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Loki had been stuck inside a time loop for a year now. He had tried everything he could think of, had considered sheer endless possibilities, but had come not even an inch closer to figuring out why, or how he had ended up in this situation.
It was the same day every day. He would wake up in his bed with a headache (he needed to drink a glass of water within the next 20 minutes or it would last almost the entire day), spend the next 24 hours as he would like and then, exactly on the 86400 th second, the day would repeat. Loki had spent an entire loop counting, just to make sure.
He had talked to countless people about it by now. Almost everyone would believe his story by the third try, and those who didn’t were of no use to him anyways. They had presented theories, ideas and their own understanding of time and at first Loki had been eager, hopeful with every new glimpse of a solution presenting itself to him. But it had never worked out, and after a year, he decided to venture further.
For the next 5 years Loki travelled further than he ever had before, talked to races he had no knowledge of existing prior and learned of energies he had never heard of. But there was only so far a day’s travel could take him and he soon realized that even if there was an answer to his situation somewhere hidden in the cosmos, the 24 hours were not going to be enough to reach it.
For the next 5 years Loki did nothing but study magic. He hoped that if he mastered every spell and could wield every cosmic power, he would be able to find an answer in them. But it, once again, was of no use.
He had become the strongest sorcerer in the universe, he could bend armies to his will and win fights against the strongest of beings. And yet the flow of time still eluded him.
The universe, with its infinite possibilities, had become finite in the face of those 24 hours. No matter how much Loki grew, how much he learned and progressed, the universe would never move along with him.
After 15 years Loki had done everything he could have ever thought of. He had killed everyone he knew, he had made peace with everyone he had ever tried to kill, he had tried every dish, he had slept with countless people, he had been kind, he had been cruel, but all of it had slowly started to lose its meaning. The past had ceased to exist and without any consequence to his actions, they seemed as pointless as the headache that still greeted him every single morning.
After 20 years Loki tried killing himself for the first time. He had already died numerous times during his time of chaos and adventure, when the thrill of experiencing something new was still able to send a rush of excitement through his body. Every time he had died, he had woken up to the new loop, no prior injuries or marks to be found. Well, other than those left behind on his mind, but Loki gladly ignored those.
Despite that knowledge, his stomach was still twisting as he looked at the knife he was about to shove into his throat. Questions started to race through his head. What if it was the way out? What if the loop simply started anew? What if he would truly die?
Would that be so bad?
He shoved the knife into his throat, pain blossoming from the cool metal entering his skin. He choked on the blood that immediately filled his mouth and realized that he should have probably thought about how quickly he was going to die using this method. The idea of slowly drowning in his own blood wasn’t one he was very keen on. He quickly pulled the knife out of his throat and rammed it into his heart instead. Pain rocked through his body and a loud ringing tone took over his ears as his vision went dark.
And then Loki died…
…for the day.
For the next 5 years, Loki was numb. There was no point in talking to people, even if they presented an interesting breath of fresh air, no relationship could ever last longer than a day. There was no time for emotions to grow, no time to build something up. There was no point in trying to get to know someone new and those people that had always been part of his life (His life? Could living only for a day be described as a life?), he had talked to a million times already. Literally. There were only so many ways one could arrange words to form a sentence, only so many actions and consequences stemming from them.
Nothing scared him anymore, nothing could surprise him, nothing could bring him real joy and much less could anything bring him contentment. Emotions seemed pointless, impossible to experience, when he knew how little they mattered.
But he had learned one thing. No matter how much time dampened over his sense of feeling, no matter how numb his mind, pain still stung all the same. It didn’t matter if the knife had grazed his skin ten or a million times already, the ache that flooded his body was always the same.
And that was a good thing. Whenever the dullness got too much, whenever the beating of his heart seemed to blend into nothingness, it was pain that made him remember that he was indeed, despite everything, still alive.
After those 5 years, Loki stopped counting. The past did not exist beyond his memories and sometimes he himself wasn’t sure of their validity.
The one thing that had kept his sanity in check were the anomalies. When Loki had first encountered them, his heart had started racing like it hadn’t in years, the desperation for something new making him chase after them like a madman. (Maybe he already was mad. Did the mad person know of their madness?) But he soon had come to realize that they were nothing but that. Anomalies.
Mostly they were minor things, a breeze coming by in a place Loki knew there to be no wind, a butterfly crossing his path when there shouldn’t be one, or, on rare occasions, a person crossing his path that had not been there before.
He loved anomalies.
He hated anomalies.
