The Devil You Know 9
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A/N: More angst than humor in this chapter, but it was bound to happen. Most of the humor that is here can be blamed on Clint. Which is interesting since usually I blame Loki for this sort of thing, but he's too busy angsting out. Silly boys. *siiiiigh*
In the Crossfire
"What did you just say to me?"
"You heard me!"
Natasha paused the video game and traded glances with Clint. The artificial sounds of clanging metal and dying gurgles cut to silence in the room. The shouts still rang in Clint's ears, despite coming from down the hall.
"Lovers' spat?" Natasha asked with raised eyebrows.
Clint shushed her and strained to listen, the controller in his hand forgotten. The voices continued to argue, this time in angry hisses that Clint couldn't make out.
At least not until he heard the voices getting closer, accompanied by stamping footsteps. Oddly, Tony sounded like the angrier party.
"Wow," Natasha murmured. "I always assumed that it would be Tony pissing off Loki, not the other way around."
Clint nodded in agreement, and then the two of them shuffled along the floor until they were hidden by the couch. The angry voices filled the room.
"Oh, I see!" Tony said with biting sarcasm. "I'm a lowly mortal, so nothing I do matters!"
"Stop twisting my words!" Loki snapped back. "And where are you going?"
"But that's what you're saying!" Tony all but shrieked. "And I'm getting a drink. Is that okay with you, Your Highness?"
Clint heard the clink of glasses and the slosh of liquid, the sounds harsh and amplified, and he imagined Tony slamming the glass around.
"Well, think about it!" Loki hissed. "How long do you mortals live? A century, at the most? You are like insects compared to us! How can you possibly contribute anything long-lasting - ?"
Loki was cut off by another slosh of liquid, and judging by the tense silence, Clint figured Tony had just thrown his scotch in Loki's face.
Clint reached for his comm and flicked it on to the channel he and Natasha shared with the other Avengers - meaning Not Tony - that they had made just for such an occasion. As softly as he could, he said, "Codename FrostIron has reached code red. I repeat, FrostIron, code red."
He flicked off his comm again before anyone could respond and make it crackle noisily to life.
He exchanged worried glances with Natasha.
"That was childish," Loki said lowly.
"More of a waste of good scotch."
The floorboards creaked under someone's feet. Clint guessed Tony's since Loki walked like a damn ninja. Or a cat.
Oh. Ha. That made sense.
"Do you realize what you're saying?" Tony snapped. "Do you hear yourself, you arrogant twit? You're telling me that my entire life means nothing, that everything I've done, the inventions I've made, the work that I've accomplished mean nothing. How do I not get offended by that?"
"Tony - "
"And just what the hell have you done with your life that's so great, huh?"
Uh oh, thought Clint. He turned to see the same sentiment written in Natasha's round eyes.
"In fact, what have you done, period, besides - Gahhhkk!"
Clint would wager that Loki had just wrapped a hand around Tony's throat.
"Tony," Loki said softly, "I'm going stop you right there before you say something you will later regret." He sounded more weary than angry now.
A few moments of heavy silence broken only by Tony's choking gasps for air. Finally there was the sound of creaking leather, and then Tony let out a long, shuddering sigh. Loki must have let him go.
Clint edged around the couch and hazarded a look at the dysfunctional couple. Tony was rubbing his throat, still wheezing a bit, and glaring at Loki with a look that could melt ice. Loki, on the other hand, was ice that refused to melt, his expression impassive except for the clenching of his jaw.
"Would you like me to throttle you every time you say something stupid?" Tony said.
Under his breath, Clint muttered, "Yes." Natasha lightly smacked him in the shoulder.
Loki's glare narrowed, and Clint could have sworn that the temperature in the room dropped ten degrees. "You really don't know when to shut up, do you?" he said in a voice menacingly soft.
Clint had to concede that Loki had a point there. Tony, on the other hand, merely did what he did best and blabbered on.
"Oh, ho!" Tony huffed. "That's rich coming from you, Mister High and Mighty!"
Tony was in Loki's face now, and Clint tensed, watching Loki bristle.
"Oh, I'm sorry. Do I need to ask the god's permission to speak, now? Look." Loki opened his mouth to respond, but Tony's expression turned from sneering to pained. He held up a hand to silence Loki. "If I am so insignificant to you," he said softly, "then what the Hell are we doing?"
