Oh...well hello there. It's been a while. But I am on the verge of finishing several of these little one shots so, if I can stay focused enough, you have that to look forward to! I'm not sure if I feel like this one is exactly what I want it to be. I'm hoping it's not confusing and that everyone can understand it. I may come back to it and edit it. We'll see.
It's been a while...but read, review, and enjoy!
Tony knew the week was going to be bad because Loki was going to be gone the whole week on some little treasure hunt. It was also going to be bad because he was so busy with meetings this week that it wouldn't have even mattered if Loki was around—they would've never seen each other.
It was going to be terrible this week because he's pretty sure someone's put a hit out on him.
At first, it was just knowing he was being followed. The second he figured that out, he let Natasha and Clint know. He was far too busy to deal with this. Clint took it as a personal challenge to figure it out and rain hell upon whomever it was. Tony didn't really care, as long as it got handled.
Speaking of Clint…
"This better be the most important phone call of your life. I have twenty minutes before my next meeting," Tony issues. He's driving downtown and he hates driving downtown. Stupid stoplights with their stupid red lights. If they would just let him use the suit but noooo it would call too much attention to him or something.
"Tony-are-now-don't-"
"What? You're cutting out birdbrain. Finally," Tony says as the light turns green.
It takes a nanosecond for his brain to catch up with his words. This is the highest level of StarkTech. It doesn't cut out. The only reason it would…
Tony barely has time to brace for impact as a car comes speeding down the road, blowing through the red light, and slamming into the driver's side of his car. His consciousness reels for a minute as his head snaps from one side to the other, coming to an abrupt stop when it smacks into the window. Pain rockets through his body in several places but he doesn't have a good enough grip on the world to tell where exactly the pain is coming from.
When everything finally settles down, the world is still a little blurry to Tony. Things seem to be moving in a strange stop action. Tony looks to the other car, expecting to see someone in about the same condition he's in, but—he blinks a couple times to make sure—someone is emerging from the car like the accident never happened. That can't possibly be right. There's something shiny in the guy's—he's pretty sure it's a guy, now that he's closer—hand. Metal? Maybe metal. He's raising it up to Tony's eye level. Tony's sluggish mind tries to process the entire scenario.
Gun, his mind finally connects. The guy has a gun, is coming at him, and Tony can't even move. He musters up his best glare, ready to snap out some snarky stalling comment. Before he can get to it, something flashes into his line of sight. He catches sight of red, white, and blue, before it slams into the guy, dropping him instantly.
"Tony?" Someone's calling. Someone? If there was red, white, and blue in an area there could only be one person following it. "Tony?" Steve tries again. His face pops up in the shattered window. He knocks stray pieces of glass out of the window. "Are you-"
"Pretty shitty day, huh?" Tony says as he tries to straighten out his body. His mind connects the pain to his leg and his head. No surprise on the head. This has to be the concussion to rule all concussions.
Steve's smile is a little weak. "Yeah, looks like it. Where are you injured?"
"Head. Leg." He closes his eyes. Things are starting to track better but the world still tilts in a nauseating way every once in a while.
"Tony, c'mon, stay with me here," Steve says. Tony opens his eyes to see Steve tugging on the door.
"Never seen a piece of metal you couldn't beat," Tony comments idly.
"Can you move at all? If I rip it out, I don't want to hurt you."
Tony tries to move at all, but pain shoots through his entire body. He might have whimpered. He's not sure.
"Stuck. Pinned." Tony hates being trapped anywhere. It's never followed by anything good, not lately anyway, and for a second it's not a seatbelt and car that's holding him back but hands and Steve's not speaking English anymore, but possibly Arabic, but it's not Steve there is it?
"Tony!" Steve's voice suddenly snaps into focus. Tony's eyes shoot open and he realizes he can barely breathe. "Breathe Tony. It's okay. I'm right here. Just…breathe."
"Don't worry, I'm here too." Clint's head pops up behind Steve and Tony loses the little control he had over his breathing for a second. Steve shoots Clint a glare, who returns it with a sheepish, but definitely not sorry, look. "So, this is what I was trying to warn you about."
"Maybe a little more warning would've been good, yeah?" Tony asks.
"Okay, in my defense, Nat and I just figured it out when I called you. Cap, put your shield over Tony's right side angled right for…"
Steve follows Clint's line of sight and sees something that Tony couldn't hope to see, even if he wasn't concussed. It feels like Tony blinks and when he opens his eyes again, his vision is blocked on his right side by Captain America's shield. Another second passes and a bullet pings harmlessly off of it.
