Work Text:
When Tony gets the call telling him that Thor has reappeared on a spaceship with several hundred refugees, he runs his hand through his hair, briefly considers telling everyone it’s not his problem, and then starts sorting through his contacts at the UN. Some of the delegates who were friendly to the Avengers have less-than-favorable positions on refugee matters, but there are a number who he thinks would take their side. He also adds the delegate from Norway to his list; although she was never a fan of the Avengers, Tony is pretty sure she has a soft spot for Thor, and he wants the Nordic countries on their side.
Thor looks different, exhausted and beaten down in a way he’s never been before, not to mention the eye thing, but he greets Tony as wholeheartedly as he always has. He introduces the man he’s brought down with him as Heimdall, a name that Tony’s only previously heard when Thor was bellowing it at the sky. Fortunately, Heimdall seems more detail-oriented and patient with political negotiations than Thor himself is.
The first day of negotiations lays out the stakes for everyone and doesn’t accomplish much else. Heimdall is required to stay on UN grounds or return to the ship for the night; he chooses to go back up and take some fresh food that Tony gets his people to scrounge up for the Asgardians. Thor’s history on Earth means he’s allowed to spend the night at the Compound, and he does so, saying he wants to catch up with Tony. He starts by surprising Tony with the news that Bruce is with them. “He foresaw that there would be political challenges and didn’t want to put himself in the middle of it on the first day. He’ll likely come down with Heimdall tomorrow, if he thinks he can do it quietly.” Thor gives the Cliff’s Notes version of how Bruce came to be with them, along with a somewhat more extended version of the fall of Asgard than he’d given the UN. It’s heavy stuff, but Tony’s pretty sure he’s still leaving something out.
That impression is confirmed when Thor’s mood takes an even more somber turn. “There is another matter of some delicacy we must discuss. I haven’t been sure how to bring it up…”
Tony is sick and tired of “matters of some delicacy,” but he says, “All right, let’s hear it.”
“My brother is with us.”
Tony buries his head in his hands. “Is this the supposedly dead brother who tried to kill us all, or yet another sibling you didn’t know about?”
“Loki,” Thor confirms.
“Great, just what we needed. Where has he been all this time, anyway? Aside from not being as dead as you thought.”
Thor looks sheepish. “Ah, well…it turns out he was impersonating our father, ruling Asgard in his place, writing bad plays…” He trails off.
Tony can’t help but laugh. “One of those things is not like the others, big guy. Does that mean he got the ruling thing out of his system, or is he still in the market for a throne? Because that’s not going to go over on Earth any better than it did the first time around.”
Thor makes a complicated face. “I have never been certain of my brother’s motives. He can’t be trusted in the smallest matter, and yet he saved Asgard when no one else could.”
Tony thinks bitterly that there are probably plenty of people who would say more or less the same of him. He says, “Well, I guess the fact that he’s not currently here trying to kill us again is a good sign?”
Thor shrugs rather hopelessly. “He didn’t want to come to Earth, but he hasn’t left us yet as I thought he would. I’m certain he must be planning some mischief, but I can’t think what it might be.”
“Mischief. Mischief like short-sheeting all the beds, or mischief like bringing another alien army to tear up New York?”
Thor shakes his head. “I’m fairly certain he doesn’t have access to an army.”
Well, small comforts. Tony still can’t decipher Thor’s tone and body language, so he asks, “Do you want him on Earth? Do you think he’d help you? Help build whatever New Asgard ends up looking like?”
“His counsel would be most valuable, but…the people of Asgard don’t trust him. I don’t think he’d be happy in that sort of role for long.” Looking miserable, Thor adds, “I think it has been many centuries since my brother has been truly happy.”
Tony doesn’t know what to do with that. Instead he tries to redirect the conversation. “Okay, look. If he wants to stay on Earth peacefully and make some kind of amends, we can probably make that happen, but it’s a pretty big ask and you’re going to have to make some other concessions. It’s not going to be worth it if you think he’s just going to peace out in a few months and go make trouble on Jupiter or whatever. So I think you need to talk to him to figure out how you’re going to play this.”
Thor nods, accepting that though he still doesn’t look happy, and the conversation moves on to other things.
As Thor predicted, Tony catches sight of Bruce slipping away from the shuttle the next morning, and he’s not surprised to find him in the Compound when he gets back. They're alone that night, Thor having decided to go back and talk to his subjects.
Over a late dinner, Tony and Bruce catch up. Bruce doesn’t remember much of his time before the spaceship, so they end up talking mostly about what’s been happening on Earth. Tony explains, as neutrally as he can, the Sokovia Accords and the breakup of the Avengers.
Bruce sighs and says, “Well, I guess I’m going back off the grid then.”
Tony nods. He was expecting this, but Bruce still seems to feel the need to justify himself. “Look, Tony, I appreciate what you were trying to do, I really do. But at this point I don’t want to be called out for anything short of the end of the world.” He pulls a sour face. “Again. Look, you and I both know I was doing more good in Calcutta when Nat pulled me out than I ever did with the Avengers. And I don’t want to smash anything anymore. I’ve smashed way too many of my friends—you, Thor, Loki…” He trails off for a moment, and then adds, “I’ve killed people on three planets. I’ve never wanted that to be my legacy.”
There’s a lot that Tony could say to that, but he’s stuck on one thing. “You consider Loki a friend?”
Bruce looks away. “It’s complicated. I think I’m about the closest thing to a friend that he has. He’s not the same person he was back in 2012, Tony, and I don’t think he’s doing well these days. He’s surrounded by people who hate him. Heimdall really hates him—there’s history there, I don’t know what it is—and that can’t mean anything good for his position in these negotiations.”
“Why is he still here?”
“I don’t think he has anywhere else to go. And he has a lot of complicated history with Thor and Asgard, but I think he really does love them. Just keep an open mind, okay?”
Later that night, when he’s alone, Tony reflects that if he can come to terms with Captain America trying to kill him, he may as well give the guy who threw him out a window a chance.
Tony gives Bruce a new phone before he leaves. They both know but don’t say that Tony will be tracking him, keeping half an eye out in case he gets into any trouble. Officially, Tony has no idea that he makes his way southward and eventually settles down in a coastal village in Panama. On satellite images, it looks impoverished but unremarkable. Tony’s torn between missing his friend and hoping he never has reason to contact him.
The negotiations drag on. Tony isn’t there every day, but he drops in fairly frequently at first to keep the wheels of diplomacy greased. As Thor meets people and Heimdall gets a sense of the political landscape, Tony isn’t needed as much.
Loki’s name isn’t mentioned for a few weeks, and Tony’s almost hoping that he has decided to go make trouble somewhere else after all, when Thor takes him aside and dashes that hope. “Tony, my brother won’t speak with me. I still don’t know what he wants. I’ve tried everything I know to do. I was wondering—perhaps a change of venue might do him some good. The ship is crowded and, well.” Thor trails off, not finishing the thought, but Tony remembers Bruce saying all the Asgardians hate Loki. “I thought perhaps—well, maybe it would do him some good to come down and stay? Here? At the Compound?”
“Thor, buddy, the negotiations—”
“I know! But I don’t know what else to do.” Thor’s voice has the miserable edge that it always seems to get when he talks about his brother. “My brother is nothing if not discreet when he wants to be—” Tony snorts, thinking about New York “—and I thought he might be willing to talk to you.”
“Talk to me? When he won’t talk to you?”
“You’re easy to talk to, my friend. And you have much in common with him, on his better days.”
“That’s the worst compliment sandwich I’ve ever heard.”
Thor looks baffled. “Compliment—?"
“Never mind. Look, okay, yes, fine, it’s your funeral. He can come down here if he can be discreet about it, but if it blows up in our faces I’m throwing you under the bus, just so we’re clear.”
That makes Thor look happier than Tony’s seen him since he got back, although he still doesn’t lose the confusion until Tony explains that there is no literal bus and no funeral. At least some things haven’t changed.
Tony expects Thor to bring Loki by any day, but almost a week goes by with no sign of him. Then on a Wednesday he stops by the UN and ends up carpooling back with Thor again. Thor seems as surprised as Tony is to see Loki leaning against the compound fence and tossing some small object in the air. He stands up as they approach and follows the car in. Like Thor, he looks tired and worn down.
“Brother! You came!” booms Thor as they get out of the car. Tony winces a little; he should have remembered Thor’s inability to keep a secret. But no one seems to be around to hear.
Loki nods stiffly to Thor and then turns, equally stiffly, to Tony. “Stark. Thor tells me I owe you thanks for your hospitality.”
“Don’t mention it.” Tony opens the door and motions them both in. “No, seriously, don’t mention it, since you’re not exactly supposed to be here. Still, welcome, make yourself at home, all that.” Tossing his sport jacket over a chair, he adds, “Well, let me give you the grand tour.”
He would swear that Loki is staring at his left forearm when he turns around, although he snaps his gaze away and schools his features immediately. “Friday, let’s give Loki here guest access. We’ll put him in guest room 3. Loki, this is Friday, the AI who runs the house; you can ask her for anything you need.” He’s pleased that Loki introduces himself politely to Friday and doesn’t seem fazed by the AI.
As he takes Loki through the kitchen, the gym, the living space, and up to the guest rooms, he ponders what that gaze on his arm might have meant. It looked as if Loki was surprised that he didn’t have a soulmark, but why would he think he would? He hadn’t had one the last time they met, and surely Thor had explained enough about Tony’s living situation for Loki to come to the right conclusion. Was Thor confused somehow? Tony had still been dating Pepper the last time he’d been on Earth, and you didn’t have to see their blank arms to realize they were good friends but not soulmates. He can’t come up with a satisfactory answer, so he puts the question aside. Maybe he imagined the look.
He settles Loki in the guest room and then doesn’t see him for a while, although he occasionally hears Thor pounding on the door and yelling. He hopes the Asgardians still on the spaceship are grateful to miss out on that, although it makes the secret seem even more tenuous since they must all realize that Loki is gone and that Thor knows it.
Friday assures him that Loki hasn’t left the Compound. When he pushes a little harder, she tells him that he’s been asking her when he can sneak down to the kitchen without being seen by anyone.
He throws himself into his work and manages to forget, most of the time, that there’s a would-be conqueror of Earth living silently and invisibly under his roof.
On a Saturday, a week and a half after Loki’s arrival, Tony’s in his workshop when Friday says, “Boss, Loki is asking if he could meet with you.”
Well, that’s polite. Tony surveys the status of his project, decides he’s at a good enough stopping point, and says, “Sure, tell him I’ll meet him in the kitchen in five.”
Striding into the kitchen, he announces, “I’m having a snack. You want anything?”
“No thank you.” Loki watches while he rummages through the fresh fruit he has on hand.
He selects an apple and sits down at the table across from his visitor. “So what’s up, Professor Snape?”
Loki is stiff and looks uncomfortable. “I greatly appreciate your generosity in housing me here, Tony Stark. I confess I’m not certain of your purpose in doing so.”
“Honestly? Mostly a favor to your brother. He’s been worried about you, you know.”
Loki stiffens even further. “I have reason to doubt the sincerity of Thor’s concern for me.”
“Does he even know how to be insincere? Never mind, don’t answer that. If you want a more selfish reason, what about information gathering? I want to know what your deal is so I can help them figure out what the hell to do with you in the negotiations.”
Loki’s smile is bitter. “Wiser men than you have tried and failed to understand ‘what my deal is.’”
“Okay, then, more specifically: are you going to try to invade Earth again? Are you going to peace out to another planet tomorrow so no one has to worry about you anymore? Do you even want us to fight for you at the UN?”
“And what information have you gathered to date?”
“Not as much as I’d hoped, since I haven’t even seen you until now. But you haven’t made any moves to leave, you haven’t taken over anybody’s mind that I know of, and if you’re plotting world domination you’re doing it quietly and subtly so far. Tentative conclusion based on very little data: it’s probably worth trying to find you some legal mechanism to stay here.”
“You would trust me so easily?”
Tony laughs. “I don’t trust much of anybody these days. But I’m willing to give you that much grace, or rope to hang yourself, if you prefer.”
“Mm, not today I think. But tell me, how long do you intend your information gathering to take?”
“No set end date. Why, got somewhere else to be?”
“Not at all, but I can hardly expect to intrude on your hospitality forever.”
“Such a demanding houseguest, I haven’t even seen you for a week.” He thinks, but manages not to say, something bitter and self-deprecating about how he chases everyone away eventually anyway.
