably.

He never wanted Tony to know this.

"Loki."

He edges backward, until he can't go farther back, something—a dresser—pressing into his back. It feels like he's stepped slightly out of time with everything and his heart is racing and all he wants to do is tear open his veins and bleed until he's clean because maybe that will keep Tony from hitting him for this weakness he's found, maybe that will keep him from shouting and screaming and telling Loki how utterly worthless he is.

"Loki, look at me. Please." Tony's voice sounds like he's about to break; Loki can't help but look up. Tony doesn't look angry or frustrated. Just sad. "What do you want for breakfast?"

It takes him off-guard and he can't stop staring. Where's the disappointment and disgust? Maybe he just doesn't know what it looks like on Tony's face?

"Breakfast?" Loki echoes, voice barely above a whisper, afraid that if he makes one wrong move that everything will change.

"Yeah. Breakfast. You know, that thing you eat when you wake up?" There's a melancholy smile on Tony's lips.

"I… Not hungry. I want to go back to sleep. Leave me alone." He's watching, waiting on the something next.

"Then go back to sleep. I'll get you some pancakes." Tony knows he's lying, knows that Loki could eat a horse, but he's not yelling at Loki for it. He's… he's humouring Loki and Loki watches Tony get up and walk out of the room before he goes back to the bed. He buries himself in the blankets, curls into a pillow. At first it's just tears, but then the sobs come, heavy and breath-stealing and making his entire body ache and all his bruises feel like they have bruises on top of them.

XXXXXX

Why. It's the only thing Tony wants to ask but he doesn't because he doesn't want whatever lie Loki will come up with. He asks it with his eyes and isn't surprised he gets no answer. Loki doesn't even look him in the face most of the time.

XXXXXX

"I'm sorry," Steve tells Loki, later, when Loki is nothing more than a tiny curled up ball on the couch. Steve is almost certain the only reason Loki is there is because he's feeling too sore to move from where Tony had set him down last night. Tony had gotten a box of tissues for him before leaving for work that morning, but it's already half-empty.

Loki looks over at him, eyes half-glazed, pupils dilated; his face glistens with sweat and hair hangs lank around his face. His black eye is starting to go deep purple, but it isn't swollen shut anymore. He licks chapped lips before speaking.

"What?"

"I'm sorry. For saying you're a failure. You aren't, and it was out of line. And ugly of me, especially when I was the one encouraging you two to go out in the first place."

Loki just stares at him before letting his head drop back onto the arm of the couch.

"Okay."

Steve gets up to go to the kitchen to make something for Loki to eat. Soup, barley soup. He starts digging through the pantry and cabinets.

XXXXXX

Tony usually ends up sleeping wherever Loki sleeps. It's hard sometimes; sometimes he gets back and Loki is angry and tense and biting and can't sleep, won't sleep the entire night until literally an hour before Tony needs to get up and go into work. Sometimes Loki just tries to ignore him and hides under blankets and cries, and Tony will just sit there next to him, let him know he's there, one hand gently rubbing his back through the blanket. He tells work he's helping with a sick family member to explain why sometimes he's late when Loki is a huddled mess in the bathroom floor, unable to hold anything down, dry retching until the nausea passes, occasionally breaking down and begging Tony for more morphine in between the retching and sobbing; Tony won't leave him like that.

"How is he?" Pepper asks on the phone midway through a week Tony doesn't think he's going to forget any time soon.

"Twenty pounds lighter and calling me a torturer," Tony answers, because it's what he feels like when Loki looks at him with green eyes begging for a shot.

"How are you?" Pepper asks.

"Tired," and it's the truth but he laughs a little to try and make it not sound that way.

XXXXXX

Steve isn't quite sure how, but Tony had convinced Loki to eat something this morning, had him waiting in the kitchen when Steve got up. Loki just sits on the bar stool at the counter, head in his arms—Steve can count his ribs pressing tight against the flesh, see every twitch of muscle; if Loki had had fat it is gone now. It's been five days now, and it was sometime last night when they finally stopped having to camp near the bathroom or a bucket.

Steve makes him oatmeal with brown sugar, butter, and tiny little sugary dinosaurs because anything heavier is a risk at this point, but Loki deserves something a little sweet. Loki gets himself up, propping his chin on one arm, fiddling with the bowl of oatmeal, stirring it and getting spoonfuls and letting it drop back down, occasionally actually taking a bite. Steve watches him out of the corner of one eye while he makes himself a bowl of cereal.

"Why are you doing this?" Loki's voice is a little hoarse; when Steve got home last night Loki had been screaming at Tony about how much he wanted to die and why wouldn't Tony just let him already before bursting into sobs and running off to curl up in a tiny ball underneath the guest bed.

"Because Tony loves you."

"But you hate me." It's so matter-of-fact how he says it. Steve is left at a loss for a moment.

"I don't hate you, Loki," he finally says. "I'm a little envious of you, but I don't hate you. I… I love Tony; it's a shame that I don't make him that happy. But you do, and I do want to see him happy, even if it isn't with me." He feels better, actually saying it out loud for once.

Loki drops his spoon into his oatmeal, the dinosaurs half-melted colourful blobs, and pushes it away to set his head back in his arms.

"Tony doesn't love me. He loves the idea of me, he loves the person he met who hadn't been clean for nearly two years."

Steve just stares at Loki, dumbfounded. He has to remind himself that despite being able to eat (even a little), despite being past the worst of it, Loki's still crashing, still getting everything out of his system and that it's not just his body that has to detox. He has to resist the urge to shake Loki in an attempt to get him to see reason.

Tony might not know much about Loki, but the same is true in reverse.

"Loki," Steve keeps his voice level, calm, gentle. "Tony doesn't just give up his sleep and bed and comfort for every single drug-addicted person he happens to interact with. If he did we would probably need to just open a clinic. He loves you, or at least wants to love you, if you let him. He's having to fight against every urge to just give you what you crave because that's the easy way out and Tony has nearly always taken the easy way out. Tony doesn't fight, Loki. He hasn't, not until he carried you in here five days ago. He hasn't said it, because he's not very good at that, but he loves you."

Loki doesn't say anything in response, so Steve just takes a bite of his frosted mini-wheats.

"Eat some more of your oatmeal before it gets cold, Loki," he says with a sigh, not able to tell if he's getting through at all.

XXXXXX

The opening line of The Star-Spangled Banner hadn't even finished when Natasha dropped what she was doing and answered the call.

"What's up, Steve?"

"Natasha, I need to come home, please. I can't stay here anymore, please come get me. Please." His voice breaks some on the last word.

"Wait, Loki? Is everything okay? What happened?" Natasha readjusts the phone. Between Pepper and Steve she's kept a pretty good grasp on what's been happening and latest updates suggested Loki was mostly out of the woods. This does not sound out of the woods.

"They're both crazy and I don't know what to do and please come get me." Loki's sobbing, and she can just imagine him curled up in a corner of a room, knees hugged to his chest and crying.

"Okay. Okay. Hush. It'll be okay Loki. Get cleaned up and I'll be there soon, okay?"

"O-okay," Loki sniffles.