Wooing The Trickster. Chapter 6.

[teofse]

 

Title: Wooing The Trickster.

Author: Teofse

Rating: G

Pairing: Loki/Tony

Genre: Slash. Romance.

Word Count: 2793

Warnings: None. Unbetaed.

Disclaimer: Don't own these characters. No money is being made out of this work.

Summary: “Get ready to be swept off your feet, Loki of Asgard, because my fucking heart has finally found its match, and I'm afraid it's you.”

Wooing The Trickster. Chapter 6. 

 

It was now official: Tony Stark had gone from considering sushi his third most favorite food, following closely behind greasy burgers and pepperoni pizza respectively, to despise it with a fierceness that bordered on actual hatred in twenty minutes flat. He would never, ever again, be able to look at those innocent-looking fluffy rice rolls without having flashbacks to Loki's delighted gaze as he'd focused on his plate with unusual enthusiasm for such a picky eater. The expression of absolute pleasure that invariably flitted through that pale and narrow face whenever those thin lips closed around another mouthful would probably take front stage in Tony's wanking fantasies, starting tonight, if the uncomfortable tightening of his perfectly tailored dark slacks across the crotch area was anything to go by.

'I can't believe this guy is making me feel irrationally jealous of sushi, of all things.' He thought to himself incredulously as he sat across the table from his blissed-out crush and watched the god enjoy his food with the kind of hazy, definitely-more-than-sexual longing that no one had ever managed to inspire in him before now.

“I don't think I've ever seen you eat anything so enthusiastically, Loki.”

Bright green eyes looked right at him, studying his face for a long, drawn-out second, as their owner rolled his simple enough comment round and round that clever and suspicious mind of his, attempting to find some snide second meaning hiding under words that were never meant to say anything other than exactly what they'd said.
“I don't understand what you are trying to imply, Stark.” Loki finally responded in a tone that was starting to frost over with enough unwanted distrust to set Tony's teeth on edge.

“I let my lawyers -and possibly Pepper- do all the implying stuff for me, gorgeous. But I, myself, prefer to say exactly what I mean. I'm Tony fucking Stark, dude. I have nothing to fear from anyone and that's why I can afford to say whatever the hell I feel like saying whenever it crosses my mind.”

Loki frowned and looked down towards the table, studying their half eaten meals with strained confusion.
“That doesn't make any sense. Why would you wish to remark on something as trivial as my preference for this food?”

Tony didn't much care for the hint of honest befuddlement he could read in that question and wondered, for the millionth time or so what the hell was wrong with the bunch of Asgardian assholes who had so thoroughly conditioned this practically perfect mix of gloriously skilled kick-ass sorcerer and off the charts uber hotness to believe that nothing related to him could ever matter to anyone at all.
“Your likes and dislikes are not trivial, Reindeer. I've been looking forwards to discovering each and every one of them for two years now. I may even have stalked you around the tower a time or two, just to learn what makes you tick. You are the kind of fascinating puzzle that has curious guys like me clawing each other's eyes out for the honor of being the one to figure out how every intriguing little piece fits together to make such gorgeous whole.”

His Alien-wizard's snow-white features paled even further and those eyes: so green, so wary, pinned him to the spot with wounded incomprehension.
“Now I know you're lying to me, Stark. No one has ever fought another for my attention, let alone went to the trouble involved in clawing out actual eyes. What I can't understand is why you felt the need to fake a romantic interest in my person when the only thing you wanted was to jest about my lack of charms. You could have done that at any time. It's not like I'd have begrudged you the right to... relish... the truth. The Norns know everyone else does, so you would have had plenty of company.”

Tony couldn't help the annoyed growl that escaped his lips as soon as he heard those words and no one, not even the Hulk himself, could have prevented him from shoving his chest forwards until the table pressed so painfully against the skin of his pecs that he could feel every ridge of the wooden frame digging deep groves in his flesh. His right hand shot across the pristine tablecloth, navigating around plates and cups with ease to grab the god's elegant fingers in a fiercely possessive gesture.
“I may have teased you a bit here and there about plenty of things, but I have never lied to you, Reindeer. I have never, ever, found a single thing wrong with your sky-high sex-appeal, and I'm gonna build a specially designed torture chamber just to teach proper manners to all the douche-bags out there who have been blind enough to miss the fact that you are the hottest thing to walk the universe since bloody Casanova.
“I'll make every goddamned asshole who ever 'relished' your totally fictional 'lack of charms' sob for my mercy and I still won't give it until they eat their own words twice over. I swear on your name that I will do it, Loki. And I don't even give a fucking shit about the possibility that 99.78% of those bastards will turn out to be freaks of the Northern-God-brute variety.”

