Chapter Text
Tony wasn't sure whether Loki felt self-conscious, or merely meant to tantalize him a little with the promise of delights ahead. He suspected the latter, considering that his boyfriend now seemed to be recovering his sense of mischief in small but steady increments. At any rate, Loki not only refused to let Tony watch him dress, he wouldn't even give him a peek beforehand at the suit his new buddy Darius King had not merely tailored, but apparently designed especially for him.
"Never fear, best beloved, I will not merely debut at your New Year's Ball," Loki informed him, "I will shine."
With that promise (or possibly threat), he threw Tony a decidedly Mona Lisa-esque smile over one shoulder, then swanned off to the seclusion of his workshop, garment bag in hand.
To say Tony's curiosity was piqued would have been an understatement. Loki, he'd learned (even this recent iteration of Loki), was not without a little healthy vanity. In fact, he seemed to have recovered a good measure of his self-esteem along with his magic--or maybe when, around the same time, their relationship took a turn for the physical. A Loki properly loved, it appeared, was also a Loki happy.
It probably wasn't hurting, either, that for once Tony had forced aside his usual inclinations to hide all his more serious (and therefore dangerous) thoughts and feelings behind a high wall of snark and glibness, taking instead that giant leap of faith into actually sharing some of himself with his partner. It felt weird. It wasn't like him. It also felt- and this was the strange part- actually pretty damn amazing, like he'd started to turn into a whole person instead of a huge, alcohol-numbed ball of hurt.
True confessions time: his old ways would hardly have worked anyway, and Tony knew it. Like he'd have any luck hiding his interior life from a guy who could--literally--read his every thought.
Not that the reading was deliberate. It wasn't spying, or prying, or any other bad thing. Loki wanted to understand him, true, but that desire came with a more-or-less limitless sense of acceptance. He didn't judge. He didn't come with a pre-determined list of things that would be deal-breakers. He actually seemed to want to love Tony just as he was, foibles, quirks, inconsistencies and all, and not some idealized version he'd made up in his head about what he wanted Tony to be (to say that particular problem had cropped up once or twice with lovers in Tony's past would be a serious understatement). In turn, he wanted Tony to love him the same way.
Loki may have had a vast and unbelievably complex mind, but for all that, his needs were simple: he needed to keep busy, to be accepted as he was, to have people to care for, and to feel genuine affection from those around him. Nothing else, really, not as far as Tony had been able to make out. Assured of those things, in the past week Loki had begun to eat and sleep better, the old nightmares troubling him, it seemed, only rarely. He'd started working out with Kurt in the gym, and had even begun to train with Thor, in a playful, big brother/little brother kind of way. He spoke almost shyly, now and then, of wanting to be strong like his "brothers."
And Loki tried hard- they could all see that- maybe even harder than he should. It would have been impossible not to notice that he brought an almost unimaginable grace to even his ordinary everyday movements, and that he was clearly getting stronger, physically. It delighted Tony to watch his lover transform slowly but surely from his former frail boniness into a slender sleekness he couldn't help but find completely captivating. Loki was clever and lightning-quick, able to elude Thor, during their workouts, in ways that had Point Break doing cartoon double-takes, trying to figure out where his little bro had vanished to from one second to the next.
Whatever had made him a fighter, though, a skilled, even vicious warrior, just seemed to have gone missing, rooted out of him along with his memories. Loki enjoyed gymnastics with Kurt, running, swimming, even the aforementioned playful wrestling with Thor, but Tony never picked up from him the least sense wanting to compete, much less win. Loki was like a kid goofing off in the schoolyard, and Tony caught Thor looking at him sadly, now and then. He often wanted to ask Thor what it meant to him, wanted to know what the god of thunder might be thinking in those moments, but he always chickened out in the end.
If Thor looked unhappy, Loki seemed pretty much the opposite, more often pleased with his life, these days, than haunted or confused. The skeletal ghost with the tragic look in his eyes had been replaced by a cheerful, skinny-but-great-looking young guy with a devilish grin. Tony loved the change. He loved Loki, to an extent he wouldn't have believed possible, not holding back, not guarding his heart. The only thing he feared was that, if something happened... if something went wrong... if Loki was ever lost to him... Every time it came up, the thought struck him as unbearable. He'd never recover. Never. He couldn't even think of it without a horrible, sick feeling coming into the pit of his stomach.
