Chapter Text
Ever since the battle of New York, Tony had been plagued with headaches and nightmares. The nightmares he attributed to falling to his death, twice, as well as flying up into the Void. The rough awakening at the hands of the Hulk didn’t help.
He attributed the headaches to the concussion that not even his suit could prevent from happening. It had been weeks, but once Tony had gotten the “all clear” from his doctor, to take it easy, and not sleep for more than four hours, he hadn’t been back, not even at Pepper’s insistence. He knew that this was probably detrimental to his health, but he couldn’t be bothered to care. He was drinking himself to an early grave, a concussion or two wasn’t going to hurt him, not too much.
Or at least, that was his plan before Nick Fury showed up to Stark Tower and demanded he go see a doctor once a week from here on out until the director himself said he could stop. And if Tony wouldn’t comply with these rules, Fury would remove each suit from his possession until he did comply. And no matter how well Jarvis was coded, Fury probably could, and most definitely would, remove the suits from Tony’s possession.
And so he acquiesced with hardly a fight. Tony was nothing if not smart, and while he generally would have fought the order, he could spot a lost battle when he saw it. Never mind the fact that the headaches were turning into migraines, which just would not go away . Maybe the doctor could prescribe something. That’s what doctors were for, right?
Most of his time was spent in his workshop, figuring out ways that he could make his suit react faster, to prevent a second nosedive into the streets of Manhattan. He had woken up just before he was to hit the street, no suit to save him, the deranged cackling of the God of Lies ringing in his ears.
The sudden wakening would leave him disoriented for a few moments, and the first time it happened he started to cry, just like he had when he first got back from Afghanistan. The stress of reliving the worst moments of his life made him panic, and it took an hour for him to calm down, all desire to sleep gone. And ever since every time he tried to sleep, if he wasn’t so exhausted that he could stand on his feet, he would relive moments of pure terror. This pushed his resolve to sleep even less. Coffee could make up for it, it was coffee, of course it could. The less he slept, the less he would relive the terror, and when he was finally so out of it that not even coffee could keep him awake more than five extra minutes, he would sleep on the couch in his lab, only for a few hours, until the fear forced him awake.
Once he woke up, he could feel a sense of longing, something lacking, something inside him yearned for comfort that wasn’t there, that never would be there. Comfort that no one could give him; no one would give him, save Pepper. But she had moved on, was no longer willing to share her life with him. And he couldn’t find it in himself to blame her for moving on. He was a mess, hardly made it into bed most nights. His libido had been nonexistent since the fight, and not even a buxom blonde could cause his favorite body part to stir.
Maybe the constant caffeine and lack of sleep was taking its toll. He certainly didn’t feel up to fighting a rabbit, let alone a super villain. Maybe Fury was right to remove him from the Avengers roster, but no matter how much Fury may have been right, Tony couldn’t help but feel irritated. He didn’t want to acknowledge that he was weak. He most certainly didn’t want that news to fall into the wrong hands. Jarvis may have had the most developed security on the entire American continent, but knowing the news could be out there didn’t help him sleep. If anything, it made it worse, recognizing his weakness.
At this point, Tony felt that he would do anything to fix himself. He would even go to therapy if he thought it would help. The problem was he knew it wouldn’t. Talking with Pepper hadn’t helped, back when he returned from Afghanistan. Talking to a stranger about what went on inside his head seemed so much worse, so invasive. And there was always the possibility that that information would get into the wrong hands. That that information could be used to ruin him, to ruin his company.
And so he would do anything. Anything but that .
So when Thor came back to their planet, and he requested to house a meeting in the tower, maybe he didn’t want news to get out that he was back, didn’t want the hordes of teenage girls running after him when he was needed elsewhere.
Of course, Tony allowed it. The tower had many, many rooms set up to house meetings, both for SHIELD and Stark Industries, with varying amounts of security. He didn’t want to waste resources on rooms that wouldn’t require it. He believed in overkill, despite the luxury he lived in, the riches he had. No one would believe him when he said that, hell, he had shoes that cost more than some people made in a month. But he thought that this was different. That was vanity; he could spend as much as he wanted on that. He could spend as much as he wanted on necessity too, but he tried to keep to a budget; the simple thing cut back unnecessary spending by half, easy, especially when he dictated the choices to someone else.
When he asked Jarvis to notify him of Thor’s arrival, he didn’t expect what the AI said.
“Both of your guests are here, sir.” Both? He had been expecting one, Thor. Maybe Jarvis had a bug that was screwing up what he said. Once, if , this headache disappeared, he would get around to fixing it.
“Thank you, Jarvis. Tell him I’ll be down there in a sec.” He finished signing the document Pepper had sent over for him to sign and ambled over towards the elevator. Once the button was pressed, he started to fidget.
