Confession time: Tony takes an inordinate amount of pleasure in sitting on the floor and eating day-old pizza while wearing a tuxedo.

He's surrounded by boxes. That's the part that isn't so pleasurable. In a spectacular show of coincidence, it turns out the house in Phoenix is full of boxes of shit. Box upon box. Shit upon shit. Boxes of tapes, boxes of CDs, boxes of books, boxes of gadgets, boxes of a weird assortment of crap that, judging by the newspaper used to pack it, looks like it was swept off a bookshelf in January of 1992 and hasn't seen the light of day since. He sort of remembers doing that. He sort of remembers all this stuff. Or maybe he just remembers remembering all this stuff yesterday.

He also remembers an hour ago when sorting through it all seemed like a really good idea. 'Nostalgia therapy', he called it. What better way to boot superhero craziness out of his mind than by sifting through boxes of his mundane past? Answer: a better way to boot superhero craziness out of his mind would be to smoke a doob and pass out in the hot tub, but this also works. Actually, what works is sitting on the floor with his pizza while thumbing through a road atlas of eastern Canada from 1975. There's a polaroid taped to the inside cover of his family standing on a windy walkway. The background gives away nothing but clouds of mist, but his mother's elegant handwriting along the bottom of the frame identifies the location as Niagara Falls, Ontario. In the photo, her hair is blowing across her face. Tony's father is turned away from the camera, the shot catching him in profile, and five-year-old Tony looks sullen and unimpressed, slouching against the guard rail. All in all, a classic Stark family portrait, of the quality one might expect to find taped as a memento inside an obsolete road atlas.

Kneeling up, Tony pulls open more boxes until he finds one with more photo albums. There aren't many. His parents were never really into the whole photography thing. The newest album, a sickly salmon number with some swans on the front, has the label 'Christmas 90 – Fall 91'. No, not gonna look at that one. The baby blue kitten album says 'Spring 84 – Summer 85.' Might be good for a laugh. One covered in horrible nubby orange fabric has '1978' written down the spine, and when he flips it open, he's greeted by a picture of himself shooting the camera a gap-tooth grin over a birthday cake shaped like an alligator.

There are more albums from earlier years, full of people he doesn't know and places he doesn't recognize, playing croquet at garden parties and holding cocktails. Then the framed photos, and the ones in little cardboard folders. His mom the fashion plate in a macramé dress and giant hat. His dad and Uncle Ed on a fishing boat circa 1950. Dad again, much younger, with his arm around a stunning blonde as the two stand beneath a banner that reads 'Happy New Year 1939'. Mom's college graduation photo. Dad's graduation photo. Tony's own graduation photo. Someone really should've stepped in to prevent that haircut from being immortalized on film. (Actually, somebody should've stepped in to prevent most of his haircuts from being immortalized on film. A lot of his photos could legitimately be used as cautionary illustrations for the phrase 'men's style disasters of the late twentieth century'. And yet he thought he looked so slick at the time. Damn.)

The picture at the bottom of the box, in a thin gold frame, is from the Stark Industries Christmas party in 2004. He's in a navy pinstripe suit and his hair looks, thankfully, pretty normal in the post-frosted-tips era. A little less gray, but otherwise things haven't changed a lot since then. And it's a kind of a nice picture overall. Dorky smile, but nice picture. Best one of him in the whole box by far.

Pepper standing next to him looks so much younger.

Wearing a modest ivory dress, hair cut in a shaggy, shoulder-length bob... Her face is a little rounder, a little softer. The way she holds her arms is awkward and self-conscious. A tight, closed-lipped smile just touches her mouth, but... Her eyes glitter. Her eyes smile wide, joyfully, straight into the camera, and she looks so happy and so beautiful.

She is so beautiful. Intelligent. Kind. Patient.

Perfect.

The longer he stares at the picture, the heavier it grows, as if ideas and memories and even intangible regrets can have mass. The kind of mass that starts as a stinging thorn somewhere near his heart and sinks down, expanding as it falls, becoming a dead weight like a coiled chain in his gut. Constrictive. Binding him from the inside. Threatening to fuse itself in place as a permanent fixture, just when he'd convinced himself he'd come to terms with how things ended.

No, that was a lie. One more lie in the long series of lies he's told himself all his life. This one weak enough to be undone by nothing more than a photo.

(Oh, Pepper...)