Enough of that, anyway. Time to scramble back to firmer ground and root himself safely in the here-and-now. If Loki intended to shine, he could at least give a faint glimmer. Tony trimmed his beard, put a little product in his hair, pulled on his own tux (Hugo Boss, and a pretty damn fine suit, though he suspected Loki's truly would outshine it as the sun outshone the moon), retied his bow tie three times before he felt satisfied with the way it looked, and called himself done, fully aware that he looked as good as he was ever going to look. He wondered if he could get JARVIS to do a little subtle spying on his behalf.
"J., old friend..." Tony began, sounding sketchy even to himself.
The AI shut him down fast. "No, sir," he answered sternly. "No, I refuse to be complicit in spying for you. Loki requested privacy, and I will not go against his wishes. I will not take part in spoiling the surprise. By my estimation, Loki will be fully prepared to meet you in a quarter of an hour, and you will just have to wait until then."
Tony, mature as always, stuck out his tongue at the wall.
JARVIS hrumphed back at him.
After a couple minutes passed, Tony tried, "He looks that good, huh?"
JARVIS laughed evilly.
Tony considered that he'd made the AI too intelligent. Intelligent enough to consistently get the best of him. He fidgeted his way from one of the big chairs, to the couch, to the other big chair, to the kitchen island, and back again. He tried not to crease his suit, and obsessed about his boyfriend.
Some of Darius King's looks, in his humble (or not) opinion could be very weird, others were classically elegant, the kind of elegance found in old black-and-white movies. Which style would King have picked for Loki? His boyfriend liked clothes, that was undeniable, especially elegant clothes or unique clothes, things that looked and felt good, in lush fabrics that satisfied his highly-developed sense of touch. He and Darius King- whose studio Loki now regarded as one of his "safe" places, seemed well on their way to becoming the fastest of fast friends.
Pepper had been right, too, about Loki having stellar taste in practically everything. Her decision to assign him to the Design Department, even with only the evidence of the couple days worth of work that Loki now had under his belt, was already appearing to be a genius move on Pep's part. Tony knew there was a reason he kept her around- and Pepper punched his arm (not gently, either) every time he said so.
Loki had been ecstatic about his new workshop, and his new job, and he seemed to be joyfully anticipating the classes he'd be starting in the next week, even though they meant he'd have to leave the tower for hours at a stretch. It probably didn't hurt that JARVIS's Christmas gift to him (with Tony's help and blessing) had been an ear-bee of his own, just like Tony's, so that he never felt disconnected from home. That present alone had raised Loki's spirits, and confidence, immensely.
To all appearances, Loki was now more enthused about his new life than fearful, which had the doubly positive effect of raising Tony's spirits as well. For the first time in his life, he didn't feel like he was waiting, with unnameable dread, for the awful thing ahead, waiting for the other shoe to drop and everything in his life to be torn into shreds. Most of all, he wasn't looking for the terrible ending when he'd only barely begun the adventure.
The knot he'd carried in his belly since what felt like birth magically unknotted. He felt free, his life filled with possibility. When he woke up before Loki in the pale dawn hours of morning, Tony would often just lie there on his side in their shared bed, watching his boyfriend's face and wondering what good thing he'd done, after all the difficult years, that he deserved to be so lucky.
Loki, discovering himself being stared at in the early hours, never got weirded out or angry. He'd smile his sleepy first-thing-in-the-morning smile, and reach out his hand for Tony's. They'd lie there together, holding hands, waking up to each other's faces, sublimely, ridiculously in love.
And so, when the penthouse elevator stopped at the workshop floor to pick up his handsome prince, ending his anticipation... oh, the actual fuck! Tony practically had to pick his jaw up off the floor--he was that stunned.
There weren't words. There really weren't- even if he'd spoken as many languages as Kurt did.
If Tony had been a cartoon character, his heart would have jumped a foot outside of his chest and still been thumping away like crazy, his eyes bulging out of his head. It wouldn't have been pretty.
"Loki... wow. Just wow." Tony looked his boyfriend up and down, from his shiny shoes to the top of his soft curls, not to mention the glimmering silver banding his horns. Yup, just... wow to the infinite power. "Holy shit, babe! Gotta say, you're far and away the most gorgeous thing that ever stepped onto my elevator."
Loki, fortunately, didn't jump on the opportunity to wonder how many lovers Tony had actually shared that particular elevator with, or what they'd meant to him. The answer to that particular unasked question being (except for Pepper), pretty much nothing.
"Holy shit is... the good shit?" Loki asked instead, looking slightly perplexed. He smoothed down his black velvet jacket with both hands, extending the more generalized perplexity to include his new suit. Only it wasn't so much a suit as it was... okay, regalia, or something--a black-on-black combination of vintage and modern, the jacket cut a bit like a gentleman's frock coat from olden times, worn over a swirly-patterned black silk waistcoat, black shirt and tie, and plain-but-perfectly-cut black trousers. On anyone else, maybe, the outfit might have looked a little over-the-top, or weird.