“You would demand no recompense, then?”
He’s used to people being cryptic about asking him for things or trying to offer him things, but the Shakespearean diction really takes it to the next level. “I mean, guest access gets revoked if you start killing or mind-controlling people again. World domination through legal, capitalist means only, please.” Loki still looks dissatisfied, so Tony continues, “Wait, are you trying to say you’re bored and you want a project? I can give you a project if you want one. Um…are anti-magic shields a thing? I could really use an anti-magic shield. You want to help me build something like that?”
Loki looks baffled. “But you already have an anti-magic shield.”
Now they’re both confused. “I absolutely do not. I only reluctantly believe in magic, where the hell would I have gotten an anti-magic shield?”
“But…you repelled my attempt to control you.”
“That wasn’t an anti-magic shield, that was an arc reactor.” He pauses for a moment, trying to calculate whether there is any danger in talking about this to Loki. He generally doesn’t talk about it to anyone, much less a (former?) enemy, but there’s probably no harm in it anymore. “Medical device. Anyway, I had it removed.”
Loki looks aghast. “You had it removed? Why?”
“It was…a vulnerability. Also seriously uncomfortable. Got the underlying problem fixed up and bam, no more hole in my chest.”
“But that means anyone could enchant you now.” It would be almost touching, how concerned Loki seems about that prospect, if he knew where that concern was coming from. There’s no reason for it to be real, so it must be a manipulation of some sort, but he can’t figure out the endgame.
What he says is, “Yeah, actually, I figured that one out on my own.” Does this mean Maximoff couldn’t have gotten to him if he hadn’t gotten rid of the arc reactor? He’s wondered about that, but it’s like a punch in the stomach to have it confirmed.
“In any case, you have a functioning item that repels magic. Can it be carried with you as a pendant or some such, if it’s no longer in its former place?” Loki is leaning forward, clearly happier with a problem to focus on. It’s intensely relatable.
“Not in the old design, but I can work something out. Did it really repel all magic?”
“I can’t say for certain. As you may recall, I didn't have much of an opportunity to test the parameters."
Are they joking about that now? Tony considers saying "Too soon," but he's no stranger to borderline-inappropriate humor, and he appreciates the engineer-like sensibility Loki put into that particular joke. So he just grins.
Loki continues, "If the scepter didn’t affect you, then I imagine you were immune to all mind-altering magic, but perhaps not other types of magic. If you want to create such an item, I would be willing to help you test it.”
Tony’s not naïve enough to think this is altruism on Loki’s part, or even just a weird way of paying rent. If he’s thinking of fighting Tony again, then this is valuable intelligence for him. Still, it goes both ways, and Tony’s already thinking about the design challenge of a portable arc reactor. He’s been toying with a nanotech suit lately, so it’s just a matter of integrating the reactor into the housing. “Deal. I’ll let you know when I have a prototype and we’ll have a date. You, me, some magic explosions, it’ll be great.”
Loki’s predatory smile mirrors his own.
The next morning he decides to hit the gym. To his surprise, the Asgardian brothers are both there, separately running through a series of exercises he’s seen Thor do many times. Thor is limited in the workouts he can do when no one wants to spar with him: flinging Mjolnir around tends to result in massive property damage, and although Tony tried to help set him up with some weights to lift, nothing short of a minivan is much of a challenge for him. So he usually does a set of Asgardian martial arts forms. He so clearly finds them tedious that Tony has never paid much attention to them.
Thor looks as resentful as he always does when he’s doing these exercises, and Tony can only imagine how many times Loki had to refuse to spar with him today, in the face of the puppy dog eyes—puppy dog eye, now—that once convinced even the squishiest human Avengers to spar with Thor occasionally. He supposes that if anyone is immune to Thor’s puppy dog eye, it’s his brother.
But Loki is also doing those exact same forms, and it’s a revelation. He moves with such grace that it’s like he was born to them. It’s one of the most gorgeous things Tony’s ever seen a person do. He clamps his jaw shut and tries not to gawk openly.
“He’s favoring his left arm.”
Tony’s proud that he doesn’t jump, although he knows she can probably tell she startled him. “Natasha! The blonde looks good on you. How was Ljubljana?”
She gives him a smile that might even be genuine. “It was a great place to drop my phone before I went on the real mission.”
He’d been surprised to realize, when she turned up a few months after everything, that he wasn’t angry with her, not really. She is a spy above everything else, and he’s never trusted her to do anything other than act in her own self-interest. They’re friends, as much as she’s capable of being friends with anyone, but he’s always known she would stab him in the back in a second if she thinks she needs to. So these days she turns up at the compound at irregular intervals, usually with a new hairstyle and sometimes injured, and he welcomes her back. This little dance, where he tries halfheartedly to track her movements and she dodges him, apparently effortlessly, is their way of affirming that their relationship hasn’t changed.
She jerks her head in Loki’s direction, redirecting Tony’s attention. “I’ll bet you money that’s more a bandage than a normal soulmark wrap.”
“I’ve got enough money. Bet me something I want.”
Natasha ignores that. She pushes off the wall and calls out, “Thor! Want to spar?”
Thor’s face lights up. He catches her in a bone-crushing hug, until she does something with her legs that ends with him flat on his back on the floor. He bellows a laugh and then the fight is on. They’re always a sight to see, but Tony’s seen it before, and he can’t take his eyes off Loki for long. He’s moved on to a set of forms that Tony’s never seen before, presumably because Thor doesn’t fight with throwing knives. And even if he did, he couldn’t conjure knives that vanish almost as soon as they’re thrown. It’s mesmerizing. Tony gives up pretending that he’s doing anything but gawking. Loki speeds up gradually, never stumbling or slipping that Tony can see, even after Natasha pointed out his weakness. Tony doesn’t doubt her, though, not in her area of expertise.
Loki finishes his workout by spinning around a full 360 degrees while flinging what Tony thinks must be a couple dozen knives. They vanish when they hit the edge of an invisible circle about ten feet in radius around Loki. The size and location of the circle mean a few of the knives come close enough to Thor to make him flinch, though not so close that he’s ever in real danger. Natasha takes advantage of his distraction to get a hit in, and she tosses off a tiny salute in Loki’s direction without ever looking at him.
When the knives are all gone, Loki stands in the center of the circle, breathing heavily. Tony claps for the show he’s just witnessed, and Loki bows deeply. Then he takes a few steps toward Tony and asks, “Would you care to spar, since the lovely Widow is otherwise occupied at the moment?”
Tony lets the mental image of Loki sparring with Natasha distract him for half a second before responding. He needs to make that happen—with him as audience—before Natasha disappears again. “Thanks for the offer, but I don’t want to put my suit on today, and without it I’m just a squishy mortal with some boxing lessons under my belt. No match for that.” He waves an arm in the general direction of the spectacle he just witnessed.
Loki preens at the acknowledgment of his prowess. “Perhaps an exchange, then? I know nothing of your boxing, so perhaps you might show me the basic forms? And if you’re interested, I might teach you an introductory lesson in my own style.”
Why is Loki being so nice? But Tony can’t see any harm in it; even if Loki has dangerous intentions, teaching the man who just put on that display how humans like to throw a punch isn’t going to tip the balance. And if you’d asked him an hour ago if he wanted to learn Asgardian martial arts forms he would have laughed in your face, but now he’s intrigued. So he says “Deal” and steps onto the mat.
He finds Loki a pair of gloves and then runs him through some basic hooks and jabs, first in the air and then on a punching bag. He’s suddenly glad he kept Steve’s reinforced bags around, even though Loki clearly isn’t using anything close to his full strength. Then they square off, despite Tony’s statement that he doesn’t want to spar. Tony would be hopelessly overmatched in a real fight, of course, but they can pretend as long as Loki is focusing on trying to block some punches instead of dodging them all and slipping around Tony to stab him in the back.
Tony’s not paying a lot of attention to Thor and Natasha, but he’s pretty sure he hears Thor’s heavy body hitting the mat more than it should. What’s most distracting for Thor, Tony wonders: the fact that Loki is willing to spar with a mortal that he barely knows after presumably turning down his brother’s requests to spar? The fact that he’s playing by the rules? The fact that he’s learning a new art that’s not particularly suited to his strengths?
They finish their bout with a handshake and move on to the Asgardian forms. It’s more like a dance lesson than anything else Tony’s ever done. Loki’s not a particularly patient teacher, but they both stick with it until Tony has the first basic form down. He’s worked up a good sweat by then, and Thor and Natasha have left to shower, so he flashes a grin at Loki and says, “This was fun! Let’s do it again sometime.”
Loki inclines his head, but Tony’s not sure if he’s agreeing to another session or not.
Thor goes back to the spaceship the next night after he’s done at the UN, so it’s just Tony, Loki, and Natasha at the Compound. Neither of them is a particularly demanding, or even noticeable, houseguest, and Tony just goes about his usual routine. So he’s surprised that evening when he goes up to the kitchen to find some food and hears the sound of the television coming from the next room. He makes himself a sandwich and then goes to see what’s on.
Loki is sprawled on the couch in casual clothes watching what Tony’s pretty sure is a mediocre romantic comedy. “Didn’t take you for a rom-com fan.”
Loki shrugs. “I can hardly know what I’m a fan of if I haven’t tried it. Though I confess I don’t imagine I’ll be revisiting this.”
Tony can’t argue with that, even if he could have suggested a better movie to represent the genre. “You want something to eat? I can make you a sandwich.” He waves his own sandwich as if in demonstration. “Or a drink? I guess I still owe you a drink.”
Loki smiles, and it looks genuine. “I’ve eaten, thank you, but a drink would be lovely.”
Tony pours two glasses of scotch and sets them down on the coffee table before sitting down on the other end of the couch. Loki takes a sip of his drink and closes his eyes, sighing in satisfaction. “Thank you for this, Stark. I haven’t had a decent glass of liquor since before—well.” There are a number of things he could be referring to with that, and Tony’s not sure exactly which one applies, but he has his own recent series of events that divide his life into before and after and that he doesn’t like to name too precisely, so he’s not about to pry. Loki continues, “A bit of free advice: should you ever find yourself on Sakaar, don’t bother trying the liquor. Even their supposedly higher-class alcohol is pure rotgut.” He pauses for another sip. “I suppose the better advice would be: never go to Sakaar.”
“Noted.” He’d gotten that impression from both Thor and Bruce, anyway, although neither of them had mentioned the alcohol.
Loki’s facial expressions are more interesting to watch than the movie, and Tony has to make an effort not to get caught staring. At the climactic scene, when the heroine dramatically rolls up her sleeve to reveal that she and the hero are soulmates, Loki looks like he’s bitten into a lemon, straight through the peel. “Does all Midgardian entertainment involve people finding their soulmates?”
Tony shrugs. “They say 20% of real people meet their soulmates, but 90% of movie protagonists do. You might like the Bond films, no soulmates there. The name is intentionally ironic.”
Loki turns to face him, looking astonished and apparently abandoning the end of the movie. “Twenty percent?!”
“Uh, yeah? Isn’t that part of the birds and the bees talk in Asgard? You know, here’s how babies are made, 20% of people meet their soulmates, condoms are 90% effective, don’t get anybody pregnant, all that?”
“Surely that number isn’t correct, though?”
“Nah, condoms are better than that if you use them correctly. Seriously, I’ve never looked into it. I’ve always thought the 65% number was obvious bullshit, but 20% feels about right, don’t you think? Hey Friday, as of the last census, what proportion of people had met their soulmates?”
“16.4%, Boss.”
“Thanks, Fri. That’s a snapshot in time—you can’t count the people who are going to meet their soulmates at some point during their lifetimes but haven’t yet. So the lifetime number might be a little over 20%, but it’s probably a decent first-order approximation.” Loki still looks gobsmacked, so he adds, “Is it different in Asgard?”
Loki answers slowly. “We don’t—didn’t—collect the numbers as you do, but if I had to estimate I would think it’s the reverse—one in five people never meet their soulmate. What’s the 65% number?”
“Oh, they say 65% of soulmates are platonic.” Loki makes a sound that's halfway between a sniff and a snort. “Yeah, exactly. There’s a decent number out there that are, but there’s no way it’s more than half. Pretty sure that one is just good old-fashioned homophobic propaganda—wouldn’t want kids to get the idea that it’s normal to have sex with somebody the same gender as you, after all. Plus probably a dab of not wanting kids to have sex with anybody at all, if they meet their soulmate young.”
