Part 3 - Chp 4
Loki takes the Tesseract with him back to Thanos to get started on his half; the issue of eye colour is a quick illusion away--not a true shape-change, and so the only way Loki can get away with it.
Tony, meanwhile, gets dropped rather unceremoniously back in bed, lips still swollen from one last fierce kiss.
It’s not a good plan they’ve got because there’s so much that can go horribly wrong, yet…
Tony feels alive. Absolutely. This is exactly where he wants to be, the thick of things, the spaces between peace and everything going to hell in a hand basket, that narrow space to manipulate and shape before the wave breaks.
Loki feels it, too, is all fire and spark and laughter because it wasn’t the lack of safety that got him before--it was the idea of being consumed, or worse, and having what appeared to be no options out. Except Tony, and Tony doesn’t miss that what brought them together was Loki’s need again.
Anyone else might have been able to help him, but none of them are who Loki turns to when he needs--just like there’s nowhere else Tony goes when he dies. There’s a metaphor in there somewhere but Tony’s content to let it lie.
He’s got Loki, knows it the way he knows his own name, and he doesn’t feel angry or jilted anymore when he considers the way Loki tries to pretend Tony doesn’t mean anything to him; the god gives himself away in everything else he does.
***
“Where the hell have you been?” Barton asks when Tony’s on his way out the door to go visit Jane and give her some information she’s going to need for her Einstein-Rosen bridge.
“Uh, hello? My room?” Tony thinks. Loki said it was Tuesday, and he might be crap with time but yesterday was definitely Monday.
“Not for a fucking week! We’ve been looking all over for you!”
Ah. Tuesday. He resists the urge to start laughing at the utter shit Loki’s been.
“I had a midlife crisis. I died a week ago, remember? I drowned? We had schawarma afterwards.”
Barton just looks at him.
“It was him, wasn’t it?”
“Not likely.”
“Look, dude, I’m not going to rat you out if it was, but you’ve got to be fucking careful. You can’t just let him whisk you off for a week when we’re in the middle of trying to plan for your dumb alien invasion that your dumb soulmate has decided sounds like a great time.”
“Why not, exactly? Who else is going to convince him it’s a bad idea? Thor?”
That gets a brow raise, and Tony really can’t stop from smirking at him this time.
“I know what I’m about, Barton, but thanks for the concern.”
“You’re in over your head!” Barton calls after him when he gets in the elevator. Tony just waves as the doors close.
***
Jane is, not surprisingly, ecstatic.
“Oh my god Tony, this is incredible, where did you even get this--this is--I mean, if it works, and it looks like it will, then it’s going to totally change, well, everything, I can’t believe this—”
“You think it will work?” Tony asks, just to be sure.
“I mean, I can’t be sure until I study it some more and try, but it looks like it will. This is amazing.”
“Great,” Tony says. “I’ll call Bruce up and we’ll science. Sleepover, I’ll order takeout.”
***
The key thing is, Tony needs to make sure that he isn’t in New York. He also wants Bruce out of it, because he knows how much Bruce hates Hulking out.
So New Mexico.
He’d say he feels bad about using Jane, but he really, seriously doesn’t.
***
Right on cue, Wednesday Loki shows up with a small strike force, and then vanishes--a quick and clear demonstration that the Tesseract can act as a portal for a larger force, if necessary.
Just like that, all the timetables change and top of the list: find Loki.
Tony just makes sure to keep a straight face. Wounded, shocked. Whatever--everyone is fine. They’ve got this.