"How is it, Cap?" Tony asks, laying his slice of pizza down on his plate. "On a scale of Lunchable to Brooklyn, where you putting it?"
"Ooh..." Steve has to think about it for a minute. "Definitely better than Lunchables, let's start there."
The other Avengers laugh. Steve did not enjoy those Lunchables — any of them, and Tony made him try a lot of different types. If Dominos pizza had somehow ranked lower, he probably would have already dumped it in the trash.
"Not as good as Brooklyn pizza, though," Steve says.
"You say that about every pizza," Clint reminds him.
"Because they're not!" Steve insists.
"Uh-huh," Natasha says sarcastically.
"I think we need a Brooklyn date night," Tony says. "I need to try these 'perfect pizzas.' Are they even still around, or did the meteor wipe them out along with the dinosaurs?"
Steve gives a lighthearted roll of his eyes. "I'm not that old, Tony."
"Are you sure?" Tony says. "'Cause you kinda act like it."
Tony always enjoys making fun of his friends (and his enemies, and his acquaintances — he mocks people indiscriminately) just for the hell of it, but the best part is usually the reaction it gets, so he's a bit disappointed when the bright beam of light outside cuts their conversation short before Steve can respond.
"Alright," Natasha says. "Either there's a helicopter shining its searchlights right at us..."
"Or Thor is finally paying us a visit," Tony finishes.
"I almost wish Banner was here," Clint remarks. "We'd have the whole gang together."
"Not with Loki in the building," Steve says darkly.
"Oh, what's the matter?" Natasha asks teasingly. "You don't trust your little friend?"
"He's not my friend," Steve says immediately.
"Don't let Banner hear you say that," Tony says. "You'll hurt his feelings."
"I wasn't talking about him," Steve says, which already Tony knows — and Steve knows that he knows it, which is why Tony said it.
"Sir," JARVIS says, "are you going to greet Thor downstairs or should I let him up?"
"Ah, let him up," Tony says. "Maybe he'll want some pizza."
"Oh, look at you," Natasha says. "Finally learning to share."
It takes a minute or two for Thor to finally appear. He's once again in that ridiculous Asgardian costume, Mjolnir hanging from a strap on his wrist. Everyone greets him casually like an old friend, but he seems to be in an all-business mood.
"Where is Loki?" Thor asks without so much as a hello. "Has he caused any problems?"
"Oh, yeah, he's fine," Tony says. "Barely leaves his room. Sometimes I forget he's still here."
Natasha and Clint nod, muttering something with the same sentiment.
"Really?" Thor seems taken aback by that. "I would have thought... In Asgard, he refused to stay still. Is he really...?"
Tony shrugs. "We stay out of his way, he stays out of ours. It was his idea."
"Part of it might be that he's sick," Steve adds, and Tony rolls his eyes. Of course Steve is the one to say that.
Thor furrows his brows. "Loki is sick?"
Steve nods. "Or, he looked it last time I saw him, but it's been a few days."
"You know," Tony says, "I'm sure he would feel a lot better if you'd bring him back to Asgard." He really just means it in the sense that he doesn't want the guy here, but he also truly does think that being sick at home is infinitely better than being sick elsewhere. He probably would feel better if he went back to Asgard.
"I can't," Thor says. "He's bound to —"
"The tower because your dad put a whammy on him," Tony finishes. "But I can't babysit a demigod who doesn't want to be babysat, so you need to get him out of here before he decides to take matters into his own hands." He's fortunate enough now that he doesn't have to worry about it, but he doubts Loki will stay put forever. Even if he lasts a few years, by the end of the decade at least, he's going to want to get out.
"He's already threatened to kill me once," Clint adds, though he offers it as helpful information and not as something he's worried about.
"He rarely follows through on his threats," Thor says indifferently.
Now Clint seems a little worried about it. "But he does sometimes?"
"Now you have to get him out of here," Tony says. "Because if he kills Barton, Fury will kill me."
"He won't," Thor says simply.
"You don't know that," Tony says. "He could walk in and stab Barton right now. Right in the face. Just..." He mimes stabbing someone with an invisible knife.
"Hey!" Clint whines. Tony just shrugs. He's not lying.
"He won't," Thor repeats. "Where is he? I'd like to see him."
Tony hops to his feet and gestures for Thor to follow him. "It's a bit of a walk. I kind of shoved him in a corner and forgot about him."
