Reversed
Growing with an ability or feature was one thing, being enhanced with one abruptly another. Good as it felt to alas go toe to toe with the likes of Steve as equal, other superhuman creatures. Yet too he is wary, as he spars with Nat or Clint and he may hurt them, as he works on his suits and underestimates the tautness to his grip and breaks things, as he goes about interacting with day-to-day objects like the doorknob or the faucet and they pop from their sockets, being stressed prompting cracked phones and shattered cups. Frustrating. As frustrating as the team’s questions, that simply he wished not satiate hadn’t told them it’d been Loki. And Loki too hadn’t spoken. Let them guess and yell and run amongst themselves. It was amusing, at first, now a matter of obstinance because if they think they can dig around his database for answers or evidence of the super soldier serum, without his consent well then, they can’t go complaining.
But it isn’t like they don’t catch on, the way Loki comments not or questions as they do, the fact that he’s always in the lab with Stark no matter the times they’ve confronted the smith; Loki the banished god of mischief should not be permitted access to a room filled to the brim with armor and weaponry. Of course Tony Stark tends to do the opposite of what he’s told. Althemore disconcerting how they have that in common.
Nevertheless and even if they cannot explain how or why, Loki’s played some hand in Stark’s novel situation, as he approaches the man struggling as things shatter in his grasp, threading them together with green tendrils of magic effective despite its shackles, placating his wound nerves reminding him to breathe slowly, loosen his grip.
They spar often, more often than they used to, and Loki still has him on the ground each time but alas he had a chance, improvement of actual impact, when he’s able to retort pace or reflex or the momentum of his swings.
Loki doesn’t underestimate him never has and perhaps it was one of the main drives in their much too fast friendship, and a friendship it was what else as they spent day and night in one another’s vicinity, engaged in near every activity or just near. Others question it, even he questions it but quicker sees, how well Loki understands and it worries him sometimes, how similar they are how if the roles reversed…Thor tells him often, he reminds him of Loki, or how Loki once was,
the Loki that Tony tells not, he sees daily, when his sharp edges soften and the weight on him lightens and he lets himself go, discarding rigidness at the threshold of his door, sprawling along the sofa with some book or his phone, sipping tea or wine or craving desserts, offering input sometimes or just being distracting, hounding for attention when he’s bored and is annoyingly proficient at all board games even those to him novel.
Tony tells Thor not because it saddens him so, and Tony wants to tell Loki how lucky he is to have someone care so, to have family who aren’t family but he understands, scars of a lie run deep.
Loki tells him stories, when his mood is more humorous,
Loki trusts him with stories that lack humor, his stories,
in the late hours as they pass a bottle of scotch on the floor on the roof under the stars’ light.
Tony tells him of things he’s never told another soul, Tony trusts he’ll find no pity in those green eyes no condescendence, just comprehension, because if the roles reversed…