Even with his eyes closed, Tony knows they've arrived. He knows that scent. Leather furniture. Air conditioning. New carpet. A hint of recently varnished wood and fresh grout. It fills his head as he draws in breath after greedy breath and sinks down to kneel on the smooth slate floor. He knows that gorgeously familiar scent. And right now, it's the most comforting scent in the world.
Jarvis' voice ringing in his ears might just be the most comforting sound in the world. "Welcome home, sir." Home. He's home. A week and a half as a fugitive feels like years, but he's finally back in a place where he belongs. He could bend over right now and kiss the floor.
He settles for placing his hands down flat on the cool stone and dropping his head in a silent moment of thanks. The unpleasant side effects of long-distance teleportation still churn in his stomach and buzz under his skin. And if the unhappy noise at his side is anything to go by, whining its way down into a crouch, Loki feels the same way.
"It's good to be home, Jarv," he says after a few deep breaths, which don't help at all. "Is Pepper back from L.A. yet?"
His question is answered by a dull thud somewhere off to his right (if he concentrates he can recognize it exactly: that's a purse being dropped to the floor and is also, strangely, a very comforting sound) followed by his name spoken in an incredulous female voice. "Tony?!"
So much for making a quiet and unobtrusive entrance. With a groan, Tony pulls himself back up to his feet, trying not to wobble too much on dangerously shaky knees. "Hey honey," he manages, though his teeth are clenched against the growing wave of nausea. "I'm, um... yeah. That classic line and stuff."
Pepper, to her credit, looks as perfect as always in a pale gray tailored suit and bright green blouse. Hair pulled simply and elegantly back from her face. Lips glossy pink. Deer-in-the-headlights expression on her face as she slowly walks across the room towards him, but not even that's enough to detract from the overall impression. Fuck, she's beautiful.
"Tony," is all she can seem to say. And Tony, who's pretty sure that if he had a mirror handy he'd see only an incoherent and unprepared half-smile splashed across his own face, can seem to say nothing at all.
She manages to break the stunned silence first, clearing her throat. "What... what are you doing here?"
"It's Tuesday," he answers, and feels stupid as he does, because son of a bitch, shouldn't he be able to think of something better to say? Something dazzling, something witty, something worthy of winning back a girlfriend? "I... You told me you'd be back on Tuesday, and we were going to talk."
"I mean, what did... where did you come from?"
"Uh... Phoenix?"
"No, that's not..." She drops her head into her hands, covering her face and rubbing her eyes, exhaling a long, troubled breath. "You just... appeared... out of nowhere, in the middle of the room, and... At least I think you did? Did you just...?" She looks up. "What did you just do?"
"Don't panic," says Tony. "I can explain. Sort of. It's a long story."
"No, Tony, a 'long story' is what happens when you total your car or... or... when you get a bad tattoo. This is... You just suddenly appeared out of thin air. Is it some new science thing? That you didn't tell me about? Is this what you've been working on with S.H.I.E.L.D.?"
"Not exactly..."
The mistake he makes is looking at Loki, because the second his gaze darts down that way, Pepper's follows. In all fairness she would've noticed eventually, since not even the shock of seeing one person teleport into the living room can distract somebody from the fact that it was actually two people who teleported into the living room. But it would've been nice to have a couple more seconds to try to explain things before bringing a chaotic space wizard into the equation. Especially when the chaotic space wizard is lying flat on his back on the floor with his eyes squeezed shut, looking pale and sickly like he's about to vomit.
"...Who is that?"
"That would be the long story," Tony replies. "Actually, did I say 'long story'? I meant 'totally nonsensical story'."
But from the spark of alarm in her eyes and the shrill edge to her voice, she already knows exactly who that is. "Last week, when Phil stopped by, and brought you those notes, with those videos... That's... that's the... Loki."
"Yes," Tony confirms. "That's the Loki. But for now, you can just ignore the Loki. He's going to hang out here, not doing anything, while you and I have a talk. Okay?"
