Toxic • FrostIron

Sticks And Stones

The book Loki had been reading was thrown askew on the floor. Loki was lying on his side with his back facing Tony and was quietly crying to himself.

Tony ran over to Loki and asked, "Loki? Did- did somebody break in?"

Loki didn't respond.

Tony kneeled down and touched Loki's shoulder. Loki immediately yelled, moved onto his back and gave Tony a petrified look. Loki was breathing heavily and he froze for a moment.
When he recognized Tony, Loki grabbed a hold onto his shoulders, sobbing into Tony's chest.

"The hell happened?" Tony asked, still clueless as for what he had just walked into.

Loki started mumbling, "Tony, make it s-stop," his voice was high and it cracked as if he were a teenager. He sounded desperate.

Tony held Loki's head by his chin and pushed it upward so as to see his face.
Loki had a large bruise on his forehead, and his face was red and flushed.

"Loki? Did you-" Tony cut himself off. He got up and walked over to the counter. There was a small dent in it.
"Sticks and stones wont break bones, but a counter might do it. Did you seriously hit your head on the counter?"

Loki covered his face with his hands and sobbed.

Tony picked up the book on the ground and put it back on the counter.
Loki had just tried to hurt himself. Maybe it was just from the stone or whatever was causing his 'episodes', but it still affected Tony just as much.

•••

They spent the rest of the night doing what they had intended to do, eat food and watch Netflix, though Loki mainly leaned against Tony and tiredly stared at the screen.(isn't that what we all do?) Loki still hadn't figured out how chopsticks worked and had to resort to eating with a fork, which Tony found hilarious.

The movie they decided to watch was Jurassic World, which Loki said he had wanted to watch for a while.
Yet the entire time they were watching it, Loki seemed terrified. He would hug Tony and dig his face into his shoulder.
Tony kept his arm around Loki, and on several occasions he would pause the movie to which Loki would reply, "No, I want to see them kill it."

Loki was a wreck that night.

At one point he had jerked awake and almost fell off the bed.
He spent the rest of that night with his arm over his eyes shuffling through his thoughts. He wasn't able to sleep at that point and there wasn't really anything else he could do.