Loki's eyes went wide at that. "Tony - "
"Just forget it."
Tony spun on his heel and walked away, leaving Loki standing alone in the room, looking strangely lost. Eventually the god wandered away in the opposite direction, and Clint and Natasha clambered out of hiding.
"I was expecting more property damage," Clint said.
Natasha glanced at him with one eyebrow raised. "Fight's not over," she reminded him.
"True."
Clint clicked his comm back on, and it immediately crackled to life.
"Hawkeye, come in! What's happening?"
Clint smirked and shook his head. "Ironman and Lokes are having a tiff. Nothing violent yet, but it looked like it might turn that way, for a moment."
"Dammit," Steve muttered. "Keep an eye on them. Thor and I will be back as soon as we can."
"Aye, aye, Cap'n."
Loki stared out at the horizon, trying to decide what to do. He had to let Tony go, that had been the point of provoking the fight, after all, but he wasn't sure if he could handle having the human so angry at him. Loki understood loss and pain better than most, and for once - just once - he wished he could cling to something.
He hadn't left the mansion. He knew that in itself was telling and that he had already made his decision.
"Damn you," he murmured, running a hand through his hair. "You're such a fool."
Loki didn't know if he was speaking of Tony or himself.
For a while, Loki lurked in the shadows and watched Tony work. The monitors highlighted his face in blue, exaggerating the contours of his cheekbones and brow and making his eyes glow in the dim light.
"I am sorry," Loki said after many moments of silence, said before he could over-think just what, exactly, he was doing.
Tony started and cursed, dropping his phone with a clatter. He closed his eyes a moment and sucked his lips between his teeth before he bent to put up his phone.
"Loki," he sighed, finally wheeling his chair about to face the god leaning against the wall, "how many times do I have to tell you not to sneak up on me like that?"
Loki regarded the human in front of him warily. His anger had fled, and now he merely looked tired. The cold light of the monitors exaggerated the shadows under his eyes.
"I'm sorry," Loki said again, softly, referring both to the surprise and to their earlier argument.
Tony regarded him for a long moment, leaning back in his chair and folding his arms across his chest. He lifted an eyebrow as if to say, "And?"
Loki sighed and shifted his weight awkwardly. "I didn't mean to upset you," he said. A lie, but who was counting.
Tony rubbed a hand over his face and shook his head. "Is that all you got?" he asked.
Loki tried not to bristle. "What else would you have me say? I do not exactly have... much experience with this."
"With what? Admitting you were wrong? Yeah, I'd guess not."
Loki pursed his lips. Tony was still upset. His words must have struck a nerve earlier.
Damn.
After a while, Tony said, "You implied that mortal lives were meaningless."
Loki eyed him for a moment. "Yes," he said.
"Do you really believe that?"
"No."
Tony blinked as he seemed to process this. "Then," he said after a while, "why do you keep saying - ?"
"What else am I supposed to do, Tony?" Loki asked wearily. "I have to at least try to convince myself."
"What? Why?"
"This is better than a soap opera," Natasha murmured in Clint's ear. He laughed quietly in reply.
They were crouching in the shadows like the world-class assassins they were. Clint was still amazed that they had managed to hide from Loki, but he supposed even gods of mischief got distracted.
For a long moment, Loki said nothing. "Because this - us - will end one of two ways," he said at length, and Clint had to strain to hear. "Either we break up or you die."
Loki didn't elaborate, and for a long moment, Clint was left in the dark. And then he realized...
Either way, Loki was going to end up alone. He was trying to convince himself that Tony meant nothing so that he could steel himself against the inevitable. Boy, he thought he was cynical.
Another silence, heavier than the last. Clint had a feeling that Loki would kill him and Natasha if he knew they'd heard that. Or at least turn them into small woodland creatures.
Clint looked at Natasha and imagined her as a honey badger.
"Shit," Tony said softly. The chair creaked as he pushed himself to his feet. "Loki, you can't think like that."
"Tony, a human lifetime is nothing to me. I have to, or -"
"No, you don't. You don't."
Clint craned his neck to get a better look. Loki was standing stiffly, face tight and closed off, a Fort Knox locking up emotions Clint hadn't thought he was capable of feeling. Tony stood a breath away, face contrastingly open and pained. He bent to catch Loki's gaze, but the god turned stubbornly away.
