What Remains of a Broken Bond

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The first thing Loki registers is the bond.

It wakes him before his eyes do—a low, thrumming warmth beneath his sternum, like a second heartbeat that doesn’t belong to him. He has learned, over these three months, to parse its signals. This particular pulse means Tony is awake. Means Tony is moving through the penthouse, already dressed, already thinking about something that is not the man in the guest suite three floors down.

Loki opens his eyes.

The ceiling of his quarters is bare. No murals, no carved wood, no gold leaf. Just white plaster and a single recessed light that JARVIS turns on at 7:00 AM sharp, because Tony Stark programmed it that way. For security purposes, the AI had explained, the first morning. Mr. Stark prefers visual confirmation that all residents are accounted for.

Loki had not asked what accounted for meant. He had learned, early, that asking questions only invited more surveillance.

He lies still for a moment, letting the bond settle. It is not a comfortable sensation. It is like wearing a coat that doesn’t quite fit—too tight across the shoulders, too heavy in the hem. He can feel the shape of Tony’s mood through it: focused, efficient, slightly irritated. Something about a meeting. Something about a prototype.

Not about me, Loki thinks, and the thought is not bitter. It is simply a fact, like the grey light filtering through the blinds, like the ache in his jaw from grinding his teeth in his sleep.

He sits up.

The room is small by Tower standards—a bedroom with an en-suite, a desk, a chair, a closet. Tony had called it a guest suite when he’d first shown Loki to it, three months ago, and the word had hung in the air between them like an accusation. Loki had not been a guest. He had been a prisoner. But the word had been offered like a kindness, and Loki had learned, on Asgard, to accept the shape of kindness even when it was hollow.

He swings his legs over the side of the bed and notes, automatically, the state of his body. The suppressants are holding—the cool, chemical weight of them in his bloodstream, a familiar anchor. He has been on them since adolescence, on Odin’s orders. To keep you manageable, the All-Father had said, and Loki had not argued, because arguing had never changed anything.

His scent is muted. He cannot smell himself, not properly, but he knows it’s there—the winter-cold and cedar and ozone that the suppressants can only dampen, never erase. He had caught Tony’s nostrils flaring, once, two weeks after New York, in the common kitchen. Tony had been pouring coffee, and Loki had been walking past, and Tony had frozen for a fraction of a second—a pause so brief it could have been a trick of the light.

But Loki had felt it through the bond. The spike of recognition. The sharp, sudden awareness.

Tony had not said anything. Had not looked at him. Had just poured his coffee and left.

Loki had stood in the empty kitchen for a very long time, waiting for something he could not name.

---

He showers. The water is hot—too hot, probably, by Midgardian standards—but Loki prefers it that way. It reminds him of the geothermal springs near the palace on Asgard, the ones he used to sneak to before he learned that nothing was ever truly his.

He does not linger. He dries himself, dresses in the clothes that were provided for him—grey trousers, a dark shirt, both too generic to be anything but a statement. These are your clothes, Tony had said, gesturing at the closet, and Loki had understood: You have nothing of your own.

He had not corrected him.

The bond pulses again—Tony is leaving the penthouse, walking toward the elevator. Loki feels the shift in proximity, a subtle tug in his chest, and he stops mid-motion, one hand on the tie of his trousers, and just... breathes through it.

It is a strange thing, this bond. It is not like the stories. The Asgardian tales speak of true mate bonds as blessings—warmth and comfort and the unshakeable knowledge that you are never truly alone. Loki had believed those stories, once. He had imagined what it might feel like: a hand always reaching for yours, a voice that knew your name without needing to hear it.

This is not that.

This is a tether. A thin, fraying thread that connects him to a man who does not want to be connected to him. He can feel Tony’s irritation, his impatience, the way his mind is already elsewhere. He can feel, too, the edges of something else—something Tony does not let himself feel, that he shoves down into the dark compartments of his chest where he keeps all the things he refuses to name.

Guilt, Loki thinks. Maybe. Or fear. Or something in between.

It does not matter. Tony does not act on it. Tony does not come to him, does not ask him how he is, does not sit with him in the silence that has become their only shared language.

Tony leaves.

The elevator doors close, and the bond goes quiet—not gone, just... distant. Like a radio signal fading into static.

Loki stands in the middle of his room and lets the silence settle over him.

---

He goes to the kitchen at 8:00 AM because that is what he does. Every morning. It has become a ritual, a small anchor in the shapeless drift of his days.

The common kitchen is empty when he arrives. This is normal. The Avengers keep irregular hours, and even when they are in the Tower, they tend to avoid the common spaces during the early morning. Loki does not know if this is coincidence or design. He suspects design.

He opens the refrigerator. There are ingredients—fresh bread, eggs, butter, a jar of honey. Someone in the Tower does the shopping, and Loki has learned not to ask who. He simply takes what he needs and begins to work.

He makes spraklingr—a traditional Asgardian spiced bread, dense with rye and honey and the dried berries he had found in the pantry. He learned to make it from Frigga’s kitchen maids, centuries ago, when he was still young enough to believe that learning a recipe was a gift rather than a weapon.

The work is calming. The kneading, the measuring, the careful addition of spices. He does not think about the bond. He does not think about Tony. He does not think about the way Steve Rogers had looked at him yesterday—like he was a threat to be contained, like Loki was a bomb with a faulty timer.

He thinks about the bread.

He is not sure why he keeps cooking for people who do not eat his food. The first few times, he had genuinely hoped—had thought, naively, that a shared meal might be the beginning of something. A bridge. A peace offering.