Woah, there. This was a simple meeting with Thor, who wanted god knows what. Probably a place to stay while on Earth. That would be cool. Tony could add ‘housed a god’ to the already mile-long list of accomplishments. he thought, trying to stop his body from shifting back and forth. There was no reason for him to panic, to be anticipating the upcoming meeting, so he forced himself to stop. He was Tony Stark. He spent more time in meetings than Thor probably did, despite the fact that the god was thousands of years old. Meetings didn’t bother him.
“Jarvis, turn down the lights a bit in the meeting room. Give him a little warning; don’t want to freak out the man unused to technology.” See? Even when he was in head splitting pain he thought of others. Definitely a philanthropist.
“As you wish, sir.” Came the voice from overhead.
When the lift arrived to the correct floor, Tony walked down it briskly, wanting it over with as soon as possible so he could go back to brainstorming in a dark, quiet room.
When he entered the room he didn’t bother to look around, simply assuming who the mystery guest was. He flopped down onto the most comfortable chair there, and before he could really register was coming out of his mouth he started to speak. “Hello, Blondie. How lovely to see you today.“ he stopped, looking around for the mystery guest. “I hope your trip was ple—what the hell is he doing here? Point Break, why is your brother, who tried to kill me, in my house, without my knowledge?”
Once he spotted the hunched over, handcuffed god on the opposite end of the room, he stopped midsentence, all pleasantries forgotten.
“That’s why I’m here, Man of Iron. My brother… he is not well. And from what I understand neither are you.” Thor looked apprehensive as he spoke, trying to project calm, while being forceful in his words.
“So maybe I haven’t been in tip-top shape. What does that have to do with our favorite Bag of Cats?” Tony refused to take his eyes off the stooped god, remembering the crap he got up to the last time his visited their planet.
Loki’s head shot up, eyes boring into Tony’s. A muzzle similar to the one he worse the last time Tony saw him covered his mouth. A sharp exhale of breath shot from his nose, and he glared at Thor. Long, unkempt hair fell past his shoulders, longer than Tony remembered. But all that was noticed after the look of abject misery that clouded his eyes. They looked red rimmed, as if he had been crying in the recent past.
But that wasn’t possible. Loki wouldn’t cry, he was too proud. Once he failed to take over Earth his first request was for that drink Tony had offered him. Tony couldn’t conceive the idea of the god crying. There was no way that that was possible.
“Man of Iron, I ask you, to listen to what I have to say. You will be free to make your own choice, but the cure to your malady is here if you so wish it.” Thor said, looking at Tony. Turning his eyes from the miserable looking thing sitting at his table to the healthier looking god standing nearby, he nodded, urging Thor to continue. “I told you that my brother was adopted. He is from a race called the Jӧtuns, from the realm of Jӧtunheim. They are more commonly referred to as Frost Giants by my realm. All Frost Giants are born with magic, if just enough to secure their bondmate.”
He paused and looked at Tony, whose eyes darted towards the restrained figure to Thor’s left. Tony desperately didn’t want to see where this was leading.
“What… what does being a uh, ‘bondmate’ entail, exactly?” Tony said delicately. Because this was Loki , guy who threw him out a window without a second thought, a guy who would do it again, a guy who wanted to rule Earth, and all of its inhabitants. That Loki.
“Bondmates are a lifelong bound pair on Jӧtunheim. They are supposed to be matched perfectly, both mentally and… physically.” Thor finished uncomfortably. Tony’s eyes widened.
“You’re kidding. Is this an elaborate joke? I must say I don’t think it’s very funny, bringing back him, and then stringing me along. How did you rope your father into doing that? I’m sure you and Rudolph here think this is hilarious. I don’t , however. So tell me what’s really up, and why you dragged him back here? Why is he not at SHIELD head quarters, where he should be if he’s on this planet?” Tony spoke quickly, because surely this wasn’t true. He didn’t desire Loki, and he was 150% sure the god didn’t want him.
Thor looked confused for a moment, and then he looked towards his sibling. “Man of Iron, bondmates do not choose their partners. This is no joke. And Loki is here because if he stays too far away from you much longer the both of you will die.
If Tony had been drinking anything, he would have choked on it. “What do you mean the ‘both of you will die’? I am a perfectly healthy man. There is nothing wrong with me. I am not dying. I might have persistent headaches, but those are just the result of the Battle.” They don’t mean anything, they can’t not if it means what Thor is saying it does. That he is Loki’s bond whatever. His head hurt. Wasn’t that doctor supposed to prescribe him medication to fix that?