"We tried to do that in Asgard as well," Thor says. "I am glad to hear it worked better down here."
Tony nods. He's glad, too. "I still want him out of here, though."
"I told you," Thor says. "I cannot —"
"Talk to your dad about it," Tony says.
"He won't agree," Thor tells him. "And neither do I. If Loki is doing well on Midgard, why should he return to Asgard to rein chaos on the palace again?"
Okay, fair point. "But what if he's not doing okay?" Tony asks.
"What do you mean?"
"What if he's not doing okay?" Tony repeats, though he firmly believes he is. "Steve said he's sick, which, you know, he probably is. Steve wouldn't lie about that."
"Loki would," Thor says simply.
Tony scoffs. "You think Loki's pretending to be sick?"
"He could be," Thor says. "He is a master manipulator. He may be hoping to convince my father that he needs to be on Asgard. Given that he is not from Asgard, I find that difficult to believe."
"What do you mean, he's not from Asgard?" Tony asks. "Aren't you guys, like, Asgardians? That's your whole thing."
"He was born in Jotunheim," Thor says, which doesn't clear anything up because Tony doesn't actually know what Jotunheim is. "He grew up in Asgard. Once upon a time, I would have said that made him an Asgardian. I know better now."
Tony raises an eyebrow. Okay, there's definitely some shit going down in the Asgardian royal family that he does not want to hear about.
When they eventually reach Loki's room, Tony knocks on the door. "Hey, Loki, open up. You've got a visitor."
They're met with silence, which doesn't surprise Tony at all. The first time Loki ignored him when he knocked, Tony thought he'd somehow escaped. This time, he knows Loki is just being a pain in the ass.
Thor knocks even louder. "Loki! Open the door."
Nothing.
That one surprises Tony a little bit — he'd sort of assumed hearing Thor's voice would get some sort of reaction — but he supposes it makes sense. If Tony was in his situation, he wouldn't want to talk to Thor, either.
Thor knocks again. "Loki, open this door before I kick it down!"
Finally, Loki answers, with just a mumbled, "Go away."
"Not until you open the door," Thor says.
"I'm sleeping," Loki mumbles.
Tony bites back a laugh. It really is like babysitting a child.
"Loki, enough with your games," Thor says irritably. "I can clearly hear you speaking to me. You are not asleep."
Loki makes a noise between a groan and a whine and doesn't answer.
Thor slumps his shoulders, defeated, and moves on to Plan B. "Stark, would you mind if I broke your door?"
Actually, he would mind, but he shakes his head anyway. There isn't a much better alternative — other than leaving Loki alone, of course, which Tony has a feeling isn't an option while Thor is here.
Thor wraps his hand around the doorknob and gives it a firm tug, pulling it right out of the door and leaving a gaping hole in the middle of the wood. He tosses the doorknob aside and pushes the door open with ease.
Tony follows Thor into the room, then immediately turns back around and walks out. "I did not need to see that."
Loki is sprawled out in bed, his skin glistening in the dimly lit room from his sweat. His old prison clothes are in a pile on the floor, an added pair of light green pajama pants on top. He's lying face-down on the mattress, his face buried in his pillow and one leg practically falling off the bed.
Admittedly, there is a small part of Tony that wants to know what's going on, but the much larger part of him does not want to stare at Loki's ass while he finds out, so he stands just outside the doorway, looking off down the hall.
"Loki?" Thor says quickly, rushing to his side. Tony risks a brief glance at them, and Thor kneels by his brother's side, his head almost blocking Tony's horrible view until he averts his gaze again. "Loki, are you okay?"
"Mm," Loki hums into his pillow. "Fine."
"Loki..." The mattress creaks and Tony guesses that means Thor's sitting next to him. "What happened to you?"
"Nothing," Loki says.
"I've never seen you like this," Thor adds.
Loki doesn't even acknowledge that.
"How long has he been like this?" Thor asks.
Tony assumes that's directed towards him, so he looks over at him. "I have no idea. I told you, we never see him."
"How do you not see him?" Thor asks. "He lives with you."
"Barely," Tony says. "He comes out at night to get something to eat and then he goes back into hibernation. That way we don't have to deal with him and he doesn't have to deal with us."
Thor stares at him. "You've only been feeding him once a day?"
Oh, shit. That's... a point.