"No, that's not okay, that's... Tony, what's he doing here?! With you? And why is he wearing..." She blinks. Once. Twice. As if processing the sight of Loki's off-white linen suit and dark green western tie takes a lot of extra effort on top of the massive amount of effort it's already taking just to process the sight of Loki at all. "Is that one of your dad's old suits?!"
"My clothes were confiscated by the agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.," Loki explains, finally deciding to speak, though his eyes stay closed and he makes no move to get up off the floor. "Tony Stark has been kind enough to lend me some of his."
"I don't understand," Pepper whispers, shaking her head.
"It's my fault," says Tony. "I told him he could wear whatever he wanted, and he chose that. I'm assuming out of spite, because I can't think of any other reason why somebody would want to look like Vincent Vega dressed as Colonel Sanders, but..." He shrugs. "What can you do?"
"No, I don't… I don't understand why…" Her voice trails off into mute confusion.
No, Pepper doesn't understand. Any of it. That much is obvious from the way she stares, eyes jumping from Tony to Loki and back again, standing with her arms crossed protectively across her chest, radiating nothing but nerves. Tony rakes his hands back through his hair. Maybe if he clenches his fists and pulls hard that'll somehow clear his head and help him concentrate over the storm in his stomach. (It doesn't.) Think. He needs to think. He needs his brain to stop rearranging itself so he can work this through.
"Look," he says, stepping up to rest his hand on her arm. She flinches away. Shit. "...Alright, so this is obviously not getting off to the spectacular start I hoped it would. But if you just give me some time, I can explain everything. Where I've been, the sudden appearance, Loki, even the suit. Pepper? Baby? Just give me a chance, I swear I can explain it all. Please."
His words snap her out of whatever trance of disbelief she'd fallen into at over Loki and the teleportation "No." Yet another 'no'. "No, Tony, I can't even think about... I don't want to think about it, I don't want to know, I don't think I can know. I need to go. I need to get ready. I have a dinner meeting in two hours with some of the senior board members, I have things I need to do, I have my job I need to do. I have..." She gives her head a quick shake, staggering back to put an armspan of distance between her and Tony: two more steps, heels clicking hard against the floor. But then her arms drop down heavily at her sides. And her face crumples, losing all sense of composure. Right there. Right where she stands. Everything falls apart.
"I..." she says, voice cracking between sound and silence. "What's even happening here?"
One second is all it takes for Tony to close the gap between them. He wraps his arm around her back and pulls her into a tight embrace; she puts up only a token struggle before sagging heavily against his shoulder. Her breath hitches, she gulps in a mouthful of air, and then her head sinks down and he can rest his cheek against her hair
"It's okay, baby, everything's going to be okay," he whispers, inhaling the perfume that clings to her skin. (Home.) "I promise. Let's find somewhere quiet and sit down and talk this through. It's going to be okay."
"Okay," she echoes back, and nods just the tiniest bit.
There's a bottle of port on a shelf in the office. Tony steers Pepper inside, sits her down on one of the stiff new leather chairs, and shuts the door before pouring two glasses. Pepper takes both and downs them in quick succession. Tony wordlessly pours her more.
Then one for himself, twirling the glass awkwardly in his hand as he thinks of what he can even say to her. "Pepper... I just want to start off by saying how sorry I am. About this, about everything, about showing up suddenly like that... I can't even begin to guess how weird this must be for you."
"Uh-huh," she numbly replies.
"It's weird as hell for me, and I've been dealing with it for the past six days."
"With Loki?"
"Yeah. With Loki."
"The bad guy S.H.I.E.L.D. hired you to track down and capture."
Tony nods. "Yeah. But if you think about it, in a way, I have captured him."
"Tony..." she starts, and there's a familiar, exasperated warning tone creeping back into her voice. That's a good sign. The panic's beginning to subside.
"I should tell you the whole story," says Tony, sitting down in the chair facing hers. "Let me start at the beginning and maybe that'll answer a few things. If I don't do that, nothing will make sense. I mean, it's still not going to make sense, but maybe if I tell you all the background it'll be a little easier to understand."
