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Tony didn’t think he really needed to explain the concept of a “date” to someone who had been around 25 times longer than he has, but in hindsight, maybe that made sense after all. Loki’s very existence predated the concept of courtship at all, didn’t it? How did people do it in Ye Olden Days? Did they just point at someone, go “yeah, you’ll do,” marry, and then go off to have seventeen children and pray a couple of them made it to adulthood? Weren’t marriages arranged back then?
However it happened, Loki seemed (or at least pretended to seem) puzzled by the idea. He stared at Tony with skepticism written into every sharp corner of his face: lips dropping down into a slight frown, a steadily deepening crease in his forehead, eyes turning to slits as his eyebrows attempt to meet.
“Do I need to make a PowerPoint?” Tony finally asked in exasperation when his fourth (fifth? sixth?) attempt at an explanation only met with the same bewildered reaction. “Am I not using the right words? Here: date. Go out. Court. See. Uh . . . romance? Woo? Anything?”
Finally, perhaps just to shut him up, Loki held out a hand with the same fluid grace he used to cast his spells. Shutting Tony up was a form of sorcery, maybe.
“I’m not unfamiliar with the concept,” Loki said before dropping his arm to let his hands fold primly in his lap, around the cup of tea that should have cooled a long time ago but which was still suspiciously steaming. Tony just hoped there was no residual magic stink on it; it was one of his favorite coffee mugs. There was nothing quite like walking into a team meeting with a mug that screamed, in bold red letters, “Not a Fucking Morning Person” while Steve was lecturing everyone.
“Then why are you—”
“I don’t understand the point.”
It was there, seated on the couch next to the god/alien/whatever he had been flirting with, fighting with, sleeping with, and yes, even dating for months, that Tony began to wonder if he’d gone into this relationship with wildly different expectations than Loki himself.
It was stupid, really. Tony Stark did not fall in love. He didn’t develop attachments easily, if at all. The playboy moniker wasn’t unfair; he’d done more than enough to earn it for himself over the years. It shouldn’t have mattered that Loki wasn’t much of the dating type. The banter was top tier quality, the sex was great, and as long as Loki felt the same way, he seemed disinclined to get up to his usual wannabe overlord schemes. Oh, he was still a trickster in every sense of the word, but his plots ran more toward the “irritating teenager” end of the mischief spectrum rather than the “I want to enslave your species and browbeat them into worshiping me as a god” kind of villainy.
It didn’t matter that birthdays weren’t really celebrated on Asgard (and why would they be on a planet full of people who lived thousands of years?) and that Loki had completely missed Tony’s, only to then shrug about it when reminded.
It didn’t matter that the closest thing to “dates” they had ever had was when Tony bullied, begged, guilt-tripped, or otherwise cajoled Loki into attending some public function with him--and even that was to avoid having to interact with other people.
That time they tag-teamed a beatdown of some incredibly lame H.Y.D.R.A. offshoot had been a nice date though, all things considered.
But none of that mattered. It didn’t. Tony had an exhaustively long list of previous lovers, very few of whom had ever been anything he would consider a significant other, so dating was pointless. It was. It was.
He told himself that every time he shared a movie and a bowl of popcorn with Loki, so it had to be true. This was fine.
There on the couch, watching Loki staring at him with that skeptical expression, Tony knew.
It wasn’t fine.
It mattered.
“All I’m saying,” he tried again with a sigh, “is that if we’re seriously going to try this whole couple thing, we should maybe, you know, do couples shit.”
“Like go on dates.”
“Like go on dates. Yeah.”
“Do you doubt the sincerity of my feelings for you?”
Tony rolled his eyes. “Okay, first, don’t start with that. You don’t get to complain about your entirely self-made campaign as the god of lies was too successful and now no one believes you. Second, no, I don’t doubt them. I’ve moved from being utterly terrified to only slightly nervous around you with kitchen utensils now,” he noted, gesturing to the plate on the coffee table. A fork still rested atop the half-eaten pastry Loki had been nibbling on for the past hour.