The movie credits are running, so Tony grabs the remote in hopes of finding something more to both of their tastes. Loki, clearly still stuck on the 20% thing, says, “I suppose more of us meet our soulmates because our lifetimes are so much longer, and there aren’t so many of us.”
“Do people never have soulmates from other planets, then?”
Loki takes a moment to answer, but his face is a blank mask when Tony glances at him. “It happens, but it’s rare. I suppose that cultural differences make it hard for most people to have enough in common.”
Tony lands on a cooking competition in which someone is trying to make a giant sculpture of the Iron Man mask out of cupcakes. It amuses him but won’t take much attention away from this unexpectedly intense conversation, so he sets the remote back down. “I always figured I wouldn’t have a soulmate. It’s rare anyway, and who could match me?” He says that with an edge that people usually take as boastful. Loki only hums in response, but Tony gets the sense that he heard the self-deprecating undertone anyway. Suddenly uncomfortable, he adds, “Probably for the best. I work better alone.”
They’re silent for a moment, watching the frosting come together in a color that’s definitely more pale yellow than gold. Then Tony says, “Do you want to talk about yours?” It’s a gamble; at best it’s rude, and at worst it could get him thrown out his window again. At least they’re on the ground floor this time.
But Loki just says “No.” His voice is rough, but he doesn’t show any inclination toward violence, so Tony takes it as a win.
The TV cuts to a commercial immediately after the shocking revelation that the bakers don’t have enough red food coloring and Iron Man is going to come out pink. Tony’s made it awkward, so he just keeps watching the commercial. Piano music over an image of a field of yellow flowers; allergy medication, maybe? When Loki starts speaking, Tony has to strain to hear him. “My bond never completed correctly. There were…powerful external magics at play.”
They’re both still staring at the commercial. Tony was almost right; it’s for arthritis medication. “Never completed correctly? What does that mean?”
Loki doesn’t answer for a few seconds. As the litany of side effects starts, he rolls up his sleeve. His hand hesitates over his wrap. “It’s not a pretty sight.”
“I’m sure I’ve seen worse.” He’s thinking about the enormous hole that used to be in his own chest, Pepper’s disgusted reaction to it, and the long surgery to finally repair it.
“I doubt that.” But Loki starts unwrapping it. When he’s done, he holds his arm out for inspection.
“Jesus fuck, Loki!” He’s no longer sure he’s seen worse. The mark is red and swollen, blistered in places, and radiating red lines that he knows mean infection. There’s a blackened area in the middle. It looks like it ought to smell, but fortunately it doesn’t. “That…we’ve got to get you medical attention, stat.” He’s pretty sure that Loki needs to lose the whole arm as soon as possible, or else he’s going to die.
Loki smiles grimly. “I’ve treated it with ointments and salves from civilizations ten times more advanced than yours. I hardly think your medical attention has anything to offer. In any case, it’s not a normal wound. This has been progressing slowly over the course of the past several years. I estimate that I have another few years to go if nothing changes.”
“Doesn’t that hurt, though? Shit, you were punching heavy bags with that arm yesterday.”
“I am accustomed to pain.” Loki is stiff.
To avoid thinking about that and about the calm way Loki talks about his own death, Tony peers at the mark. It’s still legible despite the massive inflammation and the necrotic section. There’s no deathmark. “Wait a minute, does that mean there’s somebody else also walking around with that on their arm?”
“No. As I said, the bond never completed. The other person’s arm is still blank, and they have no idea they could have been linked to me.”
“But you know who it is.”
He can’t interpret Loki’s smile, but it’s not nice. “Yes.”
“How?”
“Does Midgard have the art of soulmark interpretation?”
“Okay, no, no, no. I’ve dealt with the idea that magic is real, and I don’t like it, but I can’t argue with some of the things you do. But now you’re telling me that soulmark reading is real too? That somebody in a seedy psychic storefront can tell you about your relationship just by looking at your arm? What’s next, palm reading? Please don’t tell me palm reading is a thing.”
“You’re right that soulmark interpretation is rife with charlatans. It’s an easy way to make a few coins, isn’t it? Look at someone’s arm and tell them some nice platitudes about themselves.” He laughs suddenly. “It would be amusing to see what they would do with this.” He rotates his left arm slightly to emphasize his point. “But like all the best lies, it contains a grain of truth. Enough to tell me beyond a doubt who the person is who is not my soulmate, but would be under other circumstances.”
Some background process working in Tony’s mind has been adding up several years ago and powerful external magics, and he doesn’t like the conclusion it’s come to. “It’s Barton, isn’t it?”
Loki’s expression turns icy. “I will not have this made into a guessing game. I will answer this one question and no others like it: it is not Barton.”
That’s a relief, assuming he’s telling the truth. Tony hasn’t seen Barton since everything, but he likes to think he could get their relationship back, like he did his relationship with Natasha. That prospect is jeopardized by letting Loki into his home at all, of course, but it would be utterly torpedoed if he ever had to look Barton in the eye and tell him Loki is his soulmate.
Loki starts wrapping his arm back up. He’s brutally tight with it, presumably to hide the swelling. “Jesus,” says Tony. “Do you at least want some Neosporin? I think there’s some in the guest bathroom, but I know I have an industrial-size tube down in my workshop.”
“I doubt this problem is amenable to the application of Neosporin,”—and how is he able to pack so much disdain into that word?— “but I will examine the contents of the guest bathroom.” And he stands up and heads for the staircase back to the guest rooms. Tony wouldn’t have predicted how badly he would react to the question about Barton—worse than Tony’s asking about his mark in the first place.
He files that away to think about later and turns his attention back to the TV. The judges aren’t impressed with the pink-and-yellow Iron Man mask. “Friday, make a note: never try to build a seasonal Easter-themed suit. It won’t look good.”
“Noted, Boss.”
After that, they see each other more often. They have dinner together a couple of times, and watch movies or TV together when they run into each other in the common area. They don’t talk about anything consequential again for a few weeks. Tony enjoys introducing Loki to Earth entertainment, although their tastes don’t always align. Loki has a deep fondness for old-school theater, and they watch more Shakespeare than Tony really wants to before he puts his foot down.
Tony asks Loki about the career as a playwright that Thor mentioned, omitting Thor’s judgment on its quality. “Oh, that was just a bit of fun,” laughs Loki. “They all thought I was dead, so I made them act out ‘The Tragedy of Loki of Asgard.’ It was as terrible as I could make it, but their beloved king, in his grief, wanted them all to sit through it and pretend to mourn for me.” Tony has to admit that it’s pretty hilarious when you look at it from Loki's perspective.
They also train together in the gym when they run into each other there. The boxing falls by the wayside, but Tony keeps working on the Asgardian martial arts forms. He likes to think he looks better doing them than Thor does.
Loki’s surprisingly good company when he’s in a good mood. He’s prickly, and Tony isn’t good at predicting what will set him off, but he never does anything worse than going stiff and stalking off suddenly. Considering all Thor’s stories of friendly brotherly stabbings, Tony’s not sure whether the generally pleasant demeanor is a sign that Loki likes him, or the opposite.
Tony can’t stop thinking about the soulmate conversation. He tries searching the internet for information about incomplete bonds and infected soulmarks, but it’s a dead end; apparently Loki’s situation is unique, at least on Earth. So Tony turns his mind to an even more personal topic that he knows he shouldn’t pry into. He’s pretty sure that the guessing game comment means that Loki’s soulmate is someone Tony knows, or might know; if it were some Asgardian that Tony had never heard of, Loki would probably have thought it was funny to let him keep guessing. He tries to put it out of his mind, because it’s rude even if Loki hadn’t made it abundantly clear how he feels about it, but eventually he gives in and opens a new file. He decides to start by listing everyone Loki interacted with during the invasion and trying to estimate a ranking for how likely they are to be the missing soulmate.
Barton’s first—he can’t discount the possibility that Loki was lying. Next is Selvig. He remembers Thor saying that Selvig wasn’t doing well, mentally, the last time he saw him. Is it possible that whatever went wrong is affecting Loki physically but Selvig mentally? He drags Selvig’s name up above Barton’s.
Thinking of Selvig reminds him of Jane Foster. She wasn’t there for the invasion, but Thor took her to Asgard at some point, and Tony remembers him laughing about how she slapped Loki and then sobering suddenly when he remembered that his brother was supposedly dead. Surely Thor would have noticed if she’d acquired a bond at that point, so she seems unlikely. He adds her to the list below Barton, hoping for Thor’s sake that she’s not the one. “My ex is my brother’s soulmate” stories should stay in the movies where they belong.
He doesn’t know any more relevant details of the more recent event, so he goes back to trying to remember the invasion. Did Loki ever touch Fury? He doesn’t want to think too hard about the idea of those two as soulmates, but he can’t rule it out. Reluctantly, he puts Fury’s name above Barton’s.
The lack of a deathmark should rule Coulson out, but Tony never saw the body and always found his death a little too convenient, so he suspects he's no more dead than Fury is. He adds him to the list above Fury, not because he thinks Coulson is much more likely, but the thought isn’t as revolting.
He makes a note to dig through the leaked files for the names of the SHIELD agents that Loki controlled or otherwise interacted with. For now, he thinks he’d rather keep moving than get bogged down in researching them. In any case, Loki doesn’t seem like the type to match with some mid-level SHIELD grunt. Although any given mid-level SHIELD grunt could have actually been a high-level Hydra mole.
Suddenly he can’t do this anymore. All the possible answers so far turn his stomach for one reason or another. He closes the file, pours himself a glass of scotch, and pulls up the plans for his nanite suit instead.
He finishes a prototype of his new and improved, externally mounted arc reactor. He hasn’t quite got the nanites working the way he wants them to yet, but it’s good enough to go for a test drive. It’s a nice day, so he asks Loki to meet him on the outdoor training ground.
“Okay, let’s set some parameters here. I have to say I’m not too hot on the idea of jumping straight to the mind control. Or the bringing-out-worst fears stuff.”
Loki frowns minutely. “I did not—”
Tony waves him off, not wanting to talk about it. “What I’m trying to say is, let’s make a plan here, Merlin, and I’m going to have to trust you to follow it.”
“Very well. I was thinking we could start with some harmless magics. If that goes well, we might move on to more…potentially damaging maneuvers. With all safeguards in place, of course.”
Tony eyes him warily. “What kind of harmless magics?”
Loki grins sharply. “How would you like to be invisible, Iron Man?”
It turns out that it’s impossible to make the arc reactor invisible, and as long as it’s on his person he can’t be fully invisible either. The best Loki can do makes him look like a special effect from a low-budget ghost movie, flickering and blurry but unquestionably present.
Next, Loki teleports him across the training ground. It’s a real trip, which earns him a glare when he says it aloud.
Loki looks thoughtful. “That was…unexpectedly difficult. I think it might be even more difficult to teleport you against your will. Can you try concentrating on wanting to be outdoors?”
It’s a strange thing to concentrate on, but Tony does his best. Loki stands next to him in silence, holding the arm of his suit, for an uncomfortably long time before there’s a sudden rush of vertigo and they’re in the living room. Loki looks smug. “Most sorcerers will not be able to accomplish that, particularly if you put any effort into increasing your mental defenses. I suppose you will still be vulnerable to those who use portals; there’s no help for that if they can physically move you through.” His expression sours, and Tony gets the impression that he doesn’t get along with these people who use portals, whoever they are. That’s confirmed when he adds, “I have taken the liberty of blocking portal-based transportation on your grounds, by the way, for my own safety. I hope that’s not a problem.”
“You’re the only guy I know who can teleport. No skin off my nose if you want to keep it that way.” For all that he shrugs it off, Tony’s fascinated by the comment. Since portals played such an important role in Loki’s last stint on Earth, his distaste for them is striking and adds more evidence to the theory that Tony has long held, that there was more to the invasion than met the eye.
Loki takes them back outside, and they move on to trying some offensive magic. He starts with blasts meant to knock a person back, similar in concept to Tony’s own repulsors. He tries different strengths, starting with blasts that Tony can’t even feel and moving up until he finally manages to knock him down on his ass. “You’re resistant to that, too. Something like this—” he aims a blast at Tony that feels like the kind of light shove a friend might give you in conversation— “would be more damaging elsewhere.” He points his hand at a nearby fencepost, and it’s knocked down to the ground, warping the chain link fence around it.
Tony stabs a finger at him. “Hey, that fence is coming out of your salary, buddy.”