They put the sweet taste of disorder, of randomness on his tongue, and allowed just the slightest seed of hope to grow in him. But they never yielded any results. The person he had crossed paths with was never aware of the loop, the butterfly was always just as ordinary as any other and the breeze would fade away after a few seconds, as if never having been there at all.
He loved them, because they kept him going.
He hated them, because they kept him going.
Loki had come to accept his new reality. (Not really, but telling himself he had done so made it easier to pretend he did.) It hadn’t been easy, but he had found a rhythm that kept him going. He would live out a different life every day, and never the same twice in a row. It was also a rule that he needed to experience at least one emotion a day. It kept the numbness at bay, he found.
(And the part where he would sometimes erase his own memories of entire days, just so he could experience them anew again, also helped.)
He had lived a million lives by now.
He had gone to Svartalfheim and stared fire dragons directly into their beastly eyes, he had gone to the sea, smelled the fresh breeze and simply sat there for the entire day. He had pretended to be a human office worker, had done nothing but scan documents and rode the subway. He had slept with countless people and today, he was going to up that number by one person more. Sex, much like pain, was another one of those sensations that he found never lessened, never dampened with time and he enjoyed the grounded feeling it gave him.
His eyes trailed over to the bar counter where Tony Stark sat.
The man went to a coffee shop in the morning, sat in his workshop until noon and then got drunk in the evening. Loki had mental notes on a lot of people like that, just so he knew when to intervene if he wanted a specific scenario to play out. For example, if he met Stark in the morning, the man would be disgruntled and hostile, but if he met him in the evening it wasn’t hard to take him to bed.
(He had erased his own memory of their encounters several times already. It was a good loop, okay? The man was good at what he did. You really can’t blame Loki here; you’d do the same thing.)
“You come here often?” Loki smirked at the man as he sat down on the chair next to him.
“Only every day.”
If only the man knew how true those words were. He looked handsome, his hair tastefully styled, yet slightly tousled with his white shirt already opened up a few buttons, no doubt thanks to the empty glass in front of him.
With a flick of his hand Loki refilled the glass which earned him an impressed whistle. The man brought the glass to his lips and drank from it, his eyes never leaving Loki’s.
“Where’s your own drink?” Stark's eyes flickered over Loki’s body, leaving nothing of what he was thinking to the imagination.
“No one has bought me one yet.” Loki raised a playful eyebrow.
“Oh my,” Stark smiled, a smile filled with promises of a night ahead. “Looks like I will have the honour then.”
Stark's lips were warm and wet, moving against his with hunger, the taste of alcohol still lingering on his tongue. Loki pushed against him, caging him against the wall of the bar’s bathroom as he let his fingers roam over his warm body.
Stark drew back slightly, his breath hot where it hit Loki’s face.
“Why don’t we go somewhere a bit more private?” He murmured into Loki’s ear.
Loki grabbed his wrist and promptly teleported them to the man’s own bedroom before pushing Stark into the mattress. He hungrily bit at his neck, eliciting a heavenly moan from Stark under him as his fingers trailed under the man’s clothes to feel skin. Desire was rushing through him, lulling his senses and almost making him forget about how unreal it still was.
Stark kissed him deeply, tongues clashing and nails scraping across Loki’s scalp where the man had grabbed his hair. When he pulled back, his pupils were so blown, they made his eyes appear black.
“You wanna fuck me again?”
Again?
Loki drew back, his breath hitching.
AGAIN?
He staggered back from Stark, away from the bed and his eyes glistened with panic. (Was it panic? Loki hadn’t felt panic in so long, he wasn’t sure it was the right word.) His chest was too tight and he clutched at the pain that blossomed from it.
“What did you just say?” Loki managed to croak out. Again. Again. Again.
“I- Ah shit, I fucked this one up.” Stark slumped back into bed, not answering Loki’s question at all and instead simply looking at him with a mix of pity and something Loki couldn’t quite place. “But what was even the wrong word? I thought I had followed the script…” The man went on a ramble that was drowned out by the ringing in Loki’s ears. His breathing came out in quick breaths and there was barely any oxygen reaching his head. It couldn’t be. No, it really, really couldn’t be.
“…ruined a perfectly fine loop!” Stark smiled at Loki and gave him a short wave. “Well, see you tomorrow.”
Before Loki even knew what was happening, Stark pulled out a gun from his nightstand, aimed it at his temple and fired.
For a while Loki simply stared at the dead body in front of him, the blood tinted the bedsheets a dark red. He reached his shaking hands towards Stark but couldn’t bring himself to touch the man. His lifeless eyes stared back at him when just a moment prior they had been sparkling with something new.