She put up with him for years, forgave him every stupid thing he ever did (and a lot of them were pretty fucking stupid), and shrugged off a thousand and one of his bad choices with nothing more than a resigned sigh. She was the person he could count on. The closest thing he had to family. He could be himself when he was with her, however lame and uncertain and vulnerable he felt, shedding the stifling public act of Being Tony Stark. She was sexy as hell at those ridiculous black tie things they always had to go to, and even hotter sitting on the couch eating nachos. Just being content. Together.

And he turned away from all of that because of... what, exactly? A couple stupid arguments, differing opinions, stubbornness, and shortened nerves brought on by the stress of building that damn tower and bouncing back and forth between California and New York? Basically the same shit all couples have to deal with over the course of any relationship?

Okay, so maybe not all couples undertake the building of a skyscraper, but it's pretty much the same principle as renovating a house, albeit on a giant scale, and other people get through that. The point is, he allowed a bunch of unimportant crap to distract him from what mattered, and he dropped the ball like a whiny little bitch instead of putting on his big boy pants and working things out to stay in the game.

He pushes the photo aside and digs his fingers into his eyes.

Shit.

There are certain things people need to do over the course of their lives. Normal, human things that prove they're normal, human people. Which means there's a certain thing Tony Stark needs to do right now.

He needs to put on those big boy pants and go back to New York.

ooo

Loki's either asleep or pretending to be asleep; it's impossible to tell from the doorway, staring into the shadowy bedroom with curtains drawn against the midday sun. He's nothing more than a dark, blanketed lump in the bed. Tony clears his throat. Loki doesn't move. Maybe he really is asleep.

"Hey. Loki?"

Nope. Not asleep. Loki grunts as he rolls onto his stomach, flattening his body against the bed as his head disappears under the sheets.

"It's almost one. You getting up today?"

"No," says Loki. Except the way he says it is more like a 'neh', like half the word, like he can't be bothered to form a whole coherent thought.

"What's the matter?" Tony asks as he crosses the room to sit next to Loki's feet. "Still recovering?"

He earns another apathetic 'neh' in reply.

"Grumpy? Angry? Depressed, wondering where your life went wrong that you ended up languishing in suburban America with me? That's okay. People get depressed. It's a common thing these days. Nothing to be ashamed of."

"Go away."

"No, I want to talk to you about something."

"Tony Stark, if you don't-"

"Yeah, yeah, I know, if I don't leave you alone you'll rip out my stomach and make me wear it as a hat, or something equally gruesome. You're a little predictable. And a lot tetchy. But I can forgive you for that since you've been through some rough times recently, being a S.H.I.E.L.D. prisoner, teleporting across the country, then that... minor altercation... with Thor. Can't blame you for getting a bit down."

"Please shut up," Loki growls into the pillow.

Well there's an improvement over Loki's usual temperament. A 'please'.

"How about this," says Tony. "I don't like shutting up. That's boring. I'm not a boring person, and I hate being bored. So I'll tell you a fun story instead. Okay? Okay. Yesterday morning when we first got here and you were in the shower, I decided to, um... calm my nerves by sitting at the table with a nice bottle of scotch."

Loki groans. "What a fascinating confession. I never would have guessed that of you."

"Don't be such a dick. That's not my story. The interesting part, what I wanted to tell you, is that while I was sitting at the table I started thinking of things. Remembering things. Movies, moments, stuff I used to have or my parents used to have. You know, random old shit from my past. For some reason just started thinking about it. Don't know why. And then this morning I got up, had breakfast, and started wandering around the house. Wasting time, clearing my head. And I went into one of the bedrooms, purely on a whim, opened up the closet and... There it was. All the stuff I'd been thinking about yesterday. Boxes. Movies. Books. Stuff. My dad's record case, right there on the closet shelf. Weird, huh? What are the odds that those things would pop into my mind, completely out of the blue, then they'd turn up here right in front of my face? Crazy coincidence."

The word Loki says sounds a lot like, "Hardly."

"What?"

And with that, he finally rolls back over to look at Tony. "'Coincidence' is a word lesser beings invented to describe the web of connections between all matter in the universe, which their limited brains cannot-" He stops right there, mouth falling open. "What are you wearing?"

Oh right. The tuxedo. Tony kind of forgot about that, though how a white velvet jacket with black satin lapels could slip his mind is a damn good question. "Uh... yeah, I found this in the closet and trying it on seemed like a swell idea at the time. It was my dad's. He was a little taller than me and not as wide in the shoulders, but it's an okay fit all considering. Plus you can't deny the overwhelming fashion appeal. Don't you think I should integrate it into my permanent wardrobe?"