Loki glanced down into the depths of his mug as if the murky liquid held all the answers (and maybe it did; maybe he could read tea leaves even when they were still in the bag). Then he simply reached forward to pluck a raspberry off the plate and pop it into his mouth, making sure Tony watched him as he moved.
“I’ll consider it.”
***
Loki’s idea of “consideration” was how Tony discovered that traveling through wormholes made him violently ill.
Loki’s sharp laughter as Tony double over to hurl his stomach contents off the Bifrost and into the vast emptiness of space was how Tony discovered he wasn’t the first one to suffer this particular trick at Loki’s hands.
One minute he had been scrolling through Netflix options on the couch in the ever-fruitless quest for something he and Loki could both agree on (and it was almost entirely Loki’s fault that Tony’s recommendations were full of serial killer documentaries and, for whatever reasons, every reality-style cooking show listed).
“I’ve considered your proposal of a date night,” Loki had blurted, swinging his feet out of Tony’s lap and onto the floor to propel himself into a standing position. “I accept.”
Tony barely had time to look away from the television before Loki reached forward, clasped a hand to his shoulder, and teleported them out onto the landing pad outside on the tower’s party deck.
“What are you--”
“Heimdall! The Bifrost, if you please.”
“Wait. Doesn’t that guy hate you?”
“We aren’t on ideal terms, no.”
“And aren’t you still a wanted fugitive in Asgard?”
“The degree to which I’m actively pursued changes from time to time, but yes.”
Tony rubbed his forehead, pinching the bridge of his nose. “And you’ve decided to take us there . . . why? To introduce me to the parents?”
Loki only smirked and then wrapped one of those impossibly long arms around Tony’s midsection to pull him closer.
“You’ll want to hold on. It’s my understanding the journey can be . . . unsettling for humans.”
That as all the warning Tony got before the sky split open and a dazzling rainbow burst through the clouds and engulfed them in blinding light. Then he was soaring, tearing through space at the speed of light--too quickly for him to really take stock of his surroundings or to even wrap his brain around what was actually happening.
His feet his solid ground again, his vision stopped swimming . . . and then his stomach caught up, launching itself promptly up his throat and out his mouth, which was how he found himself bent over the side of a mythological bridge leading into a mythological pantheon’s kingdom because of his insane mythological boyfriend.
It seemed hopelessly naive that at one point in his life, he thought building a killer robot suit that shot lasers would be the weirdest thing to ever happen to him.
“Good evening, Heimdall,” Tony heard from somewhere over his right shoulder, that same maddening cheer to Loki’s voice that gave away that he was well aware of what a brat he was being and was entirely unapologetic about it. “I’m actually somewhat surprised you heard my call.”
“I always do,” came a much deeper, louder voice from . . . somewhere. Tony couldn’t place it, exactly, because that would require opening his eyes and turning his head, both of which seemed like great ways to make him vomit again. “I’m just under orders at times not to respond.”
“Ah. So I take it that means I’ve been paroled again?”
“For the time being. Which you would know if you hadn’t filled Thor’s mouth with ash when he tried to give you that news recently.”
“If Odin wishes to deliver a message to me, he can do so himself, or at least employ a better messenger. One of his ravens, perhaps. Their senseless squawking is about as meaningful to me as my brother’s. At any rate, they’re likely more articulate.”
“Loki, I think I just choked up my spleen and sent it into deep space,” Tony groaned, a pitiful noise made only more so when Loki reached down to pat his shoulder. Tony wasn’t entirely sure how a touch could be sarcastic, but damned if Loki didn’t manage it somehow all the same.
“Do try to regain your composure. You’re making this awkward.”
