Work Text:
He wasn’t new to nightmares or even to insomnia. JARVIS had been tracking his sleeping patterns for close to nine years now, not because Tony cared about getting eight hours of shut eye every night. He didn’t. No, the data was merely used to identify his most productive blocks of time on any given day (or night).
As it turned out, one a.m was prime time for Tony Stark’s hyperactive brain. However, things had changed recently and Stark Tower was no longer the lonely fortress it had been once. After the defeat of Loki and his Chitauri army, the place became a halfway house for SHIELD agents, super soldiers, lab experiments gone wrong, demi-gods far from home and their newly reformed adopted siblings, and for Tony himself, who hadn’t had a family for so long a time that he’d forgotten what it was like.
His workshop remained his sacred space, with JARVIS barring entry to all but a trusted few and one exception, a certain reformed Asgardian prince, who didn’t care for Slipknot, Motley Crue or Led Zeppelin, but was content to sit quietly, sipping Scotch and watching him work without breaking his focus.
They weren’t dating. They weren’t even friends, not really. Loki was intrigued by him and Tony was curious about technology on other worlds. There was an alliance of sorts between them, a truce and an understanding that had led Tony to take Loki to his bed seven or eight times in the last month.
He didn’t think anyone else knew about what Loki termed ‘dalliances.’ He really hoped Thor didn’t know because it was bound to be an awkward conversation and he dreaded the thought of how the team would react, since not everyone had been in favor of Thor bringing Loki to the Tower in the first place.
He settled at his desk with a sigh, too bothered by his latest nightmare to put his mind to anything useful like drinking his way through a bottle of Scotch and going back to bed, this time with Loki for company, if company meant sex, a lot of it, enough that it was impossible to think of a nightmarish version of Ho Yinsen ripping the arc reactor out of his chest and telling him that he was wasting his life.
“Can't sleep?” a soft voice murmured and Tony almost smiled.
“No,” he said as Loki came and perched on the edge of his desk, wrapped in a soft green cloak and sipping delicately from a glass of Scotch.
“If there’s anything I can do…” the Asgardian said with a mock half-bow.
“I don't know if you can really help,” Tony admitted, pausing a moment and considering him. “Did anyone ever die for you?”
“For me or because of me?” Loki asked, pain flickering in his green eyes.
Tony sighed. “A bit of both.”
He averted his eyes, a painful lump rising in his throat. It wasn’t just Yinsen, it was everyone, everyone he’d failed, everyone his company’s weapons had ever or would ever hurt. He’d been targeting the stockpiled weapons for months, with or without the blessing of the government’s military arm, without, as it turned out and it still wasn’t enough.
“For me?” Loki said quietly, his tone bitter. “No. I never had anyone love me enough for that. Because of me? More times than I can even count.”
Tony grimaced. “You'd think that would make me feel better.”
“It doesn't,” Loki guessed, his expression glum.
“No,” Tony agreed with a heavy sigh.
Silence descended between them, but not the huffy, awkward kind that fell so often between Tony and Steve. Silence didn’t feel oppressive with Loki. If anything, it felt soothing or maybe that was just Loki’s expression: peaceful and serene. What Tony wouldn’t have given for a little of that serenity when it came to his chaotic life.
“You could start with a name,” Loki suggested quietly.
“Or with a sad story,” Tony countered, cocking his head slightly and considering the god perched on his desk, sipping his Scotch.
Loki nodded and frowned slightly. “That too.”
“Or a drink,” Tony said with sudden inspiration, his gaze falling on the half empty bottle of Scotch.
“Even better,” Loki said approvingly, holding out his glass for a refill.
Tony grinned and snatched up the bottle, sloshing a generous amount of the amber liquid into Loki’s glass and then filling a glass for himself. He set the bottle back on his desk and swirled the Scotch around his glass as he resumed his seat, enjoying the aroma of fine Scotch which was closer to spicy and woodsy, rather than particularly sharp.
He took a cautious sip and then swallowed and started to explain. “His name was Ho Yinsen. He saved my life… twice. That wasn't the plan, the second time anyway. He was supposed to wait.”
“He didn't,” Loki guessed, looking at him intently over the rim of his Scotch glass.
“No,” Tony said with regret, raising his own glass to his lips and drinking quickly, draining it in several long gulps.
“I'm sorry,” Loki said sympathetically.
Tony nodded and lowered his empty glass. “Me too. More Scotch I think.”
Loki didn’t protest. He just picked up the bottle and started pouring Scotch. Nobody else on the team would have done that, except maybe Thor. Clint definitely would actually and that thought made Tony smile. Not everyone was as self controlled as one Captain Steven G Rogers.
