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If there was one relationship Tony could never gather his wits about, it was the one he shared with the Trickster.
IT used to be simple – the keyword being ‘used to’. Sometimes, Tony wondered if it wasn’t better kept that way: that of enemies, of victor and the one who fell – if one wished to be poetic. Tony would’ve preferred to call Loki, as he was then, his nemesis – the Trickster being one of the very few people whom managed to keep up with him playing the biggest part in the choice of the title. Heavens knew he had so very few of such people.
Drumming his fingers on the table, the engineer took another swallow out of the glass he held in the other hand; the too-sweet sting of the unfamiliar alcohol (which, according to Thor, was called ‘mead’) setting his taste buds ablaze and keeping them burning long past the slide of the liquid down his throat. Much longer than whiskey ever did. And that alone, in Tony’s opinion, redeemed the drink of its tart taste. And its strength, he needed if he were to go on thinking about the Asgardians’ sibling.
Perhaps, he should’ve known better then to approach the god-turned-bloodsucker when the spell hit. Staying home, bearing with childlike body and lacking motor functions was surely a safer solution. Granted, it might have not worked – but it WAS an option.
One he, for some reason unknown to him, choose to scrap before it even became solid.
And choose instead to track Loki down and crash his party (metaphorically speaking, of course)
Tony would be the first to admit that he didn’t regret, for a single moment, the payment part. If anything, the Trickster was superb in bed – and the engineer was savvy enough in things that went on once the lights were out (or on; or forty percent strong, depending on the people’s preferrances) to admit that yes; there were things he stood to learn from the deity. That, and Loki was wondrously not sweet in bad. Well, if he was to be honest – the word Tony was looking for was harsh and demanding. By the end of it, the engineer felt like he was completely wrung out and then grated for good measure, so that no part of him went to waste.
And that was the problem. He god hooked. Not in an obvious, or compromising way: no, that wouldn’t be him. But in every other way? Apparently so. The trickster was the only person Tony ever slept with that he kept returning to: either to spite Loki or to flirt, it didn’t matter. The fact that he came back, again and again, did.
And then there was the marriage… ‘thing’ he kept doing. The first time he did it, it was more for the heck of it, a way to stump the arrogant deity, to make him explain himself to Tony, instead the other way around.
Yeah, the engineer should’ve dropped that habit the moment he was done with it the first time.
But he didn’t, and it grew and managed to claw its way deep into man’ psyche: to the point Tony could no longer tell if he was joking or really meaning it each and every time he proposed to Loki.
Pausing in his musings, Tony surveyed the mostly-empty glass of mead.
And threw it at the opposite side of the room, where it crashed against the wall, sending sharp shards of glass flying and leaving a small river of alcohol running down the wall.
It wasn’t to fucking hurt every time he refused. It wasn’t supposed to mess with his brain when the Trickster snapped at him. Laughed at him, Insinuated that Tony would sell whatever info he got on the god.
And, most of all, it wasn’t supposed to go into the greyscale region of maybe-frenemies-maybe-something-else, leaving Tony unable to figure out just what the hell he wanted. Needed. Out of this whole mess.