“Anthony Stark,” came the voice again, so loud and commanding it seemed as if it was inside Tony’s head. He winced and forced his eyes open, dragged the back of his hand across his mouth, and then very shakily got to his feet. If he leaned a little against Loki, so be it.
“That’s me.”
Atop the dais several yards away stood an enormous man decked in . . . well, honestly, the same ridiculous, gaudy armor Tony had come to expect of anyone associated with Loki and Thor. The fact said man was a great deal larger than Tony, appeared to be made from solid muscle, and held a frankly terrifying sword all worked to keep Tony’s commentary about his fashion sense firmly in his brain instead of rolling off his tongue.
The man’s golden eyes bore into Tony, seemingly peering into his soul and shuffling individual atoms around in search of something, and then he simply dipped his head just a little.
“Welcome to Asgard.”
“Thanks. I, uh . . .” Tony reached up to scratch at his hair, then cast a glance down over the side of the rainbow bridge atop which he stood, just at the threshold of the golden domed observatory sprawling out before him. “Wow. That is . . . that’s something. Oh, and sorry for puking everywhere. I think I got most of it on--Loki, what’s the name of that one planet you told me about that you hate? Elf hymen?”
The corner of Loki’s mouth twitched. “Alfheim. And it isn’t a planet, strictly speaking. Not what you would classify as such, anyway. It’s a realm, more like--”
“I don’t care,” Tony interrupted, holding up a hand to keep Loki from elaborating any further. “Also, you’re an asshole. You couldn’t have given me a head’s up? Couldn’t have warned me that, oh, by the way, you’re taking me through a wormhole?”
“You would have asked too many questions. Much as you’re doing now.”
“I hate you.”
“You’ll join a long and illustrious list of peers in that case,” Loki grumbled before redirecting his attention to Heimdall. “We won’t be staying long. I’ve only come to retrieve some spell books from my quarters.”
“And the human?”
Loki shrugged. “I thought he might enjoy seeing part of my life that’s previously been hidden to him. I don’t think we’re off to a great start though, really.”
Heimdall’s gaze flitted over Tony, cold and dismissive and somehow giving the distinct impression he was taking in everything there was to know about this insignificant little mortal. Tony tried not to throw up. Again. Then he looked back at Loki.
“You are aware, of course, that I will have to report your presence to the All-Father.”
“I’m allowed to move about as I please, aren’t I? Or is my freedom granted in name only?”
“You bring a mortal to Asgard, Loki. You know the All-Father’s position on--”
“Knowing and caring are two entirely different things, gatekeeper. You’ve done your duty and informed me of my responsibilities. Now let me do mine and utterly ignore them. Tony? Do you think you can walk?”
“I’m thinking of pushing you off the side of this bridge.”
Loki’s face darkened. “I’d really rather you didn’t. I already know what happens.”
Oh. Right. Tony winced and opened his mouth to apologize, but Loki had already turned to face straight ahead and started walking with long, confident strides and exhibiting all the haughty swagger of royalty on home turf: shoulders back, chin up, eyes sliding down the long point of his nose lest any peasants dare make eye contact.
Once they were reasonably far enough from Heimdall to be out of hearing range (and once Tony trusted himself to speak again without screaming at Loki for the surprise space travel stunt), Tony glanced over at Loki, eyebrows raised slightly.
“So. Spell books, huh?”
“That’s what I said.”
Tony’s mouth twisted into the beginnings of a smirk. “But that’s not what you meant, was it?”
“Of course not. I could have simply summoned the books I needed.”
“With . . . what, exactly? Your pocket dimension bag of holding? Warping space-time to create a fold you could drag materials through?”
Loki’s gaze slanted sideways before he raised both hands, wriggled his fingers, and said, in the most sing-songy voice Tony had ever heard, “Magic.”
Sometimes, Tony wondered when his life had turned into this.
