He remembers the key code to the Phoenix house on the first try, opening the door to a dim foyer and the strong smell of Pine-Sol. As soon as the light flicks on, Loki pushes past him and takes off down the hall to the right.
"If you-" is all Tony has time to say before Loki cuts him off.
"Shower."
"Are you sure that's a good-"
This time, Tony cuts himself off, stopping both mid-sentence and mid-stride before Loki has a chance to shoot him one of those classic 'you are an insufferable cretin' looks. (Loki does so anyway.) If the God of Assholes wants to have a shower despite the fact that he hasn't healed at all and is once again dripping blood everywhere he goes, well, he's a grown man... er... pagan deity... and who's Tony Stark to stop him?
No, Tony Stark has run out of fucks to give for the time being. Tony Stark is just going to shake his head and walk in the other direction, because Tony Stark is exhausted and mentally drained and needs a drink. Or five. Five drinks sounds good.
His hands tremble as he grabs a bottle of scotch and a shot glass from the liquor cabinet. To say it's been a long and stressful night would be an understatement along the lines of saying the Titanic hitting that iceberg was a minor miscalculation. He throws back his first drink, and his second, and pours a third before moving to the kitchen table and sagging into a chair. Third drink goes down. The fourth follows.
How long he sits at the table, listening to the clock tick and feeling the scotch tingle its way through his system... he doesn't even know. Maybe ten minutes. Maybe half an hour. He just needs to clear his head and forget about a couple dozen things. He needs to push all that aside to let his mind wander and unwind, meandering from one pointless thought to another. Anything but the reality of what happened with Thor. Anything to make him feel normal again, remembering movies he saw as a kid and songs he hasn't heard since the early 90s. "The Watcher In The Woods". That was a good movie. Freaked the hell out of him when he was ten, and didn't he used to have a copy on VHS? What happened to that? Come to think of it, what happened to all the shit he used to have: CDs, tapes, records, that ice cream pail full of his mom's old 45s? The green steel case full of his dad's even older 78s, and the variable speed player that went along with it? Yeah, the one with the microphone he could plug in to sing along with Duke Ellington, sitting in the corner of his bedroom, six years old and wearing pajamas printed with rocket ships... Where the hell did all that stuff ever go?
Pepper would know. Pepper probably boxed it up and shipped it off to a storage container somewhere. Pepper...
Slowly, first folding his arms, then lowering his head, Tony leans down to rest on the table. Don't think about Pepper. Back to movie nostalgia. Safer. Remember that time when you were thirteen and dad let you rent "Heavy Metal" from Video Knights because he thought it was just a cartoon?
He had a well worn, illegally dubbed tape of that, too, somewhere. The misleading orange and white office file label on the end said 'Flintstones TV Special' in red pen block letters. Funny how you can picture something so exactly in your mind's eye even after thirty years.
Maybe, if he concentrates hard enough, he can will himself back to 1983, when the toughest thing he had to worry about was his GPA. He hated being a kid back then. He hated being dependent, constantly having to answer to somebody else and follow the rules. But now? Right now, he's sure he'd give anything in the world to have parents who could step up, take charge, and tell him what to do.
(Not that Howard 'n' Maria would have any better luck in dealing with Loki, but at least the matter would be out of his hands. Also, watching that interaction would probably be good for a few laughs.)
He lifts his head. The clock above the pantry says it's 6:42 in the morning. Shit. He needs some sleep. In a normal bed. In a normal bedroom. In a normal house with normal things like a running water and electricity and locks on the door and a microwave and an idyllic farmyard painting on the wall and an overstuffed leather sofa in front of a wide-screen TV. And no predatory thunderstorm overhead. All normal. A normal existence. Yeah. That's what he needs.
His fingers skim over the fringe on the faux Navajo placemat as he stands. Normal. That's the kind of thing normal people have. Normal people have tacky table settings and shot glasses shaped like cowboy boots. The shot glass fits nicely in his hand, and in his pocket. A little reminder sitting against his hip. Normal.
When he takes a deep breath, he feels a bit better. Calmer, at least. Definitely calmer. All the bad memories of the last two days are locked away behind a nice, clean curtain of scotch, getting blurrier already. Things are returning to normal. Normal house, normal neighborhood, normal city. Normal life.
Just one little abnormality he needs to check on before he can sleep.
The door to the bathroom at the end of the hall is closed, but the sliver of light spilling out from the bottom tells him Loki's still in there. Shower's no longer running. Tony knocks at the door.
"Loki?"
An answer comes in the form of a noncommittal grunt: "Nn."
