Tony woke, laying sprawled on his stomach, with a splitting headache. Groaning sent him reeling at the echo of it in his ears and he covered them with his hands; squeezing his eyes shut.
A hangover, then. Well, he was pretty used to that. That didn't matter.
After his usual recovery time of around ten minutes, he opened his eyes, wincing at the sunlight seeping into the room, and blindly reached for his blanket.
His hands brushed against something that felt like fur, but he ignored it in favor of grabbing the nearest duvet.
He hauled it over his head, burrowing into the mattress to find some more sleep and to recover from his drinking last night, or whenever it'd been since he'd last drunk. Which was when, he noticed a couple of things all at once.
The mattress was different. It smelt old, colder than his heated cotton, and the blanket he was laying beneath was made of silk.
Silk.
He blinked, squinting up at it. Slowly, he uncurled his hands from around it and pulled it down over his body. His head was still pounding and sending spikes of pain behind his eyes, but looking down at the bed distracted him from that easily.
It was huge. Literally, huge. There was a canopy on it's left side, draped like it would probably be for a freaking aristocrat in Georgian times, and it even had it's own little roof, possibly held up by the four, long wooden posts at it's corners.
He gaped at it, and leant back into the bed. For some reason, he had a feeling this was bad.
He started when something brushed the back of his neck and twisted around to look behind at whatever it was.
The pillows he was leaning on, were made of cloth and fur, and the blanket he was beneath had an outer layer of thin silk, though it was bulging from the excess of something - soft - inside. His jaw unclenched and he pursed his lips.
This - Was not his bed.
Tony pulled his legs in, bending the knees until they were against his chest as he sat up. And-
Oh God. He was naked. He was naked in someone else's bed.
Okay: he chewed on the inside of his cheek. Okay, fine. He'd done this before. This was fine, it was cool. All good.
Sliding out of the bed, he didn't notice the gap between the bed and the floor until too late, and his legs buckled at his ill-timed landing.
He almost toppled over but he twisted in time, and just managed to fall against the bed, instead of thumping to the floor, and alerting whoever had taken him, to his now roused state.
Panting into the mattress, he grimaced at the cramping in his stomach and the dull ache in his arms. Sweat coated his back and thighs and he could feel himself shivering. That meant something - important, didn't it?
He moaned when his intestines decided to twist inside him, and remembered then that he was still in heat. With a sigh, he slid down from the bed to kneel on the floor. He hated being in heat. That's why he had his tablets.
He couldn't do this for four more days, and he absolutely despised all the commercials that told him he could. Because he really couldn't. At least, not without medication.
He needed his suppressants. Now.
He needed his drugs, and he needed his sleep and he really needed his Pepper to comfort him when it got too bad. He'd had tablets, hadn't he? He definitely remembered taking them to the fund raiser... He paused, thinking. Yep. He'd had some with him.
Fumbling around for his pockets, his hands patted bare skin, and he remembered that he was naked. And being naked, meant having no pockets, and that meant no drugs.
"Fuck."
So he was naked, and he was without his drugs and in his second cycle of heat.
The little cry of panic that threatened to push out of his mouth was swallowed back before it could come out, but he still felt the need to scream, and began to stare around the room with a newfound sense of panic.
Where the hell was he anyway?! And who the fuck had taken his drugs from him?
Shakily, he got to his feet, using the mattress to support his legs until they finally realized that, yes, he needed to stand on them and it would be helpful if his knees unlocked.
The rest of the room - as far as he could tell, when he looked around it - was empty; besides the bed of course, and a small cupboard in the corner which, after rifling through the boxes that were inside it, contained a pair of denim shorts that he slipped on.
He couldn't find a shirt in any of them, or any shoes, and the shorts barely covered his thighs, but it was better than nothing at all. And if he was stealing, then who cared. He was, technically, kidnapped right now. He could take what he wanted-
I think it best you sleep now.
Tony stumbled when standing, and he automatically reached for the door to steady himself, but he missed, and latched onto a box instead. And, naturally, it fell from under his weight and he fell with it, right into the middle of the rest of them.
The noise he made falling, made him wince horribly, nearly freezing in panic, but he shook himself free and struggled to get off of them; his limbs uncoordinated and clumsy.
