Part 1 - Chp 6
“No one mentioned that he’s fucking crazy,” Tony says as soon as he sees Barton.
“What?”
“Lok—”
“Don’t say his name,” Barton hisses, diving across the distance and clamping his hand on Tony’s mouth, and that’s it, Tony’s had it.
He shoves Barton; Barton quickly raises his hands up, backing away from Tony.
“Just… don’t, okay?”
“Why?” Tony demands.
“It gives him power.”
Tony stares. Barton rubs the back of his head and scuffs his foot a bit in the carpet.
“Look, I’m mostly deaf without my hearing aids. I got put on guard duty a lot when I was still a rookie. He feeds… it’s not in any of the records, okay? No one reads my reports. But he feeds off his name being said. Belief, I think, being made real. Every time he looked about ready to croak someone would come along and say his name, then no more looking like he was going to croak.” Barton sighs. “It sounds stupid.”
Tony remembers the way Loki’s eyes glaze with bliss when Tony says his name to him, how he looks more solid.
“Oh,” Tony says.
“He’s not really strong now,” Barton says. “But he could still wreck us if he wanted to, and he gets something off you just by you two being around. We’re just trying to… keep him contained. No offense.”
“None taken,” Tony says, rubbing his throat. He’s probably going to bruise--his windpipe feels that way. He heads for the bar he was actually going towards when he saw Barton.
“We didn’t think he had a soulmate. Explains why you knew all the things that were going to go wrong though--he wasn’t getting out without someone outside to do it.”
“Lucky me.”
“Lucky you.” Barton pauses. “Was he being weird again?”
Tony stops, turning to look at Barton. Really look at him. Barton says he got guard duty with him a lot, early on--Tony knew that, but he starts figuring out dates and realizes Barton has probably spent more time with Loki in the past few years than anyone else has.
“Define weird.”
“You know, weird.” Barton’s eyes narrow. “You didn’t lie to him about something did you?”
***
Over the next hour, Tony gets everything he can from Barton. He should probably feel bad about it, but considering that Loki shows no signs of going anywhere (Tony doesn’t particularly want him to, at least not on an animal comfort level) Tony would rather not risk getting killed.
Loki might have promised that he wouldn’t actually hurt Tony but that doesn’t mean Tony has to believe him.
Of course Tony’s soulmate would be stark (hah) raving mad.