Who: Loki and Tony What: An after-fight meeting. Drinks. Sexual tension. The usual. Where: Stark Tower When: Immediately following the battle in Times Square. Warnings/Rating: None really, some blood.
As soon as Loki appeared to retreat, Tony prepared to do the same. When Silver had first been hurt, the pain of the injury had been confused by that fear-adrenaline gas, and though Tony was definitely riding high on adrenaline, he didn’t remember it hurting this much. Tony looked down as he flew over the wreckage left by the panic and madness, charting a course back toward the top of Stark Tower. “Jarvis, any news on the death toll yet?” he asked the AI, making sure that the Avengers comm was thoroughly disconnected. Jarvis replied that there were no confirmed deaths yet, but estimates were high.
Tony made some slight adjustments with his feet and the suit propelled forward with renewed force, sliding through the debris-choked air and toward the elegant modern spire of Stark Tower. “How bad is the bleeding?” he asked as he pulled up for a landing on the panels meant to disassemble the machine. Jarvis replied that he had apparently pulled some of the stitches, and if he would have allowed the joint freeze to continue, it wouldn’t have been a difficulty. The program managed to sound particularly snide about it.“Yeah, yeah,” Tony grumbled, as the machines disassembled the helmet and he walked forward into the reach of more robotic limbs that took apart the pieces on his arms and legs. He was left in black neoprene and blood. “I need a drink for this.”
"What would you like?" asked the trickster, standing behind the bar. "It seems you're fully stocked with all kinds of libations." He leaned back, observing the contents of the cabinet. "If you drink this stuff on a regular basis, you could give Thor...oh, what is the phrase? A run for their money, I think, in drinking."
Loki pulled a bottle of whiskey from the cabinet, removing two glasses as well. He'd beaten Tony to the tower by only a short minute or so. There was no sign of the vehicle he'd taken to escape Times Square, but there was also no doubting it must be somewhere nearby in case he needed it again. Though he'd slipped inside the tower with no apparent difficulty, Loki was the worse for wear. The fight with Thor had left him bruised and bloodied, creating the monster had left him weakened, and his chest was stiff, making breathing painful. Still, despite being physically uncomfortable and singed, he seemed in high spirits. Everything had, after all, gone precisely as he wanted it to.
"You were injured," Loki said, conversationally, head tilting back, observing the blood. He certainly didn't seem like a man who'd just engaged in battle with him, however indirectly, almost concerned for his health at first. One would think he'd come simply for Tony's company. "Did one of my guardsmen do that?" Concern transmuted into soft delight and sharp eyes, relishing the thought.
Tony did drink. He drank a lot, and all the time. No one had ever told him so, and he never thought about it, but facts were facts. There wasn’t a bottle in that cabinet that went for under fifty dollars, and no few that went for over five hundred. To his credit, Tony only lifted an eyebrow and paused in mid-act of lifting his hand to cover his bad side. He didn’t limp, the injury was under his arm and high on his ribs, and he was used to going easy on his breathing. Tony didn’t bother to hide his irritation with the other god, lifting his lip and letting his eyes go flat as he approached his bar. “Make yourself at home. ‘Guardsmen’? That’s what you call those things? They do a shitty job of guarding.” Tony grinned a humorless grin that looked a lot like a shark’s. His eyes went down to the glass; he’d take a drink even if it was from the hand of the devil, and he was smug that Loki didn’t look much better than Tony felt. “You look like... you got into a fight with Thor.” Grin, grin.
"Well, I could call them Jotunn, or dogs, or creatures, or things, but those all seemed indelicate. 'Guardsmen' has a better ring." Loki liked Tony's irritation, and he liked his anger even better. He poured him a glass and pushed it across the counter to him before pouring some for himself. No tricks, no floating glass, nothing flashy, just a well-poured whiskey.
Loki picked up his drink and walked around the edge of the bar. "I think I'll take that as a compliment, considering that I'm one of the very few to survive such a fight." He began to say 'My brother', but bit the words off. No. "He may be an idiot, but he's the finest warrior in Asgard. Perhaps the best in all the nine realms." His smile widened a little. "Once upon a time, he won nearly every battle he fought. Call it self-indulgence - I do so love to see him lose."
Tony took a deep swig of the glass, and through the clear bottom and amber distortion, he watched a small, innocently green light blink as Jarvis registered an unauthorized voice signature. He let the glass rest again on his palm as he brought it down, flicking a tongue over his lips and then pressing them together to roll up into the trim moustache. “Mmmmfunny! I didn’t notice him losing. I was there the whole time.” He snapped out a bounce of eyebrows and leaned his good side against the bar, casual as anything. He glanced down at the neoprene, which had a small stain, but it looked manageable. He wasn’t going to break down in front of Loki, for godsake. “Your little stunt just earned you a lot of enemies.”
Loki's smile didn't flicker, though the bright look in his eye grew more focused. "You're right," he said, putting a hand to his chest. "I've never been a physical match for Thor. I can hold my own in battle with him, but it would be folly to think I'd be able to best him head on. We tied, it seems. In reality, I just needed to have a word with him."
