fossilised | it's a new plot!

“No... Wait.” Tony fought with the blankets to look down st his arm. The tattoo was still there and he touched it to make sure that this was real and he was really him. He hadn’t been sure with Bucky wearing that ridiculous sweatshirt, pale, muscular legs spread out from beneath. The sudden urge he had to see where those legs went had him squeezing his eyes shut and nodding his head. “Yeah. Yeah I am. Come back and sit down. I have so much to tell you.”

The telling took the better part of an hour, with Tony shooting off to recount this half seen memory of a different life to another.

“There’s a cabin, where it all connects, and I thought Loki was there opening doors but he’s not. It’s me. Some other version of me. And it explains my weird attraction to Banner’s chest hair—. Oh god, those versions of me were so weird. “And I saw a lot of versions of you too. Mostly happy. Once a sort of warrior slave which.. okay that’s probably usual. Never mind. That life was really... wow. I’ve just had so much sex.”

For some reason, that made him laugh.

Bucky would be lying if he said that he believed Tony right away and he wasn't just worried that this was an extension of hallucinations into some sort of psychosis. How was he supposed to tell if this was mental illness or a genuine otherworldly ability? Luckily, sharp eyes caught the new addition to Tony's body during all the tales, which pretty much guaranteed this to be real.

Which was scary. Very scary.

"So-- what exactly does this mean? You can predict the future now, or just that you can see what's happened in other lives that aren't actually ours?"

He wasn't sure that he liked the idea of other hims out there, especially not if they were slaves. He had dealt with being a slave long enough, thanks.

“I’m supposed to practice. Evidently I can use knowledge from other realities to shape this one. Or I can actually find answers. Not like before when I was a kid and sometimes the whispers would tell me secrets. I can use them. Find them all out on my own, maybe? James, I don’t know. They’re useful for Thanos, probably but the most important thing is that they can stop. That’s all I’ve wanted for forty years.”

No more headaches. No more hallucinations showing him realities that couldn’t be, confusing him, making him feel things he hadn’t before.

Tony winced a little at the last part of his excitement and lifted his knuckles to Bucky’s’ cheek.

“From what I’ve seen, you and me... we don’t happen. You’re...” He chewed at the inside of his lower lip for a moment before he slipped a hand from cheek to the metal fingers that rested on the bed. “But I want us to happen this time. I’m going to fight for us. This is precious to me.”

It was probably the first time Tony had been selfish to Bucky’s face about the matter.

While Tony might be excited about the direction that his powers had suddenly taken, Bucky could see things getting harder. Headaches and a craving for alcohol to stop the whispers would probably be replaced with distrust from people around them, and feeling even more isolated because of what he could do. He'd need protecting even more, and that was where Bucky came in.

"We don't happen wherever there is, there isn't here, and they aren't us. We've already happened, so screw them."

He leaned in and pressed a sudden, impulsive, passionate kiss to Tony's lips. He wanted to fight for it as well, fight for the man who made him feel human and could stop him panicking when even Steve set him off.

That was unexpected enough to cause Tony to lose the ability to breathe for a moment. He almost whined at Bucky’s mouth, which was hardly dignified and he was much too old to be turned on so completely by a kiss, certainly, though his eyes closed and he gave back as good as he got.

Tony was mindful of force when it came to Bucky and so where he might normally kneel and bear the other back onto the mattress, Tony lightly tugged Bucky over him instead. He could yield when it came to someone like this man, who had been protecting him for years now. There might have been a small gap in the center, but Bucky needed that gap to find himself.

And now they could find themselves.

And Steve Rogers didn’t always have to win. Petty, thinking that now as his hand lightly stroked the back of Bucky’s neck as they made out like teenagers. But Tony couldn’t change his stripes.

There were so many factions of Bucky always warring for upper place. There was the man he had been before all this happened - confident, flirty, happy, loyal. There was the Soldier - disciplined, blank, ruthless. There was the tortured prisoner of war - traumatised, frightened, wary. There were all of these things and more, but slowly they were gelling into a cohesive being again.

Right now the old Bucky was on top, fuelled by the desperation of the broken Bucky not to lose someone important to him. The kiss deepened as he lay on top of him, the cold digits of his metal hand sliding up Tony's thigh slowly. His voice was husky when he broke away, teasing look in his eye.

"You think I haven't seen how you look at this arm? You think I don't know that you're imagining how it feels."