The sound of the gunshot rang in Loki’s ears for a while until he finally calmed down enough to gather his thoughts.
Was Stark truly caught in the loop as well? Was today just an anomaly? One bigger and more elaborate than any other he had ever experienced?
With Stark's dead body still laying before him, he took the gun from his limp hands and shot himself twice into the head before collapsing next to the man.
“ Stark. ” Loki stormed into the cafe and grabbed the man harshly by his arms, pulling him out of his chair. “Stark, are you trapped in a time loop?”
The man laughed at him and Loki could faintly smell a hint of alcohol from him. But it was certainly not from the day before. “No, honey, Groundhog Day is just my favourite movie.”
The man was spewing nonsense and it frustrated Loki to no end. He pushed him against the wall behind him harshly, eliciting a grunt from him. Everyone in the cafe stared at them but Loki couldn’t care less.
“I am asking you. Are you stuck in a time loop?”
The man’s eyes found him before trailing around the room, the hushed whispers of the other people flooding the air. With a quick flick of his wrist Loki had silenced them, making it so they appeared hidden to the crowd of (un)real humans around them.
“ Are you? ” Loki asked again, unable to hide the desperation shining through his anger.
Stark stared deep into his eyes. “Yes.”
Loki sucked in a sharp breath. “Me too.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Loki blinked. “What did you say?”
“I don’t believe you’re stuck in my time loop.”
Loki had expected anything from the man, but not this. “Why?”
“I mean, it’s been more years than I can fucking count and now you suddenly tell me you’ve been aware all this time? After we have fucked countless times? Fuck off , yes, I’m not believing that.” There was a madness shining in the Starks' eyes and they looked a little too close to the eyes he saw in his own mirror every day. It made Loki furious.
“How do I prove to you that I am stuck like you and not like the rest.” He gestured to the people surrounding them.
“I’m thinking of four words right now.”
Loki groaned. He had used similar methods with other people countless times when he had still been trying to find a solution, when he still had hope .
“Must we do that?”
“Yep.” The man said almost cheerfully.
“Idiot, Imbecile, Ass” Loki paused shortly. “Hole.”
“Actually, fuck you.” Stark said plainly.
“I simply thought of what first came to mind.” Loki said, keeping his eyes trained at Stark.
“You sure you weren’t just thinking of yourself?”
“I am quite sure of that.”
Stark looked like he wanted to argue back but then he bit his lip.
“Café, Donut, Cat, Chair.”
“Very creative.”
“My, thank you. Let’s just hope you still know them by tomorrow, dear.”
“Oh, my dear , of course I will.” Loki smiled at the man mockingly.
Stark smiled back with much the same energy. “See you then.”
With those words he reached into his coat and images of Stark's dead body laying on his bed flooded Loki’s head as the gun came into view. He reached out his hand instinctively, putting it on top of the man’s hand.
Stark froze in his motion and looked at him with a raised eyebrow. “It’s the quickest way, is it not?”
“I suppose.” Loki said, slowly lowering his hand. After his lower points he had tried his best to avoid that method . The sweet release with so much control that you otherwise lacked was addicting and he knew what that kind of addiction could do to one. (Pain, oh pain, how much he sometimes longed for it.)
But who was he to tell Stark what to do?
The gunshot came and Loki lived out the rest of the day, thinking of nothing but Tony Stark.
“Name the four words I’m thinking of, Loki.”
Loki had sat down opposite of Stark at the table. The man was picking apart his donut nonchalantly, but Loki could still see the tension in his frame. This conversation was real, this was lasting. As much as he was excited, he was almost afraid of the weight his words suddenly held in the face of the consequences they could bring. He swallowed down a heavy lump that had lodged itself into his throat.
“Café, Donut, Cat, Chair.”
Stark's eyes widened. “You’re real.”
Loki smiled at the man with emotions he himself couldn’t even place. His heart was pounding in his chest. “Yes.”
Stark's eyes widened even more. “ You’re real. ”
And then Stark proceeded to have the breakdown Loki had two loops prior.
After that Loki spent every single one of his days with Stark. At first, they got along as well as one would expect from two former enemies but they couldn’t help but be drawn to each other.
Stark made him feel again.
Loki had forgotten just how strong and addicting those real emotions could be. Joy, Anger, Happiness, Sadness, Excitement, Frustration and Love. Stark was rain on a day with no clouds, Stark was snow in the middle of summer, Stark was a scorching sun burning even when the sky was overcast. Their relationship grew, they argued they made up, they loved, they hated and it was all Loki could have ever asked for.
