Forum Block
Stacked With: MC4A (NC; SIN; StL; ToS; BAON; RoB; AV; ER; SF; Star; Shipping War; HoSE; FR; SN; T3; War); Hogwarts
Fandom: MCU
Individual Challenges: Short Jog; Click Bait It (Y); Yellow Ribbon (Y); Yellow Ribbon Redux; SHIELD MC; Neurodivergent; Quiet Time; True Colours; Flags & Ribbons [x2]; Misunderstood (Y); Marvelous Cinema; The First Phase; Letter of the Day; Old Shoes; Ways to the Heart; Time Gaps (Y); Shipmas; Two Cakes! (Y); Themes & Things A (Y); Themes & Things B (Y); Chilled Iron Bribery (Y)
Representations: Tony Stark/Loki; Soulmates; Odin's & Howard's A+ Parenting; Avengers
Bonus Challenges: Grease Monkey; Lyre Liar; Most Human Bean; Muck & Slime; Rock of Ages; Abandoned Ship; Head of Perseus; In the Trench; Chorus (Creature Feature; Eternal Boredom; Larger than Life; Unicorn; Machismo; Peddling Pots; Wabi Sabi); Second Verse (Lovely Coconuts; Brooms Only; Middle Name; Spinning Plates; Unwanted Advice); Demo (Fruit Fly); Demo (Some Beach)
Tertiary Bonus Challenges: HoSE (Sanctuary); T3 (Thimble)
Word count: 1,258

Tony flew down to hover over the square full of kneeling people and aimed his weapons at the green-clad man with a golden-horned helmet on his head. The beats of AC/DC echoed around the square from his speakers and he couldn't help but bop his head around to the music slightly. Then he found himself pulled forward by an unseen force and slamming into the guy he had been trying to apprehend who had also apparently been pulled towards him.

In a moment, Tony's mind raced through all the things that could possibly have caused this. By the look on the guy's face, he hadn't been expecting this so he wasn't the cause. His suit was functioning fine according to JARVIS, so it wasn't that. No one else had been affected so it was localised. And that was when he realised what had happened and he groaned out loud.

Soulmates. He was bloody soulmates with tall, dark, and murderous. He made his faceplate lift up and flicked one of the horns on his newly-discovered soulmate's head for something to do and said, "So I guess we're stuck together. A lot of people have tried to say they're bonded to me so well done on being bonded to Tony Stark, I suppose."

This close to him, Tony could see the man's eyes flickering between a deep green and an electric blue. He frowned as he watched the colour changes, wondering what could be causing the phenomenon and if it was just something alien eyes did. The eyes finally settled on mostly green with a ring of blue surrounding the green.

"You're bonded to a monster. Congratulations go to you."

"Nothing a bit of hacking and cuddles can't solve. Who are you anyway? I only got the basics."

"Loki, son of—" he cut off before saying again, "Loki. I am Loki."

"Nice to meet you, Loki, think you could lay off the making everyone kneel in front of you shtick and come to the super-secret base you would have gone to had we captured and this whole thing hadn't happened?" He waved a hand at them and then the quinjet hovering nearby.

Loki's lip quirked a tiny bit and Tony counted that as a win because, hey, if the bad guy is amused, it means he's less likely to go on a killing spree despite the presence of a soulmate against that stuck to him.

"Lead the way."

Fury had scowled when he saw the situation Tony and Loki had found themselves and directed them both into the glass cage that he had on hand—ostensibly for the Hulk. He also tried interrogating Loki but Loki wasn't very inclined to talk and he eventually left (annoyed that his threat to drop the cage out of the helicarrier and down to the earth far below did nothing due to Tony's presence in the cage).

Tony pulled out a bag of blueberries from the dedicated compartment of the Iron Man suit and started snacking. He and Loki were sitting on opposite sides of the cage with their feet stuck together. Loki was staring after Fury and smirking slightly as Tony snacked.

Pretty quickly, Tony got bored and threw a blueberry at the Asgardian. Loki's hand flashed through the air to snatch it and he looked it at it suspiciously. Tony rolled his eyes and said, "It's a gift."

"Uh-huh. Or a curse," Loki responded, still scrutinising the blueberry.

"I don't have magical powers, Horns. Just eat the blueberry."

Loki did so. Tony threw him another one to eat and they continued in that fashion until Tony's bag of blueberries ran out. He had more stuffed away but he figured one bag was enough for now. He should probably get to know more about the person the Fates had decided he suited—and possibly try and get some info about Loki's dastardly plan to take over the Earth while he was at it.

"Family troubles?" he asked, very subtly. He had seen the way Loki interacted with his brother—the other Asgardian, Thor—and it hadn't been even slightly close to what he assumed brotherly love was like.

Loki froze. Quite literally froze, Tony was astonished to see. Ice was forming on the other man's body and Tony found himself wondering if all Asgardians could turn their skin blue and create ice. Though, considering Thor had his lightning and thunder shtick, it was probably an individualised thing. Thor had storms; Loki had ice.

"You could say that," Loki eventually said, a few moments after the ice had melted and his skin lost its blue colour.

"I had a rubbish father," Tony offered when Loki said no more.

Loki snorted. "I doubt he could have been worse than mine."

"You wanna bet?"

"My father barely paid any attention to me," Loki said in way of answer.

Tony shrugged. "Neither did mine, I wasn't as important as work."

"Did yours ever punish you for doing things he thought were feminine?" Loki countered.

"When he was around, sure. I remember a time I had long hair and braided it. When he noticed it, he cut it off right away. I was in the care of the butler most of the time because he didn't have time for me."

"My father assigned no one to be my caretaker. I had to either follow Thor around and make my presence known to be cared for or take care of myself."

"That sucks," Tony admitted. "At least I had Ana and Jarvis, they were like my parents even though they weren't."

"My parents aren't my parents." Loki looked like he hadn't meant to say that. Tony rose an eyebrow but stayed quiet, letting him decide if he wanted to continue; eventually, he spoke again. "I discovered I was adopted only recently and that my whole life has been a lie. I am the monster that Asgardians tell their children about. Odin stole me when I was a baby and claimed I was his."

"So that's what you meant when you said I was bonded to a monster." Tony dug into another blueberry compartment and pulled out two bags. He tossed one to Loki—the man deserved a whole bag of blueberries.

Loki caught the bag and stared down at it as though wondering why it was there. "It's what I am. I may look Asgardian, but I'm a Frost Giant."

"Don't suppose that means you could cool down this cage? Heat and me aren't the best of friends since I was kidnapped and held in the desert. I'll give you more blueberries if you can."

"Bribing me with berries, are you?" Loki asked even as the temperature noticeably cooled down and Tony relaxed muscles he hadn't realised were tense.

Tony grinned at Loki and tossed him another bag of blueberries from his stash. "If it works, it works."

He only had one bag of blueberries left by the time Loki's men arrived at the helicarrier to carry out his plan. Loki looked conflicted when the explosion went off. Tony could see his eyes flickering again, the blue encroaching further into the green.

Tony held up the remaining bag of blueberries and said, "Last one."

He grinned when Loki gave a long-suffering sigh—already Loki knew that Tony was an annoying but lovable pest to those he liked after only a few hours of being stuck together—and held out his hand to catch the bag, green overtaking the blue in his eyes once more as he did so.