Cautiously, they move on to magical fire, then ice. Tony’s resistant, but not immune, to both. When Loki catches him off-guard with an ice blast, he retaliates with a repulsor, and suddenly they’re sparring. Loki stays one step ahead of him, but it’s fun to try to anticipate his next move, especially when he can see echoes of the Asgardian martial arts forms that he’s been practicing. Loki adds some illusory doubles to the mix, and Tony retaliates by taking to the air. Eventually, Loki manages to lure him close enough to where he’s hiding, invisible, to grab Tony’s boot, teleport them just far enough to unbalance him, and then knock him down to the ground with a well-placed repulsor-like blast.
Laughing, Tony retracts his helmet and gauntlets, stands up, and holds out his hand to shake. There’s a mild shock when Loki takes it, as if he’d been scuffing his feet through carpet. “You’re resistant to that too,” he says with a grin.
Tony notices that Loki’s flexing the fingers of his left hand. He motions at it. “You want me to help you clean that up and bandage it again? Maybe let it get some air where nobody can see?”
Loki inclines his head. “That would be kind of you.”
So they go into the workshop, where he keeps his good first-aid kit. Tony’s always self-conscious about this moment when he first lets someone into his private sanctum. Loki looks around with evident curiosity but doesn’t say anything. Tony gestures at a cluster of chairs around a worktable. “You can sit down there and start unwrapping while I gather some supplies.”
He gets what he needs and sits down next to Loki, taking his arm. “Let me know if I hurt you.” He’s relieved to see that Loki was right, and the damage hasn’t significantly progressed since the last time he saw it.
But that doesn’t mean it hasn’t changed, he realizes as he starts gently cleaning the arm with a warm, damp cloth. The mark itself has shifted, a couple of lines on one side becoming more prominent while a curve has shifted slightly inward and another line has disappeared altogether. Soulmarks change over time, shifting to represent the relationship between the soulmates. But what would have changed in Loki’s relationship? The only person he’s interacted with is—
Tony’s hand stills momentarily as the pieces fall into place. Loki’s willingness to come to Earth and stay here. The easy camaraderie they’ve developed over the past few weeks. Loki learning that Tony had removed his arc reactor, which blocks magic, and asking him to spar—finding an excuse to touch him—the next day. But touch hadn’t been enough, so Loki had laid some of his cards on the table, showing Tony the problem.
Quietly, without looking up, he asks, “When did you realize it was me?”
Loki stiffens. “Ah.” He pulls his arm away and sighs. “I ruled you out at first, having seen your arm after—the battle. But during my imprisonment, I gained access to this book. Once I learned to read the mark, the meaning was clear enough.”
He pulls a fat, leatherbound book out of thin air and sets it on the table between them. Tony flips through it, curious. It’s all written in an alphabet he can’t read, but it’s reasonably obvious that the bulk of the book is a dictionary of soulmark components with their interpretations. “What did it say?”
Now Loki smiles, predatory. “Are you asking me to read my own soulmark for you, Tony Stark?”
“I’ve got some silver wire around here if you want me to cross your palm with it.”
“Wire?” That look that Loki gets when he’s trying to parse a reference never gets old.
“It’s a saying. ‘Cross your palm with silver,’ meaning pay a fortune teller.”
“Ah. Well, perhaps we can consider the wire of your fence to be sufficient payment.”
“That’s steel, not silver, but sure, I’ll allow it. Good thing most fortune tellers don’t require significant property damage.”
Loki gestures, and an illusion of a soulmark appears in the air in front of them, sparkling gold lines in the air. “A soulmark depicts the past and present of a relationship; it doesn’t predict the future. In general, a soulmark as it first appears depicts shared traits and experiences that the soulmates have developed or experienced independently of one another, with the overall shape describing their first meeting.”
He crooks a finger, and part of the mark turns green. “This is a rune of creativity.” Another finger, and a different section is highlighted. “This one means resilience. It’s related, by the way, to a rune of protection that is—was—commonly inscribed on armor, in Asgard.”
“Can I get in on that? Wait, first question: does it work?”
Loki smiles. “It does work, in a limited fashion, although I suspect it would not work on your armor as long as your power source blocks magic. Moving along—” a flick of the finger again— “endurance through pain. A bit redundant with resilience, perhaps, but it drives the point home.” Flick. “Difficult family relationships.” Flick. “Challenges with authority figures.” He meets Tony’s eyes intently, flicks his finger again. “And this one means betrayal. Again, something we independently experienced before we met. Although this particular rune became considerably more prominent relatively recently.” He points it out on his arm.
Tony feels cold. “Yeah. Yeah, it would have.”
“There may be more, given that I’m not entirely proficient in the art of soulmark interpretation. In any case, all that was true of me, as far as it goes, but not much beyond the platitudes one expects from a fortune teller. But this—” the light now points out a rune that doesn’t use all the lines, but somehow delineates the whole shape of the soulmark— “this rune is not often seen. It means hospitality scorned.”
“I offered you a drink, you threw me out a window.” It still feels a little weak, but there’s no question it all fits.
“Precisely.” He proffers his arm again, inviting Tony to compare it to the illusion of the original mark. “As I said, the rune of betrayal has become more prominent. The rune of resilience is still there, but it’s weaker, and doubled with a rune that could mean desperation or futility.” He traces that one. “I would venture a guess that the past few years have not been kind to you either. But the most recent changes—” He points at the illusion, still with its overall shape highlighted. “This is hospitality scorned, as I said. This—” another rune next to it. It looks similar, but it’s less complex, and has fewer sharp angles. It’s also very clearly now the overall shape of Loki’s soulmark. “This one simply means hospitality.”
Tony shivers. He reaches out to touch Loki’s arm, keeping his finger outside the inflamed area now that he’s not directly tending to it, even though he wants to touch the mark proper. He takes a deep breath. “So now what do we do?”
Loki stands up, pulling his arm away again. “Well. The most straightforward option is to do nothing.”
And let his mark kill him slowly. “Yeah, no, that’s not happening.”
“You are not bound to me, Tony Stark. You have no need to be bound to one such as I. You have been given, perhaps, a rare opportunity to reject what fate has decreed for you. You said yourself that you didn’t desire to be bound.”
“Yeah, no,” he says again. “We’re in this together, now that I know what exactly we’re in together. We’re not just letting you die because I didn’t think I wanted a soulmate. So Plan A is off the table. What’s Plan B?”
Loki is still stiff. Tony wants to reach out to him but he’s pretty sure he would pull away again. He says, “I fear I have no very good ideas. This is unprecedented, so far as I can tell. I had hoped that perhaps a touch would suffice, now that your shield is out of your body and I am no longer under the influence of the Mind Stone—but it seems it is not so simple. The ideas I can think of come largely from stories, and seem unlikely at best.”
Tony wants to ask about the Mind Stone—the idea that Loki was under some kind of influence is something Tony had guessed but never confirmed—but Loki seems uncomfortable about it, and he doesn’t want to get too far off track anyway. “Like what?”
“You have some of the same ideas in your Midgardian entertainment. For instance, perhaps if we were put in mortal peril together.”
“Yeah, ix-nay on the ortal-may eril-pay.”
Loki makes that face again, so at least that’s a bright spot. Then he bites his lip and turns away. “Or perhaps, if a mere touch is insufficient, a more…intimate relation is required.”
Right. He looks Loki up and down, and then tries to meet his eyes. “I could go for that one.”
Loki looks hopeful but uncertain. “You realize this is unlikely. There’s no need…”
“Sure, it’s a long shot, but I’ve slept with much less attractive people for worse reasons. I’m just saying, if you want to give it a try, I’m down for it. If not, no harm no foul.”
“Truly…”
Tony stands up. Slowly, telegraphing every motion, he steps into Loki’s personal space, puts his arms around Loki’s waist, and tips his head up to kiss him. Loki is stiff at first, but then he brings his arms up too, and melts into the kiss.
Loki breaks the kiss after a little while, holding his left arm a little away. “Let’s finish bandaging this, and then, if you like, we can attempt to consummate the bond.”
Afterward, Loki stands up and, in one smooth movement, he’s dressed and put together again. Tony says, “Maybe we just need to try a different position?”
Loki’s glare says what he thinks about that suggestion. Tony adds, more softly, “Hey. Thanks.” Loki inclines his head before teleporting out of the room. Tony can’t tell if he screwed this up.
The next day he has to go into the city for some meetings. He spends the morning with Thor, Heimdall, and one of their lawyers, talking through how to deal with the Loki situation now that the Asgardian settlements are coming along. They are building two settlements, one in Norway and one in Canada. The children are already on Earth, in a school that Tony helped set up in Connecticut to get them to a better environment while relieving crowding on the ship. He’s a little disappointed that it’s a temporary measure and the kids are eventually going to join the main settlements outside the US, but the US ambassador decided that refugees, even high-tech alien refugees, are too much of a hot-button issue.
They talk through the options all morning. It’s hard to find a plan that everyone is happy with, especially since Heimdall clearly still hates Loki’s guts. It’s frustrating, but the lawyer is good. Still, Tony finds himself eager to head home once a plan starts coming together.
Thor makes a little noise about wanting to come back with him, but Tony manages to convince him that he’s needed at the spaceship that night. He’s not sure what this thing between him and Loki is right now, but he is sure that adding Thor to the mix isn’t going to help anything.
He heads back to the Compound relatively early, picking up takeout on the way. Loki isn’t in any of the common areas when he gets there, so he asks Friday to invite him down for dinner. Tony waits ten minutes before digging in himself. He’s almost done eating when Loki saunters in.
As they eat, Tony asks, “So how much does Thor know about this?” He cocks his head in the general direction of Loki’s arm, trying to encompass the whole situation.
Loki shrugs. “Nothing.”
Tony’s not sure what he was expecting, but it wasn’t that. “Nothing at all? Not even that you have a mark?”
Loki sets the piece of sushi he’d been about to eat back down. “No. I’ve been wrapping for centuries, so he never questioned it. I thought there might be some advantage to hiding the circumstances of my bonding, if it ever happened, although I can’t say I foresaw this.”
Tony nods. “That makes sense.” Loki bursts out laughing. “What?”
“You’ve just proven me right in a very old argument.” Tony grins and gestures for him to go on. “When I first started wrapping, Thor told me—once he was finally convinced that I wasn’t hiding a soulmark yet and had no particular premonitions of meeting my soulmate—that it was disrespectful to my future soulmate to plan to hide their existence without even knowing who they were. I said anyone who couldn’t see the advantages would hardly be a match for me.”
Tony laughs, holding out his arms. “And here I am!” He sobers a little, thinking about it. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that Thor didn’t get it, but really—I know he knows that you like a good dramatic reveal. And even aside from that, don’t soulmates in the royal family have implications that have to be handled carefully?”
“Yes, well, but hiding it was a trick.”
Loki’s look has turned sour, so Tony goes for a little flattery to try to perk him back up before getting back to the point. “Yes, and a damn good one. But anyway, we’re probably going to have to tell him sometime, you know.”
Loki makes a face that acknowledges the point, but then he turns mischievous. “Are we? We could always wait until he notices something on his own. How long do you suppose that would take?”
“It depends.” But the obvious thing it depends on—whether or not this thing kills Loki—is too much of a downer for the direction that Tony’s trying to take the conversation. And even if they didn’t have that time limit, he’s pretty sure that thinking too hard about how long it would take Thor to figure this out on his own requires too much thinking about Tony’s own lifespan. To cover his own discomfort, he starts clearing the dishes off the table. He drops the paper plates into the trash can, and then claps his hands, turning around to face Loki again, and changes the subject. “So, you want to try out a different position tonight?”
“We’ve discussed this.”
“I know it’s probably not going to help your little problem, but I could go for another round for its own sake.” He leans against the wall, near Loki but not touching him yet.
“And if I say no?”
“Then we say good night now and go our separate ways. Or we go watch a movie instead.” Loki stares at him long enough that he finally says, “Is that good night, then?”
He pushes off the wall and starts moving toward the workshop, so he almost doesn’t hear Loki’s soft response. “No, I would like to be with you tonight.”
Later, when they’re lying next to each other on Tony’s bed, Loki starts talking, staring fixedly at the ceiling. “In Asgard, those who sought to bed me did so for political purposes, or because they wanted to get close to Thor. And even so, I heard more than once ‘I wouldn’t sleep with the second prince if he were my soulmate.’”