The walk along the Bifrost took them directly into Asgard proper--Tony wasn’t certain this little planetoid was even big enough to have more than just the one major city--, at which point Loki waved his hand, casting them both awash in a greenish-gold shimmer of light. When it dissipated, it left behind not Loki, but an utterly boring-looking man with graying hair and a stern frown. Moments later, upon passing an ornate, polished statue, Tony noticed his own reflection was that of an equally unremarkable-looking woman with her long, dark hair worn in a loose plait and a few shallow wrinkles around her eyes.
“I may be paroled officially, but the rabble won’t care much for that if they see me walking the streets,” Loki pointed out, making Tony snort.
“First, I can’t believe you just called them ‘the rabble’ without a hint of irony. Second, why am I the chick? You’re the one who actually is one sometimes.” Tony’s nose wrinkled as he glanced down. “You could’ve at least given me something better than a small B cup.”
“I happen to think you look quite nice. A bit plain, but we’re trying not to draw attention, after all.”
“Yeah, about that. If we’re not here for books, why are we here?”
Loki didn’t answer, but instead just continued to wind his way in and out of the narrow lanes between market stalls with the kind of ease that only came with untold years of familiarity.
Tony, meanwhile, felt as if his head was on a swivel. The scents of the market were almost overwhelming: freshly baked bread, roasting meat, spices, perfumes, incense, tobacco smoke, and underlying everything the occasional whiff of wet hay and animal waste. The distant sound of roosters crowing testified to the fact there must have been animals for purchase somewhere in the market, perhaps an alley or two away.
Tony stopped at one stall, transfixed by the intricate glass figurines on display (and which miraculously had survived the bustle of the marketplace). He picked up a small dragon-like sculpture that fit neatly in his palm, eyes widening when it immediately began to move, glass body shining brilliantly in the early evening sunlight.
“I used to love those when I was a boy,” Loki pointed out, almost (but not quite) smiling as he paused at Tony’s side, one arm snaking around Tony’s waist. “Sometimes I would accompany my mother into the market when she came to buy supplies for her weaving. Quite unusual for one of her station, as you can imagine, so she taught me the value of disguising myself properly to avoid unwanted attention.”
Loki reached out to touch the tip of his finger to one of the glass dragon’s outstretched wings. The miniature beast continued to turn in circles on Tony’s palm, beating its wings as smoothly as if they were made of feathers.
“They’re really very simple little toys, but I enjoyed them. I would pester her endlessly during every trip until she agreed to let me pick one out.”
“Why doesn’t it surprise me that you whined about wanting something until you got it?” Tony asked, though without any real malice, as he gently placed the dragon back onto the table. His mouth turned into a confused grin as the dragon made one more circle and then curled into a ball, folded its wings back along its body, and returned to the same rigid glass as before.
“How does--is that magic too?”
Loki chuckled and used the arm around Tony’s waist to tug him along the path. “Not at all. Don’t worry. Your people will catch up one day, I’m sure. Many thousands of years from now, presuming you don’t all destroy yourselves or your planet before then, of course.”
Given that flipping Loki off might give up the game that something wasn’t right with the illusion, Tony consoled himself by jabbing a sharp elbow into Loki’s ribs, earning only another quiet laugh for his troubles.
By the time they made it through the row of stalls just in that one section of the market, Loki had acquired a sack full of food, most of which Tony could only identify in the vaguest of terms. Bread and cheese looked the same everywhere, apparently, but there were a few colorful items that Tony reasoned were fruit species native to the world, such as something that looked like a strawberry but was bright orange instead, or solid spheres which looked like blueberries on steroids.
Also tucked into the sack was an enormous bottle of dark liquid in an even darker bottle, and that made him happy; Loki had brought him Asgardian alcohol before, and when Tony woke up two days later, he swore it was both the best and worst thing to have ever happened to him.
“Did you literally drag me through a wormhole just to pick up your groceries?” Tony asked as the market receded into the background and the city streets gave way to rough cobblestone that itself eventually turned into a simple dirt path.
