(Note: this chapter contains some non-explicit adult content)

.

.

.

The person lying in bed next to him isn't Pepper, but it could be, if he pretends.

Pretending is easy in the lingering drunken haze. This person feels like Pepper. Like draping his arm over her waist and hiding his face in the gentle tangles of hair falling down to her shoulders. Like curling up in the intoxicating comfort of her presence, letting it wash through him, feeling the warmth and calm and peace and desire...

He kisses the column of her spine, the side of her neck. Slides his knee between hers and presses up close, body against body, winding together.

"Not now," she whispers, pulling away.

"I want you," he mumbles against her skin. "Need you, baby..."

But she slides out of bed and out of reach. Too far to touch. Unable to draw her back, his arm wraps around empty air.

"I want..."

"You don't want this," is her gentle reply. "You are still very drunk, Tony Stark. And you would regret it later."

ooo

When he wakes up in the middle of the night, eyes still blurred, head still reeling, wracked with panic and slick with sweat as he suffocates in the blazing heat of his body, he's alone. Pepper is gone.

Loki is gone.

ooo

The person sitting down on the bed next to him isn't Pepper, and he can't pretend it is, because everything feels wrong, and he's sick in the pit of his stomach, and the bright blanket of magic has disappeared.

That person slips one hand around the back of his neck, easing him up. The rim of a glass bumps against his lips.

"Drink."

"What is it?" he asks, words catching in the thickness of his throat.

"Water. You are severely dehydrated, and it's the only way to flush the drug out of your system."

"Drug..."

"The agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. drugged you, Tony Stark. You need to drink this."

Tony drinks the water. He shouldn't. But he does. He shouldn't trust anyone, especially not someone who has no magic in his touch, who doesn't feel safe and comforting, but he does. He drinks everything in the glass.

"Good. Very good. Now rest again, and I'll be back in an hour with more."

"Will you bring Pepper with you?" he whispers. "I need to see her..."

That might be a long pause. Or maybe his scrambled head only makes it seem long. "I'm sorry... no. I'm unable to do that."

"Will you bring Loki?"

The bedframe creaks and the mattress dips as the person sitting next to Tony leans closer. Fingertips trace a ghostly line from his jaw up to his eyelids, as if trying to coax them open. But Tony's head hurts too much, it whirls too much, and he can't bear the power of sight just yet.

"Why do you want Loki?"

Tony tries to shake his head; it takes almost more strength than he has. "I don't know. I just need him to be here. I need him."

"Then yes," the voice whispers in his ear. "I will bring Loki."

ooo

The person in bed with Tony might be Loki. It's so hard to tell. He has Loki's hair, and the angular lines of Loki's face: eyebrow, nose, cheek, chin, all explored by Tony's shaking hands. A smudge of pale skin can be seen through squinted eyes, glowing blue-white and surreal in the arc reactor's light. Soft and smooth with the scent of coconut, broken by the ridge of a scar from collarbone down to hip on the left side.

All of that belongs to Loki. Only one thing is missing.

There's no magic flowing out from his perfect skin and through Tony's veins. Not even the smallest tremor, when there should be a flood.

"Where's your magic?" Tony asks, quietly, with his cheek pressed against the familiar line of Loki's scar.

"No need for you to worry about that," Loki murmurs in reply.

"But it was there in the tower when you..."

"We are no longer in the tower. All of that is over, and you need to rest."

"But the magic..."

With a sigh, Loki lifts his hand from Tony's hip, holding it up in a cup-shaped blur in front of their faces. He conjures a little light into his palm. Bright yellow, like a tiny sun. As its glow becomes stronger, a faint tingle slides from Loki's body to dissipate like mist over Tony's skin. The mist disappears the second Loki lets go of his sun. "Satisfied?" he asks. "The magic is still there."

"But before-"

"I told you not to worry about that."

Nodding, Tony closes his eyes. He will worry, though, because not enough time has passed, and there's only one other way to rebalance.

ooo

The first time Tony wakes up with a clear head, the alarm clock on the nightstand says it's 2:27 pm. But 2:27 pm on which day in which place... that's the mystery.

