Chapter Text
Shit shit shit. What was he doing?
Tony Stark practically ran to the bar – not that this in itself was an oddity – what he was currently questioning was what had happened to prompt it this particular time.
He hadn’t been able to stop himself. The Loki he had come to know, come to care about, had been stood in his elevator, about to leave. And leave forever.
Tony had understood something was up the second he saw the god’s face upon his and Thor’s return from Asgard. Gone was the playfulness that had lingered in the corner of his mouth, and in his eyes. The green eyes Tony had only recently discovered could look upon those around him with something else than contempt and scorn.
Fumbling with the vodka bottle, pleased to notice its being almost full, he cursed his trembling hands. He’d tried his best from the moment he heard the dreaded words – that the “real” Loki was coming back – to distance himself, briskly, effectively, from the feelings that had started to grow inside of him. He’d turned to Thor to ask him to remove his brother from his world, before chaos ensued – which it would – but the thunder god’s reply had promptly tipped him over the edge.
'I will not have you hurt him.'
The irony in his words had been too much to bear, and Tony gave a short bitter laugh at the thought, before downing the very large glass of vodka he had managed to pour himself. He shuddered, both at the burning down his throat and at the memory of his yelling at Thor, a tirade ending with the very dramatic “He’s not the one hurting here!”. Tony poured another one, trying to console himself that it had only been Thor and Natasha in the room, save Loki, hearing that angsty little outcry. Natasha never told a living soul anything, even though he of course rather she hadn’t witnessed his little break down.
Never mind that now.
Tony grabbed the bottle and went to sit down on the sofa. He would’ve been perfectly fine to end it there. He was hurting, so what? It was nothing he hadn’t been through before. In fact, only six months earlier Pepper had mangled his heart in quite a similar way. Maybe that was why he had freaked so much. It had taken Loki about a week to get to a point where he could hurt him almost as much as Pepper had done.
Tony emptied the glass once more, and then decided to save time and just drink straight from the bottle, carelessly dropping the glass on the floor. It didn’t break. Maybe he’d break it later.
Taking a long swig from the bottle, already halved, he decided it must be because the Pepper thing was still fresh in mind. She had done a good job with the break up, he had to give her that. But then, when did Pepper ever NOT do a good job? She’d sat him down, given him the talk, let him scream and shout and even beg, and then she had upped and left. As in left the country. It had taken Tony four months to get over her, and all along the way he’d hated her for her coaching him into reprogramming Jarvis that night of the break up. Something he was eventually, having gotten through it, thankful for. He still had no way of contacting Pepper without going through Bruce Banner first. And Tony might have drunk himself senseless every single night of those first two months, lessening to every other night, then every third, until the end of the four months, when he could actually recognize his old, pre-Pepper self. And he hadn’t tried to call Pepper once during those nights.
Or if he had, Bruce had kept quiet about it, once Tony had sobered up.
But yeah. Pepper was over and done with, dealt with. He was fine. He had been fine. Until Loki’s leaving had tapped into all the same feelings again.
Tony drank some more, starting to feel the familiar, welcome blurring of the edges.
It made sense. Loki could not have affected him this deeply, had Pepper not done the ground work. The explanation pleased him, and he slumped back onto the sofa. Though it still left his stupidity of not severing the ties when he’d had the chance.
After his shouting at Thor, Loki had asked his brother and Natasha to leave. When they had done so, he had edged closer to Tony, who had been intent on staying on his side of the ravine that had opened up between them. But as Loki had explained to him why he had chosen to let Odin return his memory to him, Tony had found himself forced to accept that the god’s arm had been twisted. Which in turn made his situation worse, as he could no longer discard the whole thing with Loki as something he had misinterpreted. Had Loki chosen to have his memory back, ignoring what had gone on between them, Tony could merely have recited the old “fool me once, shame on me…” saying, and pin it down to some intimacy craving he still hadn’t gotten rid of since the Pepper days. Drunk a little to forget the feeling of Loki’s body, pressed against his. Or drunk a lot. But ultimately accepted that he had been played. And been fine with that, eventually.
As it happened, Tony could see how Loki had been forced to let him go. He could also see, in the god’s eyes, the despair at this. And that had ruined it. That had forced some hope back into him, some vague idea that maybe he could get those good feelings back, somehow. And when he had seen the god out, battling with himself to actually let the elevator close – a struggle he had almost lost – he had found that what he was trying to tell himself was already falling on deaf ears:
Loki was going away. Loki was not coming back. Tony was fine with that, he’d be fine.
He had not been able to stop himself from stepping forward, from venturing back to where he’d found himself several times during that last week, into a kiss.
A kiss goodbye, he had tried to rationalize it.
But as he emptied the bottle, noticing how his hands trembled still, he knew that he hadn’t managed to drown the hope that had started growing, against all better judgment.
Better get another bottle.