[TWIG] Chapter 6/14: Home with the Starks

[terresdebrume]

TITLE: The way it goes
FANDOM: Marvel’s MCU
SERIES: Standing on tiptoes (1/3)
RATING: Teen and Up
PAIRING(S): FrostIron
CHARACTER(S): Loki, Tony Stark, Thor, Odin, Frigga, Farbauti, Laufey, cameos by multiple others.
GENRE: Alternate Universe (Ballet)
TRIGGER WARNING(S): None, although there is some mildly explicit description of violence in the first few chapters.
SUMMARY: Loki is a ballet dancer juggling between two (or three, or possibly four) different lives. Tony Stark is an engineer's son who goes into theatric props to piss his father off. Then they meet, and worlds collide.

STANDING ON TIPTOES ON LJ: [Series masterpost] Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5,

Tony

For the record, he blames everything on the alcohol still lingering in his bloodstream.

And possibly Loki’s curls, because he’s always had a weakness for curly hair and Loki may be a guy but he’s got the most adorable curls Tony has ever seen, even with the products still valiantly battling to maintain the usual slicked-back look. (And okay, Tony wonders what Loki’s hair looks like when he doesn’t put what must be insane amounts of products in it, but this is completely irrelevant).

Anyway the point is, he blames everything happening today on the hangover he is supposedly used to by now because he drinks too much, from the protest of his skin at the sudden cold (and his instant resentment of whichever of Loki’s contacts has an alarm siren as a ringtone) to the chuckle that drags out of his chest (and its depth, because it’s clearly the remnants of booze that make him overly sensitive, right? Right. Tony sucks at denial.)

It’s not his fault, really, that the sight of Loki Laufeyson in sleep-wrinkled jeans, hair half undone, trying to tug his shirt free of Jarvis’ teeth (all the while cursing the loss of his phone, which Tony understands but alarm siren) is so amusing.

It’s the first time since he stopped spending his nights alone that Tony woke up next to a man and, more importantly, it’s the first time he woke up next to someone he feels like seeing again afterward, all that without even the intervention of sex. (Unless of course they managed to have sex, clean up and get back in their respective pants, but the fact that they reached the bed is impressive enough, going by the state they came back in.)

Tony also totally blame the curls for the unexpected sting of disappointment that stabs through his chest when Loki doesn’t answer his jest about the Incredibles, because they’ve known each other for a few months, and it’s more commitment than any other relationship Tony has ever had (except maybe Pepper, but Pepper is a barista he sees about ten minutes a day, not someone who makes him smile and laugh and okay Tony, you’re trying your hand a denial there, you don’t want to start this kind of list right now.)

“Fucking typical,” he mutters when the door bangs open and Loki rushes out of his room (he forces himself not to think out of his life because he doesn’t usually drink with Robert near him, but it’s a close call).

Tony lets the butler set the food tray down on the bedside table and wonders how the wasted plate (because most of his one-night stands refuse breakfast once they know he won’t be seeing them again) managed to become so irritating between yesterday and now. He picks up the jacket before Jarvis can decide it’s his new chew toy, gets Fenrir’s ball back from under his bed, and then busies himself with the remnant of the phone, waiting for Robert to take his cue and leave.

When it doesn’t work, Tony smothers a grunt and, having gathered the discarded electronics, he goes down to his workshop.

{ooo}

The shrill ring of the phone line forces him to re-emerge from his latest project, and he grunts when the gesture provokes a long chain of popping vertebras. Slowly, methodically, Tony makes everything pop back into place, from neck to back, not forgetting his shoulders and hips. (One of Tony’s weirdest talents is that he can make every articulation in his body pop. Every one.)

Then, when he is done and the phone has been ringing for a good ten minutes (ah, bad day) he makes his way to the handset and answers with a yawn.

“Anthony Howard Stark, when will you learn to answer the phone?” Howard sighs and Tony hears you’re getting more useless every day.

There is a customary pause, because Tony never answers that one (where would he start? Whenever you’ll phone to talk to me rather than at me. Whenever I stop liking Iron Maiden better than the sound of your voice. Whenever I start thinking maybe you’ll sound actually disappointed in me rather than unsurprised I can’t do anything well enough. Whenever I don’t feel like I need a drink every time you open your mouth. Tony shakes his head and pours his third glass of whisky. The clock reads 12:00, one hour after Loki left. This is a Bad Day.) and then Old Man goes on:

“Steve and Peggy are joining us today. Don’t show up drunk.”

“Okay.”

Tony hangs up the phone, too buzzed to care about Howard’s reaction, and goes back to work to avoid thinking about how his ‘Uncle’ is going to tell them about his friend Bucky’s death.

