A/N: New chapter time. And also bed time, for me. Let me know what you guys think. I love hearing from you. :)
Turn
by Flaignhan
"That's ridiculous, I clearly have the better hand."
"No you don't," Natasha argues. "My two pair beats your two pair because my highest pair is higher than your highest pair. Those are the rules!"
"I think you're making it up as you go along," Loki says bitterly, throwing his cards down. "What's the point of having two pairs if you disregard the second?"
"Because two pairs beats one pair," Natasha says obviously, pulling her winnings towards her with a smug smile on her face. "If the first pair tie, then you go to the second pair. You can't add up pairs. That's insane."
Loki huffs, snatches up the cards and deals again, five cards each.
"I did think you had a slightly more impressive hand, from your bluffing," Natasha adds. "But then I remember that you're always labouring under the delusion that everything about you is superior. Lucky for me, really."
He fixes her with a narrow glare, puts the deck down and picks up his hand. When Natasha takes hers, she purposefully nudges the huge pile of precious stones in front of her that Thor had brought for them to use instead of chips. Loki's yet to win a hand from perseverance and strategy, but he's had a couple of lucky deals, with a flush that saw him sweep a considerable pile of jewels towards him. He's bold, she'll give him that. He'll quite happily raise on a dud hand, but she's called his bluff a little too often for that to be a viable tactic going forwards.
"Are you not done yet?" Thor sighs, his head resting on the palm of his hand. Both Natasha and Loki look across to the other side of the cell, where Thor is sitting on the floor, tired, bored, and ready to go to bed.
"If you can't handle a late night, brother…" Loki begins, turning back to his cards, his expression melting into a smooth mask that's impossible for Natasha to read, at the moment.
"It's past midnight," Thor replies. "You've been playing for hours."
Natasha discards two of her cards and Loki deals another two out to her, his eyes fixed on her when she turns them over and adds them to her hand.
"You didn't have to stay," Loki says to Thor coolly, before ditching a single card and dealing himself a new one, his expression never changing. "You could have gone elsewhere. Natasha even offered to teach you how to play but you gave up far too soon."
"I have no patience for that sort of thing," Thor sighs. "And I can't go, I need to escort Natasha back to her sleeping quarters."
"My sleeping quarters," Loki says pointedly.
Natasha pushes all of her jewels into the centre. "Winner takes all?" she suggests. "And we can start from scratch in the morning?"
Loki doesn't even look at his hand, but gathers his own jewels and places them with Natasha's. She's taking a risk, but she's also tired and finds it difficult to care much anymore. Apart from that, Thor's getting impatient, and his impatience is only likely to rile Loki and cause arguments. She'd rather go without one of those before bed. They've been fairly civil since dinner, Loki only giving Natasha withering looks during Thor's brief foray into the world of poker. He hadn't even protested when she suggested that Thor join in. Yes, he had let out an exaggerated sigh at the idea, but he had not complained, not even when Natasha patiently explained the different winning hands to Thor for the third time. Loki hadn't managed to hide his grin when Thor had thrown his cards down in frustration and skulked away to the other side of the cell, where he's remained ever since.
"Confident?" Loki asks. Natasha's eyes drop to the index finger tapping against his knee, and she smirks. Loki looks down and his finger stills immediately, his own smirk fading at the edges.
"Well now I am," Natasha replies. She's got three of a kind, and normally wouldn't go all in with a hand like this, but the worst that'll happen is that Loki will finish the night on a win, won't twist her arm into playing any more games, and she can go to bed peacefully.
After a few moments of trying to gauge his hand from his blank expression, Natasha lays down her cards, and Loki, still holding his against his chest, leans forward to inspect them.
"Three tens," he says casually. "Not bad I suppose, but no match for a flush."
He lays down his cards, his smirk spreading to levels that she hadn't previously thought possible. And sure enough, he has a hand of spades. Natasha isn't surprised to lose, but she's surprised he's managed a flush. She wonders just how much luck was on his side with that one, or even whether there had been a little slight of hand when he was dealing. She chases those thoughts away, inwardly admonishing herself for being a bad loser, and smiles.
