Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The first time they met, all Tony saw was another cliché villain, if a more attractive one than he usually got to fight. (All Loki saw was a suit of armor and a threat to his purpose.)

The second time they were metal face to glamour-mask, and Tony was too distracted by Thor to pay much attention to Loki, (Big surprise for the latter there.)

The third time Tony saw Loki in person, guards were taking him to a cell on the helicarrier. There had been a thick sheet of (presumably) bulletproof glass between them, but that had not stopped (only lessened) the curious pull Tony felt around his arc reactor.  Loki was a known magic-user, and so he treated it with distrust; perhaps it was a spell meant to remove it or dissect his precious technology. He shook his head of the feeling when no one was looking. (Loki, for his part, felt a small tingle, but no such pull.  Perhaps he was only tired.)

The next time he and Loki met was in Stark Tower.  This time, there was no iron mask, no glass, no people between them.  Tony felt their connection, and couldn’t deny it.  It left him breathless with the force of it, sudden and so very strong.  He looked to Loki (fuck, that just made it stronger, but he couldn’t look away.), but he didn’t seem to be affected at all.  Sure, he was trembling, but he was psycho, wasn’t he?  Why did he feel so irritated with himself for thinking that way? He’s just a villain, says the rational mind.  But he’s more than his problems, he’s a person, says the rest. (The rational parts of his brain always outnumber the irrational, but damn, the irrational is always so much stronger, and has a kick for the totally reckless.) So they talk, and he teases, and wow, up-close Loki looks way more ragged than safe-distance Loki does. And wow, he really has no sense of humour, considering he’s supposed to be so prone to playing tricks.  And wow, such a strong grip for a not-actual-Asgardian (whoops, he’s not supposed to know that).  And holy hell, if just looking at him from ten feet away was enough to leave Tony breathless, touching Loki was enough to make his knees weak. (though that may have been at least partially due to the hand curling around his throat.) 

Tony wrapped his hands around the god’s forearm, and shit, yeah, as much as he hated to admit it (rational-side Tony, at least), he felt a heat rise and pull to his cheeks and belly.  And—no, this had to be a joke (it wasn’t), a trick (it wasn’t), a cruel twist of fate (oh, it really was).  What he felt at their moment of mutual touching he refused to name, even if there was no way to deny that it was exactly what he knew it to be.  It was so much stronger and stranger than anything he had felt for Pepper, or his family, or anyone he’d encountered in who knows how long.  He knew it, and he couldn’t bring himself to fear it. Imagine that, mister afraid-of-commitment himself, and here he was clinging to someone about to throw him out of a window and waxing poetic on love at what, fourth sight?  Tony’s eyes widened as he met Loki’s wow, very green eyes from a foot away, and that was like getting hit in the chest with a missile all over again.  The sheer force of their connection hitting him was enough to knock him backwards; no, no wait, that was his soul mate-apparent tossing him out of a ninety-three story window.  Fantastic.

Loki, apparently, felt no such connection.

The fifth time they met, well, Tony was a little incensed, and understandably so.  Here he was, being nice to someone he thought he had a real connection with, and said connection nearly murders him.  It shouldn’t burn him, how little Loki seems to care, he is the villain, after all.  But when did common sense and emotion ever really mix, especially for a Stark? So they fight, and damn, is it ever hard for him to raise a fist to that fucking gorgeous face.  Even through his the metal of his suit, the pull Loki has on him only seems to strengthen. Maybe once it has its hooks in, the bond can’t ever be unraveled?  That’s a nice thought, unless of course you soul mate is still trying to bloody kill you! (It’s clear to Tony now that this is nothing of Loki’s doing—if his staff-magic hadn’t worked on him, how could those spells have worked around his armor, through glass, and now into himself? It couldn’t, plain and simple. Besides, this felt far too natural (and wasn’t that ironic) to be forced or fake.  His soul mate was a fucking murderer.  Perfect.) Loki manages a shiver whenever they brush against one another, though it’s just as likely a wince due to previous injuries, as far as Tony can tell.  The man is not healthy, that much is apparent.  Maybe that’s why he’s rejecting their connection?  Because wow, if Tony Stark can drop everything to fall for a villain in the middle of battle, why can’t a love-starved loony?  Surely it’s just a delayed reaction due to biology, or needing medical treatment..?