“I thought you might enjoy a change of scenery.”
That was fair, Tony supposed, and he shrugged in response as he looked around to take in their new surroundings. The imposing, ostentatious gold that spoke to Asgard’s (likely stolen) riches was gone, replaced with a sprawling meadow filled with knee-high grass to the right, leading off toward the rolling hills a few miles out. To the left was a deep creek with water so clear Tony could plainly see the colorful fish swimming by.
“It looks pretty normal to me. The market back there was kinda cool, but you realize we have those on Earth, right?”
“It isn’t about total novelty.” Loki hesitated at the creek bank, looking back and forth before simply flicking his hand and forming a bridge across it made from solid green energy that sparkled with the rippling water below it reflecting on the surface. “We’re nearly there.”
The bridge was not reassuringly solid under their feet as they crossed, as if they walked along colorful air, and Tony felt like nothing so much as a cartoon character only held aloft in the air so long as he didn’t look down.
‘Nearly there,’ Tony learned, meant something entirely different to Loki, whose godlike endurance had left him unable to comprehend that walking several miles at a time was uncomfortable for someone who was used to traveling by any means but on foot.
Their (seemingly random) path led them through more meadows and far beyond any apparent signs of civilization, to the point Tony began to seriously wonder if Loki was luring him into the woods on a foreign planet to murder him. When they veered into an actually wooded area, Tony really began to wonder, but Loki only seemed to grow more agitated, wandering from tree to tree in search of . . . something.
“I appreciate you letting me be me again,” Tony piped up after about ten minutes of idly following Loki around as he muttered to himself about “not this one” and “where is it” and other nonsense. “But I think you can drop the illusion on yourself now too. We haven’t seen anything but birds, a couple rabbits, horses, and a few . . . I think those were cows. Look, what I'm saying is that no one else is around."
“I know it’s around here,” Loki went on as if Tony hadn’t spoken, prompting Tony to merely sigh and fold his arms over his chest as he walked closer to a large elm tree to lean against it.
“You know, if you’d tell me what you’re looking for, maybe I could hel--whoa!”
There was no tree to catch Tony. There was nothing at all, in fact, but open air, followed very quickly by solid ground that caught up with him quickly enough to knock the air from his lungs. There on his back, looking around since he couldn’t do much else while he caught his breath, he stared up at a sky considerably darker than the one that had just been bathed in shades of pinks and oranges and reds as the sun dipped below the horizon. The trees were also missing, including the elm that had been right there. The gentle noises of the creek in the near distance were replaced with the more insistent roar of stronger, faster running water, much stronger than the creek should have been able to produce.
“Ah! You found it!”
Tony lifted his head just enough to see Loki stepping through what appeared to be a slit in the air that shimmered with the same insane magic that tainted everything even remotely associated with Loki. He also looked entirely too pleased with himself--and he was himself, not the nondescript middle-aged man who had been Tony’s travel companion for the past couple hours.
“What. In the hell--”
“I’ve told you before that I can walk between worlds, haven’t I?” Loki asked, taking a quick look around before extending a hand to help Tony to his feet. “Well. This is one such instance. Welcome to . . . actually, I’m not quite sure where this is. But welcome nonetheless.”
“Loki, I swear to God--”
“Not yet. I’ll have you swearing to me by the end of the night, though, I assure you,” Loki replied with a lewd grin that froze every angry thought in Tony’s brain. He pointed to their left. “We’re heading there next.”
Tony peered around Loki and immediately snorted. “No. Hell no. I am not climbing a freaking mountain now. No way. Second, and maybe this should’ve been my first question, but is that . . . is that really a single mountain in the middle of nowhere?”
“It’s only a hill, not really a mountain. And yes. You’ll find the terrain here is quite different from what you’re used to.” Loki stepped closer, eyes going half lidded as he wrapped a hand around the side of Tony’s neck. “And the only thing you’ll be climbing tonight, darling, is me. I won’t make you walk any further. You’ll need to conserve your energy.”