"You doing okay? Need anything before I go to bed?"
"Nn."
"Can I come in for a sec?"
"Nn."
"...Was that a yes or a no?"
"Nn."
Okay then. He'll just run on the assumption that 'nn' is Asgardian for 'whatever'. The door isn't locked, nor is there any invisible force holding it shut. Carefully, hesitantly, Tony pushes it open. If he gives Loki ample chance to magically slam it in his face, he can't really be intruding, right?
The first thing he notices after leaning in for a peek is how the air in the bathroom is so cold he can see his breath. The second thing he notices is the Frost Giant sitting in his bathtub.
The Frost Giant snarls, baring sharp, gray fangs, which would probably be terrifying if it weren't holding a bottle of bright yellow shower gel in one hand and a lavender washcloth in the other.
"...Oh," says Tony. That's all. Just 'oh'. He could probably expand on that if he tried, but really, 'oh' is a pretty accurate representation of how he feels: 'WTF' crossed with 'I'm so done with this shit and no longer care'.
So much for normal.
"What do you want?" asks the Frost Giant. The question is underscored by a low, rumbling growl in its throat.
"Nothing much," Tony answers, trying to sound casual. Which is, surprisingly enough, a lot easier than he thought it might be. Yeah, talking to a large blue extraterrestrial monster is no big deal. He should probably thank a special kind of open-mindedness honed on hours of Star Trek reruns for that. "Just, you know, checking in. Wanted to see how you're doing. But you look, um... Actually, you look pretty good."
If the Frost Giant had eyebrows, it would be raising them right now. But what he said is the truth: it... no, Loki (Tony needs to remember that 'it' is nothing more than a new variety of cool-mint Loki, now thirty percent larger, for a limited time only) looks pretty good. Or at least better, in a no-longer-bleeding-profusely kind of way. The gash on his chest has scabbed over, and the bathtub water is clear. No more blood.
"You found a way to fix yourself up?"
"Jotun bodies heal quickly," says Loki. It still sounds like he's growling.
"Huh. Well, guess it's as good a solution as any."
Now, speaking in a purely practical sense, Tony should probably back away slowly, make a polite exit, and go to bed. Leave the frozen alien alone. That would be the smart thing to do. The normal, safe thing to do. The scientific thing to do, though...
He flips down the toilet seat lid and sits, Loki tracking his every move with deep-set crimson eyes. Staring. Growling. Though Tony's starting to suspect that the growl isn't so much a warning or intimidation tactic as it is simply the way Jotuns sound when they breathe. And that scowling glare isn't really anger or annoyance, but just the way Jotun faces usually look. He hopes.
It's hard to say whether or not any hint of the Loki he knows is hiding behind those grim alien features. Maybe in the straight line of his nose or the curve of his jaw. Almost certainly in the way he narrows his eyes and gives Tony that long-suffering look. The rest, though, is so foreign: sharp and severe, every ridge of every bone prominently exaggerated. Rough, gray-blue skin stretches taut over lean muscle. Not one speck of softness, just harsh angles and hard planes. And those bright, gleaming red eyes.
"Why do you stare at me?" Loki asks in a voice rumbles and cracks like grating ice.
"I'm curious and, at the moment, just tipsy and sleep-deprived enough to have all the social skills of a small child."
Loki's jaw might tighten. His eyes might narrow a little more. The cold and brittle rigidity of his Jotun face makes these little emotional nuances hard to detect. Then, after a moment, he turns away with nothing more than a dismissive "Hm." He dunks his frozen washcloth in the water to thaw it, breaks up the ice that's formed around his legs and waist, and resumes his bath.
Tony stares. Nuts to being polite and averting his gaze; he doubts even the Queen of England would be able to maintain proper etiquette when faced with the opportunity to watch an enormous, frosty space man bathe. He stares as Loki squeezes the washcloth over his shoulder, water droplets turning to ice upon contact with his skin. And he stares as a glob of yellow shower gel freezes into something close to solid soap in Loki's hand.
"You know," he says, "I'm trying to decide which is weirdest: you taking a bath despite the water constantly turning to ice around you, just the general concept of you taking a bath at all in this form, or the thought of Frost Giants using shower gel."
"I dislike being covered in blood," Loki replies.
"But you like being covered in... what the hell is 'Tropical Sunburst'?"
"Yes."
Tony nods. "Okay. Scratch the question. That is definitely weirdest."