Tony feels an unexpected spike of possessiveness. “Well, good thing you’re not any of those people’s soulmate.” He reaches out an arm to put it on Loki’s chest. “You’re mine.”
Loki turns his face fully away. “I’m not, though, not truly.”
Tony props himself up on his elbow to get a better view of Loki’s face. “Okay, so we haven’t found the secret sauce to seal the deal yet. But whatever cosmic forces decide on soulmates picked us for each other, and that’s for real even if something went wrong.”
Loki finally meets his eyes. “You mean that.”
“Yeah, I really do.”
“Why? You didn’t need to get involved. We were enemies. I tried to involve you without your knowledge to save my own life, but you could have walked away when that didn’t work.”
“Yeah, I know. But I wasn’t going to.” The eye contact is too intense, and Tony lies back down. “It’s been a while since we were enemies. And if we have to talk about that, I’m pretty sure there was more going on with your invasion than you ever told us. I started doing the math not long afterward, and it didn’t add up, even before I started talking to you. And I didn’t miss ‘endurance through pain.’” He points at Loki’s arm. “I’m guessing what that means is similar for you to what it is for me.”
Loki closes his eyes. “No one else has asked.”
This is derailing them from Tony’s point, but it feels important. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“Not at all.”
“Yeah. So like I was saying, we’re not enemies. And that’s the lowest possible bar here, but it’s also enough, because it means I don’t want you to die. And that’s before we get into the fact that I’ve enjoyed having you around these past few weeks. So I want to fix this.”
Loki turns his intense gaze back on Tony. “And then what?”
“Are you asking if I want to be in a relationship? Because, um…”
“I am asking what you will do when I betray you.”
Well, that thoroughly kills the mood. Tony sits up and starts thinking about putting his pants back on. “Are you planning on it? Because no offense, Iago, but telling me your plans isn’t the best way to go about—wait a minute, is this a villain monologue? Are we at the villain monologue stage of our relationship already? I didn’t really peg you for the Bond girl type.”
Loki’s face is tight. “Surely Thor has told you of my inconstant nature, the inevitability of—”
“Yeah, I’m not asking what Thor thinks, I’m asking what you’re planning. I’m over here trying to help you with your arm situation, and I’m thinking you should save the betrayal until after we work that out.” His pants are across the room, but he decides it’s worth getting up to get them. “And after that you can betray me if you want, I guess. You wouldn’t exactly be the first—you know that too.” He waves his own left arm as he pulls his pants up. “Or you could fuck off to Dagobah or wherever and never see me again, I don’t care. But let’s get this fixed first, okay?” He sits back down on the bed as he starts pulling his shirt on.
Loki sits up on the bed, leaning against the headboard with one leg stretched out. He’s fully clothed before Tony has his shirt all the way down, and Tony envies the magic trick. “A pretty sentiment. But empty, unless you have any idea how to accomplish it, given that your preferred method has failed to yield any results.”
Tony refuses to let himself be brought down. “Yeah, okay, so it’s probably not sex. And we’re still not doing mortal peril, aside from what you’ve already got going there.” He stands back up; he’s always thought better when pacing. “So let’s think through this logically. The arc reactor blocks magic, but that can’t be the only thing that went wrong. You said something about the Mind Stone maybe interfering too, right?”
Tony is facing him, so he can see Loki tense minutely. “Yes, there was…influence from the Mind Stone.”
“Is there something you could do with it? Use it to reverse the polarity or something?” Magic makes no sense, so he’s just making this up. “I can track down Vision, get him to come for a visit—we can’t take it out, obviously, but—”
Loki interrupts, “I would prefer not to bring the Mind Stone into this. Its influence is gone and I would prefer not to risk changing that.”
Touchy subject. Tony spins on his heel, wishing he were in his workshop where there’s more room to pace. “Right. We’ll put the Mind Stone on the list right above mortal peril. Was there anything else blocking us back then? Other weird magical artifacts up your sleeve? Did the Tesseract do something? Spells you were casting? Does magic interfere with the whole soulmate thing normally?”
He turns again in time to see Loki shake his head. The magic thing is starting to look like a dead end, so Tony racks his brain for other things that make Loki different. “Wait a minute, you’re a shapeshifter, right? What if I need to touch you when you’re, say, a snake or something?” It seems like a long shot, but they’ve got nothing but long shots.
Tony wouldn’t have thought it was physically possible for Loki to be tenser, but he would have been wrong. He’s afraid Loki might actually teleport away, but after a moment he pinches his lips together tightly and says, “A snake. I suppose it wouldn’t hurt. You would be willing to see such a thing?”
“Sure, why not? I’ve never seen anyone turn into a snake before.” He’s not sure why Loki’s so reluctant; Thor had made it sound like the snake thing was one of his favorite tricks.
Loki takes a deep breath, and suddenly there’s a huge black snake coiled on the bed, staring at Tony. He’s got to be at least six feet long, Tony calculates quickly in his head. “Wow,” Tony breathes. “And you can still hear and understand me?”
Loki inclines his head. It’s the same gesture he makes regularly in his usual form, and it’s disconcerting how familiar it is coming from a snake.
Tony’s no expert on snakes, but he’s never seen one quite like this. “Are you venomous?” he asks.
Loki flicks out his tongue once. Tony suspects that translates to something like “Would you like to find out?” —more like a dare than a real answer.
Tony sits back down on the bed and reaches out a hesitant hand. “Can I—” Loki inclines his head again, so Tony gently brushes his fingers against his flank. “Wait, do you even have a soulmark in this form? How does that work?” Loki just stares at him fixedly. He glances at his own left arm, but nothing has changed, so he lays his whole hand against the coils. They’re cool and surprisingly smooth. Nothing else is happening, though, so after a moment he withdraws his hand and runs it over his face.
When he looks up, Loki is sitting there looking like a person again. Tony says, “Well, it was worth a try. Thanks for showing me that, anyway.” He stands up to start pacing again. He really wants to move this to the workshop. “I have so many questions. Are you venomous? What kind of snake are you? Can you do any kind of animal? And what does happen to your soulmark? Is it still there somewhere? Wait, could you just…be a snake and not have to worry about this? I mean, you’d have to be a snake, which is a pretty significant downside…would a different animal be better? Wait, if you’re, say, a dog, do you have a soulmark on your paw?”
Suddenly there’s what definitely looks more like a wolf than a dog on the bed. He stretches out his left front paw. Tony catches a glimpse of the blackened, inflamed soulmark before Loki changes back. “To answer your question, Stark, it is still there even in snake form. And in any case, I have no great desire to spend long periods of time in animal form.”
“Well, there goes that. Okay. Oh, and stop calling me Stark for god’s sake. We’ve slept together, you're my soulmate, that definitely puts us on a first-name basis.” Tony goes back to trying to think of solutions.
“Tony, then, if you prefer.” Loki pauses, then says more quietly, “It truly doesn’t bother you?”
“What, the shapeshifting?” Tony looks at Loki, and is surprised to see that he looks uncertain and almost nervous. “I mean, I’d feel better about it if science had any kind of explanation at all, but that goes for pretty much everything you do. What, do people in Asgard not like shapeshifters? Thor always talks about it like it’s a funny joke you play.”
“A joke, yes. A trick, suitable for children. Not for a warrior.”
“Wait a minute.” Tony feels like he’s going to need a map to find the real topic again, but this whole conversation is fascinating. “You’re telling me you never used that snake to infiltrate an enemy castle through the air vents? Do castles have air vents? Infiltrate wherever your enemies are through whatever security holes it has that a person couldn’t fit through.”
Loki’s smile is wry. “Recall that Thor was commanding those missions, and tell me if you’ve ever heard him produce any plan involving the word ‘infiltrate.’”
“Sure, he’s more of a frontal assault kind of guy, but he never had a problem with Natasha doing her thing.”
“Midgard did change him, then, or else he simply has different expectations for her than he does for the one he wishes to call brother.” Loki shifts position and Tony catches him glancing at his arm.
“Right, back to the main point. Do you think the shapeshifting thing is a dead end, or are there other forms we should try? You didn’t even let me touch your wolf!” Tony turns away, pacing.
When he turns back, Loki is looking down at his hands. When he speaks, it’s quiet. “There is, I think, another possibility to try, if you would be willing.”
Tony hasn’t seen him looking this vulnerable since he first showed him his soulmark. He sits back down, acknowledging the sudden mood shift, even if he doesn’t understand where it’s coming from. “What’s the catch?”
Loki stands up in a single graceful movement, as if he’s made up his mind about something. “Do you have anything here that’s particularly cold? Colder than you could safely touch?”
Tony has no idea where that topic change is coming from, but he’ll roll with it. “I’ve got a liquid nitrogen tank down in the shop.”
“That will do perfectly.” Loki’s already heading for the bedroom door.
When they get to the workshop, Tony lets Loki in and leads him to the corner where the liquid nitrogen tank sits. He puts on the safety gloves, sets a small dewar on the floor, and points the hose into it, putting his hand on the valve. “How much do you need?”
Loki smirks. “That won’t be necessary.” He takes the hose from Tony and turns on the valve. When the liquid nitrogen starts flowing, he moves it away from the dewar and aims it at his own hand.
“Shit, whoa!” Tony jumps out of the way of any liquid nitrogen that might spatter in his direction and reaches for the valve.
Loki is smiling, liquid nitrogen spurting over his hand onto the floor before evaporating, but he lets Tony turn the valve off. Tony says, “What the hell? You don’t need another nasty injury!” Cautiously, with the safety gloves still on, he reaches for Loki’s hand. The hand is blue. That can’t be good. He glances up, and finally notices that Loki’s face is blue too. Deep royal blue, with raised lines running along it. Loki’s still smiling, sharp and sardonic. “What the hell?” Tony asks again.
“I’ll try not to hurt you. Take off the gloves.” He holds out his hands. They’re both blue, slightly lighter on the palms, with those dark raised lines. Tony can’t stop staring as he takes off the safety gloves. He raises his eyes to Loki’s face and takes his hands.
A flood of sensation hits him immediately. Distantly, he registers that Loki’s hands are cold—of course they are, he poured liquid nitrogen over them—but it’s overwhelmed by something like a rush of lightheadedness. His left arm feels warm. He thinks his knees might be buckling, but before he can do anything Loki has scooped him up in a bridal carry. He doesn’t remember to object until after Loki’s set him down on the workshop couch.
“I suppose I should have expected this,” Loki says sadly, sitting down next to him. He’s back to his normal color, Tony notes.
“Expected what?” Tony tries to ask, but his head is still swimming and he’s pretty sure the question is missing about half of the phonemes it ought to have.
If Loki answers, Tony doesn’t hear it, but he has realized his head feels better if his eyes are closed. When he opens them again, Loki is staring down at him, frowning. “Are you all right?” he asks tenderly.
“Not sure,” says Tony, with more honesty than he usually answers that question with. “What happened?”
“Well, it worked,” says Loki, holding out his arm. He must have unwrapped it at some point while Tony had his eyes closed. The swelling and infection are completely gone, and it looks like a normal soulmark now.
“Wow,” says Tony. With an effort, he manages to pull his own left arm out from under him and bring it where he can see it. He has a soulmark too now, and it matches perfectly. It’s beautiful. He’s vaguely aware that Loki is talking, but he can’t focus on the words. He tries to shove himself closer to his soulmate—his soulmate! —and eventually Loki must figure out what he’s trying to do, because he gently lifts Tony’s head onto his lap.
He drifts back into consciousness at some point to the sensation of Loki stroking his hair and singing something about slaying giants. “Why are we slaying giants?” Tony asks, or tries to.
Loki stops singing and moves his hand down to Tony’s shoulder. “It’s just a lullaby. How are you feeling?”
Tony still isn’t sure. “What happened?”
Loki sighs. “What do you remember?”
Tony’s head feels fuzzy, but he manages to dredge up the answer and not fall back asleep. “You poured liquid nitrogen on yourself. I thought you were going to get frostbite but you just turned blue. Very cool effect, by the way. Then you touched me and—the bond completed, I guess?”
Loki nods. “Yes, the bond completed. Beyond that—this isn’t normal for human soulmates, is it? Collapsing and—whatever else you’re experiencing?”
It’s getting a little easier to talk. “Soulmate bonds are supposed to produce warmth and euphoria for a few minutes. Endorphins, oxytocin, all that.” He pauses. “I feel drugged, I guess, but the bad kind, not the euphoric kind.”