So that's what he does. He starts at the beginning, with that fateful night in Stuttgart when S.H.I.E.L.D. took Loki into custody. Thor's arrival. Loki's cell. The tortures. The inconvenient uprising of conscience, the chat with Thor, the escape, and hiding out in Atlantic City. He leaves out the part about Loki's inert magic and glosses over the exact reason for Thor and Loki's fight in Texas, but otherwise sticks to the truth. Right up to the decision to return to New York (minus the contract). It takes nearly fifteen minutes for it all to come out, and by the end Pepper's finished her fourth glass of port and is staring at him with an unnervingly calm expression, eyes giving away no hint of emotion.
"Which brings us to now," he says. "Um." Which is a really shitty ending to the story, but what else is there to say after just having told your girlfriend that magical aliens are real and are trying to take over the planet?
Pepper nods. "And now Loki is here with you. And he's just going to... lie in the middle of the floor."
"Yeah, teleportation isn't a good way to travel. Imagine seasickness multiplied by stomach flu plus a suit made of bees, while riding on a roller coaster. Speaking of which..." He shifts his chair closer until their knees are just touching. "Can we take a break and talk about something normal for a sec? How was Disneyland?"
"Fine," Pepper answers, still cool and distant. "We went on rides. We took pictures. Last night we all had too much wine and Tracey lost one of her shoes on Soarin' Over California. But that's the craziest thing that happened, which makes my story a distant second to yours, and Tony, please don't try to change the subject. You're telling me all these things that I don't think I I'll ever be able to understand, magic and legends and powerful beings from outer space..." Thinning her lips, she shakes her head. "It'll take a while for that to sink in. It's just... It's too weird."
"I know," says Tony. "Pepper, honey, believe me, I know. And that's kind of why I'm here. I've been on the run from S.H.I.E.L.D. since Wednesday, hopping from one place to another, experiencing a whole lot of insane shit I didn't even know was possible... and it's forced me to step back and think about what's important in my life. What I want. It's shown me, without a doubt, that what I don't want in my life is... all that. I thought I did. I thought I'd found my calling as Iron Man, being a big hero, saving the world, but now the world has stepped up to show me what I'll be up against if I stay in the game, and I don't think I can do it. I'm not a superhero. This past week has made that very clear. I'm just a guy who builds robots. I take on terrorists and war criminals and mad scientists because they're all human, just people, but now we have super soldiers and radiation mutants and intergalactic demigods in the mix and I'm so out of my league it isn't even funny any more..."
He sighs. "I want to go back to a normal life. I want to wake up in the morning secure in my knowledge that nobody's going to try to kill me. I want to be able to say that the weirdest thing I saw on any given day was a man rollerblading in a bright orange Speedo. I want to go on vacations to somewhere tropical where I can drink piña coladas until I get sick and not worry about anything except sunscreen. That's what I want. A normal life. With you. Just a normal life like everybody else has, and I want you with me."
The way she stares back at him doesn't instill a whole lot of confidence that this conversation is going well. "You want a normal life?" she asks, quietly incredulous. "As in... two kids and a dog normal?"
"Well, uh, no, I hadn't really thought of 'normal' in those terms, but if that's what you really want I could possibly be persuaded to buy a painting of two kids and a dog. Preferably abstract. Or, even better, sponsor some needy kids and dogs in Africa." He smiles at her, trying to provoke any kind of positive response, but there's nothing coming. "No, I mean normal as in going to visit your mom in Tampa for Thanksgiving," he explains. "That's how serious I am. I am actually willing to go to Florida with you. Maybe even more than once."
"Okay," she says. And nothing more.
Tony can feel his stomach twist, and it has nothing to do with the lingering teleportation nausea. It's all going wrong. It's not supposed to be this way. She's supposed to break down in tears of joy at his confession, falling into his arms, saying that she's waited so long for him to realize she's the one he wants to settle down and spend the rest of his life with. And they live happily ever after. That's what's supposed to happen. He draws in a hesitant breath, leaning forward to take her hand in his. She doesn't pull away, but she doesn't do anything else either. No reassuring squeeze.
"Pepper... I know things haven't been the best lately. I know I've acted like a real asshole at times. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. That's not the person I want to be, and that's not the life I want to have. I want to start over. Do things right. We had a good thing going for a while and if we work at-"
"Just stop," she says suddenly. She jerks her hand away to hold it up between them, palm out as a barrier. "Before you go any further, I think it's my turn to say a couple things."