“You will not sleep without night terrors unless you agree to the bond. The lack of sleep, the pain in your head, it will eventually kill you. Soon. Your only hope is to stay within a close proximity to my brother, but even that will not last forever. You will be forced to consummate the bond eventually, but that can be pushed off for maybe another year or two. But you have to be with him.” Thor insisted.
“Fine. Fine. But what does he think about all of this? Hmm? Did he throw me out of my own window because he thought I would make a good partner and wanted to test my reflexes? Is that it? Because I don’t think that is acceptable courting by anyone’s rules.” Tony didn’t want this bond. Tony very much didn’t want this bond, so he didn’t understand the hurt that he felt at that thought.
“You can ask him if you would allow me to remove the muzzle around his mouth. He cannot perform spells, for my father allowed me to use magic dampening chains to bring him here. Some of the things he may say may not be the most… kind, however.” Thor warned, moving closer to his brother, who looked at him warily.
“Yeah, sure. Take off the thing around his mouth. And if you’re sure he’s no danger then I want you to leave. Stand outside the door if you want, but I want to speak to him. Alone.” Tony said, his mind made up. And there were some things he didn’t want to talk about with Thor around. Like how they most certainly weren’t going to fuck until the very last second and even then it would be a onetime thing that under no circumstances was to happen again because Tony still had things to do, damn it, and the God of Mischief wasn’t going to change that, ties to him would mean nothing. And that that would only happen if the god refused to admit it was a joke.
Thor put his hands on both sides of the contraption, and whispered a few words, too low for Tony to hear. Huh. He thought that Thor didn’t have any magic. Well. That was unimportant. He needed to know what his least favorite reindeer felt about this, and if he was going to force the issue. He needed to figure out to make the pain in his head stop, how to sleep without waking up a mere handful of hours later covered in sweat. Once Thor left the room, Tony returned his attention to the God of Mischief, the God of Lies .
He walked over to the god, standing over the sitting figure, “I don’t believe that ‘bondmate’ shit. Tell me what the fuck you did to me, and you’re going to fix it, or so help me.” Uncreative, the threat, but it was all he could come up with, due to the pounding in his skull.
Tony felt, rather than saw the flinch. “Thor was not lying. Despite what you want to believe, what I would wish to be true, we are irreversibly bonded, without either one of ours consent, and despite all of that, I am unwilling to die, simply because you, Stark, refuse to accept what is . No matter how much I would like to change what has happened, I cannot, and neither can you.” Throughout his speech Loki refused to look Tony in the eye.
“ This is not fucking funny. ” snarled Tony. “I won’t be tied to you, and I won’t have sex with you, you can damn well forget it.”
Loki’s head whipped up, and he glared at Tony. “Stark, as much as you might think I want this, I really, really don’t. The idea of continuing to have your hatred of me in my head is not good for me, and I do not like it, I do not want it. I have both of our migraines in my head and sometimes I think I might just burst with the amount of pain that this strained bond is causing me. But it will not let me die so easily. It wants me to have you , for Hel knows what reason.” Loki snarled, and paused to take a breath.
Tony interrupted him. “What do you mean you feel both of our migraines? And feeling how much I hate you? That’s not… that’s not possible.”
Loki rushed to inform him, “Oh, I assure you, it is true. I feel every bit of hate you feel, I feel the never ending migraine you have had since we last saw one another, I feel your terror after waking up from a nightmare that I can only guess at, but I can safely assume that it was partially about me, I feel your exhaustion because you have not slept for days. It wears at me, Stark. It makes me physically ill. Even if these damnable chains did not suppress my magic I doubt I could muster the energy for a simple spell. I am dying, I am miserable. I will not force you, but know you will die an exhausting death, and it will be your fault . Realize this, Stark, and act accordingly. But while you decide, lessen this damn headache and touch me somewhere, my head, my hand, my foot for all I care.” He finished, looking at the inventor, thrusting his hands upwards, palms spread wide. He swallowed, “Anthony Stark, I never took you for a sadist, or a masochist. You have caused the both of us a large amount of pain. You will not continue to do so.” Tired of waiting for Tony to do something and just stop staring wild-eyed at offending appendage, he grabbed one of the hands lying at Tony’s side and sighed in relief.
Immediately, Tony wanted to struggle, and he listened to his first instinct. Loki grasped his hands even harder.”Let. Me. Go.” growled Tony.
“Even an idiotic mortal such as you could feel the relief this touch provides. Why do you continue to fight? Is it because of the fact that that oaf told you we would have to consummate the bond? We don’t have to consummate the bond for years and even if we did have to consummate it, is it your dignity that you’re worried about protecting? Are you worried because you have only ever been attracted to the fairer sex? Is that it? I can turn myself into a woman if that is what you are bothered by.” Loki was babbling now, obviously desperate to make his pain end, regardless of the fact he would spend the rest of Tony’s life glued to his side.