But maybe even Frost Giants enjoy smelling like coconut and flowers. So Tony stares again, this time as Loki coats his skin with frozen gel and washes it away with shards of ice. Ice on blue skin. Limbs awkwardly angled and cramped in a bathtub that's been designed for a much smaller species. It's still no less weird even after taking in the sight of that strange body.
Loki's face, back, chest, shoulders, arms, legs, and all other parts Tony can see are covered in the fine, raised lines he saw back in Texas. Too perfect and symmetrical to be scars. Too fluid and organic to be anything but a natural part of his body, like the intricate markings on a butterfly's wings. Natural decoration.
"Do all Jotuns have the same lines, or are they different from person to person?"
"Somewhat different, in small ways," says Loki. "As far as I know. The lines are similar but not identical. Why are you still staring at me?"
"Because I've already memorized the pattern on the floor tiles and you're easily the second most interesting thing in this bathroom. Can I touch your skin?"
Loki turns to look at him sharply. "Why would you want to do that?"
"Um, I think the question you should be asking is, 'why wouldn't I want to do that?' You're a giant blue alien. You look really cool. No pun intended. I'm assuming you'd feel like a frozen lizard, but my scientific mind wants to know for sure."
He doesn't wait for Loki's answer before raising his hand, though he does let it hover, inches from Loki's upper arm, at a safe distance. Loki, still fixing him with that prickly gaze, gives him no leave to continue, but nor does he pull away. He just stares. Unblinking. Wary, but... not opposed? Or so Tony hopes, as he leans forward to close the gap between them and his fingertips meet Loki's skin.
At first, it feels no different than touching a rock coated in frost. Frigid. Rough. Hard. Then it bites. Loki's skin radiates bitter cold, not content to just subtly freeze on its own, but full of what feels like a malicious intent to suck the warmth out of everything around it and turn the world to ice. Just from that tiny scrap of contact, the heat drains from Tony's hand, past his wrist, and halfway up his arm. He jerks his hand back; the pad of one of his fingers is already white and numb. "Jesus Christ," he says, shaking his hand to try to circulate some warm blood through it. His entire arm now feels like he dunked it in a barrel of ice water. "That's... that's nothing like a frozen lizard."
"You should not have done it," Loki says quietly.
"I regret nothing," Tony replies. Which isn't totally accurate. He kind of regrets the part where Loki's cold started to seep up his arm, because now it's reached his shoulder and the top of his chest and he can't stop shivering. He grabs a towel down from the shelf above the toilet and wraps it around himself like a blanket. That's a little better. "Though to be honest, it feels worse than touching metal in the dead of a New York winter. Do you think if I licked you, my tongue would stick?"
The look Loki gives him at that says, very clearly, Tony Stark, are you on fucking crack?
He may need a better brain-mouth filter. "Sorry. I tend to think out loud a lot of the time, and to be honest, I bet less than half of my thoughts are actually intelligent."
Loki nods. Then pauses to break up the bathwater ice that's formed around him again. Then says, "I think you are very intelligent."
"Well obviously, yeah, overall, 'intelligent' is a gross understatement, but-" Hang on. "...Did you just say something nice to me?"
"It is true. You are perhaps the most intelligent person I've ever met."
Did he stumble into the Twilight Zone? Did he fall asleep at the wheel and crash the Durango, leaving him in a coma-dream somewhere? Did Thor actually succeed in killing him, and now he and Loki are stuck in some kind of backwards purgatory where nothing makes sense? "But... you're being nice to me."
"Why would I not be nice to you?" Loki asks, accompanied by a gesture that might be the Jotun equivalent to a shrug. "We are friends."
"Yeah but..." He gives his head a shake. "I figured we were the kind of dysfunctional friends where I constantly complain about how weird you are, and you always threaten to tear my skin off."
"I would not tear your skin off," says Loki. And he stares at Tony with a snarling expression that's hard as rock (because that's just how Jotuns look all the time, apparently) but also... There's something unexpectedly sympathetic in his red eyes. "That is nothing more than an empty threat."
Okay. "...Thanks. Um. Are you..." He pauses to rake his hair back, because really, what the hell is going on? "I mean, did you... Did Thor hit you really hard in the head or something? Are you confused? Do you have a concussion? You're acting strange and it's kind of worrying. Are you trying to lull me into a false sense of security in preparation for something worse later?"
"No."
"But if you were, you'd still say that, wouldn't you?" Yeah, he would. Because Loki is, by nature, a sneaky SOB who's probably just trying out a new way to screw with Tony's mind. Well, good luck. Tony's on to his tricks. And that's what this is. Just another trick. It has to be.