"I hope they're good things?" he asks, trying to force another smile, though this one feels tight and awkward and all wrong. He lets it fall. She's not looking at him anyway.
Pepper starts slowly. "You say you want a normal life. You say you want boring vacations and predictable day to day living, but Tony, I know you. That'll last for a week. Maybe a month. You're incapable of doing the same thing for more than a few days at a time before you get bored and move on to the next bigger and better thrill. So maybe you want 'normal' right now, but what happens after we wake up and have breakfast without worrying about dying, and after we drink piña coladas with my mom in Florida, and after you lose interest? What happens when you start thinking about building new armor and weapons that can take on the aliens and put you on the same level as people like Loki and Thor?"
"This time it's different," he says, taking her hand again.
"But it's not different! This sudden desire for a normal life is just another one of your projects! When you have it, it'll be done, and then you'll want something new. It happens every time! You said you don't want certain things in your life any more, and that's the only part of this whole conversation I understand, because... I don't want this any more."
His whole body tenses at those words. All of it, entirely, down to the last little muscle. Legs stiffen, pressing his feet down hard into the floor. Back and shoulders clench, making his spine burn. Left hand tightens around the cut crystal stem of the port glass. Ready to snap its delicate neck. He pulls his right hand away from Pepper's and lets it squeeze itself into a fist with his fingernails biting into his palm. He'll crush his own bones instead. "Then what do you want?" he asks.
"I don't know," she replies. There's real regret in her voice this time. He can hear it. He'd probably be able to see it in her eyes, too, if only she'd stop staring at her knees long enough to look at him. "I guess I've never had time to figure that out. I just know I don't want... this."
"And 'this' is...?"
"This. Everything. The uncertainty, the chaos, worrying, never knowing... It was bad enough when I was just your assistant and had to keep track of a million and one appointments that you never made even the slightest effort to reach on time, but now I have to keep track of you. When I'm not worrying myself sick over your company, I'm worrying about you. Where are you? What are you doing? Why aren't you keeping any of your promises? Do you even care about being with me? Are you ever considering about how I might feel? Am I holding you back? That's what I don't want. I don't want the stress. I don't want to lie in bed every night waiting for you, falling asleep alone and angry and frustrated, only to have you wake me up three hours later to tell me about this amazing new thing you just did that couldn't wait until morning. That's not me. It's not who I am. It's not the life I want."
"But that's what's going to change," he says. "No more stress and chaos."
"Tony, you are stress and chaos," she sighs. "It's why people adore you: you're exciting and unpredictable and impossible to pin down and live this insane, fast-paced, glamorous life that boring little people like me can only dream about."
"Excuse me, what? Since when are you a boring little person? You've been living that glamorous life with me for years."
And now she finally looks up. A sad smile sits on her lips as she speaks. "No. I lived it with you for one year. Before that I lived it beside you or behind you or in an office down the hall from you. That's different. And the one year of living with you showed me why boring little people like me only dream about your life instead of going out there to get it. I can't do this. I thought I could. I did. I tried. I really..." Her hands flutter up to her mouth, then to her cheeks, then down to her neck, like they can't decide where they want to be. And she can't decide what she wants to say. "I also want a normal life. But I think... my version of normal is pretty different from yours. There's not a lot of overlap. So I can be your employee. I can be your CEO. I can be your friend."
She stops short of saying what she can't be as she stands up, gives his shoulder a quick, sympathetic touch, and walks to the door.
Stunned, he stares after her. "And that's... that's it? That's all? That's all I get? A vague brush-off and a cliché line about you wanting to still be friends?"
"We're both intelligent, grown-up professionals, Tony," she says. "Can't we just leave it here? End things on a calm note? Be civil to each other? I don't feel like screaming at you, or crying any more than I've already done this week. This is good for me. Right here. I'd really like to be able walk out of this room without hating you."
"No. No, sorry, no, this isn't good." It's wrong. It's all wrong. It's all unraveling. Incomplete. And he's grasping at straws, but... "There's more to this. I'm not done."
