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"Good morning, Sir."
"... Good morning, JARVIS… what time is it?"
"The time is currently 10:32am, and the weather is pleasantly mild."
"Is that a subtle hint that I should get out of the house?"
"The subtlety is questionable at best, but that was the intent, yes."
"You're a menace."
"Thank you, Sir. And on that note, may I say how good it is to see you get more than an hour's worth of sleep in a single night."
"Hmph. Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later."
"Indeed, Sir. But I'm glad that it happened sooner rather than later."
"I'm sure you are. … JARVIS?"
"Yes, Sir?"
"How long has it been?"
"... It has been six months and ten days, Sir."
"..."
"Shall I have breakfast prepared for you this morning?"
"No… no, I think I'll make it myself."
"... Yes, Sir."
—•—
"Oh, look what the cat finally dragged home."
Loki looked up at the sound of Anthony’s voice, his heart leaping up into his throat. He tried to give a smile, the smile he could feel, for seeing Anthony for the first time in so long… but the look on Anthony’s face stopped him cold, freezing his features.
Anthony stood at the top of the stairs which spiraled downward into the workshops below, leaning against the banister. It could have been a posture of ease, or even of flirtation, had Anthony’s face been arranged as it usually was when he looked in Loki’s direction — the way it had usually been when looking in Loki’s direction.
Now he stared at Loki was an expression so cold that rage would have been preferable. At least then there would have been some warmth.
“I knew that there would be a lot to adjust to when it came to living with an alien,” Anthony said, not moving from his place at the banister. “Especially one as long lived as Asgardians are meant to be. But I would have thought that the concept of time passing wasn’t completely foreign to you.”
Loki winced. It was on the tip of his tongue to say that he was aware of the passage of time – possibly even more so than Anthony could ever hope to be. Loki had lived through centuries, seen the entire lifespans of countless others, watched as cultures grew, developed, and declined again. A longer lifespan did not deaden his awareness of time.
He was in a position to feel the passage of days, the slipping of opportunities through his fingers keenly.
When Loki remained silent, not answering the accusation thrown at him, Anthony scoffed, and pushed away from the banister, heading towards the little kitchen. Loki was seated at one of the counters facing the rest of the house, and he tensed as Anthony came closer. It had been a long time, so long apart from his Anthony… surely it would be alright to reach out and to touch…?
As he passed by, Anthony nodded down at the plate in front of Loki. “It’s good to see that you still know where the fridge is. At least this place still has some value to you.”
It felt as though Anthony had struck him directly in the heart, knocking all of the breath and cunning out of him. “This place has more value to me than any feast could possibly hope to share, Anthony.” He fixed the man – his lover – with a look, hoping that his honesty was as visible to Anthony as it had ever seemed to be before. “I hope that you know that – can understand it… what this place and what you truly mean to me.”
“I might have more luck with that if you were ever here,” the man shot back, unmoved. “But it’s a little hard when—“
He cut himself off, looking for all the world as though he were restraining himself from some sort of outburst.
Loki couldn’t find it in himself to blame him. Had Loki been in his shoes… but that was hardly the issue just now. Searching for some safe topic, Loki waved at his own plate of food. “Are you hungry? I… imagine that you’ve been spending a lot of time working. You never eat enough when the creative spark hits you.”
“How much food I am or am not getting is none of your business,” Tony snapped at him. “If you were really concerned about that kind of thing, then you’d—“ And again he cut himself off, biting at his own lips in frustration and self-restraint.
A few moments passed, and Loki allowed them to do so in silence, giving Anthony the time he needed to gather himself, if he was able to. After a couple of deep breaths, Anthony was able to speak in a level voice again. More than level – he sounded tired. “I’ve already eaten this morning. Some of us live here.” He turned his head, giving Loki a close look for the first time, eyes scanning over his face, his clothes. “You look like absolute hell, Loki. Where… what have you been doing?”
Loki huffed a small laugh at that and shook his head. It was a question which invited answers he had no intention of getting into. “Nothing of very much importance, Anthony. Nothing which you should concern yourself with.”
“Obviously not. Or I would already know.”
Loki didn’t answer – couldn’t. There was nothing he could say which would make the situation any better, which would take the hurt out of Anthony’s voice or heal the breach which had opened up between them.