On Loki, of course, it looked amazing--making him appear less like a mutant (which, of course, he wasn't anyway) in a fantastic suit, more like... well, more like the king of some fabulous and magical realm.
The board, et al., was gonna crap themselves.
"You look extremely handsome, by the way, my beloved," Loki told Tony, almost shyly. "I feel great pride in accompanying you to this celebration. This..." He smiled at having looked for and located the right word. "This party."
"Oh, babe." Tony squeezed Loki's hand, then brought it to his mouth, delivering a kiss to the palm and, incidentally, causing the sweetest glimmer of a smile to flicker over Loki's lips.
"Ya know, it seems as if this sobriety thing might actually kind of suit me. Every time I look in a mirror I'm struck with how much less I look like I've been 'rode hard and put up wet.'"
Loki's lips parted slightly and his brows pulled together he tried to puzzle that one through. "Which is to say... you both look and feel better?"
Tony laughed. "Yeah, something like that, babe."
Loki's expression changed to one of sympathy. He draped an arm around Tony's shoulders and drew him close, kissing the top of his head, then just holding him as the elevator sped downward.
His boyfriend understood it wasn't all easy. Yes, he'd cleaned the alcohol out of Tony's system, left everything fresh and new, but that didn't mean Tony was--abracadabra! shazam! and a flick of the magic wand- no longer an alcoholic. His body maybe didn't still crave the stuff but, god, his mind sure did.
Even with Loki's constant support, and the steadfast encouragement of his friends, he still hadn't gotten over wanting a drink every time he was hit with the least bit of stress. When he was happy, he wanted a nice glass of something to celebrate. When he got tired, or down, he wanted one for comfort. Most maddening of all, he hadn't even realized what a crutch the booze had been all these years, and now he felt like an idiot. If not for Loki, the pitiful remnants of his self-esteem would have been in the toilet.
As it was, he wondered if it was possible to feel more crazy-in-love with every hour that passed. Loki did everything that could humanly (or inhumanly) be done to ease the cravings, but he was understandably slightly reluctant to root around in Tony's brain flipping switches--so instead he'd usually just offer tender, loving, joyful, mind-blowing sex. Which was definitely distracting in a good way, and nothing to be complained about. Ever.
Tony grinned up at Loki. Yeah, he had to admit--it did help. It also didn't suck to realize how absolutely present he felt, how sharply aware, without the single malt hazing out his vision.
"Yes?" Loki asked.
Tony wondered how weird the look he'd been giving his boyfriend had actually been."I kinda love you, you know, Lok. You're amazing."
Loki kissed his mouth this time, pulling away, with impeccable timing, the very second the door opened to reveal the lobby, currently thronged with people and sparkling with decorations and lights in shades of pale blue and champagne, elegant as hell.
Tony, well aware of his own limitations, left all that kind of thing up to Pepper and her team.
Speaking of the devil (which she totally wasn't)... Pepper greeted them almost at once, as if she'd been lying in wait for their entrance. She had a man on her arm who slightly resembled a doughier version of the author Stephen King, and a look of determination on her pretty, and expertly made up, face.
"Loki, dear! Tony!" she called out, in her hostess-with-the-mostest voice. "I'd like to introduce you to the ambassador from Iceland."
"Pep, you look like a movie star." Tony kissed her cheek lightly.
Someone other than him, though, had apparently either done his homework, or engaged in a spot of lightning-fast mind-reading. Loki grasped the doughy man's hand firmly, looked deep into his eyes, and rattled off, "Sendiherra Haarde, Hvílík ánægja að mæta svo frægur heiðursmaður frá heimalandi mínu! Má ég kynna gestgjafi okkar og kæru frænku mína, Tony Stark? Ég er Loki Stark, útlendingur í þessu landi."
Confronted by a mile-tall blue prince in cutting-edge couture evening attire, doughy dude looked slightly startled. Tony guessed he didn't blame him.
"Tony," Loki continued, "Please allow me to introduce Ambassador Geir Haarde."
In Tony's ear-bee, JARVIS snarked, "I might debate the use of the word 'distinguished.' The man formerly served as prime minister- for only three years I might add- and nearly managed to bring his country's formerly robust economy crashing down about his ears. One can only assume his countrymen were overjoyed to see him made an ambassador, as it also allowed them to finally see the back of him."