He's still dizzy when he climbs out of bed. It takes a minute to get his bearings, but at least he can stand up now. That's an improvement. He can stand and he can look around the bedroom, rubbing clouds out of his eyes before they finally focus. It's the bedroom in Phoenix. He's back in Phoenix. Everything is just like it was. Clothes on the floor, a towel thrown carelessly over the foot of the bed...

So Loki brought them back here? Or...?

Once he finds his balance, he can walk to the bathroom. Or maybe shuffle would be the more accurate verb to use. Whatever. He just needs to take a piss and gulp some water right from the faucet, and brush his teeth because his mouth tastes like the floor of a dive bar men's room. His reflection in the mirror as he leans heavily over the sink looks like shit. Real, honest-to-God, no-lie shit, with dark circles under red eyes, sallow gray skin, and a week's worth of scruffy stubble. He needs a shower and a shave like nobody's business, but not before he finds out what the hell is going on and why, of all the things that could've possibly happened, of all the crazy potential twists and turns fate could have thrown at him, he ended up back here.

He shuffles his way down the hall and into the kitchen. There's a black-haired figure sitting at the table, positioned like he's hunched over his food. Wordlessly, Tony sits down across from him. Mushrooms. Loki has a bowl of mushrooms. That weird Asian kind, long and skinny and white. He's wearing a black suit that can't be an illusion, because nobody takes off the jacket of an illusion and drapes it over the back of a chair.

The first words out of Tony's mouth are, "What the fuck, Loki?"

Loki looks up. "To which exact fuck might you be referring?"

"Let's start with why the fuck are we back in Phoenix?"

"I would have thought you'd like to start with thanking me for saving your life."

"That's coming up later on my list of fucks to ask about," says Tony. "This is just the first one."

Shrugging, Loki picks up a mushroom between two long fingers, holding it like a cigarette before biting off the tip. "It seemed to me to be the most sensible choice of destination. You needed a safe place to recover, and I needed to shift somewhere I had already been and could easily access."

Okay. Sure. By Loki standards, that actually makes a lot of sense. One down, dozens more to go. "Fine. Then fuck number two: what day is it?"

"Friday."

"Shit," Tony groans. So he was a space cadet for two solid days. Unfortunately, there's nothing he can do about that. "Number three now. Where did those mushrooms come from?"

"I bought us some food."

"Where and how?"

Loki grabs one more mushroom before standing up to fetch a grocery bag from the counter.

"...You went to Whole Foods?"

"Yes, why?"

And Tony can only shake his head in awe at that, because the mental picture of Loki in a supermarket stubbornly refuses to materialize. Too bizarre. "Just... nothing. You went to Whole Foods. Actually went there like a normal person..." He pulls a receipt up from the bottom of the bag. "Yeah. A normal person with normal money. You did pay for this, right?"

"I know how to purchase food, Tony Stark," Loki answers with a little sneer.

"And you went out and bought that suit, too?"

"Yes, among other things."

"Jesus Christ." He lowers his head down slowly to the table, resting against folded arms. How is it possible for this Loki-adventure to keep getting weirder? By all reasonable estimates, they should have reached weirdness saturation when Loki teleported them across the country the first time. Or when he became a she. Or when he and Thor fought in the desert, or when Tony had to patch him up with dog bandages, or when Loki turned into a Frost Giant, or when they jumped out a window on the penthouse level of Stark Tower and miraculously didn't die.

There's only one explanation for this.

"Am I dead?" he asks, looking up just enough to make eye contact with Loki. "Since Monday morning I've sort of been suspecting that I'm actually dead and in some wacko hell that keeps getting weirder and weirder until I fall into a spiral of insanity. Or else I'm in a coma and all of this is just a dream. Or the S.H.I.E.L.D. drugs haven't worn off yet and in reality I'm still in New York on a bad trip. So remember when I said 'what the fuck'? I'm saying it again. What. The. Fuck."

"I don't know what you mean by that, Tony Stark," Loki answers, opening the fridge. "You're confused. And you should eat something; you've had no food in over two days. Do you like carrots?"

"No, I don't want..." He lifts his head only to drop it back down into his waiting hands. "See, this is what I mean. Food. Shopping. Carrots. You being normal isn't normal."

"I'm only trying to help you."

