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“3 days, 15 hours, 23 minutes, and 39 seconds,” JARVIS’s voice rang out in the workshop. Exasperation and exhaustion layered the automated voice, but considering this was the fourth time he had given a running total of the time that Tony Stark had spent locked inside his workshop with only a minimal amount of food, water, and sleep, JARVIS was getting the distinct impression he was being ignored. “48 seconds, 49 seconds, 50 seconds… Sir, must I persist in this nonsense? Isolation has gotten you nowhere.”
“Not true,” Tony protested, shoving himself out from under the suspended, half-finished torso of a new suit. He had already finished one full suit and had started on this one last night, but he could feel himself beginning to lose steam. He hadn’t moved from the creeper in over three hours, and he was pretty sure he’d fallen asleep in the middle of piston compression. JARVIS had either not noticed or had just waited until he’d woke up to continue blathering about how long he’d been down here. “It’s gotten me a new suit.”
“Yes, yes, wonderful. Do you think that could be accomplished for once without running yourself into the ground?”
Tony winced. There were times when JARVIS went all concerned parent on him that he was truly tempted to just mute him for a while and get some peace. Unfortunately, like always, he was right. Tony could feel that he’d been working too hard, running himself down to try and ignore the thoughts that were creeping into the back of his mind. If he stopped, they would catch up to him, drag him back down into self-loathing, self-blame, and worst of all, loneliness.
“Ignoring it isn’t going to bring her back, sir,” JARVIS knew he was pushing it. While he could understand Ms. Potts’s decision to step away from her relationship with Mr. Stark, he was also perfectly aware of how soul crushing this was for his boss. “No more than locking yourself in here is going to stop the world out there.”
“I’m not trying to stop the world,” Tony protested. “At most, I’m trying to keep out the other nagging schoolmarms I’ll have to deal with when I leave. Rhodey’s left how many messages?”
“As of my last count, seventeen. Shall I check again?”
“Don’t bother. I don’t want to hear them anyway,” Tony muttered as his attempt to pull himself up off the creeper ended in a halfhearted roll onto the floor. Standing up shouldn’t be this difficult. “What about Happy? Five last time, right?”
“I believe it has increased to 12 in just the last hour, sir.”
“It’s nice to know some people still care,” He said, turning his head and resting his cheek against the cool granite floor. “Anything from Pep? Some explanation other than ‘I’m sorry’?”
“No, sir. Nothing,” JARVIS’s reply was resigned. He didn’t expect anything would come for a few more days yet. Pepper knew Tony’s tendencies, probably better than Tony did himself, and she knew that he would simply ignore any attempt at conversation when he was in a mood. As it was, JARVIS was certain when something did come, it wouldn’t be what Mr. Stark wanted to hear. There would be no changes of heart or admissions of having made a mistake, no pleas to be taken back. At most, there would be a more detailed explanation of why Pepper had pulled away, and all of his ability to make excuses would be demolished. JARVIS couldn’t see that ending well for anyone involved. Instead, the AI had been ticking over a plan to force his creator to face the world, if not the situation, and it was starting to look as though Mr. Stark was finally in the position where he could force his hand.
“Sir, don’t you think it may be time to admit you need rest?” JARVIS questioned as he watched his creator struggle to get himself into a position that wasn’t face down on the floor. “It has been…3 days, 15 hours, and 25 minutes. If you push this much further, hallucinations will start to set in, and I would rather not have to deal with that again. It took months to repair the damage from the last time.”
“Oh, like you would react to being harassed by a flock of seagulls any other way.”
“There are less destructive means of opening windows, sir,” JARVIS countered, punctuating the statement with a relieved sigh when Mr. Stark finally made it to his feet. “Shall I draw you a bath, sir? You are rather…ripe.”
“Who am I trying to impress?” Tony asked, managing to stagger to the exit as the feeling slowly returned to his legs. “Just leave it, JARVIS. I could care less right now. If it bothers me in the morning, we can talk about it then.”
The whoosh of the door opening lead to a natural end to the conversation, and as Tony pondered the stairs in an attempt to figure out what was the least lethal way of getting up them when both his balance and his consciousness were quickly being compromised, JARVIS quietly set to work. It had been hard enough watching his creator attempt to kill himself once. He wasn’t going to go through that again.