“I like both of your arms,” Tony said, trying not to sound as wary as he felt. Whichever version of Bucky was currently dominating was one of the better Buckys (though Tony loved them all). He didn’t want to offend or chase him away again. His brief evening with Loki had set fire to certain parts of his body and Tony couldn’t help the amorous purr that slipped from between his lips as he groaned up towards those teasing fingers. “But I do have an engineering degree and what good is that if I don’t use to carry along sexual fantasies?”

No. Tony had never built a sex robot. Not exactly. But when you’re seventeen and smarter than all of your fellow students and teachers, you aren’t invited to many parties and you don’t have a whole lot of opportunity to meet people that will give you handjobs. So you get creative.

He lifted his shoulders off of the bed to lightly press kisses up Bucky’s throat.

“But all right. You caught me. Maybe I was... a little... wondering what... that might feel like...”.

Bucky knew that if he overthought this then he would end up retreating again, and maybe even panicking. It helped, oddly, that Tony was a brunet. Most of his handlers had been blond, most of the people who had dominion over him had been chosen because of their resemblance to Steve, tapping into that subconscious loyalty to make him more malleable and easier to control.

So instead of giving himself time to think, he pushed his left hand underneath the pants Tony had on and wrapped cool metal fingers around him carefully. The hand was odd, in that it was clearly mechanical in nature, but it moved with a pressure and fluidity that even the most sophisticated of robots couldn't possibly achieve.

This had a tender edge to it, but Bucky was going for speed and passion rather than sweetness and affection. He wanted to show Tony how much he cared, but he also needed it to not last too long so his brain caught up with what he was doing.

Though the word that left Tony’s mouth was probably ‘James,’ he hadn’t been expecting a touch like this, even if they had been joking about it, and so he needed a moment for his brain to catch up with his mouth.

There would be a lot of kissing while Tont enjoyed the exacting precision of a hand he used to trace when he was little and try to break into when he was older. He wrapped well muscled, toned arms around Bucky’s neck and breathed against his cheek in rapid, quick bursts.

Oddly, Tony wasn’t a talker in bed. He was present, completely focused, but he didn’t feel the need to run at the mouth with dirty talk. And when he came? It was mid-kiss, whimpering and then grinning against Bucky’s lips.

Feeling Tony orgasm was-- different to any other time he had felt someone orgasm. Those times he had felt powerless and used, like a tool that had served its purpose; but here he felt wanted, cared about, and in control. He had guided this whole process, and it made such a difference to what he had suffered through before.

He found himself grinning as if he were the one in afterglow as he slid down to lay his head on Tony's chest and listen to his heart jackhammering in his chest.

"...consider that me fighting for us."

Tony lightly laid a hand on the back of Bucky’s neck and closed his eyes, stretching his fully body like a cat as he settled the other man against him. “Shots fired. Warning read loud and clear,” he murmured. “FRIDAY, we’re gonna have breakfast in bed today. And lunch in bed. And dinner-- Order from the usual places and have DUM-E bring the food up.”

Not everyone was lucky enough to spend the day in bed, however, because there was still a lot of mess to clean up from the Earth’s second alien invasion in the last decade. Thor left the ship to assist his compatriots to prepare for Thanos days before, leaving Valkyrie in charge, and was still out when Iron Man came knocking on the door, so to speak. He was here to see Loki, which he wasn’t particularly fond of himself for deciding to do, in all honesty, but what he’d felt when he met the other in his journey more or less demanded he come out here.

And that left Bucky to do whatever he wished. Tony didn’t encourage him to see Steve Rogers, but he couldn’t and wouldn’t stop him if he wanted to do so.

He was just hopeful that Bucky was still willing to fight for them both when he returned.

Loki had spent much of the past few days trying to figure out his place in things again. He was accepted again as worth something by the Asgardians, but what role did he have there? Asgard was no more, despite the people who kept saying that Asgard was a people and not a place, the shining realm completely eradicated by Sutur's fire.

What, then, was their place? They were not a kingdom, and Thor was king of hardly anything. Were they to become annexed on Midgard, no longer sovereigns of their own realm? Intolerable. But where else would he go? Who else could he be? He was not Aesir in truth, but he knew less than nothing about the Jotun side to himself, so he could hardly seek shelter in Jotunheim. There would be no shelter, anyway, not when Thanos properly arrived.