He had left a plate of spiced bread on the counter, six weeks ago, and Clint Barton had thrown it away. Not dramatically—just a quiet, efficient disposal, as if the bread were poison. Loki had watched from the hallway, unseen, and had felt something crack inside his chest.

He had not cooked again for three days. And then he had, because the alternative was sitting in his room and staring at the walls, and he had learned, on Asgard, that doing nothing was worse than doing something that would not be appreciated.

He finishes the bread. He places it on the counter, on a clean plate, and covers it with a cloth. He does not leave a note. There is no point. They will throw it away or let it go stale or ignore it, and he will return in the morning and find it gone, and the cycle will continue.

He stands in the empty kitchen for a moment. The bond is still quiet—Tony is somewhere in the city, probably, doing something that matters. Loki can feel the shape of his presence, a distant warmth in his chest, but it is vague. Like trying to hold water in his hands.

He should leave. He should go back to his room, to the books he has read three times, to the window that looks out at the New York skyline. He should find something to do that does not involve standing in a kitchen full of food he will not eat, cooking for people who will not taste it.

He does not move.

He stands there, and he thinks about Jötunheim.

He had not meant to find that book. It had been in the Tower library—a Midgardian scholar’s history of the Nine Realms, inaccurate and secondhand but thorough enough. Loki had been looking for something else, something irrelevant, and his eyes had landed on a passage about the Jötunn child taken after the war.

The creature was brought to Asgard as a ward of the crown. It was raised alongside the prince Thor and was said to possess a cunning intelligence, though its true nature remained a source of unease among the court.

Creature.

Loki had read that word and felt something go very, very still inside him. He had read the rest of the passage—the speculation about his purpose, the questions about whether he could ever truly be trusted, the implication that Odin had taken him not out of mercy but out of strategy.

It had confirmed what he already knew. What he had always known, deep in the part of himself that he kept locked away and never examined.

He had closed the book and put it back on the shelf and had not spoken of it to anyone.

Because there was no one to speak of it to.

---

The day passes.

He eats lunch alone in his room, because the alternative is the common kitchen, where someone might be, and he has learned to avoid being in spaces where he is not welcome. He reads—an old Midgardian novel, something about a woman who falls in love with a man who does not deserve her. He thinks about the parallels and then forces himself to stop thinking about them.

The bond flickers sporadically. Tony is busy. Tony is frustrated. Tony is doing something that requires his attention, and Loki is a very small, very distant thing in the back of his mind, and Loki knows this because he can feel it.

He thinks about me, Loki realizes, at one point, around 3:00 PM. Not because he wants to. Because the bond makes him.

It is not comfort. It is the opposite of comfort. It is the knowledge that Tony Stark is aware of his existence in the same way he is aware of a bruise—something tender, something painful, something he would rather not look at.

Loki sits on the floor of his room, his back against the bed, and lets himself feel it. The bond. The tug. The aching, constant pull toward a man who does not want him.

He has spent so long trying to be good. To be useful. To be the kind of person who could be chosen.

And he is still here. Still alone. Still waiting for something that will not come.

---

He hears Tony return at 7:00 PM.

The bond flares—sudden, bright, unavoidable—and Loki feels the shift before he hears the elevator doors. Tony is home. Tony is crossing the penthouse, his footsteps heavy with exhaustion, his mood a tangled mess of irritation and something else. Something Loki cannot parse.

He stays in his room. He does not go up to the penthouse. He does not knock on Tony’s door, does not ask him how his day was, does not offer to make him dinner.

He learned that lesson early. The first month, he had tried—had gone to Tony’s door, had offered the kind of quiet companionship he thought an alpha might want. Tony had opened the door and stared at him with an expression that was not quite hostility but was very close to it.

Don’t, Tony had said. Just that. One word. Don’t.

Loki had not gone back.

So now he sits in his room, his hands folded in his lap, and he feels Tony through the bond. Tony eating dinner—alone, probably. Tony working on something, his focus sharpening. Tony going to bed.

The bond settles into a soft, warm pulse—Tony asleep.

Loki does not sleep.

He stands at the window, his feet growing cold against the floor, and he looks out at the city lights and tries to feel something other than the hollow ache in his chest.

He tries to think about Asgard. About the golden halls, the laughter of the court, the way Frigga used to brush his hair and hum old songs under her breath. But the memories feel distant, like something that happened to a different person.

He tries to think about the child he might have had, one day—a child born of a bond that was supposed to be sacred, a child who might have been loved.

But he does not know how to hold that thought without it fracturing into something sharp, so he lets it go.

He thinks about Jötunheim.

He thinks about the book, the passage, the word creature.

He thinks about how, when he had read it, he had not felt surprised.

He stands at the window until 4:00 AM, and then he sits down on the floor, and he does not move.

---

In the morning, the bond pulses awake.

Tony is rising. Tony is moving. Tony is already thinking about the day, about the meeting, about the something that is not Loki.

Loki rises.

He showers. He dresses. He goes to the kitchen.

The spiced bread is still there, untouched, covered by the cloth. He lifts the cloth and looks at it—a perfectly baked loaf, golden-brown, fragrant with honey and berries.

He does not know what to do with it.

He leaves it there. He does not take a piece for himself. He does not throw it away. He just leaves it, because throwing it away would feel like accepting something he is not ready to accept.

He stands in the kitchen for a long time, and he feels the bond tugging at his chest, and he thinks, This is what it is to be known and not chosen.

He thinks, This is what remains of a broken bond.

He turns, and he walks back to his room.

And the silence of the Tower swallows him whole.

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[End of Chapter 1]

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What Remains of a Broken Bond - LunarBonded (Sukunalovez19), Sukunalovez19 - Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)