"Exactly!" Tony almost shouts. "And that's what's weird! You helping me and buying food and... and not trying to steal the Tesseract! It was right there! You said so: right there in the tower! And you did nothing!"

"I freed you from S.H.I.E.L.D.," answers Loki in a voice that's started to pick up a dangerous edge. "I would hardly call that nothing."

"But why?! You sure as hell didn't come all the way across the universe to play Rescue Rangers! You came for the Tesseract. I might have a pretty overinflated opinion of my own self-worth, but even I know I'm small beans compared to whatever space shit you're all tied up in. So seriously, Loki, just cut the crap and tell me. What the fuck is going on?"

Loki's reply is a vague 'hmm' as he leans into the fridge and digs around, moving things back and forth in a timewasting search for nothing in particular. He eventually pulls out a bag of carrots, which he chucks down on the table in front of Tony before taking his seat again. "You should eat."

"No, I told you, I don't want any fucking carrots!" Tony growls. "I'm not a rabbit! I just want you to tell me what's going on. I just want..." He pushes his hair back from his forehead, sweaty and sticky and unwashed. "I think I deserve a little honesty. We've been on the run together for how many days now? And I still don't have the slightest clue what you're up to."

"Right now, I am trying to help you recover from your little episode with S.H.I.E.L.D.," says Loki, too quietly. "I will take care of you until you are well again."

"Yeah, I know, and you'll hug me and love me and call me George, I got it. That's not the part I was asking about. I'm asking why. The Tesseract was right there, but instead of going after it, you came for me. You could have grabbed the one thing you came to this stupid planet to get, the only reason you're here, but you left it there and took me with you instead. Why?"

Loki has exactly three emotions, which Tony's seen in varying degrees of intensity over the past week: amused, pissed off, and blank. Amused and pissed off are pretty self-explanatory. Blank is the tricky one. It's not an absence of emotion like Tony originally thought. It's not the same cold, robotic distance that he sees in people like Natasha, who are able to shut the world out and feel nothing. Loki's blank is different. It's a mask, not a void. A perfectly crafted lie. Not I don't feel anything, but I'm an expert at pretending I don't feel anything. Big difference.

"I told you," Blank-Loki says through an eerie sense of calm. "The Tesseract interferes with my abilities. I'm unable to shift with it, and trying to escape any other way would have been too difficult under the circumstances."

"Not what I asked. You still came back for me even when you were clear of the tower and had no reason to return. Absolutely no reason, since you knew you couldn't take the Tesseract. Why?"

"You freed me from S.H.I.E.L.D.'s prison. I was repaying the debt. Now we are even."

"And you've been sitting around here for the last two days doing what?" Tony asks. "You could've gone back for the cube, but didn't. You could've repaid your debt, dumped me here and gone back for it. Why didn't you?"

"I see no reason to explain my actions to you," answers Loki, still unnervingly quiet. Blank as ever.

"Not even with me being directly involved in your actions?"

He doesn't reply.

"Why don't you just tell me," says Tony, thinking that maybe, if he uses a quiet enough voice, matching Loki in tone, his words will get through. "What's your plan? Do you even still have a plan? What are you doing? We? Are we still a team? What are we doing?"

"You should eat your carrots," is all Loki says.

"Carrots aren't even real food. They're an ingredient in food." But he still eats one, because his stomach is growling and, well, convenience. "You have a lot to learn about proper care and feeding of humans," he says as he chews.

"They're far better for you than the greasy filth you generally choose to eat."

"I like my greasy filth." Carrots are no comparison. "But back to the actual topic we were talking about before you tried to distract me with nutrition, do you have a plan?"

Loki nods. "Yes."

"Are you going to tell me the plan?"

"Not yet."

"But in the future."

"Perhaps."

"You don't trust me." He doesn't even bother to phrase that as a question.

Looking up from his mushrooms, Loki raises one eyebrow. "I trust you as much as I need to. And I am certain you feel the same way about me."

Much as he'd like to deny that, much as he'd love to throw Loki's words back in his face, Tony knows there's too much truth in the statement. He does trust Loki, yes. But only as much as he needs to. A few nagging threads of doubt are still there, hanging over his head, and won't be going anywhere any time soon.