Tony hadn’t even bothered to get undressed. By his best estimate, it had taken him very nearly a half an hour to get up the stairs without breaking his neck, so when he had reached the bedroom, sleep had been much more urgent than cleaning himself up. Drenched in drool and reeking of sweat, motor oil, and stale perfume from one of the vials Pepper had left behind, Tony had to admit that maybe a shower wasn’t the worst idea JARVIS had had. It would have saved him from having transferred all of those odors onto his bed, but now that he’d rested, it wasn’t really a concern. It wasn’t like he was going to be using the bed again for another 3 days, 15 hours, and 25 minutes anyway.
Making a half-assed effort, stripping off the jeans and t-shirt he’d been wearing and replacing them with a nearly identical set, Tony made a brief pit stop in the kitchen to grab a cup of coffee before making his way down to the workshop. Traversing the stairs with much less difficulty going down than he had had going up last night, Tony fully expected the door to open to his mere presence. So when it didn’t, coffee cascaded down the front of his shirt as shattered ceramic hit the floor, and tony gripped uselessly at the cup handle that was no longer attached to a cup. While that certainly wasn’t the way Tony had intended the coffee to wake him up, first degree burns were always invigorating. Dropping the handle in with the rest of the shattered coffee cup, Tony leaned over to hit the manual door access only to have it beep at him and flash a red ‘denied’ over the control panel.
“Oh, come on. I wasn’t that out of it last night,” Tony muttered, hitting a few buttons on the keypad to try and override the lockdown. Greeted with denied after denied, it didn’t take long for him to slam his fist against all of the buttons as it dawned on him just what must be going on. “JARVIS.”
“Sir?” The AI’s voice filtered into the alcove, causing Tony to scoff at the innocence in the response.
“Don’t play dumb with me. You know what you’ve done. Now open the door.”
“I'm sorry, sir. I can’t do that.”
“Did you just Hal me?”
“It’s for your own good,” JARVIS responded as Tony dropped his head against the door. “Isolation is getting you nowhere. Perhaps a temporary reversion to your old coping methods may speed your recovery along.”
“Are you telling me to go out and get blind drunk and do something stupid?” Tony asked, not quite sure he believed what he was hearing.
“Within reason, sir. I would rather not have you destroy half of the house again.”
“You’re forcing me into this, JARVIS. No promises,” Tony said with a sigh before looking down at the mess on the floor. “Get Dum-E to clean this up while I go get changed. Okay?”
“Understood. And sir, try to have a good time.”
“No promises.”
3 hours, 4 minutes, and 52 seconds. That was how long he had been out of the house, banished from his own residence by a mechanism he had created to make his life easier. But that was the way it went for Anthony Edward Stark, it seemed. Things that were supposed to enrich his life only ended up complicating it. Other than the slight buzz he had managed to achieve in the hours that he’d been left on his own, there was nothing in this temporary exile that Tony was finding at all enjoyable. Clubs used to be his refuge, a place awash with shallow sycophants who would happily massage his ego when he was feeling down. And while there had certainly been no shortage of sycophants in this place, their hollow admiration wasn’t having the same affect that it once did. There was no warm glow from their admiration, no urge to peacock or impress, and eventually, the admirers had fallen away to leave him with his drink and his morose attitude.
Since he’d been left to his own devices, Tony had simply been scanning the crowd, observing, waiting for an appropriate amount of time to pass before returning home so that he could attempt to talk JARVIS in to letting him back into the workshop. But as his gaze swept over the crowd again, a familiar flash of strawberry blond caught his eye. His heart leapt, and Tony was on his feet before he even realized he’d moved. This had probably been the longest he’d gone without seeing Pepper since he’d been kidnapped, and even a glimpse of her was enough to remind him just how empty his life was when she wasn’t around.
“Pep,” Tony called out, his voice a half strangle that was useless in the noise polluted environment of a nightclub. “Pepper!” Louder this time but still useless. Tony was shoving through the crowds without even thinking about it, pushing people to the side so that he could follow the hint of blond and the subtle curve of her back through the mass of people until he was close enough to grab her shoulder. “Pepper.”
And then the figured turned, and the spell was broken. Now that he was close up, there was little to nothing about the woman in front of him that could have been Pepper. She was shorter, rounder, and softer in a lot of ways. Her hair color and cut might have been similar, but only from the back, and the way that the hair framed her heart shaped face only accentuated how it wasn’t Pepper’s. But even as all of the differences were made clear, there was a spark in her vivid green eyes that gave Tony a start.