The sixth time they meet, Loki has been pounded into a crater (Tony would be lying if he said he hadn’t want to pound Loki into the ground himself, if in a more metaphoric way.) in the middle of his living room floor, and Tony and Co. were surrounding him to keep him from fighting.  Loki’s eyes were blown wide (out of trauma or due to the rush of being released from the tesseract’s spell—it was unclear.  Though Tony rather hoped that it was maybe out of accepting that there was totally a thing between them.), and had they changed colour, or was that the light?  But Tony couldn’t very well pull him close in front of all the Avengers to stare into his eyes, and, okay, maybe kiss him a little, because damn, it’s kind of hard not to want to at this point, without getting clobbered, flirty reputation or not.  But he certainly can’t help a smile.  It just feels so freaking good to look at Loki, he really can’t be anything but giddy when he gets to just see him like this—and wow, he has hit the besotted fool phase, awesome.  But he doesn’t imagine the way Loki’s eyes linger on him, he’s sure of it.

The next time they meet (no S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, angry Asgardian brothers, or thick brick walls between them), it’s to part ways.  Loki is to be taken to Asgard for his crimes; Tony really shouldn’t feel so betrayed, but to just find his love match and have him stolen away to another planet, possibly dimension, is a little much for him to handle right now.  (Though that’s what he gets for falling for someone on the opposing side, he supposed.)  He hadn’t told anyone about his feelings, not even Banner, and especially not Pepper or Loki himself.  Tony wasn’t so far gone as to think the Liesmith wouldn’t use such knowledge against him.  (It had taken many arguments with himself to keep him from revealing it—in a way, he couldn’t help but want Loki to use him like that, if it meant getting a brief bit of time happy and together.  But no, he had enough unhealthy habits and ways of destroying himself already, he doesn’t need any more.) 

Tony can’t help but to openly stare at Loki.  How will it feel when he vanishes?  How will it feel to have such an intense (for him) connection severed so very easily by a little inter-dimensional travel?  Tony swallows hard as Loki’s green (green?) eyes bore into his.  He finds no anger in the heavy gaze, but there is something in his expression that is—forbidden.  And Tony and ‘forbidden’ have a long, long history. 

His eyes drop to Loki’s muzzle.  He had modified a strange Asgardian object Thor had given him to make it more God of Mischief-proof.  Oddly enough, it seemed as if their soul-bond had made this relatively easy.  It was almost as if their connection had allowed Tony to get to know Loki at least a little bit, even though Loki was, for all intents and purposes, currently rejecting their ties.  He had actually (without Thor’s knowledge) made it more comfortable for the defeated god to wear, almost subconsciously.  He hated the idea of binding him like this; he remembered being bound, and being stifled.  All ‘kinky’ jokes aside, he truly could never bring himself to be the one to actually restrict a person in such a way. Tony’s eyes slid back up to Loki’s for the briefest of moments; and then he was gone.

Oh, yeah.  It fucking hurt.

Chapter Text

Loki would be lying if he said that he wasn’t pained by his departure from Midgard.  Well, Loki would be lying if he said a lot of things right now, because, well, he was a liar.  And a liar could always be expected to lie.  So he didn’t.  He kept his mouth shut, of course, but he didn’t deny to himself that he really was feeling far worse about leaving Midgard than he should ever have felt.  He had had little connection with its people for centuries, and even then, he had had few outright worshippers (compared to the other gods, or at least that is how it seemed to him.).  He had made no friends while on his visit, so why was he hurting as if he had lost something?  Something very, very dear…

The Liesmith was intelligent.  As a trickster, he sort of had to be.  As such, it really took no time at all for him to realize what fate seemed to be trying to pull here.  And really, if it wasn’t he that had to deal with having a mortal as a potential mate, he was quite sure he would have found it to be a laughing matter.  As it was, he truly didn’t know how to handle it.  He was still left reeling from the loss of the influence of the tesseract, the Other, and his recent trip off the Bifrost.  Adding in meeting his soulmate, fighting said soul mate, and then being ripped from him before they could even truly bond--that would be a difficult situation for anyone (ancient or not) to deal with.

He let them (Thor, the guards, whoever) lead him from place to place, not paying much attention until he was brought before the Father of All (except Loki, apparently).  He mocked his fellow gods, his situation, the human vermin his ironic little mate belonged to, and anything else he could think to snidely jest about.  Odin remained unappreciative, as always. Loki considered telling him about what Thanos had done.  The Silvertongue was weak; much weaker than he had let on.  The shackles that bound his magic were honestly unnecessary at this point; he was so drained, so thinly stretched that he doubted he could use even his most basic of spells.  Should he let the Wise One know just how much damage he had been dealt?  After all, he would only grow weaker as time went on, and a lifetime sentence to the dungeons really didn’t leave much room for him to strike back, even if he was given a cushier cell than most.  It was quite likely he would not be given the chance to speak to anyone for a few hundred years at the very least, for fear of manipulation into escape.  Honestly, it was a completely reasonable fear.  Before Loki could decide (and wasn’t that new? Ever the quick-thinker in the past, now unable to make a simple decision throughout the entirety of a trial and one of Odin’s famed long-winded, nigh unintelligible speeches. He was taking this much harder than he thought.), Odin commanded the guards to take him to his cell.