"Are you hungry?" he asks, quick to change the subject. "I don't know if I am or not. I was hungry about four hours ago when I wanted to stop at that all-night diner and you wouldn't let me, back when you were still an asshole, but now I might be past hunger. I might be too tired. Really, I should..."
"You should go to bed," Loki agrees.
"Yeah, I'll let you finish your bath," says Tony. The tub's full of more ice than water now; how Loki can even move in it is a mystery. Maybe he's one with the ice or some other such metaphysical bullshit. Who knows. Standing, Tony pulls off his towel cape and chucks it over the back of the toilet. "I need to sleep. When I wake up, though, everything better be back to normal."
"I will return to my usual form," Loki assures him.
"No, I meant 'normal' as in 'you stop being nice to me'. The Frost Giant, I can live with. It's the niceness that weirds me out. So when I wake up, you'd better be a dick again."
Slowly, Loki drops his head to the side, looking up at Tony from beneath the sharp ridge of his blue-gray brow. "Tony Stark, I do not mean to-"
"You better be a dick again. That's all I'm gonna say. Because unless you're rolling your eyes and telling me to shut up before you pull out my guts with your bare hands and strangle me with my own intestines..." He pauses in the doorway to look back at Loki. "I'm worried about you, buddy."
ooo
It's a little after three when Tony wakes up. Afternoon sunlight slants in through the blinds at exactly the right angle to catch his eye; he blinks, groans, and lifts a hand to cover his face. He'd had this thought, right before falling asleep, that it'd sure be nice to wake up feeling refreshed and rested for once. Apparently that's too much to ask. He still feels like he hasn't slept in days.
Sometime in the last couple of hours Loki must've decided to leave the bathroom, because there he is, lying on the bed at Tony's side. Regular Loki. Human-ish Loki. Loki wearing, once again, nothing but a towel. The sight's almost enough to ignite a spark of optimism that maybe, just maybe, the horrific insanity of the past two days is over and they can now settle down into the tolerable craziness of Atlantic City once again.
Only Loki's now marked with a long and jagged scar, running in a deep line from a few inches below his collar bone to just above his left hip. A glaring reminder of everything that's happened. It looks painful still: dull red and edged with bruises. Loki's shoulders are curved inward to protect his injury, his whole body cautiously tense around it. But his face is nothing but peaceful in sleep. Eyes softly closed, lips slightly parted. The sunbeam catching fiery highlights in his dark hair as it spills across the pillow.
This isn't the God of Mischief. Not the god of anything, not right now. Not an enemy, not a threat, not a destructive alien or giant or sorcerer... Not a psychotic murderer. Just Loki. Just a normal person. Normally sleeping. Gentle and serene. His shoulder rises and falls with each slow breath like anybody else's.
Without even thinking, Tony lifts his hand to brush aside a stray curl from Loki's face. Loki's eyes flicker open at the touch.
"Sorry," says Tony, immediately pulling his hand away. "I was just... seeing if you were asleep."
"By prodding me in the eye?"
He nods. "Yes." Because that's a hell of a lot less embarrassing than admitting what he was actually doing.
A grunt of annoyance huffs its way up from Loki's throat and he rolls over, turning his back on Tony.
"Wait a sec, was that an exasperated snort I just heard?" Tony asks, propping himself up on one arm as he leans forward. "Did you just exasperatedly snort at me?"
Loki actually growls, sounding uncannily like his former Jotun self. "I'll do far worse than make sounds at you if you don't shut your mouth and stop bothering me when I'm trying to sleep."
With a growing grin, Tony climbs out of bed. "Welcome back, asshole."
He yawns his way down the hallway to the kitchen, one hand absently scratching over the growth of stubble on his face. When's the last time he shaved? Yesterday? No, he didn't bother. Saturday? Friday. It was Friday morning. Awesome. Nothing like letting yourself go for three days to really drive home the point about being on the run with a wanted fugitive. He'll just pencil 'personal grooming' into this afternoon's schedule. Right after 'eat a lot of food' and 'shower for at least twenty minutes'.
There's nothing in the fridge except condiments, a pack of tortillas, and what might be the dried up husk of a lemon. The freezer, apart from a bag of peas and some mystery meat in a Ziplock, offers only tray upon tray of ice cubes so old they're covered in a thick layer of frost. Pantry: stale crackers, canned corn, four different bottles of oil, and an entire shelf of spice jars and only spice jars.
All of this points to delivery pizza. Something with multiple kinds of meat, cheese, and grease. Comfort food brought straight to his front door in a slightly soggy box by a weasel-faced man who claims to have no change for a fifty.