Loki replies, but Tony is rapidly losing his ability to focus on the words. His voice is nice, though. He’s telling some sort of childhood story about Asgard, Tony thinks, and saying something about giants—or maybe Tony’s just getting confused with the lullaby he was singing earlier?
The next time he comes to, it’s because Loki is shaking his shoulder urgently. “Tony. Tony!”
There’s some kind of muffled banging noise coming from the other side of the room, by the door. “What are the bots doing now?” Tony asks blearily.
“I believe that is Thor at the door. I suggest you let him in before he breaks something.”
Thor? Why would Thor be trying to get into the workshop? Well, there’s one way to find out. “Friday, baby girl, what’s going on out there?”
“Thor is requesting entrance, Boss, along with two unidentified companions.”
“Well, let ‘em in, then. Let’s see what they want,” says Tony, at the same time as Loki says, “Two? I only asked him to bring one, the oaf.”
Wait, when did Loki invite Thor to the workshop? And why? But before he can ask, the door opens and Thor is storming toward them, bellowing, “Loki! What did you do to him?”
Tony decides he would be better off if he were upright for this conversation. With Loki’s help, he manages to pull himself up to a seated position, and avoids slumping against Loki’s shoulder long enough for Loki to do one of his quick-change acts to put on his armor.
“Cool your jets, Thunderbird!” Tony says. At the same time, Loki says, “Calm yourself, brother!”
Thor’s entourage consists of a tall, thin man with good facial hair and a heavyset teenage girl with long, dark, curly hair. Judging by their clothes, they’re both Asgardian, so it’s possible that the teenager is actually older than Tony.
“What are you doing here?” Loki asks coldly.
The thin man takes a step forward. “I specifically told you not to come back to Earth.” Does that mean he’s not Asgardian after all? Did Tony miss a memo on capes becoming a hot new fashion accessory for Earthlings? That’s got to be Thor’s influence, which is probably good news for the Asgardians.
Loki, who has not gotten sidetracked by questions of fashion, says mildly, “Yes, well, my return was Thor’s idea. In any case, I’m told that your United Nations is aware of my presence and is debating how to deal with me. I suggest you take your objections to them.”
Thor seems uninterested in the conversation despite the fact that he brought this guy along to harass Loki in the first place. He redirects by saying “Tony, are you well?” at the kind of volume that shuts down other conversations.
“Peachy keen!” says Tony, trying not to lean on Loki too visibly.
Thor looks unconvinced. “Loki said you were hurt. What happened?”
Tony looks up at Loki. “Why did you call him in? Did you—”
“I was worried about you, you numbskull!” interrupts Loki.
“Aw, sweetheart, you care!” says Tony, although he’s not entirely clear on what exactly Loki was so worried about.
Loki ignores him. “I wanted Sigrid’s expertise—” he nods at the teenager— “and I had no idea Thor would think it appropriate to bring this second-rate charlatan along.”
“What happened?” asks Thor again, even louder.
“Okay, can we keep it down a little, Thunderdome? I have a headache. What happened is that your brother and I solved his little arm problem, but it seems like it had some side effects.”
Thor frowns. “Arm problem?”
Tony can’t help but laugh. He holds out his left arm for Thor’s examination. “We’re soulmates.”
Loki glares at him. “Must you?”
“What? This is exactly the dramatic reveal you’ve been waiting for all this time!” Tony may not be firing on all cylinders right now, but his sense of dramatic timing is still intact.
The teenager—Sigrid, apparently—takes half a step forward. Loki addresses her, ignoring Thor. “Sigrid, I trust you understand the concerns? He collapsed yesterday after the bond formed. He seems to be recovering, but it’s slower than I expected.”
Tony says, “Wait, yesterday?” He had thought he was out for maybe a couple of hours, tops.
Loki turns to him but ignores his question. “Sigrid is Asgard’s most experienced healer. I thought it best to call her in, since I have little expertise in healing magic of this type.”
Sigrid bites her lower lip. “I know the theory,” she confesses, “but I haven’t dealt with soulbond problems myself before. And a mortal…I don’t know.” Still, she steps forward and sits down next to Tony on the couch. She holds out a hand toward him. “May I?” she asks.
Tony has no idea what she’s asking permission for, but both Loki and Thor seem to trust her, and he can’t say that of many people, so what the hell. “Go for it.”
Sigrid lays a hand on the side of Tony’s head and closes her eyes. It’s awkward, but Tony supposes she would tell him if he were supposed to do anything.
Thor can’t be ignored for long. His expression is a mix of anger and confusion that Tony associates with his hands ending up around someone’s throat. “What is this trick, brother? I’ve seen you touch before. Whatever you think to—”
Tony interrupts before Thor can work up too much of a head of steam. “Slow your roll, Horatio, it turns out there are more things in heaven and earth and all that. Surprised the hell out of me too.” Loki’s been making him watch too much Shakespeare, he thinks; it’s affecting his pop culture references.
Meanwhile, Loki banishes his armor with a baleful glance at the glowering stranger who still hasn’t introduced himself, and starts unwrapping his arm. Tony openly stares at it. He can’t get enough of seeing Loki’s healthy arm with a normal soulmark that matches his own. When Loki’s finished, Tony lays his arm alongside it.
Thor steps closer, staring. Then he actually licks his thumb and rubs it on Loki’s mark. “Rude,” mutters Tony. He starts casting around for the nearest bottle of hand sanitizer, but he can’t quite remember where it is. Loki seems surprisingly unbothered, anyway.
Sigrid pulls her hand away, frowning. “I’ve never scanned a mortal before. I can’t say—perhaps—”
Tony can’t handle all this cryptic shit while he’s fighting to stay awake and upright, and his head hurts. “Will somebody please tell me what’s going on?” he snaps.
Loki puts his arm around Tony’s shoulders. “Sigrid?”
Sigrid looks like she’d rather not be put on the spot, but she asks, “How much have you told him, my prince?”
“Very little,” he admits.
Sigrid may look like a teenager, but she’s got the “I disapprove of your choices but I can’t say anything about it since you’re in a position of power over me” face down. Tony’s pleased to see a medical professional directing that face at someone other than him for once. “Well,” she says. “A soulbond with a sorcerer opens up certain channels within the spirit, if they don’t already exist. And suddenly opening magical channels within a person who wasn’t previously sensitive is a shock to the system. I think—”
“Hang on a second,” says Tony. “Is this the ‘Yer a wizard, Harry’ speech? I’m a magician now?”
“The term isn’t accurate, but if you’re asking if you have access to magic, yes. And, perhaps more importantly, the two of you can draw on one another’s magical reserves.”
“How is that more important?” asks Tony, who’s still stuck on the idea that he’s suddenly capable of casting spells, or would be if he could sit up straight and focus on anything.
Sigrid bites her lip. “I suspect the reason you collapsed is not just the opening of the channels as such, but the mismatch between the prince, whose power is well known, and a mortal. I think—”
Thor interrupts again. “You still haven’t explained how it is that the bond only formed yesterday. I’ve seen you touch him! You were sparring last weekend!”
Loki sighs and starts explaining. Tony’s heard it all before, and Loki’s keeping it pretty vague, so he feels justified in drifting off a little bit. When Loki gets to the end, though, Tony has to note, “You never explained where the liquid nitrogen comes in.”
Loki sighs and starts to say something, but Thor is faster. “Liquid nitrogen? Because you—”
Loki cuts in sharply. “I would prefer not to discuss this in the presence of my enemies.” He’s glaring at the guy who still hasn’t been introduced.
Tony pushes himself slightly more upright. “Actually, that’s a good point. This is my workshop, and Loki’s enemies don’t get to hang out here, so don’t get your cape stuck in the door on your way out.” He must be doing worse than he thought, because he could swear the cape waggles at him despite the complete lack of wind in the workshop.
“Wait!” says Sigrid. She shoots Tony and Loki an apologetic glance, then turns toward the stranger. “Mister Doctor, would you mind letting me scan you? As I said, I’m not experienced with mortals, and I’d feel more confident if I could compare his scan to yours.”
Mister Doctor has an impressive resting annoyed face, and he only looks more annoyed as this little speech goes on. Still, he sits down on a nearby chair and gestures her over. “As I told you, it’s Doctor Strange. And afterward, you are teaching me how you do this.”
Thor talks quietly to Loki while Sigrid does her scan thing, but at this point Tony’s focus is completely gone and he drifts off again.
The next time he wakes up, he’s in his own bed, cuddled up to something warm—Loki, he verifies by twisting his head around. “How are you feeling?” asks Loki.
Tony sits up experimentally. “Better,” he confirms. He pushes out of the bed and makes it to the bathroom and back without incident. “Starving, actually,” he amends.
Loki produces an apple and sets it between them, followed by a bottle of water. Tony takes a bite of the apple and then pauses, eyeing it speculatively. “Wait a minute, there’s a whole thing with apples in Norse mythology, isn’t there?”
Loki laughs. “There is, but I’m afraid it’s not true. And this particular apple came from the kitchen downstairs. But in any case, you have no need of mythological apples—it seems the bond takes care of that.”
Tony almost chokes. “Are you saying—”
“Our life forces are joined now. If you don’t fall in battle, Sigrid believes you will live as long as I do.”
Tony leans back hard, apple temporarily forgotten. “That’s—millennia?”
Loki nods. “Likely another millennium or two, yes, although it’s hard to say for certain. Bonds between a mortal and—well, bonds with a Jotun are entirely unknown, of course. But even with a true Aesir—I’ve never heard of such a thing, and Sigrid said it was the stuff of obscure legends in the healing halls. I have to presume that Odin would have considered the change in your lifespan a technicality and upheld the ban on mortals in Asgard, and so any such couples would have made their homes in a more hospitable realm.”
Tony barely hears the digression into Asgardian politics, which he’s never pretended to care about. He’s thinking that a millennium or two sounds like a lot less than what Thor had suggested his own lifespan was. “That doesn’t mean I’m draining your life force, does it?”
Loki makes a dismissive gesture. “We’re not certain,” he admits. “But even if you are—I’ve been thought dead three times already, twice by my own choice. My lifespan is hardly a matter of serious concern.”
“Holy shit.” Tony knows he should object more strenuously to Loki’s dismissal of his possibly drastically shortened life, but he’s having trouble coming to terms with his own drastically lengthened one.
Momentarily stunned into silence, Tony goes back to his apple, which may as well be a golden apple of immortality. As he munches, Loki sums up the rest of Sigrid’s diagnosis. Apparently he’ll be fine, but he needs to refrain from doing any magic until he recovers fully. That’s a bit of a disappointment, since he was hoping Loki could start teaching him right away.
Loki seems surprised when he expresses that. “You do have the option of requesting teaching from Doctor Strange, who is more experienced in the mortal forms of magic.”
“Yeah, no thanks, I’d rather learn from you than from the guy who wants to kick my soulmate off the planet. Unless—since I’m human, do I need to learn the human forms of magic? Or if my magic comes from you, does that make it Asgardian?”
Loki looks a little startled, but he answers the question. “It’s all the same in the end, just with different cultural expressions. You’re capable of learning either form.”
“Well, let’s get started as soon as my channels are healed.” He waggles his eyebrows to emphasize the (admittedly weak) double entendre, and Loki rolls his eyes. Tony brings them back to the topic by asking, “What is that guy’s deal, anyway?”
“Who, Doctor Strange?” Tony nods. “Well, he styles himself Sorcerer Supreme of Earth, and he does have some talent and a few years of experience. His order claims to defend the Earth against magical threats.” Loki shrugs. “The threats they concern themselves with evidently did not include me when I came at the head of an invading army, but they do now that I’ve come on a ship of peaceful refugees.”
Tony snorts. “Why do you even carry knives when you have that sarcasm?” he asks admiringly. “Seriously, do we need to worry about them?”
“They may try to cause some trouble, but nothing I can’t handle now that I know they’re here. It’s their brand of portal magic that I mentioned I am blocking on your grounds, by the way.”
Tony shrugs. "Fair enough." As long as they're gossiping, he figures he may as well ask another question. "So what about Sigrid? Is she really as young as she looks?"
"Perhaps not by mortal standards, but she has only recently reached adulthood." Loki sighs. "Asgard's healers were hit hard, and only a few apprentices made it out, Sigrid among them. But I wasn't lying when I said she was the most experienced healer. She organized everyone on the ship with any skill at all in healing to help in the first few days after the battle. She saved many lives."
