Hey all! Hope you all like this, and... my apologies. XD Enjoy! This is a rather late note I'm afraid, but just wanted to give credit where credit is due, my beta TheDarkElement helped with writing this chapter. Thanks for all the great reviews guys! Update coming Wednesday later on.
Tony didn't much like to think about when Thor found out that Loki was bedding a teammate of his. A day after Loki discovered Natasha's hot sauce collection, the god had told Tony he would take care of it, and then disappeared. Tony just went to his bar, where he happily imbibed until it was all numb and he could barely remember what Loki was doing.
"Loki!" Thor greeted him enthusiastically when Loki appeared in his room where he was polishing Mjolnir.
"Thor." Loki replied civilly.
"What is your purpose in visiting me?" Thor asked. Loki raised an eyebrow, amused at the foresight Thor was showing.
"I have news that I wish to impart. You must give me your Word that you will not do anything about what I tell you however."
Thor eyed him suspiciously. However, Loki wasn't giving him any cause for concern as of late, so he nodded his acceptance hesitantly.
"I am bedding Stark, your teammate." Loki told him bluntly. Thor's eyes widened and he surged up from his seat with a roar.
"THOR! You PROMISED!" Loki bellowed above it.
Thor stopped before he pushed past Loki. "What are you thinking brother? That man is not deserving of you. Mortals are so much more fragile than us, and that man is very promiscuous. You have not seen all the people he has paraded through his bedroom."
Loki smirked at that. "And how many have you seen in the last few weeks?"
Thor furrowed his brow as he thought. "Well... none. He's probably just gotten better at hiding them." He concluded. Loki groaned.
"Thor, it's because I've been with him. Get it through your thick skull." He snapped.
"Brother, you cannot be serious about this mortal." Thor protested.
"I make no promises. He is a very intriguing person," Loki said with a smile, one that Thor had seen many times and knew to be wary of.
Thor sighed and clapped a hand on Loki's shoulder. "Very well, I will let it pass. If he hurts you, I won't rest until he pays for it. He is also my comrade, I ask that you... be careful. His past..."
"I know Thor. It is part of what makes him so fascinating." Loki said, face clouding.
"This affair cannot last long." Thor concluded, face clearing at the thought. It was a pure carnal release, was it not?
Loki growled. "It will last however long I wish it to. I just thought it was best that you knew before you found us in a compromising situation. It is a mutual decision, and I wish you to stay out of it."
"Very well, brother. Since it is only temporary, I will leave it be."
Loki stood silently for a few minutes, debating the pros and cons of telling Thor that it was long past the point of only temporary before he shook his head and decided to let the oaf continue thinking that if it meant Thor wouldn't kill his most recent bedmate.
He strode from Thor's room, making his way to Tony's suite, where he found the mortal sloshed. He sighed in disgust. The boundaries of the spell were weakening it seemed. Tony was still not as bad off as he could've been.
"Lover, what'd you go and do this for?" He growled as Tony focused blearily on him from across the room.
"It's the great god of mischief!" Tony cried, stumbling. Loki watched dispassionately as he fell on his ass. It seemed to sober him up.
"I couldn't bear waiting for you to come back. If you did." He muttered the last part under his breath, but Loki still heard him.
"Why wouldn't I come back?" He questioned sharply. Tony looked up, startled, and then cursed as he realized that Loki had heard.
"Because Thor persuaded you otherwise, because bedding a mortal is stupid. Lots of shitty things crossed my mind. I think too much, and I couldn't stop them." Tony said quietly, leaning back on the floor with a shuddering sigh. Loki took pity on him after a moment and teleported him to the bed.
"Such a pity. I had plans for a celebratory fuck." He said before turning away.
"A what?!" Tony called out desperately behind him.
He smirked before turning around. "Sleep it off and then we'll see."
He left Tony in the bedroom whining, wandering off to see if Natasha would spar with him. He found himself liking the red haired assassin more and more as time went by. No words were necessarily exchanged, but it was the silent way she could read him that amused him the most. Their ways of fighting were very similar, and they were well matched, Loki winning most of the battles because of his history, although she would get the drop on him occasionally when he relaxed his guard.
In fact, he mused, she reminded him a bit of his daughter. He felt a pang at the thought of her. It's been too long, perhaps I should pay a visit, he thought.
It was a week or two after what Tony began calling the Hot Sauce Incident when everything changed. Nobody could've foreseen it, much less Loki. He had left, telling Tony it had been far too long since he had seen his daughter. Tony shook his head in amusement at the fact that he referred to inter realm hopping so casually and itched to ask about his daughter, but sent him off with a harsh kiss and a promise that there was more to come when he returned.
Loki's eyes lit with a dark fire and he tugged Tony forward, leaving a not so subtle mark on his neck quickly before Tony heard him whisper "I will return within a fortnight. Clear your schedule, because I have plans for you."
Tony shivered and smirked. "Such threats."
"I'll ride you into the mattress and make you scream." Loki promised. He grinned and vanished after seeing the look at appeared on Tony's face.
Tony just growled and went to take a cold shower.
A couple days later, the Avengers had a callout. Nick met them all as they prepared to go out.
"It's that guy that calls himself Dr. Doom. Be careful." he said with a grim face.
"Don't worry dear, the Doctor is in." Tony quipped. Nick glared and walked off silently. Tony shook his head in amusement and flew off to get an aerial view of what they were dealing with.
He whistled at the sight of all the Doombots littering the city.
