Complicated

Tony Stark has never been fond of poetry. Poems are always about sunshine and daffodils and messy things like love, like relationships.

"Love is a many-splendored thing", and all that bullshit he's never quite grasped. Or wanted to.

He sums up his relationships with two words (looove stiiiinks!) and the wail of a guitar. That, Tony insists, is poetry.

Art should be simple, he tells Pepper after the one and only time she convinces (bribes) him into attending a poetry reading. Otherwise, what's the point?

Poetry is love, she replies, and love is anything but simple.

He rolls his eyes and pours himself a stiff drink.

After (during) Pepper, Tony's philosophy changes from 'love stinks' to 'love is complicated'. Two words become three, become less certain.

She's so good to him it's almost nauseating. I am happy, he tells himself, because he knows he should be.

And then the world almost ends, he almost dies, and he remembers what being happy truly feels like.

Love is selfish, Tony eventually decides. Love is looking at someone you admire and thinking, I deserve you.

Love is taking the chance that you'll break her heart.

Tony knows he's going to break Pepper's heart.

Tony knows that Loki has a clever tongue (and all that implies). He's been warned about it time and again, do not listen to the Trickster, ignore everything he says. No one had thought to warn him about Loki's eyes, sharp, expressive, and the purest green, as wicked as the smiling lips below. Tony has never hated something so beautiful in his life, has never hated quite like this in his life.

Even now, Tony lies awake, trying to pin down the exact moment when I want to hurt you became I want you. But fucking and fighting aren't really that different, not the way Loki and he do it, and the bed is still warm from a body that isn't Pepper's.

I love Pepper, he tells Loki, tells himself, because he knows he should. When Loki mocks him and shuts him up with a biting kiss, Tony decides that maybe love doesn't exist.

When Pepper leaves him, Tony decides that love still stinks.

But Loki is there, waiting, with clever lips and piercing eyes and a smile like the devil. His touch is fire and oblivion, and Tony forgets things like right and wrong and why he should care.

Tony and Loki argue (constantly), and their witty retorts grow barbs. Loki sneers at Tony's drinking, Tony mocks Loki's daddy issues, and when biting words turn to swinging fists, Tony decides that he's never hated someone so much in his life.

That hate is something that stays with him, that digs in deep and stirs a fire in his gut. It's all he can think about.

Tony tries not to think about how his hate for Loki is stronger than his love for Pepper had ever been.

You're evil, Tony tells Loki that night while they're lying in bed, catching their breath.

You're no saint, Loki blithely replies.

And Tony looks into emerald eyes and hates and hates and hates.

Except hate isn't the word, is it?

Tony realizes that when a building falls on him and all he can see are green eyes before he slips into darkness.

He learns the not-hate is mutual when he awakens in a hospital to find Loki reading in the chair beside him. Tony says nothing and pretends to sleep, but Loki is gone in the morning.

This isn't love, he tells himself. Love is complicated. This is simple.

This is Tony feeling incomplete when Loki's not there. This is Loki looking at him with green eyes clear and fragile as glass. This is Tony feeling safe and strong and witty in ways he never has.

Love is pastel. This is Tony's life saturated with color.

This isn't love. Except that it is.

Love is, Tony thinks as he stares into green, green eyes. Love is...

And that's it, he realizes.

Love is simple.

Love is this moment, you and me.

Love just is.