"Seriously? Car accident and a sniper?" Tony groans, letting his head relax against the headrest. They would hardly notice if he shut his eyes for a second…
There's a crunch next to him that has Tony flailing for consciousness. The entire area to his left is wide open. He stares at it stupidly. Steve, ever so patient, reaches in and gently starts to pull him out. Clint assesses Tony's legs before helping.
"Sorry Tony, this is going to hurt just a little bit," Clint says. He waits until Steve is in the perfect position before he yanks Tony completely from the car. Tony's vision grays out and when he finally gets a grip on reality again, he's sitting on the road, leaning against his poor, ruined car.
"Liar," Tony grinds out.
"Yeah, a little bit. I think your leg is broken in two places. Where's Loki? He usually knows when something's wrong."
"Off world. Won't be back for a while."
"Well that's lucky for your would-be assassins and Nat. She's been itching to get out of the house for a few days," Clint says.
Something prickles at the back of Tony's neck and a slight shiver goes down his spine. Tony chalks it up to being concussed and in extreme pain. "You brought the little spider with you?" Tony asks as he tries to turn to look over in the general direction that the shot came from. All sorts of wrong things happen to his body and Steve crouches down and puts a hand on Tony's shoulder to ground him through the pain. Clint not-so-discreetly steps into Tony's line of sight.
"Are you okay, Tony?" Steve asks. Tony can't answer him and Steve turns worried eyes to Clint. "Any word from Natasha?"
"She said she was-wait. He was what?" Clint says, clearly not talking to Steve. Tony feels like someone's watching him and looks around with narrowed eyes. He feels like he should be able to find whomever is watching him, but the reason is just beyond his tenuous grasp of reality.
"Apparently it's safe to move him." Clint's voice draws Tony's attention back to the situation. "The sniper is dead."
"What? How?" Steve asks. He stands up and waves to someone out of Tony's eyesight.
"Nat says it looks like suicide. It's possible he didn't think he'd get out. Most assassins carry some form of pill on them for situations like this."
"What'd you carry?" Tony asks and is shocked at how slurred his voice is. It distracts him enough to not even realize that Clint's past is one of those things that they never talk about and that he just asked about it.
"Cyanide," Clint says, but he sounds distracted too and Tony realizes he's scanning the rooftops around them, then looking back to the street.
"Something wrong?" Steve asks.
"I just…I feel like I'm missing something," Clint says. He shakes it off as the medical team approaches them, and then Tony is lost in a sea of voices and people touching him before a needle pokes into his arm and he sinks into a soothing darkness. Just before complete darkness takes hold, the half-answered questions in his head connect together.
When Tony wakes up again, the same nagging thoughts that were coming together when he went to sleep are still on the edge of his awareness.
"Loki?" Tony mumbles as he forces his eyes open and his brain to start working again.
"I didn't know you felt that way about me," an amused voice says from beside him. Definitely not Loki. Tony looks over and sees Clint sitting there.
"Stuck with guard duty?" he asks. They do it for all of their teammates when they're stuck in S.H.I.E.L.D's medical facility. Luckily, since Loki came along, Tony's more often the guard than the one being guarded.
"Well we figured I'd be the best one to calm Loki down in case he makes a sudden appearance here," Clint responds. Tony stares at him in silence before Clint rolls his eyes. "I'm joking Tony. How's your head feel?"
"Like someone hit it with a car."
"Well it's good to see that your sense of humor hasn't completely deserted you."
"In fact, it feels like someone hit my entire body with a car. What the hell kind of pain killers did you let them give me? Over the counter?"
"Well technically you weren't supposed to wake up for at least another day."
"What day is it?"
"Same day as the accident," Bruce says, walking in. Steve, Natasha, and Thor are behind him. "You actually just got out of surgery a few hours ago. I'm impressed."
"Surgery?"
"For your leg. They said one of the breaks wasn't as bad, but it looked like it had still been healing from a previous break. Have you ever broken your leg before?"
Tony looks at him in confusion. "Not that one."
"As I said, there was strange magic in the air when we got there," Thor says, a slight edge of superiority to his voice.
"Well you said Loki isn't even on-planet right now, right?" Clint asks.
"That's what he said," but Tony isn't completely sure he believes his lover.
"Can we remember that Loki always does whatever he wants?" Natasha asks the room.
"What she said," Tony says, pointing to her in approval and instantly regretting it. Everything pulls strangely and he really wishes they would give him those pain killers.
"Tony you have got to stop moving your body like that. When you tried to turn around earlier you shifted one of your ribs," Bruce lectures, coming up to the bedside to feel along his side to check the ribs again. Apparently everything passes inspection. "Everything is going to be sore for a while. You're lucky you didn't get more injured than that."