"Congratulations," she says, as he pulls all of the jewels together into a mound and drags them towards him, his long fingers catching any rogue escapees and rejoining them with the rest of the group.
"Thank you," he says civilly, picky up a shiny blue sapphire and tossing it into the air, catching it with one hand upon its descent. "I suppose the best man won."
Natasha bristles inwardly, but her poker face remains. She simply smiles, gathers up the cards, puts them back in the packet and stands, heading over to the table in the corner to place them there, ahead of the following day's inevitable tournament. "Goodnight," she says firmly. "Sleep tight."
"And you," he replies, trailing his index finger through his winnings, a blood red ruby tumbling down the edge of the pile and rolling a few feet across the floor. "Enjoy my bed." He finishes with a smirk and Natasha nudges a snoozing Thor, who wakes with a start, looking around.
"What happened?" he asks, his eyes bleary.
"I'm out," she says. "And it's bed time." She holds out a hand and Thor takes it, allowing her to haul him to his feet. It takes a moment for him to steady himself, but once he has, he bids goodnight to Loki, who rolls his eyes, then he and Natasha leave the cell for a few hours of much needed rest.
The next morning begins with breakfast. Acting on impulse, Natasha asks Thor to join them, the tray holding enough for at least half a dozen people. Thor looks warily towards Loki, who huffs noisily at the invitation, but doesn't argue. Slowly but surely, Natasha is determined to steer him towards a mindset where he knows that he can't have things his way all the time, and hopefully, he won't mind when it's things as simple as Thor joining them for meals or the occasional game of cards.
They eat in silence, which isn't surprising, and Natasha has no desire to try and force conversation between the two of them. They're eating together, and that's a miracle in itself. She's not going to push her luck too far. When they finish, Loki spends a while tapping his fingers against his knee, his scowl growing more and more pronounced with every passing second that Thor remains with them.
"How about a trip into the woods today?" Thor asks. "I think the fresh air will do you good."
Loki opens his mouth to protest, but Natasha cuts across him.
"I am not playing poker all day long. I'd like to go outside."
Loki gives her a poisonous look and she shrugs, before he finally relents and sulkily says, "Fine. We'll go outside."
"Wonderful," Thor says. "I'll tell the cooks to prepare us some lunch to take with us. I have to go and see Father, but you've got your card games to be playing."
Loki's lip curls and Thor bids them a cheery goodbye, leaving the dungeon and securing the chains behind him. Natasha feels a sinking in her chest. Today is going to be trying, and she concentrates on how much warmth and good food there is in Asgard. She hasn't been in touch with the others, but she doesn't imagine that things will have returned to normal and settled down before tomorrow. Perhaps heading back home will seem like something of a holiday, but when she considers the excellent night's sleep she's had, she's not sure she'll be too keen to get back. That could all change today however. From the sounds of it, Thor's hoping for a merry trip out into nature with a picnic of all things. Apparently he's still clinging onto his childhood, and is perhaps hoping that by recreating trips of days gone by, Loki will suddenly lose all of his bitterness and hatred and will be fixed, becoming the child he once was.
Somehow though, she can't imagine that even as a child, Loki was one for skipping through fields with a basket of sandwiches looped on his arm. She sniggers at the thought, and Loki looks up at her, his expression haughty.
"Something funny?"
"Yeah," she says, trying to keep a straight face. "I'm gonna spend my day mediating on a picnic that has the potential to destroy a pretty huge amount of the universe."
"I'm not eating outside like an animal," he retorts. "Thor's even more stupid than I previously imagined if he thinks I'll do that."
"You ate chocolate last time," Natasha reasons, biting her lip to keep her laughter at bay. She knows it'll only sour his mood further, and that's the last thing she needs, even if the brothers do find cause for conflict in the most ridiculously simple things.
"Will there be chocolate this time?" Loki asks, tracing his index finger along the floor, his eyes following its progress, before he finally looks at Natasha, completely seriously.
