Somewhere AU post New York. Was meant to be a oneshot, but got out of hand. I may write more. Do you think it's worth continuing?
An impromptu party at Stark Tower. Because there's no way that could possibly go wrong. Not until the speaker gets knocked over and Loki nearly breaks your neck, that is.
You're wearing your second-best outfit. This has been a deliberate ploy on your part: your best outfit is amazing but makes you feel like you're going to a funeral or your estranged cousin's wedding (which is, in fact, what you bought it for). You want to feel relaxed, comfortable, and thereby look much cooler.
At any rate, you needn't have bothered, because your second-best at a Stark party is hardly going to be noticed. Everyone there's either drunk out of their skull or so focused on the person they're trying to get into bed with that you could have shown up wearing fruit like Carmen Miranda and the most anyone would have said would have been "Duuuuude! Cool pineapple." A man walks past wearing something so shiny Liberace would have sucked his teeth in horrified admiration and you're probably the only one who winces.
The music thumps through your body, faster than your heartbeat, louder, stronger, and you remember what it is you're really here for. Music. Your love of the beat. The speakers flanking the stage are the size of the back end of an articulated lorry and right next to them the air seems to sizzle with the force of the rhythm. An eldritch blue-white light glimmers in their dials and switches. The magazines are often full of the exploits and inventions of the billionaire genius, but this is the one that really jumped out at you: a sound system that could blow the roof off Grand Central if you so much as played rock-a-bye-baby through it on a child's recorder.
You love music and everything it does to you. The way it worms into your brain and ties your soul up in knots; the way a simple syncopated beat can turn catchy into unforgettable; the way when you plug in your headphones on the subway the music becomes your world and paints your grey journey in rainbow colours. And the lyrics. Anyone who ever claimed good music lyrics aren't pure poetry was talking out of their ass.
So Tony Stark's newest baby, this Mack Truck beatbox that gives the music itself a physical presence around you in the floor, the air, the heat of the dance - you couldn't resist coming here. Stark's patently a half-strung super-social lunatic, and Facebook parties were made for him. Unlike most people, he's perfectly happy to invite 30,000 of his closest Facebook buddies (and their closest buddies) to come down and party on a random Tuesday night.
You wonder, briefly, where he is.
Everybody here seems to be talking to someone, though you can't imagine how anything's being understood with the overwhelming, addictive beat, and behind the incredibly lengthy bar there are a number of wait staff flitting back and forth with complimentary drinks that probably cost more than your month's wages for a small glass. And that have a small sparkler in them that changes colour as it burns, which probably also cost a minor fortune.
You are too intimidated (and poor) not to take a glass of the peculiar stuff as it comes round on a tray. You don't even know what it is. It's green and smells as if someone's sprinkled raw pollen over it. There's also a growing whiff of ozone and gunpowder, which you are just starting to attribute to the sparkler, when the outer wall of the tower implodes in a cloud of rubble dust and acrid smoke. A body flies through it, backwards, and slams into the wall behind the stage with a crunch that's audible even over the music.
There's not that dramatic silence of shock, because the music is soaring, and the screams of the guests blend with the vocal track as they start to realise that maybe this wasn't part of the planned entertainment (you can never be sure with Stark) and you realise that the body picking itself up off the stage is tall and slender and boiling with suppressed fury.
And is Loki.
Loki. The god. The killer.
Beyond the immediate shock, the only thing your brain can come up with is that he's a lot better-looking than genocidal lunatics ought to be. Admittedly, he looks pissed as all hell as he sweeps to his feet and stares venomously at something behind you.
"OK," says the unmistakable voice with its synthesized twang, somehow perfectly audible over the music. "You're getting unfriended the minute we're done here, Harry Potter."
A blast of white-blue light slams past Loki's head, and he's ducking and moving with unbelievable, unnatural grace. He counters with a flare of lurid green energy which gouts from his hands like liquid fire. And Iron Man darts down from directly overhead, in hot pursuit.
You probably shouldn't stay standing where you are. Around you the other 29,000-odd people are starting to panic and surge for the exits, a tide of struggling, shoving, terrified bodies. But it's all happening in what feels like slow motion, and the music thrums through you even as Loki's terrible (magic?) sears the floor and the drapes and everything starts to burn. Loki's face is lit by flickering firelight and the neon flares of Iron Man's blasters: and it can't be your imagination that now there's a brilliant, exhilarated glee in his expression. He bares his teeth, big and white like a wolf's, and this time it's unmistakable. He's grinning even as he almost gets flattened by a falling piece of masonry. That grin snares you, the fascination of the rabbit with the coils of the snake. Loki is so crazy he's drunk-high on being fought and fighting in return.
So, rabbit-in-the-headlights, you watch Stark and Loki trade blows, blind to everything but the pair of them, deaf to everything but the humming rhythm as, against all odds, your favourite song starts to play through Stark's ludicrously outsize speakers. Loki lashes out with a gesture and a magic-laced, non-English word: Iron Man staggers from where he's braced himself up against the bar, smoke curling up his arms. There's a moment of almost comical respite as he flings out a gauntleted hand and lethal energy fails to blast Loki in the face; Loki laughs, head thrown back but soundless in the roar of the music, and Stark spends precious seconds waggling his wrist, peering into the now evidently powerless hub of his palm blaster.
"Hardball. OK," he shrugs, after a moment, and puts his shoulder down like a quarterback, charging Loki full-tilt. He passes you by barely a meter, smelling of hot metal and burning, which is when you realise that the crush of panicking partygoers has pushed you dangerously close to the fight. You're almost flush against one of the two huge speakers.
Your favourite song hits the middle eight just as that speaker, caught a glancing blow in the fight, begins to rock and topple. It falls like a monolith, like an ancient stone circle dolmen, and still you can't move. You stare up at the approaching slab, the beat pulsing in your ears and vibrating your vision to a blur. Killed by music. Not a bad way to go, your fracturing thoughts murmur.
But an arm snakes around your neck and yanks you sideways at the critical moment. The speaker crashes to the floor and everything shudders at its demise. You exhale in a gasp of relief and then extend to a hiss of pure fright as you realise that the arm holding you is wearing leather, not metal.
Loki has you by the throat in a choke-hold and he's pressing you up against the front of his body like a shield. Your neck burns with the strain of being pulled. In the sudden silence caused by the speaker's fall you feel almost deaf, but against your back Loki's heartbeat takes up the rhythm. You can feel his chest (and he's breathing hard from exertion) shoving at your spine. He's saved you: without him you'd be dead. And yet somehow there's no room for gratitude alongside your growing dread - what exactly has he saved you for?