"Hey, he's free to eat whenever he wants to," Tony says, because he'll be damned if he's accepting responsibility for that. Between the dinosaur chicken nuggets and the Perry the Platypus water bottle, he may be treating Loki like a baby, but that doesn't mean he needs to "here comes the airplane" the guy three times a day. "Why, you think that's why he's so...?" He gestures to Loki vaguely.
"It could be," Thor says. He gently lays a hand on Loki's back. "Loki, can you stand up?"
"No."
Thor nods understandingly. "Then I will help you."
"No."
Now Thor looks less understanding. In fact, he actually just looks very confused.
"See?" Tony says. "He just wants to be left alone."
Thor looks at him. "Is there someplace cold I can bring him?"
"No," Loki says, but they ignore him.
"Cold?" Tony repeats, confused. "You mean Antarctica cold or 'shove him in the freezer' cold?"
Thor furrows his brows. "I don't think Loki would fit in the average freezer, but I do not know what Antarctica is."
Tony throws his head back, exasperated. "You're killing me, buddy." If his only opposition to the freezer idea is that Loki wouldn't fit (which really should be the least of his problems with that), the bathroom might work, right? It can be cold, and it's just down the hall, not a helicopter ride away like Antarctica would be. "What about a cold bath?"
Thor nods. "That should work." He pats Loki on the back again. "Loki, we're going to stand up."
"Let me sleep," Loki mumbles.
"You can sleep tonight," Thor says. "Come on." He readjusts his position on the bed so he can stand up more readily and scoops his arms under his brother to hoist him up. "On the count of three."
Loki groans and rolls his head to the side to look at him. "What do you want?"
"I want to help you," Thor says.
"If that were true, I would not be here," Loki deadpans.
"It was your own actions that put you here, brother," Thor says. "I do not need to be here. I chose to come back, just as I am now choosing to help you."
"Don't," Loki says simply.
Thor ignores that. "We're going to stand up," he says again. "1... 2..."
Tony looks away. He does not need to see any more of Loki's skin than he already has today, thank you very much. Thor can do this part on his own.
"3," Thor says, his voice strained.
Thud.
Tony immediately looks over to see Loki in a pile on the floor. What are the moral implications of laughing at this? And how likely is it to get him stabbed? Because he kind of wants to laugh right now.
Thor is growing increasingly annoyed with every passing minute he's stuck in this room. "Loki, I am trying to help you. Stop being difficult and stand up."
Loki grits his teeth. "Oh, that easy, is it?"
Thor crouches down next to him. "You can't stand at all?"
Loki hesitates. He glances up at Tony almost warily before he looks back at Thor and gives a small shake of his head.
"You should have said that," Thor says, but he sounds a little more compassionate now. He scoops his brother up in his arms, and Tony once again looks away before he sees something he can't unsee. "Stark?"
Tony gestures for him to follow, and he leads the two gods to the nearest bathtub-including bathroom. Before Thor can put Loki down, Tony starts setting up the seldom-used tub. The first thing he does, of course, is pour way too much bubbly soap out, because, once again, he values his eyeballs. He plugs the drain and turns on the tub, warm at first to blow up the bubbles but then cooler for Loki's sake.
"Is that as cold as it gets?" Thor asks.
"It's as cold as it gets if you don't want to get hypothermia, yeah," Tony says. The guy hasn't even tested the water. What's he complaining about?
"Make it colder," Thor says.
Tony scoffs. "I just said —"
"As cold as it can get," Thor says. "It won't hurt him."
Tony raises an eyebrow, but hey, who is he to argue with the god holding the half-dead guy? He turns the temperature all the way down. Hopefully Loki is awake enough to complain, because otherwise they're going to have a Lokisickle on their hands in a few minutes.
"Stark," Thor says. "Go bring him something to eat."
Tony is very close to complaining that he's not a housewife, nor is he a slave, but he gets the feeling that this might be a bad time. He looks over at Loki, still lying in Thor's arms. His eyes are closed and Tony's not entirely sure he's still alive, but he still asks, "How do you feel about pizza?" just in case he also has strong feelings about whether or not that is a food.
"I don't care," Loki mumbles without opening his eyes.
"Okay, pizza it is," Tony says. He turns the bath off and squeezes by, leaving the two Asgardians to go about their business.