Tony didn’t even get a chance to finish the cheesy remark forming on his tongue before the world gave way below his feet again and the air pressure dropped quickly enough to make his ears pop, all accompanied by the same uneasy feeling that always came with Loki’s teleportation. It was over in barely the time between blinks, but it still took Tony several seconds of standing perfectly motionless before he could force his eyes open again, lest the vertigo make him start throwing up again.
Evidently, flying around in a metal suit of armor did nothing to counteract the very peculiar sort of motion sickness that followed bending reality and every known rule of physics.
“Please stop doing that,” he murmured, voice barely above a whisper, and in response, Loki patted his cheek, leaned in to kiss his forehead, and then wandered away.
“You’re safe for now.”
“Are you telling me you could’ve just teleported us here in the first place? What was with the detour through Rivendell? You couldn’t just get us straight to Mordor to begin with? Couldn’t call on a giant eagle to come pick us up?”
Loki blinked a few times and then shook his head, carrying on with his business of waving his hands over a large patch of grass--which was blue, Tony was just noticing, even in the moonlight.
“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about. To answer your first question, however, no, I couldn’t. I can transport myself short distances. Shorter if someone else is in tow. I can’t move between worlds under my own power. I don’t know that any being has that kind of ability.”
Another wave of golden and green light, and then suddenly, a stack of furs and silks piled several inches thick rested on the ground, arranged as though they had appeared at random but still bearing tell-tale signs that their placement was very careful. Loki, after surveying his handiwork, nodded and placed the sack slung over his shoulder on the ground, dropped down into the nest, and then stretched out a hand, beckoning Tony with a slow, seductive grin.
“Come. You can’t properly enjoy the view from there.”
Tony, for reasons beyond him (besides, perhaps, that he was now on yet another planet without his armor and without anyone else knowing where he was, and maybe it wasn’t a good idea to antagonize the only person who could get him back home), stepped forward, toeing off his sneakers at the edge of the pile of makeshift blankets. He took Loki’s hand and let himself be led into the nest--that was really the only word he could think to describe it, given its shape and construction--and huffed as Loki tugged him closer to plant another kiss, this time against his temple.
“Something very special is about to happen, Tony.”
“If that’s a come-on--”
“Shh,” Loki ordered, shaking his head and then pointing to direct Tony’s attention directly ahead. “Just watch.”
So Tony watched.
And exactly ninety-two seconds later, his mouth dropped open.
A second moon popped over the horizon. It was far larger than the first and cast a soft, reddish glow as it rose. As it climbed higher, the land below them, what every geological rule Tony had ever known told him had to be solid ground, given they were atop a mountain (or a hill, whatever; Loki was full of crap at the best of times, so it was a mountain as far as he was concerned), revealed itself to be a vast ocean stretching as far as he could see, its cresting waves shining silver under the smaller moon’s more powerful light. And feeding into the ocean, Tony realized with growing wonder, was a waterfall, which sounded as though it were pouring straight out of the side of this hill/mountain/whatever. Which was impossible, clearly, given he couldn’t see another water source, and yet--
“It doesn’t make sense,” he breathed, afraid to take his eyes from the rising moon. “There’s a waterfall--”
“Which cuts through this hill, yes,” Loki confirmed, not appearing too bothered by it as he began sifting through his bag of treasures and bringing them out for Tony’s perusal. “Nothing about this place makes much sense. You can appreciate then why a so-called god of chaos might take such a liking to it when he discovered it in his youth.”
Tony stared at the rising moon, barely registering Loki’s words. “There are two moons.”