"I don't think so," she says, but then she considers her options. Bribery is always an option. Every man has his price, and if Loki's price for being civil is a bar of chocolate, then that's something she can probably manage after she's been back to Earth. "I could bring you some chocolate next time if you like," she says slowly, watching him carefully, trying to gauge his reaction.
Loki narrows his eyes. "On what condition?"
"Am I that transparent?"
"Yes."
"Oh," Natasha says simply. "Well on the condition that you make this as painless for me as possible. I don't wanna be breaking up any forest fights between you guys. Just go, eat the food, try and enjoy the outside world a little, and then we'll come back, play cards, and I won't be pissed for the rest of the day."
"You want me to play happy families with Thor for the sake of chocolate?"
"Pretty much," she says, then takes a deep breath before continuing. "Look, you've been doing really well these past few days, and I think it's time we stepped it up a little. I know how difficult it is for you, biting your tongue and trying to stay sane when he's around, but I really think you can do this. And do it well. And if you do it well, I totally think you'll have earned a ton of chocolate for that."
Loki rolls his eyes, stands, and then goes to the collect the cards from the table in the corner. Natasha can see the cogs turning in his mind. The last thing he wants to do is be well behaved because somebody else wants him to, and yet, when that somebody else is her and not Thor, it becomes more difficult to justify bad behaviour. She's asking him for a favour, and in return, he'll get chocolate. She's not operating a rewards scheme today, where eating gets him one gold star, and not punching Thor in the face gets him seven. She's asking him for her own sake, and she knows that that's the only reason why he hasn't banished her from his cell.
That, and he wants to play poker.
She lets him deal without pushing the issue further, and she divides the pile of precious stones and thick gold coins roughly in half, giving Loki the slightly bigger portion. It's a fairly simple way to sweeten him up, but she knows she'll make the difference back fairly soon.
"If you win, I'll behave, if I win, I do what I want," he says at last, putting the deck down and collecting his hand from the floor.
"No," Natasha says, before she's even seen her hand. "I don't want you to behave because you have to after some stupid bet. I want you to behave because you're old enough to know how to behave. Just because you don't like him doesn't give you carte blanche to act like a child whenever he's around. It's you that comes off looking worse." She tosses a couple of emeralds into the middle, and Loki meets her bet, then raises her a ruby.
"You have no idea what he's like," Loki says dismissively. "If you were in my position -"
"Sometimes there are people in life who you just don't like. Personality clash, whatever. That is not a good enough reason to land yourself in jail. Nor is it good reason to be an asshole to them. You just have to deal with it. That's part of being an adult and I can't believe I'm have to tell you this when you're like fifty times older than me."
"And the rest," Loki says, pondering over his hand then slowly discarding two cards.
"Looks can be deceiving," Natasha says quietly, frowning at her own hand. "I'm not asking you to pretend to be best friends with him. I'm just asking you to be civil. He's really trying. Really trying."
"Yes, I find him to be rather trying as well," Loki says smoothly, dealing one new card for Natasha and two for himself.
Natasha's lips twist into a smile and she picks up her card. It's the two of clubs, a complete dud, not what she wanted at all. But she holds the smile, chucks in a few sapphires and looks up to Loki.
"I fold," he says, setting his cards face down on the floor. Natasha tries not to grin too much as she pulls the pile of jewels towards her. He won't fall for the same trick more than a couple of times, especially not once he's more focused on the game and less focused on Thor. He's still tired as well, tiny, pale pieces of sleep grit clinging to his lower lashes, the lights in the cell still a little too bright for his pupils.
Natasha puts her hand face down on the floor too, once her jewels are in a nice neat pile next to her knee. Loki reaches forward to turn them over, but she slaps his hand away.
He scowls, withdrawing his hand quickly from her, and rubbing the back of it to ease the stinging. "What did you have?" he demands.
"I don't have to show you," she says brightly. "If you fold, I don't have to show you a damn thing. I can just take the money and run."
"But you might have had a terrible hand," he says, reaching forward again, clearly not having learned his lesson. Natasha grips him by the wrist and prevents him from getting anywhere near her cards.
