Tony doesn't like to be backstage. He prefers to be lost in the crowd in the sea of bodies and stale breath and smoke.
He takes his place at the front and waits. The opener, that stoner chick who he still doesn't like, should have been out fifteen minutes ago.
He feels like Loki's cut him open, played with his insides, and rearranged his heart and his lungs and all the rest however he wanted. He feels scrambled and sick and terrified. He's managed to find a pair of shoes and a shirt and he still feels so very, very naked.
Tony's standing with his arms wrapped around himself. He can't even begin to imagine what kind of a song Loki's written for him and thinking about it is steadily driving him insane. He feels the urge to smoke like a kick in the stomach.
He sees a guy standing a person away with a wiry shocking mass of red hair. He's wearing a purple dress and he's holding a cigarette like its a joint.
"Hey man," Tony tries for smooth but he can feel his voice shaking. "Can I bum one?"
"Sorry man, this's my last one."
Tony knows that, that is possibly the biggest lie in the universe. If someone dumps you by saying 'It's not you it's me' it's more likely that they are telling the truth than if they tell you that they're down to their last cig, so they can't give you one.
Tony returns to his silent corner, despite the fact that the space between three girls in bright pink wigs and a guy in a dress is not really silent, nor is it a corner.
Tony is going to claw his own eyes out.
He suddenly thinks that he's going to murder someone if he can't get some tobacco in his body. He's like a giant itch waiting for a single scratch.
"I can spot you babe." Says one of the pink ladies, and they do introduce themselves, but Tony doesn't try all that hard to remember their names. He takes a cigarette from one of them and proceeds to make sweet fiery love to it.
The talk to him but he doesn't really pay that much attention. They clamor for his attention and they register no more on his radar than some flies might. He might feel bad about this, if his sense for the dramatic wasn't screaming at him that his whole entire fucking life was about to change.
Knowing that Loki knew almost everything about him made waiting for this song a strange kind of torture. His innately human instinct to not be naked in public is banging its head against the floor and screaming at him to run before it's too late.
When a tall man in jeans and plaid comes out on the stage it takes Tony a second to believe that it's Loki.
His dark hair is pulled back in a pony tail and he hasn't got shoes on. His feet are long and white and beautiful like the rest of him and Tony finds himself wishing that the man would go barefoot more often instead of his usual brightly colored boots and heels.
He hasn't got an ounce of make up on, and Tony can make out faint scars around his thin lips, like someone had sewn them shut.
Tony is captivated by them.
He feels like he's never actually seen Loki's face before, and realizes how strange that is all things considered.
The crowd is paying no attention to the normally dressed guy on stage, they probably assume he's working tech or something, and Tony doesn't understand how they can't see.
Loki's long, thick dark hair is pulled behind his ears and Tony wants to run his hands through it.
It's not until Loki's sat in front of two microphones and Wendy is brought out and sat in his lap that Tony realizes what is about to happen.
"Hello, Darling." Says Loki and the crowd's momentary shocked silence hits Tony like a slap across the face.
"Now, before panic starts, the opener for the tour, Mizandrine Walber, has had to skip back across the pond, so I'm going to play a little something for you before the real show starts."
The overjoyed wails and hollers of the crowd seem to shake the building.
"This is an old Jaques Brel composition called 'Port of Amsterdam', to start." Says Loki before clearing his throat and beginning to strum.
In the port of Amsterdam
There's a sailor who sings
Of the dreams that he brings
From the wide open sea
His voice is soft and as his fingers strum and make the proper chords Tony feels his mouth go dry. He feels like Loki's wasted in his usual bombastic spectacles, when he can sit and sing a simple song with such honest feeling that it's even more captivating-
"Awww! He's crying!" Squeals one of the Pink Ladies and the next thing he knows they are all hugging him and murmuring comforting things and telling him that he's adorable. Tony wishes that they would shut up and leave him alone.
He knows that he's adorable.
It's kind of his bread and butter, really.
He looks back up at Loki and sees him smirking at him and suddenly Tony remembers that Loki's song for him is looming out on the horizon, poking out of the water like a shark fin the size of a sail and teeth the size of human forearms.
Loki plays song after song after song. He plays 'Sell Me A Coat' with a jaunty grin , and 'In The Heat of the Morning' with the same. He plays obscure Beatles songs and well known old blues standards with pained warbling twists. He plays a couple of his band's own songs with various twists.
Tony feels like he's stalling just to kill him slowly.
The crowd is still clapping when Loki's dangerous grin softens into something else entirely.
"Now, this last song is something very, very new."
The audience's excitement is palpable.
"I wrote it yesterday and finished it this morning."
Tony thinks his heart has stopped.
"It's about someone I met on tour."
The audience's oooo's and ahhhh's feel like sticks and stones. Aimed straight at Tony's bones.
"A beautiful boy."
The audience goes completely insane. Tony suddenly can pinpoint every gay man in the room, simply because half of them are crying and the other half are comforting the crying ones. Most of them are holding hands.
There aren't as many as he'd thought.
"It's called The Ballad of Roman Red and Deifiction Serene."
Deifiction?
Tony wonders if Loki has invented a word for him. It sure as hell sounds like it. Then he realizes that, since Loki thinks he's Italian, he would probably be Roman Red and That Loki would be Deifiction Serene. In which case, that means Loki has invented a new word in the English language solely to describe himself.
Which is pretty fucking typical.
Pre-owned words wouldn't be shiny enough for him.
Tony smiles.
Loki clears his throat and begins to strum.
Stormy: Loooooookkkkiiiiiiiiiiiiii. I read some of the first book and Edward was kind of a hilarious sarcastic dick, but most of it was so boring that I couldn't even finish it. Also, the language is grotesque. A dead Edward is a good Edward in my book though.
Master: Thank you so much. That means a lot. I take everything I write really seriously and do my best to create something unique and beautiful and it makes me happy when people appreciate it. Also, in regards to your question, I haven't made it concretely explicit.
hulky: Thank you kindly!
FGS: Yeah, I'm kind of a great big bag of dicks sometimes, but my chapters are kind of what they are. Some come out of me around this length, and occasionally they are even longer, and some are just short. It tends to make people really angry when they are short, which I'm not gonna lie, I kind if enjoy. And I suppose I will have to find some other place to peddle my love than your writing utensils. Damn and Blast.
Sha-Lin: You're doing fine at reviewing, so relax. I haven't really read any frostiron in awhile, as Destiel and 00Q are swallowing my life, but I remember loving Xr Rre by Felicity G Silvers particularly. I've also always found the majority of the Loki/Tony Stark tag on Ao3 pretty solid. Occasionally there's a bad one, but that's just life.
siezure7: Oh my god. Thank you so much. I've seen you on tumblr all over the frostiron tag and I'm glad to finally talk to you. I'm glowing like a pregnant woman. I swear.
FGS: AH YOU'RE A SOUTHERN BELLE. That's so legit. I dig southern accents. Especially the New Orleans accent. I've been there a few times and every time I pick up the accent on accidentally-on-purpose. And Tony has so many problems.
xD: Thank you!
Loki'd: I just meant that he bolts from the cab. Not like the country or anything. Haha.