A/N: And here marks the start of the legitimate plot. I'll try and make the chapters less boring and short as they have been in the past.
Chapter 14: The Highest Standards of Hygiene
Loki swore in frustration and blasted the spot where Malekith had been. "Goddamnit! I should have known he would do that!"
Tony made an indignant noise at Loki scorching his floor. There had been enough large-scale property damage today without Loki throwing a tantrum.
As the surprise of Malekith's disappearance wore off, everyone else started to curse too.
Loki carefully quelled his anger down and slipped into his trademark shit-eating grin. "Haha, I – we won." Loki crowed. "He got away, but at least I had the pleasure of punching him in the face."
Loki moved forwards to where Malekith had been smashed, making himself the centre of the Avengers' attention. "Do you know what this calls for?"
Everyone looked a little confused. "Shawarma?" Tony guessed.
"This, my noble compatriots, calls for...victory marathon fucking!" Loki said cheerfully.
Everyone looked rather uncomfortable, making Loki laugh. Fortunately they were distracted by the Hulk's sudden transformation back into Bruce, making everyone look away and Steve awkwardly ask Tony where the nearest set of pants was.
As Tony gestured towards his guest bedroom, Loki leaned forward and purred into his ear "You are most welcome to join me."
Before Tony could think of a satisfactory reply, Loki had teleported away.
-O.O-
Loki actually did join the team for shawarma, after going home, removing and cleaning the suit, scrubbing himself meticulously clean, applying paper stitches to his forehead, and putting on the most formal suit he could possibly find. Anything to purge the memory of not showering and washing his hair for a few days.
The shawarma place was only kept open for the Avengers, in honour of their saving the city, and it wasn't the typical place for one of the richest men in America to come to in his bespoke suit and prissy attitude, so Loki seemed a little out of place.
The whole dinner was awkward, to say the least. Outside of conflict, they really didn't have whole lot in common. The only visible thread of conversation was a vague discussion of gamma radiation and the Tesseract between Tony and Bruce.
The invisible thread of conversation was Loki sending Tony a litany of hilarious and downright salacious texts under the table, and yeah, Tony was definitely going home with him tonight if that was on offer.
Everyone just sat around and munched, Loki and Natasha picking at their food fussily, Tony trying multiple flavours of everything to see if this experiment was worthwhile.
As everyone finished, paid, and made to leave, Natasha spoke up. "Guys, Fury wants us in the main conference room at Stark Tower at eleven tomorrow morning for a debriefing."
"Aww, that asshole's commandeered my tower." Tony whined. "I don't wanna get up tomorrow."
"You may have to call and remind me." Loki said. "I am a busy man; I may have work to do. Actually, there is a fairly good chance I will be fucking some girl into a mattress somewhere. Really, the opportunities are endless."
"Douchebag." Clint frowned. "Besides, I thought you were gay."
"Pick up a magazine, Barton. I'm not fussy on genders." Loki tutted. "Now, I must go. The night life of this decimated city calls."
"Sparkles is right." Tony said. "There's nothing quite like a victory fuck. Let's go, big guy."
They walked towards the door together. "If you think I'll lower myself to spending time with you, you are sorely mistaken." Loki sneered.
"Those two are really inappropriate." Steve said.
"If you think that's weird, you should see what Loki did to me." Clint winced.
"Eleven, tomorrow, Stark Tower. Got it?" Natasha said, and the remaining Avengers nodded.
-O.O-
Despite his words, Loki dragged him into a taxi headed for Laufeyson Tower as soon as they were clear of the restaurant.
"Jesus fuck, Loki, if you can do all the things you mentioned in those texts then I'll buy you a round of drinks next time the Avengers go out." Tony smirked.
"Try me." Loki sniggered.
"Oh, I will." Tony grinned.
Loki unbuckled his seatbelt and climbed onto Tony's lap, mouth hot and moving against his neck.
"Hey! Knock it off back there! Seatbelt on; it's the law!" The cab driver said through the partition.
"I knew I should have gotten my chauffeur." Loki sighed, reluctantly ceasing his ministrations and belting back up.
Tony reached over to run his hand up Loki's side with a leer, but stopped when Loki hissed. "What?"
"Bruises." Loki said by way of explanation. He undid his jacket, then his waistcoat, untucked his shirt, and unbuttoned it to show Tony the mass of bruises up one side where the Hulk had punched him, not to mention a few on his back where Tony had pinned him in the Iron Man suit back in the forest.
Talk about friendly fire.
"Christ, Loki. Are you sure you shouldn't just go to sleep?" Tony said worriedly.
"Very much so." Loki said, and his grin promised sinful things.
-O.O-
Tony's phone was ringing.