"If luck is what we're calling it," Clint mutters suspiciously.
"Who the hell uses a car accident as a method of assassination?" Tony asks.
"Usually someone who wants to make it look like an accident," Natasha answers. "But apparently they wanted everyone to know that they were the ones who assassinated you. That's the only reason someone ever assassinates publicly."
"You know how to make enemies," Clint says fondly, gently patting him on his less bruised shoulder.
"Is that supposed to be a compliment?"
"No," Steve says explicitly. "You have enough enemies. You don't need more."
"Yes mother."
"Since you seem to be doing fine, I'll get a doctor so we can get you some stronger pain killers. Resting is going to be the most important part of recovery," Bruce tells Tony with a glare. Tony tries to look as innocent as possible.
"Brucey dear, what could I possibly do with a broken leg?"
Bruce just rolls his eyes as he walks out of the room. Steve already looks like he's figuring out the best ways to bribe Tony to stay in bed.
"Don't worry, Steve," Clint says, grinning at Tony. It doesn't make him feel any better. "We'll all keep an eye on him."
"Wanna exchange stories on what we did today?" Tony says. The pain killers are the good stuff—not the instant healing that Loki can provide but the have-no-control-over-what-comes-out-of-his-mouth kind. His head lolls to the side to take in where Loki is suddenly curled up in a chair.
"Clearly you've had a much more exciting day than me," he says, all innocent. Tony doesn't buy it for a second and makes sure his face says so. Hey, maybe he does have some control over his mouth!
"For a god of lies, you're a really shitty liar," Tony says. Okay, maybe not. Loki doesn't dignify it with a response besides a roll of his eyes. He stands up to help Tony into a sitting position, so maybe he can forgive him a little.
"I did bring you back a present however," he says, and in his hands manifests a mass of something shiny. Tony's having flashbacks to yesterday for the briefest of seconds, but this time, the metal is unformed.
"Is this a bribe?" he asks, but half his mind is already focusing on the metal that Loki gingerly puts into his hands, despite the fact that his leg is broken, not his arms. Okay, so they're a little black and blue. Okay, so his entire left arm is so black and blue that the put it in a sling, but he pulled that off the second they thought he was asleep.
"Of course not. I believe I called it a present, did I not?"
"Fine, I take it back. You're not a terrible liar," Tony says. He's ready to slide out of bed and head down to the lab, but a gentle—yet pointed—hand on his good leg stops him.
"Perhaps it would be better if I explained to you the world in which it came from and tell you about the metal itself."
"You're always taking the fun out of everything," Tony says.
"Or you could sleep, as I'm sure your teammates think you're doing," Loki says, just as innocent as earlier.
"Hmph. Explain away Mr. I-know-best." Yup, definitely no control over his mouth.
Loki makes sure to jab him in one of his many bruises when he slides into the bed. "On the world it comes from, it is called, hm, how to translate it? 'Steelguard' is the closest I can get. They use it as their prestigious royal guards' armor."
"Before you go any further, do I need to question how you got this?"
"Of course not. Would I ever do something illegal as to steal sacred metal just for my lover?"
Tony takes a moment to try and gauge his seriousness. "You're giving me a headache," he says finally. "Explain on."
"I have seen swords wielded by men stronger than Thor-"
"There's people stronger than Thor?"
"And leave not even a scratch," Loki says, with a "behave" glare. "The workings of the metal are kept secret to most."
"Most, but not all?" Tony asks with a raised eyebrow. Apparently he can't behave. Well, that's not a shocker.
"To those who ask politely, the smiths are willing to divulge such secrets."
"I'm sure they are," Tony mutters.
"Heat, of course, is very important, but too hot and the metal will never reform. It must be heated to just the right temperature, with a passing breeze over it. Most of the smiths are spell weavers, and weave spells into the metal while they work it. You may have the potential for doing so, but…" Loki sends a glare at the arc reactor. He hates why it's there, and what it's done to Tony. He also hates the fact that it stole Tony from him as student, despite the fact that Tony still isn't sure how he feels about magic.
"Well it's a good thing I have you then, huh?" Tony says. "We should go down to the lab now and…"
Tony tries to make a break for it again, but Loki stops him before he even moves an inch. "A good attempt, however misguided. I believe we shall stay in the bedroom tonight."
"Oooh, I like that idea!" Tony says, and turns around to face Loki, just in time to see him roll his eyes, huff in frustration, and, with barely a blink of his eyes, he sends Tony to sleep.