"But that's the point," Natasha says. "You don't know, and I'm not about to let you know because you might use that to try and work out my strategies. The cards in your hand are like…ten percent of what matters. You can make people think you've got the worst hand in the world or you've got a royal flush, if they fold, they forfeit the right to know which it is."
Loki fixes her with a steely glare, and Natasha keeps a firm grip on his wrist, his pulse pumping steadily beneath her thumb. Then, from nowhere, his other hand speeds forward, attempting to snatch the cards, but Natasha's reflexes are well honed, and she grabs him before he even lays a finger on the topmost card. When she pulls his hand away, he rises to his knees swiftly, trying to use his height to steer his and Natasha's arms back down towards the cards, but Natasha holds him steady, her arms locked into place. He bites his lip, glancing down at the cards, then back at Natasha, calculating his next move. She tries to read him, just as she does when they're playing cards, but he gives nothing away in his expression, only that he's about to do something. When he raises her arms above her head, the split second before he throws his full weight at her gives her enough time to duck her head. He sends her tumbling backwards, but she embraces it, going for the full backwards roll and forcing him to the floor instead, her grip on his wrists unrelenting as she holds him down, all of her weight resting on his hips.
"You gotta remember," she says, a little breathless. "I play with boys a lot bigger and uglier than you everyday."
"I just want to know what -"
"You can't," she says. "End of story. That's life. I said no, and I mean no."
"But it's not fair," he says in a small voice, his eyebrows creasing in the middle.
Natasha can't believe what she's hearing. "You of all people should know that life isn't fair. Sometimes, you don't get what you want, and you can't force it, you can't invade a planet to make a point, you just have to suck it up and deal with it. Are we clear?"
He relaxes slightly under her, and Natasha loosens her grip a little. Loki sucks his cheeks in, his lips pouting and he lets his gaze slide down her, starting at the top and making its way down to where their hips meet. He smirks, and Natasha rolls her eyes.
"You know, you could at least buy me a drink first, Agent Romanov."
Natasha raises an eyebrow and removes herself from him, shifting back to the pile of cards and collecting them up, including her mysterious dud hand of contention and shuffling them. Loki returns to his original position, his smirk still firmly in place and settles himself, back against the wall, his eyes on Natasha as she deals out the next hand.
"Do you want to go to the lake?"
Loki remains silent, trudging up towards the forest, the chain linking him to Natasha jangling between them. She nudges him gently and he takes a steadying breath before replying in a tight, strained voice, "Yes, why not?"
The answer seems to give Thor a renewed sense of purpose, and he doubles his speed, Loki stubbornly trying to keep up even though his body can't handle it. Ideally, he ought to be going out every day, but he's far too miserable for that, choosing to remain in his cell despite the opportunity to head outside. She knows Thor offers it to him even when she's not there, but, she supposes, the idea of being chained to Thor is just about enough to make Loki want to vomit, so it's hardly surprising that he refuses.
When they reach the clearing in the woods, the water glinting happily under the thin beams of sunlight that manage to break through the treetops, the three of them sit down, Natasha and Loki with their backs against a huge tree trunk, and Thor opposite them, unloading a selection of food from the sack he's brought with them. He pulls out three glass bottles and passes one to Natasha, one to Loki (who reluctantly accepts) and keeps one for himself.
"It's the finest ale we have to offer," Thor says cheerfully. "Loki used to love it, perhaps a little too much on some occasions."
Loki stills next to her and Natasha ignores it, smiling at Thor, and pulling the cork out of the top of her bottle. After a moment, Loki's tension dissipates, and he removes his own cork, causing the chain to tug Natasha's arm towards him sharply.
"Sorry," he mumbles, not looking at her.
"It's okay," she says, taking a swig of her ale. It's strong, just like the wine, but it's slightly softer in its flavours, a pleasant, maltiness taking the edge off the sharpness of the alcohol. Thor opens up the packages of food and gestures for everybody to get started, waiting for Loki and Natasha to choose something before he helps himself. Natasha tries to keep her smile at bay as she tears a strip of flesh off of a roasted chicken leg and pops it into her mouth. He's trying so hard to not be too overpowering around Loki, just in small ways like letting him have first choice of the food, or asking if he wants to go to the lake instead of telling him they should go to the lake. He's considering each one of his actions before he makes them, something which she knows for Thor, is still a fairly alien concept. This new process of thinking before acting has left him rather more quiet, and bizarrely gentle. Natasha has never been intimidated by him before in the entire time she's known him, but the idea of him hurting somebody, even an enemy, in this state seems like it's impossible.