"Why would you care about a handful of paltry human dollars?" Loki asks when Tony complains about it.
"I don't care about the money, but the principle of the..." He stops himself right there. Miniscule problems seem a lot tinier somehow when talking to Loki. Nobody wants to be 'that guy': the one who wasted a god's time bitching about being ripped off to the tune of a whole thirty bucks. "No, you're right, I don't actually give a shit. Anyway, sit up. Let's eat this while it's still kind of hot."
He sits on the edge of the bed next to Loki, setting the open pizza box between them. Loki leans over to investigate with a suspicious sniff. "It looks terrible."
"You only say that because you're an anti-American, freedom-hating communist. Come on. Give it a try."
He must be hungry, because he sniffs it again. Probably starving, even, after who knows how many days of no food. With an look that seems bent on conveying the idea that he's only doing this for Tony's benefit, as a favor, (not because he' starving and desperate enough to stoop to eating inferior Earth food, oh no) his fingers reach down in pincer formation to pluck a single piece of green pepper from the top of the pizza. Eyes locked on Tony's, he lifts it to his mouth. And immediately spits it back out again with a sound of disgust. "That's terrible!"
"Well yeah, you picked the worst part," says Tony. "Green peppers only on there so we can lie to ourselves about this being a balanced meal. Try the-"
"No. I don't like your food."
Tony tries not to sigh in frustration. Really. "Then what do you like? Stop being such a whiny food martyr and tell me what you want to eat. I'll get it. I can get you literally any kind of food in the world, but you have to tell me."
Loki leans back against the headboard, and the way he crosses his arms indicates he has no intention of ever dropping his whiny food martyr act. "I like... simple food," he finally says. "Meat and cheese and bread and-"
"This is meat and cheese and bread," Tony interrupts, gesturing down at the pizza. "You've just described, with perfect accuracy, exactly what a pizza is."
"It has a strange taste. The sauce is unpleasant. I prefer subtler, natural flavors."
"Says the man who drinks box after box of Hi-C. But sure, fine. For dinner I'll order Chinese. You can have steamed white rice with nothing on it."
"Fine," Loki agrees, looking pointedly away.
"Fine!" Tony grabs a slice of pizza and crams it roughly into his mouth. It's amazing, really, how Loki can get him so riled up over absolutely nothing in seconds flat. Straight from zero to want-to-punch-in-face, and all he has to do is... not eat his lunch. Asshole. "You know what I told you earlier about being normal and acting like a dick?" he says to Loki through a mouthful of cheese. "I retract that statement. I liked you way better as a Frost Giant. It was a huge improvement on your personality."
"That's only because Jotnar are painfully stupid and easily suggestible," Loki sneers.
"I disagree," says Tony. "You told me I was the smartest person you knew. Obviously a being of superior brain power would recognize intelligence in others."
"Stupid," Loki repeats. "Slow. Idiots, all of them. Giant, thick-skulled heads entirely void of critical thought."
"Even you?"
"Yes, even me. One of the reasons I hate that form is due to a very real fear that one day I will shift and then not have the sense to return. Fighting Thor, I shifted back completely by accident when the circumstances changed and my moronic Jotun self hazily remembered that he can use magic. As soon as I call the magic back, my body shifts by default into this form. Today, though... I only shifted back because you told me to. If you hadn't said anything, I'd likely still be sitting in the bath stuck on stupid Jotun thoughts about killing things and mating."
And that's when Tony feels his breath hitch. "I see. So, just so I know for future reference... When I was in the bathroom with you, was I in danger of being killed or, um...?"
"No." Laughing like the slimy jackass he is, Loki smirks. "No, you were never in danger, Tony Stark. Jotnar are also overzealous in their loyalties, and my Jotun self seems to be under the impression that you are his greatest friend in the world. Had anyone else appeared there's a good chance I would have eaten them, but not you. Also," he adds, like an afterthought, "you are hideously unattractive through Jotun eyes. So there would be no attempts at mating, either."
He's pretty sure he's never been thankful for being called 'hideously unattractive' before, but hey, there's a first time for everything. "What do I look like through Jotun eyes?"
"Like food," says Loki, completely unapologetic. "A neat little package of warm meat with no hard shell or spines or even hair to protect you. Jotnar can see heat. They can see the sparkle of blood pulsing through your veins, the dark contraction of muscles beneath your skin, the glow of tender organs... You look like layer upon layer of nice, soft, edible parts."
