Title: The Oath

Characters: Loki/Tony, one-sided sorta. FROSTIRON.

Rated: M for implied nookie.

Disclaimer: I own nothing, no money is made, this is all riff and parody.

Warnings: Slash. Nothing I can think of. Spoilers for Avengers, but not really. Maybe if you don't know some of their names.

Any Norwegian grandmother will tell you that magic is a very dangerous thing. They will tell you that love is the most powerful magic of all. Most of all, they know that magic can do terrible things to a man in love.

Tony has never been in love. He's never been in love, but beauty is a delicious substitute for love and Tony learned long ago that a heart intoxicated with beauty never has to touch its own alien emptiness. Beauty is warm and delicious and, for a time, it feels like love. Tony has developed an uncanny eye for beauty and an insatiable need for it. He has been with supermodels and movie stars, with starlets and stewardesses, waitresses and princesses. The women and men come and go in a carnival of faces, blurred by time and detachment and by his heart's drugged and reeling delirium.

But in every conquest, from the prolonged affairs to the one night stands, there is a part of Tony that looks beneath the surface of beauty, searching for the love that seems always to be just out of reach, sinking into the blue, lightless depths.

Everything changed for Tony Stark the night that he and Loki went ice skating in Rockefeller Center; the night he had a minor heart attack and Loki drove him out to Westchester New York, to see the stars; the night he promised to be with Tony when he died; the night Tony fell in love with him.

Magic can work miracles in a heart eager to love. Any Norwegian grandmother would have known that it was terribly dangerous for Thor to ever bring Loki into Tony's home.

For the last year and a half, the pale flame of Loki's beauty has illuminated Stark Tower. Loki is like all of the Fey Folk; a close encounter can dazzle a mortal, leave them drunken and stumbling in the dark, starving for the thing they cannot catch, that vanishes like wind through their fingers. Loki's form is a spirit haunting the halls of Tony's mind.

But Loki is proud. He looks on Tony's desperate love across the cold expanse of his godhood, at times with indifference, at time with what seems like pity. The hours that they spend together in New York, the thousands of dollars Tony spends buying him anything and everything he desires, all this Loki accepts as an appropriate offering to his godhood. In return, Tony receives the blessing of Loki's presence.

Tony Stark is in love and with each passing day, he grows more and more desperate to make Loki love him in return.

A little research. That's how it all starts, with a little research. Through a few friends at museums whose galas he occasionally attends, he learns everything he can about Norwegian lore. A connection at the Smithsonian puts Tony Stark in touch with an archivist at the Lofotr Viking Museum who tells him about the Yfirring, the Ring of Crossing.

Long ago, a little known legend says that the Yfirring was given to Loki by his brother Thor and that Loki swore to always cherish it. Should it ever become lost, Loki swore an oath to grant a boon to the person who returned it to him.

For 2.3 million dollars, Tony Stark purchases the Yfirring and has it flown in overnight from Denmark. He is in a state of restless anticipation while he waits for it to arrive, partly because he is desperate for Loki's love and feels that this is the only chance he will ever have to earn it, partly because he knows what he is about to do is reckless and terrible and may cost him not only his chance to win Loki's heart, but Loki's friendship as well.

The Yfirring ring arrives in a nondescript brown package. Inside, the Lofotr archivist has included instructions. Tony must hold the ring in his hand and read the Oath of Return, which the archivist has included.

Tony has to swallow down a tumbler of scotch before he can do it. The scotch blooms hot in his stomach and the heat rushes to his head. Holding Loki's image in his mind, he commits himself to his plan and in Old Norwegian (clumsily and with an atrocious accent) he reads the following words:

Loki, Flame-of-Asgard, Beloved of his brother Thor. Behold, I have found your treasured Yfirring! I hereby commit it back to you and ask in return the gift of your gracious boon.

For a minute, nothing happens.

Then the door to his living room opens. Loki steps inside, long-braided hair swinging like a silken whip down his back. The light in the apartment that diffuses through the glass windows seems to dim; Loki's presence is brighter than the city lights.