Loki gaped like a fish out of the water. His long, artistic digits twitched in Tony's hold as he lowered those gorgeously expressive eyes to look down at their entwined hands with the kind of overwhelmed vulnerability that usually preceded his annoyingly predictable episodes of self-protective retreat.
“Thank you for such impassioned defense of my supposed charms, Anthony, but I...”

“I'll rather take over the conversation, if you're planning on spouting any more nonsense tonight, muffin. And don't even think about doing that green wispy thing of yours, OK? Pulling the vanishing act in the middle of a first date is just not on, dude. You have to suck it up like a man and put up with your bad date all the way to the bitter end. That's how this dance works here on Earth, frosty.”

“How did you even know I was planning to leave? You never gave me that chance to tell you that I...”

“You don't need to spell out everything you're thinking for me to get a pretty good idea of what you're about to do, babe. I've told you this already: I've been dutifully studying your little quirks since I decided to name my so-called heart after you. Wasn't that the uncomfortable admission that drove us down this unexpected glitch in my Give-Sexy-Long-Legs-The-Most-Awesome-First-Date-Of-His-Life foolproof plan?”

Loki blinked for a second or two, clearly startled, before laughing the most charmingly delighted laugh the engineer had ever heard and shooting such heart-stopping, flirty look from underneath thick dark lashes at Tony that the billionaire's breath hitched and his slacks-related crotch problem worsened to unbearable levels of pant-strangulation in the space between one slow, unconsciously coy blink and the next.
“So you've taken the time to... study... me. That sounds flattering, Anthony. What have you learned apart from my preference for sushi then? It should be enlightening to hear what sort of information you've been most interested in seeking, should it not?”

Tony had to bite his tongue to stop himself from moaning like a desperate nymphomaniac on the receiving end of that bloody enthralling sexy purr that had absolutely no trouble messing with his pulse and causing all kinds of really personal, anatomically-Tony-Stark-related things to stand on end and beg for more of that titillatingly playful, breathy, come-hither tone.
“If you plan to laugh at me for trying everything I could to get to know you better, let me tell you right now that it isn't going to work. I'm not ashamed of liking you, Loki. I'm not ashamed of you.”

Tony would have kicked his own ass until it bled when all that entrancing playfulness abandoned his date's features as swiftly as it had arrived. 'Way to kill the mood, hotshot!' he thought to himself disparagingly and fidgeted uncomfortably in his chair while his companion stared at him with those uncomfortably expressive green eyes that he had the hunch were never meant to look either this hurt or this confused. Particularly not right after hearing such perfectly innocuous comment.

Something dark and snarly and utterly furious wriggled left and right in Tony's gut as the moment hung and one second stretched into another until a full minute of unbearably suffocating silence had taken over their table. He stared at the half eaten sushi with growing dismay and the undeniable fact that their date had just taken a turn for the worse settled in his mind like a painful little thorn he couldn't shake. He'd said the worst possible thing at the worse possible moment and, although he'd done exactly that in similar circumstances to so many people already that he'd been kind of waiting for the inevitable open-mouth-insert-foot moment to happen, the truth was that he hadn't been expecting it to be triggered by such harmless little comment. He hadn't seen his faux pas coming. Not by an extra-long mile.

Loki should have never, ever, looked so utterly shocked upon receiving the very same kind of reassurance that anyone who had a dotting big brother and had supposedly been raised as the sheltered baby boy of a loving royal family should have heard at least a hundred times a day for the last thousand years or so. Now the fact that the amazingly resilient God of Mischief seemed to be crumbling in the middle of a 'midgardian' sushi bar after hearing someone tell him they were not ashamed of him was making Tony itch to go Thor-hunting as soon as he cleaned up this mess. He'd been nursing the not so pleasant suspicion that things hadn't been as cut and dried as they'd been told when it came to the small 'mental breakdown' that had led to Loki's attempt to conquer New York for some time, and this—whatever the hell it was that was happening right now in his crush's messed up head, did nothing but confirm each and every one of those suspicions in the most unpleasant way possible.

“I swear I'm gonna build you that boat, peaches. I'll find a way to give you the means to get off whatever crazy ride your dad's trying to force you into, so that you -and only you- can get to choose who the fuck gets on your deck. They'll have to follow your rules then, if they want to stay around. They'll all have to find the dammed balls to apologize for all the shit they've done to you instead of blaming you for everything, and sweeping their own mistakes under whatever passes for a heavenly carpet up there, in Asgard.”