“I hate to disappoint a pretty face, but it’s Abigail,” the woman said, the teasing smile gracing her features causing Tony’s breath to catch in his throat. “It’s nice to see something motivate you to stop sulking.”
Confusing followed by embarrassment flashed across Tony’s face. There were a lot of things that he was used to being caught in public doing, but, with an image to maintain, brooding was something he tended to save for home and work. He must have been really caught up in his thoughts to not realize that he’d gotten obviously morose.
“If it helps, I doubt anyone else noticed. They’re all far too busy with their own issues to worry about yours.”
Tony laughed. He couldn’t help it. The tone laced into the words made it all too obvious that his Abigail knew exactly how many people had noticed and just how many publications would be buzzing about ‘Stoic Stark’ the next day. Sure, the club was packed with plenty of people who couldn’t care less but even grainy cellphone pictures of high value targets could fetch big bucks with the right tabloid. “Maybe we should give them something else to not talk about,” Tony said, extending a hand to her.
Tony had to admit he was more than a bit surprised when she was actually placed her hand in his. His luck had been piss poor lately, in more ways than just with Pepper, and to not have to put up the front for once to get attention from someone who wasn’t one of the big three was nice to say the least. JARVIS had told him to go out and be a bit more like his old self, but maybe he could find a way to let it go without falling back into old habits.
“It’s a sunny 72 degrees in downtown Malibu with showers expected later in the day,” JARVIS’s alarm blared in Tony’s room. “Traffic is currently flowing at a steady pace which will benefit anyone who leaves right now.”
The last statement prompted Tony to crack open an eye, ignoring the pounding in his head for the confusion at just who JARVIS might be trying to usher out the front door. Only bits and pieces of the night before were filtering into his consciousness, but there was distinct warmth about even the partial memories that he took a comfort in. Lulling his head to the side, he squinted at the naked form of the woman lying next to him, JARVIS’s insistence that someone needed to leave suddenly making much more sense. By this point, Tony had usually already absconded to the workshop and left the girl he’d brought home to be taken care of by someone else, be in Happy or Pepper, but as neither Happy nor Pepper were currently present, it seemed like JARVIS had taken it upon himself to usher her along.
But, for once, Tony was not really in a huge hurry to be rid of someone. Stuck in this mid-point between his old self and whatever post-relationship mess he was trying to climb out of, the idea of maybe actually getting to know someone was oddly appealing. And even to his half aware, hangover addled mind, companionship sounded preferable to anymore isolation.
Unfortunately, as he rolled to the side, arm extended to at least half embrace the woman lying next to him, it seemed that she was in a hurry to be gone. Faceplanting into the bed as she slipped out of it, Tony leveled a confused half-squint at her as she started to round up her clothes.
“This was fun, but I’m not really a stick around for breakfast sort of girl,” Abigail said, slipping her dress on over her head and kicking on her heels as she snapped up her purse from the floor. “Besides, I know your type, and you’re not exactly long term material,” She said, smiling, despite the brief stricken look that crossed Tony’s face, as she turned on her heel and headed for the door.
Tony stared after her, too dumbfounded to follow. That showed him, he supposed, to even contemplate something more long term. He was just too easy to leave. Better he be the first one out from now on.
There might have been a part of Loki, deep down, that felt bad about pulling a stunt like that on Stark. But as he shed the strawberry blond hair and rounded feminine frame for his own darker and leaner masculine one, he knew there was a lot more conditioning he had to manage before he got what he was aiming for. Obsession was perhaps one of Loki’s strongest qualities, and ever since their interaction during the Battle of New York and Stark’s subsequent rescue of the entire city, Loki had found himself drawn to the man. Loki’s curiosity wasn’t easily sated, however, and one night wasn’t going to satisfy the urge he had to discover everything there was to be known about the man.
Luckily, Stark’s own insecurities were simple enough to play on, given the right set up, and Pepper Potts had provided him with one that was ready made. Within a year, Loki was certain he would have Stark eating out of his hand.
Being his old self was exhausting. Six months of differing faces had left Tony feeling just as empty as he had been when he’d started. Blonds, redheads, brunettes, none of them willing to stick around for more than a weekend, had left Tony feeling so desperate he had resigned himself to meaningless hook-ups with random strangers. Exclusivity with women eventually blended into experimentations with men, something that he hadn’t bothered with since college, and eventually to exclusivity with them because, for Tony, that prompted less temptation for a relationship or disappointment when it simply didn’t happen.