"You assume I didn't have any before," Loki said, chuckling at the idea. He was the friendless one, abandoned to the silent screams of the dead places in the universe. "I like enemies. One can count on them." He downed most of the glass in one smooth swallow, and set it down on the counter. "You might even say I'm collecting them." Loki glanced from Tony's feet to his face now that he had stepped out from behind the bar. "Were you planning on getting medical attention?" he asked. "Pardon me for interrupting. Please, go about your business. We can talk while you see to that."
Tony shook his head. “Nothing like these ones. We’re not going to let you take the city apart everytime you want to have a chat with your brother. He might not be willing to break your head, but eventually we will--or better, we’ll find some hole to stick you in and leave you there.” Tony liked that idea. People were all gung-ho about the death penalty, but to his mind it was worse to languish in obscurity--to quote some dead poet. “Thor would probably be alright with that. He might help us make it.” Tony ignored the offer about medical, leaned over with a grunt and poured himself another drink. “...And be careful, there’s a laser right there.” There was no addition of a neat red light to hint at the existence of the security laser, but it was positioned in a line from the ceiling to the wall at about chest-height (perhaps Loki’s stomach, chest on Tony) and activated sometime in the last five minutes. Tony figured Loki could do his little teleport zap out of there, but the point was clear: don’t wander into my house uninvited.
“Oh, it wasn’t just for him,” Loki said. His face clouded, and his tone grew sharper. He didn’t like his ideas, who he was, his motives all being tied exclusively to Thor. “Getting his attention was just a desired side effect. You wound me, that you think my intentions so easily understood.” Thor was of no consequence anymore. He was just the designated spectator. When this world was Loki’s own, he would put his brother in a glass cage, and make him watch as Loki took his rightful place. He liked that idea. He would place Thor firmly in his shadow, and make up for all the years when he had been the one eclipsed.
The threats and the laser didn’t seem to affect Loki at all. He stayed where he was and gestured to it. “Oh I know. I saw a light flash a minute or so ago out of the corner of my eye. Very clever of you. Really, for a man in a world of limited means, the solutions you do find are fascinating.” He watched Tony pour himself a drink, and then moved as close to him as the laser would allow, inclining his head forward. He was still wearing the helmet, still dressed in gold and silver and black and green, leather and metal, armor he’d made for himself just as he’d forged his own weapons and built his own transport. It was practical, but also a statement. Belonging nowhere, he would borrow from nowhere, crafting his own path. “What would happen if I broke it?” he asked, extending a hand toward the invisible line of the laser, studying Tony, his smile widening by the moment. He liked to think the penalty would be fun. Something interesting, outside the norm. He was beginning to attribute such little surprises to Tony Stark.
Up until that point, Tony hadn’t known Loki could see so many spectrums of light, even those not visible to the human eye, and it was a good addition to his knowledge. Almost worthwhile, even. Just because he could see it didn’t mean he could react if it was, say, pointed right at him, and Thor had proven that Loki could take a punch like a nice, normal, solid being. It even looked like he felt it. These were all very good things, and worth the paltry cost of a medical-grade carbon dioxide laser.
Tony turned as the god came closer, careful to do it absolutely in place. “Depends on which one it is. There’s a few trip-wire type lasers around ground level, those just lock down the rest of the building and isolate us here. The one you’re about to stick your hand in will burn it off, though.” Tony glanced up at the ceiling and appeared to think. “Wait. I think the ones on the floor are that way too--which one was which?”
Loki had quite a few tricks up his sleeve. Just because, for instance, his brother had been able to knock him back, didn’t mean the average human would make a dent if they made the mistake of striking him. He might not be Asgardian by birth, but he did share the dense bone and muscle that characterized them, the Jotunn, and some of the other races from the outside realms. Of course, physicality had never been where he really excelled. His mind had always been his greatest tool, and his memory was excellent. He would not be likely to forget, for instance, the device he’d watched strip away Stark’s suit, and where the suit was being stored.
Regardless, he didn’t flinch away from the laser when Stark claimed it would burn his hand off. “You disappoint me,” Loki said, still smiling a little. He placed his palm against the air, very nearly touching the laser, waving it along the invisible barrier it represented. “Putting this thing between us. One could think you didn’t want me to come any closer, despite the fact that I see no fear in you of me.” He tilted his head. “Or, perhaps I’m wrong.”
Loki backed away from the laser, glancing around the room. “Where have you hidden away all your toys? The one you took to battle was sleek, but I liked the broad ones I saw before. They reminded me a bit of the Destroyer. A beautiful thing, that. A walking suit of armor, capable of evaporating nearly anything. You might have liked it, though I expect you’re the kind who must know how everything works.” He looked back to Tony over his shoulder. “Have they said, yet, how many dead?”