And then at some point, Stark became Tony.
They were sitting together on a rooftop overlooking the city they had just wreaked havoc on. The sun was setting, tinting the sky in its warm colours.
“You know, for a while I thought this whole loop thing was some kind of punishment for me. For my past.” Tony's voice was soft and when Loki looked over at him, his gaze was cast onto the horizon. His skin was glowing golden and his eyes were painted with the reflections of the sunset. He looked beautiful.
“Do you still think so?” Loki asked after a moment.
“No.” Tony turned his head and the smile he sent Loki was the softest he had ever seen on the man. “Not anymore."
“Why?”
“Because it can’t be a punishment when you are here with me.” With those words Tony leaned forward and kissed him.
Over time they got to know each other as well as they knew themselves. They knew every pore of the other's body; they knew every bit of detail that had happened in their lives. And yet, it never got boring. Loki never got tired of Tony. How could he?
Tony made his heart beat again, and even if it were only them for eternity, at least they had each other.
“Want a donut?” Tony gestured to the box in front of him as Loki walked to his usual table in the café.
Loki leaned over the table to plant a quick kiss on his lips. He then picked out a chocolate donut and slowly went about eating it.
“Why do you always insist on starting the day here in the café?” Loki asked, picking off another piece of the donut.
“Said the one sleeping in every day until 10 am.” Tony shot him an accusatory look. Loki always woke up later than Tony did, no matter what he tried, so by the time he made it to earth, Tony was already awake and waiting for him. “Also, I just kind of like the routine.”
“Yes, because we don’t have enough of that already.”
That earned him a chuckle from Tony.
“The day you show up here before 10 am will be the day I will forego my morning donut.” Tony stretched out his hand across the table. “Deal?”
(That could never happen.)
Loki took his hand and planted a kiss onto it. “Deal.”
Tony scrunched his nose, but his eyes were soft with fondness. “You’re so cheesy.”
“Only for you, darling.” Loki shot him a wink.
Tony snorted in amusement, the gaze of his eyes fixed on their intertwined hands. “For the rest of time, right?”
“ For the rest of time .” Loki breathed out the promise they had made to each other. A promise that implied so much more than those words could convey.
Loki sometimes wondered if this was it, if they had been supposed to find each other and break the loop together. ( Break the loop? Are you crazy, there is nothing but the loop! ) He wouldn’t have claimed to believe in destiny, but maybe there was something to it. And yet, every night that he fell asleep in his lover’s arms, was followed by a morning in his lonely bed.
They never really talked about trying to break the loop, except once. Once only Loki had dared to bring the topic up. He would never forget the way Tony's eyes had widened until they appeared to be bulging from his head, the way his entire face had contorted until it resembled a mad grimace. He had pushed Loki against the wall, his eyes shining with the cracked insanity they both knew slumbered in them.
“There is no other day.” Tony had spat in his face and Loki was so scared the man was going to break, fall apart in front of his very eyes that he never dared breach the topic again. (It had been foolish of him to do in the first place. There was only the loop, only the loop.)
Loki drew back from the kiss to look at this lover’s face. His eyes were warm, his cheeks flushed and his lips painted red from kissing. He looked gorgeous, he looked alive .
He stroked his cheek softly where he held him in his arms, before resting his forehead against the mans, breathing in his smell.
“So, what do you think? Today a good day to blow up Manhattan?” Tony's lips curled into a lazy smirk, but there was chaos glinting in his eyes.
“I’d say it’s just as perfect as any other day.”
Tony no longer used the gun, Loki made sure of that. And Loki himself had stopped erasing his memories of beautiful days, for now, he could experience a countless different version of them.
Tony was all he could have ever asked for, Tony was perfect.
Tony was aware that tomorrow wouldn’t come…
…except for the days where he wasn’t.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Tony slapped his hand away from where he had rested it on his shoulder.
“Tony, please just let me touch you for a moment. It will explain everything.” Loki kept his voice calm, his arms held up in a defensive gesture.
“That’s Stark to you, buddy.” Tony snarled at him. The man had stood up from his seat at the café. The repulsor that had formed from the wristband he was wearing was pointed at Loki.
It stung. Even if it wasn’t real, it stung.
Loki sighed. He teleported behind the man and put his hand to his temple before he could even think of turning around. He flooded Tony with memories, not too many, just a few recent ones and he felt the man slowly relax under him.