“Shut up. Let me think.” Tony gritted out, as he stopped trying to pull his hand away. No matter how much he wanted to deny it, the touch did help the headache, damn it all.
Tony made a chart in his head. On one hand, he despised Loki. The god had thrown him out of his own window, had killed hundreds of people, and wanted to subjugate the human race to what amounted to slavery.
On the other hand, the god was apparently the only one to be able to fix the pounding in his skull. And nothing other than sex could permanently remove the punishment from his head. And, if he was to be entirely honest with himself, the god was not unattractive. However, the idea of submitting to the god during sex made him nauseous. He hadn’t ever done that with a man, and to do it with someone who hated him, who wished him ill, who tried to kill him, was nerve wracking.
As he thought about it, the longing in his chest started to disappear, becoming whole. The figurative, hole, at least. There was still a faint glow from the arc reactor. That, at least, he had control over. He knew how it worked, what powered it, how to fix it. This thing in his head? With it he was flying blind. Tony didn’t like flying blind. He had Jarvis to prevent that. And Jarvis was useless here. Hell, Tony was useless here. He had to trust Loki and Thor to guide him through this. Tony was willing to trust Thor with his life. He trusted Loki about as far as he could throw an elephant without the suit.
Tony could feel worry creeping up on him, but why was he worrying? Loki had said something about shared emotions, maybe it was that? Surely it was that. If he was worrying, he needed to find out what he was worrying about and soon. He didn’t want to start hyperventilating in front of the god still holding his hand. Maybe the worry would recede if he stopped holding his hand? It may take away the headache, but the emotional transference was not worth it. He started to disengage his hand from the god’s, who started to hold it tighter. Tony felt the panic rise in him, and struggled to pull his hand away.
“Let. Go.” He stated firmly. And just like that the hold loosened, and Tony was easily able to remove his hand. Almost immediately, the panic abated as well as the worry. So he was right, and at the moment, emotional sharing was heightened by touch on Tony’s end of the bond.
“Why did you start to panic?” Tony asked, ignoring the minor headache that he could feel coming on.
Loki looked at him like he hadn’t said it once before. “If you don’t accept it I will die and so will you. If you do accept it we will spend the rest of your short mortal life together. You spent at least ten minutes thinking it over when there really is only one choice.”
Tony looked at him for a while, and stopped to think. He had no guarantee that Loki wouldn’t try to kill him to get out of this. And so he decided on a pair of stipulations that he thought would make the god say no, to get out of Tony’s life. He could deal with the headaches, and the alcohol he regularly consumed already shot his liver to hell, so no matter what he probably wouldn’t live past sixty, so what difference did the extra twenty years make.
“I have two conditions, if we’re actually going to do this thing.” Loki nodded, encouraging him on. “One, I will not be the receiving partner in any thing we do when it comes to the bedroom. I’ve never done it before, and I’d sure as hell not like to start with you.”
“That is fine. I can change myself into someone of the fairer sex if it would make you more comfortable. Shape shifting is one of my magic’s specialties.” Loki agreed quickly, presumably wanting this over with immediately.
Tony started to feel nervous and sick. He chalked it up to second hand emotions, and continued with his second stipulation. “You bring up my second stipulation.” The sure expression on his face started to crumble, and quite frankly looked scared. Tony pointedly ignored it. “I want someone, preferably me, to be able to control your magic.”
Tony felt a spike a fear that reached from his stomach to his throat. We’re not even touching. he thought. This isn’t supposed to happen if we’re not touching.
Loki stood up abruptly, and backed away, hands raised, breaking his train of thought. “No. No. No. You can make me argr if you want, but not that. Stark, I cannot do that. My magic is part of me. To do without it would be you attempting to do without a leg.” His eyes were wild, pleading.
Tony sighed. The headache he felt creeping on him earlier decided to showcase itself and he could feel the full force of it slamming his brain against his skull for all it was worth. “Calm down. Relax, control your fucking emotions. I’m not saying I want to take it away. I’m saying I want to limit it. Keep you from blowing up my humble city again. Keep you from killing people. You can still keep it. But I want to be given a modicum of control when it comes to what you do with it.” He thought his intentions were obvious. Not that he would mind if he did control all the magic, but at the very least he wanted to say what Loki could and could not do with it.
The fear that was crawling its way up Tony’s throat disappeared and Loki stopped trying to back away, to put distance between them.
He looked Tony in the eyes, and said in a quiet voice, “I agree to your stipulations.”
“Wonderful, Rudolph. Now, let’s go reassure your brother that we haven’t killed each other yet. Isn’t that important in a bond?” Tony quipped, forcing cheer into his voice. He turned around and left the room, leaving a bewildered look plastered on the face behind him.