An unwelcome chill slides down Tony's back, ending up somewhere near his soft, edible parts deep inside as gray fangs flash through his memory. He sets his pizza aside. "Okay. Um. That was very detailed and... disturbing and... Thank you for not eating me, I guess."
"You're welcome," says Loki. And he picks up Tony's discarded pizza slice, tearing off a little pinch of crust to pop into his mouth.
Tony can only shake his head. "Why is it that talking about eating my internal organs is the only thing that makes you show the least bit of interest in food?"
"Let me tell you a story," Loki says. He pulls the rest of the crust off the piece of pizza, careful to remove any hint of sauce, and takes a bite. "I was not terribly interested in food on Asgard, either. When I was a child, mother would have fits trying to convince me to eat anything at all. All I would tolerate with any sort of regularity was mushrooms, so we had mushrooms at every meal and I put up a great fuss while she tried to stuff bits of meat and bread down my throat. That slowly changed as I grew older, but I never enjoyed eating or cared for food as some others did. It was an unpleasant chore. Until one day... Thor went out on his first hunt. His first time riding with our father's men. When he came back, he told me in horror that they had made him eat the heart of the stag they killed. Fresh and still warm, straight from the beast's body, it was a rite of passage into manhood that he eat the heart."
Loki chooses this moment to pause and take another bite of pizza crust. Tony feels his jaw involuntarily tighten.
"Thor actually cried about it. In private, of course, where nobody else could see, he sniveled like a maiden on my shoulder over how he had watched that poor stag die and then choked down its bloody heart, trying not to vomit. And do you know what I thought? I thought, 'Goodness, Thor, you are one weak little boy, to bawl like this over having to eat the heart of an animal.' That hardly sounded so terrible to me. In fact it sounded... perfectly natural. I thought about it, over and over. I played the scenario in my mind. I imagined what it would be like to taste blood on my tongue and feel raw muscle tear between my teeth. I thought about it every day, at every meal, until it was my turn to go on my first hunt, and my turn to eat the stag's heart while father's men stood laughing and jeering in a circle, certain I would gag and fail and dishonor myself. But I ate the heart. And they cheered. And I ate the liver as well, and they cheered more. And I ate the kidney, and they fell silent... and the tongue, just to tease them... No one spoke a word as we returned to the palace with a torn-up stag carcass and me covered in blood. Father was so upset over what I had done, though he refused to tell me why. At the time, I assumed it was because he was siding with Thor, who was furious at me for showing him up. Now I know better. Which reminds me of a similar story."
"No," Tony says quickly. "That's okay. One story's good." He holds out his hands, a pleading gesture, because he's pretty sure he doesn't want to hear any more of this. Coming from anyone else, a story about eating raw animal innards might make a guy cringe, but from Loki it's disturbing. Beyond disturbing. Because Loki means every word that he says, and he says them so coldly.
Loki ignores him, launching straight into the next tale. "Thor and I once went to Jotunheim with father."
"No," Tony repeats. "I don't really want to hear any more of your stories."
"But of course you do," Loki replies with a thin smile. "Isn't that why we're here? You want me to talk to you. You want me to tell you things. You want me to tell you about the Tesseract, of course, and the Chitauri, and perhaps we will get to those later. But you also want to know why I'm even here on your dull little planet, and why I would bother bringing my army to enslave you all instead of simply grabbing the Tesseract and moving on to bigger and better worlds. You want to know what I'm thinking, and you want to know all about my poor hurt feelings, because you think that if you can only understand my point of view you'll be able to convince me that I've made a terrible mistake and I need to turn my life around."
His eyes bore into Tony's like a flame. Not searching, just staring. Challenging. Tony stares right back, waiting for Loki to add something more. Nothing comes.
"Sure," Tony finally says. Voice quiet. As if he can force some measure of control over the conversation by making Loki work to hear him. "You seem to have spent a lot more time thinking about this than I have, so you're the boss. Go ahead; tell me stuff. It just better be relevant to me wanting to Holy Savior your ass or whatever it is you think I'm doing." He picks up a new slice of pizza. A tiny, deliberate, totally pointless act of defiance.
"Everything I say is always relevant, Tony Stark. Why would I say it if it weren't?"
Because you're the God of Lies and you enjoy orchestrating chaos, a voice in Tony's head answers. "Because you're-" he almost repeats, but catches himself. "Never mind. Relevant away."