Tony puts a hand on his shoulder, hoping to comfort him a little. "You worked with her then?" He's not sure he's heard Loki speak this admiringly of anyone.
Loki nods. "My knowledge of healing is limited to basic battlefield aid, but that was helpful enough."
It's a lot to take in, but Tony is pretty sure that thinking too much about how that went is going to induce a panic attack. Instead, he gives it a minute, hand still on Loki's shoulder, and then changes the subject. “You still haven’t told me what the liquid nitrogen was about.”
Loki laughs, although his face suggests that the subject change didn't help cheer him up. “I did, in fact, but you fell asleep. I’ll tell you again if you feel capable of hearing it this time.”
“Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed,” Tony confirms. “Although I wouldn’t say no if you’ve got a protein bar in your magic pockets.”
“I am not your snack dispenser,” grumbles Loki, but he produces a protein bar, presumably also from the kitchen. Then he continues in a more serious tone. “The story begins a thousand years ago, at the end of Asgard’s last war with the frost giants. The giants were invading Midgard, attempting to freeze your whole planet, and Odin’s forces drove them back to their own realm.” He presses his lips together. “Odin found one of their whelps, a runt, abandoned and left to die. The thing was a natural shapeshifter, and when he picked it up it instinctively molded itself into a form more pleasing to his tastes.”
Tony’s starting to have a bad feeling about this story, and the sarcasm Loki infuses into the next few words doesn’t help. “In his wisdom, Odin chose to take the thing back to his wife and raise it as his own child, without telling it of its origins.”
Tony’s protein bar tastes like dust in his mouth, and he buys the good protein bars. “That lullaby you sang me—”
“Is indicative of the general attitude in Asgard toward the frost giants, yes. They are mindless brutes who think only of killing and serve only to be killed, the children are told.” He shrugs. “To continue. Not long ago, Thor took his brother and four of his closest friends to Jotunheim and picked a fight. In the battle, one of the giants gripped my arm. Instead of the frostbite that such a touch would typically induce—well, you saw.”
“That’s what the frost giants look like?”
“Indeed. It appears that the skin I was born in was necessary.”
Tony nods and sets aside his empty protein bar wrapper. “Can I see it again? I didn’t exactly get a good look before.”
Loki gives him a strange look. “You…want to see that?”
“Yeah? Like I said, I didn’t get a good look, and aliens may be old hat for you but they’re pretty exciting for us Earthlings.”
Loki is still for a minute before asking, “Are you well enough to go back to the workshop?"
“Yeah, I’m good,” Tony reassures him, probably truthfully.
As they make their way down, Tony asks, “Why the need for liquid nitrogen, anyway? You didn’t need anything special to be a snake.”
Loki is calm, controlled. “I’ve only taken that form a handful of times,” he admits, “never for long and rarely voluntarily. I haven’t had the time I need to study it well enough to control the transformation properly.”
In the workshop, Loki calmly walks to the liquid nitrogen tank and aims the nozzle at his hand. This time, knowing what’s coming, Tony stands back at a safe distance to watch. It only takes a few drops before the transformation is starting. It’s gradual, not like the changes into animals, which seemed to happen in the blink of an eye. It travels up his arm and spreads outward from his shoulder. And then he’s standing there, fully blue and visibly uncomfortable.
“Wow,” says Tony, stepping closer and holding out a hand.
Loki jerks away. “Do remember there is a danger of frostbite.”
Tony shakes his head and holds out his hand for Loki’s inspection. “I didn’t get frostbite last time,” he reminds him. “Didn’t even feel all that cold. And worst-case scenario, you’ve seen my first aid kit down here. I’ve gotten way worse injuries than that.”
Loki shakes his head. “I am surrounded by idiots,” he says, but he lets Tony take his hand.
It’s cold, but it doesn’t feel dangerously so. Tony takes his other hand and looks into his eyes. The red eyes are a little disconcerting, but he’s dealt with much worse. “This is amazing,” he breathes. Gently, he rotates Loki’s left wrist to look at his soulmark. It’s a blood red color, which stands out against the blue skin the way a standard blue-black mark would not. Other than the color, it looks just like it does on Loki’s usual body. Just like Tony’s.
Loki is also staring at it wide-eyed. He lets go of Tony’s left hand to run his thumb over his own mark, then he takes Tony’s hand again to feel his. With his right hand still on Tony’s mark, he meets his eyes again. “You truly don’t mind?” he asks.
“Mind what? The fact that my soulmate is actually two different alien species, one of which is unknown to human science and apparently has a different temperature regulation mechanism from anything on Earth? No, I don’t mind, but I’d love to take some scans.” Loki looks puzzled, but he lets Tony lead him over to the scanning equipment.
As Tony sets up the scans, he adds, “Oh, and it doesn’t hurt that you’re completely gorgeous in either body. Have you ever done your martial arts forms when you’re all blued out? That’s got to be a sight to see.” It’s a little embarrassing, but what the heck. If you can’t say something sappy like that to your soulmate, who can you say it to?
Loki shakes his head. “And the fact that they—we—invaded your planet?”
Tony snorts. “Spaceman Spiff, if I was going to be upset about a planetary invasion, it wouldn’t be the one that happened a millennium ago when you were a literal baby.”
Loki inclines his head, conceding the point. “And the other one?” he asks quietly.
Tony sighs, looking away. “Look, I’m not going to pretend I’m thrilled about that one. I still have nightmares. But you told me yourself there were extenuating circumstances.”
The scans are finished and Tony wants nothing more than to jump straight into the data, but this conversation feels too important, so he leads Loki over to the sofa and sits down against his side. It’s too cold to stay like that for long, but it’s bearable.
Loki isn’t looking at him as he says, “No one else has asked. About the extenuating circumstances. Not even at my trial.”
Tony’s willing to bet that Loki didn’t exactly volunteer the information either, but all he says is “Shit.”
“He’s still coming, you know.” Loki is staring at his hands and talking almost inaudibly.
It takes Tony a moment to process that. “The guy who was pulling your strings?”
Loki nods. “You put a dent in his forces, but he won’t be stopped that easily.”
“Shit,” says Tony again. “I kind of thought so, but shit. I tried to build a planetary defense system, even, but that didn’t go so well,” he admits. He pauses. “I guess probably Thor already told you that story. Or Bruce, since that was why he left in the first place.”
Loki shakes his head. “No, neither of them spoke much to me of you or your…colleagues.”
Tony’s not entirely sure what to make of that. “So great, new planetary defense system needed, let’s try for less murderous this time.”
Loki clearly doesn’t have all the context he needs, but he just grimaces and says, “That would likely be desirable, yes.”
Tony closes his eyes and goes through a breathing exercise to try to stave off a panic attack. He doesn’t like his odds against anything that has Loki this scared—and he clearly is scared, behind his usual calm façade. Tony’s not sure when he learned to read Loki this well, even in his unfamiliar blue form.
When he opens his eyes, Loki pulls away and changes back to his usual form. “Hey,” says Tony, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Thanks.”
Loki gives him a sly grin, pulls away again, and changes back to blue.
“Hey, cool, you did it! No more need to fling liquid nitrogen around, so score one for lab safety!” He stands up, clapping his hands together. “This calls for a celebration.”
Loki changes back again. “Perhaps a real meal is in order?” he suggests.
Right, Tony hasn’t eaten anything except an apple and a protein bar for well over a day. He puts in an order at his favorite Chinese restaurant and they relocate to the kitchen.
Natasha is at the table when they get there, eating an apple and sporting a hairstyle that has got to be deliberately unflattering. Tony gives her a jaunty wave. “Hey, Itsy Bitsy, how was Tucson?”
She wrinkles her nose. “Tucson was a bust. Bad intel from start to finish.” She nods at Loki. “Loki.”
There’s no way of knowing if her claim about Tucson is true or if it’s a double bluff, and Tony doesn’t care one way or the other. “Want some dinner? We just ordered Chinese. I got some of that eggplant dish that you like.”
Her eyes flick from him to Loki. “It’s four in the afternoon and I had a late lunch, but thanks for the offer,” she says dryly. Then she stands up, deposits her apple core in the trash, and leaves the room.
Only then does Tony remember that he’s wearing short sleeves. “I hate living with spies,” he grouses.
Loki shoots him an amused look. “She knows you have a new soulmark.”
Tony nods. “And chances are she guessed it’s you. She probably has a theory that’s pretty close to the real story, considering that she noticed you were favoring that arm when she was watching you train a while back.”
“Is that a problem?” Loki asks mildly.
Luckily, Tony’s already made up his mind on that. “Nah. Secrets are what she does. She’ll keep it until she’s got a good reason to reveal it. But we should talk about how secret it actually is. I don’t exactly have the best history of keeping important secrets about myself.”
Loki gives his soulmark a pointed look but refrains from saying anything insulting. Instead he just says, “You already told Thor, so I have to assume all of Asgard knows. It seems to me that you have more to lose than I do from this getting out, given my history on your planet.”
Tony gives him a thumbs up. “So no hiding, but maybe I stick to long sleeves for a while, at least until your pardon goes through.” He’s pretty sure it will, based on the latest information from the U.N.
When the food is nearly gone, Loki asks, “Is this going to be a problem with your team?”
Tony can’t help but snort. “What team?”
“As I recall, the first time we met you were quite proud of your team.”
The irony is bitter. “Yeah, turns out you were right in the end. We didn’t hold together in the long run, even if we managed it long enough to beat you when you weren’t really trying. Thanks for that, by the way, not sure if anyone’s ever actually said that to you.”
Loki’s jaw actually drops. “I—no.”
Neither of them is eating anymore, so Tony goes to the bar and pours them each a generous glass of scotch. Sliding Loki’s to him across the table, he decides he might as well push a little more. “You said no one asked at your trial. You didn’t tell them?”
Loki takes a sip and shrugs. “I saw little advantage in humiliating myself. Even if I had been believed, which is unlikely, what would it have gained me?”
“A reduced sentence?” Tony suggests. “Didn’t you get life in solitary?”
Loki is turning his glass around in his hands. “To be honest, I was expecting execution. In any case, a reduced sentence would have been no mercy. Most likely it would have been banishment, and I was rather counting on Asgard’s dungeon to keep me safe from those I had failed.”
“Shit.” Tony takes a big sip of his drink. He can’t think about that right now, about who might be coming for Loki. “A shorter prison sentence, then?”
“To what end? As I said, I would have wanted to stay on Asgard on my release. I was already despised and distrusted, and a display of weakness would have made it worse. I would have been expected to return to my position as second prince, following and attempting to advise Thor without him or anyone else listening to or trusting me.” He laughs mirthlessly. “As has happened, in fact. So no, even if my life was to be spared I thought it better to bide my time in my cell and await an opportunity.” He takes a long drink. “And one came, although I ended up regretting the cost.”
“Your mom.” Tony heard the story from Thor. Loki nods.
What the hell, he might as well reciprocate the emotional sharing. “You asked about the team. It turns out Cap’s long-lost soulmate, who everyone thought was dead—he apparently had what looked like a deathmark and everything—turns out he just got brainwashed and turned into a super-assassin. He killed my parents. And Cap knew that for years, and he didn’t tell me. Not even when I was helping him search for him.” He refills their drinks, takes another sip. “So anyway, a lot of the team sided with him. Why wouldn’t they? He’s Captain America, right?”
“Mm. He is seen as worthy for his mere identity, regardless of his actions.”
“Yeah, exactly.” He hasn’t even directly mentioned the whole Accords mess, and yet in a way Loki just summed up the disagreement in one sentence. Not for the first time, he thinks he’s glad Thor was off-planet for all that. “Anyway, there was a fight—a couple of fights, actually, and after that—” He makes a “scattered” sort of gesture.
Loki nods, acknowledging all that. Then he stands up and starts quietly clearing away the leftovers. Tony joins him. When they’re done, he puts an arm around Loki’s waist, pulling him in close. “Shall we take this back up to the bedroom?” Loki kisses him, hard, by way of reply.
Afterward, he really doesn’t want to go back to the topic, but there’s one thing he needs to know. “Those…people you were worried about, that you thought might be following you. You think they’re still after you? Didn’t the whole playing dead thing throw them off the trail?”
Loki rolls away from him, staring at the ceiling. “In truth, I don’t know. I certainly hope so, but hoping for the best is not a winning strategy.”
“I hate to ask this, but with Asgard gone, are you safe here?” Not to mention the fact that his presence here might be putting the Earth in danger.
“As safe as I am anywhere. But it would be wisest for me not to stay on one planet for long.”
