[TWIG] Chapter 11/14: For all of the things we're not

[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, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10,


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Thor

Thor snatches his phone from Frigga’s fingers before he’s had time to process what he’s doing but it’s too late, she’s already looking at him with that look, the betrayed one Thor hates because for most of his childhood that meant you have made Loki cry, go and apologize or I will stop to love you until diner (and a ban on poptarts whenever he failed to obey in reasonable delays. Horrible face.)

He looks at the ground, the door, the window… anywhere but at his mother, pale and tired in a way she never seemed to be before as she sits next to Odin’s bed in the small hospital room. Anywhere but the white face of the man he loves more than any other save Loki, whom he watched beat his little brother to a pulp without lifting a finger.

Anywhere but at the father who lied to him for years and still had enough self-righteous anger in him to try and force Loki to adopt his own moral values.

“It wasn’t like that,” Frigga says, and Thor realizes he spoke aloud.

He wishes she would just shut up. “Your father didn’t cheat on me. Not really. We’ve always been doing that, and I knew….”

“I don’t care,” Thor forces out, not bothering to sort out whether he really means it or if he just doesn’t want to hear. “I don’t care. Whatever happened between you two, whatever he did or did not do, he had no right to do that to Loki.”

He pauses, long and awkward and ugly, and adds in a barely there whisper:

“I had no right to let him.”

He wants to leave. Wants to be anywhere but here, anywhere but trapped into a room with a man he wants to scream, and kick, and spit at, anywhere but a place that won’t let him forget what a piece of shit brother he’s been tonight.

Anywhere but in a place where he has nothing to do but relive his childhood, his teenage years, and stare in horror at the hundreds little things he thought of as harmless jokes, but that turned out to be far more harmful than he ever intended.

He leaves the room, and tries to call Loki.

Loki

After a long while spent staring at the ceiling of his bedroom, wondering what exactly just happened, Loki finally falls asleep.

It isn’t a restful sleep, and he wakes up cramped and tired, confusing dreams still whispering in his ears as he rolls to his side and squishes Fenris to his chest, wishing he could just decide to burry himself under the covers and never come back out again.

Life, unfortunately, doesn’t work this way, and Fenris is a wonderful dog, but even he won’t just stay unmoving for hours on end, especially since Loki hasn’t walked him since yesterday night, and the fact that he’s still behaving is a testimony to his good education. Loki picks his dog up and takes him to the first floor, where he stops in the bathroom.

Pale is always an accurate word to describe him, of that Loki has been made aware by countless jibes during endless summers in secondary residence or beach resorts, and he’s made his peace with it since his spectacular growth spurt at fifteen and the apparition of the tall dark and handsome effect. Still, as he watches his reflection stare at him in the mirror, he wishes he didn’t look so much like a corpse.

The stark blackness of his stitches makes it look like his mouth was sewn shut, and he wants to rip them out, wants to forget any of this ever happened. Instead, he pokes at the dark circles under his eyes and makes a mental note to borrow some make up from Darcy… they’ve been exchanging their stuff for years anyway, it’s not like she’ll start minding now.

And yes, Loki realizes that dark circles are a very vain thing to focus on, but what is he supposed to do?

Sit in the dark on his bed and wonder if he did something wrong? Wonder if, maybe, Tony has finally realized what kind of crazy he’s getting into? (Because, you know, there’s a reason why none of Loki’s friends know any of his families. As much as he loves both, he’s intelligent enough to realize that both are terrifying in their own right.)

The only thing he can think of that would be worse than that, would be to check the eleven text messages Thor sent him during the night.

He bangs the door on his way out.

“Dude!” Helblindy calls out from downstairs, “Did you fall or something?”

Loki punches the door twice, long practiced signal for ‘no’ and takes a great pleasure in storming down the stairs and to the main door.

“Okay, I’ll tell mom and dad not to wait on you for diner then!”

Loki barely bothers to wave his hand in the universal gesture for ‘whatever’ and he has to bite back a curse when he realizes he doesn’t have a car near at hand. He brings a hand to his face, only to remember the stitches depriving him of speech, and curses internally when he realizes it means he can’t even call for a taxi.

He could ask Hel for a ride, but he’d really rather be alone right now, not with a kid who, for all that they share DNA and Hel is more mature than most boys his age, wouldn’t understand how fucked up Loki’s life –lives- is at the moment.

In the end, Loki does swear, hands moving with the bold and harsh movements of a shout, and he goes to the shed housing the saddles. He needs to go away now, needs to have silence to clear his head, and if he can’t go in town to see Darcy, he can at least get out of the house.

He gets a bite on the shoulder from Svaðilfari, but it’s nothing he isn’t used to, and it takes him less time than usual before he gets Sleipnir out and rides into the fields surrounding the farm at a slow pace, ribs aching from the effort but mind slightly calmer for it.

He doesn’t know what to think about Tony’s behavior.

Hell, he doesn’t know what to think about his behavior! He doesn’t know what it is he wants exactly, because his mind is so full of Thor, Thor, Thor these days, but then earlier this morning, when they were together in on the bed it was… nice. More than nice, actually. More like, really, really hot, but not necessarily in a sexual way, more like… intimate.

Loki doesn’t deal very well with intimacy.

Thor never really understood the meaning of the word, mistaking cuddles for choke-Loki time, and even Frigga wasn’t a very tactile person. Odin doesn’t even deserve to appear on this list.

Laufey and Farbauti hug him, but they’re not really intimate hugs. It’s a tight squeeze that ends up in Farbauti getting up to serve him some Irish coffee, or a one-armed move that leaves him with Laufey’s hand messing his hair, or Hel telling him to keep that to himself ‘cause I got a reputation to maintain.

He will admit, there’s Ivan, sometimes, but then it’s more of a comfort blanket for Ivan, as too many people in his life thought that being asexual meant you didn’t want physical contact… so once it was established between the four of them that Ivan wouldn’t be having sex with anybody anytime soon and that dating wasn’t an option either because Darcy is definitely into girls, Ivan took to using them as cuddly toys. Which Loki doesn’t mind, it’s just that it doesn’t count as real intimacy to him, because when it’s his turn to be Ivan’s pillow, he feels mostly awkward and uncomfortable in that very base ‘your hair is in my face and your breath is too hot’ way.

There was one person Loki was ever intimate with, so much so that he seriously considered coming out to Odin and Thor and Frigga for him.

Of course, that flew out the window when he went to announce his decision and found Victor in bed and very enthusiastically naked with his colleague Susan.
(She rang him afterward, saying she didn’t know, and nothing would have happened if she had, but the wound was there already and it’s never helped Loki feel any better about this.)

So no, Loki doesn’t really do intimacy, which is why what happened this morning is so unsettling.

Because he never realized he’s gone that far in regard to Tony. Because he spends his time thinking about Thor and he’s still not sure he’s not treating Tony like a substitute for his brother with a splash of sick brother-on-brother action thrown in the middle –and with how screwed up he’s been lately, that wouldn’t even be impossible.

Because if it’s really Tony he wants, and he finally gets him, and he opens up and makes a place in his lives for him, who’s to say he won’t disappear like everyone else?