He had no real wish to speak to any of the mortals, but one of the surviving Einherjar showed the man into his chambers anyway, to a slightly unimpressed look.

"You wished to speak with me?"

Tony was unimpressed, or at least he looked that way. He was singularly annoyed by Loki’s presence anywhere on his planet after what he had done, but people had been forgiven for more if they were truly helpful and Tony himself knew that first hand. This Loki was nothing at all like the polished, refined woman he had met the night before and that annoyed him too.

He paused for a moment, fingers just under the lump on his arm, and tried to call up some of the whispers to give him a little insight. They were being stubborn, however, and Tony didn’t push it this time around. He dropped both arms to his side.

“Actually, I came here to compare you to someone else. You’re probably used to that. I don’t wish to do anything with you, but I don’t have a choice.” He stepped into the room and closed the door the old fashioned way. So weird. He expected these to have sliding doors, not hinged ones. Some space ships just didn’t compute. “I met a prettier version of you. She helped me with a thing. I helped her with a thing. Now I think we can help each other.”

"Is that so?"

Loki's gaze sharpened on Stark with a weighing sort of interest. He didn't much care for the mortals at all, even with how fond Thor was of them, but his mother's words rang in his mind. There was someone who he had a suppsoed bond to, who he should seek out and befriend, and it would be small minded and short sighted to completely rule out the mortals.

If this one had met another version of himself, then perhaps this was the person he was meant to find. Or perhaps this was just a coincidence.

"So-- in what way do you believe we could help one another?"

“Actually, I just need you to help me. You can get brownie points.” One night, a few hours worth of work, was not going to help him out here. Tony had absolutely no intention of letting his gift go, but he didn’t really have time to spend weeks and weeks locked in constant meditation. As usual, he wanted to and thought he could actually find a short cut.

Loki might not be old enough to really understand, but he felt basically the same way that the other version of him did. They didn’t have the same immediate connection, but he could feel countless connections between countless other versions of themselves and that was good enough for him.

“I need you to help me learn to guide my way through all of my lifetimes, through all of the branches of Yggdrasil that I’ve sat on. Some of those branches probably have versions of me that helped to defeat Thanos and I need to find them. That work for you?”

It was not a task that was out of the realms of possibility for him to be able to accomplish, but it was still an unusual request. Especially for one such as a human, when most humans didn't have aught but the scarcest connection to the seidr of Yggdrasil to call on.

"Tell me for what reason I should help you, rather than simply find a branch of my own that connects to a defeat of Thanos?"

He had not that capability, he was not a Seer as his mother had been, but he also sincerely truly doubted that this mortal could have the same gifts as Frigga either.

Tony rolled his eyes. He’d just told this crazy loon that he’d met another version of him who helped him work on whatever weird gift he was forcefully given a few years after he was born. If it was as simple as Loki doing this him or herself, either would have. “Yeah, so I already know you can’t,” Tony complained, helping himself to whatever strange fruit was hanging out in the bowl on one of the tables next to the apples. He just really hoped that it didn’t taste like melon. He was not a fan.

Thumb breaking through the peel, Tony watched Loki, curious to see if he would lose his charm as he had at the Tower all those years ago, when he had gone from amused to furious in the span of a second.

“We need to work together. Well. Need. We don’t, but it would be easier. Pretty sure you want to meet up again with Thanos even less than we want to. Did some bad things to you right? And don’t ask how I know. You know how I know.” He stuck some of the purple fleshed fruit in his mouth and nodded in appreciation. It tasted like chocolate. Very nice.

That first insult rolled off his skin, he wasn't quite the unbalanced and frightened creature he had been when he first invaded, but the second comments did spark his rage anew. It was, as much of his anger was, born from fear and from an unwillingness to display any of that fear as vulnerability.

"You know not of what you speak."

The words were hissed out, as if by a venomous serpent, as he grabbed Stark by the throat and pinned him to the wall. There was something utterly petrified in his eyes, barely hidden beneath the contempt he kept around himself like armour.

"Have a care to what you allow to fall from your tongue lest you lose it; I am the God of Lies, little mortal, and I do not tolerate others stealing my craft."

Tony immediately missed the woman. He was childish enough not to want to deal with any of the crap Loki was throwing his way. He read the anger with a certain glee, mostly because he doubted he could be so easily thrown from a window this time, and because the guy needed to learn from humility for kill thousands. Instead, Loki only demonstrated further contempt.