"Fuck's sake, Stark, what is it with you and your mid-coital phone interactions?!" Loki gasped.
"Try saying that when you're drunk." Tony sniggered. "Sorry, dude. I don't want to answer it either, but that's the emergency tone."
Loki looked pissed off to the extreme as he reluctantly climbed off Tony and let Tony awkwardly grab his pants off the floor and retrieve his phone.
"Stark, if you take too long, I'm finishing and going to find food." Loki said snippily. "I am deadly serious. And you will have to watch."
Tony made a face. Watching Loki jack off would probably be a sight to see, but he had no doubt Loki was serious about leaving. Nevertheless, he answered the phone. "Whoever this is, it better be a real emergency, 'cause I was in the middle of something."
"You missed the meeting, Tony." Natasha said irritably. "Eleven at your own house. Where are you?"
Loki looked so incredibly annoyed that Tony was surprised he hadn't been thrown butt naked into the elevator already.
"Hotel. My living room got Malekith'd so I figured me and my companion could afford a room." Tony said. "Didn't the Princess say to ring and remind us?"
Loki made an obscene hand gesture at him. Evidently getting interrupted in the middle of preparing to fuck someone did nothing for his already sharp temper, or his libido.
"We figured you'd remember. We were wrong." Natasha said.
"What time is it? And make this call quick, I have a...situation here and your voice isn't supposed to be a part of it."
"Don't give me the specifics. It's just after one in the afternoon. Fury wants you here as soon as possible." Natasha deadpanned.
"Give me 'til three o'clock to finish up here and shower and whatnot and I'll see you then?" Tony bargained.
"I'll pass that on. Is Loki with you?"
"Why, why, why would Loki be with me?" Tony said.
Natasha made a noncommittal noise and told him to actually be there, before hanging up.
Tony climbed back onto Loki's bed – like everything Loki owned, it was pretentious and imposing, with gold silk sheets, embroidered black duvet and a wrought iron headboard (seriously, what the hell?) – and crawled up Loki's perfect pale body, running his hands up Loki's smooth legs -
"Incoming phone call." Server said.
Tony and Loki swore simultaneously. "Just answer." Loki hissed.
"Laufeyson, you missed the meeting." Natasha said flatly.
"Too bad. I am certain what I was doing was more important. Server, what was I doing at eleven?" Loki said airily, as if he wasn't on the phone to a teammate while in bed with another teammate.
"Master was in process of performing-" Server started
"That's enough now." Natasha cut in. "I don't need to know."
"Are you sure? You may want to sit down first, though." Loki said cheerily, always enjoying the opportunity to make someone uncomfortable.
"Fury wants you in Stark Tower at three. No skipping." Natasha said flatly, hanging up.
"Isn't she a nice lady." Loki said dully. "Now, where were we?"
-O.O-
"Get in the shower and purge yourself." Loki commanded.
"Can't I just-"
"Get. In. The. Shower. I will go nowhere with you if you are not conforming to the highest standards of hygiene."
"Has anyone told you that you are really fussy? You're always shoving me into showers." Tony grumbled, walking to Loki's ensuite.
-O.O-
Fury was not impressed when a slightly flushed Loki and a messy Tony (dressed in the same clothes he'd been wearing last night) stumbled into the conference room. Clint and Natasha stood in the conference room too, po-faced at their rather debauched appearances.
"Thanks to you two assholes I've been here all day, instead of meeting with the Council and organising the cleanup." Fury growled.
"I would claim to guilt, but I feel none." Loki said with a shrug. Tony nodded in agreement.
"Your other teammates have given me the full story on your part in the invasion, so I don't need a play-by-play. Here's the short version: all of you Avengers have to help with cleaning up this city."
"Aw, but-" Tony started.
"In return, seeing as Dr Selvig has said he never wants to set foot on SHIELD property again, I'm leaving research on the Tesseract partly to you two." Fury said.
Tony's face split in a huge grin, and out of the corner of his eye he saw Loki's face light up with something similar.
"Yes!" Loki said brightly. "Brilliant! ...What are the limitations?"
"Wednesdays and Thursdays, from eight 'til three, here in the main lab at Stark Tower, one of you must be in the room with it all times, and we want your notes regarding potential clean energy uses." Fury rattled off.
Loki knew full well this was as close to ideal as he was going to get, so he didn't push for more.
Tony, on the other hand, had different ideas. "Do I have to work with Loki? Just, I'd rather the work I do stays private."
"You two work together, or not at all." Fury said flatly.
"You and I will be lab partners, Stark." Loki said amusedly. "If that is all...?"
"It's Tuesday today, so you'll have access to the Tesseract tomorrow. For now, we've moved Malekith's portal-creating device into your main lab, if you'd like to take a look at it." Fury said.