"Well, maybe we can work on that," he says, standing up. "Later. Right now? That carrot made me even hungrier, and being imprisoned by S.H.I.E.L.D. and falling out of my own tower have made me incredibly stressed, so here's my game plan. I have had literally no time to relax in... I don't even know how long. Probably months. So heads up: I am doing fuck all for the rest of the day. First I'm going to take a shower and try to feel like a small fraction of my old self again. Then I'm going to call for some greasy, filthy Chinese takeout with a side of extra filth and grease. Third, I'm going to take advantage of the fact that I'm not in New York to sit on the deck with my ginger beef and a beer, soaking up the sun."

"Beer?" asks Loki. "After everything you've been through in the past three days, after all that was done to you, the first thing you want to do is drink more?"

"Third thing," Tony corrects on his way out. "The first thing is showering, remember? Also, beer doesn't count as drinking. Beer is socializing. So you're more than welcome to join me on the deck, unless your pallid ass is worried about getting a tan."

ooo

He's halfway through his shower before the guilt starts to seep in. Just a little bit at first, regretting one or two words here and there. Maybe he shouldn't have said that. Or the other thing. Or dropped so many f-bombs. But then the dam breaks and when he replays the conversation in his mind as he towels off and pulls on clean clothes... He really shouldn't have said that, he definitely should've steered clear of the other thing, and for the love of God, why did he have to start everything off on a sour note by being such a spaz instead of thanking Loki for saving his ungrateful hide?

"Son of a bitch..." he swears under his breath. So he trudges back to the kitchen, even though it feels about as comfortable as punching himself in the face, and plants himself two feet from Loki's back. Loki's still in exactly the same place. Picking at mushrooms. "Sorry," he says, quickly, to get it over with.

"Sorry for what?" Loki snaps in return.

"For being such an asshole and not thanking you like I should've done. I'm stressed and unhappy and have the motherfucker of all headaches and I'm kind of freaked out by everything that's happened, but that's a shitty excuse, so I'm sorry. You've treated me a lot better than I ever expected or deserved. Which is part of what's freaking me out, but that's okay, I can deal. I should really stop being such a dickhead about it because I'm free and I'm safe and compared to how I felt after my fortieth birthday party, I'm actually in really good physical condition. And that's all because of you. So. Thanks. Thank you. For everything you've done. And... even for the carrots. That was weird, but thoughtful."

He watches the back of Loki's head as Loki grudgingly nods. "You're welcome."

"And I'm sorry we don't trust each other more."

Loki's only answer to that is another dip of his head as he leans over the mushroom bowl.

"We good now?"

"Hn."

That pretty obviously means 'no'. "Sorry." Again. Even though the word is starting to become a little meaningless. An empty, quick-fix apology. He takes one more step forward to close the distance between them, and rests a hesitant hand on Loki's shoulder. Loki flinches at the touch, but doesn't shrug it off or pull away.

It reminds him of something. Something in a muddled memory from hours ago or yesterday or the day before or who even knows when: an action made all of fog and imperfection that he thought was a dream. Somebody in bed at his side. No magic.

"That wasn't a dream, was it."

"What?"

"You brought me water."

"Of course I brought you water," Loki mutters. "You would have died if I hadn't."

Tony nods. "Your magic is gone."

Loki does pull away at that, wrenching his shoulder out of Tony's grasp and standing up faster than the eye can track. "I told you that is no concern of yours," he warns. "I need neither judgment nor pity from you, Tony Stark. I do what I must, and have been doing so for longer than you can even imagine."

"I know," say Tony, and he lets his hand fall down uselessly at his side. A sinking feeling in his gut matches the gesture too perfectly. "I get it; you're a big boy and can take care of yourself. I'm not trying to pry or... anything. But if you ever feel like you might want to trust me a little more and have a go at telling me something about your mysterious self...?"

Not a chance, says the icy glare in Loki's eyes. The fortress walls are up. And they're armed for combat.

"Okay. Well. If you change your mind? I'll be on the deck."

ooo

Loki doesn't join Tony on the deck. But he does forgive Tony in time to find his way into the bedroom once the evening of relaxation has moved indoors. He sneaks in like a cat on the prowl, slinking through the door and skirting along the wall before he finally makes it over to perch on the edge of the bed. All of this is done without once looking at Tony. Instead, his eyes stay fixed on the TV. Which is, in that moment, showing a large-breasted blonde woman taking it doggy-style from a man whose muscular arms are littered with tattoos.