Loki shakes his head. "Never wear it again."

Really, it's not possible to disagree with that statement. Tony shrugs off the jacket. "Yeah, you're right. I look like an idiot. A vintage '70s idiot."

"Why are you even in here?" Loki asks him. "I'm trying to sleep."

"Right, right." He did come in here for a reason. Something before the tuxedo and the coincidences. "I... uh..." (Oh, just stop screwing around and spit it out already...) "I need a favor."

"Of course you do." Sitting up, Loki leans back against the headboard. By the looks of things, he's wearing either his towel or nothing under the blankets, leaving the scar down his chest on prominent display. He crosses his arms the moment he notices Tony's eyes flick towards it.

Tony looks back up. "Pretty good scar you got there."

Loki doesn't answer; he just pulls the sheet up to cover his body.

"Hey, no need to hide it. I'm familiar with scars. Getting a heart full of shrapnel doesn't exactly leave a guy with skin like a baby's ass. And this thing-" He taps two fingers against the arc reactor, hidden beneath the tuxedo shirt's ruffles. "-was originally installed courtesy of a makeshift Afghani cave hospital. So there's a couple, um, rough edges, so to speak. Not as nicely defined as yours. But you know, I think we're both equally badass when it comes to our scar stories, which is what really counts. I got exploded by my own tech, you were stabbed by your own brother with your own knife... the ladies love that tragic irony. You'll be a hit at parties."

"Stop stalling and ask me your favor," snarls Loki. "I'd like to refuse quickly so I can go back to sleep."

"Sorry. Right. Favor." How come this idea made so much more sense before he actually had to talk to Loki about it? He takes a deep breath. This is starting to seem like one of those ripping-off-the-Band-Aid situations where it's better to outright say what he needs to say. "I need to go back to New York."

Loki's answer is out of his mouth without missing a beat. "No."

"That wasn't a question," says Tony.

"I can infer the question from your statement. The question is, 'Loki, will you agree to leave for New York immediately, based on this foolish and inexplicable whim I've just thrown at you out of nowhere?' To which I have already answered, 'No.' At the moment, I am not inclined to sit in a car for four days."

Tony nods. "Okay, well, that's good because..." (Just say it, just say it, just say it, you dumb fuck) "...I'm not inclined to spend four days in a car, either. I need to be in New York tonight."

The sound that comes out of Loki as he slides back down under the blankets might be a protracted 'ohhhhhh', or it might be a groan, or it might be a custom-tailored hybrid of both.

"Oh, come on," says Tony, because seriously, this shouldn't be a big deal. Or so he likes to tell himself. "You already teleported me from New Jersey to Texas, then in a bunch of zig-zags to explore the Land of Enchantment. It's not like I'm asking you to do some crazy new thing that isn't within your repertoire of wizard powers."

"No, you're merely asking me to expend those powers – powers which, I might remind you, come at an incredibly high cost – to transport you across the country for reasons you have not seen fit to divulge."

"Because of my girlfriend," Tony says, quickly, not even pausing to think about the potential consequences. He tried the roundabout approach, stepping in from the side and avoiding the issue, easing into asking Loki for a favor... which worked about as well as trying to sweet talk a komodo dragon. He should've known. He knows now. You can't jerk around with Loki, because all Loki will do is jerk you right back. That's what he does. That's all he does. You want something from Loki? You ask him straight up and hope like hell he's in a mood to entertain your silly little human desires. "It's Tuesday. I promised Pepper I'd be back in New York on Tuesday night so we could talk."

"And you expect me to take you there, just like that?"

"Not expect. Hope. Because we're such good friends now. I scratch your back, you scratch mine. I wrap up your enchanted knife wound with stolen vet supplies, you teleport me to the opposite corner of the country. That's what friends do for each other. It's like a law."

"I thought you and your girlfriend were at odds?" Loki asks.

"Were at odds," answers Tony. "Okay, technically still are, but I need to undo that."

Loki takes a good long while rolling around in bed, stretching, and generally wasting time before he speaks again. And then, all he says is, "Why?"