Loki and Tony speed-walked to the elevator and mashed the down button. When the doors closed, Loki turned to Tony frustratedly and said "After all this, you still think I will steal your trade secrets?"
"You might. I don't know." Tony shrugged. "Remember that you're actually my biggest competitor in business, not a teammate or a fuck buddy or anything that's going on here."
"You believe I forgot?" Loki said coolly.
"No, I just – don't get confused." Tony sighed. Then he shook himself, reached over and hit the 'stop elevator' button.
"What are you-" Loki started, but Tony put his hand over Loki's mouth and started kissing the space under his ear.
"Shut up and behave." Tony said, like half of him thought this was a terrible idea and half of him thought it was great.
Loki chuckled and removed Tony's hand, ducking slightly to press their mouths together and taste Tony. The shorter man opened his mouth, drawing Loki in for a hot open-mouthed kiss that was completely chasteless.
"We've got to stop doing this." Tony said half-seriously as he mouthed Loki's jawline.
"Stark, if you start getting sentimental in any way I will castrate you and find a new bedmate faster than you can say 'don't touch that'." Loki said sharply, sucking in a sharp breath when Tony moved to his neck and started undoing his belt.
"You're all heart, aren't you, Laufeyson," Tony said as he dropped to his knees and pinned Loki against the elevator wall.
"Aaaaaaah!" Someone shrieked, mildly effeminate and panicked. "Holy fuck NO! That's just- oh god, my eyes!"
Tony leapt to his feet, looking for his attacker, and followed Loki's line of sight as the taller man zipped his dress pants and rebuckled his belt.
Clint Barton's head was looking through the service hatch in the roof in abject horror at the scene within the elevator. "Fuck it! This is why we can't have nice things! Laufeyson, you are the reason I can't have nice things!" He gasped.
"Barton, what the hell are you doing here?" Tony gasped, looking more than a tad messy with red-flushed lips and his shirt crumpled.
"The elevator stopped – I thought you might be in trouble – oh gods, why did I check, I should have let you assholes die in here!" Clint said desperately, pulling his head out of the elevator and closing the hatch. Loki and Tony could faintly hear his wails of anguish as he abseiled back up the elevator shaft.
Tony and Loki took one look at each other and burst out laughing.
God, Loki, Tony thought. You are such a bad influence on me.
"Maybe we'd better get to the lab before Fury strangles us." Tony said.
Loki made a face, disappointed at Clint's cockblocking, but acquiesced as he saw reason. No one could accuse Loki Laufeyson of not being on top of people's motives.
-O.O-
The device was mostly intact, barring the removal of the Tesseract. Loki searched over the whole thing while Tony read from the designs, and yes, it seemed to be in one piece. Even the iridium, rare as it was, was still in place.
"I plan to reverse-engineer this until I know exactly how creating an Einstein-Rosen bridge could ever happen." Loki said, satisfied by the science he was drinking in.
"I'll join you, big guy. Pity Selvig's laptop isn't here, but we'll figure it out."
Time passed quickly as they tried to figure out what they were looking at. Eventually Loki looked at the time and startled, saying "The time has flown! I was supposed to get Darcy picked up from the airport in half an hour." Loki furiously dug out his phone and texted his chauffeur.
"Oh yeah, you mentioned that. It's really cute that you moved her to safety. And-" He checked his phone. "SHIELD have hired out floorspace in the tower and Clint and Natasha want to know if you're staying for dinner."
"No, I will make my own when I return to my tower." Loki said.
"You cook? I tried to make an omelette once. Just once. But I'm heading upstairs now and you can't stay in my labs all night." Tony said.
"Then I shall be leaving." Loki said, sending another text to his chauffeur.
Loki walked to the elevator, hit the down button and left, all without a backwards glance.
-O.O-
Darcy stepped from Loki's private plane to see the tall man himself waiting for her on the airstrip. She immediately dove forward and hugged him, clinging tight until he peeled her away from him.
"Oh my god, Lokester, I saw the whole thing on TV – thank you so much for rescuing me! And hey, you're one of Earth's mightiest heroes now. Loki Laufeyson, a hero. Never thought I'd see the day." Darcy grinned.
This was true – in the chaos of the battle, multiple people had recognised Loki, and by this morning it had become public knowledge exactly who Lightningrod was. Loki just cursed them for taking so long.
"It was nothing, Darcy. I hardly would have left you there." Loki said affectionately.
"Thanks, dude. Let's go home before I get too disappointed at the lack of sunshine."
"I will be out tomorrow morning, and the morning after. I am doing scientific research for SHIELD." Loki forewarned.
"Cool! Well, I'll clear anything that needs clearing, but truth is I'm pretty sure the whole alien invasion thing probably did most of my work for me." Darcy said.