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It always starts—as things usually do with Loki—with a lie.
The kind delivered in the bored tone of a man who has already decided everything for you and is now merely waiting for your logic to catch up: “I have this. Go.” Two short sentences tossed at his back, and by the time Tony turns around, Loki is no longer standing where he should be.
He is standing between Tony and the very thing he was supposed to walk away from.
Tony doesn’t have time to say anything then. Later—he’ll check the logs—he realizes he didn't even have time to be truly afraid; fear comes afterward, once the body has already handled what the mind hasn't yet granted permission to process. Standard operating procedure. Nothing new.
What is new is that Loki lets him approach.
Usually, by this point, he’s already vanished.
He doesn’t wait for the dust to settle, for Tony to pull off his helmet, for the team to stop chattering over the comms in the voices of people who have just confirmed they’re still alive.
He doesn’t do it crudely or demonstratively—he simply ceases to be in the place where he just was: among the wreckage, or at the edge of what remains of the street, or two steps away from Tony, who hasn't even caught his breath yet and is already reaching out with his eyes, just to be sure.
Loki has a way of doing it that makes it feel as if he never left, as if the room itself—or the ruins, or the ash, or whatever is left of a place that was something else an hour ago—had simply decided to revise its composition.
And Tony, as a rule, is left standing over the spot where there was blood (or wasn't blood—it doesn’t matter, the void itself is what matters, the fact that it sits where something living just was) thinking that normal people probably scream in moments like these.
Or drink.
Or do something for which he lacks the proper word, but which is clearly better than standing there with a masked face, counting to ten in three languages simultaneously.
But today, Loki stays.
He’s leaning against a wall at the far end of a corridor—Tony will realize much later that the hallway leads nowhere, a technical dead end—staring at the floor with the expression of a man who knows exactly that he’s about to be found and doesn't quite know what to do about it.
“Are you coming?” Tony asks. Where to—he doesn't even know himself.
“No.”
“Fine.”
Tony sinks down right where he stands.
His legs make the decision before his head does, and a second later he’s sitting with his back against the wall, legs stretched out in a battered corridor with a burnt-out row of lights on the right, staring at the ceiling like a man whose daily quota for heroism has expired.
The silence lasts long enough for it to stop feeling heavy. Then Loki slowly slides down the wall beside him.
He maintains the distance he always maintains, calibrated with a precision that feels anything but accidental. Tony knows this distance by heart. He could measure it in centimeters.
They sit like that for ten minutes, maybe fifteen.
Tony thinks about how something in his rib seems to have cracked—no, not broken, but it’s talking to him with every breath—and about how he needs to email Pepper regarding the report he promised for Friday, which definitely won't be ready by Friday. About the coffee he didn't finish this morning, currently sitting somewhere in the lab, turning into something that can no longer legally be called coffee.
About what Loki did today.
“That wasn't necessary,” he says finally.
“I know.”
“Then why?”
It’s not a question. Tony intentionally keeps his inflection flat—he knows how to ask things in a way that leaves the other person no room to maneuver. Loki stays silent for about three seconds regardless, and Tony has time to think that this will be one of those conversations that never quite becomes a conversation—just two people in a hallway, and silence, and in the morning everything will be back to normal.
“Because it could have gone differently,” Loki’s voice sounds hollow, echoing off the concrete walls.
“It could have. So?”
“And you wouldn't have gotten back up.”
It’s not what he expected to hear. Not because it isn't true—there’s no doubt about that, Loki rarely says inaccurate things, it’s almost a professional trait—but because it’s blunt. Blunt and without padding, without the layer of diplomatic cotton Loki usually wraps around anything that might cause damage.
“You don't know that,” Tony parries.
“I know you,” comes the retort.
This, perhaps, is where the real conversation begins.
Because conversations have a real beginning and then there’s the part that comes before it. Everything before is just a warm-up, a testing of the soil, a cautious prodding to see where the ground is firm and where it isn't. Loki is a master of this. Tony is no slouch either, to be honest; he just prefers to charge straight through and see what survives.
“You don't have to save me.”
“No,” Loki agrees. “I don't.”
“Then stop.”
“No,” Loki repeats again, and there’s something in that “no” Tony can’t quite identify—it’s not a refusal, and it’s certainly not stubbornness, but something else entirely, something he needs a little more time to process.
“Why?” he asks, and this time it’s a real question, with the inflection and everything.
Loki is silent.