So Loki begins the story again. "Thor and I once went to Jotunheim with our father. It was some pointless political visit: father would negotiate terms of the ongoing peace treaty with the Jotnar, Thor and I would stand there looking pretty and doing nothing, like little trophies. During this visit we attended a court banquet, which was depressingly awkward as Laufey, the Jotun king, tried his best to emulate the customs of Asgard and eat off of plates while sitting at a table instead of having everyone rip their food apart on the floor like animals. And do you know what Jotun food is?"
That's something Tony can guess easily enough. Unfortunately. "...Raw meat..."
"Very good," Loki says with a sharp and entirely unfriendly grin. "You're paying attention. Yes, raw meat. So dark it was nearly black, slimy with blood... just bowls of meat and entrails. And fungus. Odd mushrooms and lichens are all that grow on Jotunheim, apart from a few stunted trees. Thor turned gray at the sight of it – I knew exactly what he was thinking – and father gave us one of his looks. The 'you do one thing to embarrass me and I will thrash you' look. I watched as he stoically lifted one piece after another to his mouth, and watched as Thor tried to do the same, but choked on it. Then I happily ate everything I was given, and took more when it was offered. Laufey beamed with pleasure at the sight of prince of Asgard enjoying his hospitality. Father seemed happy this time, and Thor... Well, Thor was angry at me for showing him up again, and tried to eat his share, and was sick later. And do you know what the odd thing was?"
Tony shakes his head, and Loki closes his eyes.
"I never once wondered why I was different. I never even thought to ask, why could I eat their food, when Thor, who was so clearly superior to me in every measurable way, gagged to even look at it? Why did I prefer it? Those thoughts never crossed my mind. I never wondered why I had an easier time than Thor in reading Jotun emotions, or why I could look at them without flinching in disgust, or why, when I was a child, I suffered every night through dreams of ice and frost and dark cold so consuming it felt like I was being frozen from the inside out... I would wake up shivering, unable to move. And I never wondered why. I never... If that's not proof of Jotun stupidity..."
"I wouldn't call it 'stupid' to not-" Tony tries to say, but Loki silences him with a hiss.
"Let me finish, Tony Stark," Loki snaps. "Let me tell you how Laufey died."
Okay. Tony sets aside his pizza and slides over on the bed so he can sit facing Loki, straight on, and folds his hands in his lap. If this is what Loki wants to talk about, if this is relevant...
It is. He can see that in the low fire smoldering in Loki's eyes.
"I killed him," Loki finally says. "After Thor was banished, I lured him into Asgard, and he was stupid enough to follow. All I needed do was promise him a chance at revenge against Odin, and he followed me like a dog. He and his warriors. Idiots. All of them. If they had a single functioning brain between them they would have taken me hostage and tried to ransom me back to Asgard for their damned Casket, but no. They followed my plan, like I knew they would, because they were too stupid to think for themselves and recognize a trap. And Laufey was supposedly renowned for his cunning! Jotunheim's clever king. He was an idiot. He deserved to die."
"He deserved to die for being stupid?" Tony interjects. "That's a little harsh."
Loki's face twists in a scowl. "He deserved to die for the choices he made. For perpetuating the myth that he knew what was best for his people. That was the only intelligent thing he ever did: convincing all those Jotnar he was smarter than they. Arguably not a difficult feat, but he was not the biggest or strongest and he needed some edge to put him above everyone else to make him worthy to lead. Laufey was small for a giant. Hardly over eight feet tall. Average Jotun height is closer to ten, and some are even larger than that. Two of his sons are big, lumpen idiots. The third was small, like Laufey himself, but... he was abandoned and left to die as an infant."
And that's the end of Loki's tale. Tony holds his breath through the pause that follows, waiting for more, but that's all, story time finishing as abruptly as it started. Loki stares at him again with that challenging gaze. The one that makes Tony think Loki may just be able to see through him. Heat-seeking Jotun eyes locking on his vulnerable interior. Demanding a reaction.
It's a game, Tony realizes. Or a test. Loki made his move, throwing out all those pieces of his past under the guise of aimless reminiscing, and now it's Tony's turn. Tony gets to guess. He gets to pull everything together, sorting out the filler from the clues, and build up a cryptic message one brick at a time. Everything Loki says is relevant...
"You don't really hate being Jotun at all," Tony begins. First guess. Loki's eyes narrow. Target hit. "If you did, you'd try to hide it at all costs instead of highlighting all the ways you're still like them even in Asgardian form. Maybe you did hate them when you first found out. But you've spent the last year going who knows where with who knows what, and that must've been an eye-opener. After that, Jotun doesn't seem so bad any more. Actually, it comes in handy at times. What relevant thing did you say yesterday morning? Your Chitauri jailers weren't too thrilled with you suddenly turning into a Frost Giant? Maybe it's not as bad as those jerks in Asgard say, being bigger than everybody else and able to freeze whatever you touch. You don't hate that. You embrace it. Maybe you don't love it, but you recognize an advantage when you see one, and this is a major advantage."