"Well. I am."
Her jaw tightens. She turns away. Concentrates on the door handle, tracing its contour with her fingertip, and when she speaks again it's in a different voice, from a distance. "I need to go. I need to meet the board members for dinner."
"Will you be back later? Can we at least continue this discussion tonight, or tomorrow?" One more desperate line thrown out. Anything for a sliver of hope.
"I don't think so."
Those are her last words before leaving. Nothing dramatic, nothing memorable. Not even a standard 'goodbye'. Not even a look over her shoulder. She walks out on the same note of anticlimactic incompletion that ended their conversation, shutting the door behind her.
It wasn't supposed to happen this way.
The port bottle is smooth and comfortingly cool in Tony's hand, and against the fire in his neck and his cheek and his forehead. He pours the rest into Pepper's glass, into the crimson quarter-inch she left behind. One tiny remnant of a connection with something that had once been hers. His mouth covers the smudge of her lipstick.
The pain of loss has always manifested itself in his body as a physical feeling. Ever since he can remember. It's a tight ache just above his stomach, a lot like hunger, even though nothing could be more unappealing in this moment than the thought of food. He waters it down and loosens the knot with drink instead. As always.
It really wasn't supposed to happen this way. She was supposed to…
When he finally scrapes together the courage to open the door and leave the office, Pepper is long gone.
Loki is nowhere to be seen.
ooo
He's been this drunk before. It's nothing new: staggering, fall-down, blackout drunk. His last clear memory is grabbing a bottle of Crown Royal from the bar. After that, things happen in strobing snippets. A view of the skyline. Hanging his head down over the back of a chair, staring at the ceiling. Crawling up the stairs. Trying to pull off his clothes and struggling with shoes. Watching a thin trickle of vomit swirl down the shower drain while water stings his eyes.
Somehow he ends up in bed, and maybe he falls asleep. That's difficult to say. All he knows is that the last time he looked at a clock it was 8:04, and now it's 12:21, and somebody's turning on the lights. The blurry shape of a woman stands in the doorway.
His heart lurches in his chest. "...Pepper?"
And it falls. "Sorry, no. Guess again."
She walks forward, and Tony squints against the bright light to make out any features on the dark, female-shaped blur. Wait, no, that dark female shape is a feature. A form-fitting black catsuit.
"Natasha?"
She sits down on his bedside table with a smile. "The one and only."
He should really be terrified to see her, but alcohol has this magical way of latching onto any emotion, draining its power, and diluting it down to apathy. All he can manage is bland disappointment. He can be terrified sometime in the future. When he's done being drunk. Which will hopefully be never. "What are you doing here?" he asks.
"I come bearing a peace offering." And she pulls out something from behind her back that looks like...
"A ceramic dragon?"
"Unscrew the head," she says as she hands it to him. "Sorry, it was all we could get on short notice. Coulson bought it in Bangkok three years ago and it's been sitting in his desk ever since. The label says 'whisky', but I think you're looking at genuine Thai moonshine."
Tony takes a swig, gagging when the taste hits his tongue. "Yeah that's... fuck, that's not whisky."
"You want me to find you something else?"
"I didn't say I wouldn't drink it." The second mouthful is even worse than the first. Jesus Christ. "So is this S.H.I.E.L.D.'s new plan to get rid of me? Let me drink myself into an early grave? 'Cause you know what… I'm feeling just shitty enough to do it."
"No. We'll stop you before alcohol poisoning sets in. Right now, we just need to keep you sedated and cooperative. This is the easiest way for both of us."
And that should probably be insulting. Or ominous. But... sure, why not. "In that case, can you bring me something from the bar downstairs? Anything. I don't care. My drunk is starting to wear off."
"You're still very drunk, Stark," says Natasha.
"Yeah but I can almost coherent a sentence." He lifts up the dragon. He really needs to stop drinking this swill. Right after this sip.
She gives him a condescending pat on the head before standing up. "I'll find you something."
"Thanks."
"And you might want to put on some pajamas."
"Why? What am I wearing now?" One glance down answers that question. "Aw hell. I forgot I had a shower."