Would that there were…
Anthony sighed, and Loki looked up at him. His lover’s gaze had gone far away, turned away from him as he considered things on his own. After a moment, still not looking in Loki’s direction, he murmured quietly, as though hoping that if he spoke quietly enough, what he said wouldn’t be true.
“You’re getting bored of this place, aren’t you? You came here, you found something you thought was interesting, you stayed a while, and now… now you’ve just… lost interest. Maybe you thought that your interest would outlive me. But turns out that it couldn’t even last that long.”
“That’s not true.” Loki could only manage it in a whisper, emotion robbing him of any power. “I’ve not lost interest in either this world or in you. I never could.”
Anthony scoffed, and shook his head, still not deigning to look in Loki’s direction. “It’s alright if you have, you know. If I’ve got one thing going for me it’s that I’m not completely stupid. I always knew this would be coming. I just… I don’t like wondering when I’m going to see you again. If I’m going to see you again.”
Pain lanced through Loki’s heart, silencing him. Anthony had settled near him, his hands on the counter near to his plate as he leaned.
Loki reached out, reached to touch the back of one of Anthony’s hands, to reassure with his touch since his words had all turned to lead, that he was here, and he would never leave him in the way he was suggesting—
Anthony pulled away before Loki could touch him, keeping his hands close to his own body.
“I just need to know what’s going on, Loki. Tell me what’s going on so we can both move on.”
—•—
“Where is he, JARVIS?”
“He is currently in the living room, Sir, pacing.”
“How… how does he seem?”
“If I can be trusted to judge in this case, he is doing very poorly.”
“Oh. …JARVIS?”
“Sir.”
“What are your thoughts?”
“I believe that I have made my position on the situation very clear. But as you seem to require the repetition – I find everything about it to be unhealthy.”
“But surely you see why—“
“I assure you, Sir, I do see why you are allowing this to continue, why you have allowed it to continue as long as you have. And it is still unhealthy. I believe you wish me to provide some form of endorsement and so give you reason to continue. I cannot, in good conscience.”
“… And you are ever my ‘good conscience’…”
“I do try to offer that balance, Sir.”
“… It will hurt. Saying goodbye.”
“And the current situation, can you honestly say that it does not cause you pain?”
—•—
Loki was sitting in on the bed of their room, waiting, when Anthony came in.
When he saw Loki he paused at the door, but he didn’t look surprised. Probably he had known that Loki was here before he’d even left the shop, and decided to come up anyway.
It was unlikely that Loki would ever be able to scare Anthony away from any place in his own home. Coming here even knowing that it was where Loki was, it didn’t mean that he was necessarily looking for a confrontation. It might mean nothing more than he wanted to come up to his bedroom.
Whatever his intention in coming up to the bedroom – confrontation or just sleep – he strode in and took a seat next to Loki. Not so close as to touch, but near enough that Loki could have reached out if he wanted to.
He didn’t.
It took some time before Anthony spoke. When he did, it was quietly, facing forward so Loki could only see him in profile.
“You know. When we first got together, I didn’t really think that this was possible. That you and I would work at all. I mean,” a brief flash of teeth and depreciatory chuckle, “neither of us exactly scream ‘stable relationship,’ you know? I thought… I thought that at best, if we did act on the whatever it was that was happening between us, it would be over quickly. At best we might end up as occasional fuck buddies. And even that, at the time, was such a strange thing to think about…”
Loki watched him, studying his profile, the half expression he was allowed to see. He wanted to engrave every part of Anthony into his memory; every facet of him fixed into his very being, so that… so…
“I didn’t expect… all of this,” he waved in the air vaguely between them. “I didn’t expect for us to actually get into a relationship, for us to share a bed just for sleeping, to wake up and eat together, to… to talk like we did… I didn’t expect to end up loving you.” He swallowed so hard that Loki could hear it.
“I didn’t expect it… and I wish I didn’t.”
Loki’s world narrowed to only a few things: the sound of his own breathing, Anthony’s figure out of the corner of his eye, and the lance which seemed to have run him through.