Tony waits. He knows how to wait when it matters—it’s one of those skills he acquired late and at a high price, and one that still doesn't come easily to him, but he manages. He stares at the ceiling and counts the burnt-out bulbs (seven out of twelve, the maintenance department clearly decided this hallway could wait), and he waits.
“Because you would have done the same,” the voice finally drifts from his right. “And you have a lower probability of survival.”
“That’s debatable.”
“It’s mathematics.”
“I’m good at math, Bambi.”
“Tony.”
His name in Loki’s mouth sounds different than it does in anyone else’s. Tony noticed this a long time ago—so long ago that it stopped being news and became a fact, something a person keeps in a separate corner and tries not to touch too often, because touching it means thinking, and thinking means arriving at conclusions that change the configuration of things.
“I hear you,” he replies softly. “But you understand that I can’t just... not.”
“Yes,” Loki exhales. “I understand.”
And that “yes, I understand” sounds as if Loki understands something significantly larger than what Tony meant. As if Tony had said something important without knowing he was saying it.
The silence returns.
Somewhere between “because it could have gone differently” and “yes, I understand,” Tony has likely managed to say something that now hangs in the air and refuses to dissipate. He’s used to words as tools—he wields them well, he knows how to cut and how to solder with them—but sometimes they take on a life of their own and do things he hadn't planned.
“You’re angry,” Loki observes after several long seconds.
“No.”
“Tony.”
“I’m not angry,” Tony snaps, and it’s almost the truth. “I’m... tired.”
He should add something biting now. Something that sounds like his usual self—light, emphasized, with that signature “everything’s under control, move along” vibe. So that “tired” doesn't look like a complaint—he doesn't complain, he doesn't even have a license for it, let alone the habit. But his tongue won't cooperate. Or his brain—Tony isn't sure which one is in charge right now.
Loki looks at him—Tony feels it in his peripheral vision, without turning.
“Tired of what?”
“Of you disappearing every single time.”
It comes out quieter than he intended. And more precise. Tony doesn't like it when his words are more accurate than he planned—it means something has leaked, something he usually keeps a tighter lid on.
Loki doesn't answer immediately. When he finally speaks, his voice has that same measured quality it gets when he’s thinking several moves ahead:
“I do not disappear.”
“No, you really do. One minute you’re here, and five minutes later you’re gone. That’s called ‘disappearing.’”
“I leave. Those are different things.”
“To me, they aren't,” Tony cuts him off, and again, he hears how it comes out too accurately. Damn precision.
He has a moment of regretting this conversation—not the meaning, just the talk itself, the way it sounds—then changes his mind about regretting it, then decides that to regret or not is a question for later, while right now he’s just sitting in a hallway with burnt-out lights and a cracked rib, and that is quite enough for one moment.
“I am not leaving you...” Loki begins.
“I know.”
“Then...”
“I know it’s not from me. Just—you leave.” Tony shifts his gaze to him. Loki is sitting with a straight back even now, even on the floor of a technical dead end, with dark circles under his eyes and something on his sleeve that’s better left unidentified. “Every time something ends—you leave before it’s actually finished. It’s not a grievance. I just...”
He trails off.
“Just what?” Loki asks softly.
“I want to know why.”
The question should have been difficult, and Loki should have side-stepped it—he’s gifted at that, moving a conversation so gracefully that the other person doesn't even notice they’ve ended up somewhere else entirely. But Loki doesn't side-step. He looks at the floor and remains silent—a different kind of silence than before—and Tony sees something in him making a decision.
And for some reason, he feels afraid. Not for himself—but for what he’s about to hear.
“Because otherwise, I become something to be fought for,” Loki replies hollowly.
Tony doesn't answer.
“Do you know how you do it?” Loki snaps his gaze up—not at him, but to the side, though it’s a movement, it’s more than there was a minute ago. “You walk into a situation, assess what needs protecting, and you begin. You do it without thinking—because for you, there is no other option. Either you protect, or...” He doesn't finish. “I am not criticizing; it is, after all, simply who you are.”
“But?” Tony interjects.
He knows there’s a “but,” and everything good said before the “but” doesn't count.
“But I do not want to be a problem you are solving.”
“You aren't—”
“I know you do not think that,” Loki interrupts, and there’s something sharp in his voice, something raw, not the version of himself he usually lets out. “I know that isn't how it looks to you. But when you fight—for me, instead of me, because of me—that is exactly how I feel. A problem with a solution. A vulnerability that needs to be covered.”