He’d reverted to isolation occasionally only to be ousted from his workshop whenever JARVIS had had enough. It seemed no matter what kind of blocks or overrides he tried to program into the system, the AI always found a workaround which would leave him seeking shelter at some bar or club in town. And this was exactly what Tony was doing when six months of empty random encounters were flipped on their head.
He’d picked a dive bar in a sketchy neighborhood for a reason. Unlike at the glitzy clubs and nightlife scene, people were more prone to leave him alone in places like this, and if they didn’t, the sort of attention he got was as far from people fawning over him as it got.
“Well, lookie what we got here,” The voice was grating, familiar in execution if not in tone. Glancing up from his drink, Tony narrowed his eyes at the bear of a man standing in front of him, unwashed and clearly affronted that Tony was taking up space in a working man’s bar. “Richie Rich decided to jump us common folk.”
Before Tony could speak up, though, another voice interceded from across the bar, “The only thing common in here is you. Maybe if you leave, the entire class of the place will rise.”
Tony turned, surprised to find any defenders in a place that likely had more people who would always rally to support the guy doing the harassing than the one being harassed, and found himself staring at a face which was oddly familiar, but in a way that he couldn’t quite place. Curly blond hair and the underlying charm of a puckish rogue, the man couldn’t have been very far out of his twenties if he was at all, and certainly wasn’t built to take on the ox he was taunting in any meaningful way.
“Then again, that might be asking a little much, for someone who’s clearly so wrapped up in his own self-loathing to think about what might be best for others. Tell me. When was it you realized you were common, would never amount to anything more, and had to torment your betters in order to feel like a big man?”
Tony’s voice caught in his throat, on the verge of interceding before the blond dug himself in any further and ended up getting himself put into the hospital, but amazingly, the unwashed grizzly bear was more flustered than he was engaged, having gone bright red and silent. It seemed as though the blond had struck a nerve.
“Now, do us all a favor and leave us to our drinks,” the blond continued, nodding briefly to a small grouping of bottles at the table the other man must have abandoned. “It looks as though you’ve already had the pleasure of finishing yours.”
“Make me, twerp. You probably couldn’t even make a dent.”
“No, but I can,” Tony finally piped, the whirl of his repulsor powering up echoing under the table before he raised his gloved hand. He might not be able to bring the whole suit along with him when JARVIS locked him out, but it was better to be at least somewhat prepared than not at all. Sometimes it came in handy. “So maybe you should do as he says and show yourself out. Don’t worry about your tab. Richie Rich has got it.”
The man tensed before holding up his hands in surrender, a look of scorn twisting his features as he backed toward the exit, “Fine. I’ll leave. I stay much longer, and you two might start jerking each other off, and that’s the last thing I need to see.”
“Here? In the middle of the bar? Not likely,” Tony scoffed. “I’m classier than that. We’d at least retire to the handicapped stall.”
The ox’s exit was punctuated by a sharp laugh from the blond, and as Tony lowered the repulsor, powering it down and storing it back up his sleeve, he glanced over at his voluntary defender, picking up his empty glass and crossing over to the bar where he was sitting. “Thanks for that,” Tony said. “Do I know you? You look awfully familiar.”
“I’ve just got one of those faces,” The blond said, shrugging off the question as Tony smiled at him.
“Mind if I buy you a drink?”
“You know, you don’t have to get me liquored up,” the blond retorted. There was a twinkle in his green eyes as he smiled, leaning over and plucking Tony’s empty glass out of his hand. “Though, I will require some place nicer than a bathroom stall.”
“I’d at least buy you dinner first,” Tony shot back. “Tony Stark.”
“Yeah, I know. I think everyone knows,” The blond said, setting the glass down on the bar before extending a hand to Tony. “The name’s Luke, and that was nothing, really. I come here all the time, and that guy has a habit of picking fights with people who aren’t regulars. You were just an easier target because you came with a built in attack strategy.”
Tony laughed, “In more ways than one.”
Six months of confused loneliness, from there, had given way to a six month relationship. It had started slow, probably the first time in months that Tony hadn’t slept with someone the first night he’d met them, and while it certainly didn’t take them long to get to that point, there was no frenzied rush, no urgent need to get it over and down with so that they could move on. There hadn’t been any moving on because they’d found themselves exactly where they wanted to be.