“No. I thought the same originally, but that isn't the case. That,” Loki pointed out, pointing toward the horizon with the tip of the knife he was using to carve up the block of cheese in his hand, “is this little rock’s sun. Well, it was, at any rate, some millions or even billions of years ago.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“Stars die,” Loki replied with a shrug, eating a slice of cheese directly off the edge of the knife. “This planet is dying. It’s changed even in the brief time since I discovered it centuries ago. You and I are dying.” He shrugged again and reached forward to grasp the bottle, which Tony distantly recognized as wine due to the cork once it was pulled loose. “I thought we could use a little beauty before then.”
“Are you talking dying immediately, or . . .?”
“No. But all existence is finite. And as living things, we have two choices: we can rage against our mortality and fight the universe itself. Or,” he went on, swallowing down a swig from the bottle before passing it to Tony, “we can enjoy the time we have. Make the best of it. Perhaps, if we’re lucky, find someone worth sharing it with.”
Tony took the bottle almost without thinking and knocked back a large mouthful, savoring the pleasant sweetness on his tongue for a long while; he should have known, given Loki’s sweet tooth, that he’d go for some cloying, fruity wine that tasted like abnormally strong fruit punch--but also knowing Loki, which undoubtedly had a brutal kick, so Tony limited himself to just the one drink for the time being.
“When did you become such a zen master?”
Loki hummed quietly and pulled the oversized blueberry-looking fruit from the bag and took a bite, surprising Tony by revealing the inside was a dark, velvety red.
“Since I also found someone to share it with, I suppose.” He cast a sideways, almost shy glance at Tony and then held out the fruit. “This is a kobbleberry. It tastes very much like your pomegranate on Midgard, I believe.”
Somewhat against his better judgment, Tony took a bite, chewed the pulp with care and thought, swallowed, and then burst into laughter, startling Loki from his quiet reverie.
“No, I’m sorry. I’m not laughing at you, babe. I swear. I’m not. I just--I realize we were just on Asgard, but it looked so much like places I’ve seen before that it didn’t really occur to me that . . . I mean, seeing this,” he explained, gesturing wildly out to sea and the red moon-sun. “Like . . . holy shit. I’m actually on another planet. Apparently one in a binary star system? And all it took was a giant blueberry that’s not a blueberry to finally make me realize it.”
Loki nodded and took the fruit back when it was offered, but he did not take another bite. Rather, he turned it over and over with his deft fingers, peeling at the skin and tossing it aside like someone else in another life might peel the label from a beer bottle.
“I first found my way here much the same way you did, and with about as graceful a landing,” he noted with a smirk. “I was in those woods on the outskirts of Asgard, and I sensed something odd. Something that wasn’t meant to be there. I found it quite by accident. I didn’t know there were . . . gaps in the realms, so to speak. And then I found this place. I climbed to the top of this hill--”
“Mountain.”
“--and looked out across an ocean that shouldn’t be there, fed by a waterfall that shouldn’t exist, watched a sunrise which had long since stopped providing this little realm with any heat, and do you know what I’ve found here, Tony?”
“Usually with these stories, you find some kind of spiritual guru at the top of the mountain, which might explain the whole zen master thing.”
Loki rolled his eyes. “I found peace. For a time, at least. I found quiet and solitude, which were incredibly rare for a prince with so many demands om his time. And I found life. Here, among the dead and dying things, left to just survive while their sun continued to fade, I found life still carrying on. Not, perhaps, life we would recognize. I’ve seen insects, but no animals besides that. Nothing resembling a person or any kind of higher life form. Just plants. I can only assume that if complicated life ever did exist here, it was snuffed out eons ago when the star supporting it died.”
He smiled slowly, a little sadly, and waved his arm in a slow, sweeping gesture.
“Look around you. Does this look like death to you? Look at the variety of grasses, the trees, the odd little flowers. Perhaps there are mysterious creatures down there in the depths of the ocean, just as unlikely in their existence as anything else here. This planet is bursting, teeming with life, even after a cataclysm that stole the very light from the skies. And,” he added, pointing to the silver moon hanging almost directly above them, “the moon still shines as brightly as it ever did.”