"Okay, so the future's gonna suck at some point," Tony said with his usual eloquence, stuffing his hands into his pockets and shifting uncomfortably. "Don't you think that makes the present more important? I mean, c'mon, you might as well soak up as much of this as you can!"
Tony gestured at his own body with a suggestive smirk. That earned a tiny huff of laughter from Loki.
"I suppose I should, shouldn't I?" Loki's voice had taken on that darkly sweet quality that Clint realized, with a grimace, meant sex. He bunked in the room next to theirs, after all. The things he'd heard... he doubted he would ever sleep again.
Tony closed the distance between them. With Loki leaning against the wall, they were almost the same height. Loki looked at Tony with hooded eyes, wrapping long arms about his waist and pulling their bodies flush together. Their lips met, and Clint swallowed bile at the wet sounds of their tongues sliding together.
"I think they've moved on to the make-up sex," Clint whispered to Natasha, who looked somewhere between amused, relieved, and horrified. "Their regular sex is noisy enough. We might want to get out of here before we hear things we'll never recover from."
Natasha nodded vigorously. Clint chewed his lip and tried to map out an escape route. In the end, Clint shrugged and went for the direct approach. He stood up and addressed Loki and Tony.
"Hey, could you hold up on the make-up sex until we're out of earshot? 'Kay, thanks!"
The couple froze, still lip-locked, and Loki stared at Clint with round eyes. His face flushed red to the tips of his ears, and he pulled away from Tony with a snarl, fingers moving angrily in the beginning of a hex.
Clint grabbed Natasha by the hand and ran like he had never run before.
Tony laughed and pulled Loki back into his arms before he blew up his teammates. Loki glared at him but allowed himself to be maneuvered, letting the spell fizzle out. He melted when Tony pressed a series of kisses to the pale column of his throat.
Loki pulled back a moment to study Tony's face, cupping his cheek and feeling stubble rasp under his palm. There were tiny gray hairs mixed in with the brown spikes, and the knowledge that Tony was aging sent a pang of grief through his heart. Tony was slipping through his fingers already.
Loki's throat closed around the weight of three words that had been on his minds for weeks now, afraid that, in saying them, he would cement the truth they represented and so doom himself to lifetimes of pain and loneliness.
"Hey," Tony murmured, cupping Loki's chin. "What'd I say? Focus on this, on right now. And stop thinking so damn much."
Loki looked into Tony's eyes, soft and dark with want and affection. He knew that little of what he was thinking had shown on his face, but Tony knew him like no other.
I don't deserve you, he thought, staring into those laughing dark eyes. I never will.
"You're a fool," he said instead.
Loki hungrily pressed his lips to Tony's before the human could read those thoughts as well.
"Hawkeye, can you give us an update on the FrostIron situation?"
Clint smirked when his comm crackled to life. There was no Trickster god in pursuit, for which he was deeply grateful.
"It's alright, Cap," he said. "FrostIron is no longer code red. It has, however, reached code 'love shack', so you might want to avoid the workshop. And sanitize the bench before you sit on it."
"Code love shack?" Natasha asked in amusement.
"Bring your juke box money, baby."
"I could have lived without that knowledge," Thor complained. Clint smirked.
"Sorry, big guy."
He was anything but.
When Thor returned that evening, he expected to find Loki and Tony still entwined. He did not expect to find Loki back on the roof, leaning on the rail and staring out at nothing. Thor felt a pang of older-brother worry at that vacant look.
Oh, Loki, he wanted to say. We've been at peace for so long, and I'm starting to see the old you again. Please, please, don't let that go.
Because Loki had the look of someone on the edge, someone haunted, like he had on the Bifrost all those years ago.
"Loki," Thor said, drawing up next to him, "brother. Is everything all right?"
Loki blinked and shifted to indicate that he'd heard, but his gaze still held that lost, unfocused look. After a long moment, he whispered, "No."
And then he was gone before Thor had a chance to respond.
Footnote: Oh, and... for those who don't know, "FrostIron" is the more/less "official" name for Loki/Tony on tumblr, though personally, I'm partial to "Lark". XD
Seriously, look under the "frostiron" tag and bask in the glory. God bless the internet!