Again.

{ooo}

It’s not that Tony is (completely) insensitive.

It’s really not.

But come on, what story keeps being interesting after you’ve heard it every week for the past thirty years? Exactly.

Which is why Tony’s mind experiences no trouble in drifting away after “So, after that, I decided to follow Peggy’s advice and do something more useful than parading on a stage: I volunteered, and properly this time!”

“It wasn’t a walk at the park, let me tell you,” Tony mouths as his gaze wanders over the other patrons in the Valhalla.

Actually, Steve’s not really his uncle.

It’s just that Howard and Peggy were good friends even before they went into the army, and when she met Steve Rogers she just couldn’t resist introducing the two. (Which proved a good idea, as it was Steve who prevented Obadiah Stane from sabotaging Howard’s car twenty years ago, but Tony doesn’t like to think about that.)

Steve always says that their friendship started out looking more like a dogfight, but forty years later and they’re sitting at the same restaurant table with the same people (plus Tony and minus Maria) drinking the same drinks and laughing at the same stories.

Tony is all for routine, but they’re frankly taking it way too far.

It isn’t until they bring the main dish that Tony spots Loki Laufeyson sitting at the Borsons’ table.

Loki looks just about as enthusiastic as Tony is to be here, which denotes a certain familiarity with the whole process. Is it possible that he’s been sitting here all this time and Tony didn’t notice him? (Granted, there used to be two rooms here and the two families use different ones, but still).

Loki is sitting next to a guy who must be Thor Borson, and Tony is neither relieved at this lack of male-to-male-contact-phobia nor frustrated that said male-to-male contact seems to be more than just friendly.

Fortunately (Focus Tony! Denial.) Thor doesn’t waste much time in draping his arm around the shoulders of a petite brunette, whose face is extremely happy as well as extremely red: probably an engagement or a pregnancy then.

She turns towards Loki and says something that puts a knowing smile on her lips and makes Loki look like he swallowed something rotten.

Tony watches as all the heads around the table turn to Loki, then to Odin, then back to Loki with an air of petrified silence that can only mean something absolutely scandalous has been said, either about Loki’s life or Odin’s.

Either way, Tony engineered enough scandals himself (with great help from one Mr. Charles Xavier and his White Witch of a best friend, Miss Emma Frost) that he knows the look of an upcoming shouting fit when he sees one… it therefore causes little surprise to him when Odin starts yelling:

“HOW DARE YOU?” Odin roars, and half the other patrons get whiplash as they try to identify whose voice it is. “HOW DARE YOU EXPOSE YOUR MOTHER TO SUCH INDECENCY?”

“EXPOSE HER?” Loki screams, and okay, Tony knows he’s got a good voice, but he didn’t quite expect him to be louder than Odin. “I EXPOSE HER TO INDECENCY? I’M SORRY, I THOUGHT YOUR HABIT OF SLEEPING WITH EVERYTHING THAT WALKS ON TWO LEGS WOULD BE WHAT WOULD DO THE TRICK! IT’S NOT LIKE I EVER BARGED INTO ONE OF YOUR MEETINGS WITH ENOUGH ALCOHOL IN MY BLOOD TO KNOCK OUT AN ELEPHANT!”

Thor looks especially panicked at that last bit of information, and his girlfriend is doing her very best to fusion with the wall behind her, all while Tony leans in his chair out of a perverted desire to know more about Loki even in the middle of what is obviously a Crisis (he wishes it wouldn’t look like he’s succumbing to the same morbid curiosity that makes the other patrons look like they feel so terribly superior to Loki, but he knows it’s a lost cause).

“It’s not like I was ever found with my head lying in a puddle of my own vomit after my birthday party!” Loki continues in a quieter but much more threatening tone. “It’s not like I ever came home with blood all over my face with a note from the principal saying that I beat the shit out of a kid and broke a teacher’s nose when they tried to stop me! I never did any of this, and yet I am the indecent one! Or am I so different that I didn’t realize wearing thigh for dance practice is worse than buying my way into alcohol and girls until my boxing career is about to fly out the window? Is that it then? Is it because I dance? Because I don’t look like you? Or is it because for the past twenty six years you resented yourself for not being able to give your wife a second child? Because no matter how much you claimed to love me, you could never get over the fact that a stranger was mooching off your riches!”

In the silence that falls on the room, heavy and life-swallowing with the weight of dozens of skeletons in their closets (and God knows skeletons in the closets come along with the whole ‘rich and powerful’ part) the sickening sound of knuckles meeting a face, the clang of a chair hitting the floor, and Tony discovers what rage really means.