They eat in silence. Natasha catches Loki chewing slowly, and it soon becomes clear that he's very much wishing he was elsewhere. There is a slightly mechanical feel to his movements, all too regular and a little bit stiff, and it's because he's thinking of everything else except where he is and what he's doing; his body is on autopilot. She wonders what he's thinking about, and doesn't want to break his mood, because he is doing exactly as asked and behaving himself. The methods he chooses to employ in order to stay sane throughout this experience are not for her to question.
"How is Dr Banner?" Thor asks Natasha eventually, when he realises that Loki won't be joining them in conversation.
"He's good," Natasha replies, nodding as she swallows down the remnants of a bread roll. "He's doing a lot of research for SHIELD, is in control of his condition, it's all good."
"I'm glad," Thor says with a concerned frown. "He seemed a good man when I met him. And there are not many men who can match my strength." He smiles and helps himself to more food from the sack. "Loki, come, there's still lots to eat."
Loki blinks, and Natasha knows he's fallen back into reality with a slight bump. But, without question, he reaches out a hand and takes a small, round pie from one of the boxes. He bites into it and chews steadily, looking between Natasha and Thor as they watch him.
"What?" he says defensively. "I'm just eating."
"Is it good?" Natasha asks, gesturing to the pie. There are at least half a dozen in the box and she hasn't tried one yet, far too distracted by all the other things that Thor has laid out for them in this veritable feast. She'd love to have such good food available to order twenty four seven, and while Tony's pizza place does do a mean thin crust with barbecued chicken at the drop of a hat, this beats it a hundred times over.
"You'll like it," Loki says, after swallowing a mouthful. "They've sweetened the pork."
Natasha takes a pie, and as she brings it closer, she can smell the sweetness through the small skewer hole in the top. It's almost caramel like, and when she bites into the, pastry crumbles, the pork soft and tender, falling apart in her mouth. She closes her eyes and leans her head back against the tree trunk, enjoying the moment. She thinks fondly of home, of how the snow will have definitely lost its picturesque pure whiteness and will now be slush and ice and the source of plenty of visits to the emergency room. She thinks of her cold flat, with its candles and blankets, and of all the tinned food that she isn't having to crack open and eat cold. Tomorrow should probably be her last day here, because she knows that after three days, the powers that be will be so sick of it themselves that there will be no other option than to spend the money to get everything working more quickly. She should probably check in with the others too, see how they're getting on at Tony's place and if Pepper's decided to spend her week in Miami instead.
When she finishes the pie, she keeps her eyes closed, relishing in the sweet aftertaste of the meat. It's not until Loki pulls gently on the chain that she realises that both he and Thor have finished, and are sitting in an awkward silence, not helped in the slightest by Natasha's prior obliviousness to it.
"Can I go and skim some stones?" Loki asks, lifting the chain slightly to indicate that if he goes, Natasha will have to go too.
"Sure," she says, and they stand simultaneously, nearly used to the confines of the chain linking them. They head down to the bank, while Thor packs away the leftover food, and Loki takes a swig of his ale, before using the base of the bottle to hollow out a small, secure well for it to stand in the pebbles. He crouches down, Natasha following, and begins searching amongst the pebbles for some prime stones. After a little while, he has a collection in the palm of his hand, all smooth, flat, and a strange, ghostly white.
"I'm having fun," she says quietly, as he turns over a couple more stones and then tosses them aside disapprovingly.
He surveys her silently, his lips skewing to the side until his fingers close around a stone of interest and he focuses his attention on that instead.
"Thank you for making this easy," she continues, in that same soft voice that she knows won't carry over to where Thor is. "I appreciate it."