Something dark and haunted flashed across his face, gone as quickly as the breeze sweeping the hair across his forehead.
“I suppose I needed reassurance that even a moon could survive without its sun.”
Tony, not knowing exactly what to say to that, stole one of the orange strawberry things (which in fact tasted like a raspberry) and then looked back at Loki to find him still watching the sky.
“There must be another star near enough to give off heat. We’re not freezing to death, and the moon has to be reflecting the light from somewhere.” He nudged Loki’s shoulder with his own to get his attention. “So that moon might think it’s out here all alone, but it really isn’t. It’s got at least one other friend, even if it can’t see it.”
Loki’s nose wrinkled, despite the faint grin pulling at his lips. “Don’t get maudlin.”
“You’re the one who decided to take me to another planet to wine and dine--wait. Is that what this is? Is this actually a date?”
Loki made a noncommittal noise and pretended to sort through the bag again, only for Tony to poke him in the side.
“It could be. It seemed important to you.”
Tony, stuffed with exotic fruit and impossibly sweet dessert breads (and okay, maybe a little tipsy on stupid-strong Asgardian wine), lost count of the hours as he lay in the nest with Loki, head pillowed atop the god’s arm but leaving the other one free because Loki, like him, had a habit of speaking with his hands. They spent ages, it seemed, pointing out constellations to each other neither of them could identify, given the stars were entirely different from what either of them was used to seeing in their own skies. But it seemed right to find patterns and name them anyway, since there was no one else around to do it. Maybe intelligent creatures had done the same billions of years earlier, before Earth or Asgard had even coalesced from star dust and cooled. Maybe they, too, had stretched out upon the oddly colored grass with those closest to them and made up stories about how the stars came to be in the sky, why they only appeared at night, what powered them, and what might happen if one day they looked up and the stars were simply gone.
About the time Tony was finishing up his explanation for why he’d chosen to name one cluster of stars “Cap’s Patriotic Nuts” (with the primary reason being that no one was there to stop him), movement from the corner of his eye pulled his focus back from the constellation in question to Loki’s side. And there, resting in Loki’s palm, was the glass dragon from earlier, moving once again and silently roaring its little nonexistent heart out.
“It’s customary in courtship rituals on Asgard to give each other gifts. You seemed quite taken with this one.”
Tony laughed despite himself, even stroking the dragon’s snout as if were a real pet. “Thank you. But you know, I never saw you pay for this . . . or anything else in that bag, now that I think of it.”
Loki waved dismissively and turned slightly on his side so that he was facing Tony more directly. “The merchants will find themselves well compensated and quite pleased with their tills when they shutter their shops tonight, I promise.”
“Yeah, but with real money or, like, chocolate coins?”
“Where would be the fun in my answering that?”
Tony snorted and placed the dragon on his chest, and just as before, the “toy” (if Loki could be believed on that point, at least) curled in on itself and turned back into motionless, lifeless glass.
“So it’s customary to give gifts, huh?”
“Yes.”
“Hmm. Well, I owe you, then. I don’t have anything to give you.”
Long fingers draped over the line of Tony’s jaw with just enough pressure to turn his face to the side so that he could see just how intently Loki’s eyes were boring into him, still as brilliantly emerald in the darkness as they ever were. And, if Tony could trust his instinct on this sort of thing, surprisingly unguarded.
Loki leaned in, so close that Tony felt his breath falling warm and humid across his mouth, the tips of their noses almost touching.
“You’ve already given me a most precious gift, Tony Stark.”
Tony had flown hundreds of miles an hour in a suit of his own design, built by his own hands, a creation of his own brilliant mind. He had fought monsters, both human and the more traditional kind. He had lived every excitement there was to be found, it seemed.
And yet there, in that moment, kissing an ancient god on a planet barely clinging to life, under the light of a dead sun and its ghostly shadow, Tony knew he had never felt more alive.