"Because I've made a terrible mistake. I need to throw myself on the mercy of her French pedicure and beg her to take me back. Otherwise I'm pretty sure I'll die old and alone, surrounded by hundreds of robots designed for increasingly unsavory purposes. I might turn into an evil genius. I might build a death fortress in the remote wastes of Alaska. You never know. If I'm distraught over being dumped and try to continue my work when I'm mentally fragile... If movies have taught me anything, it's that all good scientists are just one bad experiment away from becoming supervillains. This is a very real fear for me."

"Turning evil?" Loki snorts.

"Yeah, I'd rather not go down that road," says Tony. "I'd probably try to destabilize the government and assassinate the president so I could rule as a crushing dictator from my Alaskan death fortress, holding millions of terrified citizens hostage with hitherto unseen sci-fi weapons technology. In which case, I could make an argument that it is my patriotic duty as an American to get back together with Pepper in order to prevent that scenario. Anything less would be treason."

"And you think Allegedly Evil Loki will help you because...?"

"Because Allegedly Evil Loki is actually a nice guy who's interested in giving his pal Reluctantly Evil Tony a hand to turn his life around?"

"You have a unique interpretation of reality," Loki says with a yawn. "And yet with all these words and excuses, I've yet to hear a single valid argument addressing the question of why I should use all that power, and, subsequently, how I might be able to rebalance it. Had you thought about that?"

"In fact, I had," says Tony. And he had. Briefly. In a disturbed sort of way. "And I was thinking... you haven't used nearly as much magic as you had back in Atlantic City. You're not all pale and shaky like you were then, and..." He leans forward to poke Loki in the arm. "Hey, look at that. I can still touch you without turning into a drooling moron. So you can't be too close to your magic saturation limit yet. A one-way trip to New York shouldn't be too much trouble. Then you just lie low for a couple days until your magic resets itself or whatever Thor said happens, however that works, and everything'll be good. See? I thought it through."

Loki hums like he's considering what Tony said, except he looks too happy with that creepy smile on his face, which can only mean he's bullshitting and about to say, "Mm... no. Sorry. I dislike that plan. It's indefinite. I like definite things. Meticulous schedules. Strict routines. I like knowing."

Loki also looks way too happy when he says that last word, which might make Tony feel just the slightest bit dirty. Tony coughs. "I don't. At least not in the sense you're implying."

"It's your choice," Loki says with a shrug. "The offer I presented you back at the inn in Texas is still in effect. Everything has a cost. You know what that cost is. If you don't agree to my terms, then I'm afraid I cannot help you."

In Tony's mind, this conversation had gone so differently. In his mind, Loki was a lot easier to convince. Oh, wishful thinking. "I guess I was hoping we could work out some other terms," he says, trying not to sound too pessimistic.

"No. My rules are absolute, Tony Stark."

"Only a Sith deals in absolutes, Loki."

"I hardly think my price is unreasonable."

"Maybe not to you, but it's a pretty big conflict of interest for my purposes. If I'm trying to patch up my relationship, I can't have you in there literally fucking things up. What happens when I spend hours with her working through all our problems, only to turn around and say, 'Okay great, honey, our cherished monogamous commitment starts right after I mess around with this guy for fifteen minutes'? Not an awesome plan."

"Hm." Loki nods. And Tony nod in return, because for some dumb reason he actually thinks they're on the same page for once. But then Loki says, "Fifteen minutes is far too small a timeframe. I would set aside at least three hours."

"...Right," says Tony. "Well, that's flatteringly optimistic of you, but my answer's still 'no'."

Loki smiles, just barely showing his teeth. "And so is mine."

It takes a lot of effort for Tony not to groan in frustration as he drops his head down into his hands, massaging his temples, but somehow he manages. "Loki… please." He glances up. Loki's eyes are already on him, flat and guarded. "Just gimme a break. I know you're a Grinch and your heart is two sizes too small and you'd probably jump at the opportunity to steal Christmas if it came in a small cubic shape and had intergalactic warp powers, but I am asking – begging – you to step back and find that one tattered remnant of a warm, fuzzy place inside your soul that still cares about other people. Please. Please do this one favor for me. I will sing the Fah-Who-Something song if you want me to, I will buy a roast beast for you to carve, or even an unroasted one if you like that better… just please. Help me. I need to get to New York. Please. I need this. I really, really need this."

"And so do I," Loki softly replies. "I really, really do. That is the rule." He rolls over onto his front again, half hiding his face in the pillow, and closes his eyes. "I also need to sleep. Come back once you're ready to accept my terms. Until then, I'm afraid I can do nothing."

ooo

Tony folds like the proverbial cheap suit at 2:52 pm while sitting at the kitchen table watching the hands of the clock tick on by.