“He told me not to waste my life, you know,” he commented as Loki set his refilled glass in his hand.
“Are you?” the Asgardian asked, his tone lacking the judgment Tony had come to expect from most other people.
He shrugged and glanced at the row of Iron Man suits that lined the far wall. “I don't know. I know this isn't what someone normally does with their life.”
Loki looked amused and said, “Well, he didn't tell you to live a normal life.”
“I wouldn't have listened if he had,” Tony admitted as he sipped his Scotch.
Loki smirked. “Oh, I know.”
The thought of a defiant Tony Stark, who lived life by his own rules seemed to amuse him because Loki gave a low chuckle and ducked his head to hide his smile. Tony looked at him and smiled too. This was why he liked being around him. Loki never tried to restrict him with rules and reasonableness. He liked a bit of chaos: enter Tony Stark.
His smile faded as he said quite seriously, “I want to do something for him, but he's dead. His family was slaughtered. His village was destroyed…”
“Stark…” Loki said with a grimace.
“I can't make it right and I want to,” Tony said bitterly as Loki sighed and nodded, seeming to understand at least that much, even if making amends wasn’t really the Asgardian’s style.
“I know what that feels like,” he said quietly.
“I believe you,” Tony replied, the words leaving his mouth before he’d even thought about them.
Loki looked shocked. His green eyes were wide and uncertain. He seemed to be waiting for Tony to take the words back, to say that he didn’t mean them. The crazy part was that he did mean them. There was a marked difference between Loki as he was now and Loki spearheading a Chitauri invasion, tortured and corrupted by powers and instigators he refused to name out of fear.
Loki seemed to struggle to regain his composure as he asked quite calmly, “What did he do? Yinsen?”
“You mean when he wasn't putting magnets in my chest?” Tony said lightly.
Loki smiled and relaxed slightly. “Yes.”
Tony shrugged and helped himself to more Scotch. “He was a scientist… and a field surgeon, a little unorthodox, but that's what you get for graduating from a place like Cambridge, I guess.”
“I guess,” Loki repeated thoughtfully.
His gaze drifted and he tapped a finger against his glass, his expression unreadable. Tony looked at him curiously. Loki seemed more vulnerable in the lonely pre-dawn hours when he didn’t feel compelled to put on a show of spiteful hatefulness for Thor. How much of it was an act intended to keep Thor at a distance, Tony didn’t know and didn’t dare ask.
“Well, I wouldn't know. I didn't go to Cambridge,” Tony said as Loki blinked and shook his head, his expression pensive, something Tony wisely chose not to comment on, humming to himself instead. “Hmm…”
“You have an idea?” Loki guessed, taking a long, slow sip of Scotch.
Tony frowned and said slowly, “Yes, a scholarship, like fifty of them, a program.”
Loki smiled knowingly. “A Ho Yinsen scholarship?”
“Yeah. It's not much.” Tony shrugged.
“It's a start,” Loki commented and Tony nodded.
He was right, of course. It was a start and a small one at that, a stepping stone towards the kind of future where he wasn’t continually haunted by Yinsen’s dying words. Maybe he always would be, he reflected dully, knowing that he had to try for his own sake as well as Yinsen’s.
“He'd hate it,” he admitted as he sipped his Scotch. “He never made a fuss or let me make a fuss. He was the calmest, most humble–”
“He was a saint?” Loki guessed, looking unimpressed.
“To put up with me in a cave for three months? Yeah,” Tony declared as Loki rolled his eyes at him. “I'll have someone get on the phone to Cambridge and get the ball rolling.”
He reached for his phone, but Loki stopped him, his long, slender fingers curling around Tony’s wrist. Tony looked up at him, a smile curling his lips when he registered the look on the Asgardian’s face. He knew that look and he knew where it always led: to hard liquor and great sex, neither of which he was in a position to refuse at this hour.
“You can call them after you sleep for at least four hours,” Loki said so sternly that Tony’s mouth went dry.
He licked his lips and said casually, “You could help with that, you know.”
“I could,” Loki agreed, drawing him to his feet and then leaning in, stopping just shy of kissing him and murmuring invitingly, “Shall we?”
Tony grinned and said chivalrously, “After you.”
Loki’s answering smirk pleased him as the Asgardian took Tony’s glass from him. He drained his own glass and then Tony’s, setting both on the desk and looking pleased with himself. Then he turned and framed Tony’s face with both hands.
The kiss he pressed to Tony’s lips was loaded with intent and tasted like Scotch and he liked it. That was the trouble with Loki and with Scotch; one taste was never enough. Tony was always going to come back for more, every single time.