The panic in his chest expanded as he backed away, and he jerked his head at his own stupidity. This wasn't the first time he'd woken up somewhere strange. Why the hell was he acting so, so ridiculously jumpy?
Forcing himself to calm down, he clenched his fists tight, and began to breath in, nice and slow...
There was no one here. The room was empty, and most likely, the house he was in, was too.
He was fine. Absolutely fine. The reactor was still in his chest and unharmed, and he was no longer naked and in a stranger's bed; he wasn't tied up, or in a cave, or laying on his sofa with his mentor standing over his paralyzed body like he was-
A light tinkle came from under the floor.
Well. The room under him. A room downstairs. He must be upstairs then, somewhere, unless there was a basement.
He swallowed, his mouth now dry, and he wet it with his own saliva. Another tinkle came and in the back of his mind, he recognised the sound as being two glasses tapping each other.
So. Someone was downstairs. Someone was here, and had been here, the whole time. They might have been listening, might have been waiting for him to wake up, or for-
Oh, who cared? This wasn't his house anyway and they were probably just an overdramatic drunk one-night-stand of his that had decided to take him home for the night. He'll just go downstairs, and leave. Simple.
Except. He was in heat. He was in his second cycle of heat which meant he'd had his first already. And, judging from the pain in his stomach and ass, someone had put something in him last night... He just didn't-
Oh, god.
Feeling dizzy and a little sick, he leant against the wall, still trying to breathe in as slow as possible. That wasn't possible. He hadn't bonded. He'd remember, if he'd been bonded. He'd know.
He was still feeling panicky and overwhelmed from his fall, but his body clearly knew something that he didn't, or couldn't, remember; and he was starting to hyperventilate and he didn't even know why.
He pressed a hand to his mouth when he heard, from downstairs again, the sound of a chair being scraped back. Jerking his own hand away, he shut his eyes for a brief moment and willed himself to calm down. This was nothing. Nothing. He'd literally been there and done that. He was fine.
There was the sound of a door closing and he figured that if he wanted to leave, then it was either now or never. Before his 'host' decided to go somewhere.
Pushing off of the wall, he flicked his eyes around the room until he found the door and he marched toward it, intent on walking out of the room, demanding to know where he was, and then leaving when his clothes were returned to him.
But, he barely even made it to the door, before he had to stop and check between his legs to see if he was bleeding. Because it felt way too uncomfortable, sticky and really sore to not be.
And, yep. Sure enough, after prodding at his thighs, he could see a visibly dark stain in the blue of the denim, and it made him feel a little queasy to look at. He sighed in exasperation, rolling his eyes.
There wasn't exactly a spare change of clothes around and he didn't have many options. Biting his lip, he eased his thighs apart, grimacing when the dried blood caught on his skin, and he walked a little more stiffly that before out of the door.
And it wasn't locked! Ha. He didn't even know when that'd become a worry of his, but apparently it had been, because all he could feel now was pure relief as he walked down the hallway outside.
An awful nightmare of yours.
The hallway, like the room, was completely empty. No cabinets or mirrors or tables with little photographs on them; which was what he'd expect from a house as huge as this.
Because it wasn't just the room that had been big. The hallway stretched down longer than the Stark mansion's one did. It was also really, really wide and he had to stick near to the walls as he walked, because there were no windows and no lights, and he had to squint at the dim surroundings to make sure he didn't walk into something.
There was a carpet here though and for his bare feet, it felt a lot nicer than the hardened wood from the room he'd woken up in.
He walked slowly, with no idea why he was taking his time, and his eyes skimmed over anything he could see around him; cautious all the while. He almost expected someone to jump out at him and he unconsciously quieted his breathing as he neared a set of stairs in the middle of the hallway.
The wood creaked when his hand grasped the bannister and he released it quickly, his heart thudding. There was a single thud from one of the rooms downstairs but nothing else afterward, and he risked a step down. Without touching the bannister this time.
Alarm bells were ringing in his head but he ignored them. He'd been in plenty of situations like this before, this was nothing. Why was that so hard for him to understand? This was just someone having gone too far, and he was going to let them know just how far they'd gone. With his fists if necessary.