5:52 pm in New York. Pepper will be home any minute. I need to get there now. Now. Now. Shit. I need to get there now.

Sometimes he wishes he didn't have such an obsessive personality, but the sad fact is he's always been the kind of guy who runs on instant gratification. If he wants something, he wants it five minutes ago. And that stupid something, whatever it happens to be, fills every available inch of thought and crowds out all else. If he wants something, he needs it. Needs it. Can't concentrate on anything else until he has it.

I need to get to New York. I need to see Pepper. I need to get to New York. Right now. New York.

The words pulse through his head as he pushes open the bedroom door, crosses the room, and slams a piece of paper and a pen down on the nightstand next to Loki.

"Okay, Scotty, here's what's going down. You are going to beam me to New York. Right the hell now. I will agree to certain conditions as outlined on this paper, which, upon signature, will be considered legally binding despite the fact that I wrote it on the back of a phone bill. Read it. Sign the bottom. Then we're out of here."

Chances are Loki's being slow on purpose just to piss Tony off as he lazily sits up, stretches, yawns, rubs his face, and goes through the whole spectrum of other time-wasting gestures before finally picking up the paper. The first thing out of his mouth in response is, "You have terrible penmanship."

"Fuck you."

"Isn't that exactly what you're agreeing to do by way of this document?" he asks with a smirk.

"I mean go fuck yourself. Also read points two and three very carefully."

"Hmm." Scanning the page, Loki's eyes dart from line to line. One eyebrow rises and his mouth tightens, turning down at the corners.

"And before you start bitching about anything," says Tony, "this is my final offer."

Loki looks up. "Expand on point three. Where you have written 'in the absence of any suitable candidate', please clarify the means by which suitability is determined?"

"That would have to be a mutual decision," Tony replies.

"No," Loki says with a shake of the head. "I think I'll have to demand full control over that decision."

"Nice try, but that gives you unreasonable veto power."

"Which by all rights you should agree is fair under that particular circumstance." He picks up the pen, scribbles down a few words, and hands the paper back to Tony.

The God of Assholes has annoyingly neat printing for something written against his hand on the back of a crumpled phone bill:

...in the absence of any suitable candidate, as determined by Loki...

"Fine," growls Tony. He grabs the pen out of Loki's hand, initials the amendment, and thrusts the paper back towards Loki. "Now sign it."

"Your wish is my command. Do we require a witness to our legally binding agreement?"

"No way. The fewer witnesses the better, with the ideal number hovering around exactly zero. Nobody knows. Ever. As per the confidentiality clause in point five."

"Oh, Tony Stark, you do worry so..." Loki murmurs, swirling the pen across the bottom of the page in an elaborate signature. "Honestly, who on Earth would I tell?"

"I don't know, you might brag to some of your weird alien buddies over weird alien drinks?"

"I said 'who on Earth'. And the answer to that is 'nobody'. There is nobody in this petty little realm I would ever care to tell, and any of my acquaintances outside this realm would certainly not care to hear. Your secret is safe."

"You told me about you and Barton," grumbles Tony.

"Yes, well, Agent Barton did not have the foresight to ask me to sign a contract with a confidentiality clause, now, did he?"

Tony snatches the contract back, hissing a frustrated breath out through his teeth as he scrawls his own signature next to Loki's and prints the date beneath it. "Something tells me Agent Barton was unable to ask you for a lot of things. But somebody else can ream you out for that another time. Right now, we gotta move. I'm going to get changed. You get dressed. In real clothes this time, none of that illusion bullshit, since those seem to disintegrate too easily and there's no way in hell I'm letting you walk around in front of Pepper in a towel. I don't care what you wear, as long as it's classified as clothes. Go. We leave in ten minutes."

"Will you bring me a juice box?" Loki calls after him as he reaches the door.

"When we get to New York," he promises.

And that's that. The contract may be signed in blue Bic ink rather than blood, but even so he can't help feel, as he peels off the ruffled tuxedo shirt and pulls on a gray hoodie, that he's made some kind of deal with the devil. Something that may just end with the ground opening up beneath his feet and swallowing him whole. Probably metaphorically, but if Loki's in a theatrical mood... you never really know.

It's going to take one hell of a fiddle contest to weasel his way out of this.