Tony is silent.
“And I leave,” Loki continues more quietly, “because I don't want to be that. Not for you.”
This is where Tony should have said something. Remember, he has words—he always has words, they’re his primary tool, his backup generator, Plan B and Plan C. But right now, the words are standing in a queue and not moving, because he’s trying to reconcile what he just heard with how he’s been thinking about this for all these months.
(Months. It’s worth saying it even to himself—months—because that’s the length of time he thought he knew what was happening, only to find out he didn't.)
“You think that I...” he starts.
“I think you are doing exactly what you know how to do,” Loki cuts in. “And you do it well.”
“That sounds like a compliment with a very large caveat.”
“It is a compliment with a very large caveat.”
Tony scrutinizes him. Loki holds the gaze for a few seconds before looking away.
“I don't mind fighting,” Tony says, more roughly than he intended.
“I know,” Loki replies. “That is the problem.”
“That doesn't make sen—”
“You would fight forever,” Loki looks him straight in the eye for the first time since the conversation began, and in his eyes, Tony sees something Loki himself would never name, but for which Tony has a definition. “You would fight this battle on a loop, infinitely, because that’s who you are—you find what needs protecting and you protect it against all logic, against your own cost. And I...” A controlled breath. “I did not want to be the thing you protect. I wanted to be the thing you keep.”
Silence.
Tony thinks about the difference. It’s strange—to think about the distinction between words at this specific moment, but he is wired exactly that way: even when something vital has just happened, a part of his brain continues to work with words as objects, arranging them, weighing them.
To protect—that he knows. He knows it so well it isn't even a word anymore, but a reflex—a part of how he’s built inside, something that was there before he even decided it would be. To keep—he knows that too, but from somewhere far away, the way you know things you understand with your mind but don't understand with anything else.
“I didn't realize there was a difference between them,” he admits finally, and only halfway through the sentence does he realize he isn't saying it to Loki. Or not only to Loki.
“I know.”
“That should have offended you.”
“No.” Loki slowly shakes his head, like a man who is in pain but isn't ready to concede defeat. “It didn't offend me. It’s just... difficult to be loved by you like that.”
The word “loved” he says without expression—levelly, as a fact, a coordinate. Tony doesn't respond to it immediately, because this, too, is more accurate than he expected.
“Like what?” he asks.
“In spite of.” Loki turns his head slightly. “You love in spite of. In spite of logic, in spite of the cost, in spite of the fact that things sometimes aren't worth what they cost you. It is...” He stops. “It is very beautiful. And it is very difficult to live beside.”
Tony finds no rebuttal.
“Because when you love ‘in spite of,’” Loki continues more quietly, “you do it like a battle. Like something that must be won, held by force. And I don't want to be something held by force.”
“Then what do you want to be?”
Silence again. It’s long, long enough that Tony hears something dripping rhythmically from a pipe deep in the corridor.
“The thing you return to. And not because you have no choice but to return, but because you want to. Do you understand?”
This, Tony understands.
He understands it not with words, but with something deeper, the place where things he doesn't vocalize usually live. Something to return to. Not something to be held onto, not something to be won back—just something that is, and where you go when you’re tired, or when you want to, or simply because that’s the way home.
“I don't know if I know how to do that,” he says honestly.
“That is why I stayed silent.”
“That wasn't fair.”
“No.”
“You should have said something sooner.”
“Likely.” Loki fixes his gaze back on the floor. “But it is... difficult to say.”
“What exactly?”
“That you want to be held.” A brief pause. “Not protected. Held. They are different verbs.”
This isn't what Tony prepared for. He’s generally bad at preparing for things that don't require action from him—things that require simply being there, not making anything out of it, not shielding, not taking it upon himself, just—being. Even now, he isn't sure he realized it was a separate skill a person could either have or lack.
But he damn well wants to try.
“Okay.”
“Okay?” Loki repeats.
“Yeah. Okay.” Tony turns toward him, not pulling away from the wall, just shifting the angle. “I’m not promising I’ll get it right immediately. I’m wired a certain way, and that doesn't get reconfigured in one conversation in a hallway. But I hear you. And I want to. To know how.”
Loki looks at him for a long time. So long that Tony has time to think about the seven burnt-out bulbs, the cracked rib, the coffee in the lab—and then stop thinking about all of it, because there is something in Loki’s eyes that demands full attention.