“Yeah, that makes sense.” It does. It’s sound strategy, and it limits the amount of danger Loki could bring to the Earth with his mere presence. There’s no reason Tony should be disappointed.
Just a few days later, Loki’s pardon comes though, along with finalized status for the Asgardian refugees. Thor throws several parties to celebrate, one of which is at the Compound for his New York-based friends and select Asgardians. Tony helps the way he always does, by throwing money at it, pointing Thor at competent people, and then hiding in his workshop while the actual planning takes place.
The night of the party, he comes down in a long-sleeved shirt and starts working the room. Sigrid is standing alone, so he takes her a drink. “How’s it going, Dr. Quinn?”
“Sigrid,” she corrects, and Tony doesn’t bother trying to explain the reference. “I’m doing well,” she tells him. “I’m with the Canadian settlement, and there’s a lot of work to do, but the king was kind enough to invite me tonight. How have you been?”
“Never better!” says Tony, more or less meaning it. “I’d offer to let you use your juju and check it out, but I know better than to be that guy.”
She shakes her head. “In fact, if you wouldn’t mind, that’s part of the reason I came tonight.”
He sits down in a quiet corner out of the way so she can do her thing. While she’s concentrating, he sees Pepper and waves her over. “Hey Pep, glad you made it. This is Sigrid, she’s a little busy right now but I’ll introduce you in a minute.”
Pepper is directing a skeptical look at Sigrid, who has her hand on Tony’s temple and a look of concentration on her face, but she hasn’t figured out what to say yet when Loki appears beside her. Tony’s a little surprised, but pleased, that he’s showing his face. “Hey Lokes! This is Pepper Potts, CEO extraordinaire and most organized person in the universe. Pep, this is Loki, ex-invader, newly free man—” oh, what the hell— “and my soulmate.” Sigrid chooses that moment to release him, so he stands up and grabs Loki around the waist, pulling him toward himself. Loki gives him an amused look but comes voluntarily.
Pepper’s jaw drops, almost imperceptibly because she’s a professional, and her eyes dart between his and Loki’s covered forearms. “Are you serious?”
“Yup!” He releases Loki, a little reluctantly. “But we’re keeping it on the down low for now.” To Loki, he adds, “We can trust Pepper. She knows all my secrets.”
Pepper makes a sound that might be a snort, from anyone else.
Tony introduces Sigrid and they make awkward small talk for a minute before Loki pulls Sigrid aside, saying he wants to ask her something about the health status of the Canadian settlement. That leaves Tony with Pepper, who is making the face she makes when she can’t decide if she’s more mad at him or worried about him. Apparently she decides on the latter, because what she says is “Are you okay?”
“Just ducky!” he says.
She looks unimpressed, but she glances around the party and apparently decides she doesn’t want to make a scene. “We’re discussing this later, Mr. Stark.”
“I look forward to it, Ms. Potts.”
The next morning, he’s awakened by Pepper barging into his bedroom. He’s not sure she’s done that since they were dating. At least she’s carrying two cups of coffee.
Rhodey is wheeling behind her, looking bemused. It’s been even longer since he’s done this. Tony decides to address him. “Sugarbuns! Sorry we didn’t get a chance to chat last night. How’s the fam?” Rhodey has been staying with his sister, helping her take care of her kids while he recovers.
Then Tony considers Pepper’s face last night, the untimely hour of her intrusion this morning, and her decision to bring Rhodey into it. “Wait, is this an intervention?”
Pepper says dryly, “Only if you need an intervention.” She sets one of the coffees on the nightstand next to Tony. “Tony, have you told Jim what you told me last night?”
“Nah, when I tell him his hair looks good it comes off as sarcastic even if I’m 100% sincere. Or do you mean the thing about those little mini-quiches? Don’t worry, I told all my friends about the best hors d’oeuvres.”
He reaches for the coffee and then realizes his mistake when they both gasp. He’s just wearing an undershirt to sleep in, and he reached out with his left hand. She definitely planned that. He envies Loki's foresight in getting used to covering his arm before he ever had a reason to.
Rhodey finds his voice. “Tony, that’s—” He cuts himself off, probably based on something he sees on Tony’s face. “Who is it?” he asks instead.
Tony takes a long sip of coffee, partly because he needs it for this conversation but mostly to give him time to control his facial expression. “Loki.”
“Loki,” says Rhodey flatly. “Loki, as in wannabe genocidal dictator Loki?”
“He got better,” says Tony.
“Loki, who threw you out your—wait a second, was he wearing gloves or something?”
“No,” says Tony. And he tells them the whole story, leaving the solution vague in deference to Loki’s obvious sensitivity about the frost giant thing.
Pepper still looks worried. “Did he hurt you?”
“What? No! How did you even get that out of what I just said?"
“That Asgardian healer…”
“So, funny story. Turns out I have magic now. Side effect of my soulmate being Gandalf, apparently. It kind of threw my system out of whack there for a little while, but I’m all better now.” He pauses. “I think. I didn’t actually get a chance to talk to Sigrid last night after she ran her little diagnostic on me. Hopefully Loki got the scoop.”
Rhodey buries his head in his hands. “Only you, Tones.”
Pepper is looking at him speculatively. “So what’s wrong?” she asks.
Damn, he hates how perceptive she is, at least when it’s directed at him. He still tries a chipper “Nothing at all!”
“Tony.”
“This is definitely an intervention,” he says resentfully. Then he sighs. These are his two best friends, and if he can’t talk to them about this, who can he talk to? “He’s not staying.”
Rhodey frowns. “What?”
“He’s leaving Earth. He has teleportation magic, he can do that.” He pauses. “I think. Maybe he’s just going to grab his towel and stick out his electronic thumb. Or maybe he’s planning on stealing the Asgardian spaceship once they’re all off it. That sounds like the kind of thing he would do.”
Under his breath, Rhodey mutters, “That sounds like the kind of thing you would do.”
“Soulmates!” chirps Tony, as if similarities in poorly-thought-out spaceship theft plans were a known consequence of soulbonds.
Pepper brings it back to the point. “So he told you he’s leaving, and you’re upset because you don’t want him to go.” She gives him a considering look when he doesn’t deign to respond to that summary. “Tony. Have you actually told him you want him to stay?”
“Of course!” He’s pretty sure.
“In words? In English?” Her skeptical look is unfair.
“Funny story! Apparently the Asgardians don’t actually speak English, they have some kind of translation magic. Which makes a lot more sense, if you think about it. Huh, I wonder if I can get in on that now—”
“Tony.”
“Okay, so maybe I didn’t say anything. But he’s a smart guy, he can figure it out. Anyway, I’m not going to try to make him stay if he doesn’t want to.”
Pepper and Rhodey both start talking at once. She makes a “go ahead” gesture, so he nods in her direction and says, “Pepper knows this better than I do, but Tones, you’re the smartest damn person I’ve ever met. But if I wait for you to intuit my emotional state without me saying anything, it’s not going to go well for me.”
Pepper is smiling wryly. “He’s your soulmate,” she says, “and that means you have a lot in common.”
“Not necessarily,” says Tony. “There are different theories…”
She blows right past that, as he expected her to. “I cosign everything Jim just said. But I’ll add that there’s this thing you do when you’re afraid of rejection, so you hold the person at arm’s length to pre-emptively reject them first. I’m just saying that from where I’m sitting, it sounds like there might be a lot of that going around.”
Tony claps his hands. “Well, this has been a laugh riot, but I think that’s enough emotional conversation for ass o’clock in the morning.”
“Nine,” says Rhodey. “Nine o’clock in the morning, specifically.”
Pepper stands to go. “Just think about it, Tony,” she says. “And call one of us if you need to talk.” She holds the door for Rhodey.
Tony buries his head in his hands as soon as the door closes behind them.
He’s not hiding in his workshop, he just needs to hang out with machines instead of people for a while. It works for a few hours, and then Friday tums down his music to announce, “Boss, Loki is requesting entrance.”
After the morning’s conversation, he’s not sure if Loki is the first or the last person he wants to talk to. He runs his hand through his hair and says, “Let him in. And keep the volume down.”
Loki comes in with his hands clasped behind his back. Tony greets him, “Houdini! You want to see the results of those scans we took? I’m still working on it—really wish Brucie had stuck around to help with the biology—but I’ve got some cool results already anyway. Pun definitely intended, by the way.”
Loki comes up next to him to peer at the display, but says, “I thought you might want to hear what Sigrid had to say last night.”
That gets Tony’s attention. “Yes, thank you, I was hoping I wasn’t going to have to figure out how to get hold of her.” He pauses. “Wait a minute, how did you do it earlier? Thor hasn’t finally started carrying a cell phone, has he?”
Loki smiles. “There’s little need for cell phones when you have access to illusory doubles.”
Tony wrinkles his nose. “Okay, sure, for that use case, but there’s so much more that a cell phone does these days. Granted, you don’t seem like the Candy Crush type, but I hesitate to imagine how much fun you’d have on Twitter.”
“In any case. I thought you might like to know that your magical channels are nearly healed. Sigrid thinks you ought to be able to start learning to use them in a week or two. Possibly sooner, but it’s best to be cautious. I suggest you seek out Doctor Strange’s order—I understand he made a poor impression on you, but I’m told they have other order members who are quite capable of teaching. Of course, if you’re interested in healing, I’m sure Sigrid would be happy to teach you.”
Tony stares at him. “Are you kidding me? No, I still don’t want to learn anything from the guy who trespassed in my workshop to antagonize my soulmate. Or his order.” He takes a deep breath, mindful of the morning’s conversation. “What if I want you to teach me?”
Loki meets his eyes, pressing his lips together. “Do you?”
Tony steps closer, into his personal space but not touching him. “Yes. I’d like you to stay here, if you want to. I know you have safety concerns, but we can work on that together. You don’t have to go jumping around the universe alone trying to stay ahead of your enemies.”
“And what would I do here?”
Tony turns away slightly, gesturing expansively to indicate the workshop, and the whole world beyond it. “Well, like I said, teach me magic. But other than that, it’s up to you. I can tell you what I want to do. If I’m going to learn that voodoo that you do, then I want to figure out how it doesn’t break every law of physics that there is. Maybe we could discover the Grand Unified Theory of Magic together, that should get us an easy Nobel. I also want to build that satellite network to protect the Earth, like we talked about, and keep you safe from your alien enemies. Ultron 2.0, now 100% less murderous. That name won’t work, we need something new. I’m sure I can come up with a good acronym if I think about it for a while.”
Loki is staring at him. “You want me to stay here. With you.”
So much for not wanting any more emotional conversations today. He puts his right hand deliberately over the area on his left sleeve that covers his soulmark. “Yeah. I do.”
“And when you tire of me?”
Tony turns away, pacing. “Okay, let’s just take that at face value for a minute. You don’t have to keep hanging out with me, you can do whatever you want, really. The world is your oyster. I mean, no murder, I’m pretty sure that’s in the terms of your pardon anyway, and any world domination has to be the legal corporate version. I’d prefer it if you worked with SI, not against us, but I guess if you want to do the corporate rivals thing I could use a better class of competition. Or you can hang out with Thor if you want, help him rule New Asgard or play pranks on him or both. I bet you could talk Nat into taking you on some of her missions, you’re good at that spy stuff.” He turns back to look directly at Loki again. “But that’s all beside the point. I don’t know how it is in Asgard—maybe it’s different with your lifespans. But on Earth, you hear about soulmate relationships going bad sometimes, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard of soulmates just getting tired of each other.”
“It is not different in Asgard,” says Loki. His smile is sharp. “But I might remind you that very little about our bond to date has been typical.”
Tony snorts. “Yeah, fair point. And hell, it’s not like I have the best track record of not chasing people off. I’m no good at this relationship stuff, and from what you’ve told me, you haven’t even had much of a chance to try. Maybe in fifty years we won’t be able to stand being on the same planet. But for right now, I like having you around. So you want to stick around on the planet and give it a try anyway? At least for a while? Because let me tell you, if nothing else I am itching to learn that teleportation trick of yours. No portals.”
There’s more he could say. He wants Loki to stop talking like he doesn’t value his own life. He wants Loki to have someone he can rely on. He wants to be that person. But all that is too much, too soon. Right now he just wants Loki on Earth.
Loki smiles slowly and holds out his hand. “Soulmates, then?”
Tony takes it, grinning himself. “Soulmates. Let’s see what kind of trouble we can get into together.”