The long and awkward silence that ensues is a surprise to nobody.

Loki speaks first, in a (completely justified) tone of resigned disappointment. "Tony Stark, what are you watching?"

"Um," Tony replies. "I think it's 'Busty MILF Addicted to Cock', but I don't remember if that's the title or the synopsis."

"And why are you watching this?"

"...I got bored with Big Bang Theory reruns?"

"I see," says Loki, leaning back against the headboard. "So you intentionally chose to observe this troll-like oaf and his equally hideous woman rutting like pigs over any other form of entertainment?"

"The way you say that makes it sound like you're trying to shame me," says Tony. "Not going to happen. I have pretty much no sense of shame."

"Why? You enjoy this artless display?"

"Since when does porn have to be art?"

"Sexuality is an art," Loki replies, and hell if those words don't just slide off his tongue like liquid silk. Sinuous and enticing. "Every little nuance and hint and teasing promise. A touch or a kiss drawn out in anticipation of what might come. The fleeting caress that sends shivers down your spine. Skin just barely touching skin and shallow breath finding all those secret places that make your pulse race. Undressing inch by inch, feeling the weight of each piece of clothing slide down your shoulders and arms and back and thighs as you bare yourself to the vulnerability of the bedroom, nothing but cool air to cloak your body, and you watch another do the same... For you. All for you. A gift. Denial heightens expectation. There is a place for feral lust, yes, at the heart of all desire, but would you not agree it is sweeter to savor each moment? Slowly? Prolonging it almost to the point of intolerance, stoking embers into an inferno? A constant scattering of tiny motions accumulates into something great when given time. It takes you higher than anything you've ever known, further than any careless, animal encounter, until finally, finally, at the utmost end, you can lose yourself in the glory of perfect satisfaction... That, Tony Stark, is a very fine art. Not this..." He jerks his chin at the TV in a dismissive gesture. "...crude fucking."

An art. Yes. Oh, yes, it is an art, a goddamn fine art, if mere words from the lips of a fallen angel can incite the same reaction as any touch of magic. Filling Tony's bloodstream with the same dark red heat and concentrating in the same low, heavy place. "Shit," he breathes. Those words inspire too many dangerous pictures in the over-imaginative chaos of his mind. "Yeah that's... Say that again."

"All of it?" Loki asks.

"Specifically the part about 'crude fucking'. Coming from anybody else it would just be vulgar, but somehow when you say it, the words are oddly poetic."

Loki's grin stretches wide enough to show a row of straight, white teeth. "Crude fucking," he purrs.

And that's nothing short of a lightning strike of... what did Loki say? 'Feral lust'? Yeah. A lightning strike straight to his core that hums over his skin and electrifies every hair on his body. He swallows the thick knot in his throat. "Right. Um. So. I think we should get naked now."

Immediately, Loki's smirk of wry amusement falls away into a blank stare. "That's a very forward statement."

"I'm a very forward kind of person."

"And what reason might we have to 'get naked', as you so charmingly phrase it?"

"Well," Tony starts, "let's see. It's Friday evening. We're sitting in bed, drinking beer, watching porn, and you just started a conversation about what sounds like the Asgardian Kama Sutra. Add to this the fact that I'm objectively a very okay-looking guy in desperate need of a rebound lay, and you're more or less a sex-pest supermodel... Statistically speaking, I don't think it's possible for this night to end without us sleeping together."

"Statistically speaking," Loki echoes back to him.

"I like to apply a good measure of scientific analysis to everything I do."

"Do you ever apply critical thought to anything you do? Because that was honestly the worst proposition I've ever had. And bear in mind that I come from a culture where the prelude to most sexual encounters is some tactless cretin yelling 'Oy you; get over here' from across a mead-soaked banquet hall."

"Okay," says Tony. "Sorry. So... was that a yes or a no?"

The sound Loki makes in response could easily be classified as any of the following: a disgusted grunt, a disbelieving groan, or an inarticulate 'you are a complete asshole'. "That would be a no."