He looks up at her briefly again but either he's more interested in his stones, or her cool blue gaze is holding a little too much sincerity for him to be able to deal with.
"I'd probably be having fun if he weren't here."
Natasha doesn't know what to make of that. On the one hand, it's still obvious that he can't see past the idea he has of Thor that he's the bringer of all misery, but on the other, it's a confession that actually, the two of them alone in the forest is his idea of a mildly pleasant situation. She decides to disregard the latter (for now) and focus on the more pressing issue.
"He has to be here. If you leave that cell, you have to be with him. But look at how much space he's giving you." She looks over to where Thor is sat by the tree, food packed away, sipping his ale as he reclines on his elbows, gazing up into the treetops. "He's really trying to make you comfortable around him. He knows how much you can't stand him, and as much as that hurts him, he accepts it and respects your boundaries."
Loki stands up suddenly, chooses a stone and skims it across the surface of the water. Natasha stands too and sighs, wishing at the very least Loki would just acknowledge how much effort Thor is putting in, with little regard for his own feelings. The amount of time he will have had to sacrifice in order to be Loki's sole warden when Natasha's not around is huge, at least ten hours of every day, and when combined with his duties as a prince, it's no surprise that he falls asleep while she Loki and play poker late into the night.
"You know I'm gonna have to head home tomorrow night," she says, watching the progress of one of Loki's stones as it bounces across to the far bank, eventually dipping beneath the surface. He lets out a small breath, then chooses a new stone. "Need to check in with everybody. Never been out of contact this long before. Apart from on assignments."
"When will you be back?"
"When I've bought chocolate…and your poker book."
"Give me a date," he says impatiently.
"Two, maybe three days at home, then I'll come back. I kinda have to show up to work at least a couple of days a month."
Loki nods and skims another stone, the muscles in his face tight and twitchy. He's upset at the news, as she knew he would be. He's probably grown used to her being there at every waking moment these past couple of days, and to go back to the silence will be hard for him. But, who knows, it might force him to actually converse with Thor. Desperate times do call for desperate measures after all.
"It's so boring when you're not around," he sighs. "It's just endless…misery. I hate it."
"Yeah," she says. "I know. But you gotta pay your dues, you know that."
"But for how long?" he asks, finally taking his attention off of the stones and placing it solely with Natasha. "Am I to stay in that cell for the rest of my life?"
"I don't really know what Asgardian law states when it comes to invading planets…" Natasha begins slowly. Loki rolls his eyes and turns back to the lagoon, flicking one of the stones towards the water with a little more force than strictly necessary. "But I do know that you're now allowed outside, and that Thor would have you out here everyday if you agreed to it. That's progress."
"I refuse to be chained to that imbecile."
"I know, but the point is, you're trusted enough for that to be an option. This is why I'm trying to get you guys to be civil to one another. You don't have to be best friends, but if he can trust you, if you actually embrace the opportunities he's giving you, then maybe after a couple more times out he'll be able to let just the two of us out together, or maybe he'll ditch the chains, I don't know. You have to really prove yourself, if you want an improvement, and no one else can do that for you."
He skims another stone, this time with slightly more of that treasured finesse of his, but doesn't reply. She doesn't mind when he's like this. It just means she knows he's digesting her words. Even if he doesn't like them, or agree with them, he's processing them and letting them sit in his brain, as opposed to flat out ignoring her. Then, hopefully, when he's laying awake at night because the floor is too hard and the blanket is too thin, his brain will present those words back to him, and he'll figure that actually, a little bit of effort might be worth it, if it means that one day, he might get out of there and get a proper bed again. That's what Natasha hopes, anyway, and so far, he's not let her down nearly as often as she first expected he might.
She drags her feet, unimpressed with the mixture of grit and slush spread all over the pavement. The walk to Tony's is cold and miserable and the power is still intermittent, the streetlights flickering occasionally, the streets eerily quiet. There are faint snowflakes falling from the sky, not enough to actually build up, but still an indication that it's not quite over just yet.
