Hidden Troubles

Chapter 47

AN: Roses are red, violets are blue, 8K reads? I f-ing love you ❤️

Some parts of this chapter were hard to write for myself, mainly because I drew on my own experiences. Hence the reason why I've balanced this chapter out with a lot of humour. Coming chapters may be less like this. But I hope you guys like this one!❤️❤️

Loki's victory with the fruit bowl had been cruelly short lived. He had retired early to his room with exhausted pride, sure that perhaps he would have a night of blissful dreams. Apart from the dismissible pain in his stomach, he felt well. He felt...safe. Content.

Yet he found himself sobbing and shivering at three in the morning, stomach heaving as he grasped desperately at the porcelain toilet.

He could hear their voices, crooning at him derisively.

"Spoilt little rat, and how ungrateful."

"You expel the precious scraps we feed you?"

"The disgraced Prince of Asgard will not be welcome to lavish banquets. This is all you get."

"And all you deserve."

Natasha sat beside him, stroking his disarrayed hair back, soothing nothings washing over him as tremors wracked his feeble frame.

It's ok. I'm here. It's ok.

Could a malady be cured by a sole presence?

He'd allowed her to wipe the sweat from his brow, place a tender kiss of his feverish forehead.

And the kiss scorched his skin, as though to kill away all his ills by heat alone.

He'd allowed her to lead him back to bed and curl up next to her, tears trickling like rain droplets down flushed cheeks as she stroked his hair and hummed a calmly melodious tune.

A song, a symphony, a story from far away, lost in time yet easily retrieved, if one caught the fish with the right net.

He'd allowed her to draw the covers over him as his mother had once done, and guard him from his nightmares as his brother had once done.

To love and protect, for love's truest teacher is loss; to fall into the darkness would mean a loss worse than death.

And he'd allowed himself to show weakness and surrender to sleep, with something like love holding him in arms so warm—so warm that perhaps they could melt some of the heartless ice within him.

And wash away the red in my ledger, and let it mingle with the blue, so the royal purple may grant me once more joys and pleasures worthy of a king.

It was the cold that woke Natasha again the next morning, and it was a forlorn heart that she wondered when Loki would accept warmth and comfort, without being driven to do so by sheer exhaustion.

***

"Tony, five peas don't count as your five a day," Pepper's voice chided as Tony walked merrily towards the medilab.

"Then I'll wash it down with apple cider vinegar and have six a day! Oh, look at that! Dummy's calling! Love you Peps!"

"Tony—" Tony's grin quickly dissolved into a disgusted expression as he rethought what he'd just said. Apple cider vinegar. Bleurgh. I do have some taste.

Tucking the tablet under his armpit, he cradled his coffee more securely as he continued towards the medilab. Bruce had said something about research and "feel free to come round" —and so of course he'd come to lend a hand. Also because waiting for SHIELD's authorisation on some radioactive specimens was getting rather boring. He'd been trying to build in a noxious gas dispenser, without it reacting with high amounts of heat. The last attempt had nearly singed his eyebrows off. And his beard. He quite liked his beard as it was.