Yeah, that's it. He's on the right track. He must be, because Loki's mouth is suddenly shut up tighter than a bank vault. So he continues, "Being Jotun also provides some convenient answers for why you were never like the other Asgardians. You were the weird kid, weren't you? The one everyone laughed and jeered at and expected to fail in his first hunt. The one who was always compared, unfairly and unfavorably, to 'measurably superior' Thor. But the stag heart and Laufey's pride at the banquet when you did the one thing Thor couldn't... those moments stand out in your mind. Those time you outshone Thor? You can't hate the thing that allowed you to do it. You can't hate the thing that made you different, for once, in a better way. No matter how stupid you think the Jotuns are, you still know their value."
And now Loki's haughty smirk has faded completely. His expression has washed away into nothing: no challenge, no spark, no emotion at all. Just blank. Like a mask. He's a skilled liar, but his go-to lie, when things aren't going his way, is always no lie at all. Just empty silence. Tony's seen it before.
"What's the matter, Space Oddity?" Tony asks. "Don't like where I'm headed with this?"
"You presume an awful lot," Loki murmurs, his voice every bit as flat and unreadable as his face.
"I thought that was what I was supposed to be doing. You tell me things, I jump to conclusions. But let's keep going: I still have the last bit of your grand confession to over-analyze. Like that part where you told me how this Laufey guy died. Why is that relevant? Well, on the surface, it's not... unless you take into account that you've now come to terms with your Jotun origins. You killed Laufey – hell, you tried to destroy all of Jotunheim – immediately after finding out the truth about yourself. That seems like a reckless, emotional explosion. And now you regret it. Because now you know they could have been useful allies. You regret killing Laufey, and try to justify your actions by telling yourself he was stupid, he didn't deserve to be king, he was some monster who left his own son to die because the kid wasn't as big as-"
The pieces of the puzzle don't so much click into place as crash.
"...Oh."
Laufey was small for a giant. Eight feet tall. Average Jotun height is ten. Loki, standing next to Thor, looked about...
A fraction of a sneer twitches on the side of Loki's mouth before falling back to nothing. "Well done, Tony stark," he whispers.
Tony coughs. Looks down at his knees. Shit. And here he thought he was all done with feeling sorry for poor psychopath Loki. "So I guess that's why you killed him, huh."
"One reason," says Loki.
"And the others?"
"What, you can't guess? Don't you understand me? You don't see things from my point of view, even after this meaningful, heartfelt talk we've just shared?"
"No." He pushes a hand back through his hair. "I guess I don't."
Loki's reply is preceded by a smug little 'mm' sound. "That's right. You don't."
"Then maybe you can help me understand by telling me how the balls this is relevant to our... your... whatever... quest for the Tesseract?"
"When did I say it was?"
"You told me a minute ago that everything you say is relevant!" Tony all but shouts.
"Yes, but in this case, the stories were relevant only to why I dislike your 'pizza'."
No, there's more to it than that. There's more to Loki than that. He can feel it deep inside his bones that this all ties together somehow: the Jotuns, Loki's actions, the Tesseract, the Chitauri, whatever shit show he's planning for the future. There's a thread, however small, however difficult to pick out from the mass tangle of events, that connects them all. He just can't see it yet. It's still buried beneath too many other layers, outside of his reach. So close, but...
Infuriating. Not all the game pieces are yet in place.
"Oh, whatever," he says, grabbing the pizza box and standing up. "I'm done. And I'm taking this to the dining room so I can sit at a table and eat like a normal person. You wanna come with, or are you going to stay in here being creepy by yourself?"
"I'm going back to sleep."
Tony nods. "Creepy it is. Good choice."
He's two steps out into the hallway before reconsidering and turning back. "Purely out of curiosity, do I have anywhere near the number of clues needed to unravel your crazy web of evil plots?" he asks.
"Not even close," answers Loki.
ooo
Takeout phở tái comes with thinly sliced raw beef on the side, meant to be swished through steaming broth piece by piece and cooked on the spot before being eaten.
There's probably a good reason why Tony decides to drive across Phoenix during rush hour in a stolen SUV with New Mexico plates to visit the one Vietnamese restaurant he sort of knows how to find, but for the life of him he can't figure out what it is. He'll just attribute it to a sudden craving for spring rolls.