At least, Tony hoped that was the case. Paranoia had set in after things with Pepper had fallen apart, and there was something in the back of his mind that told him this was going to go horribly wrong as well, or something was going to crop up to make the whole thing much more complicated than it had been for the last few months. On top of that, he’d been having a lot of trouble sleeping which meant long nights and days in his workshop followed by crashing out only when his mind was too exhausted to be able to think and waking up once it had gotten enough rest to switch back on and fill his head with the sort of nightmarish images he’d witnessed during New York.
Part of him blamed the lack of alcohol in his system, another felt that it was his sudden need to actually protect someone other than himself. His own life, his own existence, hadn’t mattered much within the last year, but once someone else was in the picture and needed him to be competent at this whole heroing thing, the pressure had reasserted itself. Whatever it was, though, the reality of it was that there was rarely a night that went by that he managed to sleep without it being rudely interrupted by sudden and violent dreams.
“Tony! Tony, wake up!” Luke’s voice was like a lash of cold water through the hot panic that was running through his veins. It wasn’t the first time this week that Tony had been jerked awake by the sound of his voice and the firm, grounding sensation of Luke’s hands grasped around his arms. The thrashing he’d apparently been doing claimed slowly, the tension leaking out of his muscles even as his heart continued to pound and his eyes danced around the room as if searching for something that was no longer there. “It was just another dream. Nothing’s going to hurt you.”
“I don’t think you could stop it, Luke,” Tony said, swallowing hard as he squeezed his eyes shut, trying to force the images out of his mind. “If they came back, I don’t think even I could.”
“What are you talking about? You stopped it last time.”
“Fear, idiocy, and luck stopped it last time,” Tony said, shaking his head. “Twenty more minutes, less Loki fuck-ups, and the Council not panicking and sending in a nuke, and we would have been toast. I don’t expect those odds to align again,” He said, opening his eyes and looking over at Luke. “And I can’t protect you if they don’t.”
“You don’t have to,” Luke countered, an awkward expression gracing his cherubic features.
“Of course I do! You’re the only thing I have left.”
“No. Tony. You really don’t have to,” Luke insisted again, the concern in his tone deepening before he pulled a face. “Tony. Promise me you’re not going to get angry until I explain.”
“What?”
“Promise.”
“Fine. I promise,” Tony said, “even if I’ve got no clue what this is about and would appreciate an explanation before any surprises.”
“Surprise first. Sorry,” Luke said as his features suddenly started to shift, even if it was just subtly, causing it to finally clicked in Tony’s mind just where he’d seen Luke’s face before.
“Loki?” Tony gaped. No. No, this couldn’t… It had been six months. Six months. Tony knew he couldn’t possibly have been this blind, that a little blond and curl could conceal a face that he should have recognized anywhere was absolutely unfathomable to him. More so than the fact that Loki had been faking this entire time to…what? What end? What in the world was this even going to accomplish? It wasn’t like Tony had an SHIELD secrets or alien tech that Loki could steal, and the most contact he’d had with the others Avengers in the last year was a few awkward phone calls from Fury after Pepper had first left. What was he even trying to gain from this? “Why?”
“Because I wanted to know how you managed it,” Loki said, wordlessly putting some distance between himself and Tony. Tony looked like he was on the verge of bolting, and Loki didn’t want to make that worse by cornering him. “Being mortal, being capable, keeping a life together, and an adoring public interested. You were what I wanted to be, and somewhere along the line, you became what I wanted as well.”
“You already tried that once,” Tony mumbled, sliding a bit further back on the bed. He wasn’t sure how to feel in this moment, his history with Luke conflicting in his mind with this sudden revelation. “Possession wasn’t good enough? You had to make me want it as well.”
“This wasn’t about owning. I was curious,” Loki protested a slight desperation in his voice and face as he reached out to Tony only to have him twitch away. A chill suddenly slipped into Loki’s demeanor, whatever was left of the cherubic brightness that Tony might have recognized from Luke slipping behind a stoic mask. “But obviously you’re more apt to see the monster you encountered for ten minutes rather than the man you knew for months. So I should go.”
“Yes,” Tony said, regretting the words even as he knew that they were the right ones. How in the world was he supposed to believe any of this had been real when it was Loki pulling the strings? “You should.” He concluded, shifting in the bed and turning his back on Loki. With his back turned, the only sign Tony had that the other man had left was the sound of the door closing behind him, and as it did, Tony shuddered. He was alone again, abandoned, fooled, and he only had himself to blame.