Tony restrained himself from snickering just in time to hear Loki blithely inform the diplomat that he hailed from the north-east of their beautiful land, from the far-off town of Þórshöfn, near the Langanes peninsula, and that his father was an ornithologist, who studied the birds that nested there. He looked fully prepared to go on for hours, with incredible earnestness and detail, about the delights of the region, and to share all kinds of "fascinating" facts about the local wildlife.
That was his Loki, god of stories, telling a tale by managing not to tell a tale. No rational human being who didn't want to experience an untimely death-by-boredom would ever have chosen to follow up that particular conversational trail.
"My god, that's a remote place!" Haande said. He may have nearly destroyed his country's economy through his own incompetence, but he wasn't crazy. He so wasn't going to pursue the topic of nesting birds in back-of-beyond Iceland.
Tony shook the guy's hand (it felt sweaty, and slightly cold) and watched him pretend to spot the Norwegian ambassador across the room, using that as an excuse to beat a hasty retreat from their little group.
Pepper concealed a laugh behind her opera-gloved hand, while Loki grinned at her. She really did look like a star from the Golden Age of Hollywood Glamour that evening, elegant in a sea-green gown that brought out the fire in her red-gold hair, dangling Harry Winston earrings sparkling in her ears. Eyes followed her admiringly wherever she went, and rightly so.
"I have now exhausted every word of Icelandic I know," Loki told them. "Do you believe the ambassador of my supposed native country was impressed?" He snagged a glass of champagne off a passing waiter's tray and took a long drink. "Tony! This is delicious!"
"Sure, but remember what I said, Lok?" Tony cautioned. "About how , with all the bubbles, champagne has a way of sneaking up on you?"
"I pledge to you, Tony, I will only drink this one glass, and perhaps another, to toast the fall of midnight. I shan't shame you."
"Never even crossed my mind." Tony gave his hand a last sneaky little squeeze before their sure-to-be-Oscar-worthy performance of dashing-host-and-his-handsome-foreign-cousin began in earnest. "I just don't want you to end up feeling yucky. Champagne hangovers are hell."
"Earlier I felt quite nervous," Loki said, gazing around the crowd. "Yet now I feel excited, and as if I may well enjoy myself! I'm wearing the earpiece J. gave to me tonight, Pepper, just as you and Tony do, and dear J. has promised to help should I encounter rough conversational waters."
A second waiter brought Tony a glass of a dry sparkling cider that more-or-less resembled champagne in its color and effervescence (the entire waitstaff having been sternly ordered to serve him nothing else, no matter how he begged). Tony tucked his arm into Loki's, and sipped, and mingled, chatting on the shallowest possible level with a number of old enemies, an equal number of friendly acquaintances, their orbit intersecting with Pepper's now and then, or with one of Tony's fellow Avengers, attending that evening as a weird combination of guests, celebrities and high-powered backup to Hap's security team.
As expected, Steve-o looked heroic and upright and patriotic in uniform. Tony would have been willing to bet good money that Nat's skintight and slit-up-to-there little black number concealed at least ten deadly weapons. Clint looked like he'd rented his tux from the bargain rack of Men's Warehouse, but Tony still caught Phil sending him loving looks. Bruce wasn't there. Even putting aside the fact that he'd sometimes been known to Hulk out unexpectedly, Bruce didn't do parties. That wasn't negotiable.
Loki met the Stark Industries board of directors. He met the mayor of New York (and the more reclusive Mrs. Mayor, who was way less of a dickwad than her husband and took to the former prince of Asgard immediately). He met dignitaries, athletes, celebrities, and outshone them all--not merely because he was so tall, or so elegantly horned, or such an emphatic shade of blue. He was exactly what people mean when they said, "That person is the soul of charm and wit." He even managed to tone down his normally slightly weird vocabulary choices for the occasion.
He dazzled them, like he was fucking Auberon, King of Faerie in the comics (only a thousand times more poised and handsome), who by some whim of his own had deigned to spend the evening in their midst. The rich, the powerful, the beautiful, the famous, all ate it up like candy.
Early on, Tony questioned his own wisdom in letting his magical boyfriend go free range, but at midnight, when the ball fell in Times Square and Loki bent down to chastely kiss his cheek, the charm still held. The other guests adored him, practically worshiped him, even as midnight gave way to one AM.
In the end you will always kneel, Tony thought--and immediately hated himself for letting the words slip into his head, his only consolation that Loki wouldn't see them as Tony harboring doubts about him, or his motives. More than that, as far as Tony knew, his boyfriend didn't have any motives, ulterior or otherwise. He wouldn't remember having spoken that particular sentence, or have the slightest idea what it meant. His ragged memories of living out in the world were filled with nothing but pain, and he just wanted people to like him.
