Author's Note: So I...don't really know what happened! Except that a few piece of this fic popped into my head at work (AT WORK) and then I started writing and then there was this...thing. And I am a slave to the wills of others, and also an attention whore. What can I say. Not much honestly.

I have only myself to blame.

(/needs to stop coming up with self-indulgent oneshots for this fandom oh my goddddd)

Clint opened his eyes to see Natasha leaning against his door, her lips curved in a small smile. "Did you miss me?"

Clint smirked at her, sitting up. "You were gone?" She made a face at him and prowled across the room in that way that always meant he couldn't look away.

"Ha, ha," she said. "Cute." There was a decidedly dangerous glint in her eyes. "Want to say that again?"

Clint couldn't help grinning at her. "I hadn't even noticed you were gone."

"Oh," she said, "You are just asking for it." Natasha climbed onto the bed and pounced, catching his lip between her teeth and biting down almost hard enough to draw blood. His brain shorted out, and she prowled up his chest, straddling his body and pushing him back into the bed. She rolled his lower lip between her teeth, bit down lightly, and then kissed him, fierce and aggressive and – he brought his hands up into her silky red hair.

Her mouth shifted on his and her tongue flickered against his lips. He let them part, enjoying the press of her strong thighs on either side of him, her easy assurance, the hard, flat angles of her body pressed up against his-

Wait.

Clint opened his eyes with a jerk and met laughing green. His fingers were tangled in black hair, not red, and his tongue stroked along Clint's in one long, languorous motion before he withdrew and pulled his lips away just enough to murmur, tone perfectly mocking, "Did you miss me?"

Clint thrashed immediately, desperately, hands flashing toward those bright eyes, only to have his wrist caught and squeezed in a vice grip and slammed back down to the bed. Loki's whole lean body was pressed against his, intimately, terrifyingly close. He grinned.

"Not what you were expecting?" he said, in that silky voice Clint remembered too well. "If you want I could always change back…" The blink of an eye and Natasha was holding him down, though there was something glittering in her eyes that was still all wrong.

"Get the fuck off me-" Clint twisted, trying to throw Loki off, and received Natasha's narrow-eyed stare that both thrilled and left him cold.

"Are you sure you want to try to order me?" he said, and it was her voice but his tone and Clint fell still almost before he could think about it.

Loki's grin did not fit on Natasha's face. "Isn't that better?" he murmured, and Clint's stomach churned because it was and it wasn't and he wasn't quite sure that the wasn't was strong enough. He bucked his whole body again and only succeeded in slamming his body against Loki's, a feeling like hitting a brick wall. He fell back, panting and trying to think.

"JARVIS," he said, and then raised his voice to a shout. "JARVIS!" No answer. Shit, Clint thought desperately, shit shit shit-

"No help coming," Loki murmured, and the illusion of Natasha's appearance melted away. "Just me, hawkling. Just you. As it should be." His hands squeezed on Clint's wrists and Clint gritted his teeth, fear suddenly seeping into his stomach. He knew Loki could break his bones, easily, probably hardly needed to try. He needed his hands and he knew how easy they'd be to ruin, for good, could think of all the different ways Loki could-

He let his body go slack, forced himself to relax. "What do you – what do you want?"

"Want?" Loki laughed, and the sound was low and rich. "A great deal. I want the slow destruction of everything Thor holds dear. I want your friends splayed lifeless on the ground before my feet. I want to know everything the universe has to offer and to travel to corners yet unseen. At this moment, I simply wanted to speak to you. My prodigal pawn."

Clint gritted his teeth. "I'm not your anything."

"Oh," said Loki, "But you are. Or you were. Entirely mine. And you would be again if I asked it of you. Wouldn't you?"

"No," Clint grunted. There was a knife somewhere, in the bedside table, something – if he could move his hands, but if he tried all Loki would have to do was tighten his grip and Clint would be crippled. Useless. "You'd have to – it wasn't real. You so much as try that again and-"

"And what?" Loki's voice cut through his, cut him off. "Are you going to threaten me? That's charming, hawkling. What do you think to threaten me with? Death? Pain? The revenge of your friends? I can almost hear it. Tasha will kill you." His voice was a cruel, exact mimicry. "How do you know she's not already dead? That they aren't all already dead and I've come to you last of all, my favored servant."

A sick feeling of dread settled in Clint's stomach. "You're lying," he said. "This isn't real, this isn't, somehow you're-"

"You're dreaming?" Loki's voice was sickeningly sympathetic. "And when you wake, you will run and find your spider, crawl into bed beside her, shaking like a child. Save me, Natasha. Love me, Natasha. How pathetic she must think you. Perhaps she looks at you and thinks, I survived. Barely a child, and I survived, and see how he whimpers and crawls, replacing one leash with another-"

"Shut up!" Clint yelled, and surged up again, fruitlessly, but this time Loki shifted his weight and rolled them over, Loki sprawled on his back looking up at Clint, eyes glittering with mirth.

"Or what," Loki purred. "Or what, hawkling? Tell me what you will do to me," and the motion of Loki's hips was an unmistakably deliberate roll. Clint's stomach roiled and he jerked away, scrambled back and to the other side of the bed, stumbling to his feet and standing, shaking. His heart was thudding too loudly and he needed to, needed to-

"I'll kill you," Clint hissed. "I'll – I'll rip your lungs out and shove them down your throat, I'll cut out your eyes and your tongue and leave you stumbling in the dark, I'll rip you apart peace by piece by piece-"

Loki stretched languidly. "Are you done?" he murmured, lazily bored, and Clint felt himself tremble.

"Fuck you," he said, fiercely, his own voice feeling grating on his throat.