Recognition made its way into his face and the tension left his frame as he slumped back against Loki’s chest. Loki sneaked his arms around his waist and held him tightly.
“It’s okay, my love.” He pressed a kiss into Tony's hair, breathing in its familiar smell. “How about we take it easy today?”
“Yea… Probably a good idea.” Tony sounded a bit breathless and Loki pulled him even closer against him.
They spent the rest of the day at a secluded beach. They watched the clouds and enjoyed the warmth of the sun while they laid in each other’s arms.
What had happened that morning wasn’t the first time.
“It’s like I’m under water, everything around me is muffled and I can’t think for myself. It’s like I’m not even there myself.” Tony's eyes were cast far onto the horizon where the water met the sky. It was barely possible to discern where one ended and the other started. “It’s scary.”
“It doesn’t matter. I will be there to pull you out of it.” Loki assured him.
“Yea.” Tony planted a kiss on his lips. His eyes still looked uncertain but he smiled softly. “For the rest of time.”
“For the rest of time.”
There was a day where Loki came to the café and Tony didn’t recognize him. Only this time no matter the number of memories he fed the man, he did not remember. Loki had tried the entire day to bring his memories back, with every method he could possibly think of. But Tony's eyes had remained distant, unclear (Dead! Dead! Dead!) and never had Loki felt such horror curse through him.
“Want a donut?”
Loki flung his arms around the man; the donut Tony had been holding towards him falling to the ground.
“Hey, uhh, so no donut today?” Tony reluctantly hugged him back, his voice laced with confusion.
“Tony…” Loki pressed his face into the crook of his neck, he held onto him as tightly as he could. Tony was back, he wasn’t gone, he wasn’t gone.
“What’s wrong?” Tony pulled back from the embrace slowly and his eyes widened when he noticed the tears that were rolling over Loki’s cheeks.
“You didn’t remember.” Loki sucked in a sharp breath.
“What?” Tony blinked at him with his big brown eyes. Oh, how he loved those eyes. (As long as they were alive.)
“Yesterday. You didn’t remember. And I tried so hard to make you remember, I tried everything, really! I did! But you just wouldn’t and I- I-“ The desperation in him cut him open, left him raw and gasping for breath.
“Loki, it’s okay.” Tony reassured him, his hands on his arms. “I’m here. I remember .”
His voice was gentle but it was wavering ever so slightly. His hands were grasping Loki too tightly and he saw the way the man’s eye had twitched.
“It’s okay now.” He told him all the same and Loki swallowed down the lump that had lodged itself into his throat.
“Yea.” He gave Tony a quick kiss on the lips, a smile washing over his face that did not reach his eyes.
They both knew it wasn’t okay. But what could they do?
It started happening more often. Loki needed to feed him more memories, needed to delve deeper into his mind to untangle the webs that had laced themselves in there. A human mind was simply not made to withstand these many years. (How much time had even passed? Maybe he should have counted after all.) His body did not age a day and nor did his brain get any slower, it just slowly but surely… faded.
Every morning that those brown eyes would shine with hostility instead of warmth Loki feared it would be the end they had dreaded.
But Tony had come back to him every time.
So far.
“I won’t ever give up on you. I promise.”
“Loki,” Tony shook his head. “I don’t want you to promise that.”
“But I just did.”
Tony sent him a smile, a sad smile, and Loki wished it was anything but that.
“Never doubt that I love you.”
“I love you too.”
Loki sat down at the far back of the cafe with the donut he had ordered. The spot gave him the best view of Tony without the man noticing his gaze on him. He wouldn’t try to talk to the man today. He did not want to see the hostility in his eyes, the way his posture would go rigid with tension just at Loki’s sight. The man finished his donut and left a generous tip on the table before walking out of the cafe. The sky was sunny (as always) and Loki walked a few steps behind Tony. He looked at the back of the man’s head, at the curve of his neck he wished to let his fingers trail over and almost ran into him when the man suddenly stopped in his path. In front of him, a little butterfly flew by.
An Anomaly.
The butterfly passed them and flew off into the air. People were walking past them on the sidewalk, rushing to wherever they needed to go, but Tony stood still. Slowly Loki walked up next to him and looked at him from the side. Tears were streaming down his face, his lifeless eyes staring blankly into nothing. After a moment the man continued on his way as if nothing had happened, not even turning to look at Loki. The wetness on his cheeks was slowly drying in the sun.
“For the rest of time.” Loki murmured quietly to himself as he fell in line a few steps behind Tony.
…
…
…
“For the rest of time.”