When she arrives at Tony's, she's surprised to see that the entire ground floor is full of people. The glass doors slide open and she walks through, relishing in the burst of warm air that envelops her from the heater above. The entrance hall has extension leads trailing all over the floor, the thick white cables covered up by rubber mats, taped down to the floor tiles. People are sitting on metal folding chairs, polystyrene coffee cups in hand, phones plugged into the nearest free socket.
Natasha smiles and heads for the lift, Jarvis recognising her and opening the doors automatically.
"The others are on the twenty-second floor, Agent Romanov. Shall I tell them you're coming?"
Natasha shrugs. "Nah," she says, and she feels the small leap in her gut as the lift starts to move upwards. "I'll surprise them."
"Very well. Just for reference, Agent Romanov, the piña coladas have a horrifying ratio of rum to pineapple juice."
"I'll bear that in mind," Natasha says, and the lift comes to a gentle halt, the doors dinging and sliding open smoothly. "Thanks Jarvis."
"Most welcome, Agent Romanov."
She can hear noise coming from the other end of the corridor - there's some vague, old school rock playing through the speakers, and despite it not being very loud, Tony seems to think he needs to shout to be heard above the racket.
"Bruce, that is how a piña colada is supposed to taste, I'm telling you."
Bruce's reply gets drowned out, and Natasha figures he's been sticking to beer up until this point. He's the first to notice her when she appears in the doorway, and he certainly has the most focused gaze. Steve is resting his head in his hands, his palms covering his ears, while Tony is leaning back on his chair precariously, in very serious danger of falling and smacking his head against the marble floor. Clint, meanwhile, is sipping his piña colada quite happily, but then he's always had a strong stomach for spirits. No match for her when it comes to vodka, but fairly impressive all the same.
"Look who it is!" Tony cries with a grand, sweeping gesture of his hand, his chair crashing back onto four legs with a loud crack. "How's dungeon boy?"
"Good," Natasha says, shrugging off her coat and slinging it onto the sofa. "What's going on downstairs?"
"It's been open during the entire outage. People can come, charge their phones…parts of Brooklyn are still without power so I think it's mainly those guys down there now. I'm just being a super nice guy, you know?" Tony smirks and Natasha rolls her eyes, taking a seat at the table. A glass of piña colada slides across the surface towards her, and she catches it before it flies off the edge and crashes onto the floor.
"It's strong," Clint says in a warning tone.
"Yeah, to you, maybe," Natasha replies. "Besides, some of the stuff they have on Asgard…" she raises her eyebrows high and takes a sip of her cocktail. It is strong, but not in the way where she can feel it go straight to her head. The fierceness of the rum completely overpowers the sweetness of the pineapple juice, which is only present in a sugary after-taste that lingers on the back of her tongue.
"Did you bring any of it back?" Tony asks, his interest piqued.
"No," Natasha replies. "You guys wouldn't be able to handle it."
"If Loki can handle it, then we can handle it," Clint says firmly, sipping up the last of his own cocktail through his straw, Natasha wincing at the irritating gurgling noise he makes when getting the last few drops caught between the ice cubes.
"Oh God why don't you both just slap them on the table and get a ruler out…" Natasha sighs, stirring her own drink with her straw before taking another sip.
"We should play poker," Clint says to the others, ignoring Natasha's comment. Steve looks up, his eyes watery with a slightly pink tinge at the edges. He takes one look at Natasha then shakes his head.
"No way," he croaks. "Not if Natasha's playing. She'll win all my money. Again."
Natasha smiles, but when Tony stumbles to the bar to fetch a deck of cards, and returns with both the cards and a bottle of scotch, Steve is left with no option other than to join in.
"Losers have to take a shot," he says, flicking shot glasses across the table to each of them. Steve groans and buries his face in his arms, while Tony starts to deal.
"When did you last play?" Bruce asks Natasha quietly.
"Properly? With you guys I guess," she answers, taking up her hand and inspecting it. "Why?"
"I wanna know how rusty you are," he says with a small smile, before adding, "But what about improperly?"
"Today," she murmurs. Bruce opens his mouth in surprise, but no words come out, and she smirks, knowing exactly what's going through his head, but having consumed far too much rum, even in just a half glass, to be able to give a damn.