The stairs were carpeted as well, the material a lot softer than the hallway's, and it was red; just like the fur pillows in the room. This was getting odder, and more worrying the more he thought about it. Best not to.
He looked past the bannister, through it's patterned gaps and entwined wooden figures, to see fanciful embroidery on the walls downstairs. He frowned, even more baffled than before, and that feeling only increased when he saw next a golden model of a coiled snake, sitting atop a table beside a set of double doors.
Whoever these people were, they were rich. And a lot more flamboyant with their housing accessories than Tony had ever liked to be. He hated statues.
Too many figurines meant too many repairs when experiments went wrong.
He padded down the last step, shivering when cool air from an open window blew over his still bare skin and there was another thud from within the room behind him. He spun around, facing the door leading to it and just, simply, froze. For about a minute.
Okay - He folded his arms across his chest, pressing his lips together firmly. Time to get whatever confrontation there'd be, over and done with.
He skimmed his hands over the handle, belatedly noticing that the door was made of mahogany, and suddenly found that he couldn't swallow past a choking lump in his throat. His eyes stung when he widened them but he couldn't but continue to do so. He also couldn't help the little gasp he let out in realization. Because, shit, there were-
There were bruises on his wrists.
Tony's chest tightened. There were bruises on his wrists.
He couldn't remember how to breathe, last night was still a blur in his mind, but that was really the only confirmation he needed.
There was bruises on his wrists. ... He-
Someone had held him down. Someone had used his wrists to hold him down. He felt sick. He felt dizzy and sick and even a little faint.
He was bleeding. There was blood on the shorts. His head hurt and his stomach ached. Symptoms. Symptoms that he knew off-by-heart.
Oh my God.
Oh my God.
He stumbled backward, his hand slipping off of the handle, and he still couldn't breathe. He couldn't think-
He was-
His skin was burning. God, he was still in heat. He needed-
He had no drugs, he had nothing. He'd woken up naked and in someone else's bed-!
There were fucking bruises on his wrists!
"Hel-"
His eyes flew up when the door opened with a snick and he found himself staring up at a face he'd never wanted to see again. Ever.
He took another step back, an full breath finally making it's way into his lungs, and he shook his head slowly. In sheer denial at all of this.
No.
No, no, no.
This wasn't happening. This was a nightmare-
Then, I suppose this must be an awful nightmare of yours.
Oh my God, no.
Loki smiled at him, a knife in one hand and a glass in the other. He leant his hip against the doorframe as he stared at him. Tony stared back. He stared and he backed away and his chest rose further with every breath than he thought it ever could. He needed to puke, and gag, but there was nothing in him. He could taste the bile in his throat. He-
Loki was fully dressed in his armor.
So, how come he got clothes? That didn't matter. None of this mattered. This was a dream.
Tony opened his mouth. To - he didn't know.
To shout and spit at him? To swear at Loki until he couldn't talk anymore? Until he explained everything he'd done, to Tony?
But nothing at all came out and he was left with an open mouth.
Not for fuck-ups like you!.
It was Loki, not him, who spoke first. His smile widened as he watched Tony's faltering and staggering, and his eyes were half-closed; amused and fierce. Everything Tony remembered seeing, back in his tower. Just before he'd been thrown through a window.
His hand came up to cover his arc reactor - protecting, shielding - and Loki took a step toward him.
"Your new home." He murmured to Tony, gesturing around him with the knife, and taking a sip of whatever that dark liquid was, that he was drinking.
Tony was still shaking his head. He didn't respond. He couldn't. He was too, genuinely and sickeningly, scared to say anything to him.
He was practically naked, barefoot and wearing only shorts, and he could feel his next cycle coming up. It was already seeping through his skin, making him hard and wet, and needy.
He could feel his brain muddling together and his palms sweating. Building the need he was now burning, for a body to thrust into him again.
Loki's eyes were glazed as he watched. He could sense it. He could smell it. Tony staggered backward.
No. Not him. Not again.
He was still bleeding. He could feel it between his thighs and he was shaking, trembling, and shuffling away.
Loki took another step forward.
"No." He whispered, before spinning around on his heels and turning his back on Loki. He sprinted back up the steps he'd just come down, running faster than he ever had before, and he didn't bother to look behind him to see if Loki was following him. What was the point?
He already knew that he was.