Tony walks as quickly as he can down the hall. In hindsight, maybe he should have taken Steve a little more seriously when he mentioned that Loki looked sick. He's not sure what they could have done because this really is all Loki's own doing, but they probably could have done something. Maybe they could have brought him meals and left them at his door. Thor is definitely going to want to bring Loki back to Asgard now (thank god), but Tony files this information away anyway, just in case it comes up again (and, hopefully, it will not).
Once he reaches the elevator, he feels like he can slow down a little bit. While he waits for the elevator to reach the right floor, he says an accusative, "JARVIS?"
"Yes, sir?" JARVIS says. Listen to him, acting all innocent. He knows exactly what he did.
"Why didn't you tell me Loki was dying?" Tony asks.
"I do not believe Loki is actively dying," JARVIS says.
"Yeah, well, he looks like it," Tony snaps. "How long has this been going on for?"
"It has gotten progressively worse since he arrived, sir," JARVIS says. "I offered to tell Captain Rogers on Thursday. Loki asked me to stay silent, so I did."
Thursday... How long ago was Thursday? What day of the week is it today? Oh, whatever. That doesn't matter.
"Why would you tell Rogers?" Tony asks. "He's my unwanted emo teenager, not his."
"Captain Rogers had helped him briefly before," JARVIS says. "If Loki was going to accept help, it would have been from him."
Tony nods slowly, processing that. He supposes that makes sense. If any of them were going to be somewhat nice to Loki, it would have been Steve.
"You understand that Loki was not going to accept your help," JARVIS says. "Even if you forced it on him. Telling you would have —"
"Been pointless," Tony finishes. "Yeah, yeah, I get it." The elevator doors open, and he heads towards the kitchen, still talking to JARVIS as he does. "When did he stop standing?"
"The last time he stood up was three days ago," JARVIS tells him.
Tony's eyebrows shoot up. "Three days ago? What's he been doing since then?"
"Sleeping," JARVIS says.
"For three days," Tony repeats skeptically.
"Yes," JARVIS says. "And when he was awake, he would lie with his eyes closed until he fell back asleep."
Tony bites back a sigh. He hates to admit it, but he actually feels kind of bad about this. As much as he would like to watch Loki spend the rest of his unnaturally long life suffering, he can't imagine being this miserable for this long.
He stops pestering JARVIS with questions after that. He opts to spend the rest of the walk in silence instead, just thinking about all the ways this could have gone better. He's glad Thor showed up when he did because he can't imagine how much worse this would have gotten if he hadn't, and if he'd waited long enough that Loki had died... Well, Thor would probably kill him, too.
Tony can hear the Avengers laughing from down the hall. He's glad they're having fun, at least. When Tony steps into the kitchen, he's greeted with an array of smiles that feel very inappropriate for the situation.
"How'd it go?" Natasha asks.
Tony shrugs halfheartedly. "Well, on the bright side, I don't think Thor is going to leave him here after this."
"Finally," Clint says, throwing his head back. "Freedom!"
"Barton, you've been free to leave this whole time," Tony reminds him. He grabs a paper plate and a piece of pizza. After a pause, he puts another one on top. Better safe than sorry.
Steve eyes him warily. "Why do I get the feeling this isn't all good news?"
Tony sighs and looks at him. "You were right." It pains him to admit it, but it's true.
Steve furrows his brows. "About what?"
"Loki," Tony says. "You were right. He's not okay." He swings open the fridge and rustles around for a water bottle. There has to be one left. Unless one of the other Avengers drank it? Oh, come on.
"How 'not okay' are we talking?" Steve asks.
Tony pulls out a big container of apple juice (not because it's childlike; just because there isn't much else in here to drink) and kicks the fridge closed. "Thor threw him in the bathtub because he's been lying in bed half-dead for the last three days."
All the Avengers' expressions change at that. Good. Now Tony's not the only one that has to feel bad about this.
"Yeah, apparently," Tony continues, "Asgardians are supposed to eat more than once a day?"
"Wait," Natasha says, her eyebrows furrowed. "He's sick because he's not eating enough? He knows he can get food whenever he wants, right?"
Tony shrugs. "Apparently not." He heads out of the room, pizza and juice in hand. All three of the other Avengers rush after him.
"Where is he now?" Clint asks.
"Upstairs," Tony says. "And if you're coming with me, you're staying out of the way. No one makes fun of Loki until after we're sure he's not dead."