Tony didn’t strike with his fists. He didn’t have to. The blue glow of his chestpiece sapped some of the healthy red out of his face, if it had been there to begin with, because his fucking side was hurting and Silver was starting to get pissed in his head about it. He took another drink of the room, not troubled about what Loki thought. Was Tony afraid of Loki? No. Tony wasn’t afraid of anybody left living. Did he take precautions because the guy pissed him off? Hell yes. Even more so because there would be a death toll, and they both knew it. “No. But I bet it will make you feel nice and accomplished, even though you can’t do shit, you just have to trick people into thinking you can.” It was probably a bad idea to taunt the god, but Tony was pissed. He took a step forward and simultaneously said, “Jarvis, deactivate security protocol eighteen-point-six.” He had such confidence in the AI that he walked right through where the laser had been a split-second before, bringing his glass with him. “I’m not running a museum. If you see a suit I’ll be in it.” Of course, there was the one he just took off, which was in pieces being auto-cleaned under the Tower floor... and the ones in the walls, some in pieces, some not. Tony’s eyes flicked to one side when he said it.
Loki stepped up to Tony, closing the distance between them. This close, it was a little more obvious that Loki wasn't functioning at full capacity, his breath carefully measured to prevent putting undue stress on his heavily bruised chest. But he held himself erect with all the regal bearing expected of a prince - or a king. "Who said I couldn't?" Loki said. "Just because I don't do something does not mean that it cannot be done." No, there had been a reason he'd cast an illusion instead of creating real destruction, but that would come in a few days, once they'd had time to look at the damage and assess, to count up the deaths and for the injured who were languishing to die. All their self-inflicted wounds needed time to fester before he lanced them.
Loki followed Tony's glance before looking back at him. That was all he'd needed, really. Tony had just pointed to where the x was and given him the key to the treasure. He could go, if he chose, and return any time he liked for the pieces of the suit that he’d really come for, but he lingered, a few short inches from Tony. Rather than pull away from him, he studied his face, looking down his long nose at the curious, bristling man. "I could mend that for you," he offered, looking down to the slowly spreading patch of blood on the neoprene. "If you are as unafraid as you claim." The challenge came with that same unreadable smile.
Tony was halfway to the couch in the middle of the room when Loki intercepted his progress. Tony just stopped, not intimidated, even if he’d just seen this guy go head to head with Thor and come out a little battered. Maybe it was because Loki was now responsible for so many deaths, Tony was just angry, not afraid. Angry and hope was what got him out of the fucking cave, and he wasn’t going to be intimidated by this asshole in his stupid bug hat. He looked up into Loki’s face, glaring through the few inches difference, the muscles around his eyes utterly relaxed, the glare all steady, lasting intensity rather than a childish squint. Very deliberately, he stepped forward until his chest just came up against the armor. He brought with him the harsh scent of blood, the chemical of neoprene, salty water and green cologne, and a zip felt only in the back teeth that was all power from that blue glow in the center of his chest. “I’d rather bleed.”
It was eerie, how easy it seemed for Loki to cant his head despite the broad sweep of the helmet.
If Tony had agreed to be healed, he would have thought less of him.
Loki smelled cold, sharp and bitter like winter winds, stinging to the throat. It was the scent of isolated places, like the one he'd been left in a few dozen hundred years ago by his father to die in the snow. The ozone cling to the back mouth from the thing in Tony's chest was something new, and he ran his tongue over the teeth. "I could help with that as well," Loki said. How had his fingers found their way to the bloody fabric at Tony's side? Carefully, and before he knew they were there. All he'd have to do was fire that hand forward. He could hit him with enough force to even make his brother flinch, directly in that weak spot, and Tony Stark would be down for the count.
But no. "What motivates you, I wonder?" He didn't remove his hand, even as his voice took on more and more vitriol and the feigned amusement faded away. "What drives you to help people who care nothing for you, who resent the power and authority you command?"
Tony wanted to sneeze, or shiver, but he did neither, nor did he back away. His nose and lip twitched, and there was a faint, faint scraping sound as his breathing took the metal casing of the miniaturized reactor a few millimeters against Loki’s armor. Tony hadn’t felt any fingers, but the moment he did was very visible. Tony had all kinds of things in place that could have acted against Loki, things that zapped and boomed, but he didn’t use any of them. Instead he brought a hand up and hit Loki’s chest against all that armor with the flat of it. The movement probably wouldn’t even have knocked down a normal human if they’d seen it coming, he put an average amount of strength behind it. The blow was all show. “Get off me.”
Loki took the shove almost comically, moving despite the fact that he could have easily absorbed it, falling back on his right foot away from Tony. He laughed. It wasn't a nice sound - had it ever been? "Oh, you are brave," he said. Loki's very presence was a well-orchestrated, carefully crafted thing, but for all his artifice, his anger was too immense not to flash at the edges now and again like a halo. This was one of those times, when the laugh came through clenched teeth, and the casual tone wasn't quite right, the ends of his words clipped and sharp. "No need to fret. I understood your answer perfectly. I'll leave you to tend your mighty wounds."
Loki turned away from him, walking toward the doors that led out onto the balcony and the steep drop below. "Do me the honor of not dying," he asked. "I want to be sure you'll be here to see how everything unfolds." The grin had such teeth. "And I can't wait to see the look on your face."
He stepped lightly off the edge of the building onto his waiting steed, the rippling metal thing made of sharp edges and glowing, animated machinery. He was gone a moment later, curving around the edge of the tower and out of sight.