"Guys, looks like we've got our work cut out for us." He told the rest of the team through the com.
"Give us what you're seeing Tony." Natasha said curtly.
"Sure thing hot lips." Tony grinned as he gave the command for the rest of the team to see what his cameras were picking up.
"I would think Loki deserves that name more so than I," Natasha returned dryly. Tony could hear Clint choking in the background as he laughed uproariously, momentarily losing his balance in the suit before regaining it. He ruefully thought that Natasha might be his favorite teammate at the moment, just because she reminded him oh so slightly of his lover.
A shot flew past him, and he dodged with a curse. "Down to business guys," he said as he flew down to crush the blasted bot that had tried to take him down.
"Tony, be careful. Nick told us he seems to have it out for you, we can't let anything happen to you." Steve said seriously.
"Aw Cap, you're making me blush. I'm not a virgin maiden awaiting her knight, you handle your part and I'll take care of mine." Tony retorted, feeling a burn at the thought of getting back at Doom for what he had done in the Helicarrier.
"The word virgin doesn't belong in your vocabulary," Natasha put in with a snort. Tony grinned at that before he waded into a mess of bots, ready to do battle.
It was an hour or so later, after the team were all beginning to breathe harder, that Tony flew up to a rooftop to catch his breath, leaving behind many decapitated bots. He landed and leaned against a wall, grateful for a chance to close his eyes without thinking he would die within the next two seconds.
He was interrupted by a crack, not unlike Thor's magic. He was slow in the response, thinking it was just the Thunderer nearby, when a familiar voice invaded those thoughts.
"Stark. Finally, your power is mine." Came the voice of Dr. Doom.
Tony jerked, but it was too late. A shot came from behind him and darkness claimed him. He wasn't even able to make a sound to warn the team before he was dragged away - from the team, and from Loki.
/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/
It was dark when Tony awoke, or maybe that was just his surroundings. Tony could automatically tell that he was in a rounded chamber of sorts, and that the only source of light were the four torches set up and equally spaced along the wall. He was laying on what one could think of as a mattress, but it was made of straw, and not exactly worth a five star rating. Across the room from the mattress was a steel door, the only door in fact.
Despite being in a place that he wasn't used to being, Tony immediately turned to survey the chain that was hooked up to his ankle. The chains attached to his cuff ran into the wall, and the cuff was seamless, not even a keyhole available to pick. Getting out and away was steadily getting more and more difficult.
What was worrying Tony the most, and what he knew with a cold clarity before he even woke up was the fact that his arc reactor was missing, replaced by a crude car battery. This was a problem since the car battery wasn't even powerful enough to grasp at all the shards, and the few that were out of reach were slowly burning their way towards his heart. He could feel it, the steady ring of fire that was slowly encroaching on one of the major organs he needed to live. The only question now was how long could he live on the car battery? How long would a slow death take?
Tony was ripped from his musings at the sound of the door screeching and protesting at being opened. Clearly the dungeons weren't used often enough for their doors to be oiled frequently. Standing in the doorway was none other than Doctor Doom himself, which wasn't unexpected if Tony remembered correctly who had commented before he conveniently passed out earlier that day.
"Tony Stark. As you see, you did not give me your technology easily, so I have taken it from you. Now you will tell me how to make more." Doom intoned, pissing Tony off with how final he made it. His surroundings were pushing him to the edge with the past he had, and even buried as deep as they were, the memories surged to the front.
"Yeah, you see, I don't really do this whole scene well. That tech is mine, and going to stay mine, but feel free to get in line. Don't you have goons that can figure it out for you?" Tony rasped.
"Do not mock me. I will get it from you one way or another. Be it as you cry the workings out to me in pain, or if you tell me now. I will have it, it makes no difference to me how much pain you are in." Doom grated at him.
At that comment Tony kept silent, getting tortured again wasn't really high up on his bucket list in this lifetime. Doom though, apparently mistook his silence for resistance and nodded as gravely as he could, signaling outside of the room to a Doombot who entered and forced Tony to his knees before shackling his wrists together and clamping them down to the center of the floor, leaving him in a bowed position.
"Tell me Tony Stark, I know of the fire in your heart, but how much more pain can you take before you crack? Maybe the whips will pull the answer out of you, maybe not. We shall see."
Tony closed his eyes as the bot took the whip off the wall outside the door and closed in on him. The initial crack of the whip being handled had him opening his eyes before the tail met his flesh and left a trail of fire burning down his shoulder and down his back. He gritted his teeth through the next five, refusing to cry out in front of an enemy By the second set of ten he was seeing spots and reaching urgently to the tunnel of black that was steadily creeping closer.
The thirty first, the one that landed directly on his neck, wrapping around to strike his cheek like a snake was the one that mercifully and finally sent him under and into the sea of black.
The next day after proceeded along the same lines, as did the third. The only difference in the third day was that Doom had another bot pull his nails from the nail bed, and that they felt the need to kick him around like an unwanted animal. He knew for sure that his arm had been broken and some, if not most of his ribs had been fractured by the beating, passing out seemed like heaven to him that day. The fourth day of his captivity saw him whipped again, but this time he only made it to fifteen before the blood loss and the pain of his previous injuries made him black out.
I'm so sorry for doing this to all of you. I'll hopefully update sooner than normal, but I have finals coming up. To all who reviewed and favorited, etc, you have all my love. Mwah! *sends cookies to everyone*
