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This is a gift to my friend NoPantsuBo, I hope you enjoy it ^^
Cotton, that’s what things felt like; his senses were all filled with cotton. As he slowly began waking up from sleep, it felt like he had been in this sleep for a while. As Tony slowly opened his eyes, he took in the room he was staying in, an extremely comfortable bed with silken sheets and pillow covers.
He furrowed his brows as he sat up and looked around the room; the last thing the man remembered was holding up his hand, clad in his Iron Man suit, infinity stones in their place as he snapped, ending the battle between his people and Thanos’s own. After that, his life had been draining from him; Pepper told him he could rest before everything faded to black, and then there was nothingness.
He had died for sure, and he highly doubted this was the afterlife; then again, no one knew if there was life after death or not, so who was he to judge here.
Taking notice of the glass of water on the nightstand beside the table, he took it into his hand and took a few gulps to hydrate himself. Once that was empty, he set it back down and looked down at his hand that had the stones; the burn marks that he was sure would have there were, in fact, not.
His thoughts were interrupted by some sounds that lay just beyond the closed door of the room he was in. If he concentrated well enough, he could hear Stephan Strange and- was that Loki? The last he remembered, Thor’s brother had kicked the bucket thanks to Barny, the purple dinosaur. Though, if he thought about it and concentrated hard enough, he realized that Loki had also made an escape when they had gone back in time.
It was all so confusing; if he were being honest with himself, time travel was always something that seemed confusing in the first place. He sighed softly and rubbed his forehead as he felt a slight headache before looking at the door as it opened, and Loki poked his head inside a moment later.
“Stark, your awake!” The man said, a smile on his face and sounding pretty happy.
“Yeah…looks like it, didn’t I die?” Tony asked; a look of confusion crossed his features as Loki walked over to the bed and sat on the side.
“You did, yes. So did I, though; when you and the others messed with time to defeat Thanos, I grabbed the tesseract and disappeared, only to be picked up by the TVA.” The god explained, looking the other man in the eyes as he began telling Tony of his time with the TVA and how he had escaped, ending up taking shelter in the sanctum thanks to Stephan.
Wong had taken some convincing, not wanting to have the TVA show up to grab him later, but finally broke down and decided just to let it go.
When he had escaped, he had taken a few of the infinity stones that were just being used for paperweights; it wasn’t right for them to go to waste staying in a place they couldn’t be used in. So, once he had spoken with both the sorcerers, he had willingly given them both the stones he had stollen, and Stephan put them in a safe place.
“And- and how did I end up being alive?” Tony asked after Loki had finished his story.
“You see…” Loki hummed a little and sat straighter. “I used a remote to go to the time you snapped Thanos dead, to the moment your soul was fizzling out…and used the time and soul stone to heal your body and keep you alive. Then, the sorcerer brought us both here.”
That made sense, but wasn’t he dying the only good outcome of the battle? He supposed this as a technicality worked out pretty well.
A second chance at life.
Tony had to admit; the thought was excellent.
Though he had to admit, he had questions that he was curious about. Why had Loki just decided to bring him back to life, to begin with? He had so many questions, but he couldn’t quite think about all of them.
“I can see you are confused,” Loki said, placing his hands in his lap and looking at them, fiddling with his fingers. “I suppose I understand that a former enemy revives you-“ He looked up when Tony held up his hand to stop him from speaking further.
“That’s part of it, though I can’t say I consider you an enemy if I’m being honest,” Tony stated, earning a small smile from the god.
“I had hoped not,” Loki admitted.
“I do ask why though,” Tony said after a moment, watching the other.
The other man cleared his throat and gave a small sigh. “It’s-“ He stopped for a moment, obviously trying to think of his following words carefully before letting them leave his mouth.
“I have feelings for you, Stark.” The god of mischief admitted, looking him in the eyes.
He’ll admit that he did try to ignore those feelings for a while, and it worked when he was at the TVA and escaping with Silvy, till she betrayed him. It hurt deeply; then again, dating another variant of yourself was not a good idea. Once he had escaped and came to live with Stephan at the sanctum, his thoughts had returned to Tony till he couldn’t leave him to his fate much longer.
The other man stayed silent for a moment as the confession reached him, then looked into Loki’s eyes, staring at him as he tried to figure out if he heard correctly. If he were being honest with himself, Tony had thought that way about the other a few times over the years, even after his unfortunate death.
“I have them for you as well,” Tony replied, yelping in surprise when Loki moved toward him fast and wrapped his arms around him, kissing him softly on the lips.