“I’m an atheist,” he said, almost good-naturedly, taking another bite of the delicious fruit. “So I don’t care what you’re god of at all. But you might be onto something. You’re lying about yourself. We’ve got this weird thing, me and you. It lets me see you more easily. I’ve been having a whole choir of voices in my head whispering about you since you showed up and… Grow up a little, will you? I’m trying to help. If you don’t want to help me, that’s on you. I can do it without you but you’d make the going a lot faster.”

He put the half eaten fruit back in the bowl as if it was a sign that he was about to leave.

He would struggle to leave with Loki's hand around his throat and his back pinned to the wall, ever more furious from the disrespect being shown to him. He wanted to pluck out those Seer's eyes and tear out the tongue that told terrible truths so casually.

"If you truly wished my help, then you would have done well to not make an enemy of me with your words."

He could not allow it to get back to any of the Aesir who survived, especially not Thor, what had happened to him at Thanos' hands. He would rather they think that Midgard and his madness had come entirely from his own pride, rather than they know that he had been tortured and broken so easily.

Well yes. Definitely a struggle not only to leave but to breathe as well. Whatever Tony thought he’d felt for the other Loki was completely and utterly gone now as he grabbed at this one’s hands and wrists. Why did people like to strangle him? This was his third Asgardian strangle hold and he honestly wasn’t pleased by it at all. Tony stood on his toes, anger in his eyes.

“I don’t want your help. I think you’re still on the crazy train and I don’t care what Thor says about you. You can’t be trusted.” Maybe he shouldn’t be in the middle of being choked to go spouting any of this but he can’t help himself.

Tony was never good at self perseveration and it showed.

"Nor can you."

Loki did not know this man and certainly didn't trust him to keep silent as to things he had seen that he really shouldn't have seen. He had little choice but to deal with him in some way. The cleanest way would just be to kill him, but what good would that do him, when numerous witnesses would be able to say that the last place he had been seen was here.

Lucky for him, he had something that could augment his powers, an infinity stone of his own. He reached for it through the Void and brought it forth, a glowing cube of blue energy, and gathered his own magic.

"You will speak nothing of the visions you have seen that concern me, you will speak no word that I would not wish kept secret. Your will to mine."

This just didn’t seem fair. The reactor has protected him from having his heart touched the last time that Loki tried magic on him, but without it, and being just a nearly fifty year old wriggling mortal from the hook of Loki’s hand around his neck, there wasn’t much for him to do but find himself enchanted.

And this would be a problem. Much of the help that could come for Thanos had literally everything to do with Loki.

Light from the tesseract rose like icy snakes from the cube and floated into Tony’s nose and down his throat. All he’d done was come to meet some guy who was supposed to be one of the most important people in his life. But, true to his own life, that guy was a dick.

It was the best solution that Loki could think of. This would prevent him from going and informing Thor such inconvenient truths, such as what had happened to Loki at the hands of Thanos and the Chitauri before he used his silver tongue to save them. It would stop him from revealing that Loki had the Tesseract, thought to be destroyed with the rest of Odin's vaults when Asgard fell to Sutur.

He allowed the glowing blue cube to sink back into the pocket of the Void he kept it in, and then released the mortal from his grasp to take a step back.

"You would do well to leave my presence now, mortal, we have little else to discuss."

It wasn’t often that Tony was left so frustrated and impotent and he planned on getting Loki back the best way he knew how at the moment. He wasn’t going to be able to tell anyone about this, but he wouldn’t have to if he dug up enough dirt and left evidence everywhere. The slight hum of voices, of new and interesting strings to follow, was actually a comfort as he left the ship and blasted back to where James waited.

“I would love to tell what what happened, but I can’t,” Tony muttered the moment he saw Bucky, mostly to stop the man from reading into his anger. “I literally can’t, not figuratively. And I can’t tell you why either.” Loki was smart….but also not all that smart.

He tended to react with too much pride, without enough thought, and what ought to have been a way to bridge a gap between his own knowledge and Loki’s skill was turning into a big old childish mess. They ought to have been working on a solution to Thanos, and now, instead, all Tony could think about was getting to Loki.

“I’m going to have to work on this for awhile,” he said, moving a hand to the small of Bucky’s back as they walked. “Can you rouse me in a day and make me eat something? And if Rogers calls, tell him I’m busy and put him on hold.”

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