It was Baldur (1) that finally told Loki what had happened to his mother; he did so with more care than most would have, but he had left him with a curse, as if it had been Loki’s fault. Had the God of Mischief been anywhere near a state of mental or emotional competency at that point, he would likely have vowed to make mistletoe myth into truth. As it was, he was too far gone by the chaos of his own mind (and yet more irony, lovely) to focus on anger at anybody but himself, Odin, and her killer.

He knew then, anguish the likes of which he had not encountered in centuries.  Even so, what hurt him the most was the way that his thoughts continued to drift back to that man upon Midgard.  He held no love for him, knew no insatiable lust for him (though he would be lying if he said he didn’t feel a pull towards the man; however, he was far too physically pained to focus on it.), and yet, even as he should be agonizing over his mother’s death and his own imprisonment, he couldn’t help but think of those eyes, that science-magic, that smile the Man of Iron had offered him so openly…

It had been so very, very long since he had seen a smile like that, much less had one directed at him.  It had been small, but so sure and positive; it was beautiful.  And it had been all for him.  No, no!  Focus, he absolutely had to focus.  He needed to plan, and to do that meant that he needed to put that shining smile out of his head.  Focus, Plan, Escape, Revenge, and then he can think about him.  That could work, couldn’t it?  His mind was a mess, even more so than usual, and a clear thought just wouldn’t come.

When Thor came, his mind cleared.  He agreed to all of Thor’s terms, including his own recidivism; however, he had one small (in comparison to the things Thor had always asked of him) request.  Thor, under the guise of peace keeping amongst the other realms, was to find Thanos, and get back what he had stolen from Loki; quite literally, the Titan held nearly all of Loki’s soul.  (Loki had known such a thing to be possible, but had never known anyone able or willing to do it; though if anyone would, he was unsurprised that it was the man obsessed with Mistress Death.)  Loki was sure he could last for a century or two like this without suffering much more than he was now, but there was no way he could find peace nor actively use his magic until it was returned.

Thor was surprised by the request.  Despite his claims that he no longer cared about Loki, he, as always, could not fight his furious rage at the creature that would dare do something so vile to one of his kin.  Thor stayed only long enough to get enough information so that he could retrieve his brother’s soul (Loki quickly dashed his hopes that all of this mess had been due to his lacking heart.  It had only been after he had fallen off of the Bifrost that he had met the Titan and suffered at his hand.) before heading out to destroy his brother’s metaphorical keeper.

Thor returned what the Liesmith assumed was only a few hours later.  The Thunderer tore open the spellwork keeping the cell locked with bare hands, brute force, and little finesse.  The not-brothers stared at each other for a moment, before Thor held out his hand.  In it Loki found a carefully wrapped package; inside it, he found a perfectly carved circular green and silver gemstone.  It held an exotic allure; upon close inspection, the stone was actually an ouroboros in the form of Jörmungandr.  As Loki grew closer to it, the lovely stone began to glow from within.  As soon as he touched it, he blacked out.

When he awoke, they were in Thor’s quarters. Loki felt absolutely alive.  His senses were no longer dulled, his heart was pounding, and every time he closed his eyes in an effort to calm himself (is his chest really heaving? Why is it heaving? It’s not as if he was…crying?) all he could see was that burning, brilliant smile.  Now that his soul had fully returned, it was frantically calling to its mate—and, finding that he was not even on the same planet, it was…panicking? Oh, yes, that would make sense.  That would explain…yes, a lot of his current issues. Thor (unsurprisingly) grew impatient, and demanded of his brother that they begin their quest to save his beloved lady Jane.

When Loki opened his eyes (after he grew accustomed to the bright, flashing spots of white light that were attempting to cloud his vision), he found Thor already in battle gear and covered in what surely was somebody else’s blood.  Clearly, Thanos had valued Loki’s soul more than anyone on Asgard (barring Thor) did, to have put such apparently heavy guard around it.  Perhaps he should feel flattered.

Loki was bursting with energy as soon as he became accustomed to the return of his normal senses.  He joked with his brother almost entirely in good fun, took on multiple forms just because he had enough magic with the return of his soul that he could.

Before long, his copy was dying in Thor’s arms (apparently, the return of his soul meant a major boost of energy, allowing him to make a fully solid copy that could be touched, and mimic decomposition quite easily, something which had always eluded him.) and the real Loki was back on Asgard, wreaking general havoc.

Once Loki’s thirst for mischief was satiated, and all of his revenge had been had, he turned his mind to other pursuits. Specifically, one Man of Iron.