“Anthony…” He choked on the name, his throat closing round it as though to keep every last bit of the man as close as possible, even if it was just his name. Forcing his body to cooperate, he tried again. “It was not a one-sided phenomenon, Anthony. I did not expect it either. There was far too much, it seemed, which kept us apart, which would act to continually keep us apart. I considered it an extremely unlikely possibility that anything like what has happened would happen… But I cannot say that I regret that it happened at all.” He bowed his head, looking to where Anthony’s hands pressed against the bedsheets, his traitorous memory drawing up other times, happier ones, when the two of them had been in this very bed and Loki had noticed such small, incidental details…
“I’m sorry that you have come to regret what we have shared. It was never my intent that you would be sorry for having known me.”
“Lokes…” Anthony shook his head, and Loki’s heart leapt at the familiar pet name. “It’s not that I regret what we had it’s just…”
He turned his head at last, meeting Loki’s gaze full on, the light catching his eye so a sliver of amber shone in the deep brown.
“Do I mean anything to you anymore? I know that sounds like a melodramatic soap opera line, but I’m really curious here. Do I mean anything to you, or might I as well not be here? Am I real to you? Because I’m starting to feel like I might as well not exist so far as you’re concerned.”
“Anthony, you may be the most real person in my life.” He took a shaky breath, resisting the urge to reach out and take the man in his arms, to prove how much he still cared, to close the distance between them however he could. “You are my life, Anthony. Without you, I…”
Loki trailed away, with Anthony still watching him. The man waited a moment, waiting to see if Loki would continue. When he didn’t, he shook his head. “Without me, Loki, you’d be just fine. You’ve been proving that every time you wander off without a word. Without me. It’s this coming back and leaving again part which is killing you – killing us both.”
Loki shook his head, knowing where this must be going and trying to back away from it, deny it in any way he could…
But Anthony was inexorable.
“If this is going to end, Lokes,” he said gently, much more gently than Loki deserved, “then it needs to end.” Somehow he managed to give Loki a smile. “I’d rather be rejected than forgotten. At least then I’ll know that I was worth the time.”
He couldn’t help the gasp which escaped him, couldn’t stop the tears which trailed down his cheeks. It was worse than he’d been expecting, worse than he’d been dreading for… how long was it now?
How long had it been?
He’d been expecting it to hurt.
He hadn’t been expecting it to feel as though he were being pulled to pieces.
He took a moment, trying to catch his breath when it felt as though there was a hole in his chest, letting out all of the air inside him. After a few moments, he raised his head, looking on Anthony’s face. His Anthony… who was no longer his…
“I still love you, Anthony,” he said thickly. “There’s nothing which will ever change that. I love you now as much as I ever did. I wouldn’t be able to forget you if I tried every day for the next thousand years and there’s no possibility that I would ever reject you…”
Anthony was staring at him, a small frown creasing his brow. How badly he wished he could smooth it away, replace it with the smile which lit up his face and brightened his eyes…
Loki smiled, the tang of salt touching his lips, making it to his tongue. “I can’t do what you ask of me, Anthony. I’m sorry. But I can do something else.”
The frown deepened, confusion writ in every line of his face. “What’s that?”
“I can let you go.”
Anthony’s frown didn’t clear, but neither did he pull away as Loki reached for him. Just one last touch, a brush of his cheek, to feel the warmth of his mortal’s skin against his, one last memory of contact…
Loki’s fingers brushed against Anthony’s cheek, and then through.
Anthony flickered for a moment, his eyes showing nothing but the same vague confusion, before he disappeared entirely.
Just as though he had never been.
Loki gasped again, the pain finally given freedom to overwhelm his senses, and he collapsed into the sheets.
Sheets which had lost the scent of his Anthony months ago.
—•—
“JARVIS…?”
“Yes, Sir?”
“Mark the time, if you would.”
“Of course. Do you require anything else?”
“Nothing which you would be able to provide, JARVIS, thank you.”
“I understand, Sir. …Sir?”
“Yes?”
“It is impossible for me to speak fully for others, but Mr. Stark… He would have understood.”
“Which part?”
“All of it.”
“Heh. Well. We always said we were damaged in similar ways.”
“Very possibly, Sir.”
“Very probably, JARVIS. …How long has it been?”
“Six months, twelve days.”
“Only an eternity left to go, then.”