"Oh come on! You've been actively trying to get in my pants for the past week! What changed?"

"I was actively trying to rebalance my magic," Loki counters. "That is all."

"We signed a contract."

"To rebalance my magic. And to refresh your memory, the amendment to point three specifies that a substitute may be chosen at my discretion. Seeing as I have done so, the contract has been executed in its entirety and we are no longer bound by its terms."

"Sorry, guess again," says Tony. The contract is still sitting on the nightstand, right where he left it before they teleported to New York. And even though it now might have a water-glass ring of smudged ink, all words are still mostly legible. "Allow me to refresh your memory. In the matter of the service agreement between Tony Stark and Loki of Asgard, wherein Loki agrees to transport Tony to Stark Tower in New York City by way of magical teleportation, point one specifies that, in the event of irreconcilable differences arising between Tony and his girlfriend, Ms. Virginia Potts, Tony agrees to assist Loki in the rebalancing of Loki's magic by means of... this is a bit smudged, but I'm pretty sure it says 'intimate personal relations'."

Loki rolls his eyes. "And points two and three say?"

"Point two," Tony continues, "states that in the event that Tony and his girlfriend are happily reconciled, Tony will assist Loki to rebalance his magic by aiding in the search for an appropriate substitute to participate in the personal relations outlined in point one. Then point three, which is contingent on point two, clarifies that in the absence of any suitable candidate, as determined by Loki, Tony will be required to fulfill those duties necessary in the rebalancing of Loki's magic, regardless of relationship status."

"And there it is," says Loki. "Which part about my prerogative to nominate a substitute did you not understand?"

Holding out the paper to Loki, Tony taps point one. "The part about you only choosing a substitute in the event that I resume my relationship with Pepper. Since she ended up dumping my ass, the terms of point one are in effect. I'm required to engage in intimate personal relations with you. We're still contractually bound to get it on."

"May I see that?" He doesn't even give time for an answer before yanking the page out of Tony's hands, ripping it in half, wadding the two halves into a ball, and chucking the ball across the room. "There. Contract executed."

"Hey!" Tony shouts. "That was a legal document! You can't just-"

"It was a scribble of words on a page, Tony Stark, neither witnessed nor correctly sealed. It was as binding as a shackle made of water."

Right, because suddenly Loki wants out. Funny how that works in his favor. "Would you still say that if I was the one who wanted to break it?"

"I think it's clear that I already have," Loki answers with a brief and narrow smile. "If I truly wanted to hold you to our agreement, I could have accepted any of the... oh let me see, six times you attempted to initiate that sort of intimacy between us while in your drunken, drug-addled fever?"

And that makes Tony's stomach leap. "...Six..."

"Yes, and over the course of only two days! You are persistent."

"So why didn't you?"

Maybe, at that, something ever so slightly more than 'blank' passes across Loki's face. "Would you have done so, were our places reversed? Taken advantage of me in that way?"

No. Silently, Tony shakes his head.

"Then why should you think I would?"

Because you... But that beginning of an excuse, he knows, isn't true. Even in the first days, back in the bathroom in Atlantic City, how far did Loki push him? Touches, kisses, a cuddle on the floor. Nothing worse than that, all clothing stayed on, and most of it was probably just Loki being the God of Assholes and trying to piss him off. Then their little encounter on the couch. As much as Tony hates to admit it, Loki was right: he initiated that one. For all he knows Loki could've been content with just cuddling until Thor got home, but he went ahead and turned it into something more. In the Texas motel... Well, they were both drunk out of their minds, so nobody can be held to blame for that one.

All along, Loki could've gone a lot further down a shady path. All along, Loki didn't.

"Okay," he says, picking up the remote and shutting off the TV. Artless porn seems more than a little inappropriate now. "So you've managed to successfully kill the mood. What time is it? Quarter to nine? Maybe we should just call it an early night and chastely go to sleep in separate beds to dream of... I don't know, church and saints and heaven and shit. Be good, virtuous people for once."

"That sounds dull."

"Yeah, well..." He tosses the remote aside, letting it land somewhere near Loki's feet, and eases his way down into bed. If he turns onto his side he can stare at the clock on the nightstand, though its glowing red numbers, 8:44, do nothing to make him the least bit sleepy.