"Oh," Loki says. "It's you. Did you call me with an oath? I'm in the next room, you know." He shakes his head. "You are a strange one Tony." Then he holds out his hand in that innocent demanding way.

"What?" Tony asks. He's almost forgotten what he holds in his hand. Loki's presence can wipe the sense from a man.

"You have my ring," Loki says. "I've been looking everywhere for it and I would like it back." Tony holds the ring in front of him and swallows hard.

"Loki, I—"

"You want the boon, I know," Loki says. "What do you want, Tony?"

For a second, Tony can't say what he wants. Then he's spilling out his request, without his usual suavity or careless charm, but with a burning mixture of hope and despair.

"Just the chance," he says. "That's all I want, Loki, the chance to make you fall in love me. We already spend every day together, Loki, every freaking day. I mean why not? Why not shouldn't we spend the nights together? That's all I want, no big change baby, and I'm so in love with you I can't freaking think or breathe without you, you're in my brain and the air in my lungs."

Loki stares at him. To Tony's shock, he doesn't look angry. He looks like he's suppressing a smile.

"So, if I understand you right, you want me to spend the nights with you as well as the days?"

"Only when Thor doesn't know," Tony says. "I understand—sort of—about you and him, and, baby, if I can read anything it's the writing on the wall. But while he's not here—I just want the chance, Loki, just the chance to make you fall in love with me."

It is true, everything he says is true. Sex and love are tangled together in Tony's mind. He has always looked for love through sex, and he cannot imagine any other way to let his heart speak to Loki's than by letting their bodies speak that intimate language of physical love. He truly believes that this will be his chance to make Loki fall in love with him.

Loki smiles at him with his icy, curious, unempathic face. Stark takes his hand, massages it gently.

"What do you say, beautiful?" he says. He tries to smile his award winning smile, but he's too sick with nervousness that his bid to win Loki's love will cost him everything, even his friendship. Loki tilts his head to one side.

"I swore an oath," he says. "But I've never, you know, been with a mortal. They say it's very different." Stark stands up and Loki lets him put a hand on his waist, like they're about to dance.

"I love you like crazy," Stark says. "Just give me this chance." He grazes his lips against Loki's and feels the sudden flicker of energy. It arouses him in a way that hasn't happened in years. It is true that Tony cheats on Pepper regularly. Usually it is out of a mixture of boredom and opportunity, sometimes just for the simple pleasure of having yet another conquest under his belt, to flex his muscles, as it were.

Loki is different. He loves Loki, convulsively and desperately, beyond all control, beyond all mortal understanding.

"I think you'll find me more boring than you think," Loki says, and Stark catches just the hint of an embarrassed self-doubt. But it only makes Loki seem more beautiful, because it shows that tender underside of vulnerability. "I don't do anything half as…interesting as what I've seen on the internet."

"Forget the internet, who cares about the internet? If I want Star Wars porn and nerds arguing about which Lord of the Rings elf they want to bang, I'll go on the internet," Stark says. He's trying to make Loki laugh and it works. Loki smiles and there is something warm and intimate about the smile.

"You will not tell my brother-lover, though," Loki says as Stark dims the lights. Loki has a faraway, dreamy expression, but there is, as always, the shrewd, cunning light in his pale eyes. "You should know, Tony, that I've only ever been with one person my whole life and my brother is very protective of me."

"You don't have anything to worry about from me," Stark says. "Your brother loves me; we're buddies and I—I don't want to hurt him, Loki, I just…" he swallows. "I want this chance, that's all."

"Then, as I have promised, in return for my ring I will grant you your request," Loki says. He takes Tony's face in his thin, lovely hands with his black, lacquered nails. "I promise you that when you lie down you shall hold and love my body and when you wake, it will be my face that you see first thing, lying beside you." He kisses Tony gently. "Go to your room and wait for me?"

Tony cannot answer. He nods mutely. His body is tense already, his heart straining against the space between them.

Loki lets him go and disappears into his bedroom and Tony collapses on the couch, gasping, his hands trembling, his head swimming. In a moment, he gets up and goes into his room to wait for Loki.

He has no idea what is in store.

But it is entirely possible that, if he knew, he would not care.

Magic can do terrible things to a man in love.