Only, twenty yards away, surrounded by a knot of total strangers, Loki's head snapped up suddenly. He'd already started to look pale, the way he sometimes still did when he got overly tired. Now he looked like a frightened deer.
No no no no, Tony tried to protest. Loki, I didn't mean it. Or that. Whatever it was I meant. Or didn't mean. Fuck.
Loki's interior laughter echoed hollowly inside Tony's (apparently) empty head. He watched his prince make his warm and witty apologies, and then his escape, not one of his new fans any the wiser. In Tony's eyes though, he looked like a shamed and barefoot Cinderella racing down the road in her rags, leaving behind her empty pumpkin.
Suddenly, to remain behind felt like agony. He wanted only to follow Loki, to cuddle him and comfort him, to assure him everything was okay, it was only that the throng was so obviously smitten, and it reminded him that Loki was a prince, and...
Cue Cinderella throwing her one shoe down a deep, deep well, never to be seen again.
"J.," Tony said, when he had a spare moment to mutter to what looked like himself. "Tell him something wise, please, and say it's from me?"
"He isn't angry with you," JARVIS answered in his ear, sounding almost surprised (he would never allow himself to sound actually surprised, that was beneath his station). "Rather, blame a surfeit of emotion and champagne. He hung up his suit neatly, showered, and put himself to bed. I believe he'll be glad when you join him. He's simply done in."
Had JARVIS possessed an actual mouth, Tony would have kissed it right then and there.
"Thanks a million, J. You just made my life tolerable for the next thirty minutes, or however long it takes the rest of these assholes to haul butt out of here. Seriously, I owe you."
"Indeed," J. answered smugly. "As per usual."
Fifteen minutes later, as the wait- and catering staff began to clear the tables, and the band packed up their instruments, he and Pepper bade the stragglers goodnight and Happy New Year, Pepper holding his arm tightly. She looked tired, too- as well she might, since the lobby clock read two twenty-five A.M.
Pep sat down on one of the banquettes with a sigh, kicking off her beaded Jimmy Choo heels. "It went well this year. Don't you think it went well?"
"Guess so," Tony answered, loosening his bow tie so that the mismatched ends hung limply over his shoulders, then kicked off his own dress shoes. "Considering this is the only one I've ever done stone cold sober, and this is also the first year I have more than the haziest possible awareness of what occurred after ten p.m. Have I been acting like an asshole for as long as you've known me, Pepper?"
"Oh, Tony." Pep took his arm again. "You know I love you--no, not like that, not anymore--but I do love you. Would I say that if I thought you were an... ahem... asshole?"
"Maybe. You're an awfully nice person."
"Charmer." She laid her head on his shoulder. "I'm so glad you're happier. I'm so glad you're feeling better. Keep fighting, okay, sweetheart? I so much want everything to work out for you."
Tony rested his head against her head, closing his eyes. It felt good to just sit there for a few moments with his old friend, not needing to watch his mouth, or be on.
At last Pepper pulled away, bending down to pick up her shoes. Tony collected his own shoes, and together they walked barefoot to the elevator, leaning on each other a little as the lift wafted them upward. He kissed her cheek tenderly as she disembarked at her own floor, two levels beneath his own.
"Goodnight, dear friend," Pepper said softly, gave his hand a brief squeeze, then let him go.
Tony continued his journey, weary but contented, as if something had been settled that had waited a long time for resolution, and now that it was over, he could finally move forward again.
Loki wasn't in bed when he reached the bedroom, but he emerged from the bathroom about the same time Tony stripped down to his shorts. One look, and he fetched a bottle of water from the cooler, setting it on Loki's nightstand, then dug out an undershirt from his top drawer, pulled it on and crawled into bed, holding the covers up for his boyfriend to follow.
"I do not like champagne," Loki told him, in tones of betrayal, sliding up beside Tony with a shiver. "I do not like it the least bit."
"My poor baby." Tony kissed his temple. "When you can, drink a bunch of water. You'll be glad in the morning that you did."
Loki muttered something into his shoulder that sounded vaguely like, "Ugh."
Within seconds, he was sound asleep in Tony's arms, snoring softly. Loki never snored. Tony found it kind of cute.
"I love you so much, baby," he said quietly into Loki's ear. "Do you know that you mean the world to me?"
Loki rolled over, sliding his own long arms in around Tony's waist, burying his face in Tony's chest. Tony took that as a "yes."