Loki chuckled weakly at that. His eyes swept self-consciously upwards and he made the effort to smile, even though there wasn't any mirth whatsoever lighting his beautiful eyes with the same fire they had shown less than a minute ago.
“We don't have carpets in Asgard. There is nothing but elegant, gleaming floors for as long as the eye can see in the eternal city of gold.”

“Must be great for sock sliding.”

The startled laughter that followed his irreverent quip was a tad less trying-too-hard than his crush's previous attempt and Tony allowed his rigidly held shoulders to relax a little bit. He picked up his chopsticks, loaded them with a random sushi roll and brought the food to his lips as casually as he could manage while Loki's eyes were still focused on him, grimly determined to remind his still clearly melancholic Reindeer of the small but glorious pleasures of life that were so very patiently waiting for the moment when he finally decided to sit up and notice their existence.

“I saw agent Barton doing that once, in your tower. It looked like... fun.”

“You're trying to tell me you've never sock slid?”

“Socks are a midgardian invention. We line our winter boots with heavy fur to preserve heat and wear them all the time.”

“That's... boring.”

“On the contrary. It's simply practical.”

“Yeah. What I said: boring.”

Loki finally chuckled. “You are impossible.” He whispered and shook his head from side to side in a playful gesture of surrender even as his fingers curled around his own chopsticks, allowing him to place a cheerfully decorated rice roll in his mouth in the next second.

Tony watched him close his eyes in simple enjoyment and the moment somehow took on a weight, a magic, of its own. A meaning that was far beyond their current actions and words and jumbled feelings. Loki was happy right now. Loki was here, with him. This instant was exactly what he wanted. What he'd always longed for. What he'd craved like a drug for as long as he could remember. And he suddenly realized that all he needed to be happy was to find a way of hoarding a million moments like this one. He needed to help Loki laugh like this, smile like this, close his eyes in obvious pleasure exactly like he was doing right now and let the rest of the world just... hang.
“Gosh! You make me want to be sushi so badly that if I could figure out a way to make myself round and short and... fishy... I'd do it in a jiffy, just to get inside that gorgeous mouth of yours, blueberry.”

The Reindeer chocked on his food, turned an adorable shade of beet-red and then proceeded to cough delicately into his napkin in a pretty useless maneuver to cover up his flustered reaction. Tony leaned back and enjoyed the show, going as far as to smirk gleefully when his usually cool mega-master of the spoken word couldn't come up with anything stronger than a pretty annoyed glare and a beautifully strangled:
“You must behave, Anthony!”

“Tell you what: I promise to behave if you agree to come out on another date with me, hot stuff.”

“Are you seriously attempting to blackmail Asgard's very own Liesmith, Tony Stark?” Loki challenged him and those green eyes danced with such unfettered playfulness that they took his breath away. He'd never seen his crush look quite so mischievous. He'd never seen Loki have... fun.

“That depends on whether you think it could work. Otherwise I'll claim I'm just 'bargaining' for some more of your free time.”

“Hmmm. And what will I get out of this... bargaining... of yours? My free time is precious to me, Anthony.”

Tony thought about it for a second. Frantically weighing all his well rehearsed options in the back of his mind and discarding all of them in the face of the thought he'd been contemplating just a moment before: Fun. He wanted Loki to have fun...
“What about sock sliding?” He offered on impulse and would have hired himself a henchman just to get his own tongue chopped off if he hadn't been way too busy panicking as soon as Loki started to frown.

“Sock sliding? That sounds...”

“Dumb. It sounds plain and simply dumb, I know. I promise I can do better, Loki. Please I—I wasn't taking the piss or anything, I swear. I was just... I wanted you to have fun.”

“Fun.” Loki repeated that one word as if he'd never heard it before and that was just bloody strange, since he was the God of Mischief and all that jazz. Tony had never doubted the fact that the Reindeer knew how to enjoy himself, but now he wondered if his past joys had come at the cost of his own solitude. Was it possible that no one had ever offered to have fun with this gorgeous, playful creature? Was it possible that his curiosity had been systematically squashed for a thousand fucking years? That his mischievous behavior had been shunned? That he'd been labeled as 'troublesome' simply for being a tad impish in a kingdom filled up to the rafters with nutters who would rather go around hunting dinosaur-like beasts for shits and giggles and bathing themselves in their blood?

“Loki, I...” Tony's words died in his throat as he looked into those eyes and saw nothing short of pure, overwhelmed gratitude. His heart grew heavy and constricted to the point of actual pain in the brief instant it took his beautiful Asgardian prince to swallow past the huge lump trying its best to keep him silent and whisper determinedly out loud:

“Yes. I will go on a second date with you. I want to go sock sliding. I—I... It'd be my honor to have fun with you, Anthony.”

TBC...

( Chapter 7 )

( Chapter 5 )