“You want to know how,” Loki repeats slowly.
“Yes.”
“To keep. Not to fight.”
“I’m not saying I’ll stop fighting,” Tony clarifies. “That would be a lie. But alongside it. Together with it. Not instead of you or for you, but with you. It’s the thing I’m worst at. But I know how.”
Another silence.
It’s like the air after rain, like something in the corridor, in this technical dead end with seven burnt-out bulbs, has shifted the temperature slightly.
Loki slowly rests his head against the wall beside him, the back of his skull touching the cold concrete, looking at the ceiling. Но the distance between them—the one Tony knew in centimeters—becomes a little smaller.
Maybe by five centimeters. Maybe ten.
But smaller.
“I am not good at accepting this,” comes the admission. “What you are offering.”
“I know,” now it’s Tony’s turn to say it.
“I will leave. Not because I want to go, it is my reflex.”
“I’ve noticed.”
“And you will be angry.”
“Probably,” Tony agrees. “But I’ll try not to make a battle out of it, and I can’t guarantee the first few times, to be honest.”
Loki stares at the ceiling. And then, he relaxes.
“Fine.”
“Is that agreement or a description of the situation?”
“Both,” Loki says, and in his voice Tony identifies a cautious, almost shy version of relief.
Tony looks at him.
At the way he’s sitting—straight, but without the tension that usually underlies that posture. At the dark circles, at the sleeve (again, better not to identify). At how he looks tired and alive all at once.
“Can I say something?” Tony asks.
“You do not usually ask permission.”
“This instance is different.”
“Speak.”
“You aren't a problem I’m solving. You never were. I understand that’s how it felt, and that’s my part, the part I’m going to work on. But I want you to know—not as an argument or a move in a conversation, just as a fact: you aren't a problem. You’re...” He stops. “You’re who I want to return to.”
Well, he said it.
“You said ‘who,’” Loki notes.
“I did.”
“Not ‘to your home.’ Not ‘to you later.’ Just—to you.”
“Yeah.”
Loki is silent for a long time, and Tony sees something in his face change.
“That is difficult to accept,” Loki’s words come with effort.
“I’m not in a hurry.”
“You are always in a hurry.”
“Not right now.” Tony looks at the ceiling after him. “Right now I have a cracked rib, seven burnt-out bulbs, and coffee in the lab that has likely evolved. I’m not in a hurry.”
The silence lasts even longer. Soon, Loki says:
“You counted the bulbs?”
“Seven out of twelve. Maintenance decided it could wait.”
“Sloppy.”
“Chronic underfunding. But the result’s the same.”
Loki is silent for a second. Then—very quietly—something like an exhale, which Tony doesn't call a laugh because Loki wouldn't call it a laugh, but it’s in that neighborhood.
“Tony.”
“Yeah.”
“I am not leaving today.”
“Good.”
“It is not a promise for tomorrow.”
“I get it.”
“Simply—today.”
“I hear you.”
They sit for a long time—on the floor, in a corridor with seven burnt-out bulbs, a pipe dripping somewhere in the depths, a cracked rib talking to Tony with every breath, and the distance between them—the one Tony knew in centimeters—a little smaller than usual.
Perhaps that’s what it means to “keep”—not what you do, but the way you simply exist. That you stay at the same point, and the person beside you knows it, and that is enough. He isn't sure if he’s phrasing it correctly. He isn't sure it needs phrasing at all—perhaps it’s one of those things that falls apart if you hold it in your head as words for too long.
He isn't sure he knows how to do it well.
But right now, he thinks he’s learning.
And when Loki finally stands up and extends a hand, Tony doesn't hesitate. He grips those cold fingers, feeling that arctic chill against his skin, and pulls himself up with a jolt. His rib immediately reminds him of its presence with a sharp flash of pain, but Stark only grits his teeth.
“The coffee has probably turned into organic fuel by now,” he tosses out, trying to return his voice to its usual firmness.
“I shall brew fresh.”
“Do you even know which side of the espresso machine to stand on?”
“I have lived for several centuries, Stark. I have seen the birth and death of worlds.”
“That wasn't an answer.”
“It is the best one you have earned today.”
Fair enough.
And they walk down the corridor toward where there is light—slowly, because Tony has a cracked rib, and because there is nowhere to hurry to right now. Their footsteps echo off the walls, the voices of the team can be heard up ahead, and the chill of the hallway gradually recedes.