At his back, he can hear Loki draw in a breath and sigh it out, and shift position.

"Hit the lights on the way out, will you?" Tony asks.

"Mm," Loki agrees. Maybe. It's probably an agreement. But he doesn't move: not right away. He stays sitting there, shifting and sighing, until he finally says, "You know... That wasn't an outright rejection."

"What wasn't a what?"

"I said no to your ludicrous proposal. That wasn't a no to you." Then the mattress dips near Tony's shoulder, and Loki's breath tickles in his ear. "You just need to try harder."

All the pent-up desire that had fled his body only seconds earlier comes flooding back in at the sound of those words. All the want and all the need. Tony turns his head just enough to see Loki's face, now inches from his own. "Harder is one of my specialties."

Even Loki's smirk shows off a hint of his straight, white teeth. Tony reaches up, hand aiming for the inviting curve of his cheek, but Loki pulls back before contact is made. "Ah-ah," he says, raising a finger. "Not good enough. Not yet."

"Then what?" Tony asks.

"Think of what I said before. About teasing hints and promises. What can you promise me? What if, in some other reality, I were a stranger you spied at some very boring event... What would you say?"

"I like to open with the line, 'Hi, I'm Tony Stark.'"

"And then?"

"That's usually enough to get me where I need to go."

"Hm," Loki says. Or hums. It's a small sound, in his throat. He leans in to Tony's ear again, this time pressing lips against skin. With the point of his tongue he delicately traces the rim, curving down to the lobe, which he takes between his teeth. Biting just hard enough to hurt.

That little jolt of pain shoots right down between Tony's legs. "Oh fuck..." he hisses.

"Not today," Loki whispers in reply. "But better luck next time? I'll let you think this over and try to come up with a more enticing invitation."

And that's all he says before slipping away, sliding gracefully in his cat-like movements back to the far side of the bed. His feet meet the floor, but before he can stand, Tony rolls to the side, arm flashing out. He grabs Loki by the hand.

"Wait. I had a dream about you."

Loki waits. Licks his lips. "A dream?"

It's like a little challenge. Just another one of Loki's games, one of a thousand tricks and riddles, and he can play along with this. "You want me to get your panties all hot and bothered with dirty talk, okay, here goes. I had a dream about you. When I was in the tower."

"And?"

"I never knew how complicated Asgardian clothing was to take off."

He pulls himself up to his hands and knees, crawling across the bed to Loki, who watches with that same old wry smirk. But there might just be a spark of something else in his eyes. Something curious. Something... intrigued.

"We were in you old glass cell on the S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier. I'll spare you the racy details, but one image that's been etched into my brain is the way you looked. The way your skin glowed in that ghostly blue light, like the sheen of a pearl. I've never seen anything like it. Alien but familiar all at once, because it looked like..."

His shirt comes off in one swift motion, over his head, tossed aside. Then his hands find Loki's wrist, and the little button of his cuff, easing it open to push back the sleeve. Baring what lies beneath. In the light of the arc reactor, Loki's arm is snowy pale. Patterns of blue veins rise prominently under translucent skin.

"Like this," he says. "Just like this. Like you were mine. Bathed in my light. All for me. And... I wanted that. More than any of your eloquent words could ever describe, I wanted it and wanted you and wanted to see the way your body answered to my touch. That's what excites me, Loki. Not some cheap quickie or any of that 'crude fucking'. I like seeing what I can do. I like hearing somebody's breath hitch when my hand slides here, pressing harder to coax out a little gasp, feeling muscles tighten with need... watching your back arch off the floor and knowing that I'm responsible. That I hold the power over all the pleasure you feel. I like that. I'm a visual, tactile person. Always holding, touching, exploring, seeking out new and better ways to express myself. I like a challenge. I'm good at what I do and I'm stubborn as fuck, and I won't give up until I can make you forget about every single other talentless motherfucker who ever wrongly thought himself worthy of touching you. That's what I want."

One hand takes hold of Loki's wrist. The pulse races hot and hard under his fingertips, matching his own beat for beat.

"And think right now you want the exact same thing."

Loki gives him one shallow nod. "Perhaps..."

"Then stay with me tonight."