"You passed out in the shower."
"Shit. Sorry."
"No need to apologize to me. I've seen worse. Rogers was the one who had to carry you to bed, though, and he's not very impressed with you right now."
"So the gang's all here," Tony says, an assumption rather than an outright question. He should probably have an opinion about that, too. Fear. Anger. Confusion. Amusement. Anything. S.H.I.E.L.D. agents have invaded his private property, yet all he can feel is a lazy sort of contentment because they paid him off with a dragon full of moonshine.
"It's a good location," she answers with flippant little shrug, also completely content with the idea of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents invading Tony Stark's private property. "Anyway, I need to check on a few things, but I'll be back in about an hour with your drinks. Let me know if you need anything else."
"You're my official babysitter?"
Natasha's smile is completely empty of warmth. "For the time being."
"How much time will that be?"
"Until we find Loki."
Loki.
Somehow that one word manages to slide past the barrier of alcoholic apathy and jolt him right below the ribs. "Loki," he repeats. "He's not here..."
"He's not in the building," Natasha confirms. "But we have reason to believe he soon will be."
Tony laughs. Well, he tries to. It's so damn hard to be deceptive when you're too drunk to see straight. "If you think he'll come back to get me that's... that's stupid."
All she has to do is shrug and a bad feeling starts to creep down Tony's back. She knows something. "Thor seems to think he will."
He almost drops the dragon. "Thor."
"Like I said, it's one big Avengers party downstairs. Thor, Rogers, Banner, Barton..." Her mouth twitches with some unknowable emotion when she says that name. "If you cooperate and help us capture Loki-" (and she hisses in obvious disgust when she says that name) "-maybe we'll let you back in the club."
"But Thor's not... injured... or..."
"Not that I'm aware of," she says with a frown. "Why?"
Impossible. He saw... Down goes a swig of moonshine. "Nothing. Don't listen to me. I'm drunk. Go party it up with your Avengers." He waits until she reaches the door before adding, "But, Natasha?"
"Hm?"
"If Loki does come back, which he won't, because that's stupid, and you won't be able to catch him anyway, but if he comes back?"
"Yes, Stark?"
"He's... not really a bad person. He's the God of Assholes and world's – the universe's – biggest fucker and I'm sure ninety percent of everything he does is just to piss people off, but he's not all bad. You can reason with him. He'll pretend you can't, but you can. He just wants you to play his games and he wants to screw you around."
"You call murdering eighty people, obliterating a S.H.I.E.L.D. research center, and threatening to destroy human civilization 'screwing around'?" she shoots back at him.
"By Asgard logic, I think, yeah. Those guys are the Lady Gagas of warfare."
"That doesn't even make sense."
"It did in my head. Sorry. But Natasha-"
"Stark." She cuts him off with one of those 'zip it' hand gestures. "When we get Loki, you will be involved. I don't know why, and I don't care why, but if you're the one person who can get through to him, we'll use that. Satisfied?"
Nodding, he throws back another swig of the dragon. "Thanks."
"Now try to get some rest. I'll be back soon to check in and bring you something better to drink. You don't have to finish that."
"It's growing on me." Or at least it's burning away his sense of taste while making his head nicely hazy.
Natasha pulls the door shut behind her with a click and a series of beeps. So S.H.I.E.L.D. has spruced up the door with a fancy new lock, which is... well, honestly Tony doesn't give a shit at the moment. Maybe he'll be able to scrounge up a shit to give later, but probably not, because later he plans on still being drunk. He takes one more pull from the dragon (how is it half empty already?), sets it on the table within easy groping distance, and buries his face in his pillow. His head is so heavy. It spins. But his body floats, rising weightless, feet first. What a nice feeling…
He dreams of a riverbank full of ghosts only to wake, suddenly, with a ghost of his own standing there beside the bed. Groggily, he rolls onto his back. Somebody turned the lights off. A shadow is all he can see in the sparse moonlight. A shadow and a blur of pale white skin.
"Nnntashnn?" he mumbles.
The ghost sinks down to kneel at his side.
"Oh, Tony Stark," it whispers in reply. "What have you done to yourself now?"