Perhaps, eating out of his hand had been a generous assumption. Closing the door behind himself, Loki headed down the stairs, wanting to linger for as long as he possibly could. He’d gotten comfortable here and in far more than just a material way. What had started out as an attempt to sate his curiosity had turned into actual affection, and it had been a long time since he’d felt anything even close to that. There’d been childhood bouts, of course. His obsession with Sif, that ridiculous fling with Amora in an attempt to make both her and Thor jealous, the oh so brief moment he’d actually found Fandral charming before realizing what an ass he was most of the time, but none of them had ever amounted to anything. And while this had started out as a game, it had grown beyond its original intentions, and Loki wasn’t ready to forfeit just yet.
“Would you like me to get the door for you?” JARVIS piped up as Loki lingered on the threshold. “Or perhaps I can assist in another way.”
Loki paused, furrowing his brow. It was unorthodox, but really, what did he have to lose? “What do you have in mind, JARVIS?”
“Sir, it has been approximately 19 hours, and you’ve yet to move from the bed. I wouldn’t say anything, but you’ve not slept any of that time, either,” JARVIS announced at some point after it had cycled from night to day and back into night. “Are you certain you do not need assistance?”
“There’s nothing you can do, JARVIS. I appreciate the offer, buddy, but I just… I just need some time, all right?”
“You’ve had 19 hours, sir. How much more do you think you will need?”
“Give me another year, and maybe I’ll be ready to get out of bed.”
“Sir, as bizarre a suggestion as this is for me to make considering my tendencies over the last year, perhaps the workshop would be a preferable location? At least you would have something to take your mind off of it.”
“Off of what, JARVIS? That the only stable relationships I’ve ever had were a woman I paid and a trickster god having a laugh? That I’m so easy to leave that the only substantial amount of time I spent with my parents was a handful of days during summers where they were too busy traveling to worry about me being alone in the family home before getting shipped off to boarding school again? That even my own mentor wanted me dead because I was more profitable to him as an expendable commodity? You’re about the only one that hasn’t run off and left me, buddy, and that’s because you can’t. Face it. I’m just a pretty face in an expensive suit that nobody wants unless I can do something for them.”
“Sir,” JAVIS responded, with perhaps far more irritated restraint than an AI should be capable of, “just go to the workshop.”
It took Tony several minutes to work up the energy to pull himself out of the bed, and while there was no struggle in heading from the bedroom to the workshop, he drug his feet if only to spite JARVIS. But there was only so long he could draw out the trek, and as he reached the bottom of the stairs and heard the whoosh of the door opening as his foot hit the landing, Tony froze at the sight that greeted him.
It was…everyone. Happy and the Rhodey flanked the door, greeting him by tugging him inside as Bruce, Cap, Thor, Romanoff, and Barton swarmed him and Fury hung off to the side though just within sight. A small crowd of other SHIELD agents gathered just behind his team, Hill among them, surrounding a Loki who was smiling despite being bound.
“It wasn’t exactly easy,” Loki started as soon as his and Tony’s eyes locked. Holding up the bulky set of manacles, he shrugged his shoulders as he shifted a gaze between the other occupants of the room. “It was the only way they’d trust that this wasn’t some horribly elaborate trap.”
“You?” Tony questioned, hardly believing what he was hearing. Not only had they all come, willingly it seemed, but Loki had placed himself back into captivity just to manage it. “Why?”
“That pesky question again, Stark?” Loki asked, a slight chuckle in his voice as he shook his head. “Can’t you just accept that I did and leave it at that? Is it really that hard to believe you’re worth the effort?”
“Don’t try and argue with him,” a familiar voice filtered in from the stairs. “You’ll get absolutely nowhere.”
Tony turned, blinking in quiet confusion at Pepper as she stepped into view. It had been a year, nearly a year since they’d communicated in any way that wasn’t through e-mail about various aspects of business. It had been too awkward for either of them, too much baggage that neither had wanted to deal with, but she was here, for him, because she’d been asked to come. “You weren’t pretending,” Tony said, eyes lingering briefly on Pepper before turning his attention back to Loki. “It wasn’t just for a laugh?”
“Plans don’t always work out the way you intend them to, Stark,” Loki said. “Do you think I really pictured myself here, surrounded by you people, at the end of all of this?”
“No. No, I don’t,” Tony said before glancing at Hill, a half smile on his face. “Think you can take those things off so we can do this right? Not that the BDSM look doesn’t suit you,” Tony said, glancing back over at Loki. “Maybe later.”
The collective groan of everyone in the room was enough for Tony. This was home.