"I wouldn't mind if you asked nicely." Loki's body arched, his head tipping back so his throat was provocatively extended, long clean lines and Clint bet that if he put a knife through that flesh to the spine it'd kill an Asgardian the same as anyone else- "You want to hurt me. I can feel it vibrating through you, that need. Heady as desire. Akin to lust." Clint's felt his heartbeat low in his stomach, thudding rage or-

"You wouldn't enjoy what I'd do to you," Clint snarled. "I can be pretty fucking inventive when I want to be."

"Can you," Loki said, voice almost that purr again, enough to make Clint want to shudder. "Oh, my eyas. I might take that as a challenge. I think you overestimate yourself." His tongue slid out and swept across his lower lip, and Clint looked away hastily and a moment later dragged his eyes back, furious at himself for looking away in the first place. "You think yourself a conoisseur of pain. You think your soul a dark and bottomless pit, yourself a hard man. Willing to do what must be done."

"I'd do more than that to you," Clint snarled, and Loki laughed, sickeningly affectionate.

"You haven't the stomach for it." Loki's voice lowered to an intimate murmur. "I'd take the pain you'd give me and savor it. Take it in, make it part of myself, and laugh in your face as you tried to wring one ounce of satisfaction from me." He sat up, propped on his elbows. "You. Cannot. Win."

He had weapons in this room. Not far away. He could reach them now. That stare held him, though, kept him pinned, unable to look away. He could feel his whole body shaking.

Then Loki looked away, and laughed. "Oh, Barton. You have lost none of your charm."

"Pretty sure you never had any," Clint said tightly. Loki fell back and sprawled on the bed, loose-limbed, at ease. Clint hated him, god, hated him more than he'd ever hated anything, wanted him dead (wanted him to run those long fingers through his hair and tell him he'd been a good boy)-

He was going to heave.

"I can feel your anger from here," Loki said, his eyes drifting closed, his voice soft like a caress. "All your rage, pumping through your veins. Heating you. Does it make you feel alive? Does it fill you, hawkling, as I once did, with purpose?"

Clint swallowed hard. "It was just that stick," he said, "It was just that fucking spell," and he could hear the note of desperation in his voice, and hated that, too.

"You know as well as I do that that's a lie. Or else why would it still be there, that yearning you can't quite…that yearning. For me."

Clint's fists clenched. "Shut up."

"What was that?" Loki's smile grew. He didn't even have to look at him, could hear it in his voice.

"Shut the fuck up," Clint said, more loudly, and then he was spitting words like vomit, "You're nothing, okay? You're just a big fucking clusterfuck of nothing and you're never going to be anything else. You can't even buy loyalty you have to force it on people, that's sad, that's pathetic, shut the fuck up already, you think anyone cares about your daddy issues-"

Goddamn, he'd forgotten how fast he could move. From sprawled on the bed to slamming Clint into a wall, hand around his throat holding him a foot off the floor and fuck, couldn't breathe, couldn't breathe-

"You forget yourself," said Loki, and the eerie thing was that his voice didn't even rise. "You forget who I am. That I could rip your heart out between your ribs and you could do nothing to stop me. Nothing, Barton, is that what I am? Then know that it is nothing who owns you. And what, I ask, does that make you?"

The hand around his throat released and Clint dropped to his knees on the floor, gasping, choking. He forced a grin. "Are you – having fun yet?" He gasped out.

Loki crouched, in one smooth movement, and reached out. His fingers slid before Clint could jerk away into his hair, and then it just felt hatefully good and he needed to pull away, needed to- "Oh, hawkling. I don't want to hurt you."

"Bullshit," Clint said harshly.

"Oh, very well," Loki allowed. "Perhaps slightly. But it is not…my primary purpose. You should not provoke me. It will only end…painfully."

"It's worth it to get to you," Clint said without thinking. His whole body was trembling like a live wire. "Cause I can get to you. You're not the only one who knows how to use weaknesses."

The sound Loki made was only quietly amused. "My dear eyas. You cannot possibly think that there is any world in which you can beat me at my own game. I would not start that battle, if I were you. You have so very much more to lose, and all of it so easily taken away." His outline flickered, and just for a moment it was Natasha crouching next to him, her fingers in his hair. Clint swallowed convulsively and jerked away, but he didn't have far to go, back pressed against the wall. Cornered like an animal, and Loki watching him with that smug, self-satisfied little smile. His breathing stuttered in his chest.

Weak, thudded in his head. Weak, can't even fight back, can't even stand up, who do you think you are-

"I just want you to know," Loki murmured, "How embedded I am in you. You will never be rid of me, hawkling. I will always be there. With you. In you. A murmur at the back of your mind, an aching need you can't quite fill-"

Stop, Clint wanted to scream. Stop stop stop. He scrabbled blindly with his hand to the side, yanked the drawer open, pulled out the knife and brought it down. It drove into Loki's chest with the sound of metal on bone. Loki glanced down, ever so faintly startled, and Clint bared his teeth and almost wanted to laugh with relief.

Then Loki lifted a hand and pulled the knife out in one smooth motion. The blade gleamed red with blood, but Loki simply examined it and smiled.

"I see," he said softly, and before Clint could move or do more than stare, he flipped the knife and drove it into Clint's side.

His own scream woke him. Panting, sitting bolt upright in his bed, in his apartment, alone.

Alone.

He curled into himself, shaking. Not real, he thought, desperately. It's not-

Too vivid to be a dream. Natasha was his first thought, and then he remembered how pathetic she must think you. He couldn't let this ruin him. Couldn't let this-

Already has, hasn't it?

No. God, no.

Clint got up and went back to the bed but couldn't make himself lie back down. Retreated to the couch and stretched out, forced himself to close his eyes, even if he already knew that sleep wasn't coming back. He focused on the dark behind his eyelids. It's over.

(It's not. It's never going to be.)