“You remind me so much of a cat. Like, a cat would look at me like that as I pet it.”
Tony grinned, leaning down to untie his shoes and tug them off his feet. Overtime, they’d become unbearably tight and he’d forgotten to take them off. Wiggling his toes he sighed, glancing down at Loki in the tub. Fatigue made him achy and lethargic, but he was not sleepy just yet.
“I’m getting in there with you. There’s not shit you can do to stop me,” Tony decided, peeling off his concert tee shirt. It probably wasn’t a good idea, considering the last time he had a bath he fell asleep in the water for a few hours and ended up being all pruney and gross, but at least Loki could wake him up.
You also almost drowned. Don’t forget about that.
That was like music to the God’s ears, then, that being sung in happy, exciting tones that he wasn’t all that used to. Even his choice of music taste was the slightly darker classical, but- well, that’s beside the point.
“I’m not entirely sure I would stop you either way,” he hummed, positively gleeful as he waded to the other side of the bath. There had always been something very appealing, to Loki, about water. Tony, obviously, wouldn’t think the same thing, but Loki found water to be… quite something. The idea of drowning always seemed not appealing, but interesting, to Loki; to be utterly encapsulated by something so choking and, on first look, harmless. Be it in calm, blue washed waters, choppy, angry, navy seas, still, dark brown and green ponds or rippling stretches of vast lakes; Loki had been drawn to water. He was never sure why.
The water still being rather hot, though having cooled a fraction, he wondered if he ought to add more heat to it. It was nice to have the heat soak into his skin; and even felt remedying to powers that were running a little low right now.
Tony rubbed his chin pensively. His father wasn’t the worst father in the world, as Tony had everything he could possibly ever want due to their wealth. He was spoiled and fed with a silver spoon.
Still, as much as Tony loved his father, he couldn’t exactly say the say that he loved Tony in return. Even in the reels he’d watched while scrambling for a substitute for palladium while he was dying, his father had called him his greatest creation. That had nothing to do with love as much as it had to do with Tony being gifted.
“I wanted to impress him,” Tony replied. “I never managed to, though, even when I graduated summa cum laude from M.I.T. If you mean drunken screaming, then yes, occasionally. He got drunk a lot.”
Loki was touching him. Automatically, all of Tony’s muscles tensed, wondering what the hell it would take for the guards to come in here. The minimal contact clearly seemed fine and harmless to them, and it should be the same for Tony. Instead, it made his heart race and he found himself craving more of the contact.
“I had Obadiah Stane to make up for what my father could never give me, so I was fine with that.”
“Of course you did,” he hummed, absently, for a second. His movements ceased, and he mulled over what Tony had said. Almost drilling through it in his mind, deconstructing it, and piecing together whatever meaning it had. Whatever emotion went with it. He did so masterfully for a moment, quiet, before homing back in on the things that were happening right here, within the confines of the faded gold bars.
“Blood will always run thicker than water,” Loki countered, knowing it was true himself. Thoughts spanned, momentarily, to the fact that he shared blood with a Frost Giant. Shivering, though not with cold, he came back. Finger now on the side of his neck. “The drink must have been an issue. It must have been. There’s little need to lie, Anthony; no one else is around. It’s just you,” he paused, leaning down, now, so his lips were right beside Tony’s ear.
“And me.”
He stepped back, then, away completely, back to the desk again, taking another scan over his written files, before seating himself.
“You would have said you were fine with it. Put on a brave face, so, perhaps, your mother wouldn’t need to see how it hurt. Obadiah always said to stay strong, didn’t he? He always told you to brush it off. To not let it get to you. You were desperate to keep it from showing. You wanted your father to see you, dealing with it, and being a good boy, like he said to. Good boys follow the rules. You recently told me that following rules wasn’t your way. So it failed.”
He leaned forward again.
“It must have failed.”
